I guess. After coming home from work or university, I can grab a beer, sit down, listen to some Beethoven, and build a virtual house. Then I can plop the house into a box and sell it, and put it in a virtual "shop". Eventually somebody enjoys the house enough that they buy it. Over time, the house pays me handsomely for the time "invested" in me "working" on the house. Which is silly, because I built the house for fun in the first place.
Some folks watch TV, I doodle around in a collaboritive building environment. To each their own.:)
I guess I'm still missing the point. The economy works in SL just like the real world. There exists demand from consumers. You go in and fill that need, and make money.
Assuming you're doing it for the hell of it, it's fun, and thus doesn't feel like work. Your hobby soon sustains itself, and maybe gets you a few extra bucks on the side. If you really get into your hobby, it can make a sizable contribution to your income.
That's what most "businesses" in SL are; hobbyists who are passionate about their playtime making a few extra bucks on the side (that's me currently) The real big-money businesses are content teams doing contract work for real world firms (Wells-Fargo is one, for instance) to build prototypes and locations inworld for more RL business things. They're analogous to consultants in the real world. The economic benefits of consultants are best discussed another time.:)
They're growing, which is why they aren't making money. They're adding about a programmer every week or two, not to mention a ton of part-time liasons (in-world helpers) and support staff.
If they stopped expanding their payroll they'd be in the black very quickly.
...and I love it. I've managed to beat it once already, now I'm going through it again.
This game really makes you feel "Godlike" than the last one; Your hand feels real, as it has a physical effect on things around. You can pick up almost anything, too... I dunno, it's hard to describe. The miracles are pretty sweet, too (The Siren, one of the later ones, is beautiful to watch).
Your alignment seems less important this time around. There aren't as many morality quests, as the ones you do get are fairly cut and dry.
Building a city is tons of fun, as is doing the war stuff... watching a 40 foot cow kick a platoon of the enemy down a cliff never gets old:)
All in all I'm quite impressed with this Lionhead game, for once. I'd recommend it if you have a few hours a night to kill.
Over 40 countries have pledged assistance in some way (money, donations, equipment, doctors, and so on), including Japan, Russia, China, South Korea, most of South and Central America (even Venezuela and Cuba). Australia is donating 8 million to the red cross, Japan is donating 400,000. Even Sri Lanka, bless them, is donating $25,000. Doesn't sound like much, but consider that they're a) a tiny country, and b) still recovering from the tsunami.
Everyone's together on this. The media hasn't reported it yet because there's too much of a tragedy in NO.
He's writing a blog from within New Orleans.. he's running diesel generators to keep his company (I think it's a datacenter) running... he has a live webcam and hundreds of pictures of the disaster. It's about as close to the ground as you can get. Truly amazing...
In biology class, one of the things you learn is that plants have the most energy-to-size ratio (i forget the actual term). Then you have the primary group of animals (cows, rabbits, anything that eats plants), then the first tier of carnivores (animals that eat the plant eaters), then you have another tier that eats the first tier of carnivores (us, generally).
As you go up the food chain, you get less energy from the meat.
So perhaps this animal simply decided that munching on grass was more efficient than killing a T-rex?
Josh
Good Riddance.
on
Voom No More
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I work at a retail store that sells Dish and Voom... Voom was the laughingstock of the store the second it came in.
It had the feel of a "fly by night" organization... the contractors who came to install it for us hadn't heard of it... the tech support number we had for them was disconnected... their HD Box, which originally sold for 800 dollars (!!) plus installation fees plus 40 bucks a month minimum, was prone to crashing. Their satellite dish locked us out of everything except "demo" mode, which meant we could showcase the exact same stupid animation show every half hour.
Every time we had a customer ask about Voom, we steered them towards Dish. A shame, too, since we got paid more for Voom than for Dish... but we couldn't in our good conscience sell that piece of crap.
Did I mention the HD channels they offered were rotten? A Fashion Show channel (high def anorexia), a Moov channel (a Winamp vis set to music), a couple of black-and-white B movie channels, a few more shitty movie channels, high definition weather (wtf?), and so on. What a waste of bandwidth.
I laughed when I heard they only had 20,000 customers after a year.
Definitely more artists and creative types. There had a "waiting list" for approval by the developers, to make sure you didn't say anything offensive. in SL, pretty much anything goes. The creative output of the playerbase is nothing short of amazing.
Wrong. The TOS in Second Life states that you own what you create in the game. Scripts, databases, textures, clothing, buildings... it belongs to you. Everything (minus the buildings) can be exported to your hard drive for use in other endeavors.
you don't want Voom. First of all, it's not all HDTV, only their "exclusive" channels are in HDTV, which includes the "fashion channel", the "moov" channel (which shows nothing but visualizations to music you've never heard of), and "monsters" (old b-movies in HD).
The 30-some channels they also offer are just the regular old channels you get with any other satellite service.
The box costs 900 dollars to buy.
Plus, as of april, they're losing about 6 of their sports channels due to licensing agreements.
Apex DVD players are junk... and so are Cyberhome, for that matter.
I sell them at a national department store, and roughly 80% of them sold come back defective... usually the drive door breaks, or it eats a dvd, or the components come loose in the back.
Not worth it. Spend 50 bucks and get a decent one.
Kinda went downhill for me after going to their page required you to click on all these annoying popup ads and all this other garbage.
It sorta made the whole thing ironic... he made the program so others wouldn't have to listen to all the popup and spyware that came up on kazaa... yet this web page where you DOWNLOAD kazaalite is filled with gator ads, popups, and other annoying things.
Even worse, you couldn't just block the popups; he banned you from the page if you were using anything but IE!
I doubt anyone will see this, because the story has fallen down under the slashdot main page...
but HDTV's are coming out anyway. ANY television over 36" sold from this year forward are high-definition capable. Most next year are going to have tuners built in.
Most plasma televisions are HDTV. Even glass tube televisions have to be HDTV by next year, I think.
You guys act like no one's done anything in the last 5 years for this HDTV business. Try going into your local electronics store and ask about HDTV.
I think the main point of changing the TOS to allow more open IP rights is so people don't feel afraid to upload what they've created into the game.
It has nothing about suing people for you "dying"... dying has no consequence in SL anyway, seeing as you lose nothing but 15 seconds of your time.
It's just to alleviate concerns about Linden Labs stealing your poetry and making millions off of it:)
Lordfly
Slashdot Mirror
I guess. After coming home from work or university, I can grab a beer, sit down, listen to some Beethoven, and build a virtual house. Then I can plop the house into a box and sell it, and put it in a virtual "shop". Eventually somebody enjoys the house enough that they buy it. Over time, the house pays me handsomely for the time "invested" in me "working" on the house. Which is silly, because I built the house for fun in the first place.
:)
Some folks watch TV, I doodle around in a collaboritive building environment. To each their own.
I guess I'm still missing the point. The economy works in SL just like the real world. There exists demand from consumers. You go in and fill that need, and make money.
:)
Assuming you're doing it for the hell of it, it's fun, and thus doesn't feel like work. Your hobby soon sustains itself, and maybe gets you a few extra bucks on the side. If you really get into your hobby, it can make a sizable contribution to your income.
That's what most "businesses" in SL are; hobbyists who are passionate about their playtime making a few extra bucks on the side (that's me currently) The real big-money businesses are content teams doing contract work for real world firms (Wells-Fargo is one, for instance) to build prototypes and locations inworld for more RL business things. They're analogous to consultants in the real world. The economic benefits of consultants are best discussed another time.
They're growing, which is why they aren't making money. They're adding about a programmer every week or two, not to mention a ton of part-time liasons (in-world helpers) and support staff.
If they stopped expanding their payroll they'd be in the black very quickly.
What's so wrong about wanting to live/play/pretend that you're somebody else? Don't you daydream?
Arcologies.
:)
Also google Arcosanti, the guy who thought them up in the first place.
First place most likely to have an Arcology? Tokyo, or therabouts in Japan.
Why? Population density is INSANE there, and there's not much room left to build but up
...and I love it. I've managed to beat it once already, now I'm going through it again.
:)
This game really makes you feel "Godlike" than the last one; Your hand feels real, as it has a physical effect on things around. You can pick up almost anything, too... I dunno, it's hard to describe. The miracles are pretty sweet, too (The Siren, one of the later ones, is beautiful to watch).
Your alignment seems less important this time around. There aren't as many morality quests, as the ones you do get are fairly cut and dry.
Building a city is tons of fun, as is doing the war stuff... watching a 40 foot cow kick a platoon of the enemy down a cliff never gets old
All in all I'm quite impressed with this Lionhead game, for once. I'd recommend it if you have a few hours a night to kill.
Actually, the response has been heartwarming.
Over 40 countries have pledged assistance in some way (money, donations, equipment, doctors, and so on), including Japan, Russia, China, South Korea, most of South and Central America (even Venezuela and Cuba). Australia is donating 8 million to the red cross, Japan is donating 400,000. Even Sri Lanka, bless them, is donating $25,000. Doesn't sound like much, but consider that they're a) a tiny country, and b) still recovering from the tsunami.
Everyone's together on this. The media hasn't reported it yet because there's too much of a tragedy in NO.
...this guy?
http://massivewinners.com/mgno/
He's writing a blog from within New Orleans.. he's running diesel generators to keep his company (I think it's a datacenter) running... he has a live webcam and hundreds of pictures of the disaster. It's about as close to the ground as you can get. Truly amazing...
In biology class, one of the things you learn is that plants have the most energy-to-size ratio (i forget the actual term). Then you have the primary group of animals (cows, rabbits, anything that eats plants), then the first tier of carnivores (animals that eat the plant eaters), then you have another tier that eats the first tier of carnivores (us, generally).
As you go up the food chain, you get less energy from the meat.
So perhaps this animal simply decided that munching on grass was more efficient than killing a T-rex?
Josh
I work at a retail store that sells Dish and Voom... Voom was the laughingstock of the store the second it came in.
It had the feel of a "fly by night" organization... the contractors who came to install it for us hadn't heard of it... the tech support number we had for them was disconnected... their HD Box, which originally sold for 800 dollars (!!) plus installation fees plus 40 bucks a month minimum, was prone to crashing. Their satellite dish locked us out of everything except "demo" mode, which meant we could showcase the exact same stupid animation show every half hour.
Every time we had a customer ask about Voom, we steered them towards Dish. A shame, too, since we got paid more for Voom than for Dish... but we couldn't in our good conscience sell that piece of crap.
Did I mention the HD channels they offered were rotten? A Fashion Show channel (high def anorexia), a Moov channel (a Winamp vis set to music), a couple of black-and-white B movie channels, a few more shitty movie channels, high definition weather (wtf?), and so on. What a waste of bandwidth.
I laughed when I heard they only had 20,000 customers after a year.
Good bye, Voom.
Uh, Second Life anyone? :) Already off and running.
http://www.secondlife.com/
Definitely more artists and creative types. There had a "waiting list" for approval by the developers, to make sure you didn't say anything offensive. in SL, pretty much anything goes. The creative output of the playerbase is nothing short of amazing.
Except with programming, scripting, architecture, and everything else that snowcrash is :)
LF
Wrong. The TOS in Second Life states that you own what you create in the game. Scripts, databases, textures, clothing, buildings... it belongs to you. Everything (minus the buildings) can be exported to your hard drive for use in other endeavors.
So, maybe try it before you knock it, chumley.
LF
And I had just flipped it on 20 minutes ago for the first time in 5 months.
The onyl decent show on there was Xplay, but it wasn't current enough to really keep track of. The rest were low-budget fluff.
When's a decent tech/computer/geek channel going to come up?
Ah... well, as far as I know, Sears hasn't been updated of this new pricing scheme (where I work). It's still 900 + 40/month.
you don't want Voom. First of all, it's not all HDTV, only their "exclusive" channels are in HDTV, which includes the "fashion channel", the "moov" channel (which shows nothing but visualizations to music you've never heard of), and "monsters" (old b-movies in HD).
The 30-some channels they also offer are just the regular old channels you get with any other satellite service.
The box costs 900 dollars to buy.
Plus, as of april, they're losing about 6 of their sports channels due to licensing agreements.
Stick with antenna.
Samsung makes a 27" HDTV, widescreen, for 600 bucks.
:)
Close enough for you?
Apex DVD players are junk... and so are Cyberhome, for that matter.
I sell them at a national department store, and roughly 80% of them sold come back defective... usually the drive door breaks, or it eats a dvd, or the components come loose in the back.
Not worth it. Spend 50 bucks and get a decent one.
Josh
Kinda went downhill for me after going to their page required you to click on all these annoying popup ads and all this other garbage.
It sorta made the whole thing ironic... he made the program so others wouldn't have to listen to all the popup and spyware that came up on kazaa... yet this web page where you DOWNLOAD kazaalite is filled with gator ads, popups, and other annoying things.
Even worse, you couldn't just block the popups; he banned you from the page if you were using anything but IE!
Bah.
I doubt anyone will see this, because the story has fallen down under the slashdot main page...
but HDTV's are coming out anyway. ANY television over 36" sold from this year forward are high-definition capable. Most next year are going to have tuners built in.
Most plasma televisions are HDTV. Even glass tube televisions have to be HDTV by next year, I think.
You guys act like no one's done anything in the last 5 years for this HDTV business. Try going into your local electronics store and ask about HDTV.
Geezus.
That's just legal stuff... my neighbor in SL hails from Germany, and there's a ton of Europeans who formed a group called "Illegal Immigrants" :)
Lordfly
Actually... someone is making an EQ clone within Second Life... called "DarkLife".
:)
Complete with its own economic model, enemies, weapons, and so on
Lordfly
I think the main point of changing the TOS to allow more open IP rights is so people don't feel afraid to upload what they've created into the game. It has nothing about suing people for you "dying"... dying has no consequence in SL anyway, seeing as you lose nothing but 15 seconds of your time. It's just to alleviate concerns about Linden Labs stealing your poetry and making millions off of it :)
Lordfly
1) There's a ton of working swords in second life... hell, you START with a celtic broadsword :)
:)
2) Hmm, frisbee, I'll have to script that...
3) No Librarian yet, but there IS a Library in Kissling... even has a working 3d model of the solar system
Lordfly