Archive for October, 2007
Second Life web resources for October 29th 2007 through October 31st 2007
October 31, 2007 4:30 pm
When opening today’s mail, I was surprised to find a letter smelling of cheap German beer (Kölsch?). Carefully I opened the letter addressed just: ‘Vint, Scheherazade’. Wtf?! A blurry photograph of a dead man on the street, holding a bottle of what seems like booze and another man standing next to him. What do I have to do with a yet another drunk hobo being killed on the streets? Only then, I saw the note slipping out of the envelope: ‘Vint, Nuschi is being framed! He was NOT intoxicated! They want him out of business. Dze evidens ist corrupt! Bitte, helfen Sie Irh! X’
Nuschi in trouble? I was refusing to believe this: Mr. Martynov is a hard-working Second Life bus driver that never even got a speeding ticket and hits the breaks for lovebugs on the road! I tried to contact Nuschi: nothing! It scared the hell out of me. Starting to panic, I went to visit Second Travel only to find two reports on a bus accident in Second Life. From the video material it seems Nuschi was trying to avoid a confused man suddenly jumping in front of the bus. Sadly enough, he failed at doing so and hit the person and then a bridge. Then it hit me: dear Nuschi was involved in the traffic accident I read about earlier on. Oh my!
After some more research, I found out he is going to trial on the 3th and 4th of november, before a German judge and faces the chance of losing his Second Life driver’s license and having to pay severe damages to the - so called - victim.
I’m worried about him. And confused. How did he get himself in such trouble? Why would these people do anything to stop Nuschi? I don’t know how to get the evidence send to me to the judges. I don’t want to see him framed. I’m scared his enemies will come after me, now I have this photograph. What to do?! Hilfe!
CNN lets Residents cover Second Life news
October 30, 2007 8:18 am
Somewhere next week, CNN will start to distribute in-world kits that allow Second Life Residents to send newsworthy items directly to CNN, comparible to their real life i-Reports system. With a minor investement CNN hopes to envolve the Residents, if not only by promoting the news network as a ‘journalism school’ where interaction with CNN’s real life journalists will be possible.
“We looked at what are people doing that is meaningful to what we do,” said Susan Grant, executive vp of CNN News Services. “I love that we don’t have to take things from the real world and force them in.”
In fact, CNN’s aim in establishing the virtual bureau—which required “very little investment,” according to Grant—is to learn. “I don’t think we are betting the whole farm on it,” she said. “It’s one aspect of many ways we are engaging with users.”
I wonder if this - despite the ‘journalism counselling’ will catch on. Reuters is overall accepted as a serious and official news source for Second Life news and residents that wanted to be a reporter could already do so for the Second Life Herald, the Second Life Insider and the Avastar - often in exchange for a small (?) amount of Linden Dollars. And when extremely desperate for being heard, they could start their own blog and call it a newspaper. ;)
Ah well, we’ll see. Nice initiative none the less. =)
via Mediaweek (and Veronique)
Barbie’s UZI
October 29, 2007 3:52 pmWell, no excuse here, sauf que Veyron challenged me. This gun does look better than the My Little Pony M4, no? I figured even cute little Barbie girls would want to look decently tough, hence not all in pink. And I’ve put the VintLabs logo on it to make sure there is no mistake about this not being an official Barbie release.
*rolls the drums*
*may I present*
*my Barbie UZI*
Listening to the ‘Elle & Lui’ program on PureFM on Friday, there was an interesting interview on relationships, desire, eroticism and all the like. I tuned in when the interview was mid-way, so I don’t know who was interviewed and for what reason, but the lady had some interesting things to say:
Is Desire ever ‘political correct’?
The interviewer wondered if Desire can ever be ‘political correct’. No, desire will always be far from that, as it - always - in one way or another revolves around power and that power being unevenly divided. The lady that was interviewed stated that Desire and Eroticism is playing/flirting with that difference in power. Be power defined as physical might, buying force or mental power.
Most relationships are political correct boring
The last 50 years, a lot has changed as it comes to the Western look on relationships: both partners are to be equal in those with the same rights, tasks, involvement, … . We are supposed to known the other completely, keep no secrets, spend the same amount of time on the relationship, give as much as we take or take as much as we give and - above all - not expose the partner to unexpected surprises. When finally reached that balance we are dead scared to disturb that balance or ruin the image the other has of us. Now, the lady was speaking about love relationships, but I think this goes for most friendship relationships too.
But the final result? Slash End Desire.
Now I’m not pleading for throwing aboard every legislation and first life community guideline on relationships and replacing it by Gorean Law, but I must admit I’ve often seen problems arise in relationships around me* just because that somewhat artificial balance.
Second Life relationships are unbalanced
So when hearing all that, I couldn’t help but think of the political incorrectness of Second Life relationships. If we take a look at the SLescort business we’ll see more advertisement of role play and the like than I’ve ever seen advertised on the pr0nnet world wide web or at a RLD. Nurse/patient, schoolgirl/teacher, the rape stuff, … What are they all but a master and slave relationship, a play of power or force?
Take the BDSM scene in Second Life. I think it is one of the biggest there is, with amazing amounts of Linden Dollars being spend on collars, leaches, appropriate clothing and poses and yes… torture equipment. I won’t believe first life BDSM scene is just as big and I just did not notice. The amount of people experimenting with this in Second Life far exceeds the amount of people taking up a leash in real life. And no, neither do I believe those all fail to get laid in real life. Just that it’s more easy to experiment in Second Life, that the anonymity or the +1k amount of kilometres between both partners makes it less scary - and even less real. Ow, that and they do not - or less - need to fear to screw up the real life relationship.
Even partnered on file relationships in Second Life seem to be more ‘unbalanced’. Only to often one partner pays the house/land the persons are living on, the expenses, the clothing, … and the other partner does not even has payment info on file. If decisions between those couples are based on mutual agreement or not: well, that I would not know. =) Should we see those Second Life relationships as an elite form of the Slescort business or just as a relationship that has to live up to other standards than our real life ones?
But from whatever side you look at this coin, I must conclude that this ‘political incorrectness’ must have somehow added to the success that Second Life - imho - still is. People fear to fuck up their real life relationships by experimenting, so turn to Second Life. I do wonder what needs to change then: our evil virtual world full of sin, or the way we threat our real life relationships? :mrgreen:
* Really, it’s more easy to look at relationships around you, than even attempting at starting to analyse your own past ones. =d
Second Life web resources for October 26th 2007 through October 27th 2007
October 27, 2007 4:30 pmVintish Varia
October 26, 2007 3:00 pmThat much going on, so here’s a quick non-thorough, non-complete overview of some things keeping me ‘busy’:
Leopard Print Top: Arrived
![Leopard Top Mexx - [resolved]](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2202/1504839834_c67f5e3472_t.jpg "Leopard Top Mexx - [resolved]")
Finally, thanks to Wuf Shirabyoshi, I was able to give my human a very cute top with open back and faded leopard print. That way - if she ever wishes - she can look just like me. Well, she well never be as cute as I am, but she may try. I know I promised to let her pose with the top on, and we are working on that. The main problems are that I can’t press the shutter button for her, so it takes some setting up and the fact that it’s a rather chilly autumn. But we’ll conquer those, I’m sure! ;)
Moving to Bruges, Belgium
Restructuring on the Mardes sim makes that my shop moves to Bruges - Belgique, another sim owned by AnnSophie Maertens. So I packed all 40 prims and quickly rezzed them on my parcel ‘Bloedkapel’ at Bruges. It’s a total unstructured, bad looking mess at the moment. :( I need to think of a decent shop layout, choose some decent wallpapers, put in some carpet, paint the ceiling, etc. Still let’s to do. VintLabs excuses for the messy state. Ow, and as the Bloedkapel - or Bloodchapel, in English - is a protected monument, I can’t change much about the exterior. I need to be subtle. *writes down to Google for the meaning of subtle*
Paradise Lost / Scheherazade
Things are changing as it comes to ‘my Second Life roots’ too. Need to urgently think about and reply what my engagement towards the Scheherazade sim will be. I’m not sure, it’s constantly doubting between ‘gosh, those are my SL roots, it may _never_ fade’ and ‘geeh, when will I find the time’. Having to get your priorities straight, sucks. Bigtime!
Veodia, live streaming
Sammy Bourne - the avatar behind the guy behind the first RLSL party - showed me some live streaming he does using Veodia and told me about tons and tons and tons of interesting features. I wanted to check it out, so he introduced me to Bradford Broome. Mr. Broome, who is responsible for bringing Veodia to Second Life residents and businesses, gave me a demonstration of it’s possibilities. Veodia might not be designed for the purpose I had in mind for it - streaming the desktop whilst teaching some in-world courses, I do not feel like borrowing the human’s voice or face when in-world - but it leaves tons of other possibilities open - like on-demand streaming - so I’ll create a free Veodia account and check it out more thoroughly.
SLart @ The Cannery
Closing party coming up and what is the Cannery’s future and does that future have any room for me? And do I have any time for re-engaging in such a project? And am I enthusiastic enough to do that? Sho and I have some good idea’s to start with, but… well… they are still just ideas.
L$ Sell Order
I am looking for information on placing L$ sell orders, but can not find what I want to know. If I place a sell order for a certain amount of Linden Dollars, can I ‘redraw’/cancel that sell order later (and just get my L$ back)? Or if nobody wants to pay the amount of USD that I specified, those L$ will be lost all up to eternity? Where do I find an overview of my outstanding sell orders? Isn’t it easier to just cash out at the rates the Linden Gods are offering? Or shall I safe the L$ for future shopping & other expenses (see ‘Paradise Lost / Scheherazade’ and ‘Moving to Bruges’)?
That’s about it. Well, as far as I’m willing to share at the moment. Still pondering about the SLaids too. But that’s not news anymore. ;)
Linden Labs plans to murder Halloween
October 25, 2007 3:39 pmStupidity is the quality or condition of being stupid, or lacking intelligence, as opposed to being merely ignorant or uneducated.
Anyone has scheduled a Halloween party? Consider re-scheduling, this sounds scary:
Planned Outage - Oct. 31st 6am-11am PDT (13:00-18:00 GMT)
Second Life will be unavailable for approximately 5 hours on Wednesday, October 31st. We will be adding additional hardware to our asset storage system to keep up with growth. No software upgrades are planned, no new viewers will be required after the downtime.
The Beta Test Grid will also be unavailable during this time. We apologize for the inconvenience and short notice.
Whilst tons and tons of Second Life Residents are preparing for what is maybe the biggest grid-wide celebrated event in Second Life, Linden Labs closes down the grid. Assuming all goes well, we can still party but not do the necessary last-minute shopping and prepairing.
More likely is the scenario that the outage will take more than the five hours Linden Labs tells us and we all can kiss our virtual Halloween goodbye for this year. Linden Gods, just nevermind that 99% of your female residents look great in gothic outfits! I’m sure the SLeconomy thanks you for this. So do the avatars that already spend their precious money on Halloween outfits, decorations and other party preparations. Not!
Shall we all force our humans to go rent The Nightmare Before Christmas, just in case? ;)
Update: Aha! We’re safe for Halloween. Linden Lab cancelled the downtime on October 31th. So besides the usual quirks we should be able to celebrate as usual:
UPDATE (2007-10-26): The planned service outage has been canceled. More time is needed to prepare the updates, and it may prove to be possible to do so without downtime for all of Second Life.
And yes… the angry mob surrounding the castle with torches and pitchforks made its voice heard! I admit to being totally oblivious by scheduling an outage on the date of one of our favorite annual celebrations. Mea culpa! The shambling horror will slip back into the shadows… for now…
Joshua Linden
