I've recently watched Lessig's presentation on free culture. It has been recommended to me as an example of interesting use of slides, but it is also an excellent lecture on how copyright stifles innovation and development. The following is the basis for the whole lecture:
- Creativity and innovation always builds on the past.
- The past always tries to control the creativity that builds on it.
- Free societies enable the future by limiting the past.
- Ours is less and less a free society.
There's another noteworthy quote (by JC Watts, a US congressman/senator?): "If you're explaining, you're losing."
Regarding tips: perl's CPAN shell is an excellent tool to install packages and their dependencies. However, it uses active FTP by default which is more and more dysfunctional because of firewalls. Exporting the environment variable FTP_PASSIVE=1 before running will make it use passive FTP.
