i'm going down down down...

The latest italian elections were a real treat for ilaria and me.
We went off to Turin for voting properly, and we had the time of our lives following the exit poll projections with bated breathe.. personally I stayed up to 3 in the morning to have an idea of what was going on

Lately, a dvd is raising new questions, and they are heavy questions: what if the "sacred" right to vote, this taboo, was violated? What if my ballot was just a fake? What if the "almost draw" of Berlusconi and Prodi was driven by some external force?

For italian-speakers, this is the link

There are theories.
There are believers.
There are faiths and assumptions.
There are parties, political convictions.

I am an engineer, first and foremost, and I like data, as a matter of fact. And when I see something like this (projections of the votes for the Parliament through exit polls, during the day):



or, better, something like this (votes for the Senate):



i would love to be a statistician and claim that these curves were never seen in any elections. Never.

Pity I'm not a statistician

Five years on the run

my first academic paper has been accepted at the 2nd workshop on open source software in 2002. I remember vividly the sensations of flying to Florida and meet the legendary people I knew from their papers, the astonishment of hearing his presentation and thinking "oh gawd... THAT is sound...", and especially a long talk with Donald K. Rosenberg. The idea of speaking with him, his involvement in the discussion, and his book as a gift are among the best momories of that conference.

Five years later.

Another life.

During ICSE 2007, Grex and I will take over the workshop and run it ourselves.

Ok, it's only a workshop. But we will run it.

inevitable transition

Some lecturers believe this.

"Students represent the lecturer's greatest reward and heaviest burden. Some students can be both at the same time. There can be few more gratifying experiences than to instill a life-long love of learning into another human soul, or to hone a blunt, dull-edged mind into an analytical instrument of surgical precision. Most lecturers experience this once or twice in their careers. For the rest of the time, we take averagely bright individuals with modest critical faculties, and do what we can to turn them into averagely bright, but well-educated, individuals with some notion of independent thought"

"We all knew that students were incapable of mature judgement, and were as likely to rate a lecturer highly because he had an interesting haircut as by the quality of his teaching. So, clearly, students' opinions were irrelevant. "

"A lecturer's recognition by his students is irrelevant because students' opinions are held to be worthless. What matters is recognition by other lecturers. This means that status is tied to research activity above all else, as it is something that other lecturers can relate to. No lecturer increases his status by being a renowned teacher."

I believe that the biggest challenge for lecturers is not to forget how they felt like when they were students.

socialism without frontiers

living in england without being english is not easy.
As it's not easy to live anywhere away from your homeland.
Communication problems lead to a lack of socialisation, and you typically end up in composite groups of international friends (if you're lucky), or within people of JUST your own nation (if you're lazy - or unlucky - but mostly lazy).

Yesterday a colleague told me "mate, i feel so much better since we play football".
Take any children, give them a ball, and they will start kicking it. Communication is not an issue (apart from "meeeee! meeeeeeee! passsss meeee the baaaaaalllll!").

Corporate football sucks. Amateur football joins nations (especially when your nation wins the world cup)