July 16, 2005
| Mozilla |
mozilla
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| Programming |
programming
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| Quotations |
quotations
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After meeting BookBurro's creator and listening a great talk about microformats (and how greasemonkey extensions can assemble them to create useful services for you) past week, I'm thinking a lot about GreaseMonkey. For example, I have more than 4 extensions that modify google.com and I have no more idea if what I see is the original content sent by google or if it is modified/created by one of the 4 extensions. I see that Lucas Gonze had a similar problem: he was commenting on ReBLG icons being adopted by all the bloggers in few days but in reality it was an extension installed by him (and forgetted) doing the insertion in the HTML pages he was seeing. [Lucas is the creator of the great WebJay.org] For this reason he suggests to add a greasemonkey icon near every modification made via extensions. I'm not sure it is the best solution since I will end up easily having hundreds of GM icons in the pages, anyway it is something we need to think about.
And I just want to note, since every day it is easier for anyone to write "code", that this quotation becomes more and more true:
The moral is obvious. You cannot trust code that you did not totally create yourself.
-- Ken Thompson, Turing Award Lecture [Thompson, 1984]
May 08, 2005
| Quotations |
quotations
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I began reading "Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy" by Bertrand Russell (First page)
Mathematics is a study which, when we start from its most familiar portions, may be pursued in either of two opposite directions. The more familiar direction is constructive, towards gradually increasing complexity: from integers to fractions, real numbers, complex numbers, from addition and multiplication to differentiation and integration, and on to higher mathematics. The other direction, which is less familiar, proceeds, by analysing, to greater and greater abstractness and logical simplicity; instead of asking what can be defined and deduced from what is assumed to begin with, we ask instead what more general ideas and principles can be
found, in terms of which what was our starting-point can be defined or deduced. It is the fact of pursuing this opposite direction that characterises mathematical philosophy as opposed to ordinary mathematics. But it should be understood that the distinction is one, not in the subject matter, but in the state of mind of the investigator. ... The distinction between mathematics and
mathematical philosophy is one which depends upon the interest inspiring the research, and upon the stage which the research has reached; not upon the propositions with which the research is concerned.
I began reading this book already at least 5 times, I'm beginning again. Russell seems a genious (at least to me, but I guess I don't really have ways to judge him so I'm more trusting the generalish opinion about him here).
January 19, 2005
| Quotations |
quotations
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The web is more a social creation than a technical one. I designed it for a social effect — to help people work together — and not as a technical toy. The ultimate goal of the Web is to support and improve our weblike existence in the world. We clump into families, associations, and companies. We develop trust across the miles and distrust around the corner.
—Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving The Web
(found at XFN: Introduction and Examples)
December 17, 2004
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
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| Mozilla |
mozilla
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| Quotations |
quotations
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SpreadFirefox team has chosen a key phrase I terribly like: "There is an alternative". Actually, my preferred one is TIAAA (There Is Always An Alternative) as opposed to TINA (There Is No Alternative), often used by Thatcher and neoliberists in general to argue how capitalism is the only possible choice and you should be mad in trying to think and build something different. However this post is not about slogans but about the 2 full pages ad promoting Firefox in The New York Times (image). On the left page, the Firefox logo is built with all the names of the people who have contributed (PDF). Cool!
March 03, 2004
| Quotations |
quotations
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Email is where knowledge goes to die. I couldn't agree more.
August 21, 2003
| Quotations |
quotations
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"Our aim is to recognise each other and for each one of us to learn to see and
honour in the other what he is--the counterpart and complement of the other."
--Hermann Hesse
