Category — Science and Technology Policy

World Bank: Studies in E-Governemnt:
This website provides a large number of resources selected for those interested in promoting e-government in developing nations.

http://www1.worldbank.org/publicsector/egov/egovstudies.htm——

lots of interesting things here

A Report Card for President Bush’s Science Policies:
Earlier this week Democrats on the House Science Committee issued a “report card” on President Bush’s and the Republican-controlled Congress’ science policies. Not surprisingly, the Democrats give the President a “D.” A passing grade, but not by much. Here is…———

i’d fail them personally…. because they fail to let science provide independent results and ignore results that don’t agree with their ideological position. there is no way this can pass.

http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-57/iss-11/p48.html

Scientific research, like other cooperative endeavors, requires trust to flourish. The distinguished philosopher Annette Baier explains that trust is confident reliance.1 Both elements, confidence and reliance, are vital.

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In this article, I address only ethical questions about upholding values that contribute to defining good science. But a second category of ethical questions also exists: questions about the consequences of scientific work. When a funding agency asks that grant proposals address the ethical and societal ramifications of the scientific work being proposed, the agency is raising matters of this second type.

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The number of graduate students per faculty research supervisor has grown dramatically in some fields, which raises serious questions about the quality of research supervision and mentoring for those students. The lack of faculty supervision is further complicated by the presence of postdocs in some fields: Sometimes postdocs are the primary recipients of faculty supervision, which leaves graduate students to depend on supervision by relatively inexperienced postdocs.

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If the pleasure in doing research erodes, only the scarce external rewards will remain as incentives. Competition will become ever more cutthroat as the fear of detection becomes the only check on cutting corners in pursuit of those external rewards.

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very interesting article…. it is from physics today… i don’t really agree with the analysis of the socio-historic situation… it seems to be pure nostalgia to me, because i think the discipline in the 50’s that you find at ford, ibm, big labs and universities and the like arose out of the disciplining of men and women in the wars, not in the trust in small communities…..

Free will, not arrogance. Bill Joy had some doubts to voice about Linux. Of course, like so many others he immediately jumps to the wrong conclusion. “The open-source business model hasn't worked very well,” he says.

Open source doesn't need a business model. [Advogato]

actually no software needs a business model, that should be clear from the hisotory of software… likewise with communities, they don't need business models either

AOL Quietly Wins IM Patent. Tony Kontzer in Information Week is reporting that AOL has been awarded an important patent covering much of the technology behind instant-messaging services.

In the latest example of a potentially market-defining patent being granted without fanfare, AOL Time Warner quietly has become the owner of a patent, granted in September by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, that covers much of the technology behind instant-messaging services. Patent No. 6,449,344 appears to be a far-reaching one, with more than 200 claims that give AOL exclusive rights to a “communications system for facilitating locating a user who is connected to a communications network, preferably for the purposes of establishing point-to-point communications.” [Living Without Microsoft]

This patent will be busted, i think there is enough evidence to bust most of it as I type this. We've been debating this for some time on air-l the list of the association of internet researchers, and I'm fairly convinced that most of the claims can be insubstantiated due to prior art

One more reason to be your own ISP.

In the ultimate world of ends (which the end-to-end Net continues fundamentally to be), ISPs become nothing more than storage and pipes. Stupid things, as David Isenberg correctly says.

Because if they're not stupid, they get all smart like Verio and start shutting down whole sites and communities.

Thanks to Rhizome for the link. And to the Reverse Cowgirl for turning us on to Rhizome.

[The Doc Searls Weblog]

now, is the time to rail aainst censorship to your favorite representative. dmca has gone on long enough, more to come