The Alphaville Herald

Virtual News Briefs

by curious on 16/08/07 at 12:05 am

by Curious Rousselot

Residents protest gambling ban August 9th at Linden Village Castle [photo by Argo Pollis ]

Gambling Still Available in Second Life

Reuters reported on August 14, 2007 that the recently enacted gambling ban in Second Life has not been completely successful.Honest former casino owners are not happy seeing others reap theprofits they used to have but the demand is still high. Robin Harper ofLinden Lab explains that detection is difficult and relies primarily onabuse reports and in-world advertising.

From the Reuters article, "Gaming still goes on here, oh yes, virtual speakeasies are popping upall over,” said Mr. Rockin, a Second Life resident who didn’t want hisfirst name used.

Linden Lab Explains How to Manage a Virtual Economy

Zee Linden explains how Linden Lab manages to keep the economyof Second Life stable. Linden Lab uses it’s power to create sinks andsources of L$ to keep the value relatively stable. Sources include theweekly stipends that premium account holders receive, and sale of L$ ontheLindex. Sinks currently include the L$10 to upload images and posting classified advertisements. Zeementions that Linden Lab may consider allowing tier payments to be madein L$ if sinks need to be expanded in the future. But no promise thatthis will ever actually happen.

To sum up all that was said:

• The Linden Dollar has value but it isn’t currency, it’s a license.
• Sinks and Sources are used to maintain economic equilibrium and avoid massive inflation.
• More sinks might be needed some day.
• Virtual "banking" is not banking. "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."

Reducing SIMs Available at Auction

Jack Linden informs us that the rate at which new mainland is made available will be reduced for the remainder of August. For the past several months Linden Lab has auctioned approximately 12 mainland SIMs per day, according to the Reuters article.This has caused the average price of a SIM to fall to its current valueof around L$8 per m2. We have been told that Linden Lab will now adjustthis average to 10 mainlandSIMs per day. Comments on the OfficialLinden Blog are mixed; showing continued frustration and struggle amongthe residents of Second Life.

Grid Instability Blamed on Network Security

In a surprising move by Linden Lab on August 11, 2007 we were give a specific reason for the recent grid instabilities.  Ian Linden informed us that one of the Lab’s primary bandwidth providers was dropping about 95% of their VPN traffic. Linden Lab uses these VPNs to connect the two facilities that house the servers for Second Life. Thankfully Ian provided us with lots of links to Wikipedia so we could understand what most of the techno-speak in the posting actually meant.

IfI understood it all, then the actual problem was a bug in one of therouters that make up Linden Labs corner of the Internet and a fixoffered by the router supplier didn’t actually fix the problem. Then,to add insult to injury there was an unusual failure in one of the harddisks that is used by the database. This last problem causedlogin and inventory problems for some residents.

Asthe first comment to the Ian’s blog entry says, "Thanks for thedetails". After getting through the lengthy blog entry it was somewhatreassuring to understand what caused the problem.

New Voice Viewer available as of August 10; does anyone care?

On August 10, 2007 Jeska Linden let us all know that the New Voice Vieweris available. This was largely ignored by the Herald and several othervirtual world news sources. The usual mix of "Fixes Over Features", "fantastic update. I crash on login every time", and the like were seen in the comments.