Socializing with colleagues is an extremely important part of the job when you are in a company.

In that regard, being on-site has an edge.

But it doesn't have to be this way. What matters in the end is the amount of daily interactions you have with your colleagues.

Sure, if you are using MS Teams all day when working remotely, you will loose in interactions quality. Because sending a message to someone to ask to scedule a video meeting to ask a simple question will be less efficient than simply asking at your neighbor on-site.

But it does not have to be this way!

There are tools out there to make interactions more efficient when working remotely. Virtual offices (like Gather or WorkAdventure) will help you feel close to your colleagues and feel like you are in a real office... without the commuting.

Disclaimer: I'm a developer of WorkAdventure ( https://github.com/workadventu... )... and I built the tool exactly because I thought remote work was lacking the physical closeness on-site work gives you. Don't hesitate to give us a star :)

I couldn't disagree more. I started coding 40 years ago (I was 7 then). Why? I wanted to build a video game of course. I couldn't care less about what a map or a list was back then. But I had the passion to build small (and later less small) video games. When my friends in school were wondering why we were learning cosines and sinuses in Math, I immediately knew I could apply the lesson to draw the shape of a circle (and therefore have my sprite correctly hang at a rope) When we did forces and differential equations in physics, I knew it would help me get the correct speed of a projectile in my game. When we learned matrices, I knew it would help me for 3D. All those lessons were easy to learn for me because I understood what I could use them for. Give the kids the right tools to have fun, and they will learn by themselves without finding anything "hard".

Element ( https://element.io/ - a client based on the Matrix protocol) is really pretty cool for instant messages. It also features group calls and has a mobile app that is actually good. It is end-to-end encrypted and the management of the keys can be a challenge for non-tech users, but apart for that, it is really super cool.

If you want to go even fancier, you have WorkAdventure ( https://workadventu.re/ ). It allows you to build virtual offices in a 2D world. It comes with really easy to join video chats, and you can actually put screen-shares in "real" full-screen. It is also compatible with the Matrix protocol so you can send and receive messages from / to Element or any other Matrix client.

Anyway, in a true open-source fashion, you want to have a protocol that is independent from the app itself so that you can have many interoperable clients. The Matrix protocol is just this for instant messaging.

Disclaimer, I work at WorkAdventure :)

Zoom is certainly not the best solution if your company is larger than 10 people. There is only one conversation. In the real world, if you go to a pub with your colleagues, you'll have plenty of small discussions of 4-5 people. At my company, we were looking for a way to reproduce those informal events during the lockdown. We ended up creating WorkAdventure ( https://workadventu.re/ ) (Spoiler, it's my brainchild). It's like a cross-over between a retro RPG and a viso-conference application. Now, we don't need to mandate anything regarding compulsory team-building exercises. People go to each other naturally and can have fun in small groups... if they want to! And you can come and say hi to us directly in our virtual offices: https://play.workadventu.re/@/... (my avatar is DAN and I'm usually hanging out in the office on the left next to the entrance)

Amen to that!
There is absolutely no reason for "scientifc journals" to perform this hold-up on scientific papers. Especially when you consider that scientists doing the reviews are not paid most of the time! The whole scientific community should really learn from the IT open-source movement.
The worst part of it is there might be an easy to use solution and nobody seems to care! It is called "Self journal of science" and is available here: http://www.sjscience.org/

Think about "Github, but for scientfic papers!"

It features the possibility for any scientist to publish a paper (in Latex because this is what scientists use). The document can be viewed online and each paragraph can be discussed online, using a revision system where pears can review your article (think about a star-based system on steroids, for scientists).
Disclaimer: I know the developers who work on this project. They definitively need some help to spread the word, and more than anything, I know they need papers published on the website. If you happen to know scientists who might be interested, please let them know the "Self Journal of Science" exists! These guys are really trying to make things change and they need your help!

Actually, there might be an easy to use solution! It is called "Self journal of science" and is available here: http://www.sjscience.org/artic...

Think about "Github, but for scientfic papers!"

It features the possibility for any scientist to publish a paper (in Latex because this is what scientists use). The document can be viewed online and each paragraph can be discussed online, using a revision system where pears can review your article (think about a start system on steroids, for scientists).

The project was started by Michael Bon, a researcher who was fed up with the way scientific papers work today.

Disclaimer: I know the developers who work on this project. It is still in development but is already usable. They definitively need some help to spread the word, and more than anything, I know they need papers published on the website. If you happen to know scientists who might be interested, please let them know the "Self Journal of Science" exists! These guys are really trying to make things change and they need your help!

Call me a conspirationist, but I find the article quite strange. We learn in that article that France has one of the biggest computer systems, and it looks to me like they are trying to promote the electronic surveillance operation rather than demote it. Plus, this news arrives exactly on the day where we learn that France is refusing asylum to Snowden. Therefore, the so called "leak" might also be organized on purpose by the government, to explain why the French government is saying no to Snowden (when it fact, it is receiving a huge pressure from the US...) This is unlikely, but also possible.

Indeed, using Drupal can turn into module hell. However, we are not only using Drupal for the sole benefit of being able to quick-start a website.

Take a look at this site: Butterflive: live chat and real-time tracking

The front-office part is done with Drupal and the backoffice in Drupal + Mouf. Why did we do it this way?

Well the front-office is very efficient because we have a bunch of static pages to edit. I am a developer, but my colleagues are not. They are pretty happy to use Drupal to edit the static pages of the site. When it comes the back-office part (when you subscribe on the website), everything is coded using Mouf, in a nice object-oriented MCV way. I could have used a framework like Symfony for the back-office, however, I would have had to make a template for Drupal AND Symfony, I would have had to configure Google Analytics for Drupal AND Symfony, and so on...

So in my opinion, Drupal is a valid choice as a platform if you need to develop an application that comes with a lot of static content. Of course, if your application has no "front-office" part, you are better using a "pure" framework.

Actually, when looking for a framework, having a look at Drupal is not that stupid. I must admit I have a love-hate relationship with Drupal. It comes with a set of restrictions, but you have a website out-of-the-box to start quickly: a nice templating engine, an easy way to add static pages, a way to manage users... and it has several thousands available module to easily add functionalities, which is unprecedented

Now, in my opinion, the real problem with Drupal is that it does not rely on the MVC pattern, and most developers are used to that. Also, it is not object-oriented!

At my place, we have developed an MVC framework that we can plug to Drupal. This way, we get the benefit of Drupal and all its modules, and when it comes to pure PHP development, we have a nice MVC framework instead of those bloody Drupal hooks. If you want to have a look:

• The Mouf framework
• The MVC module
• Drupal integration

It is released as open-source, it is functional, but documentation is not complete yet so I would not recommend using it until we finish the documentation (probably in January).

Same thing here in France. Thanks to the new almighty 3-strikes and your out law. This law does not punish the people who download, but the owner of the connexion through which the download was performed... As a result, impossible to share my wifi anymore.... and that's a real shame because we loose the spirit of openness of the early internet days.... The winners? Internet providers of course! You cannot share your connexion with your neighbours anymore!

Well, here in France, the "open-office firewall" is becoming a real meme. And here is the source: http://www.numerama.com/magazine/12508-albanel-le-ministere-de-la-culture-a-comme-pare-feu-open-office-maj.html You can even see the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph6ZeEDnFmc Both links are in French, but Google Translate will help you :) To be fair, it's been 1 year since this ministry has been replaced, but it is unsure the one in place knows any better about IT.

Actually, exposing it in Javascript is not new. Some online services are already doing it (For instance: Apideo). However, it is nice to see WebM coming to live streaming. Most of the problems with current technology based on Flash is that Flash live streaming does only support VP6, which is an old codec with very poor quality and high bandwidth consumption.
My guess is a nice codec matching the quality of Skype, right in the browser, might help a wide adoption of live camera streaming.