Archive for April, 2011


If you are a linux/unix user, I guess you’re familiar
with the program screen. A program that lets you
run text-based apps in a virtual screen, and you can
attach and distach from this virtual screen without
disturbing the program. An excellent program to run
your applications on a server somewhere on the
internet, and you can use it from where ever you
want.

But…. what about graphical applications…. that’s
a different problem. There are programs like NX,
but that runs a complete desktop in a window,
in stead of just a window.

Well…. I came across a program that might offer
a solution. It’s called xpra (“X Persistent Remote Applications”)
It can be found at http://code.google.com/p/partiwm/wiki/xpra

Unfortunately it seems to be abandoned, since the
latest version is from November 2009. There seem
to be some bugs related to keyboard layouts with
‘dead-keys’, which is kinda annoying since I usually
use such a lay-out.

There seem also to be some issues related to the
status of the control/alt/shift keys.

I am testing this on a local setup now, but I am
thinking about doing some tests over the internet
later.


Installing the dependencies on Mandriva:

urpmi libxdamage-devel ocaml-lablgtk2-devel python-pyrex x11-server-xvfb libx11_6-devel libxtst6-devel libxcomposite1-devel python-gobject-devel pygtk2.0-devel

Installing the dependencies on ArchLinux:

pacman -S  libx11  libxtst libxcomposite libxdamage pygobject pygtk xorg-server-xvfb pyrex

Another note about running on ArchLinux: You have to open
the build script and change python to python2 (it ocuurs two times!)
Since ArchLinux is so modern it defaults to python3.

Well…. the question… are our thoughts limited?
But… by what, you might ask? In which extent
are we capable of thinking about things we do
not have words for.

If this is the case, then the next question arises,
is what we are capable of thinking about
limited by the language we speak. Are there
things a German speaking person can think
about and a French speaking person not?
(Languages in this example chosen at random)

Speaking a language is much easier then translating
between languages. Words in one language may not
have an equivalent in an other language, or with a
slightly different meaning. Sometimes translating
between languages means losing information.

For example, the Swedish word “farmor” translates
to “grandmother”, but the Swedish word “mormor”
does too. “farmor” means your father’s mother, and
“mormor” means your mother’s mother. But in some
languages, like English, German or Dutch, there is
only one word referring to both.

Another example, the word “siblings”, in German
“Geschwister”, has no equivalent word in Dutch.
Or the dutch word “neef” which could translate to
both cousin and nephew.

These things make translating between those languages
difficult, but could it also mean, there are more complex
concepts of which there is no word in some languages,
and what would it mean for someone speaking those
languages. Would it limit their capability of thinking
about those languages?

Another question is, even if there are words for the
same concepts in two languages, what influence does
the language have on what people think about the concept?

Freedom… what does it mean…. does such a thing even exist?

Doing whatever you want? Going where ever you want?

Well… let’s say, I want to go to the moon. Can I?
I guess not…. but does that mean I am not free?
Nah… It’s just not possible to go to the moon like that.
Neither on earth can I go where ever I want, I cannot
just walk into any people’s house just like that,
but that also has not so much to do with freedom.

No, the problem with freedom has not that much
to do with going somewhere, but more with doing.

Let’s say, both you and me are free to do whatever
we want, right? If I am free to do whatever I want,
let’s suppose I want to lock you up… I am free to
do whatever I want, so I would be free to lock
you up….. but then you wouldn’t be free any more
to do whatever you want, would you?

And so, freedom, defined by doing whatever you
want is in conflict with it’s own definition…

So…. what does freedom mean? Is there such a thing?
Perhaps freedom should be considered in context only?

What does it mean???