We are already on July 8th, 2007! :-0

I was looking for a simple info on the Belgian finance public service website: the address of their office in Liege. I know it’s rue Paradis but I also need opening hours and a general contact phone number. I can tell you this website is really crappy! First, when you arrive on the website, you are overwhelmed by links, info, text everywhere and, of course, the photo of the Finance minister. Now it will take you at least 30 seconds to know where to look. Then, it’s impossible to easily find an address ; I didn’t even find it at all! I tried their “search engine”: no result. Their site map takes ages to load (with no result, of course; it won’t be funny otherwise). When you try to click on most services on the left, you launch a new website, completely different from the main one (still no sign of the address). I guess they don’t want to be contacted … ...

Après ma présentation d’hier àla soirée du Liege Linux Team, j’ai placé ma présentation en ligne : " Introduction aux Logiciels Libres" (ou directement : fichier PDF, 1.8Mo). Tout commentaire ou amélioration possible est le(la) bienvenu(e) ! Edit (a little bit later): since I usually write in English here, I translated my presentation in English. It’s here: " Introduction to Free Software" (PDF, 1.9Mb).

On June 28th evening, the Liege Linux Team is organizing a conference to introduce free software. Three topics are scheduled: an introduction, a presentation of free software related to internet and a presentation of “offline” free software. They already left some time for discussion (between and after the talks). It will take place here (Auditoire Grand Physique, 1st floor), in the city center. Englarge the image - Poster in PDF Please note talks will be held in French but feel free to come and talk in English: nearly everyone understand English ...

Taking advantage of my laptop crash, I went back to some text-mode tools ( vim, mutt, …): they are fast, easy to use (once you read at least the introduction section in the manual) and reliable (text files are more easily recovered after corruption than binary blobs). I also tested and adopted Snownews. Snownews is a text-mode RSS newsreader. Installing it is very easy: download the archive, and type the usual “./configure; make; make install”. Since I’m following some blogs written in French, I configured Snownews with Unicode support: “./configure –charset=UTF-8”. ...

Source : Le 15eme jour du mois, 165: 4 (hé hé)

As every Belgian citizen, I voted today for our legislative bodies ( Chambre et Sénat). As always, I was confronted to the same problem: electronic voting. Technically, I’ve no problem to understand and use the system: it’s an ethical problem. I don’t know if my vote is correctly written on the card, even with all the given guarantees and technical details (you can test such a voting machine here or watch a demo of the Belgian system, both in French). Personally, I saw two problems: ...

There isn’t any television in our flat since a week. What a relief! No more stupid TV series, no more political soap operas ( federal elections this Sunday), … It also means more time for real work and real relaxation :-)

/. has some interesting comments about a story of a man who is suing PC manufacturer Gateway. He alledges Gateway wouldn’t fix a broken machine he bought, replace it nor refund his money. But the most interesting part is that Gateway doesn’t agree to be sued in court because an arbitration clause in their End User License Agreement (EULA) “require a dispute to be settled in private forums chosen by companies instead of in public courtrooms” (the man stated he can’t read the EULA since “the computer’s graphics were so scattered he couldn’t read the box of terms and conditions or click the Accept button”). ...

Last week-end, I walked in the city center and posted some photos of sceneries and people on Flickr. It was the first time I posted photos of people I really don’t know (I already posted photos with people from parties where attendees want to see them online). I recently read some articles ( 1, 2, 3) and blog posts about privacy and a new service from Google: Street view. I was then wondering if they are rules or regulations regarding online privacy for non-publishers (for online media). ...