The problem is that they are "investing money" into lindens and hoping the exchange rate changes. Linden Labs as specifically "pegged" the linden to the dollar. I track it and it usually has been consist to about 1000L for abojut $4/US. Lindens are strictly controlled, it is not easy to just make large amounts of linens, ( I know I have tried:) ). Most of this is planned, they hired an economist to help control the economy. Linden labs makes $.30 US on each buy and about 3.5% on each sale. Sales of lindens tend to act as stocks, meaning you put in a sell order and wait for some to bid on the lindens. buys are typically much faster though.
From the website (https://secure-web4.secondlife.com/currency/descr ibe-transaction-fees.php):
Fees for Buying L$
You will be charged a fixed fee of $0.30 per transaction regardless of the amount of L$ you purchase.
Fees for Selling L$
Sellers of currency pay a fee of 3.5% per transaction. Proceeds will be credited to your US$ account balance.
So if you read the article, he was trying to do currency trading on a pegged currency, not the greatest idea. He got the same amount going in as going out minus the trasnaction fees, gee go figure.
And if you want to look at the economic statistics:
http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php
Which also lists the sources and sinks, most of the money made by linden labs is from transaction fees, tier fees (fees for owning land or islands), and membership fees.
Another interesting thing is that lindens are not produced, except by "allowances" given to residents and non-residents weekly. In WOW (world of warcraft) the server producers more gold when creatures are killed. Hence the lindens in Sl are an artifical scarcity, which is what all real world currencies are.
Not everything is sunshine and roses though:
There are some problems with the economy though:
land prices have gone out the roof. It is nearly impossible to buy land without spending around $100US worth of lindens. land prices for purchase vary between 17L and more per M. How and what you can build on the land depends on the conventant or contract for the land and how much land you own. For the covenants, think home owners association. Plus for private islands you may not actually own the land, and if the island owner does not pay up his tier fees then the island itself may go into remiss.
Yes, you can get equivilent work much cheaper in SL by paying in lindens. Although the prices needed for contracted services have been going up steadily. I have had several friends in SL quit doing contracting because it does not pay enough for the effort even corporate sponsorship. I do know of some contracting companies that make enough to survive on though.
Problems with stability during the updates, this can be especially painful as shops cannot sell when SL is down, and sometimes products break during updates or on rare occassions inventory disappears during updates.
The original star trek was about how the human race had unified and was attempting to unite with the galaxy as a whole. The reality was wagons in space.
But, you had a russian on the bridge during the 60's, the height of the cold war. You had black commanders and admirals. You had female commanders and admirals.
This new series kind of pisses on the original intent of star trek.
Oh, and it's not the first time that paramount has ripped off the plot line from another show. The creator of babylon 5 pitched the series to paramount, they rejected it, but.... lo and behold DS9 has almsot the same plotlines as B5.
Besides does anyone expect quality from paramount after watching the series "Enterprise". They ought to rename paramount to miracle movies, because if they can make an orignal and good series it's a miracle.
Considering that more email is generated every year then snail mail; nevermind that just logs alone can overflow hard drives (happened to quite a few systems I encountered). Not even counting the privacy considerations this will create traffic jams and increased costs for internet usage (The extra hard drive space has to come from somewhere).
Not to mention that all that extra has to be pored through. The FBI had gotten information on a case from homeland security, unfortunately they did not parse it down and the FBI agents lamented that they spent a majority of time chasing down pizza deliverys instead of spending more time on the actual case.
Image the uproar when (not if) a cracker gets into the database and abuses all that information.
The information gathered from users can also be used(abused) for blackmailing.
You might be asked to testify against someone, if not then well your employer and spouse might accidently find out about your surfing habits.
All in all, this sounds like a lose-lose situation for almost all involved.
This is a book series that caused a lot of kids to enjoy reading. It is also by schloastic books which produces a lot of books for younger readers and some educational books/magazines. There were lines around the block waiting with people waiting for the stores to open at midnight. Heck, the book series even encourages some adults to read books. Plus someone people stayed up way late to read the books. Guilty as charged, must not sleep need to finish chapter!
Although if you need books to put you to sleep then I might suggest chapterhouse dune.
Also, I have read books from the 1700's and 1800's, there were lots of spelling and grammar mistakes in the books. Some of the older classical books use older forms of english which are a sometimes a bit difficult to read. If you do not believe read some of the books from the medevil ages.
A lot of movies companies used to use SGI computers for special effects in the 90's, however a lot of them have switched to regular pcs and macs due to increases in technology.
So the question is are the SGI workstations worth the cost? Is SGI going to survive.
And for karma whoring here is the wikipedia index on SGI's history:
Is the company trying to make an actual product or just tying to get a good stock price for an IPO so that the original investors make there money.
The unfortunate part is that the company might make sales due to the dilbert pointy-haired boss factor. The boss reads about the internet on a disk and immediately wants it, regardless of common sense.
Well since we are talking about mythical beings, can someone clone me something mythical called a "girlfriend"? Hey this is/., mythical and girlfriend belong in the same sentence.
The think this joke mythes the mark, hopefully I did not cause any mythconceptions. Hopefully I did not make any mythakes or mythspellings.
>What the hell do you expect to happen when you let these companies conglomerate all this power without so much as a "Remember Ma Bell"? Of course they're going to screw us over, they're corporations. If it was legal and made them money they would feed kitten entrails to school-children.
So which are you going to use for the cabel internet access?
There's the illuminati.net, trilateralcommission.com, and skullandcrossbones.org
I would not recommend illuminati.net, it's almost impossible to find a payment or service center. That and the customer service is very secretative and unhelpful.:)
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that they are "investing money" into lindens and hoping the exchange rate changes. Linden Labs as specifically "pegged" the linden to the dollar. I track it and it usually has been consist to about 1000L for abojut $4/US. Lindens are strictly controlled, it is not easy to just make large amounts of linens, ( I know I have tried :) ). Most of this is planned, they hired an economist to help control the economy. Linden labs makes $.30 US on each buy and about 3.5% on each sale. Sales of lindens tend to act as stocks, meaning you put in a sell order and wait for some to bid on the lindens. buys are typically much faster though.
There is one example of linden dumping to control linden prices, quote: "In the second half of September we sold L$20,117,994 to prevent rapid appreciation of the L$. " . http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/10/03/linden-dolla r-economy-update-2/ it is on there blogs.
From the website (https://secure-web4.secondlife.com/currency/descr ibe-transaction-fees.php): Fees for Buying L$ You will be charged a fixed fee of $0.30 per transaction regardless of the amount of L$ you purchase.
Fees for Selling L$ Sellers of currency pay a fee of 3.5% per transaction. Proceeds will be credited to your US$ account balance.
Yes there are limits to trading, unless you apply for higher limits:
https://secure-web4.secondlife.com/currency/descri be-limits.php
So if you read the article, he was trying to do currency trading on a pegged currency, not the greatest idea. He got the same amount going in as going out minus the trasnaction fees, gee go figure.
And if you want to look at the economic statistics: http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php Which also lists the sources and sinks, most of the money made by linden labs is from transaction fees, tier fees (fees for owning land or islands), and membership fees.
Linen exchange market data: http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy-market.php More useful economic statistics: http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy-graphs.php
Another interesting thing is that lindens are not produced, except by "allowances" given to residents and non-residents weekly. In WOW (world of warcraft) the server producers more gold when creatures are killed. Hence the lindens in Sl are an artifical scarcity, which is what all real world currencies are.
Not everything is sunshine and roses though:
There are some problems with the economy though:
Yes, you can get equivilent work much cheaper in SL by paying in lindens. Although the prices needed for contracted services have been going up steadily. I have had several friends in SL quit doing contracting because it does not pay enough for the effort even corporate sponsorship. I do know of some contracting companies that make enough to survive on though.
Problems with stability during the updates, this can be especially painful as shops cannot sell when SL is down, and sometimes products break during updates or on rare occassions inventory disappears during updates.
Land values going down or becoming unusable due
The original star trek was about how the human race had unified and was attempting to unite with the galaxy as a whole. The reality was wagons in space.
But, you had a russian on the bridge during the 60's, the height of the cold war. You had black commanders and admirals. You had female commanders and admirals.
This new series kind of pisses on the original intent of star trek.
Oh, and it's not the first time that paramount has ripped off the plot line from another show. The creator of babylon 5 pitched the series to paramount, they rejected it, but.... lo and behold DS9 has almsot the same plotlines as B5.
Besides does anyone expect quality from paramount after watching the series "Enterprise". They ought to rename paramount to miracle movies, because if they can make an orignal and good series it's a miracle.
Not to mention that all that extra has to be pored through. The FBI had gotten information on a case from homeland security, unfortunately they did not parse it down and the FBI agents lamented that they spent a majority of time chasing down pizza deliverys instead of spending more time on the actual case.
Image the uproar when (not if) a cracker gets into the database and abuses all that information.
The information gathered from users can also be used(abused) for blackmailing.
You might be asked to testify against someone, if not then well your employer and spouse might accidently find out about your surfing habits.
All in all, this sounds like a lose-lose situation for almost all involved.
This is a book series that caused a lot of kids to enjoy reading. It is also by schloastic books which produces a lot of books for younger readers and some educational books/magazines. There were lines around the block waiting with people waiting for the stores to open at midnight. Heck, the book series even encourages some adults to read books. Plus someone people stayed up way late to read the books. Guilty as charged, must not sleep need to finish chapter!
Although if you need books to put you to sleep then I might suggest chapterhouse dune.
Also, I have read books from the 1700's and 1800's, there were lots of spelling and grammar mistakes in the books. Some of the older classical books use older forms of english which are a sometimes a bit difficult to read. If you do not believe read some of the books from the medevil ages.
Just my 8 cents (2 cents plus inflation)
So the question is are the SGI workstations worth the cost? Is SGI going to survive.
And for karma whoring here is the wikipedia index on SGI's history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Graphics
The unfortunate part is that the company might make sales due to the dilbert pointy-haired boss factor. The boss reads about the internet on a disk and immediately wants it, regardless of common sense.
Knock-knock
Bang
Well since we are talking about mythical beings, can someone clone me something mythical called a "girlfriend"? Hey this is /., mythical and girlfriend belong in the same sentence.
The think this joke mythes the mark, hopefully I did not cause any mythconceptions. Hopefully I did not make any mythakes or mythspellings.
>What the hell do you expect to happen when you let these companies conglomerate
all this power without so much as a "Remember Ma Bell"? Of course they're going
to screw us over, they're corporations. If it was legal and made them money they
would feed kitten entrails to school-children.
Ah, I see you have tried school lunches then.
Seriously, slim-jims --
Mechanically seperated chicken, kitten entrails might be an improvement.
http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/m/msm.htm
So which are you going to use for the cabel internet access?
:)
There's the illuminati.net, trilateralcommission.com, and skullandcrossbones.org
I would not recommend illuminati.net, it's almost impossible to find a payment or service center. That and the customer service is very secretative and unhelpful.