Reader Mike N. contributed this review of The Mystery Of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. Hernando de Soto, for those unfamiliar, is an interesting character in his own right.

ICANN's elections are now underway. (We've covered this before.) ICANN's Nominating Committee has picked several candidates for each of the five open seats in a closed primary process; now there is a "member nomination" process underway where several more candidates will be selected to run for each seat. Civil liberties groups are actively attempting to promote democratic involvement in ICANN, such as the Civil Society Democracy Project being spearheaded by CPSR. We've asked each of the people seeking to be candidates for the North American region board seat to answer one question; here are the responses we've received. Update: 08/17 14:04 by michael : Two more responses added.

"Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue." No, that's for a wedding. For Slashback, try something more like "Something about Intel, something about Mattel, something about TiVO,something about England." Much less romantic, but quite a bit more fun to read.

Media hotshots and junkies were breathing heavily last week after Salon and CBS.com announced layoffs and APBNews.com had a near-death experience. These and other new media "setbacks" prompted some gleeful, almost poignant predictions that old media might return from the grave. Don't put any money on it. The media war of the future isn't between "old" and "new" media, already meaningless terms, but between Open and Closed media.

One of the pre-eminent reviewers on Slashdot, SEGV, has returned with a review of something a bit more esoteric than our normal book review fare. Melanie Mitchell's latest work, An Introduction to Genetic Algorithms, is the subject of today's review, and is well worth the reading for those interested in said subject. Click below to find out more.