“Ray Ozzie Quit… What Took Him So Long?” and other Google Starred Items
Via Slashdot: “…‘The mainstream press acts surprised that Microsoft’s chief software architect is resigning, but InfoWorld’s Woody Leonhard explains through a review of Ozzie’s efforts at Microsoft how the Redmond giant has consistently ignored and squandered the design savvy that Ozzie has tried to bring to the table. If you ever wondered why Microsoft’s products like Windows and Office are so bloated and underwhelming, while Apple’s are almost always wonderful experiences, this analysis will solve that mystery. And you too will wonder how Ozzie could have lasted so long at a company that doesn't believe in design.’”
“Apple May Pay $625 Million For Messing with Texas”
Ryan Tate: “The plaintiff was a Yale computer science professor with a company called Mirror Worlds incorporated in New Haven, Connecticut and under a slightly different name in Tyler, Texas, part of a region known for its friendliness to patent claims.”
“Why don’t we kill each other as much as we used to?”
Maggie Koerth-Baker: “Proof of things you already suspected: Human society is not more violent today than in the past. Quite the opposite, in fact. (At least, as measured by statistics based on Western European historical records.) ”
“The Graying of the World”
Via FREAKONOMICS: “It’s true that the world’s population overall will increase by roughly one-third over the next 40 years, from 6.9 to 9.1 billion, according to the U.N. Population Division. But this will be a very different kind of population growth than ever before—driven not by birth rates, which have plummeted around the world, but primarily by an increase in the number of elderly people. Indeed, the global population of children under 5 is expected to fall by 49 million as of midcentury, while the number of people over 60 will grow by 1.2 billion. How did the world grow so gray, so quickly?”
“Transparency Is Not Enough”
Dana Boyd: “Data transparency is not enough; danah boyd powerfully argues that the character of data depends on its interpretation and states her case for data literacy. If people are ignorant about how data is generated, selected and interpreted, power accrues to those who can ‘spin’ the data to support their opinions and biases. Using the example of publicly available sex offender data, released under Megan’s Law, boyd shows that understanding the complexity of data is just as important as making it transparent.”