desirable things

Landmines – ban the technology

Certain technological artefacts should never have been designed, manufactured or used. Among these is the landmine. Its horrible impact is not only on the combatants but rather on the civil population which needs to live with the slowly decaying lethal devices for decades after the land was sown with them. Organisations such as the No More Landmines in the UK are working to ban them as legitimate weapons. These organisations need all the support that they can get.

The problem is that people are interested in a conflict while it is active and making headlines. When “peace” is achieved public interest declines considerably. This is unfortunate as the landmines remain. The cost of removing landmines is extremely high and almost impossible to meet for worn torn countries.

So how does one attempt to ensure that people’s interest remains focused on the landmine problem? Well artist & activist Will St. Leger came up with a novel and shocking approach. On Sunday 1st April he placed 100 fake ‘landmines’ made from stenciled metal plates in park around Dublin, Ireland.

Will explains: “The reason for doing this was to get people asking themselves “what if the world I walked in was littered with landmines?” They’re nearly all gone now, the Police took away most of them when a tourist called the emergency number to report ‘Landmines’. Afterwards, I wondered who the people of Laos, Cambodia and Iraq gonna call when they step on real landmine?”

landmines1.jpg

 (via Wooster Collective)

Posted on by mklang

iCommons Summit

The third annual iCommons summit will be held in Dubrovnik, Croatia (15-17 June) and this year I have the good fortune to be able to attend.

The event includes people like Creative Commons CEO, Larry Lessig, CC Chairman and Digital Entrepreneur, Joi Ito, Wikipedia Founder, Jimmy Wales and CTO of Linden Labs, Cory Ondrejka. We have also add some new voices to the debate this year including Indiaâ??s Lawrence Liang who has become renowned for his considered commentary on the positive impact of piracy in developing countries, Jonathan Zittrain discussing themes from his new book â??The Future of the Internet and How to Stop Itâ??, Benjamin Mako Hill from MIT who will talk about competing visions of â??free cultureâ?? from the free software perspective, and Becky Hogge from the Open Rights Group, who will talk about successful campaigns to rid the world of restrictive IP laws.

I am really looking forward to it and to meeting all the other commoners. Naturally the event will be blogged 🙂

Posted on by mklang

Short Complaint

Urgh, I am tired. This week I am giving six lectures in four days. After the first four I feel worn out. Don’t get me wrong I love my job but I am getting tired of hearing my own voice. My legs hurt from pacing up and down the room and my brain is numb from concentrating.

When I feel like this it’s good to remember that I have an easy job…

from Age of Irony

Posted on by mklang

Stealing Wifi

A man in the UK has been fined £500 and sentenced to 12 monthsâ?? conditional discharge for illegally using someone elseâ??s open wifi (an offence under the Computer Misuse Act see more on note below*). These (one and two) BBC stories gives more information on this but it also includes lots of interesting pre-suppositions about the dangers of open wireless Internet access points.

The main arguments in the BBC stories are that the use of someone elseâ??s wifi is mainly to enter into illegal porn sites, launch hack attacks, to steal information or worse.

Is this really what people try to do on other peoples networks? My experience is that most unauthorized wifi use is travelers checking email, or neighbors using each otherâ??s nets out of sheer incompetence. Naturally there are always going to be nasty people attempting to abuse openness but how bad can it be?

Phil Cracknell has called for an awareness campaign to inform of the dangers of openness â?? â??The perception in the past has been that borrowing a bit of bandwidth is cheeky but not really criminal behaviourâ??. But then again Phil Cracknell is chief technology officer of security firm NetSurity and may be a bit interested in increasing our perception of insecurity.

Most of the people I come into contact with (ok, so I hang with the wrong crowd) donâ??t believe that borrowing bandwidth is cheeky â?? itâ??s a simple act that does not harm anyone.

Using anything for an illegal activity is however illegal and should be punished.

—

* Added 23 April

Stealing wifi is actually an offence under the Communications Act of 2003. To be an offence under the Computer Misuse Act there has to be more than simple wifi use. Basically the Computer Misuse Act requires an unauthorised entry into the computer system. This is similar to Swedish law where “only” using someone’s wifi is not an offence while entering into someone’s system without authorisation is an offence (DatorintrÃ¥ng). This difference is quite subtle and should be investigated further since it could be argued that it is not possible to use wifi without unlawful entry.

Posted on by mklang

Middlemen Wanted

Cheaper computers, better software, more intuitive software, the net, cheaper and faster connectivity have all worked together to make interesting audio and video content available at no cost. In addition to this the Creative Commons licensing system has provided a support for those who want to both share and maintain some control over their content.

The problem is that there is too much content online. It’s disorganized and hard to find. All this opens up an exciting niche for the middleman. Someone who will trawl the internet looking for content worthy of listeners and viewers. Naturally these middlemen have already appeared and are able to recommend good content for those of us who want but lack the time and inclination to attempt to find and wade through all the less interesting stuff.

BlocSonic is one such middleman and they (or he/she) have now released their “Volume 4: Soundtrack for the coming revolution“. They write:

Once again, we’ve got a terrific collection of 10 tracks culled from the wide world of net audio. In this one we feature one from ccMixter, a couple from Jamendo and others from various netlabels. Hip-Hop, Trip-Hop, Unplugged Electronica, Post-Rock, Indie Rock, Drum & Bass are all represented. So download it, give it a listen, contact us and leave feedback. If you’d like, we’d love it if you leave a review at netBloc Vol. 4’s archive.org page.

It’s surprising that these services have not been more widespread. Or maybe it’s just because I have not found them earlier. Here is volume 4:

01 – Sun Zoo – New Pirates (featuring DJ HDL)

02 – Maniax Memori – It’s Not Jazzz

03 – Dirge – Phone

04 – deutscheunschuld – Just One Night (DU Remix Edit) (Featuring Vocals by Jeremy Carr)

05 – You Are My Everything – Can You Feel What It Takes?

06 – Bersarin Quartett – St. Petersburg

07 – Lucas CK – Tu cries

08 – Crepusculum – A Sheltered Life (Herzog Reprise)

09 – BSK – October

10 – L’Onomatopeur – Pour Petite Tete

(via the Creative Commons blog)

Posted on by mklang

Sunrise, or the idea of summer

One of the best things about taking the early morning train to Stockholm is seeing the sun slowly rise in nature. Even through the train window the experience of seeing the reddish light spread across the foggy fields is beautiful experience. The remainder of fog on the lakes and the lack of ice on the grass also promises that summer will soon be here. And right now I need the idea of summer.

This year, so far, has been a nightmare of teaching and personal upheaval. The teaching has remained a constant but now, at least, I have organised an apartment after a few months in the parental spare room. In addition to the teaching and moving there is the struggle to find, fund, organise and commence a post-doc research agenda for myself. This has gone well in the finding but less well in the organising, funding and commencing part. So I feel a tad worn out in this area.

But don’t get me wrong there is a lot of good stuff in my life to make it happy. It’s just that now in the early spring the concept, idea, myth of summer has reared its head and I picture myself relaxing in the warmth in some exotic location.

It is the same every early spring. The idea of summer comes as a powerful desire. It takes many forms but mainly it consists of variations on a theme. The main idea is that this summer will be spent relaxing in the sun, on a beach somewhere. Even though I know that every year I tend to need the summer to catch up on my work the idea of the relaxing summer is probably one of the most powerful myths in my life.

Don’t get me wrong summer is relaxing but it is never as carefree as in the myth of summertime.

Posted on by mklang

Food for Fuel

Over at Owen’s Musings (via Memex 1.0) I read the following

I have just learned from DFIDâ??s Chief Economist, Tony Venables, that the grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV gas tank with ethanol will feed one person for a year.

While I had not seen this nugget of information before I know that in Sweden it is cheaper to heat ones home by burning grain rather than oil. It may seem to be a bit naive of me but I do get upset when people heat their houses by burning grain since it is cheaper than oil.

OK – now that I have written this I am expecting to be set straight by Johan my resident environmentalist (and some time guilty conscious) . So Johan is the example correct, relevant and interesting?

Posted on by mklang

Does anyone have a spare?

[pdf, 3.08 MB] The Living Planet Report is WWF’s periodic update on the state of the world’s ecosystems. Pdf file over here.

And it is not good news. The Living Planet Report 2006 confirms that we are using the planetâ??s resources faster than they can be renewed â?? the latest data available (for 2003) indicate that humanityâ??s Ecological Footprint, our impact upon the planet, has more than tripled since 1961. Our footprint now exceeds the worldâ??s ability to regenerate by about 25 per cent.

The consequences of our accelerating pressure on Earthâ??s natural systems are both predictable and dire. The other index in this report, the Living Planet Index, shows a rapid and continuing loss of biodiversity â?? populations of vertebrate species have declined by about one third since 1970.

The report describes the changing state of global biodiversity and the pressure on the biosphere arising from human consumption of natural resources.

It is built around two indicators:

  • the Living Planet Index, which reflects the health of the planet’s ecosystems; and
  • the Ecological Footprint, which shows the extent of human demand on these ecosystems.

These measures are tracked over several decades to reveal past trends, then three scenarios explore what might lie ahead.The scenarios show how the choices we make might lead to a sustainable society living in harmony with robust ecosystems, or to the collapse of these same ecosystems, resulting in a permanent loss of biodiversity and erosion of the planet�s ability to support people.

Find out how you can reduce your ecological footprint.

Posted on by mklang

Kevlar for Kids

The TimesOnline has a story about parents in the UK buying body armour for their children. What an incredible world we live in when they even make body armour for children let alone manage to sell it. Apparently the parents are concerned about the rise in murders among London teenagers.

This feels so wrong and as one of the comments to the TimesOnline story writes

Dressing up a small child in something that costs hundreds of pounds and sending the child out into a rough neighborhood doesn’t sound like it advances the child’s safety at all.

But where does the limit between paranoid parenting (Furedi 2001) and common sense really go? Obviously dressing children in bullet and knife proof clothing does not send out a good signal to the children or to others but then again it may save a life.

An interesting quote in the article was: “The cheapest version will stop any knife attack while the higher end will stop a bullet from any handgun or sub-machine gun.” Considering how fashion conscious children are today we are also running the risk of creating an attitude among children about who can afford the good stuff.

Posted on by mklang