Author Archives: Béranger - Page 9
How to download full-size scans from Gallica.BnF.fr
Online since 1997, Gallica is the digital library of the National Library of France (Bibliothèque nationale de France) and its partners. Among the 4 million available documents, some are scanned…
The Last Sleep of the Civilization Part II
In the first part of this series, it was about COVID-19. But the symptoms of the impending death of our civilizations include another one, which was visible for quite some…
The Last Sleep of the Civilization Part I
I'm breaking the radio silence out of rage. So much stupidity while living “in the best of times” is unbearable. Given that I gave up any social media presence, here…
The Sorry State… and the Quick Fix
I was indeed wasting my time: there is a classic answer to the question “what if I want to run Linux instead of Windows on my laptop or desktop PC?”…
Modern Times, Here I (Slowly) Run Away From You
Four months ago, I said I'll switch from Windows 7 to a pure Linux machine. At some point, I said I'll install Neptune (basically Debian 10 with a few tweaks),…
Le Twitter des cons
I've given up Facebook long ago; now I have the proof that Twitter isn't any better anymore. A little social experiment proved to be "the last straw" (so to speak).…
When Italian Design rhymes with kitsch
“Italian Design” is synonymous with good taste when used as a qualifier for clothing or cars. How about Linux distros? I'm afraid the things can be very, very different in…
Don’t trust the magazines on choosing an OCR
This covidiocy is so alienating that I wasn't in the mood of writing anything. Better late than never, a few notes on the free OCR software, simply because a stupid…
73 Minutes That Define Linux on the Desktop Today—Rather Depressingly
I must be nuts to dedicate a blog post to a videocast by Bryan Lunduke, but there's a good reason for that. For the first time ever, I'm glad YouTube…
KDE and Debian aren’t exactly my cup of tea; or should they?
I'm disillusioned although not dispassionate about everything that's software; but when one sees the catastrophic crap that is Win10, whatever might be wrong in Linuxland becomes almost acceptable. Why are…
Linux Intermezzo: Buggy Indeed, But Win10 Is Worse
Some time ago I said to myself that I should definitely switch to Linux. Returning from Win7 to Win10 in the times of a pathetic 2004 (but which Windows update…
In omaggio a John Peter Sloan (1969-2020)
Sono nato inglese ma morirò italiano, said five years ago the most famous language teacher in Italy. Nobody thought though that this would happen so soon. Here's a text I…
Mon héros, le Pr Didier Raoult
Entretien exclusif accordé à Apolline de Malherbe, sur BFMTV, diffusé le soir du 30 avril. On y trouve énormément de bon sens, et également du savoir. On en apprend beaucoup.…
End of World Diary N°4: Le monde est tellement con, yet the future is interesting
I hesitated quite some time before starting this post—more than three weeks, actually. The world seems so stupid—in some regards, even more stupid than it was in the Middle Ages—that…
Back to China
Qihoo 360, which now offers even a vacuum cleaner, and an expensive one at that; and whose antivirus is hated or at least not trusted by many. And yet, I've…
End of World Diary N°3: China Just Won
These days 99% of everything seems to be about Covid-19; when it isn't, it's even worse: staying of home has revealed our weaknesses, and our expression in the social media…
I really don’t have what to do at home #lockdown
That is, not counting the thousands of e-books, the thousands of scanned comic books, the thousands of movies (MKV/MP4/AVI), of music (MP3), etc. Tens of thousands of each. Oh, and…
Beyond the Point of No Return: We’re Losing the Battle
Not only it's "not just a flu," but we're going to lose the battle: instead of taking stronger measures than China, we're babbling here in the "civilized" West. It's not…
2020: The Year The World Ended
Friday 13 sounds like the best day for expressing some thoughts regarding the state of the world in the times of the COVID-19 outbreak. (And yes, I know: there is…
Internet Radio, Mon Amour
Listening to dozens of Internet radio streams is my contribution to increasing the carbon footprint. But it's not my fault that everything now is using Internet bandwidth--YouTube videos, Smart TVs,…