Does this matter to you? Is Google your (only) search tool of choice?
Google won’t autocomplete searches for “bittorrent,” but if you are interesting in learning how to kidnap someone, make meth, build a bomb, cheat on your taxes, or shoplift, they will happily autocomplete your search for you.
Google won’t autocomplete “bittorrent” but will autocomplete “how to kidnap a child” – Boing Boing.
“Editors of previous volumes have joined with skeptics from within the profession to protest the very idea of the DSM, saying that its “diseases” bear no relation to any particular neuropathology, and instead represent (at best), handy categories to put on insurance forms, and (at worst), a bonanza for the pharma industry, who get to produce pills that “cure” any disease that’s defined in the DSM. Greenberg captures the mental health field at the cusp of an enormous transformation driven by better genomics, better imaging, and hence a better understanding of what connections various symptoms have to one another, to physical problems, to genetics, and to health. The DSM has always been controversial — it’s the document that turned homosexuality into a mental illness for years — but never moreso than now.”
DSM wars: the battle to define mental illness – Boing Boing.
Cory Doctorow, of BoingBoing, recommends Steven Johnson’s new book Where good ideas come from
For Johnson, the secret lies in the “thin air” — the unplumbed space we credit for the “sparks of brilliance” and “happy accidents” that create new connections, strategies and thoughts. And for Johnson, this thin air is anything but: rather, it is a relatively predictable outcome arising from certain pre-conditions.
…Johnson makes a convincing case that innovation is fractal.
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Latest leaked draft of secret copyright treaty: US trying to cram DRM rules down the world’s throats (via Boing Boing)
Michael Geist writes in with the latest news on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), the secret, closed-door copyright treaty that will bring US-style copyright rules (and worse) to the whole world. Particularly disturbing is the growing support for “three-strikes” copyright rules that would disconnect whole families from the Internet if one member of the household was accused (without proof) of copyright infringement. The other big US agenda item is cramming pro-Digital Rights Management (DRM) rules down the world’s throats that go way beyond the current obligations under the UN’s WIPO Copyright Treaty. In the US version, breaking DRM is always illegal, even if you’re not committing any copyright violation — so breaking the DRM on your iPad to install software you bought from someone who hasn’t gone through the Apple approval process is illegal, even though the transaction involves no illicit copying.