Installing Fedora 13 on a Toshiba Satellite L670-10K

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 only thing that was not recognized was the wireless network card: a Realtek RTL8191SE. Here is how to install it. On the Toshiba website for (Windows) wireless drivers, it is always associated with the RTL8192SE model. So don’t be surprised if the driver downloaded from the Realtek website is a file with RTL8192 in its name although you clicked on the link for the RTL8191SE-VA2 model. Unpack this file. The LiveCD doesn’t come with some packges so you have to install them (via the System menu, Administration, Add/Remove software). These packages are: kernel-devel, gcc and make. Once it’s done, do a simple “make;make install” as root and reboot the laptop. Your wireless connection is now up and running!

Wireless UFO?

If you want to have Flash on your 64-bits Linux, Adobe released version 10.1 of their Flash player with native 64 bits support. Download Flash player “Square”, unpack the archive and copy the (only) file “libflashplayer.so” in directory /home/yourusername/.mozilla/plugin, restart Firefox. You have now a Flash-enabled browser!

Finally, I must have done something wrong, somewhere but I kept having the first configuration screen after installation, even after subsequent reboots. After a quick search, I didn’t find anyone with the same issue. YMMV. In order to skip this screen (after you went through them a first time), just add the line “RUN_FIRSTBOOT=NO” in the file /etc/sysconfig/firstboot and voilà!

In conclusion, I’m very pleased with this laptop and Fedora. My Linux desktop was ready in just a few minutes. Let’s work, now! 🙂

A good issue of Nature, obviously!

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.

Then, there are two article about publishing computer code from scientific experiment. In a World View, Nick Barnes, director of the Climate Code Foundation takes some concerns about that to pieces. The main reasons to provide computer code is to improve programming skills (the software author’s and others’) and enable others to engage with your research. Don’t be ashamed of the quality of your code. Don’t be afraid of starting the trend if no one around you share their software. Don’t be afraid to refuse support when badly asked for. Don’t overestimate the intellectual property value of your code. Nick Barnes also wrote a blog post about it. And you can comment on the Nature article here.

In a News Feature, Zeeya Merali tells stories of scientists who found themselves in uneasy positions regarding to the software they wrote but, at the same time or later on, realised publishing their software was the best thing to do. Besides formalising one’s training in programming, Zeeya Merali advocates some simple steps to practise “safe software”: use a version-control system ; track sources, data and events ; write testable software ; test the software and encourage sharing of software.

I was also interested in these articles in two ways. First, I also realised the need of a formal training in programming during my Ph.D. and I eventually got a B.Sc. in computer science. In the team and field where I’m now working (Health Economics and modelling of infectious disease), I can clearly see the benefit of having such training. Don’t get me wrong: I meet wonderful colleagues every day who don’t have the training but have lots of skills and can solve lots of problems ; I just often see the ease to grasp algorithms as well as some better procedures and testing that comes with training. And, second, I would like to addd that free software licences are to be considered when publishing your software (for science or not).

In the same issue, there was also a small news about the Europe’s use of research animal. This reminded me of the good-old-days :-). Fundamental biology still account the largest proportion of animal experiments but what intrigued me is the 12.2% of “Other” usage.

There was also a comment on a book, The Professional Guinea Pig, about paid participants in phase I clinical trials. Interesting perspective from “the other side” of trials.

There is also an Outlook on the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting. It features interviews with 10 Nobel laureates (it’s always nice to readd their comments on science) and an article about science in the digital age (not yet read but it seems interesting).

Finally, an ad for my previous lab (GIGA ULg) caught my attention, as well as the small article about Science in Belgium. I must however write that this article is a bad summary of the research landscape in Belgium with, for example, mention of only two universities: the KUL and the UCL (we have many more). Souvenirs, souvenirs.

Facebook updates: nothing to fuss about

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!

The important thing would have been to have total control on your data. The ability to post data. The ability to effectively remove data (Facebook policy explicitely states nothing is necessarily physically erased, not even your account if you decide to close it!). The ability to remove data about you posted by others. The ability to control data posted about your children. The ability to have real privacy.

So, why do I blog this? I don’t really get why people are so excited about this feature. Oxford building a new library [1, 2], why and how, this has nothing to do with the topic of this post but this is news!

Bodleian Library: Divinity School
Photo credit: Bodleian Library: Divinity School by Beth Hoffmann on Flickr (CC-by-nc-sa)

Google and the bottom search box

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.

But if you want to keep Google as (one of your) your search engine(s) and want to get back the second search/text box at the bottom (and optionally get Instant too), just use “Encrypted Google SSL Beta” (URL in clear: https://encrypted.google.com/).

Happy Software Freedom Day 2010!

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).

In terms of user experience, you can’t beat the installation process of Ubuntu (my comparison criteria are Fedora 13 and any version of Windows XP, Vista or 7 that are not on a PC-specific image disc). Seven configuration screen with rather simple questions and that’s it. There are choices you can’t make like the selection of software you want to be installed and available on the next reboot. But, most of the general software is there: a web browser, a word processor, some games, a rudimentary movie player and a music player. The “Software Center” is also readily visible so you can’t miss it and it seems to be an obvious choice if you want to install any other software.

New Ubuntu desktop for Freedom Software Day 2010

The real test will now be if one can actually work with it. If I don’t post any furious comment against some features or if I don’t post anything about the installation of some software in the coming days / weeks, you’ll know I’m still working with this Linux flavour.

Browser hardware acceleration issue?

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.

Comment if I’m wrong but hardware acceleration will not lead to fragmentation of the web landscape. HTML5 seems to be the standard behind which browsers developers are adding their acceleration engines.

However, an issue (from the user’s point-of-view) will probably be that hardware acceleration will still help the emergence of a consumer-only web. A lot of your applications will be in your browser, with your data in someone else’s data center. You want your data safe? You need to trust your provider’s security measures. You simply want your data on your hard drive? I think you’ll have a problem here. But I agree it’s not the technical implementation that will be responsible for that.

First LaTeX Beamer presentation seen in a proteomic conference There is another issue I see with browser hardware acceleration. And it’s very down-to-earth. As you often encounter in presentation with videos, the presentation is displayed via a beamer but not the video (a black rectangle is displayed instead). You can easily disable hardware acceleration in most presentation software (if it’s not disabled by default). But, with hardware acceleration fully integrated in the browser, what will be displayed with the beamer if we have to do a demo of a website or simply when the presentation software is the browser? A page with patches of black rectangles? I hope not.

Why do I blog this? I enjoy reading about the (technical) details of (browser) hardware acceleration. I am very interested in general in all the new developments in IT regarding the use of GPUs and graphics card computational power to solve current issue or allow future developments. But I’m also using these (new) technologies everyday. So I don’t want that technological improvements on one hand turn to cause trouble on the other hand.

Les bien étranges manières de Test-Achats

(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.

Avant de remplir le formulaire d’abonnement, je me dis que cette association commence déjà bien comme les sites de vente par correspondance (avec toutes les connotations négatives que cela suppose) où le client est attiré par :

  • un offre “irrésistible” avec période d’essai de 2 mois
  • un gadget très utile (une chaine “hi-fi”)
  • un deuxième gadget très utile (un appareil de mesure des distances)

La dernière fois qu’on a eu un abonnement à Test-Achats, chez nous, j’étais toujours chez mes parents et les gadgets n’ont fonctionné qu’une semaine … sans parler du super PDA avec appareil photo … photo de peut-être 45 pixels sur 20 sur un ensemble de pixels de même résolution faisant office d’écran noir et blanc quand les Palm les moins chers faisaient mieux pour peut-être 100 euros. Mais il est vrai qu’ils sont gratuits : on ne peut pas s’attendre à des miracles non plus !

Je commence donc à remplir le formulaire d’abonnement quand même. Sur la première page, une case à cocher m’indique que si je ne souhaite pas que Test-Achats utilise mes données pour me faire découvrir ses autres produits, je n’ai qu’à cocher cette case. Cà s’appelle du opt-out.

Test-achats : faux opt-out

Comme je ne souhaite pas vraiment découvrir les autres produits (livres, etc.), je coche. Et là, un message d’erreur me dit que sans mes données, il est impossible d’envoyer les revues. Euh … non … je veux bien les revues (l’abonnement) mais pas les publicités pour les autres produits. Soit ils ont codé leur base de données et leur site web avec les pieds, soit cette “erreur” est délibérée pour obliger les clients à la cocher. A quoi sert cette case, à part à donner “bonne conscience” à Test-Achats ? A rien.

Test-achats : erreur trompeuse pour opt-out

Je coche la case pour pouvoir continuer : ce ne sera pas les seuls papiers non solicités que je reçois dans ma boîte aux lettres (malgré l’autocollant refusant la publicité / “presse” gratuite) …

A l’écran suivant, on arrive à l’écran de paiement. Encore une case à cocher inutile : j’autorise ou pas le prélèvement sur mon compte, à l’issue de la période d’essai. Non, je n’autorise pas : vous n’avez qu’à m’envoyer un formulaire de paiement (ou même de domiciliation) par la poste ou e-mail à l’issue des 2 mois. Ah, c’est encore une fois impossible : décocher la case provoque aussi une erreur. L’erreur dit que l’autorisation est obligatoire pour completer la commande.

Test-achats : impossible de ne pas payer par domiciliation

Il y a bien un autre moyen de payer : par carte de crédit. Et là, ils ont au-moins la décence de ne pas mettre de fausse case à cocher : il faut payer. En fait, je suppose que la case à cocher pour le virement automatique sert de “signature” alors qu’il n’y en a pas besoin pour le paiement par carte de crédit : le processus de paiement par carte inclut déjà un processus de signature électronique.

En résumé :

  • obligation de s’abonner pour pouvoir lire 1 article
  • une offre “irrésistible” et 2 gadgets inutiles
  • un faux opt-out pour les autres produits
  • une fausse case à cocher pour autoriser le prélèvement automatique

Finalement, je remarque que la mention de la durée de la période d’essai (2 mois) n’est plus présente depuis le début de la procédure d’inscription. Serait-ce pour ne pas que le client s’en rappelle et, comme je suppose beaucoup de gens, laisse passer la période d’essai et se retrouve abonné, plus par “paresse” que par réelle volonté. Dans d’autres périodiques, la période d’essai ne nécessite pas de coordonnées bancaires, réclamées seulement à la fin de la période (avec insistance parfois) ; et si elles ne sont pas fournies, l’abonnement est tout simplement arrêté.

Je ne terminerai donc pas de rempir ce formulaire. Je ne lirai pas l’article qui m’intéressait. Mais je ne serai pas non plus abonné à une revue de force et je ne recevrai pas de spam dans ma boîte aux lettres.