[...] project (sorry, it’s still secret!) He seemed to have really liked what he played, since he even posted about [...]

I AM a bit too hard on Stephenson. I think that some form of what he describes may well emerge — it just won’t be universal and unique, which seems to be the main thing people take from his book.

As far as white labelling — you can put the client anywhere, we’re happy to have it unbranded for a quid pro quo. It still has to exist on the network, though — we’re unbending about that.

The dude abides.

Also see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_Mechanicus

I just missed you after your talk on Friday. The Q&A dragged on after the session and I had to jet before I could introduce myself. Maybe next year you can meet the grump contrarian that is StGabe.

I did happen to spend dinner with Sean Riley on Thursday night (through a mutual acquaintance) and got to argue some of the same stuff I’ve argued on here by proxy. Overall I was encouraged by the talk on MetaPlace. While I may disagree about where the market is headed (i.e. I think you’re too hard on Neil Stephenson, his scenario is actually somewhat plausible as a polished, mature-market solution for VR virtual world and doesn’t rule out non-spatial information inputs and layouts existing in parallel) I do think that a common web-based infrastructure for VW’s looks pretty valuable in the near term. A question I was going to ask is, “will there be a white label solution for a company that wants to use that infrastructure but wants 100% brand ownership of the site?”

Anyway, wasn’t sure where to put this comment so there you go.

Don’t you worry about what our planet will become with a lot of wired lunch meat coded by a few cultists and extremists to feed them intelligent artifice and artificial intelligence?

Here’s some more resources to fuel your alarmism: http://www.transhumanism.org, http://www.transhumanism.eu, http://www.singinst.org, http://www.sl4.org, http://www.extropy.org, and http://www.crnano.org.

The web steals, Morgan. Lots of money are made off of that theft and the coming recourse will be vigilante code.

Rats!

My Lord, Raph, go back to your initial instinct, please. The Soviet always used to push a lot of science to get you to believe in their death cult, too. I have one word for you: Lysenko. Ray’s brain uploading is like putting Lenin in his tomb on Red Square.

Don’t you worry about who gets to decide whose brain will be uploaded? Don’t you worry about how, well, fresh, those brains will stay uploaded? Don’t you worry about what our planet will become with a lot of wired lunch meat coded by a few cultists and extremists to feed them intelligent artifice and artificial intelligence?

If you could create your own tracks and share them online, Rising might be more interesting. Games like Rising have been around a long time, only in the form of educational software. I still have a copy of PlayPro Interactive Guitar from 1998, which also included many more styles than simply rock. I’d love to share my Celtic music through a game like Rising though. ;p

Hey Raph, imagine putting your music for download on Xbox Live as games!

So yes, the Guitar Rising UI was very tablature-like. Basically, a lot like scrolling guitar tab.

The Guitar Wizard UI doesn’t look at all like tablature — based on what I saw in the video, I think I like the Guitar Rising UI a bit better, though it’s far cruder. On the other hand, you can’t load arbitrary songs into Guitar Rising.

One of the big challenges with the guitar is how to take the 3 dimensions of fret position, string, and time and map them clearly onto the screen’s 2 dimensional display. That’s what makes it so much fun to think about though.