After seeing it for real I couldn't resist. This will arrive home in about 10 weeks. It will replace my good old Power Macintosh G3 Desktop/266 that I bought nearly 6 years ago -- and I hope it will last as long as its grand-parent.

The EU parliament is about to vote for software patents today. The Register has a good article explaining that geeks don't understand how politicians work. Another related article from ZDNet: European software patents 'a done deal', caught on IPKAT Intellectual Property Weblog.

Update: the vote has been delayed until September, "amid criticism that the legislation would institute a U.S.-style patent regime that would be detrimental to European small businesses and open-source software developers."

I have seen an Apple G5 and an iSight for real, this Saturday at the Fnac Digitale shop in Paris. The beast looks exactly as I expected, with a sleek and beautiful aluminum case. I think it will pass the "designers desk test", i.e. they will place it on their desk rather than on the floor. It is easier to open than the previous G4 case. The design inside the G5 is clearly made to optimize the use of the entire enclosure surface as a heat dissipator. We could touch the (huge) radiators attached to the processors (yes, it was the dual 2GHz G5), they were cold while the left side of the enclosure, where the motherboard lies, was slightly hot. In the noisy environment we couldn't assert the noise from the fans, it was simply unnoticeable. There are holes all around the front and back sides, with no filters, so the fans may turn the G5 as a dust collector (I might be wrong, I'm just guessing). A guy was staring at Final Cut Pro 4 crunching his complex project in 20-30s for 1h of video, saying it was really impressive. And the G5 was running a non optimized version of FCP on Jaguar, so it was apparently not at its full potential. Another guy was bitching because the machine has only two hard drives slots. The Apple guy told him he could put two 250GB drives in there, so 500GB and that the drives would get bigger over time. I told him that if 500GB was not enough, he could plug disks all over through FireWire or buy a RAID unit. He continued bitching on and on with other rants ("They always screw up the first machines, like the last (sic) generation of noisy G4." Yeah, get a PC and your frustration somewhere else please).

The iSight has a clear family look with the same meshed metal enclosure. Very serious, professional looking. I haven't seen it work though. But when looking at it, I could hear the G5 talking to me with this HAL 9000 voice: "Hello Dave!". You know what I mean (thanks Doxa!)

The second round of TypePad beta testing has started. Six Apart has sent a survey to its subscribers, and will select 1500 new beta testers by July 3. Here is what one gets after filling in the survey form:

Entries selected for beta testing will receive a reply by July 3 and will be expected to abide by a very limited non-disclosure agreement (we'll ask that you don't talk extensively about the beta-testing on your site) [...]

if you're not picked for this round, don't worry, as we'll be soliciting even more testers in the weeks to come.

As expected, beta testers will be asked to refrain from blogging about TypePad. And it looks like there will be another round before the service is launched.

No insider information here, but it looks like TypePad is hosted at Pair Networks, their DNS is managed by PairNIC, and their IP address is within the range attributed to Internap Network Services, an Internet connectivity provider. It all sounds good.

Kottke and co. are paying a visit to Paris, and found a few wireless access points, including the test we are doing. Hurry up, it ends in four days.

Now Jason, would you mind getting Meg tell us more about her broadband experience in the city of light?

It is also said that when I get away from the Net, lots of breaking news travel twice around the blogosphere before, like my corporate PRs, I get a chance to catch them.

About Steve Jobs keynote, at least I got my predictions right, so I can afford to be a bit late, can't I?

Several people have told me they don't like the design of the new G5. The better half and I reckon that all the pictures look suspiciously like computer-generated images (the intro video is particularly striking, as well as the VR panos). And I've learned not to trust a picture to judge the design of a product. My next bet is that the people this machine has been designed for will love it, design included. I know I will, er..., I do, already.

The announcement that the new G5 is simply the fastest personal computer ever has generated some heat around the benchmarks that Apple is using to back up its claim. Among the noise, Slashdot has done a good job at getting sensible explanations from Apple VP of Hardware Product Marketing, Greg Joswiak.

Meanwhile, Intel claims that the world is not ready for mainstream 64-bit computing. I don't know about the world, but Intel is apparently not ready.

Moving on the next prediction, I think we will see a G5 Xserve before that chip goes into a PowerBook. Why? Just look at the PowerMac enclosure and fans system for a clue on how much heat that beast generates. But what do I know, apart that I want one?

Why is it that each time -- each freaking time -- you are travelling abroad, those sort of things happen?

• the IT guys have yet again changed ISP but did not communicate the new access numbers
• your hotel is a tribute to a great Victorian past and as such, has not heard about something called the Internet (you wouldn't even bother to ask about wireless access, not before next century may be). But the hostesses are nice, and they speak French
• the office has only one network connection for the entire meeting room, and it's of course not Mac friendly (and what's this atavism about proxy servers?)
• entire local networks go down and suddenly the helpdesk remembers you as a handy scapegoat ("Our network's down? No, it must be your server!")
• your mobile phone runs out of battery, and the local power plugs are a tribute to a great Victorian past
• the unique PC at the train station lounge has some stupid antivirus that would not let you get to your webmail system, because the web script URL ends up with "/cgi-bin/webmail.exe" and that the .exe part makes it feel dizzy (never heard of a MIME type apparently)
• your train back is probably the most expensive rail service in the whole Europe, for reasons known only to its shareholders, certainly not because it offers innovative services such as an Internet connection (surely science-fiction, isn't it?)
• You get home at 11pm and before you get a chance to get back online, there is this breaking news running on TV that you are the last person to discover. Your mailbox is of course full of press releases that you were supposed to post today. Come on, it's not midnight yet, you can make it.

But your personal mailbox is full of interesting messages, and you rediscover that when you happen to post something slightly original, your audience comes and even dares to react. And that helps you bare the idea that you have become network-impaired.

I have been thinking of a side use of TrackBacks within one's weblog. When I write a follow-up to an existing entry, linking to this entry from the new one should create a link properly identified as a follow-up^* in the old entry to let readers know that the story continues. It should be as easy as creating a link, and voilà.

Has anyone done this already, or had this idea before?

(*) the difference is important, an internal follow-up is not a TrackBack. Authors should be able to determine the look, placement and content of the follow-up notice, I guess by way of template tags and weblog preferences.

Au gré d'une balade quotidienne sur MediaTIC l'autre jour, je suis tombé sur cette invitation :

Blogue ta musique le 21 juin : déjà plus de 25 participants ! Et vous ?...

J'ai donc écrit à l'ami musicien (comme dirait Edouard, qui me fournit là l'occasion de vous envoyer sur ses souvenirs musicaux à lui) pour lui signaler ladite opération. Voici, en substance, ce qu'il m'a répondu :

Le nom...
Déjà il y a dix ça faisait ringard de parler comme cela, alors aujourd'hui... On a l'impression que c'est une idée de Jack Lang quand il mettait encore des cravates.

Je précise qu'il est plus jeune que moi, voire même encore classable dans la catégorie "djeune", ce qui me rassure donc sur notre belle jeunesse. Mais c'est cette petite pointe d'humour quasi desprogienne qui m'a donné l'envie d'écrire cette bafouille.

La musique pour moi a d'abord été une torture. Nos parents, compensant probablement leur frustration de n'avoir jamais pu jouer d'un instrument, nous ont tous fait passer par le conservatoire, que ça nous plaise ou non. Mon frère aîné, Rémy, a appris la trompette et la guitare. Mon autre frère Vincent s'est mis au piano et à l'orgue. Moi, j'ai été "collé" au piano d'office (je suppose que c'était pour rentabiliser l'investissement dans l'instrument du salon, un piano droit Erhard d'un kitch absolu avec ses petits bougeoirs mobiles en laiton et sa façade néo-classique mais façon cuisine rustique).

Le Conservatoire National de Musique et d'Art Dramatique de la Vallée de Chevreuse à Orsay (maintenant rétrogradé au statut d'Ecole Nationale de Musique) ne fut pas, au début, une expérience très positive. Le solfège, une matière déjà particulièrement barbante, était enseigné par un clone d'Alice Sapritch qui finissait toujours ses phrases par un "pigé ou pas pigé ?" du plus mauvais goût (note à l'ami musicien, je trouvais déjà ça ringard il y a vingt cinq ans). J'étais excellent en théorie et nul en pratique. Son enseignement non moins ringuard a réussi à m'empêcher définitivement de lire une partition, ce qui est assez handicapant pour un musicien. Mais le pire reste le piano.

Môsieur le Professeur Edouard Exerjean -- abonné au gaz et à l'électricité -- est un petit bonhomme qui cache mal une ressemblance de physique et d'ego avec Nicolas Sarkozy (pour le physique, le voici dans une publicité pour une cage à pianiste) et un goût prononcé pour les manteaux de fourrure. Une petite recherche sur Internet m'a permis de trouver cette perle du CNC :

Les conservatoires de musique ont parfois l’injuste réputation de dispenser un enseignement aux méthodes dépassées. Edouard Exerjean enseigne le piano au conservatoire du XIIIe arrondissement de Paris. Attaché à la rigueur inhérente à la pratique de l’instrument, il parvient néanmoins à transmettre sa passion en douceur [...]
Les conseils sont prodigués avec générosité à chaque cours, comme s’il s’agissait de la première fois. [...]
La réalisatrice questionne une élève : "Qu’est-ce qu’un maître de musique ?" "C’est quelqu’un qui vous oblige à vous extérioriser, à sortir de vous-même", répond-elle. Edouard Exerjean a conscience que l’attention portée à chaque élève, toute cette énergie déployée parfois avec excès, portera ses fruits plus tard.

Ouf, le "parfois avec excès" sonne pour moi comme la pointe de vérité dans ce panégyrique publicitaire (vous savez, cet art de faire passer des vessies pour des lanternes). La vérité, c'est que Edouard (tu permets que je t'appelles Edouard ?) considérait qu'un artiste de son talent perdait son temps à enseigner son art à quiconque ne voulait pas devenir un grand professionnel. Et moi, j'étais classé dans la catégorie infamante des amateurs, cette caste répugnante et petite-bourgeoise des gens qui font de la musique pour se faire plaisir. Pour se faire plaisir ? Non monsieur, pour devenir un musicien, un vrai, il faut souffrir ! Et pour souffrir, j'en ai bavé des brimades, des humiliations, des violences physiques -- claques, coups de pieds au cul (et pas littéralement), je n'ai échappé au claquement de couvercle sur les doigts que parce que ça laisse des traces et que le maître trouvait que j'avais des mains parfaites pour le piano (le seul compliment dont je me souvienne). Et puis un jour, après six ou sept ans de conseils rigoureux prodigués avec cette générosité et cette énergie si particulières, j'ai craqué. Le jour d'un examen blanc, devant une pléthore d'élèves et le directeur du conservatoire, le maître a pensé pouvoir s'offrir une nouvelle petite humiliation publique en me demandant de faire une gamme en do majeur (un truc de débutant). Je me suis levé, en silence je crois, et je suis parti sous le regard effaré de mon bourreau qui voyait sa proie lui échapper. Le directeur a tenté de rattraper le coup en me proposant de rejoindre sa classe, mais je n'ai plus jamais remis les pieds dans une classe de piano ni de solfège après ça. J'en ai développé une haine du piano qui s'est peu à peu estompée, mais les fruits de ton enseignement, mon cher Edouard, m'empêcheront toujours d'apprécier cet instrument à sa juste valeur.

Et puis, après avoir mis fin au calvaire Exerjean, j'ai enfin découvert la musique.

Mon frère Vincent avait fait de l'orgue, dans la classe d'André Isoir, pas moins. Tout dans l'orgue me fascinait. L'instrument imposant, puissant, majestueux, unique (toutes les orgues sont différentes), sa dynamique, ses jeux, le toucher de ses claviers, son pédalier; le calme, le côté mystique et la sonorité des églises; le répertoire baroque sonnant à mes oreilles d'une clarté et d'une richesse tellement plus émouvantes que ce que j'avais jamais pu entendre au piano. Tout cela m'avait rendu amoureux, passionné même. J'avais trouvé mon instrument, je l'avais choisi. André Isoir avait quitté le CNM d'Orsay mais l'un de ses élèves, Nicolas Roger, avait repris sa suite et cherchait à constituer une classe. J'ai accepté de revenir au conservatoire à la condition d'être exempté des cours et des examens de solfège (trois à quatre heures d'Alice Sapritch par semaine étaient au dessus de mes forces).

Nicolas (si vous me permettez, cher maître, de vous appeler Nicolas) s'est révélé être un enseignant pédagogue, ferme mais sympathique, enthousiasmant, avec ce don qu'ont tous les vrais passionnés pour transmettre leur amour de l'art. Oppressé comme une sardine en boite au piano, je me suis trouvé comme un poisson dans l'eau à l'orgue. J'avoue que dix ans de pratique du clavier (l'informatique ne compte pas) m'avaient donné de bonnes bases et m'a permis de commencer tout de suite à l'équivalent de la cinquième année (cours élémentaire 1), mais l'instrument ne se laisse pas dompter comme ça. L'orgue n'a pas du tout la même dynamique que le piano, un tuyau sonne de toute sa puissance ou ne sonne pas, il me fallut apprendre à jouer sur les liaisons pour créer des accents, le tempo, les ornements. Et surtout acquérir cette indépendance totale entre main droite, main gauche et chaque pied, qui rend l'instrument assez "physique" mais donne vie à de petites merveilles comme les sonates en trio (où le même thème se combine, en décalage, à la main droite, gauche et à la pédale). A l'issue de ma première année d'études, j'ai passé mon examen d'entrée en C.E.2 avec mention et les félicitations du jury (en tout cas celles du directeur du conservatoire, visiblement heureux de pouvoir tourner la page du fiasco précédent).

J'ai continué quelques années, jusqu'au C.M.1 avec un redoublement je crois. J'ai même pratiqué en cachette pendant deux ans car mes parents, jamais en retard d'une contradiction, avaient décrété que je ne devais pas me "disperser" pendant mes études en classe prépa scientifique. J'allais jouer à Paris, rue du Bac, dans un temple et sur un orgue assez exotiques tous les deux. Je pense que la pratique de la musique, pendant cette période monastique de ma vie, a eu un effet profondément positif. Expatrié à l'ENSIC de Nancy, j'ai continué en dilettante après avoir eu la chance extraordinaire d'obtenir les clés de l'église d'Essey-lès-Nancy. Pendant trois ou quatre ans, j'ai passé des heures seul, parfois fort tard dans la nuit, aux quatre claviers d'un magnifique instrument de près d'une cinquantaine de jeux. Au gré de mon moral fluctuant (ce furent mes pires années d'études), j'y ai ri, sué, parfois pleuré, toujours transporté aussi bien par la musique que par l'instrument. Je crois que le sentiment le plus fort reste celui de puissance, avec seulement dix doigts et deux pieds, que l'on ressent aux commandes des grandes orgues. Sans parler de l'émerveillement de déambuler dans leur imposante mécanique, même si c'est pour aller raccrocher une soupape). J'ai eu la chance de poser mes petites mains sur l'orgue de Saint Germain des Prés à Paris (dont André Isoir était le titulaire) et celui de la cathédrale de Poitiers (qui a l'écho le plus long de France, sept secondes !). J'ai rencontré des facteurs d'orgues et assisté à la construction du nouvel orgue de l'église d'Orsay. Je ne sais pas si je l'ai dit, j'ai adoré.

Et puis je suis entré dans la vie active, comme on dit, j'ai rencontré l'amour et ma meilleure moitié, j'ai déménagé. Et j'ai laissé tomber l'orgue. J'ai pour habitude de ne rien regretter, je me contenterai donc d'admettre que c'est l'une de mes plus grandes erreurs. Peut-être y reviendrais-je un jour, qui sait. Ou je passerais au clavecin, une autre passion, et un instrument un tout petit peu plus facile à caser qu'un orgue dans un appartement parisien.

J'ai tout de même gardé un goût immodéré pour la musique baroque -- évidemment le répertoire à l'orgue est assez rarement moderne -- au point d'avoir eu une période où je considérais que la musique s'arrêtait en 1750 (les plus perspicaces d'entre vous vont nous dire à quoi cette date correspond). J'ai un peu évolué depuis, je vous rassure. Je resterai toutefois dans le baroque en vous proposant deux de mes disques préférés que je passe en boucle en ce moment même :

• Olivier Vernet, la passion de l'orgue, éd. Ligia Digital. Une pure merveille.
• Padre Antonio Soler, les six concertos pour deux orgues par François-Henri Houbart et Marie-José Chasseguet, éd. Solstice.

Pour terminer, et bien que je sois mal placé pour donner des leçons, je conseille à tous les parents qui seraient tentés de faire faire de la musique à leurs enfants de ne jamais leur imposer un instrument car la musique doit être un plaisir, pas une contrition, et des les encourager à persévérer, parce qu'ils en auront vraiment besoin.

C'était ma fête de la musique à moi. Allez donc faire de la musique.

Since about a week, Safari has been crashing consistently several times a day. It used to be surprinsingly stable (for a beta) before. I suspect a recent upgrade of something in the system is causing this (I did at least one security and QuickTime updates recently). Weird. Has anyone noticed something similar?

And for some reason, Standblog, the very standards-respectful site of the French web standards master evangelist Tristan crashes Safari big time.

Numerous sites are reporting that Apple has let the cat out of the bag by erroneously posting a graphic on its web store that reveals the characteristics of its new line of PowerMac, sporting 1.6GHz, 1.8GHz and 2GHz "PowerPC G5" processors. On all those sites, The Register provides a little bit more than just a screenshot.

The initial link reported by MacMegaSite shows the regular URL pattern of the Akamai delivery network that Apple is using on its public sites, suggesting that the image has indeed been pushed all the way through their production servers. Knowing how paranoid Jobs is regarding the announcements of new products, I think there is a webmaster somewhere in Cupertino who must not be very comfortable with this!

Speaking of which, Apple is now looking for a "Web Publishing Manager WW Apple Store". The job description, which if I'm correct appeared just today, starts with: "The position manages day to day publishing requirements such as image updates...". It might be completely unrelated, though, but the coincidence has a taste of irony.

Mmh... caught this on Jeremy Zawodny's blog:

http://firstpost.typepad.com/firstpost/2003/06/microsoft_crush.html

Authorization Required

This server could not verify that youare authorized to access the documentrequested. Either you supplied the wrongcredentials (e.g., bad password), or yourbrowser doesn't understand how to supplythe credentials required.

---

Apache/2.0.46 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.0.46 OpenSSL/0.9.7a DAV/2 Server at firstpost.typepad.com Port 80

Apache 2, mod_ssl/2 and DAV/2, interesting combination. I would have hoped mod_perl ;-).

Can I be a TypePad beta tester? Please? Pleeeeease!

P.S.: a fun thought pops to mind. Betas are usually done within a closed community under some sort of non disclosure agreement to avoid the dissemination of negative information that may discredit the product before its public release (one also may want to keep the beta testers community small and focused). In the case of the TypePad, I wonder how feasible it will be for Six Apart to prevent its beta testers to start blogging about it. "Hi, come and test our new blogging service, but please don't blog about it yet". That would be frustrating isn't it?

According to NewsWireless.net, Guinness World Records has recognized the world WiFi distance record, established at 310 km by WiFi equipment maker Alvarion and the Swedish Space Corporation. Of course their settings are not exactly your customary AirPort ones, and you would not exactly want to have a 6-watt transmitter sitting in the laptop on your knees (I wouldn't).

Meanwhile, and not just because complaining is supposedly a French national sport, I am still bitching towards railways and airlines companies for not providing Internet access onboard. A fast train round-trip in business class costs around 160€ for Paris-Brussels and 590€ for Paris-London. It would be just about time to think on useful ways to justify those costs (especially those of the Eurostar which are close to robbery). My "customer experience" would be better improved by a decent net access rather than throwing more cheap alcohol and junk food at me (no, I don't want to eat at 5 or even 6pm). Even an Ethernet plug would do!

Via 37Signals quoting MSNBC:

In response to increasingly dire warnings that widespread use of antibiotics on U.S. farms is making the drugs less effective for treating people, the fast-food chain McDonald’s is directing some meat suppliers to stop using antibiotic growth promoters altogether and encouraging others to cut back.

Ironically, France has been under a lot of pressure and commercial threats from the US because it bans the use of those growth promoters in animals raising.

Besides the public health risks induced by this foolish use of antibiotics, the food quality is at stake too. Lots of American friends and colleagues of mine consistently recognize that chicken and beef they get in the US taste like water compared to what they get in France. The reality is as always slightly more complex than that -- you can find excellent quality products in the US and bad ones in France -- but our ban on hormones-fed animals and the abondance of local food markets which raise the bar on quality and lower the prices are obvious reasons why the food is allegedly healthier over here.

I don't know what is the position across the EU regarding this, but with the inclusion of several new countries, the agriculture promises to be one of the hottest and most difficult matters the union will have to face in the next few years. France, with its traditional habit to defend its "cultural exceptions" will face more and more difficulties in a world that has the unfortunate tendency to set standards according to the lowest common denominator.

Pardon my title. Torvalds quits Transmeta to take care of Linux's kernel. Meanwhile, SCO turns up the heat against IBM, while Sun rejoices.

Let's have a look at FreeBSD for a change.

I'm right on with Adrian Holovaty on why news sites don't need specialized blog systems:

I highly recommend integrating a self-built [weblog] system into your legacy CMS, if you've got the means to do it. Ideally, if you've got a good CMS already and it's customizable enough, just extend it to produce "blog" output. Honestly, weblogs are nothing special -- they're just another form of article.

Taking this one step further, this isn't just true for news sites, it is true for any kind of site that already has a CMS which can be extended to support weblogs.

Weblog systems are a simple form of CMS, specialized to handle weblogs. I believe that soon, the quintessential elements of weblogging (like those plus comments, RSS, TrackBacks, etc.) will find a natural way into many CMS systems, whether they are commercial, open source or custom. Similarly, weblog systems will be pushed to their limits by people who want to do more than a weblog. One example of this trend is Boxes And Arrows. This is a web site, not a weblog. Only when you explore the clean layout does the underlying weblog system appears, in the form of comments that are nicely promoted as conversations and, of course, the credits to MovableType in the footer.

Eventually, the technical frontiers between weblog systems and CMS will vanish, leaving perhaps to niche players some marketing delimitation to distinguish between the public users (the current blogger crowd) and the corporate users (the current CMS market). Ultimately it is about creating and publishing content, which is what content management systems are made for.

According to Declan McCullagh, Europe still doesn't get the Internet. What did we do, poor clueless Europeans, to deserve such blame? The Council of Europe is simply on its way to adapt to online publications an old concept called "right of reply", which has been applied to any mass-media in most of the EU members for nearly three decades. And "for better or for worse, Europe lacks a First Amendment and the respect for limited government, private property and free enterprise that America still enjoys."

Oh my!

The last arguments are not only simplistic but false. Since when did Europe oppose private property, enterprise and "limited government" (whatever that means)? They just serve to highlight -- besides sheer ignorance of Europe's historical context and culture -- the very manichean view that McCullagh promotes regarding freedom of expression: in the absence of a First amendment, Europe cannot "get" the Internet. Others would qualify this as typical American mono-culture.

Considering where we come from, our approach of the freedom of expression -- as actually of many thing else -- is a balanced one: "the principle is absolute freedom of expression, and the exceptions are the limits and restrictions on such freedom of expression where a right having comparable weight must be reconciled with the exercise of that freedom." Your freedom ends where mine starts.

We have different views indeed, but regarding freedom of expression, I sustain that France has nothing to envy to the US. Nor does Europe. Living in a country that has a long tradition against discrimination, I fully support our laws against hate speech, racism, vindication of crime or in favor of the right of reply. But this does not prevent me to respect other approaches as long as our motivation and goals towards democracy are identical.

Only those who do not get that have no chance to get something like the Internet.

c'est l'amour! Turn the sound on before viewing this, or you'll miss the wonderful mix of Star Wars music with Edith Piaf's Je ne regrette rien. Really great work Jason.

I have added a new RSS 2.0 feed which includes the full posts with links. The old one (excerpts, no HTML) is maintained at its previous URL, so you will have to update the link if you want to change it. I am not sure of what the best practice is regarding changing RSS feeds (updating through the same URL so existing subscribers see the changes without updating, redirect to the new one, or give each new version its own URL and force subscribers to update manually), so in doubt I kept the "cool URI don't change" approach.

If there is anything wrong (with the new feed or that approach), please let me know.

No, Paris in the toilet is not what it seems.

The Czechs have massively voted in a referendum yesterday to join the European Union (77,33% in favor of the union). With 10 millions inhabitants, the country will become a member of the EU on May 1st, 2004. Welcome to the Czech Republic!

So be it, IE/Mac is dead. After the news that there would not be another standalone version of IE/Windows, that sounded like a logical consequence for the Mac as well. The commitment lasted for about three years.

I want to keep some hope that the death of IE is not the end of Microsoft's web developments on the Mac. The browser has become the visible interface to an underlying engine, that Apple calls WebCore and Microsoft calls Tasman. WebCore drives Safari, Tasman drives IE/Mac and (if I'm not mistaken) in a new incarnation, the latest MSN for Mac OS X. But the browser is not the only interface to render HTML content: Apple Mail does, NetNewsWire does and will make use WebCore, OmniWeb already uses WebCore. This list is far from being exhaustive.

IE is not the only software to make use of Microsoft's web engine. I use Microsoft Entourage on a daily basis and I cannot imagine that my email client be excluded from the web standards pleasures in the long run. I want Entourage to render XHTML/CSS. It should logically leverage the work done to improve the Tasman rendering engine, and that would be a very positive move from Microsoft.

I'm not giving hope on Entourage, then. R.I.P IE/Mac, et vive Tasman!

Me: your tree menu weights 150 KB for only 20 items.

The developer: yes but that's because you required that it works also on Netscape.

Me: Mozilla, but that's not the point. You could do it with probably one tenth of the code if you used web standards.

The developer: hu?

Me: like that. Look at the code.

The developer: hu!

Me: yep. Told you so one year ago.

The developer: the designer says that it's the kind of stuff that typically doesn't work on Netscape.

Me: hu? I tested it with IE, Netscape, Mozilla, Firebird and Safari. Works fine. Actually that's the goal, and the beauty of it. Code once and forget about browsers.

The developer: ...

Me: does your designer know there have been updates since Netscape 4.73?

In how to consume RSS safely Mark Pilgrim sets the record straight on the main security issues one can face with RSS. The way Mark made his point is pretty funny and the comments on this article are interesting too.

These kind of issues will not please a paranoid CIO (pleonasm). There is something else that does not help the adoption of RSS within companies -- actually a big show stopper for many intranets -- the lack of authentication mechanisms. How do you secure a RSS feed, how do you authenticate its consumers?

Tonight I have passed my personal first-level acid test on Thai food, i.e. the ability to recreate a dish without a recipe -- level 0 being the mere ability to follow a recipe, level 2 being able to create something new. I have prepared a Yam Neua (beef salad) out of gustative memory from what I used to order at the now defunct Bali Bar restaurant in Paris, and knowledge of the basic ingredients that are used in Thai food. My judges guests where pleased, especially the better half.

My approach to food is quite identical to my approach of music. To comprehend and interpret (i.e. cook or play) them, you need knowledge and practice to decipher their components (taste ingredients, ear notes), understand their harmony, play the instruments, execute and eventually create. I stopped practicing music (big mistake) but I kept improving on the cooking side. Mixing art and pleasure is enjoyable and France is not the worst place on earth to do that, at least on the food part :-).

Too tired for blogging the recipe. Ahem, OK, the real reason is that I need a dictionary for the food terms and it's really time to go to bed. Manifest yourself if you want it.

We've got 2G, 2.5G, 2.75G, 3G and now here comes 4G. I wonder how they are going to rate voice over WiFi. Meanwhile, spam is coming to an any-G phone near you.

Clashes in Paris, lots of fights after a protest on the place de la Concorde (200,000 people in Paris for 1,500,000 in the whole country according to the unions, only one third of those figures according to the Police), a fourth week of strikes in virtually all public services, the UMP (Chirac's party, right-wing) députés in the parliament singing la Marseillaise to cover the communists singing l'Internationale, the project of reform of our retirement system presented by our Prime Minister has entered the political fray today for its first day of debate in the parliament.

I'm afraid Tom might be right, "the fun looks set to begin." Apart that it didn't turn to be fun today, and, as weird as it seems, it could get much worse. It is as if we cannot make changes without making a revolution.

There will be a lot of scrutiny on this thing from the web-standards community as soon as it will ship.

In a previous life (before the web, yes, there was such a time) I used to have this theory that Microsoft slowed down progress for the whole world by at least 10 years. I reckoned that at the time I lost, numbered in weeks per year, because of the lame decisions in DOS regarding memory, hardware interfaces, etc. that continuously forced us to hundreds of trial-and-error games like "this card should be plugged here but then this one stops working and none of the other slots seem to work unless we work out another IRQ sequence".

FrontPage, to me, has been the software equivalent of that MS-DOS nightmare, applied to the web. As Zeldman politely nailed it in this interview: "FrontPage is not a Web editor, it’s an Internet Explorer production tool. There is a difference." I'm known at my workplace to describe it more like "the worst piece of sh*t the software industry has ever dared to market." FrontPage-produced horrors, or the simple fact that it can destroy a perfectly good template as easy as "open, save", made me lost so much time that I had to officially forbid its use within my vicinity or send back its users from the hell they come from without any support but pity.

By reading between lines on that CNet article, I have some fear that FP will move from an IE to a SharePoint production tool. We shall see.

The Register, after eWeek, reckon that Apple may ship new machines using the new PowerPC 970 from IBM before it releases Panther, its next version of Mac OS X which is expected to make full use of the 64-bit hardware architecture.

Provided that no new hardware announcements at the WWDC in two weeks doesn't sound like an option for Apple, it makes sense for the company to calm the folks down with machines that fill the performance gap, give them a preview release of Panther (already announced) and buy two to three months before releasing Mac OS X 10.3 and announce yet another performance gain. My bet: they will announce a new hardware architecture (read new chips and motherboard) but won't deliver the machines until one or two months later (as usual for quite some time now, they tend to pre-announce machines unreasonably long before they can produce them in quantities, a trend that Jobs stopped when he came back but is guilty of doing again).

Fingers were crossed. Welcome to Europe, Poland.

A propos of a project of tube redevelopment in Camden Town, Tom Coates asks if it is more important to preserve the identity of a city or to look to the future:

should they have tried to preserve some of the facade of the old underground in some way, or is that just nostalgia?

I don't know how to define the identity of a city, for this seems to be subjective and probably encompassing a lot of different notions to different people. For example, its inhabitants mood, pace, commerce, traffic... many things can shape it. I will focus on the architecture (which includes urban design), because it is probably the most compelling element in the perception one has about a city's identity. It is also, I think, the central element in Tom's question.

As a citizen of Paris, I tend to think of the identities of neighborhoods rather than a single identity for the entire city. Once you start to perceive the distinctive elements of Paris' quartiers, you can really think of this city as a juxtaposition of villages. However, Paris is one example of a city that has done a rather good job at preserving its architectural traits, the general consensus now being to preserve existing neighborhoods (the city is busy building a couple of new ones, so it can afford a playground for modernity). But this has not always been the case and one of the oldest constructions, les arènes de Lutèce (a roman amphitheater built around the Ist century in the gallo-roman city which preceded Paris), rediscovered in 1869, was partially demolished around 1880 to build... a bus terminal! In 1883, Victor Hugo wrote to the municipal council:

It is not possible that Paris the city of the future renounces to the living proof that it has been the city of the past. The past leads to the future. The arènes are the antique marks of a great city. They are a unique monument. The municipal council which would destroy them would, in some way, destroy itself. Save the arènes de Lutèce. Save them at all costs. You will do a useful action and, which is better, you will give a great example.

Hugo succeeded to convince the municipal council, which bought the terrain, classified the arènes as a historical monument and eventually did a partial restoration. The public voice (if Victor Hugo can be depicted as the public voice) spoke up in defense of something that was not deemed important at the time: the preservation of a city's heritage.

A striking counter example of city that has, apparently, some problems to preserve its identity is Brussels. If there is such thing as architectural liberalism, it has its European headquarters there. The city of Brussels has allowed the destruction of entire residential boroughs that had their own identity, to build huge business areas. Those areas did not lift off economically and were eventually "returned" to their residential destination. Unfortunately, by the time, their identity had been destroyed and no one would want to live there. As for the creation of a new identity, it seems that anyone is allowed to build anything anywhere in the city, preventing the emergence of a style, or styles within a consistent urban design. I would certainly not say that Brussels has no identity, but its architecture is a pandemonium where the best borders on the worst.

Is London in better shape than Brussels? I would think so. However through what Tom writes and my own trips over the tunnel sous la Manche, it seems that the virus of architectural liberalism has caught London in some way.

Back to Tom's question, are we in a dilemma of nostalgia vs. modernity? I see no reason why preserving the past would jeopardize the future or, more exactly, the evolution of a city's identity. But this requires some efforts and a public consciousness, very much like Victor Hugo did 120 years ago. Architecture, like music or a foreign language, reveals its inner beauty to those who are able to decipher it, and with the effort of learning comes the pleasure of being able to understand and appreciate where we come from, where we are now and, for the most creative, what possible new paths have a chance to last in our identity. Without this, the natural tendency is to destroy and rebuild, to escape a present we are uncomfortable with and a past we cannot understand. I am also a strong believer that preserving the past, far from being nostalgia, provides a great emulation to those who aim at creating our future. Taking Paris as an example (I hope you don't mind, you can transpose that to another city), try to find the architectural styles born less than a century ago that have the creative strength, impact, influence on the city that have the 1900 (école de Nancy, e.g. Guimard and his famous subway entrances) and the Haussmannian styles. There are a few candidates of course, but how would we know without the living proofs of the past?

Interesting examples of Rich Internet Applications by Laszlo Systems.

I have just received this piece by email:

From: Rony D
Date: Ven juin 6, 2003 21:18:24 Europe/Paris
Subject: order

Dear Seller,

I want to buy :
- Sony Ericsson P800, Quantity : 9 units.
Before we'll doing business I want to know can you
ship to Indonesia and payment accept credit card? .
Please let me know ASAP.

Thank you

http://mobile.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Mobile
- Check & compose your email via SMS on your Telstra or Vodafone mobile.

It is the first time I receive a piece of spam where the spammer is willing to buy something from me. Whatever.

BumpList:

BumpList is a mailing list aiming to re-examine the culture and rules of online email lists. BumpList only allows for a minimum amount of subscribers so that when a new person subscribes, the first person to subscribe is "bumped", or unsubscribed from the list. Once subscribed, you can only be unsubscribed if someone else subscribes and "bumps" you off. BumpList actively encourages people to participate in the list process by requiring them to subscribe repeatedly if they are bumped off. The focus of the project is to determine if by attaching simple rules to communication mediums, the method and manner of correspondences that occur as well as behaviors of connection will change over time.

The rules of this game of musical chairs, where you cannot unsubscribe when you want, are forced to re-subscribe on a schedule you don't control, seem more simplistic than simple. You are supposed to conduce conversations with people on that list and there can be only 6 subscribers at a time. The rules are anything but community friendly, there is no incentive to subscribe (less to re-subscribe), you can discuss anything (the current trends are less attractive than the lamest Minitel rose service), your discussion mates will change randomly as they (and you) get bumped out at anytime from this little online torture chamber. I suggest S&M.

So your site has been almost entirely ripped off by some trolls but before long, the infringing pages have disappeared in limbo. What do you do? You invoke the Google cache and use the advanced search facility to narrow your queries to a specific domain. Then, using some trademark or name you own, you nail down the culprit (and let the dogs loose, as many have kindly suggested).

For example, Sogeti is a fully-owned subsidiary of the Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Group. A Google search for "sogeti site:www.odonnell.ee" gives two results that led to something 48 hours ago but not anymore, however let's see what's in the Google cache and compare, for example, this to the original. Isn't that funny, two different companies, having the same chairman (Google on "serge kampf site:www.odonnell.ee" gives interesting results too) and releasing exactly the same financial figures on the same day? Those are only a few examples, I have a printout of 933 pages, basically every single HTML page we had online around March, on which about 10 were not copied straight from our site (at that scale, I really didn't bother to count anyway).

The Google cache, in this particular case, is for the plaintiff both a benefit and a problem. A benefit because even so the infringing pages have disappeared, it is easy to bring them back to materialize the infringement. A problem because when 70% of your visitors who come through search engines do so from Google, they may as well be diverted to (highjacked by, actually) the pirate site. Let's invoke Google another time on something our clients may search for (it may sound boring and irrelevant, just trust me on that one): "IT Global Development Center". Surprise, the pirate site appears first with two results, before the legitimate page which makes it on the third place only! How come? Simple: the copy is more recent than the original, so Google gives it a better rank.

Hopefully, the Google cache will eventually be cleared, stopping this mess (and breaking most of the links on this story, sorry if you came here too late). After which, nobody can tell you're a dog.

This is what I like with the web, each time you are tempted to become blasé, there is something new that tells you you haven't seen everything yet.

On a side note, if you think that intellectual property (or copyright) is theft, think twice. When I express my feelings about music majors or the DMCA, I am not challenging those principles, but the lack of balance and threats that IP extremists are imposing on everyone, our commons and innovation in general. If you cannot see where the theft is in the above post, you are blind, or naïve or may be you run a consulting company in Tallinn, Estonia.

My first attempt at locating the Wixos WiFi access at Gare du Nord in Paris has failed. No signal anywhere near the bus terminal, although the site FAQ says there is one at this station and that Macs are welcome. I even scanned the vicinity with MacStumbler, a wireless scanning tool for Mac OS X.

I did find another WiFi test running in the train station, setup by Intel and SFR, but had no luck either. Those guys had setup their access points on US channels 1-6 instead of using the authorized channels for France, which are 10-13. Apple ships all AirPort products set accordingly with local regulations, so my PowerBook card is listening on the 10-13 channels. The guy at the booth told me that France had unregulated the WiFi band, so they could use more channels, and that Apple did promise a firmware update to allow French customers to reach a broader range of channels. I don't know what's true or not in all that, but I think they could have done a little homework before starting their test and set their AP correctly instead of being sorry each time someone with a Mac comes to ask why their system does not work. And, please, don't blame Apple for respecting local regulations, that's not serious. It did not give me any good feelings about Intel and their capability to setup a public WiFi access. Moreover, I doubt that SFR, a mobile phone operator, is bringing anything more than being another middleman with extra markup for no added value, unless they are about to uncover some breaking new WiFi mobile phone, or where just doing some co-marketing publicity.

This, my friends, is another brilliant demonstration of the difference between user experience/interface maniacs such as Apple and the ruthless techies who think or act like this, this, this, or (last but not least) this. When you have experienced how easy and fast it is to setup a WiFi network with AirPort (you can share your own experience with other systems here), you really wonder how supposedly top-notch techies can spoil it so badly.

Mmh, compare this site with this one. I guess I'm going to have lots of quality time with our lawyers very soon.

Update (3/6): I was in Brussels on a meeting on the last two days without correct access to the net (before you ask, I didn't miss blogging ;-). Their site has profoundly changed over the past 48 hours so the rip off is not obvious now. Hopefully I'm not the only one who's seen it before that move.

Meet the new way to hate people: Fiendster, a parody of Friendster.