In other news, the MASH crew unofficially rode the Tour of California on their fixies, and Garret Chow was tackled by a rent-a-cop when attempting to cross the finish line. Some people should simply never be given even the tiniest hints of having authority or responsibility. More talk.

Technorati Tags: biking, critical mass

Despite the heavy rain I decided to ride my bike to work. I was wet and dirty, but enjoyed it very much!

Tomorrow the weather is supposed to clear up, I hope so, cause I’m going to get a haircut and all.

Bikes rock!

Our mission bicycles have finally arrived. The excitement was total and we assembled them post haste.

There were some disappointing factors. I felt that my bike was a little to large for me, despite sending exact measurements.
Also the front fork clanks quite a bit, there are gaps in the assembly. I’ll have to take it to a local shop to be looked at.

As for Vlad’s bike, it was perfect, except that both front and rear rims had some scratches on them. Hard to say if it was due to rough shipping or bad packaging, but when we opened up the box nothing looked out of place.

Other then these minor (and some not so minor) issues, the bikes handled like a dream and we rode them through the pouring rain with joy.

Just our luck that after days and days of tropical heat, today had to be the day that the tropical rain started.

It better not rain tomorrow!

Update 2008-09-04: Mission is sending me a new frame and replacement parts so I can fix the problems with my bike! Yay!

Above is my new ride, the Clark Kent. Below is vlad’s madness machine.

Two pieces of awesomeness.

Follow along here.

1. Your work needs to be easily copied, to anywhere whence it might find its way into the right hands. That means that the nimble text-file, HTML file, and PDF (the preferred triumvirate of formats) should be distributed without formality — no logins, no e-mail address collections, and with a license that allows your fans to reproduce the work on their own in order to share it with more potential fans. Remember, copying is a cost-center — insisting that all copies must be downloaded from your site and only your site is insisting that you — and only you — will bear the cost of making those copies. Sure, having a single, central repository for your works makes it easier to count copies and figure out where they’re going, but remember: dandelions don’t keep track of their seeds. Once you get past the vanity of knowing exactly how many copies have been made, and find the zen of knowing that the copying will take care of itself, you’ll attain dandelionesque contentment.

2. Once your work gets into the right hands, there needs to be an easy way to consummate the relationship. A friend who runs a small press recently wrote to me to ask if I thought he should release his next book as a Creative Commons free download in advance of the publication, in order to drum up some publicity before the book went on sale.

I explained that I thought this would be a really bad idea. Internet users have short attention spans. The moment of consummation — the moment when a reader discovers your book online, starts to read it, and thinks, huh, I should buy a copy of this book — is very brief. That’s because “I should buy a copy of this book” is inevitably followed by, “Woah, a youtube of a man putting a lemon in his nose!” and the moment, as they say, is gone.

I am often very interested to see the statistics on who and what reads what and where. But I totally agree with what Cory has to say there. Let that shit fly like it has never flown before.

Link

Excellent espresso from a man dedicated to creating excellent expresso. They also have other stuff like damn tasty focaccia and other fancy café foods and sweet sweet cakes.

Go there asap and get your espresso fix. It’s at Odengatan 52, near Odenplan where Odengatan meets Sveavägen.

I think the page and pictures turned out quite nicely.
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Technorati Tags: café, cappuccino, coffee, espresso, espresso bar, kaffe, latte

You need therapy. Find it here: http://hittaterapi.se

PS: It’s currently Sweden only.

Technorati Tags: psychotherapy, search engine, therapist, therapy

In other words, live your life in such way that you can sip a cappuccino at any time of the day. Your income should preferably also be above that of humans that do not follow The Dream.

Go.

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In the United States, more than 290 people have died since June 2001 after being struck by police Tasers, according to the human rights group Amnesty International. It said in October that only 25 of the 290 were armed, and none had firearms.

One wonders why cops need to use a Taser to bring down a suspect, when most of them didn’t even have weapons. Especially if you consider the usual Taser usage scene: 4 cops against 1 dude -> Obviously, it’s Taser time.

Once again to all ye police officers out there: The Taser should not be used just because you are in a bad mood, or too tired, or just not too good at your job (i.e. protecting innocent people).

Link

Technorati Tags: taser

Passenger [...], please return immediately to the Central Search and Security area!

I feel safer already.

In this case the passenger’s name was Abdul. I wonder if his middle-eastern name was causing him trouble again? Or was he himself the troublemaker? Or is it all just a big conspiracy misunderstanding…

Amusing nonetheless.

Under året har dessutom en rad lagar trätt i kraft – och förslag lagts - som går i samma riktning: statsnyttan går före den personliga integriteten.

Link

The heart of the article focuses on how we, humans, continue letting ourselves be subjugated by the government with ineffective and often humiliating security measures, yet protests to this new opression are few and far between. Our newfound right to freely travel far and wide is being put to the test, and the outlook is bleak.

In questioning the effectivity of today’s airport security, the article talks about how airport staff (who are generally contracted from outside companies) rarely undergo screening and have virtually unlimited access to aircraft (where they can plant nail clippers, toothpaste and shoes). Pilots and crew (who are subject to background checks and training) on the other hand, have to suffer the same humiliation as the passengers. It is hard to find the logic.

There is more, of course, so go read it. I especially enjoyed this paragraph:

consider for a moment the hypocrisy of T.S.A.’s confiscation policy. At every concourse checkpoint you’ll see a bin or barrel brimming with contraband containers taken from passengers for having exceeded the [liquid] volume limit. Now, the assumption has to be that the materials in those containers are potentially hazardous. If not, why were they seized in the first place? But if so, why are they dumped unceremoniously into the trash? They are not quarantined or handed over to the bomb squad; they are simply thrown away. The agency seems to be saying that it knows these things are harmless. But it’s going to steal them anyway, and either you accept it or you don’t fly.

Although the focus is on the TSA which is a US agency, the same can be said for most of the world’s airports. Mostly because their policy is dictacted by the fact that everyone wants to fly to the USA, and for that, they have to follow the USA’s rules.

Read it, and weep.

Not only that, but the data is now stored by the FBI, and used in criminal investigations, not just for immigration purposes. So by going to the states, your fingerprints automatically mingle with those of murderers and thieves.

I think the worst part is that people don’t seem to be complaining or taking this seriously. I fear the future. And here I thought I could have a nice, relaxing day, instead the world is going to hell. I should stop reading the paper.

Link

Some people say that they feel safer when they are being surveyed by the government rather then a private company. I feel differently. It’s much easier to hide from a company then from the state, and, a company can be influenced by money and shareholders.

Then there is the argument that you can use elections to remove bad governments, but a government is a government. They are all the same, they just follow the leash of the USEU and it doesn’t matter if they are blue or red. In the end, we’re the suckers, and the politicians just keep lining their pockets with cash, while your freedoms are being cast in the bin one by one.

Link

One has to wonder why women have to hide their breasts in the first place. As I understand it, women enjoy looking at [well trained] men’s chests in much the same way men do when it comes to women’s breasts.

Way to go danes! Link

Physicians understand that practicing good medicine requires the constant acquisition of new knowledge, though they often assume their existing medical beliefs do not need re-examination. These medical myths are a light hearted reminder that we can be wrong and need to question what other falsehoods we unwittingly propagate as we practice medicine. We generated a list of common medical or medicine related beliefs espoused by physicians and the general public, based on statements we had heard endorsed on multiple occasions and thought were true or might be true. We selected seven for critical review:

• People should drink at least eight glasses of water a day
• We use only 10% of our brains
• Hair and fingernails continue to grow after death
• Shaving hair causes it to grow back faster, darker, or coarser
• Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight
• Eating turkey makes people especially drowsy
• Mobile phones create considerable electromagnetic interference in hospitals.

Link

It feels good to know that people are not as oblivious to these issues as I always assumed.

Link

Sure enough, most answers can be found on google. And most of the time the search and subsequent intake of information will take less time then actually typing up an explanation.

So are we losing a form of communication or will this create a whole new level of discussion where, like Vulcans we will focus on the subject at hand, rather then the explanation of concepts that should already be familiar to participants? Perhaps a balance will be struck between the two sides?

I can’t wait to see the outcome.

Technorati Tags: society, googled

The blockage is due to the alleged child-porn contents of the website so I am guessing the site itself is NSFW. The URL suggests that it might be a hentai site, which is in the western world synonymous with manga-style hardcore porn, i.e. pornographic drawings. I have not been able to confirm the true nature of the site, since I am unable to go there due to the blockage.

However, I feel that the motives behind the block are irrelevant. The fact that the site seems to be censored by the Police at the ISP level is very disturbing. The site has not been taken down, it’s simply not accessible from at least two large ISPs in Sweden due to government interference.
I was actually able to browse parts of the site using google’s cache service, but all the images were still blocked.

I would like to take this opportunity to point out that accessing the contents of this particular site is not my goal, nor am I challenging the criminal nature of child pornography. I feel very strongly about putting every last abuser (sexual, or otherwise) of children behind some very thick bars. However, if one type of content is censored at a national level, what’s next? And should one government organisation, really be given that kind of power?

I suppose I might be overreacting, but whenever I browse the internet and see government or police logos where there should be none, I get scared, tired and frustrated. Scars of growing up in the USSR, no doubt. Here’s to a free world.

Am I naïve to assume that internet should be completely free? Am I wrong to think that censoring criminal activity is bad? Argh! My head hurts from all this.

Update: Nisse made a good point: since it’s illegal to view/posess child pornography, one could go to jail if one was to view the site in question… Food for thought.
Another update: Slashdot talks about similar blocks in Finland

Technorati Tags: censorship, censur, great firewall, police, polis, sweden

Will locking away ideas, knowledge and stories behind a wall of legal protection for one hundred years cause the loss of many great works and perhaps most importantly instigate the stagnation and decay of creativity as we know it?

There are many examples today of copyright causing the loss of important works and also many examples of today’s creative works being simple copies or “recontextisation” of works from hundreds of years ago. Where will we be in a few decades when all of todays creativity is locked away or lost?

My concern in this essay however is for games and motion pictures, even though books, music and other forms of creation are all in this boat.

The big word in digital media today is DRM. It was conceived as a way for corporations to protect digital media. The data is encrypted and can only be played with permission obtained from the content provider, often the permission needs to be obtained in realtime while playing the media.

However, what if the content provider goes out of business or simply decides to abandon the content type? The content may be lost for ever! And if I were to be less dramatic, certainly it will be lost to the person who was gullible enough to pay money for it.

Many hackers have made sure that DRM can be broken, despite this being illegal in the USA, EU and many other so called civilized nations. But what about ten years from now when the billion dollar giants outpace the hackers in technology and tie them up in draconian laws?

Then, yet another decade later when a corporation decides to move on to “bigger and better” things or perhaps goes out of business, what will happen to the content?

But even without DRM, there are many examples of creative works being lost because of this so called “protection”.

Most old movies and tv series are all protected under copyright. Sure, a few of them such as Dallas or Dukes of Hazzard are available on DVD. But where are the smaller titles? Where can I get my copy Cry Onion or Captain Power. By any standard crappy titles that no one makes any money on, but I like them, if only for their nostalgic value. They do not exist on DVD and are hard to find on VHS.

I might have been able to purchase them back in their heyday, but I was under 10 years old at the time and these things were not sold on tape in Russia. Even if I had found them on tape somehow, that tape would be obsolete today, and thanks to the Macrovision anti-copying system I would not easily have been able to transfer the content to a DVD anyway.

To the rescue comes youtube. Where everyone can find many of these old classics. In subpar quality, segmented, disorganised and under constant threat of being removed due to copyright violation or some other reason which you can find in youtube’s lengthy EULA. And since youtube is designed to prevent downloading, when youtube is gone, these works will again be lost!

Will the one person who taped a copy all those years ago and uploaded it to youtube, upload it again to a new video service? Can we take that chance?

Certainly some protection is required, but haven’t we crossed the line already?

What about computer games?

Games that were created in the 1990’s are often unplayable on modern computers, which is not unusual since hardware and software evolves. Of course before you can actually even try to get the game running, you first have to find it. And finding these games in a store is almost impossible. You might find them in a deep dark corner of a specialty game store, but most of these games have either been lost or destroyed. So folks today will never be able to enjoy great classics such as Stunts or the original X-Wing.

Places like the-underdogs have many old games, but many titles have recently been removed because of publishers going legal or laws changing. In the end, your only options are seedy bittorrent sites where you are more likely to get a virus than the actual game, not to mention all the porn ads.

So what about the company that made the game? Surely they would help you? Unfortunately gaming companies usually have a notoriously short lifespan and an even shorter attention span. They might support a game for a few months or at best, years, but soon it will be forgotten.

I often install older games to enjoy a moment of nostalgia and I almost always find that the game’s official website or support site is long gone. This is true even for games no older than 5 years old and even when the publisher or developer is still around!

So if you were able to obtain the game somehow, now comes the hard part. Getting the game running on your modern hardware and software! While emulators work for some games, they often provide a subpar gaming experience. Most users don’t even know what an emulator does. The alternative is modifying the game code because you can create a new copy of the game that everyone can play. However the source code is often a well kept secret, and many companies would rather destroy it than let it fall into enemy hands since that could cause legal repercussions. The enemy here is none other than you!

In some cases, programmers have given their free time to create an new version of an older game, using the game’s original graphics and often significantly improving upon the original. Some projects were shut down by the original game’s creators with the help of the law, while others have been lucky enough to avoid that fate. Luckily for the Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe project (and me, since I enjoy that game quite a bit), some companies are less sue-happy than others.

They say, imitation is the highest form of flattery. Apparently that old saying has been forgotten.

While many projects die from direct legal pressure, most die because they are forced to operate under a tight legal leash, so people are afraid to join in to lend a hand. Some of course, die from bad management

In some cases, projects are plain underground such as a large portion of the game console scene.

The old Nintendo NES and Sega Megadrives machines are long since out of production, the few that still exist and work are often considered priceless relics. They were not designed to last and neither was the media on which the games lived.

These old games and the machines to play them on are almost impossible to find in stores since they are no longer manufactured. Does this mean they should be lost? Luckily, no.

Smart geeks have copied down the contents of gaming cartridges and crazy programmers have written emulators for the NES, the Sega Megadrive and all those old kick ass platforms.

These games have indeed surpassed all life expectancy prognoses and thanks to many cool smart people working in legal gray areas, we can still enjoy them today.

This is the power of freedom operating under a tight leash, hiding in the shadows. Imagine that power if it were unleashed! Everyone could enjoy great classic games and movies without having to browse the underbelly of the internet to find them! The sites that today only dare put up pictures and stories, could host the entire thing.

The Library of Alexandria suffered many fires and many works were lost because replacing the handwritten manuscripts was expensive and difficult. Is that not lesson enough? Why does our society, which has overcome these technological hurdles, still wants to move back to those days?

We live in an age of digital media. Digital things can be copied without limits. So there is no reason to pick one NES game to go down in history or one 80’s classic movie to be re-released on DVD. Everyone can enjoy their favorites without limits. Without having the whims of the reviewers or box office numbers dictating what they can or cannot force their kids to watch a few years from now.

There is no doubt that we must protect the rights of creators. But what about protecting the right of future generations to know their history, our history?

Perhaps one solution lies in Creative Commons et al.

Technorati Tags: copyright, creative commons, drm, essay, free as in speech

If the Bible had been written by King Leonidas and the rest of the Spartans from 300, it would probably read pretty much the same as it does now.

It turns out, the Bible is already chock full of ass kicking. Here are the verses that make us want to take to the streets and put some unbelievers to the sword.

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