Replicating memes

I’m worried about the EURO’s M3 if a European version of the IMF (a EMF) is to be installed.

Nonetheless, I think the European community should do it just to strengthen Europe’s economy. I’m not satisfied by Europe’s economic strength: I want it to be undefeatable.

We must not let the IMF solve our problems. Europe might be a political dwarf, but we Europeans should show that we will solve our own problems. We’re an adult composition of cultures with vast amounts of experience. We know how to solve any imaginable problem. And let’s not, in our defeatism, pretend we don’t.

A EMF is a commitment to future member states: Europe often asks them fundamental changes; economic strength is what Europe offers in return. This needs to come at a highest price: Greece will have to fix their deficit problem. Even if their entire population goes on strike. Greece will be an example for countries like my own: Belgium has to fix a serious deficit problem, too.

An EMF comes at an equally high price, and that frightens me a bit: I don’t want the ECB to go as ballistic on money creation as the FED has been last two years. I want the EURO to be the strongest relevant currency mankind has ever created. No matter how insane the rest of the world thinks that ambition is: I believe that keeping the EURO’s M3 in check is a key to creating a wealthy society in Europe.

Politically I want European nations to negotiate more and more often. The European Union is a political dwarf only because finding agreement is hard. But in the long run will our solution be the most negotiated, most tested on this planet.

Together we can deal with anything. That doesn’t mean it’ll be easy; it has never been easy: just seventy years ago we were still killing each other. We’re all guilty of that one way or another. And before that it wasn’t any better. Today, not that many people still care: “it wasn’t me”, right? So stop being a bitch about it, then.

It’s time to let it be. It’s time to start a new European century that will be better. With respect for all European cultures, languages, nations, nationalities, values, borders and interests.

But also a European century with economic responsibilities for each member. It’s our strength: we figured out how to keep our population wealthy: let’s continue doing so in the future.

(More available at the flash preview widget’s page 21)

– Daniel Goleman, Working With Emotional Intelligence, Competencies of the stars. 1998

In Working with Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman explains several practical methods to improve the social skills of people. Before I bought this book a year or two ago, I read Daniel’s first book Emotional Intelligence. This weekend I finally started reading Working With.

I recommend the section Some Misconceptions. Regretfully ain’t this section available for display in the flash preview widget. Instead of violating copyright laws by typing it down here, I’m recommending to just buy the book.

You can find audiobooks online. The section about misconceptions is at track three. Track five talks about two computer programmers, which is very illustrative for many of my blog’s readers (and possibly myself). I hope you wont illegally download using torrents. Instead, buy the material.

Also very interesting is this lecture by Daniel:

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Here you can also find a Authors@Google talk by Daniel Goleman:

What distinguishes Daniel Goleman from old line proponents of positive thinking, however, is his grounding in psychology and neuroscience. Armed with a Ph.D in psychology from Harvard and a first-grade journalism background at the New York Times, Dr. Goleman has authored half a dozen books that explore the physical and chemical workings on the brain and their relationship with what we experience as everyday life.

– Peter Allen, director of Google university, introduction to Daniel Goleman. August 3, 2007

I hope readers of my blog will shun away from pseudo science when it comes to emotional and social intelligence, but instead read and learn from authors like Daniel Goleman. I also (still) recommend the books available at The Moral Brain by for example Dr. Jan Verplaetse.

We would rather suffer the visible costs of a few bad decisions than incur the many invisible costs that come from decisions made too slowly - or not at all - because of a stifling bureaucracy.

– Letter by Warren E. Buffett to the shareholders of Berkshire, February 26, 2010

We both agree that Nigel Farage is a complete moron.

Perhaps we should put a damp rag like the one he mentions in his mouth next time he opens it?

Nigel Farage, you’re an disgrace to yourself. The European parliament is no place for personal attacks, and you aren’t fit to carry the title Member of the European Parliament. Please keep the honour to yourself and resign.

Every sensible person outside of the U.K. thinks you should. Even the Euro skeptics do. You’re an embarrassment for your country and its culture, so I hope for the people in the U.K. that they’ll kick you out of politics.

I fear you’re just playing the populist card, and that you’ll even get votes for this from other morons.

This (super) cool .NET developer and good friend came to me at the FOSDEM bar to tell me he was confused about why during the Tracker presentation I was asking people to replace F-Spot and Banshee.

I hope I didn’t say it like that, I would never intent to say that. But I’ll review the video of the presentation as soon as Rob publishes it.

Anyway, to ensure everybody understood correctly what I did wanted to say (whether or not I did, is another question):

The call was to inspire people to reimplement or to provide different implementations of F-Spot’s and Banshee’s data backends, so that they would use an RDF store like tracker-store instead of each app its own metadata database.

I think I also mentioned Rhythmbox in the same sentence because the last thing I would want is to turn this into a .NET vs. anti-.NET debate. It just happens to be that the best GNOME softwares for photo and music management are written in .NET (and that has a good reason).

People who know me also know that I think those anti-.NET people are disruptive ignorable people. I also actively and willingly ignore them (and they should know this). I’m actually a big fan of the Mono platform.

I’ll try to ensure that I don’t create this confusion during presentations anymore.

In line with what I usually do at conferences, I lost my glasses at the GNOME Beer event this year. If somebody found it, and maybe even has it, please let me know. It’s kinda hard to see presentations without it.

This is to let Rob Taylor and David Schlesinger know that they better start organizing S.M.A.S.H.E.D.

Not all discussions are easy. If discussions were to be easy, the bar wouldn’t be high enough for your bullshit filter to be effective here.

During dark hours of discussions the nineties syndrome of wanting immediate results plays its role among spectators: It’s not a popular job to be a dissident. It’s not popular to be critical about a (the leader of a) popular idea. This is illustrated by the intellectually absurd criticisms David Schlesinger receives.

Yet is the critic who monitors the organs of a society key to that organ either producing for its stakeholders, or failing and dragging the entire society it serves down with it.

In Western Europe we traded Kings and Popes for a government that is held accountable by an opposition. Many countries and cultures adopted this system of governance. That’s because it undeniably works. If you have a better system in mind, that can be put to the test, please come forward.

It is good that the GNOME foundation board has decided to increase the amount of surveys. But I have one request which I didn’t succeed in raising before the end of last year:

Although I accept the decisive role a group of leadership has to take, I want foundation board members and employees to be held accountable for the decisions they make. Especially the ones where they go against the results of such a survey.

But this is not up to me.

*edit* They are showing an old episode of Married with Children on TV, I’ll be back in half an hour!

Hello Astronomers

it is Solstice.

(this from Wiki)

Of the many ways in which solstice can be defined, one of the most common (and perhaps most easily understood) is by the astronomical phenomenon for which it is named, which is readily observable by anyone on Earth: a “sun-standing.” This modern scientific word descends from a Latin scientific word in use in the late Roman republic of the 1st century BC: solstitium. Pliny uses it a number of times in his Natural History with the same meaning that it has today. It contains two Latin-language segments, sol, “sun”, and -stitium, “stoppage.”^[2] The Romans used “standing” to refer to a component of the relative velocity of the Sun as it is observed in the sky. Relative velocity is the motion of an object from the point of view of an observer in a frame of reference. From a fixed position on the ground, the sun appears to orbit around the Earth.^[3]

To an observer in inertial space, the Earth is seen to rotate about an axis and revolve around the Sun in an elliptical path with the Sun at one focus. The Earth’s axis is tilted with respect to the plane of the Earth’s orbit and this axis maintains a position that changes little with respect to the background of stars. An observer on Earth therefore sees a solar path that is the result of both rotation and revolution.

The component of the Sun’s motion seen by an earthbound observer caused by the revolution of the tilted axis, which, keeping the same angle in space, is oriented toward or away from the Sun, is an observed diurnal increment (and lateral offset) of the elevation of the Sun at noon for approximately six months and observed daily decrement for the remaining six months. At maximum or minimum elevation the relative motion at 90° to the horizon stops and changes direction by 180°. The maximum is the summer solstice and the minimum is the winter solstice. The path of the Sun, or ecliptic, sweeps north and south between the northern and southern hemispheres. The days are longer around the summer solstice and shorter around the winter solstice. When the Sun’s path crosses the equator, the days and nights are of equal length; this is known as an equinox. There are two solstices and two equinoxes.^[4]

We used to observe and celebrate this event widely, the Romans moved the birth of Christ to Solstice to usurp it .

Now people celebrate fiction instead of fact ..unless your an Astronomer that is.

Praise the Laws and Happy Solstice.

– Ordono Mundi

ps. I think Solstice was yesterday, but oh well..

The discussion with Richard Stallman ended with requested silence.

I’d like to ask people to use the following meme for future such discussions:

La pensée ne doit jamais se soumettre, ni à un dogme, ni à un parti, ni à une passion, ni à un intérêt, ni à une idée préconçue, ni à quoi que ce soit, si ce n’est aux faits eux-mêmes, parce que, pour elle, se soumettre, ce serait cesser d’être.

– Henri Poincaré, University of Brussels (1909-11-19)

As for the conclusions. I believe this survey result and this analysis are conclusive.

I would like to dedicate this moment to this version of Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters.

Jono, our Metal fan, probably agrees with me that even the toughest person in the world of Metal can be brought to his knees, crying.

It’s a moment of reconciliation. What is it that we want?

I think more than ever, we do understand each other.

I don’t know.

Last few weeks I have been working on the new thumbnail infrastructure for future Maemo products.

Last year I made a specification for requesting thumbnails over D-Bus. Afterward I made a quick prototype and replaced the hildon-thumbnailer library of Maemo with it. This prototype will be deployed on the standard N900 image. It’s too late to replace Fremantle’s thumbnailer with the new stuff. It takes time to properly test it.

While I was developing both the specification and the prototype XFCE developer Jannis Pohlmann contacted me about rewriting my prototype for use in the XFCE project. Tumbler was born.

The nice people at Nokia are more interested in working with upstream projects instead of maintaining own products separately, so I shifted my focus from hildon-thumbnail to contributing to Jannis’ Tumbler project.

We realized that we needed different kinds of schedulers so while Jannis was developing Tumbler I kindly asked to consider abstracting scheduling a bit. Tumbler now has two schedulers. The background one sets I/O and scheduler priorities to IDLE and processes its thumbnail tasks in FIFO order. The foreground uses LIFO and will instead of grouping Ready signals together, emit them immediately after each single thumbnail is finished. Default is of course foreground.

We also realized that thumbnail flavors are going to be platform specific. So we added some support for this in the DBus APIs that we further fine tuned and versioned.

Congratulations and appreciation to Jannis who made Tumbler’s code and design really nice. Also thanks a lot for constructively considering our requirements and helping adapting Tumbler’s code to cope with them.

I know you for example worked one long night on this stuff, so I officially owe you a few beers and/or cocktails next conference.

How about FOSDEM?

To be a Rubens, is to make paintings

Veel mensen beweren dat indien je de prijs van een product artificieel verhoogt dat je daardoor de producent ervan rijker maakt. Laten we melk als voorbeeld nemen om dit gesprek wat minder abstract te maken.

Europese overheden worden momenteel door belangengroepen en stakende boeren gedwongen om de prijs van melk artificieel te maken. Met andere woorden wordt de overheid gevraagd om het concept van vrije marktprijzen voor melk los te laten. Dus zelf maar te gaan bepalen wat de prijs voor melk hoort te zijn. Niet de markt maar wel politici en belangengroepen moeten dan bepalen wat die prijs zou moeten zijn.

Het probleem is dat volgorde van nut, van melk, niet wijzigt wanneer incompetente mensen een prijs vastleggen.

Met melk kan veel gedaan worden. Je kan er yoghurt mee maken, je kan het gewoon drinken, je kan er een kind een gezond drankje mee geven, je kan er kaas mee maken, je kan er chocolade mee maken, en zo verder. Zoals bijna alle producten is het veelzijdig.

Ieder individu heeft een voorkeurenladder voor zijn melk doelen. Tegenwoordig hebben we een ruilmiddel dat we geld noemen. Maar laten we voor de grap minuten werk gebruiken als eenheidsprijs. Je kan stellen dat een mens een zekere hoeveelheid werktijd over heeft voor ieder van zijn melk doelen.

Laat me een voorbeeld maken. Deze lijst hangt af van persoon tot persoon, maar kan slechts enkel objectief vastgesteld worden door naar handelingen te kijken. Niet door naar iemand zijn beweringen te luisteren. Stel dat we de volgende vaststelling doen bij de man:

• Zijn kind melk geven - 8 minuten werk voor over
• Zelf melk drinken - 6 minuten werk voor over
• Yoghurt eten - 4 minuten werk voor over
• Kaas eten - 4 minuten werk voor over
• Chocolade eten - 3 minuten werk voor over

Dit betekent dat de persoon 8 minuten wil werken om zijn kind een gezonde drank te geven. Hij wil echter maximaal 6 minuten werken om zelf melk te kunnen drinken. Yoghurt vindt hij wel lekker, maar minder belangrijk. Dus heeft de man 4 minuten werk voor yoghurt over. En zo verder.

We zullen om het eenvoudig te houden elk van deze handelingen gelijk stellen aan één liter melk. Dit is in werkelijkheid niet het geval maar het maakt het voorbeeld eenvoudig zonder af te doen aan de logica.

Stel dat we in totaal 10 liter melk hebben voor één man. Hij wil het kind melk geven en heeft daar 8 minuten voor over. Daarna wil hij zelf melk drinken. In totaal verbruikt hij nu 2 liter melk. Hij wil ook yoghurt eten. Hij wil kaas eten, en zelfs chocolade. Al die doelen zijn mogelijk want er is voldoende melk.

De man zal nu al zijn doelen invullen door de melk te kopen aan 3 minuten per liter. Met andere woorden koopt hij in totaal 5 liter melk voor 15 minuten werk. Er is een melk overschot van 5 liter. De producent heeft dus 5 liter teveel geproduceerd. Maar de producent heeft ook werkuren in die melk moeten stoppen. Hij zal dus niet toelaten dat de man oneindig laag gaat in wat hij over heeft voor melk.

Stel nu dat de regering bij wet vastlegt dat een liter melk niet 3 minuten maar wel 5 minuten werk moet kosten. We herhalen ons voorbeeld.

Hij wil nog steeds zijn kind melk geven. Daar heeft hij 8 minuten werk voor over. Daarna drinkt hij zelf melk, daar zou hij 6 minuten werk voor over hebben. Maar voor yoghurt heeft hij niet meer de prijs van 5 minuten werk over, dat is immers meer dan de 4 minuten die hij er voor over heeft. De persoon koopt dus géén yoghurt. Hij koopt ook géén kaas en hij koopt géén chocolade. Die producten kosten allemaal meer dan wat hij over heeft voor de liter melk die ze vereisen. In totaal heeft hij 2 liter melk gekocht voor 10 minuten werk en is er 8 liter overschot.

Door de prijs van melk vast te leggen zorgt de regering er dus voor dat bedrijven die yoghurt, kaas en chocolade maken failliet gaan en creëert het een nog grotere melk overschot.

Het kost ons allen belastingen om die melk op te kopen, en meer aan sociale zekerheid om werkloosheidsuitkeringen uit te betalen voor mensen in de sectoren kaas, chocolade en yoghurt.

Daarbovenop creëert men armoede in landen waar Europa de opgekochte overschot aan melk aan dumpingprijzen op de markt gooit. Hierdoor kunnen plaatselijke boeren niet concurrentieel zijn en worden ze werkloos. In tegenstelling tot werkloos zijn in ons land, wat werkelijk het paradijs op aarde is met brugpensioenen, gratis huisvesting, een legioen aan mensen die werk voor je zoeken en een royale uitkering, betekent het daarginds dat de boer, zijn vrouw en zijn kinderen sterven van de honger.

Dus wanneer we er dan toch ideologie bij roepen dan blijkt dat in een geglobaliseerde samenleving zoals de onze het vastleggen van prijzen door de regering immoreel is.

Ook de boeren die melk produceren gaan mee moeten opdraaien voor extra belastingen. Dat is het enige dat de regering heeft gedaan voor de boer: meer belastingen opgelegd.

Het is dus niet logisch te stellen dat wanneer je de prijs van melk artificieel maakt, dat de producent dan meer geld krijgt. Het enige wat wijzigt, is de omvang van de persoonlijke tabellen van doelen die mensen hebben die in aanmerkingen komen voor melk.

Heel wat leiders van belangengroepen, vooral socialistische, moeten hoogdringend enkele basis lessen economie volgen en moeten nog dringender ophouden met populisme. Zij maken ons land er werkelijk mee kapot en creëren armoede in andere landen.

Iedereen heeft het moeilijk, boeren hoeven geen voorkeursbehandeling te krijgen ten koste van anderen.

The Theory of Interstellar Trade. A paper by Paul Krugman, July 1978.

Not watching youtubers very often I almost forgot about Pat Condell’s video blog. Today I decided to take a look at his latest video material.

Pat Condell is, just like me, an outspoken atheist who enjoys exercising his freedom of speech to criticize various religions. Fairly often he criticizes Islam.

Before I continue I’ll remind people that, like Pat Condell, I have nothing in particular against Islam. I don’t have anything against peaceful people in general. Christian, Muslim, atheist, Buddhist or whatever: I don’t care that much. I don’t believe any of those fairy tales, but it’s your freedom to do! I do care about it when, in for example Western countries, countless Christians try to expunge you from society because “you don’t believe in anything”. For many of them not believing is worse than believing in the wrong God, or being a Satanist, or being a sadist. I want to criticize religions and I want to stress the importance of having the right to criticize religions.

Pat takes on the ultra tolerant liberal left people in this video. Just like Pat I used to be on the liberal left. And just like Pat, because I believe in things like social justice, tolerance and respect, I am no longer on the liberal left. Here’s a quote from the video:

Apologists for evil

In this video Pat talks about banning the burka. Given that wearing a burka in Western countries is most definitely only done to make a pathetic political statement, I think it is indeed a good idea to ban burkas. Besides you’re not allowed to wear ski masks when you enter a bank either. You’re not allowed to walk naked in the streets. Yet countless people are trying to claim that these women should have a right to wear burkas. Framing it that way is of course utter bullshit: the debate isn’t about women rights at all. Claiming that it is, is being intellectually dishonest. The debate is about the right for a Islamist husband to claim ownership over a woman or a girl. This isn’t a right in Western countries. The fact that it isn’t, is a good thing.

Pat also points out that Western feminists are rather silent about women rights in Islam. Usually feminists are assertive and confident but this time, apparently, feminists are muted on the issue. Why is that? Where are they?

Ban the burka

For the person who recently debated religion with me (you know who you are): I recently read “Letter to A Christian Nation” by Sam Harris. Very interesting read. I recommend it!

I try not to repeat myself too often, but I fail miserably. Don’t worry, I know.

I once wrote on this blog that the only rational conclusion a rationalist like me can make, is that there is no black and white. No idea, nor any fact, is a black and white issue. Except abstracted ideas.

I’m interested in an idea or fact, that is black and white, yet ain’t an abstraction.

Not even ethics, among the more important things in humanity, is black and white.

The only black and white ideas, in humanity, appear to be abstractions: “I imagine this abstraction to be ‘like’ a black and white model.” However. Is this meaningful at all? A lot of humans think they are geniuses for the mere fact that they can imagine abstractions. They think they are worth something just because they can make the difference between what is real, and what is abstract.

Every idiot who’s human can make a model, everyone can make an abstraction. It’s what differentiates us from animals. I’m pretty sure science will soon prove that animals too, can make abstractions. This ain’t the point.

You are zero special if you can (which is the point). And your imagined model doesn’t prove anything.

That model isn’t sufficient to convince an idiot, like me, that ‘your black and white model’ is meaningful.

Most of the readers of this blog expect some sort of relevance to GNOME or some other subject about opensource (yeah, they do. I know this is strange). Although I don’t necessarily think they deserve it, I will give them that:

A lot of the so-called “Free Software fans” have magically turned into a group of fundamentalists whom I, as a software developer, refuse to affiliate with. They decided to start thinking ‘black and white’.

ps. Don’t try to find too much meaning in this article. I just want to debunk ‘black and white’. That’s all.
ps. I fear this is one of those blogs that I will regret having posted. Oh well. Life is more than being certain about what you do.

“Now, we can finally replace Richard Stallman with a small shellscript“

– Alp Toker, Gran Canaria at the Igalia party, 06 juli 2009

I’ll write it in C#

public void ActCrazy () {
   while (true) {
      be incorrect about Mono
   }
}

Link for planets

I swear to….

• Disavow belief and pursue knowledge.
• Spread the facts and rid the world of ignorance.
• Help build observatories and fund research
• Use my Influence for the benefit of all Astronomers.
• Uphold the non secret nature of our Enterprise.
• Maintain the Laws of Physics with a sense of humour.

ps. Indeed Tiny, I copied this idea from you. Good idea!