The title is a tentative translation from an Italian song by Elio e le storie tese, one of my favorite when I was a teen-ager. We’re two days from Christmas and I should be busy wishing happiness and merriness to all of my friends, but this year there’s a different feeling. It’s that kind of tension and uncertainty you get when you go to the beach and there are heavy clouds, announcing some possible storm. You get busy thinking to B plans and even if the clouds end up disappearing your leisure time has been ruined. It’s not me. Lately several prominent newspapers wrote about the unhappy Italian mood and I’m surprised by how precisely they painted it. Apparently, even friends that moved abroad feel the same.
Google led the creation of Open Handset Alliance, a consortium involving a number of telco and manufacturers . As its first act the Alliance released Android, an open source operating system for mobiles complete of SDK and API. The SDK includes a working emulator and half a dozen example applications. The idea to establish an open platform for mobile developers is very good but not particularly new: project Openmoko has been working to a similar concept for several months and went as far as to release a developer version of the handset. Read the rest of this entry »
Your speed limit is 30Kmh. It’s a restricted area and you can’t enter on workdays from 7:30 to 19:30, except that trucks can’t enter from 8:30 to 20:30 all the week, motorcycles non compliant to european standard CEE 97/24 can’t enter on workdays from 10 to 12 and from 15 to 17, cars non compliant to CEE 91/441 are always forbidden, authorized people for sectors B and C can always enter, authorized people loading/unloading can enter from 7:30 to 9:30. Read the rest of this entry »
We’ve paid our dues time after time
We’ve done our sentence but committed no crime
And bad mistakes we’ve made a few
We’ve had our share of sand kicked in our face
But we’ve come through
We are the champions my friends
And well keep on fighting till the end
We are the champions
We are the champions
No time for losers cause we are the champions…
of the world.
Before second world war, Italy used to be a monarchy ruled by the Savoia dynasty. After the war, on June 2nd 1946 Italians voted in a referendum and chose republic for their new government. It’s not been a large majority: republic won for just two million votes and the country was split with a republican north and a monarchic south. On June 13th, King Umberto II finally decided to leave the country, heading to Portugal. Italian parliament then enacted a law that forbade ex-Kings and their sons to enter the Italian territory. This law lasted until 2002, when it’s been removed and Prince Vittorio Emanuele, Umberto’s son, eventually had permission to return to Italy.
