Tag Archives: Free software

For billgates, Free Culture advocates are Commies

From BoingBoing, I come to know that billgates consider people that believe in free culture as communists. Such a comparison is so deeply wrong, I’m almost speechless. Free culture and communism are 2 completely different topics.
“There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don’t think that those incentives should exist.”
Anyway I had a small glimpe of what americans on average think about communists (should I say “they don’t think”?) when I was there for some months. I guess billgates’strategy is simple: call them communists, have your media broadcast the idea and let televisions-truths-swallowers get the concept and burn the communists.
Making fun of this nonsense sentence, some people have created wallpapers, t-shirts and other gadgets with this “creative commies” propaganda. Check some of them on BoingBoing.
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No Internet Explorer Information Bar added

As I wrote before, I inserted in my blog the No Internet Explorer Information Bar. If you are reading this lines with a InternetExplorer, you should see an information bar saying “Internet Explorer is preventing you from having a better Internet experience. Learn more”. Clicking on it should lead you to browsehappy.com.
Let me know if this addition broke something.

NeverForgetAttachment: Thunderbird extension needed

thunderbird_extension_snapshot002.pngHave you ever sent an email writing “in attachment you can find…” and then forgot to attach the file? Have you ever received such an email? I guess so. At least I had, many times. So, I’m invoking the LazyWeb and asking for an extension to the free software mail reader Thunderbird (link not working at the moment, use the cached version). A name for the extension can be NeverForgetAttachment but of course the creator will decide the name. How could the extension work? Version 0.1 will simply look for the words “attach” or “attachment” and, in case they are present and there is no attachment when the user clicks the send button, a small window such as the one you see in this post will popup and asks the user if she wants to attach a file. Following versions can even use some machine learning in order to learn which words (or combination of words) refer to an email with a desired attachment and which don’t and react consequently. This can especially be the case if the author don’t want to enter the relative “attach” word for every language in the world. Ok, I’m waiting for someone to create the extension, could this be you?

Sharing research papers

Citeseer is less useful today than how it was 2 years ago. It seems they stop the crawling looking for papers. [I have a project about adding “web of trust” to citeseer so that every user can express a degree of interest in another users’ kept bibliography) but it seems I never have the time to seriously start it.] Anyway this post is to cite 2 interesting related projects: LionShare and Eprints … (read below for links and details)
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Mozilla-based Google Browser

Browse Happy logoWill Google develop a Google browser based on Mozilla? I hope so, everyone trusts Google and will surely download a “browser recommender by Google” (Blogger, owned by Google, already recommends Firefox). See Kottke and Anil for more info.
Anyway, do you Browse Happy? If not, it’s because you should get Mozilla Firefox; it’s even written in the stars.

I robot: Open Operating System?

I visited the I, Robot movie site and watched the trailer. I think I’m not going to see it because I’ve read some reviews who said that the Asimov’s atmosphere is lost and this is just a classical Holliwood action movie. However, the flashy website allows you to order a “real” robot (at NS-5.com). There you find the features of your robot. The operating system? Glad you asked! It’s called Teresa 2.1.2 OS.
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Firefox Ascii Logo

Yes, pure ascii text image obtained from http://c6.org/toogle/index.php?phrase=firefox+logo
(Toogle is a Text version of Googles Image Search). Don’t foget to get Firefox
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Jung (Java Universal Network/Graph Framework)

For my studies on trust metrics, I need to code trust metrics. I was looking for a Java package for modeling, analysis, and visualization of graphs (possibly weighted and directed). I tried many of them (see below) but I found a wonderful one!
Java Universal Network/Graph Framework hosted on SourceForge so open source under a BSD licence (javadoc).
JUNG — the Java Universal Network/Graph Framework–is a software library that provides a common and extendible language for the modeling, analysis, and visualization of data that can be represented as a graph or network. It is written in Java, which allows JUNG-based applications to make use of the extensive built-in capabilities of the Java API, as well as those of other existing third-party Java libraries.
The current distribution of JUNG includes implementations of a number of algorithms from graph theory, data mining, and social network analysis, such as routines for clustering, decomposition, optimization, random graph generation, statistical analysis, and calculation of network distances (Dijkstra Shortest Path), flows, and importance measures (centrality, PageRank, HITS, Random Walk, etc.).
JUNG also provides a visualization framework that makes it easy to construct tools for the interactive exploration of network data. Users can use one of the layout algorithms provided, or use the framework to create their own custom layouts. In addition, filtering mechanisms are provided which allow users to focus their attention, or their algorithms, on specific portions of the graph.

If you don’t trust me, you can try the Ranking Demo or the other demos.

It is of course an evolving project, I already wrote some code to draw arrows and to label edges with weights and I’m trying to integrate it. I plan to code some of these trust metrics. JUNG is maintained by some great PhD students.
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