Good start. The box needs to be a magnetic sheet, though, so I can build my own instant control panels for something like blender and gimp.

Superb idea.

And I see that Mac is running Windows. :)

This just reminds me of how much I wish there was a simple solution for giving a virtual machine its own mouse. For simple tasks like web browsing, most computers nowadays are plenty powerful. If you ran multiple displays and gave each display its own mouse and keyboard, you could turn one computer into many for cheap use with a group, for something like use in a library or in a poor country.

Anyone know if this can be done in Linux, maybe just with multiple x sessions and not actually needing to use virtual machines?

I haven’t found a good solution for windows, sadly.
-Taylor

@ taylor: i’d sugest looking at multiseated X

didn’t anyone see “the box ” if you push that button someone will die

@Taylor: look for nComputing devices. http://www.ncomputing.com/

Using Blender right now, i’m totally hearing you on that one.
Blender is a great example, the ability to hook on to all the various dimensions you can browse through would be really nice.
No more mess with trying to switch between dimensions.

And on the multiple mouse thing and virtual machines, totally agreed on that.
The single mouse system is depressingly limiting input ideas.
And OSes in general need to have better support for multiple points of focus, such as having focus across multiple windows at the same time.
Why has input been limited to a single point for so long?
The ability to hook a second, third or X mice to a window, for example, would make editing on several types of media so much easier.
The scrollwheel was a welcome addition to the mouse, no more wasted time having to go to the scrollbar, or move your hand to the navigation keys.
There is a lack of horizontal scrolling though… it is less important for most things admittedly, but still.

I remember seeing a video years back (7-10-ish) of something like this, on one hand, a graphics artist had a trackball, the other, a mouse.
A toolbar was hooked on to the mouse, trackball to the cursor. (toolbar was specifically written to take advantage of being able to move around, such as click-through events that will target the window and the canvas in that sequence, one click Fill was an example)
Simple things like this can go a very long way in saving time.
Wish i knew more about it, but i lost it when my old laptop died.