Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation (CDI)

Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation (CDI) is NSF’s bold five-year initiative to create revolutionary science and engineering research outcomes made possible by innovations and advances in computational thinking. Computational thinking is defined comprehensively to encompass computational concepts, methods, models, algorithms, and tools. Applied in challenging science and engineering research and education contexts, computational thinking promises a profound impact on the Nation’s ability to generate and apply new knowledge. Collectively, CDI research outcomes are expected to produce paradigm shifts in our understanding of a wide range of science and engineering phenomena and socio-technical innovations that create new wealth and enhance the national quality of life.

Read more about this important development here:
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=503163

File sync in Zotero!

Very very good news!

Zotero File Storage is a cloud-based storage solution for PDFs, images, web snapshots, and any other files attached to your Zotero personal and group libraries. Zotero File Storage allows you to access your Zotero-attached files from any computer with a web browser, and you can synchronize these files to any computer with Zotero installed. See the storage FAQ for additional information.

Every Zotero user has been granted 100MB of free Zotero file storage for attached files. In the near future users will be able to purchase additional storage space.

http://www.zotero.org/support/file_sync

Open access alliance: Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California at Berkeley

Great news! The Danish DEFF report concludes with savings of 70 million Euro every year so we should work harder for open access journals in Norway too. I think it would be about the same in Norway. I am sure that we could have spent 610 million Norwegian Kroner on something better than reducing our ability to communicate scientific results. What about some new nanotech labs?

According to Thomas C. Leonard, University Librarian at UC/Berkeley, "Publishers and researchers know that it has never been easier to share the best work they produce with the world. But they also know that their traditional business model is creating new walls around discoveries. Universities can really help take down these walls and the open-access compact is a highly significant tool for the job."

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/open-access-0914.html

Economic policy and intellectual property

I have one theory (that I have just discovered that the Indian scholar Lawrence Liang has written a lot about): I think I see a pattern in IP regulation, and that it resemble how the rich countries always have told the poor countries; Do what we say, not what we do. For example, South-Korea build themselves up by NOT doing what the World Bank told them, while Africa has been practically runned by the world bank and IMF since 1960. Bill Gates build himself up in a regime WITHOUT software patents, but he insist that his followers should follow the new rules. I think free and open standards/software/culture can play the same role for Africa in the knowledge society as tariff protection, subsidies and government support played for South-Korea in the industrialized society?

Look at this article for example: " These data are used to investigate the welfare effects of widespread infringement of foreign works on American publishers, writers, and the public. The results suggest that the United States benefited from piracy and that the choice of copyright regime was endogenous to the level of economic development."
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=495776

Lawrence Liang has some very good points:
"..and the latest allegation is that pirated music and software helps fund terrorist
organizations such as the Al Qaida."
http://www.sarai.net/research/knowledge-culture/critical-public-legal-resources/copyrightculturalproductionandopencontentlicenses.pdf

http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2009/09/11/funds-for-us-state-dept-global-ip-enforcement-training/
http://www.ifad.org/events/op/2009/wipo.htm
http://www.gov2summit.com/
http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2009/09/01/un-climate-report-envisions-modified-trips-as-governments-seek-progress/
http://www.msfaccess.org/main/access-patents/the-global-politics-of-pharmaceutical-monopoly-power-by-ellen-t-hoen/
http://www.who.int/dg/speeches/2009/intellectual_property_20090714/en/index.html

This blogpost by Stephen Gowan is very good:

http://maravi.blogspot.com/2009/07/stephen-gowans-obamas-africa-speech.html

Mashup of Google Knol, Plos and Rapid Research Notes

Plos Currents is the new modern era scientific journals that has peer-review and are designed for collaboration and rapid dissemination from scratch. Google is doing a great job for the scientific community and research that will benefit all, as ususal.

"The successful development of open access publishing by organizations including the Public Library of Science (PLoS) in recent years is a dramatic illustration of how the Internet is revolutionizing scientific communication. Today, after several months of work, I’m delighted to announce that PLoS is launching PLoS Currents (Beta) – a new and experimental website for the rapid communication of research results and ideas. In response to the recent worldwide H1N1 influenza outbreak, the first PLoS Currents research theme is influenza."

http://www.plos.org/cms/node/480

http://knol.google.com/k/plos/plos-currents-influenza/28qm4w0q65e4w/1%23#

Denmark to save 70 million Euro every year with Open Access

Excerpt from the announcement:

"The full report is available here:
Open Access – What are the economic benefits?

A comparison of the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Denmark



The reports of the three countries can be downloaded below:

* JISC report: Economic Implications of Alternative Scholarly Publishing Models: Exploring the costs and benefits
* SURF report: Costs and Benefits of Research Communication: The Dutch Situation
*

DEFF report: Costs and Benefits of Alternative Publishing Models: Denmark"

http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Default.aspx?ID=316

Why following the rich countries rules never makes sense

Following the intellectual property regulations from the rich world is like following "free trade" receipe in the industrialized world. It won't work.

Here is a very good blogpost on that:

http://maravi.blogspot.com/2009/07/stephen-gowans-obamas-africa-speech.html

Problems with intellectual property

Intellectual property is ready for reform in everything from food security to global health. Here are some recent links that is taboo to talk about in the rich world right now. Almost everyone hate to talk about it and if they do they deny the problems more or less completely. Most people are even willing to abondon the democracy to protect the income system that is based on unfear exploitation of the worlds poor through IP-regulation.

http://www.ifad.org/events/op/2009/wipo.htm
http://www.gov2summit.com/
http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2009/09/01/un-climate-report-envisions-modified-trips-as-governments-seek-progress/
http://www.msfaccess.org/main/access-patents/the-global-politics-of-pharmaceutical-monopoly-power-by-ellen-t-hoen/
http://www.who.int/dg/speeches/2009/intellectual_property_20090714/en/index.html

So far in the Norwegian election, it seems that the majority of Norwegian don't care about using the billions of dollar from the oil fund to oilsand extraction. Almost nobody cares.

They also don't care about massive surveillance of almost all digital information.

If the Norwegian politicians give a damn in climate change, forget everything they have learned about free expression, how can they travel to places like Afghanistan anThey are not interested in much else than keeping the status quo.d kill for free expression,or travel to conferences around the world and talk about the importance of reduction of CO2? Why are they spending 1 percent of GDP every year on developing countries when they earn ten times (?) through the deeply unfear international ip-regulation?

Some times I have problems to see the principal differences between the "well-functional social democracies" and corrupt regimes in the developing world. Both don't care about climate change, and both have their victims. The Norwegians build more and bigger palaces than dictators in the third world and give a damn how and where the money come from. Both give a damn about the future for anyone else than themselves.

Am I wrong?

http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2009/09/11/funds-for-us-state-dept-global-ip-enforcement-training/

Open Hardware

When Pixel Qi and Backblaze and a few other start up the open hardware race I think we will see some interesting disruptive forces.

"What if I told you that you could build a petabyte-sized cluster for around $120,000?

Now compare that to a couple of million dollars via a storage company like EMC Corp. or a server maker such as Sun Microsystems."

http://gigaom.com/2009/09/01/open-source-hardware/

They actually sell very cheap back-up too: "Hassle free back up for $5/Month Unlimited
$5 per month per computer (or get two months free by purchasing a year for $50!)"

Immigrants economic value for Norway

I did'nt know that we can thank Farouk al-Kasim, a young Iraqi geologist in may 1968 for the oil exploration in Norway.

But al-Kasim’s most immediate problem on arriving in Oslo that morning was how to fill the day: his train to Solfrid’s home town did not depart until 6.30pm. “I thought what I am going to do in these hours?” he says. “So I decided to go to the Ministry of Industry and ask them if they knew of any oil companies coming to Norway.

“Farouk is perhaps the greatest value creator Norway has had,” says Olsen.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feabdc0.html

Pixel Qi

From this comparison it looks like the Pixel Qi is almost as good as E-Ink technology.

Few short links

New book: The World is Open
http://worldisopen.com/bookshelf.php

Smart Grid Standards: Road Map a Month Away; Vint Cerf Weighs in
http://www.reuters.com/article/earth2Tech/idUS295503766420090824

Barnes & Noble Lands Irex, Another Would-Be Kindle Killer
http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090824/barnes-noble-lands-irex-another-would-be-kindle-killer/

Flatworld Knowledge doing very well!

"After a sort of beta earlier this year, Flat World is set to announce on Thursday that over 40,000 college students at more than 400 colleges are going to be using their digital, DRM-free textbooks in the Fall semester, up from 1,000 in 30 colleges in the Spring."

Source: Wired

The multimedial 3D web here soon?

If you combine O3D http://code.google.com/apis/o3d/ (impressing 3D!),Canvas, SVG, CSS, XML,Ajax, Native Client, WebGL, with Google On2 recent aquisition I think we will reach a the point where the browser will do almost everythin very soon.

Newspaper in war with themselves

"If ever there was an article at war with itself, this is it."
http://www.againstmonopoly.org/index.php?perm=593056000000001361

Google News four times bigger from today

The Google News Archive grows fast:

http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/extra-extra-updates-from-our-growing.html

The Gecko Edubook coming in August

http://www.norhtec.com/products/gecko/index.html

ePub format the new PDF?

"EPUB became in standard in September 2007, but the big step came in May 2008 when the Association of American Publishers (AAP) issued an open letter to IDPF announcing their support of the open standards format, said Smith. EPUB titles started hitting online bookshelves early this year."

http://www.infoworld.com/d/applications/epub-next-pdf-190

Sony, Intuit, Adobe and Microsoft in the open source business

Open source is mainstream just in case someone was doubting?

http://opensource.imageworks.com/

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10298333-16.html

http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=4527

http://mybroadband.co.za/news/Software/8948.html

600 000 USD in fine to sell a pair of blue jeans...

"Suppose back in the days of the Soviet Union a young man in Moscow was fined $600,000 for selling blue jeans on the black market. Would the news media just report the sentence and discuss whether or not the convict was repentant? Possibly, but my guess is that the article would comment on how the Soviet Union was failing in getting consumer products to its population. It might include some economic analysis mentioning the enormous losses that the economy suffers by banning simple trade. It might even treat our black market blue jean dealer as a hero.

Anyhow, why is there no discussion of economic issues when a student gets a $675,000 fine for transferring copyrighted music over the Internet? The copyright system imposes enormous waste on the economy, including the enforcement costs associated with prosecutions like this one. We know of other ways in which creative and artistic work can be financed. Is there some reason that the copyright protected media never discusses them?"

From Dean Bakers blog