Did weak copyright laws help Germany outpace the British Empire?:
Höffner contends … that the near absence of copyright law in eighteenth and nineteenth century Germany laid the groundwork for the “Gründerzeit” — the enormous wave of economic growth that Deutschland experienced in the middle and later nineteenth century.
Ryan Paul writing for Ars Technica:
When making a purchase, online shoppers are confronted with a validation check that requires them to supply a password — in addition to the standard security code that is on the card itself — in order to prove that they are the real owner of a credit card. … Some of the credit card companies take advantage of [this system] by wrapping their implementations of the validation system in draconian terms of service that force users to agree to accept full liability for credit card fraud.
John Timmer writing for Ars Technica:
If scientists had to pick one area of science that’s most frequently misunderstood, evolution would probably win the vote. It’s not simply the sea of misinformation available on the Internet (although that clearly doesn’t help); it also seems that a lot of people who accept the scientific evidence don’t fully appreciate some aspects of evolutionary theory. It’s one thing to remember a few examples of the compelling evidence we have for evolution; it’s another thing entirely to appreciate the features of the process that make it so incredibly powerful but, at the same time, hide many of its actions from our common experience.
John Siracusa’s in depth review of Snow Leopard, Apple’s latest upgrade to the Mac OS X operating system. Always worth the read.
John Timmer’s take on Wolfram Alpha:
… the biggest issue is that, in the process of creating the data store behind Alpha, all the context behind a number — who produced it, what were their methods, how was the raw data obtained, is the number actually relevant for a given analysis, etc. — is stripped …