January 20, 2012
"The people who want to protect “intellectual property” from all infringement have set up a binary choice. They tell us that if we do not agree to their absolute control, we are endorsing stealing. This is another lie, though it’s been an effective one until recently – when people began to realize what was at stake. In fact, if the issue is binary, it can be framed as a choice between no freedom of speech and freedom of speech. After all, the logical extension of absolute control is a permission-based information economy, in which we need permission to quote anyone else. And since all journalism and entertainment is built upon borrowing from other creators, nothing new could be legally created without permission. It can also be framed as needing permission to innovate – one of the clear effects of Sopa and other such bills. Because they would give Hollywood and other IP owners easy ways to shut down new ideas simply based on allegations, investors would stop funding most things that didn’t have prior assent from the various existing cartels. This is not speculation: major technology investors have said precisely this."

— Stop Sopa or the web really will go dark | Dan Gillmor | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

2:45pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZfsgGyF4XNo9
January 19, 2012
"Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can’t vent any anger against them. I only feel this appalling sadness.” This is Charles Bukowski, the American poet, novelist and short story writer, in 1985. Alas, what’s at stake with the Stop Online Piracy Act is far greater and graver than sadness; it’s the ruthless uprooting of the basic principles that make the Internet a thriving ecosystem of creativity and intellect, doing nothing to foil the kind of digital parasitism that actually does cultural harm and everything to stymie the alchemy of creativity."

— Congress Should Use the Internet - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com

11:46am  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZfsgGyF0p5e1
January 18, 2012
"

Mashable’s Chief Architect, Chris Heald , dissected the SOPA bill section by section to help us understand why it’s bad for the web.

Well worth a read if you haven’t read SOPA in full or don’t fully understand it.

"

— Why SOPA Is Dangerous

1:57pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZfsgGyEzt0fR
January 18, 2012
"Here are some of the highlights from the growing chorus of opposition – in Letters to Congress, In the Press, in Blog Posts and Statements, and in Long-form Analysis"

— Growing Chorus of Opposition to “Stop Online Piracy Act” | Center for Democracy & Technology

8:41am  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZfsgGyEzI6De
January 17, 2012
"Despite its strengths—hefty investment in research, a rigorous approach to manufacturing and good relations with its local community—Kodak had become a complacent monopolist. Fujifilm exposed this weakness by bagging the sponsorship of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles while Kodak dithered. The publicity helped Fujifilm’s far cheaper film invade Kodak’s home market. Another reason why Kodak was slow to change was that its executives “suffered from a mentality of perfect products, rather than the high-tech mindset of make it, launch it, fix it,” says Rosabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard Business School, who has advised the firm. Working in a one-company town did not help, either. Kodak’s bosses in Rochester seldom heard much criticism of the firm, she says. Even when Kodak decided to diversify, it took years to make its first acquisition. It created a widely admired venture-capital arm, but never made big enough bets to create breakthroughs, says Ms Kanter."

— Technological change: The last Kodak moment? | The Economist

11:49am  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZfsgGyEwLK3b
January 17, 2012
"Iceland did what the United States chose not to do — allow its biggest banks to fail and force foreign creditors to take a hike. It did what troubled European nations saddled with massive debts and tethered by the euro cannot do — allow its currency to remain weak, causing inflation but making its exports more desirable and its prices more attractive to tourists. Three years later, the unemployment rate has fallen. Tourism has increased. The economy is growing. The government successfully raised money from investors in the summer for the first time since the crisis."

— Iceland makes fledgling recovery from its economic meltdown - The Washington Post

9:25am  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZfsgGyEw53ew
January 12, 2012
"There has never been a mass market for good journalism in this country. What there used to be was a mass market for print ads, coupled with a mass market for a physical bundle of entertainment, opinion, and information; these were tied to an institutional agreement to subsidize a modicum of real journalism. In that mass market, the opinions of the politically engaged readers didn’t matter much, outnumbered as they were by people checking their horoscopes. This suited advertisers fine; they have always preferred a centrist and distanced political outlook, the better not to alienate potential customers. When the politically engaged readers are also the only paying readers, however, their opinion will come to matter more, and in ways that will sometimes contradict the advertisers’ desires for anodyne coverage."

— Newspapers, Paywalls, and Core Users « Clay Shirky

11:08am  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZfsgGyEfIthQ
January 12, 2012
Haiti: Two years after the earthquake, where did the money go? (via Haiti: Two years after the earthquake, where did the money go?)

Haiti: Two years after the earthquake, where did the money go? (via Haiti: Two years after the earthquake, where did the money go?)

8:35am  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZfsgGyEf3vu2
December 29, 2011
"researchers discovered money is indeed a major factor in day-to-day happiness. No surprise there. You need to make a certain amount, on average, to be able to afford food, shelter, clothing, entertainment and the occasional Apple product, but what spun top hats around the country was their finding that beyond a certain point your happiness levels off. The happiness money offers doesn’t keep getting more and more potent – it plateaus. The research showed that a lack of money brings unhappiness, but an overabundance does not have the opposite effect."

— The Overjustification Effect « You Are Not So Smart

10:24am  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZfsgGyDydTOY
December 28, 2011
kateoplis: What does the United States export/import? 

kateoplis:

What does the United States export/import? 

6:27am  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZfsgGyDuxZHe
(Notes: 150)