Linden Lab: standalone servers soon

AVWW 2008 continues (a wrap-up of Day 1 will appear soon), with some superb presentations and discussion.

This morning I attended the presentation by Linden Lab’s Chris Collins, who gave an interesting overview of Linden Lab’s approach and future plans. Two standouts for me were:

1. The 2009 beta of a standalone Second Life grid – this, like the OpenSim platform, will allow users to run their own grid. Expect to hear more on the beta program in the very near future.

2. When asked on the delay in Australian Second Life servers, there was an admission that the ‘real soon now’ of 18-months ago had stretched considerably, with no commitment given on when, if ever, this may occur.

The standalone servers will provide a great opportunity for Australians in addition to current offerings like Openlife. Once further work is done on being able to move between grids, Australia may actually have a higher performance option than currently exists.

More on AVWW presentations soon – if you have the chance today, jump into the Second Life AVWW sessions for some fascinating insights.

Weekend Whimsy

1. Tiny Nation Premiere (Second Life)

2. Angels of Light in Second Life

3. Baby when the light….

AVWW 2008 commences

The Australasian Virtual Worlds Workshop is underway today and continues tomorrow (all day Friday and Saturday 28th / 29th November Australian time). The base for events is Swinburne University’s Koala Island.

It’s still not too late to get involved and it’s even free to join the Second Life component of AVWW (click here for landmark)

We’ll be covering both the RL and SL event over the coming two days – the event organisers have arranged a comprehensive program so do take some time to participate if you can. We’re proud to be a media partner for this event.

Check it out in-world

Linden Lab goes narrative

Its only been a day since Linden Lab released a podcast on a Second Life innovator, but they’ve now released a text-based story on another innovator, Languagelab.

It’s great to see some further showcasing of Second Life success stories – Linden Lab just need to work on their communications strategy.

The podcast released a little over 24 hours ago was stated as being part of a new podcast series called Stories from Second Life. The story released today is part of “an occasional series” called Stories from Second Life, but it’s not a podcast.

My best guess is that Stories from Second Lifeis an occasional podcast series that contains some non-podcast material released non-occasionally….

Pedantic observations aside, this sort of profiling can only benefit those profiled and the broader cause of illustrating some of the benefits of virtual worlds. If you’d like to suggest future profile subjects, here’s where to go.

Linden Lab launch another podcast

Linden Lab have had a couple of attempts at regular podcasting, and the latest is a series called Stories from Second Life. The subject of the first one is Studio Wikitecture, a collaborative architecture project.

The prolific Torley Linden is producing these podcasts so hopefully this will become a true series of podcasts. Strangely, you can only play the podcast directly from the Linden blog – given that adding podcasts to services like iTunes is free, it’d be nice to see that option in the future.

Don’t forget, we have our own podcasts – our next episode is being recorded this weekend.

Who’s your Daddy?

Mark Kirk

US Congressman Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) would like to be your parent. At least, he would like to act as though he was your parent.

Starting back in May 2008, Kirk has been singling out Second Life for special attention: he would like legislation to be introduced that prevents children from accessing Second Life– both the Teen Grid and the Main Grid (he makes no distinction), through public libraries and in schools.

On the surface, it sounds alright. We all want to protect the kiddies, right? Who is going to say an ill word against legislation that looks like it is designed to protect our children? But then you have to wonder: why should teenagers be excluded from a place designed especially for them? How will adults who want to access Second Life through libraries and schools do so?

There is no easy, cost-effective way to restrict access to content in public libraries and schools. Unless the Congressman wants to spend many more of the limited dollars already available to libraries and schools on solutions that would allow some people to access Second Life but not others, then Second Life would effectively not be available to anyone at these venues.

Legislation banning access for kids is not considered to be censorship – law that acts in place of parental control is often seen as advantageous.

Legislation that also functionally causes a service to be banned for adults is a bit stickier. It may not strictly constitute censorship, as the law would not state that adults are banned. However, functionally, censorship would be the end result.

Does it depend on the end result, or on the original intent, as to whether this is in fact a case of censorship?

For those who are not US citizens, here are the words of the First Amendment (1791):

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

This is the fundamental piece of law protecting US citizens from censorship. Formally, censorship is prior restraint of communication based on content and enforced by law.  Censorship by the government is broadly unconstitutional.

What Kirk seems to be trying to achieve, intentionally or unintentionally, is an end-run around the constitution. There’s precedent for the State acting in loco parentis, but this sort of legislative restriction barring adults would never fly. Because it’s targeted at kids, and catches adults as collateral damage (something Kirk must have considered), it could squeak through to the detriment of everyone.

On another tack is this related idea, which to some extent makes the legislation pointless:

Thinking members of Congress, teachers and librarians have said that website filtering in the schools and libraries won’t protect kids because they aren’t finding predators in schools and libraries, but from their home computers that they surf alone in their rooms because they have nothing to do after school as many after school activities have been cut.

Perhaps a more useful way to spend Congress’ time and funds is:

  • To put more effort into providing alternative activities for children after school

and, maybe even more importantly

  • To put more effort into educating children about the use of services provided over the Internet.

An educated child is more likely to be self-monitoring. A restricted child is more likely to see excitement, danger and really wild things in those services that have been restricted.

So, what do you think? Is this legislation “in loco parentis”? Or just plain loco?

Source

AVWW this weekend – registrations still open

Just a reminder that one of Australia’s best virtual worlds get-togethers in on this weekend in Melbourne and in Second LifeAVWW 2008.

Registrations remain open – there’s no cost for in-world attendance, $20 for students and presenters attending the Melbourne event, $50 for other attendees.

There’s a great program on offer so do think about registering – Australians are at the forefront of virtual worlds research and development and forums like this will ensure things keep going from strength to strength.

Our own Feldspar Epstein will be attending this weekend to cover the best of the event but nothing will beat being there yourself.

Papal Finances

‘Nescafe’ manages to arrange a meeting with the Pope at the Vatican.
 
After receiving the Papal blessing, the Nescafe official whispers ‘your Eminence, we have an offer for you. Nescafe is prepared to donate US$100 million to the church if you change the Lord’s Prayer from ‘give us this day our daily bread’ to ‘give us this day our daily coffee.’
 
The Pope responds, ‘That is impossible. The prayer is the word of the Lord. It must not be changed.’
 
‘Well,’ says the Nescafe man, ‘we anticipated your reluctance. For this reason we will increase our offer to $300 million.’

‘My son, it is impossible. For the prayer is the word of the Lord and it must not be changed.’
 
The Nescafe guy says ‘Your Holiness, we at Nescafe respect your adherence to the faith, but we do have one final offer. We will donate $500 million – that’s half a billion dollars – to the great Catholic Church if you would only change the Lord’s Prayer from ‘give us this day our daily bread’ to ‘give us this day our daily coffee.’ Please consider it.’

And he leaves.

The next day the Pope convenes the College of Cardinals. ‘There is some good news,’ he announces, ‘and some bad news. The good news is that the Church will come into $500 million.’
 
‘And the bad news your Holiness?’ asks a Cardinal.
 
“We’re losing the ‘Tip Top’ account.”

The Watch – virtual worlds in the news

1. The Independent (UK) – Cybersex rules: Inside the world of ‘teledildonics’. “When I first deposited Journalist Hellershanks in Second Life, I wanted him to stand out. I gave him a shock of bright- orange hair, and a crisp white shirt, and I adjusted his height to about six-foot-four. He looked pretty good, I thought; but he was still missing something. And so, one morning earlier this month, I sent Hellershanks off to buy a penis.”

2. E-Commerce Times (USA) – Healthcare for Avatars? Medicine in the Metaverse. “In December 2007, Palomar Pomerado Health broke ground on a 600-bed hospital in Escondido, Calif. Just two months later, officials held a ribbon-cutting ceremony, allowing patients, staff and others to tour Palomar Medical Center West and play with new technology deployed throughout the facility. No, this wasn’t the most rapid hospital construction in history. The ribbon cutting took place in Second Life, a 3-D, virtual world that exists entirely on the Web.”

3. CNET (USA) – Avatars to run Altadyn business meetings. “Altadyn, a company that specializes in 3D virtual-world creation platforms, announced on Tuesday that it has released a new product that will turn business meetings into a living virtual world. Dubbed Online Meeting, Altadyn’s service aims to bridge the gap between 3D virtual worlds and Web conferencing. The service offers basic conferencing features like shared presentations, instant messaging, and live conversation through Skype, but it believes its main selling point is that it uses the company’s 3DXplorer virtual platform to create a virtual world that resembles a conference room.”

4. New York Times (USA) – Immersion. “Photographer Robbie Cooper shows just how focused young video-game players can be.”

5. iTWire (Australia) – Second Suicide as Google drops bomb on Lively avatars. “Back in July, when news of the Google Lively launch reached us here at iTWire, we said that the immersive 3D world populated by avatars in which you could create your own space to chat sounded a lot like Second Life. In fact, we went as far a to call it a ‘me too avatar world’ which it really very much was. Not just Second Life but with shades of There.com and IMVU thrown in. ”

6. The Globe and Mail (Canada) – So much for my so-called second life. “My name is Edith Firanelli and I was born in Antarctica. I have short dark hair, which I hide under a wool tuque, and a hot, if unrealistically proportioned, body. I’ve got no money, no job, no home, no skills and no friends. The good news is, I can fly and teleport. The bad: I still occasionally walk into trees and buildings. I spend my days wandering around a strange, computer-generated landscape, having disjointed, acronym-heavy chit-chat with strangers called things like Dimitry Barbosa and Beautiful Barbara. Maybe one day I will fulfill my dream and get a job as a nightclub dancer (like I said, I have no skills), but until then I will stand around like a wallflower in the suburbs of cyberspace waiting for my controller to finish checking her e-mail. It’s an aimless existence, being an avatar, but someone’s got to do it.”

7. The Escapist (USA) – Over 100,000 PlayStation Home Invites Tonight. “The PlayStation Home team hit a milestone last night with the release of beta 1.0 for testers of Sony’s virtual world application for the PlayStation 3. While the release marks a series of improvements for the service, the real news for those outside the secret confines of Home is that tonight, over 100,000 beta invites for Home will be sent out to European PlayStation Network users.”

8. MSNBC (USA) – Second Life bank crash foretold financial crisis. “A string of bank collapses prompted Alan Greenspan, U.S. economic guru and former head of the Federal Reserve, to admit last month that lending institutions could not always be trusted to regulate themselves. He could have taken a cue sooner by looking at the 2007 collapse of Ginko Financial, a virtual investment bank in the online game “Second Life.”

9. Silicon Valley Insider (USA) – Exclusive: Why Reuters Left Second Life, And How Linden Lab Can Fix It. “So what happened? Is Second Life dying? No, but the buzz is gone. For all the sound and fury over recent price hikes and layoffs at Linden Lab, Second Life has a community of fanatically loyal users. Since Linden Lab derives its revenue from user fees, not advertisements, Second Life is much more likely to survive the Web 2.0 shakeout than most other startups.”

10. The Industry Standard (USA) – Linden Lab focusing on higher-end systems for Second Life. “A senior Linden Lab executive has indicated that Second Life’s client software is being developed to take advantage of more powerful computers, but did not rule out future efforts involving low-end systems. Ginsu Yoon, Linden Lab’s VP of business affairs, told The Industry Standard in an interview last week that the “core part” of the Second Life experience were best shown on higher-end computing platforms.”

Weekend Whimsy

1. Second Life : Felix Meritis Monastery with Clementia Merlin

2. Space Navigator Demo – Google Earth & Second Life

3. Tour of CONSENT! game in Teen Second Life

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