Abdel sent me a link to Joe’s OpenSolution Page. It is a page with some of the best open source software for your business project. I learned about two open source ETL software!

By accident, I found the LaTeX Tips & Tricks page again. I think they changed the URL and it wasn’t easy to find in Google.

My gentoo machine got in a bad state today after a portage sync (portage non functional). Various suggestions found on posting boards didn’t help.

The following trick did it for me:

Here is what I did as I could not use emerge anymore to remerge gcc-config 1) Modify /etc/env.d/05gcc to reflect the changes in GCC version 2) Modify /etc/ld.so.conf to reflect the changes in GCC version 3) Run ldconfig (to make env-update work) 4) Run env-update

This is just beautiful. I just installed SessionSaver on for my local copy of Firefox:

SessionSaver restores your browser -exactly- as you left it, every startup, every time. Not even a crash will phase it. Windows, tabs, cookies scrolling — they’re all saved. Use the menu to add remove sessions; right, shift, or middle-clicking will delete. “Simple mode” for peace of mind, or “Expert mode” for advanced flexibility. Just Click. Install. Rad.

Absolutely perfect. You close down Firefox, with all your tabs open, and next time you open it, it restores them for you exactly as they were.

Harold talks about the new business of learning. As a university professor, I’m in the “learning business”. Harold makes it clear that if all I do is provide content to my students, then I compete against Google and I will lose:

I have already talked about Google as the best learning platform around. No LMS can compete with it.

What is worse is that all my students are nodes in an infinite see of people and knowledge:

We’re all individuals and we all have access to the world’s information and can connect with pretty well anyone we want (think long tail). The basis of all business models has changed. The basis for the training business is changing too.

A related question is “how can a classroom lecture compete?”

I have a strinkingly similar question: “why do I have to line up for hours just to renew my driver’s license when all I do is submit a form to an attendant? why couldn’t I fill a form on the web? Is the human interaction element really worth that much of my time?”

The WWW/Internet conference (ICWI 2005) will be held in Lisbon. The conference is very general.

The IADIS WWW/Internet 2005 conference aims to address the main issues of concern within WWW/Internet. WWW and Internet had a huge development in recent years. Aspects of concern are no longer just technical anymore but other aspects have aroused. This conference aims to cover both technological as well as non-technological issues related to these developments. Main tracks have been identified (see below). However innovative contributes that don%u2019t fit into these areas will also be considered since they might be of benefit to conference attendees.

The EDBT 2006 Conference will be held in Munich. The scope is very broad including anything having to do with databases.