Good British Universities, again

I don’t want to get into a row with David Blanchflower,who takes issue with the QS University Ranking results 2011 and have no argument with his assertion that Cambridge is not the best University in the World, but unless the U. of Shanghai  (UoS) have revised their methodology since I last looked at it while on the EU’s NESSI steering committee, in early 2009 , they

  • overemphasise Science (& specifically Medicine)
  • overemphasise US publication (& hence English language research)
  • have no teaching quality metric ( apart from alumni citations)
 …

Why did Facebook eclipse Yahoo?

Yahoo had a web site, e-mail and photo sharing. It didn’t have micro-blogging, nor was it able to leverage the market- and mind-share of Facebook’s initial applications publishers.

It was self-obssessed and under takeover threat, but it had great brand value, and most people would accept that it is run be people that will take customer privacy more seriously; their business model treats their users as customers, not commodity (eyeballs).

Yahoo is not a secret garden either, which should make it more attractive, you can use it to share with non-yahooers. Is it just that the deal, “Your privacy in exchange for e-mail and micro-blogging”, is worth it? Admittedly, it’s initial growth was driven by teenager adoption, but why take up with Facebook and not Yahoo?

Yahoo was almost there. Interesting how close you can be and miss! …

The Stern Review on the economics of climate change.

Today, the Stern Review on the economics of climate change was archived into the records of the National Archive. I had created a copy for myself, as I found it easier to read than on a web browser. It’s probably no different today.

It’s most important finding was that early action paid bigger dividends, and that we needed to avoid a 2% increase in the planet’s temperature.

… the less mitigation we do now, the greater the difficulty of continuing to adapt in future.

For more, by wikipedia …

Copyright Stakeholders

There are four interested parties in copyright law, authors, distributors, makers and users. Why is today’s copyright law only in one group’s interests?

Actually there are five, because the lawmakers are meant to hold the ring?

Why aren’t they doing this in the UK?

And why are authors identifying with the distributors? You need to change sides, the people you support aren’t your friends. …

Against the DE Bill again

Yesterday afternoon, I posted some of my current thoughts on the Digital Economy Bill at  my now defunct labour party hosted blog. This is I believe a Labour Party members only site and the article hopes to provoke Labour Party members and supporters into campaigning to see this bill defeated or amended.  It’s still on the front page so if you want to catchup with my thinking, check it out, especially if you are a Labour MP. …