FCHouse

…and the MacBook is finally here!

Posted by Carlo - 30/11/06 at 09:11:54 pm

today, after long time, I returned to be a Mac User!

I have received my white MacBook and I’m already moving everything on it. The first thing I have done was testing the environment, getting used to the “Apple” button and then I installed some programs.

I have to admit that one of the first tests has been the installation of Firefox. I have nothing against Safari, but the browser is a choice of heart! I have already installed Parallels and I have moved the virtual machine I had done some days ago on this jewel! Windows 2003 works like a charm: it is fast, the development environment is good and everything works as if you were working on a normal laptop, maybe not one of the best… but it’s more than enough for me!

Now I’m transferring a lot of data and I’m trying not to search a lot of shortcuts I was used to use under Winzoz… I’m happy and the MacOs X (it was the first time I was working on it) seems very fast and reliable.

One more (small) news: this month FCHouse has gone over 2700 visitor, the most visited (and most commented) month since the beginning of my digital words. Thank You to everyone of you!

PS: The “end” button and some other shortcuts seems to be more difficult to learn: my fingers go directly to the upper-right corner of the keyboard (fantastic, BTW) and I usually launch the widgets! :)

Licensing thoughts: how to support an emergent project.

Posted by Carlo - 30/11/06 at 10:11:23 am

In these days I am thinking a lot about MIDDLE, the project I am working on in my spare time. I think it is a good product and I think it can help me building a better future. However I have been asked to release the project on a different license, BSD style, and I’m seriously questioning myself on what to do. I have read carefully a good site explaining different Open Source licenses, but in the end the license choice must be driven by our own targets!
It’s not an easy decision, it’s like taking your little creature and setting it at stake not to spread its wings and fly. I had choosen the LGPL, mostly because it was the “cooperative” Open Source upon which some proprietary code can be attached to. So everyone would be able to use my code, creating their own Closed Source modules (if it is the necessity), but contributing to the MIDDLE project in case of modifications.

The BSD licence style is quite different, because allows everyone to take the code and make virtually whatever he wants with it! Apart from the Rights notice, the eventual modifications to the Framework can be kept closed source. This is the only drawback of the BSD.

One (GPL and LGPL) is more focused on the “collaboration”, the other (BSD) is targeted to the Extreme Freedom.

Well, I will have a lot of thought on this: if the project would be successfull it would be important, for me, to be able to gain some benefits for the long sleepless night passed to create MIDDLE, from the other side, being able to create something that everyone would be able to use would be a Good Thing!

Hard Thoughts, therefore…

In Italy who wants the truth becomes a suspect!

Posted by Carlo - 29/11/06 at 10:11:15 am

Enrico Deaglio has become very popular these days because of a film he has produces, an accusation film on the possibile electoral cheating in the last election “Made in Italy”

Personally I have been shocked from the information that has spread in these days. I thought that those things should have never happened in a Free and Democratic (?) nation as Italy, but apparently there is no limits to the worst.

“Kill the Democracy“, his film, has been released three days ago and some eartquakes has already begun.

The film talks about possible cheating on the blank votes during the last italian election. The election has been quite strange: in the beginning the left wing was winning by ten points, but during the day this margin has become thinner and thinner. In the end the differences was some thousands of votes. Deaglio thinks that there has been a computer manipulation on the blank votes (the voting card witout any sign on it) in order to move all those votes to the right wing. He went into some technical details with a USA technician…

This film should have fired the souls of every italian. It should have caused the manual recount of all the votes of that day… but I forgot that I am talking about Italy, I am talking about the Persimmons’ Land! Oh, what the hell is going on? Deaglio has been denounced with the accusation of diffusion of false information, esagerated and tendentious, in order to disturb the public order.

Is this the DEMOCRACY Italy reserve to the italian? Is this the FREEDOM our parents and grandparents fought for?

Beppe Grillo is telling exactly what I think: RECOUNT! Italy should count again all the votes, without thinking a single second: if what Deaglio has told is true, we NEED to arrest those who have acted against the Democracy.

RESET: COUNT!

If the iPhone would be like this…

Posted by Carlo - 28/11/06 at 02:11:03 pm

Frank has sent me the link to this video on Google, another idea for a possible iPhone…

It the iPhone (a lot of murmur are coming out now) would be like this, I think I will be in the queue to buy one on the first day!!!!!

Isn’t it AMAZING? The speculation on the possible design of the iPhone (or iTalk like in this video) are thousands, I posted one long long time ago.

I’m waiting for my MacBook, and an Apple Phone would be the perfect companion!!!!!

Stay Tuned…

I should stop blaming the Southeastern railways!

Posted by Carlo - 28/11/06 at 11:11:59 am

This morning I was quite pissed off, because for the fifth working day in a row my train was in delay! The 7:46 train from New Cross to Cannon Street passed, again, at 7:54! I pay to get the train and the service is not good enough for the money: the trains are packed and the delays are always there!

Well, today I was reading some news on Wired, and something caught my eyes: a post about the super new tecnology of Trenitalia: ViaggiaTreno (Travel, Train)… yes, now they have a website (for mobile technology too) that is able to tell you, in real time, the delays on the italian rail network. Well, in March 2006 a consumers’ association stated that the 84% of the trenitalia trains were delayed, and a third of those with more than 30 minutes! It means that more or less the 30% of the italian trains arrives with more than half an hour of delay!

Wow, cool! :)

Now, making a comparison with the italian train provider is a little incorrect (hey, guys, Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” was thought after a trip in Italy after all) but the fact still remains: the actual service given by some rail provider (and southeastern is one of these) is not good enough… and yesterday their bosses get a “little” bonus. Hey, make your trains better for the customer instead of cheering yourself for Nothing!

PS: for the italian speaking guys over there, instead of “ViaggiaTreno“, I would have called the service: “Viaggia, Tremo!” (You Travel, I shiver) because of the constant delays… I’ve took a look at the service and EVERY single train was in delay of AT LEAST 10 minutes!

The crisis of the Social Networking Sites

Posted by Carlo - 28/11/06 at 10:11:53 am

This morning I’ve read a computer magazine (suposed to be a development magazine, but it was not…) and I’ve found some terrible forecast for the Social Networking Sites like Digg and similar. Few minutes later I read this post on the false myths on the Web 2.0 and Web 3.0, related to the risk of another .com bubble, and then another post (always on Webomatica) on the Digg problems…
There are a lot of things that are not working, but mainly these sites are plagued by the worst thing possible: human stupidity! If you don’t have a blog you probably don’t know that SPAM is not e-mail related only, and spam is one of the reason I don’t like some sort of “News Aggregators” or, to call them in the Cool (?) way… social networks. There are thousands of interesting things there, but too many times posting there means receiving a lot of spam (if not worst… my auth.log is full of hacking attempt).

If I want to increase the number of visitor on FCHouse, I don’t like to have three thousands visits, which 2500 are spammers. Now, this blog is not widely read: 30.000 visits in one year and a half (less than 100 per day), 450 posts, 620 comments… and 1500 spam comments deleted! It means that 10% of my visits are spam. I’m sorry if this blog is “limited“, but I like to have few, intelligent readers more than millions of bots and ba** bre***r!

Now, returning to the main idea: the Social Networking is a dangerous idea, because it is based on the interaction between (sometimes stupid) people. Posts that are badly rated without having been read, posta that are target of Spam-Storms… and this is only a taste.

The idea behind the social networking is really cute, it has always been, but there are some limitations. We are going to move to a Web 2.0 out of the beta version while some of the most important site about it are dying… so the thought that those sites are NOT the real Web 2.0 is starting popping up in my mind. So What is this Web 2.0, and even if it is a rhetoric question, if we are still fighting the problems of this, why someone is going to talk (because everything I’ve heard until now are only words) of Web 3.0?

This is a strange world.

This site (and its owner) support the idea of the Semantic Web, but it DOES NOT support the stupid naming convention of Web 3.0. Let the children play, for the serious things talk with intelligent names. Semantic Web, it is not that bad, right?

Canon from FunTwo!

Posted by Carlo - 27/11/06 at 03:11:20 pm

Today my iTunes playlist stopped in a song I’ve heard some months ago and I’ve played it a couples of times, because it’s a really good piece of music.

The young man you can see on the YouTube video has used the nickname of FunTwo, and for months he has been the most viewed on the video sharing site. Now his identity is public: Jeong-Hyun Lim, a 23 years old Korean that plays the guitar from six years.

A lot of “Guitarist” has told that this version of Canon Rock is not that good, that he made some mistakes and that his tecnique is not “perfect“… Yeah, I’d like to remember everyone that the video of this guy has been viewed millions of times on YouTube!

Probably he simply did what a lot of other people do every day, just adding a Good Marketing. Maybe he will not be the best guitarist on the planet, but certaintly he is the best Marketing Manager for his guitar ability!

PS: I’m just listening it one more time! :)

Smiling Monday Morning! I don’t know why, but it’s better this way!

Posted by Carlo - 27/11/06 at 09:11:37 am

This morning I woke up with a Smile. Yes, I know it is Monady morning, I also know that the sky is cloudy and that some rain was coming down while I was walking through the streets of London, and of course I know that my train was delayed… but despite everything I’m still Smiling in this Sunday Morning!

Why? Oh, I really don’t know, but honestly… I don’t care!

Yesterday Fabiana and I were chatting about the differences between this new “Home Sweet Home” and Italy, the cultural differences, the different approaches to the everyday things. We are happy to be here, we are living a Better Life, because we do not wake up with some clouds inside us, and this Smiling Morning is a confirmation.

I don’t know why this morning is so shiny… but I would like to wish you a morning like mine, with a smile on your face: throw all your bad thought behind your shoulders and smile!

It REALLY Helps your day!

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: the Trailer

Posted by Carlo - 23/11/06 at 09:11:36 am

In these days I’m talking a lot about technology, computer and so on, and I like it, but sometimes I like to post some juicy news about other stuff apart from the technoidiocy I’m working with!

Today I’ve discovered the first trailer of the new Harry Potter film: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix!

I’ve read the book (and IMHO it is one of the best of the saga) and now I’m waiting to watch the film. Do you remember me? I will be the one that, sooner or later during the film, will scream “I was there, I was there!“.

Here’s the first trailer, enjoy!

PS: The Order of the Phoenix will be released in UK on the 13th of july 2007, still a LONG way to go!

MIDDLE: an Initial Presentation

Posted by Carlo - 22/11/06 at 05:11:48 pm

MIDDLE (for those who have followed some post this months it is not a news) is an Open Source Framework for Web development.

I have developed the entire project and I’m going to release it under LGPL in few weeks, just the time to complete some documentation.

Today I did the first presentation of the product, helping me with a small power point.

MIDDLE is a MVC Framework (Model-View-Controller) that is supposed to speed up the development process for web application. If you are interested you can find the presentation here for download. Note that the actual presentation is to be commented, and it is the first presentation I’ve created in english, so be patient with my grammar mistakes. Frank has pointed out that some parts of the presentation weren’t clear enough (I had made a mess in some parts) and still some others are foggy. I will try fo fix everything up, but for now you can take a look at it!

PS: Here’s the presentation via SlideShare! Enjoy!

Search

Carlo Nicora is at home in London.