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(From Slashdot) Dave Weinberger writes in Wired that copy protection mechanisms seek to limit the cultural heritage that is available to future generations: That's how ideas breed, how cultures get built. If any public space needs plenty of light, air, and room to play, it's the marketplace of ideas.
Slashdot reports that Canadian telco Telus is switching all of its long-distance traffic over to a VoIP network. Although several telcos have built new VoIP networks, including BT Spain, Telus appears to be the first large-scale carrier to transition a traditional PSTN network to VoIP. Exciting times.
ComputerWorld.dk: - Vi har ikke taget stilling til endnu, om vi selv skal blive tjenesteudbyder, eller om vi overlader det til en partner, siger Telmores direktør, Frank Rasmussen.
Frank Rasmussen, director of Telmore, a discount prepaid mobile telco, says in an article on their coming GPRS and MMS rollout, “We have not yet decided whether we will be a content provider ourselves, or whether we will leave that to a partner.”
He is implying that in order for GPRS to be a success they will either have to provide content themselves, or they will have to partner with a content provider. This is a very harmful attitude from a telco, especially a discount telco, and he is moving down a path that leads straight to a walled garden. Anyone should be able to provide content for GPRS users, and everyone should.
Tomorrow at 9:00 is Danish A1 SL Paper 2, my last exam. It's also the last exam of the May 2002 session. In 45 days, on July 6, my results will be ready.
reboot is back, now in its sixth reincarnation, complete with grainy black-and-white photos of the speakers. (Why so many reboots? Is sign of instability!) The site hasn't completely recovered from the reboot because it looks decidedly nasty in MSIE when you're not logged in.
An interesting twist is that the infamous reboot awards will only be awarded to startups this year. Many other things have changed, but the most important improvement is the midnight snack that's supposed to be served before 02:00. Yum.
Just finished reading Cryptonomicon for the first time. I thought it was a very intriguing story that combines ideas about freedom, privacy, money and not least cryptography. There were some long-winded narratives on occasion, but since I was reading the ebook I could easily skip past it.
The Solitaire algorithm that some of the characters use seems very interesting, and it is very unfortunate that the random number generator is biased. After my exams end I do intend to practice enciphering text by hand, using modulo 26 arithmetic and one time pads.
Neal Stephenson writes something at one point that I like: A carpenter works with wood and carries with him a toolbox with tools such as hammer, saw, and drill. A mathematician works with information and needs a tool too — a computer.
IBO is the organization that develops and examines the IB Diploma Programme, which I have been following over the past 2 years. The program is fabulous, but unfortunately the IBO's publication policy is less enlightened. Unlike the UK examination boards, the IBO does not publish any of its curriculum, past papers or markschemes on its website. Instead, teachers, students and schools are forced to buy expensive CD-ROM collections or even more expensive paper copies.
Teachers are supposed to provide past exam papers to students, but many don't.
One student, who is a Diploma candidate just like me, has been hosting papers (in PDF format) from 2000, 2001 and 2002 exam sessions at his website. A couple of days ago his headmaster and IB coordinator warned him that if he did not take down the site, he would not be allowed to take his Chemistry exam, and would thus fail the Diploma.
This draconian measure is ostensibly taken to protect the IBO's intellectual property rights. According to its latest financial report, publications make a net contribution of $446k to the rest of the IBO's budget. To protect these $446k, the IBO is willing to threaten students by excluding them from examinations knowing that they would fail the Diploma, even though its budget could easily absorb a complete loss of its publications revenue. In comparison, $446k represents 1.9% of the fees that schools pay to enter students for examinations.
Instead of charging excessively for its exam paper CD-ROMs, the IBO should make them freely available online, as the UK boards already do.
Slashdot is referencing a Reg article by the fabulous Andrew Orlowski. As far as we know it's not true.
It would appear that HHH has just/will be married. As apt a time as any to reprint Sonnet 116:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
I've spent some time today setting up a wiki for Arena. TWiki can get quite complicated sometimes if you install weird plugins. decafbad has written something up on what he did to integrate TWiki with Movable Type. Basically it's an MT plugin so that WikiNames are resolved into TWiki links, and a TWiki server-side include on each wiki page that shows all the blog postings with references to that page.
View image (from the Gweilo)
Only in China!
I've set up a CafeShop where you can buy a T-shirt with this slogan. The only design right now is boring, but I have my designers working to create new exciting ones incorporating the fist.
According to The Guardian the Clydesdale Bank has been reusing numbers on MasterCards, but with new expiry dates.
Transcript with student P2P developer: Hey, Jesse, why do you think the government came after you?
JESSE JORDAN, SETTLED LAWSUIT WITH RECORDING INDUSTRY: Well, actually it was the recording industry association.
Excellent meeting at Arena. Mr 100 Things and I spent most of the night fleshing out the by-laws of the association. We're now members of the board, together with Alex, Ole and Niels, and I'm already looking forward to lavish expensive board meetings at fancy hotels, board trips abroad, and all the other perks that you'd expect.