Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Altruistic Punishment and Cooperation
"The nature of human altruism (helping others), and the role of altruistic punishment (paying a cost to punish those that don’t help others) in establishing cooperation and a bases for sociality, are currently two of the most active areas of research in the behavioural sciences. Nearly every aspect of altruism and cooperation you can think of is being explored: how altruistic behaviour and willingness to punish non-altruists varies across societies with differing social systems (and also what universal trends underlie human altruism); how this variation relates to economic and demographic factors; how people respond to punishment for not cooperating, in both laboratory and real-world situations; the role of institutions that embody social norms of behaviour in maintaining cooperation; and what’s going on in the brain when we cooperate and defect in games of altruism with other human players." /Smart Mobs/
Saturday, August 26, 2006
Abuse of Authority
"Abuse of authority comes as no surprise" - Robert Anton Wilson
One Laptop Per Child Project Nears Completion
"With a 500-unit field test ready to begin in September, the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program has announced that the much-anticipated, now-$140 laptop will be called Children's Machine 1 (and) features a 400mhz AMD Geode processor (the original prototypes had a 366mhz processor), 128MB of DRAM, built-in wireless support, and 512MB of flash memory for internal storage... an SD card slot, microphone and speaker jacks (potentially for rumored VoIP support), and a digital camera capable of capturing video and still images... The display will feature 1200x900 resolution... (have) approximately one-seventh of the power consumption, one-third of the price, sunlight readability, and room-light readability with the backlight off." /arstechnica.com/
Thursday, August 24, 2006
The Infinite Album
"(T)he future of the album, as envisioned by Beck (is) something to be heard, seen, and reconstituted by artist and audience alike... The repercussions here aren't just creative. The very logistics and economics of the music industry are at stake, as one album becomes a long shelf of songs and products, each carrying its own release date, distribution path, and price tag. In the end, fans can create their own versions of the album, stringing fave songs and remixes into one ideal playlist." /Wired/
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
SSH Tunneling
"The goal of this article is to present a few effective methods to revamp the way you work in a restricted corporation-like network. In order to achieve it we’re going to use SSH tunneling to bypass the firewall rules applied by your system administrator. We’ll start with breaking through simple restrictions and gradually pass to more and more elaborate firewalls while we move on.' /polishlinux.org/
Ubuntu Apps
"When I made the switch to Ubuntu Linux on my desktop computer (that is, if you can call triple-booting Windows XP, Vista, and Ubuntu a "switch"), I was a little worried about finding the applications and tools that would make me as productive working in Ubuntu as I am working on Windows... Here are my top 10 favorite applications and tweaks that made replacing Windows with Ubuntu a breeze." /Lifehacker/
The Megacommunity Defined
"We chose the term megacommunity to reflect such a sphere’s character as a gathering place, not of individual people, but of organizations. We see megacommunities emerging in many locations, reflecting the evolution of long-standing communitarian and democratic traditions, and also the changing character of today’s business and political environments." /The Megacommunity Manifesto/
Monday, August 21, 2006
Pirate Party Releases Commercial 'Darknet'
"Today, the Swedish Pirate Party launched a new Internet service that lets anybody send and receive files and information over the Internet without fear of being monitored or logged. In technical terms, such a network is called a "darknet". The service allows people to use an untraceable address in the darknet, where they cannot be personally identified./Piratpartiet/
Sunday, August 20, 2006
The genius of Digg
"The genius of Digg is that it packs a simple user action with the maximum social intent. A digg is a single click--about as simple as it gets--and yet it's the central component of the community... Somewhere in there is a lesson for a start-ups wanting to harness collective intelligence. (If you're accustomed to more traditional ideas about community, there's also something strange about a group whose identity revolves around pushing a button.)" /Atomiq/
Friday, August 18, 2006
P2P for the Browser
"UK/Prague-based AllPeers is a Firefox extension that will allow for group P2P file sharing using the browser. A persistent buddy list in a sidebar is created. Files can be shared with those buddies by dragging a file, folder or URL into their name. It’s just as easy to share the file with multiple people. The core technology is based on bittorent./Rojo/
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Openness Aversion?
"Studying intellectual property and the internet has convinced me that we have another cognitive bias. Call it the openness aversion. We are likely to undervalue the importance, viability and productive power of open systems, open networks and non-proprietary production." /FT.com/
Social Network Theory put to the Test
"(S)ocial networks with more connectivity aren't necessarily more efficient, but that it depends strongly on the collective problem being solved... Less connectivity and less information about the network can sometimes make the problem easier." /Technology News Daily/
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
workFRIENDLY for Surfing the Web at Work
workFriendly is a cool little web app for turning any webpage into what appears to be an MS Word doc. Nice and helpful to avoid the attention of potentially prying eyes at the office. /workFRIENDLY - BETA/
ZuluPad
ZuluPad is "the only cross-platform personal Wiki. Downloads are currently available for Windows and OS X, and a Linux port is in the works.... Also, it's completely free. " /ZuluPad/
