software

Enlightenment or countering the dangers lurking in darkness

My friend and colleague Jonas Ã?berg of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has just turned the pressure on. The Swedish section of the FSFE has recently launched an ad campaign encouraging people to join the Fellowship of the FSFE. The campaign included a bonus give away of a pin or a lanyard to all those who joined before 31 December.

Today Jonas wrote a blog post where he complained about poor visibility in traffic which places pedestrians and cyclists in danger when it is dark – which is almost always this time of year in Sweden. So in order to do something about this he has just announced that he will buy a reflex vest (out of his own pocket) for anyone in Sweden who joins the Fellowship before the winter solstice (22 December 2006).

All you have to do is join fsfe.org/join then email him your Fellowship user name and length (for the right vest size) and he will send you a reflex vest…

This is such a brilliant idea!

I want to be part of it too. So if you (only in Sweden since this is a Swedish campaign) order your Fellowship (not renew, but become a new member) before the 22 December and you email Jonas your length (for the vest) then I shall send you a copy of John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty” (please let us know if you want it in Swedish or English).

Posted on by mklang

Bug catching day

Fiddling around with code always reveals new problems. Today I seem to have spent way too much time finding, developing and solving little problems. A full day of this and all I can see are the small irritations instead of the accomplishments.

For example after installing new wordpress blog software (version 2.0.5) I got this error every time I tried to do something

Found
The document has moved here.

Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Very annoying. First searching then failing. Eventually I found a discussion on this bug which seems to be particularly prevalent among users who have One.com as their ISP (which I do in this case).

Not to worry the solution was here:

Find the file:
wp-includes/pluggable-functions.php

find the line:

> status_header($status);

and change it to

> // status_header($status);

Changed and everything is sortedâ?¦ My day has been full of little bugsâ?¦ Or as LP keeps saying: Maybe you should read the manual.

Read the manual? What? I ask you: What kind of amateur tecchie would stoop to reading manuals?

Posted on by mklang

Do you hand out your handouts?

Powerpoint is my crutch. As a teacher I have long been dependent upon powerpoint*. But I have also been concerned about the way in which it forms the way I teach and the way in which students learn. Increasingly students have an expectation of getting the lecturerâ??s powerpoint slides â?? Preferably in digital form and in advance of the lecture.

Powerpoint Students
What is a lecture? University is filled with them. They are praised by some and reviled by others (this will be the topic for a future post). To the student the lecture almost defines university life. Therefore it is maybe not all good when the lecture has become confined to the square space and bullet point list defined by presentation software.

Most often I do not hand out my handouts, nor do I provide my powerpoint slides in digital or any other form to my students. This is not an attempt to monopolize or capitalize on my knowledge. To understand the purpose of this we must look at the purpose of powerpoint slides.

Slides are used (in my teaching) for two purposes. First, and foremost, the slides are there to keep me on track to help me keep my thoughts in order. Second, the slides are intended to underscore certain more important thoughts or concepts. Thirdly, the slides may provide light entertainment they can help the listeners to keep listening.

As these points show, the slides are not a replacement for the lecture, lecturer, or literature. So in order to make sure that this message gets across: I do not hand out my handouts.

Powerpoint Lecturers
If the student has become used to being fed with powerpoint slides then what about the lecturer. We have (generalization warning!) become dependent upon powerpoint. Planning a lecture begins with the opening of presentation software. The knowledge we want to transfer is confined by our ability to condense it (knowledge) into squares and lists.

By adding features, such as effects, sounds and images we believe that we are somehow helping the students to understand what we have learned through reading, scientific method and experience.

Handicap Warning
Powerpoint can be, for both students and lecturers, an invaluable support. But letâ??s not forget that the same software can be used as a way in which to hide the fact that no transfer of knowledge is taking place. Each student should as him/herself what they hope to see in the handouts and why they are so eager to obtain the handouts â?? at the same time so disinterested in the original.

Lecturers should stop and think before resorting to powerpoint. If powerpoint is necessary then they should stop and think about the content and its presentation. Would the students be equally served by the applying the old adage â??less is moreâ?? to powerpoint?

Did Einstein hand out handouts?

—
* the term powerpoint is intented to refer to a generic set of presentation software. The same results are obtained by Open Office presenter, Macâ??s Keynote, or any other such program.

Humor: The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation: Gettysburg Address as a powerpoint presentation http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/index.htm

Recommend Reading
Allan M. Jones. The use and abuse of PowerPoint in Teaching and Learning in the Life Sciences: A Personal Overview, BEE-j Volume 2: November 2003 http://bio.ltsn.ac.uk/journal/vol2/beej-2-3.pdf

David B. Daniel. Using Powerpoint to Ruin a Perfectly Good Lecture. Presented to the 1st Biennial SRCD Teaching of Developmental Science Institute 2005. http://www.srcd.org/biennial_archives/atlanta_2005/documents/daniel.pdf

Greg Jaffe. â??Pentagon cracks down on … PowerPointâ??, The Wall Street Journal Online. http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-502314.html

Jens E. Kjeldsen. â??The Rhetoric of PowerPointâ??, Seminar.net – International journal of media, technology and lifelong learning Vol. 2 â?? Issue 1 â?? 2006. http://www.seminar.net/volume2-issue1-2006/the-rhetoric-of-powerpoint

Jeffrey R. Young. â??When Good Technology Means Bad Teaching: Giving professors gadgets without training can do more harm than good in the classroomâ??, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Vol. 51, Issue 12, November 12, 2004. http://chronicle.com/free/v51/i12/12a03101.htm

Posted on by mklang

Customisation

Have you ever held a knife which fits perfectly in your hand? Or any other tool which once you picked it up seemed to become almost a natural part of your body? If you have experienced this then you have experienced â??goodâ?? design. Often the only way to recognize â??badâ?? design is when things do not work or work badly.

During the past days the problem of good/bad design has been an issue since I managed to crash my laptop and needed to format and re-install everything. On one level this is not a complex operation but what is difficult is getting the computer back to the feeling it had before.

Since it is the tool I use the most it has been adapted from a standard factory machine into a highly personalized artifact and therefore once it was restored to factory standard working with it for longer periods was a painful experience in much the same way as working with a bad knife is a painful experience.

The process of customization is slow and getting the machine to adapt itself to my wants and needs an exhausting experience since it requires remembering hundreds (thousands?) of small pieces of software that made my machine mine.

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

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

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