I was frozen for a few moments when I read the news.
Rob Levin died at age of 50 on 16 September, when a car hit him on 12 September. He left behind a wife and a children, Benjamin.

No prejudice / cynical remarks on him not wearing helmet please; I didn’t wear one when I was cycling in Birmingham - the helmet belt was choking me and I wasn’t able to find one which doesn’t. I’m sure Rob has a good reason too.
I ended up taking emptier routes - Birmingham’s canals sports only people and cyclist, no cars. Rob seems to has no choice on this aspect.

I have a family and kid(s) too, so I’m very sad to find out that they’re (quite deep) in debt. The fact that their son, Benjamin, suffers from ADHD doesn’t help the situation. Yes, I read a lot from his blogs and website tonight.

And, some people still had to make it more difficult for them, by spreading lies about Rob. Unbelieveable, but part of me is happy that Rob is now free from these bullies.

Rob has dedicated 12 years of his life for Freenode. For this duration, he lived in poverty. Yet he believed in it, and persisted. He helped grew Freenode from 3000 users service to more than 30000 users; profiting many open source projects in the process. We may owe this man more than we know.

Rest in peace Rob. You deserved it.

I’ll register a monthly donation through his spinhome website, to help support his family a bit. If you can as well, please do. It’s the least we can do now for him.

Let’s pretend that recently there’s a bubble child just stepped on our world, finally able to get out from its plastic prison thanks to its body’s immunity system recovery.
Having lived all his live in isolation, you’re asked to choose 5 movies to show to him which will quickly get him to understand the world he’s in now.

Which movies will you choose ?

Here’s my list :

1. Living with hunger : If you have easy access to food & clean water, you’re actually a minority on earth.
2. The Insider : Mega corporations are indeed abusing us.
3. Erin Brockovich : to realize the most important fact about legal system in most countries - they are not siding with the weak and poor.
4. V for Vendetta : The government doesn’t always work in your best interests.
5. Kingdom of Heaven : it IS possible for various religions / races / skin colours to live together in peace and harmony.

What’s your list ?

Thanks to Stephen Booth for the idea.

A+ adalah sebuah bahasa pemrograman yang dibuat khusus untuk kebutuhan bisnis, terutama pada bidang keuangan.

Uniknya, A+ ini di develop oleh staf Morgan Stanley, dan lalu kemudian dirilis dengan lisensi GPL ! Morgan Stanley terus mendukung development A+ sampai saat ini.

Morgan Stanley adalah perusahaan terbesar 38 di dunia, dan masuk di dalam daftar Forbes 500. Morgan Stanley banyak menggunakan berbagai software yang dibuat oleh staf IT mereka sendiri dengan menggunakan bahasa A+, dengan hasil yang bisa kita lihat sendiri.

Quote :

A+ is a descendent of the language “A” created in 1988 by Arthur Whitney at Morgan Stanley. At the time, various departments had a significant investment in APL applications and talent, APL being a language well-suited to the manipulation of large arrays of numbers. As technology was moving from the mainframe to distributed systems, there was a search for a suitable APL implementation to run on SunOS, the distributed platform of the period. Not happy with the systems evaluated, Arthur, motivated by management, wrote one geared to the business: large capacity, high performance. He was joined in his efforts as the language took on graphics, systems’ interfaces, utility support, and an ever-widening user community. Over the course of the next few years, as the business began to reap tangible value from the efforts, the pieces were shaped into a consistent whole and became A+.

A+ soon became the language of choice for development of Fixed Income applications. It offered familiarity to the APL programmers, the advantages of an interpreter in a fast-paced development arena and admirable floating-point performance. A significant driver was that many of Morgan Stanley’s best and brightest were the developers and supporters of the language. Through their practical application of technical values, they instilled fervent enthusiasm in talented programmers, regardless of their programming language backgrounds.

Dari milis is-lam :

Ada berbagai disinformasi yang disebarkan oleh berbagai pihak untuk membela Paus pada saat ini :

1. Paus telah dikutip secara serampangan oleh media massa, dengan tujuan untuk meningkatkan oplah koran ybs :

   Tidak benar. Saya sudah membaca langsung naskah pidato aslinya, dan memang ada berbagai kesalahan di situ.

   Detilnya bisa dibaca misalnya disini.

2. Paus telah dikutip di luar konteks, sebetulnya inti dari pidato Paus adalah mengajak dialog antar agama agar bisa tercipta kedamaian :

   Tidak benar, saya sudah membaca teks pidato lengkapnya, dan inti dari pidato Paus adalah mengajak rekonsiliasi antara sains dan agama. Dan dalam pidato tersebut, Islam dijadikan contoh mengenai agama yang tidak “reasonable” / tidak menggunakan akal pikiran; dan bahwa agama Kristen tidaklah seperti itu.

   Jadi sebetulnya isi pidato Paus yang selengkapnya malah mungkin lebih parah daripada yang dikutip oleh berbagai media massa.

3. Paus mengatakan Muslim barbar, dan lihat bagaimana respon mereka (Muslim) terhadap ini (2 gereja di bom, dll), memang barbar kan ?

   Ini sama seperti jika saya melihat beberapa orang Padang pelit, dan lalu berkomentar bahwa SEMUA orang Padang itu pelit. Hal ini disebut generalisasi - ketika ada sebagian yang bertindak namun kemudian kita menuduh bahwa semuanya sama.

   Ada banyak komunitas muslim yang merespons pidato Paus ini dengan rasional dan bijaksana.

4. Umat Islam baru ribut kalau agamanya dihina, tapi diam saja jika ada muslim yang melakukan terorisme:

   Ini hanya sok tahu, memangnya ybs bisa memonitor seluruh media massa yang ada di seluruh dunia ?

   Komunitas muslim di inggris sering memprotes berbagai kegiatan terorisme yang mengatasnamakan Islam, namun seringkali tidak dimuat oleh media.

5. Paus hanya mengutip saja, dan tidak lantas berarti bahwa Paus setuju dengan tuduhan (Nabi saw memerintahkan untuk menyebarkan Islam dengan kekerasan) tersebut.

   Tetap ada kesalahan Paus, yaitu tidak menuliskan pendapatnya sendiri atas kutipan tersebut. Karena tidak ada, maka wajar jika kemudian ada orang yang mengira bahwa Paus setuju dengan tuduhan tersebut.

Silahkan disebarluaskan agar kasus ini menjadi lebih jelas.

Salam,
Harry