News

Media on File sharing

The newspaper Dagens Industri (Daily Industry) while commenting on the recent file sharing case in Sweden wrote:
“In this folder there was alleged to be so called RAR-files. RAR is a standard commonly used by pirates to pack films.” My translation Swedish quote and link to article below.

I am always impressed by lack of technical knowledge displayed in the media and terrified by the lack of knowledge displayed by the courts.

Online quote “I den mappen ska sÃ¥ kallade RAR-filer ha funnits. RAR är en standard som brukar användas av pirater för att packa filmer.” di.se

Posted on by mklang

New Swedish NGO

The new Swedish NGO has now established its first web presence. http://www.libre.se/.

The “Association for free culture and software” (Föreningen Fri Kultur och Programvara) is called Libre for short and will be active in four areas Infrastructure, Culture, Access & Digital Rights. Since the main focus of the NGO is to bring a major part of an international discussion into the Swedish domain the site is in Swedish.

Posted on by mklang

The Antikythera mechanism

The Antikythera computing device, the most complex instrument of antiquity has been reconstructed and reinterpreted at the London Science Museum.

a-mech

The new model is based on mechanism fragments dated from approximately 50 BC which have puzzled generations of engineers and historians. Found in amongst other treasures of an ancient wrecked ship – the Antikythera – the machine was packed with little cogwheels like a squashed clock.

poster

“It had been suggested by scholars that the main dial showed the positions of the Sun and Moon amongst the stars at any chosen date� the other dials showing information on the lunar month and further functions which could not be understood because of its poor state. Nicknamed the “calendar computer”� it was hailed as the world’s first computer� but no one really knew what the gadget was for.”

  • It could have been an amazingly sophisticated planetarium. The user could dial in any date he or she wantedâ?? and the instrument would show the positions in the sky of the Sunâ?? the Moon and of all the five planets then knownâ?? just what you would need for a horoscope.

    After years of researchâ?? Wright has made a precise model – in the style of the original and using techniques available at the time – to demonstrate that his idea works. He saidâ??

    â??Unfortunately historians do not know too much about the astronomy of that timeâ?? because later scholars paid so much more attention to the work of the famous astronomer Ptolemyâ?? who lived a few generations laterâ?? that earlier works were lost. But Ptolemy provided some cluesâ?? which helped in building the reconstruction.â??

    • Posted on by mklang