David Jack Wange Olrik

ACTA, SOPA and Piracy

2012-03-06T12:42:00+01:00

I just read a very long rant by Asger Leth in the danish paper Politiken about Film Making and Piracy.

The gist of the rant is this: Download is stealing, We should make more laws that prevent this and “It is not a human right to have a particular movie exactly when it suits you.” ¹

I find this to be a very selfish, narcissistic and uneducated view of the problem at hand. You think that the content industry suffers because of illegal downloads and each download is a lost sale.

If people couldn’t download your movie for free,
chances are they would just watch something else instead…

The content industry suffers because the market is full. There is so much great content out there that when people are given the choice between paying a huge amount for new content and a small amount for older content, people generally chose the cheeper one. To make matters worse the content industry has continuously degraded the user experience by adding more and more crap to prevent us from copying their precious content or consuming it in any other way than the one they had envisioned many many years ago.

Just this last weekend, I had to waste 30 minutes stripping out the DRM on a DVD I bought legally in the US. I had to do so because it was region restricted to region 1, and I live in region 2. Region codes and trailers² you can’t skip are just some of the annoyances you have to endure when buying DVDs legally.

Most people want to be honest, but the content industry continuously makes it harder to be so. Matt Gemmel said it best in this piece where he describes what he calls The Piracy Threshold.

I know it is illegal to download content you haven’t paid for, but there comes a time when you have to be pragmatic even though you know your are right.

SOPA and ACTA have nasty side effects that will push us back into the digital dark ages. One of the more notable side effects is that site owners and internet providers can be held accountable for actions performed by its users.

I can post a link to some illegal content on your website
…and you will have to pay the consequences for my actions.

Each website or service provider will have to police the use of their service vigorously or suffer the consequences. More likely they will just stop providing their service… Say goodbye to WiFi in your favorite cafe, say goodbye to free internet at the public library, say goodbye to things like the Wikipedia… and welcome to the digital dark ages curtesy of the content industry trying to combat a perceived³ problem.

“Hvornår er det blevet din menneskeret, at du skal have en bestemt film, præcis når det passer dig?”
– Asger Leth↩
Why is it I am forced to watch an un-skippable “Please don’t steal” promo on DVDs I paid for?↩
Look at companies like Pragmatic Programmers and O’Reilly they provide books at a reasonable price without encumbering DRM and they thrive!↩

Don’t be too clever…

2012-01-30T10:42:00+01:00

Debugging is twice as hard as writing code.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are not smart enough to debug it.
Brian Kernighan, via Tim O’Reilly plus.google.com/posts/…

Wildcard repositories with Gitolite

2012-01-15T22:42:00+01:00

A while ago I upgraded from Gitosis to Gitolite. I’ve been using Gitosis for a long time and while there is nothing wrong with Gitosis, Gitolite just does so much more.

One of my favorite features is wildcard repositories which makes it super easy to have normal users create as many repositories as they can imaging without having to bother a git-admin.

To setup a sandbox for each user you must first enable wildcard repositories in ~/.gitolite.rc. You do this by setting $GL_WILDREPOS to 1.

After that you just need to configure the userspace like this¹:

repo user/CREATOR/[a-zA-Z0-9_.-]+
    C = @admins CREATOR
    RW+ = @admins
    RW  = CREATOR

Note the use of CREATOR, this is a variable signifying the user that creates and accesses the repository. The CREATOR can even delegate permissions² to other users if needed.

To get you locally created repository up on the new upstream you first add the new remote and then you just push it up. For convenience you can also make you local repository track the new upstream using git branch –set-upstream³ which will save you a lot of key strokes⁴ in the long run.

git remote add origin git@git.domain.com:user/<$USER>/<$REPO>.git
git push origin master
git branch –set-upstream master origin/master

That’s it! - Hope you enjoy wildcard repositories as much as I do.

Feel free to select your preferred permissions for the repositories.↩
You do this by using setperms on the remote repository.↩
Note you’ll need at least git version 1.7.0 for git branch –set-upstream.↩
When you track a branch you don’t have to provide the full refspec each time you push or pull.↩

What’s wrong with religion

2011-12-16T22:42:00+01:00

Yesterday a prominent Atheist died of pneumonia, a complication of esophageal cancer. Christopher Hitchens was the author of a book called “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything”, today we are reminded of just how right he was.

The death tonight of Christopher Hitchens is an excruciating reminder of the consequences of unbelief.
We can only pray others will believe.
@albertmohler twitter.com/albertmohler/status/…

The above quote is an insult to both believers and non-believers, and represents everything that is wrong with religion today.

Is Albert Mohlers god really so petty that he will inflict cancer on those who do not believe? and why is Albert Mohler using fear to make people believe?

Let those who believe, believe
…and let those who do not believe, not believe.

Be a guide and lead by example, don’t force your beliefs¹ on others.

Or non-beliefs for that matter ;-)↩

iCloud Documents & Data sync - Part II

2011-11-04T12:52:00+01:00

Yesterday I updated my iPhone 4S to the new iOS 5.0.1 pre-release version which is supposed to fix the horribly battery life¹ everybody have been complaining² about since the release of iOS 5.

Unfortunately it also broke my secret iCloud dance and no matter of fiddling with the options would make my Documents & Data sync work again.

After some browsing through device logs I found this error:

com.apple.Dataclass.KeyValue is enabled for more than one account

I have been a long time subscriber of Apples MobileMe service. The migration process from MobileMe to iCloud, promoted my MobileMe email address to a full Apple ID. This really sucks as I already have an Apple ID that I have used to buy Music and Apps with since the dawn of time.³

On my iPhone I had added both iCloud accounts and just turned on the services I needed from each.⁴ Apparently this is a bad idea, and deleting the old MobileMe account made above error disappear and iCloud have been syncing my Documents & Data happily ever since.

I can happily report that the battery is now back to normal again.↩
Now I know what is like to have an Android phone ;-)↩
At least since way before I created my MobileMe account.↩
Which means only Mail & Notes on the old MobileMe, and everything else on my real Apple ID.↩

About Technology

2011-10-24T10:42:00+02:00

While reading Public Parts by Jeff Jarvis I stumbled upon this little gem from one of my favorite authors.

Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
Douglas Adams The Salmon of Doubt

So relax and enjoy, it is not as dangerous and scary as it people would have you believe.

Unable to turn on Documents & Data sync in iCloud?

2011-10-19T23:42:00+02:00

I have finally gotten all of iCloud to work! I’ve been using iCloud since the launch but I haven’t been able to get “Documents & Data” to work before now.

I had checked and double checked every setting I could imagine and it still would not work.

Every device had Settings -> iCloud -> Documents & Data set to On, and every App¹ has use iCloud set to On.

To get it to work I did the following:

Turn off “Documents & Data” in iCloud settings
Turn off “Use iCloud” for each iWork app
Launch Pages, Numbers or Keynote. Each App will now ask you if you want to use iCloud, you’ll want to say yes to this.

After this little dance iCloud began syncing² my data. One weird thing though, if I go into Settings -> iCloud “Documents & Data” is turned off!
Still it syncs just fine.

You might be able to get iCloud to sync by just turning “Documents & Data” off in settings. I haven’t tried that, as it works for me now and I really don’t want to break it again.

I have filed a bug report³ for this issue with Apple.

I even filed a bug report against Instacast because iCloud syncing wouldn’t work.↩
It even started working for non Apple apps like Instacast!↩
rdar://10313253 ↩

Unfortunately, That Day Has Come…

2011-10-06T14:43:00+02:00

Photo by Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle

This morning it was raining again for the first time in something like 10 days. My wife and I were driving to work, me driving, her reading the news about Steve on her iPad.

At first I dismissed it as another poorly written link bait generating post about the iPhone 4S with an extremely distasteful title.

But as she checked Twitter, and then a lot of news sites and apple.com it finally sunk in: Steve was gone.

Steve you have been, and will continue to be an inspiration in my life and work.

Stay hungry, Stay foolish!

The photograph¹ was taken by Lea Suzuki of the San Francisco Chronicle just after the keynote given this summer at the WWDC.

Used with attribution but without permission - given the circumstances I hope it’s OK.↩

Let’s Talk iPhone

2011-10-04T15:50:00+02:00

Today is the day we’ve all been waiting for.¹ It’s finally time for Apple to unveil the next iPhone and the next version of iOS.

No stream have been announced yet, and they are probably not going to do one as they really don’t need to.

I personally hope this rumor is true, although I don’t think so - too many different models that aren’t all that different.

I do think the iOS part is going to be huge though. Normally Apple gives us developers a new iOS beta about each fortnight, and now new beta have been released since August 31st. To me this indicates that there is some really exciting new features² that Apple didn’t want to leak until todays presentation.

iCloud³ is probably also going get a lot of coverage today and will probably go live today or sometime before the end of October.

As always there is going to be a plethora of live blogging going on, and I will be using these sources⁴ to get my fix:

It’s going to be insanely great! - And I will of course be playing keynote bingo with this cool little html5 app⁵.

Well most of us anyway…↩
Like voice control that actually works↩
This is going to change everything…↩
And every social network I’m on - but probably mostly Twitter↩
Be sure to add it to your iPhone home screen to get rid of the address bar and buttons.↩

Did you remember your towel today?

2011-05-25T11:32:08+02:00

You should always¹ know where your towel is, as you never know when you might need it!

But even more so today as May 25th is Towelday ↩

Please create your own icons…

2010-11-17T17:13:52+01:00

Man I love ePub

2010-11-14T12:27:34+01:00

I recently listened to a very interesting podcast from the Pragmatic Programmers featuring an interview with Uncle Bob. At the end they talked about a book Robert had recommended at the most recent RailsConf called Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.

It’s an older book but it sounded like a really interesting read - and as a lot of languages are in the process of rediscovering the concepts of Lisp and Smalltalk - it’s quite relevant too. To my luck the book is available under the Creative Commons license¹ and this nice fellow had gone to the trouble of converting it into a really nice² ePub formatted ebook.

The book now lives in Stanza on my iPhone along with a bunch of other ebooks that I can now carry with me everywhere I go - Never again will I be without reading material while waiting for stuff³ to happen.

A huge Thank you! to MIT for making this material available for all to read!↩
All that was missing was the cover, but that was easily added in Stanza ↩
Waiting in line at the supermarket, waiting at the doctors office, waiting for the bus and all those other wasted hours and minutes that litter our everyday lives↩

Lucky for me it was just a sterile lamp handle…

2010-09-30T10:33:49+02:00

At the dentist - should I be worried?

2010-09-30T09:06:58+02:00

The Phonebook is dead

2010-09-09T09:00:05+02:00

The phonebook is dead! I know this for a fact because the tactics they use to get new paying customers are lies and deceit and this is exactly what happened to me.

August 5.

I get a call from Trine Jensen from De Gule Sider. The first thing I say is:

I don’t want to buy anything

She then tells me that as a new thing they now also list companies web addresses and asks me for my company web address which I then tell her is grepmasters.com. Note that I specifically stated that I didn’t want to buy anything nor did I agree to anything.

August 7.

I receive an order confirmation for a company listing on De Gule Sider. WTF! First line on the order confirmation reads:

As agreed on the phone I here by send you an overview of your adds…

I didn’t agree to anything, so WTF? Further more it states that

If we don’t hear from you within 8 days, we’ll consider the advertising agreement as approved

This is the the way hustlers work, they figure that a small invoice like this one will just slip through and not get noticed before it is too late. - Congratulations you just got your company listed with url in a paper¹ phonebook and on a site no-one will ever use to find a company like mine. If people want to find my company by name, they’ll typically use google.²

August 17.

I finally get the time³ to call De Gule Sider⁴, I get transferred to Trine Jensen who at first plays hardball and tries to convince me that it is too late and that the 8 days had passed already⁵ and that I have to pay. I didn’t agree to anything and wasn’t informed that I had to pay to have my company url listed, a service I neither need nor want. I can’t see why an arbitrary 8 day response time even applies to me since I didn’t agree to anything! I insist that I’m right, she talks to a supervisor and she finally agrees to send med a cancelation of the order.

September 8.

I receive an invoice for DKK 1.118,75 — I’m now truly pissed! ⁶

So now I have to waste even more time⁷ wrestling with De Gule Sider, damn scammers… Fortunately the ombudsman has already made a statement that says that De Gule Sider have to prove that an agreement was made, which they can’t do since I didn’t agree to anything either verbally nor in writing.

Stop killing trees! Nobody want your damn analogue phonebook anymore.↩
Which will find it as the first hit - can’t get any easier than that.↩
Yes I could have called them sooner, but why should I have to? I didn’t agree to anything and didn’t order any services from them.↩
This is the 8th business day since the first call↩
Which it had if you also count the weekends.↩
As if I wasn’t pissed off before…↩
Time I just might end up invoicing to De Gule Sider ↩

Out For Delivery

2010-08-20T12:48:11+02:00

I think today might be the day!
I turn on my computer. I wait patiently as it connects.
I go online. My breath catches in my chest until I hear 3 little words,

“Out For Delivery.”

I hear nothing, not a sound on the streets of New York¹.
Just the beat of my own heart. — I have a delivery…from you.

I also don’t hear a sound in the streets of Copenhagen, but the original quote was uttered in New York↩

iTunes error 5002 be gone!

2010-07-01T00:09:30+02:00

Ever since upgrading to the beta iTunes 9.2 I have been having an annoying problem. – Every time I click “Check for updates”¹ I get an error from iTunes.

We could not complete your iTunes Store Request. An unknown error occurred (5002). There was an error in the Itunes Store. Please try again later.

When clicking “Download All Free Updates” iTunes also tells me that the information displayed is outdated, and that I should do a refresh. A second click on “Download All Free Updates” downloads all the updates. Googling reveals a few, but somewhat complicated solutions for iTunes 8, so I decides to take a look myself. My current iTunes library have existed ever since iTunes 7 and as such it has accumulated a a lot of cruft over the years. My permissions looked fine, but I had two versions of my Mobile Applications directory.

~/Music/iTunes/Mobile Applications/
~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Mobile Applications/

I deleted the old Mobile Applications from the iTunes folder² and the 5002 error hasn’t been seen since.

Update: While the above procedure did decrease the frequency of the 5002 errors significantly, it didn’t remove them completely :-(

And I do that a lot as I have a mild case of compulsive refresh disorder↩
The one on line 1 – And if you do this, please remember to back it up first, just in case…↩

Did you remember?

2010-05-25T08:40:50+02:00

Public transportation in Maps.app

2010-05-21T17:01:52+02:00

Public transportation in Maps.app is so much nicer than Rejseplanen.

It’s just so nice!

2010-05-20T09:38:02+02:00