Free Software Linux

Yesterday, 2 September 2008, the Creative Commons licenses were launched in Romania. I was invited and used the opportunity to take some photos. The main talk was delivered by Bogdan Manolea, the main guy behind this initiative (Bogdan is well known for his website about internet and legislation):

As planned, I attended the Romanian FLOSSCamp, a nice offline summer escape in the mountains. The weather was not our best ally, it was rainy and somewhat cold for this time of the year: But we got a good friend in the fire (Open Source):

This story (link in Romanian) is so absurd that I had to read it (and the following replies) a couple of times and I am still not 100% sure it not a joke. For those who can't read Romanian (which is the large majority of my readers) here is a short synopsis: this guy is asked by his boss to install a Linux and a web server on a computer received by some church. HE goes into the place and find a guy hopelessly struggling with a Windows webserver.

Yesterday evening I was at home and with nothing else better to do watching a Stargate SG1 on TV (one of the very few Sci-Fi shows available on cable around here).Nothing spectacular, they were on a planet, drilling in rock to detonate some naquadah, when I saw this translation gem (translated back by me from Romanian to English) "decrease the package manager". WTF? It made no sense, what has to do a package manager with a drill? Then I put my distributive attention to work, the shows here are subtitled with the original soundtrack and remebered hearing something like "reduce the rpm" (or it was "reduce the rpms"?). Figures!

At the initiative of the Grupul pentru software liber (the Group for Free Software) there is an event organized in Romania for the first time this year: FLOSS Camp, on 29-30-31 August at Păltiniş, with the ideea to "take out of their houses all the people wanting to discuss or to exchange ideas and opinions about Free software".

I started to crave for a recently released ultraportable notebook (a certain model), thinking seriously about buying one. What's the problem? The local sale strategy.I won't complain about the global strategy (even if there is enough room to complain: only a Windows version is available, to be followed only after a couple of months by the Linux counterpart, which will be underpowered - less RAM an poorer battery). My complaint is about local sales: all the stores offer only the pink version (rumours say black and white are supposed to be available in a couple of weeks). Like they want to get rid of the unwanted stock. Stupid move, who want to be seen in public using a pink laptop? They should have manufactured less units in this color.

There is a little project (probably not hard to guess what it is about) where my own research was not enough, so I see no option than asking in the open: I need to take a photo of a steam engine (locomotiva cu abur), so does know about one in Bucharest? The condition for it is to look decent and for me to be allowed to take a photo. The only one I am aware of (a couple of engines, in fact) is the one placed in front of the "Deopul Bucureşti Călători", on Calea Griviţei, but that one is really bad:

When is a good time to use the "Impact" font? How about... never! Last week a friend of mine put on sale some stuff on an auction website (kind of local ebay, this is his the main activity of his small business) and when creating the page he had to choose a few style elements, the font being one of them.He selected the Impact font, thinking that such a name probably stands for a font that will catch attention from the readers. But being a Linux user, without the Microsoft Core Fonts installed (Impact is part of MS Core Fonts), he didn't saw how the font really looks, all he saw was a harmless san-serif fall-back option. And made it red, no less.

Saturday, in our trip to Cluj, after the presentation and the party ended we still had a few hours to spend, so we went to the Botanical Garden.Close-up to a cactus As the entrance, we had to pay a small tax, 4 RON (a little over 1 EUR) but to be allowed to take photos, an additional tax of 20 RON (or five times the entrance ticket) was needed. Figuring there is no way the tax is worth the amount of pictures we can take, we went tu put our cameras (4 of us had cameras) in the backpack.

As announced, a group of Romanian Fedora contributors went Saturday at an event organized in Cluj-Napoca by Grupul pentru Software Liber. Now it is the time for a [heavy] illustrated report of the event (even more photos [*] can be found in our photo gallery): So, we leaved Bucharest Friday, with the night train:

There's a CS/informatics competition for high school students being held this weekend in Cluj and it is combined with educational software presentations from software companies for informatics professors.

Microsoft invades another free open source conference (this time in Romania)