IT – Page 7 – Søren C's blog

Slicehost vs. Linode vs. ???

I have some projects in mind that would require some hosting – and not just some casual web-hosting, but actual root access.

If I will ever get the time to work on the projects is another issue, but the first step would be to actually get some hosting.

A quick Google search seem to indicate that Slicehost and Linode pretty much provide what I’m looking for, at a reasonable price.

So far I’m leaning towards Linode. Mainly because they have a data center in London, and I might as well have the host as close to me as possible, should all cables across the Atlantic suddenly be severed.
They also seem to have a little lower prices on what to me looks like comparable products. But I haven’t made up my mind yet.
If you have any experience with either of the two companies I would appreciate your thoughts in the comments below.
Also, if you know of companies that provide similar services (within the same price range), let me know, but my quick Google search seems to come up with only the two companies.

Thank you in advance.

Intellectual Monopolies and other stories from FSCONS

I spent the weekend in Gothenburg, Sweden, attending the FSCONS conference.

Image by: Mathias Klang.

First things first, the most important thing I brought home with me from Sweden is that we should start changing the way we talk about ‘Intellectual Property‘, and start calling it what it really is – Intellectual Monopoly.

Glyn Moody held a keynote entitled Ethics of Intellectual Monopolies (slides here). His point was (among other things) that we should start calling what is currently known as Intellectual Property (IP) what it really is, namely Intellectual Monopoly. Because copy-right and patents are just that – a monopoly granted by society to an author or inventor.
And we all know monopolies are bad! This will help people understand more clearly that these monopolies are harmful to society and need to be abolished (or at the very least weakened). To those who claim that the current rules and laws can’t be changed and are somehow set in stone, Glyn had a very good point, namely that they can be changed. They have been changed before through history, and of course they can be changed again.
The first copyright was limited to 14 years – compare that with the lifetime copyright of today. Through time there has been an increase of the time copyright was held. Nothing ensures that we could not start decreasing the time that an author is granted copyright.

If you want to do some more reading on this topic, Glyn recommended this book:
Against Intellectual Monopoly

Besides a lot of interesting talks I also met up with Andreas and Anders for a miniature Ubuntu-nordic meet-up to share stories and ideas. One thing the Swedish team is doing, that I hope we can start doing in the Danish team as well, is putting the translated Ubuntu documentation online in Swedish.
It is the same informations as can be accessed through the help menu in any Ubuntu system, but when you are looking for support, having such documents online can be a great resource. The documentation is online in English at the help.ubuntu.com website, and the Swedish team has put the translated Swedish documentation online at help.ubuntu-se.org. The translation work has already been done, so putting the Danish documentation online shouldn’t be that big of a problem.

In general I very much enjoyed the FSCONS venue and the people there. It made me happy to see a lot of Ubuntu installs on the different laptops and netbooks as well.

It was no coincidence that most rooms and walls in the building had little computer-related names printed on to them. Normally the building houses the IT faculty. In one room the names of old video-games decorated the walls, other rooms had famous computer people, special keyboard key names or similar printed… and look whose name I found next to a toilet on the ground floor:

Great Succes!

Ubuntu 10.10 has been released, and here in Copenhagen we managed to gather a nice group of people at the local Café Klaptræet, for a relaxed release party get-together.

With only three days notice I was pleasantly surprised by the big turnout, and I think it is something we should consider doing again. Sometimes there doesn’t need to be an agenda, and talks and the like.
Sometimes it’s just nice to meet up and have a soda, coffee or beer with other Ubuntu and Free Software users, while sharing thoughts and ideas about Ubuntu, software and life in general.

I haven’t had much time to look at the new Ubuntu release, but hopefully I will have time to look into it in more detail when I have my fall vacation in one weeks time.

Other Ubuntu users around the world will be celebrating the release in the coming days as well. Feel free to share your release party stories and links to photos in the comments below.

Going to FSCONS

I recently got a positive response to my application for a scholarship to go to FSCONS.

So come November I will be going to Gothenburg for a weekend to dive into the wonderful world of Free Culture and Open Source Software.

There has been some talk on the Ubuntu Nordic mail-list about meeting up during the conference to meet ‘face-to-face’, and hopefully help us cooperate more in the Nordic region.
If you are going to the conference, and are into Ubuntu, I urge you to sign up on the wiki-page linked above. I would love to meet a lot of Ubuntu people at FSCONS.

Ubuntu Global Jam i København 2010

Så er det igen tid til Ubuntu Global Jam.

Endnu engang mødes Ubuntu og Fri Software entusiaster for at arbejde med at forbedre Ubuntu. I weekenden d. 27. – 29. august går det løse over hele kloden – og vi er også med i Danmark.
Vi mødes i København i Labitat, men det er også muligt at være med hjemmefra med en internet forbindelse.

Man bestemmer selv hvad man har lyst til at arbejde med, men Bugs og oversættelse er de mest oplagte kandidater – det er lige til at gå til.

Så hvis du har lyst til at være med, så kom forbi H. C. Ørstedsvej i weekenden, eller log på vores irc kanal og lad os snakke om hvad du har lyst til at arbejde med.

Der er også en Facebook begivenhed man kan tilmelde sig, så vi har et gæt på hvor mange der deltager.

Og så har Mark i øvrigt annonceret at Ubuntu 11.04 får kælenavnet Natty Narwhal (hvilket kan oversættes til Fikse Narhval). Det var i hvert fald gået hen over mit hoved – men jeg har også haft travlt med mange ting de sidste par dage…

Hvem gør dog det…?

Jeg skulle egentlig til et møde i morgen, fredag, men fik i går, onsdag, en telefonopringning om at mødet var blevet flyttet.
Jeg bad om at få tilsendt en mail, så jeg havde de præcise detaljer på skrift.

… og det fik jeg! Men ikke som jeg havde forventet. Jeg fik nemlig en mail med et vedhæftet screen-dump af et kalenderprogram, hvor info om det nye møde var indskrevet.

Men det er jo en helt forkert måde at bruge mail på! Hvornår er vi holdt op med bare at skrive information i almindelig tekst i en e-mail?

PS. Ja, det er mit personnummer jeg er registreret med og som de sendte med i mail’en.

Hvad skete der for almindelig høflighed?

Da jeg startede med at spille StarCraft 2 beta’en blev alle spil indledt med en hurtig gl hf (kort for Good luck, have fun) hilsen. Mit indtryk var at vi alle bare var glade for at få lov til at prøve spillet før det endelig udkom, og selvom der selvfølgelig blev kæmpet intenst for at vinde, så kunne folk både anerkende når andre spillede bedre end dem selv, man kunne grine af underlige kampe eller situationer og næsten alle spil blev afsluttet med et gg (Good game).

Sådan er det desværre ikke helt længere og for snart to uger siden løb jeg på en dag ind i rigtig mange spillere, som havde en meget anden måde at snakke til andre spillere på.

Det kan selvfølgelig være jeg bare er en dårlig taber, men jeg syntes faktisk det er ret dårlig stil at indlede et spil med en sådan hilsen og selvom ham fyren her faktisk vandt, så blev det ikke bedre da han sluttede det givne spil af med følgende:

Endelig er der også de spillere som finder på alle mulige undskyldninger for hvorfor de tabte dette spil – for det er jo aldrig en mulighed at deres modstandere bare var bedre…

Min partner in space crime mente det bare havde været tilfældigt og at vi var løbet ind i nogle umodne unge mennesker, men jeg hælder mere til at tro at der nu er blevet inviteret så mange mennesker med til Beta testen at der ikke længere er nogen fællesskabs følelse og man har intet til fælles med de andre spillere. Det er jo kun gætværk, men det er hvad jeg har…

Danish Team Re-Approved

As Amber already has pointed out yesterday a selected number of Ubuntu LoCo teams got approved and re-approved as official LoCo teams.

The Danish Team was one of the lucky teams to be re-approved.

As was pointed out during the meeting, the (re)approval process shouldn’t be so much about the technicality of being approved (although that is also be important), but just as much about sharing good ideas between LoCo teams. So I would like to use this blog post to direct the attention of Planet Ubuntu to something the Finnish teams has done, that I saw on their re-approval application, and then share an idea that we hope to carry out next month here in Denmark.

Write your parliament!

The Finnish team has written every member of the Finnish parliament about free software and included an Ubuntu CD in the letter. I think this is a great idea, and I think / hope that when Ubuntu 10.04 comes out we will do the same here in Denmark.

It also seems like a obvious thing to do on a higher level. What if every EU-based LoCo team promised them selves to mail their members of the European parliament in May or June, and make sure to send them a brand new 10.04 CD? To raise awareness among our elected officials and maybe get some press attention as well?

Of course similar actions can be taken in other parts of the world – get to it :)

Ubuntu Boot-Camp

Here in Denmark we are planning an Ubuntu boot-camp in May (or June). The basic idea is to meet in person and plan out the next 6 months of LoCo work (and of course have fun while meeting up!). You could think of it as a mini-UDS, just for out LoCo team.
Although many things can be planned by mail and irc meetings, you do get another connection and another feeling of ideas and the sharing of these, when you are face to face with people for a longer time period.

It is the first time we have this planned, so hopefully it will work out great! We will keep you posted of our experiences – good and bad alike. Feel free to get in touch if you are curious as to the more specific details of the plan.

Share ideas

Hopefully all the different fun and interesting ideas that pop up from all the Loco teams going through the (re)approval process will be placed on a wiki page somewhere, but until that happens I think we can all be better at sharing our ideas, plans and news of the work we do, either on the planet or the LoCo contacts mailing list.

… and congratulations again to all the teams that go (re) approved yesterday.

Five free StarCraft II Beta invites

As you may know I have been so lucky as to be included in the beta testing of the coming StarCraft II game. Blizzard has now begun distributing invites through the people already in the Beta. So, long story short, I now have five invites to hand out. Sure, I could let them go to friends, but I just feel like there should be some reward to the regular readers of this blog.

It is going to work on a first come, first serve basis, so feel free to click the links to the invites below, but pleas only help your self to one invite, lave some for the next person.

If you are lucky enough to get one of the invites on this the first day of April, feel free to get in touch in game, so we can do a little 1 vs. 1 – but be warned, I play a mean protoss. And although the game is in some aspects very similar to the old StarCraft (and BroodWar expansion) a lot of new units are available, so you may need to spend the first few games just getting used to all the new features of your favourite real time strategy game.

Enjoy!

Beta Key 1
Beta Key 2
Beta Key 3
Beta Key 4
Beta Key 5

StarCraft II – beta

Jeg har været så heldig at blive udtaget til at deltage i beta testen af Blizzards StarCraft II. Jeg var (og er) stor fan af det oprindelige StarCraft spil – og Broodwar udvidelsen – og glæder mig meget til Starcraft 2 udkommer, over ti år efter det oprindelige spil.

Jeg har ikke fået spillet beta’en voldsomt meget, men tænkte jeg ville fortælle om det indtryk jeg har fået indtil videre.

De nye (og ændrede) enheder er selvfølgelig det første man bemærker. Der er en del nye enheder og en del gamle kendinge er blevet underkastet den helt store make-over. I modsætning til det oprindelige StarCraft spil er der nu mange flere enheder, som har begrænsninger på om de kan skyde mod luft eller jord enheder. Det lyder måske som en stor begrænsning, men det betyder også at man bliver tvunget til spille mere varieret og vælge the right tool for the job, i stedet for bare at bygge en eller to typer enheder til hudløshed.
En fuld gruppe Protoss Carriers (med den nye Mothership enhed som support) rækker dog stadig langt. Men det er relativt sent i spillet man får adgang til dem og i mellemtiden kan mange ting nå at ske…

Terrænet (i kombination med nogle af de nye enheder) er den anden ændring man bemærker. Nogle enheder kan klatre over niveau forskelle – f.eks. har Terran en Reaper enhed, som med en jet pack, kan flyve over niveau forskellige i landskabet. Tilsvarende har Protoss en Colossus enhed, som på sine lange ben kan klatre ubesværet op og ned af klipper.

Det er altså ikke længere nok at lukke af for alle ‘indgange’. Ikke kun fly, men en del andre enheder kan selv vælge hvilken vej de vil benytte for at forsøge at få adgang til din base. Nogen baner har også forskellige tårne som kan aktiveres af en ground-enhed. Tårnet viser så hvad der sker på et betydeligt større område af kortet, end normale enheder kan se.

Selvom spiloplevelsen er meget finpudset mangler der stadig nogle detaljer (det er jo stadig beta). Lige så vigtigt så bruger Blizzard beta’en til at balancere de tre racer. Så selvom det vist er sikkert at sige at de grundlæggende enheder og deres egenskaber er på plads, så bliver der stadig justeret på styrker og svagheder for at opnå et så afbalanceret spil som muligt. Single-player delen er heller ikke tilgængelig endnu for mig, så den kan jeg ikke siger noget fornuftigt om. Men jeg forventer da at Blizzard lever op til forventningerne og laver en udfordrende og underholdende single-player del, med en fængende historie.

Det er endnu heller ikke muligt at køre StarCraft 2 beta’en under Wine på Linux, selvom der bliver arbejdet på det. Men de fleste spil fra Blizzard plejer at komme til at køre nogenlunde under wine, så mon ikke også det kommer til at lykkes med StarCraft 2? I mellemtiden så er jeg krøbet til korset og har hevet en gammel Windows maskine frem fra gemmerne. Den kunne godt bruge lidt mere ram, for at køre spillet rigtig flydende, men det må jeg lige kigge på i næste uge.

Vi ses på slagmarken (hvis du er med i beta’en – ellers må det vente til spillet bliver endelig udgivet).