From http://www.break.com/

Of course there are no excuses for causing a riot in class, but this is just absurd.

On a similar note, I've tried to follow the debate of Intelligent Design vs. Darwin's Theory of Evolution. The school board of a public school in Dover, Pennsylvania tried to introduce Intelligent Design as an alternative to evolution but was - thankfully - overruled by U.S. District Judge John Jones. "Breathtaking inanity" were his words :o)

Today Tele2, a Danish Telco, was handed a court order saying that they are to prevent their customers from using the Russian site AllOfMp3.com

Link to article (in Danish)

The site sells mp3s - digital music - without paying royalties directly to the record labels and/or artists. In stead they're in compliance with Russian law, and pay royalties to some media company, that has offered to relay the royalties to the offended parties - which they've declined.
Whether it is "legal" for Danes to buy mp3s in Russia I don't know, but I do know that you can't prevent access to a site - even if a judge says so.

To explain: whenever you enter an internet address (URL), ie. www.porse.org, in a browser, that name is translated to a number, typically represented as 4 digits separated by points, (ie. 82.103.135.61). That is a unique address on the internet and is what is used to get to the website.

The judge proposes that Tele2 disables the translation of www.allofmp3.com to its ip-address as a means of stopping users from going there. Of course the savvy user will find some other means of translating the address and circumvent the "filter". Or some helpful person outside of Tele2's net will put up a proxy - sort of a point-in-between - that will relay requests for allofmp3.com to the proper end point in Russia. You can't prevent access to any place on the internet. No! Any tech would tell you so, and everybody should listen to the techs.As Ib Tolstrup, Tele2, says:

The only real way to comply with the ruling is by blocking access to the entire
internet for all of our customers. And we're not interested in that.

The whole business is futile. Besides, it's not the responsibility of the ISPs to govern where their customers are allowed to go. If the record labels want to prevent users from downloading music from AllOfMp3, they should go to Russia and make AllOfMp3.com stop selling to us Danes - and whomever they want to stop them selling to (the World, I guess)

At any rate, the proposed way of doing it has some pretty eyebrow-raising implications if you ask me! A judge can rule that a certain website is illegal to visit? I don't think so! Next we'll have a judge rule that visits to non-government-sanctioned political parties' websites are illegal? Or websites that promote violence (computer games) or unhealthy lifestyle (Cigarette brands, Alcohol brands, MacDonalds)

In the end it boils down to this: The IFPI (record labels organisation) has benifited from a judge that just didn't know what the f... he was doing and lawyers that didn't know how to handle the pressure.

Tele2 has appealed the ruling so let's hope they bring in some techs. I'd just hate to see things go the way they do in the US, where big cooporations get their way because of unqualified/inept judges and so-called professional auditors, like things have gone in patenting for instance. Now a-days you propably get away with patenting "breathing" if you describe it in a way that a patent issuer won't understand, "A mechanism for enriching the blood stream with oxygen based on a pumping motion of the body".

There.. I've finished. This blog thing is a great outlet of built-up outrage :o)

Back when I was a kid, the big nosed white-framed guy on the left was used on television to fill out the time between scheduled programs... Remember!? Yes, that was before commercials.

Actually back then, they could muster 5-10 minutes of nothing other than an aquarium with some coloured fish and some jazz music in the background if there was a gap in the program - personally I liked the line guy better.

Of course back then we had only three channels to choose from - two of them being Swedish... yup, the good old days.

I just happened to stumble over this cartoon on the web and thought I'd share my find. It's capital entertainment. Link : La Linea

So today I got my phone back, as it was transfered to a new IP-based operator. Not that I use the phone a lot, but it's nice to be reachable again. And nice to be able to call Leah in Bahrain for free (well except for the 4 cents fee for the connection)

Training is suspended this week; autumn vacation, but it's actually nice to get a little time to nurse the numb muscles :-) The streching business has been a little taxing on my poor joints and now they have a little time to recooperate.

Leah and Carsten are/were in Denmark over the weekend and we went to see them Friday. Saturday I got plastered at Klaus' bachelor party, which came back to haunt me Sunday, when Kimie invited the family over for hot chocolate and layered cake (silly English translation, really). But I managed and now I can't wait for next weekend, where I'm going to do absolutely nothing.

And tomorrow it's off to say good bye to Leah, who's leaving for Bahrain by way of a 2 day stay in Paris. She really gets to see the world. Those were the words.

Apparently my new DSL and a working phone line are mutually exclusive, so given the choice I opted for internet rather than phone. It will be back on the 16th when the VoIP transfer comes through. Only cell phone if you need to get in contact with me :-(

Yesterday I volunteered to become webmaster for the Kungfu club. It's half off of the monthly training fee (DKK 300 -> DKK 150) and since I only need to do minor updates to the site this is quite a bargain! Of course, those who know me will know that I probably can't resist making a few changes - the design is a bit out-dated, and it would be neat with some more user interaction.

Other than that, I've got a busy schedule these days. Lots of Birthdays (including Kimie's!) and a trip to Norway and a polterabend just to mention the most pressing appointments.


What else... oh yeah! You should seriously check out this link www.crypticsea.com, the Bridge Building Game. Given a budget of $X build a bridge across a gap strong enough for a train to pass. The bridge is of course subject to the usual rules of physics (eg. Gravity) and building a successful bridge is actually a bit harder than you would think.

I know, It sounds a bit nerdy and the graphics are ... well, uninspiring, but the game play is extremely catching. You start out with a "is that it?!?", progress to a "wtf? Why doesn't that work" and you end up spending hours refining your design and cutting costs in order to beat your colleagues. In the end you might even gain some bridge engineering expertise (ok, -understanding).