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I quickly needed a new laptop to continue working and I found a Toshiba Satellite L670-10K. It’s a nice entry-level laptop with a dual core processor (I didn’t know Intel was still doing Pentium-branded processors) and a 17" screen ( read the specs for other details). I downloaded the latest Fedora Linux (version 13, 64 bits ; and version 14 is coming soon) and installed it from the LiveCD. Nearly everything was recognized out-of-the-box: screen resolution, graphical card (Intel, with 3D effects), wired network, webcam, card reader, sound card, etc. ...

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. ...

So Facebook, the current paramount social website, updated its website with the possibility to download all your data (among other updates). I don’t see why people need to fuss about this. Although maybe useful, the important is not to be able to retrieve your data. After all, if your pictures are on Facebook, they were previously on your computer / camera / whatever. So you should already have them (and Facebook sends them to you in a zip file? what a feature!). Unless Facebook allows you to also download data about you but uploaded by others; this is a bit more interesting from a sociological / academic point of view (what has been posted about you). And then? A “big” step towards interoperability between social websites? Are you joking? For interoperability, you need 2 partners and, to my knowledge, no other websites (social or not) are currently offering the possibility to upload data from Facebook. Will it arrive? I’m sure of it. Is it secure? I doubt it: nothing is 100% secure in IT, Facebook is no exception. But this is still not important! ...

Nice photomontage by Philister involving one of my pictures on Flickr (no mention of license though!): Original picture: Honey, I crashed your car!

After Elephants Dream and Big Buck Bunny, the Blender Foundation released Sintel. Technically, I think it’s superb. IMHO, the only negative point is, as for the two previous films, the story is rather minimal but it’s becoming better and better. But this doesn’t prevent me from enjoying watching it! [youtube &fs=1&hl=en_US]

When Google rolled out " Instant", they also removed the bottom search box. Bad idea. Google Instant is a nice, web 2.0 improvement to Google “classic” where results appear as soon as you type them in the ad hoc text box. Google claims that Instant can save 2 to 5 seconds per search. Maybe. But, at the same time, they removed the bottom search box. I extensively used this search box: when you enter your search criteria and look at the results, you may want to refine your search, add some terms, remove or exclude others, etc. With a second search box at the bottom, you can directly do it after having browsed the first bunch of results. Without this box at the bottom, you can’t: you have to think to scroll all the way to the top of the page and actually do the change in the only, upper text box. You lose 2 seconds to scroll back to the top of the page and you may lose some idea on the way (especially if you have 1001 ideas at the same time). When you sometimes perform a lot of searches per day, the time you gain with Instant per search is largely lost by the time spent browsing back to the top. I’m not the only one to think it’s was a bad idea. ...

Today, September 18th 2010, it’s Freedom Software Day all over the world. It is an annual worldwide celebration of Free Software, a public education effort with the aim of increasing awareness of Free Software and its virtues, and encouraging its use. On the SFD website, there isn’t a lot of events registered for Belgium. There is only one, in fact, in Oostende ( LiLiT is doing an install party in Liege but I can’t see any reference to SFD; still, it’s a good initiative!). Well, a SFD on September 18th in Belgium might not have been a good idea if the goal is to increase awareness of Free Software: more than half of the population is celebrating the Walloon Region or preparing a Sunday without car in Brussels (while others are just looking for a government since April 2010!). So, at a personal level, I decided to give Ubuntu a try ( 10.04 LTS). ...

Browser hardware acceleration is meant to render websites faster by allowing the graphics card (its GPU) to directly display “things” (videos, animation, canvas, compositing, etc.) on the screen. By bypassing software rendering systems, lots of websites seem to render faster. All major browsers jumped on this: Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer and Opera (post of 2008!). I understand that enhancing the user’s experience while surfing the web is something that can be interesting. Hardware acceleration opens the door to unseen compositions, to new types of animations, to new kind of applications. Directly in your favourite browser. ...

(Post in French regarding the strange manners of a French-speaking Belgian consumer association: Test-Achats) Test-Achats est une association de défense des consommateurs belges ainsi que le nom de leur magazine mensuel. Je veux lire un de leurs articles sur leur site web. C’est impossible, il faut s’abonner. Payer pour lire un article me paraît normal (une personne a travaillé pour écrire cet article). Mais il aurait été intéressant de pouvoir acheter l’article à l’unité plutôt que de devoir s’abonner pour pouvoir avoir un code d’accès aux archives et seulement lire 1 article (vente liée ?). Passons. ...