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Fight or flight?
There is an interesting story by Petr Kaňovský at katolik.cz (in Czech). When facing the problems of our society caused by our sins we have to fight with additional temptations such as to give up, to join the crowd, to fall into hatred or to accept the thirty pieces of silver. We may be forced […]
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The Community Patent Consultation
I’ve noticed that European Commission starts a new round of the Community Patent project that can lead to legalization of software patents in the European Union. E.U. citizens and companies have opportunity to fill-in a Commission questionnaire on the issue till the end of March. If you are concerned about the European patent system and/or […]
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From Ekiga to Twinkle
I’ve been using Ekiga (formerly Gnomemeeting) for several years. Among free software phones it was exceptionally stable and well usable since about its 1.0 version. But it supported only the H.323 protocol which became a big problem during the time. H.323 is usually not supported by VoIP providers, it is poorly supported by the Asterisk […]
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Linux printing sucks
There were old good times when one could install magicfilter on his GNU/Linux system and send a file to a printer and the printer printed the file as expected. Since I started to use CUPS a few years ago it’s no longer true. Whenever I send some PostScript or PDF file to my printer, I’m […]
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Grain in scanned images
There has been an interesting discussion on comp.periphs.scanners recently about scanners, film grain, noise and aliasing. I wondered why my 2400dpi scanner produces very grainy scans in comparison with prints (and the scanned images are of much worse quality than pictures from my 2Mpix camera because of the grain) and why the grain is more […]
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Software Patent Game
Not having millions of dollars/euros on your account? Not backed up by dozens of lawyers? Not having guts to kill inovation and to blackmail your competitors? Never mind, you can still play the Software Patent Game!
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Sestry Steinovy
I’ve recently listened to the album Můj tanec by Sestry Steinovy several times. This album is one of those which may sound as somewhat simple first, but later you can find it’s very nice and interesting. Based on two voices, two guitars and often ironic but thoughtful lyrics, complemented with typical Jablkoň sound, it’s really […]
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Price cheating
I’ve been already annoyed enough by computer web shops that present their prices without VAT and one has to click more to find out the real price. Now, when recycling fee was introduced several months ago, some of the shops present prices in an even more confusing way. Recently I was going to buy a […]
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Starting with real VoIP
Phone calls are notoriously expensive in Czech Republic. Despite the former communication monopoly is officially gone, the company still owns the landlines and you pay them high fixed monthly fees and high call rates. Fortunately, VoIP started to expand here recently. I’ve already been using VoIP for some time, but only at the PC-to-PC level […]
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Not without help
There are simple facts which one should nevertheless repeat as often as needed. We are sometimes full of doubts about things we do. But if God gives us a task, there is a reason He did so and He doesn’t leave us without his help.