war

Grey Saturday

Yupp another rainy Saturday has rolled around. While taking a walk around town I managed to pick up Vilém Flusser‘s book Towards a Philosophy of Photography which seems very exiting. Also discovered that the cool exhibition by Mattias Adolfsson (blogged about him earlier and he also has a blog with images) was still available and so was my favourite picture. So I bought the Beatnik Dragon.

Not a bad bit of procrastination – but now it’s back to the the real writing. Or rather as LP would say – the stuff that I really get paid for…

Posted on by mklang

Happy Toilet, Healthy Life

Right now in Bangkok itâ??s the 6th annual World Toilet Forum. The Forum has as its slogan: â??Happy Toilet, Healthy Lifeâ?? â?? which I must say if you are going to pick words to live by then these are as good as many others! Much better than the ridiculous â??Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Moriâ?? translated: It is sweet and noble to die for your country (If you donâ??t think its ridiculous then you should read Wilfred Owen or read more current affairs).

Anyway back to the original subject of Happy Toilets. Not only is there a World Toilet Forum but there is also a World Toilet Organisation, which I thought must have been a satire on the WTO, and there is also a World Toilet College in Singapore, whose nr 2 objective (sorry I couldnâ??t resist it) is â??To establish Singapore as the premier training hub for the restroom industry.â??

The WTO site (Toilet not Trade) also has a selection of photographs entitled Beautiful Restroom Images – but I thought that I would provide something more low-tech so this is from the public latrines in Ostia

Why the sudden interest? Well I just wanted you all to know that tomorrow is the International Toilet Day – a fitting tribute to the technologicalization of the natural processes. What can I say? Except â??Happy Toilet, Healthy Lifeâ??

Oh and of course you can also buy t-shirtsâ?¦

Posted on by mklang

Staff Journal

Nice news today. A short article I wrote (on DRM) was published in the University staff paper. Strange how difficult it was to write when you know that ALL your colleagues might be reading it. It turned out alright. It’s in Swedish over here (with a photo).

Otherwise most of the whole day seems to have been spent re-creating the computer after the crash. Lots of small and large pieces of software to be installed, passwords to be remembered and settings to be restored. Very tiring and annoying but good stuff. Today it works! Better than before. This means that the weekend will be spent doing the work that I should have done this week.

Posted on by mklang

Back from the dead

Wow! What a roller coaster! My computer died causing much pain, agony, wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Today, after using Data Rescue II and spending the whole day (more or less) watching software scan, find, rescue, copy, delete, format and finally install – I’m back! That’s right the computer has been rescued by the prompt, patient and heroic ministrations of the superwizard of support LP (I will not use his real name so that he can maintain his secret identity).

All my mail is back. All my friends have been grinning and making evil comments about backups and other safety measures. When not watching the screen I have been walking around as an example to others: “Look there he is… he didn’t back up and now he is toast…” A tale to scare the grandchildren with.

So now I will solemnly promise to make even more frequent backups and to never pop mail again (yes I shall embrace imap with the fervor of a convert).

Lessons learned you think? and yet… I don’t know. Maybe it was too easy, maybe I didn’t suffer enough…

Posted on by mklang

Carpet was bombing

We are controlled by out technology. Not necessarily in a large noticeable way but definitely in small ways in which we hardly notice. Technology and technological metaphors shape our lives and our ideas. For those of us annoyed but dependent upon spelling aids in software we quickly realise how the software suggests words, spellings and grammatical rules which we are unsure of whether we want to use. If we continue to accept without question then eventually language will be shaped by software we use.

Occasionally something happens which draws attention to the silliness of allowing software to rule our language. Today I attempted to write carpet bombing. The software complained and I checked to see what it wanted. It did not like the words carpet bombing (is this an ethical choice?) but suggested carpet bombs, carpet is bombing, and carpet was bombingâ?¦

Who wrote this stuff?

Posted on by mklang

Robot Machine Gun Sentry

Samsung together with Korea university has developed the machine-gun equipped robotic sentry.

It is equipped with two cameras with zooming capabilities one for day time and one for infrared night vision. It has a sophisticated pattern recognition which can detect the difference between humans and trees, and a 5.5mm machine-gun. The robot also has a speaker to warn the intruder to surrender or get a perfect headshot. The robots will go on sale by 2007 for $ 200,000 and will be deployed on the border between North and South Korea. (Gizmondo).

The promotional video reflects a great deal of the lack of reflection among designers and developers – loud music and effects.

A machine is created to kill. No moral dimension – the machine executes commands (sorry bad pun). But what will happen when the software fails? Or even worse when the software works but a situation requiring tact and judgment occurs?

Obviously such a machine will do as it is told. It will be unable to interpret new situations and it will open fire.

Posted on by mklang

Best non-fiction book

Wait a moment…

You can’t just vote the best non-fiction book. Lots of people will be upset, annoyed, miffed and feel generally left out. For my part I feel ignored since I missed the whole event.

The Royal Institution in London have voted Primo Levi’s memoir of life as a Jew in Mussolini’s Italy, named “The Periodic Table” the best non-fiction book ever written.

The shortlist

Primo Levi The Periodic Table
Konrad Lorenz King Solomon’s Ring
Tom Stoppard Arcadia
Richard Dawkins The Selfish Gene

Other nominations

James Watson The Double Helix
Bertolt Brecht The Life of Galileo
Peter Medawar Pluto’s Republic
Charles Darwin Voyage of the Beagle
Stephen Pinker The Blank Slate
Oliver Sacks A Leg to Stand On

(via Guardian Online)

Posted on by mklang

Java under GPL

Sun will release key parts of Java under GPLv2 today! The initial release today will include the HotSpot runtime, javac compiler, JavaHelp, and Sun’s Java ME implementation. The rest of Java will be released under GPLv2 early next year.

The license that GPL Java will be released under includes a classpath exception, which allows linking against the Java class libraries without open sourcing your code, so the GPL licensing will not affect the ability of Java developers to produce closed source applications with Java.

In addition, Sun will offer dual licensing of Java, so there will also be a commercial port still available which is fully certified to be standards compliant.

“This is a milestone for the whole industry,” said Rich Green. “Not only are we making an influential and widely used software platform for the Web available under an open-source license, it also underscores Sun’s commitment to changing the whole industry model for how software is enhanced and developed.”

(via JavaLobby)

Posted on by mklang

Snålsurfa

A seventeen year old in Singapore is facing trial for logging into his neighbors wireless network. In the worst case scenario the boy may receive a three year prison sentence. This would definitely be a harsh sentence for the act. Naturally this may be a serious case (not much information in the article here) but with the increase in â??user friendlinessâ?? many users are unaware which networks they are connecting to with their laptops and pda’s

In 2005 the Swedish Language Council, which is the official language cultivation body of Sweden, added the term â??snÃ¥lsurfaâ?? to the Swedish language. The word is a combination of â??snÃ¥lâ?? (cheap, miserly) and surfa (surf) â?? basically the act of surfing on someone else’s network.

And I have a confession to make â?? I am a repeat offender. I often check mail on other people’s networks while travelling in other cities. But maybe I won’t do it in Singapore…

(via Cyberlaw)

Posted on by mklang

To Bolzano

Tomorrow I fly to Bolzano, Italy to attend the South Tyrol Free Software Conference 2006. Then on Saturday the First International Annual Meeting of the Fellows of FSFE will be held (in the same place â?? someone has planned ahead). On Sunday there will be a team meeting and then its time to fly back home.

Austrian airlines flies to Verona and then a train ride up to Bolzano. This is a bit nostalgic since I spent some time as a guest researcher in Rovereto (which is between Verona and Bolzano). Unfortunately there is no extra time to spend in Verona, Rovereto or any other of the beautiful Italian cities in the vicinity.

Posted on by mklang