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Sun Holds News Conference In Second Life
mikesd81 writes, "Internet News is reporting that Sun held an in-world news conference in the online game Second Life. From the article: 'Tuesday, Sun became the first Fortune 500 company to hold an "in-world" press conference to show off its new pavilion in Second Life, the popular 3D online world. Sun said it plans to invest in the Sun Pavilion as a place for developers to try out code, share ideas, and receive training.' Sun hopes to reach millions of Java developers, as opposed to the 22,000 that show up at its JavaOne conference each year." Good luck with that goal of "millions" — the total population of SL is under 800,000. And, who knew that Sun has a Chief Gaming Officer? Good quote from him in the article. He said Second Life isn't a game, "It's an amazing platform for global communications."
... Linden Labs has no intention (at this moment) of using Java for their scripting language. Mono is the next step, from the developer logs.
Do I need to pay for access to Second Life to communicate globally? I prefer to communicate globally in my First Life, so to speak... it's amazing! ;)
It is *very* important for companies to learn to market to people using the Internet. Where I work they are comtemplating myspace accounts, already have iTunes U going, use Blogger, and are looking for even more ways to capture those that are "jacked in".
;) It's just nice to see that companies are finally realizing that the market is huge out there and to embrace it as best they can.
;)
Second Life users scare the shit out of me but so do Myspace, Okrut, and Friendster users. Hell, I won't even go on IRC anymore
Me? I'm still into staying away from those services -- I guess I'm not the intended market
Any channel spammer from the Starcraft/Diablo II days could have told you about the potential to reach millions of customers...
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
and it wants it's bubble back.
Seriously though, I think this is another sign that Sun isn't focused. Yes they have product and technology, but I don't see them turning it into sales. Company hasn't kept up with market changes in this way.
Warm and fuzzy this may be, but show me the money!
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Did they hold the conference in The Black Sun
I would go to the Java One conference if it wasn't for the cost. So from that point of view this is great. Still, you would need some pretty craetive presentations that are SL aware to make this work. Wouldn't work if you just had a bunch of avatars standing next to each other talking about code. I can picture some custom objects that work as powerpoint screens/laser pens. Uuuu time to use all those neat 3ds plugins for SL now!
And WoW isn't a game either, it's a platform for global gold farming and life draining.
...that we were meant to go to get away from all the things in RL that suck again?
C-level titles are overdone. Especially "CIO" (I="Information") and "CTO" (T="Technology") and CSO (S="Security"). All of these functions are secondary to real business purposes; they wouldn't have a job if they weren't assisting someone else.
Think of it another way: When's the last time you saw your "CJO" (J="Janitorial")?
Sun Microsystems does VR Press release (Metaverse Messenger) (WARNING, PDF Newspaper!)
Made the front page, but below the fold.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
You know it's interesting that he termed it a great communications medium, because it is. Or it could be, with some work.
Think of all the time that people are sinking to keep email- a stressed and some would say broken- tenable into the future... now divert some of that energy into making Second Life (or a Second Life-like system) into something useful for communication. The result would be newer, richer and arguably better suited for human communication than text based email ever will be.
Coo. Just plain coo.
I cant wait until your visit Thrall's Chamber and are greeted with representatives from all the big tech companies. Maybe they can all have a duelling competition outside of Org!
I was introduced to Second Life via an educational technology conference. The potential for fully immersive online teaching environments is just amazing. Second life is capable of showing videos in-world, and coupled with VOIP technologies (which I'm not sure are integrated into SL yet, but if not, I'm sure they will be sooner or later), you could create a fully functional virtual classroom.
I'm thinking the suits heard "second life" and stopped asking questions...
You can have my cynical agnosticism when you pry it from my cold, dead logic.
No, really? If I want to share code, ask questions, read docs, does having an avatar and going through that environment really add anything at all to these tasks?
Come on, Sun, tell us how it does things that can't be more efficiently served with a website and forums?
*stabs out eyes*
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I can't imagine too many people showed up for the conference. Secondlife gets dog slow once you start crowding an area with Avatars, and the servers will give up long before you get more than a hundred or so people in there. Even if you try to minimize the avatar complexity (ask everyone to come with as basic of an avatar as possible) the game bogs down like crazy once you exceed 20-30 people or so in an area.
I read the internet for the articles.
There's actually more than a bit of truth to what he says.
I've been lurking around SL lately just to figure out what all the buzz is about and would say it's a platform in which you can create and manipulate objects, avatars, and buildings. Interaction via "game physics" occurs and keeps the environment manageable.
It's immature right now -- and maybe it always will be -- but I can see the potential. It's not a bad way to meet up with others to collaborate or teach/learn.
Sun isn't the only company seeing value there. I understand Adidas/Reebok are setting up store there...
Life is short: void the warranty.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
Did I miss something here? Sun holds a press conference. In an environment that cannot even run on their machines or in their own operating system? They're basically saying "We're cool, we're tech 'leet, but our hardware and software are worthless!"
Why didn't they just hold it in Microsoft Netmeeting?
Event Management Solutions : http://www.stonekeep.com/
Too bad we aren't in the 80s anymore where some execs had the unofficial title of CDHO ->:Chief Drugs and Hookers Officer.
Monstar L
I can't wait for the first Virtual JavaOne conference! I'm already designing my new "J# WTFPWNS your HotSpot" t-shirt. I think I'll hand it out free on the conference floor, as I dance around singing "I want to be a Cowboy". Without pants, of course.
Yeah, virtual conferences are definately the wave of the future....
Save the Music; Save the World at http://www.TuneTriever.com (Our latest Android game)
.. a giant polka-dot dong materialised floating above the podium, but was quickly removed by Second Life admins. Probably.
Reminds me of Microsoft Bob and, just like was said earlier, it can be done a lot more efficiently through the use of standard that technologies and paradigms that we use exclusively now. Stupid Bob.
So good luck reaching a million
... so we can all show up wearing black t-shirts and jeans and taunt Jobs. =)
Due to Linden Labs notorious disregard for their customers and habit of blaming development bugs on their users they did not actually fix several key problems that would have let this go off without a hitch. Most users report an average of 3-4 crashes per three hour session of the software... hope Sun's presentation did not go very long.
Although you might ask what good those are as well. :)
And I think you'll have a harder time convincing your boss to pay you to attend a "Programming Conference" in Second Life even if it is less expensive than a Las Vegas junket
Until they integrate with Match.com
...wait,did I just type that in a public forum?
As I read this the total population of second life is 902,643....Where do they get "millions?"
Sun Microsystems first attempt was to do a massive, universal campaign in another popular online game, EVE-ONLINE. Reports are scarce, but from credible witnesses flying around in Polaris ships to monitor the event, the endeavour quickly became a fiasco.
Sun thought Querious, which permitted word play for 'query' and provided them to boast their server and sql database presentation, would be a good idea to rally tons of people to the event.
Unfortunately, a large in-game Alliance known as Band of Brothers [BoB], setup a trap to permit tons of people into pouring into their soverign territory. While Sun Microsystems (working with Quaff Marketing Agents) to launch the event, BoB came in with Interceptors, Heavy Assault Cruisers, Battleships, Carriers and Motherships and podded everyone except for the GMs. Many petitions were filed that day, even Sun Microsystems employees filed petitions. As usual, all those petitions fell on deaf ears. Across the street from CCP in Iceland, police received complaints from residents nearby for excessive laughter.
Hey, thanks for the kind words Rob
...who knew that Furries and Cybersex freaks were in the market for Sun "Solutions"?
So you see no advantage to going to conferences or classrooms as learning experiences? Let's just shut down all the colleges then. Pheonix U online should be just as good as Harvard or MIT.
Oh, wait, now maybe there is some advantage to the classroom/conference format. OK, now if you want more people to show up, you have to get a bigger meeting space, arrange dates for when it's not in use by some other organization, arrange for people to travel to the location, arrange for places for them to stay, and figure out a way to pay for all of that.
But if we can get all of the advantages to a real-time, interpersonal learning environmet with top notch presentations and leading experts, but with none of the travel, hosting, or cost issues, isn't this exactly the kind of value added service we (that being technology advocates) have touted the web as providing for so many years? Yes, it comes wrapped in all the other silliness and baggage that is Second Life, but had Sun released this as a stand alone client/learning environment, and Second Life didn't exist, everyone would be hailing this as proof that tech can provide most of the benefits of a real life meeting, while avoiding the static and overly artificial interaction of webpages and forums. In fact, once VoIP is fully integrated, and dynamic expressions become easier and clearer (a frown while someone is listening to you, or the tone/type of clapping after your presentation provides a world of useful information back to a speaker) this could replace 80% of the gain I get from attending conferences. That loss would be more than offset by using this to allow me to attend far more learning and idea sharing forums.
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
Beware of the Grey goo there! Don't turn into it.
Is Sun than dropping JXTA its P2P platform after having trounced by Jabber?
Fred Grott(aka shareme) http://mobilebytes.wordpress.com
Everything was going great at the Sun's news conference, until he had a bout of indigestion and scorched the attendees with a solar flare...
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
Well, now I know why I haven't noticed SL being especially fun.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
Second Life seems to be filled with losers who don't actually have a life. The game should be called "No Life".
How do they keep the economy from hyperinflating?
If they're giving everyone a constant supply of money in their weekly stipend, isn't that just like a country's central bank printing money? How does the price of goods not spiral out of control?
Is it just because they're constantly pulling money out of the economy through land rent, that they can do it?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
With all the attacks lately, it seems like the grid has been down more than it's been up. I want to know how Linden Labs were able to keep everything together *today* when they haven't been able to the last week or so. I know this assumes that there WOULD have been an attack today, but...come on...has there been a day in the last week without an attack that prompts LL to take the game down for a couple hours (Bonus points if during that time they create a fix for the attack the breaks thousands upon thousands of legitimate scripted objects in-game!)?
[/conspiracy]
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
There seems to be a very cool bug in Second Life, rendering of clothes is sometimes delayed becuase of over worked servers, this resulted in Rosedale breifly being shown naked in the press conference
I am an ex-staff engineer from SUN.
I still do a lot of SUN engagements. A lot of SUN code. Even Java.
I don't really do Windows (I have one copy of XP running in a VMware container). I can't do "Second Life" -- went to their website, and discovered that it's Windows or Mac only. No Solaris, no Java, not even "Mono". No Sparc. Not even Linux.
Sure, they may get people into the conference; but they have lost the platform COMPLETELY. I guess that buying a computer, OS, and Second Life is probably cheaper than the conference. For additional training? I don't know. I just don't know this technology at all.
Imagine if Apple forces ALL their loyal users to buy another computer AND Windows to participate in Apple training...
Ratboy
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
It's an amazing platform for Gor.
I think it's an extremely bad idea, mainly because I know a hundred people whose idea of fun is something along the lines of sneaking into such a meeting and suddenly transforming their avatars into 20-foot-tall dolphin penises.
Anyone trying to conduct Serious Business(TM) in an anonymous enviroment that so many assholes visit for fun is almost asking for a colossal griefing among the lines of the notorious WoW funeral.
If you're going to do it online anyway, is there any reason not to simply use IRC?
Oh, you could make it fancier if you wanted, with a dialog box control to allow the presenter to go forwards or back, or possibly use a chat-based control system. It would cost you L$10 per slide you wanted to upload, but that's not a huge expense, and, if anything, it's an incentive to keep the presentation short. :-)
Be who you are...and be it in style!
You think that's bad? I heard that Steve Jobs rides to his Apple Expo keynotes in a car not made by Apple! And sometimes when the CEO of McDonalds goes to lunches with business clients, sometimes he goes to restaurants that don't serve Big Macs! Hell, I work in an architecture firm, but I live in a house that someone else designed. I must think I'm crap!
They're basically saying, rather than roll our own online "environment" for this project, we'll just use a pre-existing one, and save our company some money by not doing a lot of extra work. That seems to make sense to me.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
I would have thought that using an open source system specifically designed for multi-user conferences would have been a better choice for holding a virtual conference.
http://www.opencroquet.org/
Open Crouquet is shaping up pretty well and dosn't come with half the hassles, you don't have to worry about users gate crashing your conerence ( Conference is closed... coz of AIDS! ), you can run Croquet on your own hardware, and it can be customized to suit your needs..
Maybe someone should mention this this to Sun?
I don't need to test my programs.. I have an error correcting modem.
He's shouting "Short SUNW"!
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
SL is only a marketing gimmick. You only do something in it so you can do a press release that says how futuristic you are.
"However there are some not-so-hidden cost barriers to entry. You need a good cable or DSL connection, and the SL client is able to bring even the most modern gaming machine to its knees at high settings and certain locations"
:)
Oh no! Now you all are "forced" to pay the "broadband tax".
And warner brothers, and nike, and Fox Studios, and the BBC, and NPR...
Lots of companies are in there now... true, mostly it's just promotional fluff, but some of it is actually pretty relevant.
hookers and grits.
Second Life's recent fiascos involving security are one thing.
However, the biggest "you've gotta be kidding" aspect is how poorly Linden Labs tests, QAs, and deploys upgrades. Two weeks ago, the entire grid was down for close to 24 hours, and was flaky for days after a failed update. While I haven't been on SL very long, I'm lead to believe that this is not uncommon.
Sun is right, however, that it has the potential to be a stunning platform for communications. On the flip side, Linden Labs is the single biggest hindrance to allowing it to prosper that way. If LL were to open up the "grid" to allow third-party servers, we might have the next Internet. However, with the poor service provided by LL (only made worse by the fact that it isn't cheap, either) is what is keeping SL from being the next big thing.
Damn, you're right! Except you're wrong. OK, you're right about one thing, they don't officially support Solaris, but it does run on their machines . Oh, and it sounds like there are projects out there that make the SL protocols available on open systems, which means if it can't be accessed from Solaris today, that's not going to be true for long.
But aside from that, and the point others made that there's no company in the world that makes everything necessary for their own survival, spot on.
I heard that Steve Jobs rides to his Apple Expo keynotes in a car not made by Apple!
Apple doesn't make vehicles. And you can bet if they did, Steve would drive one everywhere.
And sometimes when the CEO of McDonalds goes to lunches with business clients, sometimes he goes to restaurants that don't serve Big Macs!
That's because if you eat Big Macs all the time, it'll practically kill you. The McDonalds corporation is all about feeding cheap crap to people who don't know better, not about making quality products.
Hell, I work in an architecture firm, but I live in a house that someone else designed.
Architecture firms tend to do projects, not mass-produced houses. And single-run houses tend to be expensive, while most people live in more affordable housing. I'm sure the people who design Bentleys don't drive Bentleys, and not because a Bentley is incapable of driving them to work.
I must think I'm crap!
If the only reason you didn't live in a house designed by your firm was that it was technically incapable of housing you, then yes, that would be true. I sincerely hope that the houses you design are livable, though.
They're basically saying, rather than roll our own online "environment" for this project, we'll just use a pre-existing one, and save our company some money by not doing a lot of extra work. That seems to make sense to me.
Hey Schwartz, great idea. I've got some more for you. Why roll your own operating system? Ditch Solaris, and save tons of development money. And if you didn't waste time on that SPARC architecture, you'd save more money and even more extra work. That UltraSPARC T1 can't be cheap to develop. Makes sense to me!
When people in Second Life talk about things being "fully functional" they are usually not appropriate for a classroom setting.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Second Life Linux download IA32 only though.
I'm all for gaming - I've been doing it for years - but really, honestly, the effort a person puts into improving their Second Life world is effort taken away from improving their First Life world - you know, the one we really live in - the real world, where the video resolution and audio quality are far superior too.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
I saw him at a conference once and he started making fun of Slashdot to a bubch of marketing people and nobody had a clue what he was talking about. If they did they wern't amused.
So an ingame room is going to be crowded full of blondes with huge breasts discussing code?
Linden Lab has been trying to position SL as the next "evolutionary step" in web communications and interaction. Before their latest round of funding came in, it was just a free-format massively-multiplayer "game". Since then, they have created open registration (no verification required), opening the floodgates to TONS of griefers who create anywhere from 2 to 100 alternate accounts, and then just burn through them. Some regions in the world are very hard-hit, and they have yet to provide the players and managers of regions the capability to effectively deal with the large influx of griefing any better than verified registrations.
Also, that "800,000" number is bogus; that's simply the count of records in their user database. It doesn't take into account alts, and it doesn't shed any light on real player numbers (which vary between 5000 and 12000 online at the same time currently.
They do NOT have a handle on their development process, with the developers pretty much being given free rein to work on whatever they want, and leave HUGE bugs and performance-sapping code for months on end in favor of adding crap people don't want which makes the game even less stable and less appealing to the existing users.
There are constant region crashes, "grey goo" grid attacks, lost assets and resources, and quite a few pissed off folks. They seem to have adopted the "worst practices in running a MMOG" book, as well as completely shifting their focus away from their core concern, which is making a nice, player-created world to something which interests no one.
I've only played it for about 7 months myself, and the degradation in even that short of time had gotten me to the point where I don't hardly want to log in on patch days (or even for several days thereafter from the grid attacks). The constant downtime means no one is buying the stuff you make, and you can't make anything.
My bet is this is nothing more than some silly grandstanding, probably in an attempt to woo the investors so they don't start getting cold feet. SL is DEFINITELY not the platform for this kind of thing right now.
As for Open-Source versions of SL, there are a couple projects out there which are trying to do SL better, and stay focused on the core concepts. LL has said that they may open the source in 2010, but they also have been trying to integrate a new physics engine since forever, and the Mono implementation for scripting is also at least a year behind schedule.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
Seriously....not a joke. I'd like to check this out but it doesn't run on Linux. I guess us Linux users aren't good enough for them. I guess my money smells bad or something.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
I've played sl on and off for about a year now and I have to agree with the grandparent. SL is neat, but it doesn't add things to existing tools. SL at its heart is an irc chat room with avatars. A more useful learning tool would have a chat room with the ability to set up ad hock groups, and on demand whiteboards between the groups. Also have a wiki running in another window. Then have a file bin so you can drag and drop files on users or in a group storage to offer to everybody. Just put up a screen where you can easily give info to everybody and the group. Heck, even put up webcams on people if you want real expressions.
I don't see how having an avatar and a virtual space adds to the education enviorment besides spacial proximity, and I fail to see how that enhances education.
Also, I know that when I went to school, most of the time myself as well as half of the classes were not paying attention to the lecture. I've also been to educational confrences, and really the only benafit of them is that they take away your ability to do anything else but pay attention to the lecture.
Really the confrences do a better job of providing an enviroment for networking then anything, and that is just a product of who is there.
I think a really well run discussion with voice connections, a chat room, and a whiteboard, can do just as well as a class room. There is only so much space on the screen and the virtual house to sit in seems like a pointless place to be.
But you know what, being in a 3d space looks cool, and as we all know, the thing that looks cool is what gets the most attention. So yeah, 3d virtual learning classrooms!
3d worlds are a fantasy, they are made so you can go in and be someone else in a world that doesnt exist. It takes too much hard work to actually make your avatar looks like you, and I can't even begin to imagine the techincial and artistic skill required to actually make it act like you, especially when all you need to represent yourself is a 20 dollar webcam.
Slashdot seems late in picking this up. As I commented over on InTheGrid, and as reported on eightbar, I thought IBM had been around a while and held a press event in SL last month.
All I can say is if a CGO makes the same $$ as other CxOs who else is hiring them and where do I put in my application?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
How do you take your coffee, sir?
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
My mentioning of Apple was an analogy. Yes, "Second Life" has an Apple client.
Now, I went to "secondlife.com". From there, I went to "system requirements". I wish to quote:
"PC Minimum System Requirements:
* Internet Connection*: Cable or DSL
* Operating System: Windows XP (Service Pack 2)
o OR Windows 2000 (Service Pack 4)
* Computer Processor: 800MHz Pentium III or Athlon, or better
* Computer Memory: 256MB or better
* Video/Graphics Card**:
o nVidia GeForce 2, GeForce 4mx, or better
o OR ATI Radeon 8500, 9250, or better"
Does that mention Linux? BSD? Solaris perhaps? I'll make it simple. It doesn't.
Now, YOU may have time to explore the Second Life website, search Google, etc. looking for alternate clients. I don't. Nor do many other developers and admins. We will go to secondlife.com, have a look, and leave. I am still not going to try the linux client on Solaris. Or on Linux -- its closed source; I don't trust "Linden"; its alpha level. Nor is there a description of what the software actually does, or what security risks it entails. Not even enough information to make an educated guess.
Some marketing persons "wet dream". And, yes, I am a server wonk.
Ratboy
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061