The Reward of Being a Good Atheist

We all know that our life can end at any minute, today, tomorrow, or several years from now, from diseases, accidents or natural causes. Suppose we are all convinced that, after our death, we will simply cease to exist; for each one of us, it will be as if we never were. Some of us will go home, shut the door and cry desperately for a long time. Others will fall into apathy, wandering the rest of their days without purpose. On the other hand, there are others who will try to live intensively, in order not to waste any single minute. And there are also those, the bad ones, who will lie, rob and kill so that they can fulfil their ambitions before dying. Life would lose much of its meaning and will turn into chaos.

Suppose, however, we are all convinced that we have an immortal soul and that we are accountable for everything we do on this earth. When we die, our souls will go to another dimension where we will be rewarded for the good things done, or punished for sins and crimes committed when we were alive. In this case, the rules of the game are clear and straightforward; the fear of death will probably remain, but there is definitely some hope.

Doesn't the second version look like the same thing you do to an infant, telling him that if he stops beating his younger brother and finish his home work, he can go out and play with his friends tomorrow; otherwise he'll be grounded for the rest of the week? In his small and inexperienced brain, the boy doesn't know yet the difference between right and wrong. He needs an encouragement, a reward, or the threat of a punishment, so that he takes the right path.

The vast majority of human beings, young or old, needs encouragement and motivation to do the right thing. One needs the proper incentive in order to perform as a good person in life, as well as to keep his/her job as a good employee, for example. The salary you get will provide for all the things you need to survive and enjoy life, thus encouraging you to do the job right. Consequently, the hope that your immortal soul will be rewarded after your death will inspire you to be a virtuous person.

Only those who are enlightened will do the right thing without hesitation. They don't need encouragement or motivation because they simply assume that this is the only acceptable way to behave. But, unfortunately, these are not the majority of us. Because justice is not always done in this world, and crime can go on unpunished, it makes us feel confident when a clear and ever present reward for the good guy, or an awful punishment for the bad one, is expected after death. The good guy will go to paradise; the bad guy will be sent to hell.

When a religious person tells me that he believes in God, but the only thing he has to offer me to justify his belief is his own faith, then he has just transmitted his state of mind, a subjective feeling, without any philosophical importance. If a believer wants to be taken seriously, he must be prepared to offer some plausible justification. However, most of the time, as incredible as it seems, it is the nonbeliever, the atheist, who is asked to prove that God doesn't exist.

Until recently, I considered myself an antitheist, i.e., not only I didn't believe in any god, but I was also against such a belief. Thinking of a permanent divine presence, keeping track of all our moves, reminded me rather of Big Brother in Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four". But, after a little bit of serious thinking, I have changed my mind in being utterly against religion. So, contrary to many atheists, I welcome religion. I welcome it only because I believe that most human beings have not yet reached a level of understanding that would cause them to behave in a civilized manner, based on the simple conviction that it is the only sensible way to live together on this planet.

It is a known fact that the more you know science, the less you will believe in God. In the scientific world, only a small minority of scientists are believers. Hence, one would say that, in our modern world where science takes a prominent place and is made widely accessible to the masses, religion should lose ground. Strangely enough, it is not so, and we observe a rise of fundamentalism in some religions and societies.

The most powerful nation on the planet, for instance, maintains the expression "In God we trust" as its motto, and most surely would not elect an atheist for the presidency, thus violating the separation of church and state, clearly stated in its own constitution.  It seems that the world is returning to God, despite the growth of educated people and all the advancements in scientific and technological areas.

This is probably due to the fact that being alive is just not enough. After all, we are the only beings on the planet who are conscious of death. The other animals simply have an instinct of preservation, i.e., they must avoid any danger at all costs in order to survive. They are aware and afraid of pain, but death for them, is an instant experience, at the moment it occurs. Humans know that even if we succeed in preserving ourselves, we'll die of old age one day. This constant awareness of an inevitable end is disturbing and devastating, unless we can make it more digestible. Furthermore, good is not omnipresent in our brains. After thousands of years of civilizations, mankind is still busy with wars, violence, killing, robbing and raping. Enter religion, that will give us what we are missing: strict rules for living and a fantasy for the after-life.

This is soothing and even necessary for the most of us. It prevents us from going astray and diminishes the agony of knowing about death.

Unfortunately, religion is not all good, and it has been responsible for some of the worse atrocities in the history of mankind. Why is it that humanity has never been able to create a loving God, with no wrath or punishment in His dogma? Or is it that we are only able to create gods in our own image, using our own methods? The word atheist simply means "the person who doesn't believe in the existence of any god", which is exactly the opposite of a theist, "the person who believes in the existence of a god". Logically speaking, we should all be atheists because we don't believe in any of the gods humanity has created throughout the ages, except for the fact that we have the tendency to embrace the last one (I think it was Prof. Dawkins who originally mentioned this, in one of his lectures).

This refusal to go all the way and reject all manufactured gods is most certainly due to the reasons outlined above. Most of us are not yet prepared to accept death as the ultimate end. We need hope, as a navigator needs a compass. Without hope for an after-life, we will be lost in the middle of the ocean of life. Atheists, on the other hand, are able to dispense with compasses, and navigate calmly under the stars...

Throughout the ages, the believers of a god never felt real comfortable with the idea that there are some of us who reject their faith. They must convert us or destroy us (the wars against the infidels). As a matter of fact, there is antagonism even between factions that believe in different versions of God (the wars of religion). Curiously, atheists do not feel any need to force, or even convince, anybody to drop their gods. I challenge you to point me any war initiated by atheists; they just go on living quietly with their disbelief, taking care of their own business.

Because of that, I sympathize with my fellow atheists when they demand that those who need religion in order to go on living happily, should keep it for themselves and respect those of us who don't, leaving us in peace. Atheists should be considered as normal human beings, with full rights and entitled to freedom of thinking. Actually, I consider it an insult if anyone would try to convert me to any religion. It's like telling me that I don't know what is good and what is evil, that I need a candy, like a child, in order to behave well, or a beating to force me in the right direction.

However, there is a big issue with friends that are very religious, since they are told and firmly believe all atheists to be damned. Because they want to save us from our everlasting punishment, they develop the rather annoying notion of converting us before it is too late. I can't be really angry with them, on account of their action being motivated out of love and true friendship.

In order to make those friends feel a bit better, and also to get them off my back, I always try to reassure them by saying that if their God exists and is truly a merciful god, when I meet Him after my death, He will not care whether I believed in Him or not; the important thing for Him to know about me is that He has nothing to reproach in the way I lived my life on this earth. He'll then probably tell me: "My son, even without believing in me, you have naturally and spontaneously followed all the principles of humanity, and because of this you are better than those who need to be taught and continuosly reminded. Therefore, my son, I forgive you and welcome you to my reign in heaven!".

In other words, don't worry so much about me, folks, because any honourable atheist is sure to end up in heaven... ;-)

Social Networks: Good or Bad?

I have read, and also heard from friends of mine, some horrible stories related to serious incidents that occurred because of improper behaviour while engaging conversation exchanges through a social network. These incidents have to do with immoral and pornographic correspondence, seduction of children, swapping erotic photos, sexual harassment, disclosure of private information, etc.

With the advent of social networks, it is common to see cases like this happening. The first contact usually occurs through the social network site itself. In most cases, the communication will progress through a more private exchange of electronic mails.

When someone is not entirely satisfied with his/her relationship at home, instead of having an honest and frank discussion with the partner, one may fall into the entrapment of a virtual erotic compensation. It is easy, it is fun, it is exciting, they think it is safe, and they completely disregard the consequences. However, when the whole thing is unveiled, it can cause terrible damage to their current relationships.

With children and teenagers, it can become a serious matter. They have more spare time and are very active in those networks, looking for new friends, some fun and excitement, and a public place where to shine, swap ideas, and freely expose their aspirations. Real parental control is almost nonexistent. As long as they are quiet and indoors, parents are happy. The young people become, in this context, an easy prey for sexual molestation.

Social networks, as well as e-mail, were not created for erotic purposes or to replace dating sites. They are a very practical mean to keep in touch with friends and family. However, it is proven now that closed networks - the ones made of family and regular friends - are not very popular. This is due to the fact that these people are already engaged doing things with each other. Therefore, they are not exciting; they don't bring anything new into your life. On the other hand, an open network - made of people that hardly know each other - seems to be a much more exciting and attractive pastime. It offers more opportunities and gives access to a wider range of people and information.

However, from the dark side of our inner selves, given this opportunity to interact with strangers, some people feel attracted to engage in all sorts of deception. Without the social networks and e-mail, this duplicity would be difficult to be achieved. As long as there are weak human beings, with all kinds of personality disorders haunting them, I guess there is no way to prevent this from happening.

In the U.S., some states are already trying to ban registered sex-offenders of being accepted in social networks. Although this is much more related to the dangers of paedophilia than straightforward love affairs, it seems to me a good thing to do.

Many people I know are afraid to take part in social networks, considering them evil and unsafe. I tend to understand their feelings, since social networks are indeed an ideal environment for all these troubles to originate, even if this sort of purpose was never intended by their creators.

Nevertheless, if your objective is just to keep in touch with family and friends, a social network can be a great tool as long as you know how to use it, by applying some basic security and adopting a discrete behaviour when setting up your account.

Read below some recommendations on how to protect yourself and your family, when you decide to sign up for an account in one of the most popular of these networks...

How to protect and avoid surprises with your Facebook account

1. Before signing up, make another e-mail account, one that you will use only for Facebook (Facebook requires that you have an e-mail account). In the settings of your new e-mail account, set the forwarding of all messages from this account to your normal e-mail account, to avoid having to monitor one more account. Leave the addressbook empty in this account, don't add any of your contacts. In this way, you will be protecting also your friends.

2. Protect your profile by making as few as possible private items visible to the public. Go to Account -> Private Settings, and under Sharing with Facebook, choose Friends Only as your security settings. This will allow only the persons you accept as Friends to see your profile and your posts.

3. Choose a discrete and composed photo of yourself as a profile picture. For women and children especially, avoid sexy and provocative photos that may attract sex-offenders.

4. Only accept as Friends, people that you know or, at least, people that were referred to you by a reliable source. Never accept strangers, of whom you know nothing about. Take advantage of the fact that Facebook allows you to categorize the people you add to your pages. You can fine tune your new friends by putting them into different groups: Close Friends, Friends or Acquaintances. Adopting this natural selection, you will be able to decide what parts of your Facebook you will make available to each of those groups.

5. Never disclose private or confidential matters in your posts. If you need or want to discuss delicate subjects with some Facebook Friend, use the Messages feature, which is only visible to the two parties. And if some Friend posts something that seems improper on your Wall, immediately delete that comment and contact that Friend, to warn that if it happens again, you will remove her/him from your list.

6. Do not hesitate to Unfriend, or even block, a person that shows some other purpose than an honest exchange of ideas. Many are using Facebook, and other social networks, as dating sites, looking for an easy prey. Women, especially, should be very careful when adding a new male friend of whom they know very little about. One good practice is to always check the profiles of these new friends. If they specifically mention Interested in Women, then you already know what to expect of them...

7. When creating Photo Albums, again, avoid publishing sexy and provocative photos of yourself or of your family and friends. Set the privacy of your photo albums to Friends except acquaintances. This can be done when customizing your privacy settings for each album. Never set the privacy to Public.

8. Be careful with your wording, when posting messages or replying comments from anyone. Analize the text carefully, before commiting it, to make sure that it cannot be any misunderstanding or double-meaning to what you intended to say.

9. Pay attention to what Apps you authorize to post to your wall and to access your profile information. I would stay away from Apps altogether, if my intention is just to communicate with friends and family.

Lastly, in the Private Settings, click on Learn more under Controlling How You Share and carefully read the guidelines and explanations about all the privacy settings in Facebook. You may want to go even further than the basic rules that are described here...

jQuery: Javascript on steroids!

For those of you, happy web developers already using jQuery, you may jump to the bottom of this article when I will be revealing some nice tools and links to assist you further. For the others, read on, and I will try to explain to you what is jQuery, and why it is so important that any web developer coding in Javascript gets to know it.

I think that most web developers would agree that Javascript can be many times a daunting endeavour. The sheer amount of functions, objects and methods is a challenge for anyone trying to integrate it with their web applications, even if they are experienced developers. Besides that, there is the nightmare of cross-browser compatibility: when coding for the web, one needs to take into consideration at least four of the existing browsers (IE, Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari).

If we consider just the Microsoft Internet Explorer alone, one the most popular browsers for the web, there are all the idiosyncrasies of the different versions adding to the confusion and generating more bugs to solve. Take IE6 and IE7, for instance: a design and code that works perfectly in IE6 may very well be broken when viewed by IE7. Even though IE6 is currently being quickly phased out by the newer IE versions, there are still many differences between those and the other browsers. To make things worse, Microsoft has a long history of preferring to implement its own solutions instead of complying with web standards, like the other browsers try to do...

It is a well known fact that developers do like to reinvent the wheel. Nobody can program better than you, right? So, you are going to code that function yourself and turn it into a real masterpiece! While this mindset was attractive in the past, nowadays it is a pure waste of time. The world is full of good programmers, and a considerable number of them have joined communities that are engaged in high caliber Open Source products.

jQuery is one of such products, an Open Source Javascript framework. There are many out there, but for me jQuery is the easiest to learn and one of the richest, thanks to a very active developer's community. jQuery is a brilliant piece of engineering that encapsulates an enormous range of Javascript functionality into a lightweight, well structured and easy to understand architecture.

jQuery helps you at least in so far as the Javascript code is concerned. It facilitates, among other things, the nightmarish task of making the code compatible with all major browsers, and this is not a small feat. The clear and concise syntax of jQuery is also a big advantage, turning your scripts into much more readable and maintainable code. Also, the Ajax capability of jQuery is among the best and most flexible you can find.

Learning to use jQuery is a small effort, compared to all the benefits you may get from it. My advice to you is to give it a try: download the script, experiment with it and take a good look at all the examples on the jQuery main site. You get good support, frequent upgrades with a lot of improvements, and it's free for the take, it costs nothing.

Sounds too good to be true? I can assure you that it is true, and to confirm that, we see a plethora of jQuery tools, controls and additional functions being created every day by an enormous community of users. I dare say that almost everything you may ever need in Javascript, has already been coded for you as a jQuery extension or control. If, by any chance, you stumble on a very specific need, the excellent documentation will explain clearly how to program your own extension to jQuery.

I always thought that one of the most important characteristics of any piece of code is simplicity. When the code is simple, it can be easily understood, maintained and expanded by someone else. And what can be simpler, for example, than this one-liner:

$("p#msg").load("/errors/wrong_date.html");

The above will call the server to deliver the error message for a wrong date entered by the user, and display it on the paragraph with an id of "msg". And the following one-liner will simply clear the error message from the display:

$("p#msg").html("");

These two lines implement an important part of what is called "real-time error checking", a feature that gives immediate feedback to the user while he's filling each field of a form. This technique is much more user-friendly than waiting for the user to submit the form, and then check all input at the server, to return a long list of errors in one go.

This is the jQuery way of doing things: concise, simple and easy to understand. Isn't the small learning effort worth while?

Tips for advanced usage of  jQuery

An alternative way to work with the jQuery library is to include it in the webpage with a script tag, using Google's API hosting service:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js"></script>

Doing this has several advantages over hosting jQuery on your server(s): pages will load faster (decreased latency, increased parallelism, better caching), and you will be sure to always get the latest release of version 1 (the current version).

In the jQuery website, take your time to browse through the extensive list of plugins and get acquainted with what you have at your disposal. This will certainly avoid you to embark in a "reinvent-the-wheel" adventure.

It is a well known fact that the jQuery documentation is excellent. However, due to the sheer amount of functions, a cheat-sheet may prove handy once you are familiar with the arsenal at your disposal, but can't remember the precise syntax for a certain statement. This site offers 25 different jQuery cheat-sheets for web developers.

Smashing Apps is a great place where to look for jQuery plugins and techniques in order to create visually exciting websites. The same Smashing Apps, presents you also with a large number of plugins to render beautiful photo galleries.

Noupe is another very useful repository, listing jQuery plugins ranging from slideshows to graphic charts and various text effects.

On the website of Marc Grabanski you will find a huge list of useful jQuery plugins for all purposes. The best ones are marked EXCELLENT.

You may also want to check the ultimate jQuery plugin list at Kollermedia.at. This list is especially useful because the plugins are nicely grouped into categories.

Webreference will introduce you, step by step, to the techniques that will allow you to extend jQuery with your own plugin. Another excellent tutorial on how to develop a jQuery plugin, is to be found at Sitepoint's, the well known book publisher.

Alternatively, if you are an absolute beginner in jQuery, pay a visit to net.tuts+ website, where you can follow the complete series of 15 screencasts that will help you to become a jQuery pro.

I could go on and on, listing many other jQuery resources spread all over the Internet. What I listed above is just the tip of the iceberg, to show you the popularity of this framework, and to give you a taste of the huge amount of resources and support you will be able to discover in the web. To find much more, there is always Google Search, right?

Ubuntu 10.04: PDF printer and standard paper size issues

The new version 10.04 Lucid Lynx of Ubuntu is probably the best to date. Among the highlights are the amazing boot and shutdown speed (less than 30 seconds to be ready for use and almost instantaneous shutdown on my current PC!), a very easy installation that is a snap even for a "normal" user, an improved and nicer-looking desktop theme, a great Software Center that is much more user-friendly than Synaptic and quickly helps you find the application you're looking for, and more... This version is surely a big step toward the vulgarization of the Linux desktop for the non-geek user community.

However, as it is customary with Linux distros, there are still some glitches that can be quite frustrating. One of them, that I found very soon, has to do with printing: the PDF printer (so useful) was not initially defined and the system wide paper size was set to US Letter (I live in Europe, where the metric system rules and the standard paper size is A4). Fixing these issues turned out to be a bigger job than I thought, especially the paper size problem. I had to go through many forums and blogs to find the proper fixes, and to have it completely solved I needed to go through several steps. Since these steps are scattered all over, no where to be found together, I will list them all here for the convenience of Ubuntu users that may find themselves in the same situation. It is important that the steps are executed in the order that I list them:

1) Defining A4 as system wide standard paper size

In a Terminal window, type "sudo dpkg-reconfigure libpaper1". You have to enter your password (for users not very familiar with the Terminal, note that the password is not echoed when typed!).
Select "a4" with the space bar, tab to "OK" and hit "Enter". This will replace the "letter' size to "a4" in the system file /etc/papersize.
After doing this, restart the PC to ensure that the new standard paper size is correctly propagated.

2) Defining and adding the PDF printer
In a Terminal window, type "sudo apt-get install cups-pdf". You may have to enter your password as in step 1 above.
After the script has finished, go to System->Administration->Printing. You should see there the added PDF printer.
To check that the standard paper size is indeed A4, right-click on the PDF printer icon and select "Properties". In the properties window, click "Printer Options".
Finally, go to your home directory and create a folder named "PDF" if it is not there. This folder will hold all the printed PDFs.

3) Defining A4 paper size for a installed printer
If an existing printer was already added to the system before executing step 1, you will need to re-install it so that the new paper size "sticks".
So, remove your printer and add it again. Open up the "Properties" window as explained above and check the "Printer Options" for A4.

4) Defining A4 paper size in Firefox
On the address bar type "about:config".  Acknowledge the warning that appears.
The entire Firefox config is displayed. On the "Filter" box, type "letter". Now, only the config items with the paper size letter will appear.
Right-click on each one of them, select "Modify", type "A4" in the text box and click OK.

5) Defining A4 paper size for OpenOffice
Press Alt-F2. Enter in the text box the following command: "gksudo gedit /etc/openoffice/psprint.conf". Check the box "Run in terminal" and click Run.
After entering your password, the editor window will pop up showing the contents of the /etc/openoffice/psprint.conf file.
Look for the string "PPD_PageSize=A4" (in my system it's on line 45). Uncomment this line, i.e., delete the first two columns (semi-colon + space).
Save the file.

6) Defining A4 paper size for Abiword
Press Alt-F2. Enter in the text box the following command: "gksudo nautilus". Check the box "Run in terminal" and click Run.
After entering your password, the file manger will open in root mode.
Navigate to the folder /usr/share/abiword-xx/templates where xx is the installed version of Abiword. In my system the folder is located at /usr/share/abiword-2.8/templates.
Copy the file "A4.awt" and paste it on the same window. You end up with a new file "A4(copy).awt".
Delete the file "normal.awt". Finally, rename "A4(copy).awt" to "normal.awt".

7) Defining A4 paper size for Gnumeric
Open Gnumeric. Go to File->Page Setup. In the first tab (Page), click "Change Paper Type".
In the "Paper Size" dropdown list, select A4, then click Apply.
Back to the Page tab, check the box "Save as default settings" and click OK.

You may skip the steps for the applications you don't use. After those steps I was able to print PDFs and not to worry about resetting the paper size every time.

Hope it will work for you too. If not, feel free to comment and share your own experience with me...

A Modern Social Challenge

According to the Wikipedia definition, "a mobile phone, cell phone or hand phone is an electronic device used to make mobile telephone calls across a wide geographic area, served by many public cells, allowing the user to be mobile.".

Again, according to Wikipedia, "from 1990 to 2010, worldwide mobile phone subscriptions grew from 12.4 million to over 4.6 billion, penetrating the developing economies and reaching the bottom of the economic pyramid.". If you consider only teenagers and adults, this probably means that over 90% of the world population owns a mobile phone, making it the most widespread technological invention in today's world. There are even many areas in the world that are deprived of land-line telephone infrastructure, relying exclusively on the mobile networks for their communication needs.

Since its wide acceptance after the introduction of the second generation (2G) mobile network in the early 90's, we have seen progressive miniaturization of the mobile phone, leading to very small sets, marvels of technological achievement. However, from a basic but extremely useful communication and messaging tool, the mobile phone has evolved in the last years into a social and entertaining object. This new trend resulted in an increase of its size, with larger and better screens, running under sophisticated operating systems. Nowadays, the mobile phone could be renamed as "mobile computer" since it provides its user almost the same capabilities of a small laptop.

In the same way as the computer, and inheriting most of its technological advancements, the mobile phone hype took over the world in vertiginous speed. Due to its portable size, it became a very personal object that is carried by everyone, everywhere. The big question here is: how did the addition of mobile phones to our lives influence our social behaviour?

The truth is that I'm horrified, everywhere I go and look around, by the manner people handle their mobiles. Mobile phones are a technological gift that became a critical tool in keeping us safe and connected. The device itself is not the issue; it is the way we handle it that is.

There are some mobile phone ethics, or etiquette, to be found in various sites of the Internet, but they deal mostly with practical issues. However, social issues that arise from indiscriminate and disrespectful use of the phone, especially in public places, are much more important than those. Some of these issues can be very annoying, while others are just plain dangerous. Any tool will be as good as the usage we make of it, and mobile phones are no exception to this rule...

10 things you should not be doing with your mobile phone

1. Put the loudest setting of ringtones for the "general" profile, or choose an annoying and very lively melody.

2. Speak loudly when talking at the phone in public places; assume that everyone has nothing else to do and is really interested in hearing your conversation.

3. Don't switch off the phone, and avoid selecting the "silent" profile, in places where silence must be observed, such as hospitals, theatres, cinemas, libraries, churches, etc.

4. Promptly answer a call while you're driving, particularly when you do not have a mobile phone car-kit installed. You're absolutely convinced that it is not dangerous at all. But beware: in many countries, such behaviour is not understood; it is considered illegal and passive of expensive fines, if you're caught.

5. Talk for a long time on the mobile phone: you know very well that the so-called harmful effects of radiation to your health are pure rubbish, and using a land-line set, even if it's cheaper, is not that fun.

6. Walk outside with your head down, fooling around with your set, reading emails, checking Twitter or Facebook, completely unaware of the surroundings, crossing streets and bicycle paths, considering it perfectly safe. Nevertheless, just in case, make sure you have a comprehensive medical insurance...

7. Never use SMS for a short communication, even if it's cheaper and less obtrusive.

8. Never take advantage of voicemail and leave a short message when you are not able to reach a person. Why bother to be polite and give a clue about the reason for your call?

9. When you advertise your phone number to someone, you're telling this person that you are available to communicate 24x7, be it live or through SMS and voicemail. Make sure to give your number even to those you do not intend to call back.

10. Go ahead, while busy talking to someone in front of you, and answer the phone without asking permission. Fundamentally, proper mobile phone usage is nothing more than common sense courtesy. But why should you care?

Roll, roll your bloat, merrily, merrily...

Although nowadays we are told emphatically by the gurus of Software Development that usability is the key word to keep in mind for our products, we are confronted with more and more applications that are so bloated with options and features that it becomes a real challenge to get anything useful out of them. It seems that software makers are trying to beat the competition not through a more effective product but by presenting a bigger product. In other words: "we give you more features and more options, therefore we are better than the others."

It is quite amazing because the same creativeness that is present in the developers to give us all those features we didn't ask for, could be easily used to give us a faster, more effective and more usable product.

Lately I had a bad experience with one of those applications: a group of ex-workers of the same company needed a site for their reunion. The chosen product was something called Grouply. Being one of their colleagues, I was invited to register and join the group, which I did. The registration was quick and painless, but once I connected to the group, the troubles started. First, I got immediately an invitation to be a "friend" of two fellows from another country. It was obviously a mistake because I have never heard of them before and they did not belong to the firm. Quickly, I got rid of them. Then I proceeded to the "members" tab to try to see which of my colleagues had joined so far. It was impossible to get any intelligible result. I tried two other search functions without any success. Clicking around, all of a sudden I realized that I was out of the group into the generic page of Grouply. Back to the group, more options, more tabs, I was lost again. Finally, I got one search that gave me some results, but soon I realized that browsing through the results I would see the same faces appearing two or three times again on different pages. After playing around for more than one hour, I gave up.

This is a typical example because such an application will be used only once in a while. The next time I go there I will have to do the same exercise and this will be a complete waste of my time...

I don't mind, for instance, to delve into the thousand options of an Eclipse IDE and learn how to get around them because I will be using that product for my daily work. But when you face the same challenge for some application that you will be using only occasionally, the case is totally different. I simply don't want to stay hours in front of the screen in order to learn how to navigate through a maze of menus and tabs, while I know that I would have forgotten most of it when I access the application again next week.

I have to admit that developers (and I am one of them) do enjoy transforming brilliant ideas into new features that will be added to the application. But where are the designers, the architects, the project managers, who should keep things under control and stick to the original design? Where are also the usability experts who should make sure that the final product is indeed a solid and usable system, capable of being handled by the average user?

Software Development is not about being clever and filling up the screen with brilliant features. It is about making a product that satisfies a specific purpose in the easiest and most usable manner. Or am I dreaming?

Is Linux ready for the desktop?

For some time the Linux fans have been claiming that Linux is ready to replace Windows and Mac as the desktop system of choice. Being myself a faithful Linux user for over three years now, I have already successfully accomplished the switch. After all this time I cannot, and I do not wish for any reason, to go back to Windows. I do all my work and social computing with ease, speed and reliability with Mint, a fork of the most popular Linux distro: Ubuntu. The biggest advantage of Mint is the inclusion of non-free drivers in their distribution, simplifying the installation and improving the compatibility with audio and video material that I often receive with my emails.

But is Linux really ready to become the desktop system of choice for a normal user? I am a software developer by profession, with a lot of experience in the field. So, for me there is no question that Linux offers a much better environment to work with.  In an article that I read just today, the author claims that the newest version 10.04 of Ubuntu is perfect and "blows Windows and Mac out of the water".  An enthusiastic claim that I had to investigate by myself.

I downloaded the netbook edition of Ubuntu 10.04 and proceeded to install it in my Asus EeePC netbook, running pretty smooth until now with version 9.04. The installation of 10.04 was indeed perfect: easy, fast and very user-friendly. I dare say that it is suitable to any user, even if the user is not computer literate. The new Ubuntu Software Centre is excellent and confirms one of the strong points of Linux: a centralized and safe repository of countless application packages. The user interface is pleasant and very usable. All seemed to agree with what the above article's author had enthusiastically claimed...

All but the wireless connection, usually one of the Achilles' heel of Linux distros. Despite the fact that the wireless was working perfectly fine with the older version, with the installation of the newest version I was unable to get connection to the Internet. I then made use of another strong point of Linux, the user community network, to look for a solution. I hooked a cable to make a wired connection and it didn't take me long to find a page where the problem was explained and the way to fix it, described in detail. I followed the instructions very carefully and 30 minutes later my wireless was working as expected. My thanks to Chris Barker for the excellent article.

At this point you would say: "So, what's the catch? The latest Ubuntu is thus great, isn't it?" Well, yes and no. It is a great system all right, for people like me, who know their way around with binary installation packages, able to cope with command line instructions and root access, aware of the right places where to search for problem reports, etc. For a normal user, accustomed with graphical interfaces and having a very superficial knowledge of the computer, the situation I faced is insurmountable.

If you care to take a look at Chris Barker's article mentioned above, you will see that fixing my wireless problem required the downloading of the latest binary package of the Ralink RT2860 driver, making some configuration changes, recompiling the driver, replacing the old one and changing the boot configuration.  And this is why Linux is not yet ready to replace Windows for the majority of computer users: none of them would have been able to do that.

The day a new version of Ubuntu will not break compatibility that has been already achieved in a previous version or, alternatively, provide solutions wrapped in a script that will execute without manual command line intervention, then I will gladly agree with any claim that Linux is ready to be a valid alternative to anyone looking for a better operating system for the PC desktop. Until this happens, I will be one of the happy few (1%) users enjoying an excellent system to work with. If you are lucky enough to own a PC that is fully hardware compatible with Ubuntu 10.04 or have a friend at hand who is a Linux geek and willing to assist you, then you will be able to enjoy the same experience. But every time you add or replace a piece of hardware, you may incur the risk of needing a little bit more than your skills of pressing buttons on a graphical window. Pity, but nevertheless, true.

Is it really worth while?

I am an enthusiastic listener of classical music and, putting aside all the crap that's uploaded there, I love the youtube web site because there you can find some gems that are extremely difficult to come across otherwise. The other day, for example, I stumbled upon a collection of HD video clips where I found one of my favourite pieces: Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra in E-flat major, K. 364 (320d). The performance was quite good, with perfect image and sound. Since this is not an easy piece to find, even in CDs, I thought it was nice to share it with my two children who, happily, also like classical music. I sent the link to both of them via email. After a day or so, I received a reaction from my daughter: "Strange, there are no women in this orchestra".

The clip was with the VPO (Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra), conducted by Riccardo Muti, with Gidon Cremer (violin) and Yuri Bashmet (viola) as soloists. I tried to explain to my daughter that this was a known fact, that the VPO does not take women in their ranks. I have always despised this policy and never truly had this orchestra in my heart, despite the fact that it is considered to be one of the finest in the world. Moved by curiosity, triggered by my daughter's quick reaction, I decided then to do a little research on the VPO to try to understand a bit better the reasons behind their strange policy.

It appears that the "all-men" policy was true until 1997, and currently the orchestra boasts four (!) women in their ranks. Big deal, the women have now a representation of 3% of the players! This is an improvement, but a very tiny step toward what we see in other prominent ensembles. Besides that, there seems to be heavy criticism and claims implying that the orchestra does not accept members belonging to ethnic minorities. Although applicants to the orchestra are asked to play their auditions behind a screen, when they are revealed to the eyes of the jury their appearance is of major importance. Thus, there is a story going around about an applicant that qualified himself as the best and, as the screen was raised, the jury discovered he was a Japanese. The musician was not engaged, because "his face did not fit with the Pizzicato-Polka of the New Year's Concert"!

More recently, in 2003, Yasuto Sugiyama, a world-class tubist from the New Japan Philharmonic, was hired.  From the beginning, it appears that Mr. Sugiyama’s appointment was controversial, creating problems within the brass section.  Mysteriously, he was told that he did not pass his trial year at the State Opera (mandatory) and was fired.  Soon afterwards, the same Mr. Sugiyama won the tuba audition for the Cleveland Orchestra, one of the leading American orchestras known, among other things, for its impeccable brass section!

Someone connected to the orchestra (no names here) tried to explain that their profession "makes family life extremely difficult, so for a woman it’s almost impossible". Even in 1987, when he said that, this reasoning was already ridiculous. He claimed also that there are many orchestras with women, so why not having an orchestra with only men? And he goes on with even more ridiculous assertions that a woman shouldn't play like a man, but like a woman, whatever this may be.

However, the rigid policies of the VPO go beyond male chauvinistic rules. In the string section, for example, the instruments belong to the orchestra. Unlike other orchestras, they don't allow personal instruments. This, apparently, is to ensure the orchestra's unique string sound. But other famous orchestras such as the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam and the Cleveland Orchestra in the US, just to mention two, managed to have also a "unique sound" that is recognized and well-loved all over the world, without these constraints. So, what's the point?

In 2008, the British magazine Gramophone, one of the most prestigious publications in the genre, put up a panel of top international classical music critics together and ask them to come up with a list of the world's best orchestras. The Concertgebouw came first, followed by the Berlin Philharmonic in second place. Vienna ranked third. It is a darned good place, but they were nevertheless outclassed by two other ensembles with mixed participation. Was it really worth while all their fuss about keeping it only a men's club? Wouldn't they be able to be as good the "normal" way, like the others?

Anyway, ranking an orchestra is almost an absurd idea since listening to music is a highly subjective thing. All one can say is that there is a bunch of ten or so ensembles that consistently perform at the top level. For the rest, it's your personal taste and experience that makes you prefer one to the other. I have had myself wonderful experiences with the Concertgebouw playing Brahms and Mahler, Cleveland with Mozart, the Staatskapelle Dresden with Bruckner, St. Petersburg with Russian composers and the New York Philharmonic with American music. All these became my favourites...

The fact remains that the essential role of any orchestra is to promote music through its art and formation, thus becoming a symbol to all man and women, making music accessible at all social levels. It is an intellectual activity and, at least in this area, there should be no discrimination. Still, I agree that a woman's brain functions differently than ours. But in this case, I wholeheartedly join the French and shout: "vive la différence"! My experiences of working in a mixed environment were always excellent and, when a manager, I kept striving for a proper balance in my team, though not always successful because my profession, regrettably, does not seem to attract women...

Thomas Jefferson's famous phrase in the US Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal", is not politically correct anymore. We have come a long way since, and it should now read "all men and women are created equal". The VPO is a great orchestra, but so are 10 or 20 others, without applying absurd and rigid policies. The proud Austrian ensemble should join the 21st century and take part in the evolution of mankind. An orchestra is probably the best example of a large group of men and women getting together in peace and with discipline, to provide the public with one of the most beautiful achievements mankind has ever produced: music!

Missed Opportunities

I made the acquaintance with my friend P. due to a tragic coincidence. My wife S. was a very good friend with his wife, who at the time was very ill with brain cancer. They spent a lot of time together, and my wife did everything she could do in order to help P.'s wife until the time of her death. A few years later, my own wife succumbed under the same awful disease. United by the tragic end of our wives, P. and I became friends.

We didn't see each other very often, but one evening P. and I decided to go out for dinner and then watch a Woody Allen movie in a cinema that was located inside a shopping center that no longer exists, near the Central Station of The Hague. After the movie, we walked together to the main lobby looking for the entrance to the parking, where we had left our cars.

At a certain point, a young man approached us and asked me:

- I'm sorry, Sir, but I wonder if you could spare 5 euros for me to get a bed in a hostel, for the night. I have some money, but it is not enough. Yesterday I slept outdoors, but I felt very cold...

It was the beginning of November, and the days were indeed rather cold for the season. I inspected him quickly: he was young, simply dressed but clean, he had no heavy coat, and he looked straight into my eyes.

I grabbed my wallet and searched inside for some change. I could come up with 4 euros and 20 cents, the rest of my money being only large bills.

- This is all the small money I have, but it gets you very close to what you need. Good luck with the rest! - I said to him.

He thanked me and turned to my friend, with hope in his eyes. My friend brusquely waved him away, nodding his head in a sign of refusal.

As soon as the young man walked away, my friend commented with a bit of embarrassment:

- I didn't feel like giving him anything. We never know if they are telling us the truth or not. How d'you know if he's not going to spend it all in drinks or drugs?

I replied, very calmly:

- Well, put it this way, my friend: if he's telling the truth, both of us are happy; he's happy because he'll sleep in the warmth tonight, and I'm happy because I helped him. If he's lying, I can't tell; the problem is his, not mine. I'm still happy because I'm left with the impression that I helped someone in need today.

My friend didn't seem very impressed with my philosophical reply. We both continued to the entrance of the parking, where we shook hands, said good night, got into our cars and headed back to our homes...

While I was driving home, I remembered that this philosophical attitude of mine started after a similar situation that had occurred with my wife S. long time ago. One day she was strolling along the Leidsestraat in Amsterdam, when a student stopped her to ask if she could give him some money because he was very hungry; he hadn't been able to eat anything the whole day.

She took 5 euros out her purse, saying to him:

- I hope you are not lying to me and that you're going to use this to eat.

A few minutes later, on her way back, someone caught her attention by frantically shouting and waving at her, from the other side of the street. It was the same young man that had asked for the money a little while ago. He was standing in front of some food joint, with a large smile on his face and pointing to a big hamburger in his other hand. That day, two people were very happy.

She told me later that when she related this encounter to her best friend, she reacted:

- But 5 euros is a lot of money to give away! Only you could do this sort of thing. What if he was lying?

S. was a gentle and generous person; she didn't care whether the fellow was lying, she only hoped he didn't. I loved her very much, and I have learned from her how to trust my instinct and do what I thought it was right, regardless if the other party was indeed being truthful or not. I find this to be a positive attitude, and I have been practicing it since. After all, 4 or 5 euros are a very small price to pay for the risk of giving to a stranger the benefit of the doubt, and for spending the rest of the day feeling great, with the sensation that you have helped someone in difficulty.

Isn't this so much better than a missed opportunity?

Driving without a license...

It is a fact that we do with computers what we wouldn't dare doing with cars, i.e., allow the person to buy a car and starting using it without knowing how to drive...

I am confronted with so many basic questions from friends and acquaintances that I wonder how they manage to get along with their computers. Probably they don't, which is a real pity. The personal computer became an indispensable tool in every home, just as Bill Gates dreamed of. The problem is that if schools are now preparing the young generation to properly use a computer, nothing much is being done for the adults who got caught in the technological hype and didn't have this opportunity.

The other day, for example, a dear friend of mine asked me if I knew of a good OCR program to capture the text he had scanned to a JPG image. Nobody ever explained to him that if he wanted to scan some text to be OCR'd, he should have saved it as TIFF instead, not only because it offers lossless compression but because most of the OCR packages prefer this format. For him, JPG became the synonym of any image, regardless what kind of image it is. I am certain that he doesn't know the difference between JPG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, and so on...

This friend is a retired engineer, very intelligent and still very sharp, but never had the opportunity to go through a basic introduction to computers where the different image formats and their utilisations are explained. It is a flaw of our system that produces high tech equipment and forgets to initiate the public on how to make the best out of it.

The same happens with digital cameras, for example. How many people buy the most expensive DSLR just to put it in AUTO and use it as a snapshot camera? Do the manufacturers really think that putting a high powered digital camera accompanied by a flimsy user guide in the hands of a snapshooter will transform him or her into an amateur photographer?

The system is inadequate because it does not provide much choice in introductory courses. There are books, but apparently most of the people ignore this fact or are not willing to invest some of their time in self-learning. I would love to see the television playing a better educational role in this area, but I believe this is a dream that, contrary to Bill Gates', will never come true.

I guess that, with regard to computers, we are experiencing a transitional period and this problem will disappear by itself in a few decades when at least all those who went to school will know how to properly handle a personal computer.  Then we, the so-called "experts", will be left alone.  In the meantime I keep helping my friends with pleasure and patience, but the snag is that they get used to this treatment and will never learn, as they should, how to take care of themselves...

Making things clear

I have just read an interesting article in TechRepublic about the usual problem of explaining IT technical concepts to a "normal" user. It is a challenge that we, IT professionals, encounter frequently in our work: how to make clear to the user the correct meaning of a complex IT subject that we are trying to explain...

One of the biggest problems we face nowadays is the vulgarisation of IT. Many decades ago, when computers were still regarded by the users as a mysterious box full of wonders, it was much easier for us, the experts. Users didn't fool around with their equipment before finally giving up and look for help from an expert, they came immediately to us for assistance, and this made things a bit simpler. Nowadays, everybody seems to be an expert in IT and likes to show off to their friends how able they are in handling the, sometimes very difficult, problems they encounter when dealing with their computers.

In the article I mentioned above, the advice is to make use of analogies in order to make things clear to the user. It is a very good approach and I have used it countless times with success. But be careful, trying to clarify an issue with some sort of childish comparison to a graduate may appear to that person that you are being contemptuous. The opposite, using an analogy that is not within the reach of the person in front of you, is also pointless. Therefore, a very important consideration is that in order for the analogy to work, you must look for something that is familiar and appropriate to that kind of user.

IT professionals have long understood this challenge and a lot of issues are already being put forward in such way that they directly refer to an analogy that is easy for the user to grasp. Take the case of viruses, for instance: a computer virus doesn't need further explanation to a user, he understands immediately the need to avoid having a malicious piece of code inside his computer in the same way we don't want to get a virus inside our bodies. If he does something about it, that's another story, just like people that still refuse to get the flu vaccination. But this stubborn behavior cannot be changed, it's part of human nature...

Take a look at the article yourself and find out which analogies you find useful or which ones you have been using that are not there. The main point is: nothing beats a good analogy as long as the analogy doesn't seem in any intellectual way unsuitable to your audience...

To comment or not to comment

I was just following an interesting thread in Slashdot about commenting code. You can take a look if you want: Myths About Code Comments.

I think that the controversy about this subject comes mainly from people who are not developers and, therefore, cannot possibly have a clear opinion about it. Of course, if I am a manager buying a product with source code, I will make sure that everything is well documented before I pay for it. However, software is not like an object that you buy with a user guide that will always be relevant because the object will never change until it falls apart. With software, things are quite different: in general, if one has the source code there will be changes applied to it.

The big trap of extensively commenting code is that there is no guarantee that someone will update it to reflect the changes brought to the software afterwards. Then we will have the worse situation where the documentation does not correctly describe the code. It is worse because it could be misleading and cost you a lot of hours pointing to the wrong direction when you're trying to solve a bug.

As a developer I always stayed away from documentation of code that has been through several cycles of modifications, much preferring to concentrate on the code itself and trying to understand it as much as possible. Because of that, I tend to agree with those who preach that code should primarily be self-documented.

Once upon a time I was called to program some expansions to a Unix device driver for TTY terminals. The code was voluminous and I could not see much documentation around it. To make things worse, I had just started programming in C... Nevertheless, I was able to successfully perform the task in the allocated time and this I owed exclusively to the developer who not only wrote excellent self-documented code but was also very tidy in formatting all the source lines, making the code very easy to follow.

To cut a long story short, I would say that if the customer demands documentation, you should do it in the way that pleases him, mainly because I assume you are doing developing for a living. However, always take into consideration your fellow developers: write clear, well-formatted and self-documented code, avoid complexity and embrace simplicity, and drop a useful comment here and there where it is really needed. Above all, use separate lines for those comments, never put them in-line with the code, they will disappear indiscriminately when changes are made...