Linux vs Windows

After nearly four years of working with these 2 operating systems, I 've come to some important conclusions.

Linux is a stable operating system. To bring Linux down you have to be ignorant. To bring Windows down you may have a degree in computer science but still there's a good chance that the system will go down or won't reboot normally.

I've installed so many different programs under Windows that the all programs menu would show only the programs starting with A to R. Some of them are integrated with the windows shell as tightly as you can imagine and that is not a nice thing to have. That means that any program installed program may change your operating system as it likes. Think a little bit about viruses and then you'll understand why Windows is so vulnerable. IE explorer is an example of a badly written software that exposes not only your Internet browser to a number of malicious attacks but also the whole operating system. If you're concerned about the safety of your data you won't use IE but any other alternative browser.

Every operating system written before Windows Vista is a perfect way to expose your PC to the hackers. I know little about Vista's security bit as far as I know it's more secure that Windows XP but still the Microsoft security policy is more about security by obscurity that anything else.

Well, OK, I don't like Windows but is there a real alternative?

Linux is very good as servers platform but it remains a platform for geeks. If you don't know what a variable is or a configuration file you'd better not start using it. People wouldn't want to waste their time to learn what the root user is. And if you don't know English you should basically forget that Linux exists. Administering Linux is just too much for non English speaking people.

The other problem with Linux that it was not a desktop OS from the beginning. I've tested the latest Plaxo site with Web 2.0 features and its certainly several times slower in Firefox for Linux (Kubuntu) than in Windows though it works correctly. Adobe doesn't support Linux either, so you forget about Dreamweaver and Photoshop and use instead Kate and and GIMP. Kate is a good replacement for Notepad but GIMP is just too counter intuitive to use it professionally. In short, Linux is for servers and not for desktop applications. I liked the very true statement about installing software on Mac OS, Windows and Linux. To install a program in Linux you have to follow a HOWTO (there's no guarantee that a particular Linux HOWTO works on your Linux distribution), in Windows one usually needs to download and then execute a setup.exe file, and Mac OS you simply drag and drop a program (don't ask me how 'coz I know nothing about Mac OS).

I would personally prefer a Mac OS 'coz it's a kind of Linux system (actually based on BSD) and it's a desktop oriented system. Windows is not so bad but it should prevent access to the Windows Shell (the worst program ever, IMHO). And Linux in a span of couple of years may change the way people look at it thanks to Ubuntu. Not Debian but Ubuntu. It's the only distribution targeted at normal people that have life.

Un île se fait manger par des crustacés

Le titre n'est pas du tout exagéré.

Un île près de la côte du Japon est en train de disparaître grâce à une armée de crustacés qui creusent des trous dans la terre et dans la pierre et ont déjà provoqué la disparition des sommets des montagnes les plus hautes de l'île.

L'Île rocheuse de Hoboro (à droite la photo prise entre 1955 et 1965) est devenue un lieu d'incubation pour d'énormes nombres de créatures connues dans le japonais comme nanatsuba-kotsubumushi, un type d'isopod. Le nombre montant d'insectes a attiré l'attention des chercheurs locaux.


"C'est rare, même sur l' échelle globale, entendre de l'érosion biologique qui a procédé sur une si grande échelle et à un pas si rapide pour changer le paysage d'une île," a dit Yuji Okimura, un professeur émérite à l'Université d'Hiroshima (à droite une photo récente de la même île).

Selon les dossiers de terrain d'Île de Hoboro compilée en 1928, l'île était 120 mètres de long et son point le plus haut s'est levé à 21.9 mètres au-dessus du niveau marin. Dans une photo prise entre environ 1955 et 1965, l'île avait deux pics rocheux et la végétation grandissait sur le sur les plus hauts de pics.

Maintenant, pourtant, le plus haut pic a presque complètement disparu, il reste seulement une protubérance rocheuse d'environ 6 mètres de haut. À cause de cela, la plupart de l'île est complètement submergée à la marée.

Les résidents locaux avaient dit que l'île devenait plus petite après chaque typhon. L'année dernière, Okimura et d'autres chercheurs ont étudié l'île de près. Ils ont trouvé que des insectes nanatsuba-kotsubumushi, qui ont envahi l'île, font beaucoup de des trous dans la roche pour préparer leurs nids. L'île est principalement composé de tuf, une roche formée par l'accumulation de projections volcaniques de petite taille emprisonnant parfois des fragments de plus grosse taille, et les trous que les crustacés ont faits expose l'île à la mer, qui emporte la roche au large.

Le même phénomène n'a pas été observé sur d'autres îles à la proximité.

"Je suppose que la nature du terrain sur l'Île de Hoboro est molle, qui rend facile de creuser des trous. De plus sur l'île les insectes retrouvent l'abondance de nourriture." - a dit Okimura.

(c'est une traduction en français du texte en anglais que j'ai faite pour mes amis francophones)

Panaramio (Google Earth's photo layer)

Abstract

Panoramio is a location aware photo sharing website. Currently, some of the location-tagged photos uploaded to the site can be accessed as a layer in Google Earth, with new photos being added at the end of every month. (wikipedia)

Content

So the whole idea is simple. You probably have a bunch of photos with some astonishingly beautiful in your opinion landscape, townscape or cityscape on it. You wouldn't probably rush to print them because

• you don't print them anyway
• those photos are your memories about places and sights but their are not really private so it's of little value for most of people around
• you wait until the moment you can make a nice photo album from after having collected more material

In the meantime, you can share some of your memories with a large community of Goolge Earth users and a smaller community of Panoramio users, that will be shortly added to the growing Google Empire.

You can see your own pictures in Google Earth :) after some time. Now it takes in average 15 days before photo materials are published to Google Earth. Quite soon there could be no delay whatsoever after Google's acquisition of Panoramio.

So, now you can argue the fact that it's a complete waste of your time. Well, there's a fact that you sacrifice some of your time to a very large Internet community. Just keep in mind that all pictures in Google Earth are uploaded by a smaller part of the same large Internet community. Why not to contribute to the good deed of saving our memories???

What you get back:

• memories ( read photo materials) are stored not on your unreliable hard drives but in Data Centers where a mechanical failure in a hard drive does not lead to a loss of data which is stored on a RAID.
• better services in Google Earth
• easy sharing with your friends. It can become as easy as integrating an RSS feed into your favorite News Reader.

If you don't contribute it's OK too. Just keep in mind if one day you'll have the craving to contribute something from your public life you can do it.

Funny videos

Small boy laughs as a grown-up



Banned Commercial - Condoms



Ali-G Drugs (good knowledge of english is required)



Talking Cats



A big family (27 children) (in french)


5 years rapper Bobby Jay

Des idées et des réponses interessantes avant les élections en Belgique

Vacation in The Hague

I'm back to Brussels after almost a week in The Hague.

I decided to take a week off from my PC and the setting around me. Last days before the 14th of July I was preparing the defense of the internship at Institute Jules Bordet. IMHO, I successfully defended my work though not everything went smoothly but it's another story. Lucy and I celebrated my graduation from ESI really humbly. We went to a place famous for the quality of their fries (frieten). I don't remember the name of place but if you're curious where it is click here. It's something called like frietjes at Jourdanplein.

After some research, the name of the place is Maison Antoine.

Anyways, I was a wee bit disappointed with the quality. It was just too greasy for me. We took only fries and nothing else. After 5 minutes of enjoying those fries and having eaten only the 3rd of the packet, I felt like I would most probably not be able to finish even the half of the frietjes mountain. And I didn't. I even couldn't finish my glass of white beer. It tasted badly and it was not a Hoegaarden. So after having fueled ourselves with some unhealthy food mixed with some beer, we left the Jourdanplein and went back home through light rain.

The day was over and I felt free. For the 1st time since a long time I had nothing to worry about. No more slow servers, no more writing, no need to find a workaround for an old Internet Explorer 6 bug. It was time to go off-line for a moment. I didn't sleep enough the previous days so I went to bed like normal people do at 0:30 A.M.

The next morning I was called by ESI's librarian who said that "Le rapport" (nearly 1000 pages) should be printed 3 times. One for the school, one for I can't remember who, and one for the enterprise. To print 1000 pages on a fast printer takes about 30 minutes under condition that there's enough paper. Fortunately there was enough though not easily accessible. So I quickly went to DynaPrint to bind 4 volumes of my report. I paid something like 25 euros for binding 3 small and one big volumes and for printing 4 covers in color. IMHO, it was a bit expensive. You pay for Flemish support probably 'coz the place is run by Flemish.

I was done with DynaPrint at 11:00 A.M. and left the place for the school, where I dropped the 2nd copy of "Le rapport" and then walked to the Institute to tidy up my bureau and turn off the development system (PC at work).

I talked a bit to William, Koffi, Ranga and Philippe, each time tête-à-tête.



Going to Den Haag CS

Should I go for a dedicated server?

I'll probably buy a dedicated server to host my site and my potential clients' sites (web applications).

Reasons to choose for a dedicated server

1. saves on your electricity bill
2. guaranteed uptime
   
3. fast upload and download, customers don't like slow connections
   
4. saves your bandwidth, hence your ISP bill is lower
5. makes a clear difference between the development environment and the production environment
   
6. you can host other client sites, hence make money out of your server
   
7. you can install just what you need

My requirements are:
root access, enough memory to use a J2EE application server, enough disk space to host sites.

I found a couple of dedicated server providers but they all seem to be a little bit expensive (around 70 USD).

Sommaire

Introduction a l'IJB et son SI

Roadmap

Presentation des projets

ZC et l'application Transport de Patient

Dossier médical sur PDA

Standard ANSI HL7 CDA 2005

Solutions

Application Gestion des courses sur CodeIgniter (MVC framework)

Choix du web framework

Analyse

Implémentation

Démo

Prise de signes vitaux du patient sur PDA

Choix du PDA

Choix de la technologie

CF .NET

C#

VB

C++/CLI

J2ME

Java

HTTP

Choix de l'approche

Application Web Classique

Client léger

Web browser

GUI

Client lourd

Avec des librairies

SOA

GUI

Client Léger

Three-tier architecture

 

 

Analyse

Implémentation

Démo

Projets supplémentaires

XMLValidator

Difficultés

DB2/400

• implémente les spécifications
  

Conclusion

L'IJB considère l'adaptation de l'architecture SOA

• meilleurs performances
  
• utilisation plus optimale de ressources (CPU, RAM, HD)
  
• maintenance plus facile => gain du temps
  

Q & A