I asked the red man with the devil horns to tell me what happened at the Jessie wall, but he just shot me dead. Getting gunned down is actually the kind of response you should expect in the Jessie simulator, also known as "the Outlands", where wanton violence is expected, even encouraged. The Outlands used to range over four sims, but by July 2003, had been restricted to Jessie, and demarcated from neighboring regions (where non-aggressive interaction is the rule) by a high, intimidating wall.
In late July, a cadre of outraged Lifers began agitating against the Linden tax system, which they see as unjustly penalizing ambitious builders, who contribute so much value to the world. By August 2nd, their cause had broken out into open protest.
THE PRICE OF A NEW WORLD: AN INTERVIEW WITH PHILIP LINDEN Originally published from December 18 to 23rd, 2003
Hey do you think the possibility of a war in Jessie against the WWIIOLers is a reality? What if some group comes in, slaughters all the people online, and then sets up turrets to keep them out? What then? And if nobody decides to take it upon them to drive them out, anyone want to start an army and attempt to drive them out?
Every utopia has its dystopian underbelly, and Peter Ludlow's The Second Life Herald leads the way in the raking of virtual-world muck. The Herald has discovered what some might consider "smoking gun" evidence of a below-board relationship betweeen Linden Lab--the company that owns Second Life--and the so-called "Feted Inner Core," a group of allegedly-favoured customers. The discovery seems to back up several key claims of Profoky Neva, a resident recently banned from the Second Life online discussion forum. Many have accused Prokofy of paranoia, but given the Herald's discovery, these claims seem to indicate a groupthink effort to discredit an unpopular agitator.
. . . it quickly became evident to content creators that they might end up competing against the company itself. So much so, the community coined a verb for it: GOMed, named after Gaming Open Market, a Resident-run Web site that was once the leading Linden Dollar currency exchange outlet . .
Arguments and counter-arguments for P2P teleportation... Back when Second Life was a tiny world, Residents could magically teleport point-to-point: that is, from any place on the grid to any other place, just like that. Shortly after launching commercially, however, Linden Lab introduced "telehubs", scattered throughout the grid.
It seems clear that LL will almost certainly abolish telehubs, and that the value of telehub land will (already has started ?) fall. The inevitable companion to this is that non-telehub land will get more expensive. Doubtless the world's overall land value will remain about the same. This will cause loss and land starvation to the smallest players, with least resources.
Virtual real estate entrepreneur Ailin Graef recently announced that her Second Life avatar Anshe Chung had become the first online personality with a net worth of more than $1 million. But Graef may be living in a fantasy world.
n what might be a first-of-its-kind lawsuit, a Pennsylvania lawyer is suing the publisher of the rapidly growing online world Second Life, alleging the company unfairly confiscated tens of thousands of dollars worth of his virtual land and other property.
