MMM

Went to the movies with the missus... Un long dimanche de fiançailles is a true member of the class of movies formed by other pearls as Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (same director and actress by the way) and Toto le heros (first movie we went seeing together).

So if you (both) too apply for the title of hopeless sentimental romantic and in for a good old time story (you might use the other titles mentioned as a test), then this is an easy path to a good evening out for you. Enjoy.

# Posted by mpo at 09:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Jolie Petite Belgique

Been doing some own country tourism lately, two shots one week and 200km apart.

# Posted by mpo at 12:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

real medicine?

Well, since the subject-of-the-day appears to be medicine anyways...

Interesting newsitem in this morning's news about the proclaimed scientific evidence of homeopathy actually working. (Mind you I'm not interested in opening the discussion for believers versus non-believers, nor for the obvious load of 'I experienced it myself stories') As far as I parsed the soundbite in the news there were monitored effects of what has been explained by some vague 'water-has-memory' theory. I wouldn't go as far as taking it as evidence pro the theory but at least it would put up some interesting new puzzles for the scientific world to come up with some sound counter-theory.

Luckily we're blessed here in flanders with the skepp, a well-organized scientific group of sceptici that obviously know all about Popper and his falsifiability. I must say I like the enthousiasm in their reaction towards tasting the pudding before accepting it's proof.

Strange to find both the skepp-website down (or at least ill mastered) as well as no obvious trace of the new claims on the ECH website.

# Posted by mpo at 01:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

more then just medicine
Simon is distributing workstation medicine. Some remarks from my side:

[1] Simon makes a striking observation about 'pain points' which kinda assumes that people will stick to what they have unless it starts hurting. (Agreed: standards compliancy will only interest the odd geek.) However this starting-point kinda hides the intrinsic values and innovation these alternatives are showing today. I'm quite sure that I wasn't the first and only immediate switcher after seeing tabbed browsing. And how many OOo users out there just started off by looking for an easy way to export to PDF?

Still, Simon's starting point is probably the correct one: nobody is likely to go out and wonder about alternatives unless they're missing something. The big thing to catalyze that IMHO is having the large website building community go for more strict standard compliant websites (with png's usinig transparency)

[2] I agree that OSS != linux, but in this story I think it makes Simon overlook another one of today's pain points: "passive virus-infection" I've recently seen two occasions of freshly installed XP machines hooked up (i.e. passively there, no surfin' or mail-attachment opening) to the net just to get virus-infected within less then 20 minutes...

Given this, I'm left to wonder who but those (masses?) that don't notice or care are left to enjoy their net experience from an WinXP that is *not* behind some port-blocking gateway (which is running some embedded linux?)

I think the pain on the desktop is getting painful enough to raise the number of people considering a switch in medicine here. Again, I'm positive that people who do switch will probably find some unexpected innovation in the ready alternatives out there: Mac-OSX keeps on gathering raving users (see: it doesn't need to be oss), and I'm still actively enjoying my ubuntu linux distro.

# Posted by mpo at 08:26 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Went off-hook for a mid-week with friends and kids. Back now, quite recharged, still in some Alice in Wonderland state wondering why not all the rest of the world took some time off as well. Sure would 've done 'em well, no? Anyways, off for a good nights rest introduced by some 'Great Expectations' (nono, just my current bed time reading :-)) # Posted by mpo at 12:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)