We, scientists, create, provide and judge the science presented to journals. While we are not paid by the publishers, we pay to get access to this science. Publishers who concentrate more and more journals within a few companies use their oligopoly to charge more and more and earn tremendous amounts of money. They use a snobbism about impact factors and the tyranny this exerts on the career of young scientists. ...
Today was the last day to get rid of all the old computers and electronic devices we could “store” in our lab. As you can see below, they are mainly broken screens …
The Indian Students Association of Leuven (ISAL) will celebrate Holi on the 11th of March 2006, in Leuven ( more info soon). Holi is an annual Hindu spring festival, aka. festival of colors ( article from Wikipedia). Although it has Hindu roots, Holi is now celebrated by people with all religions (even by people without religion). It will be a good occasion to meet other young Indians (students or not) in Belgium, eat good food :-) and maybe play with colors. Of course, you are welcome; just drop a line to the Office Bearers to say you’ll come.
Since I moved my desk in another room far from the ethernet plugs, I needed a wireless access to the laboratory network (and internet). I tested two PCMCIA card on a laptop with Fedora Core 4. The first card I found at home was an Acer card without too much information on it (it was sold with my wife’s laptop). When inserted, a lspci tells me that it’s a Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8180L 802.11b MAC (rev 20). But the Fedora Hardware Browser doesn’t recognize it. There is an open project to support this card but it’s still experimental ( they are saying it on their own webpage). My lazy nature asked my hand to eject the card. This card is recognized but not working ‘out-of-the-box’. ...
I explain here how to use the GD library with C to draw a rainbow (or HSV scale).
I really had a hard day at work, moving my desk from one room to another one and coping with unexpected problems. But I finally found some time to look for a new graphic card for my desktop PC (btw. the OpenGraphics project released the schematic of its first FPGA). While reading an article on Tom’s Hardware, I saw a flash animation for the BSA that explicitely ask for denouncement about software without licence. It was so farcical I captured the animation and added a small message at the end. You can download the AVI file here (.avi, 2Mo). ...
From the LiLiT homepage: Breaking news!! Richard Stallman’s visionary statement at Fosdem 2006 : " Even HURD is history. You should now use GNU/Tchantchux!". For those who don’t already know it, Tchantches is a mythical character from Liege (see Liege’s folklore) and Tchantchux is a mix between Tchantches and Tux, the Linux mascot. You can see the complete photo coverage here ;-)
On the 18th and 19th of March, 2006, the Namur LUG will organise the " Namur Linux Days 2006". Despite an English title and this post in English, all the talks will be held in French. On the 18th (Saturday), there will be two main keynotes: an introduction to Free Software by Maxime Morge and a presentation about intellectual property and free software by Philippe Laurent. Between these two keynotes, there will be a lot of talks about office, multimedia and internet free software for the general public. I will give a talk about OpenOffice.org Impress. The complete schedule is here. ...
I went to FOSDEM 2006 on Saturday 25th ( schedule here). This year, I went with my brother Laurent (as usual) and my wife, Nandini. This was the first time at FOSDEM for her, it was also the first time she saw so many geeks and I am not sure she enjoyed her day… In the morning, after a small introduction, Richard M. Stallmann gave his keynote on software patents. Of course, he was preaching to a converted audience (i.e. everyone is against software patents). And, even if we didn’t learned new information on what’s going on, it is always interesting to hear someone else’s opinion (event if it’s the same opinion as us) and a formal presentation on the subject. Two things turned Nandini against Richard Stallman… At one moment, RMS rudely asked that someone “removes this source of noise” (talking about a baby making some noise). Then, during the question, RMS roughly replied to someone trying to ask his questions because he was not talking louder enough (from the middle of the assistance) and because he “dared” to use the words “Open Source” in from of “Him”. I must say that she’s right: we seemed to easily forgive his behaviour because we know the character. But, imho, you can still be a great man, father of the GNU project and be polite. ...
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. ...