Reading on Jean-Etienne's blog

Medicines coming soon at a printer near you!

Fri, 27 Feb 2015 11:20:46 +0000

The terminator may not come at any time soon but medicines should be coming soon at a printer near you …

Mid last year, Gartner mentioned " medical applications [of 3D printing] will have the biggest impact in the next two to five years". With 3D printing you can already create a lot of physical artifacts and medical applications go from building medical equipments to prosthetic parts, but also blood vessels, bone, heart valve, cartilage, etc. Complete organs are not too far, with companies like Organovo already printing functional liver assays, prospects to restore a body by replacing or consolidating personalized parts seem interesting.

Will we see more babies named George in England and Wales?

Thu, 01 Aug 2013 19:13:18 +0000

A few days ago Prince William and Duchess Catherine of Cambridge gave birth to Prince George. Today at the office we were wondering if we will see more babies names George in UK. Very important question indeed!

So I went to the UK National Statistics website and looked for baby names in UK. Let’s focus on England and Wales only. There are two datasets for what we are looking for: one for the period 1904-1994 (by 10 years steps) and one for 2004 (if we want to be consistent with the 10 years step in the first dataset). I extracted the ranking relevant for us here: for babies called William, George (and Harry, William’s brother). The data is here.

Any free solution for the demise of Google Reader?

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 10:56:09 +0000

Last week Google announced it will shut down its Reader service. It is a web-based RSS reader. It therefore allows to be kept updated of news from around the net in a central location. I liked the service for 3 reasons (on top of the fact it’s free, 0$, to use):

It’s web-based, accessible from anywhere/everywhere with a simple browser;
It’s text-based, you can quickly scan headlines and use the powerful search function from Google;
It’s backed by an API so you can use it via different apps on different platforms and they all stay synchronised (the web/mobile version of Reader is not as efficient as the web/desktop version; hence the proliferation of apps using Reader as a backbone).

Of course it frustrated a lot of people, from scientists to consultants … to name a few only. People are looking for alternative ( you can do a search on Google while the Search service is still working). Feedly is cited very often as the next best alternative. However its nice, graphical interface conflicts with my second reason to like Google Reader: it’s text-based. The Old Reader looks also interesting, it is text-based but no apps on different platforms yet. But both are also proprietary and can be turned off (or changed to a pay-for-use model) at any moment :-(

Map of GAVI eligible countries in R

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 22:48:45 +0000

I was trying to reproduce the map of the GAVI Alliance eligible countries (btw I was surprised India is eligible - but that’s the beauty of relying on numbers only and not assumptions) in R. This is the original map (there are 57 countries eligible):

I started to use the R package rworldmap because it seemed the most appropriate for this task. Everything went fine. Most of the time was spent converting the list of countries from plain English to plain “ISO3” code as required (ISO3 is in fact ISO 3166-1 alpha-3). I took my source from Wikipedia.

Android is catching up iOS

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 11:08:52 +0000

Well, there is nothing new in this statement. The smartphone OS Android is catching up and even overtaking its rival iOS in many domains:

more activated products per day and per year in 2011,
more Samsung Galaxy S3 (running Android) sold in Q3 2012 than iPhone4 and 5S (running iOS),
more devices worldwide,
catching up Apple’s market share in tablets,
…

All this is summarised in an infographics MBA Online designed (the original address is here: http://www.mbaonline.com/android/ - click at your own risk). It is sweet and colorful, with lots of numbers and some references in the end. Unfortunately these references are embedded in the image so you cannot click on them if you ever want to read more info.

Forget pills, here comes e-pills!

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 21:40:32 +0000

The US FDA recently approved Proteus Digital Health Ingestion Event Marker ( IEM). Basically, it’s a pill with some electronics attached (very tiny electronics: around 0.5mm in diameter for a total weigth of 5mg, see picture below). Once activated the pill transmit a signal and, coupled with a detector, you know when the pill got into your body.

Edible sensor for electronically confirming adherence to oral medications.

Effects of Tobacco on health - visualized

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 00:49:16 +0000

As you probably know I am interested in both diseases (and health in general) as well as visualization. Recently Online Nursing Programs (*) invited me to have a look at their latest infographics about the effects of tobacco on health ( directly to figure).

Although numbers seem correct (references are at the bottom), although they intelligently re-use the presentation of some well-known tobacco companies, there is one thing that I don’t like that much: like this sentence, the figure is very, very long. You have to scroll many pages in order to see everything. It may look like a story but it is not presented as such (I mean: there are no clear marks of different steps in the story, except the three “chapters”). On the right is the complete figure in exactly 800 pixels of height - can you read something? GOOD.is solved this issue by using a Flash player that allows the viewer to woom in/out and go to different sections of the figure ( see here for instance).

World book and copyright day, 23 April

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 22:43:43 +0000

Today is World book and copyright day. UN mentions a lot about books and the diversity of values they bring along but very few words are written on copyright per se. It’s true that books are vectors of values and knowledge, depositories of the intangible heritage. But in a world progressively going towards digital books, it could be worth having a real debate about what type of knowledge we want to preserve for the next generations, in which formats, under what types of conditions.

Eat meat or not?

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 21:21:18 +0000

It all started with a strong statement in the LA Times:

If early humans had been vegans we might all still be living in caves.

It says nothing and everything at the same time … Not eating meat would have stopped our “evolution” from early humans? Not eating meat would make us dumber? Or does it have something else to do? It does.

About stacked bar graphs

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:07:38 +0000

This afternoon I received a bunch of data accompanied by stacked bar graphs for each dataset. For example, this one:

The chart shows the incidence of disease X in various age ranges. That incidence is split by 8 severity levels. The chart shows that the disease especially affects age ranges 4 and 5, at different severity levels. However I didn’t feel comfortable …

what are the different levels of severity in age ranges 1, 2 and 3?
how can we compare levels C, D and E in age ranges 4 and 5?
is there anywhere some severity A?
(it’s even worst when some age ranges don’t have any incidence at all: what is happening?)
etc.

I looked on the web but couldn’t find much information apart from the fact " The Economist says they’re so bad at conveying information, that they’re a great way to hide a bad number amongst good ones" (but are still using them in their graphic detail section) or " a stacked column chart with percentages should always extend to 100%" (this doesn’t really apply here). Then in a post on Junk Charts, someone mentioned Steven Few who would have said “not to use stacked bar charts because you cannot compare individual values very easily and as a rule [he] avoid[s] stacked bars with more than six or seven divisions”. And Steven Few also participated in his forum here.

Projection of the American ageing population

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 22:20:15 +0000

Yesterday, GOOD issued an infographic of America’s Aging Workforce (reproduced below). One of the key learning I take from it is that many Americans are unprepared for retirement. Indeed, the average American worker has saved $25,000 for retirement but it is estimated she/he will need $350,000 if she/he wishes to retire at 65 (i.e. 14 times more money!).

I was also wondering: after China and Belgium, how will the population age in the USA?

Waiting for an internet of things for everybody

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 23:42:41 +0000

There are a few days left to vote for the Internet of Things Awards 2011. Initially I thought it was a very good thing, with lots of nice ideas for the future. But then I felt something was missing, imho of course: practical projects that will help the remaining 5 billion people who are not affected by that internet of things as it currently is. Let me explain …

Health talks at TEDxBrussels

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 22:09:28 +0000

When I wrote my last post, videos of health talks at TEDxBrussels were not out yet. Now they are and you can watch them below …

First Andrew Hessel started by talking about synthetic biology, biotechnologies and his participation in the open source biology movement. One day, there will be an org (organism) for the things you want to do.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQtyRzP7SUg]

Then Jack Tiszynski followed with the drastic idea of replacing doctors by software for diagnostics and brought the idea that we will have a “virtual double” in our future smartphones. This double will know our predisposition to diseases and suggest prevention methods and cures.

Visualizing how a population grows to 7 billion (NPR)

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 22:59:03 +0000

The NPR has produced a nice visualization / video showing how population grew to 7 billion ( original article):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcSX4ytEfcE]

If you want to model the improvement in child survival, you just turn the birth tap off (or nearly). Then, with wealth, prevention, healthcare and better food, the population will also grow older (death tap also turned off or nearly) and during a certain time, lots of adults will be economically active (i.e. they will work and consume). This is a demographic dividend. But it comes with a risk: at the next stage, there might be a disproportionately high number of people compared to / depending on a small number of active adults (the next generation). In addition, if you fill it up slowly but you also empty it slowly, the container risk to be full soon, it all depends on the various rates …

Human Development Index 2011

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 22:23:18 +0000

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) released its Human Development Report 2011. It " argues that the urgent global challenges of sustainability and equity must be addressed together – and identifies policies on the national and global level that could spur mutually reinforcing progress towards these interlinked goals".

In this report, there is a ranking, the Human Development Index (HDI). The HDI is a way to measure the development. It combines indicators in three main dimensions: health, education and living standards. The mathematical way used to combine these indicators is explained in a technical note (PDF). The interest is of course to have a single number to use in comparison for both social and economic development. It’s not the only element to take into account to compare development. It’s merely a starting point giving an overview of development. An in-depth discussion about development and comparison between countries will need to go further and analyze each indicator separately (as well as other indicators if possible).

How to feed 7 billion people?

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:03:56 +0000

The world reached a population of 7 billion people at the end of October 2011. United Nations symbolically chose Danica May Camacho, a girl born in Philippine, to mark this global population milestone. I recently wrote about the world population getting older, about non communicable diseases becoming the most dangerous threat to health ( here too) or about World Population Day(11th of July 2011). We are now 7 billion and new projections tells us we will be 9.3 billion in 2050. When I heard all the news around this, I couldn’t help but think about Hans Rosling’s presentation on population growth at TED Cannes, in 2010.

First promising results for a malaria vaccine

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 21:45:16 +0000

Malaria is the 5th cause of death in low-income countries ( according to WHO). That’s why I’m very happy to read that a malaria vaccine showed promising results in a phase 3 clinical trial (in The Guardian, The New York Times or Google News). As usual, I find very interesting to get all the information at the source: the original scientific paper was just published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Yesterday was International Day of Older Persons

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 12:32:35 +0000

On 14 December 1990, the United Nations General Assembly designated 1st of October the International Day of Older Persons. 1990 … it is already more than 20 years ago! People who signed the resolution at that time are now more than 20 years older. Some (most) of them probably are now considered as “old persons”. Do they still have the same view on elderly? Maybe the highlighted principles at that time (independence, participation, care, self-fulfilment, dignity, …) are too broad, too short, just enough?

NCDs account for the majority of deaths worldwide

Sat, 01 Oct 2011 22:15:59 +0000

A few days before my last post and still about the UN High Level Meeting on Prevention and Control of Non-communicable Diseases, The Economist issued a daily chart showing that non-communicable diseases (NCDs) account for the majority of deaths worldwide. I copy the chart below:

[caption id=“attachment_1115” align=“aligncenter” width=“497” caption=“The Economist: non-communicable diseases account for the majority of deaths worldwide”] [/caption]

The state of non communicable diseases

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 18:45:51 +0000

Last week, United Nations gathered in New York, USA, to talk about prevention and control of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Non-communicable diseases are non-infectious, of long duration and generally progressing slowly. Due to the fact they are not infectious, there is no pathogen to target and there is no transmission medium to fight. Due to their long duration and slow progression, one usually notices NCDs when it’s too late and eradicating NCDs is less spectacular than other (not less important) infectious diseases. However WHO measured that NCDs represents more than 60% of all deaths in the world. For the occasion, WHO released an introductory video that summarize the issue.

References, references, references!

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 00:09:00 +0000

When I studied biology as well as when I did my Ph.D., our professors were always after us because of references. I think with their precious help we learnt the art of referencing: choosing good references, citing them at the appropriate location in a text and, of course, giving enough information at the bottom of the text to allow the reader to find these references.

I just finished reading two articles in a recent edition of The Economist and they reminded me how important are these references. These articles are What would Jesus hack? and Worrying about wireless.

A question of a few centimetres

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 09:00:54 +0000

It’s funny to see that in a short span of time, a few centimetres can make a difference. This month, Austria authorised Niko Alm to wear a pasta strainer as “religious headgear” on his driving-licence ( BBC). This month too, Belgian law banned women from wearing the full Islamic veil in public ( BBC).

Well, the Belgian law doesn’t exactly formally forbid the Islamic veil although it was often named as the “anti-burqa law”. The exact terms are:

OS need an immune system and not a CDC-like

Sat, 23 Jul 2011 01:15:30 +0000

In an IT World article, Tom Henderson gives many details about a US-government-led CDC-like organisation to fight malware. In summary, he states that companies and consultants providing security and prevention around operating systems don’t have any real motivation to eradicate malware. And in case of an “outbreak” of these malware, he added one needs a US government body to look after every computer “health”, coordinate the surveillance and the response. He even pushes the comparison with the human medical system by introducing a Hippocratic Oath for computer healthcare.

Aaron Swartz versus JSTOR

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 12:18:22 +0000

Aaron Swartz, a 24-year old hacker, was recently indicted on data theft charges for downloading over 4 million documents from JSTOR, a US-based online system for archiving academic journals. Mainstream media ( Reuters, Guardian, NYT, Time, …) reported this with a mix of facts and fiction. I guess that the recent attacks of hacking groups on well-known websites and the release of data they stole on the internet gave to this story some spice.

Road traffic: real-life and virtual visualization

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 12:04:45 +0000

During lunch time, I discovered an old street art video (well, old = 2010) where people poured hundreds liters of painting on Rosenthaler Platz (Berlin, Deutschland) to visualize traffic patterns (below: screenshot and video).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXCnWUzUw_E]

This reminded me that I recently discovered that Google Maps now includes traffic for Brussels. It was the case for Berlin since a long time and the Rosenthaler Platz looks quite quiet for the moment:

Today is World Population Day

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 22:03:59 +0000

Today, 11th of July 2011, is World Population Day. For that occasion, and as the world population is expected to surpass 7 billion this year, the UNFPA is launching a new campaign: 7 billion people - 7 billion actions.

They highlight 7 key issues to explore:

Poverty and inequality: reducing poverty and inequality also slows population growth.
Women and girls: unleashing the power of women and girls will accelerate progress on all fronts.
Young people: energetic and open to new technologies, history’s largest and most interconnected population of young people is transforming global politics and culture.
Reproductive health and rights: ensuring that every child is wanted and every childbirth safe leads to smaller and stronger families.
Environment: all 7 billion of us, and those who will follow, depend on the health of our planet.
Ageing: lower fertility and longer lives add up to a new challenge worldwide: providing for aging populations.
Urbanization: the next two billion people will live in cities, so we need to plan for them now.

These issues are not new. They are not even original: most bodies or meetings looking at issues for the future have approximately the same issues. But at least it’s another initiative to raise awareness, to think about them. And, most importantly, to act to tackle them.

Sometimes people are really stupid

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 21:17:45 +0000

I just read that orange agent is used in Brazil to clear the Amazon. I am not judging people who may be forced by their living conditions to do this (although I doubt people who did this are poor since they sprayed it by plane). It may be the cheapest way to clear a forest to use the land for pasture (although I doubt buying chemical and spraying it by plane is cheap). But …

The Top 5 Killers of Men

Sun, 26 Jun 2011 18:08:22 +0000

From Delicious, I saw that Yahoo had an article about the top 5 killers of men. I thought it would be nice to see from where they get there data.

First, I have to mention that the article is really about American men, nothing else (not about mankind, not about men around the world, not about women, children, etc.). The article is related to the US National Men’s Health Week (the US National Women’s Health Week was in May 8-14, 2011). Although the article is giving advices, there are no sources of information.

World Cancer Day

Sun, 06 Feb 2011 21:09:13 +0000

It doesn’t seem jolly but last Friday, it was the World Cancer Day. About this, the WHO set up a nice website about cancer control.

Following my previous post on Jamie Oliver and the top 15 causes of death in the USA, I started to collect similar data from other countries. Linking this to cancers, the annual statistics on cancers in Belgium can be found on the Belgian Cancer Registry. The latest numbers are however from 2006. Here are the top 15 cancers in Belgium in 2006 (all sexes and regions mixed):

WikiRebels, the documentary

Wed, 15 Dec 2010 00:34:11 +0000

I just watched “WikiRebels - The Documentary”, a “rough-cut of first in-depth documentary on WikiLeaks and the people behind it” by the Swedish Television. It doesn’t show much new information but give a nice perspective on the past events.

http://svt.se/embededflash/2264028/play.swf

Note: this video is said to be available until January 16, 2011. It may not appear above after this date.

Jamie Oliver: Teach every child about food

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 01:18:15 +0000

In the latest TED Prize wish, Jamie Oliver, the “Naked Chef”, talks about teaching every child about food. His wish is:

I wish for your help to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity.

Although I have a child and I’m obviously interested in his idea, I was also interested in the simple bar chart depicting the leading causes of death in the USA. In the tiny Flash video, the text is unfortunately barely legible and I was interested in knowing where he got his data from.

A good issue of Nature, obviously!

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 23:12:26 +0000

The October 14th, 2010 issue of Nature is obviously a good one. It had to be a good one! I usually advocate Open Access but it is always nice to reading complimentary issues of Nature which is Closed Access but is also publishing very good articles about science at the same time.

In this issue, I was interested in various topics …

First, there is a serie of articles about the US midterm elections and what (US) scientists feel about two years of Obama administration. Obama promised total transparency in American science, a new era of integrity and more freedom for scientists. From what I read, this isn’t the case yet.

Let my dataset change your mindset

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 23:32:04 +0000

In the previous post, I shared a video of David McCandless giving a talk about information visualisation. One phrase caught my attention and a bit of research lead to a very good discovery. The phrase and context is (emphasis is mine):

We need relative figures that are connected to other data so that we can see a fuller picture, and then that can lead to us changing our perspective. As Hans Rosling, the master, my master, said, " Let the dataset change your mindset". And if it can do that, maybe it can also change your behavior.

David McCandless on information visualisation

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 21:23:28 +0000

Tonight, I realised that David McCandless was behind informationisbeautiful.net, a blog dedicated to information visualisation which I often mentionned before on this blog.

Last month, David McCandless gave a talk at TED, a NGO “devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading”. And it was very interesting to hear him, to put a living face on a blog and to apprehend the amount of work to make such great infographics simple to understand. Here is the video (thanks to the license: CC-by-nc-nd - on this page, there is a link to download the high quality video):

"Facts & data"

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 23:09:45 +0000

A colleague of mine is always hammering home the message of bringing facts and data to a discussion rather than rumors, hearsays and daily newspaper articles. Since a few days (because H1N1 is not a pandemic anymore?), newspapers are coming with another “Superbug” or " Germinator", wrongly named " NDM-1". So, before spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt, please read the scientific litterature or, at least, read quality newspapers ( articles from The Guardian are quite fair and balanced).

Cognitive Surplus visualised

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 21:43:18 +0000

In the 300-and-more RSS items in my aggregator this week, there are 2 great ones from Information is Beautiful, a blog gathering (and publishing its own) nice ways to visualise data.

The first one is based on a talk by Clay Shirky who, in turn, was referencing his book Cognitive Surplus. In Cognitive Surplus visualized, David McCandless just represented one of Shirky’s ideas: 200 billion hours are spent each year by US adults just watching TV whereas only 100 million hours were necessary to create Wikipedia (I guess the platform + the content) …

Belgian eavesdropping increased in 2009

Tue, 11 May 2010 22:09:34 +0000

Following this article (French), official phone eavesdroppings again increased in Belgium in 2009: Belgian police listened 5265 times to private conversations. The French transcript is here.

One doesn’t get much more than these numbers: nothing about the number of hours spent listening, nothing about the percentage of effectiveness/results, nothing about internet eavesdropping (e-mail e.g.). One thing struck me: all requests for eavesdropping were accepted. Or, at least that what the Minister implied when he wrote “there is no distinction between the number of requests and the number of effective eavesdropping”.

Volcano and CO2 (bis)

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 20:29:57 +0000

Well, now I understand a bit better why experts said the small fall in carbon emissions indirectly due to the volcano is unlikely to have any significant impact on climate (see previous post) … InformationIsBeautiful made a correction following comments and the difference in CO2 emission is smaller:

However, although the air traffic is to slowly come back to normal, we can still enjoy some very nice moment without any plane in the sky:

Volcano and CO2

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 22:16:49 +0000

One side-effect of the eruption of the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano is that there is no more plane in the European sky for the last few days. On one side, people are obliged to stay longer on holidays, others can’t make business trips, some food and other items can’t be transported, plane companies are crying but train and coach ones are more than happy. The last week-end was sunny and a lot of people enjoyed going outside in North Europe.

Ignite presentation style

Thu, 14 May 2009 21:25:29 +0000

Being away from presentations to my dismay since a few months, I always enjoy reading the Presentation Zen blog, Garr Reynold’s blog on issues related to presentation design.

Recently, Garr came back on the Ignite presentation style with a presentation from Pamela Slim. Here is a video recording:

[blip.tv http://blip.tv/play/AfDpaI73Pw]

I maybe liked this presentation for its content but above all for its style … At Ignite, you can have a maximum of 20 slides that automatically advance every 15 seconds (so max. 5 minutes talk). I like this kind of challenge. Unfortunately, there is no planned Ignite event in Western Europe soon where I would be able to watch this live.

Implication of Oracle buying Sun on Open Source projects?

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 22:40:34 +0000

Oracle and Sun announced a few days ago that Oracle will buy Sun. Others are more apt than me to comment on the financial and strategic impacts of this move (for example, in the Guardian, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal or on Slashdot). I’m more interested in the potential implications this move could have on some Open Source projects which were backed by Sun. I indeed believe Oracle will continue the development of his contributions to Open Source software, whether they are notable ( Btrfs or Oracle Enterprise Linux) or less visible.

Beaming Multimedia Solutions Ltd

Sun, 08 Jul 2007 16:20:58 +0000

Congratulations to Ananda for the creation of his company, Beaming Multimedia Solutions Ltd.! This guy is like an example to follow when you strongly believe in one idea and really do everything to achieve it … Congratulations again!

Domain name is registered but website is not yet active.

Post publishing editing

Mon, 28 May 2007 09:31:03 +0000

Brad Burnham recently wrote a post on the editorial process on the web, where the work happens after the publish button is pushed, not before it. It’s a report on a forum session and you can read some stakeholders opinions in the post. There are a serie of good points in the post and comments but, imho, there are also some questions left unanswered.

Basically, blog posts are edited after their publication: if I wrote something wrong, people will tend to post comments correcting what is wrong. That’s why Robert Scoble doesn’t agree with Andrew Keen when the latter argued that “the recent rise of user generated content is lowering the overall quality of programming on the web”. I think there is a “population effect”: the more visitors you have, the more edition and discussions you can have.

Vote électronique (electronic vote)

Sat, 21 Apr 2007 00:27:22 +0000

(This post will be in French since it concerns French and French-speaking Belgians and gives links to websites written in French)

Les Ã©lections franÃ§aises approchant (c’est demain !), un certain nombre de personnes ont Ã©mis de vifs doutes sur le vote Ã©lectronique, doutes relayÃ©s par la presse ( exemple). Je voulais juste Ã©pingler le blog de Laurent Pieuchot, conseiller municipal d’ Issy-les-Moulineaux (prÃ¨s de Paris, en France). Il y dÃ©crit les cafouillages, gaffes, incertitudes et autres mensonges Ã propos du vote Ã©lectronique et des ordinateurs de vote dans plusieurs communes franÃ§aises. Et ils vont voter pour la plus haute fonction de l’Ã‰tat franÃ§ais …

Unlimited storage in online apps

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 05:00:41 +0000

Although I liked Bill Burnham’s post about the " storage explosion" I think he forgot one thing in one of his last posts. In " YahooMail, Storage, and the Battle For Personal Data" he explains the announcement of unlimited e-mail storage for free by Yahoo! is the indication of two trends: for him, the obvious one is that storage is cheap and the less-obvious trend is that there will be a battle to control the user data in such “web applications”.

Google -vs- CopiePress, II

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 22:46:33 +0000

The Belgian Justice confirmed its original judgement by condemning Google News service to remove all articles citations from some French-speaking newspapers. The Google cache is also considered illegal in Belgium (see beginning of the story here).

In an interview with the " Echo" (Belgian) newspaper, Alain Strowel, lawyer specialised in authors’rights, said the judgement is correct but also raised several questions:

What is exactly behind the word “cache”? If a cached document is still formatted as the original document, I understand it could be forbidden by the law. But I guess all the search engines are using indexes where they put all the words from any webpage (regular webpage or newspaper article: it’s just HTML). What about these indexes? If they are considered as a cache, then any webpages from these newspapers shouldn’t be indexed and they’ll then be unavailable. Since they also sued Yahoo! and MSN (with much less buzz), this will mean they won’t be visible on the internet, except if you directly type their URL. Is that what they want?
Alain Strowel said this judgement can bring back the debate about the exceptions to authors’rights. Currently, the exceptions are those ones (in French). With all the so-called “laws against terrorism”, I fear this will mean a reduction of the number of exceptions.
It’s difficult to obtain web statistics on these newspapers websites. A lot of people guessed the number of visits will go down but it’s the first time a journalist (the interviewer) said this number actually decreased (and the lawyer agreed).

Finally, this whole thing won’t make me change my opinion:

Links to some interesting documents

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 20:49:17 +0000

Some interesting links for today (didn’t had time to read everything, that’s why I’m storing them here):

Java boutique has a in-depth review of NetBeans 5.5
Java Practises has a small tip about implementing toString in Java
A new (very important ;-) ) feature of Java 6: the splash-screen functionality. Another interesting thing is that Java DB (Derby) is integrated by default.
About databases, David Coldrick’s Weblog hosts an interesting discussion about H2 -vs- Derby databases
The Java Plug-in Framework Project
Besides Design Patterns, OpenSubsystems released the Open Patterns, a repository of common application functionality patterns …

Some links about companies:

Personal storage is the future

Thu, 04 Jan 2007 20:48:31 +0000

While everyone (interested in this topic) is looking at internet applications, using and abusing of buzzwords like " Web 2.0", " mashup" or " Ajax", I think the next wave of cool software applications will be related to personal, local storage and organisation of documents.

Of course, you have > 2Gb of storage in most free e-mail services. Of course, you have broadband access at home, at work and nearly everywhere you go. Of course, you can watch movies on the web. Of course, you can share photos on the web. Of course, you can download songs and books on the web. Etc.

The Digital Ice Age

Mon, 20 Nov 2006 23:35:51 +0000

In this article, Brad Reagan gives many examples where the use of electronic data begins to cause problem, in a preservation perspective. The causes can be a new software that is not fully compatible with previous data models, new physical formats (unable to play old formats), too much raw information, etc. For the moment, free projects like the Internet Archive or the Free Archive (a.o.) are trying to cope with this problem.

Although the dangers of a “digital blackout” really exist, I think the author forgets one important aspect of information from the past: we already lost a lot of it. What is left is what time left us, often with some damages. It survived time, taking many different forms and paths, different storage procedures, different media, different locations, etc.

The Belgian press is fighting for its rights (really?)

Sun, 24 Sep 2006 12:20:50 +0000

A lot of blogs, Belgian or not, are talking about the fact that the Belgian French-speaking press (lead by CopiePress, a Belgian rights management company) successfully sued Google in Belgium over indexing, author rights, content copying, etc. The full order is available on the Belgian Google homepage (in French).

I am not a lawyer. So I read the order:

CopiePress wanted the Belgian court to look at the lawfullness of Google News and Googgle Cache services, according to the Belgian law
CopiePress wanted Google to remove all links to any data from CopiePress clients
CopiePress wanted Google to publish the order in its first page on their Belgian website

So, CopiePress won the first case (the case will be heard again in appeal). I assume that the Belgian justice department is doing its job. So, let us consider that Google broke the Belgian law with their services. If you want to know more about the legal stuff, P. Van den Bulck, E. Wery and M. de Bellefroid wrote an article about which Belgian laws Google seems to have broken (in French).

"Why groupthink is the genius of the internet"

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 18:53:13 +0000

In the August 10th, 2006 issue of Financial Times [1](*), Patti Waldmeir wrote a column about a new book [2] she recently read.

In this book, Sunstein start from a 1973 citation from F. Hayek, a liberal philosopher and economist:

Each member of society can have only a small fraction of the knowledge by all and … civilisation rests on the fact that we all benefit from knowledge which we do not possess.

"Hacking the genome"

Wed, 05 Jul 2006 08:25:45 +0000

Like computer hackers who cooperate in developing and using tools to understand and manipulate the inner workings of computer software, researchers are developing sophisticated biological methods that will allow them to crack the function of the genome.

Daniel Evanko shortly writes about two methods to probe the function of the genome: cDNA sequencing and microarray hybridization. It’s in Nature Methods 3, 495 (2006): abstract - full text

(a post just to show that biologists are also hacking their stuff)

Some quotes ...

Tue, 04 Jul 2006 08:19:08 +0000

In the June/July 2006 issue of Scientific Computing World, there is an interesting article about Andre Geim, director of the Manchester Centre for Mesoscience and Nanotechnology. Do you remember the levitating frog? It’s him (he even got an Ig Nobel prize for it). Do you remember the “gecko tape” ? It’s also his actual group!

So, in this article, they wrote about Prof. Andre Geim story, from his early school days near the Black Sea and in Moscow to the various labs he visited and worked with in the past few years. Although he works in nanotechnology, some of his quotes can easily be applied to biological sciences (where I am not doing “mainstream” experiments like stem cells, genomics, fMRI, etc.) …

Identity 2.0

Mon, 12 Jun 2006 12:54:56 +0000

This week-end, I attended a scientific meeting and, although the content of the presentations were often interesting, they also often lacked attractiveness. This reminded me two videos I stored, some time ago, on my hard disk. SÃ©bastien Lorion called them “refreshing”. And, for me, not only these presentations look beautiful, they also talk about an interesting topic: who are you on the internet ?

In the first presentation (a keynote at OSCON 2005), Dick Hardt talk about what is identity and how do we prove who we are, in the online world.

Yes, Trusted Computing is used for DRM

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 14:41:18 +0000

In this blog, Andy Dornan takes us from a simple demonstration of Lenovo laptops new “abilities” to the fact that the real owner of documents with DRM is the software company and not the owner/creator of the document.

You can create a document and claim ownership on it with DRM systems. Unless you can open it with or export it to a software coming from another company, you’ll be dependent on one company to open your document. Imagine you create a text file and protect it with sofware X. If you cannot open it in another text processor/editor and that the maker of X decides that you cannot open your document anymore (for whatever reason: you live in a dangerous “terrorist” country, your name sounds too different, you didn’t pay your monthly fee on time, etc.), your are stuck.

A special Belgian e-ID for foreigners? Bad Idea!

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 17:22:35 +0000

This last week-end, a Dutch-written Belgian newspaper wrote that the Minister of the Interior, Patrick Dewael, is planning a special electronic ID card for foreigners in Belgium. If this become reality, every foreigner in Belgium will have an e-ID with his/her biometric data inside, even if he/she is officially living in Belgium, with a regular permit to live, work, etc. Of course, this project is aimed at illegal foreigners (btw, have a look at his other “brilliant” idea: heavily punish those who are helping illegal foreigners to obtain asylum, regular papers, etc.). Thus it seems there will be two versions of this card. Their official reason is “better control”.

And I thought I had stress before my presentations ...

Sat, 07 Jan 2006 22:18:55 +0000

There is a story on how Steve Jobs prepares his talks for Apple’s keynotes in the Guardian Unlimited. Well, it doesn’t say much about the preparation in itself. But I can feel the stress Mike Evangelist is experiencing: he had to talk in front of hundreds of people, in front of his boss and present software not yet finished. And I thought I had stress before my presentations …

Of course, there is another reading of this article. OK, Apple is a small technology company. But it developped a good sense of communication. When you are buying an ipod, your are not only buying a portable music player (btw including imprisoning DRM): you are also buying a feeling (of hype, of having the last gadget, …). When you are buying a Mac computer, it’s also a feeling of being part of “another” community, … Apple cultivated this feeling since the beginning with slogans like “Think Different”. And, of course, this article, the book Mr Evangelist is trying to write, … even this post on this blog, they all participate in the “buzz” around Apple keynotes. Finally, if this noise (*) wasn’t there, Apple will only be another computer-selling company.

Quaero and the quest for alternatives

Sat, 31 Dec 2005 14:03:10 +0000

An article in the French newspaper Le Monde presents Quaero ( to seek, in Latin) as the future “European Google”. Comments on this article are divided between supporters of this alternative and denigrors that predict another bureaucratic, bloated, ineffective project. My point here is not to argue pro or against this project. But I would like to dwell on American databases and search engines that serve the entire world.

When you need to look at some information on the internet (mainly, the web), I am sure you are using (American) tools like Google, Yahoo! or Altavista. In the life sciences domain, we have a wonderful database, PubMed, a service of the (American) National Library of Medicine that includes over 16 million citations of biomedical articles. When you are preparing a presentation or an experiment on a subject, it’s a great tool to do the bibliography.

Identification -vs- authentication

Wed, 28 Dec 2005 14:50:42 +0000

I was reading a presentation on the Belgian electronic identity card (PDF 150 kb, in French, by a friend). Compared to the old, analogic card, this new card has an electronic chip on it. This chip contains some information that are already visible to any human eye on the surface of this card and more information (like a photo, your address, digital certificates, …). I stopped on the 5th slide where it’s said that this new " e-ID" will allow someone to be identified, to authenticate (what?) and to fill in on-line administrative papers.

2 studies, 2 differents vision of innovation and competitivity in Europe

Fri, 16 Dec 2005 16:56:03 +0000

Some days ago, IDC published a study carried out on behalf of the BSA (Business Software Alliance). In this study, they promised the creation of 4 000 new jobs and the addition of 2.6 billion US$ to the economical growth in Belgium if software piracy is reduced by 10% between 2006 and 2009. For France, it is a promise of 30 000 new jobs and an addition of 13.7 billion US$ to the economical growth!

Some links to read

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 15:43:31 +0000

Here are some links to read when I’ll have time:

Now, back to work …

Oxford resumes work on animal lab

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 13:15:34 +0000

Oxford University is building a new facility to replace and regroup all its laboratories working with animals. In July 2004, after a campaign of protest from animal rights group, works stopped. They are now resumed ( BBC story).

I am working with animals in my laboratory and, if I can understand some arguments from the animal rights activists, I can’t understand why they are going that far. A big part of the “modern comfort” that Europeans and North American are used to comes from and needs animal experimentation. For example, if we take any drug, it has to be tested on animal first before coming to the market. Of course, you can use in vitro cells but the complex behaviour of an animal (including the human) won’t be there. Animals are a collection of cells; but these cells are not the same in the arm or in the brain: they are specialised. How can you be sure that a general in vitro cell will react in the same way as an animal (including the human)? If we completely abolish animal testing, will you still go in court if a drug have side effects (that would have been spotted if tested first on animals) on you?

Firefox dans le journal "Le Monde"

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 09:49:25 +0000

(For once, this post will be in French since I am refering to a French newspaper)

Dans son article intitulÃ© " Firefox souffle 18 bougies et poursuit sa mue", Eric NunÃ¨s parle de la sortie de Firefox 1.5, de ses parts de marchÃ© (notamment face aux autres navigateurs), de la fondation Mozilla Europe et du projet de loi franÃ§ais interdisant tout systÃ¨me de diffusion de connaissance n’intÃ©grant pas un procÃ©dÃ© technique de traÃ§age de l’utilisation privÃ©e (HTTP, FTP, SSH, etc. ; certains diront que c’est la fin des logiciels libres, d’autres que c’est la fin d’internet …).

Can you trust entertainment and computer-security companies?

Thu, 17 Nov 2005 23:54:59 +0000

In an interesting article on Wired, Bruce Schneier is showing the collusion between computer-security companies and an entertainment corporation.

Sony BMG Music Entertainment distributed a copy-protection scheme with music CDs that secretly installed a rootkit on your computers. A rootkit is a software usually used by an intruder after gaining access to your computer and in order to steal information, track your habits, collect your preferences without your knowledge nor your consent. Moreover, you can’t remove it since it will damage your operating system (the main software of your computer).

When open source software teaching meets biology

Fri, 29 Jul 2005 13:28:03 +0000

Open source software are more and more observed (if not used) in the biological sciences field. They provide all the advantages of Open Source software, plus they bring needs for consensus on file formats, data representation and manipulation methods. I’ve just read a short article from Greg Wilson ( in Nature) who is working with the Python Software Foundation “to develop a course that will teach scientists and engineers the 10% of software engineering they need to solve 90% of their problems”. Their goal is to “introduce them to some open-source tools and working practices that can reduce the amount of time they spend programming by up to 25%”. The course is already available here ( Software Carpentry) … for free, of course!

Protocole non propriétaire =? absence de contrôle =? attention à l'extrème-droite

Thu, 28 Jul 2005 11:42:14 +0000

Soit je suis parano, soit j’ai raison de peu apprécier le raccourci suivant : Protocole non propriétaire = absence de contrôle = attention à l’extrême-droite …

Résumé : le Vlaams Belang, parti politique d’extrême-droite flamand / belge, émet une émission sur les ondes AM, via le système DRM ( Digital Radio Mondiale, une sorte d’équivalent au DAB ou RSN), à partir de l’étranger. Cette émission de 2 heures est apparemment “captable” (“écoutable”) en Belgique, avec le récepteur ad hoc. Le problème est que cette émission / radio / parti n’a pas d’autorisation pour émettre en Belgique.