I have been tagged by Sandrine from profession-web.ch (in French). Thanks Sandrine. Scoble doesn’t like this, on the other side, Stephen, Dragos, Jeremy, Pierre … are playing the game. So let’s try it :-)

1. I am quite crazy about (very) powerful and fast cars and I have changed from Mercedes to BMW in 2006 (and I am very happy about this change). I know, I know, it is just “male – ego – non-environmental – …”
2. I have participated to some big projects developed in C and C++, as a developer. And yes, I know, it was better for all that I have left this part :-)
3. I was taken two times in (little) avalanches when skiing, that is one of the reasons why I have stopped skiing (too risky) for some years now. Also because of my back (I have quite a lot of issues there, my osteopath likes me :-)
4. I was a glider and private pilot when I was younger (glider when I was 16). I have lost all my qualifications because of … a lack of time
5. I like the US band Toto very much, and specially the period with Jeff Porcaro. Jeff is one of the best and innovative drummer ever (and I know about what I am talking about). He died in 1992. Actually, *all* the musicians of the band are just phenomenal session musicians.

Next in line are Laurent, Rodrigo, Jeff, Marc and Mathieu.

P.S. I will update this post as those tagged post

Laurent has given me an interesting link to an article about Vista, and specially the x64 version.

Unlike with 32-bit XP versions, many hardware devices will not work on XP x64 because of a dearth of 64-bit drivers (32-bit drivers will not work in a native 64-bit OS). Likewise, many software applications will not install or run because of various issues, including a surprising amount of 16-bit application installers and poorly-designed version detection. […]

All Windows Vista editions, except for Vista Starter, will come with both 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) versions in the box, on separate DVDs. This includes the Home Basic (and Home Basic N), Home Premium, Business (and Business N), Enterprise, and Ultimate editions of Windows Vista. […]

Vista Home Basic (and Home Basic N) with support up to 8 GB of RAM, compared to 4 GB for all 32-bit versions of Vista. Home Premium, meanwhile, will support 16 GB. And Business (and Business N), Enterprise, and Ultimate will all support 128 GB or more of memory. (The “or more” bit refers to the fact that there are no client PCs available yet for over 128 GB of RAM; when that happens, these Vista versions will support it.) […]

Most dramatically, the Windows Vista x64 versions include a new secret security feature that will virtually eliminate remote system attacks for the first time on the Windows platform. This feature, previously undisclosed, ensures that system files load at random (1 in 256) memory offsets at every system boot, compared to previous Windows versions where system files always loaded to the same offset memory location. Because of this change, most (approximately 99 percent) remote attacks will simply fail on x64-based Vista versions. […]

Those hoping to upgrade should be aware of a few issues, too. 32-bit versions of XP can only be upgraded to 32-bit versions of Windows Vista. And Windows XP Professional x64 Edition can only be upgraded to 64-bit versions of Windows Vista (Business and above). […]

Dear readers, I wish you all the best for 2007:
– first of all, a good health
– a lot of fun
– a lot of new meetings with nice and smart people
– a lot of nice places to visit and (re)discover
– a lot of laughs
– a good work life balance
– a lot of nice challenges.

And for all of us, enough freedom and peace, so that we can improve a bit the strange world we are living in.

Take care!

[via 35 degrees]

[via Scott Adams]

Get boring during presentations? Have a look at this story, some people are definitely exaggerating :-)

“About 4,000 nerds go to Barcelona every year to drool all over Microsoft’s new products. What I saw there last week during one presentation surpassed anything Wally has ever done.

“One nerd clearly wasn’t interested in what the guy from Microsoft was saying. So this guy was bored, and started fidgeting. Somewhere along the line he noticed he had forgotten to shave that morning. This was no problem because he could fix that right away: He reached in his pocket and got out… A NAIL CLIPPER.

“Yep, this guy started “SHAVING” himself using only a NAIL CLIPPER.

“Apart from the visual effect (he had to stretch up his face with his hand to avoid injury) the “audio” of the clipping was great too…

“He kept this up for 45 minutes.”

[via Wikipedia]

A well-known but marvelous picture from the Crab Nebula.

This is a mosaic image, one of the largest ever taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope of the Crab Nebula, a six-light-year-wide expanding remnant of a star’s supernova explosion. Japanese and Chinese astronomers recorded this violent event nearly 1,000 years ago in 1054, as did, almost certainly, Native Americans.

The orange filaments are the tattered remains of the star and consist mostly of hydrogen. The rapidly spinning neutron star embedded in the center of the nebula is the dynamo powering the nebula’s eerie interior bluish glow. The blue light comes from electrons whirling at nearly the speed of light around magnetic field lines from the neutron star. The neutron star, like a lighthouse, ejects twin beams of radiation that appear to pulse 30 times a second due to the neutron star’s rotation. A neutron star is the crushed ultra-dense core of the exploded star.

The Crab Nebula derived its name from its appearance in a drawing made by Irish astronomer Lord Rosse in 1844, using a 36-inch telescope. When viewed by Hubble, as well as by large ground-based telescopes such as the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, the Crab Nebula takes on a more detailed appearance that yields clues into the spectacular demise of a star, 6,500 light-years away.

The newly composed image was assembled from 24 individual Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 exposures taken in October 1999, January 2000, and December 2000. The colors in the image indicate the different elements that were expelled during the explosion. Blue in the filaments in the outer part of the nebula represents neutral oxygen, green is singly-ionized sulfur, and red indicates doubly-ionized oxygen.

[via amazon.com]

Wow. We are where we should have been for about 4 years :-)

Amazon Worldwide 2006 Holiday

• Amazon.com shipped more than 99 percent of orders in time to meet holiday deadlines worldwide
• On the peak day this season, Amazon’s worldwide fulfillment network shipped over 3.4 million units
• Amazon.com shipped to over 200 countries
• The 2006 holiday season finished as its best ever, with its busiest day being December 11th. On this day Amazon customer orders exceeded 4 million items

Holiday 2006 Facts

• Tops in video game hardware were the Nintendo DS Lite available in white, pink and black as well as Play Station 2 and the Xbox 360
• In DVDs, top sellers included Pirates of the Caribbean – Dead Man’s Chest (Two-Disc Collectors Edition), Cars (Widescreen Edition) and An Inconvenient Truth
• In music, the top sellers included Awake by Josh Groban, Love by the Beatles and Wintersong by Sarah McLachlan
• Top sellers in Consumer Electronics include Apple iPods (various), Canon Powershot Digital Elph Cameras and Garmin GPS Systems
• Top Software titles include World of Warcraft Expansion: Burning Crusade (not yet released), The Sims 2 Pet Expansion Pack (Windows Me, 98, XP, 2000) and Adobe Photoshop Elements 5 (Windows XP)
• In PCs, the top sellers were the Apple MacBook 13.3″ Notebook PC in white and black and the Sony VAIO 15.4″ Notebook PC

[via ITRmanager.com]

An interesting interview of Marten Mickos, CEO of MySql. Some facts and figures (interview in French):

• To reduce the dependency with Oracle, mySql is developing a substitution to innoDB. The project is called “falcon” and about 20 people are dedicated to this project. The first productive version should be available till end of 2007.
• The online game Second Life is based on mySql.
• Today, 300 people in 27 countries are working for mySql. About 150 are technical people (development, support). About 70% of the employees are working from home. About 30 people are working at the headquarter.
• About 10 million active users
• Simple rules for defining the community:

• 1 customer (paying for a service)…
• for 10 contributors…
• for 1’000 users

[via IDC]

Have a look at these predictions (full PDF available). A summary below:

1. Worldwide IT Spending: Turbulence Remains Under a “Boring” Surface
2. Regional IT Outlook: Mature Markets Recover a Little, Emerging Brake a Little
3. Growth of Contenders Aiming to “Out-BRIC” BRIC
4. “SMB Long Tail” Will Drive New Models, Attract New Disrupters
5. The Battle for “Information Platform” Leadership Will Shift Into High Gear
6. Major Apps Vendors Will Radically Up-Shift Their SaaS, SMB Initiatives
7. Virtualization 2.0 Will Reshape Infrastructure Landscape
8. Services/Software Fusion Picks Up Speed
9. “2-Minute Drill”: IP Hygiene, Channel Mash-Up, Pricing Shift, Nets + SOA = IT
10. Consumer Market: Convergence, Competition and Creativity

So, it seems that there were a *lot* of discussions and negative feedbacks about the conference leweb3, which took place in Paris – France on December 11-12, 2006.

I would like to give you and share with you my explicit feedback, specially because some people (sajonara.de as an example…) have used my “posting-silence” as a negative argument against this conference. Which is quite strange, because I was simply too busy to post (cf. my last post), nothing to do with leweb3.

Some thoughts about the conference

• Organization: first, I find that Loic did a great job by bringing some many people to this conference (participants, partners, speakers, investors), and the general organization with some many people (about 1’300) was definitely great.
• Food: the food was just…excellent! This is normally not the case, so let’s point it out!
• Quality: as usual, the quality of the presentations varied a lot, which is quite often the case.
• Broader scope: the great variety of the themes presented was to my point of view very positive, specially because it was “not just for geeks”, but much more “just for citizens”. I am a geek, there is enough conferences for geeks, so it is good and valuable to have *one* conference where we can talk about other stuff.
• Networking: the networking and meeting possibilities were just great! Worth a visit just for this part.
• Focus: as usual, not enough time for the different panels. Really a pity, because there were a lot of good discussions and exchanges that have been started. So, here, more focus could bring a better quality.
• Program: it seems that some people were not happy because of the program (mismatch expectation / reality). The program was clearly published step-by-step. So no possible surprise on this side. On the other side, I have reserved my place *before* any program was published. Room for improvement: publish a (draft) program before opening the registration.
• Energy: great positive energy, kick-your-ass atmosphere, open and challenging exchange.
• Think tank: Shimon Peres (hope, our role in the world) and Hans Rosling (misunderstanding of the current status of the world) were *absolutely* great. Both kicked my little and narrow-minded brain. I will come back separately to these presentations.
• Blogosphere: again, I personally find that the blogosphere is almost a closed-box where too many people are just repeating and amplifying some thoughts from just a little number of Key Opinion Leaders. Specially at the beginning of turbulences. No distance, no tolerance, too easy criticism. And also: violence, arrogance, rudeness. Not very interesting. Pfffuuuu.
• Politics: the 3 presentations (including the one of Shimon Peres) represented about 1.5 hour of the 2 days. If you don’t agree, you can leave the conference (nobody did that, the room was full). So, to my mind, no big discussion. And if you don’t like politics – i.e. if you want to live outside the city – why aren’t you just leaving our world (what about ascetic?).
• Elevation: personally, I am very happy to have participated to leweb3. I will surely come to leweb4. And I am very grateful to Loic for having integrated Hans Rosling and Shimon Peres in the conference, they have elevated me/us and opened my/our mind!

Dear all, sorry for the last very rare posting.

I was completely “out-of-the-blogging-world” the last weeks/months because of some negative events and some strongly positive developments, both on the business-front. Definitely more good than bad things, the balance remains greatly positive :-)

As Marc said, I have lost my voice…

I hope you had some good and restful time with your family and friends during the last Christmas Days. I had, really. This kind of champagne – a Dom Pérignon Vintage 1998 from Moët et Chandon – is really helping. A great and quite unique experience!

So, I still have quite a lot to share with you: new gadgets, new travels, new developments about Open Source, some great meetings, ecenter solutions, new picture and music, among other.