The Power Of Us
Slide Show >> The 35 employees at Meiosys Inc., a software firm in Palo Alto, Calif., didn't know they were joining a gang of telecom-industry marauders. They just wanted to save a few bucks. Last year they began using Skype, a program that lets them make free calls over the Internet, with better sound quality than regular phones, using headsets connected to their PCs. Callers simply click on a name in their Skype contact lists, and if the person is there, they connect and talk just like on a regular phone call. How can a tiny European upstart like Skype Technologies S.A. do a number on a trillion-dollar industry? A big, hairy, monstrous organism, that is. Collective Clamor Behold the power of us. Although tech companies may be leading the way, their efforts are shaking up other industries, including entertainment, publishing, and advertising. Most telling, traditional companies, from Procter & Gamble Co. Peer Production That suggests even more sweeping changes to come. Mob Mentality
Blog of Collective Intelligence
Is Jabber's Chatbot the Command Line of the Future?
by DJ Adams , author of Programming Jabber 01/11/2002 In this article, we take a look at bots, those programs-with-character that hang around in chat channels and amuse, help, and generally make the day a little more pleasant for those people who talk to them. We'll take a close look at ChatBot, beloved of the participants in the Jabber Developer's room "jdev", which is hosted on conference.jabber.org . Despite the direction many OS's have taken in the past decade, towards a point-and-click experience (which is in many cases perfectly agreeable as a (G)UI), the command line, beloved by many a Unix hacker and perversely, by some MS Windows aficionados, is here to stay. find /haystack -exec grep -l needle \{} \; 2>/dev/null is simple, powerful, and versatile. A New Type of Command Line? Consider for a moment what this command line of the future might look like. But when thinking of IM, why stop at conversations with people? Interaction with the Bots Indeed, why see that as a problem? chatbot !
Siphs - A Life Sciences Community
Buy Nothing Day : Adbusters
“Today, humanity faces a stark choice: save the planet and ditch capitalism, or save capitalism and ditch the planet.” – Fawzi Ibrahim Until we challenge the entrenched values of capitalism – that the economy must always keep growing, that consumer wants must always be satisfied, that immediate gratification is imperative – we’re not going able to fix the gigantic psycho-financial-eco crisis of our times. The journey toward a sane sustainable future begins with a single step. It could all start with a personal challenge, such as this: make a vow to yourself to participate in Buy Nothing Day this year. This November 29th, go cold turkey on consumption for 24 hours … see what happens … you just might have an unexpected, emancipatory epiphany! Buy Nothing Day is legendary for instigating this type of personal transformation … as you suddenly remember what real living is all about … you sense an upsurge of radical empowerment and feel a strange magic creeping back into your life.
