Freedom to Tinker... is your freedom to understand, discuss, repair, and modify the technological devices you own.Newspapers Problem: Trouble Targeting Ads- June 30, 2008 Richard Posner has written a characteristically thoughtful blog entry about the uncertain future of newspapers. He renders widespread journalistic concern about the unwieldy character of newspapers into the crisp economic language of &8220;bundling&8221;: Bundling is efficient if the cost to the consumer of the bundled products that he doesn&8217;t want is less than the cost saving ...http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1303 The End of Theory Not Likely- June 26, 2008 An essay in the new Wired, &8220;The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete,&8221; argues that we won&8217;t need scientific theories any more, now that we have so much stored information and such great tools for analyzing it. Wired has never been the best source for accurate technology information, ...http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1302 Copyright, Technology, and Access to the Law- June 24, 2008 James Grimmelmann has an interesting new essay, &8220;Copyright, Technology, and Access to the Law,&8221; on the challenges of ensuring that the public has effective knowledge of the laws. This might sound like an easy problem, but Grimmelmann combines history and explanation to show why it can be difficult. The law &8212; which ...http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1301 New bill advances open data, but could be better for reuse- June 11, 2008 Senators Obama, Coburn, McCain, and Carper have introduced the Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending Act of 2008 (S. 3077), which would modify their 2006 transparency act. That first bill created USASpending.gov, a searchable web site of government outlays. USASpending.gov&8212;which was based on software developed by OMB Watch and the Sunlight Foundation&8212;allows end users ...http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1300 Study Shows DMCA Takedowns Based on Inconclusive Evidence- June 6, 2008 A new study by Michael Piatek, Yoshi Kohno and Arvind Krishnamurthy at the University of Washington shows that copyright owners&8217; representatives sometimes send DMCA takedown notices where there is no infringement &8212; and even to printers and other devices that don&8217;t download any music or movies. The authors of the study received more than ...http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1298 NJ Election Day: Voting Machine Status- June 3, 2008 Today is primary election day in New Jersey, for all races except U.S. President. (The presidential primary was Feb. 5.) Here&8217;s a roundup of the voting-machine-related issues. First, Union County found that Sequoia voting machines had difficulty reporting results for a candidate named Carlos Cedeo, reportedly because it couldn&8217;t handle the n-with-tilde character in ...http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1297 Government Data and the Invisible Hand- June 2, 2008 David Robinson, Harlan Yu, Bill Zeller, and I have a new paper about how to use infotech to make government more transparent. We make specific suggestions, some of them counter-intuitive, about how to make this happen. The final version of our paper will appear in the Fall issue of the Yale Journal ...http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1296 |