Recalling the lambda notation…

“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.” ~ Anatole France

Finally I did it. I changed the long name of my blog, from “Developing, programming and computer science” to “Recalling the lambda notation”, with the subtitle “I was a student of computer science in Pisa”.

Most of you do not understand, but some of you will do.

Why I chose this name? Because sometimes, when I am working, I think at that time, when I was a simple student of computer science.

The anxiety caused from the waiting to read the text of the exam, the trepidation during the passage of the list of results, the crucial moment passing through the door thinking “the die has been cast”, the last night before graduation…

But it was an experience that has changed me forever.

Still today, occasionally it happens to me to relive those moments. Often I and my friend jokingly talk about this (words like “I saw the ghost of <theacher name>” or “I like the exercise of the thumb” [1]).

More to come…

[1] Yes, that is the infamous “Hall effect”

Happy new year to everybody.

After several months of absence (11!), finally I am writing a post on my blog!

Many things have happened during this time. I’ll write some of them. (more…)

…I’m back.
And I upgraded my Wordpress to 2.1. Seems that all is working!

Performance Gain of Factor 15 to 40
I knew the headline would draw your attention

I’d love it (and you’d love us) if these numbers were for the entire application suite, but totally unspectacular they’re for the import of huge formula loaded MS-Excel documents into Calc, which is nice enough to be delighted anyway.. Down on the floor and back to the facts: when loading a quite big Excel document, I’m referring to 25 MB of size, more than 100 sheets, a million cells and hundredthousand formulas, formula cells unnecessarily broadcasted their initial recalculation state to all dependents. Building up this dirty tree took most of the time and by replacing it with a document wide simple chain mechanism for this case, loading times went down to a fraction. The metrics from two different machines for that document are:

Small one processor system:
model name      : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1.80GHz
cpu MHz         : 1816.213
cache size      : 256 KB
bogomips        : 3617.58
Mem free        : 386488 kB (or somewhere near that)
old performance : 39:08 minutes
new performance :  2:37 minutes
performance gain: factor 15

Two dual core processors system:
model name      : Dual Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 275
cpu MHz         : 2194.038
cache size      : 1024 KB
bogomips        : 4393.64
Mem free        : 3388412 kB
old performance : 27:58 minutes
new performance :  0:43 minutes
performance gain: factor 39

This is from issue 68960, targeted to OOo2.1

Taken from this blog post.

Steps to wollow:

1. Download the free and fast Foxit PDF Reader from here: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php
2. Print to a PDF printer, like PDFReader: http://www.pdfforge.org/
3. Cut and past from the generated PDF file!

MS:    Microsoft Support. Good morning, sir. Can I help you.
IC:    I have a problem. My computer has halted with a message.
MS:    What’s the message, sir.
IC:    ReadStringFromInf: UpdSpGetLineText failed: 0xe0000102; Microsoft Windows is Not Present
MS:    May I have your product key, sir.
IC:    [gives completely valid product key]
MS:    I’m sorry, sir. That is not a valid product key.

[...]

Read the rest of the story here!

For who that wants to upgrade his “not supported from NVIDIA” video card, like my 5200 Go (on my DELL Latitude D800), he can download the drivers and the modified INF file from here.

I got a Commodore 64 for years as many geeks.
Only we know how this computer is treated by certain hardcore programmers.

Who remembers the famous 4K, 8K and 16K demos?

Who remembers some certain games that “were technically impossible” for our C64? (I’m referring to Out Run 2, for example).

But some guys have produced an Operating System for this 64K computer with chip Motorola 6502 running at 1Mhz.

It’s name is GEOS. It provided an API framework, a device independent system (printing, memory and mouse), GUI.

All this in a highly optimized kernel written entirely in Assembler.

OSNews has written a very good article.

Watch it! Reccomended.

You’ll be randomly paired with a partner who’s online and using the feature. Over a 90-second period, you and your partner will be shown the same set of images and asked to provide as many labels as possible to describe each image you see. When your label matches your partner’s label, you’ll earn some points and move on to the next image until time runs out. After time expires, you can explore the images you’ve seen and the websites where those images were found. And we’ll show you the points you’ve earned throughout the session.

play it here!

According to this report:

This Green Electronics Guide ranks leading mobile and PC manufacturers on their global policies and practice on eliminating harmful chemicals and on taking responsibility for their products once they are discarded by consumers. Companies are ranked solely on information that is publicly available.

Apple gets 2.7/10, while Dell and Nokia get 7/10 (the maximum vote in the report).

From here:
New in Version 1.0.2

Updated Support for Host Operating Systems

VMware Player 1.0.2 adds support for the following host operating systems:

• Windows Server 2003 R2, 32-bit, 64-bit
• Mandriva Linux 2006, 32-bit, 64-bit
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, 32-bit, 64-bit
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 SP3, 32-bit, 64-bit
• SUSE Linux 10.1, 32-bit, 64-bit
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 update 7, 32-bit, 64-bit
• Experimental support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 Update 8, 32-bit, 64-bit
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0 Update 3, 32-bit, 64-bit
• Experimental support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0 Update 4, 32-bit, 64-bit
• Ubuntu Linux 6.06, 32-bit, 64-bit
• Ubuntu Linux 5.10, 32-bit, 64-bit
• Ubuntu Linux 5.04, 32-bit, 64-bit

Updated Support for Guest Operating Systems

VMware Player 1.0.2 adds support for the following guest operating systems:

• Windows Server 2003 R2, 32-bit, 64-bit
• Mandriva Linux 2006, 32-bit, 64-bit
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, 32-bit, 64-bit
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 SP3, 32-bit, 64-bit
• SUSE Linux 10.1, 32-bit, 64-bit
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 update 7, 32-bit, 64-bit
• Experimental support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 Update 8, 32-bit, 64-bit
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0 Update 3, 32-bit, 64-bit
• Experimental support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0 Update 4, 32-bit, 64-bit
• Novell Netware 6.5 SP3, 32-bit
• Experimental support for FreeBSD 6.1, 32-bit, 64-bit
• Experimental support for FreeBSD 6.0, 32-bit, 64-bit
• Solaris x86 10, 10 Update 1, 32-bit, 64-bit
• Ubuntu Linux 6.06, 32-bit, 64-bit
• Ubuntu Linux 5.10, 32-bit, 64-bit
• Ubuntu Linux 5.04, 32-bit, 64-bit

Change in End User License Agreement (EULA) Display

VMware Player no longer displays the End User License Agreement (EULA) at installation. The EULA is now displayed when you launch VMware Player.

I’m too lazy… Today I upgraded my Wordpress to 2.0.4, following the usual guide.

We’ve heard time and again from users: “I find great stores through Google search, but every time I try to buy from an online store, I have to re-enter the same billing, shipping, and credit card information. There are too many steps. Why can’t it be as fast as a Google search?” This motivated us to improve the online purchase process, and so today we’re announcing Google Checkout, a checkout option that makes buying across the web fast and easy.

Read more.