Just got back from LA. My stint with Google is over :(. It was a great experience despite my awful apartment.
Managed to get myself some confidence in my abilities and am now working on two OSS projects.
Back to the grind of school now. At least I’ll be starting a new research project.
I won’t go into full detail of its evil here, as you can read and get the gist of it here: http://blamcast.net/articles/orphaned-works-open-source-copyright.
Essentially, it means any company can take a piece of software (among other things) and “claim” they looked for the author and then use it without obeying the GPL license on it. When the copyright holder sues on grounds of infringement, the people that violated the copyright merely have to provide “proof” that they looked for an author and could not locate one.
The only way to really prevent the infringement if the bill passes, is to register with some sort of copyright registry, which costs money no doubt.
Oppose it! You can go here: http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/home/ to find out how to easily write your congressman/woman.
To be honest, I’m long overdue on saying something. I am alive, just barely, but I am.
I came across this article today. It made me realize that society has become disenchanted with… well society itself. Do something nice today for someone you don’t even know. Seriously.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89164759
Long two week, many tests, projects and homework to be done.
With that, I leave you with some food for thought: “When the rich wage war its the poor who die.” - Mike Shinoda
I am now as we speak ever approaching the dark arts. Actually I’m just going to be working on compilers and filesystems for the next two years in a directed study with a professor in the Computer Engineering department. A friend in IEEE needs help with his senior project so that’ll be the beginning of my learning about compilers. Filesystems shall follow shortly thereafter.
Should be fun and challenging, seeing as I get frustrated to no end with the obsession of online frameworks and building social networking sites. Not that I think those are bad or trivial things, I just don’t find them to be particularly interesting problems. Even if compilers and filesystems are no longer “cool” to the academic types, I still think they are.
And now I’m off to read more of “Functional Programming: Application & Implementation” by Henderson. If anyone actually reads this, stay tuned. A little while from now I may be posting a Lispkit implementation with a compiler that builds native code which I know is a dirty dirty thing and I should have my mouth washed out with soap for it but I don’t care :).
PS: More wine fun is coming as well 
Hooray for shell32!
Exams are coming up, this probably won’t be fun.
Last night I went to my boss’s party titled “Beaujolais Nouveau.” Apparently this is in reference to some French wine, but I’m not a wine drinker and thus I had none and was not interested in it. Overall an interesting night, lots of professors, business people and tech enthusiasts. My boss’s wife is “big on the tech scene” or at least was before taking her current job.
The main highlight of the night was actually meeting Alex de Carvahlo, organizer of BarCamp Miami and RefreshMiami. I’ve been hunting for some tech groups to get involved in in South Florida but it seems its only a budding area. Despite that I’ve now got something else to get involved in outside of IEEE and ACM. I also met a guy by the name of Nathaniel, though his last name escapes me. Nathaniel organizes NextMiami which is another tech enthusiast & venture capital group. These should both be good contacts for the future.
Any one that even gives this blog a passing glance a developer in South Florida that knows of other interest groups?