Month: August 2006

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Blogs Bookmarks Kim Blog (English) Open Source Technology

InformationWeek: What’s the Greatest Software Ever Written

Since reading the brilliant “High Fidelity” by Nick Hornsby I realised that geeks and top lists is a match made in heaven.

InformationWeek has one of the best researched and interesting ones I’ve seen in a long time, click the link below to read the article:

InformationWeek: What’s the Greatest Software Ever Written

In order for software to be “great”, it “simply” has to fulfil it’s mission perfectly. That’s actually a tall order, and the world could be paved several times over with failed software projects.

So what’s the greatest software of all time:

Colossus the code breaking computer from Bletchley Park that helped break the code of the German Engima machine, estimated to have helped end the war two years early?

The Apollo navigation computer, an exercise in simplicity.

No the winner is UNIX, and especially BSD 4.3.

BSD and the BSD license inspired the ideas of the Free Software Foundation, GNU, Linux and the entire open source community.

I tend to agree, that UNIX is the greatest software ever written, and guess what I’m finally using it as well, 20 years after I realised that I had to learn it, I didn’t get much further than learning the ls command back then however. But thanks to the brilliant combination of the most beautiful GUI on the market, and an open source version of BSD UNIX called Darwin, UNIX now has a friendly face. The friendly face is called Mac OS X.

PS. The original Mac OS is included on the list, and even though it was more than “inspired” by the work done at Xerox PARC, it was indeed great software. I clearly remember the first time I saw a Macintosh in January of 1985, the face of computing had been changed, and it actually doesn’t look that different today.

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Blogs Bookmarks Historier/Stories Kim Blog (English) Technology

BBC NEWS | Technology | Twenty five years of the IBM PC

IBM PCBBC NEWS | Technology | Twenty five years of the IBM PC

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the IBM PC. The PC, not only in the meaning of a “compatible”, has had a tremendous impact on the life of almost everybody in the developed world, and it’s now spreading to the rest of the world.

Personally I’ve been using IBM PCs and compatibles since December 1983, my father got one of the first IBM PCs that arrived in Denmark, and it has in many ways shaped my life.

The success of the PC is owed to an originally open hardware and software specification. When IBM tried to close the PC, realising what they had done, it was too late, the market had gained control of the standard.

When IBM designed the PC they made some remarkable decisions:

Continue reading “BBC NEWS | Technology | Twenty five years of the IBM PC”
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Blogs Kim Blog (English) Music

Review: On da grind – Masta Ace keeping it real in Copenhagen

Masta Ace Keeping It Real In CopenhagenOn Friday the 11th of august Masta Ace and friends visited the Amager Bio venue in Copenhagen, and so did I, mostly thanks to my local record pusher Musik Hjørnet in Taastrup.

The opening act was the Danish act DJ Static and MC Nat Ill, kicking it classic old-skool 1DJ and 1MC style. This is one great team, and they got the venue jumping. I think sometimes Static was showing off a little too much, and the 1+1 line-up is better suited for freestyling IMHO. Anyway, some of the best Danish Hip-Hop I’ve ever heard.

On to the main act. Masta Ace, first to take the stage was the DJ A.Vee, spinning the wheels of steel, no showing off here, just great music. Down went the lights and the first of Ace’s friends, Big Stricklean, took stage, and he’s one tight MC, preparing the wires for the Masta.

The set was mostly made up of tracks from the great 2004 album “A long hot summer”, and we were indeed introduced to a third MC, Wordsworth, and he’s a great rapper, he started by jumping off stage, later delivering a few tracks from his recent album, that sounds very interesting.

A lot of tribute was paid to the pioneers of hip-hop, first with a great “Juice Crew” trivia quiz, to my surprise I actually knew the answers…Later we were asked to drop the names of our favourite hip-hop acts, I was yelling Doom, and maybe Wordsworth heard me, because he suggested him. Ace mentioned “Gangstar” as his favourite act, not a bad choice. Generally this was a place for lovers of hip-hop, not much respect for the new hot shots that fill MTV these days, you got to gain and show respect the hard way.

Masta Ace Signed TicketThis was a great jam, and time flew. After finishing all four stayed for a long time, taking time to sign records, tickets (even mine see the picture, and I wasn’t pushing), shoes, caps etc. Truly keeping it real for the fans.

Masta Ace delivered the best Hip-Hop jam I’ve been too for ages, oh well, I haven’t exactly been to a lot lately, my top two jams are “De La Soul” and “Queen Latifah” in 1990, but this was pretty close.

Show your L’s for Love! Bringing an end to the bling bling era! B to the K to L to the Y to the N! I want more! WE MADE SOME NOISSSSEEEE!

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Blogs Bookmarks Design Kim Blog (English) Technology

Photo: Sony’s Mylo | CNET News.com

Photo: Sony's MyloPhoto: Sony’s Mylo | CNET News.com

Sony will begin selling a cool new gadget called the Mylo (“my life online”) in September 2006 according to CNET News.com.

The Mylo is a compact Wi-Fi enabled (802.11b) communications device with Instant Messenging (Yahoo! and Google), Web Browser, Media Player and Skype clients build right in.

You can slide the screen, to reveal a keyboard, that, thank’s to the PSP like formfactor, is quite big.

Nice concept, but I agree with the comment made on the CNET review site, that Sony should just add these features to the PSP, or at least price this gadget much lower than the suggested $350.

I really, really like the form factor of the Mylo, personally I think that the PSP is too big, but as a cell phone/PDA replacement, the Mylo is ahead of it’s time.

I find it likely that I’ll continue to carry at least three digital devices for quite some time, I’d consider replacing my cell phone with a compact combined Wi-Fi/GSM phone like the one Accton and Skype we’re talking about last year.

But for music nothing on the market beats my iPod nano, and for photography no cell phone can compete with my Canon iXUS i5.

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Blogs Bookmarks Kim Blog (English) Mactopia Technology

Wired News: Has Steve Jobs Lost His Magic?

Apple 5th Avenue 'Temple'Wired News: Has Steve Jobs Lost His Magic?

Wired News attended the WWDC 2006 Keynote…And they made an observation that I also made…

I wondered if Jobs, who was treated for cancer last year, was sick. Was he sharing presentation duties to save energy? When I saw Jobs introducing the iPod Hi-Fi at Apple’s headquarters in late February, about five months ago, it looked to me like he was tiring quickly and was glad to get it over.

Well, enough with the “central commite in the early 80ies speculations”.

Actually I suspect that Jobs is much more exited by the retail stores and consumer products than Macs, these days.

I think he glows when he’s talking about the 5th Avenue “Temple”, and I think he was quite inspired at the special music events in fall 2005 where the iPod nano and the iPod video were introduced.

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Blogs Bookmarks Kim Blog (English)

Julian Beever – Amazing 3D illusion pavement drawings

Julian Beever - Batman and Robin to the rescueMy attention was just drawn (badam tisch!) to the works of Julian Beever, instead of linking to the sites that posts copies of his works, I googled him a little and found this homepage.

Julian Beever

Julian Beever has specialised in pavement drawings that plays tricks on the eye, “anamorphic 3D projections” I believe that they’re called, I came to think of M.C. Escher when looking at his pictures.

When viewed from the right angle, these drawings look three dimensional.

Regarding M.C. Escher, I was once told a story about the love mathematicians has for M.C. Escher.

In the story, a mathematician that admired M.C. Escher, once meet with him, only to discover, to his disappointment, that M.C. Escher had no detailed knowledge of advanced mathematics.

Made me wonder if Julian Beever has a love for mathematics.

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Blogs Bookmarks Kim Blog (English) Mactopia Technology

Apple Opens Up: Kernel, Mac OS Forge, iCal Server, Bonjour, Launchd

Mac OS Forge

Apple Opens Up: Kernel, Mac OS Forge, iCal Server, Bonjour, Launchd

Apple seems to be doing the right thing, and is renewing it’s commitment to the power of open source, following the disappointing decision to shut down OpenDarwin.org.

First of all the Intel Kernel sources will be made available. Quote from the mailing list:

As of today, we are posting buildable kernel sources for Intel-based Macs alongside the usual PowerPC (and other Intel) sources, starting with Mac OS X 10.4.7. We regret the delay in readying the new kernel for release, and thank you for your patience.

More importantly a new community project web-site called Mac OS Forge has been launched, and a number of projects are already hosted on Mac OS Forge.

Most notable on the list of featured projects is the calendar server from Mac OS 10.5 Leopard, that was unveiled yesterday.

I was a bit worried that the Mac OS X Leopard Calendar server would be a closed project, so this is great news.

But Mac OS Forge is definitely no OpenDarwin, yet!

Thanks to macnyt.dk for drawing my attention to this important news.

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Blogs Bookmarks Kim Blog (English) Mactopia Technology

Apple – QuickTime – WWDC 2006 Keynote – Intel Transition complete and Leopard preview

WWDC 2006 KeynoteApple – QuickTime – WWDC 2006

Finally the 7th of august arrived, and the WWDC 2006 Keynote has been delivered. It’s available as a stream from the link above, but expect sluggish performance for some time, everybody seems to be tuning in.

And boy was this one hyped event, as the “Joy of Tech” pointed out, it seems like all tech web-sites, even non rumour sites, were turning into rumour sites.

Come on, this is WWDC, it’s about developers, and I didn’t expect anything besides the unveiling of Leopard.

And the anticipation was building with banners bashing Microsoft and calling Leopard Vista 2.0.

With the Keynote kicking off with the “PC” from the “I’m a PC and I’m a Mac” commercials asking the Mac developers to take a long break, or come help him out with Vista – we need it!, the tone was set.

Continue reading “Apple – QuickTime – WWDC 2006 Keynote – Intel Transition complete and Leopard preview”
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Blogs Bookmarks Lektiehjælpen (Danish)

Ringkjøbing Amts Dagblad: Umar Asifs debut ved Vesterhavet

Den 25-Juli-2006 tog Lektiehjælpen i Mjølnerparken på en kolonitur til en Spejderhytte i Hee ved Ringkøbing, i 4 dage.

Turen var arrangeret i samarbejde med frivilliggruppen i Ringkøbing, og 21 børn, 8 frivillige og 2 fædre fra Sjakket deltog.

Det var en rigtig dejlig tur, og det var dejligt at få mulighed for at være sammen med både børn, voksne og frivillige på den måde. Tak til alle der var med til at gøre det til en fantastisk oplevelse.

Der blev også plads til et par ture, bla. til Dejbjerg Jernaldercenter, Hvide Sande og Vesterhavet.

Vi er enige om at vi gerne vil lave lignende ture i fremtiden.

Vores tur fik også omtale i Ringkøbing Amts Dagblad, læs mere ved at vælge linket nedenfor:

Ringkjøbing Amts Dagblad: Umar Asifs debut ved Vesterhavet

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Blogs Kim Blog (English) Music

Review: DO Y’ALL FELL GOOD? The Godfather of Soul: James Brown in Copenhagen

Mr. James Brown

  • The Godfather of Soul
  • The hardest working man in show business
  • the list goes on

visited the Amager Bio Venue in Copenhagen on the 30th on July 2006.

This was an event not to be missed, how often do you get to see such a legend live, and in a relatively small venue with somewhat of a club like atmosphere.

Mr. Brown brought with him an all star band, with extremely strong rhythm and horn sections, they were tight indeed, mastering jazz, soul and funk. And what great backup singers.

From a quite slow jazzy start where Mr. Brown was mostly acting as a big band leader, the show picked up the pace, and the godfather showed some of his moves, and when he occasionally let himself loose his voice showed remarkable strength.

Finally the venue was jumping, and the delivery of “Sexmachine” and finally “It’s a man’s world” were amazing. Suddenly the show was over, way, way too soon, and the church of soul that had temporarily been opened at Amager Bio, closed down, with no room for encores.

Thank you, and “Mr Brown, you know that we don’t start, till you make the count”, please start it again sometime. It felt REALLY REALLY good!