I understand this can sound strange to other Europeans, or even offending for people with more problems than Italy, but Italy is going through an exceptionally difficult period.
Freedom of speech is not granted anymore, newspapers and media in general are most of the times "aligned" to give the same version of each fact and to hide the most "dangerous" points in a proper way.

Culture funds from the government have been cut for the 40% in the new yearly budget.
These funds make possible Italian moviemaker to produce films, orchestras to play, theatres and cinemas to be open and so on.

Italy is cutting on culture and this is a very bad sign. Culture is the key to Freedom, opposed to ignorance and low-qualified population, who accept without any question what is imposed from the high spheres.

If you happen to be in Italy, if you happen to understand Italian, go to cinema as soon as possible to watch "Viva Zapatero!".

This documentary shows the media situation in Italy. It answer many questions people asked me abroad about the strange link between Italian media and politics.
It is really worth a look, also because I guess it could be a good signal if many people would see it. It would probably mean that people really wants things to change!

As every year happens, I spent my early morning lost in Venice.
I normally try to make this happen someway at least once a year, sometimes twice.
I get there by train quite early in the morning (today it was about 5.40) and then just walk around the city, without any idea about where I'm going or where I am.
I was in Venice most of the times like this, before 7.00, so I know Venice in a way most tourists don't: quiet, desert, awaking.
If you happen to be there very early in the morning, don't miss the chance, you'll see a wonderful city, entirely different from the overcrowded touristical place that everybody knows, it's just like stepping back to the original Venice, feeling the walls talking about their history and the still water reflecting the moonlight.

Here's my public GPG key.

More info on the GnuPG website.

you may want to use my key to encrypt files you send me, to prove my identity via signed emails and for many other reasons.

Small Java application to control JavaPOS fiscal printers basic commands.

Functions implemented in this version are:
Receipt creation
Header lines change
Print of Daily Totals
Closing of the Fiscal Day
DirectIO to the Fiscal Printer (virtually any command)

FabioPOS is part of the My Handy Restaurant project.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

I added a tiny JavaPOS application called FabioPOS to the files.
It works, so it cold be a good starting point for a JavaPOS application.

Yes, it was a good player.
Yes, it was a good match.
Yes, it almost won...

But eventually... JavaPOS lost!

My JavaPOS software is working. I encourage anybody trying to make these stuff work to contact me, as it can be very frustrating, if you get no help!

Mr. Radaelli at Epson today sent me a new version of their driver for the FP90 printer. It included a test application. I was very surprised to see that the procedures in my application were all correct.
I was really missing something stupid: instead of using ttySx I was using ttyUSB0, as I've got a USB-serial adapter. Don't know why but the JavaPOS wouldn't work like that, so I had to create a new device (mknod) to make everything work.

JavaPOS [http://www.javapos.org] is the most difficult thing I ever found to install!

All the docs you can find on the internet is either useless, huge PDFs with tons of info that give as granted that you already had it installed, or people as desperate as I am to get it working!

I cannot even get if someone is really using it.

The only positive point here is the support by Mr. Radaelli at Epson Italia, who helped me...

OK, back to work, I hope to make it work asap!