Fabián Rodríguez

I got this via FSF Latin America, however it’s beeing reported in a few other places.

The Ecuador Government now has a free-software law and will pretty much mandate that its government uses free, open-source software only. They cite “technology sovereignty and autonomy” and the main concerns, among many others.

The Ecuador Ubuntu LoCo Team is also aiming at becoming official soon… coincidence ? I think not

Alcance libre, EcuaLUG and other sites mention the news. Esteban Mendieta even has an original scan of the signed law! (mirror)

Today while helping a friend boot from BIOS so he could you-know-what I found this great guide illustrating how to set your BIOS to boot from CD-ROM… for 11 different BIOSes in one page! Booting from CD-ROM and actually burning an Ubuntu CD or DVD image remains the first (often) most difficult step when someone is moving to or trying Ubuntu.

That’s really awesome if you ask me. But how does one take screenshots of BIOS ? Well, you don’t. You just take note of the text positioning, colors and other details AND YOU HAND CODE IT IN HTML! Use your broser’s “View source” functionality to see that code. ANSI anyone ?

Man, let’s buy this person a camera so he/she spends more time doing other useful documentation, not hand-coding screenshots! I am still in shock.

This is an invitation to all who will be in or around Montreal, QC, Canada next April 24th. Full party info and details at:
http://www.ubuntu-qc.org/ubuntu-804-invitation

We’ll be partying real hard at St-Sulpice bar and I hear other parties are organizing in Quebec province.

I’d also like to challenge other party organizers, do you think you can have the biggest party out there ? Last time we had close to 200 people in Montreal, this time we are a bit better organized. One specific thing that has helped us a lot is inviting people IN ADVANCE and PERSONALLY We welcome all to copy and improve our french and english invitation.

We are also using a Facebook event for RSVPs, local mailing lists and contacting media. We’ve lined up a few sponsors too for swag (and more). Any further ideas ?

PARTY ON!

Éric est un très bon ami qui était en informatique avant. Il a tout abandonné lorsqu’il a découvert une face cachée de sa spiritualité. Je ne peux pas expliquer ce qui lui arrive, mais le connaissant, et ayant été à l’Université avec lui, bref sachant qu’il a l’esprit scientifique bien développé, je ne peux que lui faire confiance.

Voici son dernier courriel. Vous laisserez-vous tenter ?

Update: Lisez ici pour en savoir plus sur ces démonstrations. Intriguant!

Bonjour,

Daniel Pomerleau, celui dont il est question dans mon email sur l’énergie libre, fera une démonstration dimanche prochain le 6 avril à St-Bruno. Voir les détails à la suite de ce message.

C’est à voir!!!!

Eric Hamel

From: Pierre Fecteau
Sent: March-31-08 6:04 PM
Subject: Invitation Démonstration Daniel - 6 avril 2008 - St-Bruno -

À tous les intéressés

Places limitées , réserver tôt

Daniel Pomerleau fera une démonstration de ses “pouvoirs” dimanche , le 6 avril 2008 à 13h30, à St-Bruno, au Chalet Marie-Victorin

1150 rue Marie-Victorin ( Sortie 120 - Autoroute 30 )

Prix d’entrée : $20.00

Il faut s’inscrire avec Pierre Fecteau au (450) 441.1344 ou par courriel pierre.fecteau@gmail.com en mentionnant nom, # téléphone et adresse de courriel ainsi que le nombre de places .

Merci de transmettre ce courriel à toutes personnes intéressées

Je ne sais pas très bien comment décrire ce monsieur sauf de dire que c’est un phénomène !!

Il fait une démonstration avec une quinzaine de modules qui fonctionnent sans être branchés nulle part. Il les fait circuler parmi les personnes présentes afin que celles-ci puissent bien vérifier qu’il n’y a aucune tricherie.

C’est à n’y rien comprendre sinon, une invitation à la réflexion sur nos conditionnements et nos croyances sur nous-mêmes. Nous pouvons faire ceci mais ne pouvons faire cela…

Il n’a qu’à penser “Que ma volonté soit faite” et voilà, les ampoules s’allument, les gadgets électriques fonctionnent.

Sa démonstration vaut le déplacement uniquement pour être témoin d’une autre réalité possible, ( réel pour lui) mais ignoré par la plupart d’entre nous. D’ailleurs, Daniel a de la difficulté à concevoir qu’il est impossible pour nous de faire comme lui. Il suffit à ses yeux d’avoir la foi, c’est tout.

Je ne sais pas si c’est ce qu’on appelle “l’énergie libre” !

On invite les gens à apporter avec eux ce qu’il faut pour tester le courant, l’ampérage etc. Il se sert d’appareils que les gens apportent avec eux ( Radio,blender,moteur, etc…)

Daniel peut faire beaucoup plus , mais les “autorités” ne lui permettent que des démonstrations concernant l’électricité ….intéressant, surtout pour les sceptiques.

Pierre

“C’est une sotte présomption d’aller dédaignant et condamnant pour faux ce qui ne nous semble pas vraisemblable.”
Montaigne

Note : Tous les courriels dont nous disposons ont été recueillis au fil des dernières mois soit par des contacts téléphoniques, soit lors de conférence ou par référence. En tout temps, vous pouvez nous signaler votre intention de ne plus recevoir nos communications. Si tel est le cas, nous sommes désolés de vous avoir importuné et soyez assuré que nous enlèverons votre courriel de notre base de données. Vous pouvez nous le signaler par courriel à l’adresse suivante xxxxxx@gmail.com Alors, votre adresse sera enlevée afin qu’elle ne soit plus jamais utilisée.

I’ve known about System76 and SUN for a few weeks now, can’t wait to see what other manufacturers will offer Ubuntu Server pre-installed. If you’re in Canada and know about any manufacturer providing such bundles, I’d love to hear about it.

Anne Goldemberg donne sa formation sur les wikis à la Fourmilière de Koumbit… visiblement on a sous-estimé le nombre de participants! C’est un bon problème à gérer, bravo à Koumbit pour l’organisation de ces formations.

J’y suis avec un client dans le domaine de la production vidéo (mon frère!) pour un petit projet d’implantation wiki. Drôle de journée!

So tonight I was asked what I thought of the Dell XPS 1330 with Ubuntu pre-installed… not having seen one I took a few minutes to search on the vast cyberspace only to come back empty-handed.

So… can anyone of those lucky enough to have ordered one report their experience somewhere public ? Or just point my incompetent searching skills to any existing blog posts or reviews ? I can’t seem to find any! Thanks!

It seems more and more laptops come equipped with fingerprint readers lately. If you want to see support for such readers officially rolled into Ubuntu 8.10 by all means click on that mean Brainstorm logo! Update: it seems the Brainstorm voting has closed, however the discussion that entry has about security is worth checking.

I recently got an HP Pavillion xt1000 series with such hardware and while researching its fingerprint support I came across Fprint.

From the project site:

The fprint project aims to plug a gap in the Linux desktop: support for consumer fingerprint reader devices.

Previously, Linux support for such devices has been scattered amongst different projects (many incomplete) and inconsistent in that application developers would have to implement support for each type of fingerprint reader separately.

The provided packages are:

• libpam-fprint - PAM module allowing authentication (login, sudo, etc.) via fprint
• libfprint-dev - fingerprint library of fprint project, development headers
• libfprint0 - fingerprint library of fprint project, which allows using the fingerprint reader found of many of the more decent notebooks
• fprint-demo - fingerprint scan and verification graphic utility

The packages that enable fprint functionality in Ubuntu are provided by Pavel Rojtberg, I’d like to invite anyone with fingerprint readers to try them. If you find any bugs I think they can be sent to the project’s mailing list, I couldn’t find an obvious link to any open bug trackers. Oh, and don’t miss the FAQ!

There is a lenghty discussion and interesting information on Pavel’s site. I contacted him personally and he setup a Personal Package Archive (PPA) to build the Ubuntu packages very quickly! Thanks for you work, Pavel! All the development work the Fprint project has achieved is made available very easily to us Ubuntu users via the PPA service in Launchpad. This will not make it in any official Ubuntu repositories just yet, but it’s very promising so far. Above all it should not be considered a replacement for other standard authentication and security measures.

libpam-fprint + libfprint + fprint-demo packages for Ubuntu 7.10 are available as an archive at:
http://madman2k.net/files/fprint-packages.tar

Hardy Packages are available in this PPA:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/madman2k/ubuntu hardy main restricted universe multiverse
(add that line to your /etc/apt/sources.list file and update your repositories: sudo apt-get update from comand line or just use Synaptic.

For other distributions see: http://www.reactivated.net/fprint/wiki/Download

The fprint-demo package provides a graphical application to enroll fingerprints and set different options. After installing that package, fprint-demo can be invoked from command line only (no menu entry yet) by issuing this command (notice the underscore instead of hyphen):
sudo fprint_demo

In order to enable fprint authentication on Ubuntu install the libpam and libfprint packages and then edit your /etc/pam.d/common-auth so it contains

auth sufficient pam_fprint.so
auth required pam_unix.so nullok_secure

At your next login attempt or sudo command from terminal, this will first try to read your fingerprint before asking your password. For testing purposes, you can expire the sudo passowrd caching by issuing “sudo -k”. Do not try to disable password login completely; this is alpha software and you might lock out yourself.

Example of command-line fingerprint enrollment:
sudo pam_fprint_enroll --enroll-finger 7

For more information regarding the current (under consideration) integration of fingerprint readers support in Ubuntu, see:
https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pam/+bug/187130

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This usually happens in other places, not in quiet, boring-without-any-tech-news Quebec province.

Apparently Montreal-based Savoir-faire Linux has had it, and have sent the Quebec Supreme Court a Motion for Declaratory Judgement. The Régie des Rentes du Québec wants to upgrade its desktops to Windows Vista from Windows 2000 without going through any RFPs, because, well, it is an upgrade.

The full documentation of the request (including emails exchanged between the RRQ and SFL), is available online at Cyrille Beraud’s (SFL’s CEO) blog. Cyrille has been blogging about the irregularities of Quebec’s government tech bidding processes for some time now. I’ve known him for some time and I actually almost worked at SFL at the time, but instead ended up at Canonical. If you know Cyrille at any level, you know he’s not joking about this.

This would be the first time (AFAIK) that a North-American company is taking legal action against the government by going to its highest legal instance and asking it to rule as illegal their ignoring of the bidding process of one of its own organizations. So, technically this is not suing our own government, but I hope this will bring some attention to the people and other levels of local government. Although there are some interesting efforts in our province, many government organizations in Quebec are stuck in stone-age procurement systems that leave them out of cash, paying what I call licensing taxes. I wanted to explain a bit how the software business works in Quebec, but quite frankly, I just had some food and it is so disgusting I’ll save it for another rant.

For more information about the Declaratory Judgement Motion legalese, see article #453 of Quebec’s Code of Civil Procedure. Such code is “…intended to render effective the substantive law and to ensure that it is carried out; and failing a provision to the contrary, failure to observe the rules which are not of public order can only affect a proceeding if the defect has not been remedied when it was possible to do so. The provisions of this Code must be interpreted the one by the other, and, so far as possible, in such a way as to facilitate rather than to delay or to end prematurely the normal advancement of cases.” In other words, we have a Code so the actual Code is respected. Pfew!

Update: An English press release is now available.

Combien seriez-vous prêt à payer pour un bidule qui:

• Permet de charger 4 piles AA (donc, chargeur)
• Inclût ces 4 piles AA
• Permet de brancher un fil usb normal, fournissant 5 V à 8 types de connecteurs pour étirer la charge d’un appareil “mort” (donc permet aussi d’y brancher tout autre bidule se chargeant sur une prise USB)
• Se branche dans une prise murale (combiné à la fonction antérieure, devient essentiellement un convertisseur 120VAC -> 5V USB universel)
• Inclût un file USB vers mini-USB (le fil mentionné auparavant, avec un des adaptateurs)

Combien ?

80 $ ?
50 $ ?

Mmmhhh… 24.95 $ chez Canadian Tire, ou chez tout vendeur de bidules utiles.

Plus d’information dans le manuel d’usager du Noma RX4:

• Noma RX4 User’s Manual

Passez le mot, et pour la faillite des autres fabricants d’adaptateurs, je suis persuadé qu’on va attendre.