It’s interesting to see how corporations are dealing with increasing consumer control. In the few cases I’ve noticed, they seem to be operating through a second party; a “buffer”. Whether that’s for legitimate reasons of outsourcing expertise, or clandestine reasons of outsourcing blame, I’m unsure. Perhaps that will become more clear as I pay more attention.

Anyway, to get caught up, read an earlier entry of mine on Burger King (Link) which is, for all intensive purposes and strictly in my opinion, apparently letting the crazies loose and perhaps even encouraging the creation of BK-branded pseudo-porn to help market their *gag* product (it’s hard to tell what they’re really doing since – as mentioned – they appear to have an outsourced “buffer”… I believe).

And to see why I’m mentioning this all now, go read my earlier post(s) on Disney (Link) and then read about the “hide or otherwise remove” letter from what appears to be – in my opinion – the 800-lb corporate gorilla’s lapmonkey making overtures of pending actions to control their master’s corporate image over on Water Cooler Games (Link).

Appears as if the fireworks have begun, folks. Keep an eye out for Tinkerbell… she might (I said MIGHT) now be sporting leather bondage gear and spikes. O.o, where do I sign up? {This is a joke, boys. Calm down.}

{Note to corporate legal beagles, I’ve italicized areas in this post which I hope will satisfy you; please don’t send me letters and please don’t sue me.}

{Note to readers, if I suddenly disappear from the face of the earth, please call Agent Jack Bauer … oh wait … the car companies pwn him. Damn. I’m screwed.}

via Clickable Culture {blame him, guys!}

I’ve been a fan of Rustboy ever since I first heard of Brian Taylor’s audacious effort to make a high-quality animation using a tool at which most professionals sneered. The results have been stunning (go see for yourself). And now via the good folks at Vinyl Pulse, comes word (Link) that the wayward metal contraption with the sorrowful eyes has arrived in vinyl. Hot.

{Image source: Vinyl Pulse}

I just surfed over to CGTalk and noticed an interesting ad banner floating at the top of the page (whoa, they do work on occasion!). That banner linked to a website for a company called “CrystalRender” (Link), a place that takes your 3D model and immortalizes it in… well, you know.

This is interesting. It’s certainly one way to do it. And the best part are these two snippets from their FAQ:

Which 3D formats can you accept?
…and even many game engine formats: X, MDL, MD2, MD3, W3D, PSK, U3D.
–
Do you offer any volume discounts?
Yes, from 10 to 10,000 pcs…

Seems pretty clear there’s an IP collision up ahead.

Having succeeded on the Doom3 front (see earlier post – Link), I decided to return my attention to Second Life (at least until someone culls the UV map from the videostream). In particular I wanted to get the proper config settings for Second Life and I wanted to compare the geometry. I noticed earlier (Link) that my prim object was composed entirely of individual triangles. When capturing an avatar on the other hand, the triangles fell in line with what I’d expect: triangle meshes for Head, Hair, Torso, Legs and Eyes (the last floating off in space).

What I hadn’t done was capture an avatar – with prim attachments – in a custom pose (i.e. something other than the standard modeling “T” pose). As you can see above, that was pretty easily accomplished. So at this point I suppose I’ll work toward getting both the Sentry Bot and my avatar to go “solid” in Pro/ENGINEER.

Lots of interesting stuff in Bruce Sterling’s latest post (Link) re: the ongoing adventures of VeriChip Corporation’s efforts to use RFID chips to tag and track the world; maybe even the whole universe. Only they seem to have a few hurdles… like cloning, MRI’s and maybe some sloppy record-keeping. Anyone else noticing how this technology, most often associated with tracking simple stuff, is sounding more and more like something out of Logan’s Run?

Remember that post of mine from a ways back when I talked about being able to build a killswitch into virtual objects so that they simply vanish (Link – in case you don’t)? Well… uh… what’s stopping someone from illegally pirating/cloning these things and doing exactly that on real people using a time-released or remotely-administered poison? Forget spiked Kool-aid, life is a Carousel, old chum.