Calle's Journal

Wanted: Beta reader

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:46:09 GMT

I have written a story for the femslash09 ficathon. Since I am for once in plenty of time, a beta-read would be nice. It's a Doctor Who (new series) story, and quite short (3200 words). It'd be a bonus if you're British, or familiar enough with UK English to spot my USAisms. To the best of my knowledge, the person I'm writing for does not read my LJ, so if you see this it should be safe for you to read the story before it's published. You should have watched the show up to the end of the 2008 season.

So? Anyone?

The death of a scarcity

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:17:48 GMT

A week and a bit has passed since the Swedish EU parliament elections. Before and after those, there was (and, I believe, still is) quite a lot of noise about the Pirate Party. What I have seen of that noise in old-style media has focused heavily on the sharing of copyrighted material on the Internet, and if that is wrong or not.

The answer to that question is that the question itself is faulty.

Online filesharing is not a problem. It is, in itself, just a technology that makes something that was once hard very easy. And therein lies the rub.

Let's rewind time half a century or so. It's the heyday of radio, TV, newspapers, movie studios and record companies. They all thrive like crazy, they to a very large degree drive youth (and other) culture. Lots and lots and lots of money pass through them and their cousin Advertising. Megastars are born, some people make enormous fortunes, all that stuff. You're familiar with this. Now, all these companies have one thing in common: what they actually do is to produce, reproduce and distribute information. Radio program? Just information, when you come down to it. TV? Also information. Newspapers, movies, LP records? Just the same. Now, the actual production of that information isn't much harder or easier than it has been for as long as humanity has existed. It was no harder for Shakespeare to write his plays than it was for a scriptwriter in the 1950s. What was different was that reproduction and distribution of the information on a massive scale was possible but hard. To have a radio show you needed a radio station, which was a serious investment. The same goes for TV stations, printing presses, trucks to ship LP records and so on. So companies grew up to get over that threshold; they made the investments and made a big profit from the fact that at the bottom of it all people are social creatures who want to communicate in some fashion with each other.

Fast forward to today again. In between then and now, something appeared: the Internet. Millions of computers hooked up to each other, through which people are talking to each other all day every day all the time. And here's the thing: what the internet does, at a very basic level, is reproduce and distribute information. I write this text here on my laptop, the laptop copies it to the LiveJournal servers, which will copy it to your webbrowsers where you can read it. It's all very easy. The threshold for publishing things like this is extremely low. As long as you can get the use of a web browser for a few minutes you can do it.

Now compare this to the earlier situation. The difficulties that those entire industries grew up to overcome are no longer there. The thresholds to publication that used to exist have been not so much lowered as completely obliterated by the Internet. There used to be a limit on the number of newspapers that could be printed per day, the number of records that could be pressed, the hours of TV or radio that could be broadcast. Publication used to be a scarce resource. It's not any more. The Internet's capacity to transmit information is so vast and so scalable that this scarcity has gone away. I, here, writing while I'm waiting for a script to finish running, can put my words where they are available to almost a quarter of the human species. Reproduction and distribution of information is no longer a problem.

And that is a problem for the companies that were created to solve the problem. They no longer have a reason to exist!

Back to the online filesharing debate. What that is all about is those companies' attempts to by legal means recreate an environment where reproduction and distribution of information is hard. To make it so that you can't use this wonderful planet-spanning tool to transmit the kind of information they traditionally control, not because it's beyond your ability to do so (as used to be the case in the past), but because you're not allowed to. They are trying to create an artificial scarcity of certain information.

In a way you can understand them. Any entity will fight for its own survival. But that doesn't make it any less objectionable. The hurdles they create will be with us for a long time, and be unnecessary problems for many things totally unrelated to their businesses. They are, in a metaphorical sense, spreading broken glass all over the path to even more powerful information technologies. If it wasn't for the widespread damage they're doing, we could just ignore them. There are certainly more than enough information sources popping up all over the Internet, and some of them will figure out business models that work in the new environment, and we could just start ignoring the locked-in produce from the old companies. There will be enough to read and watch and listen to, of that I am certain. But the old companies still have vast amounts of money and influence, and they will mess things up for all of us while they die (or change into something that works, of course, although I find that hard to believe in).

And that is why they must be fought. If you like the Internet as it is now, if you use services like LiveJournal or Facebook or flickr or Wikipedia or any number of new things, then you need to object to what the representatives of the old world are doing. Because what they are doing is aimed at destroying the potential of the Internet. They live on information not flowing freely, and therefore they must stop it.

It's not about file sharing. It's about leaving the greatest social tool our species has ever created alive and well. It's about making the future better for people instead of corporations.

Mystery, or something

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 07:29:45 GMT

On my way to work I listen to podcasts. Today, it was BBC World Service's Digital Planet and the Swedish P1's Vetandets Värld ("Knowledge's World", literally translated). The first happened to be about blogging and the second about podcasting. Both of them at some point talked about why people blog or make podcasts, treating it as some kind of unknown mystery. Am I weird in thinking it totally freaking obvious that when given an opportunity to communicate, people will do so?

Chuck

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:22:31 GMT

There must be Sarah Walker slash. Where do I find it?

Cats!

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 19:54:30 GMT

One of the cats was playing with a piece of Lego in the hallway. This would not be noteworthy, except that we don't have any Lego.

Well...

Sun, 24 May 2009 10:30:04 GMT

Thursday night when we came home from the cinema the kitten had managed to shut us out of half the flat.

We went to see the new Star Trek, jennyaxe, citikas and I. It was a lot better than we expected. A decent action-oriented SF movie in its own right, and a surprisingly fun reimagining of ST:TOS. At first I had a serious case of cognitive dissonance from Sylar the Vulcan, but that passed. All in all, Quinto did a good of his Spock. As did most of the actors, with a bit of an edge for Karl Urban's Dr McCoy, who was simply awesome. Uhura didn't have much to do, which was disappointing but very much in line with the original series. Overall, I think her role was more active and participating than the original's. Also, Zoë Saldana is every bit as hot as Nichelle Nicholls was back then (possibly more). The plot wasn't too bad for a Trek movie, and the occasional screaming scientific wrongness gave it the feel of a true Trek movie. The shockwave from the supernova unexpectedly reached Romulus? WTF, people? You can figure out how to build FTL spacecraft but not how long it takes for something with a fixed speed to cover a linear distance? Back here on Earth we cover that in seventh grade. Maybe the Federation Academy scientists could go back in time and get a couple of 13-year-olds from the 20th century to help them out.

And then we went home.

First a word about our flat. It's a two-story four-bedroom one. The entrance is on the upper floor, which also holds the kitchen, one bedroom, the computer room and the living room. In the living room there is a staircase going down to the other bedroom and the sewing room. There is a door between the living room and the rest of the upper floor, which is rarely closed.

This time, we came home to find the living room door closed. Which was suprising, since it had been open when we left. We quickly discovered that it was not only closed, on the other side of it was an ironing board that had previously been leaning against the wall now solidly wedged between the door and the side of a bookcase. As well as a kitten looking at us through the glass inset in the door with an expression of "O HAI! WHY ARE YOU OVER THERE, HOOMANS? OPEN DOOR SO I CAN REACH FUD PLZ". On our side of the door were two cats looking increasingly like "Yeah, ok, food is on this side, but, you know, food turns to, like, other stuff, and that goes on the other side of that there door, so, like, open the door, please? Nowish, if you don't mind?"

Some upset ensued. Different way of breaking into our own flat through the back without actually damaging anything were tried, with the result that we now have greater confidence in the flat's ability to resist burglars. Eventually, we pried loose the wooden ribs holding the glass pane into the door and lifted the pane out. Later still, we reassembled the door and made sure to move the ironing board elsewhere. Still need to repaint the door a bit, but that can wait.

Possibly we should not have named the kitten Arthas.

Pushing Daisies S2E12

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 13:22:18 GMT

And they cancelled this show! The bastards.

That other place

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 10:12:12 GMT

Since so many on my friends list were writing about Dreamwidth, I went over and OpenID-registered. And this morning they sent me a proper invitation. So now I have an account there, under the same name as here. I'd appreciate it if those of you who see this and have Deramwidth account would somehow prod me over there, so I can add you to my reading list.

Spring!

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:46:27 GMT

Best thing about early warm spring days: warm!

Second best thing about early warm spring days: scantily clad pretty women.

Watching "Merlin"

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:03:52 GMT

Morgana is cool. And pretty.

http://xkcd.com/571/

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 13:52:50 GMT

Note to self: do not read XKCD while the students are doing exercises. Sudden laughs make you look weird.

Painting

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 10:38:40 GMT

This Friday, jennyaxe, citikas, shady_fox and I went to the National Museum in Stockholm to watch their special exhibition on the Pre-Rafaelite Brotherhood. Which was nice. That art is a lot more interesting than most from that time. If you don't know what it looks like, one of the more famous examples is Millais' Ophelia.You almost certainly have seen that one, and/or one of the works it has inspired (like the video to Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue's Where the Wild Roses Grow).

Anyway.

Once we'd walked through that (and jennyaxe and citikas had done some hard-core textile geeking over it), we went on to have a look at the rest of the stuff in the museum. Or, rather, as much as we could stand before getting too tired. And one of the things we found, in an unassuming glass case in a small room, was Peter Paul Rubens' The Discovery of the Child Erichthonius by the Daughters of Cecrops. Which at first look seemed like your average Greek myth image from the time. Until one of us (I think it was shady_fox) noticed that the child has tentacles. Dude! That's like, Lovecraftian hentai horror from 1616!

Just goes to show that there really is nothing new under the sun.

Spring

Sat, 11 Apr 2009 15:10:54 GMT

+19°C and sunshine. Amazing weather for the time of year.

Nice

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 06:15:24 GMT

Yesterday I saw the first spring flowers. Little yellow things in a sheltered spot under a tree.

A matter of time

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 11:49:42 GMT

There is Zork for the iPhone. While that is all kinds of neat, it's also kinda bizarre. A minicomputer game from 1978 running on a mobile phone in 2009. Probably much faster than the original, too. Makes you wonder what the guys who wrote Zork back then would've thought if one of these things suddenly appeared.

A contrast to the regular whining

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 07:18:56 GMT

Spent last night playing WoW with my wife and girlfriend, and then talking and cuddling with the GF. At the moment, life is pretty darn good.

Perl and IPv6

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 09:38:02 GMT

It turns out that there is some interest in getting Perl more IPv6-capable, after all. A guy by the name of Steffen Ullrich has written a blog post talking about the current state of affairs, and also uploaded some modules to CPAN making it easier to use IPv6 from Perl scripts. They're based on the same kind of monkeypatching that we use in DNSCheck, but covers more functionality. And, of course, are generally usable instead of being a small part of an unrelated package.

Ubuntu Server broken by design. Use something else.

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 08:11:26 GMT

TL;DR version: The Ubuntu Server people are clueless. Choose another platform for your servers.

At my current client, we recently discovered that a live server has since it was installed been silently dropping all output from cron on the floor. This turns out to be because of the base system of Ubuntu Server (in this case, version 8.04LTS) not including any mail capability, not even that of delivering to local files. Which, of course, means that cron has no way of delivering its reports. I reported this as a bug to the Ubuntu project, and got the bug closed with "Won't Fix". Their argument is that their policy is to have no listening ports open in the base system. While this is an excellent policy, it has absolutely nothing to do with the problem at hand, and their using that as an argument against local mail delivery (or, indeed, remote delivery) betrays such a severe lack of understanding that it casts doubt on the entire Ubuntu Server project.

Nice

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 16:42:50 GMT

When I came home from work a little while ago it wasn't quite dark yet. I think that last happened in October.

Sure was nice.

RFCs

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 13:26:18 GMT

I think most of the DNS RFCs would be clearer if any sentence ending in "...use is discouraged" was rewritten to say "That way lies madness" instead.

He's gone to ride the riverboat...

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 19:24:52 GMT

Another of Science Fiction's great old writers have left this life. Philip José Farmer passed away this morning. At an age of 91, so I guess it wasn't particularly surprising.

Quote from the office

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:05:26 GMT

"You can't microwave the wine! I'm leaving!"

Meme

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 20:15:51 GMT

If it's bold, I read it. If it's also got a line through it, I wish I hadn't.

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
3. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
4. Foundation series, Isaac Asimov
5. Robot series, Isaac Asimov
6. Dune, Frank Herbert
7. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
8. Earthsea series, Ursula le Guin
9. Neuromancer, William Gibson
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham
12. A Book of the New Sun series, Gene Wolfe
13. Discworld series, Terry Pratchett
14. Sandman series, Neil Gaiman
15. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
~~16. Dragonriders of Pern series, Anne McCaffery~~
17. Interview with the Vampire series, Anne Rice
18. The Shining, Stephen King
19. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula le Guin
20. The Chronicles of Amber, Roger Zelazny
21. 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke
22. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke.
23. Ringworld, Larry Niven
24. Elric of Melnibone series, Michael Moorcock
25. The Dying Earth series, Jack Vance
26. Lyonesse series, Jack Vance
~~27. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever, Stephen Donaldson~~
28. A Song of Ice and Fire series, George R.R. Martin
29. The Worm Ourobouros, E.R. Eddison
30. Conan series, Robert E. Howard
31. Lankhmar series, Fritz Leiber
32. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
33. The Time Machine, H.G. Wells
34. The Invisible Man, H.G. Wells
35. The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells
36. Eon, Greg Bear
37. Book of the First Law series, Joe Abercrombie
38. Miss Marple stories, Agatha Christie
39. Hercule Poirot stories, Agatha Christie
40. Lord Peter Wimsey stories, Dorothy L. Sayers
41. The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett
42. The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan
43. Sherlock Holmes stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
44. Cthulhu Mythos, H.P. Lovecraft
45. Inspector Wexford stories, Ruth Rendell
46. Adam Dalgliesh stories, P.D. James
47. Philip Marlowe stories, Raymond Chandler
48. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
49. The Day of the Jackal, Frederick Forsyth
50. The Fourth Protocol, Frederick Forsyth
51. Smiley series, John le Carre
52. Gentleman Bastard series, Scott Lynch
53. The Malazan Book of the Fallen, Steven Erikson
54. Watchmen series, Alan Moore
55. Maus, Art Spiegelman
56. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller
57. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi
58. Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling
59. Chrestomanci series, Diana Wynne-Jones
60 Ryhope Wood series, Robert Holdstock
61. Wilt series, Tom Sharpe
62. Riftwar Cycle, Raymond E. Feist
63. Temeraire series, Naomi Novik
64. Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis
65. His Dark Materials series, Phillip Pullman
66. Dragonlance series, Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
67. Twilight saga, Stephanie Meyer
68. The Night's Dawn trilogy, Peter F. Hamilton!
69. Artemis Fowl series, Eoin Colfer
70. Honor Harrington series, David Weber
71. Hannibal Lecter series, Thomas Harris
72. The Dark Tower series, Stephen King.
73. It, Stephen King
74. The Rats series, James Herbert
75. Dirk Gently series, Douglas Adams
76. Jeeves and Wooster stories, P.G. Wodehouse
77. The da Vinci Code, Dan Brown!
78. The Culture Series, Iain M. Banks
79. The Duncton series, William Horwood
80. The Illuminatus! trilogy, Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson
81. The Aberystwyth series, Malcom Pryce
82. Morse stories, Colin Dexter
83. Navajo Tribal Police stories, Tony Hillerman
84. The Ipcress File, Len Deighton
85. Enigma, Robert Harris
86. Fatherland, Robert Harris
87. The Constant Gardener, John le Carre
88. The House of Cards trilogy, Michael Dobbs
89. The Dark is Rising saga, Susan Cooper
90. Psychotechnic League and Polesotechnic League series, Poul Anderson
91. Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton
92. Star Wars: Thrawn trilogy, Timothy Zahn .
93. Ender's Game series, Orson Scott Card
94. Gormenghast series, Meryvn Peake
~~95. Miles Vorkosigan saga, Lois McMaster Bujold~~
96. The Once and Future King, T.H. White
97. Fighting Fantasy books, Ian Livingston & Steve Jackson
98. The Stainless Steel Rat series, Harry Harrison
99. The Lensman series, E.E. 'Doc' Smith
100. The Cadfael stories, Ellis Peters

More kitten pictures

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 10:24:31 GMT

Foxtrot

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 12:06:02 GMT

I wonder how many of the readers actually get today's Foxtrot comic.