Articles from Best of the Best (trending on the web)

TED: Vincent Moon and Naná Vasconcelos: The world’s hidden music rituals - Vincent Moon (2014)

French filmmaker Vincent Moon travels the world with just a backpack, a laptop and a camera. He’s filmed Arcade Fire in an elevator and Bon Iver in an apartment kitchen – and single-shot films of a Sufi ritual in Chechnya and an ayahuasca journey in Peru. In this talk, he explains how film and music can help people see their own cultures in a new way. Followed by a performance by jazz icon Naná Vasconcelos.

TED: Leana Wen: What your doctor won’t disclose - Leana Wen (2014)

Wouldn’t you want to know if your doctor was a paid spokesman for a drug company? Or held personal beliefs incompatible with the treatment you want? Right now, in the US at least, your doctor simply doesn’t have to tell you about that. And when physician Leana Wen asked her fellow doctors to open up, the reaction she got was … unsettling.

Is there more money to be made from the cloud?

While managed IT services are increasing in prominence, some PC resellers are still a little reluctant to make the jump over to the cloud. Microsoft, PCR and several resellers – some who sell cloud services and others who don’t – gathered in London to discuss the benefits and challenges of selling cloud-based products like Office 365.
GETTING STARTED IN THE CLOUDPCR: How can a reseller start selling these kinds of services?

TED: Ethan Nadelmann: Why we need to end the War on Drugs - Ethan Nadelmann (2014)

Is the War on Drugs doing more harm than good? In a bold talk, drug policy reformist Ethan Nadelmann makes an impassioned plea to end the "backward, heartless, disastrous" movement to stamp out the drug trade. He gives two big reasons we should focus on intelligent regulation instead.

TED: Michael Green: What the Social Progress Index can reveal about your country - Michael Green (2014)

The term Gross Domestic Product is often talked about as if it were “handed down from god on tablets of stone.” But this concept was invented by an economist in the 1920s. We need a more effective measurement tool to match 21st century needs, says Michael Green: the Social Progress Index. With charm and wit, he shows how this tool measures societies across the three dimensions that actually matter. And reveals the dramatic reordering of nations that occurs when you use it.

It's possible to write flaw-free software, so why don't we?

If Spock would not think it illogical, it's probably good code. Alexandre Buisse, CC BY-SALegendary Dutch computer scientist Edsger W Dijkstra famously remarked that “testing shows the presence, not the absence of bugs”. In fact the only definitive way to establish that software is correct and bug-free is through mathematics.

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