SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Last night, Secret Service and FBI agents raided the headquarters of Second Life, seizing all Lindens. Second Life is a sophisticated social-networking tool, better known as a massive, multi-player, online virtual world.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson weighed in, by talking about the ramifications of virtual world currencies possibly surpassing and replacing the U.S. Dollar.

“From our charts, we can see that the U.S. Dollar is falling against the Linden. If too many people become engrossed with virtual world economies, we could see a downward spiral for the Dollar. Eventually, there could be a situation in which people trade the Dollar for virtual currencies. This could create a trade deficit of sorts between real world goods and virtual world goods, causing our entire economy to get sucked up into a virtual world. Americans could end up standing in virtual bread lines, and living out on virtual streets, facing virtual poverty, in a virtual recession.” said Secretary Paulson.

“How freaky to think about the possibily that a virtual currency could replace the U.S. Dollar,” said GOP strategist, Emma Faye Kerr. Ms. Kerr continued, “If that ever happened, the entire economy would be replaced by a sort of virtual economy, where everybody, including the government, loses connection with the reality-based world. Thank God we have a President that is still in touch with reality, who has decided to take action against the threat of virtual worlds replacing the real world.“

I fear the Linden Employees being send to Guatamala bay, as the terrorist they are. And then the glorious leader might decide forcing them to developed a government controlled virtual world, which can be put on top of Google maps. Border control will be easier there, the handing out of Green Cards can then be an completely electronic process in cooperation with the spammers, and Halliburton would get the contract for age verification. On top of that the USA could continue to live it’s dream of world domination as soldiers can easily create alts to serve on multiple continents at the same time and battle damage brings you back to your home sim safely in stead of a in body bag.

The FBI representative talked about the possibilities and safeties this will guarantee the USA’s economy: “Imagine virtual health care for those who can not afford it in First Life! A dental program? Who needs one, when teeth are included with a new skin. Imagine a virtual democratic process that makes people truly believe they and not the lobbying groups influence politics!”

When asked about Professor Vint’s concerns if this would be the final stab in the back for USA teens and young adolescent’s knowledge of English spelling and grammar, Mr. Undercover Linden stated: “All your base are now belong to us.”

Tags: funny, linden dollar, parody, SLeconomy
Categories: Laughter
6 Comments »

update: Sun inc, which was one of the leading companies focusing on Second Life business in Japan is bankrupt. The notice about bankrupcy was posted on Sun’s website on Nov 21, stating Sun’s negative networth is at least US$5 million. (via Mindblizzard.com)

Impressive, on a FOMA SH903i - non-Japanese product information on this beast, anyone? - Kimidora runs a mobile phone Second Life client. Planned for an official release in december, it does already look impressive. Kimidora says it’s slow, even in minimal quality mode, but none the less, the viewer is already vewwy vewwy impressive.

The mobile phone viewer for Second Life was created by Sun Inc and shall be officially released on December 15th. There will be two versions:

A free, basic version of this Second Life viewer for mobile phones that allows you to browse the Second Life map, (limited?) teleport, search and walking around in-world. It could be that with the free version you’ll also get some banner ads in the future. ;)

Paying a monthly fee of 315 Yen - which is two euro’s - will get you the ability to chat, manage your inventory, change appearance, buy things and a monthly stipend of 300 L$. I think you also get a Tokyo Zero Street appartement and 3D-blog. Although I do not have the slightest clue what it is, I now want a 3D blog!!! 2D just sounds so passé. ;)

At the moment the SUN Corporation handles about 350 simultanious connections, but they are preparing for a concurrency rate of 1000 to 1500 users.

I think this is highly interesting as we all know Second Life eats bandwith & computer resources. With looking into ways of streamlining it for mobile phone use - lower specs and no high-speed internet access - either by running it through servers before delivering it to our pc’s, mobile devices and maybe someday even refrigerators or by creating clients that just ‘eat’ less interesting and promising features will appear. Because really, what’s the use of doing in-world conferences on for instance world poverty, climate changes, technology for developing countries, etc. if exactly those people can not get in?

Although Google Translate Japanese should improve too then! ;) I apoligise, but I can not state that I’m 100% of the information on this mobile phone Second Life client is correct. Geeh, sometimes I really wish for being a Japanese speaking gadget freak. *sobs*

As usual, I bring the paw to the hat and bow to Nock.

Tags: gadgets, japan, second life client, SLinovation
Categories: Second Life
18 Comments »

Well, I am not a financial genius. Frankly, if I were, I would be playing the real life stock market in stead of Second Life. But sometimes it does not take a genius to figure out some numbers:

When I stumbled over Anshe Chung’s site, I saw she also sells and buys up Linden Dollars: Anshe generously offers me USD 320 for 100 000L$. Wow? Did inflation hit that hard? I assume L$ are suffering under the bad dollar exchanges rates too, but only 320 Real Life Dollars?! That’s an exchange rate of 312.5 L$ / USD! Quickly I went to check the LindeX and found that all was more or less normal. So Anshe Chung is just ripping everybody off? And is she doing that over IMVU credits too?

Anyway, I knew you could exchange L$ on SLexchange too and they also offer the ability to export those USD to first life. So I decided to compare. And guess what? Actually SLexchange - which is partially owned by Anshe - is ‘best buy‘ and ‘best sell‘. SLexchange is even cheaper then the official Linden exchange called LindeX. I though maybe the catch would be in the ‘export to RL money’ feature, but no, they match the LindeX there too. Strange, no?

* The last thing I wanted to know, was what the losses would be if you take 100 000 L$ out of SL, convert them to USD, not to export them to First Life money, but to just revert them into L$ again. All this on ‘best going rate’. Losses - the amount of RL money you need to put in extra to get 100 000 L$ again - are smallest on the SLexchange with a total loss of 12.33 USD. When you would use Anshe Chung’s exchange, those losses would amount up to 79.98 USD. That’s six times the cost of this on SLexchange!!!

Any major Linden Dollar to USD or Euro exchange services I’ve overlooked?

Sell Linden Dollars

Buy Linden Dollars

Disclaimer: Information about the rates were queried with a maximum difference of five seconds between the different websites. Buy & Sell L$ transfers fee were accounted in the USD amount I listed. And as I said, I’m not a financial genius, and if you would suffer severe losses because of something I say here, you may whine in the comments here, but under no circumstances will I pay damages. ;)

Tags: anshe chung, exchange rates, linden dollar, lindeX
Categories: Second Life
17 Comments »

The SLart at the Cannery book I ordered from Lulu had some printing flaws in it, whitespace on top missing, upper part of some of the photographs missing and ugly red stripes on a few the pages. If you have received an order like that and thought it was supposed to be that way, well it’s not! (Just to be sure, I compared mine with Shoshana’s. ;))

So if this is the case, I suggest you contact Lulu at orders@lulu.com and ask them for what they promised me on help chat:

1. a reissue of the book
2. expedite send
3. a refund

My letter to Lulu:

Dear Lulu staff,

I was so happy when finally receiving my copy of SLart at the Cannery. I almost kissed the mailman - I would have, had I been home when he delivered it - for being as nice as to bring me a copy of pure and utter joy.

I quickly opened the steady, good wrapping that made the book travel safely to me. I held it carefully, making sure not to leave greasy finger marks behind on the shiny, appealing cover.

My feelings of luck were enormously… until I came to page six to find that the - Second Life, but still - photograph featured there had a bleed edge. Wow? Wait! That was not what we planned!!! There was suppose to be white space above that one there.

I quickly started browsing the book, trembling with fear to find other defaults, and not being able to focus attention on the beautiful pictures inside because of my concerns about this strange error.

And there the were… on page 9, 13, 14, 15, 17, 30, 33, 36, 39, 44, 55, 47, 48, 49, … photographs where part of the photograph and/or frame were missing and with no whitespace surrounding them on top.

My nightmare got even worse when I discovered red stripes on some of the pages, looking like a kid had used red crayon to decorate my precious book.

Really, I love the print on demand principle, but obviously what I demanded was not printed.

I spoke to Mark B on chat support and he told me to photograph all the errors and mail them to you, so you would inform the printing department to issue out another copy and also get me a refund. Furthermore, seeing this was ordered on the 8th of November and we are now the 25th and all I have is a book with printing flaws, I suggest you consider to expedite it.

I think photographing 5 out of 24 errors on cutting/whitespace above the picture and 2 out of 5 ugly red spots will be enough proof?

As I was not sure of the quality needed for the photography proof and whether you accept large email attachments, you can find the photographs here.

Ann Wuyts / Vint Falken

Tags: cannery, customer complaint, lulu
Categories: Rant
22 Comments »

Each year, in Belgium, the Websites & Products of the year are chosen through an internet poll organised by PC Magazine.

Yes, indeed, that’s correct, no link to be found here. Why so? I dislike them because…

… the f*****g r*****s over at PC Magazine nominated Second Life for ‘Disappointment of the year 2007′.

I strongly disagree. The reasons?

1. I, Vint am a Second Life Resident / Avatar. Without this so called disappointment, I would not exist. My existence is certainly not a disappointment, so neither is the virtual world that gave birth to me.
2. Heard anything impressive like for instance Relay for Life that has been done in There? Habbo Hotel? IMVU? Nope. Indeed. We’d kick thoses other virtual worlds’ asses anytime. Actually, it has been rather silent around World of Warcraft too.
3. We’ve gotten scultped prims aka sculpties and WindlLight atmospheric rendering. Lindens started to communicate better. Second Life client versions have become more stable and the code is open source, leading to alternative versions like the OnRez viewer. And all this amongst other great achievements. Even taking into account the so called massive amounts of child pr0n, the upcoming Age Verification ft. Aristotle, the VAT for Europeans, etc. I find the overall balance of 2007 to be ‘positive’.
4. Second Life might have disappointed some persons, companies, … but that’s only because they came to our brave new virtual world with the wrong expectations. And who’s to blame for that? *points at the magazine*

So, what do you guys think? Any chance we’ll win ‘most prominent disappointment of 2007′ over Vista, internet connection prices (terrible in Belgium, especially compared to the allowed upstream & downstream) and PSP3? Or rank better than DDR3 memory and Quad-core cpu’s, which I did not even know existed?

The full text:

Disappointment of the year (teleurstelling van het jaar)

Not all that shines is a good thing. In 2007 we saw also enough misplaced concepts, failed launches or decisions that were not understandable. The redaction gathered the most prominent disappointments in this short list; you may choose the three biggest losers.

• 802.11n wireless technology
• ATI Radeon 2900-series
• DDR3 memory
• Internet connection rates
• Digital HD-television
• Safe on-line banking
• Playstation 3 (40GB, non compatible with PS2)
• Quad-core CPU’s
• Second Life
• Windows Vista

As people who do not know for sure what to answer, pick things that sound most familiar, I’m afraid we stand a good chance at playing runner up to Internet connection rates. :(

Tags: belgium, second life
Categories: Rant, Second Life
12 Comments »

Suspicion

I suspect WindLight behaves / looks seriously different depending on the graphics card / video card you use. Even when the WindLight settings are 100% the same.

How to proof this?

Comparison shots of the same locating taken with - fixed - noon, evening, midnight and dawn settings with different graphic cards.

Needed

• An object that makes sure that if an avatar stands on it, the object takes over camera controls so everybody shoots exactly the same scene. (I think I once saw Arahan Claveau use this?)
• XML settings for noon, evening, midnight and dawn.
• Residents willing to take those 4 shots and list their type of graphics card. You can upload them on Flickr or e-mail them to me. Let’s say we’ll shoot at 1600×1200px? And, guys and gals, no Photoshopping allowed! ;)

Who will help?

XML Files

Chinese volunteer for helping Vint with the XML WindLight files: Kailie Quinn (Katarina Malthus) (Vint can host them if needed?)

Fixed-view Object

Resident with coding capacities needed! (I found it a bit rude to appoint a Chinese Volunteer for this. :p) Probably found.

Guinea Pig Residents that will take the photographs

1. Vint Falken - Radeon X600/X550 Series & GeForce 8600 GTS & whatever sits in the laptop. (Voluntary Volunteer)
2. CodeBastard Redgrave (Chinese Volunteer)
3. Bella March (Chinese Volunteer)
4. Torley Linden (Chinese Volunteer)
5. Shoshana Epsilon - GeForce 7950 GT nvidea (Chinese Volunteer)
6. Veyron Supercharge - GeForce 7900GS (Chinese Volunteer)
7. Alexander Lapointe - ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT and NVIDIA GeForce 6150SE nForce 430 w/ 825MB (Voluntary Volunteer)
8. Otenth Padernborn - ATI Radeon X1600 (Voluntary Volunteer)
9. Sered Woollahra - Ati Radeon x300 (Volunatry Volunteer)
   
10. Kesseret - ATI Radeon x1650. 512mb RAM version (Voluntary Volunteer)
11. Loki Popinjay ft. Mylena Aquitaine - Nvidia GeForce 6700XL with 128 Mb and/or NVIDIA GeForce NX8800GTX with 768 Mb (Voluntanry Volunteer)
12. Faerie Hax - 7600GTX 256mb (Voluntary Volunteer)
13. Dandellion Kimban - Radeon 9250 (Voluntary Volunteer)
14. Marina McTeague - Radeon 9700 Pro. 8D (Voluntary Volunteer)
15. FireFox Bancroft - Radeon HD 2900XT (Voluntary Volunteer)
16. Nadine Nozaki - Various stuff (Voluntary Volunteer)
17. Looker Lumet - NVIDIA GeForce 6610 XL with 128 MB (Voluntary Volunteer)
18. Suzanne Graves - Quadro FX 2500M (512mb) (VV)
19. RedDawn Bade - nVidia 8800 GTS (640mb) and nVidia 8600 mobile (240mb) (VV)
20. Storm Thunders - Radeon x1950 (VV)
21. Alexis Stapovic - if WindLight runs on the POS(?) (VV)
22. Guardian Market - EVGA e-GeForce 8600 GTS (PCI-e, 256MB) (VV)
23. Claudia Mantis - Asus EN8800GTX/768mb (VV)
24. … ??!!!*

*Please, do apply! And mention your type of video card? So we don’t do ‘double’ work? And leave a valid email address behind in the comments, so I can notify when we have all things needed.

Gathering the SL WindLight photographs and arranging them so they can be compared

Vint Falken

Does this sound like a plan?

Tags: windlight
Categories: Photography
44 Comments »

1. Sony BMG & Yahoo, online video deal - azcentral.com - Sony BMG Music Entertainment has inked a licensing deal with Yahoo Inc. that clears the way for people to upload files with music or video content by the record company’s artists to Yahoo
2. 2LifePeople - Yet another social networking site for Second Life Residents. Most interesting? This sentence on the home page: This site supports the new Google OpenSocial Platform
3. 2nd Sex: Why Proky Neva should not be considered a reliable source of information - Most catchy sentence: … She is a representative of a very small group of people who make money by holding Second Life back. … ;)

Categories: Links
5 Comments »

After Shoshana Epsilon mentioned not liking Avatar Impostors showing up in stead of normal avatars starting at a distance of 10 meters, the Watermelon God decided upon enlightenig us on the Avatar Imposters system. He chose to do so in the comments, so for the benefit of this valuable piece of information not getting lost, I’ll recap here that here.

But first we need to know what the avatar imposter system is. According to the wikipedia:

Impostor is a term used instead of billboard if the billboard is meant to subtly replace a real 3D object.

And a billboard is yet another word for a sprite, a three-dimensional image that is used to replace objects that might normally be modeled using texture mapped polygons, such as our avatars. As most 3D rendering engines can process “3D sprites” much faster than other types of 3D objects, this means a serious performance gain. Linden Lab claims this will even go up to a 40% better frame rate when visiting crowded area’s. They are called billboards, because they will always face your camera, just as billboards do with your car on the highway. So no more avatars turning their backs on you! ;)

And now we know what the avatar imposter system is all about, let’s get to business and tweak it!

How to control your Avatar Impostors distance:

1. Go into File > Preferences and choose the Graphics tab. If you are wearing your WindLight client, it should look like the screenshot on your right. To be able to control the avatar imposters settings yourself*, on the right next to Quality and Performance, check custom.
2. Under Avatar Rendering, check Avatar Imposters if you want it on, uncheck if you want no avatar imposters. Yeah, I know: duh!
3. Under Mesh Detail, find the Avatar slider. If you slide it to the right, you will increase the distance at which avatars become impostors, if you slide it to the left, that distance will decrease.
4. Finish this tough decision - graphics quality/enjoyment ft. performance - off by pressing ‘OK’. (Don’t need me to tell you where that button is, now do you? ;))

*You can also set quality to either low, mid, high or ultra, which will result in different Avatar Mesh Detail, and thus in a different distance at which avatar impostors start to occur. But with the Second Life client graphics settings, I suggest to experiment to see what works best for you and your - beloved, I trust - graphics card.

Interesting material? I have some more tutorials on Second Life Photography / Snapshotting and texture creation for your reading pleasure.

Torley Linden’s classy video compliment to my text tutorial: