So let me be lazy and put a few pictures I took two years ago when I left to Vancouver where I visited somekool.
PS: where is the boat?
New suit
I was required to wear a suit, so I put this on:
Database failure
The database server has been victim of a violent outage in the datacenter where monkeys like to switch off the power on the main switch.
It’s currently being checked and restored, which will take about 12 hours.
To avoid problems with the running database, I stopped the Web service on the web server.
SaveSpell.com will be back on Wednesday, October 17, 2007.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Pussy cat
A friend’s cat.
Super easter
Awesome easter, thanks to CouchSurfing!
I just had too many requests on that week end, so unfortunately I had to refuse some; but we ended up meeting all the groups and had a nice BBQ. It was very international with some people from Luxembourg, Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Finland, United States and New Zealand. We had the opportunity to share some food, chocolates and teas.
The next day, I left with the two american girls to the North, riding our bicycles to Vianden.
IP over SMS could be cheaper
The picture below is an invoice from my cellphone operator.
If you open it, you’ll notice that I underlined one of the data transfer while I was in Germany: 0.5945 Euros (excl. VAT) for 3 kB transferred, charging a price up to 233 EUR per MB transfered (incl. VAT) (~300 USD). To compare, local data connections can be charged as 3 EUR/GB if used within one day.
In this example (using the worst roaming condition and best local price), roaming charges are up to about 80 000 times more than local connections.
Operators are making a so huge fortune with data roaming that they’ll never want to change the system; and European members states will support them as they collect the VAT (between 15% and 25%, depending on the states). Since the European commission somewhat managed to limit roaming charges for voice calls, will they increase their data charges in order keep their profit as high as possible?
I think there will not be any real Europe as long as it’s based on national operators that are not willing to deploy a European-wide network. On the other hand, what would people think in Australia if they were charged for roaming charges between states? That would definitely kill or damage many businesses.
As a user and consumer, I prefer to switch a wifi network (either public, available in a café or on the Fon community) where I can even use a Voice over IP client on my phone and pay only a few symbolic cents/minute instead of Euros. How will operators react when massive people switch to an alternative like those? Will they file for bankruptcy or attempt to make wifi illegal?
In addition to this, the Luxembourg based cellphone operator Tango launched a special offer named unlimited surf pack: it includes 5GB of data. So how unlimited is it? It’s available 24/7, so marketing people described it as unlimited. Nice joke!
As a summary, this Eurobarometer study on roaming says a lot, despite it is not focused on data roaming.
Strasbourg
My first week end in Strasbourg since I came back from down under.
The train was half a hour late due to a routing problem and an awful storm on the way; it was so cold!
At least, we could enjoy a Chinese fondue with Christian & Eric and I had to opportunity to test some lenses on my camera.
My mistake
Hello,
I made a maintenance where I had to stop new domains’ import. Unfortunately I forgot to enable the script afterwards.
Now things are back in order.
Thank you for your reports.
Party in Arlon
What day would you choose for a party in Arlon to meet old friends and colleagues and to celebrate Tak’s and Dany’s birthday with the ritual killing and eating of a small descendant of the famous sus scrofa that once roamed the Great Teutonian Forest, (not really killing it, it should be dead by then), … ?
– Saturday, May 26th.
– Sunday, May 27th. (next day is a holiday)
– Saturday, June 2nd (the day before Tak’s birthday)
Bienvenue au Moien Âge
Le retour au pays a été un choc: je suis suis échappé dans l’hémisphère sud afin d’éviter la neige, et selon ce qu’on m’a dit, le seul jour où de la neige est tombée était au printemps, le jour de mon retour.
Heureusement, malgré cet accident de climatique, le temps a vite changé et l’été a remplacé l’hiver en l’espace de deux jours.
Il m’a fallu quelques secondes avant de réussir à sortir un mot en Français.
Fini les grands espaces donnant l’impression d’être in pionnier, ma TODO list est à nouveau sur le devant de la scène.
Le plus surprenant est que les autres à la maison n’ont laissé mourir qu’une seule plante, et que les locaux étaient rangés et propres.
Ce n’est qu’un retour, et je compte bien y retourner; en voilier ce serait bien!