Unpatched

These are the reasons why I refuse to work with Internet Explorer : 32 unpatched security holes, from which one is a big SSL hole, which is already known for months at Microsoft. That means that if you are using Internet Explorer for your internet banking, your session cannot be guaranteed to be safe ! Think about that, goddammit ! Luckily there are some fine alternatives.

The Wow Signal

SETI is a scientific project using large telescopes in the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence. On August 15, 1977 the Ohio State Radio Observatory detected the most promising extraterrestrial candidate signal to date. The so-called "Wow!" signal received its name from the note written in the margin of the computer printout by Dr. Jerry Ehman. The signal rises about 15 dB above the mean background noise, in a single channel.

An analysis of the Wow! signal indicates that its source was moving with the background stars. From its Doppler shift signature, terrestrial interference, aircraft, and spacecraft can be ruled out as possible origins of the signal. The antenna coordinates indicated that the signal was coming from no known nearby solar-type stars. The only condition required for a SETI signal not met was that of repeatability. However, since the Ohio State Big Ear radiotelescope has an extremely narror beamwidth, viewing just one part in a million of the sky at any given time, one would not expect the signal to repeat. Assuming the Wow! signal is a typical SETI-like transmission, then we can expect valid SETI hits to be very strong, high intermittent signals which appear once (as the transit beam sweeps past Earth), and never repeat again. Unless the signal is detected again, we may never know for sure.

Ask a scientist

What do you mean, you don't know nothing about the temperature of the sun, mersene primes or cyclotrons ? Well, ask a scientist, then !

Goodbye Dexia. KBC, here I come !

Remember my One day post, which I also posted in the Monastery?


One day...
you don't want to join 5 meetings and receive 20 emails just to add one page on the website.
you're finally fed up with Redmondware.
you realize your cosy and well paid job is a dead end road.

One day you decide to quit.

It's over. I'm leaving Dexia to become a Unix specialist at KBC.
I have done good things at Dexia : I helped develop Net Banking, activated the thing on Linux, Mozilla and Mac OSX, and helped it transform from an unstable webapplication to a rock solid framework for building other applications.
Yes, I have done good things at Dexia.
Time to do great things at KBC.