Wow! I have only seen the New World News post and the linked YouTube video, but Neil Protagonist’s anime-inspired sim is a) AWESOME, and b) a genius foray into “immersive commerce” (Hamlet Au’s term, not mine. Clever, though).

First off, I love good, high-quality anime/animation, and this sim appears to be a true homage to the genre. Hats off! I think even more important, though, is the commerce setup…everything is for sale with a click! It’s sad to see the prefab mall concept mindlessly replicated into SecondLife, and it’s always irked me in the back of my head. Neil’s build clarifies the issue perfectly…there’s no NEED for a mall-like setup for storage of inventory, organization of product (sometimes on virtual shelves, even!), and mindless separation into boxes of shops. Instead, wander through a sim where everything is for sale with a right-click and “Buy”, where items can be shown as they’ll be used. It looks like a great idea; I can’t wait to login (let me go see if the Linux client has been recently updated…).

See ya in Nakama!

Good news…Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon (D) has placed a hold (an informal notification of intent to filibuster) on the Communications, Consumer’s Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006 (S.2686) that just came out of the Senate Commerce Committe. While in committee, a Net Neutrality amendment was defeated 11-11. After reading the committe remarks from Sen. Stevens (the sponsor of the bill), I’m VERY afraid…this guy has sponsored legislation that would impose major legislative changes on our telecommunications infrastructure (not to mention My Damn InterWeb!) without…um…the slightest idea what he’s talking about:
…I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially. …

Oh yes, that’s just a taste. there’s more to the transcript, if you’re brave. If we’re going to be monkeying around with this stuff, let’s try to at least understand what we’re trying to regulate, eh?

Lots more info at Save The Internet, if you’re interested. Full disclosure; being of a strongly libertarian bent, I’m certainly not a fan of regulation in general. I’m reviewing both sides closely; but this appears to be one of those places where we’ve already effectively granted a virtual monopoly via legislation…which causes some market solutions to be ineffective. We’ll have to see; it is CERTAINLY worth talking about.

The SIMILE project (at MIT) is full of interesting cool open-source, Semantic Web-based tools. My favorite right now, though, is Timeline…a DHTML-based AJAXy widget for visualizing time-based events. It is WAY cool; I have been looking for something like this for quite a while, but I’m nowhere near enough the DHTML/JavaScript coder to build the widget framework work myself. There are lots of scenarios where I’d love to be able to display time-based events in an inuitive way, and this fits the bill perfectly. Try out some of the examples; jazz-y!

OK, found a new way to avoid constructivity…UltraCorps! And old-school, turn-based conquest and exploration game, played via the browser. It’s VERY cool! Roy and I are having it out right now (I think free registration is required to observe…but you should be signing up anyway!), while we wait for some of our other geek buddies to get brave enough to join the fun…*grin*

Some great stuff in my RSS feeds when I sat down after dinner tonight:

• Sean McGrath points to an interesting looking protocol launch: AMQP; an open-sourced (spec/protocol) for asynchronous message queueing.
• I bumped into rynsc.net’s philosophy for handling “gag order” secret warrants: the warrant canary. It’s a weekly cryptographically signed assertion that they’ve never been served a warrant, date stamped, and also including current event data, so they can’t be “pre-written” (clever, that). If they ever stop releasing them, though…
• The Brain Waves column noted that companies are beginning to offering lie detection services via fMRI. Holy 5th Amendment, Batman! How are you going to plead the 5th from your own brain? Suffice it to say that the privacy implications are worth discussing. I’m not even sure what side I’m on; I’d love to see it’s use on government officials, in addition to it’s use by them. If you’ve never considered the implications of such a device, James Halperin’s Truth Machine is a great story using that very hook. Recommended.

Holy shit…Cory Doctorow just knocked the ball out of the park WRT the This American Life deep linking issue. I just wish I could be half as cogent:

• Cory on fan-made radio podcasts: What deep linking means.

Without a doubt, the takedown request story from Jon Udell and Jared Benedict is really worth continued discussion. There are a lot of issues involved that are important to the BlogoPodoSphere, and a lot of well-spoken folks have tossed in their two cents:

• Jon’s great initial post has disappeared, unfortunately; a voluntary takedown
• Jared Benedict’s writeup is great, from the POV of one of the principals
• Dave Slusher nails it, IMO, with This American Life Doesn’t Get It
• I don’t agree with Nicholas Carr’s take on the situation, but it bears linking to and thinking about

I’ve chatted with Jon via email over it, and it’s obvious that yesterday was a tough day for him. There are points to be made on all sides of the argument, and I believe he struggled to do “the right thing”. While I’m disappointed in PRI and This American Life, I’m (unfortunately) not surprised. It’s so hard for modern corporate media (which NPR/PRI are definitely a part of) to grok the “share it, and good things will come” ethos.

My true disappointment, though, is in the loss of Jon’s post. I think I understand his reasons behind it, but it leaves a hole in the center of the conversation that will inevitably be filled with half-truths, hearsay, and rumor. But hopefully also with thoughtful replies, conversation, and good links to further info.

Ah, another day, another outrage^H,^H,^H…er, Net misstep. Jon Udell has received a takedown notice for his custom RSS feed from the webmaster of NPR PRI (note: deliberate lack of link here…they’ve made me cranky). Whiskey…Tango…Foxtrot? Sheesh. Newsflash, Mr. Webmaster; Jon is not STEALING YOUR MP3s. He, in fact, is sending you traffic. Increasing your readership. Raising your profile (heh, he’s really raised it now!). He’s posting LINKS, not copies of your files. You know, links…how that InterWebby thing works???

Makes me glad that I stopped listening to basically anything on the radio. (review of my new FM transmitter is way overdue on Nerdware). In the car, I’m 100% podcast now, and loving it. These people LIKE having even the entire MP3 redistributed. How wacky.

I’ll be interested to see how Jon’s situation works out. Hang tough, Jon!

UPDATE: It’s PRI, not NPR that’s the copyright holder; changed above.

MORE UPDATE: Wow. In a further surprising development, Jon Udell has dropped the original post entirely.

YET MORE UPDATE: Heh…my boingboing submission on the topic was accepted. This should be interesting. I also got a long, thoughtful email response from Jon himself…if he’s alright with it, I may post some bits later.

Oh heeellll…this rocks. In case you’re not familiar with it, the James Randi Educational Foundation has a standing one million dollar prize for any individual who can show proper evidence of supernatural powers. A bit from the FAQ: The Foundation is committed to providing reliable information about paranormal claims. It both supports and conducts original research into such claims. At JREF, we offer a one-million-dollar prize to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event.

Now, I’ve known about the Million Dollar Challenge for a long time, and I’ve heard interviews with Randi where he tells great stories about various challengers. But I had no idea…that they keep the log of challengers on a forum at the website, complete with the various back and forth emails!

I mean, does it get better than this:

• GERALD EPLING – Shimmering Leaf Inventor: I do claim that an egg can sense my intention or action involved with boiling another cohort egg. This is the essence of my paranormal claim.
• PETER HUBINKSY, I WALK THE LINE: I have found that my presence creates telekinetic/teleportation phenomenon which rearranges and/or teleports random objects in open and closed spaces. Random telekinetically and teleported objects appear in spaces where there are loose debris such as small stones, bits of plastic, metal, glass, leaves, paperclips, etc.
• Baltazar Lopez, Mexican “??????????”:As SECOND TEST I propose, U can take a photograph of me!! get a machine like Kirlian or similar so U can see my special energy!! it’s real!!

And that’s just a sample. My life is complete. I may never leave the randi.org site again…

Heck. Having Google Notebook as a platform for saving my in process blog posts from accidental destruction is cool…but now I have a bunch of long, mostly finished, not complete, unposted blog entries in Google Notebook! And I’m playing “polish, polish, polish…”. Dang it! Expect some long, mostly finished rants on here directly.