Access & infrastructure

oh dear

Yesterday I came across this small predicament. A truck had attempted to drive through an underpass towards a park and got stuck. Naturally I did what we do in the digital age – I took pictures.

larger image one & two

The situation reminded me of the stories told about the New York city planner Robert Moses who was accused of purposely making underpasses to parks too low for busses to access and therefore reserving the parks for those who could afford cars. This structural discrimination of the poor and racial minorities has been disputed but the fact remains that low bridges do prevent busses but allow cars to pass.

For those of you who are politically inclined you may want to see this as a political metaphor since the van is actually labelled with the markings of a political party and was probably going to be used to spread political information about the upcoming Swedish Genereal Election.

Posted on by mklang

Dude, where is Tibet

About a week ago my untech brother discovered Google Earth. He also told me that Tibet and Lhasa were not there. I put this down to his lack of ability to use the software. But today an article in The Register proves him right. Google Earth have apparently â??mislaidâ?? Tibet.

Does this prove that Google is trying hard to please Beijing? Not sure…

So anyway I owe my brother an apology.

Posted on by mklang

Free Software and Open Standards

Here are the highlights of the launch day of a project on Free Software and Open Standards. If you happen to be in Amsterdam on Saturday Monday this might be interesting. The people involved are definately worth listening to. For more information and the full program go here.

10:20 – 10:55 Presentation of the SELF project by Wouter Tebbens, SELF project leader
10:55 – 11:10 J.W. Broekema, programme manager OSOSS, â??After Open Source Software and Open Standards there’s Open Contentâ??

11:15 – 12:15 Theme I: Strategic implications of Free Software in the Netherlands and in Europe
Keynote by Georg Greve, president of Free Software Foundation Europe
Panel discussion led by Bert Melief (ISOC, M&I) with Paul Klint (CWI), Rob Rapmund (Twijnstra Gudde), Rishab Ghosh (FLOSSworld), Jan Willem Broekema (OSOSS), Joep van Nieuwstadt (Exin)

13:00 – 14:00 Theme II: The Open Content Revolution
Keynote by Mathias Klang, lecturer at Göteborg University and project lead of Creative Commons Sweden.
Panel discussion led by Jonas Ã?berg, vice president of the Free Software Foundation Europe, with Kees Stuurman (University of Tilburg), Jo Lahaye (HollandOpen), Ton Roosendaal (Blender), Martijn Verver (VPRO)

14:00 â?? 15:00 Theme III: Free Software Curriculum Building
Keynote about the European Master programme on Free Software by David Megias, Open University Catalunya (UOC, Spain)
Panel discussion led by Dessi Pefeva (ISOC.bg) with Peter Sloep (OU.nl/Fontys), Frank Kresin (Waag Society), Marja Verstelle (University of Leiden), Michael van Wetering (KennisNet), Leo Besemer (ECDL), Tom Dousma (SURF)

15:20 â?? 16:20 Theme IV: Semantic web, knowledge platforms, collaborative authoring
Keynote on the development of the SELF platform by Nagarjuna G., Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (India)
Panel discussion led by Michiel Leenaars (ISOC.nl) with Frank Benneker (UvA), Rob Peters (Zenc, UvA, HollandOpen), Gabriel Hopmans (Morpheus)

Background: The EC to invest in Free Software promotion and education
The European Commission is directing more and more money to promote the use of Free Software and Open Standards, which is a strategic objective within the IST (Information Society Technologies) Programme. The EC has signed a contract for this purpose with the SELF Consortium, a group of universities and free software advocates in seven countries, including Bulgaria, Argentina and India. The SELF project will receive funding for the startup period (of two years) of about 1 million euro.

A short intro on the SELF project
SELF (Science, Education and Learning in Freedom) is an international project that aims to provide a platform for the collaborative sharing and creation of open educational and training materials about Free Software and Open Standards. First of all, it will provide information, educational and training materials on Free Software and Open Standards presented in different languages and forms.
Secondly, it will offer a platform for the evaluation, adaptation, creation and translation of these materials. The production process of such materials will be based on the organisational model of Wikipedia.

Posted on by mklang

GPLv3 report

The conference begins with Georg Greve explaining the organisation of FSF with its idea of sister organisations of FSF USA, FSF Europe, FSF Asia and FSF Latin America.

This was followed by Richard Stallman explaining what the GPLv3 would entail. He begins by stating very clearly that the most important thing to remember about any version of the GPL is that it is a free software license. Additionally the goal of the FSF is the liberation of cyberspace. This goal will be carried out by maintaining and defending four freedoms.

Software following the four freedoms is Free Software. If any freedom is substantially missing then it is proprietary software. The problem with this is that proprietary software is about the subjugation of users.

It is easy to write a license which says you are free to do what you want. But this is not the best way to liberate all the users. This is because people will modify and then distribute it as proprietary software. Copyleft is the method of preventing this practice. Copyleft is copyright flipped over. Copyright subjugates users. Copyleft prevents the middlemen from enclosing the code and making it proprietary.

Stallman then went through the highlights of important changes which are being discussed in the GPLv3.

This talk was followed by Ciaran Oâ??Riordan who gave a short talk of the public process before it was time for lunch.

Posted on by mklang

Exciting news and GPL3

Exciting news! I will be part of a panel at the 3rd International GPLv3 Conference in Barcelona next week. Look at the schedule (highlights below) can you imagine a more interesting two days?

Highlights day 1 – 22 June
10:30 – Georg Greve: opening introduction
11:00 – Richard Stallman: Overview of GPL v3 Changes
12:30 – Ciarán O’Riordan: The public consultation process
14:30 – Eben Moglen: The wording of the changes

Highlights day 2 – 23 june
10:30 Panel: Current projects of FSFE

  • Carlo Piana (Tamos Piana & Partners), the MS anti-trust case
  • Pablo Machón, building the Spanish team
  • Ciaran O’Riordan, Legislation from Brussels
  • Stefano Maffulli, FSFE’s Fellowship

11:30 Panel: Awareness and adoption of GPLv3

  • Fernanda Weiden, Associação SoftwareLivre.org
  • Anne Ã?stergaard, GNOME Foundation
  • Alexandre Oliva, Free Software Foundation Latin America

12:30 Pablo Machón: GPLv3 and the European software patent struggle
14:30 Panel: The Discussion Committees

  • Niibe Yutaka, Free Software Initiative Japan (committee A)
  • Philippe Aigrain, Sopinspace (committee C)
  • Masayuki Hatta, Debian (committee D)

15:30 Panel: Enforcing the GPL, thwarting DRM

  • Harald Welte, gpl-violations.org
  • David “Novalis” Turner, Free Software Foundation
  • Mathias Klang, Informatics researcher, University of Goteborg

16:30 Stefano Maffulli: Closing presentation

Posted on by mklang

Denial of Service

Denial of service attacks have earlier been used as protest forms (more here .pdf). Yesterday the Swedish government website was the target of such an attack. The attack claimed to be a protest against the actions of the Minister of Justice Thomas Bodström for being the minister who has introduced the most amount of repressive legislation in the shortest time (see earlier posts here and here)

The attack was sparked by actions by the Police on the request of the minister to shut down the bittorrent site The Pirate Bay. During the raid several organisations not connected with torrent sharing were closed down and the legal representative of the Pirate Bay was required to leave a DNA sample (see more here). The Pirate Bay was offline for less than five days and yesterday protests were held in both Stockholm and Göteborg.

While not seen as part of the formal/official protests DoS attacks have targed the Swedish Police website and the website of the Swedish Government. For a while a message to Minister of Justice Thomas Bodström was up on a site connected with the attack: “Thomas – we want our freedom back”. Aftonbladet has the screenshot here.

(via Media Culpa)

Posted on by mklang

Open Maps

Maps have always been considered valuable commodities. Therefore protecting them from illegal copying is of vital importance. However this protection also limits the ways in which maps can be adapted and used.

This is what OSM wants to rememdy. OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a voluntary not-for-profit organisation. The goal of OSM is to provide free maps that can be used by anyone.

So how does it work?

Anyone with a handheld Global Positioning System can start mapping straight away. You need to set your GPS to record tracks and then go for a walk or for a bike ride or a drive. Walk around some streets in your neighbourhood, making some notes about the street names and any one way streets or round-a-bouts that you find. When you get home, plug your GPS into your computer and upload the tracks that you recorded onto the OSM website. Within an hour or so, you tracks will appear on the website. You can then use the online tools to create a new map of the roads and street names that anyone in the world will be able to see.

This weekend they carried out their Mapchester project were over 40 participants, armed with GPS equipment mapped out Manchester.

What a cool idea!

Posted on by mklang

Digital solidarity

Tomorrow its back to Stockholm for the third time in two weeks. Itâ??s a good thing that I like trains! I shall be giving a talk about Free Information in Practice. It is part of a half day seminar on Digital Solidarity and Waking Public Opinion.

Also participating are Rasmus Fleischer from the Pirate Bureau presenting a talk on â??Shared Information, effective informationâ?? and Lars Ilshammar who will be talking about the global effort to free information.

So if you are in Stockholm and have the time drop in for what looks like an exciting seminar (and its free)

Starts 12.30 ends 16.45

Place: Solidaritetshuset, Tegelviksgatan 40, Stockholm

Information online

Posted on by mklang

Languages Online

The web began as an English place. To some the idea was that national, natural and cultural
boundaries were irrelevant. The web created a situation were everyone could communicate – if they did so in English. This is changing – fast.

The growth of alternative languages is not the story of esperanto but rather, as connectivity improves, the web begins to reflect something other than the countries who were first online in large numbers.

Measured by blogs – which are argumentatively the largest form of personal online mass communication and using one of the largests tracking services these results have been presented (Sifry’s Alerts – the state of the blogosphere with more data and also caveats about collection and validity).

English is no longer the largest language. Technorati now has more Japanese posts than English. In March 2006

37% of posts are Japanese
31% of posts are English
15% of posts are Chinese

And China is just beginning.
OK – so this is not about trying to find the first nail in the coffin of the English language but it is very interesting to see the changes which are taking place. The natural position of power held by the English language is no longer a given.

Posted on by mklang