One of the things I’ve been playing around with over the last few months is the NBER Patent dataset. This provides a listing of all US patents from 1963-1999 together with a full set of citations for patents in the period 1975-1999.
As it is an open dataset you’re able to get it [...]
7/10. Good but not more than that. It has the promise of developing into something more, something epic, but obviously, was cut short before that promise could be realized — or shown to be misplaced.
Lots of people have been up in arms about a letter sent out by Ordnance Survey about the “Use of Google Maps for display and promotion purposes”. With titles like “Are the Show Us A Better Way winners safe from Ordnance Survey?” (Guardian), “Home Secretary’s crime maps not allowed say Ordnance Survey” (localgov.co.uk) [...]
7.5/10. Beautifully shot and soundtracked as well as being elegantly constructed this film presents an unusual, and often troubling, combination of beauty and brutality, artwork and agitprop.
It would be interesting to chart over time the progress of open-source, standards compliant, Mozilla-type web browsers (e.g. Firefox) versus Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. As is often the case in other areas, it is not easy to get good (open) data over a reasonable time period. The graph below shows browser market share as measured [...]
5/10. Mediocre Bond especially when compared to its predecessor (on which it heavily depends). Its makers seemed to think that they could make up for the total absence of coherent plotting by providing a set piece action scene or a killing every five minutes. Sadly action and violence, without a narrative to frame them, ultimately [...]
The human problem of ‘scarce resources and unlimited wants’ is oft-posited as a primary motivation for studying economics. As this phrase makes clear, ‘wants’ (‘preferences’ to use the more usual terminology) are a central part of what we study, and the existence, and stability, of those ‘wants/preferences’ therefore merit serious consideration.[^1]
[^1]: It is interesting [...]
About
Dr. Rufus Pollock is co-Founder and Director of the Open Knowledge Foundation, a Shuttleworth Foundation Fellow, and an Associate of the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law at the University of Cambridge.
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