The assets of Teleplace are being liquidated after the business-oriented 3D virtual meeting place hit a financial singularity which prevents the venture's continued operation, according to a mailing sent to potential creditors - including the Alphaville Herald's own part time typist/technical advisor Mark McCahill. 

Mr. McCahill provided the Herald with copies of the liquidation notification but pointed out that the Teleplace software was recently open sourced as Open QWAQ, so the software will live on indefinitely -- despite the apparent demise of Teleplace, Inc.

seeking a more fluid situation

While opponents of open source may be dismayed at this development, software immortality is good news for the members of the Turing Church Online. The group had been holding their transhumanist services at a virtual venue hosted by Teleplace, but have now moved to another hosting service running the Open QWAQ software. Is it any wonder Second Life conspiracy theorists fear a  transhumanist tropism for open source systems?

Unfortunately, the Teleplace and transhumanist news cut short the Herald staffs' well-earned break from the virtual world news beat. After dusting the cobwebs off our virtual printing press and consulting the staff directory,  I was able to arrange a meeting with Mr. McCahill at the fashionable Martinis and Power - an after work club favored by Herald reporters despite having almost nothing in common with Philip Rosedale's new Coffee and Power work club.

Pixeleen Mistral: Hi Mark! Sorry to interrupt your vacation but what's this about Teleplace being shut down?  
Mark McCahill: Way back in the day - back when QWAQ was just getting started - I spent a couple days talking with them and they put me in their rolodex. Eventually QWAQ turned into Teleplace, and the rolodex must have made it through the transition. Now it looks like they are notifying everyone who might possibly be a creditor, and so a couple weeks ago, I got this notice. It sure looks like they are selling everything off. Here are the papers - what does it look like to you?

calling all creditors

Pixeleen Mistral: Hmmm. Looks like game over. That's a shame. Were you surprised to see Teleplace go into liquidation?
Mark McCahill: Not exactly. I knew something was up when Teleplace open sourced their code after a long run as a proprietary branch of the Open Croquet project.

It breaks down like this. David Smith and Andreas Raab worked on the Open Croquet project. They are some of the best software engineers I have ever seen - so they have really great tech - but its not just about the tech. David and Andreas went on to form QWAQ after funding for Open Cobalt got tight, which happened once Carly Fiorina left HP and Mark Hurd took over and started cost-cutting. At that point Alan Kay's research group was wound down, so David and Andreas needed to find a new home for their work. In the end, the people at the universities kept working on Croquet and David and Andreas formed a startup based on the Croquet code. That was the genesis of QWAQ, and eventually QWAQ changed its name to Teleplace.

But the business-oriented virtual meeting place market is really crowded, so a shakeout was inevitable. Look at what happened to Linden Lab - they took a huge hit and laid off 30% of their staff after Mark Kingdon pursued the business meeting place biz. So when the Teleplace code was open sourced, it seemed to be a sign that a change in direction was coming. It was ironic that the code was released under the GPL, but I imagine it was the best they could do.

Pixeleen Mistral: How was releasing the code under the GPL license ironic?
Mark McCahill: Teleplace is based on Open Croquet, and Open Croquet was released under the MIT license. This means that you could do pretty much anything with derivative works, including take them closed source and proprietary. GPL is different - and viral. GPL says that all derivative works have to remain open source. That is a big turn-off for companies that want to sell proprietary systems. Now, if I'm at a university working on a research project like Croquet, I want the widest possible impact for that research, so I prefer the MIT license. On the other hand, I imagine the only way the Teleplace guys could convince their board to release the code was under GPL, because the board was probably worried someone else might take the code and compete with them - so they wanted to see any changes made to the code. Unfortunately, this fragments the open source development community.

Pixeleen Mistral: How so?
Mark McCahill: We can't add any of the Teleplace code to MIT-licensed projects like Open Croquet or Open Cobalt without those projects getting infected with a GPL license, and we don't want a GPL license. So we have to be very careful to keep Teleplace code out of Open Cobalt. There is a way around this mess, which would be for the rights holders of the Teleplace code to dual-license it.

Pixeleen Mistral: what do you mean by dual license?
Mark McCahill: Make it available under both the MIT and GPL license and allow people to choose the license that suits their needs. I imagine that they will be selling the rights to the Teleplace code as part of the liquidation of assets. I wonder who will end up with the rights? Maybe they will also release it under an MIT license. 

Pixeleen Mistral: Where do you see the virtual meeting space for business software going next?
Mark McCahill: Onto mobile devices like the iPad and Android tablets. WebEx works really well on an iPad and I see a ton of tablets going out to corporate salespeople. To get anywhere in the corporate market, a 3D meeting space will need to be better than WebEx or Google+ video hangouts and work on tablets - and also do something WebEx and Google+ doesn't do.

Looking at the way the virtual meeting place market has played out you can see why Linden Lab bailed on marketing Second Life for business meetings. But as you keep reminding me, there is money in the babyfur and My LIttle Pony/Brony markets - and not much competition, so Second Life for fancy dress party socializing still makes sense.

Pixeleen Mistral: Never underestimate the power of cute, at least outside a business context.
Mark McCahill: If anyone would know, it's you Pix.

the end of an era

This was without question an historic day. If there was any question about Stroker Serpentine leaving Second Life, it was erased Wednesday morning when he made the flagship of his SexGen business available with copy/transfer/modify permissions. The bed that turned a former real life plumber into a millionaire is now available to anyone - and free.

The 600 animation virtual kama sutra is already creating waves of fear and uncertainty among other sex bed merchants. While a crowd gathered to witness history in the making earlier this evening, I spoke with Corsi Mousehold who has used sexbed sales to help pay land tier fees on FurNation - a refuge for furry avatars.

Corsi Mousehold: I am in tears
Pixeleen Mistral: I think the bottom just fell out of the sexbed market
Corsi Mousehold: Yes
Corsi Mousehold: Yes it did
Corsi Mousehold: And FurNation may have to close because of it.

Pixeleen Mistral: that was the first thing I said when I saw this
Corsi Mousehold: I could raise rent prices and stay alive

Pixeleen Mistral: well - do what you need to do
Corsi Mousehold: But .... Fuck Stroker really screwed me here.
Corsi Mousehold: I could DMCA but in SL things can spread like wildfire.
Corsi Mousehold: I would have to DMCA every single person I find that is giving it away
Corsi Mousehold: That's a nightmare

Pixeleen Mistral: good luck with that
Corsi Mousehold: Either way I will have 100+ more animations in mine than in these.
Corsi Mousehold: I'll just add these and call it 1500 L$ anyway
Corsi Mousehold: Take the lessers off the market. They weren't selling really anyway
Corsi Mousehold: FurNation is going to need support here.
Corsi Mousehold: Or it will die.

a crowd gathers

Pixeleen Mistral: FurNation is going to need to suck it up and get another revenue stream
Corsi Mousehold: Truth

Pixeleen Mistral: and SL is going to feel this too I think
Corsi Mousehold: Yes it will
Corsi Mousehold: Not in a month but in about two months everyone's going to feel it
Corsi Mousehold: And we thought the MLP release was bad

pink, blue, yellow and green balls + ToyMaster and TouchMaster

Bitcoin - a peer-to-peer virtual currency - has reached the point in the media hype cycle were the inevitable backlash takes hold, and the Bitcoin ecosystem becomes a target for high visibility hacks.

The latest incident took place yesterday, when the bitcointalk.org forums were converted into a Cosbycoin ad site, complete with pictures of Bill Cosby, links to a cosbycoin.com web site and a simulated upload of the reader's digital wallet converting their Bitcoins into Cosbycoins. Buttcoin.org has an extensive collection of pictures from the hacked site as does nanimogold.com.

Cosbycoin takes on Bitcoin

There is speculation that a group associated with the SomethingAwful forums may be responsible for Cosbycoins and this hack does seem to fit with the SA goon's style. Whomever launched the hack exerted some effort. Rather than simply injecting Cosbycoin images into the forums, they also set up a cosbycoin.com site and posted to other bitcoin forums.

Cosbycoin.com

This Cosbycoin hack is certainly embarrassing for the forum operators, and raises questions about site security, as did a hack of the MtGox currency exchange last June that lead to a collapse in the value of Bitcoins. Timing of the MtGox incident was particularly unfortunate, coming shortly after a Gawker.com story about Silk Road - an anonymous illicit substance exchange site - which stoked demand for Bitcoins. 

simulated upload of Bitcoin wallet

Meanwhile, the mainstream media has begun to take notice of the potential - and limits - of the crypto-currency.

Earlier this week, New York TImes columnist and Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman pointed out the value of Bitcoins has taken a nosedive recently and the system is vulnerable to "money-hoarding, deflation, and depression" - problems shared with real currencies backed by the gold standard. We can only hope that the know-nothing branch of the republican party takes note. James Surowieki of the MIT Technology Review also wrote critically about the challenges bitcoin faces in surviving the hype cycle.

The hype cycle backlash is one problem, but more a more immediate question for Bitcoin fans is how to address the challenge posed by Cosbycoin parodies appearing on their forums and an insecure ecosystem of currency exchange sites.

Matthew N. Wright of Bittalk.tv reports that there is support for the Cosbycoin hack by members of the Bitcointalk.org forum who are unhappy with poor forum moderation and a pattern of "shuffling important and popular issues under the rug" - exactly the sort of behavior that Second Life players have grown to expect from Linden Lab. 

a tip of the old Coffeepotting Gleefurs top hat to Ryokashi who first pointed me at this story - pixeleen

by Frankie Antonioni.

Since early 2008 I have been in business in Second Life, and by March of 2008 I had two stores running. In August of 2008, I had about 19,000 L$. Both of my stores sold drugs and other goods: clothes, cars, guns, motorcycles, and other items. In an average day I made a total of about 110 L$. I made about 60 L$ from camping, and the rest from my stores. Most of the people that came in, payed the random prize machines. They were from 10 L$, to 20 L$.

On some days I made more than 110 L$. If somebody bought a brick of weed for 220 L$, then I made 88 L$. Drugs were the number one thing that was sold. Clothes were the least likely to sell. Other things that sold well were the Carducci guns, cars, and motorcycles.

Camp chair slot machine — legal gambling

After I had gotten the cellphone vendor, I started making more money. Each cellphone cost 500 L$, and I made 200 L$ from each sale. Sales started going up. By December of 2008, I had about 35,000 L$. I had an idea for a new camping device. It would be a campchair, connected to a slot machine. While camping, you wouldn’t make any L$. Instead you would make credits, that could be used to play the slot machine. So you couldn’t use L$ to play the slot machine, but only credits, earned from camping. The credits that you won from playing the slot machine, you could cash out. So this would be a legal gaming machine.

I contacted a scripter, and told her about my idea. I had a budget set at 28,000 L$. After talking to her I found out that it would take more than 28,000 L$. This was in January. So I decided to wait a few months, and save up some more money.

Linden Lab bans camping for L$s

By May of 2009, I had about 42,000 L$ saved up. So I had plans to contact the scripter, that I had talked to in December, and January. But then came the news that LL, had banned camping, to increase traffic. So I had to think of something else.

Linden Lab’s new adult sim policy and BDSM clothes

After that, LL came out with their new adult policy. The person I paid rent to, told me I might want to rent some land in the new adult mainland. She said since my store old guns, it might go against the new Linden rules. Then I started getting emails from LL, about certain words I had in search. I thought it was the word drugs, or weed. So I changed the words to Spanish, and French. After I did that, I still got emails from LL, about the words I had listed in search. So I did a few searches, putting different words in each search.

I found out that it wasn’t the word drugs, or weed. But the word BDSM clothes. My clothes vendors sell all kinds of clothes. Some of these are Gorean, and other outfits. But by the time I had found that out, I had already opened a store in Yierburn sim.

Magic Bottle prize machine

I contacted the scripter, that I talked to about making the new camping idea I had. I asked her if she knew how to make a random prize machine. She said yes. So I had her make a prize machine that is called "Magic Bottle". When somebody pays 10 L$, they would get a prize, and the person that owned it, would make 5 L$. It would also send out a message saying "Your wish is my command, then the persons name". I paid 3,000 L$ to have the Magic Bottle made.

After about three months, I closed the new store in Yierburn.

Today’s Second Life business climate

Fast forward to today. lil Carducci is no longer in the people search. So, I no longer sell cars, or motorcycles. Others have also been affected, by the SL economy. Six months ago, Cocoanut Koala closed her prefab store. Since LL went into the housing business, fewer people bought from Cocoanut, and other creators.

Today, the total L$ I have is 15,620 L$. That is 26,000 L$ less, than I had in May of 2009.

One of the problems affecting the SL economy, is the new SL viewer. Not only is it hard to use, but also hard to find anything. You also can’t look at more than one profile. This includes personal, and group profiles. What LL should do about the viewer, is to let people choose which viewer they like, and let them use that viewer.

Will SL keep on going? Or will LL sell off SL to another company? As of yet, no one knows, except for those that work for LL.

The cyberwar between the Anonymous hactivists and recording and motion picture industry interests heated up earlier today when the www.copyprotected.com site was hijacked to display an anti-MPAA message in support of the embattled Pirate Bay bittorrent tracker site, then redirected viewers to the piratebay.org site.

As of this writing the MPAA’s site continues to display a "Payback is a Bitch" image and a rather wordy manifesto which is reproduced at the end of the article for those who are not quick enough digest the screed before being automatically redirected to the thepiratebay.org site.

While the irony of an MPAA site directing visitors to a bittorrent tracker site is undeniable, it takes a quick hand to capture the carefully footnoted text, and a detailed analysis of the arguments advanced by the unnamed persons will have to wait for another day.

copyrightprotected.com is owned by the Motion Picture Association – and p0wned by hactivists

This incident marks a change in tactics now that Anonymous seems to have moved beyond simple denial of service attacks. The Sunbelt Software blog speculated that the copyprotected.com site had been subject to DNS cache poisoning – an attack which would cause the site’s traffic to be redirected to a rogue server – but other believe this to have been an SQL injection exploit. In any case, it is unlikely that the MPAA is pleased with the result.

google cache image of copyprotected.com before…

…and after

Now that 12 hours have elapsed, presumably the MPAA will regain control of their site at some point soon and remove the Operation Payback message. Meanwhile, in the war for media attention the hactivists are beginning to gain ground.

The text of the Operation Payback manifesto from the copyprotected.com site:

To whom it concerns,

Over the past years, we have borne witness to a technological revolution. The individual has become free, in the most extreme anarchistic sense, to share ideas. Some of these ideas are shared behind proxies, darknets, or similar "closed doors". Nevertheless, the ideas are out there. There have been similar instances of such revolutions of the mind. Their effects on society are inestimably great. As in past times with the invention of the printing press, so it is today that the people embrace this revolution, this new "anarchy" of freedom to share, while their autocratic rulers seek to crush this freedom.

In spite of censorship in the form of copyright law and other restrictions, the people have succeeded in distributing content to the poor, the underprivileged and the oppressed. The most numerous pirates are Chinese, as content filters restrict a vast amount of information in their country. Pirates are also numerous among the poor, as this demographic cannot afford things like college books or entertainment. Indeed, while often ignored by those interested only in bread and circuses, a vast amount of educational literature is available to the everyday pirate online. Piracy democratizes knowledge and makes education affordable.

History repeats itself. There was a time when powers that be attempted to silence the printing press, the blank cassette and the recordable CD. All of these previous attempts at censorship have failed, and future attempts of this nature are doomed to failure. Indeed, the sequestration of human knowledge for the benefit of extremist capitalism is treason against the whole of humanity. All should have the right to listen to a melody, experience a plot and learn from the aggregate of human knowledge available online.

The man on the street already knows this. He knows it when he illegally [1] gives his unused software to a friend or acquaintance. He knows it when he gives that old college book to a person in need. However, he also knows that something is wrong.

He knows that something is wrong when the artwork of little girls is raped in the name of copyright [2]. He knows that something is wrong when solicitors use copyright to blackmail thousands of people sharing information [3]. He knows that something is wrong when corrupt organizations seeking to stem the free flow of information lie through their teeth, produce false documents and spread misinformation about their opponents [4].

He knows that it is not right when his leaders inexplicably support massive capitalist enterprises over the majority opinion of their own people [5]. He know they are wrong when they use illegal means to get what they want, while hypocritically deprecating their opponents for doing the same [6].

If one were to pursue the propaganda of various community-reputable organizations such as…

• The Motion Picture Association of America [MPAA]

• The Recording Industry Association of America [RIAA]

• The British Phonographic Industry [BPI]

• The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft [AFACT]

• Stichting Bescherming Rechten Entertainment Industrie Nederland [BREIN]

…They would come across many a morality play suggesting that, if they "pirate" a film or an album, they are depriving a simple artist, actor or crewmember of their rightful wage. This worker won`t be able to break even for their next lot of groceries because the pirate robbed them of their money.

Of course, these organizations carefully omit the fact that only a small percentage of the profits made by big media ever make it to those who actually produce it. Do they ever disclose how small of a percentage most script writers, novelists, etc., actually make? Of course not, and there is a reason why. Do these anti-piracy organizations truthfully disclose how much they receive in donations, and from whom? Of course not, and there is a reason for this also.

In the end, our DDoS efforts have been compared to waiting for a train [7]. What must the people do to be heard? To what lengths must they go to have their pleads taken seriously? Must they to take to the streets with noose and handgun before those in power take notice?

You are forcing our hand by ignoring the voice of the people. In doing so, you bring the destruction of your iron grip of information ever closer. You have ignored the people, attacked the people and lied to the people. For this, you will be held accountable before the people, and you will be punished by them.

We will not stop.

We will not forget.

We will prevail.

We are anonymous.

1. [1] http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/first-sale-doctrine/

2. [2] http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100722/09434710323.shtml

3. [3] http://technews.am/conversations/techdirt/acs_law_asks_those_who_deny_infringing_to_incriminate_themselves

4. [4] We DID NOT attack thepirate party, we ARE NOT affiliated with anti-scientology activism, andThe Pirate Bay has not organized this.

5. [5] http://www.which.co.uk/news/2010/01/acs-law-letter-writing-continues-197714

6. [6] http://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-boss-denies-dos-attacks-torrent-site-refutes-claim-100912/

7. [7] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/22/acs_4chan/

online playdates for hire

Weird? Not really. After all, finding a chick who actually likes to game (AND is good at it) is every boy’s wet dream. And Game Crush promises to make that happen. Through its recently redesigned Web site, gamers can select the platform they want to use, the level of interaction (designated as “zones”) they want to experience, and the gender of their future partner with whom they want to kick ass. Offering private PlayDate game sessions for as little as $.55 per minute, the site challenges the player to take his game to the next level, “Enter a private, video-enabled game session and you can find a PlayDate to play practically ANY multiplayer console game out there.” Private game sessions start at $.60 per minute with discounts for buying more credits at one time.

come play with SexyJen

The description of available “zones” (which apparently has replaced “moods” with suggestive names such as “flirty” and “dirty”) seems to be an attempt to give a more official appearance to the site that looks and feels like the cross between MySpace and the personals: “Zones help both Players and PlayDates define the game experience they are looking for. They don’t mean the actual game being played, just the vibe of the game.”

Judging by the profile pictures posted on the site, there may be something more than gaming that takes place in these “private” sessions. Young women who bare their legs, necks, bras, tattoos, and piercings appear as the possible PlayDates available through the site. And if you open and account, you can even chat with them!

CherryLix, KatiPanties, Lady_cherry, and more

Sure, there are guys few and far between displayed among the profiles… but their scarcity is a strong indicator of who the primary clientele is. When browsing these delicious pictures, however, one wonders whether there could be this many gamer chicks who are good at (and even interested in) kicking virtual butts. Knowing the extent to which people like to role play online, one also wonders if it is actually them who are the drivers behind the joystick… or another dude riding the fantasy train. Even if these are genuine profiles, the remains the possibility that the site could becoming a gold mine for predators who uses it for purposes other than gaming.

Apparently Linden lab has written off the non-profit sector to concentrate on entertainment in Philip Linden’s walled garden of cyber delights. Look for Linden Lab’s move to accelerate the flight from Second Life to alternatives to such as OpenSim for those who remain committed to virtual environments in education, or hope for more control of their online experience and assets than the Lab is willing to provide.

inspiration for new pricing policies?

Future of Metaverse be decided around a hookah on Queen Mary?

The decks of the Queen Mary will echo at the end of July with the sound of open source techno-communists in jackboots, academics in clogs, birkenstock and flip-flop clad developers, and more than a few virtual world entrepreneurs sporting the sort of butter soft handmade Italian footwear favored by the most influential of the inner core when the Metaverse Meetup kicks off next weekend — a meta meeting to party like ProkStars while plotting the next stage in the evolution of immersive new media for Open Sim, Second Life, Blue Mars, and other virtual worlds.

Look for a diverse group of players, practitioners, and researchers from the likes of Inteligencia LLC, Woodbury University, Duke University, Motion Cafe, Project Neuro along with a host others to chart the course for the Second Life diaspora.

The Alphaville Herald will be on hand with the kind of engaged analysis and informed opinion only found in these pages, as we temporarily relocate the Herald newsroom to a deluxe stateroom aboard the Queen Mary – and you can join in the fun!  Special room rates are available through Monday, see this ning page for details.

While in LA, I’m hoping for an in-person interview with the Justice League Unlimited’s Kalel Venkman to discuss the fine points of the copyright fair use doctrine and the drawbacks to filing frivolous DMCA takedown notices. Kalel – if could stop by the Queen Mary you can both keep an eye on Woodbury crew and make good on that interview your promised me.

See you next weekend !

Under a normal market, where there is a healthy flow of cash in and out of a given economy, those operating currency exchanges make significant profits in ways most people do not realize. With the LindeX, for example, the spread, i.e. the distance between the lowest sell price vs the highest buy price, rarely exceeded the exchange fee that LL charges users to use the LindeX. Many LindeX day traders would set up framing orders a mere 1 linden above and below the zero profit spread point, in hopes of catching some market activity to profit from. For instance, if you sell L$, you pay a 3.5% fee to LL, which comes out to 9.275L$ if you are selling 265L$ at 265L$/USD. If you buy L$, the fee is US$0.30 per transaction, which is pretty minimal unless you are buying paltry amounts. Still, it narrows the daytraders profit so that a 10L$ spread in prices means zero profit for the normal day trader.

Sudden volatility in the L$ currency exchange

Supply Linden, however, doesn’t pay a fee. He can trade at less than the spread and still make a profit, and more profit than most people perceive, because when Supply Linden buys up L$ that people are selling, the sellers are still paying a 3.5% fee and at the same time Supply Linden can be selling L$ on the other side of the spread for zero net change in the L$ money supply, but Supply Linden just earned 7+%. This is why Supply Linden would always stabilize the LindeX with large framing orders, of 10-20 million L$ on each side of the spread, making sure that, in order for other people to sell by limit orders, they would trade in a narrower spread so they could not profit from trading both ways. It doubled Linden Lab’s profits on the LindeX by doing so and boosted public confidence in the L$ economy by having exchange rates so stable.

LindeX would only have an excursion from this pattern on the weekend when whoever was running Supply Linden was out of the office and his outstanding limit orders ran out.

This was how things used to be run, when SL was a growing, happy, productive, expanding economy where people were putting more money into SL than was taken out.

This started turning around with the gambling ban in August 2007, when the size of the SL GDP dropped by almost half. Casino owners exited with their life savings, and gamblers who still had cash took their money out and went to the other internet casino sites. Along with subsequent bans of other legitimate economic activity (banking, advertising, as well as the homstead tier hike) more and more residents lost confidence in the SL economy and those managing it. They started taking their money out of SL in greater numbers than people were putting money into it.

When this shifted the flows of capital, then the LindeX became a liability to Linden Lab. While they were still making a 7% profit on trading activity, this profit was being drained by having to buy back more L$ than they were selling as capital fled the grid. At first this was a mere trickle. More users stopped bringing money into SL and only lived off of what they earned inworld, paying their US bills to LL with these earnings. As these numbers grew, they synergized on each other, accellerating the liability drain upon Linden Lab’s earnings. Their 7% profit shrunk so that some days they didn’t earn anything on the LindeX, in fact, it cost them more money than they profited.

At this point, it started to become economically advantageous for Linden Lab to cease this prior trading behavior, and let the L$ float freely on the open market, without the deep pockets of Supply Linden to keep it stable. Apparently the decision to make this change happened this past week.

Whether it was because LL didn’t have the money (the recent firing of over 100 employees speaks to their need to cut costs), or was merely trying to maximize profits prior to being sold off or doing an IPO, or perhaps Mark Kingdon forgot to assign someone to manage Supply Linden after whoever was managing that account was laid off a week prior. We will never know the truth, I suppose. Some have proposed that some disgruntled former Lindens are liquidating their L$ savings from their off-duty businesses. If so, they have had substantial savings of over a half a million USD to liquidate.

I believe that Mark Kingdon has realized that with the shrinking economy of SL, it maximizes profits for LL to no longer regulate the exchange rate of the L$. The recent exchange panic has put such a large quantity of sell limit orders on the market that it would cost LL over 6% of its monthly revenues to stabilize the exchange rate again at its former level. In addition to these 6% savings, he doesn’t have to employ someone to babysit Supply Linden’s trading activities, which should save the company at least another $150,000 a year in salary eliminated.

Boosting your profit margin by 6% is something most CEO’s aspire to. It is the thing that pays big bonuses and stock options at the end of the quarter. If the company is for sale, it helps ensure the company is sold for top dollar. Frans Charming commented over on New World Notes that IBM is considering buying Linden Lab. If this comes through, this may explain a lot of things that have happened lately. IBM certainly has plenty of its own staff who can handle all the things that those laid off used to do, so eliminating this redundancy is understandable. We’ll see what happens over the next weeks and months.

World of Warcraft is a subscription model, similar to SL’s premium membership.  People sign up for automatic billing and tend to forget its there.  Allods has an item shop but the game developers provided players with opportunities to avoid using it, which players tend to do, even when it makes no economic sense.

One of the items you can get is a bigger deposit box for banking the weapons, armor and other items you accumulate in the game.  This box costs approximately $10 US.  You can pay the $10 or you can perform a Wandering Alchemist quest.  The Wandering Alchemist quest is; a player must find the Wandering Alchemist, a non player character or NPC, in order to obtain a potion.  The potion has 14 constituent parts.  Each time the alchemist is found, one part, at random, will be given to the player.  The Alchemist can be found in ten different locations.  Each time the Alchemist is found, only one player may interact with the Alchemist.  After a player talks to the Alchemist, the Alchemist disappears for four minutes to reappear at one of the ten locations at random.  After receiving the 14 parts, the player must find the Alchemist again and give him the parts to make the potion.  Then you must take the potion to another NPC in order to get the deposit box.  Or you can pay $10 US. 

The interesting part is that based on the chat, and people looking to form parties to make the quest shorter, players choose the quest frequently, even though at a minimum, with no other players interfering, being able to travel to the correct location where he appears next, and the parts being given in the correct number and order, this quest will take at least an hour.  Which means players are willing to give up well over an hour of their time either running around or waiting in order to avoid paying $10.  In the meantime, the game is still running and the company needs to keep the servers going. 

Without money coming in somehow, servers do not run.  And if a player is willing to put up with the Wandering Alchemist, game developers need to come up with new ways for payment in order for games to run.