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A) Second life never releases player numbers, what is your source?

B) The only verifiable info we have shows less than 600k players per day (scroll down about midway to view charts).

C) Even if your made up bullshit number were real, still as I said means that Fortnite is bigger than Second Life ever was.

Fortnite will be a shell of its current self in 1-2 years like WOW or anything else.

Why do you think that? I can't see it going into decline anytime soon. What's going to replace it, something from EA HAH AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAH.

What you and other companies furiously churning out Battle Royale clones do not realize is that Battle Royale itself is why people play Fortnite. You do not understand the world they have created.

So you're telling me...a company with the resources of Alphabet/Google were unable to put together a viable social platform but Second Life is still a thing?

What is the value of firewood in a computer simulation?

It is L$99 which would translate into about say, 90 cents depending on the exchange.

https://marketplace.secondlife...

Is there a better centralized method of communicating with them?

Second Life?

Linden Labs said the exact same thing about second life.

Zing!

Did you know there's an Oculus enabled SL beta available?

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wik...

I'm pretty sure the only thing left keeping SL alive these days is the furries that have sex on the network.

There never were actually that many furries in SL. What's keeping SL alive are the 25-55 year old women.

If I'm not mistaken, even they don't like SL much anymore.

I really don't know why people associate furries with SL, since they are HUGELY outnumbered by every other demographic. Personally I think the association exists because a bunch of slashdotter-nerds, entering SL to check it out, headed to the more nerdy spots in SL: scripter/builder hangouts/sandboxes...and thusly ran into SL's heavily furry scripter/builder/aspie crowd. They're not furry because of the sex, they're furry because they feel alienated from real-world social culture and the average SL social culture too. Their furry form is a "take that" to the "barbie's and kens"

Yes, SL is what one makes of it, but your link is incorrect, no dash between second and life

https://secondlife.com/

3D Shopping is a failure, just take a look at Second Life. If it were so popular then why does http://marketplace.secondlife.com/ even need to exist, and why is it thriving whilst in-world shops are barren and empty? It's more efficient and more effective to find items using a traditional website than the inefficient approach of stumbling through 3D space.

> Disclaimer: at $DAYJOB I develop a web proxy; HTTP abuse makes me cry

This will probably be your equivalent of Cthulhu mythos then (induce gibbering madness): http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Reverse_HTTP

Prior art much?

http://secondlife.com/

Calling Second Life 'art' is really pushing it....

Microsoft has patented this in 2006.

Second Life has been doing this since March 2005.

There are also other, less known virtual worlds that have been doing it since prior to 2005.
(I think Active Worlds had this running in the same year or earlier? Needs to be checked.)

I wonder if this patent would hold against this sort of a prior art?

Prior art much?
http://secondlife.com/

Money laundering through Second Life isn't very effective since all transaction history is kept for at least 30 days (but is much longer than this, this is just user accessible). You can only withdraw your credit (exchange for US$) by wire transfer or PayPal, not only that but they have a Risk API to determine the risk of a real-world transaction which must also be used for any third party L$ exchanges. The paper trail is there, it's not difficult to reach if you're law enforcement, it's called a subpoena.

Money laundering through Second Life isn't very effective since all transaction history is kept for at least 30 days (but is much longer than this, this is just user accessible). You can only withdraw your credit (exchange for US$) by wire transfer or PayPal, not only that but they have a Risk API to determine the risk of a real-world transaction which must also be used for any third party L$ exchanges. The paper trail is there, it's not difficult to reach if you're law enforcement, it's called a subpoena.

Money laundering through Second Life isn't very effective since all transaction history is kept for at least 30 days (but is much longer than this, this is just user accessible). You can only withdraw your credit (exchange for US$) by wire transfer or PayPal, not only that but they have a Risk API to determine the risk of a real-world transaction which must also be used for any third party L$ exchanges. The paper trail is there, it's not difficult to reach if you're law enforcement, it's called a subpoena.

all of whom were working on a similar concept

No they weren't, enterprise was just one of their stupid directions.

Yes they were. LL says so: http://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2010/06/09/a-restructuring-for-linden-lab?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+SecondLife+(Official+Second+Life+Blogs+-+FEATURED)

More sources: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/06/10/second-life-creator-linden-lab-downsizes-morphs/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-20007260-36.html http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2364893,00.asp

Not technically "real-time" but certainly live...a few years ago I attended a live music performance in Second Life where the trio were around the world, one in Tokyo, one in Georgia, one in a city in Canada doing vocals/harmonica, keyboard and guitar all together.

They used software that allowed the subsequent performers to hear the first's stream and mix them together for the next. They also had themselves on video (ustream) so you could choose your own camera and watch them all separately from their avatars on stage in Second Life.

There were nearly 100 people in the audience enjoying their improvisations. (To give credit, I believe Komuso came up with the idea of combining all the technologies...the other performers I think were Noma and Hathead iirc.)

Not technically "real-time" but certainly live...a few years ago I attended a live music performance in Second Life where the trio were around the world, one in Tokyo, one in Georgia, one in a city in Canada doing vocals/harmonica, keyboard and guitar all together.

They used software that allowed the subsequent performers to hear the first's stream and mix them together for the next. They also had themselves on video (ustream) so you could choose your own camera and watch them all separately from their avatars on stage in Second Life.

There were nearly 100 people in the audience enjoying their improvisations. (To give credit, I believe Komuso came up with the idea of combining all the technologies...the other performers I think were Noma and Hathead iirc.)

Not technically "real-time" but certainly live...a few years ago I attended a live music performance in Second Life where the trio were around the world, one in Tokyo, one in Georgia, one in a city in Canada doing vocals/harmonica, keyboard and guitar all together.

They used software that allowed the subsequent performers to hear the first's stream and mix them together for the next. They also had themselves on video (ustream) so you could choose your own camera and watch them all separately from their avatars on stage in Second Life.

There were nearly 100 people in the audience enjoying their improvisations. (To give credit, I believe Komuso came up with the idea of combining all the technologies...the other performers I think were Noma and Hathead iirc.)

A PC is a tool and like all tools, works best with the fewest necessary peripheries. IT guys recognize this. They have no use for Bob and they feel (perhaps rightly) that their users should have no use for Bob and Bob like programs bring no real value.

A tool works best when it is designed for its users.

The user who found value in BOB or Clippy was not the geek in IT - and not the poster to Slashdot.

He won't be attracted to the GIMP by its name or its GUI - whatever horsepower is to found underneath.

But he will find a welcoming environment in Second Life - and may just discover that his college or university has an outpost there: Academic Organizations in Second Life.

See also http://www.davidrumsey.com/

Wow, where to begin... This looks good:

It reminds me of all the VRML hype from years back. People were predicting that in the future, we wouldn't type URLs into a Web browser. We'd fire up our Avatars and fly to places on the Web in 3-D graphics. We would walk through virtual libraries, pulling electronic books off 3-D shelves. We'd ride dragons to meeting rooms where we'd chat with other avatars in real time. And all I could think was, "WTF? So we've just invented the Internet, this miraculous thing that puts the world of information right at your fingertips, no matter where you are, so that all you have to do is type a couple things and the information instantly appears on your screen... and you want to impose a 3-D spatial paradigm on it? Instead of calling up information out of thin air, you want to have to hike down the virtual block to get it? You call that progress?"

I wonder if you're familiar with Second Life?

And yes, for many, it is considered progress. Or at least it was. I'm not sure how many big corps are still onboard, but there were buzzings of private servers for employee training and the like. Anyway it turns out that while it hasn't applied to the web as a whole, people really did cotton to that idea. Lots of people. Even some important ones.

Same thing with this tablet idea. People are too stupid to use computers, apparently, so you want to use all the power of a computer to enable them to do things like they would if all they had was a stack of paper and a Bic -- because that's what they're supposedly comfortable with.

Taking your finger and pointing it is about as basic as it gets. Using a pen is just an extension of that. Paper made it more portable than cave walls. People aren't all that keen on using keyboards everywhere they go because they're simply not natural. How many of those full-size, fold-able keyboards sold as accessories to cell phones really see any daily use?

I think the device looks like an innovative approach to 'infinite paper', which is basically what the videos bill it out to be. It looks like a huge step beyond what tablets presently mean, and seems to offer it in a better form factor.

Meanwhile your desktop will be right where you last left it, with the keyboard still attached.

I guess I'm not quite sure what you're rambling about, but I'm pretty certain the words you are searching for involve 'kids' and 'off' and 'lawn'.

Just like Second Life, the 3D web is not something people actually want

The 50K people logged in right now would seem to disagree. Right now it's a fairly low activity time, should go up later. And from the inside it seems to be still getting larger.

They think it sounds great. Looking at pretty things instead of reading boring stuff is in their eyes the ultimate evolution of computing. That's why you keep reading this sort of stuff all the time. But it will never stick, because in reality, it's just not very useful.

I see it in a different way. Not everything has to be a revolution. Back when there was a lot of news about SL there was a lot of hype for sure, but there must be some use to it, since it didn't die when it stopped getting talked about so much. Some people see no point in SL, that's perfectly fine. I see no point WoW either, but that doesn't make it a failure just because it fails to appeal to every person on the planet.

I think this will be in the same way. Uses will be found for it. It won't be a revolution that will change every website everywhere. Not everybody has an espresso machine, and not everybody is going to have 3D on their website, but that doesn't mean those aren't useful things.

Don't confuse this with Linden's right to dictate the terms of their service, which they of course have. The conflict with the GPL is not in their restrictions on the USAGE of a modified client, but in their imposing restrictions on the freedom to develop and distribute it.

The Third Party Viewer restrictions only apply to users of the service. If you never use Linden Labs' service, you aren't bound by them.

The GPL is no longer available to developers of Second Life clients, because Linden Lab has added new restrictions on a developer's freedom to develop and distribute,

They have done no such thing. The have restricted the freedoms of people who access the service under the TOS. If you never access their service, you aren't bound by the TPV restrictions.

You can easily see that in Section 8 of TPV: if you violate the Third Party Viewer policy, you don't lose the rights to the source code (which would be the GPL remedy), you lose the right to access the service.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Unofficial_Licensing_FAQ (This page was last modified on 12 January 2009)

Having lived in SL for more than 3 years this comes as no surprise. There were team of people writing viewers specifically for griefing and IP theft. As a example there was a viewer that had a "crash server button" and as such I do believe that this policy is well over due. https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/community/blog/2010/02/23/introducing-a-new-third-party-viewer-directory-and-policy

graphics that don't look like they're from the late '90s"

Hurray! Let's base our opinion of software from more than 5 years ago! http://secondlife.com/beta-viewer/

Where's that world of wonder where everything is possible and I'm a superman?

Provided you have a decent computer that can handle content that is not prerendered (due to the dynamic nature of such a virtual world, it's not really possible to prerender), you could try Second life.

Not quite. It's actually a virtual reality environment anybody can join. Feel free to check it out.

Open Simulator (which is what OSGrid runs) and Second Life both support LSL, and you can see tangible results from your code almost immediately after writing it. This will probably be a little bit more attention-holding than your typical hacking environment.

Really? Try me. In fact, just as an experiment, let's set up a fake holodeck, with a non-stop supply of sex hungry people of the desired gender and general physical attributes, and let's see just how long it takes before I get bored and decide to leave.

These folks?

Where can I download this "real world" you speak of? Is it a one time purchase or a subscription fee?

I think it's here.

I've been following a lot of similar stories recently and I don't understand why agencies and institutions wouldn't build on an opensource infrastructure that they can control (e.g., something like openlife)

Linden Labs has experience and resources.

Linden Labs clients include:

British Petroleum
Wells Fargo
NOAA
The government of Ontario
Naval Undersea Warfare Center
CIGNA
Kraft
Unilever
Disney
Northrop Grumman
Kelly Services
Cisco
IBM
Intel
Microsoft
Toshiba
British Telecom
Nokia

Second Life Work

Openlife is in beta and looks it.

It works for Second Life. Almost too well. In 2007, Ginko Financial, an in-game bank, went bust. Then Midas Bank went bust. This drew the attention of The Wall Street Journal. In 2008, Linden Labs introduced bank regulation. Most of the Second Life banks were actually Ponzi schemes, with huge interest rates. It's still possible for a real-world bank to open branches in Second Life, but nobody has bothered.

... is decreasing every day.

Source? This blog post seems to indicate otherwise, assuming active users is at least somewhat related to total user hours.

LL should put up a splash screen saying "This is not the U.S. Its laws do not apply here, motherfucker". Then again, most Americans wouldn't understand it, and everyone else already knows.

Linden Labs is in the US. Its servers are in the US. I think most Americans would agree that that puts them under American law, even if you don't understand that. The rest of us realize that virtual worlds aren't real.

Virtual worlds aren't outside reality; they are contained within it. The content of the Second Life grid is digital like everything else on the internet...are you claiming the internet isn't "real"?

Possibly the important question here is...is a SL Taser a protected form of expression; is it "fair use"? If I write a story in which a Taser is a prop, must I call it something else? I don't think so. But a number of people have been shut-down in world for using characters and other elements from copyrighted works.

By the way, I've heard rumors that LL wants to locate a datacenter in the UK. There's currently a huge kerfluffle in-world about a recent move by LL to add an additional rating "adults-only" to the existing "PG" "Mature" scheme. (Under 18 users are already segregared to a completely separate virtual world.

Some folks believe (me included) that the recent "extreme pornography" provisions of the UK Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 is one reason for the tighter content controls. Certainly fear of procecution under the UK's draconian pedophilia laws was related to the similar kerfluffle a year ago about age play in-world.

Second Life has problems with these suits and the courts...

"Problems" as in "Frivolous litigation"... it's stated in the Terms of Service what the Linden Dollar is meant to be and I don't see how text of the terms can be considered illegal, unless you know of some court precedent or piece of legislation I don't.

1.4 Second Life "currency" is a limited license right available for purchase or free distribution at Linden Lab's discretion, and is not redeemable for monetary value from Linden Lab.

http://secondlife.com/corporate/tos.php
I believe you are probably referring to the Bragg v. Linden Lab case in which forced arbitration was ruled out (Also featured on Slashdot). It had more to do with "land ownership" rather than the "limited license right" associated with the "Linden Dollar". The ratio decidendi of this decision has enough significant differences for it to not influence the legal underpinnings of the Linden Dollar, so I'm not really sure about the basis of your opinion unless I've missed something.

http://secondlife.com/

By the way, Kitware also develops CMake, the build system used by Second Life and KDE.

Purple.com which is one of the rare ones that is what you'd expect, I believe I've even achieved the high score in the purple game, but it's hard to tell and that squirrel is quick.

Pandora has to be mentioned, I'm surprised nobody else has yet, but a service that plays music based upon what you enjoy, rather than popularity, artificial genres, names, etc.? If Pandora were a woman, I'd be a happily married man.

Second Life is truly unique. An online virtual world that is so unique, it's nearly impossible to define. It's not a game although games can be played there. It's not a social site, although you may socialize there. It's not a place to go make money although some earn livings there. You can waste tons of time there and feel you haven't spent enough.

Hell, this kind of market for virtual goods exists explicitly for Second Life. They even have a list of suggested businesses and a real-time currency exchange.

Hell, this kind of market for virtual goods exists explicitly for Second Life. They even have a list of suggested businesses and a real-time currency exchange.

I'm already living Web 3D... you guys need to catch up.

On second thought --- don't. The 3D spaces are now much like the internet was back in the late '80s - a more equitable balance of signal to noise.

Dude, what you are describing...
SecondLife

Oh, get a second life, dude! :-)
I kid! I kid!

I tend to agree with you in general, though.
If developers are pushing 'eye candy', then by golly, give us the means to see some serious 'eye candy'! Quit playing around!

Reminds me of the ole 'Tigger' sound clip (Winnie the Pooh?):
"The wonderful thing about Tiggers, is Tiggers are wonderful things.
They're bouncy,bouncy,bouncy,bouncy, fun, fun, fun!
The wonderful thing about Tiggers, is I'm the only one!"

*off topic* Scratch the '...I'm the only one!' part!
I was fortunate enough to go to high school in the earl/mid 1970's- grad'd 1976- when halter tops and mini/micro-mini skirts were the current fashion trend.

I can attest from observation (and the 'rise in my Levi's' factor) that: "bouncy, bouncy fun, fun, fun!" can make a powerful argument while hanging out in Mom's Basement(tm), or anywhere for that matter.
Maybe it's just me.....I digress...
*back on topic*

There are always the Duke Nukem series to explore. Mine has strippers, pole dancing.....excuse me, I've got to go now.

Hey! There's real crime in Second life like being attacked by an "assault scripted object".

If you read the article, "Right now, we do not have OpenGL support but will be working to release it soon". So when it hits the shelves for purchase, opengl games, including Linux games, will work out of the box. One opengl game, Secondlife was modified for 3D by University of Michigan. http://um3d.dc.umich.edu/software/second_life/ https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2972

Dude, you so need to get a Second Life!

I'm an active LSL scripter in SecondLife and it is obvious at least to me that you are posting these criticisms without a thorough understanding of what you're talking about.

LSL is indeed quite limited, but not to the extent that you claim. Code re-use is quite possible, and is quite common in that many useful functions have been encapsulated into their own scripts and are passed around quite frequently. For example, the XYText system: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/XyText_1.5

Your assertion that scripts can't export any sort of interface beyond touch events completely ignores the listen event - which lets a script respond to arbitrary text input, either via public chat or by a private channel, with filters for specific users or objects. This allows a command line interface to any script, easily parsed with LSL's list functions, and is the basic method of 'inter-process' communication, albeit a primitve one.

For inter-script messages, you can use llLinkMessage() to avoid requiring channels at all. But in the case where there might be channel conflicts, filtering your listen events so you only hear commands from what you're supposed to is elementary.

You mention 'energy' - which is basically a means to prevent large, massive objects from moving around at light speed. It rarely comes up in normal use, and really has little to do with the limitations of LSL scripting itself but keeps people from using entire buildings as vehicles.

There are plenty of complaints to level against LSL and I could go on at length about what I'd like to see changed - but there's not much point. Linden Labs recognizes the shortcomings of LSL - which is why for the last few years, they've been hard at work integrating .NET technology to replace it.

http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/01/29/mono-beta-launch/

I'm an active LSL scripter in SecondLife and it is obvious at least to me that you are posting these criticisms without a thorough understanding of what you're talking about.

LSL is indeed quite limited, but not to the extent that you claim. Code re-use is quite possible, and is quite common in that many useful functions have been encapsulated into their own scripts and are passed around quite frequently. For example, the XYText system: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/XyText_1.5

Your assertion that scripts can't export any sort of interface beyond touch events completely ignores the listen event - which lets a script respond to arbitrary text input, either via public chat or by a private channel, with filters for specific users or objects. This allows a command line interface to any script, easily parsed with LSL's list functions, and is the basic method of 'inter-process' communication, albeit a primitve one.

For inter-script messages, you can use llLinkMessage() to avoid requiring channels at all. But in the case where there might be channel conflicts, filtering your listen events so you only hear commands from what you're supposed to is elementary.

You mention 'energy' - which is basically a means to prevent large, massive objects from moving around at light speed. It rarely comes up in normal use, and really has little to do with the limitations of LSL scripting itself but keeps people from using entire buildings as vehicles.

There are plenty of complaints to level against LSL and I could go on at length about what I'd like to see changed - but there's not much point. Linden Labs recognizes the shortcomings of LSL - which is why for the last few years, they've been hard at work integrating .NET technology to replace it.

http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/01/29/mono-beta-launch/

Actually, that's not true -

One of the goals of the Architecture Working Group (which has members from IBM, OpenSim, Linden Lab, and others) is working on the inter operable protocols for removing centralization from the infrastructure (so it's more like IP: anyone can connect to anyone)

This test was a test of the first draft of the teleport mechanism defined by the AWG standard.

Link to the AWG group: here