tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-206635242024-03-07T11:58:27.290+02:00Funkyware: ITCeteraFree Software entrepreneurship: Debian, Ubuntu and beyond.Martin-Érichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00394315280689943764noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20663524.post-23970718339139735232010-07-06T09:27:00.013+03:002010-07-06T13:50:43.954+03:00On pohjantähden alla, Tää koti mulla mainen, Mä elämästä laulan...<p>My girlfriend and I were out picking up a cake at the bakery last week, when my phone rang:</p>
<ul>
<li><cite>Hello, I'm calling about your application. I just spent the last hour discussing your case with my boss and there's just one thing that bothers us: do you ever intend on paying your residual taxes?</cite></li>
<li>I received those payment slips right after I became unemployed and, as you know, living off unemployment benefits in this country's most expensive city doesn't exactly leave anyone with money to spare...</li>
<li><cite>Say no more! Moving to the capital for this job was a real shocker. The rents are so bloody expensive here! Anyhow, do you intend on taking care of those residual taxes as soon as you get a job?</cite></li>
<li>Yup, just like I said in my application.</li>
<li><cite>Alright, then I guess that everything is in order. We can start processing your application today. We obviously cannot make any promise about how long that's gonna take, but I would think that the decision should come fairly soon.</cite></li>
<li>Wow! That's excellent news! Thanks again for your help!</li>
<li><cite>You're welcome, sir. Have a nice day!</li>
</ul>
<p>Without knowing, at that moment, I had just become a citizen of the country in which I have been living for the past 12 years. It was only yesterday, upon receiving the decision in the mail and looking at the date on the certificate that I realized that, when I got the phone call, the decision had already been made and the bureaucracy was only looking for reassurances that I fully intend upon acquitting my civic obligations as soon as humanely possible.</p>
<p>To say that reading the decision was a highly emotional moment is an understatement. Trying to explain the intensity of this moment to my girlfriend, I compared it to the day when a teenager reaches adulthood. This instant brought a similar feeling: suddenly, the whole EU opens its doors to me and I'm free to decide how to best use the opportunities it offers.</p>
<p>What next?</p>
<p>For now, completing this government training to become a bureaucrat. Funnily enough, becoming a citizen resolved the whole issue of background checks, which also suddenly triples the number of possible venues for the on-job part of the training. In my case, it looks like I'll be spending the next few months at the Ministry of Employment and Entrepreneurship, working on EU projects that fund R&D efforts and export sales ventures in each member state.</p>
<p>After that, I'm not sure.</p>
<p>On one hand, I'd like to apply for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' KAVAKU recruitment program for future diplomats. On the other hand, that ministry is extremely picky about whom it accepts and it's not particularly known for favoring naturalized individuals. This being said, our current Minister recently published rather ambitious plans to completely reform the Ministry by bringing in seasoned professionals from the private sector who could efficiently promote Finnish know-how and products abroad, rather than hiring more of the same Public Administration graduates, so, who knows? Maybe the time is right for someone like me to join the ranks of the Finnish diplomacy?</p>
<p>An other option that I'm considering is to permanently move to Estonia. When my last job there ended, I was left with the feeling that I could have accomplished a lot more, if only I were in a legal position to move there, rather than commute a couple of times a week. Beyond the pioneering work that myself and my diplomat friends at the Estonian embassy did in Turkey, there was a demand for us to perform the same magic in other countries of interest to Estonia. Unfortunately, not being in a position to be on-site and no longer having a job that paid for me to be there often enough meant that I had to pass on that opportunity. Now, seeing how one of my friends recently left the diplomacy and is open to new challenges, I'm wondering if now might be a good time to resume our operation and prepare our next campaign?</p>
<p>Wow... So much to think about, now that a whole continent opened its doors to me. Hienoa! Olen suomalainen.</p>Martin-Érichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00394315280689943764noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20663524.post-10385666070667220662009-12-21T11:10:00.012+02:002009-12-21T13:04:38.089+02:00Wanted: a coherent, sane Finnish political party<p>In more than 11 years in Finland, I've been politically involved in a couple of political parties on the Right side of the spectrum - mainly because those parties tend to favor a free market economy and a work-oriented immigration. In one case, I was invited by fellow immigrants to attend the meetings of their favorite party's English section, because of my expertise on Immigration legislation and common practices. In an other case, a member of the Finnish parliament invited me to participate in his party's immigrant workgroup, which resulted in my getting involved in a number of proactive initiatives and eventually joining that party as a card-carrying member.</p>
<p>Simultaneously, I was approached by no less than 4 Finnish political parties to become a candidate in the municipal elections (in Finland, foreigners who have lived at least 2 years on an A-status residence permit can vote and stand as a candidate in municipal elections).</p>
<p>Despite this, I've come to the conclusion that none of these Finnish political parties is genuine:</p>
<p>On one hand, there's politicians who claim to know everything about the Immigration question and yet their speeches tell an entirely different story than what immigrants experience. On the other hand, there's politicians who complain about the immigrants' lack of participation in political life, but who quickly add that their personal group of supporters is all they're interested in hearing from.</p>
<p>Correlating these facts, it's been found by many politically-involved immigrants that Finnish political parties don't genuinely want to involve immigrants; all they are interested in is acquiring a few extra votes from the immigrant population and in transferring those votes to their party's star Finnish candidate, who often is someone favored by the party's old-timers but disavowed by the majority of grassroot members. In a few more extreme cases, party brasses will sheepishly admit that all they want is «<cite>a couple of niggers in the candidate list</cite>» to show a vague sense of adhesion to the multicultural agenda - despite the assurances they have given to often naive immigrant candidates that they "genuinely" hope that they'll be elected.</p>
<p>As it turns out, many immigrants are actively involved at the grassroot level and receiving the praises of their Finnish colleagues for their innovative and proactive initiatives. As a result, genuinely interested Finns have joined forces with active immigrants to launch various initiatives for improving Finland's competitive position in the global economy through a thriving cosmopolitanism and a stronger culture of entrepreneurship. For instance, I am personally involved <a href="http://www.magma.fi/martin-eric-racine/">at</a> <a href="http://www.emn.fi/kansallinen_verkosto/kansallisen_verkoston_jasenet/tutkijat/martin-eric_racine">several</a> <a href="http://www.infopankki.fi/kayttajaraati">public</a> and <a href="http://www.otaniemi.fi/portal/our_services/otaniemi_international_network/">private</a> sector <a href="http://www.familiaclub.fi/moniheli.html">initiatives</a>.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, grassroot initiatives can only ever accomplish so much; without the unflinching support of Finland's significant political players, several key elements of these innovative solutions cannot be implemented. However, given the grassroot's frustrating experiences of the political scene, one cannot help but wonder:</p>
<p>Is there any Finnish political party whose actions are coherent with its stated political agenda and in sync with the grassroot initiatives being put forward by the immigrants and their Finnish associates?</p>Martin-Érichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00394315280689943764noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20663524.post-83271060042656627542009-08-12T19:16:00.004+03:002009-08-14T18:56:52.528+03:00Nordic expats living in Finland wanted for survey<p>I'm interested in meeting with Nordic expats (Danemark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden) living in Finland, to hear their experiences of settling down in this country, on two particular topics:
<ul>
<li>How accessible is getting service in Swedish, in general?</li>
<li>Did you experience any difficulty in settling down here?</li>
</ul>
<p>I'm especially interested in hearing stories from academicians and professionals. The material will be used in my report to two organizations where I'm involved, one Swedish-Finn think tank and one national panel on immigration, both of whom are interested in hearing about the experiences of Nordic expats living in Finland.</p>
<p>As I'm aware that many Free Software developers from other Nordic countries relocated to Finland to work at Nokia or at local technology startups, I figured that blogging this request would bring me the widest possible audience for this survey.</p>
<p>Interested expats should contact me via e-mail with a brief description of their story. Later on, we'll probably gather up somewhere and compare views, before I produce my report. Thanks in advance to everyone who agrees to participate in this survey and to those who courteously passed this request forward to friends or relatives fitting the description!</p>Martin-Érichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00394315280689943764noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20663524.post-16704955202451745672009-07-09T14:28:00.003+03:002009-07-09T14:49:00.169+03:00On the accessibility of public services in Swedish in Finland<p>As confirmed by a <a href="http://q-funk.blogspot.com/2009/06/aftermath-of-magmahelsinki-times-survey.html?showComment=1247085436409#c5791325131966965141">comment</a> to my previous article, Nordic workers moving to Finland also encounter problems whenever dealing with the bureaucracy. More specifically, getting service in the Swedish language apparently is becoming more and more difficult, in some Finnish municipalities, despite the fact that Finnish and Swedish both have an official language status in Finland.</p>
<p>This matches the findings of a committee where I was recently nominated. Among our team, we have a Free Software specialist from Åland. While the Åland archipelago legally remains a part of Finland for historical reasons, in practice, its inhabitants have always related more closely to Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia than to Finland. As such, our ålander encountered a much bigger cultural shock when he moved to Helsinki than when he previously moved to Reykjavik to live with his Icelandic wife.</p>
<p>Interestingly, most people think of EU versus non-EU nationals, when they think of immigrant integration issues and yet, EU nationals are not any more Finnish than non-EU nationals. This sort of opinion gets even more laughable, whenever average Finns presume that anyone from a Nordic country moving to Finland would have no difficulty whatsoever in settling down, simply because they relocate from a country that also happens to be of Lutheran protestant background and a political ally of Finland. This simply isn't true. As <a href="http://q-funk.blogspot.com/2009/06/aftermath-of-magmahelsinki-times-survey.html?showComment=1246285418944#c3409507923606713378">another comment</a> in the same article suggests, there are integration issues with e.g. Swedes living in Norway and vice-versa. As such, I don't see how anyone could believe that Finland would be free of similar problems. Perhaps this is yet another case of Finns believing a bit too hard that their country is so great that they could not possibly experience the same issues that their neighbors have?</p>Martin-Érichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00394315280689943764noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20663524.post-41443471575615846162009-06-29T15:27:00.011+03:002011-05-19T19:10:30.024+03:00Aftermath of the Magma/Helsinki Times survey on Swedish<p>While searching the blogosphere for responses to the <a href="http://q-funk.blogspot.com/2009/05/invandringskonsult.html">survey on Swedish culture in Finland</a>, I came across <a href="http://www.vasabladet.fi/story.aspx?storyID=41652">this interesting gem</a> [translated and commented <a href="http://keskustelu.suomi24.fi/node/8161606/flat">in Finnish</a> on Suomi 24] by <strong>Vasa Bladet</strong> columnist <strong>Kenneth Myntti</strong>.</p>
<p>After summarizing the findings of the survey that was conducted by Magma and the Helsinki Times, he moved on to describing my efforts for getting access to Swedish language classes and how it lead me to directly contact the Ministry of Employment on this issue.</p>
<p>Myntti then concludes the article by making a rather astute observation (my own translation; apologies for any inaccuracy):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Racine simply would not give up so easily. He took the initiative to approach the Ministry of Labor with a proposal that any foreigner who already passed level 4 of the National Certification in Finnish Proficiency would be admissible to study Swedish via labor training. It was he who approached the Ministry, not the Ministry who approached him.</p>
<p>Is this really how things are supposed to be? Are immigrants really expected to battle the bureaucracy just to become a part of this country's Swedish-speaking community?</p>
<p>Of course not. It should be up to us to have our own "Finland Swede operatives" inside the bureaucracy and parliament, knocking on doors and driving changes in policy to ensure that immigrants can have the option to integrate with the Swedish-speaking part of the population, if they want to.</p>
<p>The Swedish language has a status that is equal to the Finnish language in this country's constitution and a direct consequence of that ought to be a possibility to take Swedish classes on equal footing with Finnish classes for those who chose to immigrate to our country.</p>
<p>That Swedish is considered easier to learn than Finnish should in fact increase foreigners' interest in choosing Swedish as their primary integration language.</p>
<p>From that perspective, we could even complement Racine's proposal by saying that any foreigner who already achieved a sufficient level of proficiency in Swedish could be offered Finnish classes afterwards.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In my opinion, Myntti is absolutely right. If Swedish's status as an official language of Finland is to have any meaning, then it <em>must</em> be possible to study it via Integration Act measures. However, this country's majority speaks and has always spoken Finnish. As such, I think that it makes perfect sense to put the emphasis on Finnish as the primary integration language.</p>
<p>Still, I'll emphasize that this doesn't dispense this Government from acquitting its constitutional obligations to safeguard the status of both official languages and, as a direct consequence, to ensure that immigrants get equal access to immigrant labor training in both national languages.</p>
<p>Basically, for as long as Swedish retains its official language status, there can be <em>no</em> excuse for preventing immigrants from getting Swedish classes via the Integration Act measures!</p>
<h4>On a related matter...</h4>
<p>On the issue of whether or not Swedish should be reinstated as a compulsory subject for the high school matriculation exam, Prime Minister <strong>Matti Vanhanen</strong> <a href="http://www.iltasanomat.fi/uutiset/kotimaa/uutinen.asp?id=1702451">said in Iltasanomat</a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
Youths who couldn't give a damn about studying Swedish significantly reduce their opportunities on the job market and they concede a tremendous advantage to others who do speak it.
</blockquote>
<p>What's interesting about Vanhanen's opinion is that, while he correctly acknowledges how a <em>Finnish</em> professional who doesn't master Swedish could be seriously disadvantaged on the job market, he clearly doesn't realize how an immigrant who only knows one of the official languages could similarly be affected. I wonder why...</p>Martin-Érichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00394315280689943764noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20663524.post-38861035111532714442009-06-06T17:47:00.014+03:002009-06-07T11:34:58.825+03:00When can we have a balanced and meaningful debate on immigration?<p>This question keeps on popping up in many recent newspaper articles, on discussion boards and in seminars debating immigration issues in Finland. At the core of the question is a general impression that, between the enthusiastic supporters of multiculturalism and the pessimistic nationalist rednecks, very little constructive discussion is possible in Finland.</p>
<p>At one end, humanitarian help organizations, as well as politicians from the Green Party and the Swedish Folk Party, keep on taking excessively generous initiatives towards refugees and asylum seekers, all while labeling their detractors as racists. At the other end, nationalist candidates in the National Coalition Party and True Finns Party keep on painting every immigrant as a refugee who is abusing social security and label their detractors as turning Finland into the easiest country to abuse social security, at the Finnish taxpayer's expense. In between, candidates from the Christian Democrats and Center Party spread equally among these two camps. Meanwhile, while the Left is currently avoiding discussions on this topic, Social Democrats have previously shown that they tend to side with the nationalists in labeling all immigrants as social security abusing refugees.</p>
<p>One interesting point is that, no matter at which end of the political spectrum one looks, the whole Finnish immigration debate keeps on focusing exclusively on refugees and asylum seekers, despite the fact that migrant workers and foreign spouses of Finnish nationals make up for a good 70% of the foreign population residing on Finnish soil.</p>
<p>This recalcitrance to discuss immigration from any other perspective than refugees is rather painfully noticeable. Some recent examples:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>At the Maailma Kylässä ethnic festival, last month, the podium was given to a number of speakers to discuss immigration issues. In once case, Minister of Immigration Mrs.<strong>Astrid Thors</strong> made an appearance at the tent of Demo, an NGO promoting active participation in the electoral process. Sure enough, Thors repeatedly brought back the issue of refugees, leaving other aspects of immigration completely out.</p>
<p>The next day, on the Mekong stage, a panel discussion was introduced by the MC as "discussing issues that affect refugees", despite the fact that the program read "panel discussion on immigration"... In fairness, the organization sponsoring that particular time slot was the Refugee Help Center but, thankfully, issues brought by the panelists clearly discussed a much broader perspective than merely refugees:</p>
<p>One Estonian-born researcher said that she'd rather avoid putting all immigrants into the same bag, because there's so many different reasons for coming to Finland and few of those have anything to do with seeking asylum and one cannot make any assumption about an immigrant's motives for coming here.</p>
<p>The other panelist, a professor from the university of Turku, astutely said that, if it was up to him, Maailma Kylässä should not exist, because the actual intent of the event is not to give immigrants a chance to be heard, but rather to entertain Finns with exotic culture and food, which is not the right way to make immigrants feel a part of society, in his opinion.</p></li>
<li><p>Independent member of the Helsinki City Council, Mr.<strong>Jussi Halla-Aho</strong>, repeatedly makes the headlines because of his blog's rather controversial statements. Probably his most famous stunt was the day he jokingly declared in his blog that, <em>if the women of the Green Party are so keen on getting more immigrants admitted to Finland, they also ought to be enthusiastic at the prospect of becoming rape victims,</em> cynically implying that immigrants all come from 3rd-world countries where women's rights are non-existent and, correspondingly, where the probability of women being raped is greater.</p></li>
<li><p>National Coalition Party candidate at the EU elections, Mr.<strong>Kai Pöntinen</strong>, used as his campaign slogan a decisively nationalist <cite>Sosiaalipummien maahantulolle stoppi!</cite> (Stop the immigration of social security abusers). Further reading on his homepage shows a rather misinformed statement, alleging that immigrants are systematically taught Swedish in language trainings offered via the Integration Act:</p>
<blockquote>Myös kotouttamispolitiikkamme on metsässä, on täysin järjenvastaista että tulijoille opetetaan ensimmäiseksi kotimaiseksi kieleksi ruotsia. Kyllä ensiksi on osattava suomea ja sitten muita kieliä.</blockquote>
<p>Reality is that, unless an unemployed immigrant lives in the monolingual Swedish municipality of Närpes or on the Åland archipelago, the only language they can learn via integration measures is ... Finnish.</p></li>
<li><p>At a recent "Meet the Immigration Department" seminar at cultural center Caisa, it transpired that the vast majority of the audience and of the employees working for the City of Helsinki's Immigrant Services department came to Finland as refugees. The moderator of the event also came to Finland as a refugee. Can anyone guess what issues were given preference by the moderator during that evening? 12 points go to ... those who answered "refugees and asylum seekers." Was there at least meaningful discussion about any aspect of the immigration process? As the former chairman of a particular Finnish political party's English section used to say:</p>
<blockquote>I will not tolerate this meeting turning into a Wall of Lamentations or a Complaint Choir! Are we here to discuss real issues or what?</blockquote></li>
</ul>
<p>What's remarkable about all these examples is how public opinion is so persistently hardwired into thinking that all foreigners living in Finland came here as refugees from 3rd-world countries whose culture is radically different from Finland's and that they all became perpetually unemployed, forever living off social security, to the point that even politicians who ought to know better go along with it.</p>
<p>When will we be able to have a balanced and meaningful debate on immigration, you ask? The day both multicultural hippies and nationalist rednecks will have been kicked off the podium. Of course, it would also help if the refugees themselves stopped monopolizing the podium, whenever the opinion of immigrants is solicited. Then again, perhaps these 3 groups benefit so much from the current status quo that they'd rather <em>not</em> see the day when others can participate in this debate on equal footing with them, so that a balanced and meaningful debate can finally take place?</p>Martin-Érichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00394315280689943764noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20663524.post-5227085888702201592009-05-18T13:00:00.010+03:002009-05-19T23:19:39.624+03:00Invandringskonsult<p>In close to 11 years of living in Europe, I've accomplished plenty beyond working in the high-tech sector: I've also been fairly active in Immigration Policy, especially on aspects that affect migrant labor. Because of this, I keep on getting more and more requests to produce statements or to appear on panels to discuss issues pertaining to migrant labor and to immigrants' integration.</p>
<p>The hot topic of last week was Swedish language for immigrants, the crux of the issue being that even though Swedish has an official language status in Finland, in practice, it is pretty much impossibly for immigrants to register their kids at the Swedish language school, to claim public services in Swedish or, even more so, to request labor training in the Swedish language at the Employment Office.</p>
<p>The weekly newspaper <a href="http://www.helsinkitimes.fi">Helsinki Times</a>, in collaboration with the media think tank <a href="http://www.magma.fi/">Magma</a>, recently conduced a <a href="http://www.helsinkitimes.fi/htimes/domestic-news/general/6243-finlands-foreign-community-interested-in-learning-swedish.html">survey</a> of the immigrant population, to find out how much they know about Swedish culture in Finland and about the Swedish language.</p>
<p>It was in this context that the Helsinki Times and the national television's Swedish programming (<a href="http://www.fst.fi">FST</a>) asked for an interview with yours truly, because I have recently visited the <a href="http://www.tem.fi/">Ministry of Employment and Economics</a> with a concrete proposal to facilitate the availability of labor training in the Swedish language.</p>
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirjs8msTULCF7qp3Y8vO2iAopWinGWN8EXxUFITiflngKM1N5jRgHB9_BGHmj75sJF76Z-cWKqkoWwu0mNXoLyTELNrAImYlapzt7EUv8OBwGZrMPsLKY-GgdXBQiKiI2EduBK/s1600-h/Kuvakaappaus2.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirjs8msTULCF7qp3Y8vO2iAopWinGWN8EXxUFITiflngKM1N5jRgHB9_BGHmj75sJF76Z-cWKqkoWwu0mNXoLyTELNrAImYlapzt7EUv8OBwGZrMPsLKY-GgdXBQiKiI2EduBK/s400/Kuvakaappaus2.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5337101913121939762" border="0" /></a>
<p>This FST <a href="http://arenan.yle.fi/toista?id=2295567">webcast</a>, starting at 16:03 minutes into the show, and the above Helsinki Times article provide more details about the context and about my proposal to the Ministry.</p>Martin-Érichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00394315280689943764noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20663524.post-19860649326344135182007-12-22T20:49:00.001+02:002009-05-22T13:02:39.160+03:00Valga - Valka : 1 linn, 2 riiki - 1 pilsēta, 2 valstis<p>Thursday evening, I joined the inhabitants of the twin town of <a href="http://www.valga.ee">Valga</a>-<a href="http://www.valka.lv">Valka</a>, sitting smack on the Estonian-Latvian border, to celebrate their entry into the Schengen treaty. Ever since I first crossed the border there on a roadtrip from Tallinn to Fallingbostel, in year 2001, I knew I would have to return and, sure enough, I briefly passed through during last summer with an Estonian friend, on our way to an acquaintance's birthday party.</p>
<p>Still, that told me nothing of the town's life and left me wanting for more.</p>
<p>Upon hearing that year 2004 EU accession countries would join Schengen in December 2007, I immediately promised myself to show up and join the crowd. As it turns out, I missed <strong>Aleks Tapinš</strong> of the <a href="http://www.allaboutlatvia.com">All About Latvia</a> blog by very little, having I caught his last-minute e-mail the next afternoon. Aleks <a href="http://www.allaboutlatvia.com/article/694/a-tale-of-two-cities">blogged</a> a great article depicting the Latvian side of life and providing some background info on the town, if you're curious.</p>
<p>I arrived late-evening on Thursday via the Tallinn-Viljandi-Valga bus and checked into my hotel, then proceeded to checkpoint Valga II around 23:30, with the intention of grabbing a drink on the Latvian side and returning just before midnight for the celebrations. Hardly anyone was in sight, except for Latvian officer Čabana who was completing the inspection of a Russian car with three noisy passengers. Upon presenting her with my passport, officer Čabana cheerfully lead me to the office and slid my passport through a slot to officer Bukss, who was visibly surprised to have any tourist show up on the last day of his job to get their passport stamped. Upon explaining to him the reasons for my presence, he pointed me to a nearby bar where I could have a drink, visibly amused by the situation.</p>
<a title="Myself with Latvian border guards Kampe, Bukss and Čabana." onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirZh3g3mn7Zw2FsX-6lKsTJIs0GL7weg-Fz5Zk_mxxkAiIGpFBensWHTETaVrWL4qAfVCX8FFELaUmbN_asxB1i3usICecCSVu3ARef-xmop-kPP9ioBsVrJX_k-22O501CGzn/s1600-h/00005_640x480.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirZh3g3mn7Zw2FsX-6lKsTJIs0GL7weg-Fz5Zk_mxxkAiIGpFBensWHTETaVrWL4qAfVCX8FFELaUmbN_asxB1i3usICecCSVu3ARef-xmop-kPP9ioBsVrJX_k-22O501CGzn/s320/00005_640x480.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5146883288126379954" /></a>
<p>I spent the next few minutes in a local casino in the company of three hilarious Latvian truck drivers, Zintars and Aivars, two Latvians with limited English language skills and Yuri, an ethnic Russian living in Ireland who was born stateless on the Latvian side of the town and who later acquired Estonian citizenship by claiming ancestral land on the Estonian side.</p>
<p>Upon returning to the border, just minutes before midnight, I found myself in the middle of a huge crowd of villagers, police officers, border guards and politicians from both countries - barely getting noticed by anyone. I handed my passport to an Estonian border guard who emotionally commented to a civilian friend of his nearby that, "Wow! That was the last one!", handing me my passport back just as the midnight bells rang and the mayor of the Estonian side started his speech amidst pyrotechnics lining the road.</p>
<a title="The Estonian border officer who stamped my passport on the way back." onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrc7EtWYmV35oAM_ohW-gvMDRoosqPh8q3QNRzwBbkpvobGREaENuoRV9hnmtZao6eEHtYeh9aI_iKweNqgvBPcfcdnGIsi1Cg7R5-Dx2tUthuvLOPl0w-yK9InASxBGouQtC8/s1600-h/00002_480x640.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrc7EtWYmV35oAM_ohW-gvMDRoosqPh8q3QNRzwBbkpvobGREaENuoRV9hnmtZao6eEHtYeh9aI_iKweNqgvBPcfcdnGIsi1Cg7R5-Dx2tUthuvLOPl0w-yK9InASxBGouQtC8/s320/00002_480x640.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5146882665356122018" /></a>
<p>I then had a chance to chat with the Estonian mayor, who promptly handed me a bilingual certificate, signed by the mayors of both towns, attesting that I was the first to cross the open border, while introducing me to his two young daughters with whom he was about to take a stroll on the Latvian side.</p>
<p>The next morning, an even bigger and more symbolic event took place: the demolition of the fence that had been cutting the Sõprus/Raiņa street in half. You can see a picture of what the street looked like before on Aleks' blog article [edit: or on <a href="http://estland.blogspot.com/2007/12/valgavalka-ohne-grenzkontrollen-teil-3.html">Jens-Olaf's blog article</a>]. After the fence was removed, it instead looked like this:</p>
<a title="The Sõprus/Raiņa border post, minutes after after the fence that was behind it was symbolically demolished by the Estonian and Latvian presidents" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8LtWWT0Su-GbvNjXs-e_V_2ZjAIMoMFZUBEgEsY3tEhpJokligGQ7le88WxqwjUVNFufSQDhzwv4ALLf7mRu3iHrxtcYqXP0QUxxIcTbxdfHUjxNwIoTacxOJKiMvkayYAw48/s1600-h/00011_640x480.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8LtWWT0Su-GbvNjXs-e_V_2ZjAIMoMFZUBEgEsY3tEhpJokligGQ7le88WxqwjUVNFufSQDhzwv4ALLf7mRu3iHrxtcYqXP0QUxxIcTbxdfHUjxNwIoTacxOJKiMvkayYAw48/s320/00011_640x480.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5146884550846764994" /></a>
<p>The crowd then proceeded to checkpoint Valga III, where a stage had been setup for the politicians to make their speeches. An interesting fact is that, because of the way the border was drawn, along a creek leading to Pedeli river, an Estonian main road was technically on the Latvian border and thus aptly named "Raja" (border) street. The Estonian mayor commented in his speech that the the brand new supermarket standing behind us was also technically on borderland and could not have possibly been built earlier, weren't it for the Schengen treaty matter-of-factedly eliminating borders between participating EU countries. The speeches were closed by a youth group whose choreography featured six break-dancing boys, dressed as Estonian and Latvian border guards and as border posts. The choreography ended with the teenage border guards carrying away the human posts on their shoulders, just as a choir of young girls replaced them with songs in either languages.</p>
<p>Before catching my bus back to Tallinn, I dropped by the Valga tourist info, only to face a nervous-looking Kapo officer in plain clothes. Upon mumbling something about the tourist info and wanting to grab maps, I noticed that a press conference was taking place behind. As he finally let me pass to the tourist info side of the building, a familiar voice said to me, "Hey! Weren't you at our place last summer with Martin Ranna?" Yup, the wife of the acquaintance whose birthday party I had attended last summer is working there and greeted with me refreshments and munchies she had cooked in prevision for the presidential visit! As was my luck, she had one of the commemorative plaques that had been given to the politicians at Valga III on hand:</p>
<a title="Commemorative plaque for the Schengen border opening at Valga/Valka on December 21st 2007."onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi0f672e9i7JHlYv811kyIxv74LecSOnY1Eei5TiWe-bmefblQP45Z4ChEVhO_GQwiO5FttPmfXXnHrvIYNrkFIfNswDj09IPESCjvB3LDtIBgEyvNNl3UWaDDt0d18YL5gDLI/s1600-h/00012_480x640.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi0f672e9i7JHlYv811kyIxv74LecSOnY1Eei5TiWe-bmefblQP45Z4ChEVhO_GQwiO5FttPmfXXnHrvIYNrkFIfNswDj09IPESCjvB3LDtIBgEyvNNl3UWaDDt0d18YL5gDLI/s320/00012_480x640.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5146889898081048530" /></a>
<p>I was glad to see the town becoming one again, even though it is ethnically divided. There are already signs of people on both sides learning one another's languages and shopping on either side of town, not to mention plans of merging the municipal bus operations of the Estonian and Latvian halves of the town, so I'm sure that they'll get there in due course.</p>
<p>For me, Schengen brought a much more practical and quite welcome change: the end of messy border crossing stamps that were rapidly filling my almost new passport, every time I visited the head office of <a href="http://www.artecgroup.com">our company</a> in Tallinn. While Estonian border guards mostly stamp passports in an orderly fashion, being careful to fit exactly 8 stamps in a single page and to put entry and exit stamps side-by-side, Finnish border guards apparently are incapable of doing so, instead systematically wasting pages by either stamping sloppily in a way that makes it impossible for more than 4 stamps to appear on a given page or by flipping to a brand new page, every time I had to cross the border.</p>
<p>In case anyone ever wondered why I'm currently representing Estonian interests abroad, despite living in Finland, this example is one of the many reasons: Finnish authorities routinely display arrogant carelessness towards the population and doubly so towards immigrants. It amounts to an accumulation of idiocy that has costly consequences on people's lives. For some, it's about being denied the public institutions' support when they need it the most and their life forever going downhill thereafter. For me, it has been about countless missed opportunities (jobs, love affairs, travel plans), plus very costly passport and residence permit renewals. Given this, I simply don't see myself ever representing Finnish interests ever again. Faith no more. Besides, the Estonians are fun and easy-going people. Siski ma mõtlen, kas ma peaksen nüüd Eestisse kolima või?</p>Martin-Érichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00394315280689943764noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20663524.post-63673363618684103432007-11-16T22:26:00.001+02:002009-05-20T20:50:11.506+03:00Miscellanea<p>Things have been rather hectic lately, so I haven't found much time to blog. Here's why:</p>
<h4>DBE62</h4>
<p>The Gigabit Ethernet version of <a href="http://www.thincan.com" title="ThinCan">our thin client</a> took more time to produce than I expected, for a number of reasons mostly related to a few improvements we decided to squeeze into the design at the last minute.</p>
<p>However, today, we finally reached a point where <a href="http://www.linuxbios.org" title="LinuxBIOS">LinuxBIOS</a> runs as well as it did on our previous DBE61 model and where we no longer need any <acronym title="Disc Operating System">DOS</acronym> tool to flash the <acronym title="Media Access Control">MAC</acronym> address into the VIA velocity Gigabit chip we selected. Hurray!</p>
<p>Production will only commence in one month, but I'm already excited by the new model's potential, both as a thin client and as an embedded platform.</p>
<p>Another good thing is that, thanks to <a href="http://www.ubuntu.com" title="Ubuntu Linux">Ubuntu</a> developer <strong>Scott Balneaves</strong>, we managed to get all the necessary tools to support thin clients based on LinuxBIOS into <a href="http://www.ltsp.org" title="LTSP">LTSP</a>, so our Etherboot model works out of the box on Ubuntu, since Gutsy. Hurray!</p>
<p>There is one remaining issue related to recent changes in X.org core functionalities that make the AMD driver we need unstable but, again, various <a href="http://www.amd.com" title="Advanced Micro Devices">AMD</a>, <a href="http://www.debian.org" title="The Debian Project">Debian</a> and Ubuntu developers are looking into fixing this, so we should soon have spotless Geode support into Debian and Ubuntu again.</p>
<h4>Türkiye</h4>
<p>I visited Turkey twice over the last few months, because I'm putting together a pilot project to better promote the Estonian high-tech sector abroad, in collaboration with the Estonian government.</p>
<p>I have to say that the more I visit Turkey, the more I like the place and the more understand why these people see themselves as Europeans because, you know what? They are: practically every significant civilization and religion that is at the core of European culture had major events taking place in in Anatolia or Thrace and, also, a devastatingly huge percentage of the consumer goods sold in Europe are designed and manufactured in Turkey.</p>
<p>Learning the rudiments of Turkish has also proven to be a lot of fun. While I'm nowhere near as fluent in Turkish as in Finnish or even in Estonian, the learning curve isn't as steep as I initially expected: Altaic and Ugric languages share a surprising amount of grammatical concepts, while Turkish itself borrowed a lot of vocabulary from French, because the founder of modern Turkey, Atatürk, was very fond of the language. I'll venture that proximity with nearby Middle-Eastern countries that were formerly under French influence has something to do with it too.</p>
<h4>Identity crisis</h4>
<p>To me, the most challenging part of these business missions abroad is to represent a whole economic sector from a country of which I'm not a citizen or even a resident. Case in point:</p>
<p>Being invited to dinner by a Turkish investor, I noticed the waiter asking my host where his foreign guest might be from. A few minutes later, as the waiter put down a gigantic pita bread with the word "Estonia" spelled in roasted sesame seeds, my host asked, reading my business card:</p>
<ul>
<li>Actually, your name doesn't sound Estonian. France?</li>
<li>Québec.</li>
<li>And your mobile number ... 358 ... is that Finland? </li>
<li>Yup. I've been living there for the past 10 years.</li>
<li>Ah! So you don't live in Tallinn?</li>
<li>Nope. Helsinki.</li>
</ul>
<p>Looking at the waiter and pointing at the gigantic pita, he continues:</p>
<ul>
<li>Actually, make that Canada ... no, Finland ... Ah, sorry, never mind. Just keep it as Estonia.</li>
</ul>
<p>Honestly, trying to keep a straight face while saying "We" about a country of which I'm not a citizen and where I don't even reside becomes unbearable. At some point, some European bureaucrats will have to admit that I need a new citizenship, to reduce the confusion and to let me find myself a proper national identity again; the sooner, the better.</p>
<p>Besides, the absurdity of the situation keeps on jumping at everyone's face: during the second mission to Turkey, I kept on bumping into Finnish diplomats who took personal offense at me for living in their country and yet representing the interests of a competing, neighboring country. If you ask me, I cannot entirely blame them for it.</p>
<p>However, as far as I'm concerned, I've done my homeworks: I've been here 10 years, I speak the language and I don't have a criminal record. Given this, you'd think that acquiring citizenship would be a mere formality, but the Ulkomaalaisvirasto doesn't see it that way.</p>
<p>If you ask me, this country's very first Minister of Immigration, Mrs.<strong>Astrid Thors</strong>, ought to unilaterally grant citizenship to anyone who's lived here for at least 5 years, just for the asking, regardless of what circumstances brought them here or of what absurd decisions the Ulkomaalaisvirasto might have previously made on their residence permit status. Doing this would go a <em>long</em> way towards undoing the mess of her predecessors at the Ministry of Interior and it would speak volumes about how much Finnish society has evolved from the days when any foreigner was a commie they had to push over the Eastern border.</p>Martin-Érichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00394315280689943764noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20663524.post-25932278304363084902007-07-28T15:57:00.001+03:002009-05-22T13:00:25.658+03:00Localisation beyond language packs<p>In <a href="http://q-funk.blogspot.com/2007/07/dear-lazy-fluendo.html">my previous post</a>, I briefly mentioned my K750i Sony-Ericsson mobile phone. I received it as a birthday gift this year, to replace my aging but trustworthy Nokia 3210 and, as with any multifunctional digital device, there was a learning curve during the adoption period. While some features were gladly and swiftly taken into use, some of the handset's usability issues became my pet peeve and, among them, the localization pack wins the jackpot.</p>
<p>First, let's make one thing clear: I fully understand that memory constraints prevent manufacturers from including support for every language known to man, so a handset can only be loaded with a limited set of languages for the User Interface and for T9 predictive text input dictionaries. My issue is with the concept of grouping languages by linguistic families or continental areas, when compiling the localization packs for those handsets.</p>
<p>In this particular case, I had a choice between the Baltic or Nordic packs. The former has UI language support for Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian and Ukrainian, while the later has support for Finnish and the Scandinavian languages; English is also included in both cases. T9 support is a strangely mixed bag: the Baltic pack only includes predictive input for the Slavic languages, while the Nordic pack supports all the languages of its UI.</p>
<p>What's my problem with the above language combinations? For starters, I'm in Finland. We don't interact with Danes or Icelanders outside very occasional pan-Nordic meetings and that mostly concerns politicians. Meanwhile, average Finns travel for work and play to Estonia and Russia on a fairly regular basis, which makes sense, since they are neighboring countries. However, available language packs don't take this into account.</p>
<p>How should this be resolved?</p>
<p>Either language packs are produced with specific countries in mind, rather than generic geographic areas, or the users should be allowed to freely mix and match among all available languages and get the result flashed into their handset at purchase time.</p>
<p>The K750i language pack for Finland should therefore include: Finnish, Swedish, Estonian, Russian, English and Norwegian (essentially the current Nordic language pack, but with Danish and Icelandic replaced with Estonian and Russian). Then again, this only covers official state languages. Samé dialects, anyone? I guess not, because we'd soon be exceeding the handset's capacity. Hmm...</p>
<p>Thus, the only real solution is to allow people to freely mix and match UI and T9 languages of their choice at purchase time.</p>
<p>As a bonus, this would allow me to drop Norwegian and replace it with Joual... ööö... cålisse, French and finally have a language pack that I can truly find useful. I can easily picture a Transylvanian engineer working in Finland wanting to get Romanian support or a Kurdish immigrant preferring Turkish support instead.</p>
<p>Sony-Ericsson, how about it?</p>Martin-Érichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00394315280689943764noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20663524.post-57933968304789029422007-05-21T13:25:00.001+03:002009-07-27T13:09:15.151+03:00Adventures in Business Setting<p>One funny thing about being a foreigner is the linguistic choices people make when communicating with me. Case in point: my new job at <a href="http://www.thincan.com">Artec</a>.</p>
<p>This being Estonia, there's a plethora of languages to choose from: Estonian, obviously, but also Russian, English and Finnish. Russian is possible because 30% of Estonians are ethnic Russians (or related Belorussians and Ukrainians) whose ancestors were relocated during Soviet times. Russian also remains strong as a language of trade, especially among the older generation, while English tends to replace it for the younger generation. Then, Finnish is widely spoken in Northern Estonia, because of Tallinn's proximity to Helsinki and despite Southern Estonian being linguistically closer to Finnish.</p>
<p>People's choice, whenever discussing work-related matters with me, varies accordingly: some prefer to use English while, for others, Finnish comes naturally. Then there's a handful of older collegues who feel uneasy speaking either English or Finnish, so they address me in Estonian, placing special care on clearly articulating every word and on speaking at a slower pace than normal (to Finnish ears, Estonian essentially sounds like Finnish on fast-forward and with unusual choices of vocabulary).</p>
<p>I have yet to see anyone try Russian with me, although a few people have noticed that I get the overall idea, just as long as they articulate clearly and speak slower than normal. Then again, our ethnic Russians are so well integrated that they speak Estonian all day long, even among themselves, and I have been able to observe the same pattern everywhere I've been in Estonia. From that perspective, I think that Russia's claims about "oppression of ethnic Russians in Estonia" are greatly exaggerated.</p>Martin-Érichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00394315280689943764noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20663524.post-1167075276606743992006-12-25T20:37:00.001+02:002009-07-27T13:00:33.590+03:00Life after Etch<p>This week, following the announce of the freeze, I upgraded most of my home cluster to <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/etch/">Etch</a>. The upgrade went surprisingly smoothly, although I had a bit of a scare when the kernel upgrade pulled in a bunch of dependencies that resulted in the forced removal of all previous kernels. This minor scare asides, kudos to everyone who made this new Debian release possible!</p>
<p>My only disappointment about Etch is that we're stuck with Firefox 1.5.0.7 instead of 2.0.1 or Iceweasel. Then again, speaking of Iceweasel: Forget it! Breakages it introduces have been marked as pending or patched for a number of weeks and yet there's still no updated package. At this rate, better wait until Etch r1 or Lenny to introduce it, rather than release Etch with a browser fork that has not undergone several months of thorough testing!</p>
<p>This got me thinking about life after Etch, or more specifically, about what I'm gonna do with the <a href="http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=q-funk@iki.fi">packages I maintain</a>. The Dunc Tank debacle and similar other unfortunate events that overtook Debian this year have prompted me to reevaluate my motivation. Another unrelated issue is, I've been working in software development for more than 10 years and my guts are telling me that it's time to move on so, while my computers will still run on Debian or Ubuntu, I don't intend on doing any more development per-se.</p>
<p>Thus, I have already taken the initiative of soliciting co-maintainers for most of my packages. The Debian GNOME team agreed to be added for Planner, which is nice given the sheer number of bugs that are regularly found against this package. CUPS-PDF, Gaim-IRChelper and NumlockX haven't seen a meaningful bug in ages and can be rebuilt using bin-NMU magic, so they're pretty much taken care of. This leaves the issue of the Estonian and Russian dictionaries (plus a large patch in my personal repository that would upgrade Aigars' Latvian dictionary to generate the Aspell wordlist from his MySpell wordlist) open. For these, native speakers that develop for Debian or Ubuntu would be welcome to join me.</p>
<p>What next? I have a couple of interesting offers, one on the Business side of computer hardware manufacturing in Estonia and another one as the manager of a western company's Latvian office. The tricky part in either case would be the immigration process: despite close to 9 years of living right here in Europe, I am <em>still</em> perceived as foreign labor whose hiring must be thoroughly justified (in the case of Estonia, I even need to request an explicit exemption to the immigration quotas), whereas if I had been granted EC Long-Term Resident status or Finnish citizenship, I could just sign the contract and notify the local authorities of my change of address. Instead, 9 years later, I'm stuck at the passport control queues for non-EU citizens with its disgustingly suspicious border guards. <strong>Sigh!</strong></p>
<p>Thus, while I indeed have shares in <a href="http://www.linutop.com/">Linutop</a> (yes, we are finally shipping - stay tuned for details) that might eventually turn into gold, I also have close to zero motivation left in my personal life, because lingering European bureaucrazy prevents my talent from reaching its customers - turning all my attempts at having a career into a neverending series of bitter disappointments. Is it any wonder that I'm so adamant about getting out of the Rat Race to return to more gratifying creative activities like composing and photography, then?</p><p>
</p><h4>Post Scriptum</h4>
<p>Actually, there is a second disappointment about Etch: we are stuck with Evince 0.4.0, at a time where upstream just released 0.7.0 with strong recommendations that everyone upgrade to that. Heck, even Ubuntu has 0.6.0 already. I find the Evince situation <em>way</em> more annoying than the Firefox one, because, from a user's perspective, Evince 0.4.0 fails to display several PDF documents that more recent releases handle just fine.</p>Martin-Érichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00394315280689943764noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20663524.post-1160330078469680592006-10-08T19:34:00.001+03:002009-05-22T12:47:32.998+03:00Linutop - Internet for the masses<p>I promised last week that I would be telling more on October 1st, about the mysterious Project X that I had been sporadically blogging about over the last few months. Better late than never, so here's the story:</p>
<h4>Casablanca</h4>
<p>I met Morocco-based French entrepreneur <a href="http://www.blogwaves.com">Laurent Bervas</a> via his blog in January 2006, while looking for countries nearby EU with a promising <acronym title"Information and Communication Technology">ICT</acronym> market, because of growing obstacles in getting work in my field, due to my not being an EU national.</p>
<p>By the time the situation had reached the ridiculous extreme that friends were continuously loosing juicy recruitment bonuses, simply because their employer's <acronym title="Human Resource">HR</acronym> department had issues with hiring non-EU nationals — despite EU policies that clearly favor foreigners married to an EU national — I figured that I ought to do something creative and see which of the countries bordering with EU might offer interesting opportunities.</p>
<p>Laurent was blogging about all the exciting opportunities he kept on seeing, since he relocated to Morocco to conquer the high-end Real Estate market. One day, he wrote about Morocco becoming a rising figure in the outsourcing business for the Francophone market, which prompted me to contact him. After a couple of weeks of discussion, he cautiously dropped his idea for a niche market he had spotted: a simple Linux-based set top box to surf the Internet. He then asked if I would be interested in developing it and in launching a startup with him to promote it. I gladly accepted.</p>
<h4>Startup</h4>
<p>That's when Laurent decided to introduce me to an old friend of his, Frédéric Baille, who spent several years at Compaq, culminating with a role in the team that launched the iPaq. Fred's help was instrumental in defining the market positioning of our product.</p>
<p>Laurent and I discussed the product features at length over <acronym title="Instant Messenger">IM</acronym> and immediately agreed that the <acronym title="Operating System">OS</acronym> would be based on Free Software. That left the hardware part unresolved... or so did Laurent think.</p>
<p>Years ago, I briefly worked in the management team of an Estonian data security startup. This gave me the opportunity to network with several movers and shakers of the Estonian ICT. Among them was a promising <acronym title="Application-Specific Integrated Circuit">ASIC</acronym> and industrial design startup that produced really cool Thin Client hardware. The answer to our hardware needs, I figured, could easily be fulfilled by them.</p>
<p>My idea of contracting the hardware to Estonia was initially received with skepticism, so I made a simple proposal: why don't we hold the inception meeting in Tallinn and meet with the potential hardware supplier at the same time? Fred and Laurent accepted, so we spent part of April 2006 there, with me acting both as their friendly tourist guide and as the middleman for the introductions.</p>
<p>Fred and Laurent immediately fell in love with Tallinn's designer bars, omnipresent WiFi network and blond-a-plenty. Most of all, their visit at our potential hardware supplier gave them the answers they needed: Estonia is IT.</p>
<h4>Overview</h4>
<p>The hardware we selected is built around the AMD Geode LX, a nifty Pentium-compatible single-chip computer. It comes equipped with VGA output and four USB 2.0 ports, along with high-quality audio via 1/8" input and output jacks, plus a built-in encryption engine. We added 100baseT Ethernet connectivity (with provision for other networking options) to that, to complete the platform.</p>
<p>For the software part, we used ingredients from <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a>'s Etch release, focusing on a configuration that would enable easy access to the most popular applications for home and small business use: Instant Messenger (Gaim), Multimedia player (Totem), PDF reader (Evince), Web browser (Firefox), word processor (AbiWord).</p>
<p>The result is this:</p>
<img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4075/2079/320/linutop_desk.jpg" border="0" alt="" />
<h4>Press Coverage</h4>
<p>The editorial team at IT-Neeger (an A-level Estonian ICT blog) immediately scooped <a href="http://neeger.wordpress.com/2006/10/02/linutop-vaba-tarkvara-eestlaste-ehitatud-karbis/">the story</a> [in Estonian] and it produced such a strong response that the traditional Estonian media contacted the IT-Neeger team to write a feature article (stay tuned for details). The local Slashdot, Minut.EE, also <a href="http://www.minut.ee/article.pl?sid=06/10/04/0653252&mode=nested">reported</a> [in Estonian] on the IT-Neeger article.</p>
<p>Thus, myself and Laurent Bervas spent the better part of this week being blogged, interviewed and podcasted by a variety of Estonian and <a href="http://tomy.morel.free.fr/blog/index.php?2006/10/04/127-linutop-solution-d-avenir">French</a> publications, which is how I only got around blogging this bit tonight.</p>
<h4>Marketing</h4>
<p>Contrary to our competitors, we fully intend on keeping this platform open, so our initial market will actually be Free Software developers with a penchant for innovation. As such, our first 50 units are exclusively intended for interested developers who want to improve upon our initial idea and participate in defining the final product. <a href="http://www.linutop.com">Inquiries are welcome!</a></p>Martin-Érichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00394315280689943764noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20663524.post-1156779599558199202006-08-28T18:25:00.002+03:002009-05-22T13:18:55.079+03:00On entrepreneurship and Tallinn<p>Lars <a href="http://liw.iki.fi/liw/log/2006-08.html#20060828b">mentions</a> in the same article that he is thinking about starting a business and that Tallinn is nice.</p>
<p>I agree.</p>
<p>Now, what if we combined both statements?</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, other Finns had the same idea, including former collegues of Lars and I, who took advantage of Estonia's outstandingly welcoming taxation laws, of Tallinn's luxurious variety of restaurants and coffee shops, of Estonia's comparatively more affordable cost of living and of the omnipresent country-wide wireless network.</p>
<p>Given this, is it any surprise that I keep on spending more and more time there?</p>
<p>Now, if someone on Toompea could only take a hint and realize that a québécois <cite>kes räägib eesti keelt natukane</cite> and who has been living for more than 8 years in the neighboring country very much <em>is</em> a local and ought to be equally welcome to immigrate as any EU national...</p>Martin-Érichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00394315280689943764noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20663524.post-1150047382038670022006-06-11T19:42:00.001+03:002009-05-22T12:56:22.735+03:00Retour sur ma semaine à Paris<p>In a nutshell: I'm extremely tempted to dump Finland and move to France.</p>
<h4><a href="http://www.6nergies.net">6nergies</a></h4>
<p>This business networking evening was simply amazing. How about a discussion on the phonetic niceties of Northern versus Central and Southern Vietnamese accents, as a conversation starter? How about another one, on ethnic versus national identities, as the icing on the cake leading towards a business card exchange? Lovely, isn't it? So was the girl...</p>
<p><cite>Xin cám ơn, ông Mai!</cite></p>
<p>I however had the nasty surprise of realizing that I no longer speak French to a native level, when Alain did my video profile. Oh, the hesitations...</p>
<p><cite>Saaks mie puhuu suomee siinä videoesittelyzzä? Eiköha? Hä?</cite></p>
<h4>The Food</h4>
<p>From Italian pizza to Japanese street noodles ― you name it, they have the real thing, cooked by expats. No way in hell you'll ever find <strong>that</strong> quality in Helsinki, especially not for <strong>that</strong> cheap!</p>
<h4>The Book Heaven</h4>
<p>France gave the world this wonderful language book collection called <a href="http://www.assimil.com">Assimil</a> and the <a href="http://www.fnac.com">FNAC</a> had them all... minus <em>Le Lithuanien sans peine</em>, whose publication appears forever delayed. Still, as <a href="http://www.martchukov.com">Антон</a> recently found out, they even offer material in languages other than French.</p>
<p><cite>Combien vous gagez que le duc de Novgorod-la-Grande aura réussi à assimiler la langue de Molière avant <a href="http://www.debconf.org">Debconf7</a>?</cite></p>
<h4>The People</h4>
<p>Courteous, smily and easy-going; the exact opposite of the average Finn. What more can I say?</p>
<h4>The Crossroad</h4>
<p>Of course, resetting the citizenship counter to zero is not exactly my idea of fun, but then again I have a strong feeling that my 8-year venture into Finnish society has pretty much come to a full circle, so...</p>
<p><cite>Y'a-tu quelqu'un dans la région parisienne qui cherche un commercial avec une forte expérience de la gestion de produits basés sur du logiciel libre et de l'exportation vers la Scandinavie et les pays baltes? En bonus: leçons de joual [<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joual">en</a>] [<a href="http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joual">fr</a>] gratis, tabarnak!</cite></p>
<h4>The Paradox</h4>
<p>Visiting the <em>South Karelia on the Senate Square</em> event and feeling homesick for my adoptive hometown of Lappeenranta, as I kept on running into familiar faces who are still thankful after all these years that I dared become fluent in what they speak out East (which differs tremendously from normalized Finnish).</p>
<p>Isn't life ironic, sometimes?</p>Martin-Érichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00394315280689943764noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20663524.post-1140004925899845802006-02-15T13:57:00.001+02:002009-05-24T18:41:45.619+03:00Gratuitous plug<p>People who understand French and who follow <acronym title="European Union">EU</acronym> policy-making issues might find <a href="http://perkelix.blogspot.com">my other blog</a> interesting.</p>Martin-Érichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00394315280689943764noreply@blogger.com0