Why did I post an article about Xen a few months ago ?
First because this is a great technology. Then, that is the subject and of my degree dissertation (German : Diplomarbeit) I have been writing between June and September 2007.
I have been doing an internship at Hewlett Packard Germany between April and September in the Technology Solution Group division (the business division of HP for servers, storage and so on…), in the Outsourcing part of TSG.
This degree dissertation is a report of a disaster-recovery program implemented for the German bank MLP located in Wiesloch. This program has been designed by both MLP an HP people and implemented by HP colleagues and myself.
Basically, the concept is to shift a complete productive environment from one data center to another. This is achieved by a virtualized environment based on two servers SuSE Linux Enterprise 10 SP1 with Xen, two EVA 8000 (SAN solution of HP) and a HP product named “Continuous access” that mirrors constantly the content of one SAN to another.
If you want to learn more about my work, here is a link to my degree dissertation (only in German available).
I am still waiting for my grade yet and, after that, I will be done with my studies !
I am very happy to announce that I successfully passed the second exam of the first certification level of the Linux Professional Institute !
I obtained the LPIC-1 certification after I had written the LPI101 exam in Cologne last year and the LPI102 this year in Berlin.
My goal is now to go on on this way, take the following levels of the LPI certification (i.e. LPIC-2 and LPIC-3) and become more and more qualified and effective !
This weekend, I go to Berlin to the LinuxTag, a fair where geeks meet geeks and/or IT professionals 
It will be a great opportunity to meet the people of Ubuntu-de again and of other open-source communities, to discover new projects and to attend interesting conferences. Moreover, I will write there the second exam (LPI102) of the Linux Professional Institute (LPI) to obtain the first level of the Linux certification. Last but not least, I come right for the OpenSolaris love day!
I also have been in Wiesbaden last year for the LinuxTag 2006 and I hope this event will be at least as good as the previous one !
This meeting, which slogan is “where .org meets .com”, is traditionally put under the patronage of the… German minister of Interior Department, Wolfgang Schäuble ! (see my last article). I wonder how he will be accommodated by the open-source and Free software supporters, who do not seem to appreciate his will of supervising people’s computers…
Foreigners often make fun of French people for their poor language skills: they are seen as unable to have a good accent in any language.
Even if solutions were proposed in the past, like learning English in primary schools, French people regularly complain about the English level of their fellow countrymen. In this global world, English-speaking students have obviously more chances to find a job than the others. Nevertheless, English (and knowledge of languages in general) remains at the bottom of the French Education system priorities.
First of all, there is a clear problem regarding to the contents of language courses in France. Pupils must learn grammar for years but they are not taught how to give an oral speech ! Moreover, teachers speak, answer and communicate only in French during the class: the teenagers only listen to audio tapes, which is far from being attractive!
The problem comes from the pupils too. They are ashamed of speaking with the right accent: they are absolutely not used to it. When they are asked a question, they answer it without even trying to improve their pronunciation at all (what the teacher does not require anyway). This feeling of shame is not to be related to any anti-Anglo-Saxon (especially anti-American) feeling within the French society, but rather to a mistrust regarding the English language and to the lost pride of French. Indeed, our language can no longer compete with English on an international point of view.
The successive French governments have been claiming to be fighting for the protection of the French language, which contains more and more English words. The Toubon law for instance, imposed French as the official language in French companies. Any advertisement on television or in the newspapers containing foreign words must be translated. However, this law had very little effect and new English words are still being inserted into the French language day after day. And the wide-spread and Anglo-Saxon Internet vocabulary will not help to reverse this situation!
It would be nonsense to try to “save” the French language and to prevent English words inclusions, as if France were a Gallic village, surrounded by nasty Romans!! The German language is full of French words imported during the XIXth century and German people do not have the feeling to speak French at all. Scandinavians are known to be excellent English-speaking people, and yet neither Swedish nor Danish are dying languages. Why should it be otherwise in France?
English-speaking people are blamed in France for not speaking any other language as well but unlike French people, everyone can understand them, in China, India, Germany and so on…
There could be some simple methods to improve the English level in general: teachers must only communicate in English with their pupils, so that they appropriate this language. Then many more movies and programs should be broadcasted in original version in theaters and on television and all interviews or talks of famous foreign people on the daily news should be subtitled and not synchronized. The impact on the general population could be huge if they got used to listening to English programs.
French politicians dare to make such decisions. In the first place, this could look like a the defeat of the French versus English. But people could take great advantage of it and on the long run, such decisions would turn into a success.
