I’ve just read this article appeared on the last IEEE Spectrum issue. They talk about a breach in Vodafone Greece’s core network, a list of phone numbers intercepted and the apparent suicide of a technician in charge of Network Planning Management after he discovered the problem and alerted his supervisors about it. Read the rest of this entry »
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Yesterday I got my brand new Sony Vaio, a VGN-C2S. I’m very glad they gave me the silver version rather than the pink one! While I was still unpacking it, the guy who brought it started to say: don’t worry, we already removed Vista and installed XP Professional instead. I thought he was joking: Please??. Well, everybody knows Vista is broken so people don’t want it. But don’t worry, XP works flawlessly on this laptop.
So I began to configure it. Everything worked except Internet Explorer that couldn’t load any page, complaining about DNS problems. The fact is all other applications – including Outlook – worked and ping in a command window confirmed DNS configuration was OK. How can you call this flawless? And I wouldn’t care about IE, but of course without it I had no way to download Firefox or anything else!
Trust me, getting started a computer has never been so hard in my life.
After unsuccessfully twiddling several hours with all possible configurations including firewall and Internet preferences, reading articles on the web, and whatever came to my mind, I gave up and installed a Gentoo. Aaahh. I’m so relaxed now.
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This weekend I’ve been to PyCon Uno, the first italian conference dedicated to the Python programming language. It’s been very interesting, in particular Alex Martelli’s keynote on managing the tech development and a presentation on sqlalchemy, but this post is not about the conference.
Marco Pesenti Gritti’s final keynote was about One Laptop Per Child, a project to bring a low cost computer to children in those third world countries where the benefits of worldwide information and education technology would be otherwise impossible. With the help of UN and MIT, they are trying to build a 100$ book-size laptop with a 1200×900 colour display and consuming just about 2W. It’s going to be developed using open source software only, and to use Python and GTK+ to develop a revolutionary environment that discards the desktop/office metaphor and puts emphasis on children activities. Several states already joined the project and did preliminary testing on some of their schools.
I think they did a very good job and hope this is going to be a great success.
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Is there anybody out there who doesn’t know who Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are? Everybody and his brother know that they are the leaders of Apple and Microsoft and have been dominating the personal computer industry for the last 30 years. In all of this time, they’ve been very careful to appear together very rarely, but last Wednesday they shared the stage at the D: All things Digital conference. They chatted about how the industry evolved during their kingdom and talked about how they think our digital future is going to be. A warm and friendly chat, like a get together for long-standing friends who finally relax and nostalgically recall the common past. But wait, look at the picture, is that a real smile? Read the rest of this entry »
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Grom is a gelato place in Florence. Well, they actually had their main shop in Turin and then opened branches in some other Italian cities. I think it’s one of the best gelato places in Florence, if not the best, and in fact I go there frequently.
One month ago I remember they announced the imminent opening of their new shop in Manhattan and I thought that was surely going to be a big success and now reading some blogs I know it is. Go Grom go!
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A merry Christmas to all of my friends!
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Microsoft finally figured it out: Vista could be their last operating system, at least in the way they meant it so far. From Times Online:
Yet already the knives are out for Vista, a system that Microsoft executives admit will be the last of its kind, as their company finally gets to grips with the internet age. Vista is meant to be slicker and safer than its predecessors, but even after a two-year delay it is “not really ready”, Michael Silver, an analyst at Gartner, said.
Now, this is a big step for them and for everybody (partners, customers) who accepted to be locked into their products. A very bitter medicine, but they eventually figured out there’s no choice:
The fear is that rivals will use the web to kill Windows. Google, a child of the online era, is the No 1 threat.
“Microsoft is way behind Google when it comes to the internet,” Rupert Godwins, the technology editor at ZDNet, the industry website, said. “Building Vista, Microsoft is still doing things the old way at the same time as it undergoes a big shift to catch up.”
[...]
Crucially, the Google word processor and spreadsheet package does not need Vista.
Well, it was about time they noticed. Welcome to the Internet.
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From Wikipedia:
The Alhambra (Red Castle) (in Arabic الحمراء = Al Ħamrā’)) is an ancient mosque, palace and fortress complex of the Moorish monarchs of Granada, in southern Spain (known as Al-Andalus when the fortress was constructed), occupying a hilly terrace on the south-eastern border of the city of Granada. It was the residence of the Muslim kings of Granada and their court, but is currently a museum exhibiting exquisite Islamic architecture [...] The palace was built chiefly between 1248 and 1354, in the reigns of Al Ahmar and his successors;
In this place, seven centuries ago Jews used to live in peace with Muslims. There was tolerance and mutual acceptance. But in 1492, Granada was taken over by Catholic monarchs Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, and they immediatly issued a decree ordering the expulsion of all Jews from Spain and its territories and possessions by July 31. At that time Torquemada was leading the Inquisition, burning Jewish and Arabic books.
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From http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/75560
In their recent plenary session, EU parliamentarians have voiced their support for an open information society. A text adopted by a majority of the EU parliament to implement the Lisbon program of the European Community under the motto “More research and innovation – investing for growth and employment” aims, among other things, to send a signal to the EU commission, which is constantly expanding intellectual property rights to the benefit of rights holders. The parliamentarians countered that the concept of “Open Innovation” is the best way to increase investments in research and development and attain the Lisbon goals. In these goals, the EU Plans to become the most competitive, dynamic
economic area in the world by 2010. Read the rest of this entry »
