Scary stuff. A guy creates a bike with a dot matrix chalk printer he uses to print freedom of speech messages at the RNC. He gets arrested and later finds out that he was not randomly picked up but the target of pre-RNC intelligence gathering.

Quoted: A directory of wonderful things.

Ikea has begun selling prefab houses in Sweden and is rolling them out in the UK.

Quoted: BoKlok homes don't exactly come in flatpacks, but they're not far off. The timber-framed buildings are almost entirely prefabricated. They are usually brought to the site on the back of trucks as pre-assembled units, like Portakabins, with the interiors already fitted out. Each apartment is made up of two of these units, which are simply moved into position by crane. Put on the roof and exterior wall cladding, plumb and wire it in, and it's ready to live in. The typical BoKlok arrangement is an L-shaped, two-storey block with three apartments on each floor. One such block can be put up in a day...

DMCA author says it's a failure.

Tim O'Reilly blogging about when free distribution is the best approach. I love the example from Frank Herbert's "Dune," using the ecological example of "law of the minimum" - that growth is "limited by the necessary nutrient that is in shortest supply."

Quoted: A lot has to do with the ratio of possible consumers of the free product who might be converted to paying customers to the total market size. If I have awareness with .01% of the target market, giving copies away to raise awareness to 10% of the market, where 10% of those might convert (1% total) is a good deal. But if I have awareness with 60% of the target market, and give my product away, with a 10% conversion rate, I've lost a great deal.

This is funny. A group of anti-DRMers are using Amazon.com's tagging feature to tag items as "defectivebydesign."

Quoted: A weblog about pop culture

Some of these are excellent. 6 word long scifi stories:

Quoted: Epitaph: Foolish humans, never escaped Earth. - Vernor Vinge

This looks like an excellent zombie comic series. Has anyone read this? Does anybody have the first volume to loan me?

Quoted: A weblog about pop culture

Quoted: Last night, security legend Bruce Schneier gave a tremendous lecture as part of the Technology and Public Diplomacy series I'm organizing at USC. He talked about privacy in the era of Moore's Law, and the fact that advanced technology makes it easier to spy than to resist spying. One remark that stuck with me is that "personal data is like pollution" -- like the CO2 we offgas and the waste we produce. Our data-trail is toxic crud, and we haven't developed any good technology to help us dispose of it -- all our technology is devoted to saving and manipulating that data.

The reviews of "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" are starting to come in and they're sounding good. I can't wait to see it.

Quoted: A weblog about pop culture