Attualità e Information Technology

Giuliano mi segnala l’uscita della versione 2.5 di Paint.NET.

Riporto direttamente dal sito ufficiale:

What’s new in Paint.NET v2.5?

• Faster performance and lower memory usage
• Full flexibility for scaling, rotating, and moving selections and selected pixels
• Ability to subtract from and add to selections
• Internationalization (I18N) support
• Officially available in German
• Line / Curve tool lets you draw spline and Bézier curves
• Ability to work in measurements of inches and centimeters
• 3D Rotate / Zoom effect lets you rotate, tilt, and tile images at various perspectives
• Radial Blur and Add Noise effects
• Sepia adjustment
• Improved Text Tool, including higher quality font rendering
• GIF transparency support
• TGA file format support
• Greater extensibility with a brand new File Format API
• Simpler, faster setup wizard
• Update manager simplifies getting the latest version
• Cleaner user interface with none of the annoying flickering of past releases

Technorati tags: Paint, immagini

Segnalo l’articolo A divisive ruler del Financial Times di oggi.
Il tema trattato è la politica di Berlusconi e le sue contraddizioni.
Ve lo riporto:

The way in which Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s prime minister, governs his country never ceases to amaze - and dismay. Far too often, his priorities appear to be personal, or narrowly party political. He has been remarkably successful in keeping his centre-right coalition together and staying in office for four and a half years.

His latest achievement has been to force big constitutional changes through the Italian parliament without any serious attempt at cross-party agreement. Yet at the same time he is bent on reversing the very electoral reforms that have brought much-needed stability to Italian governments in the past decade.

Not only are the measures contradictory, they are in danger of absorbing so much parliamentary time that the only significant economic reforms of Mr Berlusconi’s government - to overhaul the state pension system and strengthen the regulation of financial markets - may fail to become law before next April’s elections.

The constitutional reforms will devolve significant powers from Italy’s central government to its regions, including responsibility for education, healthcare, and law and order. They also seek to enhance the prime minister’s powers, and reduce those of the state president, for example to dissolve parliament and appoint cabinet ministers. Devolution will appease the populist Northern League, junior partner in the ruling coalition. But critics fear it will weaken the cohesion of the Italian state, and make fiscal transfers from the wealthy north to the poorer south much more difficult. Yet instead of seeking a broad consensus to make such fundamental changes, Mr Berlusconi used his parliamentary majority to force them through.

Those reforms still need a national referendum to be approved. The prime minister’s electoral reforms - to return to the old system of proportional representation that produced chronically unstable Italian governments for 45 years - need no such confirmation. The move is a blatant attempt to improve the chances of Mr Berlusconi’s coalition next April, although it still lags well behind the centre-left opposition in opinion polls. It would revive the power of venal party barons, and weaken executive authority.

On top of all this, Mr Berlusconi is still seeking to win approval for a law to reduce the statute of limitations for crimes including corruption, which would inter alia wipe out the conviction imposed on Cesare Previti, his former personal lawyer, in 2003. And he has vowed to introduce a new law in time for the elections to lift restrictions on political advertising, allowing him to exploit his vast media empire.

Against such priorities, vital economic reforms threaten to come a poor second. If they do, Mr Berlusconi will go down in history as the man who squandered a unique opportunity in pursuit of a selfish agenda.

Technorati tags: Berlusconi, politica, costituzione, riforme, Italia

Ieri mi è stato scritto tra le altre cose “Del resto iniziare a lavorare è una scelta che comporta onori ed oneri”…
Forse la persona in questione dimentica che lavorare non è una scelta, un hobby o che altro…
Lavorare è una necessità, e rientra tra gli obblighi morali che il vivere in una società civile richiede.

Technorati tags: lavoro, società, obblighi e doveri

Oggi ho trovato un utile add-in per il Reflector.
Si tratta del Reflector.FileDisassembler di Denis Bauer.

The Reflector.FileDisassembler is a little add-in for the new version of Lutz Roeder’s .NET Reflector that you can use to dump the decompiler output to files of any Reflector supported language (C#, VB.NET, Delphi). This is extremely useful if you are searching for a specific line of code as you can use VS.NET’s “Find in Files” or want to convert a class from one language to another.

Technorati tags: Reflector, disassembler

Vorrei segnalarvi un interessante post sul blog ZetaVu di Vittorio Zambardino, riguardo non tanto ai tumulti francesi ma soprattutto sul discorso a fine post sul lavoro distribuito:

Ma un migliore esempio che la neutralità e il lavoro distribuito si coniugano solo con una società “pacifica” non poteva esserci (dove c’è conflitto non ce l’hai il lavoro distribuito, hai il conflitto).

Concetto semplice, lineare, quasi banale, ma estremamente vero e significativo.

Technorati tags: Wikipedia, società, condivisione

Ennesimo sciopero dei “giornalisti”. Fondamentalmente contro il precariato che rischia di limitare la loro indipendenza…
Indipendenza!?!? Wow, si scoprono ogni giorno cose nuove.

Solo una parola: ridicolo.

Ridicolo che i “giornalisti” d’oggi (il virgolettato è d’obbligo) vengano a parlarci di indipendenza…
Ridicolo che scoprano oggi il precariato…
Ridicolo che scoprano oggi che la famosa e famigerata “legge Biagi” (nome tra l’altro vergognoso che loro in primis hanno diffuso) non sia adeguata e abbia distrutto anni di lotte sindacali…

Dove erano tutti questi giornalisti quando la legge veniva approvata? Ci hanno sempre detto che era la legge della “flessibilità“. Ora a loro questa flessibilità non va bene?
Dove erano in questi anni durante i quali il precariato si è diffuso sempre più?
Dove erano anche prima della riforma dell’articolo 18, quando l’allora governo di centro-sinistra creava la figura dei co.co.co., primo vero passo verso la situazione attuale?

Perchè non si sono preoccupati dei giovani che cercano lavoro ora e, loro sì, vengono veramente “sfruttati” (termine usato oggi nella motivazione dello sciopero)?
Vadano a dirlo a quei giovani che non hanno un sindacato che indice scioperi per tutelarli…

Questo tipo di giornalisti mi fa sinceramente ribrezzo. Giornalisti di parte, che si schierano puntualmente con il vincitore, che senza un briciolo di coerenza e soprattutto senza vergogna si permettono di prenderci ulteriormente per il c**o con questi “scioperi”…

Un sentito “vadano a ca**re” a tutte queste persone a dir poco ridicole.

Technorati tags: scioperi, giornalisti, precariato

Vi propongo un editoriale pubblicato ieri, 8 novembre, sul New York Times:

After President Bush’s disastrous visit to Latin America, it’s unnerving to realize that his presidency still has more than three years to run. An administration with no agenda and no competence would be hard enough to live with on the domestic front. But the rest of the world simply can’t afford an American government this bad for that long.

In Argentina, Mr. Bush, who prides himself on his ability to relate to world leaders face to face, could barely summon the energy to chat with the 33 other leaders there, almost all of whom would be considered friendly to the United States under normal circumstances. He and his delegation failed to get even a minimally face-saving outcome at the collapsed trade talks and allowed a loudmouthed opportunist like the president of Venezuela to steal the show.

It’s amazing to remember that when Mr. Bush first ran for president, he bragged about his understanding of Latin America, his ability to speak Spanish and his friendship with Mexico. But he also made fun of Al Gore for believing that nation-building was a job for the United States military.

The White House is in an uproar over the future of Karl Rove, the president’s political adviser, and spinning off rumors that some top cabinet members may be asked to walk the plank. Mr. Bush could certainly afford to replace some of his top advisers. But the central problem is not Karl Rove or Treasury Secretary John Snow or even Donald Rumsfeld, the defense secretary. It is President Bush himself.

Second terms may be difficult, but the chief executive still has the power to shape what happens. Ronald Reagan managed to turn his messy second term around and deliver - in great part through his own powers of leadership - a historic series of agreements with Mikhail Gorbachev that led to the peaceful dismantling of the Soviet empire. Mr. Bush has never demonstrated the capacity for such a comeback. Nevertheless, every American has a stake in hoping that he can surprise us.

The place to begin is with Dick Cheney, the dark force behind many of the administration’s most disastrous policies, like the Iraq invasion and the stubborn resistance to energy conservation. Right now, the vice president is devoting himself to beating back Congressional legislation that would prohibit the torture of prisoners. This is truly a remarkable set of priorities: his former chief aide was indicted, Mr. Cheney’s back is against the wall, and he’s declared war on the Geneva Conventions.

Mr. Bush cannot fire Mr. Cheney, but he could do what other presidents have done to vice presidents: keep him too busy attending funerals and acting as the chairman of studies to do more harm. Mr. Bush would still have to turn his administration around, but it would at least send a signal to the nation and the world that he was in charge, and the next three years might not be as dreadful as they threaten to be right now.

Technorati tags: America, Bush, New York Times, politica, opinioni

Segnalo un interessante post di Tom Hollander sul Data Access Application Block della Enterprise Library per .NET 2.0.

Technorati tags: Enterprise Library, Data Access, Microsoft

Oggi vi segnalo un altro articolo che si riferisce sempre ai continui cambia-faccia di Silvio Berlusconi. E’ stato pubblicato su La Razón.
Ci tengo a riportare alcuni passaggi:

Silvio Berlusconi les ha prometido a los italianos que retirará las tropas de Iraq y al mismo tiempo le ha confirmado a Bush que se quedará en Mesopotamia el tiempo que hagan falta. El primer ministro italiano es una persona distinta cuando atraviesa el Atlántico.

“Il premier italiano è un’altra persona quando attraversa l’Atlantico”…

Si sbagliano, Berlusconi riesce a cambiare idea e versione anche solo spostandosi dalla cucina al bagno…

Technorati tags: Berlusconi, guerra, Iraq, ritrattazioni