what would be far more useful is an easy way to do single sign on between applications for a single website. I know LDAP exists, but it seems pretty complicated, or you can use half broken bridges, but somethign really simple would be incredibly useful. Or is there something I missed.

Our local council streams it's planning meetings over the web. This is very useful if you can't attend in person (and you can do something else in the boring bits). But you're right - a 3d world is overkill. Static web pages convey this information much better - and most likely already exist in some form. If they really want to get citizens to be more involved then they should write some applications for facebook etc. and exploit a social network that already exists.

I noticed that too. Having the PSU directly under a water cooled CPU sounds like asking for trouble too.