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So, Ray Ozzie has gone on the record to suggest that open source could be a bigger threat to Microsoft than Google is. Savio isn't buying that line, and I'm not sure that I do, either.

Let's be clear about what Ozzie actually said:

...[O]pen source [i]s much more potentially disruptive [than Google].

Open source has disruptive potential. Google is disruptive now. Google is making money now in markets that Microsoft covets, while open source is not cutting into a single Microsoft revenue stream. Not one. Red Hat and Novell's SUSE are almost entirely eating away at the Unix market, while MySQL is creating new markets with web properties. Open source? It doesn't (today) make a dent in Office, Windows, XBox, Dynamics, etc.

So why is open source potentially so disruptive to Microsoft? Two reasons.

At first glance, Re-Mission comes across as a stylishly produced, anime-influenced video game. But the targets in question are cancer cells, which the character Roxxi the nanobot blasts with the Chemoblaster, the Radiation Gun, and the Antibiotic Rocket.

Re-Mission is specifically designed as a health improvement intervention for teens and young adults who have cancer. Game producers at HopeLab start with a desired health outcome, and then reverse engineer a game that encourages positive behaviors, adding motivation and fun into something as scary as a kid's battle against cancer.

Re-Mission helps teens fight cancer

HopeLab Vice President Ellen LaPointe spoke at the Sandbox Summit conference on Tuesday, and I was amazed to learn that the game producers actually test the effectiveness of their games through controlled clinical research studies. HopeLab followed 374 kids with cancer, at 34 hospitals in several countries, playing the game in English, Spanish, and French. The kids who played Re-Mission showed measurable improvements in their attitude (sense of self-efficacy) and healthy behavior (taking medications as prescribed).

It's interesting to see a nonprofit with a health-improvement mission embrace video games in this new way. It is crucial that Re-Mission looks as well-designed as any game out there on the market. Deborah Manchester of the kids' science Web site Zula, another panelist at the Sandbox Summit, said that one pitfall of educational media is that we can get stuck in a rut trying to put the same boring content into a digital format. Re-Mission shows what can be accomplished when designers break out of that box to create a product based on what kids and teens really enjoy playing.

What's next for HopeLab? Ruckus Nation, whose underlying goal is to look for new solutions to childhood obesity. Students from all over the world entered Ruckus Nation's online competition for new product designs that are cool and fun enough to get kids moving.

HopeLabs will support the development and testing of winning products, providing a real opportunity for kids to not only win a contest, but to see their innovative ideas come to life.

Nobody's going to like this one. Liberals will feel attacked. Libertarians will nod glumly. Conservatives will feel they're being blamed for something that hasn't happened. And those who intend to ignore climate change will continue to accuse others of a conspiracy.

Peter Wells, a researcher in Cardiff, England, has published an article warning that climate change could lead to a global, militaristic totalitarian state. Here's where you can find the article, but it will cost money to see it all. So, a brief summary: Climate change will create severe challenges to numerous nations. It may prove impossible to get enough agreement among conflicting interests and countries to cope with the effects. Eventually, this may lead to more centralized, international government. That, the professor argues, is an open invitation to the military-environmental elite to gradually expand control.

Wells goes on to say, "A modern green junta is unlikely to arrive with tanks on the streets and the overnight capturing of control. Rather, it creeps upon us through multiple small steps--each one justified by 'necessity'." And Wells questions whether the slow-moving methods of democracy can cope with a global catastrophe.

Here's what his Web site says about the author: "Peter Wells has a degree in Geography from Leeds University, and an MSc in Town Planning from Cardiff University, while his PhD (also from Cardiff University) was on the subject of the socio-economic consequences of military R&D in the U.K. He joined the Centre for Automotive Industry Research at its inception in 1990 and has since specialised on economic, strategic and environmental aspects of the world automotive industry. He is particularly interested in small scale, decentralised economic organisation as a means to achieve sustainable consumption and production."

Of course, that's British spelling.