M is for Michael

That was the motto on MTV over the week-end. And indeed, Michael was the idol of the MTV generation from the 80s. I remember Smooth Criminal was one of the first video clips I ever saw on a video tape that my dad copied from a friend. And I watched that video many times, cause there was no MTV to watch in Romania at that time.

And M is also for the Man in the Mirror that we should try to make a better person every day:

Joi.megaJoy

"Joi.megaJoy" by Katalin Thuroczy at Odeon Theatre

A group of old people is having a party every Thursday. With all their memories and nostalgia for their lost world and friends. But they still have a hack of a party. The problem is that after about an hour I checked my watch and asked myself: is this the only idea from this play? And that was almost all, with a little interference from the present and a confusion of whether the time of the action was during the communist era or in post-communism. Overall the performance was good, but a real plot and a resolution are missing in this play.

Do we still have a city?

This is how Bucharest looks more and more:



Can we still call it a city?, or is it just a jungle. The debate about how the architecture of Bucharest is ruined every day will take place here. And this is just about the beauty our eyes don't see, but what about the dust, the crowded places everywhere, the transport and many more? No wonder Bucharest has the lowest rating among the main cities in the European Union for the quality of life.

Destroying the planet

We are doing it every day: when we drive our cars, buy that stuff we don't really need, eat too much and then go to gym to keep us fit, wander around the planet to see it with our own eyes. We do it time and again until nothing will be left, or it will be too late to bring it back. Until we will make the Earth so hot, or so cold, or so dry, or so wet, or so acid that we will not be able to live here anymore. Some insects and plants will maybe still be able to live around and maybe it's better this way. We are the people that rule the world and know everything about it, too bad we are that blind.

Or we can try to save it, but that takes a lot of effort, perseverance and relinquishment. Will I do it, will you do it my friend, will all of us do it?

Doesn't this bother you?

The Seville Communion

I finished reading The Seville Communion by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. This novel is a little different from other novels I read by Reverte, as the background theme is not an area such as Flemish painting, rare books or maritime life, but losing of battles. Each character in the book is losing something in the end (faith, marriage, money, dreams), and each one of them is coping differently with it. At some point I got the same sad feeling I used to have when reading Kundera's novels (Unbearable Lightness of Being, Book of Laughter and Forgetting), but as Coldplay says it so well: "just because I'm losing doesn't mean I'm lost, doesn't mean I'll stop".

Pintado una Canción

This site is really amazing. Try it now!

More theatre plays...

The end of theater season is approaching fast, but I'm not sleeping in my shoes, so here are the latest plays I've seen:
- The Egoist - National Theater Bucharest - 15th of April 2009
- The Death of a Salesman - Bulandra Theater - 30th of April 2009

"The Egoist" features Radu Beligan and as you guessed is about an egoist, which is not that a bad person in the end. The play explores the fine line between satisfying your needs and helping others with their needs. If you can do something for somebody else and you're not doing it, you are considered a bad guy, but sometimes nobody asks what your needs are.

"The Death of a Salesman" is one of my favorite plays (thanks to my high school friends who made me read it in the 12th grade when we studied a fragment of this play in the English class). And this interpretation is really impressive, Victor Rebengiuc actually won the best actor award at Uniter 2009 for this role.
The distorted perspective of life of Willy Loman and the never ending search of what to do with his life of Biff which conflicts with his father's vision of success is striking right into my heart yet another time...

Should software makers be liable for their code?

Many software vendors have an EULA (end user license agreement) that basically says that they do not guarantee their software makes a specific thing or is fitted for a specific purpose. Also they state they are not liable for almost anything that happens as a consequence of using that software. Here is an example from the Firefox EULA:

"4. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY. THE PRODUCT IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITH ALL FAULTS. TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, MOZILLA AND MOZILLA'S DISTRIBUTORS, LICENSORS HEREBY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION WARRANTIES THAT THE PRODUCT IS FREE OF DEFECTS, MERCHANTABLE, FIT FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON-INFRINGING. YOU BEAR ENTIRE RISK AS TO SELECTING THE PRODUCT FOR YOUR PURPOSES AND AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PRODUCT. THIS LIMITATION WILL APPLY NOTWITHSTANDING THE FAILURE OF ESSENTIAL PURPOSE OF ANY REMEDY. SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OR LIMITATION OF IMPLIED WARRANTIES, SO THIS DISCLAIMER MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.

5. LIMITATION OF LIABILITY. EXCEPT AS REQUIRED BY LAW, MOZILLA AND ITS DISTRIBUTORS, DIRECTORS, LICENSORS, CONTRIBUTORS AND AGENTS (COLLECTIVELY, THE "MOZILLA GROUP") WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF OR IN ANY WAY RELATING TO THIS AGREEMENT OR THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE PRODUCT, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF GOODWILL, WORK STOPPAGE, LOST PROFITS, LOSS OF DATA, AND COMPUTER FAILURE OR MALFUNCTION, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES AND REGARDLESS OF THE THEORY (CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE) UPON WHICH SUCH CLAIM IS BASED. THE MOZILLA GROUP'S COLLECTIVE LIABILITY UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF $500 (FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS) AND THE FEES PAID BY YOU UNDER THIS LICENSE (IF ANY). SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OR LIMITATION OF INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR SPECIAL DAMAGES, SO THIS EXCLUSION AND LIMITATION MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU. "

This practice has become common because the complexity of today's software, the almost endless possibilities in which a software can be used and the interaction with other systems. This makes offering a guarantee on what the software does a very risky thing for the software developer.

It seems the European Commission wants to change this practice and force the software providers liable for their software. Details can be read here. As a consumer I can be only happy that more rights are granted to me, but as a software developer I think enforcing such liabilities on a software provider will lead to dramatic changes in the way the software is produced and priced. It will be much more expensive and more limited in communicating with third party pieces of software. Is this good or bad in the end? It's hard to say, but this kind of law should be carefully evaluated before enforcing it.

Universities in Europe

A very interesting article in The Economist about the universities in Europe in the context of the Bologna process. Apparently everybody understood and implemented what they want out of this process. The article also argues that the difference in performance between European and U.S. universities can be explained by the amount of private funding a university gets. Basically, the more private funding you have the more likely a university is to produce better research. The article can be read here.

Where do Romanian universities fit in this picture? They implemented the 3/2/3 years cycles, but on the other hand they are plagued by nepotism and plagiarism, so should we even count them as European universities?

Movie season

Each year in the period around the Oscar awards ceremony I usually talk around about the nominated movies. It's a kind of movie season. I remember one (Quintana) year when I saw almost all the important nominated movies. I saw a couple of the nominated movies this year too, and even movies that were rumored will be nominated, but in the end were not. The ones I liked most from this season are: Revolutionary Road and Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona. The first one quite moved me and in the second one Penelope Cruz was exceptional, even when she made me laugh with Spanish-English mixture of cultures.

Earth Hour

A couple of weeks ago a global action called Earth Hour took place around the world. The idea was to turn off the lights for an hour between 8 and 9 in the evening. This year I was not at home at that time, so I couldn't take part, but I took part at this event two years ago. One of my colleagues at work argued this event is useless and even damaging as the electricity was still produced and wasted since you cannot stop an electrical generation facility for just an hour to make up for the lower demand. And since electricity cannot be stored it ends up wasted somehow in the system. I know this might be true from a technical point of view, although I might imagine somebody else (like a processing plant) could have scheduled some activity at that point to use the excess electricity, but the real meaning of this event is to make all of us aware of how much electricity we consume and many times just waste. For example, I know the TV consumes quite a lot of electricity while in stand-by mode and I started a while ago turning off the TV from "the button" (not by remote control) when I leave in the morning. So all of us should start thinking how to lower our electricity consumption. And that hour when you were supposed to sit in the dark was a good time to think about such things.

Six Characters in Search of an Author

I saw this play by Luigi Pirandello last week at Bulandra Theater in Bucharest. Extraordinary performance for an extraordinary play. Rebengiuc, Caramitru and Andreea Bibiri (the step daughter) were very convincing. A must see if you are in Bucharest.

The funny thing is that I saw this play about 10 years ago at the same theater, but I didn't remember much from it. I remember only that I liked the subject and it was with Virgil Ogasanu, but that was about all that I could say about it. This time I guess I'll keep a lasting impression :)

Keeping a promise

I'm always amazed on how things work in our society. Imagine you are traveling to a city in a foreign country. So you go to a website and make reservations for plane and hotel. And all you have is a piece of paper where it says that on the day X, at hour Y a plane will take off and you will be allowed to board on that plane. And then in that foreign city you go at the hotel with another piece of paper and they will just let you sleep and eat there. This is really the magic of the modern society, the fact that people learned to respect a contract, even if they never got in touch with their partner. Of course, it is not flawless, and it varies wildly by country and the type of business you are doing, but it is still amazing IMHO.

On the other hand, apart for the B2B, is the P2P promise land where you have no written contracts, but you have expectations. You have expectations even if there is no promise made and others have expectations from you too. And when you fail to meet the expectations or, even worse, you fail to keep a promise you made disaster strikes. And it can be very bad, as you don't loose some money, you loose the trust of others. I remember one such occasion when me and a group of friends organized something funny. But on the day we were supposed to do it I missed it. It was not like I ruined all the surprise, they did it without me anyway and it was fine. But then I was told this: how do you expect somebody to trust you again since you didn't do even this simple thing? I was only puzzled and amused at that moment and only later I realized how tough that was...

Is there a conclusion here? Only that I appreciate when the promises are kept, I know how hard is to do it.

P.S. Last Saturday I saw "Eduard the third" by Shakespeare at TNB. This particular play of Shakespeare is not one of his masterpieces, but most of the drama there was in characters that had to choose between different promises they made explicit or implicit: fidelity to your husband or serving the king's wishes, fidelity to your father or to your best friend and so on.

Carbon added tax

This year the countries around the world are supposed to reach an agreement for the next treaty on preventing global warming. This new treaty will replace the current Kyoto treaty and it is hoped it will have bigger targets and involve most of the big polluters countries (one of the shortcomings of Kyoto treaty was that big countries like U.S., China and India didn't sign it). So there is much discussion about what this treaty should stipulate and how it will be enforced. I don't follow all the news on this subject, but in general (main stream media) I didn't see articles written by economists about how to handle global warming. And this is an economic matter after all, since we will have to pay somehow to protect the environment. I thought of the economists I read and I imagined Stiglitz should have written something about how to tackle global warming. And indeed, I found this interesting paper on his site. It discusses various proposals on how to tax CO2 emissions and how the implementation might work or not. The most fair solution in my opinion is the "carbon added tax" which is similar in concept with the VAT: each part of the production chain is taxed according to the emissions it produces for the goods and service he delivers. The total tax in fact is paid by the consumer, which thus has two incentives: to consume less and to consume "greener" products (that carry a smaller tax). For sure it's not trivial to enforce such a tax world wide, but this is a sound solution from the economic point of view.

And even more

The yellow semi-submarin



Fish and corals



The desert and the Nile valley



Temple of Hatshepsut

Finally, some more photos from Egypt

Obelisc from Karnak temple



On the way to Luxor




The camel and the pyramid



Pyramids of Keops and Kefren



A beduin village

Brother Lee

Whenever somebody calls me on my mobile phone I hear this song and I feel like running to find my brother Lee who's just like me... :)



...where they know when you're fakin' it...

Cu dus si intors

I write this blog in English (because I want to practice and also because I have a lot of friends who don't speak Romanian and they might read it some day, if they don't already do). I read, write and speak English almost every day. I often use English words when I talk in Romanian and many times I just say whole phrases in English although I am talking in Romanian to somebody. And yet, it is so far away to be "The language" I speak. I like to play with words a lot, I like to coin phrases with two meanings (depending on the listener's knowledge), I like the twisted meanings from hard crossword puzzles (I don't remember most of them, but there is one that somehow got stuck in my head: se pune greu la cale - lest), but I don't remember doing ever such things English (btw, if you ever notice that at me let me know :)). So definitely, Romanian is my language.
And what was I saying in the title? That was my busy status at one point on messenger (Romanian has diacritics too, which most of the time I don't use when I write on the computer).

Blogging is hard

I have a couple of things I want to blog about, but it's getting harder to find the time and the mood to write them down. I'll just make a brief list so at least I don't forget about them and hopefully I'll come back to each of them later:
- more about Egypt and maybe some more pictures;
- more about "Letters to my son", a very beautiful book indeed;
- some articles from The Economist about the planetary ocean and what mankind is doing to it;
- the paper about the carbon tax proposed by Stiglitz;
- the account I got for Google Apps and the release of Python 3.0; maybe I'll trick myself into learning this programming language, you never know :)