book

Fun with google & googleheads

Philipp Lenssen has written the book â??55 Ways to Have Fun With Googleâ??. My first thought was that this must be a small broschure â?? but I was wrong. The book is 228 pages long. Best of all is that its available for download here. The book is licensed under a Creative Commons license (by-nc-sa).

Naturally, as one would expect, the book includes an inspirational quote from the song â??The Googleheadsâ?? see the weird song and video here (oh, and apparently you can buy the song on itunes!). Here is the googlehead quote:

On a spring day you can find your way
to a little flower garden where the Googleheads play
You know theyâ??re there by the clothes they wear
And their Googlehead faces and their Googlehead hair.

â??Cause theyâ??re the Googleheads
They shake their doodleheads
Theyâ??re the goo-ga-goo-ga-goo-gah Googleheads.
â?? Laurie Berkner

Check out Lenssenâ??s google website.

(via Lessig Blog)

Posted on by mklang

What are you reading this summer?

Summer is the time of relaxing but its also a time of stress – its the time when all those things that you have put of until summer must be fulfilled. One of these todo lists is the summer reading list. Here is what the summer has carried with it in terms of interesting literature:

Dave Taylor’s “Learning Unix” – yupp, as I have already written…it’s time to learn unix. I have been meaning to read Hannah Arendt so now her books “Totalitarianism” and “On Revolution” are part of the holiday. The technology section includes Adam Greenfield’s new book “Everyware“, Lasica’s “Darknet“, Langdon Winner’s “The Whale and the Reactor” (which I have meaning to reread) and Joseph Gies “Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel“. In addition to this I have a copy of the PhD dissertation “Being-with Information Technology” by Anna Croon Fors.

So what is everyone else reading?

Posted on by mklang

Learning UNIX

Ok ? so I have to confess something. I am not a programmer. But my
summer project is to learn UNIX. My colleagues have decided that my
development has come to the point that I should actually begin learning
the basics in a structured way. To achieve this end they have presented
me with Dave Taylor?s book ?Learning Unix for Mac OS X Tiger?. I have
begun my lessons and I am looking forward to learning this while
spending my time in the summer sun?

Posted on by mklang

In Transit

Usually I am rather fond of airports. They are a whole microcosm of life on their own with lots of strange machines, unnecessary shops and exotic visitors from all over the world. The airport can also be turned into the most horrible place when things go wrong. My flight from Barcelona was delayed and I ended up spending almost three boring hours in Copenhagen airport. Normally I would not consider Copenhagen boring (not even the airport). But with all Internet use costing 0,44â?¬ per hour, paperbacks costing 40â?¬, hardcover books costing 60â?¬ and the cheapest headphones 43â?¬ â?? it turned out to be exceedingly boring. The only thing that was free was that they hadnâ??t started charging for the electricity use. I feel a real urge to learn how to hack public Internet access 🙂

But now that I am home it doesnâ??t feel so important any moreâ?¦

Posted on by mklang

Sad iPod

My iPod has just made a face at me. Now it only does this

While I remember many years ago when my cat peed on/in my powerbook 100, I spent lots of time carefully drying it out. At the first successful startup the icon (usually a smiling mac) now looked like this.

I was naturally so thankful that my computer worked. Even if it never did smell the same again especially when the harddisk became warm…

Now that I am stuck here with a non-functioning iPod the “cute” unhappy ipod icon seems more like rubbing salt into the situation… So mac doesn’t use the “blue screen of death” but how is this better? The equipment does not work – but look at the cute icon? Bah!

Online helps involves resetting in different ways – I have tried them all. The final method which remains untried is to put my ipod in the freezer for a few hours and then reset.

oh, the joy of tech!

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

Hello Denmark

Denmark has launched Creative Commons license! Here is an excerpt from the press release:

On June 10, the Danish versions of the Creative Commons licenses were
launched in Copenhagen at a ceremony held in Politikens Foredragssal. At
the event, hosted by Copenhagen Business School, Professor Lawrence
Lessig (Chairman and CEO of Creative Commons) gave the keynote
address. The ceremony was sponsored by Copenhagen Business School, Bender
von Haller Dragsted law firm (www.bvhd.dk) and IBM Denmark (www.ibm.dk).

Says Dr. Thomas Riis, â??The Creative Commons licenses will benefit the
cultural life in Denmark. Creators and users of everything from music,
weblogs and homepages to paintings and books will profit from the
licenses.â?? Dr. Jan Trzaskowski adds that â??the licenses make it much easier
and faster to exchange creative works, which falls perfectly in line with
the vibrant cultural life in today’s Denmarkâ??.

Creative Commons Denmark.

Posted on by mklang

DNA Databases

The BBC writes that 519 requests from law enforcement agencies to extract data from the UK DNA database have been granted since 2004. No requests have been denied. The BBC writes about the database:

It emerged in January that 24,000 under-18s never cautioned, charged or convicted are on the database, which was established in 1995.

Sweden has been actively moving towards the implementation of a DNA database with the law professor Madeleine Leijonhufvud and the Minister of Justice Tomas Bodström acting main propaganda exponent with simplistic arguments in the national newspapers. Henrik Sandklef and I wrote a debate article (in Swedish) countering some of these arguments.

The short version of my beef against, is firstly that DNA databases is that they re-inforce the idea of technological infallability while being as error prone as any information system. Secondly they will be abused.

As this BBC article shows they have been done in the UK – there is no reason to expect that the same abuse will not occur in other countries.

A very good book on the role of DNA in the criminal justice system is Lazar’s DNA and the Criminal Justice System: The Technology of Justice.

(via Battleangel)

Posted on by mklang

CC Newbie Tech Litt

The idea of the publisher In Pictures is to provide basic computer litterature with plenty of pictures. Their primary audience is the beginner in the area.
They have now released 22 computer books under a Creative Commons Att-NC-ND 2.5 license.

The library includes books on software such as Windows XP, Mac OS X Tiger, Microsoft office, Openoffice.org, Dreamweaver 8 and Photoshop. In addition to programming basics such as MySQL, PHP and PERL.

Posted on by mklang