Copyright Communists and the Commons

Another of the Forbes rich listers is spamming copyright offices around the world:

Bill Gates is an intelligent man who has done a great deal of good in the world. So when he gets caught out in a bare-faced lie this should matter to all of us; and last week, when he called the opponents of American intellectual property law a "communist" movement he was encouraging a mistake that could impoverish the entire world.

Read more on the war against copyright communists.  Also check out Creative Commons who is leading the movement of sharing creativity with their ‘some rights reserved’ copyrights and encouragement of things like the up and coming music sampling commons, Mixter.

Yahoo! has even put out a beta Creative Commons search engine, so tally up on how easy home recording is these days and if you’re feeling entrepreneurial, turn your Mac Mini into a recording studio and, to Gates’ spite, head for the communes.

House Plan: Faucets

The faucet reads:
1 turn Cold
2 turns Warm
3 turns Hot

I’ve heard from the inside (inside the house that is, as I live in the illustrious, ex two-car “cottage”) that, this week, the only setting is really hot. Nevertheless, this is definitely an item that will be built into the architecture of my pipe dreams.  I’ll probably modify the heat feature in the water to be more compassionate, but I never know when I might be struck by the longing to re-create the weathered pains of a 99 year old shingle-style house in Professorville.

Thanks to mom (who apparently is a graphic designer in her spare time) for the photo and a pleasant visit.

High Price. Lots of Incentive

The drug war appears not to be having much of an effect on cocaine sales in the US.  Although Colombian cocaine traffic has been reduced by 22%, Bolivian production has increased by 17%.  The price remains steady or lower than historical levels.  Read here or here.

Fractal Finance and Business School

A great lead from Alina at Totalitarianism Today discusses randomness and rationality in markets through fractal finance.  And in a bout of rationality, a vermont businessowner bought a free-ride into a Dutch business school on eBay for $36,000.  Perhaps he’ll learn why Metcalf’s law. is a bit weaker than it was cracked up to be.

Latin American Universities

When The Times survey came out, Mexico’s UNAM university sent out ecstatic press releases to the media that resulted in headlines such as UNAM leads Latin American universities.

UNAM’s actual rank was 195 out of 200.  Nonetheless, there claims are true.  Read more on the survey and the struggles of Latin American Universities here.

Custom News

Consuming grandiose amounts of information is a hobby of mine.

Today: Google News.   If you enjoy reading the paper but don’t enjoy reading what is in the paper, Google has just solved that (minus the actual, physical paper.  Instead there will just be a large amount of photons shooting at your head).

You can now put the Sports section before the Enternainment section, or just get rid of the Entertainment section all together and add a customized section on Digital Photography instead.  Google explains here.

Schematic Food Planning

A blog entitled Cooking for Engineers takes recipe writing to a new level!

Dandy Map

Google has made navigation much like flying a super-fast and intelligent spaceship right at the location your screamin’ out!