Cum am devenit producator de ler

Pe cand eram student la Maryland am avut parte de o experienta foarte interesanta. ASTROM (Asociatia Studentilor Romani) era condusa de unul din colegii cu care locuiam in casa, asa ca am participat si eu la multe actiuni de-ale lor. Iar una din preocuparile constante ale ASTROM era organizarea de spectacole cu artisti romani care faceau turnee prin State (asa am ajuns sa ii vedem pe cei de la Divertis sau trupa teatrului Nottara, de exemplu). In acei ani inca nu era moda concertelor de sarbatori in Romanai, asa ca Hrusca, fiind stabilit de multi ani in Canada, facea in respectiva perioada spectacole pentru comunitatile de romani din Statele Unite si Canada. Intr-unul din ani s-a hotarat sa vina si in zona Washington DC si cautand oameni de contact in zona a ajuns la ASTROM. Cum nu prea erau oameni disponibili la acel sfarsit de an pana la urma m-am oferit eu sa ma ocup de organizarea acelui eveniment, adica sa fiu un fel de producator. Primul pas a fost sa cautam o sala, de obicei gaseam sali in campusul universitatii, dar atunci a fost o problema, asa ca a trebuit sa caut in alta parte. Pana la urma am ajuns sa inchiriem o biserica anglicana din zona. Am batut palma cu cei de acolo, am trimis emailuri la oameni cu data si ora spectacolului si acum credeam ca lucrurile sunt gata. Insa cu trei zile inainte de spectacol ne suna Hrusca sa ne spuna ca a ramas fara instalatie de sonorizare. In mod normal el isi aducea singur instalatia, dar de data asta la intrarea in State vamesilor li s-a parut suspect ca se cara cu asa ceva dupa el, desi nu declarase ca vine in scopuri comerciale (va dati seama ca toate spectacolele astea se faceau la negru, banii incasati nefiind declarati la fisc), asa ca nu l-au lasat sa intre cu aparatura respectiva. Iar noi fiind printre primele locuri unde avea sa vina ne-am trezit ca trebuie sa facem rost in doua zile de o instalatie de sonorizare. Pana la urma am gasit o firma care inchiria asa ceva, dar era nevoie sa o si transportam. Am gasit mai multe masini si am carat boxele alea cum am putut, am intins cabluri, testat microfoane, dar pana la urma total a fost gata la timp. Desi am "produs" si eu la ler in acel an, nu am aflat nici atunci mai multe despre ce e acest ler. "Leru-i ler" va intra in legenda definitiilor recursive alaturi de "GNU in not UNIX", asa ca mai bine urmez indemnul celor de la Kamikaze: ler it be :)

La Multi Ani! si tot ce va doriti in 2013.

Why is Romania different?

Why is Romania different? is the title of the latest book by Lucian Boia. It is not a book about how Romanians are the chosen nation, au contraire. It explores the reasons why the Romanian society is behind other western and even eastern European societies. This is in fact a compared history of the institutions and social habits from Romania (or the former regions of Valachia, Moldavia and Transilvania) and other countries. The book already generated a lot of reactions in the media, two examples being those of Dan Tapalaga (here) who complains about the last chapter where the current political situation is analyzed and Alina Mungiu Pipidi (here) who argues that the whole Balkans region has the same characteristics. Since I liked all the books I read of Mr. Boia, starting with the one which shook the view of Romanians about their history 10 years ago (Istorie si mit in constiinta romaneasca), I highly recommend this one too.

An die Sonne

First snow of this winter in Bucharest and we are fast approaching the smallest day in the year. The candidate I endorsed didn't do well in the elections, he will not get a seat. It seems pork-barrel and not sound policies it's still the way to win the elections around here. So let's think about the sun for a moment, it gives us all our energy in the end, but it's up to us what we do with it.

A candidate to vote for

Another round of elections is approaching in Romania and I am among the fewer and fewer people that will go to vote again. Most of the people complain that all politicians are the same and none of them cares about their problems, but only to get rich. This is a dangerous point of view in my opinion, because the consequence is to ask why do we bother to organize elections if all politicians are the same? Since after each elections we end up with different laws and policies, there must be some difference between those who vote for one law or against it, isn't it?

Since 2008 we have a uni-nominal voting system and you actually vote for a person, not a party list. So, like four years ago, I decided to endorse a candidate that represents me best in these elections. His name is Gabriel Biris and he is a lawyer specialized in the tax code. What he promised in this campaign is not just something for his electoral college, but for the whole country: to push for a change in how labor is taxed. The truth is that labor is heavily taxed in Romania and this leads to people trying to declare their income in any other possible way than payroll in order to pay smaller taxes. Or not to declare it at wall and work on the black market. So only a small part of the population appears in the statistics as being an employee. This is unfair in two ways: first for the people who honestly declare their employment contract because they end up paying far more taxes then other people and secondly for the people that are forced on the black market due to these taxes because their are cut from social benefits in the future (like retirement benefits).
As a professional in this area Mr. Biris understands very well these problems and he wants to improve the tax code so that these huge discrepancies can be closed. Also, he is already rich and not from businesses involving the public sector, so probably he didn't enter politics just to get richer. His campaign also has a fresh style, including many town-hall meetings with the citizens from his electoral college, not just for shaking hands, but also for discussing their problems.

So if you have your residence in D3 electoral college from Bucharest I recommend you to look at this candidate and vote for him. If you are not in these college I still encourage you to take a look at the candidates in yours (you can easily find that here), see who is the best for you and the country from your point of view and go to vote. I have a strong opinion about an alliance that should not win in these elections, but even if you don't share my view, I think that informed and active citizens will lead in the end to better politics and policies.

Tired of you

That's it, I'm going home. No computers until Monday :)

I vote for N.A.D.

Is this a new political party or something? No, N.A.D. stands for National Anti-corruption Department and it's much better known by the Romanian acronym DNA. Eu votez DNA! (I vote for NAD!) is a book written by Cristian Ghinea, a social activist and contributor at the most prestigious Romanian weekly newspaper, Dilema Veche. Ten years ago Cristian Ghinea coordinated an issue of Dilema on anti-corruption and he remembers that there was not much to tell about it: Romania was a corrupted society, but without any corrupts. Police and judicial system were prosecuting only small cases, but no big fish was even questioned. In fact, although there are some legendary figures on making justice in our history, like Vlad the Impaler, in the modern history of Romania (since Cuza and king Carol I) no big fish was ever convicted for corruption charges, although there were many scandalous stories uncovered in that era too (you can read in Romanian about a few examples here and here). Politicians in Romania had de facto immunity from the judicial system, a better word being impunity. But in the last 8 years DNA became a feared enemy. They prosecuted members of the parliament and of the cabinet from all major political parties, mayors, judges and attorneys, police men, army generals and even soccer referees and club owners for fixing soccer games. And they also have an impressive success rate with about 90% convictions of the prosecuted cases. You can imagine that most of the politicians are not happy about this, biased media outlets constantly unleash attacks on this institution, so this book is even more remarkable for describing an inside story about DNA with interviews with some attorneys and other interesting commentaries.

In the end I should note that DNA was created at the request of the European Union during the accession negotiations between Romania and E.U. There are a couple of benefits for Romania from being an E.U. member country, including money received for various development projects, but I think the creation of this agency is the best thing that happened to Romania due to E.U. influence. That's why I also vote for N.A.D.!

Bourne trilogy

I liked the Bourne movies, so when I found out that they are based on some books I decided to read them. Usually the books have more details that are not present in a movie, but in this case I was really surprised: the action from the books barely resemble what happens in the movies. Apart from the names of the main characters and the basic plot (a secret agent suffers from amnesia and fights for his life and to find out who he is) the rest is totally different. Although it dates from the cold war era and the technology described in the novels is now obsolete, the story of all three novels is far more entertaining and the conflict between various characters is doubled by the geo-political conflicts of that era, from U.S. and Vietnam to the British Hong Kong and the Soviet Union.

Of course when reading a book you use your imagination to picture yourself the scenes described there, but a movie always adds a soundtrack, so I will finish this post with the cool theme song of the Bourne movies:

Me and my Monkey

It's a chilly, foggy morning outside, so "me and my monkey drove in search of the sun".



And by the way, Good Morning, Bucharest!, the newspaper about Bucharest is at the second edition. In case you don't meet me or any other people distributing it in the city you can read it online here (in Romanian).

Blame it on the rackets

What do you do when you win a set?, you celebrate, isn't it? What about when losing one? It appears that you can always blame it on the racket as both Djokovic and Murray did it yesterday in the final of the Shanghai Master (see the video below). Or maybe they were just angry that no matter who would had won Federer would still be number one, for the 300th week. I hope that Head is happy now, they will just sell them two additional rackets :)

Electoral debates

Here we are again with elections looming both in U.S. and Romania this fall. I guess most of you are bored and scared of what politicians can say or do (it's better than being like Inna anyway :) ), but in an interesting twist this year George Washington University organized a debate not between the two presidential candidates or their running mates, but between two media presenters that consistently side with one of the two main U.S. parties. The "republican" Bill O'Reilly from Fox News and the "democrat" John Stewart, the host of the Daily Show on Comedy Central. Here you can watch their debate and I can assure you that it's more lively than any official electoral debate you will ever watch. Because they don't have to lie to you or hide specific facts for fear of antagonizing a specific electoral category and the like.



Wouldn't be funny to have in Romania as well a debate between let's say Mihai Gadea and Robert Turcescu? :)

UPDATE: That video with Inna where she says "I'm scary" and "I'm boring" is no longar available on YouTube, but you can see a transcript here.

International Book Week

I keep seeing in the last few days statuses and posts about the International Book Week. According to Wikipedia, this is not a formally established event, but anyway let's play the game:

It’s international book week. The rules: Grab the closest book to you, turn to page 52, post the 5th sentence as your status. Don't mention the title. Copy the rules as part of your status.

"I take back my previous statement; he really is a terror."

P.S. It took me a while to join this movement because I actually didn't know how to go to a certain page on Kindle, as this device displays the percentage of the book that you read until now, not the actual page number. Luckily a fellow reader helped me with that, as it seems I'm a dumb e-book user, I just read and press next page until I finish the book, so far I didn't use any other functions of my Kindle. Also, I choose the post from the book I read at this moment, not just from the physically closest book around me. I really hope people read more books than just a random sentence once a year, I surely do.

Open

Open is much more than a book about tennis, it's rather a bildungsroman on how Agassi grew out of the tennis life that was forced upon him into a respectable person with lots of money and good understanding on how to use them in life. So if you want to know what it takes to succeed and how easily you can fail go ahead and read this book. Meanwhile I read an interview (here in Romanian) with Florin Mergea, the most talented Romanian junior in many years, who didn't manage to kick start his career as a professional tennis player, but not is having a come back.

Brands and marketing

The classic way to promote a brand is to associate it with other figures that people like and trust. So Uniqlo, a fashion retailer from Japan, chose the same strategy and got endorsements for their brand from two famous characters: Novak Djokovic, currently ranked number two tennis player in the world, and Maru, the cat with 175 millions visualizations on YouTube.

Here are the two endorsements:

Now I have a little bit of a dilemma: should I continue with my tennis lessons (especially since I recently bought a racket similar to the one used by Djokovic), or should I start posting videos with my cat on YouTube?

Rock me with a cello... or two

Did I really go to RHCP or something?

Yes, but I was just lazy to post about it until now :) It was not the perfect concert, but nevertheless I'm glad I had the opportunity to see such a great band live. I read on Wikipedia that when they first became famous the guitarist of the band was so overwhelmed that he left the band in the middle of a tour. Then he returned, but 2 years ago he left again tired of touring the world. Actually it can be seen that the band is not even now totally comfortably with the large crowds, they didn't even try to engage the people to sing along the chorus parts of any of their songs. This was the first concert on the new stadium from Bucharest (National Arena) and the bad news is that the acoustic of the stadium is not very good, having an annoying echo.

I liked the jam sessions between the songs (at some point they told to one another to remember a piece they played that could lead to a new song) and the fact that they don't have a fixed setlist for the concert, so you can expect almost any song (expect for the songs from "One Hot Minute" which was the album they made after Frusciante left in 1992, but which I like very much being the first that I listened from RHCP) to come up. Just to get a feeling of the concert here is my all time favorite song from Red Hot Chili Peppers, Can't Stop live in Bucharest:

Notes from a Big Country

Notes from a Big Country is a book about various aspects of life in the US. The author is an American who moved to England and returns after 20 years with his wife and teenager kids. The mixture of American childhood and European adult life leads to an interesting perspective of how things are done there: from city development and transportation, the obsession for commodity (which may defeat the purpose as in the story about how it can take you more time to get food from McDrive than stepping out of the car and walking into the restaurant), the sheer magnitude of many things in US (like the forests from New Hampshire), the changes that can transform a country in 20-30 years. I found it a very interesting reading, especially that I resonate with some of the views of the author. And for sure you will not get bored by this book, the style is highly entertaining.

I started reading this book before my trip to US and I continued my reading after I returned, having fresh impressions from the big country. To illustrate that I added some photos of the busiest highway in California, US 101. At rush hour this four lane road can be gridlocked in many places.

Strange Man - Vinyl Playback Video

Easy like a summer vacation day. But don't watch the video too many times, it might make you dizzy (trust in me, just in me) :)

A intrat in folclor

Sunt sigur ca ati auzit de expresia "a intra in folclor". Ei bine, iata ca Ponta a reusit lucrul acesta intr-un timp record. Deci se poate, tovarasi :)

RHCP approaching...

Less then a month left till the RHCP concert in Bucharest. I wrote a while ago that I would like to see Zdob si Zdub in the opening act. Well, it seems that the media partners of this concert, Rock FM, have organized a poll where you can vote which band you want to see in the opening of RHCP here. I voted for Zdob si Zdub, they are currently on the second place, behind Omul cu Sobolani(I posted about them here). The other band that have a chance to win is Vita de Vie. I posted below a live version of the most famous song from Vita de Vie, so you can compare them with the other two bands.



So go ahead and use the link above to vote. And don't forget to buy your ticket for August 31st, there are only 2000 left.

Olympic Games - High Bar Gym

What can be better than a cat picture? A cat video, isn't it? :)

Skyfall

"Some men are coming to kill us. We're gonna kill them first." That's the spirit.

I heard that a known plagiator was in London yesterday, so Bond had to save the Queen at the Olympic Games opening ceremony :)

P.S. If you see an advertisement on this page that you know it does not represent my opinion, then click on it so that we take them the money ;)

Despre copiat si alti demoni

Se vorbeste foarte mult in aceste zile despre copiat si plagiat. La bacalaureat s-au pus camere de supraveghere pentru al doilea an consecutiv si consecinta a fost si anul acesta o rata de promovabilitate sub 50% si mult sub cele de acum cativa ani. Asa ca o sa va povestesc acum despre experienta mea in domeniu, caci ar fi o minciuna sa spun ca nu am copiat niciodata. Da, recunosc deschis ca am copiat uneori sau am dat altora sa copieze dupa mine, dar per total am invatat niste lectii importante dupa cum veti vedea in continuare:

- prima intamplare vine din clasa a cincea cand la o lucrare de control la geografie mi-am scris niste date despre lectie pe sugativa (pe vremea aceea fiecare elev avea o sugativa mare cat foaia de caiet, caci se scria cu cerneala care se usca greu si te puteai murdari); totul a decurs conform planului, doar ca in pauza de dupa ora de geografie un coleg a venit si a vazut sugativa-fituica; a luat-o si a inceput sa strige indignat prin clasa cum ca Bogdan a copiat, si cum e posibil ca unul care ia premiul intai sa faca asa ceva; nu-i treaba ca si el copiase la acea lucrare ca si la multe altele, dar ce am invatat atunci e ca daca ai un anumit statut (in clasa atunci sau in societate in general) cresc si pretentiile de la tine (chestie pe care domnul Ponta nu o intelege nici azi);

- tot in clasa a cincea, dar de data asta la matematica am avut o experienta la fel de dura; Craciunescu, proful de mate, ne muta tot timpul pe patru dintre noi care eram mai buni la mate in primele doua banci si ne dadea de lucru separat; la una din lectii el tocmai asculta pe cineva la tabla, cand a batut cineva la usa si l-a intrerupt; a iesit sa vorbeasca cu persoana respectiva, iar eu observand ca solutia colegului meu era gresita i-am zis ce sa corecteze; cand s-a intors a vazut ca tipul de la tabla isi modificase solutia si s-a prins imediat ca cineva ii suflase; asa ca a zis ca el nu continua ora pana nu zicem cine a suflat; in clasa s-a lasat o liniste mormantala, iar dupa cateva secunde sau minute care au fost foarte, foarte lungi m-am ridicat in picioare si am recunoscut ca eu ii suflasem colegului meu; nu am patit nimic concret in urma acestor evenimente, dar se pare totusi ca acea clasa a cincea a fost foarte grea pentru mine, nu-i asa? :)

- trecem acum la clasa a noua, unde la fizica am avut un prof cu adevarat revolutionar: caci la nivelul anului 1991 el ne dadea lucrari de control cu cartile pe banca si chiar ne incuraja sa ne facem fituici, caci el zicea ca macar trecem o data prin materie; si iata-ne la una din primele lucrari de control cu toata lumea din clasa stresata de problemele grele pe care ni le servise Bararu; a venit si pauza si toata lumea a insistat in cor sa ne mai lase 5 minute, caci nimeni nu terminase; la care profu si-a luat catalogul si ne-a zis ca el se duce in cancelarie si ii aducem noi lucrarile cand suntem gata; cum a plecat proful am inceput sa discutam intre noi problema cea mai grea; eram vreo trei-patru care ne contraziceam pe doua solutii alternative, plus inca altii care ne asteptau pe noi sa ne hotaram care ar fi solutia corecta; pana la urma i-am convins ca solutia mea e corecta si toata lumea a scris ca mine; am dat noi lucrarile, iar in urmatoarea ora (caci aveam doua ore legate) proful ne-a prezentat solutiile corecte; iar solutia corecta era cealalta, drept care multi dintre colegi s-au jurat sa nu mai copieze dupa mine la fizica :)

- in final ne oprim in facultate, la un examen de bazele informaticii unde printre altele am avut o problema cu masini Turing; imi rezolv eu subiectele, iar doi colegi de langa mine ma abordeaza sa le zic cum am rezolvat acea problema; le-am zis ideea in doua vorbe si mi-am vazut de treaba; cand intru la oral il vad pe asistent ca ma ia la bani marunti: sa ii zic definitii, sa ii explic in detaliu ce am scris si tot asa; acuma eram si eu mirat, caci ma intelegeam bine cu asistentul respectiv, chiar jucam si bridge impreuna uneori; dupa ce ma freaca asta bine, iar proful imi da si el cea mai grea teorema din curs sa i-o demonstrez, ajung ei la concluzia ca stiu despre ce e vorba la materia aia si imi dau 9 (aveam 8 la laborator, asa ca oricum nu aveam cum sa iau 10); iar la sfarsit ma intreaba in fata cine a rezolvat de fapt problema respectiva, caci din toata grupa toti facusera solutia standard, mai putin 3 oameni care dadusera o alta solutie;

Concluzia: ma bucur inca o data ca am avut niste profesori foarte buni, care m-au invatat mult mai mult decat matematica, fizica sau informatica, iar din punctul meu de vedere pana la urma copiatul asta nu renteaza nici cand esti destinatia, nici cand esti sursa. Caci in ambele cazuri poti foarte usor sa ajungi in situatii nasoale.

The Story of Keep Calm and Carry On

Just a day after my previous post I found on a blog an entry about the story of the slogan "Keep Calm and Carry On". So here it is, watch this movie about how to behave in life, whatever hardships are brought upon you:

Keep Calm...

...and continue fighting for what it's worth

Driving in the countryside

Prea bun, prea ca la tara (i.e. too good, feels like countryside):



The name of this song translates as "village after village" and the song evokes driving in the countryside.

An education. Which one?

In the domain which I studied and I practice now, computer science, there are four universities that are constantly ranked (often with an equal score) the best in the world: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, University of California - Berkeley and Stanford University. Last week I was in Silicon Valley, on a business trip to Oracle head quarters and I took this opportunity to visit the campus of Stanford University which is nearby.
Let me give you a few facts about the Computer Science Department at Stanford:

•  one of the emeritus professors they have is Donald Knuth, the author of one of the most influential books in this field, "The Art of Computer Programming"; on the cover of one of the editions of this book there is this quote from Bill Gates: “If you think you're a really good programmer… read (Knuth's) Art of Computer Programming… You should definitely send me a résumé if you can read the whole thing."; 
• here studied the founders of Google and got the idea of the page ranking algorithm that transformed the on-line world in the last 10 years; you can read their paper here; 
• a team from this department build the first self driving car (which I think it will transform our lives in the future) and won a contest organized by the US army research labs (DARPA); watch a presentation of the concept here; 
• on the other hand this department is taking part in an experiment of distributed high quality education by offering to anyone in the world who is interested free on-line classes on various topics, like this one which I attended a few months ago, or these listed here; 

Bellow are a few pictures from campus where you can notice that all this is made possible partly by the donations of people and companies who truly believe in the value of education.
Campus entrance on Palm Drive:

Computer Science Department's building named after the biggest donor who helped to its building, Bill Gates:

The list of people and companies that donated for the new building of the Computer Science Department:

Now I'm back in Romania and here are some other facts that you might know about if you are around:

•  two months ago a person nominated for the Romanian Ministry of Education was forced to skip the nomination after it was discovered that she lied about having a degree from Stanford University (the name of the university was actually miss-spelled as Standford in her CV); 
• the next nominee, with a degree in computer engineering, was forced to resign after proofs of plagiarism in at least three of his published papers; 
•  last week the prime minister of Romania was also accused of plagiarism in his Ph.D. thesis where he copied more than 100 pages from other books and papers; 

You should ask yourself in what kind of society do you want you and your children to live: one in which education is valued and can lead to advances in science and a better life for all of us, or one in which education is just mocked? And if you care you should act every time you can.

As for myself, I know what I stand for.

Would the real good people please stand up?

This is a song called The Streets from a Romanian TV series Good Boys about mafia boys (the good ones) and the police (the bad boys):



Here is an approximate translation of some of the lyrics:

This is a place where you wouldn't dare to go
You may possibly win, but you will probably loose
So many slicks like here you can see only in Vegas
And you wouldn't believe how some turn into whores
This is Romania's capital, this is Bucharest...

Now don't get sacred, that was just a movie and Bucharest is a peaceful place, but it still has its problems (like corrupt and populist politicians), so this is my question (inspired by Eminem) for you for the coming elections: would the real good people please stand up?

Changing Skins - Baby

Well, spring is that time of the year when many animals change their skin, so I found something suitable for this season. They are a Romanian band with a very nice sound in my opinion.

A few pictures from Maldive Islands

I spent many hours under this coconut tree 

Various banana types at the local market in Male

Ocean view beach

The orchid garden

Pool - the cocktail bar is behind ;)

Baby shark

Sting-ray having dinner at the sting-ray feeding show

Sunset on the Sun Island

Tuna fish at home

A walk and a run in the city

This week-end I took a walk and the run in Bucharest. The walk was on Saturday was organized by Urban Ideas, a blog dedicated to urbanism and hot it should be applied in Bucharest. The walk was in the Unirii and Mircea Voda areas and the talk was about the new civic center build in the eighties under the direct supervision of Nicolae Ceausescu and what was the impact of this development on the city. You will see city plans and pictures from XIX-th and early XX-th century, what were the plans for city development back then and how the communist era changed everything. How entire neighborhoods where demolished including churches and how some churches were saved by being moved so that they will not be visible from People's House or the main boulevard. There were two interesting hours, followed by one more hour of discussions on urbanism in a coffee shop nearby. Apart from this tour they organize two more, one in Foisorul de Foc (Fire Lookout Tower) area and one in Mihai Bravu - Baba Novac area. 
On Sunday I went to a 4km fun-run race on the route Piata Charles de Gaulle, Arcul de Triumf, Piata Victoriei and back. The organization was not good and the weather was rainy, but in the end we ran and it was fun :)

Millennium Trilogy

I didn't see the movie The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo yet, but I decided to read the book instead. In fact, this is only the first book from a trilogy, now I'm actually at the third book and it gets better and better. If the first novel is about an old family mystery, the second and the third are getting into police investigations and secrete police activity, but keeping the main characters from the initial novel. Highly entertaining for a vacation on a tropical island :)

A Veces

Back to work... a veces :)



I've seen this song on Nat Geo Music which I didn't know it even exists until a few days ago.

Return to the twenty first century

I first heard about Ioana Parvulescu for her books about the old Bucharest from 19th century and the period between the two world wars. So now I read her latest book, Return to the Twenty First Century, which is collection of journal notes and columns from the magazine of Romanian writers union (Romania Literara). The book describes the life in Romania at the beginning of this century with the good, the bad and the ugly. Many stories are about books, their authors and their readers and how they constantly interfere with our life in the most unexpected ways. Overall, it is an enjoyable read from the land of dragons, as this is how Romania is portrayed in one of the Harry Potter novels :)

Simon's cat in his very own book

The ones that spend time on the internet and sometimes "catch" viral videos probably know about the Simon's cat who makes poor author's life miserable at time, but highly entertaining for the rest of us. Here is the first video with the cat trying to wake up his owner:

And another one which is more appropriate to the current season in Bucharest, snow business:
 The reason I write about this famous cat is that I recently got from a colleague two of the comic books which continue the career of the YouTube cat: "Simon's Cat in his very own book" and "Beyond the Fence". They are funny to read and I can testify that at least some of the chapters are real, like the ones on the cat and the vacuum cleaner and on how to put the cat into a cage :)

This could be spectacular

As usual, taken from an advertisement :)
This time it's about a legal online music site which is about to be launched in Romania: Zonga. It seems I'm in the target audience for this service, ain't I?

Rock, alternative rock

Since Santa already granted my wish and I already got my tickets for the Red Hot Chilli Peppers concert in Bucharest, I have one more wish for the organizers of this concert: to open it with a performance of Zdob si Zdub, which is probably the best alternative rock band in Romania (they are actually from Basarabia aka Republic of Moldovia) in the last 20 years. I know they opened the RHCP concert in Moscow in 1999, so I think we deserve them too. Meanwhile here it is one of their songs having the unmistakable combination of rock and traditional music.

Extreme wedding song:

On the Beautiful Blue Danube

Every year I try to watch the New Year Concert of Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, which is a unique type of celebration of the new year, classical music and even more. The concert has many waltzes and polkas mainly from Strauss family of composers, but what stays the same is the ending with the An der schönen blauen Donau waltz and Radetzky March. Well, Danube is a very special river, at least for me cause every time I cross it at Cernavoda (Cernavoda actually means "black water" so it seems people there had a different view of the color of Danube) on my way to Constanta I feel I'm getting home, so I'm glad there is such a beautiful waltz dedicated to it. Here are the two pieces mentioned above from this year's concert:

On the Beautiful Blue Danube



and Radetzky March

Book of the year

The book of the year award has a different meaning this time and goes to my Kindle device which I started using a few month ago and which promises to greatly reduce the physical size of my library. They made a good job at making the e-book readable in almost any kind of light, at it's very nice to be able to have a library in your pocket at any time. The first books I read on my Kindle were some poetry by Eminescu and two novels by Phillip K. Dick: Minority Report and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? A long time ago I read Time Out of Joint by Phillip K. Dick and I found it one of the most fascinating SF books, very different from the usual settings of robots and wars among empires from the SF stories. The same are the two books that I read recently (there were also movies made starting from them Minority Report and Blade Runner). The author imagines hypothetical worlds and then asks fundamental questions about these worlds. In world where one can see the future, should we imprison the ones that will commit crimes before they actually commit them? Or in a world where robots are so advanced that look and behave like humans should we have anti-Turing tests (i.e. tests that try to distinguish a robot from a human) and "retire" the robots that fake their identity and pretend to be real humans? It's easy, you see. And then you just start to write characters and captivating stories which analyses your fundamental questions. I'm just getting started with my Kindle, so there will be many more books to talk about in the year to come. Stay tuned!

Remember the times

Today we celebrate 22 years since the fall of communism in Romania. Here is a satirical song from that period about how you could see cheese only at TV, but not in the stores. I know it seems incredible and every time I told this kind of stories to people from western Europe or U.S. they shake their head in disbelief, but those were the times we lived. Let's remember once again, cause you know how that saying: those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

Invest in a software developer today!

The post about hug a developer today was by far the most visited entry on this blog ever, so I think it's about time to push it to the next level. In these dire financial times, but at a moment when holidays are approaching, what better option do you have than to invest in a software developer? Because according to the well respected business magazine Forbes:

"The one absolutely solid place to store your capital today — if you know how to do it – is in software developers’ wallets. If the world survives looming financial apocalypse dangers at all, this is the one investment that will weather the storms. It doesn’t matter whether you are an individual or a corporation, or what corner of the world you inhabit. You need to find a way to invest in software developers."

You don't really need to read all the details in the article, as the author at some point thinks very low of us software developers, but it's important to understand the basic things: how tough and miserable the life of a software developer can be (please insert a hug here) and, on the other hand, how good is an investment in a software developer (probably the best investment you can do at this moment). So here is a very easy way you can profit from this once in a lifetime opportunity: I officially open my wallet for donations investments from anybody interested in such a good business. Contact me and I will provide detailed instructions on how to quickly transfer your money in my wallet. I can even promise to write a few lines of code for each donation deposit received :)

Don't waste time anymore: invest in a software developer today!

More cover power

It looks like we are in the cover season, bands are producing more of them and in the last year every concert I attended contained at least a cover performance. Omul cu Sobolani even released an LP containing only covers called Retro. So here are two more covers (the first one from this band is here) from this LP. One of Alexandru Adries, Cea mai frumoasa zi (The most beautiful day):



 The other one is a cover of a much older song by Mondial, but one of my favorites songs from childhood (I remember I had a 45 rpm single vinyl disc with this song which I listened to many times, instead of doing homework of course :))



You can listen the original version of the song by Mondial here:

The Bad Girl

"The Bad Girl", or "Travesuras de la niña mala" is an unusual novel from Mario Vargas Llosa. The action takes place mostly in Europe, there is only one narrative thread, but above all, it is a love story that follows the entire life of the heroes (including the good boy half). The storytelling style remains the same though, so I submerged like always into the sea of words of Llosa even if I opened the book for five minutes in the subway or I read from it for hours.

The kid that runs towards sea

An outstanding music video featuring one of the greatest Romanian actors, Victor Rebengiuc:


and the story of this video:

Romania care este cu Tudor Chirila si Victor Rebengiuc pe apropotv.protv.ro

AI Books

Last week somebody asked at the online office hours for the AI class I'm taking this fall (a great class by the way) about other AI books that we should read apart from the textbook of the current class (Artificial Intelligence - A Modern Approach). The answer from Peter Norvig was to point to his public list of books from Google Books. So if you ever need some good references of all kind of AI books (planning, logic, machine learning, agents, games, natural language processing, philosophy, robotics, search, vision, programming) you can find it here.

The Sound Of Winter

I can here it, the winter is coming, I even have to play tennis in a big balloon nowadays. This song was recommended by Roger Federer on his Facebook page, apparently he is friend with one of the members of the band. He actually flew back to Switzerland immediately after winning the Paris masters trophy to catch a part of their concert.

Electric music

Since the quality of Romanian television programs it's so pour and there are no important sport events in this period, I watch mostly international TV stations in the limited time that I turn on the TV. Here the advertisement mix is different, as they don't try to sell you prepaid mobile phones and meat spreads (aka pate) on CNN International, but you can still find some nice music though. Here is an example of a commercial for EDF:


and the full song:


I would like a TV channel were they show commercials and next the music videos of the songs from the commercials, like I do here. Am I asking too much?

When I met you, Cristina

Cover power is show on VH1 that plays the original version of a song and then a cover of it. Sometimes a cover is decent, sometimes is lame and rarely is very good. But what I discovered a few days ago starting from a song I heard on the radio is totally unexpected: two different covers of a song from a different league. Here it is the original style (I couldn't find the actual original which I understand is from Azur band, more than 20 years old):



and two covers:

So what do you think, which of the above do you like best?

Domino... just a thought

Ok, I know that physics, computer science, economics are hard to digest even in blog posts, so I will postpone the post I planned to write today about mathematics in the economics science. I will also skip the analysis of the depressing theater play Who's afraid of Virginia Wolf? that I saw recently (it's a nice performance the one at Comedy Theater though, don't miss it if you are in Bucharest) and I'll go back to music for an easy week-end brunch. My main source of music is the radio, but there were some mutations in the waves recently. One morning I turned on the City FM frequency and I was in shock of the music I heard. It wasn't my sleepiness, there was another radio on this frequency, Click FM. I changed the frequency immediately, so I cannot tell you if they have a girl at five minutes past the hour like in the corresponding tabloid, but the result is that my selection of radio stations is reduced now to two (since the crisis is alive and well): Radio Guerrilla and Rock FM. And since some lame jokes in a morning on Guerrilla, I listened in the last couple of weeks only Rock FM. And that is just fine, but the downside is that they play mostly classic rock, so I don't get to know of any new music. But this morning I switched back to Guerrilla and in only a couple of minutes I heard two nice new songs which happen also to be from Romanian bands. Here they are Toulouse Lautrec with Domino:



and Luna Amara with Doar Gandul (there are some problems with the voice in this recording, but the I think the sound of this song is nice):



Enjoy!

Back to school

For the fall semester I enrolled in an online class of artificial intelligence taught in parallel with the live class offered at Stanford University. I have about 170.000 classmates and some 46.000 of them are even doing homework and taking exams. So far it's fine, as they don't just put online video recordings of the live class, but prepare special videos and quizzes in an effort to make it interactive and have you thinking into the subject even at late night hours. I'm doing all this effort mainly for my laptop, I expect that by the end of the class the machine will become much smarter and it will be able to answer the quizzes by itself :)

Another type of marketing

In my opinion, consumerism is one of the main factors which took us in the double crisis where we stand today: economical and environmental. Did you ever hear about a company which told you that you should buy their stuff only if you really need it?! And that takes a pledge to design and manufacture their products so that they last for a long time (as opposed to those who design products so that in 2-3 years they feel out of fashion)? That encourages you so sell or donate their used products on eBay if you no longer need them (thus cannibalizing some of their sales)? That, although not forced by some law, takes back their products that cannot be used anymore for recycling? That donate 1% of their sales to environmental projects? How is that for a business plan? Do you think is doable? Well, here, at Common Threads Initiative (I wonder if they got the idea from the "thread pool" concept of efficiently utilizing system threads for computing :) ) they think they can. Let's wish them good luck!

Zero impartit la trei

Mi-a povestit ieri un coleg ca a auzit urmatorul concurs la Radio Zu.
Cat fac zero impartit la trei?
Primul ascultator: zero
B&M: gresit
Al doilea ascultator: zero
B&M: gresit
Al treilea ascultator: aceasta operatie e imposibil de facut!
B&M: corect, ai castigat!

Intr-adevar, zero nu se poate imparti la trei... prosti :)

Un alt fel de cover: asa e in tenis

Ca tot am vorbit in postarea anterioare de publicitate si cover-uri, iata un altfel de cover pe care l-am vazut recent la turneul de tenis Bucuresti Open:



Macar asta e ceva mai distractiv fata de "maximienii" cu care ne toaca Vodafone de luni si luni de zile. Aveti aici si originalul pentru comparatie si aducere aminte:



Nu ca m-am intersectat eu prea mult cu maestrul Toma (pot sa spun ca am fost contemporani doar pentru vreo doua luni...), dar am crescut cu o caseta cu scheciurile sale pe care le stiam pe de rost: Fabula, Mefisto, Un telefon discret, Petrecerea continua.

Another type of advertising

Movie trailers are just another type of advertising. Here's a nice one that I saw today, with an incredible cover of Immigrant Song of Led Zeppelin. I thought first that this was a teaser for the next Bond, since Daniel Craig is starring, but in the end it's another movie, The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo:



P.S. Even with a good advertising, I won't necessarily buy the product, let's see the IMDB ratings first :)

The beauty of computers

What can be beautiful in can of silicon and wires and which also usually contains lots of bugs? Knuth entitled his famous books "The Art of Computer Programming" because he considered that computer programming cannot be considered yet a science, but it's rather a craftsmanship. All software licensees have a part where it is stated that the particular software is not "fit for a particular purpose" (see for example Mozilla Public License, section 7 here). The best joke about software engineers is the one where all kind of engineers try to fix a car and the software guy proposes that all step out of the car, get back in and try to start it again. This is how much the programmers trust their work! So in this wonderful (i.e. full of unanswered questions) industry of computers there was a man who maybe thought: we may not be able to do it right, but at least let's make it beautiful. And he did it time and again: from the calligraphic fonts that he introduced on computers, the mouse and the careful researched user interfaces, to the overall design of all Apple products. Then Bill Gates copied some of his ideas and Google guys were probably inspired by him when they designed their user interface. If so many people still use these beasts called computers and don't totally hate us for it, it is in part due to the work of Steve Jobs, who for sure will be remembered for a long time.

Why I'm not a physicist but I still read physiscs books

Although I participated in physics contests in secondary school, I was not really into it until I started high-school where, at physics, Mr. Bararu was the best professor I ever had. He was funny, but also inspiring and his teaching methods (e.g. open books exams, grading by the Gaussian curve) were revolutionary at that time. He tried hard to lure us into physics, as there was already a mathematics gang in the class (as the contests in math start much earlier, in the fourth grade as opposed to those in physics which start in seventh grade) and on the other hand we were a computer science intensive class. I still remember his arguments that we study math in order to apply it in physics and that chemistry it's just about mixing stuff and checking its color and smell. All went very well until one day he tried to solve a problem in front of us and he just failed. He put all the forces in the described situation, did the computation, but the result was different than the one in the book. Then he tried some different settings of forces until he found one that matched the expected result. That was really odd for me, as I was used to the way of solving problems logically, starting from premises and applying different logical techniques to reach the conclusion. That annoyed me so much that I gradually started loosing interest and by the eleventh grade I didn't even go to physics contests anymore. I was back to mathematics just in time for the highly abstract algebra with groups, rings and corps which I liked most. Only much later on when I read the Objective Knowledge of Sir Karl Popper I fully realized how physics works, how we are constantly make educated guesses (i.e. theories) so that they fit our observations of the surroundings as much as possible. On the other hand, the reality around us is so complex to describe that one needs to use highly simplified models to ever compute something about it. So if mathematics is the poetry of science, the physicists are the story tellers that describe what happens around us. And these stories of big bang, black holes, curved space-time, vibrating strings and quanta are always fascinating me. So here I am again, this time with a book that tells the story of quantum mechanics theory, the building blocks which led to it and its huge impact on our civilization: In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality by John Gribbin. The story telling of this author is good, with the drama of various people involved and their struggle to get a grip on this weird phenomena they were unfolding. Quantum mechanics is still a mister as the given interpretations are far away from what we normally expect from the world to behave like, but that's all we have for now: a grand casino where at every point in space and time dice are rolled to determine the next step. You just have to play the game!

Computer science on paper

Blogger changed its interface and templates and when I tried to migrate I lost some of the settings I had on the old one, so I decided to use a new template. The new one it's a tribute to the good old days when we did computer science on paper. You just had to think carefully on the algorithm, write it down on paper, run it in your head again and then eventually get your turn to work on a computer to implement it (punch card or even keyboard version cause we were kind of short on computers). I think that being able to write down the algorithm and run through it really makes one understand it better, so actually in the year when I was a teaching assistant at University of Bucharest I asked many of my students to explain a few steps of their basic algorithms (back-tracking, divide et impera and the like) on paper in order to make sure they understood them and didn't just copy the project from a coleague. Some of them even liked it :)

Hug a developer today...

...ability to work under pressure and meet deadlines, flexibility to changing priorities, be able to learn new technologies (like every other month), ability to express ideas in technical and non-technical terms, most unpaid overtime than almost any other profession...

Pouvre, pouvre developers :)

The Economist on carbon tax

I wrote a while ago here about a paper with various proposals to put a cost on CO2 emissions and how I like the idea of a carbon added tax. This evening I read the first complete endorsement of a carbon tax in The Economist. The blog post dismantles various arguments against such a tax and explains the incentives it will bring about. It's worth reading it on Free Exchange.
So if most economists agree on this issue, why is it not happening, what is politician's position on this issue? One the one hand the likes of the tea party don't wont any kind of tax whatsoever and another big group would prefer to spend money on their pet green projects, than to have a generic tax that would make the good and cheap technologies winners. Apart from being captive to special interests, their chronic lack of vision in handling various aspects of current economic challenges is disappointing.

Caught speeding?

Apparently, not only that God plays dices (in the game called quantum mechanics), but he is also speeding. In an experiment performed at CERN it appears that neutrinos travel at a speed greater that the speed of light which is the theoretical ultimate speed limit postulated by Einstein in his relativity theory. The results are still up for review, the researchers say they want to eliminate every possible chance that they made a measurement or design error and would be glad to see their experiment replicated by another team, but I can't stop thinking what the venerable Einstein would think about this?

If this experiment turns out to be right, we have to re-write all our theories on physics. Again! So should I stop trying to understand the current ones? :)

More details on this story here.

Midnight in Paris

Midnight in Paris is a magic movie about a magic city. Of all the cities I visited, I remember Paris as having the best atmosphere on its streets. Summer is not terribly hot, winter is not very harsh, so the coffee shops are always there, everywhere, inviting you to sit and relax, and watch the time passing by. That probably attracted all those artists in the early 20th century, cause they were flooding to Paris from allover Europe and America alike. So what could possibly happen at midnight in such a city? It's just another walk, drink or party, or what? I'm not gonna spoil it for you, so go see the movie.

Poate o sa va placa...

Eram la vanatoare de melodii si asta m-a sedus :)

Party in my mind

This story goes back to the years when I studied at UMD. One day one of my housemates passed by the open door of my room and saw me laying in bed and staring at the ceiling. He asked me if I'm ok cause he felt I had a strange look fixing that wall. In fact I was doing my homework for advanced algorithms class, but he found it hard to believe that this was a proper way of doing a homework. Staring at the ceiling became a hallmark of the way I am, it feels for me just like a big screen where I can project my imagination :) So I felt vindicated when Sheldon introduced Flatland to Raj in my favorite sitcom The Big Bang Theory (you can watch the scene here). And now there's even a song about having a party in one's mind:



It's easy to join this party, just stare at the ceiling above you wherever you are (blue sky also accepted) :)

Was Marx right in the end?

In a recent interview Nouriel Roubini (also known as the prophet of the crisis) said that capitalism could auto-destroy itself when too much capital accumulation takes place and the agregate demand becomes in turn very weak. The original declaration can be seen here:



First I'd like to note that in general any system involving human beings can self-destroy by simply commiting suicide. If somebody wants to give credit to Marx she should prove somehow that capitalism will always lead to a self-destruction stage. My second observation is the focus on consumption that appears in current macro-economics world. We need to keep increasing our consumption in order to match the ever increasing producing capacity and this is the only way we can advance the global GDP (here domestic is planet Earth :). I think the real trap in today's economics is this focus on consumption that creates the demand. We can live a happy life without this exacerbated consumption and in the end this is a matter of what we value, isn't it?

P.S. By comparing the subjective theory of value and labour theory of value one can understand the fallacy of Marxism, but more on this in another post.

Division by zero

I bought this book (the original title is "Stories of Your Life: And Others") a few weeks ago because I liked its name with mathematical connotations and I read on the back cover that two of the stories were awarded Nebula Award (it's like an Oscar for SciFi literature). The interesting fact is that this is the whole opera of this author so far (two awards out of eight stories is an impressive rate, isn't it?). His stories are rather some kind of parables set in a slightly different universe, but far from the standard SciFi galactic clashes between races and/or robots. There are even some notes at the end of the book explaining how the author got the idea of each particular story, sometimes that would be just a mathematical or physical principle he wanted to illustrate. Yet the reading is entertaining, especially "Stories of Your Life" which reminds me of the feeling from "Chronicle of a Death Foretold".

Amy Winehouse

"I don't ever wanna drink again, I just need a fried", so sad she didn't find one...

Carbon tax proposed in Australia

Australian government proposed a carbon tax that will be paid by all companies emitting CO2. If this will be devised this kind of tax has the potential to drive a "green" behaviour from all sides, since a reduction of VAT is also proposed in order to offset the total amount of collected taxes. For example, let's say a KW of energy costs 10 dollars, the VAT will be reduced by 1 dollar, but the energy produced from coal will be taxed supplementary by 2 dollars, as opposed to wind energy which will not be carbon taxed. So the coal energy will end up costing 11 dollars, but the wind one will cost 9 dollars (this is a pure imaginary example, I don't know the exact amount of VAT and the proposed tax, or the cost of energy). So greener products will become cheaper, thus the incentive to consume those ones. Note that Australia is one of the developed countries that didn't sign the Kyoto treaty (they consume a lot of coal), so the change in policy is significant. In my opinion, taxing all the types of pollution is the best way to obtain a reduction in the ecological pressure we put on the planet.

The original news can be read here.

Funky business and funky bac

I'm reading "Funky Business" a book written around 2000 that tries to describe the new business model that will take over all of us as the use of technology continues to rise. I have some mixed feelings about this book: on one hand I totally agree with their vision of empowered individuals that will challenge more and more all sorts of institutions of our society. The description of internet use and the possibilities it opens look already outdated today, after only a few years since they wrote the book. On the other hand, I don't like the extreme consumerism ideas they induce, where sky is the limit and the consumer is king. I guess the severe recession we still experience in Europe and U.S. and the prices of oil and other raw materials just show to all of us that we don't have unlimited resources and unlimited supply of money.

So once one understands the importance of education, it may be a good idea to try to improve the education system. An important part of any kind of improvement process is in my opinion a way to measure the results of your efforts. In the case of education the best way to measure the results of the system are national (or even international) tests, that's why I'm glad that this year the widespread fraud that plagued the high-school graduation exam (aka bacalaureat) was stopped. The results were not good at all, less then 50% of the students took the exam, but unless we face the truth of what the education system in Romania produces at this moment there is no chance to ever improve it.

Update: Gabi pointed out one of the best quotes from the book: "if you think education is expensive, try ignorance"

Bubble-sort with Hungarian ("Csángó") folk dance

If you ever got bored while studying sorting algorithms, this is a fun way to do it:



Now in order to evaluate complexity you need to see how tired the dancers are in the worst case scenario :)

The story of a tree

I have few memories with my grandfather from my father's side, as he died when I was 8 years old, but one I remember clear is when he took me and my cousin to plant a walnut tree in front of his house. Years after, in the freedom induced madness from Romania people starting cutting down the trees in the streets. I don't know the exact reason, maybe they were making room for parking their cars, or they were annoyed they had to clean the leaves, but I could see it on many streets in my home town and elsewhere. One day my uncle said that he also plans to cut the walnut tree in front of my grandma's house giving me some stupid reason. I told him to don't even think about it as that is me and my cousin's tree and we want that tree to stay there. He eventually gave up and you can still see this beautiful walnut tree if you go in Constanta on Razoare street.

Having this story in mind and countless more about the massive deforestation that takes place in Romania I was very glad when I discovered the Tree-Nation community. They are dedicated to planting trees, as this is the most effective way to have a sound ecosystem on our planet. Forests prevent desertification and soil erosion, enhance bio-diversity, reduce CO2 and thus global warming and also provide important economical resources if managed wise. Tree-Nation organization has three big projects: one in Niger where they plant a huge forest aimed at stopping desertification and two others in Columbia and Nicaragua where they are doing re-forestation of some areas in order to stop the soil erosion and conserve the local flora and fauna.

So next time you have the opportunity to plant a tree don't miss it. Remember that is one of the three things a man has to do in his life.

Orange channel and more

This time it was the other way around: I heard a very nice song (see below) on the radio that sounded so familiar that made me think I heard it before somewhere else.



One of the obvious places to look for was in the latest Orange commercials. While searching on YouTube for the commercials from this year I discovered that these guys finally decided to create an YouTube channel (Orange Romania) where to post their commercials and more. For example this astonishing video of a building (Institute of Architecture from University Plaza in Bucharest) that goes alive:

Open the gate to the sun

Music was part of my life from the very beginning. I grew up in Mangalia and our apartment was right next to the first restaurants and hotels from Saturn resort. So all the summer you would here the music from the restaurant across the street. I was so used to it, that I couldn't fall asleep without that music. My mom told me that I woke up one night after the restaurant closed and I was very puzzled that the music was not there, I started saying: let the music play! Later on while in elementary school I always paused from doing my homework (not a huge fan of homework, but at that time I still tried :) ) to listen to the "song on request" program on the radio. In those years appeared the song "Deschideti poarta soarelui" (Open the gate to the sun) describing a serene and peaceful atmosphere of the communist Romania while the capitalists were decaying (now I see why Thriller was such a hit, they were mocking us :) ). The voices were good, as they gathered some of the great Romanian singers to record this song (I realize this was a replica for the much well known We are the world), but the message was rather cryptic to me. Looking back I understand now what the poet wanted to say: probably the action was set after a harsh winter with electricity cuts and freezing temperatures in peoples apartments so they were begging the rulers to open the gate to the sun so we could warm up a little bit. A punk version would describe that feeling much better though, so here it is the much needed cover:

The dream of a final theory

We now for some time what androids may dream of electric sheep from Philip K. Dick, but did you ever know what physicists dream about? Well, at least the ones specializing in particle physics (like Steven Weinberg) apparently dream of a final theory that will explain all that happens in our universe. He tells a history of the theories in physics (and also in natural sciences like chemistry and biology) in his book and how they converge to a still elusive final theory. The book is entertaining not only for the history of ideas in physics, but also for the discussion of the interference that various philosophical ideas had in the progress of science for better or for worse and also for the exposition of the reductionist argument, i.e. that chemistry and biology can be reduced to physical phenomena (that reminds me on how our physics teacher from high-school tried to lure us to his subject: he was telling us that after the discovery of the atom's structure chemistry was reduced to colors and smells of various substances and that we study math to apply it in physics).

Unfortunately our common sense is far behind these theories (although our gadgets rely on these advances in physics), as most people can barely imagine a curved space-time, so these dreams remain quite obscure: imagine that everything around is formed from tiny uni-dimensional strings and their various vibrations result in the matter and energy as we know it. That (string theories, cause there are many of them) is their main dream theme for the last 20 years.

A cartel of a different kind

According to Webster an economic cartel is "a combination of independent commercial or industrial enterprises designed to limit competition or fix prices". Usually a group of companies conspire to have higher prices on their products (like the recent case of detergent market in E.U., or the infamous notarial price lists from Romania) or to deter other parts to enter their market (what Vodafone and Orange were charged in Romania), but in this case a group of companies tried to fix the price of labour. Well, labour is a special market anyway, with a lot of social implications, but this market usually has an important asymmetry of information over salaries between the employer and the employee, as many private companies require their employees not to disclose their income (the study of asymmetry of information in markets and its implications was developed by Joseph Stiglitz and he was awarded the Nobel prize in economics for it) . Even in these conditions some companies (namely Apple, Google, Adobe, Intel, Intuit, Lucasfilm and Pixar) allegedly engaged in even more anti-competitive practices (like an agreement not to try to hire employees of one another)? I understand that the competition for talented engineers is tough in Silicon Valley, but these companies are among the most profitable on this planet. It's always nice to save some pennies though, isn't it?

See the full story here with a nice diagram showing the suspected bilateral agreements between various companies.

Pseudofabula

I recently listened a cover of a nice Romanian classic rock song, here it is:



I wonder is the mouse, the cat, the dog, the wolf and the hunter and the man with rats read the same book, or all of them are that scary? I would say the book I read now is rather fascinating than scary, but that's for another story. However, for those who find alternative rock scary there is also the original version from Rosu si Negru (that would be Red and Black):

Autism - what lies beneath

I first heard about autism in a computer science class, Computer Processing of Pictorial Information, that I took at UMD. It's true that the professor, Yiannis Aloimonos, was quite unconventional and was telling us lots of stories about human and computer vision, and left us to decipher the equations used there by ourselves. One of his main ideas was that in order to make progress in computer vision was to understand as much as possible how the human brain processes the visual stimulus that results in human vision. But apart from recommending us books on human vision research he told us about a book of a different kind: clinical tales of a neurologist (The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat). In this book Oliver Sacks describes various cases of conditions or accidents that lead to an abnormal functioning of the brain and how people cope in these situations. One of the chapters in this book is about autism. This is a born condition that affects some children and which impairs social interaction and communication (a less severe form is the Asperger syndrome). But a good number of these people show some remarkable abilities: superior skills in perception (e.g. the ability to draw very accurate texture details), attention and computing (e.g. the ability to tell in an instant is a fairly big number is prime or not). This lead to a theory that somehow there is a trade-off in our brain: the computing power there is sufficient to be able to do instant computation of prime numbers but most of the time is shut down and the brain is wired for things much more useful to us like the ability to communicate and interact socially with other people.
Now I'm sure you'll have a different view on some piece of news like this one: A twelve year old rewrites Einstein's theory of relativity.

More than radio: semantic radio

Semantic web is basically the idea of adding some meta-information (usually tags) to the information presented on the web in order to facilitate automatic processing by hinting the computers about what that information is about. For example, the labels that I try to put to my posts that you can see of the left hand side of this blog. The big problem with this approach is the effort needed to tag all the information on the web, that's why there is also a big interest in processing unstructured data, which recently lead to a spectacular Jeopardy show won by a machine build by IBM.
Comming back to radio, this principle of meta data first occured a few years ago when appart from the audio signal the broadcasters added a station id meta data that was used by the radios in the cars to automatically discover the local frequency of an FM radio. This was a nice feature cause once you have your presets in your car then anywhere you would go the radio player will automatically identify the local frequency of that radio based on the radio id metadata.
But a few weeks ago one of my favourite radios (Radio Guerrilla) introduced an even more spectacular feature. They added metadata for the song currently played on the radio, so on the tiny screen in my car I could see the name of the song and singer while playing. I wouldn't care much about this feature on a classic rock radio, cause there I know most of the songs they play, but Gurrilla plays many new songs, especially British and some Romanians ones so before this metadata I was always trying to memorize some lyrics from the songs I liked in order to search for them and identify the song. Now I have right in front of me on the radio display. This will mean I will probably not know the lyrics of the songs anymore :)

Java programming nowadays

A colleague hit a problem yesterday while testing in isolation a SCA (Service Component Architecture) component. He was trying to call WSDL method from a Java SCA component using a SCA reference. In this case you actually obtain an implementation of a generic interface com.ibm.websphere.sca.Service, and on this interface you have to use a generic invoke that looks like this:
java.lang.Object invoke(java.lang.String operationName, java.lang.Object input);

In the case the WSDL method you try to invoke has one parameter then you just pass an object (SDO - Service Data Object in fact) of that type to the invoke method, we had such a case and it worked. But what do you in case the WSDL method has 2 or more parameters? Initially we guessed that the input would be an array of objects, but it didn't work (wrong number of arguments exception) and if you think carefully it would be ambiguous to have an array of objects because one cannot distinguish if the invoke should have as many parameters as the number of objects from the array, or just one parameter (array of objects). At this point we were stuck.

So what do you do when you get stuck? You search on Google: for the exception, or a part of the stack trace, add a few keywords that you think are relevant like the application server you are using (WebSphere Process Server 7.0), framework and technology names (SCA, SDO, WSDL, Java, invocation) and the like. Sometimes you get the answer immediately if someone else hit earlier the same problem and posted the solution on a blog or a forum, but this time it was not that easy. I had to search for about 45 minutes, try all kind of keywords, read forums, blogs and help pages until I finally found the solution in a sample in some documentation manual from IBM. You basically have to use the SCA API and create a special wrapper SDO that contains all the input parameters as properties and then pass this object to the invoke method. You can read the full solution here if you are interested :)

The tennis connection

I'm watching the men's final at Indian Wells masters series tournament between Nadal and Djokovic. After a disputed point the TV camera turned to a cheering spectator, Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle, who happens to be the owner of the tournament since a few years ago. Is this some business intelligence in a relational database or something? :)

P.S. Vamos Rafa!