Ectopist’s posterous

The Apple iPad

I can be quick because meanwhile I read the Mashable review, which is scathing, and I can find myself in it completely. So I won't be rushing out to buy one. That review is at http://mashable.com/2010/01/27/ipad-whats-missing/

To JF, I just wanted to say:

Product brand: dumb. iPod/iPad, are you kidding me?

Content integration: what do you think? I always hated iTunes, which was a clunking piece of software with a business model intent on ripping me off. It has been a long time since I did anything with my iPod other than update the files using Amarok on Ubuntu (which stopped working too now....). Anyway, I have my doubts if Apple can ever build a position in eBooks and video akin to the now-dwindling one it had for some years in music. It would require commercial savvy which they don't have. And since Flash doesn't even work on the ipAd.... Of course third-party stores may be able to feed the iPad, don't know. But then where are the profits? They will be faced with smarter rivals who give their machines away and reap profits in the content aftermarket. I am guessing. But it would be interesting to see an indepth analysis of this issue.

Keyboard: yeah, I prefer a physical one too. But I just saw a youngster on the metro manipulating a touch screen with as much agility as I do a physical keyboard, so I am now wondering if this is just a learned preference and there's nothing actually intrinsically better about physical keyboards. Which is not to say it isn't a design flaw not to have one (I am not going to buy a Nexus One and stick with my G1 just for this - though looks like I'm going to have to resort to custom OS flashes soon), just to say that maybe we will all have to adapt to the preferences of the younger generation sooner or later.

Les sadistes qui eduquent vos enfants

Il m'arrive souvent d'être profondément dérangé par la manière ouvertement sadique dont on traite les enfants, même en très bas âge, dans bon nombre d'écoles francophones de Bruxelles.

Bien que j'imagine que le goulag et l'armée soient légèrement pires, ça porte comparaison; sauf que vu l'effet devastateur que cela doit avoir sûr le développement émotionnel de si jeunes enfants, il faudrait sans doute considérer un effet multiplicateur lorsqu'il s'agit des traumatismes qui en résultent.

Il ne faut dès lors pas s'étonner des problèmes de société qui nous entourent.

Pour moi, un enfant est sacré, je les adore et ils me remplissent d'une telle joie juste à voir leur exubérance naturelle, que j'ai du mal à imaginer quel genre d'haine puisse motiver quelqu'un à se dédier la vie à leur torture. Pourtant, ce phénomène est courant et, en quelque sorte, ayant quelques notions de psychanalyse je comprend son origine.

Ce que je comprend moins c'est que personne n'agit contre. Car ça c'est bien plus grave. Ni les institutions scolaires lesquelles, en général, n'ont quand même pas le seul but d'être des Guantanamo pour les tout-pétits, ni les parents qui soit se désinteressent de ce qui arrive à leur enfant, soit le trouvent normal, voire bénéfique....

Ce sadisme est donc bien plus que le fait de quelques instituteurs isolés - il est un problème profond de société. Et moi j'en ai marre. Au nom de chacun de ces enfants, j'exprime leur détresse et leur rage face à ce démantèlement voulu de leur personnalité.

Je ne permettrais pas qu'un de mes enfants reste un seul instant dans un milieu traumatisant de ce genre, et je vous invite à faire pareil.

Heureusement ce problème, s'il est courant, n'est pas universel. J'ai rencontré le même jour sur le métro un groupe d'enfants en compagnie de quelques institutrices qui étaient visiblement ravies d'être entourées par ces jeunes esprits; et la bonheur des enfants était tout autant évidente.

Mais cela veut dire que vous ne pouvez même pas vous justifier en faisant appel à une imaginée fatalité.

Parents, protégez s'il vous plaît vos enfants en faisant un minimum de contrôle avant de les confier aux mains de n'importe qui!

Et voici... la vache rouge. Signee Alyssa.

Big hug cow!

Fetes medievales de Forest

Lots of fun, a number of cute babes in sexy peasant dresses, great weather and Belgium's perhaps best microbrewery, from the unlikely named Ellezelles. Every creator of medieval and role play clothing for hundreds of miles around must have been strutting their stuff. It's still on today, abbaye de Forest.

Brussels metro

What else was wrong today?
- the ticket machines weren't working at Gribaumont. Neither of them
- the new, but antediluvian, indication boards weren't working, anywhere
- the down escalator at delta is still not working, it has been like that for at least two weeks, but at least there are three workmen there today. Talking and reading the newspaper.
And I'm only half-way.

Metro in pictures

This is the line dirn Hermann Debroux OUT of the center at 8.20am.

Brussels metro

Is it, I wonder, the worst service in the entire Western world? There are two lines (inventively counted to get to six) so how difficult can it be to run the trains on time? Yet almost every day they tell us how they are doing their best to return the service to "normal". Normal here has the quintessentially French sense of a social desirable state which does not occur in nature.

I dream of the day when, abnormally, the not very difficult problem of mass transit in Brussels is temporarily solved in an adequate way!

(From the metro)

Cafe b-express, av de fre in Uccle - wonderful!

Facebook Says It Wants You to Be Less Private - But Why?

via readwriteweb.com

I am left wondering if the author has actually been on Facebook in the last five years... it's perfectly clear it has become more and more about getting in contact with new people : friends of friends, members of groups that interest you etc. In fact the recent changes have probably only slowed this down.

Still, interesting article on Facebook's policy and the rationale behind it.