Source: PRWeb Denver, CO (PRWEB) December 09, 2011 Until now, investors interested in learning about peer to peer lending had nowhere to turn. Lending Club and Prosper, the two leading companies in the U.S. market provide little in the way of investor education. Today, that has changed with the release of the world’s first ever… Continue reading
Date archives "December 2011"
The Stop Online Piracy Act: Yet Another Stealth Maneuver To Control The Internet
Source: John W. Whitehead “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busy bodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who… Continue reading
Open Source, Dynamic Systems and Self-Organization
Source: Ino Fleishmann Introduction The intention of this article is to explain and compare the ideas of open source with systems theory, particularly regarding self-organized, self-regulating, dynamic systems and strange attractors. In so doing, it is important to first define what the term ‘open source’ means. What is Open Source? It is not so easy… Continue reading
Cory Doctorow: Copyrights vs. Human Rights
Source: Cory Doctorow – Publishing Weekly December 10 is Human Rights Day, as designated by the U.N. General Assembly and observed all over the world. In honor of the occasion, I want to address the human rights implications associated with something central to all of us in the publishing industry: copyright policy. For human rights,… Continue reading
From Instrumental Rationality to Collaborative Rationality
* Book: Planning with Complexity. An Introduction to Collaborative Rationality for Public Policy. By Judith E. Innes, David E. Booher. Routledge, 2010. A review by Larry Susskind: “In their extraordinary new book, Planning With Complexity (Routledge, 2010), Judith Innes and David Booher make the case for a new way of knowing and deciding. They call… Continue reading
Swiss insist file-sharers don’t hurt copyright holders
Source: Caleb Cox – RegHardware The Swiss government has ruled that downloading pirated copies of films, music and videogames for personal use will remain legal because it is of not detrimental to copyright owners. Last year, the Swiss Senate ordered an investigation into the impact downloading may have on society, in case further legislation was… Continue reading
Institutional Strategies for Open Education
Source: Lisa Spiro – New Learning Resources, a NITLE initiative What types of institutions are most enthusiastic about open educational resources (OER), which are “teaching and learning materials freely available online for everyone to use, whether you are an instructor, student, or self-learner” (OER Commons)? According to Going the Distance, the ninth annual survey on… Continue reading
Call for applications: Internet Governance Capacity Building Programme 2012
Source: Diplomacy.edu DiploFoundation is currently accepting applications for course participants for the 2012 Internet Governance Capacity Building Programme (IGCBP12). This online programme is designed to improve Internet policy and IG-related knowledge and skills for participants from both developed and developing countries and to assist them in participating in the global decision-shaping debates on IG. The programme… Continue reading
1st Thematic Conference on “the Knowledge Commons” – 2012
Source: IASC Governing Pooled Knowledge Resources : Building Institutions for Sustainable Scientific, Cultural and genetic Resources Commons 12-14th September 2012, Université catholique de Louvain The Call for Papers can be downloaded here. In order to upload an abstract for the conference, you need to log in on the website. To register as a new user,… Continue reading
Amazon Fire Not Really Open
If you thought that the Kindle Fire was an open platform you are going to be disappointed. The code released by Amazon recently may be open source, but it isn’t the whole code. Amazon recently made available the source code for the Kindle Fire version of Android. This has been taken as an indication that… Continue reading
Top scholars from reputed universities share courses online
China now has its version of Harvard open courses. Twenty courses provided by 18 top Chinese universities went online on Wednesday, China’s latest attempt to disseminate teaching resources within the nation and promote Chinese culture globally. These courses feature 20 subjects or lectures given by speakers and professors from several universities, including Zhejiang University, Nankai… Continue reading
The return of the operating system
Source: Brian Proffitt – IT World. In recent days, if not months and years, I have been arguing that Linux may soon become much more prevalent on the desktop PC, because as applications move to a software-as-a-service model handily served up by the now-ubiquitous browser, the underlying operating system would matter less and less. I… Continue reading
Goteo.org: Crowdfunding the Commons in Spain
Post by David Bollier on his blog: The infrastructure for starting and maintaining new commons just got a big boost in Spain with the founding of Goteo.org, a new crowdfunding website. The explicit mission of Goteo.org is to help finance and support “the independent development of creative and innovative initiatives that contribute to the common good, free… Continue reading
Interview with Michel Bauwens: A peer-to-peer economy
This interview is part of an exclusive series Paper.li is doing with the CulturaDigital.Br festival in Rio. Paper.li is CulturaDigital.Br’s media partner and is bringing our community a taste of the keynote speakers’ talks ahead of the event. Peer-to-peer originated in technology… but can it help transform society? Michel Bauwens, leading P2P advocate, tells Paper.li that… Continue reading
3-D printer makes scaffolding for growing bones
This project at Washington State University is incredibly nifty. Researchers use a 3-D printer to make a bone-like material that can temporarily do the job of bone, while serving as a scaffold for new bone to grow on. Over time, it dissolves safely. Read more about it on the WSU website Video Link Source: http://boingboing.net/2011/12/02/3-d-printer-makes-scaffolding.html?utm_source=feedburner
A tale of two worlds: Apocalypse, 4Chan, WikiLeaks and the silent protocol wars
Opening a major new front of the protocol wars, the struggle between digital freedom and control, Wikileaks recently announced a new major release: “The Spy Files”. It is worth re-reading my ‘A tale of two worlds’ paper, just published by Al-Jazeera, in light of the new information made available. The article discusses some of… Continue reading