Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde

First I hoped I had misread the web page. Then I realized I had not.

Networked disks are very useful. At home, they allow you to access your data from any computer on your local network without needing to keep a machine acting as a file server turned on all the time. But wait! You could use a networked disk to store songs and movies that you have illegally downloaded, couldn’t you?

Don’t worry, your networked disk will make sure you comply with the law and much more . Did you intend to store music that you legally downloaded from Jamendo and let your spouse and children access it? Too bad, since it may infringe someone else copyrights, Western Digital seems to think that it is best that you do not share it at all, just in case:

Due to unverifiable media license authentication, the following file types cannot be shared by different users using WD Anywhere Access.

If these file types are on a share on the WD My Book World Edition system and another user accesses the share, these file will not be displayed for sharing. Any other file types can be shared using WD Anywhere Access.

As a friend send to me, “sure, sharing 1 tera bytes of text files looks very appealing”. This post could have been titled “how DRM (Digital Rights Management) can hurt the world even when they are not used” or “we assume that you are a criminal”.

I was surprised to see that wget chose to use IPv4 over IPv6 when downloading a file. It looks like it is on purpose (I would call it a bad design choice). You can tell wget to prefer IPv6 over IPv4 by putting the following line

prefer-family = IPv6

in either /etc/wgetrc (system wide) or $HOME/.wgetrc (user settings).

Since about a week, I started to notice that I had been making a lot of typos in some commands I use frequently. For example, I became unable to type correctly

cd /usr/src/linux

which always resulted in

cd /usr/src:linux

(incidentally, when typing the above strings, I had to fix the first one and the second one came naturally buggy)

On a French keyboard (AZERTY layout), / is obtained by pressing shift and :. I first thought that my laptop keyboard was misfunctioning. But it happened on my home computer as well. I then thought I had become unable to properly release the C key before pressing the shift one, but no, I think I found a real bug somewhere: this problem occurs only when a key amongst the lowest left part of the keyboard (near to the shift, namely one of the WXCV letters on my keyboard) is rapidly followed by a shift.

Let’s make a test: while running a X11 server, press the C key, let it pressed so that you turn the auto-repeat mode on, then press shift (without releasing the key). You should, at least under Linux with Xorg, see something like:

ccccccccccccccCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC...

But what I get is:

cccccccccccccccccccccc...

The shift key is ignored. Note that it works fine with the right shift key though.

For a fast touch typist (as I otherwise luckily am), this is rather unfortunate; the combination of one of those wxcv letters followed by a slash happens to me at least fifty times a day, often much more than that. Since I cannot reproduce that on the Linux console, I will for the moment put the blame on my X server.

Tonight, I was willing to create a while construct in Factor taking two items on the stack:

1. a quotation to execute when the test is true
2. a test quotation

For example, I wanted to be able to find the smallest power of two greater than or equal to an arbitrary number (here 34098) by doing:

1 [ 2 * ] [ dup 34098 < ] while

(of course there are much better ways of doing that, such as 34098 2 * 1 + 2 /i but that’s not the point here)

This would be much easier if we could recurse from within a block (by using a recurse word). Let’s start with that:

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Are you Japanese? Do you have a bachelor degree? Do you speak some French? Do you want to come study for one year in Paris for free in the prestigious École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications? We teach computer science, electronics, embedded systems, robotics, optical communications and many other things.

If you answered yes to all those questions, do not hesitate to send me a message. In cooperation with the Renault Fondation, we are ready to welcome for one year Japanese students coming from the following universities:

• Hokkaido University
• Tohoku University
• Keio University
• Sophia University
• TokyoTech
• Tokyo University
• Hitotsubashi University
• Meiji University
• Waseda University
• Nagoya University
• Kyoto University
• Osaka University
• Kyushu University

And when I write for free, it even means that you get a comfortable grant that would cover all your expenses in France. Moreover, you will also follow intensive French courses when you arrive and you will travel around to discover other European cities.

For more information, have a look at the Renault Fondation website (and this explanation), and come and join us. See you in Paris!

(do not hesitate to disseminate information about this program, e.g., by sending a link to this post)

Bon, commençons par la partie agréable : je suis fan de Velib. Maintenant, de retour de soirée (merci Pablo pour m’avoir indiqué la route), il est rageant de dépasser les 30 minutes parce que la borne d’arrivée est pleine et qu’elle ne reconnait pas les passes Navigo pour prolonger, comme prévu, les trajets de 15 minutes supplémentaires. Surtout lorsqu’il faut faire 4 bornes pour trouver une place libre…

Et c’est marrant d’en faire avec les copains. Et ils aiment tous malgré les petits tracas.

Ceux qui me connaissent savent que je suis un farouche opposant au scrutin majoritaire à deux tours. En effet, celui-ci empêche d’exprimer un choix réel en favorisant le vote « utile »  lorsque les Français votent selon leurs véritables préférences, on obtient un second tour Chirac-Lepen comme on l’a constaté en 2002.

Je préfère de beaucoup la méthode dite de Condorcet qui consiste à classer les candidats par ordre de préférence. On dit souvent qu’en 2002, l’utilisation de cette méthode se serait traduite par l’élection de Lionel Jospin, candidat le plus consensuel notamment parmis les électeurs de gauche ; en effet, Lionel Jospin aurait probablement été placé plus haut que Jacques Chirac sur de nombreux bulletins.

Curieux de savoir ce qu’aurait donné l’utilisation de la méthode Condorcet lors de l’élection présidentielle de 2007 entre les trois candidats François Bayrou, Ségolène Royal et Nicolas Sarkozy, j’ai fait une simulation avec les hypothèses suivantes :

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Thomas nous invite à signer la pétition contre les machines à voter. Les procédés électroniques utilisés aujourd’hui ne garantissant pas la sincérité des résultats, je l’ai signée sans aucune hésitation.

Par contre, je ne suis pas farouchement opposé au vote électronique en tant que tel. Mais pour cela, il faudrait que les résultats puissent être vérifiés sans aucune possibilité de tricherie. Je serais satisfait d’un système où :

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I am in search for the perfect non-intrusive personal email ticket tracker system. Many people send me email which require me to do some things before I can either answer them or provide them with a definite solution. Right now, I put those emails in a “avoir” (”to see” in French) folder which grows continously as I easily forget to remove things from them when it’s done. Also, it is now so big that I have trouble navigating through it.

I am in the need of a real ticket tracking system which would allow me to prioritize such requests, set deadlines and so on. This system would need to be non-intrusive as I do not want people to have to do anything but reply to emails from me; in particular, I don’t want to change the subject line nor ask them to use another email address. It would also have to work if several people are in copy.

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At ENST, a French engineering school and research institute located in Paris, France, we currently have two internship proposals to work on XWiki, a Free Software wiki. European candidates may apply. Interns will receive 800€/month. Contact me if you need more information.

We also have fixed-term positions available (up to 18 months) on similar subjects (working on XWiki). Net income will be around 2000€/month. Do not hesitate to contact me if you are an European citizen and want to apply.

First proposal:

Internship (6 months): Interface design for an embedded distributed wiki

The applicant would work in the ENST XWiki Concerto team. The team goal is to port the XWiki engine (a java scriptable and semantic wiki) to an embedded mobile target.

The applicant mission would be to adapt the current XWiki user interface for a PDA/Mobile phone. He/She should take into consideration the reduced screen size and the different input devices. Exploration of innovative ideas which increase the ergonomy of the application will be encouraged.

The applicant needs experience in computer-human interaction, java developpement and web open standards (html, css).

Second proposal:

Internship (6 months): Rearchitecture and port of a wiki engine to an embedded device.

The applicant would work in the ENST XWiki Concerto team. The team goal is to port the XWiki engine (a java scriptable and semantic wiki) to an embedded mobile target.

The applicant mission would be to isolate components in the current XWiki engine, port them to a J2ME CDC configuration, and integrate them in the embedded XWiki application.

He/She should take into consideration the space and performance limitations of the mobile device when adapting the components.

Strong java skills are mandatory. Experience in embedded developpement would be greatly appreciated.