Mar 29 2008
easter in mamallapuram, a temple-site close to the beach, in tamil nadu (soth india), classified by unesco as world heritage. we found an unexpected hard rain, but the weekend was very nice. see the pictures of pietro exploring the temples…
Mar 27 2008
i have tried this test from openpolis that measures your “distance” from italian parties and it turned out that i am too left even to be represented by the most leftist, not to talk about the distance from the new democratic party! this is the result:
since i got a little depressed, i also tried this one from Repubblica.it, and i found out that according to this test i am instead very close to the democratic party:
what does this mean? now i am a little confused… maybe i am just too far away from italy.
Mar 26 2008
two news from france in the last weeks that are worth mentioning:
1. the creation of a new “independent, digital and participative” web media: mediapart.fr, a news website, entirely independent from traditional media and highly open to external participation. access is only available through subscription (9 euro), but after only a few days from the official launch the number of subscribers exceeds 3.000!
2. from a relatively different sector, an interesting report on “governments and dominant positions in IT sector“. actually the conclusion of this report is quite obvious and well known: (a) monopolies are only possible if an explicit - yet possibly hidden - government policy allows them and (b) monopolies are bad both markets and for development.
Mar 17 2008
there you go! pietro is learning how to use the phone, how to draw and swim.
Mar 15 2008
unesco has not granted its patronage to the internet freedom day promoted by by reporters without borders (RSF). RSF has complained that unesco turn-back was due to the pressure by some of the countries included by rsf in the list of 15 enemies of internet freedom. according to RSF the worst enemies of the internet are belarus, burma, china, cuba, egypt, ethiopia, iran, north korea, saudi arabia, syria, tunisia, turkmenistan, uzbekistan, vietnam, and zimbabwe.
Mar 13 2008
a few days ago my home town, florence, launched the italian version of the project “one laptop per child”, the well known project developed at mit by n. negroponte since 2005 (at least). the basic idea is to build an oversimplified, but fully equipped laptop for a price of about 100 dollars, so that the laptop could be accessible to potentially every child in the world, especially those from the south of the world and developing countries. since 2005 the project has undergone many evolutions. we are now in the fourht generation of olpc which comes with an attractive design, full communication capabilities (LAN, wi-fi) smart power management (that includes a cranck recharge) and, of course, open source software installed on a linux based operating system. so far, so good. well, almost…
Mar 01 2008
i don’t like facebook too much, it is mainly a waste of time: if i want to contact my friends i prefer to write emails, if i want to satisfy my ego, i update my website. there is really no need for facebook on the web. but these days are so crazy that even facebook can become something to fight for, can become the flag of freedom of expression!
fouad mourtada is a young moroccan engineer and he probably thought that facebook could have been what it claims to be: just fun.
