There were a lot of changes and a lot of places had to be adapted, but finally they got it working: maintenance updates for openSUSE 12.1 are now handled inside the openSUSE Buildservice without further need of SUSE internal scripts (well: we still will have some of them running as backup for a while now).

As a lot of people were involved in this task and a lot of code has been written, some smaller bugs might still be included, even if everyone tries to avoid failures. One of the most visible bugs was the unsigned 12.1 update repository from 2012-02-18 until 2012-02-19: the reason was a sync script that tried to pull the repository from a wrong location where the signing was not yet done with the new setup.  We apologize for the trouble and irritation caused and really appreciate all the reports from our users about that broken repository – as this shows the high amount of interest and knowledge about the security impact such an unsigned repository has.

Our release manager, Stephan “Coolo” Kulow said:

There have been enough weeks without another release,
so I started now with uploading Milestone1 of 12.2
(build151)

The main purpose of this release is to find all the
places that need to be changed from 12.1 to 12.2 – the
branding already made a great start. Milestone1 sure
looks great – and different to 12.1 already at this
early stage. Great work, artwork team.

Please keep in mind that Milestone 1 is only the beginning of the 12.2 development cycle and that some things might not work as they should. Please stay patient. We would appreciate if you would test the development release and report bugs and problems to us.

Have a lot of fun…

Busy time at the booth

openSUSE brought lots of fun to FOSDEM in Brussels, Belgium. We’re all exhausted now from selling beer, t-shirts, hats and giving demonstrations of openSUSE with GNOME Shell, KDE, Plasma Active, openSUSE-on-ARM (running XFCE) and countless other things. Yet we did want to tell you about FOSDEM before we go catch up on sleep!

Beer and Goodies

Like last year, the crew from the SUSE office in Nuremberg loaded up a bus with people, beer and anything/one else needed for FOSDEM. The bus was left during Friday night at the ULB where FOSDEM would happen. Despite the risk of somebody breaking in and stealing our awesome goodies, it was deemed more important to join the other FOSDEM go-ers in their attack on the tasty-beverage supply of Brussels! Besides, a night outside in the > -10C degrees from last weekend ensured the beer would be cold and ready to drink.

Cool hats to keep your head warm

The next morning, those smart enough not to drink too much (or (wo)manly enough to ignore the hangover and show up anyway) prepared the booth for the onslaught of visitors eager to learn the latest about openSUSE and buy the coolest beer at FOSDEM. Besides this great beverage we also had the usual assortment of stickers, openSUSE DVDs, t-shirts (in any size as long as your size is Large) and of course our demo systems showing off openSUSE. This year we had our big touch screens again, one with GNOME Shell, the other with the latest from KDE, as well as an assortment of smaller devices. Several of them ran ARM with either consoles or XFCE and there was a “WeTab” with Plasma Active on it as well.

Interestingly, our beer got “forked” by the Firefox crowd who bought a bunch of them (we threw in some t-shirts) and put a firefox sticker over the Old Toad badge. Yes, “Free as in Beer” and all that. Suffice to say the beer was not only popular (as some evil tongues claimed) because the K building had no other drinks available – everyone who tried it agreed it was actually a high quality lager. If you want to know more about the beer, see here. Sorry, we don’t ship it, but if you look us up at LinuxTag in May (Berlin) we will have some!

Two ARM devices with openSUSE

FOSDEM

If you have never been to FOSDEM there is little we can do to describe this event. Nevertheless I will attempt to paint you a picture as everyone deserves to know how awesome it is! For starters, as you might know, our beloved Pascal “Yaloki” Bleser is part of the FOSDEM organisation. There is no doubt that the event can do anything but rock! Of course, while Pascal might be as strong as many men, he’s just a part in the mighty wheels that keep FOSDEM running. That is to say: it is big. VERY big. The two days the event lasts (Saturday and Sunday) are packed with over 400 sessions, summing up to over 200 hours of content (yes, in two days), varying from BOF sessions to keynotes and presentations and the attendees litteraly number in the many thousands.

This year, almost all booths were moved to the new K building, which also hosted a number of so-called “devrooms” (project or topic specific rooms). As the old location was getting crowded (crowded as in standing nose to nose breaks) the change was great, both from a hygenic and comfort point of view. Especially since the weather made going outside far less appealing as it had been in previous years – one has to feel sorry for the nicotine addicted at FOSDEM.

The new K building booth area

FOSDEM has a number of buildings spread over the ULB university campus, each of them filled with a number of booths as well as many rooms where talks are held. There are some HUGE rooms but most of them have capacities of 80-150 people. These rooms are organized by a FOSS project or by topic: there were the cross-desktop and the cross-distro rooms but also spaces for LibreOffice, Mozilla, embedded operating systems, JBoss, Mono, Java, Legal issues, virtualization, cloud and more. In other words: you will feel the need for a decent cloning machine once you get an idea of how much interesting stuff goes on in those two days. But (un?)fortunately, that’s not all. The “hallway track”, as in, the area around the booths, is absolutely STUFFED with interesting people. Core developers from projects ranging from Python to Arch Linux and LibreOffice to the kernel can be found wandering around. As a matter of fact, many FOSDEM veterans are known to not visit more than one or two talks – and those often presented by themselves. There are just too many people to talk to. And getting in contact with people at FOSDEM is both easy and hard. Hard, as you will find it difficult to find a person you are looking for in the huge crowd. And easy because most people are incredibly easy to aproach and very much open for a chat.

Motivational poster...

Results

So what did we take away from FOSDEM? First of all – about 6-700 euro from the sales of the t-shirts and beer. This money has been donated to the FOSDEM organisation in the hopes they will use it for something good (like giving themselves a well deserved evening of relaxation, food and drinks).

Second of all, openSUSE is clearly popular and getting more so. Our efforts are recognized and appreciated by our users and that’s a great thing! Many people where very happy to donate a bit for a t-shirt, a hat, some stickers, DVDs and more and we surely convinced quite a few to give openSUSE 12.1 a test drive. There was of course the usual slew of users thanking us for our efforts – as well as those coming with the issues they faced. Interestingly enough, stability was not often a big problem but there are still things “out there” which are not packaged. Hard to believe with the almost 170.000 packages on OBS! But yes, we don’t have the perfect Linux distribution yet, so keep up the good work!
There was quite a number of “geeko talks”, as usual. Of course a number of enthusiastic LibreOffice developers consider themselves Green but there were of course talks by openSUSE contributors in the cross-distribution, X-org, and cross-desktop rooms as well as in many other places. Highlights include talks on openQA, OBS, openSUSE-on-ARM, Snapper, a round table discussion around ambassadors with other distribution projects, and much more.

We had many hugs and catch-up moments as we don’t see each other all that often – it was truly great to meet so many friends again. With visitors from around Europe (and quite a few from other continents too) it was great seeing old and making new friends.

There were interesting discussions with fellow FOSS projects, e.g. with the Ubuntu LoCo team from Belgium that had a stand right next to us.

Last but not least, Richard and Tom deserve big hugs for their organizing work. And obviously, so does everyone else who was there. It was awesome because we were all there!

View more FOSDEM pictures here and here and all around the web…

1 – What is ATK and AT-SPI in simple words?

AT-SPI is the acronym for Assistive Technology Service Provider Interface. Its main purpose is to provide a means for an assistive technology to interact with an application. For instance, the Orca screen reader wants to present newly-inserted text, such as a new instant message, to the user. Therefore Orca asks AT-SPI to inform it whenever text gets inserted. When Orca is told what text has just been inserted, it can present that new text to the user in speech and in braille. Similarly, Orca presents each newly-focused object to the user as the user navigates via the keyboard. Orca can do this because AT-SPI tells it each time a new object gains focus.

Orca, of course, is not the only assistive technology out there. Speech recognition tools can make it possible for users to speak the name of something they wish to click on, like the ‘Close’ button in a dialog box, and then do the clicking for them through AT-SPI. A screen magnifier can make sure the user’s location is always visible on the screen by paying attention to changes in the location of the caret, in the selected item, and in the focused item — each of which gets reported to assistive technologies by AT-SPI.

AT-SPI in turn needs a way to get this information from the applications being used. This is typically accomplished through the application’s toolkit.  For instance, Gtk+, Clutter, Gecko, and other toolkits implement an accessibility abstraction layer called ATK.  If a toolkit implements ATK, then AT-SPI will automatically receive the information from that toolkit thanks to the atk-bridge. It turns out that, in the case of Qt, there is no ATK implementation. Instead Qt implements its own direct bridge to AT-SPI. But that is a special case. What is important is that in all cases, accessible free desktop toolkits expose information to assistive technologies, and assistive technologies get that information via AT-SPI.

2 – How easy is for someone with disabilities to run a computer? How far is Linux from other similar proprietary software?

In short: it is not especially easy. And in some cases the problems start early on in the user experience because not all distros have accessible installers yet. Having said that, we are seeing more and more awareness of accessibility on the part of developers as well as distros. Thus we are getting closer and closer to the point of Linux accessibility which “just works.”

With respect to how far away Linux is from other similar proprietary software, we’ve admittedly got a ways to go. But it is also worth mentioning that in the case of Linux GUIs, accessibility is comparatively new, having been created just 10 years ago.

3 – Do you believe the financial costs make it more difficult?

Yes, in our opinion financial costs do make things more difficult for the end user. Accessibility related software and hardware tend to be quite specialized, and are only required by a very small percentage of the overall user market. As a result these tools are often expensive. For example, the leading, proprietary Windows screen readers cost in the ballpark of $1000 US for a single user license. In the case of the hardware, a braille display with just 24 cells can cost three thousands dollars (or more). Figuring out how to make the hardware more affordable is a difficult problem to solve, but we can at least reduce the overall costs faced by users through Free Software.

4 – How did you get involved with GNOME Accessibility?

Piñeiro: In my case it started when a former contractor asked Igalia to provide support for automatic testing. Accessibility technologies are also used to implement automatic testing (like the Mago project). As one of the outcomes of that work, I implemented a basic ATK implementation for Clutter. Then we decided that it would be useful to use that work for accessibility purposes. I contacted the Clutter maintainers to see if they would be interested. They were, so we started to include that functionality in Clutter itself. As part of that work, I began interacting with the GNOME Accessibility developer community and also attended the Boston Summit where I met Joanmarie Diggs who is one of the Orca developers.

Joanmarie: In 2006 Massachusetts announced their decision to make ODF the official file format of the Commonwealth. At that time, I was an Assistive Technology Specialist working at the Carroll Center for the Blind and, due to some issues surrounding the Commonwealth’s decision, a number of companies began paying us a visit to talk about free desktop accessibility. One of those companies was Sun Microsystems, which in those days was where much of the GNOME Accessibility development effort was housed. Orca was amongst the items presented to us, and for the first time I saw something I had wanted for the bulk of the previous decade, namely a screen reader that didn’t cost $1200 and which users and instructors could truly make their own by providing input and contributing code. At the time, my non-work systems were running Kubuntu, so it was just a matter of crossing over to GNOME and getting up to speed on Orca and how things worked in the GNOME community.

5 – Where do you get your feedback to improve the development of accessibility generally? Is there just a community involved?

We get a considerable and ongoing amount of input from the community. For instance, GNOME’s Orca mailing list has lots of discussion and can always be relied upon for timely feedback. The participants of that list range from basic users to individuals with enough knowledge to compile and install Orca from master in order to see if a new feature meets their needs or a proposed fix solves a problem. Some users even provide patches for proposed fixes or features to the developers.

We also get feedback from other sources. For example, when local governments want to migrate their desktops to Free Software solutions, they conduct evaluations of the accessibility tools, and provide us with feedback and/or a list of requirements.

6 – How can someone who wants to help join forces? Do they need to have any special hardware equipment?

Anyone interested in contributing should take a look at https://live.gnome.org/Accessibility/ or http://projects.gnome.org/accessibility/. There they will find information about accessibility in GNOME, the different areas (development and non-development) in which they help, and how to get in touch with us. Having access to assistive hardware devices is not required, unless of course someone wants to provide a feature or fix based on a specific type of hardware or a particular device.

7 – What has been achieved in this Hackfest and what are the next steps?

Being able to bring the free desktop accessibility developers — a group of individuals who are normally scattered around the globe — together in the same room for five full days of discussions was extremely valuable: We were able to talk about how GNOME does things versus how Qt does them; about the differences between Gecko and WebKitGtk; about what Orca needs from the toolkits, how AT-SPI provides it, and what challenges are faced by those toolkits when providing that information via ATK. It is essential that we achieve the most reliable, performant, and standardized accessibility implementation possible, and this event brought us closer to achieving that goal.

The most immediate next step is to implement solutions based on the conclusions reached during the hackfest. Beyond that, we need to keep working together to find answers and reach consensus on the questions and issues which remain unresolved.

Anyone interested in contribute can take a look at http://projects.gnome.org/accessibility/

Thanks to GNOME accessibility team!

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The following hosts will be affected:

• static.opensuse.org
• api.opensuse.org
• build.opensuse.org
• connect.opensuse.org
• features.opensuse.org
• hermes.opensuse.org
• login.opensuse.org
• notify.opensuse.org
• svn.opensuse.org
• ci.opensuse.org

We do not expect any service interruptions, but some users run with strict certificate checks.

This article is contributed by Kamila Součkova

Introduction

As the btrfs wiki says: “Btrfs is a new copy on write filesystem for Linux aimed at implementing advanced features while focusing on fault tolerance, repair and easy administration.” Although under heavy development, it has become stable enough for personal use, and there are plenty of reasons to try it. What distinguishes it from earlier filesystems is that it has been designed with scalability and robustness in mind: it can handle huge files (up to 16EiB — a lot!), it can pack lots of files and directories efficiently, has built-in error detection methods (checksums of data and metadata), support for transparent compression, integrated multiple devices support (RAID-0, RAID-1 and RAID-10 so far) and more — see here for a more complete list.

In this how-to I will focus on one particularly neat feature: snapshots. Btrfs allows you to make read-only or writable snapshots of the state of your filesystem without wasting space with redundant data. Together with YaST’s Snapper module, this makes tracking FS changes and undoing undesired modifications a breeze.

Some Background

So how does btrfs do all that snapshot awesomeness? The answer is, it uses subvolumes. Subvolumes are something like separate filesystems within one partition: you can have several filesystem roots in the same container. With copy-on-write (COW) this means that “almost-separate filesystems” can share duplicate data and therefore save space. (Note: Subvolumes do not have a fixed size, they grow and shrink with the data they contain.)

With snapshots, one creates a copy of the whole filesystem within a new subvolume on the partition. As data is actually duplicated only once it is changed, making snapshots is both time- and space-efficient.

Time to Test It

Preparations

You will need the btrfs tools (package btrfsprogs). The Snapper YaST module provides a nice interface for btrfs’s snapshot functionality. You may create a new btrfs partition just for experimenting, or convert an existing ext3/ext4 filesystem. As for conversion, this is done using btrfs-convert; the good thing is that it can preserve the original ext FS and one can easily go back to it (see the wiki page for more info). Alternatively, openSUSE offers btrfs as an option during installation since 11.3.

Listing Snapshots

Once you have a partition, you can look at its snapshots with
snapper list
or view plain btrfs submodules/snapshots with
btrfs subvolume list

Note that in the snapper listing snapshot #0 is always the current system. Also note that for btrfs snapshots and submodules are the same thing.

Snapper Configs

Snapper keeps configs for your partitions; you can view them with
snapper list-configs

Configs allow you to specify when to make snapshots, how many of each tipe should be kept etc. They are stored in /etc/snapper/configs; config templates are in /etc/snapper/config-templates.

In case your root filesystem is btrfs, Snapper will have created a config that makes a “pre” and “post” snapshot pair whenever you use YaST or zypper in addition to the “timeline” snapshots.

You can create your own configs (e.g. for /home or whatever) with snapper create-config:
snapper -c create-config [-t template]
You need a config whenever you want a path other than the default /. (Always specify it with -c.)

Making Snapshots

To make snapshots manually use either
snapper [-c config-name] create --description "something that tells you what this is"
(and see snapper –help for more options); or the vanilla

btrfs subvolume snapshot /[subvolume-name]

A snapshot made with the former command will show in snapper list; one made with the latter will appear as a directory named in. Side note: Snapper actually stores its snapshots in/.snapshots/.

Viewing Differences

To see the differences between snapshots you may either mount the snapshots somewhere (with snapper mount , or simply browse to the snapshot location) and see for yourself, or use the very convenient snapper diff:
snapper diff
will give you the list of files changed between the two given snapshots;
snapper diff
will show you the files’ diff.

Restoring Previous Snapshots

To restore a snapshot made with snapper use
snapper undochange []...
You can also specify ranges, as in snapper undochange 42..47.

To do the same with vanilla btrfs use
btrfs subvolume set-default
where can be found out with btrfs subvolume list and then unmount and remount.

Snapper GUI

Snapper also provides a YaST GUI for comparing and restoring snapshots or individual files.

Final Words
Btrfs does not have an error-correcting fsck yet, so just now it is not ready for systems that require high reliability. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use it ­— it merely means that you should keep backups, which you should do anyway. So go ahead and give it a try! Its snapshots feature (together with all the other awesomeness) makes it a really worthy filesystem for both personal use and servers, and with Snapper managing snapshots is really convenient.
Note: Kernel 3.1
Fixes from kernel 3.2 have not been backported into 3.1 yet, so you may want to use the 3.2 kernel. See e.g. https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=733843 in case you get crashes with 3.1.

References and Further Reading

BTRFS wiki

Linux.com Tuturial

openSUSE Snapper Portal

As Benjaman Brunner announced yesterday, openSUSE 11.3 has reached end of life.  As a quick refresher, openSUSE releases new versions every 8 months, and each version has a life cycle of 18 months.  As 11.3 was released in July of 2010, the time has come to embrace our newer versions, including the successful release of 12.1 in November of 2011.

As Brunner’s announcement indicates, we worked hard to maintain 11.3 while developing its subsequent two releases (11.4 and 12.1.) And of course, we’re already gearing up for 12.2, slated for release in July.  And the first milestone release is already just around the corner.  You’ll be able to try out Milestone 1 on February 9th.

The roadmap for openSUSE 12.2 is as follows:

As always, testers and contributors are welcome throughout the release development process.  Join the Factory Mailing List and have a lot of fun!

We are a community that provides free and easy access to Free and Open Source Software. We innovate, integrate, polish, document, distribute, maintain and support one of the world’s best Linux distributions. We are working together in an open, transparent and friendly manner as part of the worldwide Free and Open Source community. And in this community there is no room for copyright abuses. That however does not mean that the end justifies the means. We at openSUSE are opposed to the proposals because we depend on our users to not only be able to freely and openly contribute their code but also their opinion and other information. Why that is threatened by these proposals, you can read over at the EFF, or watch this video from Fight for the Future

We hope the decision to blackout openSUSE.org will educate people around the world about this issue that threatens the basics of the internet, will make some US based contributors, friends and users contact their representatives in congress and inspire others to join the strike.

The SAN array of the backend server server lost 3 hard disks over the weekend.

That means the array with the built RPMs was broken. We checked and replaced a lot of files from backups – but since not all binary parts of the projects are in backup we need to rebuild some of them (31 from 24,194) afterwards.

The good news: sources and project configurations were affected by this.

So, enjoy! ;-)

Please introduce yourself!

My name is Frédéric Crozat, I’m 36 and I live in Paris (France). I’m working for SUSE for a little more than a year, with focus on various topics such as SUSE MeeGo, GNOME 3 live image, LXC (Linux Containers) and more recently, systemd.. Before that, I worked for 10 years at MandrakeSoft/Mandriva, taking care of GNOME. From 2002 to 2011, I was part of GNOME Release Team, making sure GNOME was released on time and with all those nice features.

Tell us about the background to your computer use.

I’ve been interested in computer since I was a kid (first computer was a MSX Canon V20).. First „big program“ (on a PC 8086 with 10MB hard disk IIRC) I wrote was a billing program for my mom (she owns a bookstore), when I was in 7th grade (first in Quick Basic), then I rewrote it in Turbo Pascal when I learned Pascal in 2nd grade and later, I even rewrote it in Object Oriented Pascal (because I bought Borland Pascal 6 or 7, shipped with huge printed user manual, included OO stuff) when I was in collegue. And my mom used this program (on the same computer) until she closed her shop, 7 years ago ;)

Then, I went to a Computer Science Engineering school where I learned a lot about computers science (even if I was already a geek ;), including C, C++, Java and many strange languages.

I also learned Unix there and discovered Linux because our C teacher told us „you’ll get a free C compiler you’ll be able to use at home“ and then, I became hooked (it was in 1996)

When and why did you start using openSUSE/SUSE Linux?

I started to use openSUSE when I joined Novell (now SUSE) in August 2010. I was already monitoring openSUSE (and SUSE) before, when I was working at MandrakeSoft/Mandriva.

When did you join the openSUSE community and what made you do that?

I joined the community when I started to use openSUSE and more precisely, after openSUSE conference in October 2010 (where I met a lot of interesting people)

In what way do you participate in the openSUSE project?

Initially, I helped on GNOME (and a bit on MeeGo, when it was still alive). I took care of GNOME 3 live image (used by GNOME Foundation, and based on openSUSE). More recently, I’ve been handling the switch to systemd for openSUSE 12.1

What especially motivates you to participate in the openSUSE project?

I want openSUSE to be the best Linux distribution in the ecosystem, best in the „easy to use“ sense, but also best in its interaction with upstream projects.

What do you think was your most important contribution to the openSUSE project/community or what is the contribution that you’re most proud of?

Probably, GNOME 3 live image : I started as a way to learn SUSE Studio and then kiwi, and it morphed into a 3 months projects, which helped a lot on GNOME 3.0 launch and Novell/SUSE sponsored 10000 promo DVD based on this work which were handed over to GNOME Foundation.

When do you usually spend time on the openSUSE project?

Usually, during the day, in parallel to my work at SUSE (when it is not openSUSE related)

Three words to describe openSUSE? Or make up a proper slogan!

Green ; Easy ; Powerful

What do you think is missing or underrated in the distribution or the project?

Underrated : OBS . We have a unique technology, simplifing software package (and availability).

What do you think the future holds for the openSUSE project?

Great things :) . OpenSUSE as a project is pretty young, compared to other projects I’ve participated in the past, and I want to be sure we’ll be able to use other project experience to go even further (and avoid possible mistakes other did)

A person asks you why he/she should choose openSUSE instead of other distribution/OS. What would be your arguments to convince him/her to pick up openSUSE?

Because we give people choice and freedom. And we also make sure to have great relations with other communities (either upstream projects or even other distributions)

Which members of the openSUSE community have you met in person?

I can’t list all of them (attending conferences makes the list very long), but in my short list, I’d say Vincent Untz, DimStar, FunkyPenguin, Michael Meeks and many many other people

How many icons are currently on your desktop?

None, since GNOME 3 doesn’t have icons on the desktop anymore ;)

What is the application you can’t live without? And why?

I’d say Firefox, empathy, evolution and git ;)

Which application or feature should be invented as soon as possible?

Easy (ie transparent) backup, and getting my data synchronized and available everywhere ( I know both those ideas are being addressed, but not yet fully and in a „easy for my mom to use“ form)

Which is your preferred text editor? And why?

Vim. I’ve been using both Emacs and vi for a long time and some years ago, I switched to vim exclusively, because it was just so fast to start (I tend to detect a lot of different files not always at the same time) and I thought I would be better to focus on just one editor and better learn to use it at its full potential (I don’t consider myself a vim guru at all)

Which famous person would you want to join the openSUSE community?

None, all the best are there already (kidding ;)

Which computer related skills would you like to have?

Understand assembly language and this kind of low level stuff. I learned it at school, but it was never my „thing“

The Internet crashes for a whole week — how would you feel, what would you do?

This is exactly what I’m experiencing right now (moving between flats). So, I’m using a 3G Internet access at home… More seriously, in the past, when I was travelling for my holidays, I always make sure to „unplug“ myself for one or two weeks and everything went fine.

Which is your favorite movie scene?

None in particular

Star Trek or Star Wars?

Star Trek (but I like both)

What is your favorite food and drink?

Food : truffade (regional dish from countryside, cheese and potatoes : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truffade

No favorite drink, I like a lot of them ;)

Favorite game or console (in your childhood and nowadays)?

Heavy Rain / ICO. When I was younger, the various „Commander Keen“ from Apogee Software

Which city would you like to visit?

The list is pretty long, but right now, I’d list Amsterdam and New-York.

What is your preferred way to spend your vacation?

Travelling with my wife and use my DSLR to take a glimpse of the landscapes encountered.

Someone gives you $1.000.000 — what would you do with the money?

No idea. Call me when the bank order is done on my account and we’ll talk ;)

If traveling through time was possible — when would we be most likely to meet you?

Nowadays is a nice time, not sure I would move permanently to another time (but maybe I use it to visit various times ;)

There’s a thunderstorm outside — do you turn off your computer?

I used to (because I lived for a long time in rural environment). I don’t anymore.

Have your ever missed an appointment because you forgot about it while sitting at your computer?

One or two times, mostly because I forgot to set the alarm in my calendar for the appointment ;)

Show us a picture of something, you have always wanted to share!

This is what some collegues did in our office in Paris : everybody should do the same : http://www.flickr.com/photos/fcrozat/6055381155/in/photostream (and I’m now the guardian of this geeko ;)

You couldn’t live without…

My wife

Which question was the hardest to answer?

Movie scene / what to do with one million $.

What other question would you like to answer? And what would you answer?