digital

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

Unrelated things: GPL conference & Filesharing

Some unrelated things which I put together in one post because I have been away from my blog until today (without any serious side effects).

Yesterday I was in Stockholm at the Swedish Parliament to discuss filesharing. No â?? not in the chamber! It was an enjoyable, open and interesting discussion â?? thanks for inviting me.

I also found out yesterday that the date for my thesis defence has been finalised. Once again travel plans of others had forced changes but now the date is set (for the last time! I hope.) So I will defend on October 2nd.

In addition to this I have been invited to join a panel at The 3rd International GPLv3 Conference: CCCB, Barcelona, Spain, June 22nd & 23rd. This is going to be very interesting.

I seem to have accidently forgotten (Freud who?)
to return my visitors badge…

Posted on by mklang

blogg against torture

Yesterday (June, 12) the American Medical Association took an important ethical policy decision against medical participation in interrogations “Physicians must not conduct, directly participate in, or monitor an interrogation with an intent to intervene, because this undermines the physicianâ??s role as healer.â??
The UN has declared that the 26th June is the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture – what are we going to do about it?
There is no single face of torture. Unfortunately there happens to be several examples of the cruelty and heartlessness of men (no gender bias intended). Examples include the statement by Rear-Admiral Harris about the three suicides of prisoners under his responsibility was â??â?¦not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfareâ?¦â?? or the comment of Nick Harvey when faced with the news that after WWII British troops had starved prisoners and tortured them with equipment taken from Gestapo prisons, says â??Itâ??s too late for anyone to be held personally responsible, or held politically to accountâ?¦â??

Ok so issues such as time, energy and emotional baggage tend to get in the way of a more active support. There is however a way of supporting without much effort. This is not a trivialisation – on the contrary it is the promotion of information to raise awareness. Not to let uncomfortable information slip into oblivion.

The group known as Torture Awareness Month has a blogrole going. By going to http://blogagainsttorture.blogspot.com/ and do two things:

All you need to do to join is (1) promise to do a blog post about torture in the month of June, (2) link to Torture Awareness Month somewhere your blog. Do both of these things, and we will link to you from our blogrolls.

Donâ??t forget to go to Torture Awareness Month to learn more about what is, and can be done, to raise awareness against torture. But don’t stop there. The information about torture, its causes, effects and how to work against it.

Some background…

The United Nations has declared the 26 June to be International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. The UN position against torture is based primarily on article 5 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states, â??no one shall be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishmentâ??

This is further qualified by the 1984 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the sentiments are echoed in conventions such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which adds that: â??No one shall be subjected without his [or her] free consent to medical or scientific experimentation.â??

Posted on by mklang

Note from my university

As some of you may know â?? I am concerned with plagiarism (some earlier posts on the subject). In one of these earlier posts I wrote about a situation where a supervisor had borrowed/stolen/plagiarised a student work and presented it as his/her own at the EMAC conference in Milan in 2005.

The plagiarist is a PhD â?? not a student. The conference submission was a five-page paper. There is something very wrong with the fact that a person with a PhD cannot write his/her own five-page conference paper (Actually I would call five pages an extended abstract).

What really annoyed me (besides the bad plagiarism and all it stands for) was the fact that:

The majority of the research ethics committee found that while it was wrong that the supervisor did not ask the students, it was too far to say that the supervisor had cheated. This position was motivated that by calling the supervisor actions plagiarism would effectively be damage scientific research. (from earlier post).

Thankfully today the local newspaper writes that the University Dean has sent the errand onwards and upwards to the research ethics group of the National Swedish Research Council. Maybe by going beyond the confines of the own organisation the message can be stated clearly that plagiarism by researchers is as unacceptable as we claim it is when students attempt it.

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

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

Politics in Games

Violence and ideologies in games have long been under discussion. On the one side computer game advocates argue that computer games are not the cause of violence while others claim that computer games are harmful. The truth is never as simple as either side would like to claim.

Americas Army is the official US army game and was developed by the US army (beginning in 1999) the goal is to allow players to develop into specialist â??Green Beretâ?? soldiers. The website contains information about US army recruitment centres.

Afkar Media is producing â??al-Qurayshâ??, a real time strategy game that tells the story of the first 100 years of Islam from the viewpoint of four different nations – Bedouins, Arabs, Persians, and Romans. The planned release date is September. Afkar Media hopes the game will help to reverse negative connotations of Islam in the west and evoke new pride among young Muslims. (Christian Science Monitor).

Last year Afkar Media launched the game Under Seige, which was inspired by actual Hizbollah missions. An earlier game on the same theme is Special Force. They write on their website:

â??The game â??Special Forceâ?? is based upon reality, meaning that the game is based on events that took place in a land called Lebanon. Lebanon was invaded by â??Israelâ?? in 1978 & 1982, and was forced to withdrawâ?¦we decided to produce a game that will be educational for our future generations and for all freedom lovers of this worldâ?¦â??

Games such as these are criticised for simply reversing stereotypes while their supporters claim to redress the balance in a genre dominated by western forces defeating Arabs.

Does Civilisation create a â??beat-them-upâ?? â??winner-take-allâ?? view of history? Do Counterstrike and Vice City lead to conflict? And then what do the Sims tell us about ourselves and which values do they re-inforce?

It is interesting to note that all sides seem to argue that â??the otherâ?? is unfairly portraying them as the evil enemy. The question of political propaganda in games is a large unexplored area. Taylorâ??s â??Munitions of the Mindâ?? is an excellent starting point for those wishing to better understand the history and impact of propaganda from a non-game perspective.

Posted on by mklang

Writing Disruptive Technology

Finally done. I handed in my edited thesis to my supervisor today. The work spans 268 pages split up into 1769 paragraphs, 9953 lines. Which became 101 956 words. It includes 7 tables and 2 figures, not including the cartoon in the acknowledgements.

Since I have already survived two seminars on the work with revisions after each now my supervisor will read the work again and I will be able to make minor changes after his comments.

From the brilliant Jorge Cham – PhdComics

Then its summer – not a lot happens then. With any luck I will avoid reading my thesis. Just let it be until the begining of August. Then the work is off to the printers and upon its return a copy of the work is nailed to the university notice board along with information about the public defence which will be in September (one of the days: 25th, 26th or 27th still undecided…). If I pass & survive my defence then I am well and truely finished with this project.

The title of my thesis is “Disruptive Technology” and it has the subtitle “Effects of Technology Regulation on Democracy” if you want to read the latest version download it here.

Posted on by mklang

Pirate Bay Traffic

The seizing of Pirate Bay’s servers has raised many legal and political implications but what are the traffic implications on the loss of servers? Keeping in mind that there are other trackers online can the effects of the closing of The Pirate Bays servers be seen? After all, the Pirate bay has claimed to be the worlds biggest bittorrent- tracker. This is should not be taken as a rigerous attempt to measure Internet traffic but only an indication of the impact of the loss of a major online site.

Looking at the traffic for of a student dorm at Chalmers Universtity in Göteborg for the last week we see this:

The blue line represents the amount downloaded in bits/second while the green represents the amound uploaded in bits/second. The servers went down on Wednesday 31 May. If we take a look at the traffic data for the last month we see:

last week was week 22.

The amount of traffic seems to have dipped by about 20% the question is whether or not this is caused by the loss of The Pirate Bays servers? If we look at the traffic data for the last year we can see that there is a natural dip which begins at about this time which is the of term. While it is difficult to be exact the dip which coincides with the loss of the Pirate Bay’s servers seems to be a bit earlier than the annual dip due to the summer holidays.

The most interesting dip in yearly traffic occurs at Christmas. On Christmas eve at 3 pm it is traditional for most Swedish families to watch television (Disney Christmas Special) and then sit down to eat together.

Posted on by mklang