Google being evil?

Hi,

Right now we have a huge opportunity to deal a serious blow to one of
Washington's most powerful lobbies, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. At
Google headquarters, employees are intensely debating whether Google
should quit the Chamber in the next few weeks. Google quitting would be a
huge blow to the Chamber's credibility.

I signed a petition to Google employees to ask them to stand up for us and
our democracy by quitting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Will you join me?

http://civic.moveon.org/googlechamber1/?r_by=33547-19148747-xF_2Wxx&rc=googlechamber1_letter.email.g0

Thanks!

Advice about who should use or not use Perl

From Learning Perl, 6th ed. (6):

If you're going to use a programming language for only a few minutes each week or month, you'd prefer one that is easier to learn, since you'll have forgotten nearly all of it from one use to the next.  Perl is for people who are programmers for at least twenty minutes a day, and probably most of that in Perl.

The highlights are mine.

I went to YAPC::NA 2011 and in my narrow slice of experience of the event and ancillary meetings (including Perl Mongers meetings), this quote from Learning Perl resonates with me.

Unfortunately (!), only jobs I've *applied* for would have me writing Perl everyday.  As it is, and has been for nearly a decade, as much as I've wanted Perl to be my job, it has been nearly none of it.  Thankfully, at least, my work now puts me back in front of actual code, so while it isn't Perl, it is something (Python and PHP).

• Schwartz, Randal L.; Foy, Brian D.; Phoenix, Tom. Learning Perl. 6th ed.

Best way to aggregate content for reading offline

I started using Instapaper  a looooooooooo . . . ooooooooong time ago for aggregating things I wanted to read later.  However, less and less of the content I want to read is actually in the feed or article that I have at hand to forward to Instapaper (via my personal Instapaper e-mail address).  So what happens is that I go to my Instapaper feed, sync it to my Nook, for example, so I can read it offline, but when I sit down to read it, all I get are headlines and excerpts; all of the meat of the articles lay elsewhere on some network, so I still need a data connection in order to access it.  Mission failed.

So, it would be great to find a way to not only sync a given feed (or, like my Instapaper, a feed of feeds) with a device or offline app, but to spider that feed and keep all of the content together.

Surely this exists!  Or will I have to write it myself?

Ubuntu + x11vnc + TightVNC = happytime

In searching for the current best way to access remote X sessions, I tried out x11vnc and TightVNC -- not the native client, but the Java app, no less -- and was immensely pleased!  Just ran "x11vnc -display :0" on a remote console, and connected with TightVNC instantly.  No additional config.  The display was very smooth, and resolution was 1280 x 1024.

FYI, that was a password-less session, so if you want to secure it, gotta do a little better than that.  But with a simple SSH tunnel, should only involve another command on the remote shell, right?

Fwd: [Dclug] Fwd: Invitation to DCLUG Members

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, Sep 11, 2011 at 23:34
Subject: [Dclug] Fwd: Invitation to DCLUG Members


I am forwarding this announcement for a code sprint devoted to writing
tools that help government transparency. I have no connection to the
organizers, but I think it's a great idea. Even in the US, we have a
lot of data but not necessarily a resulting transparency, e.g. as it
relates to public finances (taxes, government contracts, etc). As a
result, people often have silly arguments about things that should be
easily verifiable facts, such as 'what is the effective taxation rate
for corporations of varying size in the US"; it's embarrassing when
various people make mutually exclusive claims on issues like that.

I don't know the scope of the event mentioned below, but I recommend
checking it out.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, Sep 11, 2011 at 9:11 PM
Subject: Invitation to DCLUG Members



There is a competitive codeathon taking place on September 24/25 in
Moscow and Washington D.C. focusing on using open source technologies
and open data to address transparency challenges in the U.S. and
Russia.  We would like to extend a particular invitation to DCLUG
members to participate.  A brief statement about the event is below
and more information is available at www.code4country.org.  We hope to
see some of your members there and please do not hesitate to let me
know if you have any questions.


Urgent Call for Ideas -- and Programmers



Mark your calendars!  On September 24th and 25th an unprecedented
event is taking place: a codeathon bringing together programmers and
software engineers from both the U.S. and Russia to address challenges
of openness, transparency and accountability in both countries.



Code4Country is the first event of its kind--convened within the
framework of activities of the Bilateral Presidential Commission and
with support from civil society and the tech community. Code4Country
is about ordinary citizens working together across borders, and
building bridges between the U.S. and Russia by addressing common
challenges.



What are the obstacles to transparency in your city, region or
country? Is there a Web-based or mobile solution that could help? How
can ordinary citizens use new technologies to make their governments
more open? Please describe your ideas at www.code4country.org



This is also a call for programmers, designers, engineers, techies,
activists and digital diplomats to come out to American University on
September 24th and 25th. You will have the chance to work with coders
in D.C. and in Moscow to brainstorm, code, mash up data and win prizes
for apps that promote openness and make data accessible to the
community.  Register at www.code4country.org.

Trouble getting Net::SFTP installed on Windows and Mac

So, in the spirit of proving that Perl is not a *nix programming language, I have been banging my head against the wall for days trying to get Net::SFTP installed on a variety of non-*nix platforms: Windows 7 + Strawberry Perl, Windows 7 + Cygwin, Mac OS 10.6. I run into countless dependency problems, some of which I was able to decipher and move through.

The latest is when I attempted to install Net::SFTP using perlbrew on my iMac at work. Math::GMP fails with "WARNING! No GMP libraries were detected!". Will look into that one and report back.



Okay, got GMP (The GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library) from here: http://www.gmplib.org/ . Trying "cpanm Net::SFTP" again. . . .

Installing Net::SSH::Perl failed on 03-packet.t test. (I should probably be putting this in CPAN Testers, but I have never done that before.)

At YAPC::NA::2011 in Asheville, NC!!!

Finally made it to the annual North American Perl conference! It was so close, I had to go. Drove to beautiful Asheville, North Carolina. Everything from Front Royal was scenic candy.

Looking forward to breakfast among the Perlers and genuflecting to Larry Wall at 10:25am tomorrow.

Building roads doesn't remove congestion

http://m.fastcompany.com/ethonomics/52337/

Posted via email from Ali J. Nabavi's posterous

Google hits sites putting search rankings first

Google hits sites putting search rankings first

So-called ''content farms'', which generate a lot of content by republishing content, have experienced a 30 to 70 per cent drop in Google organic search traffic, and the effect on web traffic has been instantaneous, according to statistics seen by Mr McKeown.

Hallelujah!!!!! Praise be to Google.

This part is particularly eye-roll-able:

Media reports suggest that the US online text and video content company Demand Media is among those hurting. The company said it would not comment beyond a recent blog post, in which its media and operations chief, Larry Fitzgibbon, wrote: ''We're in the trenches listening, learning, adapting and innovating - and we are very excited about the opportunity in front of us.''

Many of these companies are innovative merely in ways that drive traffic to sites through misdirection and deception. They should consider becoming productive organizations that provide something useful to the world.

Balsamiq Mockups | Balsamiq

Balsamiq Mockups | Balsamiq: "Why Balsamiq Mockups for wireframing?
Using Mockups feels like drawing, but because it’s digital, you can tweak and rearrange easily. Teams can come up with a design and iterate over it in real-time in the course of a meeting.

Product managers, designers, developers, and even clients can now work together in the same tool to quickly iterate over wireframes, before writing code. Read our Manifesto!"

Very cool tool! Thanks, @mankperl!

Careers 2.0 Launches - Blog – Stack Exchange

Careers 2.0 Launches - Blog – Stack Exchange

One day, you’ll be telling your grandchildren about getting a programming job, version 1.0. You would send a “resume” to a “recruiter.” It included all kinds of silly information required by the esoteric resume ritual (foreign languages spoken, whether or not you play ultimate Frisbee, Microsoft-veteran status). This so-called “information” was utterly useless at determining whether you could program or not, but if you spelled everything right and used suitable fonts, you could come in for a day of interviews at which you would be asked to perform mundane programming tasks on a whiteboard.

anything i want to be critical about / reviews: mind blockage

via 86thatish.blogspot.com

Posted via email from Ali J. Nabavi's posterous

Regular expression for Gmail filters

I used this in jEdit to pull out sections of the mailFilters.xml file from Gmail:

(?s)^\s*.*?(?=\.list).*?