Yup. It's official, and you can download the source code now. I understand it wasn't an easy process, but it's good that it's finally done. The licenses seem to be Apache License v2 and the Python License.
Ugh. I don't like Sourceforge at all. I've always found its interface to be repulsing, and I can never find what I am looking for.
Now, if only there were more open source hackers on S60... Symbian is difficult[1], and not very endearing to a casual programmer (though you could arguably say the same thing about MIDP Java). But I hope the source code will allow others to also work on their alternative programming environments (OPL, anyone?) for S60 as well. These new platforms do make smartphone programming a lot easier.
So, Anina, the resident supermodel of the blogosphere got an ultimatum from her agency: stop doing the tech stuff, because "fashion and technology do not go together".
Eh? Excuse me? But... that's what she's famous for!
Maybe they're scared that one of "their girls" is not conforming to be just a beauty, but also shows to have brains. Maybe they're annoyed that she's getting more attention that the agency. Maybe they're scared that if she keeps doing this tech stuff, she's going to go away to better-paying jobs. High technology is probably the area (sports and motor sports perhaps excluded) where the demographics couldn't be more suited for beautiful women who know what they're talking about (and can crank their own PHP).
Maybe they're just scared at change, like everyone else.
I was just listening to a podcast with an interview from Kim Stanley Robinson, and he mentioned something pretty alarming which I hadn't really realized before... The carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (which is a strong contributor to global warming) is also affecting the balance in the oceans - and when it's mixed with water, it becomes carbon acid. This acid is pretty mild, but still, in sufficient quantities, enough to prevent things like shells forming on tiny little marine organisms.
The problem is, these little tiny things form the bottom of the food pyramid. Fish eat them, bigger fish eat those fish, and after a few layers, we humans are at the top of the chain.
What happens to a pyramid, if the base suddenly crumbles?
From The Guardian:
They found that by 2100, the amount of carbonate available for marine organisms would drop by 60%. By 2050, there could be too little carbonate in surface waters for organisms to form shells.
"Oops."
(More in the New Scientist.)
Hilarious spoof of an "antipiracy" comic book. In Finnish.
The fun thing is that the author lives in the US, and the work is protected under USC 107§, the parody act. It may well be that distributing this is illegal in Finland, as it's a derivative work... But I seriously doubt anyone is going to give a shit.
(Via everyone.)
Whoo! Now here's a cool AJAX app: Meebo allows you to access MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, AIM and Google Talk from within your browser - and it works through corporate firewalls, too! Now you can access your IM from anywhere...
It looks very good, too: You get cool stuff like scalable and movable windows in your browser, emoticons, a buddylist, etc.
(Thanks to Heikki T for the tip.)
Interesting... Both GVU - the German "antipiracy" -team, run by the media and entertainment industry - and MPAA - the US movie producer's association - have been caught redhanded doing things they want to stop others from doing. GVU is spreading files in p2p networks (in Finnish) to try to catch others doing the same thing, whereas MPAA has been copying and distributing DVDs without the rightsholder's permission.
There is, of course, some more justification for both. But copyright organizations are not the police, and they cannot and must not assume the same rights as the police has. The idea that law enforcement is done by private, unaccountable entities is not a good idea; not in practice nor morally.
For the latter it might appear that MPAAs copying is governed by Fair Use. And I actually agree; that's something that could well be covered by fair use. But considering that MPAA has been shouting for years that there is no fair use, and considering that someone in the entertainment industry wants to eradicate these old-style "rights", this seems very... what's that word? Hypocrite?
(Via numerous places, mostly Boing Boing and Slashdot.)
One of the things about working for a large organization is the incredible amount of Powerpoint that will amass throughout the company. I have gigabytes of .ppt:s in my hard drives; some of them still useful, some of them not. There are lots of search tools which peek into these and allow me to find decks that I remember seeing, but what I would really, really like to have is some sort of a way to collect all the corporate powerpoints lying around in the intranet under something else than a search engine. After all, copy-paste of useful slides is a common practice in the corporate world: you don't have to worry about copyright, since by default all slides you and everyone else did belong to the corporation. (Attribution is of course good to do; else you might piss off people.)
Finding information from an company intranet is usually quite a problem. The search engine trickery learned with Google does not necessarily work, since intranets tend to be strongly hierarchical and managed, and you can't rely on the usual "if it's linked to often, it's more important" -thang as much as you can in the internet. The content also tends to be a mix of HTML, Powerpoint and Word, which do not lend easily to free-form hyperlinking. Powerpoints can be notoriously difficult to find any context in, especially if you prefer the Steve Jobs one-word-per-slide-but-plenty-of-pictures -method, so the search engines cannot index them properly.
One such other media which is difficult to index are pictures. However, Flickr shows that even from this chaos you can get some sort of order. JC Hertz has found use for Flickr to store US Army satellite images.
Why wouldn't it work for Powerpoint and associated Office files as well? Having a central repository that you can just dump your powerpoints for someone else to find some use in, or at least keep your own slides organized through tags and sets, might be a nice little productivity increaser. Or just result in more powerpoint, who knows... I've personally started to prefer Word documents these days; the clipped, terse bullets of PPT tend to simplify and trivialise things too much.
(Free idea, now go and make something. And come back to me whenever you have it running. If you do good, I'll buy it... :)
(Credits to Stephen and Charlie and ~ChrisH for the idea.)
*choke* The perpetual beta is over! Google Blog reports that Google News is no longer beta - the first time since it was launched in 2002.
That's one long beta testing period.
Maybe the web application space is maturing? Nah...
Joi Ito has an interesting entry about the Japanese culture, the Live Door case (in Finnish) and what one should and should not do. A lot of it is globally applicable, like the fact that you should think what you say, and that breaking the law because everyone else does it too, is not a good idea.
Since Kolibri asks, I think I feel obliged to answer...
- I grunt while I am coding. I hold my breath and release it such that it sounds like I'm having a fit. This tends to annoy everyone around.
- I start sentences and never finish them, when my attention wanders off somewhere else.
- I like to pile up sandwiches. Anything goes - I pile butter, sausage, liver paté, cheese, egg, cucumber... As long as the cheese is on top, it works well. The cheese always goes on top, because otherwise my fingers get greasy or otherwise dirty when eating the sandwich. I do this also on Carelian pastries, which scares people.
- If I make a full turn to the left, I need to make a full turn to the right "to unwind". This was far stronger impulse when I was young (like seven or so), but I still feel it. By the way, I've never, ever, mentioned this to anyone before. Probably because I thought I was weird, and everyone was normal. How completely mistaken I was...
- I throw away chocolate. I buy a lot of it, but I forget to eat it, and I end up throwing it away two years after its best-before date. This tends to scare women, for some reason.
I have plenty of other weird habits, but these seemed to be 'work-safe' to list. And yeah, this was after my fourth beer.
Well, it's not quite out yet, but I've experimented with it a few times, and it's very cool. But the web site is up at the brand new Nokia Research web site.
Having a industrial-grade web server on your cell phone is a pretty good sign that the thing in your pocket is a full microcomputer with full computing and connectivity capabilities. However, quite a few people still see the cell phone as exactly that - something that you call with, and nothing more.
I usually get two kinds of reactions from people whenever I mention that I work for Nokia. The first group starts complaining that the current cell phones are too complicated, and that they really need just a cell phone. And SMS. And clock. And the ability to change the ring tone. And bigger keys and display, but a smaller form factor.
The other kind of a reaction I get from people who tell me - in no uncertain terms - that Nokia should do X, where X ranges from an extra button to do whatever people happen to think is important for them, to some really wild stuff.
(Then there's the third group that tells me why Nokia platforms suck, but let's not get there right now. Maybe later.)
Anyhow, (I'm up to my third beer tonight), and I'm setting up my aunt's new printer, and I've almost completely forgotten what I was going to talk about....
...
Yeah, the perception of mobile phones. It's odd: mobile phones are such intensely personal devices, that people really see them completely differently. Some people can't simply comprehend why manufacturers roll out devices with all sorts of capabilities that most people will never use, but on the other hand, there's a number of people that want to have PC-quality graphics, sound and bandwidth in the cell phone, too. And it's really, really hard to cater for both extremes. At some level, cell phones are always about compromises, far more than PCs ever are.
However, I think it's still exciting that people are constantly pushing the boundaries on what cell phones can be. Having a web server in your cell phone might not feel such a grand thing (I'm sure a lot of you are asking "why" at this moment), but I think it's important in the exploratory sense. The reason why you now have SMS is that someone once thought that it might be cool to be able to send short text messages around, though he couldn't exactly figure out why you might want to do that on a crappy keypad. Who knows what a web server in your cell phone might turn out to be in a few years?
(Via Matt.)
...we accepted an offer to buy our apartment. It happened right in the wood section of Bauhaus, with everyone wearing jeans and a lot of randomly arranged dots of paint. Not very ceremonious, but odd enough for my taste.
A big load off my shoulders, I can tell you that. Having two apartments and two house loans at the same time is... frigging scary, even though it's apparently one of the things that adults do for fun every few years.
Our place was sold in four days, so I now owe Outi a dinner - I claimed it would take at least four to six weeks to sell it; but she was confident that we would get it sold sooner.
Always bet on the worse option. I lost, but for the price of one dinner I get to sleep a lot better. Had I won - well, at least I would've gotten the dinner.
Yup, it's available.
Having said that, I'm happy with the new MacBook Pro announcement. It looks pretty damned cool - though I worry a bit about the fact that they do not announce the battery life anywhere. So I'm assuming it sucks. Anyhoo, I'll be waiting for the 12" version of the same - I don't have enough space in my backpack to lug around a 15"...
New York Times reports that USPTO has teamed up with IBM, Red Hat, Novell and some universities to provide better visibility to open source for their patent examiners.
The patent office has come under increasing pressure in recent years from critics who contend that it issues patents without adequate investigation of earlier inventions. As a result, conflicts over published patents have loosed an avalanche of intellectual property litigation.
This is good news. Even if it's just a small step - they still have to train their examiners to use whatever new system they come up with, and making overworked people to adopt new ways of working can be pretty... straining.
For the IPR-discussion challenged among you: Patents good. Janne like. Janne think USPTO is overworked. Janne think they not have capacity to examine patents well enough. Janne thinks many crap patents issued because of that. Janne thinks many companies taking advantage of this. Janne thinks it is good to help USPTO to work better. Janne thinks more work needs to be done, though. Janne wonders, maybe copyright should be more like patents.
Janne thinks imbecile people will now think Janne said "copyright must be exactly like patents."
This little gem comes from Unacosa. Riikka writes:
There's even a Flickr pool of images from the video.
(Sorry for continued Finnish content. I'll resume my normal habits, once I get some things off my chest about the copyright legislation...)
Näin uuden vuoden (ja Lex Karpelan) kunniaksi pitää nyt selvittää yksi asia.
On väärin puhua kopiosuojauksista. Oikea termi on "käyttörajoite".
Jaa mitä välii vai? Antakaas kun setä selittää:
Tietokoneet osaavat tehdä hyvin kahta asiaa: yhteenlasku ja kopiointi. Kaikki tietokoneet (ja sitä kautta koko kulutuselektroniikka) rakentuu näiden kahden yksinkertaisen toiminnon varaan. (Nykyään tietokoneet osaavat tosin tehdä hyvin myös kertolaskuja, mutta aritmetiikkaa yhtä kaikki.)
Pelkästään yhteenlaskusta ei ole iloa - mies, joka osaa laskea yhteen päässään, mutta ei osaa kirjoittaa sitä paperille tahi lausua ääneen, on yhtä tyhjän kanssa. Samaten tietokone, joka ei pystyisi kopioimaan, olisi tarpeeton.
Tietokoneelle se, että estää kopioinnin, on noin sama kuin estäisi ihmistä hengittämästä. Ei hyvä idea pidemmän päälle. Tuppaa tulemaan rumihia.
Kun nyt puhutaan kopiosuojauksista, ei suinkaan tarkoiteta sitä, että kopiot olisi jotenkin suojattu, esimerkiksi sadetta vastaan. Oikeampi olisi puhua kopioinnin estosta, sillä sitähän sillä pyritään tekemään. Samanlainen uussana on "murtosuojaus", joka kuulostaa paljon paremmalta kuin "murron esto". Estäminenhän on aina negatiivista, suojaaminen positiivista, vaikka kyse olisikin samasta asiasta. Kun siis puhutaan "kopiosuojasta", tarkoitetaan että kyseessä on "kopioinnin esto", mutta se halutaan saada kuulostamaan kivalta ja positiiviselta asialta. Vähän niinkuin kuvailisi hirttoköyttä "hengityssuojaukseksi" eikä "hengittämisen estoksi".
Tietokoneet (ja CD-soittimetkin; se sinun "jog-proof" -mallisi toimii kopioimalla musiikkia CD:ltä väliaikaisesti muistiin) eivät voi olla sen enempää kopioimatta musiikkia kuin sinä voit olla kuuntelematta sitä.
Noin esimerkiksi, teen tässä alla kaksi kopiota ns. "kopiosuojatusta" tiedostosta (jonka ostin iTunes Music Storesta tätä tarkoitusta varten). Molemmat kopiot toimivat oikein mainiosti. Se, mitä en voi tehdä, on siirtää tuota tiedostoa toiselle tietokoneelle niin että se toimisi, koska iTunes-ohjelma vahtii, että kyseistä musiikkikappaletta soitetaan vain yhdellä tietokoneella. Kyseessä ei siis ole kopioiden tekemisen rajoittaminen, vaan käytön rajoittaminen.
[DralaFi:tmp] jalkanen% ls -la total 7488 drwxr-xr-x 3 jalkanen staff 102 Jan 7 18:44 . drwxr-xr-x 3 jalkanen staff 102 Jan 7 18:44 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 jalkanen staff 3831978 Dec 6 00:07 15 Feliz Navidad.m4p [DralaFi:tmp] jalkanen% cp 15\ Feliz\ Navidad.m4p feliz.m4p [DralaFi:tmp] jalkanen% ls -la total 14976 drwxr-xr-x 4 jalkanen staff 136 Jan 9 20:58 . drwxr-xr-x 3 jalkanen staff 102 Jan 7 18:44 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 jalkanen staff 3831978 Dec 6 00:07 15 Feliz Navidad.m4p -rw-r--r-- 1 jalkanen staff 3831978 Jan 9 20:58 feliz.m4p [DralaFi:tmp] jalkanen% cp 15\ Feliz\ Navidad.m4p feliz2.m4p [DralaFi:tmp] jalkanen% ls -la total 22464 drwxr-xr-x 5 jalkanen staff 170 Jan 9 20:59 . drwxr-xr-x 3 jalkanen staff 102 Jan 7 18:44 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 jalkanen staff 3831978 Dec 6 00:07 15 Feliz Navidad.m4p -rw-r--r-- 1 jalkanen staff 3831978 Jan 9 20:58 feliz.m4p -rw-r--r-- 1 jalkanen staff 3831978 Jan 9 20:59 feliz2.m4p
(Juh. Se on Celine Dionia. Ajattelin, että tämän kopiointi ainakaan ei vie minua helvettiin.)
Tekijänoikeuskeskustelussa erityisesti mediateollisuus on keskittynyt kopioiden tekemisen pahuuteen. Tämä osoittaa hyvin vanhakantaisen ajatusmallin, joka tosin on helppo myydä asiasta mitään ymmärtämättömille. Digitaalisessa maailmassa kopiointi on luonnollista, ja tyystin normaali toimenpide, jota tapahtuu triljoonia kertoja koko ajan. Sitä ei voi estää.
Se, mitä näillä rajoitustekniikoilla halutaan tehdä, on estää luvaton käyttö. Voit toki kopioida DRM-suojatun tiedoston kaverillesi vaikka miljoona kertaa, mutta hän ei voi käyttää (kuunnella, katsoa) sitä, ellei ole erikseen hakenut lupaa.
Luvattoman käytön määrittelee sitten oikeuksien omistaja. Hän voi esimerkiksi antaa oikeuden kuunnella musiikkikappale vain kolme kertaa. Hän voi sanoa, että saat kuunnella kuukauden ajan kappaletta, mutta sen jälkeen joudut maksamaan lisää. Hän voi jopa muuttaa oikeuksiasi kesken kaiken, jos epäilee sinun syyllistyneen johonkin epäilyttävään - lakimiehet pitävät huolta siitä, että he varaavat itselleen tämän oikeuden. Euroopassa kuluttajansuoja on sen verran voimakas, että täällä tuskin nähdään pahimpia ylilyöntejä, mutta monessa muussa maassa käyttörajoituksilla voidaan tehdä kuluttajasta mediateollisuuden orja kuin huomaamatta. Miltä kuulostaisi käyttörajoite, jonka mukaan sinun on katsottava televisiota vähintään kolme tuntia päivässä, jotta saat pitää oikeuden katsoa sitä jatkossakin maksamatta? Mahdollista, joskin melko epätodennäköistä.
Käyttörajoitteet muuttavat sen, miten käytämme esimerkiksi musiikkia. Et enää "osta" itsellesi rajoittamatonta oikeutta kuunnella musiikkia missä ja milloin haluat ja millä tahansa välineellä ostamalla CD:n, vaan lunastat itsellesi rajoitetun, yksipuolisesti muutettavan ja koska tahansa peruutettavan lisenssin kuunnella musiikkia hyvin rajatussa ympäristössä. Päätös siitä, miten ja missä musiikkia saa kuunnella, siirtyy kuluttajalta tekijänoikeuksien omistajalle. Tämä kuluttajien oikeuksien radikaali muutos on juuri se, mihin uuden tekijänoikeuslain 50a-c pykälät tähtäävät, ja tämä on se, mihin kritiikki kohdistuu. Se vain on valitettavasti onnistuttu huutamaan piiloon kummankin tahon toimesta: toiset ovat keskittyneet meluamaan MP3-soittimien laillisuudesta, ja toiset taas syyttävät kaikkia lain kritisoijia piraateiksi.
Nämä digitaaliset käyttörajoitteet ovat mediateollisuuden märkä unelma. CD:t ja DVD:t ovat tällä hetkellä hyvin heikosti suojattuja, eikä niihin tulla saamaan toimivia kopiointiestoja mitenkään - markkinamiesten puheista huolimatta. Sen sijaan uudet tarkkapiirtotelevisiot ja uudet audiolevyformaatit tulevat tukemaan niin tiukkoja kopiointiestoja kuin markkinat vetävät. Ja koska uudet tekijänoikeuslait tekevät näiden murtamisesta hyvin rajusti laitonta (noin tappoon verrattavaa rikollisuutta), mediateollisuus tulee voimakkaasti markkinoimaan ja työntämään näitä uusia järjestelmiä markkinoille. Esimerkiksi vaikkapa teräväpiirtojärjestelmissä käytetty HDMI-standardi, jonka yli kuvatieto siirtyy salattuna - ennen saatoit ottaa SCART-liittimestä kuvan ja digitoida sen; uusissa järjestelmissä tämä ei enää onnistukaan.
Tämän takia ei itse asiassa ole kovin järkevää boikotoida DVD:itä. Kaikki uudet järjestelmät ovat merkittävästi enemmän kuluttajan oikeuksia rajoittavia - jos luulit, että aluekoodit ja Linuxin toimimattomuus olivat hankalia, niin et ole nähnyt vielä mitään. Miten olisi videonauhuri, joka poistaa ohjelmia vaikket ole ehtinyt katsella niitä? Tai järjestelmä, joka murtautuu koneeseesi vahtiakseen, ettet huijaa nettipeleissä? Tai jo monta kertaa mainittu "Ei käyttäjät tiedä, mikä on rootkit, joten miksi niistä pitäisi välittää" -Sonyn haittaohjelma.
On helppo keskittyä keskustelemaan CD-levyistä, koska ne ovat tällä hetkellä tärkein ja konkreettisin median muoto, joita myös levitetään laittomasti eniten. Mutta todellisuudessa käyttörajoitteisiin liittyy paljon pahempia uhkia, jotka realisoituvat vasta muutaman vuoden päästä. Lex Karpela on laadittu "tulevaisuutta silmälläpitäen", sanovat lain laatijat, ja ovat harvinaisen oikeassa. Tulevaisuuden media tulee olemaan rajoitettu tavoilla, joita me emme voi edes kuvitella - ja mediateollisuus haalii itselleen vain entistä enemmän valtaa. Kyse ei ole enää vain rahan tekemisestä; tässä on jo kyse puhtaan vallan kahmimisesta. Keksikää tähän jokin sopiva lainaus rahan ja vallan korruptoivasta vaikutuksesta, minä en jaksa kaivaa sopivaa niiden miljoonien joukosta.
Tärkein ase tässä taistelussa on se, että ihmiset ymmärtävät, mihin ovat päänsä pistämässä kun he ostavat jotain käyttörajoitteista. Yhtenä tärkeänä tekijänä on se, että asioista puhutaan niiden oikeilla nimillä.
Puhutaan siis rehellisesti "käyttörajoitteista" eikä "kopiosuojauksista". Puhutaan "musiikin vuokraamisesta", ei "musiikin ostamisesta". Ja puhutaan myös siitä, miten uudet, hienot teknologiat merkitsevät muutakin kuin enemmän pikseleitä.
If you get this, you're a Finnish-speaking nerd. If you laugh at it, you're a sad, Finnish-speaking nerd.
On a completely unrelated issue: it's a good thing I have a tea mug which has a lid. Otherwise I might have spilled it on my keyboard, because I was laughing so hard.
(Via Irre on IRC.)
If you have already decided not to buy any CDs with any sort of DRM (Digital Rights Management, i.e. copy protection, i.e. broken CDs), you might as well sign this pledge. This is organized by "Free Culture@NYU", who have also set up a wiki with more information.
(Via BB.)
Niin, jotkut ovat jo odotelleet tämän vuoden Kultaisia Kuukkeleita, mutta valitettavasti tosiseikka on se, että muuton, remontin, töiden ja JSPWikin puristuksessa minulla ei ole kerta kaikkiaan aikaa tänä keväänä järjestää ko. pippaloita. Sitäpaitsi, olen muuttamassa pois Kalliosta ja Helsingistä, olen jo lähtenyt top-listalta, en lue suurinta osaa top-listan blogeista, enkä ole ehtinyt käydä sisäpiirin pippaloissakaan, niin ei minulla oikeastaan ole enää kvalifikaatioitakaan... Antaisin kuitenkin sitäpaitsi omavaltaisesti kaikki palkinnot Vahtikoiralle, jota ylläpitävät kaverit ja tutut. ;-)
Anyhoo, tämä tarkoittaa sitä, että Kuukkelikisan järjestäjän paikka blogimaailman kuumimmassa huumassa on tarjolla. Vaatimuksena ehdoton, vahva oma näkemys, bileidenorganisoimiskyky ja kyky hermostuttaa tosikoita. Palkkioksi saa oikeudet kultainenkuukkeli.net -domainiin, ja... no, joitain mustelmia egoon. Hyvällä lykyllä kisan järjestämällä saattaa löytää itselleen myös bloggaavan kaunottaren (tai komistuksen. Toimi ainakin minun kohdallani. Siis se kaunotar, ei se komistus.)
Yhteydenotot pers. koht..
(English Summary: No time to arrange Finnish blog awards this year; too much real work to do. Searching for hardboiled volunteers.)
Heh. Dumb jokes on the internet are usually just dumb, but this one is a pretty good blonde joke.
(Thanks to Jocka.)
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(Apologies to Monty Python.)
Last Wednesday, Darla Mack complained about poor Nokia warranty support in the US.
Yesterday, it was already #5 in google.com, and #6 in google.fi, when you search for nokia warranty. All other pages are brochures or ebay announcements. It's therefore quite likely that if you are looking for Nokia warranty information (e.g. if you're planning to purchase a Nokia phone), you'll end up reading this rant. And since people probably keep linking to it, it'll float on the top for months, maybe years.
There's no way to tell what it leads to. It cost Kryptonite 10M USD in replacements after someone showed how to pick their locks with a ball point pen, and who knows how much in lost sales. On the other hand, no matter how negatively people write about Microsoft, they still make tons of money.
There has been negative and positive criticism throughout all of the internet. Mostly it's been limited to closed or semiopen groups of likeminded people (discussion boards, USENET, mailing lists, IRC). It's just that now single blog posts - single opinions - can become global influencers through the power of the search engines. These engines don't have any preprogrammed idea about corporate blurbs and corporate PR-folks being more reliable than anyone else. They play by new rules, born out of chaos and grey, devised by pale geeks in their dark chambers.
A lot of companies don't know how to play by these rules. The rules are not clear to begin with, and especially with the big behemoths it takes time for them to understand the game, and they refuse to enter the arena before they know what the rules are. The game scares them, because they are afraid to make mistakes. Some companies just go in, and play by the ear until they learn the rules. Others sit on the edge of the field, and try to figure out the rules by watching the players. Some companies get dragged into the game, kicking and screaming. Some can afford to ignore the game altogether, and keep going just like they have been doing for the past 200 years.
This "Web 2.0" -thing is like playing Calvinball on a global scale: nobody quite knows what the rules are, a lot of them are made on the spot, and winners can become losers overnight. (Calvinball is better, though, because you get to wear a cool mask. In Web 2.0 you have AJAX, but it's not that cool.)
The question is - what are the rules of the game? What do I tell people who ask why we should care about some blogger somewhere? Do they really matter, or is everyone just having self-delusional feelings of self-importance? How much would it cost to just ignore the internet? Can it be influenced, and how? How to win the game? Or should you just aim at surviving it?
(Disclaimer: I work for Nokia, but I am a private person and my opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the company, even if I am trying my best to make my opinions to be the company opinions as well, which is very unlikely to succeed, but I like to bang my head against walls anyway, just ask my colleagues, and thank you, I will go and make tea now.)
Some people change the entire looks of their blog when the new year comes. Some even change the entire blog engine, or at least update to a new version. Me, I'm just lazy, so I change the subtitle.
The Finnish Ministry of Education has released a FAQ on the new copyright legislation.
It's the worst FAQ ever. It's full of legalese, has few examples, no discussion, is ambiguous, hardly answers any questions, and looks like a troglodyte cut-n-pasted sections directly from the law onto a web site.
There are answers there, but they're vague and difficult to understand, or apply to real life. These folks clearly have no idea what kind of questions are the frequently asked ones... (Hint: go to Ihan itse, the handicraft discussion board, and look around.)
Then again, I don't think they had a very clear idea about the law in the first place.
Private comments? Drop me an email. Or complain in a nearby pub - that'll help.
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More info...
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| "Main" last changed on 10-Aug-2015 21:44:03 EEST by JanneJalkanen. |
