Links for Sunday, October 24, 2010

• Zero Hedge: Guest Post : Two Decades Of Greed – The Unraveling – “Reagan cut taxes and doubled spending during his eight year reign. This initiated the launch procedure for a US government debt rocket. It sent a message to the world and to its citizens that debt was not a bad thing. Interest rates were in the midst of a quarter century long decline, so the debt became more serviceable as time progressed. There was no reason to save and invest when government and consumers could borrow and buy what they wanted today.“
• Be Cunning and Full of Tricks: The Future of Virtual Worlds: No Fate but What We Make – “At this moment in history, people are facing a great deal of change and uncertainty around the future of virtual worlds. In particular, people with a vested interest in Second Life are understandably concerned about the future of the platform, unsure of what Linden Lab has planned for the future. Only time will tell what Linden Lab chooses to do. My own personal hope is that Linden Lab will continue to improve Second Life for the benefit of all its users, and that Second Life will evolve into a platform that can eventually interconnect with other virtual world platforms. I see connectivity as the key factor for any specific virtual world’s long-term success, which is why my attention is so focused on the current work involving OpenSim and Hypergrid these days.“
• Brian Solis: Introducing The Conversation Prism Version 3.0 – “One of the aspects that make social media so fascinating is the conversations that define the culture and value of each community. While many of us operate on the information that fill public streams, sometimes the most interesting aspects of a story take place in the back channel. The Conversation Prism has its own story and I’d like to share it with you.“
• Millin Arund Choudhary: Linux Boot Process – Code Commentary – “Linux has grown from a system that used to boot from a floppy providing no luxurious features to the user, to the current jazzy Linux systems. It is important to have an insight of the Linux boot procedure. Say for Linux to serve the purpose on embedded systems, the generic boot procedure must almost always be modified to meet the needs of the target application.“
• Wikipedia: Emoji – “*Emoji is the Japanese term for the picture characters or emoticons used in Japanese wireless messages and webpages. Originally meaning pictograph, the word literally means e “picture” + moji “letter”. The characters are used much like emoticons elsewhere, but a wider range is provided, and the icons are standardized and built into the handsets. Some emoji are very specific to Japanese culture, such as a bowing (apologizing) businessman, a face wearing a face mask or a group of emoji representing popular foods (ramen noodles, dango, onigiri, Japanese curry, sushi). *“