It was a dream.

I was in the mountain, in a jungle, in a village. All of these.
I had been living with them for a while, I knew them and they knew me; we had, since a long time ago, accepted each other.

And that noon, as the sun was high and burning, I was lead to a clearing at the start of a steep, short, downward path.
That was where the passage ritual was performed.
Vested with no more than a short cloth covering us from the waist down to our thigh, barefoot, we gathered around the way, and they explained me.

You are now about to become a man, following out tribe's tradition. You will simply have to, along with our young ones, walk the path, from end to end.
Just walk, do not run, do not jump.

I saw the first boy walk forward, and only then I noticed that the ground under him was paved with stone scales similar to a giant snake's skin, pointing toward the entrance, slightly lifted... and sharpened.

My turn came and in engaged myself, stepping on the scales.
As I went down, they bit into the sole of my feet. Lightly at first, leaving no more than shallow scratches.
But the further I went, the deeper they dug into my flesh, thanks to the steepness of the path.
It was a dream, that bears repeating, but I remember the pain as if it were real, digging, sharp, lancing up to my calves.
The last steps were a torture. Blood spilled from my feet when I finally managed to step out.

Then they told me

You felt the scales hurt you, and you know now that the last steps are the most difficult.
Yet you carried on, endured its whole length.
You just walked down the dragon's back. You are now an adult.

I woke up hurting and feeling my feet, with the dream still vivid in my mind, and regretting that I was back in my bed and missing the cheers of my fellow tribesmen.
But hey... as every morning usually greets me, that one said: welcome back to life, stand up and keep on walking down, to grow up.

Posted via email from Walking down the dragon's back

Once you read the article past the title, you will find some points that are interesting if you go over their marketing garble.

- "As of April 1, Nokia will have two main business units: Smart Devices, led by Jo Harlow, and Mobile Phones, led by Mary McDowell."

- "MeeGo will be an “open-source, mobile operating system project.”

Here we are witnessing the separation of church and state, it could work.

Symbian OS is one of the main reasons why Nokia is seen as 'your dad's phone', and keeping its core to aliment the cheaper mobile phones that made possible for Nokia to sell around 100 units in 2010, while coming back to a the innovation-oriented strategy that made their success, sounds like the right thing to do.

It could result in a hardware that's not a total waste of potential like the n97 and launches on time unlike the N8.

Nokia has been buying market shares like crazy in Q1 and Q2 2010, and it started plummeting, not because of Symbian, not because of the N8 or the iPhone, but because it just had to happen. They wouldn't have been able to keep with their pricing policies at the time, and they chose to fire their CEO and opt for a more sustainable strategy, can't blame them.

They are still leading the market, far from being doomed, and they could surprise us in the month to come.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

There is no religion here, there is no moral.

Just cold, biting irony.
While in Egypt, hundreds of thousands march against oppression, here the soil of Indonesia is stained by the blood and ashes of the innocents and their homes.

I saw what they did, thanks to the Internet, I saw them hammering the neck of a bloodied, lifeless corpse, screaming the name of a god they betray with each word, each move.
The same breath that claim to detain the truth exhaling foul hatred, inhaling the blood's vapor and savoring a vengeance on behalf of...of what, exactly?
Small men, you know nothing, you see nothing and you dwell in anger toward what you don't know. You're scared and violent, mindless stampeding herd.
I ask you, what do you know of the truth, what truth is so brittle you need to carry it at the end of a stick?

And now I am calling you, Indonesian fellows, in which my faith held since the first time I set foot on your land.
By law, I am bound to silence when it comes to politics. I am a foreigner.
Look at me and see if I care.

I am calling you, who in 1998 toppled a regime in the name of your freedom.
That bloody cadaver, half prostrated, hopeless and barren, is one part of that tolerance you cherish, dead and still beaten on.
Open your eyes, open your mouth, act.

"What is this, a foreigner calling to arms? The nerves!"
No arms. I am calling you to ostracize violence. I am calling you to call, yourself, to those who might not see.
I am calling you to watch what they did.
Bear the sight, cry, heave, but don't close your eyes.

Look. Understand. God in not there, the truth is not there.
Just a group of people taking away dignity, lives and freedom.

I am nobody. But you might as well hear that call.
Because tolerance can be preached by everyone.
Ostracize violence, together, so no one can ever get scared of thinking, talking, or praying.

Posted via email from Walking down the dragon's back