Politics
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Lessig: I’m considering a run for Congress | Tech news blog – CNET News.com
“Confirming weeks of speculation, Larry Lessig, the Stanford University law professor and “free culture” icon, has confessed that yes indeed, he’s considering a run for the U.S. Congress this year.”
Free As In Beer
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Analysis: Popularity of open-source, Adobe tools on campus prods Microsoft’s giveaway to students
“Despite the popularity of .Net within companies and other employers, Microsoft has seen its standing among students continue to be eroded by a combination of open-source programming tools and Adobe Systems Inc.’s Web design software. Now, after years of using half-measures to try to beat those technologies on college campuses, Microsoft is taking a bolder step by making four pillars of the .Net platform available free of charge to tens of millions of students in the U.S., Canada, China and eight European countries.”
Virtual Worlds
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‘Second Life’ coming to mobile devices? | Geek Gestalt – A blog by Daniel Terdiman – CNET News.com
“But now, according to a press release I got Tuesday morning, a company called Vollee is planning on releasing technology that will make it possible to run Second Life on 3G handsets via Vollee’s streaming media service.”
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Blue Mars: Second Life With Pro-Level Content – GigaOM
“Though set on a future Mars terraformed for human habitation, Blue Mars isn’t hardcore sci-fi — indeed, the company’s hoping to attract non-gamer women who’ll enjoy shopping, socializing and playing casual games built into its idyllic locales.”
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Avatar Reality, inc. — Serious Computing for Serious Fun
“Blue Mars is a new online massively multiplayer virtual world (MMVW), featuring stunning graphics, realistic characters and endless social bonding opportunities. Set on Terraformed Mars in the year 2177 AD, players will be able to live out their fantasies through personalized avatars. Blue Mars is scheduled for beta release at the end of 2008.”
Open Source 3D Game and Virtual World Engines
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DevMaster.net – 3D Game and Graphics Engines Database
“Welcome to DevMaster’s Game and Graphics Engines Database, your ultimate source for 3D Engines. This database is committed to providing you with the most accurate and up-to-date information for current engines around the web.”
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Delta3D – Open source gaming & simulation engine
“A well-supported and fully-funded open source project, Delta3D is a full-function game engine appropriate for a wide variety of modeling & simulation applications.”
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Irrlicht Engine – A free open source 3d engine
“The Irrlicht Engine is an open source high performance realtime 3D engine written and usable in C++ and also available for .NET languages. It is completely cross-platform, using D3D, OpenGL and its own software renderer”
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OGRE 3D : Open source graphics engine – Home
“Over the course of the last 6 years, OGRE has grown to become one of the most popular open-source graphics rendering engines, and has been used in a large number of production projects”
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“Crystal Space is our main project. It is a free cross-platform software development kit for realtime 3D graphics, in particular games.”
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“Panda3D is a 3D engine: a library of subroutines for 3D rendering and game development. The library is C++ with a set of Python bindings.”
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Building Virtual Worlds: A Carnegie Mellon Project Course
“Students use 3D modeling software (Maya), painting software (Photoshop), sound editing software (Adobe Audition & Pro Tools), and Panda3D, a programming library originally developed by Walt Disney Imagineering’s Virtual Reality studio, to display our virtual reality worlds.”
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“After more than four years of hard work and many point releases, the developers behind the jMonkeyEngine are proud to announce the release of version 1.0 of their Java game engine.”
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I didn’t realize that Blender included a game engine with a Python interface.
In some kind of show of openness, Microsoft have apparently promised not to sue open-source developers who use published Microsoft interfaces for non-commercial purposes.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7257411.stm
I’m sure that’s a great comfort to someone.
But it does suggest the beginnings of a serious search for relevance, in this interconnected Internet age.
Be Free. Work Smart. Get your Symphony here http://symphony.lotus.com/ . Use it for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial. IBM’s price for it is $0.