Posts

Today is the Indian Independence Day. Photo credit: Boy holding Indian flag by myself on Flickr (CC-by-sa)

Three years ago, I wrote about JoVE, the Journal of Visualized Experiments. JoVE was a peer reviewed, open access, online journal devoted to the publication of biological research in a video format. I recently discovered that since 2009, JoVE is now just a peer reviewed, open access, online journal devoted to the publication of biological research in a video format. You can debate at length on whether JoVE was Open Access (as I thought) or not. I just think it’s sad although I understand their motives: in a recent exchange with them, they wrote they “handle most production of our content [themselves] and it is a very very costly operation”. ...

Following some comments on the dependency to version 4 of the .Net framework, I rewrote ForbidSleepingMode in C++. You can open and compile the project with Qt (open source). The source code is of course updated. The mandatory screenshot as well :-) As you can see, I took the opportunity to add a small field where you can specify your own interval at which the program will “tickle” your computer.

Historically, computers were invented to solve issues in the factory or the office (university office or company office) but recently invaded home and are becoming ubiquitous. At the beginning of this invasion, computers for home were (and are still) very similar to the ones for the industry/office: a CPU, a keyboard to enter data or commands and a screen to see what was happening. Artifacts to be attached to the computer were first invented for the corporate world and then progressively entered into homes. I still remember the first mouse we had at home: it was like a mini-revolution. After years there were still some software that could not take advantage of it or its usage was implemented but in a rudimentary way. Idem for the first webcam we acquired: only the provided software was able to use it. Now it comes embedded in most computer screen and can be used for various purposes (video chat, take pictures, read bar codes, art, …). ...

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: ...

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, 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. ...

I just put my first small tool on GitHub: forbidSleepingMode. It will forbid your (Windows) computer to enter into sleep mode, acting as if there was activity all the time. I’m sure you can think of 1001 productive uses for such tool. Technically, it just sends a “tickle” to the computer every 10 minutes forcing the display to remain on (hence: don’t set your screensaver to come before 10 minutes). Build it with Visual Studio 10 (I know, I know …). ...

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: ...

Although its presence in Belgium is more discreet than China or other European countries (for obvious reasons in the latter case), India has always something to show in Belgium. I decided to put some (most of?) events related to India in Belgium in a calendar so everyone can be aware of them. Here you are: [googleapps domain=“www” dir=“calendar/embed” query=“height=350&wkst=2&hl=en_GB&bgcolor=%23FFFFFF&src=09d2i9naunu5fpkm6sdeqsikvs%40group.calendar.google.com&color=%238D6F47&ctz=Europe%2FParis” width=“500” height=“350” /] ...