It is of course quite easy to stay relatively anonymous on the internet and services like Pirate Bay are already offering ways to work around these new laws.

There are however people that figured out how to make use of the new technologies to distribute media and still make decent money. Jamendo is one of these companies. All music on Jamendo is free to download and licensed through one of several Creative Commons licenses or the Free Art License, making it legal to copy and share, as well as to modify and make commercial use of for some, depending on the license. Jamendo allows streaming of all of its thousands of albums in either Ogg Vorbis or MP3 format, and downloads through the BitTorrent and eDonkey networks. Jamendo also helps musicians to commercialise their music via their Jamendo Pro services.

On 23 March Jamendo published an ironic statement against the “Three strikes” laws. It is called “Three strikes vs. three thanks”. In a nutshell – they will reward people for downloading music, instead of punishing them showing “…that there are plenty of talented artists who know how to profit from the opportunities offered by the internet and embrace innovative monetization models…” Hopefully many more artists will join them.

BTW if you are in Johannesburg and want to hear a really great band that publish all their music under a creative commons license, NUL are playing at the Bohemian tonight 4/4/2009.

If you go to the link you will notice that it was the Chaos Computer Club that published the vulnerability. I have written about them before and think they do great work to raise awareness about the risks in computers and other electronics. Some may think that they are irresponsible, but are the large companies that release equipment with these kinds of vulnerabilities not way more irresponsible?

I also have a feeling that our cell phone providers are probably not providing the filters suggested in the article, and even if Nokia does release fixed software for their phones chances are high that most people will be clueless about it and won’t know how to install the fixes.

PS. I love the final question in the CCC FAQ (translated from German):
Q: I don’t realy know the exact question but can you answer it anyway?
A: Tricky. But not impossible. The answer is: 42

Kampala

The first installations I did was in East Africa, Dar es Salaam, Nairobi and Kampala. My first trip was kind of hectic, the logistics was screwed up totally and we had a lot to learn.

Our first mistake was thinking that renting a car and self driving is a good idea. The roads in these cities are atrocious, and the drivers worse. And the irony is that for the same money you can get a full time driver with a car of the same quality. Anyway on this first trip I was driving around in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi dodging potholes and Kamikazes in cars.

We assumed that TV and radio stations would be good at technology and decided to install our computers at the broadcasters premises. I’m sure you know about assumptions and what they do to you and me. Well to say the least these guys may know something about broadcasting but there was very little understanding of computers, the systems we installed seemed like black magic and mentioning the word linux caused blank looks from all concerned.

The other mistake was thinking that communications systems are similar to that in South Africa and that because we only need to upload a few kilobytes a day to the server back home that dial up internet will be OK. It is up to the point you want to do maintenance and have to dial into the system from South Africa.

Dar es Salaam is actually quite a nice city especially the older part of town where I found some very nice places to eat. Unfortunately DTV where I had to install the computer were a bit surprised, they expected me much later.

Street in front of DTV - Dar es Salaam

The computer installation was quite simple except that it was mostly a hurry up and wait situation and I did not get to the roof, DTV had an antenna that worked well.

Next Stop Nairobi: And I find out the computers are stuck in customs with no hope of getting them out in the next two days. This caused some hectic rebooking of flights causing me to catch the last flight out of Nairobi to Entebi and booking into the Kampala Sheraton at about 1 am.

The next day I meet up with Alex from TV Africa who was quite helpful and surprisingly he had an ISP lined up in the same building as TVA, we got a full internet connection with public IP address from them. TVA had quite a weird array of antennas on their balcony all pointing at a nearby hill with a massive transmission mast on it. There was also quite a nice view of Uganda’s parliament.

Kampala Antennas

The Kampala installation went quite smoothly with only one snag. The only flight I could get back to Nairobi was the very early 5 am flight. This meant leaving Kampala at 2 am to get to the airport in time. This meant about 5 hours sleep in 48 hours, which is no fun at all. I also had one of the most bizarre moments at Entebbe airport. Going through emigration the guy checking passports asks me “Are you a businessman?”, I answer “Yes” and he asks “When are you going to the moon?” My half asleep brain really struggled with this line of interrogation until I realised he was referring to Mark Shuttleworth’s space trip. The guy was just being friendly.

Fairview Hotel Garden

Back in Nairobi I was actually quite happy to hear that the computers haven’t cleared customs yet. I had time to book into the lovely, very colonial Fairview Hotel and go to bed. The only damper on the proceedings were the gunshots going of just after I checked in and the hotel staff all saying “Gunshots Sir? No we didn’t hear any shots”. OF course the next morning when I walk out the front gate I find that the Israeli embassy is opposite the hotel. Half the Kenyan army were standing around looking menacing. With no one saying anything I assumed someone tried to attack the embassy the previous day and probably failed miserably. The Kenian army then showed up with a token presence to look as if they cared. Anyway there were no other incidents during the two days I was there.

Nairobi

I go to GTV who were just down the road to do the installation, again the radio and TV part is well sorted at the TV station but computers are a black art. An additional complication is that they don’t have any means of dialing out directly except for their fax line which, of course, they don’t want to give up. I manage to convince them eventually that the computer will actually dial four o’clock in the morning so it won’t interfere with their fax line. In the process I found out that 4 hour power failures are quite normal in Kenya. (At that time power failures did not happen in South Africa, of course it is very different now). Luckily, because they broadcast from the top of the building GTV had a decent generator set to keep them going, I guess they had big diesel tanks.

We were lucky to be able to swop flights easily when we could not get the computers out of customs in Kenya. If not it, I probably would have wasted a great deal of time and would have needed to fly there again. I was really happy to be back in South Africa after this very hectic trip.

You may ask “What is a System Administrator?”

The answers you will find at http://www.sysadminday.com/ are as good as any. Being a System Administrator is a somewhat stressful job and turns you into a cynic very quickly (see http://www.sysadminday.com/time.html ) and you start hanging out in places like the scary devil monastery. Your (l)users also stop talking to you mainly out of fear of hearing the truth because the last time they complained about not getting e-mail you answered “Well, maybe nobody likes you anymore”

Why does one stay a System Administrator then if the stress is so much. You will find the answer in the scary devil monastery FAQ

Sysadmins are driven by a desire to _make_it_work_. We loathe non-functioning
pieces of crap. Similarly, we hate seeing equipment working at substantially
below its potential due to moronic admin decisions.

After a while, you quit and go to work for somewhere else, where you’re
promised you won’t have to be a sysadmin.
But the machine on your desk crashes every five minutes…