Ask Slashdot: Is Making Government More Open and Connected a Good Idea?
Nerval's Lobster writes "For quite some time, there's been a theory drifting around that government can be made more open and efficient via the same crowdsourcing and social-networking tools that created such successes out of Facebook, Twitter and Kickstarter. In that spirit, numerous pundits and analysts have advocated the development of 'e-government' or 'government 2.0.' But what if the idea isn't as great as it seems? That's the angle embraced by Evgeny Morozov in a recent essay for The Baffler. Structured as a lengthy takedown of open-source advocate and O'Reilly Media founder Tim O'Reilly, the piece veers off to fire a few torpedoes at the idea of making government more responsive and transparent through technology (the latter being something O'Reilly readily advocates). 'One of the main reasons why governments choose not to offload certain services to the private sector is not because they think they can do a better job at innovation or efficiency,' Morozov writes, 'but because other ...
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Point and Shoot 3D Modeling (Video)
Slashdot editor Tim Lord was wandering around SXSW and ran into a small display for Lynx Laboratories, a startup that makes this claim about its Lynx A camera: "If you can use a point-and-shoot Nikon, you'll find the Lynx even easier to use. Instead of outputing 2D images, it produces 3D models of whatever you point it at. It's faster and cheaper than existing solutions today." There's a two-minute demo at the end of the video in which Lynx Founder and CEO Chris Slaughter shows how it works, and (at least in his hands) it looks extremely easy. The company is a University of Texas spinoff that "has received prestigious awards including the 1st Place Idea2Product (I2P) Texas, 1st Place I2P Global, Top 10 Dell Innovators and National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation Research Funding." Naturally, they're hoping to raise money through Kickstarter as well. They're looking for $50,000 and as of 13 March 2013 it looks like they've raised $88,548 of it. There are obviously other ways ...
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Gillmor Gang: Gangnam Style
The Gillmor Gang — John Taschek, Robert Scoble, John Borthwick, and Steve Gillmor — went bicoastal with @stevegillmor at @borthwick's Betaworks Studios in New York City. @scobleizer and @jtaschek held down the West Coast as it threatened to float away in Googlemania. With a touch Chromebook and a Google Glasses video surfacing, at least half the Gang is predicting Apple is in trouble. Certainly the Googlers get network while a Tim Cooked Apple gets supply chain, but who's to say (Scoble) that the fun ride is over for ownership of innovation. I think not, fascinated as I am with the amazing platform being nurtured around the iPad Mini and what it augurs for Apple's move to the streaming cloud.
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Internet’s Pace Of Innovation Will Force The Data Center To Open Up
More hardware will open up -- it's inevitable. Hardware in the data center is no exception. Hardware in the data center is no exception. As Tim O'Reilly said in his keynote at the Open Compute Summit, innovation in the data center is critical for keeping up with the Internet's pace of innovation. A first step is opening the hardware so people can hack it and adapt it to the data that flows at an ever-increasing velocity.
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Scientists Turn Air Into Petrol
rippeltippel writes "The Independent reports on a scientific breakthrough which would allow us to synthesize petrol from thin air. Quoting from the article: 'Air Fuel Synthesis in Stockton-on-Tees has produced five liters of petrol since August when it switched on a small refinery that manufactures gasoline from carbon dioxide and water vapor. The company hopes that within two years it will build a larger, commercial-scale plant capable of producing a ton of petrol a day. It also plans to produce green aviation fuel to make airline travel more carbon-neutral. ... Tim Fox, head of energy and the environment at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London, said: "It sounds too good to be true, but it is true. They are doing it and I've been up there myself and seen it. The innovation is that they have made it happen as a process. It's a small pilot plant capturing air and extracting CO2 from it based on well known principles. It uses well-known and well-established components but what ...
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