October 2006 archive

Stephan Kinsella, 'Against Intellectual Property'

For today's lecture, some libertarian thoughts on the problem of intellectual property from Stephan Kinsella.

I'm regularly exposed to libertarian ideas at places like Marginal Revolution and EconLog. I like a lot of the ideas, but I wouldn't describe myself as libertarian.
Kinsella wrote a paper called "Against Intellectual Property." I'm slowly making my way [...]

Free Software is a Weak Mode of Production?

Originally published in Free Software Magazine, 16 October 2006.
Another digg front page item, with 375+ diggs to date, resulting in more than 10,000 reads at FSM.
This one sparked a lot more discussion both at digg and at FSM, probably because of the provocative title. Maybe it would have been less inflammatory to put a [...]

Friday Photopost? Minneapolis Stone Arch Bridge.

You have your Friday cat and squid bloggers out there, could I be a Friday photo blogger?
Update 17 Nov 2006: It may have been kind of a tease to advertise a stone arch bridge but not show more of the arches. I've added a few more of the bridge...
Out of curiosity, I checked Google:

"friday [...]

Review: Linus Torvalds, 'Just for Fun'

Just for FunLinus Torvalds
Welcome to my inaugural minimalist review. I recently finished reading Just for Fun, by Linus Torvalds and David Diamond. "The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary." Now it's time to blurt out a few comments.
(Remember: minimalist may refer to the small amount of substantive content rather than the word count. [...]

New Ad in Town

I'm afraid this post is going to be about money. I say "afraid," because I don't think my money concerns and ambitions are as important to you as they are to me.
But this is also about you and what a wonderful person you are, which might pique your interest.
(And I have advertisers covered also--please [...]

Architecture of Annoyance

If you found this post looking for how to make the HP Scanjet 2400 Scanner work in GNU/Linux, perhaps this post will help you: Yes, your HP Scanjet 2400 might work in Ubuntu and maybe even other flavors of GNU/Linux.
This isn't so much an Architectures of Control kind of item, but Dan Lockton's post about [...]

5 Ways to Save on Your Monthly Software Rental Bill in the Year 2056

Originally published in Free Software Magazine, 9 October 2006. (With Diggage!)
Software bills got you down? Here at Intellectual Property Magazine (championing intellectual investment since 2012!), our studies show that the share of an average household's budget for software rental has increased from 10% to 23% from 2040 to 2056. Today our experts will share* [...]

Cell Phone Seduction

The picture here at the top of the post is the cell phone that my wife and I have been using for the past five years. (Well, not this cell phone, but the same model, a Nokia 5120, and we each have our own.)
Pretty old and clunky, huh? They've worked great for us. [...]

MetaMiscellanyStatsPost

Hello, again. I feel like I've been neglecting you. It's not from a lack of desire to post here, but lack of time. It seems like there is never enough time, and what time there is, I'm quite effective at whiling away. And then as more time passes, I feel like [...]

Photos: Autumn in Northern Minnesota

Went on a spur-of-the-moment camping trip this weekend, so I didn't have much time to write. I did get an entry in for Free Software Magazine: "5 ways to save on your monthly software rental bill in the year 2056." (Digg it!)
For want of new material, I'll share these pictures from the trip, [...]