NEWS |  ARCHIVES |  LINKS |  SITEMAP |  CONTACT

My old pal Kornelius just sent me a PM about Cohen's live performance at the Beacon Theatre in New York City, which was recorded by NPR. The recording is now available for online streaming, just like they did with Tom Wait's Glitter And Doom concert in Atlanta GA which is also available as an mp3 "album" at the pirate bay (just like right over here). I just want to express my thanks to the NPR for doing this, because the kind of audio equipment you need for a good recording is kind of hard to carry into a concert hall:)

Link of the day: Leonard Cohen live @ the Beacon Theatre NYC (stream)

.. I must admit I read the Bacon Theatre but that's just because I'm hungry.

Me, Kornelius, Apoet, Koew, Lady C, Lady C's mother, my own mother, my sister, the mysterious mr. S and around 12,991 others saw Cohen live @ Bislet Stadium 1st of July 2008. It was a great concert, and if you want to see the pictures or videos I took just head over to post #1255. Now I have more audio to grab when I get home:)

Last night around 2am when I was typing in my notes from Stallman's talk on Copyright I was interrupted by some serious banging down the hall. Not the kind of banging I expect you gang-banging hustlers would think of, no, this was the simple repetitive collision of physical objects you'd usually not ascribe to pornography at all. Banging doors maybe. Or shotguns.

The banging did not cease, and it was so loud I felt the vibrations in the table where I was sitting. At the top floor. I stepped away from the laptop and hurried into the bedroom where Lady C was sound asleep. For all I knew, it could be the janitor trying to hack away at the terrible, razor sharp icicles we have hanging under the roof. A lady was killed in this city a couple of years back. If the pure force of 10 kilos of ice doesn't kill you, the spike through your neck will. Late winter is the time of impalement-hysteria. Anyway, hysteria aside it was still a little weird to be doing this at 2am in the morning.


This is just outside our kitchen window, 5th floor.
There's also a kindergarten 20 feet from the door. Great combination. Kid on a stick?

- C, hey wake up!
She barely managed to not open her eyes.
- Uhhh?
- Haven't you heard the noise? What is that? Is it normal?
- No, she said. Thumper.. someone's summoning a maker..

Not much help there, I reckoned, and went to the door. I always feel like something of a pervert when I stand there looking through the judas hole. Judas must have been a pervert for getting a peeping hole in the door named after him. I think of construction sites in cartoons or public bathrooms for women in Japan..

I couldn't see anything, reached for the door handle, but changed my mind. The pounding was really violent, it sounded as if someone was trying to kick down a door. For real. Or firing a shotgun, my overactive imagination suggested. Thanks. I went back to the bedroom and by this time even sleeping beauty had heard the ruckus.

Not long after a police van arrived. And another one. Four officers got out of the car, with see-through crowd control shields and weapons drawn. Fucking someone firing a shotgun! I heard something sounding like pistol shots, and then everything went more or less silent. The second van left the scene of the crime. Twenty minutes later the other car followed, and they hadn't apprehended anyone.

Someone some floors below us had probably just had a little too much to drink, and was dealing with his frustration by confronting the furniture with it. That's IKEA for you. And another night in the outskirts of Oslo. You may laugh about my thoughts regarding the shotgun and all, but please check out the national papers a few years back when two people were massacred with Uzis just across the street from here, in one of the flats you can probably find on the picture above. Just after Christmas we saw a row in a flat facing ours, and an old television set was thrown out the window. Goes to show that in Torshov, TVs and icicles will kill ya. Good luck!

Kaada's new album Junkyard Nostalgias is up for sale, and they only have a few copies of the limited edition left. Handfolded by Polish workers.

Head over to kaada.no/shop to grab your copy!

UPCOMING SHOWS (W/KAADA ORKESTER)
Mar 26 Lyngdal Kulturhus
Mar 27 Sandnes Kulturhus
Mar 28 Bergen, Hulen
Apr 02 Drammens Teater
Apr 17 Oslo, Parkteatret
Apr 18 Nøtterøy Kulturhus
Apr 19 Kristiansand, Kickscene
Apr 22 Blå Grotte Fredrikstad
Apr 23 Stryn Kulturhus
Apr 24 Rokken, Volda
Apr 25 Blæst, Trondheim
Apr 26 Oppdal Kulturhus

Today (Monday) I had the honor of listening to one of the founding fathers of Free Software as we know it. Mister Free Software Himself, namely Richard Stallman. If you haven't read the Zenwalk or Slackware manual, or are into the politics and philosophy of computing and software, you may not realise what an important figure he is in the history of Free software. Quoting from The origins of free software in the Zenwalk manual:

History begins at the start of the eighties, when Richard Stallman, a researcher of the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, U.S.A.), faced an ethical dilemma. His IT research section had been closed down; for years, he had shared his knowledge with his colleagues. Now, did he have to sell his knowledge to the highest bidder, or would he take the occasion to share his knowledge with the world? To appease his conscience, he created the principle of 'free software'.

Most of the linux users in the world refer to linux as linux, although the appropriate term is a collective of "GNU plus Linux", abbreviated to GNU/Linux. The GNU part is the work of Stallman and other pioneers to create a totally free operating system, but lacked some software until Linus created the Linux kernel. You may read more about that in the Zenwalk manual. The two of them together make the brilliant OS I use at work and at home every day. But they may still be licensed differently.

Most other users of Windows and Mac OS, may still have come in contact with Stallman's work or other people's work, because it is licensed under the General Public License (GPL). You may also have been in contact with other material, such as user contributed text, in the form of Wikipedia for instance. If you go to any article at Wikipedia.org you may see that "All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License." This license is the work of Richard Stallman, as the president of the Free Software Foundation, and many others. With a long beard and a growing belly, think of him as the Santa Claus of Software. As the giver of gifts, there comes great responsibility.

Hence, Stallman specified 'free software' with four fundamental freedoms:

0. The liberty to run the program, without restrictions upon its usage. 
1. The liberty to study the inner workings of a program, and to adapt it to your needs. For this, access to the source code is a prerequisite. 
2. The liberty to redistribute copies. 
3. The liberty to improve the program, and to publish those improvements, so the whole community can benefit from it. For this also, access to the source code is a prerequisite. 

The talk was about Free Software and Copyright (or Copyright vs. Community in the Age of Computer Networks - Free software and beyond) totally avoiding the cloudy term 'intellectual property' which somehow tries to combine several different sets of laws with little other result than confusion and powergrabbing. Stallman went on to give the historical grounds of copyright, as an industrial economy of scale in the days when the printing press was invented and became a part of society, as an example of how technology affects ethical issues. Various monarchies gave monopolies on certain books to certain publishers as gifts. While 17th century Britain granted a 14 year copyright to the author in order to encourage writers. This has since been the picture painted by the copyright holders, or more likely, those enforcing those rights. Because many authors, according to Stallman, suffer from their work being quote unquote protected by major corporations. While it is true that a few stars, like J.K. Rowling, certainly promotes copyright there are many authors whose work is kept from them because their representatives are using copyright against them! (Not irrelevant is Don't Buy Harry Potter Books by Stallman.)

Stallman went on to discuss several types of technologies which are really good example of how the end user is exploited by evil End User License Agreements, notably technology that is hidden within the proprietary source code and thereby does harm to its user. There are "gaping backdoors" in Windows and Mac OS which allows the developers to make any change they want to a user's system, and more infamous are the different forms of Digital Restrictions Management software, as Stallman called it: DVD encryption (which was broken by DVD Jon &tc. but whose work is illegal in the US due to the Digital Millenium Copying Act), AACS encryption used in HD DVDs and the PS3, not to mention the additional layer(s) suspected in the blue-ray format. Stallman also made a point of the original DRM rootkits that used GNU software and was therefore in direct violation to its license because they didn't distribute the code.

He went on to talk about the "Sony Shredder" (Reader) and "Amazon Swindle" (Kindle) which is the new way the major copyright holders and/or corporations are trying to keep us from freely using information. Think of how many times you've borrowed a book from a friend or from the library. They don't want us to do that anymore, and they can control this by adding DRM to the socalled e-books that are on the rise these days. Then Stallman asked this question: "What should a democratic government do about this?" The answer? Reduce the extent of copyright. To do this, the first thing it would have to do is to shorten the time a copyright is valid. His suggestion is 10 years, because it is more than 3 times the normal publishing cycle, but he noted that authors he had lectured strongly suggested no more than five years for reasons I've already mentioned. But the length is not all of it, copyright can't be as narrow as it is today and must take into account the social use of the work in question. Therefore, he suggested three major categories:

1. Functional works 
2. Works that state thoughts or opinion 
3. Works of art whose impact lies in itself 

I'll deal with these in a second, let me just remind you that my notes from the talk are not perfect, so I can't guarantee that everything is 100% accurate!

The first group deals with software, recipies, referential works such as encyclopedias, text fonts and all those how-tos I have written during my years. For this group, taking into consideration its social use, the user must have ALL FOUR FREEDOMS.

The second group deal with memoirs, essays of opinion, and scientific papers. To modify these kinds of works would not make sense and would harm the work, because modification would mean misrepresentation. Therefore the user should have the Freedom to non-commercially REDISTRIBUTE the work, but copyright should be allowed or even encouraged as a means of encouragement and industrial regulation.

The third group seems a lot harder to work out, because what is a modified version of a work of art? Some would claim that the artistic integrity would suffer. But consider then the case of Shakespeare. He borrowed a lot from other authors and his works would with today's copyright laws have been considered strictly illegal. Like Stallman said: "Shakespeare is trying to make a cheap ripoff of my book!"
So modifications and the freedom to do them are important, but how do we best protect the quote unquote artistic integrity of the artistic work? Stallman came to a sort of compromise by stating that, okay, if you have to wait for the work to go into public domain, then it doesn't really do any harm. So copyright is again encouraged, but naturally a reduced copyright to cover modification while granting everyone the freedom to non-commercially redistribute.

How do we acchieve this as a society?
Remember that the society uses peer-to-peer file sharing applications, and that they are wholly legal as such, including the infamous Pirate Bay. (When asked what he thinks about piracy, Stallman always answer: "Attacking a ship is a bad thing." This because sharing is not piracy, it's a social conduct, as apart from the anti-social conduct which piracy must be recognized as. Just as 'intellectual property' is a term coined to confuse, 'piracy' is a misnomer for natural human conduct.) Therefore the means to do this does not have to stand in the way of freedom. Stallman proposed two methods:

The first is the method of taxation. We pay taxes maybe to our ISP or everyone in general, and a certain amount would go to artists judging by how popular they are. But the division of wealth would not be linear proportions, instead the superstars would make a little less and the well-established ones would make enough to stay alive.

Not everyone enjoys taxation, however, and Stallman subscribes to this view himself. So another method could be voluntary payment. The examples here are pretty easy to remember from the top of our heads, namely Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails$ who distributed their music online and asked the listener to pay what they liked. They made a lot of money, but they had a starting fee. Stallman mentioned Monty Python whose sales have skyrocketed after they put everything they've ever made on youtube, and a Canadian singer who put everything she's ever made online and asked the user to pay what they like (starting price zero). She actually makes more money per song than your regular superstar on iTunes!
But, he added, the process should be made as simple as possible. Today we still have to whip out our credit cards or log into our banks to donate or something. A simple DONATE or VOLUNTARY PAYMENT button should be added to all software media players. Great idea, if you ask me! Just remove the DRM and ensure the user's rights to privacy and freedom.

It was an interesting and inspiring talk to listen to, both as a user of free software and as a writer of fiction. The issue of freedom as practice (or praxis, rather) is very central in many philosophies, but not so in the world of software nor its legislation. I shot a lot of video with my cellphone (almost 1 gigabyte) but I am not sure where I should upload it to. Reading the Youtube Terms of Use and with the file-size restriction of Flickr, I was apt to go for Wikimedia Commons but they won't allow my proprietary file format (mp4) which is too bad. Hence I went for Youtube. As I understand it, these recordings are my work qualified by "videos you have created of (...) people that are either public figures or are taken at public events" even though the speech itself is Stallman's of course:

• Stallman: The Four Fundamental Freedoms 
• Stallman: Saint IGNUsius of the Church of Emacs 

I recorded most of the QnA session as well, but it is over 600mb so I'm not going to share it. You may also check out the University's Dep of Informatics webpage Richard Stallman comes to Oslo, and NUUG who recorded the event and is supposed to release it sometime soon @ NUUG News. In addition to Stallman.org of course! I want to thank IFI at the University of Oslo for inviting Stallman, and of course the man himself for showing up. It was a great experience! Good night:)

Edit 26th of February 2009:
There has been a lot of interest in this article by many first-time visitors, mostly hardcore RMS fans eager to get their hands on the speech he held at Chateau Neuf. I have been in contact with NUUG and ping.uio.no and they have been so kind to let me know that they are waiting for Stallman's approval of license. One of the terms he had was that the audio was to be released as ogg only. I am not sure what he thought about the video. They will upload it as soon as possible, and everything is clarified.
Meanwhile, Friprog (Norwegian Open Source Competence Center) has written an entry called Eating soup with Stallman (in Norwegian), as they were invited to have soup with RMS at the Norwegian Opera. You can click that article for images, and Friprog has more pictures on their Flickr page that are licensed CC-BY-SA. Enjoy them while you wait for the tapes!

Edit 2nd of March 2009:
Some days ago I tried to upload my 30 minutes recording of the QnA session after Stallman's speech, but it has been removed from youtube because it is more than 10 minutes long. Doh.. But fret no more, RMS fans, 'cause ping.uio.no and NUUG have finally released the full recorded session in .ogg format, hi and low res:

• rms-oslo_2009-low.ogg (500MB) 
• rms-oslo_2009.ogg (2GB) 

That's it for this post I guess. If you like to check out more Stallman material see Stallman.org, or you can check out this torrent called Free Software Speeches in OGG - Stallman GNU FSF that apparently hosts more than 7 gig of Stallman audio and video courtesy of trygnulinux.com.

Many of you are unaware that I bought a fish tank 6th of July 2005 in the hope of getting some company while writing. But I had major nitrate problems possibly caused by my continuous chain smoking right next to it, and severe sleep deprivation because the air pump (yes it's a very small fish tank and does not have a proper filter) was so damn noisy. So I gave up the entire project in August 2005, and didn't think more of it. Until I told Lady C about it last summer and she immediately borrowed the tank and we began cultivation. If you don't have an aquarium you have no idea how precise an art it is, and I have a dream, yes I do have a dream that one day I will get to build a proper tank based on an area in the world. That is, art imitating life. In the meanwhile, our little 20l (5.3 gallon) tank will suffice.

After establishing a positive bacteria culture, healthy plants and adding a prehistoric backdrop with dinosaurs(!) on the back we went out and bought two goldfish a.k.a fantails a.k.a Carassius auratus named Babette and Fyodor, in October 2008. Many people don't know this, but the original goldfish can live up to 65 years in captivity, and the fantail breed around 5 years, but they often die sooner due to mistreatment. I won't have any any of that in my house! While I don't believe in God, I do believe in fish! And I bestow the best of care to any vertebrate to the best of my ability.
Visiting the same pet store a month later, we saw that the entire tank where Fyodor and Babette's family had lived had been wiped out. Probably because of some minor disease emphasized by the stress the fish is put under in most pet stores. Babette and Fyodor lived on, however, and we were thankful that we'd been given the opportunity to save them.


Babette & Fyodor (Fyodor inspecting the bubbles)

Thriving under our care, we learned to know their difference of personalities, and even though most of a goldfish's time is spent hunting for food they also knew how to have fun and make us laugh. I was especially thrilled with Fyodor's Jaws interpretations, which he had developed as a strategy during the feeding frenzies. He would lurk from below, mid-tank, spotting the unknowing fish flake on the surface, then circle around the prey until SUDDENLY! attacking at full force from the bottom. Lady C even saw him jump once she was feeding them. Having seized the prey, he would patrol the waters like any other great white. You can see how I came to love him so much.

But Fyodor also suffered. Not from our care, far from it, but from generations of degeneration which is so usual in pet fish breeding. Instead of keeping a species healthy and natural looking, pet fish breeders have gone to great lengths to make bizarre-looking creatures with big eyes and enormous tails. Many of the individuals are not fashioned for swimming, some are blind, and most of them are in pain. After we got back from our mountain trip the 8th of February, Fyodor was having trouble swimming. We almost had to hand-feed him to make sure he actually got in touch with the food. Having spent a couple of days diagnosing the problem, we realized that Fyodor's swimming bladder had burst and he was unable to control what way he was lying in the water. This condition is painful, but its progress can be slow, as the internal organs are pushed away inside the fish. Luckily he didn't suffer long, and on February 10th 2009 at 9:30pm Fyodor died naturally.
Babette was devastated, as were Lady C and I.

The swim bladder bursting is not something you can control, it just happens sometimes, but I feel that the likelihood of it happening would have been smaller if Fyodor hadn't been in a scheme of selective breeding. I'm happy that Babette is still going strong, she is a more healthy fish in terms of shape looking more like her free-swimming cousins, but the loss of Fyodor left its definite mark. Rest in peace little friend, we still love you. I am sad to say that our project of mounting lasers on you never came to be. I also want to encourage all of you looking forward to buying your first or next goldfish to make sure you buy healthy fish that has not been degenerated for the purpose of making it look funny. Buy a book on pet fish and see whether it's a recognized natural species. Failing to do so encourages the business of this animal, or fish, cruelty; the process of which is deemed illegal in a growing number of countries. You also cause the suffering and death of its family members. I mean, why would anyone buy a pet that suffers? Educate yourself and support the movement for healthy pet fish and its protection's legislation. RIP Fyodor.

Today is the "National holiday" for the indigenous Saami people of the North; Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. The Saami people can easily be compared with the Native Americans in North America, and we share an equal sad history of abuse, introduction to alcohol and mass-conversions to several variants of Christianity. You can see the great movie Kautokeino-opprøret (The Kautokeino Rebellion) if you want an introduction to the Saami rebel which occured in Norway during the 19th century.


The official Saami flag was recognized in 1986

This morning I heard a radio report from Kautokeino describing the cultural events of the day, including the royal visit of our Crown Prince Haakon and Princess Mette-Marit. What is normally overlooked is the significance of the royal couple dressing up in the cultural dress of the Saami. I have close relatives who still refuse to talk about our heritage, because it was regarded as a disgrace. They were systematically denied practice of Saami language and practice by schools, officials and the rest of society. The same generation of people also has a greater respect for the royal house of Norway, so this token of recognition can help mend the painful memories of some.

I am Saami too.
Not by culture or language, but "purely genetically". I have read about the Saami shaman, called Noaidie, and what little literature exist on the spirit world. And I am keen to read more, though you're more likely to find out more by talking with those who keep up the traditions. It's a very interesting and rich culture from a people who has lived in harmony with the harsh nature of the North for thousands of years.

Today I've taken the day off and in two hours we'll be on our way to Øyer mountain to celebrate. That is me, Lady C, Koew, Lady C's friend and the mysterious mr. S. It has been reported lots of snow in the area and around minus ten degrees Celsius. Of course it can't compare with the mid-winter temperatures of Kautokeino, today minus 30°C or -22°F. I'm looking forward to the great food, company, scenery and the sauna sessions! Have a nice weekend, and happy holidays!

The Word Fuck has been the one keyword to attract the most visitors to Sigg3.net for many years, closely followed by t.A.T.u, Christina Ricci and Female of the Year related posts. So other keywords that occur much less frequently are usually more interesting. And why they were ultimately brought here is anyone's guess (though I've tracked some of them). Best ones are bold, in order of appearance.

1. 123456789@123456789.1234567890123 #1321 
2. norwegians are inbred 
3. cold war octopussies  
4. dog humping itself google maps error  
5. huey dewey louie naked #1298 
6. my chameleon is very shaky and lying on the bottom of cage #1286 
7. the art of rubbing up against strangers without them knowing 
8. traktor.bmp ?s=Traktor 
9. child swallowed flash drive #1293
10. "you make me smile when you make your body move" #1261 

Number 9 there makes me concerned that some desperate parent out there actually came to Sigg3.net for medical advice after his four year old swallowed the pendrive.. Whoops.