Thoughts

Interesting indeed.

I was checking piratgruppen.org (A place in favor of sharing things online) the other day, and found that a new site, rettighedsportalen.dk had been started by a former spokesperson of piratgruppen.org.

The site aims to shed some light on immaterial “rights”. This is a good idea and I for one welcome it.

One of the first articles that was posted was from the chairman of KODA, a rightsholder organisation for composers in Denmark. His article can be found here.

I wrote my reply in the comment section, but Id like to point out the main point of my comment, which is that copyright does not exist for the single reason to put food on the table of artists. It exists as a means for a society to create incentive for artists to create more well, art. We do this for the sake of our society, not because we feel artists by definition should get paid. This is a misunderstanding. So, if we are to discuss copyright in the digital age, I feel it is important to see why copyright was invented in the first place, to benefit the society, only then can we find new ways to accomplish the same goal, to benefit society, even if that doesnt agree with right holders.

Again, Im not against people getting paid for their work by any means, what i AM against is criminalizing an entire generation of internet users for basically do, what we people do…. share.

Im writing this on my 3rd HP laptop in 2 years. This is a company owned laptop, because if not, I would never have purchased another laptop from Hewlett Packard.

My first HP laptop was a so called NC8430, which is in their line of business laptops. It replaced a T20/T21 (I have forgotten), which was 3+ years old, and still working fine. The NC8430 has a 15″ display, 256mb graphics card, comes with 1 gig of ram (which I had upgraded to 2gig right away), and as far as i remember, a 60 or 80 gb harddrive. It also had a 2.0 ghz Core 2 duo processor from Intel. Pretty nice machine from reading just the specs. And thats where the story takes a turn for the worse.

A week after I received my first NC8430 the display started cutting out on it, sometimes it would turn on, sometimes it wouldnt. At first i thought it was a bad connection somewhere, because right from the beginning the hinges that holds the lid in place felt kind of wobly as well. Anyways, after speaking to the company that sold it to me (company), and since it had not even been 14 days since the purchase, they sent out a guy to fix it. Turned out it was a bad graphics card, and it was replaced.

After a while, the wobbling lid became really bad, but (un)fortunally the machine got hit by a snow storm (real snow comming through the roof, and landing on it, so I declared it dead. I dont blame HP for that though

I was told to order another NC8430, which I did. After a month of usage, this machine started running really hot, showing the same problems with the lid as the previous one. I shrugged it off for a while, but about 2-3 months ago, it became too much. According to Coretemp, each core was running at 99 degrees (celcius), and the exhaust fans was soo hot I couldnt have my hand anywhere near it. The USB port on the side, which has a metal frame, became so hot I actually burned my finger when I accidently touched it. I finally got enough of my left hand being very uncomfortably warm just by resting my hand on it, that I convinced my boss of purchasing another laptop for me. This time I got a 8510p, which I guess is the successor of the NC8430.

It has an even worse keyboard layout, the speakers are in the wrong place (almost underneath which makes audio the inverse.. inaudible at best). The keyboard is of really poor quality, and sometimes its like you get a finger under a key and almost rips it off.

Also, for some reason, during class today, the “touch” button for the wireless activity didnt work, and there is NO way to software-enable it, so I was left without wireless internet until I finally managed to tap it hard and brutally enough to turn back on.

At the moment, im in my hotel room, just feeling lucky that wireless is still working.

HP = Bad Software and Bad Laptop Hardware.

If you want a laptop that is usable and will last for a while, dont buy HP, its that simple. Sorry, but its true.

This is cool, a p2p program based on real life trust.

Alliance is a program that everyone has seen before, but with a twist. Instead of searching everybody and their uncle’s stash of bits, you only search a much smaller circle of people whom you already trust. This makes it virtually impossible for the RIAA/MPAA/<insert other bad guys here> to catch you in the act (if you were doing something illegal with the technology in the first place).

I can think of small networks where people all trust each other, and if new material was to be entered into these small networks, only 1 person need download it from the vast internet, and put it on the closed small network.

The only real issue, is whether or not you trust Alliance to carry your bits in the first place, but im sure some very clever people will use packet sniffers to make sure of no foulplay.

Im curious what the “establishment” will make of this.

Since starting my now almost infamous Cisco course, I have become very interested in ways to learn new material.

How do you plan out a semester, how do you organize a study schedule, where do you study? what kind of tools do you use to get you through it all?

Ive been looking into some of the tips that Lifehacker.com provides, but Id like to figure out what other people have done to get their study needs met.

I will try and document my own experiences, for better or worse

This is another great strategic move by the republican party. Let the two democrats fight against each other all they can, while taking focus of John McCain.

Then when the real election cycle begins, they can put credibility behind a claim that the democratic candidates are focusing more on getting elected than the real issues, and they dont have a clear focus on solving the problems that the United States faces.

It will be another smear fight, and unfortunally I think the average voting american will think “well, they fought each other, instead of solving their differences, ill vote McCain”, which is going to put the US further down the drain.

You gotta give some credit to the strategists in the republican party, Carl Rove is a mastermind in this game, even though he is pure evil.

I watched an iPhone get a dent yesterday. Not a pretty sight. It was my girlfriends iPhone. She dropped it on the floor, and unfortunally it landed on the edge of a doorstep, causing it to get a dent. Nothing wrong with the glass surface or function of the phone at all.

Ive dropped mine a few times on rocky concrete, without it getting scratches on the glass surface, which has really surprised me. Im sure mine will get a dent or scratch in the future though. Its a piece of equipment, and therefore will get its share of wear and tear.

So to iterate, it IS possible to damage this mythic piece of gadgetry.

But it is still the number of peers The Piratebay had sometime during the past week.A peer is defined in the bittorrent world as one who connects to download/upload some part of a file.

The number 12.000.000 is also about twice the amount of people living in Denmark at the moment. Just think about what that means for a second. It means that a website to share information has twice as many people using it as a small country has inhabitants.

For me, it signifies how large a movement this really is, and how much of a failure that any and all actions taken by the RIAA and the MPAA so far has been. They have failed to stifle the further usage of filesharing technologies, and this will probably still be a loosing battle for them in the foreseable future as well.

Been having alot on my mind lately. Ive been writing down the topics I want to give my opinion on, but just havent gotten around to actually elaborating on them. I will try to rectify that over the comming days.

The main reason for this lack of posts, is because of what happened with my health. I really thought I had those panic attacks beaten.

However, I must admit to myself, that I need to go another round with this enemy of mine.

Check in for some interesting topics in the comming days.