/home/nand

Hey, Ubuntu brainstorm has been launched!

Ubuntu users can now submit their ideas and suggestions for Ubuntu, and vote for them. This will greatly boost Ubuntu’s ability to assess the user base expectations, and act accordingly. Two months before the next Ubuntu Developer Conference, I think this is a great time to start gathering input and brainstorming some rocking stuff for the Ibex!

Go, start unleash your ideas! And if you want, digg it!

Update: Due to a badly handled redirect, IE users will face a 404 not found. Shall I find a bugreport?

I’m forwarding a great piece of news today: the Gnome Foundation, with the sponsorship of Mozilla, Google, Novell and Canonical, will fund 50000$ of bounties to enhance Gnome accessibility.

More specifically, there will be a list of tasks held at the program’s home, and tasks will be divided into small 2-weeks tasks and long 6-months tasks. You apply for a specific task, and your submission will be reviewed. Then, if you are accepted, you can happily start to work on it, and once done, your work will be reviewed.

No hurry! Right now, there is no tasks, the initial task list is expected for the 1st March.

Today, they should all have come back to France. One thousand mighty Renault 4L that started from France, headed down to Spain and went through hell in the rocky tracks of the south of Morocco. That’s called the 4L Trophy, and it’s a big student event in France. In fact, only students are allowed!

I think why it has so much success is because of the challenge. The challenge before the rally : gathering 3000 euros (participation fee), finding a Renault 4L, repairing it, customizing it. And you bet that takes a while! A 4L is a car that was produced from 1960 to 1990, so they are generally in pretty bad shape! And the challenge during the rally, because you are on your own, and it’s an orientation rally! Of course you break your car, and you know what? It’s just fun

Last year I had the luck to join the fun and participate! Look at my mighty 4L!

We did have some problems with it, essentially ignition problems, which have led us to some amusing times. A 2000 meter mountain pass at 10 km/h, the loss of our catalytic converter, a tire blowup on the motorway,… And THE “Speed” period! Imagine some narrow rocky area, with lots of 4Ls. Everybody slows down, stops. Except us. Because, at any cost, we had to drive faster than 15 km/h. Any lower, and the car would stall, and refuse to start again Here is our team’s video:

That was a great time. Unfortunately, back to France, I had to sell it. The buyers participated to the 4L Trophy this year, and according to some pictures, it looks like they made it

Now I’m looking forward another great trip… And the Mongol Rally looks promising!

I’m forwarding a blog entry in which Adobe ask for Linux beta testers for their AIR technology. If I have correctly understood, it is a Internet rich client technology using Flash and Flex. It’s currently available on Mac and Windows, and it is being ported to Linux.

I’m a bit curious about this technology. A lot of different efforts are currently under way to improve the Internet experience, with the now-stalled XHTML 2.0, the upcoming HTML5, the proprietary Silverlight and its open source counterpart Moonlight,… Is this new one a viable competitor?

So I signed up

Edit: Wrong choice of word, as pointed out, XHTML 2.0 is not “stalled”. What I intented to express was the lack of enthusiasm around XHTML 2.0.

I tried some title banners for the website, but Thorsten got in the ring and knock me out Here are his banners :

This was the last artwork needed. Now I will finish with some SQL tweak, and the websites will be ready for upload and private testing for a while!

We got an interesting discussion a few days ago at work : how can we motivate a programmer to work harder?

A salesman get a commission for each sale, and a good salesman can double or triple its base salary. That, gives motivation. But how can we do that with a programmer?

• A bonus per feature added? It’s against team work and against quality.
• A bonus per bug resolved? It would obviously depends of your position, and could lead to bad behaviors (i.e. introducing trivial bugs).
• Bonus on quality of code? Too long and subjective.
• A bonus per line of code? You can laugh at that, but I heard this was used sometimes at the early time of IT by ignorant people.

Do you have some ideas on this subject?

A month ago I ordered one of the new Ubuntu Dell on the Dell France website : the Inspiron 6400. The base price was around 450 euros, and I took almost all the upgrades, for a final price of around 750 euros. The specs are : a Intel dual proc, 2Gb of RAM, 160Gb HD, 15′4 inch screen, i965 video chipset, DVD+RW burner, 9-cell battery, and a 4-year-warranty. That’s it for the laptop itself. I will now focus on Dell’s integration of Ubuntu (more specifically feisty), something that intrigued me.

First the content of the package :

• The laptop and its charger. (with no Windows sticker)
• the Ubuntu CD
• the “Drivers and utilities” CD, full of drivers and utilities… for Windows.
• Some warranty papers
• A single paper with the Ubuntu technical support phone numbers for UK, France and Germany.
• A 200 pages manual detailing the basic operation of the computer (setting up network, copy a DVD) … on Windows.

Ok right, they are just starting this new business with Ubuntu, they have not yet fully updated everything… Still, it’s kind of weird to receive a manual for the wrong product

I boot the computer, Feisty took around one minute to load (with a switch to text view because something was being generated, fonts IIRC), I had a first-time wizard to process, then first bad surprise : I’m in 1024×768 in a 1200×800 widescreen, and I can’t change it, I’m limited to 4/3 resolutions. I can say that having a 4/3 desktop scretched on a widescreen is not really pleasant, for those who didn’t tried this. But that was the only bad surprise. Hardware compatibility is otherwise perfect, even the modem has his driver! (Haven’t tried it though). And for the first time, I was able to suspend successfully on Linux. Even the music control buttons on the front of the laptop were working with Rythmbox!

Concerning the Ubuntu interface, there was no custom Dell changes. No dell utilities, no trial-trashware icons, no new wallpapers. A plain vanilla Ubuntu. I only noticed two partitions with lots of files in Nautilus, one amongst them was a gigabyte feisty704.img file. So they also made a rescue partition! Nice. Haven’t tried to launch it yet.

One of the thing I was curious about was : were Dell using their own repositories? The answer is : no. So quickly after updating the system, I was given the choice to update to gutsy. Ok let’s see what will change. The result is : I got my 1200×800 using the new display manager and choosing the intel driver instead of the i910 one. But I lost the use of the music control buttons on the front of the laptop, probably some xorg stuff to tweak. Otherwise, same perfect compatibility.

So on the overall, I’m pretty happy: For the first time, I have a fully compatible computer (well almost, but I’ll forget the front music buttons), and there was some nice work from Dell, with their rescue partition, and the compatibility. Now I’d hope they would make a better packaging!

EDIT: The front music buttons are now working! Maybe just rebooting was sufficient.

Edit: new ones:

I’m not an artist, ok? The website look where will go the logos, for reference.

And the most annoying bugs :

Still on the road to the Ubuntu idea braistorming and most annoying bug websites, here are some more artwork contributed by thorsten: the “image links”. These images are supposed to be posted on various websites and forums to support an idea/bug and ask for votes.

You remember the old days when it was the websites that were deciding what you should use? “Best viewed in IE 5.5 in 1024×768″, or even worse the ones that were refusing if you didn’t had the browser of their choice? Yeah I know, a few websites still have these restrictions, but usually it is legacy stuff that they are working on to remove. With the rise of alternatives browsers (mainly Firefox) and alternatives OS (mainly Mac OS, yes, not Linux yet!), nowadays are the days of the interoperability. IT people are supposed to catch the trend and offer relevant solutions. That’s what we see … but not always. Bad luck for me.

Incompetent IT staff from a brand new ISP I now use, DartyBox (founded in 2006 IIRC) decided that their IP TV offer should be broadcasted on… IE in XP/Vista with WMP only! Not only does it limit your “choice” of OS, but it also limits you choice of browser! And I really wonder what they were thinking by offering their TV service on a browser… Absurd. On the opposite, a very good solution from their ISP competitor Free offer their TV service on VLC. Cross platform, no TV-on-browser oddities, perfect!

One funny thing while I was trying to get this working on VLC (unsuccessfully) :

** (.:16387): CRITICAL **: gtk_pizza_set_size: assertion `pizza != NULL' failed

I really wonder how taste a GTK pizza