Speaker for the dead

I've just started to read this book that is the second book of the Ender's cicle.
The Others are still out there, but sometimes they're closest than we can imagine. Must we kill them all or learn to live in peace with them? Tolerance is not always the good solution, as tolerance don't really let understand what the Others really are. We tolerate their traditions, but must we accept and understand them? Obviously this is a too hard question for a simple post at 11 am.
I'll tell you once I've read it all.

The Venice Project invitation quest

As somebody may knows The Venice Project is a brand new project by the founders of Skype that should propose a new way of thinking about television. "We're working on a project that combines the best things about television with the social power of the internet - a project that gives viewers, advertisers and content owners more choice, control and creativity than ever before." as reported by The Venice Project Team on their site http://www.theveniceproject.com/
Inscriptions to become beta tester have been closed this week and I've been able to fill the form just in time. Right now I'm looking for some beta tester invitations in order to start testing Project Venice features right now instead of waiting the next admission wave.
How I imagine this service?

I would like to build my own channel menu, picking up US channels as well as italian regional channels, I would like to set them it in the PV interface and watch them whenever I want. I assume that channels will be avaiable as streamings so I would not be allowed to cut off commercials, but I would be able to record my favourite program (as on TIVO) in order to watch them on other devices (i.e. home cinemas, iPods, PSP etc.). (Of course I would be able to cut off commercial when content are on my computer). Would all those features be avaiable? Would the commercial channels understand the importance to switch to the net and break the unidirectional way of communication that they're still devoted to?
Well see it on Project Venice.

Beautiful

Here an amaizing pure-white Hanabi lamp. Thanks to a special metal alloy when you switch on the lamp, the heat of the light bulb makes the metal remembers of its shape offering you a real blooming light flower. (source http://www.designbeans.com/)
Hanabi is a Japanese word which means “fireworks” or “flower & fire” in literal translation.
In the following photo here's what a night forest of Hanabi lamp looks like.

You can find more information and more products on the designer site:
http://www.nendo.jp/

English and Italian version if you do not speak japanese.