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{ Monthly Archives } October 2007

Ravelry

I finally got my Ravelry invite today. I got on the wait­ing list about a month ago, so it didn’t take long. I spent a few minutes pok­ing around, though I will have to be care­ful as it could prove to be an immense time-sink for me, with all the dis­cus­sion about knit­ting and crochet. […]

2007 10 25 Crafts Comments (0)

Market Choice

Here’s a fas­cin­at­ing piece dis­cuss­ing how fixed prices on books in Ger­many was actu­ally push­ing prices down (con­trary to eco­nomic the­ory), while sup­port­ing a wide range of book­sellers. When I was last in Ger­many, apart from my usual beef about Ger­man book­sellers not tak­ing credit cards, I found no reason to com­plain about the range […]

2007 10 25 Books
Rants Comments (0)

Children’s Privacy

If you have chil­dren, or an interest in pri­vacy, spend the time and watch the video of Pro­fessor Valerie Steeves dis­cuss­ing how children’s web sites mon­itor their vis­its. It’s scary. [Link from Michael’s Geist’s blog.] After see­ing this, I won­der why the schools here don’t teach more about pri­vacy. When we were last in Australia, […]

2007 10 23 Identity and Privacy Comments (1)

Owning Homes

In the midst of the U.S. hous­ing crisis, Paul Ked­rosky asks, quite reas­on­ably, Why Do We Want People to Own Homes? I’ve been won­der­ing that myself. Is it because people think houses are a good invest­ment? Because they have sen­ti­mental attach­ments to the idea of own­ing the roof over their head? Because they want to […]

2007 10 11 General
Vancouver Comments (6)

Small Gods

Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods is a good place to start in the pan­theon of the Dis­cworld books. That’s the reason we chose it, rather than one of the many oth­ers, to read in book club. There are a couple of places where hav­ing read some of the other books would give some addi­tional depth (the […]

2007 10 10 Books Comments (2)

Musings on Copyright

I know why it happened, but it still strikes me as odd, the fact that the goal­posts kept mov­ing, as it were, with copy­right. And it’s weird no mat­ter whether the copy­right is there to give other people rights to use, copy and modify the work, or rights to the author to pro­tect and profit […]

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2007 10 07 General
Rants Comments (5)