Denne mand hedder Pia

[Klick image for larger version]

The ancient and evil brotherhood

I found this brilliant picture on the interwebs, and it sort of set me off...
So firstly thanks to http://thegreatgeekmanual.com/blog/picture-of-the-week-even-sith-lords-get-the-blues
Check it out.

 

How to get a million followers on G-plus (upd)

Something very unexpected happened the other day. Google+ told me that I had 1200+ 'followers. I'd decided that I'd celebrate if I ever reached 1000. Well... Too Late!

Edit: by March 7 the counter says 1502....
Edit: by March 14 the counter says 1665....
Edit: by March 17 the counter says 1706
Edit by March 26 the counter says 1802
Edit: by October 10 (2013) the counter says 2313...

This unexpected development raises a number of questions. How did that happen? Are G+ followers a 'bankable' asset. Will it get me laid - And what about my own user experience?

The answer to the most important question is of course 'no'. According to the very impressive Circle Count website 68% of Google plussies are of the male persuasion. 28% are female while the rest are sort of in between...

• Link to Circlecount

I've followed a few simple steps from the beginning. I've added the Google+ contributor suggestions regularly to my following circle. I share some thoughts and ideas I think I would find interesting. Old youTube clips and so on. I 'harvest' the stream for stuf I personally find interesting and re-share that. Conscientiously given credit where credit is due and all that. And eventually this tactic would have brought me 1000 followers. But then something unexpected happened. Two brothers named Keith and Scott Cramer had a bet (say hallo to Scott / link to Google+). They'd selected a number of G+ contributors and the winner would be the one whose team had gained most followers combined. Though I seem to have been on the loosing 'team' the resultant extra buzz is quite evident on the Circlecount graph below.
I wonder whether I can maintain that level of growth?

• You can read more about the whole competition thing by doing the clicky stuff here.

To be honest I find the G+ user experience 'out of the box' a little bland. You get a lot (and do mean a lot) of Google employees who - not entirely un-cult-like - plug various amazing Googlisms. Not to mention animatied gifs and litterally billions of cute kittens. Though I like a ...cute kitty cat as much as the next guy It. Gets. Old. Then theres the videos of people getting terribly hurt, pornography and spam. What I probably disklike the most are the SEO's and the Tech-evangelists. Yes we get it: You're so cool. Like a piece of stale bread hidden in the back of your senile great grand mother's frigde. Plus za chance... as they say.

Furtunately you can easily ban anyone you don't like from your stream and you shouldn't hesitate to use that option. Problem is that you'll get the feeling that things are getting slow and the place is emptying. It's important to keep adding more people than you disconnect and then use G+'s semiexcellent sorting system to differentiate them. I'm still working on that.

Is it a bankable asset? - At this scale probably not. It might be something to put on a CV for certain job applications, so there's that. Many of my 'followers' must share some interests and world views and though I'd bever do spam, I get the feeling that it's considered Ok to promote pet projectss and interests within reasonable limits of course. I guess that it might just make som things that used to seem impossible much less so.

As Terry Pratchett would say: we live in interesting times.
In deed!

Choosing a font

Typefaces can be confusing. There are just so many and they all look nice. So what to do?
Well, one thing you can do is to check this excellent flowcharts. Its not new and you may have seen it before.

(click image to se larger version)

Graphic by Julian Hansen

Originally posted on this site [link]

En ring der binder dem alle...

 

Der har i den seneste tid rejst sig en mediestorm om hvorvidt der bør være en betalingsring omkr. København for at styre trafikken. Mange ting er sagt for og imod og nu har vores sidende regering besluttet at lade ideen falde. Vi får i stedet en milliard til trafikforbedringer her og der.
Det er en løsning der - alt taget i betragtning - er meget bedre end ingenting.
Problemet er bare at hele diskussionen om betalingsring eller ej er et sidespor. - Ikke bare et almindeligt sidespor af den type, der får der til at gå længere tid før man når sit mål, men en masseødelæggelsesafvej, der vil medføre mental blindhed og forstoppelse og ende med at man ligger i en fjern ørken et sted, død og indtørret.

 (fra http://curiousphotos.blogspot.com/2010/11/fancy-skyscrapers.html)

Sagen er at det overhovedet ikke handler om København, noget ovre på Sjælland eller endda en landsdækkende udfordring. Problemet findes i alle større byer over hele verden. Det er fundamentet, det er galt med.

Problemet har mange aspekter, men for at forstå hvad der foregår, kan man starte med at tænke på skyskrabere. - Højhuse kan på mange måder ses som modeller for hvordan byer fungerer, og det interessante er, at det i dag ikke kun er byggeteknik og ingeniørkunst, der sætter grænsen for hvor høje de kan blive. Det er faktisk elevatorernes antal. sagen er at jo flere mennesker, der skal kunne være i bygningen - og ikke mindst: jo flere der skal kunne komme ud og ind af den, desto flere elevatorer skal der bruges, og på et tidspunkt begynder behovet for elevatorernes antal, omfang og konstruktion at blive så stort, at det ikke længere kan betale sig at tilføje etager.

Problemet er simpelthen at på et vist befolkningsniveau begynder kravet til transport og infrastruktur i det hele taget at stige voldsomt. Københavner problemet kendes fra alle større byer over hele verden, og man kan tilsyneladende vælge mellem enten total-kaos på den ene side eller forskellige kombinationer af voldsomt upopulære 'løsninger'. Som sagen fra Københavnstrup synes at antyde, vil alle gerne have adgang til byen, men der er ikke så mange der vil betale for, at andre også får det.

Samtidig har politikere og beslutningstagere haft travlt med at skyde sig selv i foden på dette punkt siden Vorherre den Almægtige fladede Babelstårnet. En kombination af kortsynethed og blind tiltro til intelligent design har fastholdt os i en stadigt stigende blindgyde af varm luft, tågetale og tiltende luftkasteller. Tendensen går mod centralisering. Byerne bliver større og større, Hospitaler og skoler fusioneres (omend sjældent med hinanden) administrative centrer centraliseres og der blive flere og flere indkøbscentre. En blind tiltro til privatbilismen potentiale har fået folk til at fravælge nærbaner, undergrundsbaner, sporvogne og anden kollektiv trafik og nu hænger vi altså simpelthen på privatbilismen.

Zenvo ST1.
Den har flere end 1000 HK og kan efter sigende køre over 350 km/t..
Der er plads til to voksne og en lille hoppe-bold,
og der hvor den er på vej hen, er der ingen parkeringspladser.

Pris ca. 10.000.000 kr

Hvis vi nu vender tilbage til KBH og ser på dens nuværende problemer som et eksempel, så er betalingsringen ikke en løsning. Jeg har ikke fulgt med i debatten på detaljeplanet men ser det ike lidt ud til at projektets tilhængere hovedsageligt bor indenfor den planlagte ring, mens modstanderne bor udenfor. Eftersom KBH's beboere er en meget stor del af problemets årsag, er det vel ikke ikke en rimelig fordeling.

Man kunne også vælge at forbedre adgang og parkeringsmuligheder for den private trafik. Det vil kræve store investeringer i veje og anlæg og en udfladning af Amalienborg, Christansborg og KBH's berømte rådhus samt en tresporet motorvej fra Børsen via Pølsemanden på Tagensvej til Det Nye Operahus.
Ønsker man derimod ikke at omdanne Tivoli til et 8 etagers hurtigtroterende parkeringsanlæg, må man i stedet iværksætte omfattende investeringer i offentlig transport og ny teknik. Der er sikkert tal og beregninger, som jeg ikke lige har adgang til, men jeg tænker en tredobling af dækning og kapacitet for metroen kombineret med massiv udflytning og decentralisering.
Der er dog også lyspunkter, selvom det måske ikke altid ser sådan ud, er ørestads-projektet rigtigt set. Vi kunne flytte Hendes Majestæt Den Anden af Danmark derud med hans højhed Prinsen, hans anden højhed Prinsen, lilleprinsen og Thornings mand.
Roadpricing er i virkeligheden blot en betalingsring der er sat fast i din bil og fungerer ved hjælp af et avanceret elektronisk overvågningssystem. Goda, kan de sige Skynet?
Jeg tror faktisk mere på at man kunne udvikle og sælge biler, der var optimeret langt mere til at løse de opgaver, vi bruger dem til, forbedre mulighederne for at tele-pendle o.s.v. Der er mange muligheder. De gør alle sammen ondt og koster vildt mange penge, men vi ER altså nødt til at gøre noget og vi skal starte med det for ca ti år siden.

Men pointen i alt dette her er at betalingsringen er bedøvende uvigtig som 'sag'. Den er symptom på en livstruende livsstilssygdom, som vi er nødt til at forholde os til. Ikke bare i Københavnstrup.
Så kan man tænke over det, mens man sidder der og venter.

Værd at tænke på: Politisk amok som metode

Denne video med indenrigs- og sundhedsminister Bertel Haarder opnåede omfattende berømmelse i sin tid. (19/12 2010)

Helt fundamentalt mener jeg ikke man kan have folk i ledende ansvarsfulde stillinger, der reagerer så voldsomt på helt almindelige normale, fornuftige og relevante spørgsmål. Man kan konkludere at var han ikke i en ledende stilling ville den slags opførsel få ham fyret ret hurtigt. Der faktisk heller ikke ukendt at netop politiske ledere har et ustyrligt temperament. Ikke at denne egenskab har gjort det nemmere for nogen af dem.
Men det interessante i vores sammenhæng er ikke at Bertel går fra Snøvsen. Det interessante er spørgsmålet. Baggrunden er at Haarder har indført nye skrappere retningslinjer for fedmeoperationer. Og journalisten spørger efter ca 7 minutter og 30 sekunder omtrent således "der sidder jo en arbejdsgruppe og arbejder med netop dette spørgsmål. Hvorfor venter I ikke på den?"
Det er - alt andet lige - et spørgsmål områdets minister på have et svar på. Sagen er at selvom de pågældende operationer er dyre, hævder tilhængere at de kan forebygge typiske overvægtsrelaterede sygdomme som hjerte-kredsløbslidelser og diabetes. Hvis det er helt eller delvist korrekt er det faktisk højst sandsynligt at en fedme-operation kan tjenes ind på et par måneder. Jeg ved ikke om påstandende er holdbare eller om forventningerne er for optimistiske. Man skal faktisk bruge en vurdering fra en ekspertgruppe inden man gør noget overilet.
Hov! Vent!...
For sent.
Du kan læse mere om baggrunden for spørgsmålet her.
DRs side med videoen finder du her.
Se nu kunne vrede Bertel på videon have været en enlig svane. Men faktisk ligner det lidt en fast metode hos den gamle regering. Man nedsætter faktisk ofte grupper af eksperter men så ignorerer man deres rådgivning. Som i forbindelse med Kamphunde-loven eller man indfører indlysende idiotisk lovgivning som fx med knivloven for at følge en eller anden tilfældig aktuel folkestemning eller senest med grænsekontrolloven
Jeg kan såmænd godt se hvori det tillokkende består, men det er altså ikke en måde man kan styre et land på!

Værd at tænke på: Prisen for kampen

En ny undersøgelse fra institut for internationale studier opgør prisen for dansk deltagelse i kampen mod terror til 3-4 milliarder kr. årligt. Og det er vel at mærke fraregnet prisen for deltagelse i diverse militære kamphandlinger rundt omkring på kloden. Ligesom følgeomkostninger af at det eksempelvis er blevet meget mere tidskrævende og ubehageligt at rejse og al den slags tilsyneladende ikke er medtaget. Politiken har en slags artikel om undersøgelsen her.
Det er en af den slags beregninger kloge mennesker sikkert kan skændes længe om, men sandheden er at vi i DK sammen med hele den vestlige verden bruger enorme midler på at bekæmpe noget vi stort set ikke fatter en brik af. Midler som er ude af proportion med den reelle trussel.
Og koster dyrt i menneskeliv.
Vi har således mistet syv soldater i Irak (Wikipedia-link) og over 40 i Afghanistan (Politiken-link). Det drejer sig bogstavelig talt om mænd i deres bedste alder. Folk som havde et liv de skulle have levet et andet sted med kærester og børn og job. Amerikanske tal tyder på at antallet af sårede er i nærheden af 6 gange så højt som antallet af dræbte. Så det bliver omkring 300 danskere med varige men . Derudover er der civile tab på modstandersiden . Og ufattelige omkostninger i kroner og ører.
Irakkrigen blev startet på falske forudsætninger og man kan ikke vide om vores politikere bevidst viderebragte en løgn eller om de blindt troede på, hvad de blev fortalt. Var de dumme eller var de 'for smarte'... Det er tankevækkende at den daværende statsminister nu har fået et vældig fint job som generalsekretær i Nato.
Forholdene omkring Afghanistan er noget mere indviklede. Så meget mere indviklede faktisk at det er et skoleeksempel i sig selv: Vi taler om et område vis hovederhverv er opiumsmugling, hvor hverken det Britiske Imperie eller diverse russere har haft militær succes og hvor man simpelthen bør holde sig fra traditionelle militære operationer.
Kampen mod terror har også haft en anden meget alvorlig betydning. Den har gjort os til Cheney-itter. Cheney, Bush-periodens frygtede vicepresident var en af hjernerne bag den frygtelige dobbelttænkning som gjorde de 'normalt', 'meningsfuldt' og 'lovligt' at bruge tortur for at forsvare demokratiet. Cheney var også en af kræfterne bag mange af de løgnagtige og bedrageriske metoder som blev brugt til at holde modstanden mod krigene nede. Husker nogen fx Plame-gate?
Herhjemme har vi under den nuværende regerings skiftende dejlige drenge set lignende metoder anvendt i kampen for at skjule at vi rutinemæssigt har udleveret afghanske fanger til mulig tortur. Eller eksempelvis i forbindelse med Jægerbogsagen.
Samlet set har krigen mod terror sæt centrale demokratiske værdier ud af kraft både i det store udland og herhjemme.
Du kan læse mere om Cheney og hans nyudgivne erindringsbog her (link til Slate.com).
Du kan læase mere om prisen for krige mod terror her. Artiklen handler om amerikanske forhold, men jeg mener at hvis man tager højde for størrelsesforskellene og for konsekvenserne af Fogh-Rasmussens fantastiske indsats som nato-generalsekretær, er en sammenligning ikke meningsløs.

Samtidig understreger de tragiske begivenheder i Norge for nylig med al mulig tydelighed, at den reelle terrortrussel ser helt anderledes ud i virkeligheden end eksperterne og alle de kloge i medierne har gået og regnet med. Jeg siger ikke at alle terrorister er blonde, taler norsk og ser sig selv som kristne. Men i den Europæiske historie har langt de fleste terrorister faktisk været enten revolutionære, nationalistiske eller kristne i forskellige smagsvarianter og kombinationer.

Jeg er ikke pacifist og jeg mener at terrorisme er en af den slags forbrydelser der retfærdiggør meget skrappe midler. Men hvis vi lader kampen mod terror kortslutte vores demokratiske processer har vi intet at forsvare, samtidig med at vi mister evnen til at forholde os konstruktivt til hvad vi skal bekæmpe og hvordan.

The Ploogle Problem

A couple of days ago I joined the new social networking site Google+. Or: Ploogle as I alone insist on calling it.

Impressions so far have not been good

It's quite interesting but there are some very serious problems.
First of all: these guys really don't get "Privacy" as a concept and don't understand (or pretend not to understand) people's privacy concerns.
Let me give you an example everyone can find me, access my profile and see my personal information, including but not limited to email, occupation and where I live (more or less).
And while I have nothing whatsoever to hide there's a problem with that. Everyone includes the creepy guy across the street, that guy from Friday the 13 and a couple of hundred potential terrorist. Not to mention government agencies and secret Libyan security forces.
There's also been a lot of discussions about the use of pseudonyms. Why shouldn't I be allowed to call myself Captain Jack Sparrow if I want to says I. 'Aye' Says Google 'as long as you don't!'. I realize that there's a need for rules about such things but to me the real problem is impersonations not pseudonyms.
As most of you might know, this is an issue which has caused at lot of debate. Considering that G+ is a new product that Google is setting up to compete with Facebook and Tweedledee it really really shouldn't be.
(And don't tell me that theres a setting or an app for that. We need default setting and rules that doesn't enable criminals, stalkers, crooked employers and malevolent dictatorships.)
What one should expect is that Google would want to move the service to follow ist potential costumers not that they'd try to make their customer base conform to its arbitrary rules. It's not as there's no alternatives.

Rightsizing

Another problem is the sheer size of it all. The good news is that you can very quickly find and select to follow a lot of "interesting" people the bad is that then you have to listen to their meaningless plurble, watch their animated cat gifs or read their endless repetitions of the latest buzzwords. And each individual post in the stream can be huge. Often growing rapidly as comments are added.
You must un-follow the worst cases off course. But what about those who are actually quite interesting or possess essential information in some areas while being a total dork in others? What about your mother in law and all your colleagues some of whom you really don't like that much. How about the guy that works with supersizing search engine optimization software. You need to follow the white rabit but it's gone down a hole.
What we need is better ways to sort our streams, square our circles and tag our own postings. Its a well-known Internet problem: when 40.000.000 people want to talk at once it's almost impossible to hear what they are trying to say. I wonder if Google has access to technology that makes it possible to sort and systematize large amounts of information? Gee, I don't know...
You're supposed to be able to control all this through the use of circles which is an OK concept which suffers in execution. If you make your circles to big you will be flooded with ... whatever and if you make them too small there'll be considerable less of the same. My conclusion so far is that you need them to be bigger that you'll have though but smaller than you'd have wished for.
Also the tools for editing individuals circle settings are great but we really need a sorting tool that can sort, say, 500 people after language or interest in filatelism.

As it stands everybody are so exited about the ability to post messages in a constantly rolling stream of superficiality and animated gif-cats that they don't notice the train is actually going nowhere extremely fast. The whole thing is still in some sort of pre-Beta basis stasis, so you'll have to forgive and love everybody. Which is OK.
But this is supposed to be an effort towards a marketable product. Really? Get in the game mr. Gundotra!

The upside is that there 40 million users or so which means that some of them must be quite interesting.
Hopefully...

The new face of terror

The terrible acts of terror that shook Norway this Friday did not only brutally end the lives of more than 80 innocent civilians of which many were teenagers in the span of a couple of hours, they must also fundamentally change the way we think about terror and terrorism and how we fight it.
If you're reading this by now you probably know the basic facts of what happened. If not I believe the Wikipedia post is reasonably updated. - Or will be soon.
But as we discovered on Danish TV (in Danish), on the Wired.com website, in Great Britain and just about everywhere else journalist and most self proclaimed experts kept seeing the atrocities as the work of al-Qaeda or some spiritually related organisation.
As we now know it wasn't and that is an extremely important fact.
Historically Europe have a long tradition of terror: Serbian nationalists, Christians vs. other Christians, left wing revolutionaries in Italy and Germany Basque Nationalist, Greek right and/or left and so on and so on ad nauseam. Relatively speaking very, very few of these attacks have been perpetrated by Islamic extremists.

It's my conviction that this is extremely important.

Terrorists and extremist do exist and they do pose a very real danger to our society, culture and way of life. But just as terror isn't really what we think it is, the true nature of our culture and way of life is not what some political forces have tried to make us believe.

As I understand it terrorism is the concept that violence and the threat of violence can be used as an instrument to achieve goals that - in some sense at least - are political*. The main object is the creation of fear in the population and, I think, the expression of anger.
Obviously it's much more complicated than that and you could probably write books analyzing terror. As I suspect that one or two very intelligent persons may have already done.

This brings us to what I think "We" are. But lets start by examining why this is important: What we have been seeing since 9-11 and the beginning of the socalled "war on terror" is a concept of Us vs. Them. We, basically White Christians from Europe and the US seen a the good guys in a battle against the evil forces of another non-white religion.
This a fundamentally flawed concept. It is absolutely essential that 'we' can identify real values that are worth defending and that others can understand and respect. Objectively there is no doubt in my mind that if the group I'm supposed to be part of is white Christians, it's not superior and shouldn't be glorified and therefore not worth fighting for. It is simply impossible to list all the atrocities and idiocies that have been instigated in the name of the supposed superiority of white Christians.
The values that I do have, that I want to defend and I which I feel are central to any concept of civilization are Freedom, the willingness to listen, the ability to talk, openness towards people that aren't like me and a handfull of other things.
Not just because I think they are nice touchy-feely ideas to stand on but because I think they're absulutely central to the long term survival of our species: If we as a group, as a nation, as a people, as an entire species are to ever get out of this terrible mess we need to work together, we need to be able to listen to each other and most especially and importantly we need to stop trying to kill each other off.

This is not a fight against an evil religious force. This a fight against our own fears and anger and we will win.

Blimps are the new black

As this excellent article from Wired.com [link] suggests blimps have a strong future in upcoming military scenarios.

There are problems though: as the article explains we are presently seeing several different versions competing. This classic Pentagon-style infighting: do we really need one model for the air force, one for the army (and a separate (secret) one for the CIA)?

The real problem though is with classic military logic. The strategists are preparing for the war they fought yesterday or, at best, the one they are fighting today.
While it is true that they are great for spying on an occupied area blimps are very big and slow. They fly by being "lighter than air" and while some hot air baloons go very high these airships will be filled with high tech gear. I don't know how high they'll go. Compared to spy planes and drones they seem to be very easy targets for anyone with an anti aircraft missile or a fighter jet. While they'd probably work Ok in Iraq and Afghanistan where the enemy has limited and predictable capabilities they'll be like giant pies in the sky for an aggressive and better equipped enemy.
Mostly at this time though they look like fancy new ways for Americans to spend money they really don't have on things they really don't need...
So what else is new?
:o)