This is a great tool, thank you Joel!  Basically you enter an address and Walk Score looks it up in Google map automatically collecting a list of interesting places you can reach on foot and finally computing a walkability score.  How easy it is to move on foot in your neighborhood?  Do you need a car?  The place where I work got 80 out of 100 which is defined as “Very Walkable: It’s possible to get by without owning a car”.  In fact I own a car by I never use it to go to work.  I usually ride a bicycle and believe me, it’s great.  I can’t stand the stress of traffic jams.

Italian Minister Bersani recently issued a decree mandating use of on line tools to pay social security taxes (F24 form). This means, starting from Oct 1st you either go to very expensive authorized 3rd party tax professional accountants, or you buy a very expensive on line bank account from one a few authorized banks, or you go to the ministry web site and download an application they provide for free.

She asked to her bank, but they said they’re not authorized. Of course nobody wants to waste lots of money in accountants (their services cost typically around €1000/yr) or in additional bank accounts (€200/yr), therefore she tried to download the on-line software. Problem is, the ministry web site says this application is only available for Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac. What if you run Linux or any other operating system of your choice? Well, you are on your own, you moron, just waste your money buying a copy of Windows and shut up. At this point, my mother was desperate and asked for my help.

Previous government issued a directive mandating the State to use open source tools wherever available and to always accept and produce at least one open file format for any data exchange, therefore the government here is violating its own policy. Moreover, smart people investigated the application provided by the ministry and found out it is a java application. Wait, isn’t java supposed to be a portable language running the same across every operating system and platform?

My mother is lucky enough to have a geek son, and after some serious hacking, reading hints on the Internet, I managed to install and run this application on Linux, using some obscure tools and the obsoleted (and end of life) java version 1.3.1.

So why is the government requiring citizens to run Windows/Mac? Can’t they just provide a multi-platform java binary? Are their contractors (SOGEI) so incompetent that they can’t even test this application on Linux? Do they think everybody has a geek son to call for help? What about accessibility guidelines? Was it so hard to build a web application that any browser can load instead of this java crap? Do you think a government endorsing Microsoft/Apple does any good to fair competition in the market?

It’s beyond me.