Lillesvin Networks

Yup — it’s here, I’m sure. Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 now supports ODF out of the box and has the option of using ODF as the default format. And just to add to that hell-freezes-over feeling, Office 2007 SP2 finally has a “Save as PDF” option. (Slashdot article with further links.)

So in this post-apocalyptic wasteland of a world it is now possible to actually use OpenOffice.org and send your ODF document to a Word user and expect them to be able to open it! While this is somewhat unexpected coming from Microsoft, it’s really a huge benefit to all word processor users of the world and a nice move from the people in Redmond. Of course, they’re not just doing it to be nice — there are certainly financial aspects to it — but still it shows that they are “getting it” even though it’s taken them some time.

Now, let’s sit back and watch how long it takes for Apple to implement native ODF support in Pages, Numbers, Keynote, etc. My guess is that it’ll be a while. Actually, I’m getting more and more tired of being held hostage by Apple’s ideas of what I want — and am allowed — to use my computer/OS for, while Microsoft seems to be heading in a more sensible and  Open direction. Of course, first and foremost I’m a Linux-user, but with Windows 7 getting rave reviews and these nice additions in Office 2007 SP2 (not that I do, or ever will, use Microsoft Office or any other office suite for that matter) I might just give Microsoft another chance after ditching Windows back in 2001. Kudos to the Redmond crew for going with what the users want instead of what they want the users to have.

Politiken has an article about how the EU wants to develop an emulator — KEEP (Keeping Emulation Environments Portable — in order to preserve video game history. (Original article in danish; Google translation.) According to the project description it should be able to handle pretty much any data from any platform and while I’m all for preserving video game history, I think €4.02 million ($5.05 million; £3.55 million) is a bit of a hefty price to pay, considering that there’s plenty of Open Source software out there that does exactly that.

So will KEEP actually be written from scratch? Or will they simply bundle whatever Open Source software they find into one neat package? The project description doesn’t say anything about it. The first is stupid, because a lot of the Open Source emulators available are of high quality, are quite portable, have been developed for many years now and are still maintained. Some shiny new software is likely to be less stable and compatible, and the project description doesn’t give any promise of the software being maintained in the future. The latter is simply too expensive. €4.02 million for bundling some Open Source software?

Also, while preserving the games is all well and good, there’s more to preserving video game history than just preserving the software. Playing Super Mario Bros. on the Wii with the Wiimote is NOT the same as playing it with the good old, unhandy NES controller (even though the Wiimote is quite unhandy for that purpose).

In science we learn and do research based on the findings of — and conclusions drawn by — others before us. (“Standing on the shoulders of giants” ring a bell?) That is the very essence of cumulative science. To make the obligatory car analogy: What if the car manufacturers had to reinvent the wheel and the engine (steam first) every time they wanted to make a new model? That would most certainly make Thomas Kuhn cry, and we’d be driving ridiculously old-fashioned cars.

Yesterday my professor told me that he couldn’t actually provide us with access to various papers on the subject of the course he’s currently teaching, because certain publishers have hired students to spy on the teachers at the university and report back on any copyright infringements they notice. Usually the teacher would upload a PDF of the relevant article on our intranet, thus allowing students to download (and print), but now we’ll have to obtain these papers by other means, which may be any of the following:

• try to get hold of some obscure copy of some obscure journal containing the article in question
• pray that the publisher has made it available (either for free or relatively cheap) on the web
• get in contact with someone who owns the relevant issue of the relevant journal containing the relevant article and hope they’ll let us xerox it (and still infringe on the copyright, but this time without the professor’s help)

… and that’s only the articles.

A lot of the texts we use in linguistics come from various collections, where a number of people contribute to the work published in book form. Now, we have some good libraries here, but they rarely have more than a single copy of a book (well, maybe some older editions), which means that if every student had to read an article from a particular book, they’d actually have to either borrow the book or read the article at the library. Think about it… 24 students all wanting to read the same article (which they’re not allowed to xerox) in the same book, of which the library only has one copy.

One could, of course, buy all the journals, collections, etc… But that would be so ridiculously expensive that studying something like linguistics would cost a fortune. Handing in a decent paper based on good research would quickly run into the thousands of euros. And we’re expected to write 2 or 3 of those papers each semester…

Now I’m thinking Science Bay (or maybe Science Nova) — a marriage between Pirate Bay and Discogs containing nothing but torrents of scientific articles neatly categorized, with detailed meta data, and searchable in every imaginable way. It would even be possible to provide BibTeX entries for every article, and even provide one huge, downloadable BibTeX database for the entire content of Science Bay. When uploading a torrent, one would be able to either fill out all the relevant meta data form fields for the article in question, or simply paste a BibTeX entry containing all the relevant/required meta data. It wouldn’t just be a solution to a problem, it’d be awesome! Searching for and actually finding relevant articles couldn’t be much easier! I’m not talking about sharing entire books or even just chapters of books. Just scientific articles from journals, collections, and what have you.

Only problem is, where would one get such a project hosted? We’ve all heard about the legal trouble Pirate Bay has faced through the times and I certainly can’t afford to hire a lawyer to fend off pissed off pubilshers. While I could probably easily do the code for the project, I don’t have access to decent servers, bandwidth, Hungary, legal advise, etc…

But isn’t this how science is really supposed to work? Everyone sharing what they find and contributing to a greater cause. I know some scientists like to live like rock stars (I’m looking at you, Hawking! :-p), but that’s no excuse for their publishers behaving like retarded record labels.

Just overheard this. And I must admit, I adore such blankness. P1 and P2 is two people talking in front of a computer.

P1: It this also the internet?

P2: Yes.

P1: I always go down there (pointing to some other place of the screen). That’s also an internet.

Seams there is multiple internets all over the place. That’s very fortunate, eh.

I’m going to do something unusual here and actually blog about sports — more specifically American football. It has never been a secret that I’m a Green Bay Packers-fan (or Pack-man if you will) and tonight was their first regular season game since Sep. 20, 1992 without legendary quarterback Brett Favre in the starting line-up. (Favre is now starting QB for the New York Jets, more about the trade at Wikipedia) There has been a lot of talk about Aaron Rodgers, who has taken over after Favre, and whether or not he can handle the pressure and the high expectations.

Now, the pressure and expectations are hard enough to cope with and Rodgers handles it extremely well, but constantly being compared to what may well be the best QB ever in the history of NFL is downright unfair and totally illogical.

Watching Favre play football was like watching an artist creating a master-piece; art in real-time. Extending that analogy further, who would you prefer to see painting a Picasso — Picasso or Kvium? Rodgers is taking over after Favre and he is not supposed to be Favre or even play like Favre. Even though it is tempting to think, “Favre would have converted that 3rd and 33″, I don’t think that is the way to look at it. Sure, Favre would probably have been more likely to convert it; more likely than any other QB in the entire league!

From what I saw Rodgers deliver tonight against Minnesota Vikings, it seems that he has definitely learned a lot from Favre, but also sets himself aside from Favre in that he is willing to actually run the ball if there are no open receivers or simply if the opportunity presents itself and seems viable. Favre’s influence was definitely visible at his first touchdown pass, which was great to see — there is nothing wrong with learning from the best — but I was relieved to find that he was not trying to be Favre or play like him.

The Packers have a great QB in Rodgers and it was nice to see that they had enough confidence in him to line up with 4 receivers, leaving Rodgers somewhat more vulnerable to a sack (of which they gave up exactly zero mostly thanks to the offensive linemen). Leading the Pack to a 24–19 victory over division rivals Vikings (in spite of 118 penalty yards against them) is a pretty impressive beginning and I am confident that Rodgers and the rest of the team can take on the rest of NFC North and make the playoffs. One thing though… If I was Rodgers, I would practice that Lambeau Leap some more, I am sure it will not be in vain.