Pew Forum Religious Knowledge Quiz →

I suppose I should be proud of myself, but I'm generally just embarrassed by our society.

New York's Hundred Million Calls to 311 →

The city's popular NYC311 call center was set up to field complaints and provide information on school closings and the like, but is now aggregating data to help provide prioritization to solutions.

Game Theory Explains Some Viral Content →

The authors of this paper conclude that the qualities which make things like diseases into epidemics are actually the opposite of the qualities that make social and peer-related ideas into phenomena. An epidemic spreads widely if people travel long distances and infect new people, in essence, if they have a high number of interactions and contact with others. An idea can actually spread better with fewer interactions and contacts; the more friends you have, the less likely any one idea will become popular among all of them, thus influencing your opinions strongly.

Microsoft vs. Software Piracy →

Microsoft spends "north of $10 million" a year on its intelligence-gathering operations and an estimated $200 million on developing anti-piracy technology.

Microsoft CEO sells $1.3B of shares →

This comes a week after he sat in the our cafeteria and said he "wasn't concerned about the stock price" and "still had all my shares".

Everest Summit Wired Up With Internet →

I'm pretty cynical about technology in nature, but it would be pretty cool to make a video call from the top of Mount Everest.

Final Nail in Coffin for Net Neutrality? →

Before Tuesday's midterm elections, there were 95 House and Senate candidates who pledged support for Net neutrality, a bill that would force Internet providers to not charge users more for certain kinds of Web content.

All of them lost -- and that could mean the contentious proposal may now be all but dead.