Vilhelm is holding a picture that my parents took when I was 2 and 1/2 years old which is approximately Vilhelm's age when the picture above was taken last week.

Enron's new voice mail! Very sarcastic!

Rebooting Reboot! I spent 3-4 hours this afternoon in a session with Thomas Mygdal-Madsen and some twenty-five people that Thomas had summoned to discuss what should be Reboot 5.0. Reboot is (to quote the Reboot web-site) the annual rendezvous and fixed point of the Danish Internet industry. The Reboot experience consists of an equal amount of lots of supply of knowledge, inspiration and networking.This afternoon session was conducted (conducted is probably the wrong word when we are talking open space meetings) as an open space technology experiment. This type of meeting was in itself an interesting experience to part of. However, I left the meeting somewhat confused and unconvinced about both the merits of open space technology and the future (and justification) of Reboot. It seems that some people wants to focus on Reboot as a great party with lots of people and lots of booze. Others on Reboot as a conference where webworkers can share professional knowledge. Still others wants to use Reboot to transform society and make the world better. All these views are honorable, but I find it hard to see all these opinions having their way at the same time at the same event. Companies are not likely to pay to send their employees to an event about big fluffy ideas on soft values and with no rock-solid professional output. And so on. Maybe it will work, though. And there is probably no better here in little Denmark to handle such an ambitious project of convergence than Thomas. Good luck, Thomas. I'll be there 31. May this year!

OpenEther: Founders from left to rights: Thomas Madsen-Mygdal, Tor Nørretranders, Martin von Haller Grønbæk (with Vilhelm), Morten Lund. Other founders Gert Birnbacher and Nikolaj Nyholm could not attend. More to come!

Open vs. proprietary software pricing models: Danish local government is evaluating open sources alternatives to Microsoft desktop software, in response to a proposed 30 per cent price hike for Windows 2000 and Office 2000 licenses. Article in the Register: Danish local govt. rebels against MS license terms, 19.02.2002.

Where did you get that von Haller name from, Martin? The Swiss physician, poet, natural scientist and magistrate Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777) was my great-great-great-great-grandfather.

Subject: Historic time in 4D

From: Steven Carlson's NowEurope maillinglist.

This snippet appeared on Dave Farber's IP list

At 8.02 pm on February 20 this year, there will be an historic moment in time. It will not be marked by the chiming of any clocks or the ringing of bells, but at that precise time, on that specific date, something will happen which has not occurred for 1,001 years and will never happen again.

As the clock ticks over from 8.01 pm on Wednesday, February 20, time will, for sixty seconds only, read in perfect symmetry 2002, 2002, 2002, or to be more precise - 20:02, 20/02, 2002.

This historic event will never have the same poignancy as the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month which marks Armistice Day, but it is an event which has only ever happened once before, and is something which will never be repeated.

The last occasion that time read in such a symmetrical pattern was long before the days of the digital watch and the 24-hour clock - at 10.01 am on January 10, 1001. And because the clock only goes up to 23.59, it is something that will never happen again.

More on open content! Seth Shulman who is the author of Owning the Future from 1999 has written a short article Intellectual-Property Ecology in the March 2002 edition of MIT Technology Review. In his article Shulman calls the movement to protect the conceptual or information commons as an environmental movement for the new millennium - guarding collectively against the encroachment of proprietary intellectual-property rights. The environmental theme is powerful indeed. A growing body of thinkers now believes society should view the sphere of information and ideas we call the “public domain” as an ecosystem. As such, it can remain healthy only if its relationship with the market - as embodied in intellectual-property law, technology and social practice - is kept in balance. More information on this theme is to be found at the web-site of the Conference on the Public Domain that took place at Duke Law School, November 9—11, 2001.

Blogging gone mainstream: Blah, Blah, Blah and Blog from Wired News.

Sunday brunch at Basecamp.

I am fortunate to have a large family with many cousins around my own age. This weekend a number of us went to Basecamp to brunch. On the picture are Vibeke and Morten Hartkorn (Morten is a cousin), Alexandra (girlfriend to Andreas Asingh who is the son of my cousin Jesper) and Martha (Alexandra's and Andreas' daugther), Jeanne and Vilhelm and Louise og Benjamin Lundström (Benjamin is the son of another cousin Karen). My brother David had just left when I took the picture. Andreas was playing the drums in a jazz trio that entertains the brunch guest.

Open Content! Interesting initiative from Lawrence Lessig: Creative Commons. In a boon to the arts and the software industry, Creative Commons will make available flexible, customizable intellectual-property licenses that artists, writers, programmers and others can obtain free of charge to legally define what constitutes acceptable uses of their work. The new forms of licenses will provide an alternative to traditional copyrights by establishing a useful middle ground between full copyright control and the unprotected public domain. The first set of licensing options Creative Commons plans to make available are designed mostly for people looking for some protections as they move their wares into the public domain. Those protections might include requirements that the work not be altered, employed for commercial purposes or used without proper attribution. Read more in the article All Hail Creative Commons Stanford professor and author Lawrence Lessig plans a legal insurrection. We at vonhaller law firm will probably contribute to the project here in Denmark.