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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”. ...

Combining a trend from the free software world and a reaction to increasing subscription costs, the last decade saw the emergence of the “Open Access” movement in the scientific litterature. Instead of transfering all your rights (and copyrights) to an editor that will sell your work to other scientists, you can choose to publish your work in Open Access journals. In this case, you retain your rights (and copyrights) on the article you wrote. Moreover, your work is freely available to other scientists (at least in electronic format) while still being of some quality since the reviewing process is still there. As an article writer, you only risk to be cited more often (since your article is freely available). As an article reader, you only risk to gain more knowledge (since more and more interesting articles are published with various Open Access publishers like BioMed Central, the Public Library of Science, etc.). ...

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. ...

I spent the whole afternoon in shopping malls and fashion boutiques. Now I know that sales are giving me headache … Am I becoming old or is it a normal reaction to heat, crowd, noise, smoke, etc.?

I was experiencing frequent disconnections of my internet link at home. These were very short but long enough to disturb one service I am using. So I decided to check if my internet provider was correct and doing his job correctly. My first idea was that there must exists free (as in free speech) and simple command-line tools to test the connection speed under GNU/Linux. As I am not a specialist, I tried to find such tools on the internet but didn’t find any (if you have one, please feel free to share it with me). So I decided to write my own set of scripts in Perl. ...

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. ...

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. ...

Regarding GNU/Linux installation and usage, prejudices are still hard to fight (at least in my environment). Yesterday, we had the usual Christmas dinner with some friends and family. At one moment, talks went on technology, computers, peer-to-peer, etc. One of the boys just bought an Apple Powerbook and his wife got a laptop PC from her work (MS-Windows only, of course). We ask them to put GNU/Linux or, at least to try free software. For their general usage, OpenOffice.org (writer, calc and impress), The Gimp, FireFox, Thunderbird, … are sufficient. They don’t need more: specific applications they might use are already on dedicated computers in the laboratory. ...

Researchers at the University of Michigan have found a “pleasure spot” in the brains of rats that may shed light on how food translates into pleasure for humans. The spot in rats’ brains makes sweet tastes more “liked” than other tastes. So now I know what’s going on when I am eating sweet Indian pastries :-p Reference: Peciña, S. and Berridge, K.C. " Hedonic hot spot in nucleus accumbens shell: where do mu-opioids cause increased hedonic impact of sweetness?" in J. Neurosci., 25: 11777-11786 (2005). On Berridge’s web page, you can also view a cool video illustrating this subject.

If you used to see me on MSN or Yahoo!, there is a risk I won’t be there anymore. I’ll now try to only use the free Jabber protocol. If you want to know more about jabber, please have a look at the Jabber overview. Clients (software) are available for MS-Windows, Linux, MacOS, etc. ; see here for a list of software (with some of them, you will even still be able to chat with your MSN and Yahoo! contacts). My Jabber ID is jepoirrier at jabber.org. ...