Slashdot Mirror

tmjva writes "A hardware hack reported last Wednesday on the HP3000-L list proved that a newer version of Hewlett Packards's MPE operating system can be loaded on HP's more venerable machines. Normally this is impossible according to HP (the installation message declares this.) This also brings up some important legal questions as convictions and lawsuits have been handed down before for converting HP3000 systems. Since the HP3000 is sold no more and support ends in 2008, HP may decide to show no interest. Then this hack may allow those who are clinging to old machines the ability to upgrade their OS. Those with newer models may also be able to upgrade their intentionally crippled HP3000 processors to equivalent HP9000 speeds as shown in this table."

tmjva writes "A hardware hack reported last Wednesday on the HP3000-L list proved that a newer version of Hewlett Packards's MPE operating system can be loaded on HP's more venerable machines. Normally this is impossible according to HP (the installation message declares this.) This also brings up some important legal questions as convictions and lawsuits have been handed down before for converting HP3000 systems. Since the HP3000 is sold no more and support ends in 2008, HP may decide to show no interest. Then this hack may allow those who are clinging to old machines the ability to upgrade their OS. Those with newer models may also be able to upgrade their intentionally crippled HP3000 processors to equivalent HP9000 speeds as shown in this table."

Wagner James Au reports from the New World Notes blog about events in Second Life. Today, he's got a discussion with a woman growing her own garden of Eden in the alternate reality that is 2L. From the article: "The result of a year's work, Laukosargas Svarog's island of Svarga is a fully-functioning ecosystem, adding life or something like it to the verdant-looking but arid pallette Linden Lab offers with its world. It begins with her artificial clouds, which are pushed along by Linden's internal wind system. 'If I was to turn off the clouds the whole system would die in about six hours,' she tells me. 'Turn off the bees and [the plants stop] growing, because nothing gets pollinated ... '"

Wagner James Au writes "Soon after Second Life crossed the 100K subscriber mark in January, there's been a rush of big companies itching to develop and promote their brand in the world: first it was MTV, then Coke, and now with SL at 225,000+, they keep coming: this week, for example, Twentieth Century Fox had a virtual world premiere of X-Men III in Second Life. Since SL is completely user-created content, this entrance of big money has helped create a whole new profession: freelance metaverse developer. Aimee Weber, who got her start designing and selling avatar fashions for fun, has since become one of the best in this field, recently creating a promotion environment for a Warner Brother's singer in SL. So I asked her to come to my blog and give advice on how to get your scripting and 3D building skills to pay the bills."

Wagner James Au writes "Soon after Second Life crossed the 100K subscriber mark in January, there's been a rush of big companies itching to develop and promote their brand in the world: first it was MTV, then Coke, and now with SL at 225,000+, they keep coming: this week, for example, Twentieth Century Fox had a virtual world premiere of X-Men III in Second Life. Since SL is completely user-created content, this entrance of big money has helped create a whole new profession: freelance metaverse developer. Aimee Weber, who got her start designing and selling avatar fashions for fun, has since become one of the best in this field, recently creating a promotion environment for a Warner Brother's singer in SL. So I asked her to come to my blog and give advice on how to get your scripting and 3D building skills to pay the bills."

Wagner James Au writes "Soon after Second Life crossed the 100K subscriber mark in January, there's been a rush of big companies itching to develop and promote their brand in the world: first it was MTV, then Coke, and now with SL at 225,000+, they keep coming: this week, for example, Twentieth Century Fox had a virtual world premiere of X-Men III in Second Life. Since SL is completely user-created content, this entrance of big money has helped create a whole new profession: freelance metaverse developer. Aimee Weber, who got her start designing and selling avatar fashions for fun, has since become one of the best in this field, recently creating a promotion environment for a Warner Brother's singer in SL. So I asked her to come to my blog and give advice on how to get your scripting and 3D building skills to pay the bills."

Wagner James Au writes "Soon after Second Life crossed the 100K subscriber mark in January, there's been a rush of big companies itching to develop and promote their brand in the world: first it was MTV, then Coke, and now with SL at 225,000+, they keep coming: this week, for example, Twentieth Century Fox had a virtual world premiere of X-Men III in Second Life. Since SL is completely user-created content, this entrance of big money has helped create a whole new profession: freelance metaverse developer. Aimee Weber, who got her start designing and selling avatar fashions for fun, has since become one of the best in this field, recently creating a promotion environment for a Warner Brother's singer in SL. So I asked her to come to my blog and give advice on how to get your scripting and 3D building skills to pay the bills."

Wagner James Au writes "Soon after Second Life crossed the 100K subscriber mark in January, there's been a rush of big companies itching to develop and promote their brand in the world: first it was MTV, then Coke, and now with SL at 225,000+, they keep coming: this week, for example, Twentieth Century Fox had a virtual world premiere of X-Men III in Second Life. Since SL is completely user-created content, this entrance of big money has helped create a whole new profession: freelance metaverse developer. Aimee Weber, who got her start designing and selling avatar fashions for fun, has since become one of the best in this field, recently creating a promotion environment for a Warner Brother's singer in SL. So I asked her to come to my blog and give advice on how to get your scripting and 3D building skills to pay the bills."

Terra Nova is having a discussion today entitled Cultural Borrowing in WoW, looking at the cultural references made in relation to the Horde (Jamaicans for the Trolls, Native Americans for the Tauren) and what that means given the Horde's reputation as Evil. From the article: "I want to talk about how science fiction and fantasy often engage in this type of borrowing -- most 'new' things are just old things recoded. For instance, the Wikipedia entry on Klingons points to the Soviets, Mongolians, and Japanese Samurai. In most cases, I think this whole process of cultural encryption, mash-up, and recoding is fun -- perhaps what good art is all about. Looking particularly at WoW, though, I have to wonder sometimes..."

Terra Nova is having a discussion today entitled Cultural Borrowing in WoW, looking at the cultural references made in relation to the Horde (Jamaicans for the Trolls, Native Americans for the Tauren) and what that means given the Horde's reputation as Evil. From the article: "I want to talk about how science fiction and fantasy often engage in this type of borrowing -- most 'new' things are just old things recoded. For instance, the Wikipedia entry on Klingons points to the Soviets, Mongolians, and Japanese Samurai. In most cases, I think this whole process of cultural encryption, mash-up, and recoding is fun -- perhaps what good art is all about. Looking particularly at WoW, though, I have to wonder sometimes..."

BusinessWeek's cover story for May 1st has to do with a little place called Second Life. BusinessWeek Online has several stories related to their exploration on online living. My Virtual Life is a first-time exploration of Second Life, with some examination of the property and financial aspects of the gameworld. It's Not All Fun and Games explores the serious side of virtual businesses, as they interview Ashne Chung (notable real estate baron) in a piece called Virtual Land, Real Money. Ed Castronova has his say in a more general article on virtual economies. Finally, for an outside perspective, the obligatory Terra Nova discussion is always useful.

pauljoyce asks: "I'm a Mac fan who is intrigued by the possibilities of Apple's Boot Camp software. Now that I have a chance to painlessly dip into the Windows world, what I'd like to ask you is, what Windows software amazes you? I want to build a list of unique, elegant, can't-do-without apps, so all us new Boot-Camp babies can finally experience some of the great innovation happening over on the Windows platform. I roughed in a quick blogpage to collect the info, and to house any useful discussions. It'll probably deteriorate into a flame war at some point, but hopefully I can get a few contributions to each category before then. Would those interested please chime in with their list of favorites?"

pauljoyce asks: "I'm a Mac fan who is intrigued by the possibilities of Apple's Boot Camp software. Now that I have a chance to painlessly dip into the Windows world, what I'd like to ask you is, what Windows software amazes you? I want to build a list of unique, elegant, can't-do-without apps, so all us new Boot-Camp babies can finally experience some of the great innovation happening over on the Windows platform. I roughed in a quick blogpage to collect the info, and to house any useful discussions. It'll probably deteriorate into a flame war at some point, but hopefully I can get a few contributions to each category before then. Would those interested please chime in with their list of favorites?"

Stitch_Surfs writes "Defendant Skype Technologies S A, Niklas Zennstrom, Janus Friis, Kazaa, Bluemoon Ou and a slew of others have been named in a Rico Suit Filed by StreamCast Networks, of Houston, Texas. StreamCast is the company credited with the development of the Peer to Peer Technology called Morpheus. From the little information the courts have released, StreamCast is claiming that the group engaged in corrupt business practices."

There's a preview up on YouTube of an upcoming documentary on Chinese Gold Farmers. Terra Nova links to the video in a discussion on the hypermobility of labour in the 21st century. From the discussion: "In watching the video, I am most struck by the intertwined empowerment/disempowerment that is occurring simultaneously for these Chinese workers. Their lives in these virtual worlds are brighter, but yet their interactions with American players (and associated slurs) are a constant reminder of their inferior socio-economic status. The disembodied hypermobility granted by these virtual worlds is, to a certain extent, dispelled when they are labeled as 'Chinese gold farmers'. For them, it is a double-edged sword."

Ever willing to explore the hidey-holes of thought, the Terra Nova blog has a discussion up this week talking about play as production. IE: What makes people willing to engage in 'productive play', like the crafting mini-games of Star Wars Galaxies or A Tale in the Desert? They also touch on the more pragmatic 'productive play', gold farming. From the article: "The outsourcing of labor is another interesting trajectory. We know that people outsource, for instance, 'Adena farmers' in Lineage, low-wage workers who farm for game currency to sell on the 'black market.' This creates interesting class and even race tensions, such as the Lineage 2 scenario described at State of Play 2004 by Constance Steinkhueler. Here, Adena farmers typically took the roles of female elf warriors (primarily for farming efficiency reasons); as a result, this race/class in the game began experiencing racial slurs and attacks by players who associated it with Adena farming."

Jerry23 writes "This Saturday The Happening will bring Second Life to first life. The Electric Sheep Company, a new metaverse developer, has virtually recreated R&B Coffee in Washington DC for use in a mixed-reality party and benefit for the DC art scene and several local nonprofits. Real people will mingle with avatars via realtime video projections in the real and virtual R&B spaces, and MAKE Magazine's Phillip Torrone will be on-hand showing off his homemade Virtual Reality headsets and gloves. The whole world is invited to attend in DC or Second Life, whichever's closer for you." This is just conceptually a weird idea to me.

Terra Nova has an interesting discussion going, talking about what really matters when we talk about a virtual world's population. Total registered accounts? Accounts logged in since last month? Concurrent users? Interesting stuff. From the article: "In a similar vein we discussed Second Life's 100K+ members, a figure which I and others have questioned here on TN. Cory Ondrejka said that SL's 'concurrency numbers are rapidly approaching 4500, about 17,000 residents were in SL in the last 24 hours, and 50,000 in the last 30 days... If you go back even 90 days you get about 90% of the accounts having logged in.'"

Via GamePolitics, commentary on the Game Tycoon and Terra Nova sites about how virtual world events and the law can interact. Property rights seem to be the largest sticking point of late, with a recent event in 2L being the focus of the discussion. From the Terra Nova article: "In introducing Point to Point (P2P) movement in Second Life, Linden Lab fundamentally altered the economic structure of the virtual space. In response to protests Linden has offered to buy back land as a form of 'compensation'. Taken together with the recent FBI reports is this the dawn of a liability culture within Second Life heralding a new form of virtual space?"

The Guardian Gamesblog takes a look at the sometimes confusing lexicon used by MMOG players. Aleks was inspired by this post from the MemoryCard blog about acquiring a drop in FFXI. From the Guardian post: "Certainly, I predict that the word 'avatar' will be on the tips of tongues, if only so that tech journalists can stop adding 'the identity that represents you online' every time it's included in an article. If anything, that definition should be added to the OED along with the others: 1. Hindu Myth. The descent of a deity to the earth in an incarnate form. 1784 SIR W. JONES in Asiat. Res. I. 234 The ten Avatárs or descents of the deity, in his capacity of Preserver. 1858 BEVERIDGE Hist. India II. IV. ii. 28 The fifth avatar, called Varuna, because in it Vishnu assumed the form of a dwarf." On a related note, the MMOG commentary blog n3rfed has begun posting again after a leave of absence. Cosmik reintroduces himself with a 'We Didn't Start the Fire'-esque recap of recent events.

The Guardian Gamesblog takes a look at the sometimes confusing lexicon used by MMOG players. Aleks was inspired by this post from the MemoryCard blog about acquiring a drop in FFXI. From the Guardian post: "Certainly, I predict that the word 'avatar' will be on the tips of tongues, if only so that tech journalists can stop adding 'the identity that represents you online' every time it's included in an article. If anything, that definition should be added to the OED along with the others: 1. Hindu Myth. The descent of a deity to the earth in an incarnate form. 1784 SIR W. JONES in Asiat. Res. I. 234 The ten Avatárs or descents of the deity, in his capacity of Preserver. 1858 BEVERIDGE Hist. India II. IV. ii. 28 The fifth avatar, called Varuna, because in it Vishnu assumed the form of a dwarf." On a related note, the MMOG commentary blog n3rfed has begun posting again after a leave of absence. Cosmik reintroduces himself with a 'We Didn't Start the Fire'-esque recap of recent events.

Davis Freeberg submitted linkage to a short story talking about Skypecasting Television. Essentially using Skype and Yahoo Messenger to rebroadcast video to the internet. While it isn't a PVR, it circumvents the regionally oriented programming that prevents the UK from watching our "Football" or us from getting Dr Who. It also raises yet another battlefront the content owners will need to contend with in the upcoming years.

The always thoughtful Terra Nova has a look at the recent Star Wars Galaxies revamp from a group with a long view on the role of Massive games. From the article: "Unfortunately, the live management team seems to have ignored another long-standing criticism of SWG by many observers: that their design and implementation process is a disastrous mess. Never more so than with the NGE: whatever it is conceptually, in practice, it's roughly on par with an alpha build of a MMOG. Or did they ignore it? It's just possible that SWG's latest flaming car wreck resulted from deliberately driving over a cliff. I'm normally deeply suspicious of conspiracy theories. In the case of SWG's NGE, though, there are really only two possibilities: that there is a deeper agenda or that the live management team is well beyond cluelessly self-destructive, out in some outer void of fecklessness. "

jacksonwest writes "What's been rumored for some time has now been confirmed -- Google has made a bid in response to Mayor Gavin Newsom's request for information. The details of the bid include citywide access, for free, at 300kbps. The plans dovetail into their location-based advertising and services strategy, and come on the heels of their recent VPN service rollout."

Jerry23 writes "The Second Life Community Convention site is carrying pre-release excerpts from O'Reilly Publishing's 'Only A Game: Online Worlds and the Virtual Journalist Who Knew Too Much' due out in 2006 (direct link to 10-page PDF). From the introduction: 'When virtual journalist Peter Ludlow was banned from the digital world of The Sims Online for being a bit too good at his job, it wasn't the end of the story but the beginning of the headlines that would capture readers around the world. Only A Game follows Ludlow's career as a virtual journalist as he and colleague Mark Wallace take us behind the scenes into not just The Sims Online but a fascinating universe of worlds that are far more colorful-and, at times, more disturbing-than their creators would have you believe.' As online *worlds* grow to earn their name, the last line of the PDF asks the million dollar question: 'How big is your game?'"

ringbarer writes "News is coming in that the lands of Azeroth have become infected with a deadly plague which the developers never intended to spread. Originating from the new Zul'Gurub instance, the plague has spread from player to player via town NPCs. Entire cities are being wiped out, yet players are finding this surprise content entertaining!" From the article: " Some servers have gotten so bad that you can't go into the major cities without getting the plague (and anyone less than like level 50 nearly immediately die). GM's even tried quarantining players in certain areas, but the players kept escaping the quarantine and infect other players." Commentary on Terra Nova.

Slashback tonight brings you a larger-than-usual assortment of updates, clarifications and followups to previous and ongoing Slashdot stories. Read on below for more details on the Canadian Harry Potter injunction, CardSystem's customer data mishap, the popularity of Beethoven vs. the Beatles, and what the recent MySpace acquisition might mean.

Beethoven rules the downloads charts! jd writes "At 1.4 million downloads, Beethoven has beaten the Beatles in online downloads, according to The Guardian. iTunes sales of 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' comes in at a mere 20,000. The BBC, who put the symphonies on their download site, are delighted. The music industry, which thought classical music was all but dead, is in shock. About the only question remaining is how much did the Slashdot Effect contribute?"

And if the Beatles are "more popular than Jesus," this Beethoven guy must be really popular!

Now you can think of it as Rupert'sSpace. applextrent writes with a few thoughts on the recent acquisition of MySpace by Fox: "MySpace's privacy policy and company filings including all users' information lists, databases, text, files and documents are explicitly documented as an asset of MySpace. The agreement also states MySpace can sell the site and all user information to a third party that might not necessarily follow the same privacy policy as MySpace. To put it simply, MySpace owns everything a user provides them with. This is not entirely an uncommon thing for many free services such as AOL's Instant Messenger have similar privacy policies. Now all of this user information is in the hands of News Corp. and they can pretty much do whatever they want with it.

Not to say anything bad will come of this, in fact this could mean better protection for users privacy, or it may not. This is possible reason for concern especially considering MySpace's blog population for a MySpace run blog is technically owned by the same people who bring you Fox News."

This is much worse than losing the car keys, son. An anonymous reader writes "In the wake of the large-scale credit card compromise of Card Systems, the NYTimes is reporting that Visa has decided to stop allowing transactions from the processor. Visa says 'CardSystems has not corrected, and cannot at this point correct, the failure to provide proper data security for those accounts.' Visa has informed member banks that they have until Oct. 31 to switch from using CardSystems to process card transactions. The decision sends a strong message to the industry about Visa's stance on cardholder security with respect to enforcing the PCI Data Security Standard. We'll see how MasterCard and American Express react. Also the long term viability of CardSystems itself is now in question."

Another visit to the Abandonware Orphanage. chill writes "Aladdin 4D, the venerable Amiga 3D design and rendering program, is yearning to be free. If the owners, Nova Designs, can raise $37,579.83 to pay off old debts they will release the trademarks, source code, tutorials, rights, and all as LGPL. So, if having this tool available to the FOSS pool of code is something that interests you, donate!"

This approach worked for Blender; it would be great to see it happen more.

Google keeps stealing my best ideas before I have them. Chmarr writes "Right on the heels of Google Moon, Google Maps now includes very detailed maps of our favorite animation source Japan. Here's hoping you can read Japanese."

But you only need to read Alien for this one: Oreo 51 writes "It was only a matter of time before someone did this. Barry Snyder used Google Maps to take shots of the infamous high-security Area 51 in the Nevada desert. I can't wait to see what /.ers think of all the craters and interesting sand geometry there."

Now taking donations of one nickel per cool use of Google Maps, to go toward the James Ellroy Crime Scene Map Project Fund.

Now with more nutritious Darkness! Simian Farmer writes "For the tens of thousands of Star Wars fans who visited The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster on a daily basis just before the release of Sith, the same author has begun penning his own blog-novel called Simon of Space.

The style of writing that lured so many to read Darth Side so avidly this past April/May is present in spades in his new fiction, updated almost daily. According to the author, it has, '...romance, action, humour and all the whiz-bang special effects you can get without actually making a movie.'"

Blue Frog Claims to be Legit justy writes "I noticed that Blue Security, the company behind the Blue Frog anti-spam initiative, have issued a statement on their blog as a result of "feedback we have received from the community". They say that "the total number of complaints posted by the community is exactly equal to the number of spam messages received", which seems more fair in my opinion. Perhaps this development is a result of the heated discussion here on Slashdot."

Well that's not Orwellian or anything, Nooo .... An anonymous reader writes "The fallout from the recent Canadian Harry Potter court order continues [Harry Potter and the Right to Read] as a national newspaper was threatened with a lawsuit if they published a book review based on an 'unlawful reading.' The case, along with similar copyright abuses, has Canadians wondering what became of a kinder, gentler legal approach."

Well, keep looking then. According to this NY Times story, the recently described spotting of an ivory-billed woodpecker may be based on evidence too weak to rely on; this is the same bird that Cornell researches have been looking for with automated means to detect its distinctive voice.

If you're an American abroad or just don't get out much, virtual spaces still have something to offer you to get you in the spirit of July 4th. The Guardian Gamesblog has commentary living abroad as a game players, and specifically on a Second Life area entitled Americana. Star Wars Galaxies, being a generally very American game, is celebrating Empire Day today. World of Warcraft isn't doing anything July 4th specific, but this week or next should see the introduction of the Darkmoon Faire, a traveling summer carnival. From the Gamesblog post: "There are only two times of the year when I get homesick for the country of my upbringing: Thanksgiving and 4th of July. Well, the latter is upon us and while the Yanks have their annual fireworks festival (in warm weather, thank you - none of this November nonsense), we're celebrating the beginning of July down here in the south of England with some uncharacteristic sun."

Late last month the Games + Learning + Society conference came to town in Madison, WI. The assembled big thinkers discussed many different aspects of gaming as it interacts with education, socialization, and main-stream culture. Terra Nova has a great big breakdown thread with commentary from some of the presenters. The Shifted Librarian has a firsthand account of the conference, and PsychoChild's blog features musings on the MMO presentations. From PyschoChild's blog: "Stephen Gillett, a Senior Director at Yahoo! Inc., gave an excellent presentation at the GLS conference entitled Guild Building is Skill Building where he argues that you can learn important skills from playing online games. In his case, he says he learned important management skills from leading a guild. Stephen argued that the act of forming and running a guild is similar to what an entrepreneur does. An entrepreneur has to raise capital, incorporate, find talent, etc. Similarly, a guild master (GM) has to get together funds, form the guild, recruit good members, etc. Given Stephen's history as an entrepreneur he knows what he's talking about."

The sale of Neopets to MTV earlier this week has created an interest in how the "tiny" site could go for so much. Terra Nova has a look at the stickyness of the site and its reality as a virtual space. Alice discusses the reasons behind the price tag, based on the outlook of a venture capitalist. From the Wonderland blog: "Here we have one of the most successful pieces of social software ever, so successful that it is being purchased by a major media company for $160-million, and the story is getting remarkably little play in social software circles. Why is the acquisition interesting? "

Several of the larger commercial MMOGs are gearing up for updates in the next few weeks. The Everquest 2 Producer's Letter details more quests and PvP news, SWG's Patch 19 has smuggler updates and animation fixes, and World of Warcraft lead producer Shane Dabiri offers up a Battleplan for your perusal. (N3rfed has some leaked patch notes, if you're so inclined.) From the WoW Battleplan: "Some of our upcoming plans have already been mentioned on our community site. For example, in our next major update, we will be releasing Blackwing Lair, a 40-person raid dungeon, where you will be able to battle against the epic dragon Nefarian and his minions. We are also working on a 20-person dungeon called Zul'Gurub, and the mysterious lands of Ahn'Qiraj in Silithus. Outside of dungeons, we want to continue adding new world events, such as a carnival that will take place in Mulgore and Elwynn forest."

flippy writes "Videoblogger Steve Garfield has a new interview with Holmes Wilson of Downhill Battle and Participatory Culture Foundation, talking about the F/OSS internet TV platform that Participatory Culture is developing and their recently released video publishing package, Broadcast Machine. Their RSS / BitTorrent / VLC application ("TiVo for the Internet") is expected to be released for Mac and Windows by the end of this month."

Via Terra Nova, the New York Times (reg. required) has a piece discussing the increasing trend of players making serious money off of MMOGs. They cite one gentleman who is able to pay his monthly mortage thanks to his daily ventures into the virtual spaces of Second Life. From the article: "Mr. Ainsworth, 36, was not a fan of online games until his 10-year-old daughter became interested in The Sims Online. He then noticed that a large number of simoleans were for sale on eBay. 'I started hearing about players leaving the game who were selling their assets...so I figured, buy low, sell high.'"

Terra Nova is reporting on a 60 page DoD report on MMOGs and their military applications. The paper is a blueprint for using massive spaces as research tools. Some of the topics suggested include: "Impact of After Action Review (AAR) on MMOG, Performance and Decision Making Style, Impact of Addiction to MMOG, Sense of Community and Group Longevity or Persistence, Describe the Apprenticeship Process in MMOG, Game Authenticity and Constructivism"

jkendrick writes "jkOnTheRun has posted pics of the rumored IBM ThinkPad X41 Tablet PC pulled from the FCC filing. It looks as expected, a nice black ThinkPad with a major exception, the swivel screen and the Tablet OS."

Jerry23 writes "Next Thursday, April 28th, the Second Life Future Salon will begin holding free, monthly mini-conferences inside the digital world of Second Life. These Salons will feature invited presenters on topics exploring the future of technology, business, society, and digital worlds. The first Salon will take place in design team Bedazzle's China Town setting and feature Randal Moss from the American Cancer Society on an upcoming Relay for Life fundraising project in Second Life, and Jim Purbrick AKA Babbage Linden on his personal experience developing digital worlds as well as some emerging opportunities for paid jobs working in (not just on) digital worlds. The Salon is being started up by the Acceleration Studies Foundation, a futures research nonprofit."

Jerry23 writes "Next Thursday, April 28th, the Second Life Future Salon will begin holding free, monthly mini-conferences inside the digital world of Second Life. These Salons will feature invited presenters on topics exploring the future of technology, business, society, and digital worlds. The first Salon will take place in design team Bedazzle's China Town setting and feature Randal Moss from the American Cancer Society on an upcoming Relay for Life fundraising project in Second Life, and Jim Purbrick AKA Babbage Linden on his personal experience developing digital worlds as well as some emerging opportunities for paid jobs working in (not just on) digital worlds. The Salon is being started up by the Acceleration Studies Foundation, a futures research nonprofit."

OMG! writes "In an open letter to the community John Smedley, the president of Sony Online Entertainment, announced their new service 'the Station Exchange' which will allow players of Everquest II to trade their items for real live money. Sony Online is the first major player in the MMORPG genre to embrace commercial trading of in-game items." Commentary available from all the usual suspects, including Wired, the Players, Terra Nova, F13, and Grimwell. This would seem to be a total reversal of the policies of certain other MMOGs.

We reported late last week that FFXI was under a DDOS attack. The Japanese origin of the title may be the reason for the attack, as Ludonauts asks the question of whether chinese crackers may attacking the game because of political frustration. From the article: "Discussion on the Allakhazam forum points the attack at Chinese protesters angry about the deletion of references to Japanese war atrocities from history textbooks: the DDOS attacks began on April 9, the same day as the protests in China. In FFXI, this issue is linked to the question of 'gil-sellers,' players who farm in-game resources for real-world cash, who in FFXI are usually characterized as Chinese: many who are suspected of being gil-sellers have placed comments in their searchable information fields like 'Resisting all Japanese goods, long live the People's Republic of China.'" Commentary available from game girl advance, Broken Toys, and Terra Nova.

Terra Nova has a post up about a financial development on the World of Warcraft server Elune. From the article: "two players recently bought out the entire contents of the Auction House in Ironforge, with the exception of premium-priced high-level weapons and armor (e.g., they bought all the trade goods) and then resold all of what they bought at a higher price." They go on to discuss the event in the context of Massive Game economies and the results that tradeskills can have on monetary inflation.

Jim Hanas excertps from his very funny article on the quiet disappearance of last-year's promised digital bacchanal. "Remember 'toothing'? It was a craze that was sweeping England last year as bored commuters arranged sexual encounters using Bluetooth-enabled cellphones. You probably read about it over at Wired or Reuters or the BBC. There's a decent chance you even blogged about it. Well. What happened?" Update: 04/05 00:10 GMT by T : Hanas writes with a followup: "The original source on the whole toothing thing has just admitted it was a hoax -- in response to my email and your picking up of my post."

FLickLover writes "Yahoo is buying Flickr for an undisclosed amount. The rumors of the deal have been doing the rounds for weeks now. On the Flickr Blog Ludicorp folks are talking about the deal and how it impacts the community. "We can finally confirm that Yahoo has made a definitive agreement to acquire Flickr and us, Ludicorp. Smack the tattlers and pop the champagne corks! Woohoo! " This is the third high profile Blog/RSS related buyout of 2005. Live Journal was bought by Six Apart, while Ask Jeeves snapped up Bloglines." Update: 03/21 12:49 GMT by H : And my favorite comment on it comes from Ben Hyde's blog. Genius.

The Game Developer's Rant session held at the GDC continues to reverberate through the industry. GameDev.net and Greg Costikyan's site have more details on the session itself, while Terra Nova's original thread on the subject has been followed up by an open letter to the participants from Matt Mihaly of Iron Realms Entertainment. From Matt's letter: "Anyway, please, just stop the whining. Stop telling people about how horrible the games industry is. Stop telling them that they can't succeed without radical industry changes. It's bunk and you should know better. Are you intentionally trying to discourage people from getting into the industry?"

The Game Developer's Rant session held at the GDC continues to reverberate through the industry. GameDev.net and Greg Costikyan's site have more details on the session itself, while Terra Nova's original thread on the subject has been followed up by an open letter to the participants from Matt Mihaly of Iron Realms Entertainment. From Matt's letter: "Anyway, please, just stop the whining. Stop telling people about how horrible the games industry is. Stop telling them that they can't succeed without radical industry changes. It's bunk and you should know better. Are you intentionally trying to discourage people from getting into the industry?"

bonch writes "Richard Grimes of Dr. Dobbs Journal wrote an article entitled Mr. Grimes' Farewell, in which he discusses what he feels are inherent flaws in .NET, and how he is abandoning his .NET column. Grimes argues that .NET is merely thin wrappers to Win32 calls (Avalon uses message functions that date back to 16-bit Windows), that Microsoft has abandoned confidence in both .NET and sales of Longhorn, and that the framework itself is too large and poorly implemented, most of it ported from past APIs like WFC and VB. Dan Fernandez, Microsoft's Visual C# Project Manager, has responded in his blog. Richard Grimes appears in the comments to defend his criticism, referencing first-hand disassembly of .NET APIs using ildasm. Scott Swigart has also responded to the criticism of Visual Basic .NET. Apparently, Mr. Grimes struck some nerves."

TerraNova has the story that MUD1 co-designer Richard Bartle has been awarded the annual First Penguin Award. The award is given for exhibiting "the courage and bravery of a developer who is the first to test the proverbial waters, in the face of uncertainty of success or failure. Receiving a 'penguin' serves as an inspiration and lesson to the community."

ChipGuy writes "TiVo's death watch has begun. The company is having a tough time finding traction in the marketplace, as more and more competitors rush into the market, most of them deep pocketed satellite and cable companies. But is all lost? What if the company went private and became the anti-cable, letting us download, store, organize, and serve media from both cable and -- this is the important part -- the internet. Others believe that TiVo should get into the content aggregation business."

This past weekend we discussed virtual sweatshops, and the legal issues they bring up. Today Terra Nova has a discussion in which Julian Dibbell, noted VW economics researcher, asks do such things really exist? Firsthand experiences would seem to indicate they do, with extensive chat logs (via Broken Toys) and the experiences of players documenting farming behavior.

prostoalex writes "MSNBC points to the court cases spawned by virtual worlds. Recently, Tom Loftus notes, a virtual island in one of the MMORPGs sold for $30,000, enough to attract commercial attention. Apparently, some businesses create third-world sweatshops, where low-wage laborers are being paid to play and accumulate enough virtual merchandise, so that an eBay sale of it makes the operation profitable. 'One such business, Blacksnow Interactive, actually sued a virtual world's creator in 2002 for attempting to crack down on the practice. The first of its kind to center on virtual goods, the case was eventually dropped,' MSNBC says." Update: 02/06 18:59 GMT by Z : We ran a story about the sale of the virtual island, and Terra Nova has a lot of commentary on the sale of virtual goods. For comparison, the economic impact of this phenomenon is roughly equal to that of Namibia or Macedonia.

prostoalex writes "MSNBC points to the court cases spawned by virtual worlds. Recently, Tom Loftus notes, a virtual island in one of the MMORPGs sold for $30,000, enough to attract commercial attention. Apparently, some businesses create third-world sweatshops, where low-wage laborers are being paid to play and accumulate enough virtual merchandise, so that an eBay sale of it makes the operation profitable. 'One such business, Blacksnow Interactive, actually sued a virtual world's creator in 2002 for attempting to crack down on the practice. The first of its kind to center on virtual goods, the case was eventually dropped,' MSNBC says." Update: 02/06 18:59 GMT by Z : We ran a story about the sale of the virtual island, and Terra Nova has a lot of commentary on the sale of virtual goods. For comparison, the economic impact of this phenomenon is roughly equal to that of Namibia or Macedonia.