Speak Stiltedly and Wear a Yellow Shirt

Hello Kitty link of the day: a Hello Kitty Xbox

GeekPress linked this WSJ opinion piece on filesharing. Conundrum #3 is the eternal question: “How is it that millions of Americans who wouldn’t cross the street against a red light will sleep like lambs after downloading onto their computers a Library of Alexandria’s worth of music or movies–for free”?

The simple answer is that information wants to be free. It’s not easy to foist a new definition of property on people after five thousand years of civilization in which all property has been physical and nearly all information free. Information might settle for being cheap (e.g., 99 cents at the iTunes Store), but I don’t think the information-pushing corporations have much a chance against piracy as long as they’re selling $100 DVD sets and eBooks that cost more than a paper book.

This blog entry should not be interpreted as an admission of guilt.

Veronica, I, and an undisclosed third party went to CraftBoston this weekend. I got a cool Hilary Law bag and saw some other neat stuff. Here are the few web links I managed to collect:

• Hilary Law Textile Design
• Iron Works of Art
• Yellow House Studio

Birthday of the day: Apple is 29 today, and Gmail is 1.

Apparently, the WordPress guys have been spamming Google, using their (formerly) sky-high page rank and hidden links to raise shady ad revenues. Google Is Not Amused, so you’ll no longer find search results like this one.

Some WP supporters object to calling it spam, but this is disingenuous. “Google bombing” and the like are frequently referred to as search engine spamming; if you don’t want to be called a spammer you shouldn’t behave like one.