Pierre’s weblog

Totay I am testing my new blog. I Would really enjoy joining planet.debian.net. That’s a wonderfull things. Thanks to Scott James Remnant and Tollef Fog Heen for their respective work on it :)

My hackergotchi picture thanks to Wouter

Since Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho ask for D-D to explain their vote, here is mine:

I recieved this message yesterday on my email @univ-ubs.fr :
(English spoken person are invited to read the summary at the bottom - context: with the term of the university year in France, the period is propice for lectures and other presentations)

Received: from univ-ubs.fr (pc-adm-21.univ-ubs.fr [172.17.34.21]) by mercure.univ-ubs.fr (8.9.1a/jtpda-5.3.1) with ESMTP id QAA27148; Fri, 18 Jun 2004 16:46:53 +0200
Message-ID: <40D3005C.7040502@univ-ubs.fr>
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2004 16:46:52 +0200
From: “XXXXX” <xxx -censured-XXX@univ-ubs.fr>
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; fr-FR; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0
X-Accept-Language: fr-fr, fr

L’utilisation de materiels personnels modifie le reglage des video projecteurs et peut creer des perturbations dans le deroulement des soutenances. Pour cette raison , il vous est expressement demande de vous conformer aux regles suivantes:

• La presentation du travail de stage se fait en utilisant le materiel mis a disposition par l’IUP uniquement.
• La presentation Powerpoint doit etre sous forme .pps, sur disquette. La version disponible a l’IUP est Office XP.
• En aucun cas il ne doit y avoir de branchement de materiel personnel (portable ou autre) sur le video projecteur.
• Lorsque l’etudiant a prevu une demonstration utilisant du materiel personnel, elle doit se faire sans utiliser le video projecteur.

Merci de respecter ces regles

En: Administrative people in my Uni told students not to use their own laptop because according to them, it breaks video-projector installed at Uni. Administrative people ask students to use Microsoft PowerPoint. Administrative people ask students not to use a video-projector when they need to made a demo of their work.

In other words, I do not have the right to use pdfLatex in my Uni! I do not have the freedom to use anything except M$ plateform. I do not have the right to bring my laptop with Debian! I do not have the right to bring a video projector with me.

This kind of thing is really sad and and make me perplex. I do not really know how to educate so close-minded person. If you have an idea of what should be done, please fill free to drop me an email or post a comment to the following post.

I will attend the LSM from the 6th to the 10th of July 2004 at the ENSEIRB school located on the campus of the Bordeaux I University.

My association (tuxfamily.org) is organizing a petanque Tournament. Feel free to subscribe by sending an email at petanque<at>tuxfamily<dot>org. (Don’t forget your boules!)

As far as I know there will not have any Debian booth. However, some Debian Developers will attend this event. If you come to Bordeaux, visit tuxfamily.org’s booth.

If you wonder about my personal philosophy I guess that this quizz will give you some idea.

it seems that we will “Puts the recent changes made in the social contract in abeyance for the next release of Debian. (Choice 2 on the ballot)”

The winner of the vote is:
Option 2 “Choice 2: Postpone changes until Sarge releases [needs 3:1]”

Well proposal B was my 4th Choice, I would really have prefered a strong deadline for Sarge. But anyway it’s IMHO a good news for Sarge.

Last night we had a Debian dinner here at LSM. We were in a nice restaurant with Andreas Tille, Werner Heuser, Bart Cornelis, Herman Robak, Julien Delange, Julien Danjou, Bill Alombert, Martin Poirier (a Blender developper). There are many Debian developers and helpers here. However most of them have several hats on their head, so it’s not easy to meet alltogether arround the same table.

Since a lot of people missed our event last night, an other event is schedule tonight. I don’t know the exact details since I have an appointment tonight. If you are at Bordeaux these days, please drop me an email :-)

I found the link to this quizz on a recent post of Jaldhar Vyas on planet.debian.net

Wackiness: 34/100
Rationality: 24/100
Constructiveness: 66/100
Leadership: 56/100

You are an SECL–Sober Emotional Constructive Leader. This makes you a politician. You cut deals, you change minds, you make things happen. You would prefer to be liked than respected, but generally people react to you with both. You are very sensitive to criticism, since your entire business is making people happy.

At times your commitment to the happiness of other people can cut into the happiness of you and your loved ones. This is very demanding on those close to you, who may feel neglected. Slowly, you will learn to set your own agenda–including time to yourself.

You are gregarious, friendly, charming and charismatic. You like animals, sports, and beautiful cars. You wear understated gold jewelry and have secret bad habits, like chewing your fingers and fidgeting.

You are very difficult to dislike.

Tonight, I went to a concert of Buddy Guy and Elioth Murphy, I had a wonderfull time. Imagine how it could be nice to sing Hoochie Coochie Man or Sweet Home Chicago! This concert was in a little French town called Binic (Yeah, it’s in Brittany)

It definitely rocks :)

Il y a quelques jours, j’ai achevé la traduction des pages de manuel de module-init-tools. J’espère sincèrement que l’auteur amont va les ajouter dans sa version.

Vous pouvez consulter ces traductions dans le format HTML ici

Pour une nouvelle, c’est une bonne nouvelle. Les pages de manuel de module-init-tools viennent d’être intégrées à la distribution Debian unstable. Merci à Marco d’Itri pour les avoir intégrées rapidement.

Selon toute vraissemblance, la distribution Sarge inclura ces traductions.

Exceptionally, I write in Pierre’s blog.

Pierre was attacked monday evening.
He is currently at Vannes hospital and he seems to be quite well, although he fell from 3 meters.
His health is stable and he should be back in a few days.

You can leave here your comment for him.

I am back at home. I left the hospital yesterday. I still need to stay at home a month to be in better shape. I have several fractures of the petrosal part of the temporal bone (on my right side). The skin of my auditory canal has been removed. My tympanic membrane has also been removed. I ear nearly nothing on my right ear. I have to see the doctor every week.

I believe that it will take quite a long time before I can go back the University and return to the real life. I do not have the right to take the train, the plane. And I should avoid taking the car…

The good news is that I have nearly no headacke since 4 days. The bad news is that I do not have the right to take any shampoo, because I can’t put any water into my ear and into my head.

I am very happy to be back in front of my computer at home. I stayed 15 days at the hosptital. I am up since only 5 days. I am very touched by the people who sent me news and gave me encouragement. Thank you very much.

Je suis rentré à la maison hier. Enfin sorti de l’hopital. J’ai passé 15 jours dans 3 hopitaux différents. J’ai encore 1 mois d’arrêt au minimum. J’ai plusieurs fractures du rocher (os pétreux). La principale préoccupation c’est de savoir si le liquide des méninges ne va pas couler dans ma gorge. Donc, je suis sous surveillance très rapprochée pour savoir si je ne fais pas une méningite. Le principal problème que j’ai maintenant c’est que je n’entends presque rien de l’oreille droite. Je n’ai plus de tympan et toute la peau du canal oditif qui se remet petit à petit en place. L’ORL ne sait pas encore si mes osselets vont se remettre dans le bon sens.

Je vais donc aller revoir le médecin à l’hopital de Rennes toutes les semaines. Prochain rendez-vous lundi matin. Depuis 5 jours j’ai le droit de me lever, et depuis 4 jours mon oreille ne saigne plus. Je n’ai presque plus de maux de tête. Une bonne nouvelle parce que je n’ai pas le droit de prendre de paracetamol étant donné que ça masquerait une hausse de température. Donc je prends tranquilement ma tampérature deux fois par jour.

Je suis bien content d’être rentré à la maison car depuis 5 jours les journées à l’hopital devenaient bien longues.

Concernant mes agresseurs, je n’ai pas la moindre nouvelles. Il faudra que je retourne à Vannes pour déposer plainte d’ici quelques jours. Une bonne nouvelle qui est venue de Vannes, c’est que j’ai eu mon année de Licence. Maintenant il me reste donc à m’inscrire en Master 1. Ceci étant, je ne sais pas du tout quand est-ce que je pourrai retourner en cours.

Je voulais remercier très sincèrement les gens qui m’ont envoyé des nouvelles et des mots de soutien. Vraiment ça fait très chaud au coeur.

I am always in convalescence after the aggression I was victim on september 6th. My body is now in good shape, but my moral is very low. I am not doing many things. But that’s not the subject of this post. These last days at home, my family decided to install a wifi network. Since I am _the_technician_ of the house - you probably know that, when someone meet a problem on his PC, he never forget to get in touch with you - my policy was to let only PC under Linux to connect to the Internet with the wifi. This occasion was a great opportunity to test ubuntu. In the past I had tested progeny, and I quickly come to Debian. Not because Progeny was bad, but because it was perhaps too early to have a stable distribution only working with a GUI. I was very surprised by Ubuntu, first because its look is very nice, but the most important is that ubuntu brings a lot of nice tools unavailable under Debian testing or unstable : Gnome 2.8 for ex. I was not a fanatic of gnome, but a few month ago I tried Gnome as soon as 2.6 entered into our distribution. Now I am still using gnome (I am using gnome-terminal a lot).

I read a lot of emails, posts and comments about ubuntu, but to be honnest ubuntu makes me wonder about the future of Debian. I am not sad, but to my mind we have to resolve our problems in a near future otherwise our project will loose its energy, its maintainers, and its users.

Strong projects from Debian have been included into Ubuntu, the others have “not yet been integrated” or have been ignored… I do not want to make here a judgment on debian maintainers but we have to see the reality in front. 3 examples to show the interest of Ubuntu:

The debian-installer has been included without major changes because it’s nice and because Joey Hess is doing a nice work (He is not alone, but he realised a very big work).

Some people from the gnome-team have been recruited by canonical (that’s a great opportunity for them, and I deeply belive that canonical did a good choice).

Ubuntu is providing an up-to-date distribution with security support and the most important packages (other packages, from universe are only included to provide a lot of packages to ubuntu users).

Let’s go back a few seconds on the gnome-team. (Note that I am not involved in maintaining gnome)
What interest for people involved in gnome-team, when they must upload the lastest stable release of gnome (2.8) only in experimental, and when gnome users are only repporting bugs that have been fixed in 2.8 ? If I remember correctly, a few month ago (before the summer) the gnome-team was obliged to convince the release team that gnome 2.6 was not breaking gnome 2.4 because we were about to release Sarge. Now, gnome 2.8 has been released, we still do not have released Sarge. Are gnome-maintainers supposed to wait for the release of Sarge before uploading 2.8 into unstable ? I understand that they are interested by Ubuntu. Nobody can blame those guys. Ubuntu is based on gnome 2.8 and I can tell you that It works well.

I really belive that some “key persons” on the Debian project should stop focusing on their own person, and should recognise the reality. Debian is not on the good way. I wish I had not such idea, but unfortunately currently I do not think that we are doing the right things (except debian-installer, gnome-team and translators). I am really tired to see people complaining that Ubuntu is not intersting. Sorry guys, but at least test it.

I am still using Debian on my PCs. But today I was obliged to grab packages from ubuntu to use gnome 2.8… My question is simple today I started to grab packages from Ubuntu, gnome was the first, what packages will follow on the list ? And I wonder if I will see Debian as motivating than in the past when I decided to join the project.

P.S. I do not know if my low motivation on Debian is a consequence of my agression, or if it’s related to Ubuntu and the indifference of some Debian maintainers that refuse to see that Debian is on a difficult path.

Last night on the topic of #traduc on irc.oftc.net, the topic mentioned the following URL:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=194498

In French typo we have non-breakable spaces. The problem is that currently mozilla does not handle these non-breakable spaces correclty. It simply replaces non-breakable spaces by “normal” spaces. It renders some forms, filenames and wiki very dirty. You could help solving this issue by voting for this bug.

For more information, read the whole bug repport. Please VOTE for this bug!

Yesterday, I passed the TOEFL. The computer based test. I am waiting for the results however, at first sight it does not seem that bad:

The final score will provide the mark for Structure / Writing. I do not know yet If I will study in an american university. The goal of this TOEFL was to have a proof about my English level, and who knows perhaps studying in a foreing country next year. FYI I am currently in first year of a Master of Computer and Science in France.

My best training was Debian. We are always working in English, it helps a lot. Evenif develepers’ mother tongue is not English. If somebody knows an intersteting university, not too expansive, drop me an email. In France we have that chance that our tuition fee is very low

I finaly receive my results of TOEFL last saturday, I am proud to announce that I get 227 as Total score. For those who would worry about such score, please do not. It’s a computer based test. That is to say that if I had taken the paper based test, I would get 567.

Thanks to planet.debian.org I was informed of the blogger code.

My blogger code is the following:
B4 d++ t+ k+ s- u-- f- i o+ x e l c--

En parcourant l’Internet depuis quelques semaines, j’ai été ammené à lire plusieurs articles sur les personnes qui voteraient non à la constitution parce que les brevets logiciels ont été approuvés en Europe. Permettez moi de dire que c’est une très mauvaise idée !

Dire non à la constitution parce que les brevets logiciels viennent d’être adoptés c’est vraiment une fois de plus, détourner la question que nous adresse le Président de la République en pensant que ça va nous aider à surmonter nos problèmes ! C’est du même acabit que les gens qui voteront non à la constitution parce que, pensent-ils à tord, ça veut dire intégrer la Turquie dans l’Europe.

En effet la constitution pour laquelle le Président de la République a souhaité nous solliciter est un enjeu majeur qui donne de bien meilleures possibilités aux citoyens de faire évoluer l’Europe. Je vais citer un exemple concret. Une fois que la constitution sera adoptée, il est possible d’organiser une pétition internationale. Il faut que cette pétition rassemble 1 million de signatures au travers de plusieurs pays pour qu’elle soit considérée par la commission.

Le traité de Nice actuellement en application empêche qu’on fasse évoluer la situation (plutôt que de faire ici un copier/coller d’articles que j’ai lu, adressez-vous à google à ce sujet). De plus concernant les défenseurs du non, comprennez bien une chose : c’est qu’un Philippe de Villiers, une Christine Boutin, un Jean-Pierre Chevènement, ou une Marie-Georges Buffet n’arriveront jamais à se mettre d’accord sur un texte. (Notez que je respecte les personnes que je viens de citer, même si, vous l’aurez bien compris, je n’ai absolument pas la même sensibilité politique)

Pour une fois nous avons l’occasion de nous retrouver face à un enjeu qui transcende les partis politiques. Certes le texte n’est pas parfait, certes c’est très fastidieux à lire, mais Albert, et vous qui êtes en train de me lire, plutôt que de voter non, votez d’un OUI franc, direct et participez.

Une fois que la constituion sera en application, nous aurons au moins la possibilité de faire évoluer notre vision et de demander le retrait des « brevets logiciels ». Quoi de plus simple que de mobiliser 1 million de personnes à travers l’Europe pour nous autres qui faisons parti de la communauté du Logiciel Libre ?

Première mise en ligne le 7 mars 2005
Dernière mise à jour le 17 mars 2005