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Comment Kindle! (Score 1) 415

I bought a Kindle.. And I now read a lot more than I used to, though it's especially in the train.. The e-ink display is really far ahead of the other technologies, and is really comfortable. Battery is never an issue, and the experimental browser is not too bad for news reading either.. The included dictionnary is really nice, as well as the nice wikipedia integration (especially while reading foreign litterature with local names and such..)
Then, you have 2 cons mainly.. a) PDF.. already mentionned here, but even if there are workarounds, it's mainly terrible.. b) the format.. can't really be happy with the amazon ebook format, but well, it works ®..
I'm happy with my Kindle, and as it's not a smart-tab-computer-coffee-machine, it's actually a lot better to stay focused on what you're reading, which enabled me to actually... read faster ;)

Submission + - Hacker Space Festival splits across locations (hackerspace.net) 1

lekernel writes: After the success of the second Hacker Space Festival, the international community of hackers are invited to participate in the multiple events of the third edition. Hackito Ergo Sum (Paris, April 8-10) will be your usual security conference. Breizh Entropy Congress (Rennes, April 15-17, submission deadline March 16) is an eclectic event themed around free culture and technologies. Les Contorsions Technologiques (Paris, May 1st, submission deadline March 20) focuses on DIY hardware. Tetalab Hacker Space Festival (Toulouse, May 28-30) will consist in conferences and workshops revolving around hackerspaces activities. Eventually, Estive Numérique (Southern Alps countryside, July 20-26) will be about autonomy and self-sufficiency in the digital age. With such events blossoming, France looks like the place to be during the next months!

Comment Re:You're doing it wrong. (Score 1) 332

I totally agree with your point of view. I think that there are many reasons our administrations should require opensource for their projects:
  • there is a real public audit of the software, should it still be developped by a selected corporation
  • money is not lost for private parties, as in, they are many things that could benefit other people, companies.. If it's the taxpayers' money, what can be more transparent to give it back this way to them?
  • it lowers the risk of lock-ins for the administrations, that usually end by costing a lot more when you need to buy again a new solution 3 years later..

I think there is a lot to write & tell about how the many general reasons to endorse opensource could be adapted to the government / administration specifics, in terms of local economy growth, global service & quality improvement of software, ability to share more easily the load between cities/states/whatever and so on..

Comment Re:Not a "right"! (Score 3, Insightful) 312

All of this is nit picking over the definition of the word 'right'. It has more than one meaning! Generally, the precise meaning is determined by who we are saying is 'giving' the right - and in the case of 'basic human rights' we usually imply that either 'the natural order of things' or $DEITY 'gave' the rights. All rights do not have to be innate though - I can contractually give you a right of access across my land. In the case of TFA we are talking about a government / constitutionally granted right. Ok? Can we all stop arguing semantics now? Kthx.

Comment Re:Bad statistics - GIGO (Score 2, Informative) 1231

The article sounds indeed more like a rant made public about a problem. Of course, this doesn't deny there is problems with 9.10, but heh, it was in alpha/beta, as the others, and nothing really "that serious" was pointed out I think. Anyway, people ranting loudly enough to make it to The Register may learn that they can also participate in testing the releases..

As for my story, I was running 9.10 since alpha, and it went quite nicely.. Minor pulseaudio glitches that were solved over time and so on. At work and on my laptop, I've upgraded from Jaunty to Karmic when offered to do so by the update manager, and it went nicely too. No problem here, not even a dependency issue, it really went fine, and 2.6.31 is really nice to my setups ;)

About all this issue.. I can't help but think it's more a PR prank than a real spotted issue.. The bugtracker doesn't tell that "that many" users are impacted, and also, that it may be more due to a ATI-card weirdness.. Heh. Not ubuntu's fault in the end, even if they could have worked around it..

Comment Re:I thought I did. (Score 3, Insightful) 747

If you don't want to look at code, however bad it is, it doesn't mean you should necessarily turn to proprietary software (or even "not fight for F/OSS).. Which is somehow his point. If locked on proprietary software, his only option was to ask the editor to correct the bug. Which may or may not be willing to do so.

With opensource software, he could have hired someone to waste his time on it, even if the original developper wouldn't have been willing to do so.. Plus it could have been a nice contribution, so probably for a lower price, he could have had his software up&running, and made the software better..

And anyway, just by reading that: "which I can find out by other means than looking at source code", we can probably assume the technical details aren't exactly relevant to him.

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