Firefox Download Day Today! Check the start time!
Tuesday, 17th June 2008, is the Firefox 3 download day.
For the world record attempt, check the start time for your location before downloading Firefox.
If you are located in Athens, Greece, we start at 20:00, Tuesday 17th June 2008.
If you are located in London, UK, we start at 18:00, Tuesday 17th June 2008.
Check the correct start time for your location.
Download Firefox 3!
For more information, see http://www.spreadfirefox.com/
ert-archives.gr: “Linux/Unix operating systems are not supported”
ERT (Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation) is the national radio/television organisation of Greece.
ERT recently made available online part of its audio and video archive, at the website http://www.ert-archives.gr/
When browsing the website from Linux, you were blocked with a message that Linux/Unix operating systems are not supported. This message was appearing due to User-Agent filtering. Even if you altered your User-Agent, the page would not show the multimedia.
There has been a heated discussion on this on local mailing lists, with many users sending their personal polite comments to the feedback page at the ERT website. Many individual, personal comments have value and are taken into account.
Since today, http://www.ert-archives.gr/ does no do filtering on the User-Agent, and has changed the wording at the support page saying that
Σχετικά με υπολογιστές που χρησιμοποιούν λειτουργικό σύστημα Linux σχετικές οδηγίες θα υπάρξουν στο άμεσο μέλλον.
which means that they will be providing instructions for Linux systems in the immediate future.
Going through the HTML code of http://www.ert-archives.gr/ one can see that the whole system would work well under Linux, out of the box, if they could change
<embed id="oMP" name="oMP" width="800" height="430" type="application/x-ms-wmp"
to
<embed id="oMP" name="oMP" width="800" height="430" type="video/x-ms-wmp"
Firefox, with the mplayerplugin, supports the video/x-ms-wmp streaming format. You can verify if you have it by writing about:plugins in the location bar and pressing Enter. For my system it says
Windows Media Player Plugin
- File name: mplayerplug-in-wmp.so
- mplayerplug-in 3.40Video Player Plug-in for QuickTime, RealPlayer and Windows Media Player streams using MPlayer
JavaScript Enabled and Using GTK2 Widgets - ...
-
MIME Type Description Suffixes Enabled video/x-ms-wmp Windows Media wmp,* Yes
I am not sure if the mplayerplugin package is installed by default in Ubuntu, and I do not know what is the workflow from the message that says that a plugin is missing to the process of getting it installed. If you use the Totem Media Player, it instructs you to download and install the missing packages. I would appreciate your input on this one.
A workaround is to write a Greasemonkey script to replace the string so that Firefox works out of the box. However, the proper solution is to have ERT fix the code.
I must say that I would have preferred to have Totem Movie Player used to view those videos.
I just finished watching a documentary from the 80s about ecology and sustainability of the forests on my Linux system. It is amazing to listen again to the voice-over which is sort of a signature voice for such documentaries of the said TV channel. The screenshot shows goats in a forest, and mentioning the devastating effects of said animals on recently-burnt forests.
Update (22Mar08): The problem has not been resolved yet. Dimitris Diamantis offers a work-around at the Ubuntu-gr mailing list.
Vote NO with comments (on DIS 29500 / OOXML)
- Vote “No, with comments,” which is the JTC1-prescribed way of indicating “conditional approval” (JTC1 Directives (DOC, pops), Section 9.8)
- Recommend that OOXML be resubmitted as normal working item in JTC1/SC34:
- Split into a multi part standard: WordProcessingML, SpreadsheetML, DrawingML, Office Open Math Markup, VML, etc.
- Have each part progress independently, at its own speed, within normal ISO processing stages
- Encourage participation from OASIS to identify opportunities for harmonization with existing ISO 26300 “ODF”
- OOXML, as the default format in MS Office, is important. But as a standard it is full of inconsistencies, omissions, inaccuracies and errors. No standard is perfect, but OOXML, in its current state, does even not meet the minimum requirements.
source: Rob Weir's presentation slides, last slide (pdf)
OOXML is being rushed to become an ISO standard using the fast-track process. This is not good. As end-users we want real commodity document formats that are easy to implement and do not tie us to a specific office suite. Sadly, the purpose of rushing to standardise OOXML is simply to avoid letting it become a commodity document format. By letting OOXML become an ISO standard as it is now, a few companies get to gain a lot, but we are going to lose.
Spread the word.
I copy below the voting country list.
According to Rob Weir, all countries can cast a vote on this; sorry for this misinformation.
The voting countries (Participating countries) are (the list is being updated, please see Participating countries for new list)
In addition, the following countries have observer status (Observer countries), (the list is being updated, please see Observer countries for new list)
The observer countries, though the cannot vote, they can submit comments.
Greek OLPC localisation status
The Greek OLPC localisation effort is ongoing and here is a report of the current status.
For discussions, reading discussion archives and commenting, please see the Greek OLPC Discussion Group.
We are localising two components, the UI (User Interface) and applications of the OLPC, and the main website at http://www.laptop.org/
The UI is currently being translated at the OLPC Wiki, at OLPC_Greece/Translation. At this page you can see the currently available packages, what is pending and which is the page that you also can help translate.
At this stage we need people with skills in music terminology to help out with the localisation of TamTam. In addition, there are more translations that need review and comments before they are sent upstream.
Moreover, if you find a typo and a better suggestion for a term in the submitted translations, feel free to tell us at the Greek OLPC Discussion Group.
The other project we are working on is the localisation of the Greek version of www.laptop.org. The pages are not 100% translated yet, so if you want to finish the difficult parts, see the Web translation page of laptop.org.
The translators that helped up to now have done an amazing job.
OOXML voting process and controversy
By the end of this month, the ITC 1/SC 34 Technical Committee (ISO) will be voting on whether to accept or not OOXML as an ISO standard.
The voting countries (Participating countries) are
In addition, the following countries have observer status (Observer countries),
The observer countries, though the cannot vote, they can submit comments.
The current stage that OOXML is at, is 40.20, which means is the period that leads to the voting whether to accept or not as an ISO standard.
This proposed document format is controversial because an existing document format exists, the OpenDocument document format, ISO/IEC 26300, Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0, since 2006.
OOXML is a controversial document format. Read more on this regarding OOXML.
In addition, see the Technical White Paper on OpenDocument and OOXML by the ODF Alliance UK Action Group. Another whitepaper, ODF/OOXML technical white paper by Edward Macnaghten.
Open Malaysia is also valuable resource (includes blog contributions relating to open standards). For example, in spreadsheets in OOXML one cannot write dates before the 1st March 1900!
Finally, Achieving Openness: A Closer Look at ODF and OOXML by Sam Hiser.
Update #1: Microsoft is Outmuscling OOXML Opposition in Spain
Update #2: It is important to vote NO rather than abstain. It is sad that Spain decided to abstain rather than voting NO. UPDATE: Spain is an observer, thus cannot cast a vote. Somewhat lost en la traduccion.
Update #3: Czech comments on OOXML.
GUADEC Day #1
I am writing this in the morning of the second day (posted at the end of the second day). Just had breakfast and there is a bit of time before making it to the conference venue.
Yesterday Sunday, was the first of the two days of warm-up for the GUADEC conference. At 11am the registration started. I was in front of the queue and got my badge quickly, then picked up the bag with the goodies; three cool t-shirts, a copy of Ubuntu 7.04, Fedora 7 Live, Linux stickers, two Linux pens, a mini Google Code notebook (no, that's an actual notebook (not that type of notebook, it was just the paper-based thing)).
During registration I met up with Dimitrios Glezos (of Greek Fedora fame) and a bit later with Dimitrios Typaldos. It was the first time I met both of them in person.
Between a choice of two sessions I went to the one on X.org developments (XDamage, xrender, etc extensions and how to use them). Ryan Lortie gave the presentation.
Next was lunch time, and Dimitrios T. recommended a pub for traditional English food and drink. Sayamindu came along.
The next session I went to was the Hildon desktop, which is what we used to call Maemo; GNOME for internet tables such as the Nokia 770 and Nokia 800. There are special technical issues to solve. Lucas Rocha mentioned refactoring issues with the source code. In addition, as far as I understood, there is an issue with the internationalisation support for the platform.
Next, Don Scorgie talked about the GNOME documentation project. Several things can be improved and one of them is the introduction of a simplified XML schema for the needs of GNOME documentation. When compared to DocBook XML, the new GNOME documentation schema has only 6 elements (or do they call them tags?). In addition to this, there is a documentation editor with a special rich-edit widget for this schema. Mallard is a type of duck(?).
I also attended the last 10 minutes of the presentation on project Jackfield (sadly no special significance between Jackfield and what the project is about). Jackfield is apparently a way to run Javascript scripts on the desktop. OS/X is supposed to have it, and there are already scripts available. With Jackfield, you can run those scripts unmodified on Linux. The demos where really impressive.
The final session for the day was a presentation by Richard Rothwell on free software for the socially excluded. No, you do not have to go to Africa for this. His work relates to families in Nottingham, UK. It reminds me the situation and effort in Farkadona, Greece, that was described by Kostas Boukouvalas. I think it would have been helpful if Kostas Boukouvalas could have attended this. Richard is running a 3-year project that provides a number of PCs (in the hundreds?) with Linux to socially excluded families. Even in the UK, funding is hard to come by.
What’s wrong with health care systems?
It is generally quite easy to create a blog using one of those online services such as Blogspot. In fact many people create a blog and after a couple of posts they lose interest and neglect to update it. There is a blog I would like to draw your attention to, http://fakellaki.blogspot.com/. This blog was last updated on 3rd May 2007, one month ago. Quite sadly, it will not get updated again because the blogger has just passed away.
Amalia, the blogger, has been a victim of malpractice of the health service (both national and private) who failed her. 
At the age of 8 she was complaining that there was pain at her leg. The doctors failed to diagnose a case of schwannoma (a type of benign tumour). Seventeen years latter and after many visits, the tumour became malign and she developed cancer. A further five years of fight against cancer and she passed away in May 2007.
At the time of writing, her final blog post has over 1500 comments.
In the US there is no national healthcare system which leaves tens of millions of people without basic healthcare. For the rest, who have private healthcare, it appears there is a varying degree of satisfaction. Michael Moore, in his latest documentary Sicko, talks about the trend in the US private healthcare system to actively look for technicalities so that they do not cover the medical expenses.
What is wrong with the health care system? Is health care inherently expensive so that quality naturally drops? Are the examples depicted above the norm or are they just mere exceptions? What's the true cause of the problem?
Techteam.gr does not work from abroad?
Quite strangely I try to connect to http://www.techteam.gr/ from abroad (UK) and I cannot. The result I get is similar to blocking someone using a firewall.
However, when connecting from inside Greece, it simply works.
Techteam.gr, why does this happen?
Update (Jun 07): Apparently there is still some blocking at some times during the day.
The OLPC and Greek
(oh, I am writing this through a lousy Net connection; thanks Engelados)
I tried out the latest OLPC image, specifically build 218, on Qemu and my aim was to get Greek support configured, if it was not there already.
The OLPC does not currently come with a good set of Greek fonts; you will need to install a set of fonts such as DejaVu or GFS Didot.
Installing means adding the font files in the directory /usr/share/fonts/. The current font configuration files in the OLPC favour Bitstream Vera, therefore you would need to move the bitstream subdirectory outside the fonts directory. DejaVu is based on Bitstream Vera and therefore you will not notice any change once you upgrade. Also, Fedora Core 6 and Ubuntu Linux are based on DejaVu. You need DejaVu, as Bitstream Vera does not currently support Greek. Both DejaVu and GFS Didot are free and open-source fonts.
Note: This screenshot shows DejaVu Sans, not GFS Didot. Sorry for the typo.
This is the OLPC running the cut-down version of the Abiword wordprocessor. Click on the image to view the full size.
This is the OLPC showing the same document above with GFS Didot. The font looks quite nice and similar to old greek textbooks. There is a small issue however, it does not have the character coverage of DejaVu. For example, notice that the Euro sign is missing from GFS Didot. Also, other glyphs such as fancy bullet characters are missing as well. Normally, the OLPC software should replace those missing characters with the correct characters from another font. Apparently something is wrong here and needs further investigation.
Writing support for the Greek language has to be configured separately in the OLPC. The case with other languages appears to be that the default layout is that of the language; apparently there is no need to switch between Brazilian Portuguese and English. For the Greek language it appears that it is good to be able to switch between Greek and English.
There are several places that you can add Greek writing support. The most common is in /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Having gone through the configuration files, I think that /etc/X11/Xkbmap is also a good place and saves us from touching the core Xorg configuration file.
To write the full set of Greek letters, one needs to set the extended variant for the Greek layout, and also try to set the Compose key (for ano teleia). These things should be simplified...
I am not sure how the OLPC looks like (the only photos I saw where not focusing on the keyboard). Perhaps it would be useful to have a test machine at my disposal (hint, hint).
Jim Gettys wrote at his blog about the different languages that the first generation of the OLPC should support. Both Kinyarwanda and Kiswahili use the latin alphabet, therefore there are no significant issues with font support or writing support.
p.s.
Greece will carry out a pilot with OLPC laptops next September.
Επίπεδο στάθμης της θάλασσας στην Ελλάδα
Sea level rise data at Piraeus, Greece
Ο συνδυασμός των Google Maps και υψομετρικών δεδομένων από τη NASA βοηθούν στη δημιουργία του http://flood.firetree.net/, που μπορεί να δείξει κατά πόσο θα καλυφθούν οι παράκτιες περιοχές από τη θάλασσα όταν το επίπεδο της θάλασσας αυξηθεί. Η προσομοίωση μπορεί να δείξει μέχρι 14 μέτρα αύξηση στο επίπεδο της θάλασσας.
Η φωτογραφία δείχει τον Πειραιά με το επίπεδο της θάλασσας να έχει αυξηθεί στα 7 μέτρα (σε σχέση με τώρα).
Βλέποντας την υπόλοιπη Ελλάδα, φαίνεται ότι ακόμα και μια αύξηση στο επίπεδο της θάλασσας κάτα 3m θα έχει σοβαρές επιπτώσεις στη Θεσσαλονίκη. Είναι τα υψομετρικά δεδομένα σωστά; Είναι η περιοχή γύρω από τη Θεσσαλονίκη τόσο χαμηλά, κοντά στη στάθμη της θάλασσας;
Ενημέρωση: Αν λιώσουν οι πάγοι στη Γροιλανδία, το επίπεδο της θάλασσας θα ανέβει κατά 6,5 μέτρα. Αν λιώσουν όλοι οι πάγοι στη Γη, το επίπεδο της θάλασσας θα ανέβει κατά 80 μέτρα περίπου.
1st working model (OLPC)
1st working model (OLPC)
Προέρχεται από τον Pete Barr-Watson.
Το έργο OLPC είναι σημαντικό διότι δημιουργεί νέα γενική τεχνολογία για φορητό υπολογιστή χαμηλού κόστους όπου κάθε χώρα μπορεί να πάρει (και αν χρειάζεται, να το μεταφράσει στη γλώσσα του) και να διαθέσει στους πολίτες του.
Υπάρχει τέτοιο έργο για την Ελλάδα, δείτε
http://wiki.laptop.org/index.php/OLPC_Greece
Ο εξελληνισμός των πακέτων είναι εύκολα προσδιορίσιμο έργο και μπορεί να γίνει.
.eu domain
Today is a special day for Internet domain specialists. Specifically, the .eu domain is on sale for all citizens and companies of the EU.
EURid is the focal point for the whole process. You can find a list of accredited registrars for the .eu domain, the current registration status of .eu domains, a guide on how to get an .eu domain.
Currently, Greece has completed 4324 registrations which is less than 1% of the total registrations.
There is a list of blocked names that cannot be registered (for example, geographical names). Here you can see that a good percentage of the names are from Greece. This is good. However, several of the Greek names are in the genitive case, such as lesvou instead of the more appropriate lesvos. If you are from Greece and you would like to activate a reserved name, you have to follow a special procedure.
Who is the cheapest accredited registrar for an .eu domain?
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