Thank you MovableType for so many empty blogs on the web...

Yes, it's the week-end; so I only enabled MathML and rebuilt.

When I look at XPath 2.0 Last Call draft, I like even more CSS and the simplicity of its Selectors. And in fact I am glad that Håkon Like and Bert Bos wrote black on white that CSS must not become a programming language. Corollary, the more I look at XPath, the more I think a transformation language based on CSS selectors is a good idea. Hey after all, CSS Selectors were here before XPath and XSLT, they reinvented the wheel.

I don't even mention any more what I think of XSLT, you already know about it...

XQuery... Aaaaaah XQuery. Look at this example. XQuery is a mistake, a BIG one.

Conclusion: 3 languages, but 9 specs needed to explain them. Wow. Simplicity rulez!

...to Maria, my wife, who just found a new job!

• I think I have removed all dependencies to the browser now
• Clicking on a link now correctly opens a browser according to system settings
• Worked on the directory view in the FTP manager
• Started cleaning/adapting CaScadeS

A team of France 2, french national tv channel, has followed a section of the famous 82 Airbourne, deployed in a small Iraqi town, close to the Syrian border. The documentary was shown this evening on France 2.

• Soldiers are young and have no fight experience at all; only a sergent in the whole section has experienced real war conditions in the past.
• None of the soldiers believes in this war. Even the officer expresses deep concerns about their presence in Iraq.
• Could someone explain US soliders that "if we keep having problems, let's vitrify the whole country" is not funny?
• One of them said "I understand the people, I would do the same if troops were occupying my village in the United States".

At least in Vietnam, it took more than just a few months to hear such opinions. Congratulations to George W. Bush. He finally reaches a wide consensus in the US. Hey, don't tell him the consensus is against him, it would not be nice to be too harsh with a mentally handicapped.

• Help menu entries now working correctly, including About Nvu
• Browse button now correctly handled, using system settings
• Started coding preferences à la Firebird, extensions panel seems to work fine
• New buttons for customizable format toolbar. Corollary: if you want to edit stricter HTML and replace the B button by a STRONG button, that's now possible in two clicks :-) Other new, very cool and powerful toolbar buttons are on their way.

C'est parti. Comme en Grèce, où les abrutis que l'on surnomme affectueusement "politiciens" pour ne pas leur faire trop de peine avaient juste mis hors-la-loi les jeux video, la France se prépare à interdire la copie musicale à usage privée, ou peu s'en faut. Je tiens juste à rappeler plusieurs faits importants à nos abrutis à nous, et à notre Sinistre de la Culture, j'ai nommé Aillagon (la tentation du contrepêt est forte avec un patronyme comme celui-là...):

1. les technologies qui se vendent le mieux sont celles qui se copient le mieux; j'affirme que la copie est nécessaire au succès. Empècher la copie est une grave erreur stratégique (cf. point suivant). J'affirme également que la copie libre est aussi importante que l'enregistrement libre de la diffusion radio : cela accroit la notorieté des artistes et donc leurs ventes. Que ceux d'entre vous qui n'ont pas commencé par enregistrer des chansons diffusées à la radio se montrent, ça fait vingt ans qu'on les cherche.
2. toutes les protections mises sur le marché tant par l'industrie du disque que par le monde du logiciel depuis 25 ans se sont vues déplombées en général dans les trois mois qui ont suivi la première commercialisation. Je fais totalement confiance à l'industrie du disque pour développer des protections aussi peu fiables que les précédentes face à la compétence des informaticiens. Une fois que les logiciels de déplombage seront en ligne, sur un serveur hébergé aux Vanuatu pour échapper à la Loi Française (grand L grand F, et prononcer "ançaise" avec une emphase gaullienne évidemment...), bonjour à l'industrie du disque pour venir emmerder le gamin qui utilisera sa bécane Linux pour lire sa musique...
3. rappelez-moi le prix de revient d'un CD ? Et rappelez-moi leur prix de vente ? Voila. Tout est dit. Si les majors du disque arrêtaient de nous prendre pour des cons, on achèterait peut-être plus de disque au lieu d'inventer le n-ième Kazaa après la fermeture du n-moins-un-ième par la justice US.
4. je n'attends pas du Gouvernement Français qu'il RESTREIGNE les libertés individuelles mais qu'il les PROTEGE.

Je n'attendais certes pas du gouvernement Raffarin qu'il se comporte intelligemment. Après tout, il faut qu'il se coltine non seulement les promesses de campagne de Chirac mais aussi les coups bas de Juppé. Mais depuis disons début Mai, je commence vraiment à trouver qu'on nous prend un peu trop pour des cons. On n'en est pas encore à Bush-Halliburton, mais UMP-Industrie rejoignent vite et sûrement la limite du supportable.

"The French Were Right", by Paul Starobin, National Journal, Friday, Nov. 7, 2003.

I'm back on the Old Continent.

Si ça continue comme cela, il va bientôt falloir que j'embauche!!!!

"pretty much all we can do" ?= "joli beaucoup tout ce qu'on peut faire" :-)

Too much food... I spent a wonderful time tonight having dinner at the Cheesecake Factory at the top of Macy's Union Square with ex-colleagues Stuart Parmenter (aka Pavlov), Heikki Toivonen, and our friend James "imajes" Cox. The food was just excellent, really excellent. Of course, I had enough Miso Salmon for three persons, Pav had enough for five and....and James left his plate empty. Hey he even had cheesecake after that. We had a lot of fun and really enjoyed our dinner.

Just before that, I had the joy to finally meet Mitchell Baker and visit the VERY nice offices of OSAF.

I also had a great dinner the day before with Akkana and her husband, Charles Manske and his wife Dawn, Kin Blas, Simon Montagu and Joe Francis. Again, a lot of fun, long discussions and delicious food. I'll start a diet when I'm back in Paris ;-)

It was such a pleasure to see them all again. I miss Netscape and the Netscapers.

I think that our friend Mat could easily list this into his Hall of Fame of stupidity on the Web.

I was enjoying the sunny day in SF and stopped where all french always stop in SF to buy a french newspaper. When suddenly a tall guy approached, and WAIT, that's impossible! Eric ? Yes, Eric. My old friend Eric Hautemont, founder of RayDream turned into a VC and now the CEO of a new successful game company. We were students together... He went to the US long ago for an internship and never went back. Success guy. Reminds me of the time when the HTML and the CSS WG were full of millionaires :-)

So I am in San Francisco right now sitting at Tantek's place, after a late lunch with him and Doug Bowman (Tristan, Doug te transmet son bonjour:-) and a little tour with Tantek and his girlfriend Amber. Looking at the stores around (and some of the visitors too), I suggested to rename the street Hashishbury instead of Ashbury. Feels like Amsterdam's red light district minus the red lights (you know what I mean) and the coffee shops (you also know what I mean, don't you?).

So I left a very sunny San Diego this morning to get rain showers here. Call it luck. So we're back at Tantek's because it's really not the best day for promenade lovers like myself. I hope the weather forecasts are better for tomorrow but in SF, you never know, the weather can change so suddenly...

Is it WiFiland ? Wherever we go, even in the small crepes restaurant where we were, laptops easily hit 3 or 4 open WiFi networks... It is amazing to see that so many people open access to the network they pay for and share connectivity with total strangers, having even no idea where they are! This is so different from the way WiFi is perceived in Europe, hotspots becoming more and more commercial. I suppose WiFi is the new internet bubble in Europe. Telcos are pricing hotspot access so high that I am not expecting a real positive answer from the public. We'll see.

I'll have dinner tomorrow night with a large part of the former Netscape Composer team and I can't wait to be there! It's been so long since I saw them! And on monday, I'll meet with Mitchell Baker, our beloved Mozilla Chief Lizard Wrangler before having dinner with Pavlov. Hey, that's been a while too :-/ Unfortunately, I won't have the time to visit the Mozilla Foundation and all the good friends we have there. Very sorry for that, I promise I'll spend some time in Mountain View next time, probably at the end of February.

On Tantek's request, I will start tagging my post entries with a lang attribute and I'll probably add a Babelfish button at the top of this page to auto-translate its french portions into English.