I just returned from a business trip to Paris... Li came too to France, to meet some old friends (and for shopping!).
We both agree that Paris is a wonderful city... hum... when you are visiting. But absolutely not a place where we want to live...

I got a Bell's Palsy since beginning of December. I feel better now, but I did not recover completely yet...
When you wake up with half of the face not working (it really happens like that!), you completely panic, until google (first) and a doctor (second) makes you understand that it is not dangerous (but really disturbing, for eating, speaking, etc...)

Again, I was too lazy to write anything here for nearly two months... This is just a quick update:

Boudicca left her prison after 2 weeks, a couple of FAX exchanges, and the great help of a Li's friend in Paris... Domo Arigato Gozaimasu Izawa-Sama!

We are now living in Mita, iin the center of Tokyo, in a beautiful japanese wood house on a small street end. This is very nice, especially when the weather is bad (I love the rain music on the walls!).

Most disturbing was Li's mother heart attack two weeks ago: We received a phone call in middle of the night, and she (Li) went to Dalian the next day, to support her mom. The result was an heart operation, that hopefully will be enough for many years.

Oh, I forgot: My bicycle.
I received an old bicycle from an office friend in middle of July. That just triggered something in my mind: "This is very good!". The next day, Li bought me a new Peugeot bicycle, which I use every day to join the subway station. Two events about that:
A fall down two weeks ago (of course, due to Murphy's law, Li was already in China), and badly touched my left breast. It is still painfull, and difficult to move my arms. This was a good lesson: I am no more in my 18th!!
And yesterday was the best: We were called by the police at 22:00, to understand that someone was catched trying to steal the bicycle (crazy guy: 100 meters from a police station!). I had to spend 2 hours there to put my finger prints on papers that I did not understood at all!!

I will stop there for this post, the two important earthquakes being some kind of routine. We are just hoping that the big one is not going to happen soon...

Julien: Ils aiment pas trop parler anglais.

Julien: They prefer not to speak english.

Olivier: Bruno m'embête avec son bateau.

Olivier: Bruno, stop speaking about your boat.

Philippe: Eh! Y'a Sophis qui met une demi-heure à faire n'importe quoi!

Philippe: Eh! Sophis is just spending half an hour just to do nothing!

We arrived in Japan last week.

Li landed a couple of days before me, as I had to come via Hong-Kong. Everything is fine, we live in a nice appart'hotel in Minami-Azabu, and started to look for our next home (likely not far from Azabu-Juban).

But one very important issue is still pending:

We miss Boudicca a lot: She could not pass Narita Airport controls. We eventually should get her back this Monday (but she was not far from getting a 180 days quarantine!). I understand authorities in this case: This dog is probably very dangerous for Japan's public health :-(

Subject: It is time to say my goodbyes...
From: bruno.raoult@sgcib.com
To: Many
Date: Fri, 20 May 2005 12:30:13 +0200

This is my last day in SGCIB.

After 12 years in SG, the time has come to head back to East, and to say goodbye to you.

I wish to thank you all for the years of fun, work and challenges we have been part of. It has been a privilege working with all of you through the ups and downs, and I hope you have enjoyed the ride as much as I have.

I wish you the best of luck in the times to come.

Sayonara.

Bruno, signing out.

Let's go for some updates:

As usual, I had some holidays: Canaria Islands with Li & Boudicca in March, and sailing (again!) in Phuket 2 weeks ago. No way for my wife to come this time (I mean in Thailand): Ghosts are probably everywhere in this place - a very important issue for many Asian people.
To say a word about December 26th tsunami, Koh Phi Phi was completely destroyed, and still not growing up (the lack of tourists does not help, I guess). Patong, on the other side, is very neat (I mean: no difference with the pre-tsunami town I know).

But the great news is that I am going back to Japan! After one year and a half in Paris, I resigned 2 months ago, and in exactly 18 days we will use our one way tickets, back to Asia...

Surprise this morning: Accessing my two Google mail accounts this morning, I noticed that something has changed. My available space was 1,067Mb for the first one, and 1,071Mb when I logged on to the second one (instead of 1,000Mb for both accounts previously).

In fact, Google is continously increasing all mailboxes storage capacity (you can see the current value on their home page), until the value reaches 2 Gb!!
This story is also available on news.com.

Gmail likes to make announcements on Fool's day apparently!

By the way, they also improved the composition window a few days ago, by allowing rich text formatting (not for me, anyway, I use only plain text mail!).

Akéboué: myth.

Personne célèbre qui aurait dit, au début du XXIème siècle: "Putain, c'est qui qui m'a tapé, là?"

Akébouer: v.t.

Effectuer une opération financière par erreur avec une tierce partie. Confondre test et production en est un cas typique. Ex. J'ai akéboué le CAC: Ah bon, c'était pas du test?

Akébouer: v.i.

Se prendre pour un trader (Syn. Cakébouer). Ex. Il est interdit d'akébouer ce matin: Faites gaffe, les gars.

Manifester un mépris ostentatoire par un comportement urinatoire. Ex. J'akéboue sur [censuré]: Je pisse sur [censuré] et sur la descendance de Ian sur 9 générations (Expression non comprise à ce jour).

Akéboué: n. et adj.

Se dit d'une personne dont la famille est endettée pour 7 générations lorsque l'un de ses ancêtres a tenté d'akébouer. Ex. T'as pas 1 clope, je suis un akéboué: J'ai plus de sous.

Merci, C., de m'avoir autorisé à publier ces bêtises!

Gaétan: Excusez-moi, si je comprends bien, vous voulez faire le test en prod?
Tout le monde: Oui.
Gaétan: C'est bien ce que j'avais cru comprendre.

Gaétan: Excuse me, if I understand, you want to perform the test in production?
Everybody: Yes.
Gaétan: This is what I was afraid to understand.

Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0, the email client, was released yesterday, one month after its cousin, Firefox.

It is not sure it could have the same success (Firefox was downloaded more than 9,000,000 in four weeks), but at least it could help some people sick of Microsoft's Outlook Express to switch to a more secure (and more powerful!) product.

Reading Thunderbird's web site, you will understand that Thunderbird is probably one of the most complete email clients (especially when compared to Bill's favorite virus/worm spreader):

Safe and Secure
Thunderbird provides enterprise and government grade security features such as S/MIME, digital signing, message encryption, support for certificates and security devices.

Packed with Features
Thunderbird gives you IMAP/POP support, a built-in RSS reader, support for HTML mail, powerful quick search, saved search folders, advanced message filtering, message grouping, labels, return receipts, smart address book LDAP address completion, import tools, and the ability to manage multiple e-mail and newsgroup accounts.

Unlimited Features
Thunderbird lets you add additional features as you need them through extensions. Extensions are a powerful tool to help you build a mail client that meets your specific needs.

Still not interested? Just try it, and let me know what you think!

Mozilla Firefox 1.0 is out!

The Preview Release having being downloaded 8 million times, we could expect some interesting numbers with the long awaited final version!

The 6 years old Internet Explorer could have some trouble: Not only new flaws are discovered nearly every day (yesterday's one), but also M$ decided to stop the developments on the standalone version.

If you never tried a real browser, you should really have a look on this one... It's time to switch!

Mathieu: Tu le lui a dit?
Pierre: Non, je lui parle plus.

Mathieu: Did you tell him?
Pierre: No, I don't speak to him any more.

Candidate: "They made a very new real-time Java Virtual Machine.
Pierre: "Very interesting! How did they do it?"
Candidate: "They mainly developped a new garbage-collector: It releases only unused objects."
Pierre: Sorry, I have a meeting, I have to go.

Candidat: "Ils ont réellement fait une nouvelle Machine Virtuelle Java temps réel.
Pierre: "Super! Et comment ont-ils fait?"
Candidat: "Ils ont développé leur propre garbage-collector: En fait, il ne libère que les objets non utilisés."
Pierre: "Désolé, mais j'ai un meeting. Je dois y aller."

Forty one years old today...

But I am still able to solve the very nice Petals Around the Rose puzzle in around 30 seconds... hehehe :-)

Not so old after all!

As I already received some tens of questions in my office about it, here is what I did when I came back to France with my two available phone lines (France Telecom, my regular phone, and Free, the internet one).

My view was that it was not acceptable to have two phones devices just because I got two phone numbers. For instance, if I am already busy on phone, there is no way to answer a second incoming call, and I want this second call to give the caller a busy signal.
Also, I wanted to be be able to choose the outgoing line depending on my own reasons (price, destination, etc...), but again with the same phone device.

One answer could be:
Just Google a little by yourself (this is what I did a few days after I understood the issue), or have a visit to National Communication web site, and search for their Line Selector.

I hope you this could help some freebox users :)

Olivier (Network): "About the connection, everything is fine... But it does not work..."
Olivier (Réseau): "C'est OK pour la connexion... Mais ca marche pas..."

La FNAC m'a vraiment déçu le week-end dernier. En allant acheter une nouvelle lampe pour mon vidéoprojecteur (Hitachi PJ-TX10), le rayon vidéo m'a renvoyé au service après-vente.

Mais voila: Le jeune homme qui nous a reçu avait l'air surpris par ma demande, et son supérieur, un homme d'une cinquantaine d'années, m'annonce, d'un air hautain:

Pas de probleme, vous n'avez qu'à déposer un acompte de 400 Euros pour commander cette lampe.

Ooops! Je lui fais part de ma surprise (c'est plus du tiers du prix du projecteur lui-même!), mais il a une nouvelle réponse de spécialiste pour un pauvre idiot de client comme moi:

Mon Brave Monsieur, ça va vous coûter dans les 5,000 (ND br: Francs, c'est à dire 760 Euros), ce n'est pas une lampe de salon. Allez donc voir chez Hitachi si vous trouvez mieux...

Imparable!! Sachant qu'il n'avait même pas daigné chercher le moindre prix (il a simplement regardé le modèle de mon appareil), j'ai préféré abandonner... J'avais spécialement apprécié au passage le "Mon Brave Monsieur" ;-)

Ca se passait a la FNAC les Halles, Paris, il y a 4 jours.

Ah, j'oubliais: Je viens de commander la fameuse lampe (modèle DT 00611) sur le net, pour 270 Euros... J'en aurai donc à peu près trois pour le prix d'une!!

Apparently, Bobby Fischer (world chess champion in 1972) was caught in Narita Airport, while he wanted to flight to Philipines with no valid passport.
There are chances that he could be extradited to the United States, mainly for political reasons.

As he is my All Times favourite player, the most disappointing point for me is that he apparently frequented the Tokyo Chess Club (member of the JCA - Japan Chess Association), where I used to play a couple of years ago!!

Fischer's own web site (in Japan) has just been updated with a phone number for people wishing to help him in the current case (+81 3 3735 3675). This is... the number of the Club where I played...

If you wonder who is this guy, have a look on Wikipedia's Bobby Fischer entry.

After two months, I eventually took some time to release pictures of our last trip to phuket.

The most interesting during this trip was that Li was not sick at all for her first sailing experience. On contrary, she really did like it! Next step could be to learn how to sail alone? ;-)

I wonder how long many companies will still consider IE as a standard, despite its long history of critical flaws.

The latest flaws discovered should make anybody aware of the dangers of using this old browser, but even security teams are silent... Imagine that even over a secured connexion, your keystrokes could be recorded when you connect to your bank!

But nobody is going to put his balls on the table for a fight against corporate standards, I guess. Even (with knowledge!) IT teams go on buiding IE-only sites (the easy, lazy, and dangerous way).

Microsoft is going to sue Sergio Amadeu, President of the Brazilian government's National Institute of Information Technology for defamation.
Apparently, M$ does not appreciate Amadeu's opinion about their business practises:

"drug-dealer practice" for offering the operational system Windows to some governments and city administration for digital inclusion programs. "This is a trojan horse, a form of securing critical mass to continue constraining the country".

M$ considers in the document that this is "an excess in freedom of speech and freedom of thought" (Ooops!). Just remember Bill Gate's speaking in 1998 to make your opinion about the facts:

"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software," he said. "Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."

Original document on lessig.org, and funniest comments on slashdot, as usually!

raoult.com hacked! This web site was just hacked. This article was not written by me (just in case ;-)

Now, Japanese can buy a home, and get their children pay for it!

Interesting.

And what will say your children's child, when he/she will receive two of these nice gifts from his/her grandparents?

This looks crazy, but this is not really new: In France, government is using this system (spending now and let next generations manage the deficit) for quite a long time, unfortunately.

Or even better: They found a better system: You pay now for something that you will never get back. The retirement system is the best example as my generation is paying full rate with absolutely no hope of getting any decent retirement allowance later). This exactly means that I am paying for a house that I don't get.

Not bad, is it?