Personal notes

Having just followed a lecture about the economics of knowledge which, besides other things, also touched the problem of how the tension between protecting vs promoting knowledge, within a period in which mobility and access of information, is crucial, I happily welcome the announcement, made by the Executive Director of Science Commons, to start the [...]

[Read more →]

I've found a nice classification of (complex) systems, in Why things bite back by E. Tenner. The original 'definition' is from the sociologist Charles Perrow, and Tenner uses it quite extensively in his book.Perrow divided systems in tightly and loosely coupled and, taking the same examples used in the book, we might think of a [...]

[Read more →]

I'm against software patents since i'm pretty much sure they hinder progress and slow down market and technology development. I'm not sure yet whether patents, generally speaking, are as bad as software patents or not.What i believe anyway is that most of the patents (software or non-software) shouldn't have been granted, let's say because there's [...]

[Read more →]

I was very pleased when i read on BoingBoing that the audiobook of such a masterpiece as On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, written by Charles Darwin and published in 1859, has been completed and made it available to anyone who'd like to listen to it.
Darwin's work is nowadays in the [...]

[Read more →]

I think this is a signature worthwhile petition, and hopefully it will reach its goal.
Researchers, students, universities, accademics, librarians, pofessors and other kinds of organizations decided that it's time to persuade the CE that not giving free and open access to the results of the public scientific researches will hindher progress and innovation and could [...]

[Read more →]