Cyril Dangerville

The question should be "HOW TO CUSTOMIZE your BLOG INDEX IN A FLASH". Indeed, your index is right there already, in your personal weblog site. You just click on Archives, and you get your index. You don't have the dates in the list? Let Movable do it for you. I'll try to make it easy.
After RTFM (type "index" in the search tool), you find out that you have to modify the Master Archive Index. After logging in, click on Templates then Master Archive Index in the list. In the template body, look for the first occurence of:

<MTArchiveList>
[blablablabla]
</MTArchiveList>

Then, if you just want to add the date before the entry title with a new line (<br/> in HTML), make sure it looks like:

<MTArchiveList>
<li class="archive-list-item"><$MTArchiveDate$><br/>
<a href="<$MTArchiveLink$>"><$MTArchiveTitle$></a>
</li>
</MTArchiveList>

I just inserted <$MTArchiveDate$><br/> (22 characters), not more. That's the power of the template. You can use different attributes for MTArchiveDate to modify the date format or the language (RTFM).
Now that you feel like a master, you want to increase your power, so you want to number the list (because Dr. Groom told you so. Sorry, no inside joke on the blogs? Too late). (Footnote for non-CICS: Dr. Frank Groom teaches ICS 630: Research Methods where he insists on the necessity to number the list of subjects in the random sampling process.) In this case, you have to change the lines before and after the MTArchiveList element:

<ol class="archive-list">
<MTArchiveList>
<li class="archive-list-item"><$MTArchiveDate$><br/>
<a href="<$MTArchiveLink$>"><$MTArchiveTitle$></a>
</li>
</MTArchiveList>
</ol>

I just changed 2 letters: o instead of u in <ul...>. Example of the result of this change. You can now copy-paste in one shot the whole index or just give the link as I did, when you want to give your blog index. You don't have to waste a blog for it.
I hope at least it helps the geeks that still have to get a blog index.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

Posted by Cyril Dangerville at 03:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you want the solution right away, skip to my next blog (same thing “Part II”).

You are having a nightmare. In this nightmare, you are taking the final exam for ICS 620 AGAIN. (Footnote for non-CICS: ICS= Information and Communication Sciences, ICS 620 is a course on Telecommunication Technologies by Dr. Jones.) As usual, Dr. Jones, cheerful, tries to relax you by telling entertaining stories, yelling at GAs, playing with the equipment in the room, etc. (Footnote: GA= Graduate Assistant.) But this doesn’t work. You are striving to concentrate the few brain cells that you have left on this one damn question, the question that keeps you from the Perfect, this one blank in your paper (this is just a dream, I mean a nightmare, OK?).
This question is:
What basic principle would you apply whenever you do not know how to do [whatever]? 4 words, NO ACRONYM PLEASE

You think hard, you even try to think in binary to grasp the essence of the course... Nothing comes out except the steam from your overheating brain.

You are now the only one left in the room. Dr. Jones is staring at you with ball eyes, exhaling heavily and tapping on his watch. The exam is over. You give your paper back with this only damn blank in it, mortified. As soon as you go out of the room, before suiciding yourself, you remember the answer:
READ THE F_ _ _ _ _ _ MANUAL (RTFM) (Feel free to play hangman on this one.)
This is the trigger. The nightmare is over. You wake up soaked in sweat and realize this was just a nightmare. In a lightning reflex, you catch your todo list, to make sure you did not forget to come for the 620 exam. Yes, “620 exam” checked. All right, you move on. Something about 640 (ICS 640= Information and Communication Industry, by Dr. Bellaver), checked as well. Then, “602 blog index”. (ICS 602= Human Communication: Process and Theory) Not checked. The CICS still got you, you can’t escape, even in your nightmares (see above).

So you have to do this blog index. You have been such a great blogger that you have 100 blogs already. You want to get this done in a femtosecond because you are waiting for one thing right now: to be in the arms of Morpheus.
You lambda-user side suggests you to copy-paste everything in one document naïvely. But then you think:
"I am in a MASTER’S PROGRAM. I must think as the MASTER I strive to be. - Jedi or Sith? Pick one. - In any case, I have a new light saber: RTFM (see above).
Wait a minute. A machine could do it, faster than me. It is just indexing. This is an alienation for me. Let’s use the machine."
By the machine, I mean the software. The mass of engineers at Six Apart has certainly figured that out before you were born. Movable Type is a professional blogging software isn’t it?
How to do a blog index in a master’s way? RTFM and let Movable Type do it for you. OK, I applied the RTFM principle on Movable Type and give the solution in my next blog.

Posted by Cyril Dangerville at 01:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I said in part I I would explain in a next blog why many open source software are threatened to death by this law and what kind of protections governments and large companies are developing to enforce the DMCA/EUCD. Here you go...

Short reminder: on December 22-23, the French parliament is to vote the DADVSI law which is the transposition of the EUCD (European Union Copyright Directive), itself a European adaptation of the US Digital Millenium Copyright Act. The DADVSI law proposes to introduce a judicial protection of the technical measures of restriction proved to be efficient such as software controlling the private use of digital works, and a juridicial protection of electronic data related to electronic licenses. I know this is awkward. I apology.

What is the big deal with open source?
The protections required by the DADVSI law rely on the secret, which secret guarantees the control over the end-user system.
By contrast, free software (open source, let's say it is the same thing for this article, I didn't say freeware, ok?) relies on openness and transparency, which prevent the control that I just talked about.
As a result, the authors of free software can't claim to provide the technical control measures - or any software interoperating with such measures - required by the DADVSI law, since the source code is open, everybody can tweak it and "hack" the control measure. You still with me?

That's why the government is facing two choices: allow free software to access the works (movies, music, images, even music scores, etc.) controlled by the technical measures mentioned, or ban free software. For the moment, the solution adopted by both the legislative and executive is the second one.

In short, the DADVSI law - these effects may extend to the rest of the European Union - will jeopardize free competition. Free software authors will be excluded from very promising markets: multimedia players, video streaming servers, systems embedded in portable digital entertainment devices, PDAs, mobiles, etc.).

Finally, I will give you one reason why governments - especially non-American ones - should not do anything threatening the freedom of open source (Actually, it is the main reason why some Minister and governmental services decided to move to open source and this is quite contradictory with the DADVSI.)This idea is supported by the FSF (FSF France in particular): you are well aware that the software industry and financial flows are controlled by a handful of big editors, mainly American. The development of free software enables Europe to take back the initiative in this field and fosters an industrial, economic and social potential that is thriving already. Moreover, the control of information and information systems are at stake. Unlike free software, proprietary software does not allow the users to control the tools. This lack is obviously critical in several sectors such as defense, health or police.

This may be too theoretical for some of us. So I help you out by giving you one common example. I will take an extreme case just to give you an idea. Let us assume that the department of Defense in your country is using Microsoft Access as a database to store data about the number of tanks, submarines, fighters, nuclear heads if you have any (always good to know), their properties, the codes, etc. Let us assume the system is connected to the web (I repeat this is an extreme case, you can find such sensible services connected to the web.) Have you heard about Microsoft spywares? Oh you are a smart guy, you have an anti-spyware, easy. So let's try something you can't really do something about, say MS Access just got in trouble (it crashed as a matter of fact, yes it happens), and you have the friendly message saying "Do you want to send the information to help Microsoft debug?" (or something like that). You think "yes, I want it fixed, I paid you for that". So you click yes, what guarantees you that there is not something else than the mere debugging information that is sent to Microsoft, let's say some of your critical data? First, you cannot prevent that because, you have no idea what is really going when you enter your data in MS Access. You can have the most secure system ever, you don't know what Microsoft is doing with it "inside"... and you cannot check that out and prove whether there is something wrong BECAUSE YOU DO NOT HAVE ACCESS TO THE CODE. So what are you really telling Microsoft when you are clicking "SEND" on the "Help debug" window? No idea, huh?

Of course, most people first want something that works and preferably something they have already used for decades, like Microsoft. Open source? free software? What is that? Something new? Oh, I am scared. You said "free"? Oh, it has to be something done by some incompetent nerds in their garage with a hammer and a nail... because it is free, right? Oh, you mean "freedom" ? Oh, ok, sorry. (The ambiguity of "free" in free software was the main reason why the term "open source" replaced "free software" in the business world.) Who is selling that stuff? What? Nobody? I just download it and play with it? Don't fool me, this is nothink like I am used to. Who can I trust then? The open source community? Is that a new club for nerds?
Enough, I could go on for a while with the scepticism that free software is facing all the time. But don't believe that governmental administrations can't move to open source. The french police (gendarmerie to be accurate, no american equivalent, sorry) has replaced MS Office with OpenOffice since January, and I have 3 or 4 recent examples like that but I am tired and this blog has been too long anyway.

Posted by Cyril Dangerville at 07:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I read an article in a IT-related newsletter (very popular among French web surfers) concerning the use of blogs in the world (in the USA in particular). It shows the results of several surveys, including the benefits of a CEO's blog in the company. I am sure Dr Steele would argue such a study. I thought this would be helpful to the CICS blogosphere, especially to the CICS geeks that research on blogs.
However, it is all in French and I did not find a close English equivalent on the web. You may be luckier than I was. Anyway, I give an (attempt of) English version of two interesting survey results in my opinion, that are given in this article. One reason is to keep track of the content [1] since it might disappear pretty soon or the link might change.

There is more on the link...

[1] Le Journal du Net, Monde : L'usage des blogs, 12/09/2005

Posted by Cyril Dangerville at 03:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When my CICS colleague Luke Amos informed me about something scary going on between free software, e.g. VideoLAN, and the French legislature, I went to the VideoLAN website, alarmed, since VideoLAN is one of my favorite programs ever. What do I read in red bold characters, at the top of the page?

“VideoLAN might disappear due to new French/European legislation.” (VideoLAN, 2005)

What?? Do you mean the program that…

- reads almost any type of video without having to install the appropriate codecs (DivX, MPEG, AVI, WMV, DVD, VCD, etc.), and any DVD, blocked or not
- gives you a video server and IP VoD services
- enables you to stream from the hard drive, from DVD, VCD, satellite, Digital Terrestrial TV, to Windows/MAC/Linux/BSD/… computers, set-up boxes or PDAs (see VideoLAN streaming features)
- we use to “multicast” a bunch of TV channels on the LAN in my school (in France) and Ecole Centrale Paris (one of the top non-specialized French Grande Ecoles of engineering), where the program originated as a simple engineering project, then turned to a “WOW” project.
- the Google Video player is based of, as well as the IP TV over ADSL services offered by some French ISPs (free.fr).
- counts HP, IBM and AT&T among his partners.
ALL OF THAT FOR FREE and OPEN SOURCE.
Are you saying this program might disappear?!!

Needless to say I am slightly (I mean “very very” for those who do not get my irony) upset at that time. Then, I click on the link below without thinking - “Learn more”, it says – and the Awful Truth appears to me in all his scary dressing, here is the essence of the message, for those who are too lazy to click on the link:

“During the night of 22nd to 23rd December 2005, while everybody is preparing for Christmas, the French Parliament will rule about the "DADVSI" law. This vote will be made with minimal discussion, as an "emergency" has been declared on this law.
This law is the French transcription of the European EUCD (European Union Copyright Directive) text, which itself comes from the American DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act).
The main goal of this law is to restrict the rights of digital content purchasers. It most notably forbids them from working around technical content protection measures.
Doing so, writing or publishing software allowing to do so, or even merely talking about ways to do so becomes an offence that can be punished with three years in jail.” (VideoLAN, 2005)

Not only they want to vote for a law that might kill many open source multimedia and Peer-To-Peer software, but they also want to do this sneaky-sneaky while everybody is enjoying the preparations for Christmas. What a wonderful gift!

Then, in the French version (under the English one) exclusively, there is an invitation to fight this “freedom-killing” bill in various ways. Sorry, mainly in French, but there is a link for English readers and you can read articles and documentation in English on the EUCD website that supports the movement against the “European DMCA” law.

I will explain in a next blog why many open source software are threatened to death by this law and what kind of protections governments and large companies (these are the only ones benefiting from such laws) are developing to enforce the DMCA/EUCD. “Bear with me.”

References:
VideoLAN, VideoLAN and the issue of EUCD / DADVSI, Retrieved 12/06/2005, http://www.videolan.org/eucd.html

Posted by Cyril Dangerville at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I build my human communication on different models of communication from various fields of science, from basic to complex, looking for effective ways of communication at different levels (from interpersonal to mass communication).

Link to my theory of human communication: http://ilocker.bsu.edu/users/cdangerville/WORLD_SHARED/HumanCommTheory.pdf

(The first part - out of 3 - only for the moment)

Posted by Cyril Dangerville at 10:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)