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Johann Höchtl

Data Startups Danger - 0 views

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    Of course, the radio stations were absolutely correct on all their points except one. Compared to the data about what the market wanted, the song was too long. It was too complex. It was too confusing, and it didn't fit into any best-selling genre. But even though it was a massive outlier compared to the data, somehow it worked. Bohemian Rhapsody went on to become the only song to reach number one in four different years. But even better than that fleeting data-point of success, it went on to change what popular music could be, and made countless people happy.
thinkahol *

Imagine Peace 2011 - 0 views

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    Dear Friends, In two weeks time, on February 18th, 2011, I will be 78. I know you are asking many questions on Twitter and elsewhere about what I am really like. It's something I would love to know, too! One day it will suddenly dawn on us ... maybe. The world situation is too urgent for us now to discuss trivial things, like what I eat for breakfast. We are at a point in human history when we have to wake up and realize that the only people who can save the world are us. Every hour that goes by without us doing anything about it affects us, and affects the world that we love so much.
thinkahol *

Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail? - 0 views

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    Which is not to say that the Obama era has meant an end to law enforcement. On the contrary: In the past few years, the administration has allocated massive amounts of federal resources to catching wrongdoers - of a certain type. Last year, the government deported 393,000 people, at a cost of $5 billion. Since 2007, felony immigration prosecutions along the Mexican border have surged 77 percent; nonfelony prosecutions by 259 percent. In Ohio last month, a single mother was caught lying about where she lived to put her kids into a better school district; the judge in the case tried to sentence her to 10 days in jail for fraud, declaring that letting her go free would "demean the seriousness" of the offenses. So there you have it. Illegal immigrants: 393,000. Lying moms: one. Bankers: zero. The math makes sense only because the politics are so obvious. You want to win elections, you bang on the jailable class. You build prisons and fill them with people for selling dime bags and stealing CD players. But for stealing a billion dollars? For fraud that puts a million people into foreclosure? Pass. It's not a crime. Prison is too harsh. Get them to say they're sorry, and move on. Oh, wait - let's not even make them say they're sorry. That's too mean; let's just give them a piece of paper with a government stamp on it, officially clearing them of the need to apologize, and make them pay a fine instead. But don't make them pay it out of their own pockets, and don't ask them to give back the money they stole. In fact, let them profit from their collective crimes, to the tune of a record $135 billion in pay and benefits last year. What's next? Taxpayer-funded massages for every Wall Street executive guilty of fraud?
thinkahol *

Danny Glover Tremendous Speech @ Occupy Oakland - YouTube - 0 views

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    Danny Glover IS NOT too old for this shit.
Johann Höchtl

Gov 2.0: The end of a GovFresh era - 0 views

  • this has been a civic adventure driven by pure patriotic adrenaline
  • passionate, patriotic group of people I’m proud to now call friends
  • Over the past few months, I’ve tried to work on establishing a sustainable business model, but the challenge around building an immediate solid foundation has turned into a case of ‘too little, too late.’
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    GovFresh went awry and failed to establish a business model. Interessante Aussagen: passionate, patriotic aber kein Business Modell. Wo ist der Unterschied zu eg. Open Source? * Open Source "erzeugt" ein Produkt, das in der digitalen Welt "gehandelt" werden kann, eine digitale Plattform ohne digitale Produkte mit EndanwenderInnennutzen hat diese Eigenschaft nicht * Open Source communities sind erfolgreich, wenn sie Probleme in sehr kleine Einheiten brechen können. Damit steht potentiell vielen peers "Mitmachen" offen. Open Data erfordert ein skill level, das von nicht-Technikern schwer aufzubringen sein wird, macht damit jene, die sich nicht beteiligen und "credit" geben, zu Trittbrettfahrern
Parycek

Science and Web 2.0: Talking About Science vs. Doing Science « The Scholarly ... - 0 views

  • There are far too many sessions on journalism and policy, and far too little on doing science . . .
  • “killer app” that integrates social media into the mainstream of science.
  • Tools for doing science are much harder to envision and build.  But these sorts of tools are much more likely to see uptake and use by the community, simply because scientists are more interested in doing science than they are in talking about science.
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  • ScienceBlogs has around 80 regular bloggers. The Nature Network has around 40 blogs that have been updated in the last month (this figure seems to have dropped by 20% since I last checked). David Bradley lists 600-plus “science type” users of Twitter.
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    Science Online 2010, the annual meeting for cutting edge users of Web 2.0 technologies in science, was held last month. It filled the science blogosphere with coverage and allowed far-flung colleagues to meet in person.
thinkahol *

Al Franken: The Most Important Free Speech Issue of Our Time - 0 views

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    This Tuesday is an important day in the fight to save the Internet. The FCC will meet to discuss its badly flawed proposal for net neutrality. If they approve it as is, I'll be outraged. And you should be, too.
thinkahol *

Technology: Necessary but Insufficient for Human Survival | Thinkahol's Blog - 0 views

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    In the context of technology the only way out is through. Global society is dependent on artificially inflated energy resources-i.e. oil-that are directly leading us toward total collapse. Technology is being used to most efficiently maximize wealth of the largest corporate conglomerates at the expense of the social fabric and a living environment. The biosphere is in fact collapsing. The technology exists to solve our technical problems but the solutions do not seem like they will be effectively put to use. The power structures concentrating money off the status quo are too entrenched. Each human is called on to become more aware.
thinkahol *

When Change Is Not Enough: The Seven Steps To Revolution | OurFuture.org - 0 views

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    "Those who make peaceful evolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable."- John F. KennedyThere's one thing for sure: 2008 isn't anything like politics as usual.The corporate media (with their unerring eye for the obvious point) is fixated on the narrative that, for the first time ever, Americans will likely end this year with either a woman or a black man headed for the White House. Bloggers are telling stories from the front lines of primaries and caucuses that look like something from the early 60s - people lining up before dawn to vote in Manoa, Hawaii yesterday; a thousand black college students in Prairie View, Texas marching 10 miles to cast their early votes in the face of a county that tried to disenfranchise them. In recent months, we've also been gobstopped by the sheer passion of the insurgent campaigns of both Barack Obama and Ron Paul, both of whom brought millions of new voters into the conversation - and with them, a sharp critique of the status quo and a new energy that's agitating toward deep structural change.There's something implacable, earnest, and righteously angry in the air. And it raises all kinds of questions for burned-out Boomers and jaded Gen Xers who've been ground down to the stump by the mostly losing battles of the past 30 years. Can it be - at long last - that Americans have, simply, had enough? Are we, finally, stepping out to take back our government - and with it, control of our own future? Is this simply a shifting political season - the kind we get every 20 to 30 years - or is there something deeper going on here? Do we dare to raise our hopes that this time, we're going to finally win a few? Just how ready is this country for big, serious, forward-looking change?Recently, I came across a pocket of sociological research that suggested a tantalizing answer to these questions - and also that America may be far more ready for far more change than anyone really believes is possible at this moment. In fac
thinkahol *

GRITtv » Blog Archive » Michelle Alexander: End The Drug War: Face the New Ji... - 0 views

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    The NAACP has just passed a historic resolution demanding an end to the War on Drugs.  The resolution comes as young Black male unemployment hovers near 50 percent and the wealth gap's become a veritable gulf. So why is the forty-year-old "War on Drugs" public enemy number one for the nation's oldest civil rights organization? Well here's why:  it's not extraneous - it's central: the war on drugs is the engine of 21st century discrimination - an engine that has brought Jim Crow into the age of Barack Obama.     Author Michelle Alexander lays out the statistics -- and the stories --  of 21st Century Jim Crow in her ought-to-blow-your-socks off book: "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness." I had a chance to sit down with Alexander earlier this summer. We'll be posting the full interview in two parts.     "We have managed decades after the civil rights movement to create something like a caste system in the United States," says Alexander in part one here  "In major urban areas, the majority of African American men are either behind bars, under correctional control or saddled with criminal record and once branded as criminal or a felon, they're trapped for life in 2nd class status."     It's not just about people having a hard time getting ahead and climbing the ladder of success. It's about a rigged system. Sound familiar?  Like the Pew Research Center report on household wealth and the Great Recession -- the NAACP resolution story was a one-day news-blip - despite the fact that it pierces the by-your-bootstraps myth that is at the heart of - you pick it - the deficit, the stimulus, the tax code - every contemporary US economic debate.     White America just maybe ought to pay attention. With more and more Americans falling out of jobs and into debt, criminal records are a whole lot easier to come by than life-sustaining employment.  Contrary to the conventional media version, the "Drug War" story is not a people with problems
thinkahol *

Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes? | Rolling Stone Politics - 0 views

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    Imagine a world in which a man who is repeatedly investigated for a string of serious crimes, but never prosecuted, has his slate wiped clean every time the cops fail to make a case. No more Lifetime channel specials where the murderer is unveiled after police stumble upon past intrigues in some old file - "Hey, chief, didja know this guy had two wives die falling down the stairs?" No more burglary sprees cracked when some sharp cop sees the same name pop up in one too many witness statements. This is a different world, one far friendlier to lawbreakers, where even the suspicion of wrongdoing gets wiped from the record.
thinkahol *

Cell Phone Censorship in San Francisco? » Blog of Rights: Official Blog of th... - 0 views

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    Pop quiz: where did a government agency shut down cell service yesterday to disrupt a political protest? Syria? London? Nope. San Francisco. The answer may seem surprising, but that's exactly what happened yesterday evening. The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) asked wireless providers to halt service in four stations in San Francisco to prevent protestors from communicating with each other. The action came after BART notified riders that there might be demonstrations in the city. All over the world people are using mobile devices to organize protests against repressive regimes, and we rightly criticize governments that respond by shutting down cell service, calling their actions anti-democratic and a violation of the rights to free expression and assembly. Are we really willing to tolerate the same silencing of protest here in the United States? BART's actions were glaringly small-minded as technology and the ability to be connected have many uses. Imagine if someone had a heart attack on the train when the phones were blocked and no one could call 911. And where do we draw the line? These protestors were using public transportation to get to the demonstration - should the government be able to shut that down too? Shutting down access to mobile phones is the wrong response to political protests, whether it's halfway around the world or right here at home. The First Amendment protects everybody's right to free expression, and when the government responds to people protesting against it by silencing them, it's dangerous to democracy.
thinkahol *

What does it mean to be an 'anarchist'? | David Goodway | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

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    Too often associated with mayhem on the streets, for centuries anarchists have actually sought a more ordered society
thinkahol *

Richard Wilkinson: How economic inequality harms societies | Video on TED.com - 0 views

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    We feel instinctively that societies with huge income gaps are somehow going wrong. Richard Wilkinson charts the hard data on economic inequality, and shows what gets worse when rich and poor are too far apart: real effects on health, lifespan, even such basic values as trust.
Johann Höchtl

Manage Real Improvement in Online Projects - Input Output - 0 views

  • Substantial businesses have long "re-purposed" what's available from court proceedings, census publications, CIA atlases, and agency scientific and commercial compilations. It seems plausible that release of, say, crime statistics in Cook County, or water flows of the Colorado River, will be valuable to someone. Which datasets are worth processing first, though?
  • Specialists widely believe what European Commission VP Neelie Kroes and others have said: "Your data is worth more if you give it away." As with many other IT issues, though the people in the best position to make such measurements are too busy creating the future to invest time rigorously justifying it.
Johann Höchtl

Open Data Business Models | Jeni's Musings - 0 views

  • I find business cases for data publishers much more compelling than examples of how open data can be used. For a start, I don’t think it’s possible to predict how open data will be used or what that will mean in terms of economic or societal impact: the wide world into which it’s released is just too complex to know.
  • One argument I’ve heard made about government open data is that releasing it can help organisations avoid the costs of Freedom of Information requests.
  • The reverse of cost avoidance is finding sponsors for open data publication.
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  • The freemium model has been used with some success for web-based services; it might also work for open data.
Parycek

Der EuGH, Google und das Vergessen: Was sagt das Urteil wirklich? - 0 views

  • benfalls inexakt ist Mathias Müller von Blumencron, wenn er  ebenfalls in der FAZ schreibt, dass es nun „doch ein Recht auf Vergessen werden im Internet“ gibt. Nein: das gibt es nicht.
  • Dieses Recht des Einzelnen ist  abzuwägen gegenüber den wirtschaftlichen Interesse des Suchmaschinenbetreibers und „dem Interesse der breiten Öffentlichkeit daran, die Information bei einer anhand des Namens der betroffenen Person durchgeführten Suche zu finden“
  • utocomplete-Urteil des BGH keine Klagswelle gegen Google gegeben habe, wie die FAZ einen Anwalt zitiert.
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  • atlicher Regulierung rief, begann eine doch bemerkenswerte Diskussion um die Rolle von Google in der Informationsgesellschaft. Überschriften wie „Angst vor Google“, „ Google ou  la route de la servitude“, „Warum wir Google fürchten” , „Die Google-Gefahr“, „Dark Google“ schafften ein Klima, in dem nur schwer sachlich argumentiert werden konnte.
  • Google neo-absolutistische Machtfülle vor und schrieb „[o]ur demands for self-determination are not easily extinguished.  We made Google, perhaps by loving it too much.”
  • chtung der Privatsphäre wies der EuGH Google an, erforderlichen Maßnahmen zu ergreifen, um bestimmte personenbezogene Daten aus dem Index der Suchmaschine zu entfernen und den „Zugang zu diesen Daten in Zukunft zu verhindern“
  • keine Daten verarbeiteten, da sie nicht zwischen personenbezogenen Daten und anderen Informationen unterschieden
  • und deshalb hätten Suchmaschinenbetreiber in ihrem „Verantwortungsbereich im Rahmen [ihrer] Befugnisse und Möglichkeiten“  dafür zu sorgen, dass grundrechtliche Garantien ihre volle Wirksamkeit entfalten können (Abs. 38).
  • Es reiche aus, wenn der Suchmaschinenbetreiber aus wirtschaftlichen Erwägungen eine Zweigniederlassung oder Tochtergesellschaft gegründet habe, „ deren Tätigkeit auf die Einwohner dieses Staates ausgerichtet“ sei
  • Suchmaschinenbetreiber dazu verpflichtet werden können, Links zu Webseiten Dritter mit Informationen zu einer bestimmten Person zu entfernen, auch wenn Name und Informationen auf dieser Webseite nicht vorher oder gleichzeitig gelöscht würden
Johann Höchtl

Facebook's friendship trap | Eleanor Mills - Times Online - 0 views

  • Last week my vague feelings of unease about social networking were fanned by a fascinating study by the Mental Health Foundation, which blamed high levels of loneliness among young people on their use of virtual, rather than real, communication. Dubbed the “Eleanor Rigby generation”, those aged 18-34 (84% of whom use the internet regularly) are the most likely to be lonely, according to the report. And 31% admitted that they spent too much time online rather than face to face.
  • The psychologist Dr Aric Sigman says that social networking sites undermine social skills and the ability to read body language.
Johann Höchtl

THE OPEN DECLARATION « Co-creating an open declaration on public services 2.0 - 0 views

  • An Open Declaration on European Public Services
  • The needs of today’s society are too complex to be met by government alone. While traditional government policies sought to automate public services and encourage self-service, the biggest impact of the web will be in improving services through collaboration, transparency and knowledge-sharing.
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