Asus Eee PC 1101HA, Intel GMA500 (Poulsbo) and the shattered dream of the out-of-the-box GNU/Linux support

Information Technology, Wishy-washiness No Comments

Do not buy a Asus Eee PC 1101HA or any netbook/laptop having an Intel GMA500 (Poulsbo) video chipset if you plan to run GNU/Linux on it. Unlike Intel’s other video chipsets, the GMA500 is not developed in-house but it is based on Imagination Technologies’s PowerVR which is barely supported under GNU/Linux. The GMA500 drivers are so messy that it is even challenging to get the native display resolution. You can read more about how Intel is ruining its relationship with the GNU/Linux community on Linux Journal and Ars Technica.

I spent about 3800 NOK (460 EUR) to buy an Asus Eee PC 1101HA last Saturday. Now I can not return it to the reseller. In other words, I am screwed.

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From the richest to the poorest European country and back

Curiosities, Personal Life, Travels 2 Comments

I had a short vacation in Moldova together with my friend Diego. Probably you are asking yourself “Why Moldova!?”. At least this was the reaction of all of my friends when I told them that I had planned a trip to Chişinău. To be honest, despite the fact that I came back from this trip just few days ago, I am not sure what to answer to this question. :)

As far as I am concerned, I just wanted to have a trip to an east European country, eventually an ex USSR country. The idea was to go to a country which was culturally, architecturally, geographically and economically speaking very different to what I am used to. After several discussions with Diego about which country to visit, Moldova caught our curiosity… And there we went.

I have to admit that I knew really little about this country before to go, and two things impressed me the most there. The first is, unfortunately, the poverty. The time seems to have stopped in the Nineties there. The average monthly salary in Moldova is around 2500 MDL (151 EUR) while in Norway is 30000 NOK (3533 EUR). Of course, life is cheaper in Moldova than in Norway, but even normalising the salary to the cost of life the difference remains huge.

The other thing that left me puzzled is the lack of linguistic and cultural identity. Native Moldovans belong to the Romanian ethnic group. The official language in Moldova is Romanian, although natives speak a Moldavian dialect which is not so different from the original Romanian. However, Russians and Ukrainians form a large ethnic group in Moldova. Russian is then the default second language at all levels of education, and everyone in the country can speak it fluently. Oddly enough, local Russians refuse to speak Romanian and oblige native Moldovans to speak Russian. Walking around Chişinău I heard more conversations in Russian rather than Romanian, which is quite sad. Maybe this is a superficial analysis of the integration problems, but what kind of cultural identity is this?

I learned a lot from this “very original” trip… especially to give value to the things I am lucky to have in my life. Being at home with all the comforts seems like a luxury now… I hope I will always remember about it.

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NWPT 2009 and Danish language

Information Technology, Personal Life, Travels No Comments

I have not written any post about my summer vacations in Italy, Spain and Hungary, but now they are far away and I will skip them. I just want to share my experience at the last conference I participated, namely the Nordic Workshop in Programming Theory in Lyngby, north of Copenhagen, Denmark.

As always I travelled together with Adrian and this time I had to share the hotel room with him since my travelling budget for 2009 has been in red since July… Fortunately Adrian is not employed at the University of Bergen but at the Bergen University College, and it seems that funding is less problematic there. ;)

The conference was very well organised and covered very many topics of computer science. We had the presentations of our two abstracts almost at the end of the conference and we spent a lot of time modifying the slides rather than listening to the talks, but everything went fine in the end.

During my stay I had the chance to test my skills in Scandinavian languages with some local. Just for the records, written Danish and Norwegian (in the bokmål variant) are rather similar, so similar that reading Danish is not a problem for me… but the spoken counterparts are definitely very different. Spoken Danish sounds to me like a continuous stream of (guttural) sounds, with no chances to understand when a word stops and when the next starts. :) I hope that no one will take it personally if I say that it seems like Danes do not make any effort to pronounce words clearly.

But there is even more… Danish has a rather weird number system. The tens from fifty on are not based on the number 10, as is the case in most European languages (French being another outstanding exception). This strange system combines two archaic ways of counting: 20-based instead of 10-based and fossilized expressions for two and a half, three and a half and four and a half. This is the result:

50 halv-tred-s(ind-s-tyve) half-third-t(imes-of-twenty)
60 tre-s(ind-s-tyve) three-t(imes-of-twenty)
70 halv-fjerd-s(ind-s-tyve) half-fourth-t(imes-of-twenty)
80 fir-s(ind-s-tyve) four-t(imes-of-twenty)
90 halv-fem-s(ind-s-tyve) half-fifth-t(imes-of-twenty)

After this experience, I think that these Norwegian comedians are not so far from reality. ;)

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La tastiera italiana come causa di un pericoloso malcostume linguistico

Curiosities, Italiano, Languages, Wishy-washiness 5 Comments

Ho deciso di condividere un articolo che scrissi nel 2007 dal titolo “La tastiera italiana come causa di un pericoloso malcostume linguistico“. Nell’articolo mostro come il layout di tastiera italiano favorisca l’uso del digramma lettera + apice in sostituzione della lettera accentata. Pur non avendo una preparazione universitaria in linguistica, decisi di scrivere questo articolo come reazione alla trattazione decisamente superficiale dell’argomento da parte dell’Accademia della Crusca. Ogni commento è benvenuto.

Buona lettura. :)

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TOOLS 2009

Information Technology, Personal Life, Science, Travels 1 Comment

This time it was the TOOLS conference in Zurich, Switzerland. Me and Adrian arrived on a Saturday, without any particular plan for the evening. Many locals suggested us to go to Lucerne because of the first edition of the Lucerne festival. Adrian managed to convince me to go there, and I have to admit it was a good idea. Loads of people, music played on all the squares of the old town, stands providing food and drinks. And right after the sunset, the best fireworks I have ever seen: 25 minutes of pyrotechnic show with lights coming from both sky and lake… Just lovely!

All the stereotypes about Swiss precision and efficiency were destroyed in one go on the way back to Zurich. We were supposed to take the train from Lucerne at 2:30, but probably too many people shared with us the same plan. :) The result was kilometric queues on the ticket machines and people packed in trains like in India. The train we took did not even arrive to Zurich and despite the promises of the railways personnel there, no further train came before one hour. In the end, tired of waiting, we took a taxi back to the city.

Well, despite this “original” start, the conference went very well. Zurich is lovely and welcomed us with a great warm summer weather. The ETH, which hosted the conference, is located on top of a hill with a nice view over the city. The event was well organised and composed by several co-located conferences and workshops. Adrian made a brilliant presentation of our last work and many asked questions about it. I feel like the goals of our participation to the conference have been all fulfilled. Food was also great; to eat once more authentic Fondue and Rösti was a pleasure. :)

I left Zurich by train on Saturday, and my destination was not Bergen but Tortoreto, my home town in Italy. The trip home was a sort of odyssey. The train I took in Milan had broken air conditioning system and I had to stay inside it for 5 hours with no chance to open the windows… And if this was not enough, the catering services of the Italian railways had a strike the very same day, i.e. it was not even possible to buy water! You can imagine what this lead to, I will not spend time describing it. Italy is somehow always able to remind me that the choice to move away was the right one.

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Iomega UltraMax Plus — A Linux-friendly External Hard Drive with RAID support

Information Technology No Comments

Lately my home folder began to run out of space, so I started to look around for an external hard drive. I wanted a solution comprising at least 1TB space, RAID 1 support and USB connector (since the last NAS I tried did not transfer more than 10Mbit/s). Obviously, the drive had to work out-of-the box with GNU/Linux.
The most popular solution seemed to be the WD MyBook Mirror, but various GNU/Linux forums including the Ubuntu ones counted many posts regarding compatibility problems. The RAID control software is Windows-only, and under GNU/Linux the drive tends to spin itself down, causing the kernel to give up on it and disconnect the device.
It seemed almost like there was no other solution but I found out that Iomega produced exactly what I was searching for. The Iomega UltraMax Plus includes eSATA, USB, FireWire interface connections plus RAID 0, 1 , and JBOD features. And it even looks cool! ;) I could not find any information about possible compatibility issues with GNU/Linux, but I decided to buy it anyway. I have not been experiencing any issue since I received it one week ago. The RAID configuration is chosen via a hardware switch on the back of the drive, and GNU/Linux seems to handle it properly. I recommend it to anyone.

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7-fjellsturen 2009

Travels No Comments

Yes, I did it again. The 7 mountains of Bergen in day, 13 hours and 8 minutes to be precise. Despite the rain, I spent 1 hour and 12 minutes less then my first time.

Checkpoint 2008 2009
Start 7-fjell (Gravdal ved Nutec) 8:47 8:28
Lyderhorn 10:14 10:06
Damsgårdsfjell 11:51 11:52
Løvstakken 13:40 13:37
Start 4-fjell (Årstad) 15:00 14:36
Ulriken 16:43 16:39
Fløyen 19:05 19:21
Rundemanen 20:27 20:07
Sandviksfjellet 20:56 20:48
Mål (Marken) 22:27 21:36

Special thanks goes to “min kjære” Synnøve, who shared with me in both editions, plus Antonio and Mikal who joined us this year.

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Lettera aperta ai rappresentanti politici italiani

Italiano, Personal Life, Politics 7 Comments

Gentili rappresentanti politici italiani,

sono Alessandro Rossini, un giovane di 28 anni originario della provincia di Teramo che è stato costretto purtroppo o per fortuna ad espatriare per non vedere vanificati tanti anni di sacrifici.

Scrivo questa lettera per condividere con voi la mia storia. Prendetela un po’ come volete: come la storia di un perfetto sconosciuto a cui non dare nessuna importanza oppure come l’ennesima preoccupante testimonianza di uno dei tanti “anonimi” cervelli in fuga che da decenni abbandonano il Bel Paese.

Ho investito diversi anni della mia vita sopra i libri per ottenere una istruzione universitaria. Non sono stato solo un “secchione”, ho coltivato i miei interessi ed ho avuto i miei momenti di svago, ma i sacrifici sono stati tanti. Il risultati sono stati una laurea magistrale con lode in informatica ed un Master in Web Technology presso l’Università degli Studi dell’Aquila, uno stage aziendale di quattro mesi a Roma presso una importante società di consulenza e soprattutto un anno di scambio in Norvegia grazie al programma Erasmus.

Alla fine del mio ciclo di studi mi sarebbe piaciuto rimanere in accademia a fare il ricercatore. La ricerca è una delle cose che mi stimola di piú… Già da bambino dicevo che da grande avrei fatto l’ “inventore”. Non avevo ancora idea di cosa avrei inventato, ma le intenzioni erano buone. :) Il relatore della mia tesi mi invitò a partecipare al concorso per l’assegnazione di una borsa di studio per il corso di dottorato, ma le condizioni di lavoro sarebbero state quelle stranote: all’epoca poco piú di 800€ netti al mese, ovviamente se fossi rientrato fra i pochi “eletti” a vincere il concorso. Dovetti declinare a malincuore la proposta. Uno scapolo che non vuole piú vivere a casa e gravare sulle finanze dei genitori ha bisogno di molto di piú di 800€ al mese. La cosa sconcertante è che è possibile guadagnare di piú con lavori (tutti rispettabilissimi ovviamente) per i quali non è richiesta la benché minima preparazione universitaria. È questa la ricetta per mantenere i giovani ricercatori nei nostri atenei?

Non mi restava che valutare le opportunità del mondo dell’industria. Fortunatamente, grazie ai contatti che le aziende hanno con gli atenei, ricevetti diverse proposte di lavoro nei mesi seguenti la mia laurea. La maggior parte delle offerte arrivarono da Roma e Milano, ed io sarei stato ben disposto a trasferirmi, se solo avessi ricevuto una proposta di lavoro adeguata. In realtà nessuna di queste proposte mi avrebbe ripagato dei sacrifici fatti. L’offerta piú vantaggiosa mi proponeva di lavorare a Milano per uno stipendio di 1200€ netti al mese, con un contratto di formazione e lavoro della durata di un anno. Mi chiesi piú volte cosa avessi studiato a fare… Con il costo della vita delle metropoli italiane, e con il precariato di questi contratti, voi (dimenticando per un attimo l’agio in cui vivete grazie alle cariche che rivestite) avreste accettato l’offerta? Io proprio no. Molti dei miei colleghi ci sono già passati, e tutti hanno vissuto almeno il primo anno di lavoro con l’ansia di non arrivare alla fine del mese.

Eppure, rappresentanti politici, con i vostri programmi elettorali avete sempre promesso, tra le tante cose, maggiori investimenti per l’istruzione e la ricerca, la riduzione del precariato lavorativo, lo snellimento della burocrazia, ma soprattutto avete promesso un futuro ai giovani. Puntualmente, tutte queste promesse sono state disattese.

A dir poco scoraggiato dallo scenario che mi si presentava davanti, iniziai a pensare che l’unica strada auspicabile per la mia carriera sarebbe stata quella di spostarmi all’estero. Nel marzo 2007, grazie ai contatti fatti durante la mia esperienza di studi in Norvegia, ricevetti una proposta di lavoro come ingegnere del software presso una azienda di consulenza informatica di Bergen. La scelta non era delle piú semplici, ma alla fine accettai e poche settimane dopo ero nel profondo nord. Dopo qualche mese di lavoro come ingegnere, nell’ottobre del 2007 si presentò l’occasione di entrare nel programma di dottorato di ricerca presso l’Università di Bergen. Occasione devo dire molto allettante, visto che la ricerca era sempre rimasta la mia piú grande aspirazione. Nonostante ci fosse una sola borsa disponibile, risultai l’unico candidato scientificamente idoneo e firmai il nuovo contratto a dicembre. Cosí si concluse la mia breve esperienza in industria e dal gennaio 2008 lavoro all’Università come dottorando, realizzando uno dei miei sogni.

È inutile che vi dica che le condizioni contrattuali sono decisamente allettanti: lo stipendio di partenza (anche normalizzato al costo della vita) è piú del doppio di quanto offerto in Italia, la classe di stipendio viene aumentata annualmente, ho cinque settimane di ferie pagate all’anno e posso lavorare con orario flessibile. Ancora una volta, voi cosa avreste fatto? Io ho preso la mia decisione serenamente, ho accettato di investire almeno i prossimi quattro anni della mia vita qui, tanto avevo capito che dimenticandomi dell’Italia avrei avuto piú benefici che svantaggi.

Da due anni vivo in un Paese che, pur con i suoi difetti e problemi, è sicuramente moderno e dinamico. Ricordo ancora che al mio arrivo tutti mi parlavano in inglese, e le uniche cose che dovetti fare furono richiedere il permesso di soggiorno ed aprire un conto in banca. In meno di un giorno avevo finito con la burocrazia, nessuno mi chiese di riempire decine di moduli ridondanti, nessuno mi chiese di comprare marche da bollo, nessuno mi chiese di rivolgermi ad altri uffici. Alle tasse ci pensa direttamente il datore di lavoro. Le mie qualità vengono valorizzate ed alla fine del mese ho la mia gratificazione economica.

Quella di trasferirmi all’estero è stata comunque una delle scelte piú difficili della mia vita. Trasferirsi a piú di 3000km da casa vuol dire mettersi completamente in gioco e ricominciare da zero. Rinunciare alla vicinanza della propria famiglia, dei propri affetti, delle proprie amicizie sono solo le piú ovvie delle conseguenze di una scelta cosí importante. Si deve imparare una nuova lingua, cambiare le proprie abitudini alimentari, familiarizzare con nuovi usi e costumi e farsi piacere anche quello a cui non siamo e non vorremmo essere abituati. Si deve affrontare la solitudine, ricostruire una rete di amicizie e a volte sentirsi un ospite indesiderato. Credete sia facile? Eppure io preferisco affrontare di petto tutto questo pur di avere un futuro…

Signori rappresentanti politici, sarò ripetitivo ma ci tengo a ribadire che io sono solo uno dei tanti cervelli che hanno ricevuto ospitalità e garanzie all’estero. In Italia, a parte il mio relatore di tesi che è stato l’unico lungimirante, nessuno ha provato a trattenermi. Questo è un problema che conoscete bene, eppure non riuscite ad arginarlo in nessun modo. Perché una volta tanto al posto di ostacolarvi “a priori” non trovate un accordo su tematiche di interesse nazionale? Perché al posto di giocare alla creazione di nuovi partiti, federazioni e alleanze, non cercate concretamente di frenare gli innumerevoli sperperi di denaro pubblico e li investite in maniera opportuna? Oppure il sistema è veramente cosí marcio da non poter porre rimedio? La meritocrazia è persa per sempre in Italia?

I giovani che fuggono lo fanno perché non hanno possibilità di esprimersi nel loro Paese, e non c’è da meravigliarsi: la ricerca universitaria si regge in piedi con mezzi di fortuna e le aziende italiane in cui si possa parlare di ricerca e sviluppo si contano ormai con le dita delle mani. Non vi preoccupa minimamente che molti giovani capaci spicchino il volo per andare a dare il loro contributo in altri stati? Con la natalità ai minimi europei ed il conseguente invecchiamento della società, e con le remote possibilità di far rientrare chi scappa, che sviluppo pensate possa avere il Bel Paese nei prossimi decenni?

Io rimango perplesso e soprattutto triste che un Paese dalla storia cosí ricca sia stato distrutto dai giochi di potere di rappresentanti politici che da 50 anni non fanno piú politica, ma pensano solo agli interessi di una casta.

Cordiali saluti,

Alessandro Rossini

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Marburg and FASE’09

Curiosities, Personal Life, Science, Travels No Comments

I have the feeling that my blog is slowly becoming just a collection of reports about my trips… Not that there is anything wrong with that, but a bit more of variety would be better. Anyway, here I am once more talking about research and travelling.

During March I had two trips. The first was in Marburg, a little town about one hour train north of Frankfurt, Germany. This trip was not due to a conference, but because I needed to work together with my colleague Adrian – who was spending three months as visitor research at the University of Marburg – on an paper which we had to submit for a journal publication. Marburg is a delicious university town, it reminds me a bit L’Aquila, at least the L’Aquila I am familiar with. I have been staying one week in a king sized room of a guest house, with furnitures from the beginning of the 20th century and a bathroom that was probably bigger than the room I have in Bergen. :) No, I did not have money to waste in my travelling budget, on the contrary I tried to spare… This was actually the cheapest solution available since Marburg was hosting a big conference on Medicine exactly that week and all the hotels were fully booked. We managed to get finished with the paper and to submit it. But fortunately it was not only work, we have also been able to enjoy German beer and food. I enjoyed so much a couple of “auflauf” (casserole) I tried. I learned also something curious: many of the public toilets in Marburg has special sink specifically designed to… puke. :) A local PhD student commented with “We have strong drinking traditions in Germany…”. Amazing!

The second trip was to York, as always together with Adrian, to attend the FASE 2009 conference, part of ETAPS. Here I presented our last published paper. I was not so stressed in the end, and everything went smoothly. I am very satisfied by the presentation, and receiving compliments from colleagues and other researcher was a great reward. The very same evening after the presentation we had a “gala dinner”, which was actually delicious, and of course we continued the celebrations in the pubs of the city centre. The ale beers from the local breweries helped me to forget about the research carried on in the last months… :) The city of York was somehow fascinating, also because of its history. Founded by Romans in the year 71 and captured by the Vikings in 866, it shares a lot with the history of both my home country and the country where I live now.

I hope to be able to upload pictures from both trips soon!

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Earthquake in L’Aquila

Personal Life, Politics, Society, Wishy-washiness No Comments

This is just a short post to answer all the messages I received asking whether my family and friends where involved by the earthquake in L’Aquila. Thanks everyone for the interest!

My family lives in Tortoreto, which is a village on the Adriatic coast, about 100km far from the epicentre of the earthquake. The distance was enough to avoid yet another natural disaster in my home village — the very same area was already seriously damaged by a flooding in October 2007. Despite the distance, my parents woke up in the middle of the night because of the vibrations, and spent the rest of the night in their Caravan.

Serious damages involved unfortunately many of my friends who live in L’Aquila. Most of them are now without a roof: the lucky ones are sleeping at some relatives or in the hotels, the unlucky ones are sleeping in tents… At least all of them seem to be in good health and relatively positive about the future.

What makes me really sad is to see the city where I have been studying for six years transformed in a sort of city of ghosts. I am sincerely sorry for all the victims of the earthquake. Victims not of the power of nature, but of the rotten public system which allows private and public buildings to be constructed without obeying to the essential safety laws. The public hospital of L’Aquila, inaugurated nine year ago, was seriously damaged… The student hostel collapsed… And despite this tragedy, Berlusconi was even able to make one of his “brilliant jokes”, saying that the victims should view this experience as a camping weekend. All this is just disgusting.

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