Wired: Mr. Wizard Gives a Last Interview

Wired Magazine has published the last known interview of Don Herbert, a.k.a. "Mr. Wizard," who unfortunately passed away Tuesday. Like many people - especially those of us who went into scientific and technical fields--who were fans of his show, I feel a profound sense of loss. We're a generation raised, and educated, to some extent, by television, and if Sesame Street taught us language and Mr. Rogers taught us civics, Mr. Wizard certainly gave many scientists and technologists their start in understanding this world.

WN: What advice would you give to the makers of science television programming?

Herbert: Science is about the real world around us and it's filled with fascinating wonders.

In the meantime, I found a YouTube clip, of an old NBC "Watch Mr. Wizard" dating from 1965 episode on YouTube, and a video interview from 2005 from the Archive of American Television.

ZDNET: Judge: TorrentSpy must turn over logs in RAM

The case so far: The MPAA sues Torrentspy to get access to server logs of people visiting the site. Torrentspy says that they don't have any logs. So far, so typical.

However, the judge in the case then orders Torrentspy to make a copy of the system RAM to capture that data.

The decision sets a precedent for the argument that information stored on RAM is subject to the rules of relevant [sic], Chooljian said. The decision pokes holes in the notion of privacy that many Web sites guarantee, and Web site operators will probably have to revise their privacy policies. TorrentSpy intends to appeal.

Of course, how are you going to write an image of RAM to the hard disk without using any RAM? If you do, you'll have to record that, and for that you'll need more RAM, and… oh no I've gone cross-eyed.

Kidding aside, there are, as mentioned above, serious implications for privacy policy holders if this case is taken as precedent, but it also presents a wrinkle into Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.