Culture

GPLv3 report II

Eben Moglen began his presentation by putting recent news in new perspective. He spoke of the retirement of Bill Gates in a way that I found intriguing.
When a CEO states that he resigns there is a period of calming the market. Therefore when Gates says he will step down in two years this should not be seen as a long time. Two years it is the minimum timeframe that will not spook the market. The important issue is that the resignation comes 6 months from the shipping the most important product in 10 years.

Also we can put this into another perspective the FSF is on schedule with the most important product in 15 years. The update of to the GPLv3. The process going to version three is open and public. Philosophically it reflects the rule-making process put forward by Habermas where the idea is that those affected by the rules should be part of the decision making process.

When discussing the substantial changes Eben explain why the GPLv3 has been adapted to meet the needs of issues such as distribution via torrents, the developments within patents and the increase in DRM.

On the latter he explained that companies feel that they should be allowed to have rights (digital) and want to protect them. Many of these feel that RMS is attempting to change their vocabulary (from Rights to Restrictions). But this is not about attempting to use a software license to address non-software problems. The license (and its implementation) is about the software and the four freedoms. DRM is about the attempt to prevent users from practicing the 4 freedoms.

In closing before an extended Q&A session Eben returned to the issue of Microsoft. The falling revenues and the stepping down of Bill Gates will have the effect that one of strongest voices against Free Software will be silenced (almost). In the future arguing for Free Software will therefore not meet the strong resistance it is accustomed to.

Posted on by mklang

Open Video Project

Creative Commons and the Fedora Project have launched an open video contest on the topic of Openness and Freedom. The first prize is a Fedora-branded Sony Camcorder. The first 150 submissions will receive a pair of handsome Fedora Flip-Flops – prefect for the summer!

Open Video Contest

The video submission should be in ogg format, less than 10MB in size, less than 30 seconds in duration and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License (in the jurisdiction of your choice). The competition period is between 00:00 UTC June 20, 2006 and 00:00 UTC July 20, 2006. Winners will be notified by September 1, 2006. So I think this means that the Flip-Flops will have to wait until next summer…

More info.

Posted on by mklang

The Death of Memory

OK â?? so articles that begin with the title â??The Death ofâ?¦â?? have a tendency to be alarmist. Despite this the recent news that Dr. Martin Luther Kingâ??s estate is about to auction off his papers (10 000 papers) creates thoughts in this direction. (via On the Commons)

The main fear is that the collection of sermons, speeches and papers that King wrote between 1946-1968 (including drafts of  â??I Have a Dreamâ??) will be bought by an investor and then sold off in pieces to the highest bidders. The economics of this is totally logical it will raise the most money. The downside is that this amazing collection will be spread making research difficult, and maybe impossible. As part of a collection a small note written by Dr King is a valuable addition. Taken on itâ??s own it is worth little and can be maltreated and eventually lost â?? as history has often shown.

This is indeed a death of memory.

The second part of the death of memory concerns the digitisation of communications. Since the dissemination of computers there has been a dramatic rise in communication and creativity. The general impression is that more and more people are writing and creating different forms of creative works. In addition to this more of our photographs are stored on digital storage devices. What are the implications of the shift to digital storage devices?

Cuneiform writing on clay tablets can still be read today after over 4000 years. Through this we have been able to read the Hammurabi code of law and the Gilgamesh epic and legends. (UPenn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology). Older books have a relatively long life expectancy in particular those printed on paper made from cloth rags. â??Ordinaryâ?? paper is less enduring and in particular modern paper since the acid remains in paper made between 1850 and 1950 cause this paper to slowly disintegrate (actually a slow burning acid fire) (Wikipedia).  Microfilm and Microfiche have a life expectancy of 500+ years but in reality this is substantially lower due to wear and tear by users.  Magnetic tape, Videotape, Magnetic disk and Optical disk will last less than 30-40 years.*

Stored digital photos will not be recovered from dumpsters and garage sales (Swapatorium) since they will have become unreadable as well as deteriorated.

All information storage forms require that the reader be able to understand the data. In the case of cuneiform tablets it is necessary to understand the written language. In the case of technologies such as tapes and microfilm it is also necessary to maintain functioning equipment that will be able to read the stored data. In the case of digital equipment it is necessary to save both the hardware and the software.

A good way to begin to understand the magnatude of this problem is to look at the â??Mother Tonguesâ?? chart of the development of computer languages that shows the rise and fall of programming languages.

Who will save the hardware, software and knowledge to be able to auction my collected works stored on several decaying computers? Even if someone eventually would want to read itâ?¦

* Rothenberg, Jeff. ‘Ensuring the Longevity of Digital Documents’, Scientific American (Jan 1995): 24-29.

Posted on by mklang

ECIS day 2

Today began with a keynote presentation by Barbara Czarniawska. The title of her keynote was â??The Great Challenge of the Context or, the arc of action is always wider than the arc of projectionâ??.

By analysing examples of (mainly) cyberpunk literature and films Prof Czarniawska showed that the context of use is always richer than the context of design. While at the same time showing examples of how designers embed technologies with their stereotypical ideas and values â?? which in turn are demanded by the audience for the artefacts.

Thought provoking and entertaining the talk has created many discussions between conference attendees.

Posted on by mklang

Football Technology

People will go to great lengths to adapt technology to suit their needs. This was the technical solution which on Saturday turned an ordinary bar into a sportsbar for the first game Sweden played in the World cup – Sweden lost…UPDATE – As ink pointed out in the comments the result was a draw. Sorry for exposing my total sports incompetence 🙂

Posted on by mklang

Will blog for cash (and even for free)

Actually I am sceptical to the idea of making money from blogging. In a previous post on the Blogburst I reported about the downsides of commercial feeds (they eat your broadband, usually you dont get more readers, and payment is virtually nil). Obviously there are the exceptions to the rule. In the same way as Madonna makes money from selling records is an exception from the thousands (hundreds of thousands?) who never will.

Dont get me wrong – I am not against money per se. I just dont believe that I will make money directly from my blog. Despite this, I found this news interesting.

Scoopt, the world’s first commercial citizen journalism photography agency, has just launched ScooptWords to help bloggers sell their content to newspapers and magazines. Within the Scoopt interface, you can easily add a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license to your blog right alongside a Scoopt commercial badge. Use the CC license to tell people how your work can be used non-commercially; use the ScooptWords badge to let editors know that your writing can be purchased for commercial use. There’s so much great blog content being created every day — it’ll be very exciting to see how it helps change the way newspapers and magazines are created.

(via Creative Commons)

The attempts to create commercial forms of citizen journalism are fascinating to watch. Again we see the new social uses of media threatening the established business models. Blogs will not kill print media but they will force print media news to adapt to a new reality.  As usual in situations such as these there will be commercial winners and losers.

Posted on by mklang

Starcups, Starbucks & Trademarks

While on a short coffee break from the exciting world of thesis writing I saw this sign on the coffee place next to the place where I was having coffee.

Starcups Coffee? Its amazing that Starbucks would let such a thing survive… There seems to be a site registered online but it keeps timing out. Thanks to google image search here is a better image of the Starcups logo and next to it the Starbucks logo.

So what do you think? Trademark infringement? Which is the copy and which is the original? If you know anything about this please comment. And if you happen to be in Göteborg on Plantagegatan then I can recommend Cafe con Leche next door to Starcups…

Posted on by mklang

Amerocentric

When does a word become a word? I wanted to use the word Amerocentric and thought that there was no such word. So I searched for it on Google. I googled it â?? to google is an accepted verb! Anyway the word Amerocentric exists online and is used so therefore it must be a word which carries meaning. The term denotes an US world view.

America is not the world is an (mildly) anti-Amerocentric website which actually only contains this:

Population of the World: 6 500 000 000
Population of the United States of America: 298 000 000
Percentage of the world that isn’t American: 95.4%

Which considering the amount of attention the US receives is a sobering thought.

Posted on by mklang

When librarians snap

Most jobs have built in annoyances – and most often its customers! These are usually tolerated as they are considered part of the territory but sometimes the urge to work these annoyances out becomes too great…

One such occurance concerns the librarian Barbara McCutcheon who will now, with the help of the local police, have people arrested for not returning library books. This article quotes her as saying: “I’m just not going to take it anymore. I want my books back and I want them now,” and “I will track people down. You can run but you can’t hide”.

This may seem a harsh way to go but the police seem to support this action: “If Barbara has books out that are not returned, then we will make reports and begin to seek arrest warrants. We will start arresting people…”

The library is in Texas – why is this not surprising?
(via Biblioteksrelaterat)

Posted on by mklang

Free Films Online

While the main discussion on online films revolves (rightly or wrongly) on pirates downloading material. This discussion sometimes forgets that we have now reached a period when a number of films are being released into the public domain. Here is a selection of films available at the Internet Archive. Browsing their collection is lots of fun and may seriously threaten thesis work.

Things to Come (1936), William Cameron Menzies (dir.), The metropolis of Everytown is a city threatened by world war. Pacifist intellectuals try to turn the tide but efforts go unheeded by the self-interested classes, and war arrives with tanks and aeroplanes and gas bombs. The war continues for thirty years, its original purpose forgotten. Everytown is destroyed by air raids and civilization degenerates… (imdb) (Public Domain).

Le Voyage Dans La Lune (dir. George Meiles), an old 1902 film from france about a small group of scientists that travel to space on a rocket to get to the moon. (Licensed via CC Att-NC-SA).

Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1943) (dir. Roy William Neill) Based on the Sir Authur Conan Doyle story “The Dancing Men”, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are placed in WWII europe to help protect a scientist and his invention from the Nazis. (Licensed via CC Att).

The Kid (1921) (dir. Charlie Chaplin) The Kid was Charlie Chaplin’s first full-length movie. It, more than anything else to that date, made Chaplin a living legend. It took over a year to produce, and was an incredible success for Chaplin. (Public Domain).

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) (dir. Alfred Hitchcock) While travelling in Switzerland, the child of a well-off couple is kidnapped. She is held to ensure that her father does not reveal what he knows about a planned assassination. Since they can’t talk to the authorities, the parents plan to begin the search for their daughter on their own. This is the original, British-made movie from 1934 and is now in the Public Domain.

Mechanical Monsters (1941) A ten minute Superman cartoon where he battles a criminal mastermind and his robot army (imdb) (Public Domain).

Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) (dir. Charles Reisner, Buster Keaton) the story of a naive, college-educated dandy who must prove himself to his working-class father, a hot-headed riverboat captain, while courting the daughter of his father’s rival, who threatens to put Steamboat Bill, Sr. and his paddle-wheeler out of business. (Public Domain).

The New Adventures of Tarzan. (1935) (dir. Edward Kull) Not many realize this feature, along with ‘Tarzan and the Green Goddess’, were produced by E.R. Burroughs, himself. He wanted a screen portrayal of Tarzan as he had written him, a noble intelligent Ape Man/Lord Greystoke, not as Hollywood had made him (“Me Tarzan, you Jane”). And NO Cheetah.

Three Stooges – Color Craziness (1965) “The New Three Stooges” featured the animated adventures of Moe, Larry, & Curly Joe. The cartoons were introduced by live-action inserts with the real Stooges. These inserts were some of the only Stooges material ever filmed in color, and they also feature long-time Stooge collaberator Emil Sitka. (Public Domain).

Posted on by mklang