Copyright, Music and Fair Use

Norwegian copyright law has up until now been very relaxed, relaxed to the extent that downloading of music and copying between friends has been legal. Well, that is not going to last long. A new law is in the pipeline, and the proposition (norwegian only) put forward to the Norwegian... [Read article]

Copy Control and the RIAA

Bought a new CD yesterday. Or, well, after I got back home I quickly understood that this was no CD, but rather a piece of plastic at the same size as a CD, and that for some wierd reason happened to be compatible with a standard CD-player. It is called... [Read article]

The Graduate

As reported by Anders I have now graduated from university. More precisely I am now a Sivilingeniør -- a Norwegian title that is equivalent to a Master of Science degree. Studying the official pages of NTNU I deduce that I am now a Master of Science in Industrial Mathematics. Sounds... [Read article]

Effectively vs. Efficiently

Needed the difference between these two words today, and after searching in vain on many online dictionaries I managed to find some links that described it to me, resulting in a definition related to computer science and maths. Effective: Choosing the right algorithm, the one with the smallest possible time... [Read article]

On Peace - Why I Support The Intervention in Iraq

"Peace is not merely the absence of war but the presence of justice, of law, of order--in short, of government." -Albert Einstein "Peace is not simply the absence of war. Peace is a dynamic process of collaboration between all states and peoples. This collaboration must be based on a respect... [Read article]

Why Does People Live in Norway?

Some times one will have to think; 'why does people live in Norway?' The previous weekend I was visiting a friend living in Nice on the French Riviera. It was mid February, and when leaving Trondheim in snow and -10 degrees Friday morning, arriving in France with the sun shining... [Read article]

A Month Off

It has been quite a while since I last wrote anything in my blog. The fun part is that the number of visitors are still increasing. Take a look at the logs and you can easily see it. :) But as people are reading I guess that I should increase... [Read article]

Books

Many a time futurists have claimed that we are getting close a paper-free society. The books will disappear, everything will be read of some sort of computerized display, be it a tablet PC, a portable or something we have never heard of before. So if this is the future, one... [Read article]

Niggardly Revisited

Some month ago Anders wrote his inital post on the word niggardly. Discussion got slightly heated, and I wrote a slightly harsh post in reply to it. As known time generally cools down any heated feeling towards one thing or the other, and except for the fact that the posting... [Read article]

American 'Free' Speech

As a follow-up on Anders' posting Mixed reactions on my "niggardly"-posting I wanted to look more into the concept of free speech. How can a person be fired on grounds of teaching kids a perfectly sound work, listed in any dictionary? Wouldn't this infringe on that teacher's rights? Congress shall... [Read article]

Emptying the Dictionary

Our dictionarys are about to become empty! Every day a new word is tagged as being politically incorrect, rendering them useless and effectively putting a ban on them. Main Entry: political correctness Function: noun Date: 1990 : conformity to a belief that language and practices which could offend political sensibilities... [Read article]

Is MovableType A Time-Consuming Curse?

When suddenly an entire afternoon evening is wasted tweaking different blogs, both my personal blog and a system of blogs for CISV [1][2] without even planning it one might actually think so. I can always blame Anders, but then again, this is, as stated earlier, quite fun. So maybe I... [Read article]

A Hit'n'Run Tech. Freak?

Last days I have been thinking. What is so intriguing about getting to know new technologies? This summer I have been spending hours on hours installing stuff, getting it to work, and then more or less forgotten all about it. Take this weblog for an instance. Took some 4-5 hours... [Read article]

Anders the Serious Blogger

Some people are way more serious into the blogging thing than I am. Check out the blog that Anders Jacobsen, and old friend, maintains. (Pages updated way too often... get a life? *g*) Anders also has some weather pages that are quite so popular.... [Read article]

First Time

It is a first time for every thing. And now it is blogging. Wonder if this works as it should. MovableType is actually quite impressing on a first look. Might even be possible to use it for something useful later... Some half hour later; even managed to get control over... [Read article]