I now plan to read his book, The Science Delusion, as well. It is an excellent talk and TED is doing itself a huge disservice in removing it from their front page. They have relegated it to a small back corner of their site and labelled it “open for discussion”. I personally feel disgusted at their behavior, especially considering the meritorious elucidation of the problems with science as it is currently practiced in our world today.

A big thank you to Rupert for his dedication to real science and real skepticism. And unless they reinstate it in a prominent place in an expedient fashion, a big shame on TED for their hypocrisy in claiming that they want to engage — with us, with Sheldrake, and with the world on the very important topic of what we actually know and what we think we know — as they actively try to dis-engage from it all.

Other talks that have been censored by TED:
Nick Hanauer: Rich People Don’t Create Jobs
Graham Hancock: The War on Consciousness [another must-watch]

Another view into the minds of TED organizers:
JRE #330 (The Joe Rogan Experience): Eddie Huang TED Conference Exposed

Efforts to fight piracy and limit computer functionality converge on malware/spyware being pre-installed on every machine that ships. As an example, Intel has teamed up with video streaming services in the design of their new Sandy Bridge chips, which will supposedly allow for only DRM content to be streamed in HD. (Not that you have to utilize DRM-ladden content; you can find and play things in HD on your own still, but it’s the beginning of a larger trend — i.e. cars that can be remotely shut down, iPhones whose cameras turn off at the request of the authorities, etc.)

This trend is most disturbing in particular in regimes where the populace is not media-literate enough to get around these restrictions, unlike in wealthy, western countries where we can assume, as always, someone will find a way to hack into it (or out of it). [Maybe these people: ccc.de?]

Doctorow refers to all of our iThings and other increasingly restricted forms of hardware as Appliances, but what they are, he goes on to elucidate, are general purpose computers that ship with malware inside. With SOPA and all this copyright mess what we are seeing is just the first battle of the war on general purpose computing.