As soon as you’re born they make you feel small
By giving you no time instead of it all
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
They hurt you at home and they hit you at school
They hate you if you’re clever and they despise a fool
Till you’re so fucking crazy you can’t follow their rules
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
When they’ve tortured and scared you for twenty odd years
Then they expect you to pick a career
When you can’t really function you’re so full of fear
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
And you think you’re so clever and class less and free
But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
There’s room at the top they are telling you still
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
If you want to be like the folks on the hill
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
If you want to be a hero well just follow me
If you want to be a hero well just follow me
Q:
Har du forslag til besparelser indenfor print/ kopiering (sort-hvid/farve tryk) og/eller papir-forbrug, – (også gerne systemændringsforslag), så skriv dit forslag og send det til postkassen: xxxxxxxx
A:
Det gælder jo ikke kun om at begrænse medarbejdernes papirforbrug, men også den mængde papir der sendes til kunder i form af regninger, og her er der også en stor logistisk omkostning da brevene jo skal bringes ud.
Det skal også nævnes at man udover at benytte dobbeltsidet tryk, også kan udskrive flere ark på samme side, og personligt er det meget få af de dokumenter jeg udskriver på den måde, der bliver sværere at læse.
Ellers er det også relevant at vælge en papir-leverandør der prioriterer miljømæssig bæredygtighed højt, og det er ikke kun for at opnå en økonomisk besparelse på “papiret” (bevidst vittig ;-), det må nemlig gerne koste mere, hvis det samtidig er bæredygtigt, og så er det et godt signal at sende til omverden. Noget andet er at hvis prisen er højere, kan det også virke som et inictament til at sænke forbruget yderligere.
Bortset fra det kan man rent faktisk ofte undgå helt at udskrive, det kræver bare at man lettere kan finde informationerne, og så er det vigtigt at man ikke længere sender f.eks. Word dokumenter til hinanden, men i stedet henvisninger til Intranettet/Lokalnettet, så man vendes til at læse informationer på skærmen i stedet for at udskrive den.
Systemer til vidensdeling som wikier, diskussionsfora og team blogs kan også hjælpe til at begrænse mængden af papir, der er heller ikke længere diskussion om hvilke versioner af et dokument man har. Man kan også med den slags systemer begrænse behovet for møder da projekter lettere kan diskuteres og resultater fastholdes når man bruger den slags systemer.
Det kunne også være en idé hvis der var en computer i mødelokalerne der var koblet op til lokalnettet og en storskærm, som man var SIKKER på virkede – det er min opfattelse at der bruges en del tid på at være sikker på at et mødelokale har fungerende netforbindelse etc. På denne computer vil man så kunne hente projekt dokumenter, inklusive diskussioner, så de kan diskuteres på mødet.
Principielt kan det diskuteres om det overhovedet er nøvendigt at have en harddisk i en computer, afskaffelsen af den lokale harddisk vil betyde at man altid vil gemme informationer på en sådan måde at man kan få fat i dem fra en vilkårlig computer, og derfor ikke har behov for at udskrive dokumenterne når man går på besøg hos kolleger for at diskutere dokumenterne.
Dette vil dog stille større krav til netværket, og derfor vil det være en idé at tænke i en distribueret infrastruktur, f.eks. ville det være smart hvis en udviklingsafdeling havde sin egen filserver på lokalnettet, der så blev replikeret til firmaserverne automatisk.
Konkurrencemailen er i øvrigt et “sjovt” eksempel på forkert brug af elektronisk distribution, da der er en vedhæftet fil medsendt, i stedet for et link til Intranettet.
This week, the world got a lot less interesting, when the visionary, humanist, inventor and author Arthur C. Clarke died. I really considered not commenting on it, because others would be better at it, and the picture from Joy of Tech on the left sums up my feelings.
Remembering a great visionary and humanitarian
Arthur might not be the best writer, but his clear visions, belief in humanity and always good spirit was such an inspiration.
Clarke has mostly been remembered for his two most famous contributions to the collective heritage of humankind:
The movie 2001
The concept of Geo-synchronous communications satellites
The only thing that I feel sorry for, is that Arthur didn’t live to witness the discovery of Extraterrestial Intelligence, which I’m sure is on the verge of happening, and when we have First Contact, I hope that the politicians and scientists read the works of Arthur C. Clarke, before trying to understand E.T., I really feel that Arthur did.
First Contact
I’ll give you an example, and it’s my favourite part from one of his books, “The Fountains of Paradise”.
As is traditional with the novells by Arthur C. Clarke, the plot contains several independent sub-plots, and that is the strongest aspect of his writing, it never gets dull, and it’s filled with humour, and insights into humanity.
The main plot in the “Fountains of Paradise” is really about the construction of an elevator to the Clarke Belt, the geo-synchronous orbit, 36,000 kms from Earth.
But the by-line is a story about First Contact – e.g. the discovery of intelligent Extraterrestrials – a favourite topic of Clarke – it’s also about Artificial Intelligence – the favourite topic of Clarke.
The sub-plot is similar to “Rendezvous with Rama”: Due to universal limits of relativity, you can only travel at sub-light speeds. Another universal law is that the ordinary life-spans are too short even for ET, so ET is investigating the universe using unmanned probes.
Earth, or rather the solar system, is visited by such a a spaceship, and onboard is a computer or more correctly an AI – that is somewhat secretive – but co-operative – and we have so much to learn, like the fact that we’re an emerging level 1 Civilisation, at least in the 22nd Century, where the book is taking place.
Clarke suggested that advanced Civilisations goes through three levels:
Civilisation can control energy on Planetary level
Civilisation can control energy on Solar level
Civilisation can control energy on Galactical level
Needless to say we’re not even a level 0 civiisation right now. When ET finally arrives, some hundred years after the probe visited, he expresses admiration for the achievements of “such a young civilisation.
Well the computer abroad the space-probe, is co-operating and teaching us lot’s of things, without violating the rules about giving away information posessed by a higher level civilisation, so we’re only given hints, like a level 1 civilisation, has mastered the conversion of matter to energy and back – e.g. has things like matter transporters and replicators, like in Star Trek.
That is until someone at a Theological Institute decides to transmit the complete religious scriptures to the computer, it painstakingly analyses it, points out the fundamental flaws of religious thinking, shuts down communication with a comment that expresses disappointment at such tribal manners from an emerging level 1 Culture, and sorry but now you have to switch to direct communications, going to cruise mode, shutting down, bye.
Mind you, ET is 50 light-years away, so everyone was upset by the actions of the religious people, but really it was also the end of religious thought, and humanity could move on the bigger projects, like building the space elevator.
The concept of the Space Elevator was lifted from a Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, that Arthur credits in the closing notes of “Fountains”. Clarke also suggests that it might be possible to build it already in this century, and the concept is well thought out, and actually feasible with current technology, unfortunately the current funding of space exploration, dictates direct military benefits, and the military seems to love chemical rockets, what a shame.
Other contributions
Another important contribution by Clarke, was his 80th birthday special feature, where Discovery dedicated an entire evening to Arthur, another was his series The “Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World”, where he was also dealt with myths and Urban legends, paving the way for the “Mythbusters”.
Clarke deserved the Nobel Peace Price, not least for deciding to live his final many years in war-torn Sri Lanka.
The Pod Bay doors have been opened, Godspeed Arthur
The Imperial Cinema in Copenhagen is showing “2001: A Space Odyssey” on Monday 24th of March oops April 28th at 3.45pm CEST.
Imperial has one of the best cinemas in Northern Europe, expect me to be in the audience, I can’t really think of a better way to pay tribute to Arthur, get your ticket here (link will probably expire soon ;-)).
I’m humbled by your creative vision: The Pod Bay doors have been opened, and my God it’s full of Stars. Godspeed Arthur!
The picture that accompanies this article is from the great comic strip, The Joy of Tech. I dare to claim “fair use”, and why don’t you click here to buy some merchandise, or one of the paintings – I’d love to own “HAL 9000 shedding a tear” as a painting. BTW: I’m not making any money from providing Joy of Tech with such a link, welcome to the future of advertising ;-).
When “Sergei and Larry” approached Yahoo with a brand new concept of a “search engine”, they discovered, to their dismay, that Yahoo wasn’t really interested in “search”, but in selling ads. So Google was born.
How I discovered Google
In 1998 I was doing a search of myself, e.g. ego-surfing, using my preferred search engine, Lycos, and I was stunned to see that the top hits were Usenet groups that contained my name, several of them in fact, but worse: they had names like kimbach.slut.slut.slut etc.
I was a bit upset, especially since I, at that point, was being sued over violation of the marketing law by a former employer – a case that was later thrown out – but I assumed that they might have created those groups, to slander me, and I was quite sure that it wasn’t me that created those groups ;-).
I took a look at the content of the groups, and they had very low traffic, I only found some spam, which was rare in 1998, and someone who asked the question “who is Kim Bach” – a question I’ve pondered myself, but it didn’t look like it had anything to do with me.
Eventually I contacted the hotline of my ISP, Image Scandinavia, and they referred me to…GOOGLE.
Doing a search on Google, I realised that it had nothing to do with me, but that the groups had been created by a disgruntled husband, and Kim Bach was his ex-wife!
I also believe that using Google for the first time, immediately made me drop Lycos. At that point Lycos actually yielded what I’d label “better results”, but that changed quickly.
Google, originally, cracked “the search code”, and the world changed.
How I discovered Wikipedia
This I also remember clearly, and it’s quite interesting, I googled it – indirectly!
3-4 years ago I was trying find the English word for the type of dog, that is called “gravhund” in Danish, I somehow 😉 knew that a literal translation wouldn’t do, since that would have yielded “diggingdog”, “digdog”, “gravedog”.
So a Google search let me to the English Wikipedia article for Dachshund, and that was what I was looking for!
Seeing Wikipedia was an instant eye-opener, and at that point it hadn’t even dawned upon me, that Wikipedia was pure user-generated content!
Google isn’t interested in “knowledge”
Google won by doing a better job, but now “we, the people” are approaching the world with a concept of a “knowledge engine”, only to discover, to our dismay, that for instance Google isn’t really interested in “knowledge”, but in selling ads.
The difference: “we, the people”, will, surprisingly, transform Google from a “search engine” into a “knowledge engine” as well, no matter what Google does. The algorithm Google uses will give preference to “quality”, at least in the long run, and since “we, the people” are so numerous this will happen sooner rather than later.
Case in point, the best SEO strategy I know of is to create a Wikipedia article, try googling the terms I’ve created Wikipedia articles for (for instance: Kim Schumacher, DB03 and DB07).
You’re brainwashed
Google and the big companies have had us, pretty much, brainwashed to think that we have no say. This is reflected by the response to the launch of the Wikia Search engine, on the historic day, January 7th 2008.
Everyone is trying to compare Wikia Search to Google, and that’s missing the point COMPLETELY, and people should read what Wikia Search are writing:
WE KNOW THAT THE QUALITY OF THE SEARCH IS: “PRETTY LOW” (a polite way of saying that it “stinks”)
The way to help change it, is simply to get involved.
Every-time you do a search on Wikia Search, you’re offered the option to edit a “Mini Article” on the search. A “Mini Article” is just a Wiki article, that explains the search term. The “Mini Articles” will be used to improve the search index.
“Unfortunately” people seems to have been using a search on themselves as a benchmark, meaning that a lot of the “Mini Articles” are links to private and small web-sites, but that reflects the community.
Ego-surfing was also one of the first things I did, and the first hit that could be attributed to me was result number 8, and that yielded the photos I’ve taken, that are in the Flickr pool I created for Sjakket, my former place of work.
Is that my major contribution to the world? Well it’s not that far from it, bordering that I believe that it could be.
Getting involved – choose a community to “work” for
My criteria are:
Not for profit, open, free, strong community, sustainable.
The beer isn’t free however, so you’re allowed to make money, but take into consideration how the money is being made, if it is sustainable etc.
Personally I’ve chosen these organisations
Kim Bach . Org – My personal Internet presence with community support (some call that a blog ;-))
Currently I’m mostly involved in Wikia Search, I’ve found it really intimidating to be a contributor to an Encyclopaedia, so my contributions to Wikipedia have been quite limited, Wikia Search is much less intimidating, and right up my alley.
Where would you put your money (e.g. time)?
In ten years, Google has gone from no to 16.000 employees, but “we, the people” will, in ten years go from no to 6,5 billion, or how many it is that “we” are in 2018.
Where would you put you money (e.g. time)? It will only cost you time, and you’ll be involved in building a beautiful shrine to knowledge and human achievement.
Together we’ll do Google one better: crack the code of “knowledge”, and the world has changed forever.
Free at last, free at last, oh God almighty we’re free at last.
And “we”‘re hiring! No need to submit a resume, come join the fight!
Welcome to ICT Mythbusters Episode Two – this time we’ll be investigating the myth that Microsoft is just copying Apple. The post is indeed subtitled “Attack of the Clones”, but bear with me, I have to take a detour to the world of digital typography, before returning to the real topic, so if you’re the impatient type (pun intended), just proceed to the end of the article.
ICT Mythbusters is inspired by the great Discovery show Mythbusters, and you’ll find Episode One here.
Is Microsoft just copying Apple?
Among Apple Macintosh faithfuls, it’s considered common knowledge that Microsoft, with Windows, just made a bad copy of the Apple Macintosh, but who’s copying who?
What triggered me to revisit this myth, that I’ve covered in detail before, was the screening of the great documentary, Helvetica, that I went to yesterday.
In the Helvetica movie Apple Computers was very much the supporting actor, and Apple was indeed mentioned in the credits. More prominently one of the Gurus of Type design, Erik Spiekermann, stated, as a fact, that Microsoft Windows was nothing more than a clone of the Apple Macintosh.
Spiekermann’s statement sounded just like the Apple marketing hype, and the fact that it was being stated by a very influential person in the industry, triggered me.
Firstly: I was somewhat surprised to hear this in a documentary about type. There’s no doubt that all the graphic designers interviewed for the documentary were already using Apple hardware, but I found it strange that Spiekermann’s statement didn’t end up on the cutting floor.
Show some love for the Mac
First there’s no doubt that Microsoft, and Bill Gates always has been great fans of the Apple Macintosh, as the clip below documents:
To create a new standard, it takes something that is just not a little bit different, it takes something that is really new, and really captures people’s imagination, and the Macintosh, of all the machines I’ve seen, is the only one that meets that standard
Case closed: Bill Gates just admitted that Windows is nothing more than a cloned stormtrooper.
Now wait a minute…As you might notice the clip is quite old, and at that time Microsoft was working on creating one of the key selling points, even to this date, for Apple hardware, the Excel spreadsheet.
Excel was originally developed for the Macintosh, and it wasn’t released for Windows until the the dying moments of the 1980ies. In fact, Microsoft has done more for the proliferation of the Apple Macintosh than any other software manufacturer, and you could argue that the commitment to the Macintosh platform that Microsoft guaranteed at the famous MacWorld keynote in 1997, was a pivotal turning point. Steve Jobs even declared:
We have to let go of the notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to loose. […] The era of setting this up as a competition between Apple and Microsoft, as far as I’m concerned that is over.
And then Jobs went on to establish the fact that Apple and Microsoft, together, is the standard with a combined market share of 100%. Whatever Apple and Microsoft does is the standard.
Well I’m sure the $150 million investment by Microsoft, and the televised image of Bill Gates in the background, had something to do with it, but Steve Jobs was just saying exactly what the stockholders and board-members wanted to hear.
What’s your type?
The market for Apple Macintosh was very much created by the fact, that the Macintosh Computer was the first desktop computer capable of doing print quality design, this revolutionised publishing.
Really it wasn’t so much Apple’s technology that helped create this market, as it was the PostScript technology developed by Adobe.
Until PostScript, all fonts used by desktop computers were so called bit-map fonts, it meant that the fonts were digitised to a specific resolution, and they looked horrible if you tried to scale them to a different point size than the one that was provided with the operating system.
Another problem with the bit-map fonts was that they required a lot of storage, laser-printers use a resolution of 300 DPI (dots per inch), a point in typography is 1/72 of an inch, meaning that 12 point X roughly requires 50 x 50 pixels = 2.500 pixels, and you needed that matrix for all 256 possible characters in the character sets used until the 90ies, a rough calculation yields 640.000 pixels, in bytes that is 80.000, meaing that you’d need approximately 80KB to represent a 300DPI bit-map font. Multiply that by several factors, because the italic and bold versions need their own representation as well, and that should once again be multiplied by the number of fonts installed.
Today this doesn’t sound like much, but remember that the first Macintosh came with only 128KB of RAM, and NO harddrive. In those days a Linotype typesetter had a resolution that was a factor 16 higher, so Houston we have a problem.
Mathematics to the rescue
The PostScript technology used mathematics to describe the fonts (quadric BézÃer curves), making them scalable to all sizes, and a special “hinting” algorithm that reduced the processing power needed when rendering the types.
The technology is known as Adobe Type 1. Adobe had also secured licensing deals with Linotype, the dominant player in the type-foundry business, and owner of a huge share of the mainstream fonts.
The fact that that you could do close to print quality proofs on the desktop, and then simply send the PostScript files to the Linotype typesetter, for print quality, and be confident that the result would look the same as the proof, was nothing short of a revolution.
Fight the power – TrueType this
So heavenly bliss, we had scalable fonts of “infinite” quality, and thanks to the software Adobe Type Manager (ATM), type 1 fonts also worked on the screen, delivering the holy grail of desktop publishing, true WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get).
So what was the problem with this? The problem was the exorbitant licensing fees that you had to pay Adobe to use the technology and Linotype for the use of their copyrighted fonts.
One of my favourite parts of the Helvetica documentary, is in the scene where we’re taken to the “holiest of holy”, deep below the HQ of Linotype, where they keep the original Hass designs for Helvetica, it’s their “precious”.
Another problem with Adobes technology was that it was very processor intensive, making the screen rendering of the fonts quite slow. Anyone that has ever used ATM on early 90ies hardware will know what I’m taking about.
So Apple was developing a competing technology, TrueType, and later Microsoft and Apple worked together to create an alternative to type 1. Microsofts work included the introduction of replacements for the predominant fonts of the day, Helvetica became Arial, Times Roman became Times New Roman and Courier became Courier New.
Microsoft has contributed a number of major enhancements to TrueType, mainly ClearType, which is an anti-aliasing technology to improve the readability of screen fonts. The technology, which is bundled with Microsoft Reader, has failed to make to much of an impact, but anti-aliasing of screen fonts is the standard today.
Back to the real topic – who’s stealing from who
Oh well, this was a long talk about type, fonts and technology, and proof that the competition between Microsoft and Apple mostly takes place in the minds of the faithfuls (devotees?) of the “Church of Steve Jobs”.
Why is it that neither Bill Gates nor Steve Jobs really want to talk about copying, well it’s because Windows AND Mac OS both are clones.
The work that is the foundation of all graphical user interfaces was done at the Palo Alto Research Center of XEROX, but XEROX being a hardware company, also developed hardware, and the XEROX Documenter or XEROX 8010 Star that really was the first modern computer.
The Star was introduced on April 27th in 1981, several months earlier than the IBM PC. The Macintosh, Windows and GEM shipped 4 years later.
Despite the fact that it wasn’t until the introduction of the NeXT computer, that the mainstream computer industry delivered anything remotely akin to the Star, XEROX failed to make the Star a mass-market product
Attack of the clones! MYTH BUSTED!
Today most people are oblivious of the fact that the Imperial clones were ordered by the agents of the Empire, the ICT equivalents of Count Dooku and Palpatine: Apple and Microsoft. The praise for creating the fantastic tools we have in our hands today should go the XEROX, the Palo Alto Research Center and the amazing people that worked there, for instance Alan Kay, whom Steve Jobs often quotes.
The picture of the real myth busters, Adam Savage and Jamie Heyneman, actually is a banner add, but I make ABSOLUTELY no money from it, if you click it and make a purchase, all proceeds go to the Jamie, Adam and of course Café Press. I hope this will settle any copyright issues with them.
The picture of Erik Spiekermann above, is a still from the Helvetica film, and it is copied from the official site of the Helvetica film. The picture is copyright Gary Hustwit, but I consider my use here to be fair use.
The picture of the XEROX 8010 Star is copied from the wonderful DigiBarn website. The picture is copyright DigiBarn, but since it is under a CC-NA-SA license, I can use it – the wave of the future!
The MYTH BUSTED picture was copied from the webiste of MARIJNBOSCH.COM, there’s no copyright notice on the site, and I consider my use here to be fair use.
Friday I went to the Science Fair – dubbed Science After Dark – that was held at Copenhagen City Hall Square (Københavns Rådhusplads), and I enjoyed it very much. I didn’t really know what to expect, but when I read that there would be live electronic music, I knew that I was going.
The first thing i noticed was that attendance, despite the location, was disappointingly low. I feel that it was because the venue looked quite uninviting, due to the fence, and the rather closed looking pavilions.
I also got the feeling that the PR for the Science Fair had been less than satisfactory.
ConDio – Controlling Audio
Anyway, the first thing that grasped my eye was the ConDio, Controlling Audio. The ConDio is a device with which you can control the playback of sound, simply by moving physical bricks around on a table surface. The ConDio uses pattern recognition to determine the position of the different blocks, which translates into a specific function, for instance one brick changes the track that is being played, others applies filters.
It’s remarkably simple, efficient and intuitive to control a computer in this fashion, and it was a real crowd puller.
The ConDio has been developed by the medialogy branch of the University of Aalborg, and It was really great talking to the students that were responsible for the project. They were really feeding from the enthusiasm of the people that were looking at it.
I’m really envious that the students of today get to play with technology like this, to quote Haladjjan, the founder of Violet (manufacturer of the Nabaztag intelligent WiFi bunny):
“le début de l’internet a été une aimable kermesse… Maintenant les choses sérieuses commencent†– (translation: “the beginning of the Internet has been a friendly festival…Now the serious stuff beginsâ€.
What a great time in history to be alive in.
Kim Bach – The failed scientist
I also enjoyed visiting the Bio Chemistry tent, where I had a discussion about how to bring science to the public (“videnskabs formidling”). The scientist in charge asked me it I’ve heard about Jens Martin Knudsen – and the regular reader would know that I just posted a tribute to him – we need more like him – since he was able to bring across complicated matters in lay-mans terms – we also discussed the great Richard Dawkins.
What I really hope is that someone could take up the reins from Jens Martin Knudsen, because we need those positive role-models from the scientific community to teach us the importance of understanding our world.
I also had a chance to redeem myself. I label my self a “failed scientist”. I’m really a product of the inspiration of the space program and the lunar missions, and when I was a kid, I desperately wanted to become a scientist – but “something” happened along the way – and it’s too complicated to talk about here – but I basically got fed up with boring educational system.
But it does seem like I have some basic scientific intuition, and I got some high marks from “the teacher” for thinking like a scientist, when I was observing the strange creature the Daphnia.
It was also interesting talking to the students from the Nano technology line. They’re looking into how to produce solar arrays that are less harsh on the environment, it turns out that you can use fruit juice from black berries as the base of a solar cell, instead of silicon – amazing.
Bend my circuits
But what I really enjoyed the most, was the tent dedicated to audio, which also included live performances from Dødskuglen, Rumpistol and Bjørn Svin (who I missed).
In the tent some interesting and simple demonstrators were set up, one was a Theremin that was controlled by a plant. You could actually play music by touching the leaves of the plant – very entertaining. Another was a tube with a number of nozzles from which gas could escape, and be lit, if you then played music, the sound-waves would modulate the flames – Daft Punk’s Robot Rock looked quite good “going up in flames”.
Dødskuglen plays with circuit bending, and they had gutted a lot of electronics with audio capabilities, for instance a couple of Furbys, that now looked – and sounded – like mean birds, and when you hooked them up to a keyboard, they were capable of making some wonderful noise.
Dødskuglen has their name from a dome shaped device, that is the center-piece of their show. According to them it’s filled with gutted electronics from Happy Meals and the like – I’m not surprised.
We also got a live demonstration of how to circuit bend – don’t try this at home – you might hit the AC power-supply and die – but if you’re careful, just take a cheap electronic keyboard apart, and try to apply some wire patches live – it was amazing to hear how the standard drum-machine suddenly went into a completely different state, and sounded completely different, only to return to it’s standard loop after being reset.
Kim Bach – The failed musician
After Dødskuglen, Rumpistol took the stage, and he’s using his computer in combination with analogue synthesisers to produce great electronica.
Besides being a failed scientist, I also consider myself a failed musician, but with the simple technology being showcased here, that is so much more fun and intuitive to control than a traditional instrument, I might be able to express myself – I know that I have some music in my head – maybe I can finally make some music – I know that I want a copy of the guitar simulator for the Nintendo DS called Jam Sessions.
A child’s mind
There’s a strange unifying synergy between science and music. When doing science and music, you really need to have a child’s mind, and like to play. That’s something I still, I’d say increasingly, possess – so I might still become a scientist/musician. It’s also noteworthy that a number of my heroes for instance RMS (Richard Stallman) and N (Peter Naur), actually play music themselves.
I went home after having had a great time, with renewed faith in our educational system, it seems to be producing playful scientists – I wished someone had told me that science was about playing, when I was a student.
I hope that Science After Dark will become a recurring event.
Show your <3 for science – make some NOIIIIISSSSSEEEEE!!!
I did, however, hear some rumours the Science After Dark has been frowned upon from the established scientific community. Come down from your ivory towers, Science is FUN and NOISY. Show your <3 for Science – make some NOIIIIISSSSSEEEEE!!!
Welcome to ICT Mythbusters Episode One – who needs prequels, start your numbering scheme at one!
ICT Mythbusters is inspired by the great Discovery show Mythbusters
It’s also premiering a new concept in advertising that will revolutionise it:
Commercials that the host – in this case me – don’t make any money from, so click the banner and support the REAL Mythbusters, if you want to me support, send me some money ;-).
Was Bill Gates wrong?
A very famous quote from Bill Gates is:
640KB of RAM should be enough for everyone
Everybody has been laughing at that statement, but was he actually right?
I can access the web in high-fidelity from my Nintendo DS, and any modern phone with Java ME can run the Opera mini browser, and these phones rarely have more than 1MB of RAM. I’d say that approximately 4MB should be enough for everyone.
So Bill Gates was right, or? Why is it that he wasn’t? It’s of course because we’ve moved our storage to the server, as a college of mine was so friendly to point out – actually I think he was quite annoyed with me – but that’s only because he didn’t understand what I meant.
The desktop and portable computer is an anachronism, as I’ve written before, and we need to move ALL the storage to the server – where it belongs, and run only thin clients. VERY thin clients would actually suffice for something like 90+ percent of the worlds business users.
So yes my college is right, yes 640K isn’t enough for everyone, neither is 4MB, but how much is then?
And we’re talking server storage, to cater to the computing needs of the entire world, at the time, not considering the more than exponential growth we’re likely to se in the future.
Help me do the math, or should I just submit it to Jamie, Adam, Toby, Grant and the red-hot Kari.
Yesterday was my regular day in Lektiehjælpen i Mjølnerparken, you might have forgotten, since it’s been a while since I wrote something about my work there.
Yesterday we had a rare discussion about religion, and it was triggered by this comment:
“Real followers of Islam don’t dance”
I know that it wasn’t to be taken too serious, and that I overreacted by hearing such a misguided statement, but I beg to differ. It really doesn’t get truer to Islam than Maâllem Mokhtar Gania & Gnawa Sufi group, and since Islam Muslim translates to “devotee”, a lot of dancers qualify for the title of being real followers, at least in my book.
On September 29th, there will be Sufi Ensemble performing in Stefanskirken, Nørrebrogade 191. The concert with Maâllem Mokhtar Gania & Gnawa Sufi group was fantastic, and I hope that this will be on par, even though the venue seems to be less suited for dancing (like in not at all – can you dance in a church? I might just give it a try).
ps. One of the children also handed me a copy of “لوسردمØماللها Muhammed, Guds sidste sendebud” (links to a PDF) – I’ll read it – even though I’m sceptical of the content.
The booklet is available in most major languages from Islamhouse.com – and now seems like a good time to study الإسلام and the القرآنagain.
pps. The quote below is true to Islam, again in my book ;-).
[2.112] Yes! whoever submits himself entirely to Allah and he is the doer of good (to others) he has his reward from his Lord, and there is no fear for him nor shall he grieve. â€Ø¨ÙŽÙ„َىٰمَنْأَسْلَمَوَجْهَهÙÛ¥Ù„ÙلَّهÙÙˆÙŽÙ‡ÙÙˆÙŽÙ…ÙØْسÙÙ†ÙŒÛÙÙŽÙ„ÙŽÙ‡ÙۥٓأَجْرÙÙ‡ÙۥعÙندَرَبّÙÙ‡ÙۦوَلَاخَوْÙٌعَلَيْهÙمْوَلَاهÙمْيَØْزَنÙونَ ‎
balay’ man ‘ʔaslama wajhahuw lil:ahi wahuwa muḥsinunm falahuwʔ ‘ʔajruhuw ʕinda rab:ihiy wala’ xawfun ʕalayhim wala’ hum yaḥzanuwna (I hope this was correct, I’m not proficient in Arabic).
So you thought you could build an economy on other peoples work, and even have the audacity to charge them (that is us) for it!!!
Well! You have your “Pyramid” – and it’s beautiful – unfortunately for youwe‘ve just invented the “Arch”.
So Google will remain a fantastic monument, but we‘re building the Aqueducts, Viaducts and last but not least the beautiful temples.
And how come Google and all the other search engines, seems to ignore the copyright all together? No let’s boycott Google, and ask to be delisted, or have them block commericals.
So let’s put Google and all the SEO “creeps” out of business, and get rid of the commercial search engine, “itsy bitsy spider, walk along the web” – it’s not that hard to build a better google than google. Where we’re going we don’t need Google.
