Rosetta Code has put out a call for editors. The idea is ingenious in its simplicity: a Wiki that shows how to do the same tasks in a wide variety of languages. For anyone who learns best by example this is a no-brainer.

Stop by, create an account and help out!

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In an article titled “Stiff asks, great programmers answer,” blogger Jarosaw “sztywny” Rzeszótko gets answers from some of the most influential programmers of the day. Includes responses from Linus Torvalds (Linux), Bjarne Stroustrup (C++), James Gosling (Java), Tim Bray (XML, Atom), Guido Van Rossum (Python), Dave Thomas (Pragmatic Programmer), David Heinemeier Hansson (Rails Framework), and Googlers Steve Yegge and Peter Norvig.

While there are a good deal of serious answers about tools, platforms, methods, skills and so forth, the gem that made me chuckle was the response from Guido Van Rossum to the question “What do you think is the most important skill every programmer should posses?”:

I guess being able to cook an egg for breakfast is invaluable.

If you haven’t yet heard of it, XFN promises a simple way to harness XHTML rel attributes to define relationships on the web. With simple additions to urls such as rel=”friend met colleague neighbor” you could define a link as going to a site owned by someone you consider a friend, who works in the same field as you, that you have met in person, and in fact, lives close to you.

To see where all this is going, be sure to check out the XFN: What’s Out There? page, and take a look at the new XFN lookup service at RubHub. And of course, I had to add bookmarklets to make things easy to search RubHub.
Search RubHub
Search RubHub in a new window

In other news I have seen a plugin for Blosxom (the Perl kind) that checks links in stories against a tab-delimitted list of values to add XFN information to links within the story. While the simplicity of having that handled automatically is nice, I have to wonder what kind of perfomance hit that would make. I first thought about doing something like that for PyBlosxom, but I think I will look into other ways to do it, rather than to require extra pre-processing on every story display.

An article at reallylinux.com points out the issue of Linux user elitism and snobbery – which seems to be putting some Windows users off of trying Linux.

I know it is something I’ve said before (although I’m not sure I have said it here) but it bears repeating: we all start out as a n00b but somewhere along the way we had some kind of assistance to get where we are. It is only if we are willing to share what we know that we can spread our knowledge for the “greater good.” Besides, if you don’t tell anyone what you know, you get no claim to being 1337.

For those who are unaware, VMWare offers the free VMWare player. It’s an ok way to bridge the gap between not having any virtualization and a full-blown VMWare Workstation. There are only a limited number of pre-built Virtual Machines for VMWare player from the VMWare site, however.

There are instructions online on how to install a new OS in VMWare Player, but of course that means that you can’t install VMWare Tools.

The better solution (for the short term) is to allow those who have a full VMWare Workstation installed to create virtual machines for use in the player. Riding to the rescue on this front is vmwarez.com – a site that offers prebuilt virtual machines of Open Source OSes for use in VMWare Player. And I see that there are finally some community built machines showing up on the VMWare site now, as well.

I would, however, still recommend getting VMWare Workstation as soon as you can. It is more than worth it!

It seems that an inordinate amount of energy is being expended on who is offending whom with what speech . I say let it go already!

We have connected the world, and made communication between continents and countries and cultures trivial. There is no way that anyone can communicate with that broad of an audience and not offend someone, sometime. The trick is to focus on making your communication clear, intelligent and well-thought-out. Those who will take offense will be offended no matter what. Those who are more open to new ideas are going to judge your communication based on its merits. And with that in mind, I am rarely ever offended at anything intelligent. (Yes, poorly thought-out, muddy and unintelligent conversation annoys me, but it is much harder to offend me.)

Of course, I think a large number of cases of “offense” are actually annoyance. And as long as we are on the subject, why is that those who are most offended are usually trying their hardest to offend right back ? It is the inability to laugh at ourselves that leaves us fragile and easily injured. Bah! I laugh at myself all the time. That’s why the article over at comicbookresources.com made me smile a bit. The headline says it all: Israeli group announces anti-Semitic cartoons contest!

I challenge anyone who is currently taking offense at something being said to take a moment, and try to come up with your own, even more offensive remark or statement about the same subject and see if that helps you to put it into perspective. Now that I’ve got that off my chest I can get off my fat ass and get back to doing something productive!