#OSE Open Source Everything – Page 228 – Public Intelligence Blog

Free Software Supporter

Issue 56, November 2012

Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software Foundation's monthly news digest and action update — being read by you and 64,307 other activists. That's 1,124 more than last month!

View this issue online here: http://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2012/free-software-supporter-issue-56-november-2012

Encourage your friends to subscribe and help us build an audience by adding our subscriber widget to your web site.

Subscribe: http://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter
Widget: http://www.fsf.org/associate/widget

Miss an issue? You can catch up on back issues at http://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter.

#

El Free Software Supporter está disponible en castellano. Para ver la versión en castellano haz click aqui: http://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2012/free-software-supporter-numero-56-noviembre-2012

Para cambiar las preferencias de usuario y recibir los próximos números del Supporter en castellano, haz click aquí: https://crm.fsf.org/civicrm/profile/create?gid=34&reset=1

Give freely this Cyber Monday: Introducing the 2012 Giving Guide
Tell Amazon: Books and libraries shouldn't have a kill switch
MediaGoblin crowdfunding campaign: huge success!
Let’s limit the effect of software patents, since we can’t eliminate them
Left wondering why VLC relicensed to LGPL
Good “End Software Patents” video – not by us
Finnish activist, Danish hacker share Nordic Free Software Award 2012
LibreWRT: What we use for wifi at the FSF
FSFE meeting the FSF crew in Boston
Fall 2012: Photos from ICT Goes International, in Helsinki
FSF to begin accepting scanned assignments from Germany
Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory
LibrePlanet featured resource: 2013 LibrePlanet conference
GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry: 22 new GNU releases!
GNU Toolchain update
Richard Stallman's speaking schedule
Thank GNUs!
Take action with the FSF

Continue reading “Richard Stahlman: Free Software Supporter Issue 56”

2012/11/30

Yoda: To Know But Not Understand — Science and Big Data

Knowledge

yoda with light saber — Got Crowd? BE the Force!

Wise, he is.

To Know, but Not Understand: David Weinberger on Science and Big Data

In an edited excerpt from his new book, Too Big to Know, David Weinberger explains how the massive amounts of data necessary to deal with complex phenomena exceed any single brain's ability to grasp, yet networked science rolls on. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington recorded daily weather observations, but they didn't record them hourly or by the minute.

Read full article on TheAtlantic

Continue reading “Yoda: To Know But Not Understand — Science and Big Data”

2012/11/302015/05/10

SchwartzReport: US Court Orders Tobacco Companies to Admit Lying — But Higher Court Has Blocked Mandate of Graphic Images

Culture, Knowledge, Politics

US court orders tobacco firms to admit lying

A US judge has ordered tobacco firms to pay for a public campaign laying out “past deception” over smoking risks.

The ruling sets out the wording of a series of “corrective statements” that the companies are being told to make over a period of up to two years.

Details of which media will carry the statements and how much they will cost are yet to be determined.

Read full article.

graphic warning — Click on Image to Enlarge

US court blocks graphic cigarette warnings

The US government cannot force tobacco firms to put large graphic health warnings on cigarette packages, an appeals court in Washington has ruled.

It said the government's plan undermined free speech in America.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had wanted to put nine pictures of dead and diseased smokers to convey the dangers of cigarettes.

But tobacco firms had argued that the images went beyond factual information and into anti-smoking advocacy.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: Absent a public uprising and a change in the electoral integrity of the US Government, it will take another 20 years for the truth to be pushed back into big pharma, big sugar, and big oil. The truth, however, is making a comeback as a public good. “The truth at any cost lowers all other costs.” Once a government gets back into the business of serving the public interest instead of special interests, transparency, truth, and trust will again become the signal attributes of a democracy.

See also:

Documentary: The Tobacco Conspiracy: Backrooms Deals of a Deadly Industry (free, loaded with quality content)

Video (26min) of tobacco leaf child labor in Malawi – towards the end is mention of fair trade farms working to replace the tobacco crop with tea leaves.

2012/11/282012/11/28

Yoda: Mississippi Down? Lower the Ocean, Raise the River — Army Corps of Engineers Finds a New Challenge, a New Way — But Who Will Pay?

03 Economy, 12 Water, Knowledge

Mississippi River may hit record low, halt traffic in December

Michael Winter

USA TODAY,

Obama is urged to declare emergency so Army Corps can take steps to keep 200-mile stretch open.

8:27PM EST November 28. 2012 – A key stretch of the drought-ravaged Mississippi River may fall to a record low by mid-December, halting barge traffic and disrupting billions in commerce on the nation's busiest inland waterway.

President Obama on Tuesday was urged to declare an emergency so the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers can take steps to boost the river's flow and deepen the channel along the 200-mile segment between St. Louis and Cairo, Ill.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., plans to meet Thursday with the Pentagon official who oversees the corps to ask that it quickly dynamite exposed rock pinnacles and increase Missouri River reservoir flows to keep the river open, the St. Louis Beacon reported Wednesday.

The corps annually reduces Missouri River releases — mandated by Congress — to conserve water for spring and recreation. The last time it dynamited Mississippi rock obstructions was during the drought of 1988-89, a spokesman told The Wall Street Journal. The current drought is forecast to extend into next year.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: We have not done the math, but we are beginning to see some convergence among various challenges (mostly not enough fresh water) and various solutions (mostly solar and wind power, but decentralizes). We connect dots. So connect the above dot with the below dot. Anyone who has the math, please share it. We strongly suspect that if a viable solution can be found for desalinating ocean water to stop the drught shallows now and fill the aquifers later, that those who stand to lose close to $4 billion a month from use of this public waterway just might find a way to earmark $100 million and up for a novel persistent solutioin.

2012/11/282012/11/28

Penguin: Trans-Pacific Partnership – Corporate Legalized Theft in 3 Parts

Economics/True Cost

Spengler salivates for the continuing sell-out of Prols whose grandparents built, with the direct support of government, the infrastructure he thinks “entrepreneurial innovation” will rebuild. Try activating the cement-mixers.

Part 1: The Trans-Pacific Partnership: This is What Corporate Governance Looks Like

Part 2: Why So Secretive? The Trans-Pacific Partnership as Global Corporate Coup

Part 3: The Trans-Pacific Partnership: What “Free Trade” Actually Means

Phi Beta Iota: Integrity and Truth are coming back into style.

2012/11/282012/11/28

Yoda: Immortality Beckons…Only One Scientist in Japan Paying Attention

Knowledge

Wiser crowd, finally.

Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret of Immortality?

Nathanial Rich

New York Times, 28 November 2012

After more than 4,000 years — almost since the dawn of recorded time, when Utnapishtim told Gilgamesh that the secret to immortality lay in a coral found on the ocean floor — man finally discovered eternal life in 1988. He found it, in fact, on the ocean floor. The discovery was made unwittingly by Christian Sommer, a German marine-biology student in his early 20s. He was spending the summer in Rapallo, a small city on the Italian Riviera, where exactly one century earlier Friedrich Nietzsche conceived “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”: “Everything goes, everything comes back; eternally rolls the wheel of being. Everything dies, everything blossoms again. . . .”

. . . . . . . .

In fact there is just one scientist who has been culturing Turritopsis polyps in his lab consistently. He works alone, without major financing or a staff, in a cramped office in Shirahama, a sleepy beach town in Wakayama Prefecture, Japan, four hours south of Kyoto. The scientist’s name is Shin Kubota, and he is, for the time being, our best chance for understanding this unique strand of biological immortality.

. . . . . . . . .

Continue reading “Yoda: Immortality Beckons…Only One Scientist in Japan Paying Attention”

2012/11/282012/11/28

Patrick Meier: US AID Crisis Map of Syria

Geospatial

Why USAID’s Crisis Map of Syria is so Unique

While static, this crisis map includes a truly unique detail. Click on the map below to see a larger version as this may help you spot what is so striking.

For a hint, click this link. Still stumped? Look at the sources listed in the Key.

ANSWER from Patrick Meier: AID map uses Syria Tracker as a source for Reported Deaths.

Previously posted:

Patrick Meier: Crisis Mapping Syria – Automated Data Mining and Crowdsourced Human Intelligence

#

TABLE OF CONTENTS