Thoughts, ramblings and other stuff

I went to the signing of Cory Doctorow's new book Homeland. He had a very good lecture about internet freedom, laws that are skewed against users, Aaron Schwartz and how we all need to do something about it before we get even more reliant on the computers and the internet. It reminded me why I ended up feeling so pissed off I almost stopped reading the first book in this duology - Little Brother - it is just a little more extreme that the stuff that actually happened in the examples he talked about. I could try to describe it in more detail but it's much better coming form the man himself (from some earlier stop on his tour).



Doctorow makes his books available for free download under Creative Commons licence and still manages to sell quite a lot of them. Proving that his belief that file sharing is not destroying creativity and original content is not unsubstantiated.

There was also a presentation of 3D printing. One more thing showing how expressing creativity and manufacturing can be much more accessible to everyone now and how the distributed network of sharing ideas directly between users (from building 3D printers to sharing designs) can make our lives a better place. They talked about people creating companies making game pieces or just making stuff the need at home. The small things you can just make when you need them

And here's the printer in action and some of the stuff printed


And it is a self-build 3D printer. You don't have to spend thousand on one you can build it. And now, that the community is bigger your will be more precise (and print parts for next one thus starting the machine evolution).

PS. Today is 540 anniversary of Nicolaus Copernicus birth and I hope you saw the doodle. Orbiting the Sun FTW!