Good for Zeynep publishing this. But I don't really see what the point is. The problem for democracy is that campaigning is about manipulating people to win votes, not about actually engaging in issues. The mass media approaches to this are not particularly less scary to me, even if they are not as effective as new more data-driven approaches.
"Two recent articles call for an openness revolution in science: one on GigaOM and the other in the Wall Street Journal. But they’ve got it all wrong. These folks are missing that the process of scientific discovery is not, at its core, an open process. It only becomes an open process at the point of publication."
In a coffee shop not long ago, I saw a mug with an inscription from Henry David Thoreau: “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.†At least it said the words were Thoreau’s.
Interesting argument, but seems pretty obviously wrong.
This is the most important thing I've read about Android in a very long time. "Android is open — except for all the good parts."
"If you are a scientist or engineer, programming can enable you to work 10 to 100 times faster, and to come up with more creative solutions than colleagues who do not know how to program."
Wow, I don't think I've found myself is such load disagreement with James. I think the FB study was research. I think that the OKCupid case is much less clear.
"So instead of wishing you could tip an artist for something you pirated, talk about it. That’s good for everyone involved. If you have nothing good to say, even a simple mention is helpful. Not a bad mention. That’s not helpful. But the difference between pirating something and saying nothing vs. pirating something and mentioning it to other people is really, really huge."
"Even Champagne and sparkling wines, which have so often been consigned to less-than-ideal vessels like the flute or the coupe, are better served by the all-purpose glass."
Annoyingly repeating the rumor about stemless wineglasses warming wine. Not unless you're really doing it wrong. Otherwise, a very nice write-up.
"The Electronic Frontier Foundation announced a new initiative on Tuesday to seek reform of the United States patent system. But conspicuously missing from the list is the most direct and obvious way to solve the problem: exclude software from patent protection altogether."
"Getting your stuff fixed instead of throwing it away is good for the environment as well as for your bank balance. So why is this craft dying out in America?" Via Don Marti.
I'm also a devotee of the Amtrak quiet car.
Nice little gloss on the TAL take on software patenting.
"I would estimate that about 80% of the non-academic non-fiction books that I do not find a complete waste of time (i.e. good books in politics, economics etc – I can’t speak to genres that I don’t know) are at least twice as long as they should be." Amen.
"If the major publishers switch to selling ebooks without DRM, then they can enable customers to buy books from a variety of outlets and move away from the walled garden of the Kindle store. They see DRM as a defense against piracy, but piracy is a much less immediate threat than a gigantic multinational with revenue of $48 Billion in 2011 (more than the entire global publishing industry) that has expressed its intention to "disrupt" them, and whose chief executive said recently "even well-meaning gatekeepers slow innovation" (where "innovation" is code-speak for "opportunities for me to turn a profit")."
