software security

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 short Apple Get a Mac ad that mocks Windows Vista's constant security pop-up prompts.

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 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.

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

A Google Tech Talk by Steve Weis that introduces modern cryptography and its use in practice and at Google. It covers proofs of security and security definitions and a special topic. HN commenters treat it as a talk on verifiable electronic voting.

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.

A short clip parodying Windows Vista's cancel-or-allow security prompts, in the style of Apple's Mac vs PC ads.

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.

Gameplay footage of the original 1986 Macintosh version of Dark Castle by Silicon Beach Software. The uploader argues the original is a great game that was tarnished by inferior ports.

A short EDS television commercial that shows an airplane being built while it is in flight. It is an early use of the 'building the plane as it flies' metaphor.

A short demo of real-time sparse voxel octree rendering, shown by Jon Olick at Siggraph 2008. It shows a detailed model rendered by ray casting through the octree.

Joshua Bloch's Google Tech Talk on how to design good APIs and why it matters, with concrete principles and examples. It treats every programmer as an occasional API designer.

Brian Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman argue that the 'genius programmer' ideal harms collaboration. They advocate trading ego for growth, sharing work early, and understanding how tools shape social behavior.

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.

A four-minute 2006 explainer on trusted computing, describing what it is and whether users should support it, with a skeptical DRM angle.

A short clip from a lecture Q&A in which Richard Stallman appears to pick something off his foot and eat it.

Part 2 of an old Microsoft Research demo of Intentional Programming, showing the compiler side of a system that stores programs as abstract structure rather than text. The uploader says the companion editor clip is clearer.

Ted Nelson demonstrates Xanadu Space, his software for representing hypertext in three-dimensional space with linked, referenced content fragments.

Alan Kay's TED talk on teaching ideas, in which he argues the world is not what it seems and shows children learning through programming and building their own lessons with Etoys/Squeak.

Cuong Do of YouTube describes how a handful of engineers scaled the site, covering hardware, software and database scalability challenges during its rapid growth. The talk was given at the 2007 Seattle Conference on Scalability.

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.

A demonstration of the 1982 Xerox Star user interface, including its desktop, icons, documents, networking and printing. The uploader argues that Apple's later Lisa and Mac interfaces evolved from these ideas rather than copying them.

Pranav Mistry demos SixthSense, a wearable device that projects information onto the physical world and lets people interact with data through gestures. He also shows a paper "laptop" and says he will open-source the software.

A 1971 DEC LAB-8/e (PDP-8/e) minicomputer plays music by inducing noise into a nearby AM radio. The software is Richard Wilson's 1975 Music Compiler running under OS/8.

A Little Britain sketch featuring the 'Computer says no' catchphrase, in which a clerk refuses requests by deferring to her computer.

A promotional commercial for Microsoft Songsmith, software that generates backing music from a vocal recording. The ad became widely known for its awkwardness.

A one-minute clip from a CSI episode featuring the trope of zooming and enhancing low-resolution images. The uploader says it was the last CSI episode they watched.

Johnny Chung Lee shows how infrared light pens and a Wii Remote can make a very low-cost multi-point interactive whiteboard or tablet display. Software is available for download.

A sketch from That Mitchell and Webb Sound in which a caller learns that identity theft is, in effect, a bank robbery in which the bank blames the customer. It runs about two minutes.

Apple's 1987 Knowledge Navigator concept video imagines a conversational voice assistant, multi-touch tablet and video calling used by a professor. It was made years before the graphical web existed.

A short 2007 demo of Pizza Party, a command line program that orders Domino's pizza from a UNIX-like terminal. The video shows the designers placing an order using the software.

A short promotional video of a 5-axis CNC machine milling an elaborate helmet, made by DAISHIN SEIKI with a DMG machine and hyperMILL CAM software. It shows what 5-axis machining can produce.

A short clip of Steve Ballmer at a Microsoft event chanting "developers" over and over. It became a lasting internet meme.

A Top of the Pops performance of The Wurzels' 1976 novelty hit Combine Harvester (Brand New Key). It is a West Country English comic cover of a pop song.

A short video of Venetian Snares' track 'Vache' with the Renoise tracker sequencer data scrolling past, uploaded by the artist in 2006 as a demo of the software.