For some time, I have been curious about the karma system in Launchpad – the massive infrastructure being erected not only for Ubuntu, but for the F/OSS community in general. The karma system gives “karma points” for actions which the system appreciates, like bug reporting, specification writing, bug fixing and so on. But so far, [...]
Since I came from Læsø [note the Wikipedia entry name in the address bar - not easy to recognize] late Tuesday evening, I have been catching up on my mail. And lots of it. Doing fieldwork in an on-line community means that you’re reading lots and lots and lots of mail. From the various Ubuntu [...]
For three weeks through May and June I ran a Web Survey directed at the active members of the Ubuntu community. I got more than 290 valid responses, and I’ve set up a page to share the results with the Ubuntu community. Not having done any major statistical surveys before, this was quite a change [...]
I arrived back in Copenhagen late last night on delayed flight from Barcelona and the 2006 version of the GUADEC conference. Actually, the conference took place in Vilanova i la Geltrú, 45 km south of Barcelona. The GUADEC (GNOME Users and Developers European Conference) and GNOME, for the uninitiated is the acronym for “GNU Network [...]
Since Sunday afternoon, I’ve been at the Ubuntu Developers’ Summit at SAS Radisson hotel near the Charles De Gaulle airport outside of Paris. Actually, the hotel is located in the small village Mesnil-Amelot which is even outside of the airport so that you have to take a shuttle bus to the airport, and then a [...]
Well, I’m finally heading out into the field. The real field, not the virtual one but out to meet real flesh-and-blood informants. I’m very excited, if you couldn’t tell. The plan is like this: First I’m off to Paris for the Ubuntu Developers’ Summit where all of the core Ubuntu developers will gather to spend [...]
In a discussion of what it takes to be “computer literate” – ie. having sufficient computer skills to manage – one slashdot poster noted the following: Just for fun consider this: Computer support technicians and doctors are similar in many ways. They are both supposed to be highly paid, highly trained, highly skilled, and highly [...]
Since most hackers use PGP encryption keys to sign their mail to prove their identity, I decided that I probably should have an encryption key pair to sign my communications in hacker circles. So a few weeks back, while on Easter vacation, I found a nice guide describing the use of PGP (which stands for [...]
Last night I was treated to a rare experience: The Mathematics Revue at the University of Copenhagen. My friend Jakob was playing saxophone in the revue band and had invited us to spectate. It was good fun. It reminded me of Biella Coleman’s research on hacker wit and humor, and it seems that this sort [...]
In a Slashdot discussion on Open Source Software in the developing countries, the following comment was made by the self-consciously monikered FlyingPig: At the moment software is frequently a tax that poor countries pay to rich countries to be allowed to participate. Poor countries often have weak currencies, but the local cost of goods and [...]