signing statements

I need to learn a bit more about signing statements. I believe that basically it is a chance for the President to articulate his understanding of the law. Meaning, that one can interpret the law to mean something different from what most people commonly think that it means. Does the signing statement offer any sort of limitation from liability? If not why say anything?

Eben Moglen

Last night I had the great fortune to watch a speech on youtube given in October by Eben Moglen (the attorney for the Free Software Foundation). In this hour long speech he discusses the changing socio-economic landscape of the world, and how we can provide near limitless resources via technology to the poor at almost zero marginal cost. These parts dealing with the economics of creating software were less than convincing.

I remember reading probably twelve years this same argument in Mondo 2000's User's Guide to the New Edge, having to do with post-scarcity economy where the marginal cost of "copying" a loaf of bread were approximately zero. In the case of software, this is obviously very close to true. After Microsoft produces the first copy of Windows for $1,000,000,000 the second copy very close to $0 However, this just seems like two different ways to allocate costs. Anyway, I think about it and hopefully post something later.

That said, DO SEE THE SPEECH!

30 Boxes

I have been messing around the online calendar site 30 boxes. From what I have seen so far I am impressed. It seems good at interpreting certain things that you want to do. For instance, I configured the software to alert me when it was my mother's birthday. I am not sure exactly what syntax tipped the program off, but it offered to set the date up as a once yearly event. That is pretty cool!