Caution: Singularity Ahead [DEFUNCT]

... or, "How Josh spends his time when the family is on vacation without him." It's a client/server app for the Apple II and Windows that streams the Windows desktop down to the Apple. So far the communication is one way, so you can't even call it a graphical terminal. Yet. Second Life login screen My pirate ship Billabong My avatar at the International Space Flight Museum The Windows server and Apple client (with the USB->RS232 Serial connector in the middle)

We're getting a fresh batch of business cards at work c/o Moo Cards and this time can use custom screenshots. Here are some I snapped today which will be on the back of my cards: Yes, that's how good Second Life graphics are these days. I really am that shiny. :)

I decorated my av in a seasonal fashion: I showed up for a meeting green, and someone didn't "get it". So I had to make the hat.

I built myself a shiny new avatar for SL. Check it out.

After nine years, today was my last day at Microsoft. Starting at the end of June I'm off to new adventures in San Francisco.

One of the deeper thoughts coming out of the "Gray Goo in Second Life" incident is a reminder: Baseline human intellects are not native to virtual realities. I think there's an argument that any substrate rich enough to support computation and replication and has a sufficient degree of error can host life which will evolve. For us, the laws of physics provide computation (particles interact), replication (via RNA, later DNA/RNA/Proteins) and error (DNA replication has good but not perfect error correction). Left on its own, an artificial environment like Second Life would be overrun by replicators which are "native" to the environment. Yes, someone has to create them maliciously - for now - but bugs and eventually real errors would creep in over the millenia. Like a replicator in Core War (see the FAQ ) you can have extremely efficient creatures dominate the substrate very quickly. Consider one possible start for life on Earth - the "clay substrate"...

My friend Sarah alerted me to an attempted grey goo takeover of Second Life: http://www.joystiq.com/entry/1234000597070455/ Second Life is a blend between TinyMUDs (online text-based virtual worlds that allowed users within the game to create new objects, including scripted behavior in descendants) and a modern MMORPG (Everquest, World of Warcraft, etc). I haven't played (I love my family) but I've been thinking about the problem space for 15 years or so. Basically, someone made a object that replicated itself and took over large parts of the world's geography and sucked down CPU cycles. It’s interesting to think about tweaks to the laws-of-physics in the game that would prevent such a thing. I realize that’s not the approach they took – and applaud their attempt not to – but I think there is justification for considering changes to the fundamental behavior of a world that makes such things harder. (Caveat: I have no idea what the physical laws of SL are, but it's ap...