Archive for the 'My life' Category

It is more than half past three in the middle of the night, early Tuesday. My god damn neighbors have been playing loud techno music and shit like that the whole night, and they are screaming and thrashing things in the basement of this 10 floors big house. I went down to the basement and tried to find out who is responsible for the party but nobody was able to tell me.

I asked them to turn the volume down, but then they just asked me if I am Swedish. Yes, I am one of the few Swedes in this house, if that matters, but when I said yes, they just laughed at me. So I found the source of music, which consisted of one big fat receiver and a laptop. I tried to turn the software volume down, but as the fucking laptop was running a Spanish version of Windows, I was not able to find out how to do. Instead, I turned off the computer and the receiver for them and went back upstairs to my apartment.

What can I do about these neighbors? This is not the first time they have parties in the middle of the week and it is unlikely to be the last… And my landlord does not offer any disturbance hotline.

At the moment of writing this, they have succeeded in starting up the music again. Now, I will go and see if I can remove the fuses or turn off the main power source.

Time to update my homepage, indeed. Let’s do it with some statement. Students must not call abroad, if they use a cellphone subscription of the Swedish telephone company Telia. That’s a fact I faced today, when I was about to make a call to Italy (of which reason I will come to in a future post). I picked up my phone, dialed the number and waited for an Italian to answer me. Instead, I heard a recorded voice telling me that I cannot call this number from this subscription, plus a referring phone number to Telia for details. So I called Telia. They informed me that my salary is beneath the limit for making abroad calls. I need to earn SEK above or equal to 10000 a month.

I was stunned. Could this really be true? And how can they know my salary? How can they be allowed to know my salary in the first place? Well, that’s another point. When I was revealed from my chock, I said that I am a student with about SEK 7000 a month in student subsidies. That’s not enough, because 7000 is less than 10000. Yes, I can agree on that one.

So, keeping to the topic, which is not very far-fetched, a normal student will not be able to call abroad from a Telia cellphone subscription. I don’t know about the policy of other phone companies, but as I have a minimum subscription time of 12 months counted from this summer, I would not be helped by the fact that there may be other options.

Of course, I solved the issue by using VoIP, but that is not the point. I just want to spread this word as a warning to students that are potential cellphone subscribers - do not give your soul to Telia!

At May 31′th, the Swedish Police attacked The Pirate Bay, the world’s biggest search engine for pirate copied information. About 50 policemen raided the company who hosted The Pirate Bay, and seized all the servers.

Even though the servers for the particular site was clearly labeled, they took all the servers hosting about 200 other sites. Piratbyrån, an organization with opinions against copyright, was one of them.

I could write more about this story, because there are many more important details. Others have already done that, so I will leave the details and give you a link to an article on IDG.se.

At 3′rd of July, there was demonstrations organized in some cities of Sweden, against this misbehavior of the Swedish Police. I was at one of them, in Stockholm, where the demonstration was organized by several parties.

The leader of the Pirate Party (which is the party I support), Richard Falkvinge, held a great speech. I will take the liberty of translating it into English and publish it on my site. I really hope Richard will not mind, but according to his speech, I should be free doing so. I have tried to translate it as exactly as possible, but please refer to the original text written in Swedish to verify the information. Here it follows:

Richard Falkvinge’s speech at the demonstration, translated into English

“Friends, Citizens, Pirates,

There is nothing new beneath the sun.

My name is Richard Falkvinge and I am the leader of the Pirate Party.

Last week, we have seen several right assaults. We have seen the Police doing outrages. We have seen innocent people get hit. We have seen how the media industry acts. We have seen how top level politicans are acting to protect the media industry.

This is an unparalleled scandal. That is why we are standing here today.

The media industry wants us to believe that this is about payment models; about how one particular group of professionals shall get payed. That it is about their decreased profitability; pure sales statistics. That is a pretext. This is about something completely different.

To understand the situation of today, we need to go back 400 years, to when the Church had a culture and knowledge monopoly. What the Church said, was the law. Pyramidal communication; you have one person at the top, who speaks to many people downwards the pyramid. The culture and the knowledge has one source, and that source was the Church.

And God help him, who dared challenging the culture and knowledge monopoly of the Church! He was exposed to that time’s most cruel punishment. Under no circumstances, the citizens were allowed to spread information on their own. They had access to the whole judical system to prevent, punish and harass, when so happened.

There is nothing new beneath the sun.

Today, we know that the only right thing to do, was to set the knowledge free; that Galileo Galilei was right. Even though he infringemented the knowledge monopoly.

In other words, we talk about a time when the Church, with its full potential, claimed that there was no use for citizens learning to read or write, since the priest could tell them everything they needed to know. The Church understood what it would involve to lose control.

Then came the press.

Suddenly, there was not only one source of knowledge; but several. The citizens, that now had learned to read, were offered unsanctioned knowledge. The Church was mad. The royalties were mad. The British royal family even instituted a new law, which said that only the few presses selected by the royal family, were permitted to publish books; and spread knowledge and culture to the citizens.

That law was called copyright.

Several hundred years passed, then came the freedom of the press. Still, everywhere, the same old model of communication was used: one who speaks, and many that listen. The government liked that, and founded a system with a legally responsible publisher.

Surely, the citizens are allowed to learn, but there shall always be someone responsible, in case - perish the though - they learn wrong.

And this is what is basically changing today. Internet is not following that model. We are not only downloading culture and knowledge anymore; we are also uploading to others. We are sharing files. The knowledge and the culture have, amazingly enough, lost the central point of control.

This is my essence, so I will dig a bit deeper in the details:

Downloading is the classical model of mass medium, with one central point of control; a legally responsible publisher, who shall answer for the consequences, who risk having his or her press subsidy cancelled et cetra. Everyone can download knowledge and culture from that central point of control, and the right to publish can be cancelled by needs and opinions.

Culture and knowledge monopoly. Control.

File sharing involves simultaneously uploading and downloading from each connected person and completely lacks a central control. It is a situation where all culture and information flow organically between millions of different persons at the same time. Something completely different. Something new in the history of communication. There is no longer anyone responsible for potential wrong knowledge.

This is why the media corporations talk about legal downloading. Legal. Downloading. They try to make that, the only way to download legally, is to download from the central point which they control. Downloading; not file sharing.

And that is exactly why we will change the rules.

Last week, we have seen how far an actor is willing to go, to avoid losing the control. We saw the constitution violated. We saw how the Police used forcement and integrity violations; not for fighting crimes, but for the obvious reason to harass the involved and all those who have been near them.

There is nothing new beneath the sun, and the history is always repeating. This is not about payment to a particular group of professions. This is about control of the culture and knowledge; for the one who controls it, controls the world.

The media industry has tried to make us feel ashame; saying that what we do is illegal and that we are pirates. They try to put us under pressure. Look around you today; see how they have failed. Yes, we are pirates. But those who believe that is something shameful are mistaken. This is something we are proud of.

For we have already seen what it means to be without central control. We have already tasted, felt and smelled the freedom not to be in a controlled culture and knowledge monopoly. We have already learned to read and write.

And we will never forget how to read and write, just because it does not fit the media interests of yesterday.

My name is Richard, and I am a pirate!”

As a collector of arcade and video games, I am addicted to eBay and their evilness of stiffing people. Sometimes, I am happy to get stiffed that way, however. Today for example, when I won an auction of the game 1942 by Capcom for $20.5 (a total of $42.5 including shipping to Sweden). In order to avoid bid wars, I usually wait to the last few seconds of the auction before I place my bid, and when I do, I often bid quite alot higher than I really want to pay, hoping that nobody else have place a bid just some dollars lower than mine. If someone overbids me, I don’t care, as long as the bid is far higher than I am willing to pay for the item.

The technique I use to bid the last few seconds is called sniping. It is quite easy when you get used to it, but it requires perfect timing. You’d better not being at the local store as the auction ends, or asleep for that matter. There is a solution on this, however; automatically sniping services. Those are programs that just do the sniping for you. I used to argue against those, as I found them unnecessary, expensive and insecure. Well, I’m still a bit paranoid about using it, but the laziness always wins in the end.

Why snipe when eBay itself has a powerful auto-raising bid system? Well, when not sniping, but bidding when there still is time left to be overbidden, the one who has the current maximum bid still has time left to raise his bid. And he will probably do, if he has the chance. Don’t give him that chance! If you do, you probably have to overbid him again, and so it goes on… That’s the simple reason.

The service I have tried is called Bidnapper. Wonderful name, isn’t it? It is easy to register an account and start sniping auctions. It is not free to use, but it is not very expensive. You can choose to pay for a number of snipes, or for a time of unlimited snipes. Once you have registered an account, you can try it for free of charge for 10 days. One way to get more snipes without paying, is to recruit users to their evil service. That’s the reason to why I’m writing about it in my blog. I want to recruit you! Ooops… Did I say that loud? Well…

If you want to try this feature, just follow this link to Bidnapper and sign up for an account. That will probably help you winning more auctions, and it will give me another three free snipes. Good luck!

Are you looking for a calm and wonderful place for your vacation? How about a cute little summer cottage in the South Eastern part of Sweden? You will experience a beautiful nature and the Eastern Sea is just a hundred meters from the cabin. The place, called Åkvik, is located about 30 km north of Oskarshamn, and a couple of km from a village called Figeholm.

All pictures on this page can be clicked for full size versions. There is also a photo album with some additional pictures.

The cottage is surrounded by forest, and on the other side lies Simpevarp. There, is a powerplant called OKG located. Maybe you have found this site because you are going to work at OKG this summer? If so, why don’t you take this opportunity to live near your employment; still far away enough not to be able to note one single sign of the powerplant at your spare time… If not, don’t worry; the powerplant won’t interfere with your holiday. You can neither see it, smell it nor hear it from the cabin.

The cottage is featured with electricity, cold water and limited access to warm water (for showering only). No water closet is available, but instead, there is a cosy outhouse. The boat on the picture above is not ours, so it is not included. However, we have a little dinghy, enough to take you on a ride at the beautiful archipelago. Update 2008-05-16: We now offer a plastic row boat for you to use, included when you rent the cottage. Depending on the weather conditions, there may be mosquitoes. They are not dangerous (if you’re not especially allergic to them), but they might be frustrating. However, there are quite efficient methods of keeping them away.

You may rent the cottage for just a weekend, the whole summer, or anything in-between. Providing it is not already reserved, of course. I am the owner of the cottage. However, I live almost 400 km north of it, so my mother, Gunilla, administrates it. If you want to know more, feel free to contact me or her. However, unless you can speak Swedish, you will have to contact me. For general questions, you can use the commenting system for this page. If you want to rent the cottage, please send me an e-mail or contact me or Gunilla by phone (details at the bottom of this page).

How about pricing? Normally, for one week we will charge 2500 SEK (about 250 Euro or 1000 Polish Zloty, depending on the currency rate). That price may be negotiated, depending on how long you’re planning to stay. Feel free to make an offer!

E-mail: joh.svensson@gmail.com (English, Swedish or maybe Babelfish)
My cellphone: +46 70 59 55 621 (English, Swedish)
Gunilla’s landline: +46 491 76 07 23 (Swedish only)
Gunilla’s cellphone: +46 73 907 89 81 (Swedish only)
Link to a Google map, that will show the location of Åkvik (opens in this window)

Today, all Swedes are celebrating Walpurgis, but almost nobody really know why, and even fewer care about it. They are pleased enough by the fact that they have a good reason for boozing, in combination with another day free from work. Too bad, it is Sunday today, which means they would have been free from work anyway…

On Walpurgis Day, you should locate a place where someone have collected a fair pile of wood. At the evening, a parade of children are supposed to set the pile on fire, using torches or something. There you’re supposed to stand, freezing your ass off, until the fire has turned big enough to supply you with pleasant heat.

Me and some friends failed in locating a good pile. The one we found looked big enough, but unfortunately, quantity does not imply quality. It was made of wet and fresh wood, and it took bloody forever to begin fire. On the other hand, it provided loads of smoke, as the photos in the album can support (click the photo above to see the album).

Finally, we ended up at some coffee bar in the city of Västerås. The espresso at that place was yet another evidence of that quantity does not imply quality. But I had better not to complain; in company with good friends, you don’t need high quality fires nor coffee. Get the moral?