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Bojan Radej: Open Source Software Hub

Software
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Bojan Radej
Bojan Radej

Dreams of ‘Open’ Everything

Quentin Hardy

New York Times, 28 November 2012

Software is not merely about automating every aspect of our lives anymore. Some of its makers want to change the way we all interact, spreading their supposed egalitarian excellence.

Whether this is liberation into a new and better mode of being (and yes, the people thinking about this take it to that scale) or the folly of an industry in love with its success is one of the more intriguing questions of a world rushing to live online.

GitHub is a San Francisco company that started in 2008 as a way for open-source software writers in disparate locations to rapidly create new and better versions of their work. Work is stored, shared and discussed, based on the idea of a “pull request,” which is a suggestion to the group for some accretive element, like several lines of code, to be “pulled,” or added, to a project.

“The concept is based around change: what is the right thing to do, what is the wrong thing?” said Tom Preston-Werner, GitHub’s co-founder and chief executive. “The efficiency of large groups working together is very low in large enterprises. We want to change that.”

Read full article.

 

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SchwartzReport: Black-Market Abortions — When Legislators Let Ideological Money Ignore the Reality of Poor Women

07 Health, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government
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schwartz reportBlack-Market Abortion Drug Sales Appear To Be Rising

The New Republic‘s cover headline this month is a topic that pro-choice activists speak about occasionally amongst themselves, but rarely address in public: “The Rise of DIY Abortions.” The reason that it's not much discussed in public forums is that reproductive health advocates are data-driven people, and one thing that's nearly impossible to get data on is the prevalence of women quietly buying an ulcer medication named Cytotec from sleazy online dealers and using that to terminate pregnacies at home, far out of the reach of doctors and agencies like the CDC or the Guttmacher Institute that compile statistics on abortions. The writer of the piece, Ada Calhoun, admits that there's no way to know how common these black-market abortions are, but points out that the rise in websites peddling Cytotec specifically to terminate pregnancy (instead for its on-label use to treat ulcers) makes it hard to deny that this is a growing trend:

Read full article in Slate.

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: Black-Market Abortions — When Legislators Let Ideological Money Ignore the Reality of Poor Women”

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Mike Nelson: Cognitive Surplus Killing Monopoly Capital

#OSE Open Source Everything
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Mike Nelson
Mike Nelson

If you care about technology, the future, and economics, you'll find LOTS of interesting links here.

The tech debate blasts off (a linkfest)

It took almost a year for me to be taken seriously on the “technology is undermining capital” front,  so it was extremely exciting to see the debate blast off in serious economic circles during the last quarter of 2012.

I thought it might be useful, as a result, to provide some links to the most recent developments — since the debate really is moving quickly now.

But before doing so I would like to stress that I appreciate that the debate itself is not new. Ricardo, the Luddites, Keynes, Marx and many more have all considered the impact of technology on labour and capital.

But, as I’ve written previously, it’s almost as if the entire economic and financial community decided to collectively forget about how tech influences capital following the dotcom crash. Like the bubble and bust proved once and for all that the “new economy” theory was flawed, and that bringing it up again could turn out to be embarrassing — thus better left ignored.

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Mini-Me: Sandy Hook Massacre — Still Conflicted

Collective Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Media
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Who? Mini-Me?
Who? Mini-Me?

Huh?

Sandy Hook: Huge Hoax and Anti-Gun “Psy Op”

By Jim Fetzer and Dennis Cimino

Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Dennis Cimino, who has extensive engineering and support experience with military electronics, predominantly US Navy Combat Systems, was the Navy’s top EMI troubleshooter before he went to work for Raytheon in the 1980s.

There are obvious signs that tell the difference between genuine and fabricated event. The recent shooting of police and firemen responding to a deliberately-set fire has all the signs of being a bona fide event: there is a single consistent narrative, one shooter has been clearly identified, and there has been no good reason to doubt that the subject, William Spengler, went off the rails and committed the crimes. There are many articles about it, which relate the same basic themes: “Killer of 2 NY Firemen had semiautomatic rifle, left note”: “Police say the man who lured firefighters in Webster, N.Y., into a deadly ambush had the same make and caliber semiautomatic rifle as the one used in the Connecticut school massacre. Webster Police Chief Gerald Pickering said Tuesday that 62-year-old William Spengler was armed with a .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle, a .38-caliber revolver and a 12-gauge shotgun in Monday’s ambush. Spengler killed two firefighters and wounded two others before fatally shooting himself.”

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Reflections on Healing the Americas — Open Source Agency & Hourglass Strategy

#OSE Open Source Everything, Advanced Cyber/IO, All Reflections & Story Boards, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Peace Intelligence
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Robert David STEELE VivasClick on Image for Personal Page
Robert David STEELE Vivas
Click on Image for Personal Page

The Hourglass Strategy: Healing the Americas with Intelligence & Integrity

Robert David STEELE Vivas, CEO, Earth Intelligence Network

Mr. Steele grew up in Latin America, returning as a clandestine case officer, and then going on to teach governments across the region how to leverage Open Source Intelligence (OSINT).  He is the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction, reading in 98 categories, and has been described in the media as a serial pioneer and an unsung hero helping create the future.  If implemented, ethical evidence-based decision-support becomes the foundation for a completely new innovative and positive OAS in the Americas.

Click on Image to Enlarge
Click on Image to Enlarge

The USA and the OAS have lost their way.  The formation of CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) was ignored, just as President Barack Obama ignored the value of the book Open Veins of Latin America when it was given to him by President Hugo Chavez.  The seven sins of American foreign policy, beginning with ignorance and ending with arrogance, persist.  Meanwhile, in Asia – and reinforcing the future of CELAC – President Obama was politely sent home with a sound rejection of his proposed and obviously predatory Trans-Pacific Partnership; instead, a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is being established.  The Western Hemisphere including the Arctic should be but is not Priority One for the USA and OAS.  The fact is that the USA and OAS lack a strategy, lack coherent policies, and lack harmonized spending strategies for embracing, nurturing, and devising mutually beneficial diplomatic, informational, military, and economic (DIME) programs.  This is a global short-coming best addressed first in relation to the Americas.

Continue reading “Reflections on Healing the Americas — Open Source Agency & Hourglass Strategy”