Moderators: Funkmasterr, noel
yeah, languages never evolvemiir wrote:And maybe you should actually learn the orgins of the languange that your country has butchered before you criticize someone for spelling.I think the author of the article missed the point entirely if he thinks SL is all about 'furries and paedophiles.' And he should at least learn to spell if he's going to use big words like pederast.
so then by your logic we should all use thx and pls as proper uses of words?Boogahz wrote:yeah, languages never evolvemiir wrote:And maybe you should actually learn the orgins of the languange that your country has butchered before you criticize someone for spelling.I think the author of the article missed the point entirely if he thinks SL is all about 'furries and paedophiles.' And he should at least learn to spell if he's going to use big words like pederast.
I wouldn't be shocked if something like that became more commonTruant wrote:so then by your logic we should all use thx and pls as proper uses of words?Boogahz wrote:yeah, languages never evolvemiir wrote:And maybe you should actually learn the orgins of the languange that your country has butchered before you criticize someone for spelling.I think the author of the article missed the point entirely if he thinks SL is all about 'furries and paedophiles.' And he should at least learn to spell if he's going to use big words like pederast.
Or maybe leet speak!Boogahz wrote:Pesky wrote: And maybe you should actually learn the orgins of the languange that your country has butchered before you criticize someone for spelling.Stumpy wrote: yeah, languages never evolveI wouldn't be shocked if something like that became more commonBooger wrote: so then by your logic we should all use thx and pls as proper uses of words?
Holy shit has he/she never logged onto an online environment before? That stuff happens everywhere. People were cybering long before SL came around. And I don't see how SL 'encourages' it. His whole rant is bullshit. Other than perhaps Lindens population claims. But on that I couldn't care less since I don't even play SL. They can claim a population of 2 billion for all I care.One day, Jack Thompson and the public at large are going to find out about Second Life and when they do, every online environment is going to be in deep, deep trouble because of what Second Life has allowed, no, encouraged, to go on in their systems.
Americanisation isn't evolution, it's the linguistic equivalent of docking puppies tails.Boogahz wrote:yeah, languages never evolvemiir wrote:And maybe you should actually learn the orgins of the languange that your country has butchered before you criticize someone for spelling.I think the author of the article missed the point entirely if he thinks SL is all about 'furries and paedophiles.' And he should at least learn to spell if he's going to use big words like pederast.
Second Life to go open source
The creator of the burgeoning 3D virtual world expects it to grow even faster with outside programming help, David Kirkpatrick reports in a Fortune exclusive.
FORTUNE Magazine
By David Kirkpatrick, Fortune senior editor
January 8 2007: 7:00 AM EST
NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Aiming to take advantage of its already-impressive momentum, San Francisco's Linden Lab, developer of the Second Life virtual online world, will announce Monday that it is taking the first major step toward opening up its software for the contributions of any interested programmer.
The company will immediately release open source versions of its client software for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. In order to enter and move around the Second Life service, users must download and run this software on their computer desktop. But now, says Linden CEO Philip Rosedale, independent programmers will be able to "modify it, fire it up and sign on with it." The company gave Fortune exclusive access to executives in advance of the change.
While this initial step will open up what is essentially the user's window into Second Life for modification, it will leave Linden Lab in control of the proprietary software code for all Second Life's backend services - the server software that makes the world exist. However, executives say that the company's eventual intention is to release an open source version of that software as well, once it has improved security and other core functions. They say they have been preparing for the open source move for about three years.
The client, or viewer, software now being open sourced is what enables users to control their avatars, or digital in-world personas, as well as communicate with other users, and buy and sell virtual goods and services.
"We think that if we open source Second Life its product quality will move forward at a pace nobody's ever seen," says Rosedale. Almost all of Second Life's in-world content is already created by the company's customers, the world's residents, using software created by Linden Lab. With it, residents build a vast variety of in-world experiences, ranging from sex clubs to skydiving stations and golf games, from a fantastic anime-themed city to virtual recreations of Dublin and Amsterdam. All are populated by the avatars, or virtual representations, of other users. Many users own land where they build homes and businesses.
Linden executives calculate that over 15 percent of Second Life's residents are currently writing code in the so-called "scripting language" which enables users to build sophisticated in-world creations. Today Rosedale says they are writing 7 million lines of new code every week, in order to do things like modifying a doorbell so that it sends an e-mail message when a visitor rings it.
"We feel we may already have a bigger group of people writing code than any shared project in history, including Linux," says Rosedale. While this is often elementary code, it means, he says, that "we have an army of people waiting to work on this." Adds CTO Cory Ondrejka: "Why wouldn't we leverage our community and give them the opportunity to make Second Life what they want it to be?"
Many soldiers in that army are professional programmers at companies like IBM (Charts), Sun (Charts) and Autodesk (Charts) which have employees working on projects in Second Life. In addition, Linden Lab calculates that 65 small new companies have arisen that help build products and services inside Second Life.
Improving the client code is urgent for the company. Says Sibley Verbeck, CEO of Electric Sheep, one of the largest in-world construction companies, with 30 employees: "Linden Lab has done extraordinarily well creating a platform for very motivated early adopters. But they have not made the front-end experience ready for the mass market. It's hard to learn, hard to use, and hard to find content even once you learn how to use it." He's confident, though, that "those barriers will be addressed very rapidly upon the adoption of this open source initiative." He says his own company, among many, has a big incentive to improve Second Life's client code.
Interest in Second Life - which is free for basic use - has grown dramatically with a quickening pace of press coverage in places like Reuters, Business Week, Time, Wired and The New York Times, as well as consumer publications and Web sites worldwide. New registrants were arriving at a rate of 20,000 per month last January but by October the number had soared to 254,000. But many were apparently thwarted by how difficult the service is to use. Only 40,000 of those October registrants were still using Second Life 30 days after they first joined, according to figures recently provided by Rosedale.
Linden Lab claims 2.5 million "residents," meaning people who have registered for Second Life. But the service has only around 250,000 active members who still sign in more than 30 days after registering. Nonetheless, that group of active users is currently growing at about 15 percent per month.
Linden Lab claims its move represents the first time a market-leading company has taken a proprietary product and released it instead as open source. Netscape, by contrast, only released code for its Web browser once Microsoft had overcome its one-time lead in the market. That code, of course, eventually became the base for today's popular Firefox.
CEO Rosedale says that opening up the software is good for Linden Lab: "We believe that if we open-sourced every single line of code we have ever written it would only increase our rate of growth." That's because, he says, Second Life is a business that shows what are called "network effects." In such a market, every incremental user makes the service of greater value to existing users. The more people there are in Second Life the more interesting it becomes.
Under the GNU General Public License that Linden is using, if competitors were to use its open source code to build their own virtual worlds, any improvement they make to the software would have to be shared publicly. That means it would give the most benefit to Second Life, so long as it remained the largest such world.
Rosedale and other executives say they fully expect there eventually to be multiple virtual worlds that use Linden's code, or that at least are interoperable with Second Life, so avatars can pass from one world to another. Says Rosedale: "Say IBM builds its own intranet version with our code that's somewhat different from Second Life. But it's probably not that different. A user may say 'Wow, this virtual thing IBM's built is pretty cool. Now I want to go the mainland.' And we have another customer."
IBM Vice President for Technical Strategy Irving Wladawsky-Berger, a close student of Second Life, heard about the impending move toward open source from a Linden employee. "They have the right thought," he says, "which is that open source things work with the marketplace. But this is a field in its infancy that will be very competitive. Linden Lab might end up with a huge leadership position in a certain class of tools for virtual worlds, but those might not be the right tools for, let's say, a surgeon learning a new procedure in an immersive online environment. Second Life can be wildly successful, but so can others."
Says Linden Lab Board Chairman Mitch Kapor: "The whole philosophy of the company is about empowerment, with the overwhelming majority of everything being built by the residents. So going open source is part of the logical progression of our business. The most open system is also what will foster the most innovation, because people will be free to experiment."
In total, the software for Second Life comprises five gigabytes of source code, according to Joe Miller, Linden's vice president for platform and technology development. He says that with the members of its community helping it improve the client software, Linden can devote more of its own efforts to essential work at the server level to enable Second Life to grow faster. Near-term, the company expects users will create code to address bugs and other problems, as well as do things like enable Second Life to run on cell phones, or add support for different kinds of multi-media content inside the world.
Linden Lab will review open source contributions to decide which outside features it will incorporate into its own official versions of the client software. Unofficial software will not be given customer support by the company. But it will shortly open a test version of its server "grid," so developers can try out their software before unleashing it in the real Second Life.
Neato. There are a lot of Scandinavians in Second Life. I suppose the sunny world of SL appeals to them during the dark months up there near the North Pole.
Why didnt i transfer my Lindens to real money? I had lots but i gave it away! lolBoogahz wrote:People pay Lindens for the clothes, and Lindens can be exchanged for real money.Kwonryu DragonFist wrote:Holy crap!
People really pay real money for SL-clothes Winn?
Good for the mom!
It depends on the "exchange rate" at the time. It's worth whatever anyone would pay for it. I actually pulled my "money" into my paypal account when I left, and made about 7 bucks over what I spent for the three month premium account.Kwonryu DragonFist wrote:Why didnt i transfer my Lindens to real money? I had lots but i gave it away! lolBoogahz wrote:People pay Lindens for the clothes, and Lindens can be exchanged for real money.Kwonryu DragonFist wrote:Holy crap!
People really pay real money for SL-clothes Winn?
Good for the mom!
How much is 10.000 Lindens in real cash?
Not any more Winnow. They lowered it to 300 if you get a premium now. Older members still get what they signed up for, but 300 a week now for new members.Winnow wrote:The typical exchange rate is 250-280 Lindens = $1.00 U.S.
If you pay $9.99/month (you don't have to) you get 500 Lindens/Week
2000 Lindens = roughly $7.50-8.00 U.S. so if you quit playing SL and forgot to cancel your 9.99/month sub, you could sell your lindens and make back most of the 9.99/month. Nice to have that option.
[/hide]Just 30 percent! The other 70 are taking balloon rides.Second Life has its own currency called Linden Dollars, which are currently trading at $270 per real dollar.
"Establishing some micro-transaction currency was really important because obviously there are a lot of things you might want to make and sell for a very small amount of money because there is no inherent costs associated with those things," Rosedale said.
Those micro-transactions can add up. Several Second Life entrepreneurs are clearing $200,000 a year. Of course, in any world where people have money to spend, there will also be a sexual element. Rice said Second Life is about 30 percent sex driven.
"And you know, in its early stages, everything kind of starts that way, I guess. I see more casinos than I do weird clubs," he said.
Nevertheless, a lot of Second Life is rated G. You can take a balloon ride. You can listen to a live concert through your computer speakers. You can join a Harvard Law school seminar with fellow students who are actually scattered all over the world. Still, Second Life isn't quite a paradise yet. It's experiencing growing pains in the form of software bugs and freezes and Rosedale acknowledges that there's a lot of work yet to be done.
"In just a few years, this is gonna look like walking into a movie screen," Rosedale said. "And that's just gonna be such an amazing thing."
They are going to implement "Restricted Logins" during peak usage times to Premium accounts.Winnow wrote: It doesn't look overrun with politicians complaining about furrys. It's still pretty laggy though. There were 30K on the server today and it was taxed so they still need to figure out a much better way to handle a bunch of people.
Well, the last part of that announcement details their longer term plans to fix the problem:Aslanna wrote:Sounds like a band-aid approach to fixing the actual issues.
I've been playing around with the Huddles Animator Remote Macros. It's pretty advanced as far as building in game macros. Here are some of the commands that may be used:Scaling the Grid continues to be our highest priority, and over the next several months we’ll be working on the following:
- additional caching systems
- reducing write load on the central database by partitioning or removing data
- addressing critical bottlenecks
- deploying more internal ‘web services’.
Beyond that we are building ambitious plans for re-architecting the Grid, so that in the future we can realize the full potential of the Second Life Grid to support millions of concurrent users.
[NAME]text
If the first command in a macro is the [name] tag, the text that follows it will
be displayed as the name of the macro on the EZAD button.
[STOP]
This tag stops the current animation.
[REPEAT]
Starts the current macro over again. This is ignored if you are in dance mode.
[GO]XX
Jump to play another macro from the current notecard specified by XX. 1 is the first line of the
notecard.
[XX]text
When you put a number inside the brackets, the EZAD broadcasts the text that follows on this
channel number. Useful mainly for commands to control other scripts which are listening on
off channels
[WHISPER]text & [WHISPER:XX]text
The text that follows a whisper command will be whispered instead of just a normal say. Whispers
are limited to 10 meters instead of the normal 20 meters for most chat. You can also have the
the EZAD whisper on off channels by changing the XX to a number.
[SHOUT]text & [SHOUT:XX]text
The text that follows a shout command will be shouted instead of just a normal say. Shouts
have a range of 100 meters instead of the normal 20 meters for most chat. You can also have the
the EZAD shout on off channels by changing the XX to a number.
[AO_ON] & [AO_OFF]
These tags turn the AO off or on. For instance you might want to play an animation that doesn't
work properly when you AO is on. You could have a macro like this:
[AO_OFF]|disco_dance|20|[STOP]|[AO_ON]
This macro would turn off the AO, play the animation "disco_dance", wait 20 seconds, stop
the animation and turn the AO back on.
[LINK]text & [LINK:XX]text
These tags should only be used by experienced scripters. You can drop your own script into the
EZAD and use the EZAD macro system to control the script through link messages. For example
[LINK]SCRIPT_ON
This macro will broadcast the message SCRIPT_ON to all the linked prims in the EZAD. If you used
[LINK:4] instead the message would only be sent to link 4.
[DIALOG]text,button1,button2,button3,XX
The dialog tag allows you to set up a dialog menu pop up from the EZAD. You must specify the
text to be displayed on pop up, the options for the buttons and finally the channel the dialog
will be said on. You can have up to 12 buttons on a dialog pop up and each button can be up
to 24 characters each.
Dialogs would be useful for commands for scripts that must be said by the avatar itself.
For instance, you might have a dialog to control your multi-gadget which looks like this:
[DIALOG]Multi-Gadget menu options,flight on,flight off,mg pose,mg show,mg hide,23
[MAP]sim name,x,y,z
This command will bring up a map and highlight the location in 'sim name' at location x, y, z.
[REZy:z]object name
This command will rez the object named "object name" at location x, y, z relative to your
avatar. For instance:
[rez:4:0:6]anvil
That macro will rez the object named "anvil" 4 meters in front of you and 6 meters above you.
[RAND]x,y
This command will cause the macro to wait for a random amount of time before it goes on
to the next command. The amount of seconds it waits is y seconds plus a random number
between 0 X. For instance:
[rand]30,90
This command will cause the macro to wait between 90 and 120 seconds before doing
the next command--a random number of seconds between 0 and 30 plus 90 seconds.
You can leave off the second number if you wish.
[URL]web address,text
This command allows you to add URLs to your EZAD. When you use this in a macro, it pops
you out of SL and opens the web site on your browser and displays the "text" in the
blue drop down dialog before you go.
[TARGET]
Put this anywhere inside an emote and your EZAD will replace it with the name of your
current target.
[HUG]anim1,anim2,time,move,emote
When playing a hug macro, the user will be given a dialog with the closest avatars listed.
If the avatar you choose gives you permission to hug, your avatar will move to theirs and
a hug will take place.
- anim1 - the animation that your avatar will use
- anim2 - the animation that the other avatar will use
- time - the length in seconds (if left blank, it defaults to 15.0 seconds)
- move (TRUE/FALSE) - if set to TRUE, your avatar will move to theirs before the hug
if FALSE, your avatars will simply play the animation whereever they are.
- emote - the emote text that plays when the avatars hug, it can be left blank.
Siji wrote:I'd be curious what the free/premium user ratio is.
Second Life avatars to speak
The animated avatars for members of the popular virtual world Second Life are about to get more realistic. Massachusetts-based Vivox said that its technology will enable the three-dimensional avatars representing people in Second Life to "speak with each other simply by walking up to other residents and talking." The speech capacity will add a new dimension to Second Life; voice conversations alongside the current instant messaging mode of communication. "Integrated voice is a natural extension of the virtual world our residents are building. Voice will further enrich that community and introduce new opportunities in social development and commerce," said Linden vice president Joe Miller. The speech program will include spatial audio to "mirror real-life" by making voices sound as though they are coming from the speakers' directions.
http://blog.johnedwards.com/story/2007/2/27/21847/2507Shortly before midnight (CST) on Monday, February 26, a group of republican Second Life users, some sporting "Bush '08" tags, vandalized the John Edwards Second Life HQ. They plastered the area with Marxist/Lenninist posters and slogans, a feces spewing obsenity, and a photoshopped picture of John in blackface, all the while harrassing visitors with right-wing nonsense and obsenity-laden abuse of Democrats in general and John in particular.
I witnessed this event, taking names and photos, including the owners of the pictures. I also kept and saved a copy of the chat log. I have filed an abuse report with Linden Labs, and am awaiting their investigation.
The Weather Channel Launches Headquarters on Popular 'Second Life'
Virtual Destination Provides Extreme Sport Challenges for SL Residents and
Premieres Episodes of The Weather Channel Programming
ATLANTA, March 9 /PRNewswire/ -- The Weather Channel (TWC) today
announced the creation and launch of a virtual headquarters in the popular,
3D virtual world known as Second Life(R). "Weather Island" will be
available to visitors beginning today. The island will serve as a
headquarters for The Weather Channel, host an extreme sports park as well
as provide a destination to screen premiere episodes of the new program
"Epic Conditions."
Second Life residents, four-and-a-half million strong, will experience
a fully interactive destination featuring adventures ranging from skiing
"Mount Epic" to mountain-biking the Moab Dessert. A "big wave" surfing
simulator will open soon and other attractions are still in development.
Premieres of shows from The Weather Channel will be hosted in Second Life,
showcasing an episode from the program "Epic Conditions" along with short
clips of other episodes. New episodes will be premiered on Fridays on
Weather Island and on the dedicated broadband channel located at
http://www.weather.com/epic prior to airing on the network.
The debut of Weather Island on Second Life is another example of The
Weather Channel embracing technology to reach weather enthusiasts. "Be it
with our unique and original cable programming, weather.com, our mobile or
our broadband efforts, we are constantly providing weather to our audience
in new and innovative ways," says Debora Wilson, president, The Weather
Channel Companies. "With Second Life, we're hopeful we can expose our brand
in an original and meaningful way. We also see Second Life as a potential
advertising platform for brands currently partnering with us."
Features and Experiences on Weather Island
Each portion of Weather Island will offer the opportunity to interact
with other residents, take on extreme-sport challenges, as well as obtain
factual information about the real-world landscapes and climates that are
replicated on the island. The island offers a variety of dynamic weather
effects, from blizzard conditions in the mountains to torrential downpours
in the desert. These are the most complex weather systems ever created for
Second Life.
Weather HQ
A key destination on Weather Island is the Premier Amphitheatre, which
will provide sneak previews of the latest episodes of "Epic Conditions," an
extreme-sports program premiering on The Weather Channel in March.
Residents can visit this stunning, outdoor venue which will host on-demand
video episodes of the Epic Conditions program. Other smaller video
screening facilities are scattered throughout the island.
Epic Conditions
The Epic Conditions portion of the Weather Channel's Second Life
presence is the cornerstone of the experience, providing the most realistic
and intense "Extreme Conditions" experience available to date including
Epic Extreme Skiing, featuring Mount Epic. Also available at launch is the
Mountain Biking Moab Desert Challenge, situated in a highly-realistic
simulation of the Moab Desert. Rolling out shortly after launch of Weather
Island is the Hawaii Big Wave Surfing simulator.
Infinite Vision Media (IVM), a leader in virtual world development and
interactive experience design, partnered with The Weather Channel to create
the Second Life presence. Drew Stein, CEO of IVM explains, "IVM has been in
Second Life since the inception of the community and we can say with
certainty that The Weather Channel is entering the community in the most
strategic way - - from providing Second Life residents new experiences to
potentially offering companies new marketing venues."
My recommendation to take your time on the tutorial island and then newbie help island is buried in this thread so I'll say it again. Once you leave those two islands you can't go back so get used to the interface and learn the basics there before moving on.Kaldaur wrote:I think I may give it a try. I'm interested to see the world for myself.
Virtual Rape Is Traumatic, but Is It a Crime?
Last month, two Belgian publications reported that the Brussels police have begun an investigation into a citizen's allegations of rape -- in Second Life.
I am half convinced that the tantalizingly brief story, printed in De Morgen and Het Laatste Nieuws, is a hoax or an April Fool's joke.
Yet it has prompted several threads of discussion, from a legal analysis to four pages of commentary at the Second Citizen forums.
Unfortunately, rape in virtual spaces is not unheard of. And I'm not talking about the "consensual" rape built into some games (although if you're interested in that debate, GameGrene has a good conversation about it).
There is no question that forced online sexual activity -- whether through text, animation, malicious scripts or other means -- is real; and is a traumatic experience that can have a profound and unpleasant aftermath, shaking your faith in yourself, in the community, in the platform, even in sex itself.
Our laws say that an adult subjecting a teenager or child to sexual words, images or suggestions on the internet is preying on their mental and emotional state in a sexual way. Even if you never try to meet the minor in person, and even if you never touch them or expose your naked self to them, it is a crime to attempt to engage sexually with a minor.
If it is a criminal offense to sexually abuse a child on the internet, how can we say it is not possible to rape an adult online?
But I have a hard time calling it "rape," or believing it's a matter for the police. No matter how disturbed you are by a brutal sexual attack online, you cannot equate it to shivering in a hospital with an assailant's sweat or other excretions still damp on your body.
That's not to say I dismiss the trauma a person suffers after being raped online. Virtual rape is not just a prank, one the target needs to get over or expect as part of a role-playing world. (And if you are inclined to pooh-pooh this, first read author Julian Dibble's chapter about a rape that occurred in a text-only MOO in the early '90s.)
A virtual rape is by definition sudden, explicit and often devastating. If you've never immersed yourself in online life, you might not realize the emotional availability it takes to be a regular member of an internet community. The psychological aspects of relating are magnified because the physical aspects are (mostly) removed.
Even regular users might not realize how wide open they are until something drastic happens -- they fall in love, get dumped, have a huge fight or get attacked in the online parallel of rape. In that context, a sexual assault can indeed have a deep impact on a person's life, especially if they are actual rape survivors.
Some suggest that the best way to deal with a virtual rape is to ignore it, or simply log off and come back as another user.
But in a game, you don't want to lose the long-term investment you've made in your character. And these days, your real world income or professional reputation can depend on your online self.
In a 3-D marketplace, your avatar's name is your brand. You can change the appearance of your cartoon without much impact, but changing your name makes it too difficult for customers or clients to find you.
If an online environment becomes too hostile or scary, or causes you such great anxiety you cannot work or interact with friends, more has been taken from you than your playtime. Your friends will gather around to give you emotional support -- but your customers will wander off and shop elsewhere.
Adult communities facilitate our need to go deeper into our sexual selves, even into secret places around gender and taboos that we cannot acknowledge anywhere else. We feel safe because of the peculiar blend of disclosure and anonymity provided in online communities, and we journey along paths we might not even glance at in the physical world. We don't expect to have our control wrenched away or our minds assaulted or even the intensity of our anguish during and after.
The truth is, anywhere people gather, we bring all of our potential with us -- for love, for sex, for community and creation, and for violence and destruction, too. That's why we still enjoy pondering whether cybersex is real sex and whether an online affair is more or less damaging to a relationship than a physical affair. It's a tacit acknowledgement that while the time-space continuum may change, people don't.
Rape is the ultimate perversion of sexual intimacy. Like sex, rape has mental and emotional elements that go beyond the body and the damage to the mind and spirit generally takes much longer to heal than the body.
But that doesn't make the psychological upheaval of virtual rape anywhere near the trauma of real rape. And I can't see us making virtual rape a matter for the real-life police.
It's a shitty thing to do to someone. But it's not a crime.
LOL GEM!Gemily wrote:hah I had fun making this one. http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k81/d ... Graves.jpg
Anyone still log on to this game?
y:z]object name
