Lars Pind

Here’s the article from computerworld.dk (in Danish).

I wonder whether they’re considering an open source platform, such as dotLRN?

Looks like Microsoft is scared of loosing the Department of Defense. Here’s the story and some background.

• SoftwareChoice.org is angry with a report on use of Free and Open Source Software in the DoD. good commentary on this story.
• Bruce Perens wrote about this in the Register back in September. He’s also the founder of SincereChoice.org, an attempt to counter-balance the absurdity of the softwarechoice.org lobby.

Great web site for misheard lyrics to songs. Fantastic! :)

I just recalled the fantastic old “Money Gooood! Napster Baaaad!” cartoons from Camp Chaos which rocked the internet a couple years ago. They’re hilarious.

Jeffrey G. Katz in Fast Company: When it comes to airlines, Southwest Airlines is now the competition for everyone. Lower costs are the basic goal of every airline.

I’ve been reading about Southwest Airlines for a little while now, and I’m very impressed with their story. I’m especially impressed, because it’s sincere and honest. There are no cheap tricks, no shortcuts. It’s about caring and working hard. End of story.

We’re off to Netlearning 2002 in Rönneby, Sweden. Exciting! We’ll have a booth and hopefully we’ll learn a lot and sell a good deal, too.

Scandinavian airlines does wi-fi on board planes. Cool. As Christian just said: Almost as obvious as putting wi-fi on trains.

Who’s on first? Very funny. Thanks to Jonas for passing this on.

Universal offers legal music download. Definitely a positive move in this troubled area.

I’m starting to get to know my new camera. There are a couple more shots up now at the photo gallery.

I got a new camera today, and of course I had to go out and take a few new photos, although I must admit they’re probably not the greatest photos I’ve taken to date.

But why don’t you judge for yourself: one and two.

I also uploaded a couple of old photos I had lying around. Enjoy!

Slides from the conference on open source software in the Danish goverment are now online.

CNET news.com: Is Microsoft losing ground to Linux?.

Picture this: Imagine what we could do with Linux if we took the 2.8 billion dollars that we paid for Windows licenses in the three months from July through September, and poured them into Linux development.

Or if we took the 2.3 billion we paid for Office licenses and put that into furthering development of OpenOffice?

And we’re just talking one quarter here.

The power of open source is not just what you can get for free. The real power lies in what we can create if we take the money that we were going to spend on licenses anyway and use them to further develop the open source software.

That’s the way we work here at Collaboraid.

Here are the official filing to the SEC of Microsoft’s revenue and earnings by segment. Scroll down to note 9.

They have a profit margin of 86% on Windows (most claim 85% but they don’t know how to round numbers) and 79% on Office.

Damn! Amazing! It must be great to have a monopoly in a market, not to mention three: Desktop OS, office suite, and browser.

(Thanks to Thomas and computerworld.dk)

Netflix rocks. When can we get Netflix in Denmark?

The thing that everyone hates about Blockbuster is the late-fee drill. Analysts estimate that 18% of Blockbuster’s $5 billion in revenue comes from late fees. With Netflix, there are no late fees, and you can keep a movie for as long as you like. Blockbuster’s addiction to late fees helps drive Netflix’s success.

Halloween VII basically confirms what Tony Stanco said when he was here a couple weeks ago: It’s a done deal! Open Source has already won, it’s got too much momentum, and it’s only a question of time now. The powers working in favor of Open Source Software are far too strong.

May I add, just like with the Medieval Church versus the Enlightenment.

He’s not making himself very clear, but I wholeheartedly agree with the approach in this Holonic Software Development Manifesto. It’s more than a year old, though. Is anything happening with this?

I’ve again uploaded a handful old photos which got lost in the server hard drive failure. Enjoy. And yes, I’m sure I’ll soon get back to taking some new photos again.

If you haven’t yet subscribed, you should now. It’s not just about computer security, it’s about security in all of society, and how it affects our lives in very real ways. A few excerpts from the latest newsletter:

And while we’re on the subject of ridiculous, here are some of the “digital media devices” that would be required to incorporate government-approved copy-protection technology under the Hollings CBDTPA Bill: hearing aids, talking picture frames, scrolling signs, and baby monitors.

Real-world security looks a whole lot like computer security. It’s not just that computers are everywhere; the same concepts and methodologies that allow us to make sense of computer security also apply to the real world. In my previous book, “Secrets and Lies,” I used real-world metaphors to explain computer and network security. In this book I am going to explain real-world security using the techniques, processes, and formalism from the computer world, without assuming any computer knowledge.

Book publishing is second only to furniture delivery in slowness. My deadline for the book is the end of the month, but it’s not going to be available in stores until next September.

http://www.nomoreaolcds.com/

Alexander Kjerulf stopped by yesterday with a book called Birth of the Chaordic Age. On the back cover, it says:

“We are at that very point in time when a 400-year-old age is dying and another is struggling to be born—a shifting of culture, science, society, and institutions enormously greater than the world has ever experienced. Ahead, the possibiliy of regeneration of individuality, liberty, community and ethics such as the world has never known, and a harmony with nature, with one another and with the divine intelligence such as the world has always dreamed”.

Hm. I’m believing and hoping something along those lines myself, yet I always get this skeptical feeling in my stomach when I read such things. Maybe I’ve just been betrayed by hoaxes one too many time. Anyway, when I turned the cover and found out that this book was written by the founder and former CEO of VISA (yes, the credit card company) I was relieved. That increases the chances that the book has got at least one foot on the ground.

I’m looking forward to reading it, it looks very interesting.

Spolsky: Leaky Abstractions.

The law of leaky abstractions means that whenever somebody comes up with a wizzy new code-generation tool that is supposed to make us all ever-so-efficient, you hear a lot of people saying “learn how to do it manually first, then use the wizzy tool to save time.” Code generation tools which pretend to abstract out something, like all abstractions, leak, and the only way to deal with the leaks competently is to learn about how the abstractions work and what they are abstracting. So the abstractions save us time working, but they don’t save us time learning.

And all this means that paradoxically, even as we have higher and higher level programming tools with better and better abstractions, becoming a proficient programmer is getting harder and harder.

Patrick Giagnocavo recommended Jumpstart Your Business Brain, which looks quite useful. Some reviews it’s got.

Amazing weekend. For a long time, the work on producing the Yearbook for Testrup Højskole has been a model of good, fun team work. Work the way it should be. Working with people who care. When Alexander Kjerulf asked me to tell a story of when working felt particularly great, that was the story I told. When I started my business, it was with the express goal of recreating this spirit and experience in a work setting.

Since then, I’ve found that (a) it’s not easy, and (b) there are a number of things you do not want to copy, such as the drinking and smoking, and© the closest any normal business has come is probably Southwest Airlins.

This weekend was even better then they used to be. I haven’t been to the school for four years, and I’d forgotten a lot about what it was like. Getting back to school with this group of great people totally blew me away. It’s like 700 on-switches were turned on inside me. I also feel totally relieved. Much lighter. It’s very hard to explain, so let’s just say I had fun. Thanks to all of you. You know who you are :)

Okay, to answer Branimir and other’s questions: What did my Uncle say? He told me his story, which was quite impressive, and which I’d never heard before.

The short version is that he built Scandinavia’s largest producer of industrial paint by focusing on high-quality, customized paints. If a standard paint was adequate, he’d pass. He also got hold of the best engineer there was very early on, and held on to him.

With everything he’s done, he’s been lucky or smart to get in on a time where a significant change was happening in the marketplace, and got to ride that wave. It’s classic Innovator’s Dilemma. With paint was the entire Danish industry that started to grow rapidly around the time, and the other paint shops ignored them in order to focus on the consumer/standard paint market. Dres picked up that slot and stayed with it. With his import business, he started just around the time when supermarkets started opening up, and all the other importers refused to sell to those. Dres seized the opportunity and stayed there.

There was a lot more, of course. Maybe I’ll get around to that later.

Halloween VII: Survey Says.

Forslag til folketingsbeslutning om en offensiv konkurrencestrategi, der udnytter open source-software og åbne standarder.

Tor Nørretranders’ new book: The Generous Human Being. Looks interesting, looks like he got something right.

My friend, Alexander Kjerulf, has been preaching this to me for a while, but it wasn’t until this morning that I finally looked into the concept a bit myself: Appreciative Inquiry (see also Google results – I haven’t found the best resource yet).

It’s very inspiring. I’m going to use it this afternoon when I talk with my Uncle, the masterful entrepreneur.

I haven’t been posting a whole lot over the last few weeks, because it’s been very hectic around here. My business have been looking for new office space for a while, and finally moved into Havnegade 39 yesterday. Very nice place, nice people, I think we’ll stay here for a while. Indeed nice to have that settled.

Then there was the conference on Open Source software in the public administration in Denmark, which was very exciting. More than 300 people turned out, which is clear proof that more and more people recognize that open source makes good business sense. I also got the chance to attend a private gathering afterwards, with the two US keynote speakers from the conference, Tony Stanco and Bruce Perens. It was very encouraging to hear how Tony considered the “war” between open source software and proprietary software a done deal: The forces have been awakened, and it’s only a matter of time before almost all software development will be open source. Why? Because it’s supported by the two major western european forces: Democracy and Capitalism.

I spent Friday at the Open Space conference held by the Danish Entrepreneur’s Society. It was very encouraging to meet with all those like-minded people, and to really feel that the cultural revolution that I talked about here a couple days ago is a reality: It’s happening here, now, even in this home land of the Law of Jante. Beautiful.

Other than that, I’ve been spending time on doing sales pitches for our knowledge management and e-learning solutions. Phew!

Early tomorrow morning I’m on my way to Jutland, to pick the brain of my Uncle, Andreas Schou, a very successful entrepreneur indeed, and a role model of mine (when is he going to win the Entrepreneur of the Year award?). I’m very excited about that. After that, it’s off to my second home, Testrup Højskole, where I’ll help produce this year’s yearbook, which I took the initiative to giving a facelift back in 1996. It’s going to be a mini-reunion of the original crew, and it’s going to be a lot of fun. Never forget to contribute to things that don’t count on the bottom line :-)

Alright, I’m off. Take care :)

I went to the award show for local show) yesterday. Quite interesting, though it wasn’t exactly my crowd that was present. Too much entertainment, and too little time to meet and network with all the interesting people there. Looking forward to obtaining the price myself next year ;-)

Rode the new Copenhagen Metro for the second time today, and I’m very respectful of what they’ve achieved. The un-manned trains work well, it’s beautifully done, everything’s worked without a hitch. Okay, they’re two years over time, and significantly over budget, but still they’ve done a very good job.

Only complaint is that the design of the stations is much too sterile, and it’s a shame that they all look exactly alike, so you have to be very alert, if you don’t want to miss your stop. What they should’ve done was to ask different architects to interpret a common theme in designing the different stations.

Oh, well, perhaps they’ll do that with the new stations.

Krak has been updated, thus breaking my quick search deskbar interface to map lookup. That’s been fixed with this new version.

Wired: The Geek Syndrome.

It’s a familiar joke in the industry that many of the hardcore programmers in IT strongholds like Intel, Adobe, and Silicon Graphics – coming to work early, leaving late, sucking down Big Gulps in their cubicles while they code for hours – are residing somewhere in Asperger’s domain. Kathryn Stewart, director of the Orion Academy, a high school for high-functioning kids in Moraga, California, calls Asperger’s syndrome “the engineers’ disorder.” Bill Gates is regularly diagnosed in the press: His single-minded focus on technical minutiae, rocking motions, and flat tone of voice are all suggestive of an adult with some trace of the disorder. Dov’s father told me that his friends in the Valley say many of their coworkers “could be diagnosed with ODD – they’re odd.” In Microserfs, novelist Douglas Coupland observes, “I think all tech people are slightly autistic.”

Asperger’s is a milder form of autism.

Basically, I believe that we’re seeing a sweeping cultural change towards a very positive and constructive form of individualization, which we can call the network society. Each individual tries to be true to him or herself, to maximize his or her own potential, by building positive relationships with other people, and by contributing, sharing, learning from each other. I believe this is happening all over the place, in education, in workplaces, in personal life.

Students at universities want to know what’s in it for them, they want to be in control of their own education. People in jobs demand to not just fulfill a certain position or role, they want to use all of themselves, they want to learn and grow.

Collaboraid is about building software that supports these people.

Yesterday’s conference was for entrepreneurs, but basically entrepreneurs are just another example of this move: I believe that more and more people will come to see themselves as entrpreneurs, whether they’ve started a business or not. It’s about having the courage to contribute what you have to contribute, to take yourself and your ideas seriously, and make them happen, whether you do that at home, in a job, by starting a community, a conference, a business, or simply throw a well-crafted party.

Open source software is to me an integral part of this movement: Being strong enough to share, realizing that we can move ahead further by sharing and using each other. It’s like the difference between the Enlightenment and the medieval church. It’s also about not accepting that other people try to dictate what software we should use, having the power to change what you’re unhappy with.

Weblogs are an expression of this trend, too. Why not share your thoughts and ideas, so others can get inspired and think up even more exciting ideas. It’s about letting things out in the open by default, and only keep things closed when there’s a good reason to. It’s a central part of the cultural revolution that’s going on.

This revolution has been fueled by technology since the beginning. In the early 70’s, the personal computer was born, putting computer power in the hands of individuals. In the 90’s, the internet took the world by storm, enabling these people to get in touch.

So what’s the software that we now need to build to support these people? It’s a software that enables individuals to find each other, to get in touch, to communicate online. Software that helps people build up networks of people. It’s software that lets people share what they know, and collectively build up catalogs of their combined knowledge. I’m sure there’s years of work ahead in finding innovative ways to let people open up their personalities to each other in creative ways. And it goes without saying that it’ll have to be open source.

Collaboraid was created to build this software.