Category: 4.1 Society (General)
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Sexist Ads Alive and Well in 2015
I just saw an advertisement for software from an anti-virus company, homepage pictured below. The ad showed the woman flirting with the man (licking her lips, sliding her finger along the rim of the glass) while an overlaid text box was saying: “You don’t have to understand it, you just have to install it.” The…
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Should You Learn to Code?
The U.S. president Barack Obama wants to learn programming and so does former New York City major Michael Bloomberg. Germany’s chancelor Angela Merkel does not, but reports tell us that her cell phone connection was spied on by the U.S.A. As long as it doesn’t turn out to specifically have been Barrack Obama’s code which…
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Assumption About Longevity and Its Consequences
If you have run into me recently, I may have bugged you with the following question: Given the rapid pace of development in medical technology, I expect my generation to live to 100 years of age. A child being born today may live to the age of 250 years of age. Under this assumption, what…
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Call for Proposals: 2nd Open Data Dialog
November 18-19, 2013, Berlin “Open data has the potential to transform society, government and the economy, from how we travel to work to how we decide to vote,” declared Rufus Pollock, co-founder of Open Knowledge Foundation, at the 1st International Open Data Dialog, which took place in December 2012 in Berlin. With this year’s motto…
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Call for Participation: OC13 – Open Commons Kongress in Linz, Austria, 2013-05-14
Please consider participating in the Open Commons Kongress, OC13, in Linz, Austria (I’m on the advisory board.) More information below (in German). [DR] OC13 – Open Commons Kongress 14.05.2013, 9:00 – 16:30 Uhr Wissensturm Linz, Austria Lernen und Leben mit digitalen Gemeingütern Zum zweiten Mal veranstaltet die Johannes Kepler Universität Linz und die Open Commons…
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Looking Back on One Year of Public Policy Consulting
2012 was the year when I first did some serious public policy consulting. I found it quite informative to see how politicians work and what the impact of lobbyists is. I’m a professor of computer science at a German technical university. I also have an M.B.A. from Stanford. I consult on open source, software development,…