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Bruno, long time ago

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Sat, 17 Jul 2004 Bobby Fischer was found... And I missed him

Bobby Fischer Apparently, Bobby Fischer (world chess champion in 1972) was caught in Narita Airport, while he wanted to flight to Philipines with no valid passport.
There are chances that he could be extradited to the United States, mainly for political reasons.

As he is my All Times favourite player, the most disappointing point for me is that he apparently frequented the Tokyo Chess Club (member of the JCA - Japan Chess Association), where I used to play a couple of years ago!!

Fischer's own web site (in Japan) has just been updated with a phone number for people wishing to help him in the current case (+81 3 3735 3675). This is... the number of the Club where I played...

If you wonder who is this guy, have a look on Wikipedia's Bobby Fischer entry.


[/news/world] | permanent link | Google this

Fri, 02 Jul 2004 Phuket Sailing trip pictures

After two months, I eventually took some time to release pictures of our last trip to phuket.

The most interesting during this trip was that Li was not sick at all for her first sailing experience. On contrary, she really did like it! Next step could be to learn how to sail alone? ;-)

[/diary] | permanent link | Google this

Wed, 30 Jun 2004 IE flaw, again and again...

I wonder how long many companies will still consider IE as a standard, despite its long history of critical flaws.

The latest flaws discovered should make anybody aware of the dangers of using this old browser, but even security teams are silent... Imagine that even over a secured connexion, your keystrokes could be recorded when you connect to your bank!

But nobody is going to put his balls on the table for a fight against corporate standards, I guess. Even (with knowledge!) IT teams go on buiding IE-only sites (the easy, lazy, and dangerous way).

[/news/net] | permanent link | Google this

Sat, 19 Jun 2004 Microsoft does not accept free speech

Microsoft is going to sue Sergio Amadeu, President of the Brazilian government's National Institute of Information Technology for defamation.
Apparently, M$ does not appreciate Amadeu's opinion about their business practises:

"drug-dealer practice" for offering the operational system Windows to some governments and city administration for digital inclusion programs. "This is a trojan horse, a form of securing critical mass to continue constraining the country".

M$ considers in the document that this is "an excess in freedom of speech and freedom of thought" (Ooops!). Just remember Bill Gate's speaking in 1998 to make your opinion about the facts:

"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software," he said. "Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."

Original document on lessig.org, and funniest comments on slashdot, as usually!

raoult.com hacked! This web site was just hacked. This article was not written by me (just in case ;-)

[/news/linux] | permanent link | Google this

Sun, 16 May 2004 One hundred years loan in Japan

Now, Japanese can buy a home, and get their children pay for it!

Interesting.

And what will say your children's child, when he/she will receive two of these nice gifts from his/her grandparents?

This looks crazy, but this is not really new: In France, government is using this system (spending now and let next generations manage the deficit) for quite a long time, unfortunately.

Or even better: They found a better system: You pay now for something that you will never get back. The retirement system is the best example as my generation is paying full rate with absolutely no hope of getting any decent retirement allowance later). This exactly means that I am paying for a house that I don't get.

Not bad, is it?

[/news/world] | permanent link | Google this

Mon, 26 Apr 2004 Li is going to sail eventually

We are going again to Thailand, and Li will sail for the first time. We will go with Jock and his yacht, Fi-Tuen, as I already know them.

As usual, Li was going to disturb these holidays, as she managed to find a temporary job for this month (April). So I am just going first there tonight, to arrange the sailing charter conditions with Jock, and she will take the plane this friday, a couple of hours after she finishes her job...

I simply hope she will love this new experience (she never sailed, as said previously), and especially that she will not be sick on board. This could force me to change the next holidays destinations!

[/diary] | permanent link | Google this

Tue, 23 Mar 2004 Magouilleur is not fair play

A new Google bomb was targeting our President.

Just a few hours ago, it was sill working: By searching "magouilleur" (some kind of cheater in French) on Google the #1 result was the French President's web site .

Maybe because this news appeared on first TV channel site in France, TF1, this bombing just disappeared one hour ago from the search engine, both from US and French versions.
Did we get a new magouille there, where some people did ask Google to suppress these links?

Hehehe...

[/fun/net] | permanent link | Google this

Sat, 13 Mar 2004 Welcome to Paris, Li

Li was walking near La Madeleine this wednesday, when a guy on a motorbike robbed her bag. She was so surprised that she did not react at all: She just did not believe this could happen (this is a big change compared to Tokyo famous security!).
She managed to cancel quickly her credit card, and to file a complaint at the police station. As she did not have my phone number, she had to wait for me outside half of the day :-(

The next day she told the story to her french school (a Japanese one), and the other two students answered that they had exactly the same problem! The robbers are apparently looking for Asian women in touristic areas of Paris (Opera, la Madeleine, etc...), as they generally have a lot of cash.

We did not loose a lot this time, and fortunately no important papers. We will just need to change our door lock, which is not cheap at all (from 400 to 800 Euros, depending on the companies).

[/diary] | permanent link | Google this

Sat, 13 Mar 2004 Internet up again

My internet is up again, after one month and a half of outage (!!). Free support service is simply crazy: Not only they did nothing for one month (despite my weekly calls), but they also tell you a different explanation every time you call them.
And try to guess what? Today this high-tech company is asking me to send them a regular mail to get some money back! Just incredible.

[/diary] | permanent link | Google this

Fri, 13 Feb 2004 Windows source leaked

Bill has trouble: Windows NT and W2K source code are available on the internet!

As Microsoft always pretended that closed source is better for security, I wonder what they think about this leak. Will we see hundreds of new worms/viruses appear in the next weeks? This could be funny anyway ;-)

[/news/net] | permanent link | Google this