How do I reduce the size of the block chain data on my machine? The block chain file is getting rather large, ~500MB.  Is there a way to trim it or clean up, or maybe configure it to be limited in the future?  I am using the stock Bitcoin client on Ubuntu.
For portable devices there are variants of the Bitcoin client often dubbed "selfish clients" in that they do not download any portion of the block chain other than what pertains to their own specific addresses and transactions. To my knowledge, none of these variants has been fully developed into a desktop client, but it is likely that such projects are underway. Unless your system is literally lacking the hardware to accommodate these files, however, it is recommended that you use a non-selfish client version. The lightweight versions are called "selfish" for a reason - by only holding block chain data which pertains to your own transactions, you cannot pass anything but that data to other nodes and as such your client is of minimal (if any) use to the network.