Open Source meets Fashion

The End User: Sewing up new customers - International Herald Tribune

"My generation's problem is not a lack fashionable clothing, but the excess of mass consumption products," said Nora Abousteit, the hobby sewer of the two women. "We aim for conscious consumers who want to make their own unique clothing items."

To better understand those consumers, BurdaStyle has teamed up to share offices with Etsy.com, a Web site that helps people sell their handmade items.

For Abousteit - who earned money in high school selling hand-sewn hair bands - technology and handicrafts are following parallel trends within a sharing-based economy.

"Ours is an open-source approach to the sewing patterns," Abousteit said. "We removed copyright restrictions and actually encourage people to make money selling their improved versions over our own Web site."

The only requirement for people to use modified Burda patterns is to acknowledge the company as the source.

Removing copyright restrictions from the patterns that made Burda Moden money and fame was a move that required approval from Hubert Burda.

"Instead of opposing the removal of copyright," Burda "drew a parallel between sewing patterns and the music industry," she said. "He said we should not make the same mistakes as record companies did with copy restrictions."

(From Techdirt who also point to their coverage of a New York Times article that points out that the fashion industry gets along perfectly well without patent or copyright protection.

Hasta la Vista, Billy boy!

Intel's MID UMPCs: So long XP/Vista, hello Linux - Engadget

Big news on the UMPC front this morning folks. Looks like Intel is shedding the Origami gorilla (read: Microsoft) as they prep a Linux-based platform to compete with Vista and XP-based UMPCs. Intel will unveil their new MID (Mobile Internet Device) platform at the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing later this week. Unfortunately for their marketing department, they've already posted the slides. Unlike UMPCs which target mobile professionals, MIDs will target "consumers and prosumers" and feature a range of screen sizes from 4.5 to 6-inches with resolutions from 800 x 480 to 1024 x 600.

Funny thing about that: once you lose the bloated, expensive OS, an 800MHz dual-core processor with 500MB of flash works just fine, thank you!

More detail in this article

Ouch!

Sometime yesterday evening my left leg started hurting -- it still hurts, on and off. Feels like maybe a muscle cramp, though I'm not ruling out joint or tendon problems at this point. Aspirin helps. Grumble. I've also had very low energy, and crashed around 10pm last night. A couple of times today I've felt like I'm fighting off something. The Martian Death Flu, probably -- something flu-like would fit the symptoms. Took only a short walk at lunchtime, and a nap after dinner.

I did manage to put down a clean vocal part for "Someplace in the Net" this morning. I'll try to do "Daddy's World" tomorrow. Those were the only really bad ones on the latest dump, though some mixing is clearly going to be needed.

Got the taxes into the mail before heading off to work. I'm not going to pay $20 extra to e-file and save them money. Idiots!