2007-12-26

OCaml and Cocoa

I have opened up an alpha-quality version of a bridge between Cocoa (Mac OS X API, Objective C version) and Objective Caml. Despite the common "Objective" prefix, this is not a perfect match, far from it.
In its current state, most of Foundation and AppKit is available from OCaml, but callbacks are not yet implemented (hence any GUI app would be pretty much impossible to write).
At this point I'm looking mostly for feedback; naming conventions are subject to change at any time, until I get to something that is palatable.
The next major step is the implementation of callbacks.

The license is new-BSD style, svn and wiki are at: http://code.google.com/p/objective-c-caml-bridge/

2007-12-23

The dark business of commercial fundraisers

This commercial fundraiser has been calling us for months, first with a caller id indicating "Courtesy Call", then with blocked caller ID (shows as "PRIVATE"). Since I typically ask them to put our number on their do-not-call-list (which they don't do because fundraisers are allegedly not subject to the direct marketer obligation), they ask for my wife.

The last call, from a certain Bill L, I asked gain "who's calling" after he demanded to talk to my wife. And then he called me a "f*ing idiot" and hung up. I kid you not. This is a fundraiser for charity. On December 23rd.

If anybody reads this while searching for their company name, please, please, do not ever give to their clients. Just peruse the WA site and look at how much money they return to their clients: 13%. This means that they eat 87% of the donations. Look at some of their charity customers. Some numbers are appalling. For comparison, the Red Cross uses 75% of donations to programs, NHF 92%.