Today, they don’t. And they only want to show numbers now. They don’t want any friction at all to come between someone wishing to add to their illustratious numbers, and a little thing like exploitation.

They also couldn’t limit the number of parcels or meters in a free market, where their business model depends on them./

Wouldn’t it be as simple as to limit the number of parcels of land that could be owned by each credit card number?

I mean – sure, if you have 2000 Credit Cards, you could own a lot of land – of course, each extra number is extra risk for the holder, with Real life fraud and all.

You couldn’t limit by IP – in the case of say, a College… Or by account, they could just make more – easy. But Credit Card number… hmm, or perhaps EVEN better – billing address?

Afterall – how many ‘regions’ could one actually ‘play’ before the point it’s just hoarding land.

But I guess i’ts a risk – I mean seriously, buy all the land you want – you best just *hope* someone buys it back, or you’re stuck with it. Perhaps, instead of paying extra for land each month, I’ll just buy Lindens. I could have plenty of fun without even one square meter of land.

They do often feel like they are in beta. I think we have to ask the question: will they save everything? What prevents them from saving everything? What prevents whoever buys it as software and a customer list from also ponying up to preserve all the content?

Second Life isn’t an ordinary MMORPG. I reckon a lot of its value is in all the user-created content, the community of existing users, and the fact that they got here first. You’re essentially suggesting that they should throw it all away because “that’s how it’s done in ordinary MMORPG betas” – whose value lies in their ability to get as many people to spend as many lovely, fee-paying months grinding, levelling up and improving their equipment as possible. It makes no sense.

(Besides, Second Life isn’t officially beta software anymore, and I’m sure I’ve read something about them already having done one content wipe at the end of alpha testing – which does make sense.)

Now if you want more than 512 sq. meters of land, or you want land that is zoned, then you would have to find somebody with more land to sale, or find a land baron.

“I don’t say stuff like “about your speed” until *after* I’ve been pissed on about 12 times by people like you.”

Actually, the first comment you ever made to me back in the mists of time was to accuse me of attempting to trick you when I asked you to clarify one point of your position. Your natural form of defence is attack, and anyone reading back into your history will come that conclusion.

I’d suggest you go back to Popper, too, my dear. He would tell you that what *I* stand for makes no difference to whether *your* position is justifiable. He’d also tell you to cut the ad hominems and stop trying to evade questions. Karl, you see, was a proper thinker, not someone obsessed with “winning” the argument to the extent that they’ll spread baseless lies about a person.

“I don’t do that about my ideologies; I merely uphold them and argue them.”

No Prokofy. Making stuff up – as you did with Electric Sheep’s so-called “involvement” with copybot and as you are doing here – is not “upholding” your ideology. Unless, of course, your ideology is built on lies.

I haven’t “made shit up”. I’ve speculated that they may, like every beta game before them, have to wipe the servers. Or that people who “host their own” will be in the wilderness, not connected to anything at all because it will be just too damn hard or expensive. This is *eminently* reasonable. It’s not anything to get “caught” about; I stand by the right to speculate. YOU are the one putting out statements as fact. Go back to Karl Popper. He stands by the right to make an unsupportable thesis as the bedrock of an open society. This is unknown territory. We get to think about it, speculate about it, posit things, try ideas out, and we don’t have to “shut the fuck up” or listen to rigidly hysterical orthodox priests of the Internet like yourself.

It’s fascistic to insist on your ideologies as being “the right way”. I don’t do that about my ideologies; I merely uphold them and argue them. What DO you stand for, Ian, other than a tilter at windmills?

As for “shrill and hysterical”: Accusing people who diagree with you of being fascists is pretty much the dictionary definition of both of those.

You simply have no evidence that Linden in any way plans to wipe the servers. It goes against every public pronouncement anyone has made. In other words, as so often, you’re simply making shit up for effect. You got caught doing it before, but that wasn’t enough of a lesson for you.

And I don’t have some monster stake in SL, I just run a dinky rentals business pretty much on the mainland. It may be the best-known or even largest one, but it’s not the most expensive or the most lucrative, in fact, it’s a lot of low-cost stuff, so by contrast with SmugBurghers which makes like $2000 take-home US a month, I’m a sideshow.

I don’t need to preserve scarcity of land; it’s a pet rock in the sky in which the Lindens said one thing, did another, described it as yet another thing. I’m just following it, and I hope to get away without losing my shirt. What have YOU done for Second Life?

I think if you pay for something that sounds like it’s a server, when they wipe it or close it or finish with it they should have a way of leaving you wish something. I mean, when I buy a computer in real life, I get a computer. It might break down after two years but I can replace its parts, etc.

Universality means the rule of law. Under the rule of law, you might have some worlds that will be more socialist, some more capitalist, but whatever the system, something will be valued, either sheer power over other people (something that seems YOUR personal favourite, Ian) or land (my own personal favourite because it’s the most neutral and tradeable and measurable inworld) and creativity (what Aimee and co. value because they get paid more for it and can take it to other worlds when this one is done).

Wikipedia isn’t the best source on this, by a long shot, but since it’s about your speed, let me quote it:

“Universality is opposed to relativism in philosophy. Truth may be said to be universal, as well as rights, for example in natural rights or in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, heavily influenced by the philosophy of the Enlightenment and its conception of a human nature. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights is inspired by the same principles. A proposition is said to have universality if it can be conceived as being true in all possible contexts without creating a contradiction. Some philosophers have referred to such propositions as universalizable. Truth is considered to be universal if it is valid in all times and places. In this case, it is seen as eternal or as absolute. The relativist conception denies the existence of universal truths – although they are, of course, grades of relativism: most relativists deny the existence of universal moral values, which make them moral relativists, but few deny the existence of universal truths when mathematics are concerned. In other words, since truth has various domains of application, relativism does not necessarily apply to all of them.”

The Lindens *are* likely to have to wipe the servers. Haven’t you ever been in a game beta? They wipe the servers when they are done with the beta phase because that’s just how it is done. They do that everywhere. In TSO, in ATID — all the games. What, you thought *this* game, which is probably in the world’s longest game beta, is going to be different?

Do you actually think that IBM or Sony or Google will volunteer to pick up the asset server and its code and all our inventories just like that lol? Of course not. It will either cost a bundle to port, or they’ll say, look, you can have double the land on our new Eightbarshire or Sonyland or Googlestan, but you have to come clean.

I’m just going by my own experience with games and worlds and such. You always have to leave stuff. Like, going from TSO, I sold my sim on ebay for $158 US. He had all the rares and was maxed out on all skills 10 points, plus he had a Simmy as a founder, so I think that was a good price. Historically, I was among the last years of people able to sell game loot on ebay, they’re now outlawing it.

So Pierre Omidyaar, the ebay guy and investor in SL, won’t allow us to sell our SL game loot on his ebay as SL folds or changes — probably a shrewd move on his part, given everything.

Ian, I’ll thank you to leave this shrill, hysterical, snide stuff back at home on your bog. Try to discuss ideas, and stop it with the personal attacks.