Microblogs
February 09, 2010
Twitter / oscartexplorer
oscartexplorer: Integritetsåret 2009: Genomgång av Datainspektionen, fri PDF http://bit.ly/bpKzDQ
Twitter / bagder
bagder: @GodEater http://lifehacker.com/5410229/five-best-screencasting-tools perhaps?
Twitter / bagder
bagder: @Neil_Snat by "track" I mean a consecutive series of talks, like in a single room. I guess I should try to rephrase/clarify that.
ludost timeline
@support I thought it might be useful to be able to delete the personal messages (at least the outcomingl ones), similarly to the dents.
Twitter / kyrah
kyrah: @junicks bei uns gibts noch gar nichts :) - wir sind noch in der "wie reden wir dem vermieter die antenne aufm dach ein" phase.
February 08, 2010
-"RT @fscons2009" -from:fscons2009 #fscons OR fscons.org OR FSCONS - Twitter Search
Live: My Fosdem 2010: Friday Björn and I left work on the Friday afternoon and took a flight down to Brussels, Bel... http://bit.ly/dBrPdZ
by FSCONS (FSCONS) at February 08, 2010 11:20 PM
Twitter / bagder
bagder: blogged: "My Fosdem 2010" => http://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2010/02/09/my-fosdem-2010/
Twitter / bagder
bagder: #foss-sthlm got a new place sorted, so we'll now be able to fit 200+ people http://foss-sthlm.haxx.se/mote1.html
Twitter / Micke_Nordin
Micke_Nordin: ohh: http://mugtug.com/sketchpad/
Twitter / Micke_Nordin
Micke_Nordin: är grymt nöjd över att jag gymmade på lunchen idag! #fb
Twitter / Gelada
Gelada: Math Monday: Skewers and elastic bands give a ruled surface: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/02/math_monday_skewer_hyperboloid.html
Twitter / kyrah
kyrah: @f0lkert in any case I'm looking forward to meeting you on Friday :) - anyone who @smarimc sends my way can't be anything but awesome!
Twitter / kyrah
kyrah: @f0lkert also if you're into cocoa, there's a meetup on Thursday...? -> http://cocoaheads.at
Twitter / kyrah
kyrah: No sir I won't. Thank you. RT @leyrer @kyrah http://is.gd/7Xbs2 ? Illegitimi non carborundu
Twitter / kyrah
kyrah: CQ CQ CQ! Reminder: first official meeting of the #metafunk radio amateur group tomorrow 19:00 at the #metalab - http://bit.ly/bIwznM
Twitter / kyrah
kyrah: I'll do what I've always done. Cry my tears, learn my lessons, dust myself off, and move on. It takes more than that to break my stride.
Twitter / Gelada
Gelada: Learning and riding a bike: Fun cartoon: http://bit.ly/cL7K7Y /via @finiteattention
Twitter / Gelada
Gelada: Children are Mathematicians: http://bit.ly/9hfDBL /via @peterrowlett
Twitter / kyrah
kyrah: You live you learn. You love you learn. You cry you learn. You lose you learn. You bleed you learn. You scream ... ♫ http://blip.fm/~kkzp8
Twitter / kyrah
kyrah: @f0lkert Heya! If you're still here on Friday, this could be of interest to you: http://metalab.at/wiki/Metaday_29
Twitter / OSEcology
OSEcology: Blog Comment on Ubuntu 9.10 on Dell Latitude D820 Laptop by Abe http://bit.ly/9sO1Bn
Twitter / OSEcology
OSEcology: Blog Comment on Ubuntu 9.10 on Dell Latitude D820 Laptop by lyle howard seave http://bit.ly/dmY0go
-"RT @fscons2009" -from:fscons2009 #fscons OR fscons.org OR FSCONS - Twitter Search
Live: Time management by (somebody elses) press-releases: A while back I submitted a couple of talks for PG-East 2... http://bit.ly/a5sS02
by FSCONS (FSCONS) at February 08, 2010 04:23 PM
ludost timeline
@support Is there a way to delete private messages (incoming/outcoming) from #identica? Or they will simply "expire" one day?
Twitter / oscartexplorer
oscartexplorer: Kan inte @ComputerSweden ringa o fråga hur man aktiverar manuellt avstängd mobil på teknisk väg http://bit.ly/d6NM6k sant el missförstånd?
ludost timeline
Monday starts with desktop customisation. Purple Crux won this time, replacing the orange/grey Wasp. #gnome #interface
ludost timeline
@ildalina try wizzair, easyjet & google: cheap flights sofia madrid > > lots of options) ;) good luck!
Twitter / OSEcology
OSEcology: New Blog: Gaia: One perk of life at Factor e Farm is that you run into some really interesting people. Liora and A... http://bit.ly/aAXF5l
-"RT @fscons2009" -from:fscons2009 #fscons OR fscons.org OR FSCONS - Twitter Search
Live: Gaia: One perk of life at Factor e Farm is that you run into some really interesting people. Liora and Andre... http://bit.ly/basjwQ
by FSCONS (FSCONS) at February 08, 2010 02:39 PM
Twitter / bagder
bagder: @gjoos no PHP's libcurl wrapper uses... libcurl! ;-)
ludost timeline
@ildalina Ами как, с евтините европейски авиолинии ;)
Twitter / OSEcology
OSEcology: Blog Comment on Dedicated Project Visits Continued by c.t.mummey http://bit.ly/aoyDr3
Twitter / OSEcology
OSEcology: Blog Comment on Winter Orchard Damage by mimarob http://bit.ly/ctCQ9f
Twitter / OSEcology
OSEcology: Blog Comment on Ubuntu 9.10 on Dell Latitude D820 Laptop by GregE http://bit.ly/b72NhL
Twitter / OSEcology
OSEcology: Blog Comment on Ubuntu 9.10 on Dell Latitude D820 Laptop by Links 6/2/2010: GNOME Journal Released, ARM CEO Sees B... http://bit.ly/9WCujt
Twitter / OSEcology
OSEcology: Blog Comment on Ubuntu 9.10 on Dell Latitude D820 Laptop by Justin http://bit.ly/bd1Hlo
Twitter / magnushagander
magnushagander: @DevrimGunduz: you mean the actual hat? Nope, but don't tell me you don't have one already?!
-"RT @fscons2009" -from:fscons2009 #fscons OR fscons.org OR FSCONS - Twitter Search
Live: Hästsvansman hotar staten!: Henrik Alexandersson skrev nyss om "INDECT: Storebrors nya verktyg", ett EU-proj... http://bit.ly/aOJrbu
by FSCONS (FSCONS) at February 08, 2010 02:06 PM
Twitter / oscartexplorer
oscartexplorer: Hästsvansmannen som hotar staten, denna INDECT-video är krämmande, skall ses http://bit.ly/9SGY5x
Twitter / bagder
bagder: . @chrisblizzard welcome to the snowy #stockholm !
Twitter / Gelada
Gelada: You feeling lucky fraction? Go ahead integrate my day! Clint Eastwood:math teacher from"Maths for Primates"(@mathpunk): http://bit.ly/bCyUe8
Twitter / Gnurkel
Gnurkel: http://www.quintgroup.com returns your password in cleartext in the submission form. #pwdfail
Twitter / magnushagander
magnushagander: Using double reverse port forwarding with ssh to punch holes in failing firewalls.. Whee!
Twitter / bagder
bagder: @antb yeah, 3000 geeks and 250 something talks == awesome!
Twitter / kyrah
kyrah: @twena unfortunately yes
Twitter / kyrah
kyrah: ... down last night. I needed this reminder more than you'll ever know. I'll be alright. If nothing else, it was a learning experience.
Twitter / kyrah
kyrah: Thank you so much for your concern and expressions of support, my friends. You've reminded me that not everyone is like those who let me...
February 07, 2010
Twitter / bagder
bagder: back from #fosdem. Fun, educating and crowded!
Twitter / Gelada
Gelada: @SmallCasserole or Dr Emmett Brown?
Twitter / magnushagander
magnushagander: Back on the ground in Stockholm, after a couple of great #fosdem days. Thanks to all who helped out with the #postgres effort!!!
Blogs etc
February 08, 2010
daniel.haxx.se - My Fosdem 2010
Friday
Björn and I left work on the Friday afternoon and took a flight down to Brussels, Belgium. After having checked in to our hotel, we met up with Frank from the Rockbox project and we headed to the Fosdem beer event that took place on a pub quite nearby to the hotel.
The Beer event was crowded. I mean really really crowded. But we still managed to get seated and we got fine belgium beers and we had a good time. We met a few other Swedes that turned out to be the first in a long series of Swedes that were there. Petur from Rockbox joined up there as well and together we went over a fair share of their beer selection…
Saturday
For us tech guys, the Saturday morning had no really exciting subjects and weirdly enough the morning had only one track and the massive amount of parallel tracks didn’t start until after lunch. This gave us an opportunity to go sight-seeing, and we visited the city square and the Atomium before we headed into the FOSDEM premises and squeezed our way in to a presentation.
Peter Stuge from the Coreboot project explained to us that we were by far too many people crammed into that little room so if one of the responsible guys would come around a fair lot of us would get thrown out of there. With that heads up given, he started his talk and gave us insights in what coreboot is, what it does and so on. I’ve heard Peter talk about this topic before, but he’s still a good talker and the topic still is techy and interesting enough to listen to.
Embedded software development best practices by Adrien Ampelas turned out to be a bit boring. Basically we got the feeling that Adrien re-used a company slide show or something and told the audience a lot of things I bet the majority of people already knew. Yes we know we must use version control. Yes we know we should send patches upstream. No we don’t 
agree with you that there never exist any reason not to use git.
Sascha Hauer from the Barebox project (the project that was previously known as U-Boot v2) told us about this U-Boot project and what they’re trying to accomplish. It seems like an interesting approach to fix some of the worst mistakes of U-Boot but still leverage on all the things U-Boot did right. It’ll be fun to see if it gets adoption from board makers and companies in general. I guess there’s a lot of investment in U-Boot so lots of things will probably stick with that for a long time ahead…
Flash enable BIOS reverse engineering by Luc Verhaegen gave us an insight in the x86 based reverse engineering they do in the Coreboot project to figure out how to enable flashes and to make them possible to write to when you want to upgrade them to use Coreboot. It was only a quick run-through, but my general feeling was still that compared to Rockbox-style reverse engineering, their tasks actually seem a lot easier! Still interesting, as Luc is a good speaker.
Sunday
Sunday morning started earlier than yesterday. Interesting talks started right away, and we actually were too slow at breakfast so we missed the first part of the interesting Introduction to RTEMS talk by Thomas Doerfler. RTEMS is a fully open source RTOS that’s been around for ages and that has some very good realtime skills and can get shrunk to a rather small size. A slight downside with it is its slightly odd license, as it is a GPLv2+ license with a rather big exception that is made to allow proprietary applications link with it. It makes it incompatible with regular GPLv2 code.
The RepRap project was presented by Adrian Bowyer and I must admit that these 3D-printers are mighty cool and even more fun to see and witness in the real world than they are to see on tiny pictures on web sites.
Back in the embedded room, Roberto Jacinto told us about apt-get for android – with GUI which pretty much described the Aptoide project. It has nothing in common with apt: it doesn’t do dependencies and it doesn’t use its file formats. It has some pretty significant bugs still, and it generally seemed like a rather immature project that I’m not even sure I agree is on the right track. I’d rather actually see the real apt-get for android, with or without GUI.
The Cross build systems: Present & Future workshop could’ve become interesting. A lot of projects (PTXdist, Buildroot, Crosstool-NG, Openembedded, Emdebian etc) spoke about what they are, what they hope to do and how they’d like to collaborate. Unfortunately it took a bit too long time so by the time all had presented their projects the time was pretty much up. The most controversial and slightly off-topic of them all was Andy Green (formerly involved in Openmoko) who talked about how we all should stop cross-compiling and build directly on the target instead(!) and how booting Linux shouldn’t need a boot-loader and that designing PCBs with NAND is stupid(! again). I didn’t hear anyone agreeing with his ideas.
Next up was my talk on Rockbox. I did it in about 40 minutes and I think I covered a bit of what Rockbox is and how we work when we work with new potential targets. It later struck that I should perhaps have had a slide about what the future holds etc, but hey I think it went pretty smooth anyway! Peter recorded my talk on his n900 so hopefully it’ll soon be available online somewhere. After my talk we met a lot of guys wanting to talk Rockbox, ask about particular players and so on and it was mighty fun and interesting.
Greg Kroah-Hartman did the final talk and he is a very good and engaging speaker that really can catch the big audience in Fosdem’s biggest room. Write and Submit your first Linux kernel patch is his “standard talk” but he’s doing it so good and with such elegance that it is a pleasure to watch and learn from. And I’ll admit I wasn’t aware of the get_maintainers.pl script in the kernel tree. A very useful little thing!
Reflections
Some conclusions and general thoughts about the event:
Lack of gaps – there’s a problem when all talks in all rooms are made gapless. It makes people get up and leave 5-10 minutes before the end of each talk so that they will get in time to the next talk that will start on the full hour in another room. It causes pretty much all question-sessions towards the end to fail since the questions (and answers) can’t be heard.
Hard to find people – it is such a huge event and lots of people I have no idea what they look like, so trying to meet friends and people I’ve only emailed with or chatted with on IRC is very hard. Name tags would be really cool. I did have some benefits
from using my shirt with a big Haxx logo on the back since a fair amount of people recognized it and approached me!
Audio systems – the quality of the different rooms varied a lot (not only sound-wise but the sound was what bothered me). Unfortunately for me, the embedded room was one of the worst ones when it came to audio. It was a big room sure, but the biggest room had an excellent audio system and thus proved size is not what matters. In this case, I think a lot was to blame on the actual microphone we had there.
Phone apps – having phone apps with the entire schedule and a little map for each room etc was a great service. The app also reminded us when a talk you had marked as “favorite” was about to start. It was a bit strange though how the android and n900 versions of the app differed. The n900 version was buggy and slow, but it did offer the schedule in a time-based view while the android version only allowed us to view the schedule based on rooms.
Next year – yes. I think it was great fun and I will really try to attend next year again. Hopefully other friends will too, since meeting friends at the place really doubles the fun! Thank you all for a nice event!
by daniel at February 08, 2010 11:01 PM
Rett på Nett - Prinsipper, lover og slikt - Gift Economy i praksis
I boken sin The Long Tail skriver Chris Anderson om forretningsmodeller som blir mulig etter at man har krysset The Penny Gap. En modell han beskriver er da The Gift Economy. Han spår at over tid vil Gift Economy bli den ledende forretningsmodellen innen mange områder, rett og slett for at når marginalkostnaden er 0, og kapitalkostnaden faller stadig vil tjenester som fokuserer på maks eksponering vinne over de som setter opp store gjerder mellom kunden og varen.
Dette er gjentatt av Kevin Kelly skriver i innlegget Better than Free, hvor Patronage er en av hans 8 generativer - at man ønsker at opphavsmenn og tjenestetilbydere skal tjene penger.
Jeg tenkte på dette da jeg gikk igjennom paypal historikken min. Iløpet av det siste året har jeg donert (ihvertfall) :Tjenestetilbydere P2Pnet 700 kroner http://www.p2pnet.net/ Wikileaks 1000 kroner http://wikileaks.org/ Wikimedia Foundation 800 kroner http://www.wikimedia.org/ Isohunt 650 kroner http://www.isohunt.com Programvare Openoffice.org 50 kroner http://no.openoffice.org/ Azureus 80 kroner http://azureus.sourceforge.net/ CDex 40 kroner http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/ Faststone 140 kroner http://www.faststone.org/ Media Here Be Dragons 70 kroner http://herebedragonsmovie.com/ RIP! A Remix Manifesto 70 kroner http://www.ripremix.com/ The Corporation 350 kroner http://www.thecorporation.com/
Idag er det også ganske komplisert å betale for noe man liker. Veien mellom ønske å betale og faktisk betale er svært lang, og lite blir gjort for å forenkle det. Spesielt gjelder dette uavhengige artister. Eksempler som NiN og Radiohead har lykkes svært bra med betalingsløsninger på egne sider, men det krever sitt.
Her har jeg lit til at bedre løsninger som kan knytte fans og artist tettere sammen vil lede vei. Genero prosjektet er et klasseeksempel på noe som kan løse dette problemet.
Gift Economy. Se dit, nyskjerrige forfattere og redde forleggere.
by oystein.jakobsen@gmail.com (Gnurkel) at February 08, 2010 04:44 PM
Magnus Hagander's PostgreSQL blog - Time management by (somebody elses) press-releases
A while back I submitted a couple of talks for PG-East 2010 in Philly, and over the past couple of weeks I've been nagging the organizers semi-frequently to get some pre-info on whether I've been accepted or not, since flight prices started to climb fairly rapidly. The site clearly says information that the information will be available on Feb 15th, so I can't really complain that the answer kept being "don't know yet".
A couple of days ago, I got a note from Dave pinged me with a message asking if I was approved. Turns out this press-release had been posted (by his company, no less). Which explicitly names me as a speaker at the conference.
Took me two more days of chasing down JD, but I now have confirmation I'll be there. I don't actually know what I'll be speaking about, but it's a pretty safe bet it will be PostgreSQL related.
I call this Time management by press releases. If I could only get it to apply to all meetings, I would no longer need to keep my own calendar up to date.
So, I'll see you in Philly!
by nospam@example.com (Magnus Hagander) at February 08, 2010 04:07 PM
Oscar Swartz :: Texplorer - Hästsvansman hotar staten!
Henrik Alexandersson skrev nyss om "INDECT: Storebrors nya verktyg", ett EU-projekt för total övervakning.
Jag skulle vilja att folk tar några få minuter och tittar på en video som visades i Stockholm som ett led i Sveriges ordförandeskap i EU. Maud Olofssons (c) statssekreterare inledde och Sten Tolgfors (m) avslutade på konferensen. Bodströmsamhället med turboladdning.
Videon marknadsför projektet i maktgemenskapen av EU-politiker, teknikföretag, polis, säkerhetsindustri. Den har legat öppet på YouTube förut men INDECT verkar ha hävdat "upphovsrättsintrång", ett argument som används när man inte vill att allmänheten skall se det man producerar inom maktvärlden. För allmänhetens skattepengar givetvis. Den verkar finnas där nu också men bara om man har inloggningsuppgifter.
Jag och en kompis tittade på den flera gånger i julas och tycker att den på att fantastiskt sätt visar vad beundran för den starka staten så lätt kan leda till. Filmen är producerad i Polen, där ledningen för detta EU-projekt finns.
Videon är tragikomiskt självrefererande. Den visar hur projektkoordinatorn professor Andrzej Dziech (som presenterade videon och projektet i Stockholm) får en dokumentmapp om INDECT-projektet stulen på sitt kontor. Hemligt hemligt! Tjuven har förstås hästsvans (vilket möjligen indikerar polsk syn på knarkarbögterroristpedofilanarkister som hotar staten). Han får motstånd eftersom INDECT-organisationen ser och hör allt .... rafflande! Är det "protection of citizens" detta handlar om?
På Wikinews finns en lång artikel om INDECT och där finns även videon upplagd. Den ligger i öppna formatet Ogg video, .ogv. Det stöds i Firefox 3.5+. (jag har inte lyckats hitta ett sätt att bädda in den här på min blogg utan ni måste gå till Wikinews).
UPDATE: Videon finns, som genom magi, på YouTube igen!
Man kan även gå till själva videosidan hos Wikinews eller ladda hem videofilen genom att klicka här. Man kan sedan spela den i VLC Player.
Här finns en PDF av presentationen i Stockholm. Och här är projektets egen hemsida.
by Oscar Swartz at February 08, 2010 03:04 PM
Open Source Ecology - Gaia
One perk of life at Factor e Farm is that you run into some really interesting people. Liora and Andrew Langford, co-founders of Gaia University and also True Fans, visited yesterday.
We covered lots of ground on collaboration between OSE and Gaia U. First, I should explain what Gaia University is about, because its uniqueness is not evident from the website.
Gaia University is an international school-without-walls with about 100 students. This means that education occurs not on a physical campus, but wherever the student chooses. There are mentors and the school is accredited. Gaia offers Bachelor’s and Master’s programs, and it is also introducing their Ph.D. program this year. Gaia has the capacity to provide credit for applied work and studies. There are other low-residency programs, such as Goddard College and Union Institute in the USA.
The unique features are threefold. First, the focus is on integrated education, and the approach is that of action learning. Andy’s initial design of the University was based on extending applications of permaculture to real societal change. Gaia is also a strong proponent of open source development.
Part of the integrated education program involves a feature that, to our knowledge, has no other precedent. This feature is that the students are explicitly instructed to spend the first part of their studies in designing their own direction. Other schools, if they offer an independent study major, require approval of the study program before it’s accepted. In the Gaia U. formula, the process of formulating your studies and problem statements is an integral part of your education. This allows you to take responsibility for a natural evolution of your eduction – consistent with the fact that most people don’t really have a clue about what they want to study until they begin to explore it deeply, and at that point, they make many mid-course corrections. This kind of approach is for those people interested in gaining a kind of responsibility that cannot be taught when your program is laid out by someone else for you.
The third point is also without precedent in any other institution of higher learning. This part is integrating process work of eliminating psychological blocks as part of the essential training program. This part is brilliant – as anyone who recognizes that we have both a conscious and subconscious mind knows that there are misconceptions, pains, and other garbage that prevents us from reaching our potential – and such blocks should be addressed and not carried until they turn to sickness. This clearing process is accomplished at Gaia University by Re-evaluation Counseling. From the rc.org website,
The theory assumes that everyone is born with tremendous intellectual potential, natural zest, and lovingness, but that these qualities have become blocked and obscured in adults as the result of accumulated distress experiences (fear, hurt, loss, pain, anger, embarrassment, etc.) which begin early in our lives.
This perspective is much aligned with the groundbreaking work of Dr. Bruce Lipton on the Biology of Perception, and the work of Robert Williams on the Psychology of Change. These works represent clear thought leadership on how we can seize our true powers in personal and political transformation, and the Re-evaluation Counseling process appears to be in tune with these practices. Inserting some measures of insight about the workings of one’s mind – and especially its blocks and misperceptions – is critical to any effective education program. Otherwise, we continue to manifest inner pains as outward destruction, or we continue to replace broken institutions with new broken institutions. Gaia Universtity appears to be a leader on the front of addressing this issue.
Interestingly, Gaia University and OSE face similar issues on recruiting, organizational development, fund raising, and other practical topics. Thus, the conversation was fruitful, and I have great hopes for major long-term collaboration. Whether it will be through setting up a Regional Organizing Group of Gaia U. at Factor e Farm, or setting up OSE’s proposed K Through Ph.D. Renaissance Freeholder’s Education for Evolution to Freedom as in this older draft – our goals are aligned towards creating powerful, integrated humans. We both know what it is like to be pioneers, and we also respect the fact that The Revolution Will Not Be Funded. Thus, the bottom line is generating economic power from the ground up. The simple problem statement is to seize global domination – with love.
On the practical front, my task is to line up a few Ph.D. study program descriptions for essential research to move OSE forward. Gaia University can then promote these topics as research material for its Ph.D. candidates. Off the top of my head, there is a dozen or so significant topics that deserve the caliber of Ph.D. research. This is my present task.
As for any of you who want to take on a different course to your education, Gaia University is a great option. The founders are great people, and their intent is right on the human empowerment game towards tranformation. So if you ever questioned the value of your education, you can rest assured that Gaia University provides you with an option to take charge of that process. You can get credit for your past work, and you can choose to do what you really like. In this respect, Gaia U. can’t be beat.
by Marcin at February 08, 2010 02:01 PM
February 06, 2010
Ministry of Love (without imported items) - via Air Conditioning cartoon by Stuart McMillen - Recombinant Records
via Air Conditioning cartoon by Stuart McMillen - Recombinant Records
[Reposted from Erikmitk via ylem235]
Intensifier » telecomix - Hata(-)lagringsdirektivet
Miljöpartiet och Vänsterpartiet är EU-kramande svikpartier. De tänker göra den berömda Fredrik Fegerley-manövern och inte rösta emot datalagringsdirektivet. De är båda sugna på att sitta med Bodström i regeringen. Tänk när vi får Bodis som justitieminister! Vilken fantastisk triumf för hetsövervakning!
Datalagringsdirektivet är värre än FRA. Visserligen är det kanske omöjligt att göra en sådan grov jämförelse, men de skiljer sig åt ur några kvalitativa aspekter.
- FRA innebär kopiering av all trafik vid samverkanspunkter, varpå sökbegrepp sållar i dataströmmarna. FRA är en en centraliserad och klumpig organisation som trots många anställda troligtvis inte kommer att kunna massavlyssna 1984-style. Faran ligger snarare i att de delar informationen med andra underrättelsetjänster och att de klantar sig så att oskyldiga råkar illa ut.
- Datalagring innebär decentraliserade sparade loggfiler. De kommer att finnas hos internetoperatörer, telefonbolag, kanske till och med på hotell och caféer. Distribuerad övervakning är värre än centraliserad eftersom att det för det första skapas flera arkiv med loggfiler som måste tvångslagras. För det andra leder detta till att ett större antal individer ser loggfilerna och då blir steget till missbruk och överträdelser mycket lättare att ta. Även steget till hyrsnuten blir kortare, något som är direkt samhällsnedbrytande.
Det finns en livaktig nätaktivism kring datalagring, där allt fler Europeiska kluster börjar samarbeta. Werebuild / Telecomix jobbar bland annat med att förhindra just tvånget att införa direktivet nya medlemsstater.
Sverige behöver inte införa datalagring. Tvärtom har vi ett guldläge för att avskaffa det i hela EU, något som Mp och V borde inse. Dessa båda EU-kritiska partier borde vara lite aktivistiska istället för att lyda varje blinkning från Bryssel. Skärp er! Om ni överhuvudtaget ska vara trovärdiga i er EU-kritik så kan ni ju inte kvitta bort era principer som regeringskåta Bodströmtofflar, det håller liksom inte. I princip sysslar ni med vapenexport av övervakningsteknologier, något som bland annat jag och Johanna Nylander har påpekat.
Jag tror varken Mp eller V vill ha tvångsdatalagringen. Hugo Chavez vill ha den, Iran gillar den och Kina har den redan. Dessa länder vill mer än gärna legitimera sina metoder med det sköna Sverige som förebild! Normalisering av tvångsövervakning är en form av våldsnormalisering.
Som vanligt gäller Bodströmtunnlar för att undergräva Lagen med Prometeusteknoaktivism. Med enkla medel, proxyservrar och VPN-tunnlar, kan man lätt kringgå datalagringen. Darknets är också trevliga, kolla gärna instruktionsfilmerna hos instruction.telecomix.org.
by Christopher Kullenberg at February 06, 2010 01:34 PM
February 05, 2010
Ministry of Love (without imported items) - Hubble Detects Mysterious Spaceship-Shaped Object Traveling at 11,000MPH - se...
Oscar Swartz :: Texplorer - Rör inte min dotter!
Jag skriver en artikel för Newsmill om gromning ("grooming") idag. Frågor som innehåller sex och ungdomar förvandlar hyggliga människor till fradgatuggande lynchmobbar som främst styrs av sina egna äckel- och "Rör inte min dotter"-känslor.
Det är intressant och skrämmande. Att använda människors sexualhat och sexualskräck är ett av de säkraste sätten att få dem att ställa upp på nätkontroll och övervakning. Vad gäller sex försöker jag själv alltid se litet längre. Sexualitet är ett av mina stora intressen eftersom den styr det mesta här i världen och nästan inget kan förstås till fullo utan att med denna urkraft i beräkningen.
Vad gäller gromning finns en hel del forskning och kunskap och det hela kräver att vi faktiskt tar ungdomars rättmätiga och biologiska sexualdrift med i beräkningen. Läs artikeln på Newsmill. Här är referenser till sådant som finns i artikeln:
- Sveriges Radio P1 och deras kampanjjournalistik
- Moderatkvinnornas kampanjsajt med det jag kallar deras "brandtal" i artikeln.
- Moderatkvinnornas artikel på SvD Brännpunkt där de krävar att man lurar män i fällor
- Slutrapporten Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies från Internet Safety Technical Task Force, en grupp som leddes av Berkman Center for Internet and Society vid Harvard University
- Forskningsartikel Online "Predators" and their Victims: Myths, Realities and Implications for Prevention and Treatment finns länkad på Medierådets sajt, men slutversionen av den publicerade artikeln finns som PDF här. Artikeln är skriven av teamet på Crimes aginst Children Resarch Center vid University of New Hampshire.
- Forskningen bekräftas av Barn och sexuella övergrepp via IT, från Landstinget i Östergötland som driver "Onlineprojektet".
- Skrift från BRÅ, Vuxnas sexuella kontakter med barn via Internet
- Expressen 25 maj 2009, "Så blev fula gubben på nätet vår mest fruktade folkdjävul". Lars Lindström intervjuar Elza Dunkels, forskaren på Umeå Univeristet.
- Elza Dunkels doktorsavhandling som PDF, Bridging the Distance: Children's Strategies on the Internet, som är mer generell och visar att ungdomar är smarta vid nätanvändning.
- Min egen artikel från 2007-10-02 om den statliga utredning som låg till grund för gromningslagen
- Min egen artikel från 2008-02-19 där jag går igenom kunskapsläge och forskning.
- Min egen artikel från 2007-10-21 där jag gör kulturkritiska spekulationer om hur våld och sex förhåller sig till varandra.
- Långt reportage i Rolling Stone om TV-serien där åklagaren sköt sig i huvudet
Notera förresten att den attityd som uppvisas i den svenska gromningsdebatten i grunden är samma som i hederskulturer: "Rör inte min dotter!". I Sverige vänds hatet mot män när sexuellt sökande tjejer agerar ut. I andra delar av världen mot tjejerna själva och kan ta sig de mest hiskliga uttryck. Fast hedersimpulsen är densamma.
by Oscar Swartz at February 05, 2010 02:13 PM
Open Source Ecology - Ubuntu 9.10 on Dell Latitude D820 Laptop
The PowerBook G4 Mac in the house finally quit working. We splurged $300 on a brand new laptop recently. We got a 3 year old Dell Latitude D820 from Craigslist. With 2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo, and 1920×1200 screen resolution – that makes for an impressive system with Ubuntu 9.10 installed.
The install was straightforward. You just download Ubuntu 9.10, burn the download onto a single CD. You then install from the disk – in our case by pressing F12 to enter the boot menu and select boot from disk. You just follow instructions on the screen to get it going, and that’s all.
The laptop came with Windows Vista. I considered dual boot, but decided not to waste otherwise perfectly good disk space. So 45 minutes later Ubuntu was finished installing. Performance is rather amazing. Boot time is 35 seconds, shutdown takes 7 seconds, and applications start up pretty much instantaneously. It amazes me why so many people prefer Windows when you can run so much faster on the same computer by installing Linux. In this instance of Dell D820 with Vista compared to Ubuntu 9.10 – the boot time and startup time of programs was about 2x faster on Ubuntu.
The Ubuntu install was turnkey. Wireless worked right after I put in the ID for the wireless network. Skype installed without a glitch. So did QCad, and of course Blender. There was a trick to Kdenlive, the movie editor, which I hope is fixed by the next Ubuntu upgrade. There was the broken sound problem when viewing videos in the project monitor. To fix this, I un-installed Pulseaudio, simply by using Synaptic Package Manager. I also had to go into the Kdenlive settings and choose Alsa as the audio device and the restart Kdenlive. That fixed the problem. Sound works now, and I have not had Kdenlive crash once yet.
Kdenlive in itself is impressive. Inserting video into it is instantaneous. Back on the Mac, it would take an hour or more just to insert video clips into iMovie to begin editing. Rendering is also impressive – about a minute of time for every minute of video produced, as opposed to 5-10 times slower than this on the Mac.
The sound is a little bit of a problem now that Pulseaudio was unistalled in Ubuntu 9.10. Now sound in Movie Player – a sound and video player – disappeared on me. So when I need to play videos, I just use Kdenlive to view them. This works well. I now use Rhythmbox Audio Player for audio.
For those of you who don’t know about Linux, there’s the powerful command line terminal – where you can start applications, manipulate the system, even surf the web in text mode – and do much more than you can do in the GUI. The fact that you can type in commands at the command line sounded geeky or unimpressive to me, until I tried it and found out for myself how useful it could really be. There are certainly situations where you want to go through the command line instead of the graphical user interface.
All in all, I am very pleased with the clean look and speedy performance of Ubuntu 9.10 on the Dell D820. Linux has come a long way, and now looks totally professional, especially on a high resolution screen. It certainly feels like I’m using serious computing power, and the fact that it’s open source, free, and so adaptable – is just inspiring. Thanks to the leagues of open source developers out there who created an amazing system, which in my opinion is clearly superior to Windows on the basis of speed, flexibility, and cost. I’d like to hear from others if they also have similar opinions on the speed issues – and if so – why isn’t everyone switching to Linux on the basis of that metric alone.
by Marcin at February 05, 2010 09:56 AM
February 04, 2010
Ministry of Love (without imported items) - "Know Thyself was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the porta..."
"Know Thyself was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, Be Thyself shall be written."
–Oscar Wilde
hesa's blog » FSCONS - FOSDEM – here we go
… having finished a hectic period I must say that leaving for FOSDEM tomorrow morning feels great. I will team up with Daniel Stenberg, Magnus Hagander and of course some GNUs, I know that some of the people at last year’s GNU Hackers Meeting (held the days before FSCONS) will come over to FOSDEM as well 
. Going to be great meeting Brian Gough and Jose E. Marchesi while I am not stressed of work overload, GHM planning and FSCONS planning. Brian and Jose were organising the GNU Hackers Meeting with me. … and as always I’ll team up with the FSFE folks.
As for the presentations I will surely go and see:
a topic I find interesting for many reasons, more on that later
since I missed Daniel talk about this at FSCONS. As a FSCONS organiser I can’t just sit
I missed Mirko’s presentation at FSCONS as well …. always on the move at FSCONS 
And, of course I hope I will be able to do some business (Sandklef GNU Labs) down there. During some breaks I will prepare some presentations at “my” University next week and also prepare a Free Software presentation for a company later on in February (more on that later).
This year I’ll be traveling with Andreas Nilsson and Jeremiah Foster. Same procedure as last year…
see you there
… did you see how I managed to mention FSCONS 6 times (including that very last)
by hesa at February 04, 2010 11:09 PM
GNU Hackers Meetings - News - GNU @ FOSDEM Saturday Dinner arrangements
On Saturday we have a booking at "Le Grenier d'Elvire" (near the ULB Campus) at 20:00. The booking covers everyone who has confirmed by email that they are coming to the dinner. There will be a sign-up sheet at the "GNU Booth" for extra places on the day. Details at http://www.gnu.org/ghm/2010/fosdem/.
by Brian Gough at February 04, 2010 02:45 PM
GNU Hackers Meetings - News - GNU @ FOSDEM Friday Dinner arrangements
Dinner on Friday will be at "Chez Leon" (18, rue des Bouchers B-1000 Bruxelles). Meet at Hotel Astrid Foyer (Place du Samedi 11 Zaterdagplein Bruxelles 1000), we will leave at 20:15 to walk to the restaurant, which is nearby. Full details at http://www.gnu.org/ghm/2010/fosdem/.
Information about Saturday's dinner arrangements will follow, and will also be available at the GNU booth at Fosdem of course.
by Brian Gough at February 04, 2010 09:33 AM
Open Source Ecology - Winter Orchard Damage
This winter, we had 1-2 feet of snow, and the cover lasted for about a month. This was harsh on the orchard – because an army of rabbits thus had a 1-2 foot pedestal and could reach above the existing tree guards. There was significant damage, but the trees will grow back – from below the damage at the very worst. Here is an example, which I covered with chicken wire after the damage was done already:
The rabbits, which for some reason exploded in population this year and kept the crockpots busy – were not the only issue. Subterranean creatures exploded, too. Look at these tracks, which to my guess, are voles or moles:
How could this happen if the ground is supposedly frozen during this colder-than-normal winter? The snow cover made for perfect habitat, by insulating the ground from the -20F temperatures this winter. This is not pleasant, because these critters have killed a few trees, maybe 5% of the orchard of 400 trees. Here is an apple tree that I pulled out after I noticed it was no longer anchored:
One doesn’t even see that the tree is dead – it it literally eaten underground, and pulls right out of the soil. The damage in this case was totally underground, and you notice only when you touch the tree. The description of vole damage described here matches what we see in our orchard.
Some trees were eaten by voles above ground, those which were too branched and difficult to protect effectively with covers:
This picture shows why you need to go 6″ or so below ground with metal mesh if you want good protection from voles. This one is eaten right under where the 1/4″ mesh ends:
One thing I learned – there’s a reason why people keep a close mow on their orchards and lawns. I thought most people go through painstaking care of their lawns just because they are insecure, but this vole episode showed me other reasons. It’s time to get the brushhog mounted on LifeTrac and do some major cleaning.
All in all, I estimate we will lose about 5% of the orchard to this damage, while the rest will grow back. Most of this damage happened on apple trees, as opposed to many of the other fruit we have. The rabbit issue has been stabilized, but the voles are still a danger. I am still seeing new vole activity. I guess the best solution is clear ground – for various predators like cats, dogs, hawks, owls, coyotes, snakes and shrews. By the way, coyotes rarely visited FeF this year, while last year they were visiting and howling almost nightly. This is the first time we’ve had significant rodent damage to the orchard in our 3 years here.
If anyone in the audience knows about an effective vole solution, we would appreciate any insight.
To end this on a good note, the lemon tree – rooted in water from a cutting this year - is doing very well indoors. We got it from our postmaster:
by Marcin at February 04, 2010 09:12 AM
February 03, 2010
daniel.haxx.se - libssh2 version 1.2.3
The team behind libssh2 isn’t very big, but we’ve managed to yet again ship a new release (version 1.2.3) that adds new features such as support for SSH-agent and the new libssh2_trace_sethandler() function, while also fixing a few bugs.
Enjoy!
by daniel at February 03, 2010 06:40 PM
February 02, 2010
Ministry of Love (without imported items) - (Image)
February 01, 2010
Open Source Ecology - Open+Pario Project Collaboration Platform
We are now officially using Open+Pario as our project management and design repository for Open Source Ecology. The most active project at present is the CEB press, and we are beginning project management of the Open Source Induction Furnace. Anybody can view any of the projects – including design files, technical discussions, etc. The content is entirely transparent and open to the greater community.
If you want to get involved in any of the projects, you can sign up as a Project Member by registering and joining a given project. This allows you to post comments on any of the content, start discussions in existing forums, and begin tasks (New Issue tab). Note that if you join one of the projects of OSE, you are not automatically joining other projects.
The next level of participation is a Project Developer. The requirement for Project Developer is regular, ongoing, and substantial participation in technical development of OSE projects, whether in technology or organizational issues. This means that the Developer has some form of a track record with the project. Project Developers are additionally allowed to start Forums and to commit Files and to add News.
The highest level of participation is Project Manager, who sets project permissions, commits Documents and Files, and starts Forums. We are looking for a project manager for each of the 40 technologies of the Global Village Construction Set, plus a number of others in support tasks such as organizational development, resource development, land stewardship, physical site design, public relations, architecture, civil engineering, marketing, visualization and modeling, ICT support, library development, rapid learning material development, documentation, documentary production, and others. It takes a village to build a village.
So if you want to get involved, first join as a Member, and then let us know if you are interested in moving up to Project Manager. Right now, we have only one project manager, so we have yet a long way to go towards nurturing the project on its way completely.
We are taking a solid step towards scaling the project. Combined with initial outsourcing of design work on the Induction Furnace, we’re moving slowly but surely towards the scalabe, open source economic development method.
By the way, one of our collaborators, the CubeSpawn project for developing an open source universal constructor system – is also at Open+Pario. James Jones, project leader, invites you to vote for CubeSpawn at the Pepsi grant program. If it makes it into the top ten it’ll receive $25,000 in funding. Kindly vote for the project, but more importantly, invite others to do the same. James also has the project up at the Kickstarter funding effort, and is seeking crowd funding just like we are. Support him.
by Marcin at February 01, 2010 07:28 PM
January 31, 2010
Open Source Ecology - Homebrew Industrial Revolution, Political Ponerology, and Kymatica
Kevin Carson, Research Asociate at the Center for a Stateless Society, just published a book called The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low Overhead Manifesto. This is a progressive review of industrial history, culminating in the present option of post-scarcity economics. Open Source Ecology is featured as one of the Case Studies in the Coordination of Networked Fabrication and Open Design in the Appendix of Chapter 5. If you are interested in a comprehensive overview and of the technological ecology that we’re pursuing at Factor e Farm, this is a worthwhile read. It’s an insightful and quite accurate third-party analysis of our work, and the chapter provides a more in-depth understanding of the relationship between access to cheap, modern tools and collaborative design repositories – and how these combine for radical democratization of industry. Thumbs up for this important work. It is one of the cultural creative writings of the times, aimed at breaking through society’s limited consciousness on technology and production as a means of evolving to freedom. Read more about it on Kevin’s blog.
I’d also like to bring up a seminal book on the psychological basis of anthropogenic, societal ills suffered in the world today - Political Ponerology: a Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes, by Andrew Lobaczewski.
This book is noteworthy in that it documents the scientific studies conducted by the author and many others in the aftermath of WWII during the Stalinist regime in Poland – on the nature of the evil and terror that has just left its mark on history in the tragedies of WWII. The book is important because the underlying dynamics are not specific to WWII, but are general human features that need to be understood because of their profound, often undetected, effects on society. The author produced hard evidence regarding the nature of this evil. His conclusions on the underlying psychosis are sobering. This book is not for the fainthearted, but it is an honest analysis on the self-selection and rise to power of forces in society that lack a critical component – a working conscience. This author is also absolutely optimistic – in that he provides clues of how society could develop immunity to the macrosocial phenomena addressed. Thus, it is also a survival guide for those daring to question the world. As stated in the preface, “…this book is the most important book you will ever read. Unless, of course, you are a psychopath.”
Next in line is Kymatica, a full length movie on evolving to freedom, the human spirit, the heart, and individual responsibility in shaping the world around us. These are challenging topics even for most people today – because as Carl Jung proposed,
People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul.
The movie includes a synthesis of all that is known about human evolution to date, from the beginning of time to modern genetics. If you think you know all you need to know about this, this film will likely throw in some twists – twists proven even in mainstream science. This movie is noteworthy in that it also tries to address the nature of macrosocial phenomena – just like Lobaczewski – but from the perspective of human evolution. This movie is quite comprehensive in terms of societal topics covered. It is also fast-paced, and it provides critical background for any student of the system or lover of freedom.
PS. Note that Lobaczewski’s work builds a message slightly in contrast to the ‘we are all in this together because we could be good or evil’ portrayed in Kymatica – as his medical studies show the cases of psychopathy in the most notorious of world leaders.
by Marcin at January 31, 2010 11:07 PM
Ministry of Love (without imported items) - (Image)
Open Source Ecology - Dedicated Project Visits Continued
William Cleaver will be joining us at Factor e Farm on May 1 for a Dedicated Project Visit. He’s coming from across the big pond – from the United Kingdom – and we are planning for a 3 month stay.
William is not a novice to creative dexterity – he’s involved in repair and demolition of industrial chimney stacks and natural draught cooling towers – at heights. See for yourself:
He has experience with various tools, welding brickwork, ropework, woodwork, and general shop. He’s traveled the world, studied Romance languages, taught English in Chile, and is certified to teach high ropes courses. He is now showing great interest in the deeper message of post-scarcity, resilient community creation.
We discussed the following tentative plan, with both of us working in the shop and as needed:
May – Work on finishing or building Sawmill/LifeTrac II/MicroTrac II/ anciliary implements for construction – all in preparation for building.
June – begin building autonomous, zero energy housing with solar space. Experiment with CEB floors, CEB masonry stove and chimney, stabilized bricks, stabilized reject lime bricks, stabilized brick walkway and driveway, stabilized retaining walls, and others. We plan on winter food garden and sprouting in the solar space. If progress on the steam engine goes well, we’ll aim to install combined heat and power on the masonry stove.
July – continue building until comfortable accommodations for the winter are ready for several people.
We’re looking at building zero energy homes that look tentatively like this:
(Credits: Aigars Bruvelis in Blender)
Here is a CEB floor example from Abe at Vela Creations:
See more of his photos here.
Other than this, William is learning Kdenlive on Linux for movie editing, as well as and QCad for CAD work. These are staple tools now at Factor e Farm. William will begin preparing some of the technical drawings for the sawmill, so we can collaborate on making that happen over distance until his arrival.
We do want to consider bringing in additional help from the CEB general contractor, Floyd (see last blog post). We will consider hosting a CEB workshop if progress is good. If the CEB fabrication is going well – there could be resources generated to really get things moving forward, and continue to build more structures. I think now is the beginning of really settling into the land – and getting the place to look half-way presentable. We’re open to all kinds of ideas, such as the proposed CEB vault construction and others – but we’d need other people to get involved to push those projects forward. Otherwise, we’re sticking to basics and all types of experiments in the process.
by Marcin at January 31, 2010 07:12 AM
January 30, 2010
Ministry of Love (without imported items) - Exactly. Refuse to be Terrorized.
[Reposted from m68k]
Exactly. Refuse to be Terrorized.Losca - Neo FreeRunner "A7+" now available
Thanks to Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller's efforts, a new "A7+" version of the world's only 100% free software (and even free hardware design, leading to further community development) phone, Neo FreeRunner, is available for sale at www.handheld-linux.com for 299€! New in this hardware version is prolonged battery life, due to a fix applied to the famous "#1024" bug. Now you should have theoretically about 5 days time suspended, but that's of course only if you don't actually do anything with this phone-computer.
In other news, despite the fact or because Openmoko Inc. has ceased its development efforts for now at least, concentrating on the WikiReader to recover from the economic problems, community finally questioned the reasoning behind some of the Linux kernel debug configuration in the official Openmoko kernel branch. Results? Speedup of certain kernel operations in the range of 2x to 5x! In practice that means Neo isn't actually anymore the sluggish device you used to get to know with. Of course it's not top of the line by any means, but being the only Free phone available on the market still, more free than most full-size computers in fact, it's a quite nice improvement to eg. boot time, application start up time et cetera. I merely was a messenger of these news from the kernel mailing list to the community, but I also provided a readily compiled kernel which I use in Debian and which seems to works for others as well (until their distributions package it up).
Over 1,5 years after launch of the FreeRunner, and even more since the original Neo 1973, the software is getting better all the time. The pace is slow, as is the case with any free/open project with limited community-only resources, but the best thing is that it never has to stop. A lot of the middleware, applications and so on will make it to future phones as well. Things like Intone music player, TangoGPS and literki keyboard might be nice little finger-usable applications in the future as well.
So, if you can manage without 3G and want to still have an unique mobile computer experience with basic phone functionality, running for example Debian for the "familiar experience" if you use Debian or Ubuntu on your other computers, it's still not too late to catch it. It seems we're still a couple of years away from any next effort of such level of freedom. I'm making through it by having bought a 59€ 3G modem for the more serious data needs. I'm still also thinking about a privoxy setup on my home server that would clean up and compress pages even via Neo's GPRS connection.
by noreply@blogger.com (Timo Jyrinki) at January 30, 2010 07:53 AM
Open Source Ecology - CEB House Tour – Missouri
It turns out that there’s a CEB contractor by Lathrop, Missouri – which is within 30 miles from us. Meet Floyd Hagerman, who has built a couple of very interesting CEB houses. The first one shown here is a hybrid – or a combination of CEB and standard construction. It has a Trombe wall – meaning a South-facing CEB wall, painted black, and glazed over. The wall serves as a thermal collector – and its performance is impressive. Last winter, before anyone moved in, the house remained above 40 degrees Fahrenheit all winter – Zone 5 continental climate – with no supplemental heating! Here’s a look.
Here is an example of DIY concrete blocks that Floyd pressed with his machine, by adding about 2% cement. Floyd used reject lime from the quarry, mixed in the stabilizer – and made an external retaining wall:
This was only 3 shovels of cement for over 1000 pounds of reject lime. So we are seeing the feasibility of stabilized blocks for outside use, especially if we add more stabilizer. Sealing the surface with stone sealer or similar cover would finish the job for complete stabilization from the elements.
With LifeTrac, we could throw a bag of cement in front of the soil pulverizer as we work the soil (80 lb for a 1000 lb load of soil, for 8% stabilization), and we would mix and load the soil in one step – ready to be used in The Liberator. We plan on using stabilized brick for walkways, base courses in buildings, and we are considering the possibility for building a driveway paved with brick.
Here is Floyd’s machine – a Powell and Sons version at $15k for up to 6 brick per minute pressing rates:
Here Floyd discusses the feasibility of building with CEB as a contractor – based on his experience. The big question is, does it work? How much would a CEB house end up costing? Here are some interesting insights:
On the open enterprise front, the field is rich for incubating a number of open source CEB entrepreneurs. Anybody out there considering CEB contracting?
by Marcin at January 30, 2010 06:15 AM
Ministry of Love (without imported items) - (Image)
[Reposted from tommydisimone via ylem235]
January 29, 2010
Hacktivism - Software Freedom - Feminism - Foulab Montreal Video - Repurpose
Checking the Youtube embedding with Drupal. Here is a link to the original movie. Ah, and if you don't know Foulab, don't hesitate to visit!
by christina at January 29, 2010 09:24 PM
Jimmy Callin - Dåtid och nutid
Det har nog inte undgått så många vid det här laget att jag studerar kinesiska, då min förmåga att uttrycka frustration mestadels runt tentaperioder för språket är bland mina främsta (och för många mest irriterande) egenskaper. Men det är faktiskt ett oerhört spännande och intressant språk, speciellt med tanke på den kultur och historia som tillhör ämnet. Då skriftsystemet som välkänt består av ideogram får man snabbt en någorlunda inblick i hur kineser har levt under de 3000 år som detta existerat och speciellt vilka referensramar de levt under. Att 好 (hǎo, bra) består av tecknen för son och kvinna visar till exempel hur viktig familjens roll varit under årtusenden. Men detta är inte enbart viktigt ur historiskt perspektiv, utan minst lika viktigt för att förstå den kinesiska kulturen som den ser ut idag, inklusive dess referensramar. För när man i sitt skriftspråk har 3000 års historia precis vid pennspetsen känns de senaste 20 åren trots de otroliga förändringarna som ägt rum, speciellt hos Kina, inte som en särskilt lång period.
Men trots den korta perioden har otroligt mycket skett sedan dess och kanske främst i form av internets födelse och utveckling. Det känns verkligen som en tredjedels evighet sedan, speciellt för mig som inte är mycket äldre än nätet, men för 20 år sedan satt vi fortfarande primärt med papper, kuvert och frimärken och höll tummarna för att brevet skulle dyka upp dagen efter (så länge det inte var helg), och skulle fortsätta göra så i några år till. Det har kort och gott utvecklats otroligt fort, och det är med detta perspektiv man borde titta på de politiker och upphovsrättsivrare som försöker sig på att ”tämja” internet. För dessa är internet som ett helt annat land med en annorlunda kultur, just för att de inte växt upp med det eller lagt ner den (stora mängd) tid det skulle innebära att förstå det, och historian har lärt oss hur nya kulturer brukar behandlas. De lever i en annan verklighet med andra referensramar och försöker tillämpa dessa ramar när de lagstiftar kring nätet och dess användare. På samma sätt som att svensk politik skulle vara katastrofalt för Kina gör tillämpning av lagar stiftade innan internets uppkomst betydligt mer skada än nytta för dess utveckling.
På samma sätt som att vi inte bör ha någon större makt över utländsk politik bör inte heller politiker som inte förstår sig på internet ha över informationspolitik. Därför behövs Piratpartiet i riksdagen, och därför ska Piratpartiet in i riksdagen.
by Jimmy at January 29, 2010 08:24 PM
Open Source Ecology - Open Source Manual CEB Press and Open Source Prefab Strawbale House
Hats off to our collaborators from Poland for open-sourcing a manual, dual-block CEB press. It is in the pre-alpha v0.1 release stage.
Open Source MANUAL CEB PRESS beta I from Cohabitat Platform on Vimeo.
You can download the existing CAD files here. The files are in Polish, so they still need to be translated for the broader audience.
Meet your developers from the Co-Habitat Platform: Pawel Sroczynski and Remik Karbowiak.
These guys are pretty good. They also developed a model open source, prefab, straw-bale house design, and they will be buildng it this year at a budget of $7k. I always thought that straw bale is too exotic in practice because of the huge labor requirements, but these guys are showing otherwise with OpenSTRAW:
Here is the building sequence. Click on the following images to enlarge:
Both the manual CEB press and the straw bale work are a major contribution to open source economic development – and to humanity. See their website for more information. Congratulations to the Co-Habitat team. We’d like to add the manual CEB press to the Factor e Farm product line as soon as the machine is tested in the field, and we may end up building some straw bale here after all.
by Marcin at January 29, 2010 12:21 AM
January 28, 2010
Henri Bergius - iPad and information appliances, a free software angle
Apple iPad is certainly interesting. It seeks to challenge the concept of PCs by providing something that is at the same time more personal, and a lot easier to use. The personal computer of the future.
Gone is difficult file organization - instead, applications use their own purpose-build content repositories. Instead of seeking software from many places, all of it is easily available in an App Store, all quality-controlled by Apple. And same thing with content - forget about bookshelves and stacks of CDs, instead simply dowloading all you need from iTunes.
This sort of user experience obviously comes with a cost. Important computing concepts like multitasking are not supported. The iTunes/App Store experience means that Apple is in the position to ensure no software or content competing with its or its business partners' business model gets on the device. And most of the content you buy for the device is DRM'd, meaning that you're only renting it for the time allowed by content owners, never buying.
Even with the limitations concerned I can see myself buying an iPad. It would serve as a very nice device for web surfing from the couch and as an e-reader on business trips. I can also see myself running demos and presentations from it instead of a laptop.
Even with the limitations concerned, it is likely that the iPad will happen, and will blaze the trail towards a new way of personal computing. Stephen Fry says it well:
Like the first iPhone, iPad 1.0 is a John the Baptist preparing the way of what is to come, but also like iPhone 1.0 (and Jokanaan himself too come to that) iPad 1.0 is still fantastic enough in its own right to be classed as a stunningly exciting object, one that you will want NOW and one that will not be matched this year by any company. In the future, when it has two cameras for fully featured video conferencing, GPS and who knows what else built in (1080 HD TV reception and recording and nano projection, for example) and when the iBook store has recorded its 100 millionth download and the thousands of accessories and peripherals that have invented uses for iPad that we simply can’t now imagine – when that has happened it will all have seemed so natural and inevitable that today’s nay-sayers and sceptics will have forgotten that they ever doubted its potential.
The success of iPad will mean more than just a completely new level of App Store economy. Other companies will certainly seek to emulate the model, coming up with their own post-WIMP devices and their own content and software ecosystems. This all will be a challenge for the free software movement.
The world of free software is still very much stuck in what computing was in the 90s. We think of desktop computers, we do not integrate with the web. And we do not get the transformation that is happening with personal computers. Taught by smartphones and cloud applications, users are moving from desktops through simple netbooks towards information appliances.
With information appliances you need a seamless user interface. You need an ecosystem where content comes alongside the software to utilize it. You need to move past the old WIMP metaphors and the idea of separation between data stored in a a file system and the software manipulating it.
So far the first convincing attempt towards this direction I've seen in the free software world is KDE's Social Desktop initiative. It allows users to connect with each other straight through the desktop, and it allows discovery of new applications and content to download and use straight in the applications. We also use it with Maemo's new App Downloader.
Threatened by the cloud from one end, and closed-ecosystem appliances from the other, it will be interesting to see how we react. Will we rise to the challenge and start providing new user experiences? Will we build a free cloud? Will we integrate with initiatives like Project Gutenberg and Creative Commons to provide the content integration? Will the open web be our safe haven?
Definitely interesting times to be a software developer.
by henri.bergius@iki.fi (Henri Bergius) at January 28, 2010 09:51 AM
January 27, 2010
Open Source Ecology - Initial CEB CAD Drawings
Here are the initial CAD drawings for the CEB press, The Liberator Beta v2.0. 
You can download these drawing interchange format (dxf) files at the Open+Pario project repository. You can view dxf files with QCad, AutoCAD, Lx-Viewer, or many other applications. Note that this is work in progress, and the drawings will be updated as time goes on. New files will appear at the repository as soon as they are available.
by Marcin at January 27, 2010 08:08 PM
Images
January 01, 1970
Recent Uploads tagged fscons - thank you
Wrote posted a photo:
by Wrote at January 01, 1970 12:00 AM
Recent Uploads tagged fscons - Werner & Stian
Wrote posted a photo:
by Wrote at January 01, 1970 12:00 AM
Recent Uploads tagged fscons - Mirko
Wrote posted a photo:
by Wrote at January 01, 1970 12:00 AM
Recent Uploads tagged fscons - laptops beer and discussions
Wrote posted a photo:
by Wrote at January 01, 1970 12:00 AM
Recent Uploads tagged fscons - next talk in five
Wrote posted a photo:
by Wrote at January 01, 1970 12:00 AM
Recent Uploads tagged fscons - taking notes
Wrote posted a photo:
by Wrote at January 01, 1970 12:00 AM
Recent Uploads tagged fscons - we were there
Wrote posted a photo:
by Wrote at January 01, 1970 12:00 AM
Recent Uploads tagged fscons - Social event: Pre-registration mingle
blondinrikard posted a photo:
This is *one* way to mingle ;-)
by blondinrikard at January 01, 1970 12:00 AM
Recent Uploads tagged fscons - trust me
Wrote posted a photo:
by Wrote at January 01, 1970 12:00 AM
Recent Uploads tagged fscons - The FSCONS elk!
blondinrikard posted a photo:
Look closely in the middle. What's wrong with this picture? Weirdest thing that happened during FSCONS 2009!
by blondinrikard at January 01, 1970 12:00 AM