Sin's Notebook

Telecoms package and HADOPI

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:28:00 +0100

Just a thought here.. Not being a lawyer, but the French HADOPI law includes something called ordonnance pénale, which is basically an automated court, with the accused having no chance to defend her or himself. It was added, since France’s Constitutional Court declared the first version (no legal instance) unconstitutional.

However, with the new text in the Telecom package combined with the ordonnance pénale means that each case must be heard, and the “automatic process” (the only viable option economically at the scale Sarkozy wants it to be handled) has to be abolished?

Article 1.3a in the Telecoms Package states that:

Accordingly, these measures may only be taken with due respect for the principle of presumption of innocence and the right to privacy. A prior fair and impartial procedure shall be guaranteed, including the right to be heard of the person or persons concerned

If so, France is looking at a hefty cost in administration every time a media company points finger at a person…

"You know what killed off the dinosaurs, Whateley? We did. In one barbecue."

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:51:39 +0100

“You know what killed off the dinosaurs, Whateley? We did. In one barbecue.”

- Cthulhu

Martin Rees - Keeping it real: the art of science

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:41:10 +0100

Martin Rees - Keeping it real: the art of science:

“Those who are unable to enjoy the vision of nature offered by Darwinism and modern cosmology — the chain of complexity that has led from a still-mysterious beginning to atoms, stars, biospheres and a human brain able to ponder the wonder of it all — are, I fear, as culturally deprived as the tone-deaf. This common vision should transcend all differences of nationality and faith. Science is the one truly global culture. Protons, proteins and Pythagoras’ theorem are the same from China to Peru.”

Thanks @ElrikMerlin & @david_colquhoun for the original tweets.

It's a matter of definition

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:44:48 +0100

Betty: I'm Christian, I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and God's Word, the Bible
Me: So you're ok with stoning your neighbours and selling your daughter as a slave in Mexico then?
Betty: Of course not! That's not what God meant!
Me (to the waitress): Can I have a large beer and a steak, please?
Betty: I thought you were a vegetarian?
Me: I am. Why?
Betty: But vegetarians don't eat meat.
Me: You pick your definitions, I pick mine.

"… We live in a world where John Lennon was murdered, yet Barry Manilow continues to put out fucking..."

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 10:09:05 +0100

“… We live in a world where John Lennon was murdered, yet Barry Manilow continues to put out fucking albums. God-dammit! If you’re gonna kill somebody, have some fucking taste. I’ll drive you to Kenny Rogers’ house.”

- Bill Hicks

"Western Europeans think people wanted democracy when Communism fell. Simple fact is middle-class..."

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 09:03:07 +0100

“Western Europeans think people wanted democracy when Communism fell. Simple fact is middle-class wanted capitalism.”

- Anonymous

The European Commission's net neutrality con

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:42:20 +0200

The European Commission's net neutrality con:

The European Commission has circulated a draft declaration on “net neutrality”. But is the ability to make comments on the restrictive behaviour of network providers such as BT or Deutsche Telekom, the same thing as enforcing net neutrality? Or is it just intended to dupe European citizens who are demanding a principle of net neutrality in the Telecoms Package?

RIAA Says "Don't Expect DRMed Music To Work Forever"

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:52:59 +0200

RIAA Says "Don't Expect DRMed Music To Work Forever"

We are under attack...

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:50:00 +0200

Nazi Leader Herman Göring, interviewed by Gustave Gilbert during the Easter recess of the Nuremberg trails, 1946 April 18, quoted in Gilbert’s book, Nuremberg Diary:

Göring, “Naturally the common people don’t want war… but it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.”

Gilbert: “There is one difference. In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.”

Göring: “Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the biding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

Those words…

“All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism.”

Terrorists, paedophiles, pirates…

We are under attack…

Virtual Faces and Opportunities

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:21:00 +0200

My latest tweet just made me think of something.

Thank you, Second Life, for giving me a virtual mask for my private self.

If you work a lot online, and are active online in forums, groups and so on, it is usually not a problem if your main interests are grill parties with your neighbours and your political opinions belong to the moderately conservative.
You just trot along, assuming your opinions are some kind of norm, which they actually may be, and tweet about heavy taxes, lazy people on the dole or whatever.

However, if you may be slightly more libertarian, radical, green, anarchistic, autonomous, or whatever, the simple fact is that sometimes it’s slightly more convenient if your name isn’t to appear as the TAZ ideologist of the day on top of the Google hit list.
(For more info on TAZ, look for Hakim Bey on Wikipedia, or something).

Am I ashamed of my opinions? Of course not. Do I try to hide them? Never. Actually, they are part of why I work with what I do, even if I get my hands sullied in the vats of capitalism.
But I’ve never been one demanding to build barricades in my customers’ receptions when I arrive.

More conservative people speak with an assumption that their point of view is perfectly natural. You can see them probably in their status updates on Facebook or tweets: “More handouts from the Labour again to single mums and higher taxes for us decent, hard-working, non-lazy people”.
Me, I simply assumed that stance myself, years ago. Stance, mind you, not opinions. I know what I say is an opinion, and relative, but I am not trying to explain, nor excuse a single opinion of mine. Swedish Tories (Moderaterna) are concrete arseholes (betonghäckar) that have betrayed every single sentence of “liberty and choice for the individual!” by voting for laws that would give old Joe Stalin a hard on and fourscore of wet dreams.
I voted on the Pirate party this election, and now we have a representative in the European parliament. So far, I think Christian is doing a great job, being active, and blogging, using the net to have a dialogue with his voters and adding at least as much as he can, to the transparency of the EP (much to the chagrin of some MEPs that prefer a more opaque “democracy”, it seems).

The virtual face of Sin Trenton allows me simply to for now separate my professional self (not-Sin Trenton) and my private self.
Of course, more than one of my followers have a professional relation with me and know my real name.

But that I am a libertarian socialist, anarcho-taoist, green humanist, pro-choice (meaning I am 100% pro abortion rights), pro-choice (meaning I am pro 100% legal rights for same sex relation), pirate party voter, etc, etc, is something those of you just have to put up with.

However, Sin Trenton originates from Second Life.
But I think we’ve moved on in different ways, you to cater the tastes of suburbanistas of certain income brackets, rather than a possible virtual world with a global perspective and me, in a multichannel, ongoing conversation about the nature of societies and our options. Or maybe you never were there, maybe it was only my original infatuation with the possibilities a virtual world of this kind offered.

I’m popping ‘inworld’ occasionally, to communicate with friends and people or to tinker and relax for a moment. But the virtual world of Second Life per se is not where my passion and initiatives lie. I find more ‘force and initiative’, ‘revolution’, if you want, on Twitter or IRC even.
Second Life is in the pure technological perspective not a new frontier, but a commercial product, no matter how appealing the ~~texture~~ surface.

So thank you, Second Life the virtual world software,
for the virtual face I wear.

I see you around.

SMTP in Webmail (esp GMail)?

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 12:47:38 +0200

When you send email via any email client, your computer’s Internet address is included in the message headers for all recipients to see, right? But I have heard that this only goes for email clients, not webmail. Does anyone know how it is with webmail, and especially Gmail? Does anyone know what traffic data is conveyed?

You know what? Reading the blog posts from tne Swedish Pirate Party MEP, re the internal work of the...

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:33:10 +0200

You know what? Reading the blog posts from tne Swedish Pirate Party MEP, re the internal work of the EUP, you get a strong suspicion that the main reason why the politicans don’t want you to know about their work, decisions and all that is that they don’t want to know how clueless they are when it comes to tiny things like facts…

How to make use of the Lisbon Treaty (whatever you may think of it): “Let’s squeeze as...

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 10:59:06 +0200

How to make use of the Lisbon Treaty (whatever you may think of it): “Let’s squeeze as much as possible out of Brussels” says Mr. Girzynski of the Polish Law and Justice party.
(The Polish President Lech Kaczynski has not yet signed the Treaty, just like Czech President Klaus)

http://euobserver.com/9/28780

What is quality journalism?

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 09:10:31 +0200

Just read a really good tweet from @DNEuropa2009, one of the twitter channels for the Swedish morning paper Dagens Nyheter:

What is quality journalism? Long texts, published on paper, written by men above 60, for men above 60. Just so you know.

( My translation. Original in Swedish: Vad är bra journalistik? Jo: långa texter, publicerade på papper, skrivna av män över 60, för män över 60. Bara så att ni vet.

Original source: http://twitter.com/DNEuropa2009/statuses/4622905129 )>

Dear artist,

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 12:56:31 +0200

Hi, how are you doing?

Not so good, if I am to trust your spokesmen, the media industry. You know, those chaps that take care of your interests and make sure you get what’s due. Makes me sorry to hear, and trust me, I’m honest about that one.

I just wanted to check something with you. You see, you wrote this song that I really like, and I would like to buy it. No offense, but the entire CD is not up to par and I am not too keen on paying €20 for just one song.

So I thought I’d download it. I mean, if I buy a CD, I convert the songs to MP3 anyway, so I can listen to them in my computer, mobile phone and my player. But I must confess, I’m not really sure what I am buying here? It seems that if I buy a digital file, I don’t own it, it’s not mine? Maybe it’s because I am so old that I remember my LPs, which I think I owned. Or didn’t I own them either? So I am paying for.. the right to listen to the song? Or a license to listen to a song? I guess you don’t want me to give a copy of the file/song to my mate ‘arry here… But is he still allowed to be in the room when I play the song, right?

I just want to know exactly what I am buying and if there is an expiry to the purchase or if I can burn a audio CD of my MP3’s for personal use (No, I’m not going to sell or give away copies of that CD, not even to ‘arry) and such things, you know. So I can decide if the product I am buying/renting/something is worth the price.

To be perfectly honest, and I am sorry to have to say this, but it’s quite likely that if it is too much bother about your song, it’s probably not worth it and we’ll just forget about it, mkay?

No-fudge user-centred design

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 11:58:31 +0200

Since a couple of years back, I live in a country where the conversational tone is sometimes considered more harsh compared to the one in Sweden, where I come from.Maybe this has coloured my approach a bit, when I lecture on UC(S)D, User-Centred (System) Design. Of course we know that memory is a very subjective thing and my perception of the past is coloured, more or less. But when I think back on how we used to communicate usability, the image I get is of the soft, caring approach to communication, like some kind of “You know, it is nice if you think about the users, we must not make things hard for them, the users are important”, and so on. Wuss. “Think of the children” approach, my buttocks.

Last lecture I held and the one before that, was a three days course, and unlike a couple of years back, all participants came from the “system” side, IT-departments, hands-on business people. And perhaps it seems like my approach nowadays, if it has changed, suited them, because I have never got such a high judgement on the evaluations when it comes to the parts that participants usually complain about fudge (in Swedish: flum, meaning something is too abstract and your head is up in the clouds).

My approach is that we are talking about user-centred design, usability is a measure and user-friendliness is just fudge. What is “friendliness”, how do measure it? If you’re in the private sector, you’re doing business, if you’re in the public sector, you have an obligation to the citizens, your employer. Usability is a measure, maybe a complex measure, but a concrete measure nevertheless. “Extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use.” There you have it. An internationally accepted ISO standard. Not “so easy to use your grandmother can use it”. Your grannie is quite likely not the target group of this application or site. UCD is about working with target groups and we define their needs from usage and goals, not what they think or say they want. We do this in parallel with the organisation’s objectives and in order to make the project manageable, we prioritise target groups, as well as needs.

There are no simple answers how to make a site or application efficient and effective to a specific user group. It depends on the needs and goals. Think for yourselves, if you’re a ministry, or a company on the financial market, or a retailer wanting to do e-business, and I gave you the same answer to “how do we optimise our services for our customers/citizens?”, I would either just sell you over-simplified solutions or be lying through my teeth.

It is not about being friendly or nice to the users, it is about providing them with services that are effective, efficient and support them to achieve specific goals, both customers’ and the organisation’s goals. And that is simply good business.

Quality

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:27:07 +0200

There are a few things I’m terribly fastidious about and know exactly what I want from them.

a knife
a komboloi
a pen
a mobile phone

Atheists are barbarians

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 19:20:00 +0200

A reply of sorts

It is very simply, and I am afraid on your behalf a little embarrasing..

You see, you claim that by tying YOUR emotions up together with your religious beliefs, you thereby automatically assume that since your emotions and beliefs thus are connected, anyone not having ANY belief, which makes an atheist, and not a muslim, for instance, since the latter one obviously has a different belief, albeit not the right one, that therefore, since an atheist does not, in your opinion has ANY belief, that person must more or less be void of emotions.

Since this line of reasoning is so bluntly silly even to you, you therefore try to ease up on it a bit, while still not abandoning it completely. Which means you imply that atheists deny that Christian dogma has given us the European culture (which, to some of my American friends, I’m sorry to say, would surprise them if they actually encountered. The range of European cultural values, that is) and thus, atheists are in fact trying to do away with culture altogether.

Atheists are in fact barbarians that cannot see the emotional, cultural and artistic sides of humanity.

Pondering about Twitter

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 10:52:31 +0200

We got a rather hefty wave of pr0n spam on Twitter, while I was on holidays and thus on mobile. It simply became too much crap running an open feed with mail notifications, something I’ve done since I started tweeting back in April 2007.

So I turned on the Private feed option, thinking I will probably turn it off when I’m back home.

Well, now I am back home. But instead, I went through my Followers list and cleaned it up a bit more, even, deleting obvious ad twitterers and some. So, I’m keeping my tweets “invitation only” for now. Not that I come up with utterly private tidbits of my life or utter profound wisdoms that should be only for an elect few. You may read the occasional profundity, but basically, it’s nice to phase out the spam noise that is generated even if you don’t follow them back.

The author Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) said this morning [“It occurs to me that when you do it right twittering can be footnotes for life.”]( http://twitter.com/neilhimself/status/3481014740). Even if I don’t aspire on creating anything that ambitious with my tweets, now that they are private, they may just change slightly, due to this. We’ll see.

Laying out in the hammock and reading tech blogs. The Apple fanboy armada is as always out to make...

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 10:45:33 +0200

Laying out in the hammock and reading tech blogs.

The Apple fanboy armada is as always out to make sure this small, competent, supercool freedom loving company is always ready to fight against large, evil corporations like M… wait, so it’s Google that’s the bad guy now? Bill Gates has been dethroned as the Prince of Darkness?

Spin, chew & swallow.