This is cool as crap: Phosphor Beta 1 – Rasterworks. Sucks that there is no Shockwave 10 plugin for Linux yet, so I had to boot to Windows to check it out…but damn, it’s impressive nonetheless.

link from (where else lately?) Second Life Future Salon

What can’t AJAX do, eh? I just got back from vacation, and decided to start playing with 30boxes (a calendaring AJAX app) today. Pretty cool stuff; I like it. But then I start catching up on my RSS feeds this evening, and I see this: eyeOS: Web Based Desktop System — and GPL’d, no less! (and AJAX out the wazoo, of course)

Contains basic apps (word proc, calendaring, phone/contacts, etc.), new apps can be installed, and runs on any webserver including PHP 4.3 or better. All you need is a web browser to access a pretty useful desktop. They also host their own server at eyeOS.info, so you can create an account for free there if you don’t have a webserver handy.

Interesting, interesting stuff. In particular, the F/OSS aspect; you can take the code running this things and get your hands dirty with it!

link from Second Life Future Salon

It’s that time of year again…even though I’m probably only 10% the fan I used to be, I still find time to head over to SI.com and find gems like this: The Most Heated Rivalry in College Basketball — The basketball rivalry between Duke and North Carolina is the fiercest blood feud in college athletics. To legions of otherwise reasonable adults, it is a conflict that surpasses sports; it is locals against outsiders, elitists against populists, even good against evil.

Ahhh…tasty. Of course, that article is written by a Carolina fan, and I’m a Duke alum. But the feeling’s the same; he just has it backwards. *grin* Go to Hell, Carolina, go to Hell!

And this little ungrateful bastard? What a piece of crap: Krzyzewskiville eviction — Duke punishes student trying to sell game admission. That punishment better be slow and painful. He has broken a sacred trust! The free admission to Duke b-ball games and the phenomenon of Krzyzewskiville (the student had been living in line in a tent since Jan 9th…ah, brings back memories!) are priceless!

I’ve seen several articles and discussions by Will Wright on his new game idea Spore, but this Google video (35 minutes long) looks awesome! By far the most info I’ve seen; according to the metadata, the video is from the Game Developer’s Conference. The UI looks fantastic.

link from Second Life Future Salon

I’ll post more on this later, but I just wanted to jump on the bandwagon ASAP:

Thanks to mneptok for the image as well as the post to boing boing!

Here’s the link to Lee’s blog: Rantings of a Nerd. The comcast DVR-related link is here. (Might as well move some of my mighty traffic *LOL* Lee’s way!)

I’ll be honest; I have an initial gut feeling on the DP World situation, but I haven’t finished working through my reading on it and gnashing things out. As food for thought, though, this KRT wire article (damn thing; it’ll probably linkrot in 10 days or so) hits a lot of interesting points for me. Among them:

Kirk [R-Ill], among others, believes the president made a decision based on bad advice, counsel that apparently did not include congressional Republicans. “The kind of scrutiny that happens in a closed-door meeting with 10 or 15 staffers in the executive branch is very different from the kind of scrutiny that you will get in a House or Senate committee, backed by an energized press,” Kirk said. (emphasis added)

Regardless of your feelings for this president (and I’ve made no secret of mine; to say I’m no fan of his is putting it mildly), this situation is pointing out some of the dangers of such an insular executive branch. I find the whole situation intensely fascinating.

ars technica: DRM and the tech industry’s “girlie men” — My point is that, for even just half the price of a single 65nm fab, the tech industry could buy a few small studios and just start throwing tons of free content at the world…why couldn’t investments in free movies and music pay off in home entertainment, networking, and storage hardware sales?

The post’s jumping-off point is a hilarious rant against the Small Picture the tech industry has painted for themselves. David Birch makes a great point, and Hannibal goes on, in classic back-of-the-envelope fashion, to nail it home.

And one could even debate the meaning of free here. Free as in beer as well as free from DRM would certainly be awesome, and presumably would sell the maximal amount of hardware (at least in some hypothetical scenarios), but a case could be made for selling DRM-less, CC-licensed material that you (the hardware manufacturer and media mogul) encourage/allow/expect widespread redistribution of. It’s a double dip; you get paid (something) for the initial sale of the media, and you make more money, razorblades-style, on the storage, transmission, and player hardware required to support the entertainment infrastructure you’re building out!

There’s no question that content sells hardware; Apple settled that. Yes, they use DRM, but that’s at least partially because that they had no choice, seeing as they don’t own the vast majority of the content they transfer. A hardware manufacturer that controlled their own studios could make different choices, and simultaneously leverage the vast podosphere and videoblog landscape.

Sure…it might not work; but bankrolling RocketBoom, Atom Films, and The Podcast Network for a couple of years as an experiment would practically be a rounding error on Intel’s books.

WorldChanging: The Unplugged – A Speculative Fiction — Touting their movement as a combination of the economic theories of Mahatma Gandhi and the political science of Buckminster Fuller the Unplugged have now reduced the GDP of the United States of America by 20% over their 15 year programme. Opponents of the movement call Unplugging an unscientific and cult-like political movement, but proponents say that “Unplugging” was the best decision they ever made. …

Certainly speculative, but rich with interesting possibilities. The scenario is worth exploring; some of this stuff “sticks to the wall” when you throw it up there. As I’ve mentioned before, WorldChanging is well worth taking a look if you are interested in trying to build a better future.

It will serve you well, even if it is at times painful: US ‘reclassifying’ public files (BBC) — The restoration of classified status to more than 55,000 pages began in 1999, the [NYT] said. At that time, the CIA and five other agencies reportedly objected to what they saw as a hasty release of sensitive information. The Transparent Society has gone back into my reading queue; it’s overdue.

Link from reddit