links for 2008-07-30

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The "Phylogeny" of Scientific Life.
OK, PZ, Grrlscientist, and John have
Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education - Inside Higher Ed :: Early (Encouraging) Data on Early Colleges
Stopping atoms A "coil-gun" method for slowing atomic beams without lasers, from the Raizen group at Texas

Does it strike you that EA Games (who developed the 'legitimate' version of Scrabble for Facebook) dropped the ball?

I wonder how much they spent writing, testing, and debugging the one they had. I bet it was more than it would have cost them simply to buy Scrabulous itself and adapt it. Certainly cost more in time.

If they'd just bought Scrabulous and tweaked it a bit to make it legitimate (rename it, add some branding, whatever), everyone might have won - users, EA, the Scrabulous developers, Hasbro.

As it is, only the lawyers are happy. They get paid, no matter how much goodwill is lost to their clients.

Maybe buying Scrabulous wasn't possible; maybe they tried - I have no idea. Still...

Thanks, Chad. I've been lamenting the demise of Medium-Large for months now, so I hadn't been checking. One of my favorites: "Things That Confuse Sean Hannity."