Home

The film, produced by the brilliant and ecology-minded French director Luc Besson, is the work of acclaimed aerial photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand, whose cinematography, covering landscapes in 54 countries, provides a journey you’ll never be able to experience anywhere else. Bertrand’s views of Earth from above are so powerfully exquisite they will bring you to tears.

Nut, along with its enthralling images, the film delivers alarming statistics about climate change and how quickly it is transforming our beautiful planet into a place that will be uninhabitable. Glenn Close does a beautiful job with the English language narration, Salma Hayek voices the Spanish version and other ecology-minded actors contribute the French and other language editions. They’re all available online.

The documentary is intended to spur you to sustainable behavior, and ends with some instruction about how you can help conserve our Home.

Besson told me that the reason they named the film Home, although it’s actually extra-terrestrial in its point of view, is because “the word ‘home’ has the same meaning in all cultures, all languages. It is a place that people of all ages–even little kids–can identify and love. It is central to their sense of themselves. Earth is the only ‘home’ we have, so we must care for it that way.”

This is a must see film, especially for kids. Well, and parents, too. And, yes, any and everyone who thinks about what the future holds for our species and all the others that share our Home.

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Fractals - The Colors Of Infinity (By Arthur Clarke)

The Mandelbrot set – someone has called it the thumb-print of God – is one of the most beautiful and remarkable discoveries in the entire history of mathematics.
With Arthur C. Clarke as narrator and interviews with a number of notable mathematicians, including Benoît Mandelbrot, this program graphically illustrates how simple formulas can lead to complicated results: it explains the set, what it means, its internal consistency, and the revolutions in thought resulting from its discovery. Asked if the real universe goes on forever, Stephen Hawking defines its limit of smallness; the Mandelbrot set, on the other hand, may go on forever.
The invention of the silicon chip in the 1970’s created a revolution in computers and communication and hence transformed our way of life. We are now seeing another revolution which is going to change our view of the universe and give us a better understanding of its’ working.
This film will explore the fractal universe and on our voyage of discovery, we will be helped by: Professor Ian Stewart of the Mathematics Institute, University of Warwick, an author of over 100 published scientific works; Dr. Michael Barnsley, former professor of mathematics at Georgia Institute of Technology who received a 2.5 million dollar government grant in 1991 to develop a fractal image compression systems.

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The Future of Nano - Electric Power Generation

Justin Hall-Tipping CEO of "Nanoholdings" Explains how nanotechnology is set to change the future of energy and replace fossil and nuclear fuels.

Nano: The Next Dimension

Nanosciences and nanotechnologies represent a formidable challenge for the research community and industry.

World-class infrastructure, new fundamental knowledge, novel equipment for characterisation and manufacturing, multi-disciplinary education and training for innovative and creative engineering, and a responsible attitude to societal demands are required.

This documentary film, made available by the European Commission, provides a glimpse of some of the many activities that are being carried out in Europe in these fast-grozing fields of research and technological development.

Circus School

A revealing look at the rigorous physical training endured by young Chinese acrobatic students.

Future Intelligence (Discovery)

Catch a first-time glimpse at smart technology that will put android helpers in the home, network commuters and entire cities to the Web, and bring us entertainment systems that can virtually make dreams come true.

Advances in artificial intelligence are creating machines with near human-like mental agility. Intelligence will be embedded everywhere – even in our clothing, thanks to smaller, more powerful computers.

Soon, we will be able to build computers with artificial intelligence and processing power that rivals the human brain.

Intelligence will be everywhere, in our clothing, our vehicles and homes. Intelligent robots will serve us – until they don’t feel like doing so anymore. And what happens then…?

Revolution OS

Revolution OS is a documentary which traces the history of GNU, Linux, and the open source and free software movements. It features several interviews with prominent hackers and entrepreneurs (and hackers-cum-entrepreneurs), including Richard Stallman, Michael Tiemann, Linus Torvalds, Larry Augustin, Eric S. Raymond, Bruce Perens, Frank Hecker and Brian Behlendorf.

The film begins in medias res with an IPO, and then sets the historical stage by showing the beginnings of software development back in the day when software was shared on paper tape for the price of the paper itself. It then segues to Bill Gates’s Open Letter to Hobbyists in which he asks Computer Hobbyists to not share, but to buy software. (This letter was written by Gates when Microsoft was still based in Arizona and spelled “Micro-Soft”.)

Richard Stallman then explains how and why he left the MIT Lab for Artificial Intelligence in order to devote his life to the development of free software, as well as how he started with the GNU project. Linus Torvalds is interviewed on his development of the Linux kernel as well as on the GNU/Linux naming controversy and Linux’s further evolution, including its commercialization. Richard Stallman remarks on some of the ideological aspects of open source vis-á-vis Communism and capitalism and well as on several aspects of the development of GNU/Linux.

Michael Tiemann (interviewed in a desert) tells how he met Stallman and got an early version of Stallman’s GCC and founded Cygnus Solutions. Larry Augustin tells how he combined the resulting GNU software and a normal PC to create a UNIX-like Workstation which cost one third the price of a workstation by Sun Microsystems even though it was three times as powerful.

His narrative includes his early dealings with venture capitalists, the eventual capitalization and commodification of Linux for his own company, VA Linux, and ends with its IPO. Frank Hecker of Netscape tells how Netscape executives released the source code for Netscape’s browser, one of the signal events which made Open Source a force to be reckoned with by business executives, the mainstream media, and the public at large.

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