TED and BMW Count Down to Armageddon and More...

Hurray for TED and BMW.

NEW YORK and WOODCLIFF LAKE, N.J., June 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Once a year, 1000 people are invited to the TED Conference in Monterey, California, to exchange something of incalculable value: their ideas. What happens there has never been shared until now. TED and BMW today announced they will team up to provide a ground-breaking, free video and audio podcast series of the best talks delivered at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Conference. Starting today, the public can download the talks - which will feature Al Gore, Bono, and more than 30 other distinguished speakers...

Take special note on Stephen Petranek counts down to Armageddon, well worth watching (above for your convenience ;-).

See them here.

P.S. As a side note, why can't we have more of this and less empty, useless crap? Can someone please figure out a way to make *real* information sell better than useless information? I really don't care about Celebutards like Paris or Britney, or reality non-stars. Okay... it may be hard to make most people actually think critically, so how about we just come up with a really entertaining vehicle for good quality information and science? If Poker on TV can be entertaining, or a reality show about cakes, there's gotta be a way.

Copyright vs Free Speech

Just heard from Steve Gibson on Security Now ep. 69:

Steve: Well, for example, it’s certainly arguable that you cannot have free speech without anonymity. Because people will simply be...

Leo: Intimidated.

Steve: They will be less – yes, intimated, exactly, and less willing to speak freely if they know that there are consequences to what they could say. I have to say, Leo, I have been self-conscious sending some political email, like post 9/11, knowing that the United States government has become much more aggressive about scanning email. When I use hot terms and keywords and things, I find myself thinking, literally, my behavior is modified because I don’t want a false-positive. I’m no terrorist. I’m a patriot and all that. But still it’s just like you just get a little twitchy when you think that what you’re saying could be triggering some automated system somewhere.
(...)
Steve: And the other issue is one of copyright. And it’s interesting how copyright comes into this because the enforcement of copyright, that is, the actual enforcement of it, requires monitoring communications. That’s how copyright is enforced is you’re monitoring communication. But free speech, as we have said, cannot be guaranteed in an environment where there is monitored communications. So just logically that demonstrates that you cannot simultaneously have both freedom of speech and the enforcement of copyright.

Very interesting point: you cannot have both freedom of speech and copyright. Comments would be very welcome on this issue.

From Darth Vader to Reagan's Brain in Schwarzenegger

Really funny stuff. Check out alt.NPR Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything, especially The MasturVader installment:

This piece was truly a collaboration, the sort I hadn't been a part of before. Ben called me and said he was doing a show called "The Dark Side" in two weeks and would I want to write something with him. He had a sketch of an idea about a Darth Vader impersonator who was pathologically obsessed with the character, even after his obsession had alienated the people who allowed him to live his dream. He wanted to write it as a mock public radio news report which is also something I'd never done before. After a couple of phone conversations just brainstorming different plot twists and details, Ben hammered out a rough, partial outline and I e-mailed him back with the first few minutes of the story. Ben e-mailed me back with changes. I changed his changes and e-mailed back more script. It went on this way for a week until I was sitting on Ben's couch reading the final script into his mini-disc recorder. (And even then we argued about the ending until we came up with some writing we both agreed on.) I recorded the "tracks" first, then me-as-interviewer asking "Darth" questions, then me-as-"Darth."

Thanks to Senta M.

Skypecasts

Interesting...

The next version of Skype will enable people to post a link on a blog or Web site that will take people to a public chat room when clicked on, he said during a question-and-answer session during dinner.

The live chats would be "Skypecasts," which Zennström described as public conversations or audio conferences that people can moderate.

More.

Free Emerson (and more)

 Here's a podcast with essays by the great Ralph Waldo Emerson, from learnoutloud.