In dust we trust

Monday May 31, 2004

Elections: limited democracy?
The European elections are less than 2 weeks away now. That same day (June 13) here in Belgium we also have elections for the regional government, in my case, for the Flemish government.

The past 3 sunday evenings, there was a show on TV, called Doe de stemtest (Dutch). Every show contains 33 multiple choice questions about a theme, e.g. one of them being about 'money'. Based on your answers, you receive a personal profile, which should help you to make up your mind for the Flemish elections. I restrict this test to the Flemish elections, as most of their questions were about Belgian politics. Note that I say 'Belgian' politics, not 'Flemish' politics, as again, most of the questions/issues are situated on the federal (Belgian) political level, not the regional (Flemish) one, if I'm correct.

Anyway, take a look at my results. I'm not going to list the results of the three tests separately, but I'll give you my general political profile, according to this test:

1: VLD	14,28%
2: CD&V	13,27%
3: N-VA	12,85%
4: SP.A	12,37%
5: Spirit	12,37%
6: Vivant	12,37%
7: Vlaams Blok	11,54%
8: Groen!	10,95%

So now what?

They're all in a range of 3,5%, between 11% and 14,5%. The results of every test separately shows the same thing: the order changes somewhat, but their percentages are very, very close. So that doesn't help me to make up my mind either. Not that results of tests make any difference to me, but I'm always interested to know what political color I have... :-)

Now let's take a look at the real choices we have, as most of the political parties over here have formed alliances: VLD + Vivant (26,65%), CD&V + N-VA (26,12%), SP.A + Spirit (24,74%), Vlaams blok (11,54%) and Groen! (10,95%). You should know that nobody asked for alliances anyway, as far as I know. But since every political party needs a score of at least 5% (yet another change nobody asked for), this is the result. So we have 5 choices left. In my case, two of them are out of the question, in advance. It's funny to see that this actually corresponds with the test. One would expect to get a more left-oriented or more right-oriented profile out of a test with 99 questions. In my case, the two parties I don't even consider are the most opposite ones of the Flemish political spectrum I guess, as we have the Vlaams Blok as the most right one, and Groen! as the most left one.

We are used to have much more choice, as you can see. But these alliances restrict our choices from 8 to 5. In my case, I'm left with the 3 major formations, the 3 alliances, and all three of them are within a range of more or less 2%. And you'll have noticed that I didn't need a test on TV to come to this conclusion... :-) But the show contained some nice conclusion as well, more in general, one could see what the Flemish people most care about.

Anyway, let me end with the real problem I'm facing. Even if I had already made up my mind, and selected one of my 3 choices, I'm left with the problem that every choice I have represents 2 political parties! What if I have a problem with one of them? That question is not so unreal, if you know that N-VA is a rather radical Flemish nationalistic party, and, although Vivant has some very refreshing, rather radical left-liberal ideas, I do not agree with all of the ideas. I know, a vote for a party doesn't require to agree with all ideas. But it might be enough to strongly disagree with one idea, for never to vote for a party, don't you think?

So, is it just me, or have they all just limited our choices here? If democracy is about choice, didn't they just limit our democracy here? It surely feels that way!
-- published on May 31, 2004 at 19:30 EDT in category belgium -- Trackback Permalink Comments [2] --

Friday May 07, 2004

Voice
Had a really strange experience at work today. Having a cold is one thing, but it gets really annoying when it affects your voice. So there I was, in a meeting with 10-15 attendees, trying to participate and make my point. Really difficult and frustrating, without voice. As with everything, you only really realize what you have, when it's gone.

Oh well, Thank God it's Friday!
-- published on May 07, 2004 at 16:15 EDT in category dust -- Trackback Permalink Comments [0] --

Saturday April 24, 2004

23
Grab the nearest book.
Open the book to page 23.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

Here we go: "Er komen bij een aantal van mijn klanten jongetjes van 21, met de jeugdpuisten nog vers op het gezicht, consultant spelen in een blauw pak." ("Hoe gooi ik een adviseur eruit?" from Martijn van Oorschot & Michiel Hogerhuis)

Sometimes we do still read books in Dutch, you see. But for those not that familiar with Dutch, I'll provide a second phrase, restricted to books in English. So this book is just a bit further away than the Dutch one:

"But perhaps not as good as the early adopters might have us believe". ("Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering" from Robert L. Glass)

Not that spectacular, I agree. That's why I still read Dutch books as well :-) "If only I understood Dutch", I hear you thinking :-)

Others infected with 23/5: Vincent, Marc, Steven, Bertrand, ...
It's actually a fun game. One could do this with music also: grab the nearest music cd/album/record, listen to lyrics of track 4 and write down the 7th phrase...
-- published on April 24, 2004 at 12:15 EDT in category dust -- Trackback Permalink Comments [0] --

OpenOffice developers say they have no plans to introduce Microsoft-competitive vulnerabilities
Came accross this article, titled OpenOffice trails MS Office in vulnerabilities. It's not new, it's written in September last year, but for some reason I only found out about it today. Oh irony... Excerpt:

Of course, there's also the price barrier to be overcome. At $0.00, OpenOffice simply can't compete. Heck, it can't even get on retail store shelves because a 40% markup on $0.00 gives the retailer a gross profit of approximately $0.00, and most don't feel that's high enough to devote valuable shelf space to OpenOffice.

:-)
-- published on April 24, 2004 at 11:39 EDT in category xroads -- Trackback Permalink Comments [1] --

Thursday April 22, 2004

On the train
This is kind of exciting: I'm on the train from Brussels to Ghent writing this post, reading & sending e-mail, surfing the net. All of this using GPRS, my portable and my SonyEricsson P900: the portable connects to the P900 using an infrared connection (could use Bluetooth as well, but I forgot my adapter at home). The P900 acts as a modem using the GPRS. So basically it's back to the plain old dialup connections :-) Speed: 9,6Kbps.

What is really funny though is the network status over here: there is a big gap between Brussels and Ghent when you want to use your mobile phone and your operator is Proximus. Just for calling people I mean. But the GPRS coverage seems to be much better. Does this make sense?

alright... Time to press the 'post & publish' button...
-- published on April 22, 2004 at 12:15 EDT in category xroads -- Trackback Permalink Comments [0] --

Tuesday April 20, 2004

Understanding the wheel
I just read a post titled 'So what if we choose to write software for geeks' [from Object Country, via Feelings and Thoughts]...

It may be true that you don't need to recreate the wheel, but you don't truly understand the wheel until you have recreated it.

Like that.

What I don't like is being forced to recreate the wheel. Yes, that does happen, despite all discussion, presentations and good arguments... *sigh* ... Sometimes it's just politics.
-- published on April 20, 2004 at 16:17 EDT in category dust -- Trackback Permalink Comments [0] --

Saturday April 17, 2004

Ireland and European software patents
This month the Irish Presidency of the EU referred back the controversial EU Directive on software patents to a committee of politicians from member states. The proposed draft text rejects all amendments made by the European Parliament last September and instead pushes for direct patentability of computer programs.
[from The Register: EU braces for software patent demo]

I really like Ireland, you know, and I'd like to keep it that way. But I'd like to know why they are doing this. Are there some (Irish) readers amongst you can explain this? I read something about this in the Belgian press somewhere, saying it had something to do with investments of big USA based companies in Ireland. I don't know exactly what the point was, but can this be true? Is stuff like that still possible?
-- published on April 17, 2004 at 13:14 EDT in category xroads -- Trackback Permalink Comments [0] --

Bugfix
Recently I received this comment on my Cocoon 2.1.4 upgrade report, from Addison Phillips:
Actually, the browsers are right not to look at the meta tag when the http header has a value: those are the rules. What's more, META tags are notoriously wrong. In JSP it is always best to use the page directive and set the content-type that way. It's even better to use XHTML and set the encoding in the document declaration too. Just a tip.

Well, I don't know where I got that nonsense from in the first place: off course browsers look at the http header. I must have been drinking when I wrote that, I guess :-) So a good reason for a separate 'bugfix' post.

The problem with Cocoon is still a big issue though, as it is still Tomcat that fills in the (missing) http header with the default encoding. You can imagine the mess this creates when you serialize with utf-8... I just checked the bug status in the Cocoon bugzilla, and they are working on it. But it ain't that simple to fix, as I predicted. And unfortunately, I really lack the time to help fixing it. About the XHTML: I am working on that. The goal is to achieve valid XHTML, but I ended up with a blank page in some browser, or text output instead of a nice formatted page in some other browser. It's been a while and I should look into it again.
-- published on April 17, 2004 at 12:35 EDT in category techno -- Trackback Permalink Comments [0] --

And you are?
Which OS are You?

I just couldn't resist this one, although I was a bit scared about ending up as Windows ME or so :-) If you try it, make sure to check out all the possible results, there are some good ones...

[via Waste of Time]
-- published on April 17, 2004 at 08:24 EDT in category dust -- Trackback Permalink Comments [1] --

Tuesday March 30, 2004

Ze Frank On Friendster

Hilarious movie. MUST See. Makes fun of Friendster, Orkut and Wallop.

Monday March 29, 2004

Bad combination
A short entry, just to let you all know that I'm still around. Fighting a cold (or a little flu) combined with all the last minute things that need to be done at the end of our financial year and spiced with renovations of a building: a really, really bad combination. You can take my word for it. And those are just the most demanding issues...

But at least the future looks warm and sunny: according to the local weather forecast, Spring is here to stay, at least this week. Hurray!

Major headache. Time to go to bed, I guess, before my head explodes...

Personal message for M.: no more voice messages please, I will call you back, as soon as I find some time (and have my voice back). I promise! (and I know you're reading this).
-- published on March 29, 2004 at 14:58 EST in category dust -- Trackback Permalink Comments [0] --

Thursday March 11, 2004

MS knows where you're living?
From The Register: MS moves to purge Lindash from Benelux:
Microsoft also wants Lindows to comply with a Dutch court ruling to make Lindows.com inaccessible to visitors from Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Microsoft will ask the court to fine Lindows €124,000 for every day that the website is still accessible to Benelux punters. "Microsoft knows that there is no way to effectively block only browsers from those three countries," Lindows CEO Michael Robertson wrote earlier this week on his website. A small company like Lindows obviously cannot pay such a large sum, Robertson insists. "With Microsoft's $60bn in the bank, they have a virtually unlimited legal budget with which they can simply sue, and sue again, until they win." (...) "The only outstanding question is: just because our servers are connected to the Internet, does that mean than anyone else connected to the same wires can dictate what we do with our servers in the US?" (Lindows CEO Michael Robertson)

Interesting question, Mr. Robertson. But just some crazy thought:
Apparently MS knows how to detect the country of origin of a surfer? Because they do seem to have reasons to believe that your company does not comply to the Dutch court ruling. So perhaps MS can first prove that there are surfers from the Benelux accessing the Lindows.com website?
-- published on March 11, 2004 at 06:16 EST in category xroads -- Trackback Permalink Comments [4] --

13 billion years ago...
... the universe was only 5% of its present age. We can look back that far, taking a deep, very deep image of the universe. Thank you Hubble for the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF)! Its million-second-long exposure reveals the first galaxies to emerge from the so-called "dark ages," the time shortly after the big bang when the first stars reheated the cold, dark universe. According to the press releases, Hubble takes us to within a stone's throw of the big bang itself, with galaxies that lived just 400 million years after the birth of the cosmos. Back then, things looked rather chaotic, don't you think? :-)
Now how did they do this? The HUDF observations began Sept. 24, 2003 and continued through Jan. 16, 2004. The telescope's ACS camera, the size of a phone booth, captured ancient photons of light that began traversing the universe even before Earth existed. Photons of light from the very faintest objects arrived at a trickle of one photon per minute, compared with millions of photons per minute from nearer galaxies.Amazing... one photon per minute??? So for 4 months Hubble looked at one point in space. Amazing, considering it is moving around earth at the same moment...

Now, does everybody realize how important this is? I hope so... The publication of this image was announced on the news today, here in Belgium. Some experts were interviewed, and all stressed out the importance and uniqueness of this image. This Hubble telescope seems to perform better and better, so lets be careful with it, and use it as long as we can. But apparently, not everybody sees it this way. According to the TV news, the release of this image might also be a publicity stunt to show the importance and possibilities of Hubble (once again). This is necessary to convince Mr. Bush to spend enough money on Hubble to keep it up there as long as possible, which is not his intention at the moment. Checking the Hubble site, this is confirmed, as Servicing Mission 4 in Hubble's future (2006) is cancelled! It seems more important to walk on the moon again, or send people to Mars, than organize a final service mission for this amazing telescope...

Some months ago, Mr. Bush revealed his ideas to send people to Mars. The negative reactions on this were mainly inspired by the enormous amount of money this would cost. On the other hand, investing in space travel is a good idea, as this boosts research and leads to all kinds of new technologies. I still remember the American lady they showed us in the news, criticizing the costs of this adventure. She said that the money would be better spent for providing better social security in the USA, or help out the poor in the USA. In the USA... I silently thought about all those hungry people in Africa... There is still lots of things to do on our planet first, before we can start thinking about exploring space. On the other hand, perhaps new NASA technologies might help to improve this global life quality...

You see, I'm not sure what to say about the ideas of going to Mars. But how on earth is it possible that such an important scientific instrument as Hubble is simply thrown away because of financial limitations, while, at the same time, it seems to be possible to spent billions and billions of dollars on a war in Iraq?
-- published on March 11, 2004 at 01:03 EST in category dust -- Trackback Permalink Comments [2] --

Tuesday March 09, 2004

Welcome to Flanders, Belgium
I just added a new category 'belgium', as I'll be writing about my country Belgium, and the region I live, Flanders. Perhaps you'll find some somewhat subjective items about my hometown Ghent also, can't help that, I just love the city I live in :-)
You'll read all kinds of things here, I think the first months I'll probably mainly pay attention to the upcoming elections (June) for the regions, and for the European parliament. Enjoy!

Note: I've also re-enabled the rss feeds for the different categories, you'll find the links at the bottom of the navigation (right side of this page). So if you're not interested in what happens in this little country, you can now feed your rss reader whatever category you want. For the tech geeks, this will be the 'techno' category.
-- published on March 09, 2004 at 04:20 EST in category belgium -- Trackback Permalink Comments [0] --

Monday March 08, 2004

More browsers allowing Javascript?
From time to time I take a look at the browser statistics, to see the market shares of the different browsers. Why? Oh well, sometimes you find yourself writing down minimal browser requirements for a website project. You do not want to support all the different (versions of) browsers, that's just impossible :-) So instead you motivate your choice of browsers and minimal versions by stating that it covers at least xx % of the current browser market.

Nowadays (feb 2004) there are only two browsers left worth mentioning, apparently: IE and Mozilla. Until last year (more or less), Mozilla was still collecting market share from Netscape users, I guess. If you look at the numbers, that would make sense. The last months however, the Mozilla % is growing by 1% a month, and it seems as if it is really taking market share away from IE now. Is this a historic moment? Are browser times really changing? It looks that way, don't you think?

The market share of the Opera browser is still very low, in my opinion. If you read this blog regularly, you know that I'm a Mozilla fan, so that shouldn't surprise me :-) I shouldn't write that, as Opera is in fact an excellent browser also. That was proved to me again, when a reader of this blog encouraged me to install Opera on my Symbian powered SonyEricsson P900. It is really perfect for this kind of devices, I think, I don't know of any better browser for it. So it's my guess that the market share of Opera, given an unchanged browser market composition, will grow in the future, as there will probably be a growing number P900 (equivalents) around...

If you scroll down a bit on the browser stats page, you'll see the Javascript statistics. Now, the last number is from Januari this year, and it says that 8% of the browsers have Javascript functionality turned off, compared to +/- 11% in 2003. This is really surprising me. There are actually more people allowing Javascript? I find that hard to believe. Especially if you consider that atm there are actually people switching from IE to Mozilla. I'd think that using Mozilla, it's a lot easier to disable cookies, javascript and popups in particular. Perhaps these new Mozilla users haven't discovered all the settings yet. Perhaps facing these settings, they're encouraged to actually enable it (perhaps not knowing what it means?). I don't know, do you? I mean, that's an increase of 3% in one month!
Where are those Javascript stats for feb '04? I want to see the number confirmed...
-- published on March 08, 2004 at 17:40 EST in category techno -- Trackback Permalink Comments [1] --