20100330

Why I like staying at Hilton...

A few days ago I stayed at the Hilton Diagonal Mar, in Barcelona, for a conference. Yet another big international hotel, you'll say. Sure. But...

When I left the hotel, I forgot (I realized when arriving home) the charger for my electrical shaver (my favorite Braun 340 Wet & Dry) in the bath room.

I had just received the satisfaction survey e-mail from my stay, so I added a comment saying that I had forgotten the charger for my shaver... after a few mail exchanges telling them where I thought I had forgotten it, the house keeping service went and looked in the room, and found it.

They posted it to me directly, no questions asked (appart from "what is your postal address?). I just got it today.

That's service for you. And that's why I like Hilton.

20100325

Closing panel of Octopus conference


At Council of Europe on Cooperation Against Cybercrime

20100324

20100317

OpenSolaris on a mobile medical assistant...


Now we need proper support for Intel's Mobile Clinical Assistant APIs... And Wacom tablets!

Une entree tentaculaire


Calmars frits... Miam!

La paella dans la poelle


Bientot dans nos assiettes!

Paella noire!


En compagnie de mon amie Maria Eugenia!

20100316

OpenSolaris on Panasonic Toughbook CF-U1


At HIMSS Barcelona. OpenSolaris SNV_130. Out-of-the-bix live CD. Touchscreen not working, but the rest yes. Driver to look into... Nice machine for fielf/outdoor medical work!

OpenSolaris on Panasonic Toughbook CF-30


At HIMSS Barcelona. Running off of the SNV_134 live CD... Out-of-the-box : 3D graphics, WiFi, touch screen and pressure touch pad. Military grade OS on military spec solud hardware! I want one of those puppies for myself!

20100312

MPAA's contradictions...

In the March 10 report available here, the MPAA (you know, the guys who bully people who share media between each others) states :

"The Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA) today released its annual Theatrical Market Statistics Report for 2009. The report shows that global box office receipts reached an all time high of $29.9 billion, an increase of 7.6% over 2008 and almost 30% from 2005. The U.S./Canada market reached $10.6 billion, an increase of more than 10%, and International receipts increased 6.3% to $19.3 billion in 2009."

Interestingly enough, this seems to contradict everything they claim regarding the effect that so-called piracy has on the media industry. If you were to believe what they say elsewhere, piracy is killing the media industry.

Well, for a dying industry, the numbers published May 10th 2010 seem to be pretty optimistic.

So here, I officially accuse MPAA of lying in order to push their own agenda. And that agenda is that they do not yet know how to adapt to the changing world, so rather than try to figure it out, they are doing (as they have always done since the first audio recording of a live artist threatened to kill the live artists industry) what they know best : threaten people, bully people, stick their heels in the ground to freeze the world from moving, lobby and pressure states into promoting unrealistic legislations, and so on... you get the picture.

(You got the picture, of course, probably using BitTorrent, if you believe MPAA!)

20100306

Home made fondue...


... Moitie moitie, at home!