format war

Clay Shirky argues at Web 2.0 Expo NY that the problem online is not information overload but filter failure. He says the real challenge is building better ways to filter and organize what we see.

The climactic lesson scene from the 1983 film WarGames, in which the computer learns that the only winning move in nuclear war is not to play. It includes the character entering zero players and the famous closing line.

Eben Moglen of the Software Freedom Conservancy speaks at the 2009 Law of the Commons Conference about free and open software as a model for a new intellectual commons. The talk covers the legal and social case for sharing knowledge.

A short clip of Richard Stallman singing the free software song, recorded during a visit to Ecuador.

A one-minute 2007 clip of Barack Obama, during his campaign, opposing warrantless wiretaps. It was later reposted with a campaign call to action.

Cliff Click of Azul Systems gives a Google Tech Talk on running Java business applications on a machine with about a thousand cores. He covers hardware and software codesign, including garbage collection hardware and the JIT.

Elizabeth Warren's 2007 Berkeley lecture, when she was a Harvard law professor, on why middle-class families are under growing financial strain. She draws on bankruptcy research to examine rising costs of housing, health care and education.

Jon Stewart appears as a guest on CNN's Crossfire in 2004 and criticizes hosts Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala for turning political debate into partisan theater that hurts America.

Patrick Stewart on the BBC's Parkinson talk show talks humorously about going bald, how it affected his career and relationships, and how he came to accept it.

David MacKay's 2007 Google Tech Talk presents Dasher, a text-entry system driven by continuous gestures and a language model, reaching about 35 words per minute with one finger and 25 hands-free. It explains the information-theory reasoning behind the design.

A two-minute demonstration of the loudness war, showing how heavy dynamic range compression in CD mastering makes music louder while degrading sound quality. It uses audio examples so you can hear the distortion.

An episode of the comedic You Suck at Photoshop series in which Donnie Hoyle teaches distort, warp and layer effects while vandalizing a Vanagon in the image. It won Webby awards as a how-to and comedy series.

Sean Parent of Adobe argues that object-oriented frameworks ultimately fail to deliver scalable, high quality software and proposes combining generic and declarative programming instead. It draws on Stepanov's Elements of Programming.

A clip in which Eben Moglen tells how he grew up when software was freer and how his path crossed Richard Stallman's. He describes how they came to work together to make software free again.

A short 2009 WIRED clip showing Kiva Systems robots moving inventory shelves in a warehouse serving online retailer Zappos. It shows how mobile robots bring goods to pickers instead of people walking the aisles.

A Red Dwarf clip where Kryten fixes a toaster and finds it to be the most annoying machine in the universe, endlessly offering toast.

An Onion News Network satire about a Warcraft sequel in which you play a character who is playing Warcraft, in a cramped dark apartment.

The 1951 US civil defense film 'Duck and Cover', starring Bert the Turtle, which taught schoolchildren to drop and shield themselves during a nuclear attack. It was shown to millions of children and is preserved in the National Film Registry.

A 2006 promotional video for sCrAmBlEd?HaCkZ!, a music software project that analyzes and reassembles sampled audio and video in real time, tied to themes of sampling and copyright.

Tom Lehrer's gallows-humor song about nuclear annihilation, in which everyone goes together when the bomb drops.

A dramatization of a hypothetical Soviet first strike that destroys US bombers and Minuteman missiles, filmed with US Air Force cooperation. It is a short version of the 1979 documentary First Strike.

Ward Cunningham explains the history and intent of the debt metaphor, which he coined while refactoring the WyCash product. He says debt means code reflecting an incomplete understanding of the problem, not sloppy programming.

The 1992 SIIA anti-piracy rap video Don't Copy That Floppy, warning kids against copying software, remastered and uploaded.

Psychologist Barry Schwartz argues in this TED talk that abundant choice makes people more paralyzed and dissatisfied rather than freer and happier.

Tony Schwartz of The Energy Project speaks at Google about managing energy rather than time. He draws on The Power of Full Engagement and his work on stamina and sustained performance.

Climber Chris Warner talks at Google about his book on high altitude leadership and the 2007 K2 expedition, where eighteen climbers summited and two died.

James Houston's entry to Radiohead's Nude remix contest, performing the 6/8, 63bpm song on obsolete hardware such as hard drives, a dot matrix printer, a scanner and a ZX Spectrum.

A three-minute clip of Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address of January 17, 1961. In it he warns of the unwarranted influence of the military-industrial complex.

The parody anti-piracy warning from The IT Crowd Series 2, Episode 3, a spoof of the 'you wouldn't steal a car' ads. It is a one-minute comedy sketch.

A short Flash animation made in 2001 by an IBM employee, set to the company's old 'Ever Onward' rally song, with imagery from IBM history.

A Dutch parody commercial from the Groen Brothers for a supposed Star Wars style mosquito defense system. It mimics the style of infomercials with laser-armed anti-mosquito technology.

A spoof commercial by the Groen Brothers for a Star Wars-style laser defense system against mosquitoes.

The classic Fawlty Towers scene in which Basil Fawlty tries not to mention the war while serving German guests, ending in goose-stepping and mocking. It is a two-minute BBC comedy clip with John Cleese.

First lecture of MIT 6.00, an introductory computer science course taught in Python by Eric Grimson and John Guttag. It covers the goals of the course, what computation is, and data types, operators and variables.

Steve Blank tells how World War II, Stanford's Frederick Terman and military and intelligence agencies shaped the rise of Silicon Valley. The talk centers on the Cold War electronic warfare and signals intelligence work that seeded the region's tech industry.

The first part of a four-part Channel 4 (UK) documentary series presented by Howard Goodall, this episode covers melody and why tunes affect us so deeply. It explains how melody works in Western music with historical background and music theory.

A short comparison of the retail release of Metallica's Death Magnetic against the Guitar Hero 3 version of the same song. It switches between the two so you can hear and see the heavy clipping in the retail master.

First lecture of Stanford's CS106A Programming Methodology by Mehran Sahami, giving a course overview and starting on programming. The course teaches software engineering principles using Java.

Jon Bentley walks through three implementations of Hoare's Quicksort, from a dozen-line C function to a series of systematic code transformations that make the program ever simpler and more powerful. It is a Google Tech Talk on code elegance and program derivation.

The secret project cutscene for The Planetary Datalinks from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, featuring a quote about free information flow as the safeguard against tyranny.