An interesting new initiative by the Berkman Centre, Oxford’s Internet Institute and Lenovo. In an interview with MIT Tech Review, Johathan Zittrain described the motivation for the initiative thus:

Machines clogged with “malware” — the catchall term for code that infiltrates PCs to steal data, send out spam, or produce pop-up messages — are already costing billions annually and testing everyone’s tolerance.

And a single destructive virus could prompt harsh regulations and cause millions of people to seek safe, closed networks.

To help fight back, Zittrain and fellow academics have just launched a new antimalware effort (www.stopbadware.org) funded by Google, Sun Microsystems, and Lenovo (the Chinese firm that acquired IBM’s PC division).

No — not what you think. It’s the headline on a fascinating Economist editorial on the importance of women in the workforce. Here’s a sample:

EVEN today in the modern, developed world, surveys show that parents still prefer to have a boy rather than a girl. One longstanding reason why boys have been seen as a greater blessing has been that they are expected to become better economic providers for their parents’ old age. Yet it is time for parents to think again. Girls may now be a better investment.

Girls get better grades at school than boys, and in most developed countries more women than men go to university. Women will thus be better equipped for the new jobs of the 21st century, in which brains count a lot more than brawn. In Britain far more women than men are now training to become doctors. And women are more likely to provide sound advice on investing their parents’ nest egg: surveys show that women consistently achieve higher financial returns than men do…