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Since some months ago, my preferred color scheme is white/light text over black/dark background, so I changed everything to match that. The XFCE theme, the color settings for claws-mail, and Firefox default colors.

The last one opened the Pandora's Box. I picked white text, yellow for new links, lime for visited ones, and a black background, instead of the predefault dark over light combination.

Accordingly to the specifications, this should work. There's also a W3C QA Tip about colors.

But, actually, there are lots of sites rendering unusable. Fortunately, some of the affected sites have good webmasters and admins: issues with Mozillazine and Gentoo websites were fixed after being reported.

But the world isn't perfect and there are sites which, having been warned about the issue, weren't fixed. I am also keeping a list of the broken sites I browse so I can report the issues when possible.

At the moment, one of the most annoying issues is with Google. Not the search engine, that's one of the two Google sites without troubles.

I checked Groups, Calendar, Orkut, GMail and Docs&Spreadsheets. All of them have issues with colors not being set. I've also posted a message I can't read because of this, at the "Is Something Broken" Google forum: Colors @ groups.google.com and other Google pages.

A message like this one was sent to webmaster@google.com, but I've got no reply to any of the messages, maybe I've to browse the (unreadable) google help pages so I can find a better way to expose the issue.

Another example is SAPO, a portuguese site, which didn't react to the report (it was just forwarded to the involved department).

It seems it's needed to add a step after "check your page with two or more browsers", the "check it with a different color scheme"...

In the Digital Literacy homepage, you can read:

"(...) a Microsoft (...) disponibiliza a todos os cidadãos o Curriculum Microsoft Literacia Digital."

Which translates as "(...) Microsoft (...) makes the Microsoft Digital Literacy Curriculum available to every citizen". It's just another collaboration between the portuguese government and Microsoft.

The interesting part is that the government wants to make this part of the basic education. Okay, so let's have a look at it.

On the main page, you have two green buttons. I click on the one which says Iniciar este curso (Start this course). And here's a translation of what I get

There is no updated version of Microsoft Internet Explorer on this computer. If you don't install Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 SP1 or later, the viewer may not work correctly. To get more information about Microsoft Internet Explorer, visite http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie. f you are installing this product through a network server, contact the system administrator.

Using an IE User Agent just gives me a white page.

Fortunately, I'm able to click "Iniciar Avaliação" (Start Evaluation) and get a working web page. Then I did the same thing in the page I got (there was another button with the same text). A new window is opened, with a multiple choice question. When I try to validate my answer and get the next question ("Seguinte", Next), I get another beautiful message:

We're sorry, but we were unable to service your request. You may wish to choose from the links below for information about Microsoft products and services.

The question "Should we place 'Engineer' after 'José Sócrates Carvalho Pinto de Sousa'" is far from being answered, with the person behind the divulgation of the "dossier" being accused in the judicial inquiry about the academic life of our Prime Minister.

I'll wait to see what's the result of the inquiry. But, considering what happened in the North a few weeks ago (a teacher got unpromoted after commenting the "title" of the PM), I'll not be surprised if Mr. António Caldeira goes into jail. But I'll be surprised if Mr. Socrates survives more than a couple of months...

I am not a polician, but I believe there are some rules about what should not be done. And putting a large amount of people against ourselves must be one... actually, lots of teachers are against the Minister of Education and her "Estatuto do Docente", the people from the south margin of Tagus are agains the Minister of Public Works (he said that there would be no benefits in building the new Lisbon airport there because it's a desert), students and (more) teachers are agains the Minister of Education because of the "new version" of the portuguese grammar, even more teachers are against the government (because of that incident with the teacher who joked about the prime minister) and the FLOSS community is also against it (because the government violated the law to choose Microsoft as a partner).

The last time a large amount of people were against the government was just a couple of years ago, when Santana Lopes did the biggest mess ever seen, and ended with the President of the Republic (Jorge Sampaio) dissolving the parliament... and I'm really having a déjà vu feeling...

http://nunojsilva.wordpress.com/2007/06/16/democracy-freedom-of-speech-and-an-engineer/

A week ago, the portuguese prime minister announced that a half million people will be able to get a computer and internet access. This initiative will cover students, teachers and workers which are integrated in the "Novas Oportunidades" project.

Involving a down payment of 150€, and a montly payment for the broadband internet access at a discount of 5€, in one of the offers (the other two involve just 15€/month and 5€/month for families in economically unfavourable situations), this initiative would be a great one.

This would now go throught the proccess of choosing manufacturers and suppliers for hardware and software. But the government missed that step, and announced a certain company as a partner and software supplier for the students computers. So Microsoft will distribute Windows Vista and Office System in the "e-escola" (that's the name of the game, which would translate as "e-school") computers.

Even if Microsoft is going to provide the licenses with discounts, that will create the dependency, etc. If I was going to get a computer of these, I'd install GNU/Linux on it, but here is a question: will people be able to do that? There are some manufacturers including the OS in the warranty, and if the user removes the OS, it voids. And in the first three years, the computers are not owned by the students, so they will not be able to void the warranty. And I can imagine Microsoft using EULAs that forbid the user to install other systems in multiboot.

It would be hard to understand this initiative even if there were no alternatives, but we have Caixa Mágica and Alinex, and other GNU/Linux distributions...

For now, one thing that may be done is filling a complaint form at Autoridade da Concorrência ("Authority for Competition").

You may find more information (in Portuguese) in the project homepage, in an article which announces the initiative (meio milhão de pessoas vão ter computador e Internet mais baratos) and in the article which announces the involvement of Microsoft.