Last night I was out in Dublin and, due to the length that the night dragged on, I invited my friend to crash in the extra bed in my Hotel room in central Dublin rather than return to his place in the suburbs which, at that point, may well have been impossible. When someone came by to clean the room in the morning, they noticed both beds full and reported this to the Hotel managment who called me up to say that they knew the room had been "double occupancy" last night and that they wanted to know if it would "single occupancy" the next night. That's a pretty strange way to talk if you think about it. There is an extra person in my room and the Hotel complains that my room has somehow changed into a new state that they are unhappy with. I suppose this circuitous way of speaking is designed to avoid any potentially embarrassing discussion about who the extra body is and why they are there. That said, this type of obtuse conversation is difficult for patrons to puzzle through immediately after being awoken. Dublin, of course, is great.

Antiquated technology makes for emancipatory possibilities.

—Alan Toner (2005)

Perhaps a truism. Perhaps merely what I fear is a prescient statement.

If one is in a public or shared restroom at a urinal or in a stall and the person at the adjacent urinal or in the adjacent stall sneezes, is it appropriate to say "bless you" or "gesundheit" or another culturally appropriate post-sneeze statement? Is it appropriate to say nothing at all? It's cold season at the lab and the fact that I do not know the answers to these questions is becoming a source of stress.

My talk at BLU seems to have been carried out successfully. The talk was nothing new for folks who follow this blog and know my other Ubuntu talks. It was a long (nearly two hour) number given to an audience with mixed experience with Ubuntu. As such, it covered a lot of ground by pulling from both my introductory Ubuntu talks and my To Fork or Not to Fork talk that I gave several times this summer. The talk was given at the Sloan School of Management at MIT. Steve Ballmer gave a talk at Sloan two days later. His talk was better attended. Of course, I doubt he told people how to get free copies of his projects OS offering shipped to their homes at no cost. Slides and notes follow. Slides:

• HTML
• PDF
• OpenOffice Impress Source

Talk Notes:

• HTML
• reStructured Text Source

Next month in Dublin is going to be the Darklight digital film festival. In preparation for the festival is a now traditional symposium that has a reputation for bringing together a collection of interesting people to, "identify, profile and respond to the current transformations in the distribution of cultural production enabled by the proliferation of digital and wireless networks." I'm thrilled to have been asked to attend and give a speech there along with fellow Media Lab inhabitant Barry Vercoe (of course, he helped found the lab -- I've only been there for a month). I'll be talking about intellectual property and will try to describe some of the history of the current mess we're in, offer a rough classification of the types of solutions that are being offered and then go into some depth on the Free/Open Source Software model. I'll talk about the reasons Free Software has been successful and try to describe some of the benefits and limitations of applying this model to the production of other types of creative works. You can check out the symposium schedule and register now for a free spot in the audience. Please keep in mind that registration is limited. If you will not be able to attend but are in Dublin and would like to meet up (for keysigning, chatting, etc.), please get in contact and we'll work something out. I've never been to Ireland before am excited. The one (major) downside of course is that this talk will mean I will not be able to attend the most relevant parts of Ubuntu Below Zero conference and so am currently not planning to attend at all. I send my regards to the rest of the Ubuntu team. I'll see you at the next one am looking forward to the tsunami of new specs that will define Dapper and am looking forward to participating in whatever way I can from remote.

Obelisks have been on my mind recently. I think it started with this suggestion I made to help use up some space in the newly remodeled "Alley" (the new home of the Electronic Publishing Group at the Media Lab):

I think we would be wise to purchase and display this very high quality seven foot Large Reprocessed Garden Obelisk in the Alley. In addition to the happiness that the presence of its simple geometric shapes would bring us, it would provide us with both a great conversation starter and an undeniable symbol of our power during Media Lab teas.

Good morning Freud.

There was some confusion about my recent post on the Melnick book on manhole covers from people who were unfamiliar with the term "manhole." One way to describe a manhole cover is a sewer lid. However, manhole covers are employed to cover a variety of holes that men (and women) explore for a variety of purposes. I prefer to think of a manhole cover as exactly what an obelisk isn't.

Mika pointed out a striking similarity between the official business addresses of Apple and Canonical:

Canonical Ltd. One Circular Road Douglas, Isle of Man

Apple One Infinite Loop Cupertino, CA

A friend I trust tells me that Infinite Loop is not, in fact, infinite. I have every reason to believe that Circular Road is everything the name implies. Honesty is very important to me.

My country's national intelligence is now in the hands of a man so powerful that he is not publicly referred to with even a fake last name. Of course, it's nice to know that as mysterious as he is, "Jose" is a maximum of three shorts degrees of separation from me on the social networking graph. Add this to the list of benefits that come from knowing Nicholas.

Last night, I decided to check out the Boston Linux Unix webpage to find out when the next meeting would be and what the talk would be on. To my surprise, the talk is tomorrow and is slated to be given by none other than Benjamin Mako Hill. Hmmm. I vaguely remember agreeing to give a talk like this in general sense but don't remember ever agreeing to a specific day. In any case, I'm not one to disappoint and am working on my slides. If you're interested in some post-Breezy action in Boston, please show up! If you can't make it, I'm trying to arrange a proper release party for some point after I receive my Breezy CDs (a week or two I guess). I'm sorry for the short notice. Of course, I'm giving the talk on short notice so I'm not too sorry. Additionally, I am missing both a class and a Media Lab sponsors dinner that I was already double booked for. You should be able to cancel up to one of your prior engagements to attend. Information on the talk is on the BLU website. The talk will be held at MIT in E51-315.

Mika and I went to the MIT Press Bookstore loading dock sale today. It provided what was, by far, the most relevant selection at any bargain book sale I've attended. It was two small rooms and I could have easily walked out with 100+ books that I would have read. Even with most books at three, five, or seven dollars (US), my student budget was the limiting factor. At the sale, I bought a large coffee-table sized book called Manhole Covers by Mimi and Robert Melnick. It offers page after mesmerizing page of black and white photographs of manhole covers of all designs, shapes and sizes. At seven dollars, I felt like it was asking a lot but Mika and I decided that on a per-manhole-cover basis, the price was really unbeatable. The price was 3.3 cents (US) per full-page manhole cover photograph if you do not account for the small thumbnails of manhole covers that pepper the books front matter. If you are in or around Boston, you should go to their next loading dock sale -- probably in the spring.