Unicast

Simon BC was here yesterday. We saw Moulin Rouge at the cinema. Afterwards we went to Christiania, where his concert was, while I went to some birthday party. His concert was cancelled, so he went to some nightclub and called me when he ran out of money. (Why couldn't he just pick up some rich chick?) Well, he took the train back to Jutland this morning before I was even awake.

The party sucked. We were served some kind of fruit punch which was claimed to contain white wine, but tasted like detergent and vinegar.

CityDesk launched. Cool!

Posted by Guan Yang at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

__Deep Linking in the Third World__
The Danish content mafia (aka the Association of Danish Dailies) has made a lot noise about deep linking (all deep links) being deeply illegal. Except that their definition of ‘deep’ links includes links that appear on a site's front page. That's why I've made a Danish news media aggregator using some RSS feeds. Unicast is officially illegal.
danish-copyright

__RealNames sucks__
RealNames, and its licensees, sucks. In many countries RealNames, which is built into Microsoft's browsers, has been trying to sell browser keywords that may be entered into Internet Explorer to go to a company or product's website.

For example, type in 'New York Times' or 'Macromedia Flash' in the address bar of your Internet Explorer, and hit enter. That's RealNames.

This sucks for a number of reasons.

__RealNames undermines the Internet name system__. The domain name system has been a cornerstone of the Internet for 15 years, and literally billions of DNS lookups are performed every day. URIs are such a good addressing mechanism for the web precisely because hosts can be authoritatively identified through a decentralized system. Moving to a separate assigned namespace would undermine this.

__RealNames undermines the usefulness of URIs__. URIs constitute a universal addressing mechanism for the web, and with RealNames they are replaced by a proprietary, commercial product.

__RealNames confuses users__. What do you tell users? “Just enter this word into the address bar!”

__Trademark holders are forced to pay twice__. Trademark holders have already paid their local patent and trademark authorities for registering their trademark. Now they have to pay again, to RealNames and Microsoft, for the right to use it on the Internet.

__RealNames keywords are discriminatory__. Keywords bought through RealNames are not cheap, and companies, organizations and individuals are discriminated against because they are unlikely to be able to afford RealNames.

__Browser vendors are paid royalties__. Which is probably why only Internet Explorer supports RealNames; not even Google presents RN results anymore.

Posted by Guan Yang at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jesper Nielsen, who appears to attend school in Denmark, asks (on 25 Nov. 2001, in Danish) why he should read a text from 1880 when Denmark is striving to become a leading IT nation, and learning about how a dairy farm worked in 1900 when we have 2 GHz processors today. He notes that the teachers always say that the student should be able to relate the education to their daily lives. To this I can only answer that the object of a general secondary education should not concencrate on the latest and the newest; it is, after all a general education. We can only see so far today because we stand on the shoulders of giants, and there is no reason to throw away knowledge and literature that has been created before our time.

I am watching BBC Parliament right now. Beverley Hughes, a junior minister at the Home Office, is doing a great job defending a Kafkaesque emergency terrorism bill.

Felix von Leitner, on the djbdns mailing list: All the proprietary code I have seen so far was so abysmally bad that sourceforge's cvs would have dumped core in disgust had someone tried to check such criminally bad code in.

Brandts Ventures, a Danish dot-com VC, filed for bankruptcy protection today.

Wow, serious downtime. I hate this.

Yahoo! Shakespeare: The 37 plays, 154 sonnets and miscellaneous verse constitute the literary cornerstone of Western civilization. That's a bit thick, isn't it? Question: How many works did Shakespeare himself publish while he was alive? None.

Posted by Guan Yang at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Simon Sørensen has some comments about my remarks on Naser Khader (my translation): You're being unfair; it is true that I was on vacation in Southern Europe in 1994, but it wasn't in Greece, and I didn't meet anyone named Giorgio (although perhaps those types don't usually seek out 14-year old boys). But more seriously I think Naser Khader deserves a better comment. He is imho a fairly serious politician whom I think will be an asset to the political debate.

Posted by Guan Yang at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

http://www.despair.com/elitism.html

The Economist (non-free subscription required): Denmark has been a strikingly homogeneous society. Well out into the centre-left, few politicians see merit in multiculturalism. What they want is assimilation: let the immigrants be any colour, but let them think and act like decent Danes.

... That, with hindsight, may prove to be the European significance of this election: not that in one corner of the continent nine years of centre-left rule were ended but that an eminently decent European society had to face head-on, albeit amid half-truths and hyperbole, a question that faces many others: in this era of mass migration, what does it mean to be European?

538976288
It's amazing what comes up when you enter random numbers into Google.

Posted by Guan Yang at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Scripting News is closed for Thanksgiving.

This ad was used by the Liberal Party during the election. It's a photo of some young Palestinian boys leaving a courthouse after a conviction. The text says “Time for change”. The lady to the right lost her job as a result of this photo. And the guy on the bottom left is the new Prime Minister.

Naser Khader from the Social Liberal Party is the first Danish MP with an immigrant background. Khader's voters are mainly middle-aged women who think he reminds them of Giorgio, the hunk they dated during their holiday in Greece back in 1994.

More interestingly, Line Barfod, who works at the law office of a good friend of my family, was elected for the cross-Socialist Unity List.

Posted by Guan Yang at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Is government disappearing? This particular comparison (51 of the 100 biggest economies are corporations) which measures the size of companies by their sales, is bogus. National income is a measure of value added. It cannot be compared with a company's sales (equal to value added plus the cost of inputs). Can Microsoft tax the citizens of Luxembourg (whose government collected 45% of GDP from them last year), conscript them if it has a mind to, arrest and imprison them for behaviour it disapproves of, or deploy physical force against them at will? No, not even using Windows XP.

I really should learn to roll my log files. I now have a log file for unicast.org that's 1 gigabyte. It hasn't been rolled since April.

Jamie Lee Curtis turns 43 today. Congrats!

I kind of miss some of the editing features of Blogger and Radio. It would be cool to have an Opera right-click menu item that copies a piece of text as well as the page's URL.

Posted by Guan Yang at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We'll probably get universal data retention soon. In the meantime I'm playing some 3D Pong.

The analysts on TV are saying that the Social Democrats lost the election on the immigration and criminal policy.

FT has excellent coverage of the election. So does Sydsvenskan.

Mygdal believes I've been too biased in my coverage of this election. In all fairness the current (at 22:00) government relies on a bunch of goateed rebranded Communists and a separate heap of wannabe Communists for their parliamentary support.

The Danish election is today. According to the latest exit polls the Danish People's Party, a Haideresque ultra-rightwing party, is now the third largest party in Denmark. This means that they will be an important part of the future ultra-rightwing government.

It's frightening to listen to the Danish Liberal party candidates. Especially on economic issues they are generally completely clueless. The one I talked to, a lady who's running for parliament, tried to convince people that a tax freeze in nominal terms would not amount to a tax cut. They also want to remove $180m from the international development budget and spend it on hospitals. When will people accept that huge spending increases and even larger tax cuts are not mutually compatible?

Posted by Guan Yang at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was out on streets with flyers today. People in Østerbro, which is the nice part of town, were a lot more positive. Very few of them were nasty. The election is tomorrow. Let’s hope we don't get an Austrian-style fascist government.

Posted by Guan Yang at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Slashdot crowd are discussing hierarchical versus relational databases. I am no computer scientist, but I love relational databases. I own a copy of the $80 Introduction to Database Systems. Expressing the data using an object-oriented XML schema might make my work a lot easier, but ultimately life is not about making the developer's job easier but about creating applications that scale to millions and millions of records. Relational databases work. In the words of Codd, object-oriented XML databases are ad hoc creations with no theoretical underpinnings.

More Megora: She's been homeschooled since first grade, and will be attending college next semester (we hope.) She was supposed to start college when she was 12, but a long-lasting illness has delayed her higher education. (Her illness was a recurring bone infection in her left great toe.) Could any Harry Potter fans tell me if the toe infection is a reference to the book or if it is real?

Why do I bother writing film reviews? I can just get them from RinkWorks!

Megora: And I also packed my black power suit just in case something big happens while I'm there. One never knows when one might need a power suit. :) What is a power suit? Wounlund explains: It's just a regular suit, but of better quality.

So yesterday I was out on the streets of Copenhagen with Waqas from my class, whose mother is running in the municipal elections on Tuesday, handing out flyers. Its scary how apathetic and antipathetic people are to politics these days, especially the young people. This is not good, because a low turnout might indicate a rightward swing. Those are the people who just ignored me as I thrust the flyer at them. (Waqas believes that I should say something first to stun them, then give them the flyer, but I simply cannot make my mouth say political slogans at strangers.)

The rest look at the picture, think ‘Lubna!’, then run away screaming. At least they care.

Bandwidth glut? No problem! http://www.random-downloads.com

My favorite movie is now back to Blue Velvet by David Lynch. There is something magically appealing about the americana idyll, just as it is portrayed in American Beauty. to be continued

What is Daily Prophet? Simon explains: It's just a lot of articles about literature for children.

Posted by Guan Yang at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There are around 35 people in my class. Perhaps 5 of them are comparatively sane. The rest are raging maniacs.

I had to hand back The Open Society to the school library because someone else wanted it. Not to worry, I'll get the English version from the public library.

I just remembered the quote (my head is full of quotes) that really describes Karl Popper: Chomsky is one of the philosophers that I don't read. His ideas were shocking in the 1950s but if you tell a young person today "Newspapers print what big rich companies want you to read" they'll just say "Tell me something I didn't know." Like Nietzsche, the Zeitgeist has overtaken Chomsky. I feel the same way with Popper, but that doesn't make the study of Plato significantly less interesting.

Posted by Guan Yang at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was at Louisiana, a modern art museum outside Copenhagen, today on a school field trip. We only saw the David Hockney exhibit. David Hockney is interesting.

It's frustrating that my Reuters headlines are in Swedish.

Uncle Fester: Secrets of Methamphetamine Manufacture. Mmm... I love chemistry.

Posted by Guan Yang at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It seems that there are no good mail clients for Windows. I've tried Mozilla, Opera (doesn't support IMAP), Outlook and Eudora. Now I'm trying out Mahogany. This is amazing. Don't Windows people use email?

Posted by Guan Yang at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, Simon is coming over on 30 Nov for some concert.

Recovered somewhat on my shares.

Posted by Guan Yang at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I lost DKr 1600 on Thrane today. But at least I can get free lunch at the shareholder's meeting in early December...

Posted by Guan Yang at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Philip: I have a friend who can recite, from memory, every line of dialogue in every Simpsons episode. Drool.

The microads spec is now 100% locked down for PayPal settlement, and I'll continue actual coding now. After PayPal is done I'll work on the barter system, and after that escrow settlement.

[In Danish] Grænser for kærligheden. Denmark is not a really a nice place anymore. Danish politicians regularly make statements in the immigration debate that would cause a public outcry in other countries.

“People who have relations to Arab countries residing in Denmark must leave.” (Mogens Glistrup)

“It could be necessary for them [asylum seekers from the CIS] to live in an isolated uninhabited location — it could be an island.” (The Minister of the Interior)

“People from immigrant nations shall not be granted residence permits on grounds of marriage or close family ties.” (Immigration spokesman for the Liberal Party, which is poised to win the election on 20 November.)

“I and the Danish People's Party will continue to fight Islam.” (Pia Kjærsgaard, leader of a large right-wing party.)

As Clare MacCarthy, our local Financial Times correspondent, says, If any of the views and values that are being expressed by even moderate Danish politicians in this campaign were being expressed in Britain there would be a public outcry, there would be calls for resignations, and it would quite simply be political suicide to do something like this. People here just do not realize how extreme these views are and how dangerous they are to Denmark's reputation abroad. (Real clip, at 01:38 minutes)

cgic is a C library for CGI [sic]. Actually, it would be cool to try to implement a web app in C or C++ sometime.

Posted by Guan Yang at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

John Millais: The Boyhood of Raleigh (Tate)
Roger McGough: The Boyhood of Raleigh (school to bottom)
I need to go to Tate to see the Millais next time I'm in London.

Presented a poem by Wordsworth in English class yesterday. Was a total disaster because the poem I chose had no content whatsoever.

Song: ash-grove

Yesterday evening I was at dancing school.

Posted by Guan Yang at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Does anyone know how to temporarily change the line spacing in LaTeX? The baselinescretch for my document is 1.45. How do I temporarily (inside a \scriptsize) change it to 1.0?

Simon: I'm sorry, but I haven't been able to locate your blog lately. I always assumed that it was at http://bcuni.net/ (which was probably around 6 months ago), but that URL is rotting.

Alfred lord Tennyson is a bit tedious to read...

I am spending the evening correcting the LaTeX for a friend of mine's BSc (Econ) thesis. Apparently economics students aren't smart enough for LaTeX, so they use a nifty goeey program called Scientific Word. Which means that I have to fix all the stupid LaTeX errors. ;)

I received a bill from Intrum Justitia, a debt collector, for Kr 641.54 for something from World Online. That might be reasonable, except for the fact that the original invoice seems to be from November 2000, and this is the first letter I've received about it. Worse, there's no documentation at all. No precise date, no invoice number, nothing.

Hilary Rosen of RIAA spoke. Bruce Schneier: Every time I write about the impossibility of effectively protecting digital files on a general-purpose computer, I get responses from people decrying the death of copyright. "How will authors and artists get paid for their work?" they ask me. Truth be told, I don't know. I feel rather like the physicist who just explained relativity to a group of would-be interstellar travelers, only to be asked: "How do you expect us to get to the stars, then?"

Report card: Da A1 6, En A1 6, Eco 7, Psy 6, Phy 6, Math 6, TOK 6. That's a 6.14 average, and well on track to a 39. For the next repord card (in April I think) I'd like to have 7 in Physics. That's probably all I'm going to get, equivalent to a 40/776 or if I'm lucky 41/776.

Posted by Guan Yang at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was at Saxo Bank for today's OD. Saxo Bank is an investment bank for millionaries who think it might be fun to speculate in forex or short selling. They have no commissions, but only make money on their spread and on the 5× (20× for equities) leveraging facility. They do forex, CFDs (exotic derivative with exposure identical to a long or short position in an equity) and futures and options on commodities, forex and indices.

My investments have yielded 11% to date!

Denmark is having its own spate of "deep linking" lawsuits. Apparently some judge decided that linking into specific news stories (e.g. from an RSS feed) is not allowed, but the Danish Content Mafia® is holding strong. This is probably the first time I'm sympathetic with the DCM.

Posted by Guan Yang at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

MathWorld is back up!

A story (in Danish) about Danish politics: http://www.090978.org/kinder

Posted by Guan Yang at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

7 in my Economics test, with only one wrong answer out of 40. (God I hate indirect taxation, but I love multiple choice.)

Nice site: http://us.hsbc.com/business/treasury

Posted by Guan Yang at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Matador was beautiful. The actors playing the bank director, Stein, Minna and Helle were there, and each got a huge applause. Then Lise Nørgaard, the author, was introduced, and everyone stood up for a standing ovation that lasted for several minutes.

Posted by Guan Yang at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today's Matador daaaaay!

Posted by Guan Yang at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Muchos important links for microads.org (mustn't forget!): http://geo-ip.com/download. It's an IP to country database.

I am developing code for microads.org for targeting to user's country and user's browser language settings.

Posted by Guan Yang at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)