Second Life Herald

Primjackers Trash LL's Digital Rights Management

Copy "protected" prim hair, motorcycles now easy to copy -
In-world economy threatened?

by d3adlyc0d3c, ex griefer

video demonstrating use of a prim replicator for potential customers on onrez

Recently it came to our attention that certain devices have begun to circulate inside Second Life that allow object owners to circumvent Linden Lab's digital rights management/permissions system. These new products are simply LSL scripts that are able to copy themselves into every prim in a linkset, and then they use the llGetPrimitiveParams function to detect prim shapes and position within a linkset.

Once the target prims have been "enhanced" by the addition of the prim copy script, they can communicate the prim's size and position information to another object which then rezzes a number of cubes that automatically change shape, adopting the shapes and colors of the original prims and position and link themselves -- making exact copies of linked objects. The only missing elements are the textures and the original scripts, which current prim replicators do not currently steal duplicate.

Op/Ed: So Long - Thanks For All The Fish

by Ms. Penance Sautereau

So here it is, my last article. It's due today, and I still can't really think of a particular subject to cover. I've been sitting here staring at the edit page for an hour now I think. A few ideas have popped into my head, but most I dismissed.

I pondered writing about the good things Prok has done on SL as a follow-up on my last article. I decided against it. My little Anti-Fan Club here would just accuse me of pretending to care about her sanity to serve my own interests. (Though I really can't imagine what self-interest I serve by trying to help someone so universally loathed on the Herald.)

I considered maybe writing a third Religion in SL article. I never did get to finish my series. But the research was draining and I can't be bothered to write one knowing  the Herald loudmouths will just dissect it as an attempt to ignite debate. The point of that series was to try and showcase spiritual diversity and foster more tolerance. It was a point no one seemed to get, so it isn't worth a third attempt.

I thought of just asking Pixeleen to post that last fluffy "How-To" piece I submitted in November as my last article. But it'd be frilly and pointless, and I feel like I owe the whole whopping 4 people who like my stuff better than a canned fluff piece as a goodbye.

So I sat here. I pondered. I looked over my past submissions and read the reactions to them. I self-analyzed how I reacted to trolls, evolving from the angry bawing they wanted to just mocking how sad they are. I smiled at the 15% of comments that were nice, appreciative, and supportive. I laughed seeing old comments from people like Candy Lemmon telling outright obsessive lies about non-existent in-world harassment supposedly happening well after she was muted and forgotten. I grumbled at the Effite Diction robot's obsession with trying to fix my writing and ignoring the point of what I'd written. I smiled sadly reading comments from Artemis and D3adlyCod3c, wondering how different things might be if not for initial misunderstandings (Artemis) or if cooler heads had prevailed much sooner (Cod3c).

Pixel Clothes, Virtual Fashion Summit, IMVU, and HiPiHi

The Celebrity Trollop interview

by Pixeleen Mistral, fashionable reporter

IMVU fashionista

Recently, Celebrity Trollop took time from her busy schedule for an interview about the pixel clothes scene in SL, IMVU, HiPiHi and elsewhere. Celebrity also mentioned what promises to be a very interesting event - The Virtual Fashion Summit - a conference for virtual fashion designers, texture artists, prim sculptors, committed virtual fashion watchers and shoppers this coming June.

Pixeleen Mistral: Celebrity, you have been a huge figure in the SL fashion scene - where do you see that going? what is next?
Celebrity Trollop: I think Havok4 and Windlight are going to be the next major technical things coming down the pipe from Linden Lab. A lot of content creators are going to have to adjust to those differences between the SL of now and the SL of 3-4 months in the future.

Pixeleen Mistral: is this going to help the fashion scene or hurt it?
Celebrity Trollop: In general I think it'll be huge leap forward in terms of framerates, avatar appearance and general grid stability. But on the other hand, most fashionistas have a pretty huge wishlist of flaws they wish would be addressed.

Pixeleen Mistral: *nods* how are you spending your time lately? is SL your main thing?
Celebrity Trollop: Mostly I've been running around IRL looking for a new job; but when I've been in SL its been mostly on Second Style business. I do spend most of my time in SL, but I also like checking out some of the other VWs - IMVU, or the really rudimentary fashions in places like hiphiphi

Pixeleen Mistral: tell me about the fashion scene in IMVU
Celebrity Trollop: It's pretty active. One big difference between SL and IMVU is that in IMVU you can use some other's creators work as a basis for your own extension. This is called a "derivation" and when you sell a work like that both you and the original creator get some of the fake money they use.

Ad Farmers Face Game-God Induced Drought!

Resident urged to conserve ads as abuse reports fly!!!
Visual Spam cleanup - or ban on unreasonably land value increases?

by Jessica Holyoke

fewer roadside attractions?

Jack Linden announced a new ban on Ad Farms this past week. While advertising is still allowed, it will be an abuse reportable offense when "it crosses the line into harassing behavior or visual spam, where the intent is purely to compel another resident to pay an unreasonable price to restore their view - then this will be covered under Harassment in our Community Standards." After studying Jack Linden's dispatch, the consensus in the newsroom is the Lindens will now use their highly developed aesthetic sense to improve the state of the metaverse. This new program seems to be off to a fast start, as Patch Linden reported receiving 500 abuse reports regarding Ad Spam as of 9am the morning after the policy was announced. Let us hope the game gods are up to the challenge now that the fallout and possible motivations of the new policy are becoming more visible.

After studying the report formerly known as the Police Blotter, I went to Sallow to try to deduce which Ad Farms were being warned regarding being spam. None of them were the Umnik Hax scheme, but rather a combination of ad towers, some of which had advertisements, some of which did not. Some of the plots were for sale at approximately L$46 per sq. m. and some as high as L$520 per sq.m.

The following day, both Tyrian Camilo and ROBO Marx were warned against violating the Ad Farm policy via e-mail from Harry Linden. The alleged ad farmers were given until Monday to remove any visual spam/land sale notices, lest their accounts be suspended. The location of specific plots where the advertisement network would be considered spam was not provided, perhaps so that residents would not be tempted into second-guessing the Linden game gods' infallible judgment.

IBM Jilts SL - Now Dating ActiveWorlds!?

by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk

Activeworlds, conference calls, and interactive web pages - but no SL

It is hard to know exactly what to make of this, but a reliable source pointed us to the Kauffman foundation's web site where this page http://www.kauffman.org/3D announces a "3-D Internet for Learning Summit" hosted not on Second Life - but on ActiveWorlds.

It would not do to speculate on what Philip Linden thinks of this development - but speculation is sure to follow as the announcement promises "a first-ever public demonstration of IBM’S privately-developed capability" where participants will "experience a real-time, seamless and simultaneous environment that combines telephony, wiki and virtual world environments. This will allow global participants to collaborate in building some of the next-generation capabilities of the 3-D Internet."

This summit is to be open to all - and the Herald expects strong representation from the furry and babyfur metaverse demographic - assuming fur avatars are avalable in ActiveWorlds. The event will take place February 19th and 20th, 2008, in three spaces simultaneously - a toll free conference call, within IBM's Active Worlds based Extraverse, and on the web through an interactive wiki environment.

How to Separate the Naughty From The Nice

by Penance Sautereau

Second Life has a lot to offer of course, as we all know. From Sci-Fi sims, to combat RPG areas. However like most games of it's sort, there's a large chunk of adult content to be found. Not that there's anything wrong with that, (sorry Mister Seinfeld), but not everyone who logs in is looking for a strip joint or a sex club.

Therefore I thought it'd be a good idea to tell those of you who don't know how to separate adult areas from all-ages ones. Places to just hang or have fun without having to deal with something pornographic. So how do we find the nice friendly places among all the adult excitement? Well let's find out.

For starters, it's damn hard to find a good nightclub to dance at that doesn't at the very least have Escort ads posted, so you have to be very crafty in your search. Here are a few basic tips about this for newcomers.

Mending a Broken SL heart

Love happens. So do Break-Ups.

by Penance Sautereau

Love happens on SL. No one will deny that. But like RL, people grow apart. So if your SL romance fizzles, if it was serious for you, you're going to feel hurt by it. Aside of the ways to cope with your hurt in real life, which may be the preferable choice for a few days, as in taking a break, if you must keep playing SL while healing, you're going to need ways to distract yourself. So in that vein of reasoning...

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TOP 5 WAYS TO DISTRACT YOURSELF FROM A BROKEN HEART ON SL

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5) Go dancing! Yeah I know that sounds simplistic but SL has no shortage of dance clubs of all sorts, such as Lucifer's, Gazza's Bar, Refugees, Rogues Club, and many others. Sometimes dancing mindlessly to good music with fun people around is a great way to soothe the ache. For a lot of people it's healthy to be around people after a break-up, and if your RL friends are bust, well, SL is always crowded. It also doesn't hurt to just dance the anger away. Channeling break-up anger through dancing is a lot healthier and positive then stewing on it.

4) Go exploring. When you're hurting in your heart, well, that's a perfect time to look up some things on SL. I looked up the Apple store after seeing a video of it on YouTube, and had fun browsing all the virtual computer props. Then I looked for various themes. I found an actual Transgender support area, hidden amongst all the shemale sex clubs, and met some really cool people there. Just search the places tab for anything you're into, goth, rave, art, etc, and go exploring. You'll be amazed how easily you get distracted from the hurt.

Scrooge McSheep Cans 22 ESC Employees One Week Before Christmas

Tiny Tim despondent - lumps of coal and company restructuring for the holidays

by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk

Jeremy Vaught reports on the Second Life Podcast blog that 22 employees of the Electric Sheep Company will have a permanent holiday this Christmas - leaving them plenty of time to select and wrap presents and visit their families, now that they have been sacked by the metaverse development company.

Reportedly, ESC cited financial problems and is "refocusing the business". The group working on MTV projects is apparently still intact, but speculation is that they may be discarded at a later date now that the company is focusing on "technology like onRez". OnRez is a shopping site for purchasing virtual clothing and accessorizing SL lifestyles with possible holiday gifts such as latex school girl outfits, and whip marks and everhard prim genitalia.

OnRez sells milk and cookies, too

Joel Greenberg's Virtual World Ad Network has also been shutdown as part of the ESC company restructuring. According to an e-mail send by Mr. Greenburg to those who had signed up for updates on the project the ad network was about a month away from going into beta test. Tiny Tim was unavailable for comment at press time, but the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future were reportedly planning a midnight visit to the ESC headquarters.

SL Love and the Single Neko

by Penance Sautereau

Penance meditates on the good and bad in SL love

Wow has SL ever hooked me. I made an avatar that looks like I picture myself inside, and it gave my self-esteem a boost. I made a lot of friends really quick. Although granted only a third of those spoke to me more than once but that's alright. I have my own place, I make a living doing things I love. My Second Life is shaping up nicely.

But I'm the same person on or offline at heart. A polyamorous cuddlebutt who falls in love very easily. Now I have a wife in real life, (GOD I love being a Canadian lesbian), but she and I each have our own online girlfriends. So while I didn't come to SL looking for new love, I wasn't expecting it to not happen.

So let's talk about the physics of love and romance in a virtual world.

Virtual Skin is Blemish Free

by Penance Sautereau

Lorelei Singh dancing at the Rogue's Club

So like a lot of people in Second Life, I have no Credit Card. My money has to be earned. Until I learned to build and make clothing I hadn't been able to find a lot of options. An odd parallel to my First Life where I'm disabled and employment possibilities are limited.

However the joy of SL is that here I look like I do inside. Since I'm pretty on the inside, or so my friends keep insisting, I nervously set about exploring the seedier side of SL.

Now while I appreciate flattering attention as much as anyone, I had no real desire to BE a sex object. But being new I assumed it's just showing off your pixels for horny net geeks.

At least until it started to feel real.

Identity Hunting In Second Life

Lingerie is easy - but where do you find anthro-style purple cat ears?

by Penance Sautereau

Jungle Voodoo - purveyors of fine cat tails and ears

Like so many people, I come to SL to be myself, but more myself than my RL body will allow. Problem with that is for me, that requires more than just a nice skin and cool clothing. I'm a little bit of a lot of things, and it required a lot of hunting, a lot of mix and match. SL has so much to offer but finding exactly what you need is tricker.

First I needed a skin that matched what I see as the inner me. Fortunately SL really is full of nice people, and within 10 minutes of leaving Orientation Island, I was being given free stuff. It took some time to sort through but I found a shape and skin that suited me, although I've long since ditched it for my prized buy from Sweetest Sin and my own creations. Now it gets harder. I'm sort of gothpunk in my style, but I'm also comfy in very relaxed casual clothing. Plus I have huge shoe and lingerie fetishes, and I ADORE purple. So you can imagine that made the hunt a bit trickier.

Lingerie was easy. SL has quite the contingent of lil naughty folk like me, and there were lots of places that had lingerie packs for free or as low as $1L. Odds&Ends Mall provided me with some very nice stuff. (I recommend their Black Crochet outfit. Mmmmm). The GLBT welcome Centre has a nice freebie clothing pack.

Plus all the afore-mentioned nice people I've met have happily offered me extra clothes, underwear, shoes, and even some interesting extras. Some even gave me large chunks of $L without being asked, just to help a newbie out.

So now I had a good body, and tons of clothes. But I still needed the right hair. A friend took me to a HUGE mall just for hair. It lagged to high hell but the selection was AMAZING. I can't recall the name of the place but if you search for Lisa EDT hair you ought to find it. For $175L I found my perfect purple hair. Flowy shoulder length and a bit messy. Just like me.

That left one final ingrediant that was troubling me.

You see I'm a very feline personality, and I wanted the SL me, the visual of how I look on the inside, to be just a little bit Catty. I found some cheap furry parts at Odds&Ends but... well they just weren't right. They were designed for full-on Furries, not just mildly feline Gothpunks. The ears I had were huge, triangle bigger than my face. The tail was nice enough but it was black. So last night the hunt began again, after I made some money shaking my cute butt.

The trick I find is to know EXACTLY what it is you want. The SL search engine popped up a few hundred results for just "cat ears". You'd be amazed the difference one extra word can make. I added Neko to the search criteria.

And there it was, Jungle Voodoo on Temenos Island. And while it lagged me horribly with the meagre 256 megs of Ram I had at the time, it was worth it. A half hour later I had my purple wiggling cat ears and a wriggly purple tail. My look is finally complete, and it wasn't really all that hard once I knew how to look.

So if you're looking to tweak your body here on SL and you just don't have the Linden, be patient. Sooner or later someone will throw you a bone. Then you only have to know where to look.

But then isn't the hunt half of the fun?

Life 2.0 Summit Receives Royal Reproach

Unexplained avatar bans draw imperial frown

by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk

The Dr Dobbs Life 2.0 fall summit concluded yesterday, but was marred by what may become an international incident - Princess Manqo of Yaximixche's expression of pleasure at meeting virtual world experts is mixed with strongly worded warnings to event organizers about how to treat royalty - and commoners - if the goal of the meeting is a positive experience.

We learned of the royal displeasure in a press release from the Royal Press office of Yaximixche in which her royal highness Princess Manqo expresses delight in learning more of virtual worlds from experts such as Xconomy, Acceleration Studies Foundation (Ogoglio, Photosynth), Forterra Systems, SLBrowser, Gridocity, Linden Lab, Electric Sheep, Code4 Software, Sun Microsystems, Clear Ink, Eolus, Involve, ESC, AWA, IBM, libSecondLife, Croquet Consortium (Croquet video), Maya Realities, Borland Codegear, Tateru Nino, Multiverse, Pixeltrix, Questar, Intel, and Weather Channel.

However, the Princess also expressed grave concern at the organization of Dr. Dobbs/CMP’s event, saying the organizers were “more concerned in pleasing their sponsors marketing objectives rather than being good hosts by creating a unforgettable experience for visitors and potential customers. Some attendees had to use alternative avatars in order to continue in this event as the committee decided unilaterally that some questions or behaviours were not appropriate. Additionally, the committee did not provide any justification of avatar ban cases or simply they refuse replying to any request for explanation.”

The Herald was shocked to learn that the Princess was asked by event organizers to refrain from wearing her own environment awareness non-for-profit tag because they felt "she was selling". This amazingly cheeky behavior is simply not how one treats royalty. The Herald calls on both Dr Dobbs and the Life 2.0 event organizers to issue an apology to the princess - lest an international inter-world conflict erupt. Metaverse wars have started over less.

Which SL Software is Best? - 4 Viewers Reviewed

An expert's guide to SL client software - including the Nicholaz Beresford options
4 great ways to a better SL experience!

by JayR Cela, SL viewer connoisseur

After living in the Second Life metaverse for 2 years, I have seen quite a few changes take place. Sometimes it seems to me the Lindens are hell bent on shooting themselves directly in the foot. Other times I can actually see some forward progress being made, a bit slowly, but forward none the less. One such area I seldom see discussed outside of a few blogs and in-world meetings is the SL client application -or- SL viewer. The recent addition of voice chat to the main grid, starting with the 1.18.xxxx series warrants a look at exactly what sort of progress is being made. Let's look at the recent history of the SL client software - and decide what works best.

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Version 1.18.0.6

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This probably will be the last official non-voice version released. This was a mixed upgrade, more of a move sideways in preparation for for the 1.18.1.2 voice enabled release. It was certainly a great place for the open source community to provide some wonderful improvements of their own to this little gem - as is definitely evident with the Nicholaz Beresford Edition. Mr. Beresford has a blog I highly recommend reading available here. Versions 18a to 18k2 - the current incarnation - are his way to differentiate the incremental improvements.

Nicholaz has done so much behind the scenes improvements, not evident to the casual SL lifer. One of the biggest obstacles he has managed to overcome is the incessant memory leaks that have proven so elusive for the Lindens to solve. For those unfamiliar with the term, a memory leak is a bug or series of interconnected bugs that cause the running program to actually seem to grow larger and consume more or your computers memory resources.

Exclusive Pix from the Developer Grid: SL's New Zone Concepts Interface

The next version of SL?

by Pixeleen Mistral, food critic

Zone Concepts Interface: brighten the corners

I considered having another glass of wine while waiting for the wild coho salmon filet slathered in finely chopped fresh organic parsley to finish steaming over a what I hoped would become a Grey Goose vodka and sicilian blood orange reduction -- if my calculations were correct. However, the calculus of culinary choice suddenly narrowed. The iMojo wire was demanding attention with breaking news from the betaverse - an exclusive photo of the new look and feel for Second Life. Maybe.

Readers are cautioned that the iMojo is not always completely reliable, but our source provided what appears to be a screen shot of the next version of SL - or at least a mock up - reproduced here so that long suffering citizens can begin preparing for another forced march into the future, as envisioned by the game gods of our “better world” - the physics experts at Linden Lab. If our source is to be believed, this is a picture from the developer grid.

LA Times Joins the SL Hater Parade

The Hate Just Keeps on Comin'!

It seems like just last month (well, ok, it was last month) that Forbes did its 180 and started hating on Second Life. Now the LA Times joins the hate parade with a story of its own. Herald Summary (tm): Businesses came in, saw, and decided it was a bust, a waste of time, a veritable Bushian anti-insurgent surge of marketing failures. Now we have two things to say about this: First and foremost, WTF? The corporations who are now reportedly pulling out (American Apparel, Skywood Aloft, etc. etc.) and/or losing interest, came in, didn't listen to one fucking thing residents said, did it their 20th century push media meatspace way, and now... and now they are all befuzzled that it didn't work out and they think SL is a bust!!?? Well, good bye and good riddance. Maybe they are making more room for the corporations that are nimble enough to adjust to this very dynamic environment.

Oh and by the way, while I am quoted in the LA Times article, I don't think it entirely got the drift of what I said OR my position, which is this: Some of the corporations that came in early were doing it for impact outside second life, but others are committed to learning how to operate in this new environment and are making adjustments (I sited the case of Nissan and provided a link to how they had retooled). My impression is that no one really knows how to proceed here, but we are all learning as we go along. Or, in any case, those that stay will learn. 'cuz, yah know, quitters never prosper. (Someone told me that once.) --Uri

Here Comes Second Earth! Or not.

WTF? 120 Servers (480 new sims) per Week?

MIT’s Technology Review has a (registration required) disappointingly fanboyish, hyperventilating story about Second Life and the possibility of linking up worlds like Second Life with Google Earth. Oddly, while the article talks about how swell and kewl this would be (and includes interviews with developers who live off the hype -- Aimee, Sibley, and Reuben – AND includes the obligatory word “mashup”), no one claims to be working on such a mashup and the figures in the article show why:

At one region per server, simulating just the 29.2 percent of the planet's surface that's dry land would require 2.3 billion servers and 150 dedicated nuclear power plants to keep them running. It's the kind of system that "doesn't scale well," to use the jargon of information technology.

But what caught my eye was the following passage citing Cory (Ondrejka) Linden:

According to Ondrejka, Linden Lab must purchase and install more than 120 servers every week to keep up with all the new members pouring into Second Life, who increase the computational load by creating new objects and demanding their own slices of land.

Elsewhere, Nelson Minar calls BULLROAR on this:

Let's reality check that. 120 servers a week is 6000 servers a year, or roughly $25 million a year in hardware expenses alone, not to mention power. I sure hope they're not actually spending that.

On the bright side, if they ARE expanding that fast they will have enough servers to simulate the land surface of the earth in only 383,333 years! Par-tay! -Uri

Open Letter to Linden Lab

Metaverse residents ask LL to fix the game

by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk

In an attempt to entice game maker Linden Lab into fixing problems with Second Life, an open letter asking that long term problems with the virtual world be fixed before more new features are added has been signed by over 600 players and virtual world entrepreneurs.

The open letter comes in response to both stability problems with the world and Linden Lab’s retreat from contact with their customers - the world's residents. This retreat has been in progress for some time as the Lab has removed resident forums, and most direct customer contact - apparently in an attempt to cut support costs.

The cost cutting measures and focus on new features at the expense of stability may exact a toll as Cristiano Midnight points out, “it is much easier to retain customers when things work as promised”.

However, the social network effect - or wanting to hang with your friends - tends to blunt criticism of the Linden’s product, and those with significant investments in the game are not likely to migrate out of Second Life in a hurry. This platform stickiness may be what the Linden game gods depend on as they continue to rework their world despite the protests from its residents. It should be clear to all that Second Life is a never ending beta test - but it is significant that residents are organizing large scale protests of the way in which the beta test is being conducted.

Here is the text of the open letter:

Virtual Worlds 2007, Report #5: Venture Capital and The New School of Athens

by Urizenus Sklar

As I reported Wednesday, much of the Virtual Worlds 2007 conference reeked of the anxiety of marketing guys and gals trying to catch up with the next wave. The fear was palpable. Why else would those people be sitting in that auditorium taking notes like they were Gorean slaves pressed into service as scribes? And all they seem to want to know – at least all they wanted to ask - is this: What is the return on investment? How many eyeballs do we get? How long do we keep them? Are they the kind of eyeballs that spend money?

Thursday I lasted for about 30 seconds of that. I walked into the auditorium – steaming hot and stacked to the rafters with suits -- and the first thing I heard was the interesting factoid that when you create NPC salespeople you want them to mimic the animations of the customer. Psychological studies show that mimicking gestures is more likely to make the customer trust and like the salesperson whether an NPC or a human. And it only takes a simple script to do this! Joy. What a brave new virtual world we live in. Would someone please penis this event?

Virtual Worlds 2007, report #1

By Urizenus Sklar

All quotes guaranteed to possibly be accurate.

I climbed out my cab in Battery Park, eager to take in Virtual Worlds 2007 conference and hear the latest developments in virtual worlds. But what is this? The other taxis pulling up are not yielding scruffy game devs and virtual platform development geeks, but are disgorging middle aged men in dark suits. Is there something else going on? A conference on accounting strategies in the packaging industry? Perhaps a meeting on optimizing your real estate portfolio? Nope, these are Fortune 500 marketing guys, here to harness the technology of virtual worlds for their harvest of eyeballs.

I enter the venue auditorium and it is packed with at least 600 suits. Maybe more. You can feel the poplin-filtered sweat of middle-aged anxiety. You know, that anxiety you feel when you get the vague sense that the kidz are passing you by – that you won’t catch this wave and you’ll be left bobbing offshore while jellyfish sting the shit out of you and sharks circle you. And meanwhile the kidz that caught the wave are already on the beach doing the limbo by the bonfire and drinking sugary carbonated sodas with Annette Funicello? You know. *That* sort of anxiety.

Julian Lombardi: Second Life's Technical Problems "Inevitable"

Second Life not Scalable?

Image stolen from Lombardi's blog.
Julian Lombardi, one of the six original architects of Croquet and executive director of the Croquet Consortium AND the original designer of ViOS (Visual internet Operating System) has posted a rather sobering assessment of the scalability prospects for Second Life. Lombardi observes that ViOS went though similar scalability problems back in the day. His description sounds scarily like the current situation in SL:

Our strategy back at ViOS, Inc. was to simply re-tune the system and put up more servers as the loads increased - hoping for the best. That approach would work well for Intranet applications that serviced relatively small numbers of clients. It even worked well for ViOS' initial user base of around 15,000 unique users. Problem was that once we had several thousand simultaneous Viosians tooling about in the landscape, they began to overload our interactivity servers, resulting in performance problems and service interruptions.

The prospects for Second Life?

Second Life ... has a very similar technical architecture to that of ViOS - a vintage twentieth century client-server architecture with with single points of failure, inertia, and control. It's been interesting to watch Linden Lab's struggle with the inevitable technical problems faced by Second Life as a result of its recent popularity, constrained architecture, and non-scaling technical approach.

Yeah, it's been interesting all right. Damned fascinating.

Alternatives To Second Life

by Onder Skall, courtesy of Second Life Games

Let me start this off by stating that I have no interest in the “world vs. platform” debate. It’s boring and played out, so don’t you dare try to draw me in. What I’m trying to do here is answer the simple question:

Where are the best candidates as viable alternatives to Second Life?

In order to answer this question, I’ve come up with the three things that in my opinion make Second Life irreplaceable at the moment. Since these are entirely formed from my little brain, we’ll call them “Onder’s Big Three”. They are:

1. Cash transactions must be easy and readily accommodated flowing both into and out from the system.
2. Users must be able to create unique content and retain some form of ownership over it.
3. The fabric of the world itself must be possible to affect. IE: land ownership, room decoration, or some other content that remains viable even when the player who created it is logged off. (”Pervasive” is the word I’m groping for here…)

Hell is Other People: The LA Times Gets to the Bottom of SL's Growing Pains

If you are coming from the Feb. 22 LA Times article... I dunno...just know that we really really hate the Lakers. Or as we call them, the Hollywood Fakers. If you already read the article, then let me save you some trouble, and suggest that you use this link for sex, cybersex, and beyond.

If you haven't read the article by Alana Semuels, which has been long in the works, I guess the key thing to know is that it is a reasonable MSM attempt at covering the current growing pains in Second Life, as the meatspace corporations invade and the indigenous tribes protest. Cyberlebrities quoted include the ever sensible Second Life Liberation Army's Marshal Cahill, the meek and soft-spoken Prokofy Neva, the oh so modest Urizenus Sklar, and Electric Sheep's luddite ruler Sibley Verbeck and many others including Nimrod Yaffle. If you needed more reason to think that the LA Times was highbrow, there is also the infamous quote from John Paul Sartre -- "Hell is Other People" -- which, come to think of it, is a good one line explanation of why Second Life sucks, but then again it also explains why the whole world sucks unless you find a platform that no one else is using.

By the way, the online article (requires registration) features a picture of Prok's RL typist and it will probaby feature in a major way in future Something Awful productions, but I couldn't help but think that this is how 9 out of 10 women in Ann Arbor look. Which just goes to show...something or other.

Ludlow Joins Shirkeyjerk

Hotspur, Glendower, Mortimer and Worcester arguing over the future division of the kingdom at Bangor, in 'Henry IV'. Painting by Henry Fuseli.

Let's see if we can reconstruct what happened. First, there was all the fluff and hyperventilation about Second life having 100k then 1 million then 2 million "residents", followed by much ridicule in the SL Blogosphere. This was followed by Clay Shirkey coming along a year later saying there aren't really that many "residents." To which we said "no shit Sherlock" but of course Clay was then feted as the ubergenius of the new millenium by Dan Hunter and other Eggheads on Terra Nova. This was followed by cries of indignation from the SL Blogosphere and cries of hyper-indignation from Clay Shirkey, and then the heavy guns got involved -- as when Henry Jenkins, Beth Coleman and Clay got into a three-way convo about it. Apparently the debate is about played out, because Ludlow is involved now, in part two of an interview on Jenkin's Blog. A few excerpts are below the fold.

Bearded Eggheads Talk about Virtual Journalism and Stuff

Henry Jenkins just posted part one of a two-part interview with our own Nutty Professor -- Peter Ludlow. In it Ludlow has some not very nice things to say about the Avastar, and some marginally interesting things to say about civic responsibility and virtual journalism, and also where the Herald fits in the magic circle ("on the circumference" it turns out), but what might be discussion-worthy is this:

The more interesting question is why people keep repeating "“only a game"” so much. If you google "“only a game”" and “Second Life” together, you get nearly 12,000 hits. It is like a mantra that people keep repeating to keep some thought or idea at bay – and I think the dangerous idea that Second Life shoves in your face every day is this: our wealth is virtual, our property is transient, and our social lives are mediated by technology, nomadic, and often fleeting. I think that when people keep saying “it’'s only a game” they are really saying “the rest of my world isn’'t like this: my wealth is tangible and permanent, my friendships are unmediated and also permanent.” Saying “it’'s only a game” is like saying “this isn’'t how things really are, this is just a bad dream.” People need to pinch themselves, because this ain’'t no dream. This is reality; deal with it.

more quotes below the fold:

Avatar of the Year, Second Place: Anshe Chung

Second place in the Herald's coveted Avatar of the Year award traditionally goes to the avi who has had the most impact on the virtual world's economic scene. Last year's winner, Sir/Father Callahan, was a master of the simolean trade in TSO, as well as a collector of rare cannons and press secretary for the corrupt administration of Mr-President. This year, our second place award winner has made a similar transformation, from self-proclaimed "business girl" to budding political activist. You may admire her or you may just find her omnipresent signs annoying, but either way, there's no avoiding Anshe Chung.

Said to have earned the equivalent of $100,000 or more in Second Life's real estate business, Anshe has been featured in The New York Times, the L.A. Times, and Fortune magazine, among other dead-tree publications. (Of course, all of these stories cam after the Herald profile of Anshe earlier this year.) But since her rise to the top of her heap of Linden$, Anshe has taken it upon herself to make an impact on the political scene as well, speaking out against P2P teleporting and the Ginko investment bank, as well as getting involved in the budding lobbying efforts that residents have mounted in recent months.

In all, few avatars have had as big an impact on the Grid and the news over the last 12 months as Anshe has. Of course, one av has created bigger waves. To find out who (as if you don't already know), stay tuned for the Herald's first-place award, coming to you in a week or so.

Second Life Running on Linux?

Acording to a comment he posted on Boing Boing, this week Cory Linden is going to be at the Chaos Computer ClubCon (ah ok, so now it is upscale and is called the Chaos Communication Congress) in Berlin. Plus he promises to be giving a public demo of the SL client running on Linux. That would be pretty cool, but it is more interesting to speculate about the long term impact of this.

Good Riddance: SL Says Goodbye to Dwelloper Awards

Uri and Prok do Some Last Minute Christmas Camping

by Dow Jonas

With the advent of camp chairs in the last month, Robin Linden’s announcement of the end of the Developer Incentive Awards (DIA), or the “Dwelloper Awards,” as they were dubbed, came as no surprise to most of the hundred-odd recipients of the cash prizes, who make up the two percent of landowners in Second Life with the most dwell, reflecting the numbers of people who came and remained on their properties for a minimum of five minutes.

The awards are to be ended in March 2006, and with this three-month lead time, camp chairs, money trees, money balls, and every other magnetizing object for sticky avatars have been deployed in an even greater frenzy to soak Linden Lab of its last “dwellopment” dollars.

Some forums debaters blamed the camp chairs, which pay out anywhere from $1-$50, depending on whether the sitter also plays (and often loses) various casino games during the session. Others said the elimination of the program, which last month cost LL some US $120,000 to pay SL dwellopers, was a belt-tightening measure.

A glance at the list of winners in recent months shows that many of SL’s top land barons, club owners, and casino hosts are on the list, along with a handful of special themed-sim project leaders.

In a year that has brought removal of events grants, ratings stipends, telehubs, and GOM, SL forums criticism about the latest stripping away of subsidies appeared muted. A number of major businesses appeared to greet the action as consistent with a “capitalist” model for the virtual world, and a rational move in view of widespread gaming of the system that drained dollars through the use of AFK-devices like camp chairs, rather than creation of compelling content. Said Cyberland CEO Shaun Altman, “Good riddance, developer incentive! Let's replace [this] with something that actually incentivizes developers, rather than those who bribe people for their dwell.”

Aimee Weber, a prominent SL clothing designer, told the Herald that she had never been on the Developers’ Award list because she did not own land (she said she had just purchased a new island named Midnight City for her stores). The presence in SL of various artists and designers with interesting builds and events seems evidence for some that the DIA was not achieving its purpose. Asked about any possible replacement for the DIA, Weber said, “I think an automated system will always be vulnerable to being gamed, and some kind of Linden-decided award program may be forever haunted by claims of favoritism. So I don't know that I can think of a good one off the top of my head.”

In the past, the Lindens have held a few contests, with one or few participants, for themed sims or games, and suffered criticism for appearing to show bias.

“The camping chairs exposed the weakness of the system enough where it was embarrassing,” said Weber. Asked if she thought the Lindens lost a lot of money paying out awards based merely on camping, she said, “If anything, they raised the priority of fixing the system.”

Some forums contributors suggested substituting the DIA system with a voting mechanism to collect votes for good lots; old hands at SL recall a time when such a system was used and then abandoned as it, too, was gamed by people setting up flash mobs of their friends.

Weber suggested that the SL world map could have a mode “where areas of high traffic were painted certain colors. Like some kind of thermal chart LOL. That would be pretty cool! You can see the ‘hot spots,’” she commented.

While such a system could arguably be networked and flash-mobbed as well, it would likely serve as a more accurate picture of avatar flows than dwell created by friends and alts logging in and staying AFK on land to drive up the traffic numbers.

At times, the Lindens have discussed forming some kind of Council of the Arts to administer a grants system through applications. “It will be painfully political, but if they could make it work, it would be a great idea,” said Weber. Of course, with so many people joining SL and having trouble gaining visibility for their work, scouting talent could be difficult for short-staffed and busy Lindens. “It means some people will be left out, and that means there will be accusations, conspiracy theories, etc,” said Weber. “It would get messy.”

Top SL club manager Jenna Fairplay, owner of the Edge, told the Herald about the end of DIA, “I prepared for this as I do with all SL changes good or bad. I know there are those who were greatly affected negatively from the change and do feel for them as well.” Fairplay has put her club in DaBoom up for sale for a requested $20,000 US – and confirmed that the offer for the 100-meter terraformable original sim would not include the building. (Coming Soon: an in-depth interview with Jenna on club management in SL.)

Others reeled from the first impact of the announcement. “It is possible that my club will go to the wall without the DIA, which paid for my tier & membership fees as well as part payment for my radio stream. The way I feel right now is 6 months work down the toilet because I can’t fund that from my monthly RL income,” said Stacey Sugar, owner of the Barbie Club in Refugio.

Rallying later, Sugar subsequently told the Herald, “I have called a meeting of all my friends who own some of the high dwell projects in SL…to discuss the scrapping of the DIA and what we can do to minimize the impact and maybe come up with some alternative suggestions we can suggest to LL.”

Travis Lambert, owner of the Shelter, a club for newbies, commented, “The larger enterprises that receive Developer Incentive will likely only be marginally affected by this change. This is because the DI only made up a small percentage of their monthly budget.

Winners of the awards ranged from Prokofy Neva, who said he began at about $35 US and worked his way up eventually to $125 in recent months, to land baroness Anshe Chung who has earned thousands of US dollars.

“For a long time, the program appeared to discriminate against those with group land because it rewards only those with the most tier on one account; if your tier is spread out in a group then you may not come up on the radar,” said Neva. The Lindens recently adjusted the formulas to better include group owners.

”It is the small-to-medium sized venues that will be hit hardest by this change - not those you see on the Popular Places list every day,” said Lambert. “The DI made up 90-100% of the budget of the smaller venues, and those are the ones we are in jeopardy of losing.”

One effort the Lindens have promoted as a substitution of the “Dwelloper Awards”is the Developers’ Directory, a project that has drawn mixed reviews as some residents have praised the Lindens for making more transparent the process of bidding and being awarded content contracts in SL, and others have complained that the list is incomplete.

The Lindens have asked residents with ideas for how to provide incentives for content to replace the DIA to write to proposal@lindenlab.com

Extra!!: Philip Calls the FBI. W-Hats Shit Themselves

by Dow Jonas

Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Lab, announced at a resident virtual winter holiday party in Second Life's Wengen today that he is turning to real-world authorities to investigate Monday's deliberate crashing of his virtual world's grid.

When the party was bombed today by a griefer with pixelated C-4, Rosedale, whose avatar is Philip Linden, was bumped around the sim. The overcrowded Linden-run sims appeared to be a prime target for an attack during the season's top event.

Bedecked in a red Santa's cap and blue shirt, the Monetarized Socializing Platform Mogul danced around a roaring bonfire set for the occasion and said, "This seems about a good a time as any to tell you that I am turning over names to the FBI."

Linden said that he viewed Monday's grid crash like any denial-of-service attack on an Internet web page.

The CEO's announcement was greeted with cheers by residents toasting marshmallows around the virtual fire.

Asked by a reporter to clarify what kind of prosecution he might seek, Linden said, "Yes, we will turn over data to the FBI. That is what we are doing. Already in progress."

Hastening away to a real-life party with investors, Philip Linden declined to comment on queries about whether the 14-day suspension handed out to an unnamed resident for a "global attack" reported on the Police Blotter this week was related to the grid crash, or whether it was the limit of Linden Lab's actions.

He did not name the attackers nor specify whether they were related to members of W-Hat responsible for 2 other global attacks this year.

LINDEN ADMITS TO INSIDER SNOW SIM DEAL ON TEEN GRID

By Dow Jonas

In a fascinating glimpse into the life of teen-agers in Second Life and the internal pressures with which Lindens cope in their San Francisco office, a land scandal has emerged on the Teen Grid (TG) involving confirmed charges that Blue Linden gave a teen land buyer an unfair insiders' heads-up about a valued snow sim he was releasing.

"I sure hope that I am wrong here," was the title of a post on the teen forum with a poignant plea by a young girl who questioned a brewing land scandal early on December 7.

She noticed upon logging in that a large amount of snow land was released for sale and quickly purchased. Unlike the main grid, where adults have land scanners to seize abandoned land, land frequently abandoned by kids who can't get their parents to pay the tier can sit for days at $1/meter with no takers.

At first the sharp-eyed teen chalked up the windfall to "the luck of the draw," but then upon reflection began to wonder.

"I have reached the conclusion that at least one teen was given preferential treatment by LL in this land purchase process in the snow sims." Snow sims are still a novelty on the TG.

"The extent of this preferential treatment includes prior knowledge of the exact timing of the land release and posting of it as public --- and POSSIBLY allowing that person (and possibly even a cohort or two) to log on before normal log on time to get the land before anyone else could," said the teen.

In an interesting mirroring of the trends on the adult forums, other fans rushed to the Lindens defense and even grew indignant with the poster. "I doubt that this happened, simply because it would ruin LL's credibility on the TG, and would lose a lot of business if word got out," said one response.

While the original poster speculated that her bold comments might be deleted, the discussion was allowed to continue, with most people trying to rationalize how the kiddie barons had managed to snag the coveted land so quickly ahead of the pack. Inworld, teens flew around buzzing about the incident and chatting on Yahoo, putting together clues.

Unexpectedly, at 10:25 p.m., Blue Linden appeared on SL's teen forum with a surprising admission.

As you probably realize, the Teen Grid is not profitable...it would be nice if Linden Lab was a charity, but it's a business. Because Second Life is free, the only way we make a profit is to sell land. As it happens, land sales on the teen grid are very low. So whenever there is a board meeting and the investors are in the building I get nervous and wonder what we could possibly do to encourage people to buy more land. This is not the fun part of the job, obviously.

We try to make it as easy as possible for residents to own a whole sim, but realize that it's prohibitively expensive for teens to do so. I thought I should at least attempt to make it easier for teens to buy large plots of land, and in doing so receive the same concierge support that private estate owners receive. I looked up the top land owners and offered some of them the opportunity to reserve some land while we were setting up new regions. If we were able to sell enough land it would make sense to add new regions specifically for large landholders. People could get as much land as they wanted, receive the same treatment, in a scaled way, that MG estate owners receive, and the TG would grow faster. Everyone gets more right? Good idea?

Bottom line? It wasn't a good idea.

It didn't result in the sale of one entire sim, and people have been more upset than I'm willing to accept as 'growing pains'. We won't be doing that again. I'm sorry if it came across as favoritism and not a hard look at the numbers of the teen grid. I'm VERY sorry if anyone felt personally neglected in the way the choices were made. I'm MORE than happy to talk to anyone 1 on 1 about it or have a community meeting regarding the way we add regions to the teen grid. We'd like the grid to be something that every resident, parent, Lindens and investor agrees is worth every penny.

Some young residents wondered why the Lindens would likely net anything with such new land sales in terms of tier, since teen buyers kept on strict tier limits by parents worried about credit-cards sometimes end up releasing land to the public when they make new purchases. While no mini-version of Anshe Chung appears to have occupied the teen grid, there are several kids who reportedly have amassed as much as half a sim or more than 32,000 m2, for a monthly fee of $125 US.

In response to Blue's statement, the original poster said she was "stunned" and said she had become "leery" of the game.

For some adults hearing of the story, which began to make the rounds of the SL forums yesterday, Blue's startling but defensive admission speaks volumes; others yawned and dismissed the incident as minor.

"I'm not surprised this went on, and I'm proud of the teens who got wise to Linden favoritism," one parent who asked not to be named told the Herald.

"It's good that Blue was so quick with his explanation, but I worry about what this 'pressure of investors' is doing to the Lindens, and wonder if it accounts for the haste with which they are pushing through p2p," said the parent.

The existence of a teen FIC has been discounted by some, but as Picabo Hedges, an adult resident since 2004 with a child on the TG, explains, "the TG FIC" received preferential treatment/favoured status for whatever reason "whether for their skills, their having been part of the TG Beta or simply because they chatted up X or Y Linden while violating the MG TOS and then 'turning themselves in' during Amnesty Week."

A number of parents and children have complained that amnestied teens were able to keep their accounts to SLBoutique.com and continue downloading goods not available on the TG.

"First it was inventory and $L account transfers by former MG residents as they moved to the TG," said one disgruntled teen. "Then it was found that certain TG'ers were maintaining accounts on both grids and transferring items, scripts and money here (and vice versa). Then it was SL Boutique access and sale of those MG items on the TG. Now it's sweetheart land deals. Seems to be a pattern of preferential treatment for residents who did not start out their SL 'careers' on the TG like some of us have," said the teen.

The Blue Linden scandal has provided an interesting glimpse into the preoccupation of both adults and teens about perceived or actual favoritism by the Lindens.

"As an employee of LL I believe you should remain neutral to every customer. No matter what their tier rate is. Everyone should have an equal opportunity to own land in the sim of their choosing. There should be no under the table deals going on," said a youngster.

"Considering the extent of the FIC controversy my Dad has told me about during his time on the MG and the comments made here on the TG about it, the issue of 'level-playing field' continues to raise its head everytime I turn around," said a teen.

"My trust level has been shaken," concluded another.

"I view TSL as a way to step away from the social ranking system of the real world and play as who i want to be. This is a bit of a cruel wake up call because now it seems as if this is less of a community and more of a buisness or shop or something.I hope i can put out the Snow Sim Scandal out of my mind and I hope I can forget this," lamented still another player.

A few teens queried the Lindens as to why an auction system wasn't in place for the teen as well as the adult grid but there was no word from the Lindens on any consideration of such a proposal .

Rate my Linden .com

How's my driving? Rate Second Life Support:

by Pat the Rat

Are you concerned about Linden behavior? Have you ever gotten mad at the way a Linden has treated you?

Most people are so grateful that the Lindens are *there* that they don't think of them as problematic, behavior-wise. They are so earnest, and so ever-present, that you sometimes wonder if they ever sleep. Still, there are those who believe even such good Lindens should be held to some kind of code of conduct. A little-known episode has passed in the annals of Second Life without much commentary (except from the graphomanic Prokofy Neva). After much pestering by several lobbying groups this summer ranging from the apparently now-defunct (or hijacked) Metaverse Justice Watch founded by Anshe Chung and the more respected but evidently inactive Residents Action Committee founded by Lordfly Digeridoo, the Lindens finally produced something approximately some "ethics guidelines."

Published inworld near a sign showing a man juggling (what are we supposed to make of *that* visual message?), the guidelines have some meat-and-potatoes sort of behavioral guidelines like the threshold for when you "kick" (i.e. suddenly log off) a customer.

Scant and meager stuff indeed, with nothing about sexual harassment or conflicts of interest in running one's own business or touting other residents' businesses who may have been on one's friends' rolladex in a previous lifetime.

Rumor has it that the guidelines were deployed inworld -- then suddenly removed for rewriting -- then put out again. We've already gotten used to myriad variations on the TOS dropping down in front of us like parking meter flags each time we load SL.

Taking some 60 days to appear with the documents, the Lindens no doubt had at least some haggling amongst themselves, looking at the different balls they have to keep in the air -- their desire to have Lindens mix it up with residents inworld and be a part of it themselves; their desire to have residents participate in world-creation but yet not get in the way of selling the product to still more residents; their desire to promote creativity even as they co-opt it in the name of creating *more* options for competitive edge and creativity; their desire to uphold the image on their corporate website where they hammer home that "the product is cool, the work is cool, the people are cool, the company is cool, the location is cool." Hey, cool!

But...whenever something is just so...gosh...cool...what happens when it is not? Can it *not* be cool?

Everyone knows that Lindens are sometimes bad. They can get snappish late at night in their telecommuter jobs dealing with cranky customers. They play favorites, we are told, with bits like Jeska and the modeling for SLBoutique.com. There's that time a Linden was seen holding down dwell for Bad Girls in Smoky...or the time a Linden at a community meeting started tellling a customer arrogantly "this isn't about you,"or even the time a new Linden was reported *gasp* taunting a resident for getting a stiffy over Philip Linden's lovely hair.

Has anything really serious ever happened with a Linden? And if it did...would we know? Lindens -- like Colin Linden -- disappear from the list completely, and no one knows why. Others who we know said goodbye like Haney Linden remain in the list. There are all kinds of Lindens with funny names like RealEstate Linden who is even in some resident project groups and GoodCop and BadCop Linden (can't wait to meet them!).

Still, the Lindens are trying! Some of them, who have been targeted in forums for particularly difficult interactions, are even sporting siggies these days, like the on