Back in February I visited my parents. One of the things I brought back from them was a double-CD containing Red Hat Linux 3.0.3 of 1996 vintage. I also brought other neat memorabilia from my youth, but for various reasons they were forgotten in the chaos surrounding me.

Until five minutes ago, when I found this little tidbit from years gone. Excuse the poor image-quality as I don’t have a scanner and the only digital camera I have access to right now is the one in my cellphone.

Here’s a translation done by yours truly for those who are linguistically impaired:

Local rates to INTERNET!

* Monthly Fee 100 kronor
* Hourly rate 5 kronor/hour 8AM-6PM, rest of the time no charge
* Setup fee 120 kronor
* Free support by phone
* The first 15 charge-hours are complimentary…
* And we never charge more than 300 kronor per month!

This way you’ll avoid unpleasant surprise if you happen to be connected an hour or so longer than you had planned, and you don’t have to be afraid to call us if you have any questions! Mailbox and homepage is included.

For companies wishing to be seen on the World Wide Web we also offer a so-called WWW-hotel where you can host your pages at a very reasonable cost.

The above prices are not including VAT.

Call for more information.

Communique

Currently US$1 is about equal to 6 swedish kronor. That’s todays currency values as well, I don’t know what things were like back whenever I collected this clipping.

Well folks, it’s official. The apartment is now sold. I signed the papers earlier today, and I’ve got until the 1st of September to find a new place and move into it.

This is excellent. So many things are going the way I want it to these days, and this was definitely the last piece in the puzzle preventing me from moving along. It’s such a relief to have this all done with.

I also got an extension on my internship at VK. 26th of August i return there for a three-month period to begin with. I’ve been quite mum about things during my “black period” where I took a break from blogging, but I did a three-week trial at VK to see if things worked out. It was better than worked out, I had a blast and felt totally at home there.

I even helped setup the Squid-cache serving their website, it was a neat experience. For those of you who don’t speak Swedish, VK (aka Västerbottens-kuriren) is a fairly large newspaper, and when you click the link there, the content you see is served via the server I set up.

To say that I’m looking forward to returning there in August is a huge understatement. It’s perfect too, hopefully I’ll be all moved until then.

Aaaand there’s plenty other things that are going well for me, but I’m not ready to divulge those secrets just yet.

I’ve gotten a lot of questions and complaints. Most of them are of the “I don’t know how to do this/I’m too lazy to do it/What is XMPP anyway”-variety, and a few have been of the harsher “How dare you abandon our fantastic friendship, you must continue using MSN”-variety.

To all of you: There’s no going back for me. I don’t trust proprietary protocols any longer. I’ve been lazy for too many years, but now there’s a worthwhile open alternative - and with built-in encryption.

So, here’s a FAQ of sorts to answer some common questions I get:

I don’t want to change IM!

Well, that’s not really a question. But no one is forcing you. You can install any XMPP/Jabber-client alongside your regular choice of MSN or ICQ-client. They will work just fine, you’ll just need to keep track of an extra piece of software.

How difficult is it to use XMPP instead?

At first it’s a little confusing since anyone can setup a server anywhere. XMPP is not controlled by one entity, it’s more like email but for instant messaging and chat. Think of your Jabber-name as your adress on the internet, and then the server you’re connected to talks to all the other XMPP-servers out there. It’s completely decentralized, unlike MSN or ICQ or whatever who has one point of failure.

Can I keep my existing MSN/ICQ-accounts?

Sure. You can either use them through a transport or use a messenger-client with support for multiple simultaneous protocols. Under Windows there’s a good one called Miranda IM which handles multiple protocols. Linux users have Pidgin (which is also available for Windows, but I feel Miranda might be a more powerful choice) and Mac users can use Adium.

A transport works a bit differently, and not all XMPP-servers provide them. A transport is a gateway where you instruct the XMPP-server to connect to ICQ/MSN and then displays your contacts transparently in your Jabber-client. This means you only need to connect using one client yet can still use MSN or whatever. I’m using a transport right now.

Are there drawbacks when using a transport?

Unfortunately yes. Since MSN and ICQ are proprietary protocols there’s no open documentation for them. That means developers of transports have to reverse-engineer (techspeak for “guess”) how the protocols work. That means that some or many of the protocols functions won’t work. For example incoming filetransfers using a MSN-transport is quite flaky. In short: your mileage may vary when using a transport. If you want to be sure I’d recommend using a client with multiple protocol-support instead.

Why are you doing this, more details?

I’m tired of proprietary protocols. This is mostly a philosophical issue rather than a practical one, but I’m deeply tired of proprietary software and am trying to move away from it. Proprietary software is in my eyes legacy-software and has no real long-term future. The same goes for proprietary protocols.

The second major factor in my doing this is encryption. I’m transitioning to encrypting quite a lot of my online-presence and while encryption can be bolted onto proprietary protocols through third-party solutions it’s still not good enough in my opinion. XMPP was designed from the ground-up to have encryption, unlike MSN or ICQ where it’s an afterthought from people not even affiliated with the protocol. Also, the bolt-on solutions are essentially incompatible between different clients, meaning the people you talk to have to have the EXACT same software as you do to be able to encrypt the stream. XMPPs encryption works regardless of client.

—

If there are any further questions, feel free to leave a comment or send an email.

In the light of recent events I’ll be switching completely to a different messaging-protocol. I’ve been mulling this over before, but have been too much of a coward to make a definitive decision.

No more though. Come Friday, June 27th, 2008 I will completely stop using MSN and ICQ in favor of a non-proprietary protocol. If you want to continue chatting with me after then (and by extension if you basically want to continue being my friend) then you will simply have to adapt.

My weapon of choice in the future will be the so-called “Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol” aka XMPP, formerly known as Jabber. There’s a multitude of clients available. Under Linux I recommend Pidgin and under Windows I feel Pandion is a nice and clean client. Mac users do good in choosing Adium.

My decision for this switch is two-fold:

1) As mentioned earlier I have grown weary of proprietary chat-protocols. I just don’t trust them much any more.
2) After the FRA-law was voted through I’ve become more interested in encryption, and most XMPP-servers come with encryption enabled by default. Jabber.se which is the server I use does.

If you’re too much of a chicken to completely give up your proprietary protocols though, you can either use a transport or use a client with multi-capability.

As for me, after Friday I will only be accessible for chat through XMPP. I’m isecore@jabber.se so give me a holler. While XMPP isn’t a perfect protocol, at least it’s free as in freedom.

(I’m not sure if I’m back to writing or not, but I just can’t hold my anger and frustration about the latest political madness that’s been approved here in Sweden. Beware that there will most likely be plenty of foul language ahead.)

As surely anyone in this country (and even outside of it) knows Sweden yesterday passed the so-called “Lex Orwell” law, aka the FRA-law.

To say that this is stupidity on such a grand scale we’ll need a new tool and unit to measure it is quite an understatement. Personally I feel like I want to go to the swedish parliament and bitch-slap the shit out of every single one of the morons who voted yes for it. I also want to smack the living jeezus out of the wankers who weren’t even there, in this case some 60+ people.

Every single politician except one lone hero followed the party-line of voting for it. This is to all of you who voted yes: YOU SUCK, you’re a bunch of goddamn cowards and are not worthy to smell my shit!

So, why is this law such a bad thing? Well, I’m just going to list the tip of the iceberg here.

* It’s incredibly vague. The law talks about “yttre hot” (Swedish for “outer threats”) but makes only half-assed attempts at defining them. The old boogeyman called terrorism is waved in the face of everyone who doesn’t immediately nod their head off, even though Sweden has never been a target of terrorism. For any swede to think Sweden is a target for terrorism is ridiculous hubris. Sweden is such a neutral country that in comparison Switzerland seem like an extremely opinionated nation.

* The naivety among politicians about how technology works is nothing short of astounding. Do they really think that there’s something like one huge cable going in and out of the country? Go to some lame website like myspace and I guarantee you that the traffic passes in and out of the country through at least seventeen different pipes.

* The naivety among politicians about how technology works is nothing short of astounding. Yes, I know I said it once already, but it’s such a big issue that it deserves to be mentioned twice. Provided this law will be used to track those vaguely defined “outer threats” then the assumption is that terrorists use standard email, never encrypt anything and don’t use any codes at all. Seriously, how much of a failure as a terrorist do you have to be to be dumb enough sending emails with things like “are you going to place the bomb at the presidents car today”? If you did, you wouldn’t last as a terrorist more than five seconds before you accidentally shoot yourself in the face.

Which leads me to…

* Since the threat of terrorism is purely symbolic the only purpose for this constant wiretapping will be to keep track of domestic threats. And since the law is so vaguely formulated you can bet your sweet patootie that everyone with money, power or a government job will want access to the logs and contents. The first ones will of course be the mediamaffia, who will happily corrupt anyone they can in order to keep fighting for their “rights” or some bullshit like that. Not to mention that the anonymity for whistleblowers or informants will be completely gone. No one will ever again question authority, because they can no longer be sure who reads the logs. Additionally, to even mention the phrase that “innocent people will have nothing to hide” is plain idiocy. Even if you’re “innocent” you will change your habits if you know that you’re being supervised. And innocence is highly flexible. Who knows what will be defined as innocent in ten years? What is a minor crime today might be punishable by death in a decade, thanks to the fact that the government can keep constant watch on everyone.

* The fact that this law even passed makes me think that the yes-voters can be classified as one of three kinds of politicians:

1) The coward who doesn’t dare to oppose the party-line.
2) The moron who doesn’t know better.
3) The dangerous one who actually wants to implement a totalitarian state where the citizens are under constant surveillance similar to the former East Germany (DDR). The one who welcomes it, since he or she is safe knowing they’ll be more equal than the rest of us.

So what are my thoughts on all this?

My emotions are quite clear. I think this law is a frontal assault on democracy. While I don’t think that we will live in an Orwellian dystopia within the next week, I am scared that the slow erosion of democracy has started.

My emotion around all this is more Animal Farm than Nineteen-Eighty Four, but the concept is the same. A sham democracy. A faux democracy. A democracy only in name, bolstered by lofty sayings and using television and media to blind the public and keep them sedated.

I’m afraid that Sweden is started down the slippery slope towards a totalitarian government, just like old DDR or various other countries around the world, such as Belarus or even Saudi-Arabia.

I’ve just come home from spending a rather interesting saturday pre-noon. Today there was a shindig of some kind downtown, promoting free culture and other such good things. The first half of the day consisted of lectures from Lars Aronsson, founder of Project Runeberg (a swedish project with similar aims as the more wellknown Project Gutenberg, but focusing on swedish literature instead) and Rick Falkvinge, founder of the Pirate Party.

Consisting of the day after lunch was a lecture by Maud Olofsson, and then an open debate where Rick, Lars and representatives of various organizations would be present. I didn’t feel like attending this since I find Maud Olofsson at best to be very annoying, and at worst to be a two-faced untrustworthy person sprouting whatever opinion is currently in vogue. The debate would’ve been interesting, but I didn’t like the prospect of sitting 20 minutes on a bus home to eat something, then 20 minutes back to listen to the debate for an hour and then 20 minutes on the bus home again.

But the first half was very interesting. I’ve never heard of Lars Aronsson before, but I’m a big fan of open media such as Wikipedia and Project Gutenberg, and he was obviously very enthusiastic about what he did. He chatted a bit about the process of digitization, the problems that intellectual property-laws posed on his work, and generally held an interesting lecture about thing. Rick held another interesting lecture, although I found it a bit sad that he was essentially just preaching to the already converted. Never the less, he gave me an interesting new angle on the whole thing, and talked at lengts about why patents need to be abolished, as well as the origins of intellectual property and why laws regarding them need to be severely reformed. I heartily agree with Rick on the subject of patents on medicine. Not only are the patents stupid and restrictive - they’re actively harmful and causes people to die! Completely absurd.

On a different note I found it rather neat to find that both Rick and Lars apparently run Ubuntu on their laptops. Good!

Other than that the weather is spectacular here. Thermometer says only 10 degrees celsius, but it feels a lot warmer than that. Compare the photo below with the one I took in January. Same angle, almost standing in the same spot.

UPDATE: Apparently there was some kind of mix-up. It wasn’t Maud Olofsson who was scheduled, rather someone with the confusingly similar name of Maud Johansson. Weird. The sendout that I got said Maud Olofsson. Anyhoo, there’s some photos from the event at Stefan Flods blog.

And this ginormous tractor outside the tractor-place. It’s a humdinger. It has nothing to do with the rest of this post, I just thought it was cool.

I forgot to mention that yesterday our apartment appeared in all the listings. It is now for sale! So, if you’re looking for a very cozy apartment in Umeå, look no further. Plenty of space, stylish interior, fairly high standards of living, huge balcony, convenient location as well as excellent (i.e. 100 mbit) broadband.

Our apartment at Hemnet.

And some photos. These were taken by our realtor Erica, and she’s been excellent so far. Professional, efficient, easy to get along with. And, an excellent photographer.

There are a few things that I miss from the more decadent US of A. Among those things is the wide selection of soft-drinks available. Sure, a lot of the stuff is available here in Sweden, but there are quite a few flavors that aren’t. We can get regular Coke, Pepsi, Dr Pepper and various other products.

But we can’t get root beer, Mountain Dew or Cherry Coke. At least not through the official channels, although there are companies who import american products for us to enjoy at almost silly prices. Root beer is pretty common now. Mountain Dew and Cherry Coke is not.

(On another note: root beer is the preferred choice of drink for UNIX-people. Why? Well, why don’t you think about it for a while)

But today I found both of those. At really horrible prices I bought two cans of Cherry Coke and two of Mountain Dew. Combined with the amazing weather Umeå has today, I’m having an excellent day.

And in case anyone in Umeå is wondering where I bought them, you can find them at Nanna-kiosken downtown, right next to Vasaplan. They cost a horrendous 15 kronor (approx US$2.50) a piece.

I’m a fan of Terry Pratchetts books. I’ve read most of the Discworld-novels, and I was a bit saddened when Good Omens fell through as a feature-film. It should be noted that Good Omens is not a Discworld-novel, yet it’s a spectacularly entertaining read none the less.

So, a few days ago I found out that a two-part miniseries had been produced, based on Terrys two first books set in the Discworld. This was called “The Colour of Magic” (note british spelling) and was based on the first book with the same name, followed by the accompanying novel called “The Light Fantastic”. Part one of the miniseries was of the first book, and so on.

Unfortunately it was broadcast on channels not available in Sweden, and it was only thanks to the miracle of file-sharing that I found it.

In the process, I also discovered that a similar mini-series had been produced based on his book “Hogfather” and broadcast christmas 2006. It was broadcast on the same channel as Colour of Magic, and again it was thanks to filesharing that I managed to find it.

I know that I linked to The Pirate Bay, but I urge anyone who enjoys these to try to find the DVDs and show financial support for them as well. I know I’m going to.

—

I watched The Colour of Magic first, and you know - it wasn’t quite up to my expectations. I’m not saying that it’s a bad production, because it isn’t. It’s actually quite good for a TV mini-series. Special effects are perfectly acceptable, production-design is very good, acting is up to par.

But it doesn’t have the pungency of Terrys books, and the story takes a lot of liberties with the source-material. Adding insult to injury in this department, a lot of the story doesn’t really make sense. There’s a lot of things that don’t add anything to the plot, except as filler-material.

Also, I don’t know about the dragons. Admittedly it was quite some time since I last read The Colour of Magic, but dragons are generally a no-no in the Discworld. It’s not that they don’t exist (because they do), it’s rather that they’re not a common commodity. I don’t remember exactly what happened in the book, but that whole bit doesn’t serve any purpose in the adaption. I just felt that it was filler, a poor excuse to show a rather beautiful woman in scantily clothing.

The thing that I missed the most though was the wacky humor that permeates Terrys books. Whenever I’ve read a Discworld-novel I’ve always felt as if I was reading some strange mix of Monty Python and Lord of The Rings. His writing is so textured, he gets every accent and every smell just right.

This was sadly missing in the mini-series. It didn’t have the wacky humor, and the few times it did it just felt pasted-on. The actors are obviously struggling to portray their characters, but somehow everything just falls a bit flat. The texture of the novels just don’t appear. Combined with the liberal deviation from the source material I actually felt a bit bored at times.

Wait! There’s good stuff too. Admittedly it’s not quite what I expected, but it does get quite a lot of things right. David Jason (known to most people as the bloke in A Touch of Frost) is quite good as Rincewind. I always imagined Rincewind as in his mid-late 30s, while David Jason is 68. So at first I cringed a bit, but I warmed to the concept quite quickly. I guess my estimate of Rincewind being much younger probably stems from the two mid-90s adventure games based on Discworld, where he’s portrayed as surprisingly young, as well as voiced by Eric Idle.

Also, Christopher Lee as the voice of Death is just… oh, I’m at a lack of words to describe how perfect it is. Christopher Lee doesn’t just voice Death, he IS Death. Jeremy Irons does an all too brief part as the chilly Lord Vetinari, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork. Cohen The Barbarian is as old as I always imagined him to be, and equally grumpy as well.

Should you watch this? If you’re a Discworld-fan, then most definitely. It probably won’t be quite what you expected, but at least they didn’t mess it up too badly, and the production is quite well-done. If you’re not a Discworld-fan, then you might be a bit confused since some things are never really explained, but the fantasy-feel and good looks might keep you happy anyways.

Oh, and Terry Pratchett himself makes a cameo in the beginning and the end.

—

After watching the Colour of Magic I watched Hogfather. Well, not IMMEDIATELY afterwards, but a day or so later. Everyone who compared Hogfather with Colour of Magic said that the former was actually much better then the latter, despite having a smaller budget and less big-name stars. In fact, there are no big-name stars in Hogfather.

I was stoked however. If Hogfather was at the very least as good as Colour of Magic, it would totally be worth it.

And oh boy, was it worth it.

Hogfather is one of my favourite Discworld-novels. It has a very wacky humor, as well as some slight satire of the consumer-driven holiday we call christmas. It also has some interesting philosophical thoughts about religion and the origin of beliefs, but it’s sugarcoated in wackiness.

In short, the story is about how Hogfather (the Discworld-version of Santa Claus) goes missing, and Death (yes, THE Death) has to fill in for him for various convoluted reasons. Much of the humor derives from Deaths lack of… well… humanity.

The story is a lot more complicated, but that’s the short version.

So, how good was Hogfather? Let’s just say that it was everything that was good about CoM, and everything good that CoM should’ve been. Hogfather sticks very closely to the source-material, even taking a lot of dialogue verbatim from the book. The story is to my recollection exactly as in the book, and everything happens like in the book. It’s a very faithful adaption. Which I find somewhat interesting, since it’s the same bloke who adapted and directed both CoM and Hogfather.

David Jason appears in this one as well, although here he portrays Albert, Death’s butler and right-hand-man. It was a bit confusing at first, but David Jason is obviously a somewhat versatile actor and fit snugly into the part of Albert. Death isn’t voiced by Christopher Lee though, and his predecessor doesn’t have quite the same Deathiness to the voice.

Other than that the casting is spot-on. Susan (the granddaughter of Death, don’t ask - it’s complicated) is perfect, just as I imagined her. The wizards are perfect, and one of my many favourite actors makes a beautiful performance as the pragmatic and slightly whimsical Mustrum Ridcully, the archchancellor of Unseen University.

So is this worth watching?

Well, unless you’re rather daft and haven’t caught on to me really liking this one yet, then let me spell it out for you: yes, it’s very, very watchable. Doesn’t matter if you’re a Discworld-fan or not. Unlike CoM, Hogfather has plenty of the wacky humor that was sorely lacking in CoM. It has the Discworld-texture, the feel is right there. And best of all, despite it’s alleged much-lower budget it still has decent special-effects and good production-value overall.

Yeah, I kid you not! Computers can cause serious bodily harm.

Just a few minutes ago, stupid as I am, I reached into my darkened computer to adjust a fan slightly. I’m allergic to those LED-fans that blink and shine and hoot and do stupid stuff, so my computer is usually pitch-black inside. I normally keep a small flashlight handy for these online-adjustments, but this time I decided to be all manly and dumb. It’s just a simple adjustment!

KA-THUNK!

I accidentally brushed the earlier mentioned CPU-fan. Almost lopped my finger right off!