Free Software for All

Last night, I attended a lecture at the Law School here at NYU held by a patent lawyer. And not just any patent lawyer. He's one of leading proponents of the Creative Commons (GPL) and is currently defending against Microsoft at the Supreme Court level. I was pleasantly surprised to learn this.

"The Empire & the iPhone: 'Technology Platforms,' the Commons, and the
Way We Live Now."
Eben Moglen
Professor, Columbia Law School and Director, Software Freedom Law Center
Monday, March 19, 8 PM

Some notes I took:
the pursuit of "prosumer culture" - production & use of products by the same person

- Paypal decentralizes the traditional bank structure
- Youtube, myspace, etc. decentralize the music culture

Hours that Microsoft actually spends, as a whole, producing software in a week: 3.8 million
This is what he called "a microsoft"
- a few years ago, there were 468,000 programmers on sourceforge.net
- 10/hrs approx. per person per week
- about 1.4 "microsofts" on sourceforge
- about 1.6 "microsofts" in GPL entirely

so, who's producing more software? and who is spending more of their resources on advertising, middle management and twiddling of thumbs?

Commons is motivated by politics; to fight against the incumbents after all the power.

Free software is a "cultural outlook" - universal knowledge is possible through sharing of resources - our own expertise.

So share. Learn about GPL and the Creative Commons. It's really up to us to figure out a way to not have everything patented

Labels: geekery, lecture, oss

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A Quick Fix

So I've been thinking of how badly scratched up my old cell phone was by the time I upgraded to the new one. In order to not have my current cell phone degrade to such a state, I decided to create a little phone cozy for it.

The pattern is very simple (or lack of pattern thereof) - I crocheted about 10 single stitches and then just start going around and around in double crochet... when it was the proper height, I just went across the same 3 stitches for a few rows and made a little loop out of single stitches. It was the perfect quick fix in the midst of my crazy week-of-midterm-madness-time.

Some pictures to show how it came out with the phone in it and by itself. Not too shabby, eh?




The money shot:

Labels: crafty, crochet

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Hello there stranger

So it's been a very, very long time since I wrote in a blog. I want to restart this practice to document my crafty adventures as well as whatever comes to mind that isn't terribly personal (all those annoying rants will be kept safely in my mind so you won't have to worry about hearing them). I'll keep it light and simple and maybe even interesting.

For now, all I have to report is that I am currently working on 3 concurrent knitting projects! Whew!

- girl sized wristwarmers with "geek" embedded on each hand
- guy sized wristwarmers with skull & bones on each hand
- regular dark brown short warmers

I will be hopefully starting on my future laptop bag very soon.. after I get all this custom knitting done. I still have a pair of wristwarmers for myself on my dpns (thanks jessica for teaching me!) but now it's getting warmer so maybe I'll leave those on hold for a little while. Plus, I really, really want a custom laptop bag. ha.

Hasta luego..
Jen

Labels: crafty, knitting

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