Anarchy, Discontent Plague Second Life

Why does that hole remind me of the hole left behind when the “Hatch” blew up on Lost? Could this be an ABC publicity stunt?

I think it’s likelier this is yet another Linden Labs publicity stunt.

@HMTKSteve Wrong ABC there. This is the AUSTRALIAN Broadcaseing Corporation. Kind of like your PBS. They’re a government funded (not for profit) corporation, so I don’t see exactly why they were targeted.

Actually I don’t see what these people are trying to do anyway. How can you liberate something that is run by a company for profit? Linden Labs controls the world, how could they possibly ever win? Are these people really that stupid? I suppose it’s better for these nut-jobs to try and attack a virtual world rather than invest their energy into real world activism.

Ahh… I just saw ABC and my brain did not register the “Australian” part.

So, if they are government funded why are they spending tax-payer money to have a presence in Second Life?

“So, if they are government funded why are they spending tax-payer money to have a presence in Second Life?”

The ABC is tax-payer funded so it can provide services that commercial media can’t or won’t. Exploring new media forms is one of it’s role. There’s some really great stuff that comes out of the ABC, like The Chaser; http://www.techcrunch.com/2007.....mmy-wales/

Since they have strict rules about promotional activities, it’s much easier to trust the ABC than any other media source. I wish the government would put more of my money into the ABC and less into fighting American wars

American wars eh? That’s a debatable point of view but TechCrunch is not the place.

That’s hilarious. I need to start playing Second Life, just to grief people. The amount of freedom and control you have over the game world is just astounding, and really opens the door for stupid childish pranks.

Why do these stories keep appearing? Who cares about Second Life? This is the most overhyped software product in existence. Nobody plays this.

World of Warcraft has 9 million subscribers and doesn’t get back to back postings on major tech blogs. I’m not saying it should, I just don’t understand the draw behind Second Life

I’m not an expert on Second Life, but I know enough that you can’t turn an area into a big hole in the ground unless you have permission to edit the area.

I also know enough about Second Life to tell you that it’s complete garbage. It was interesting at first, but even a cursory exploration of the game reveals that it’s 99% pornography, with the remaining 1% being interesting, but completely uninhabited.

Not that this in any way makes trashing someone’s SecondLife property an ok thing to do, but it’s very easy to put a stop to this kind of thing. There are built-in controls that let you specify exactly what some random SecondLife resident can and can’t do to your land and property.

Not setting these, is kind of like not patching your web server and then getting shocked that your server is suddenly full of warez and sending spam to the 4 corners of the earth.

I disagree with SL being 99% pornography. Indeed, the “public” areas (and most popular) cater to the lowest common denominator. Titillation is a huge part of western culture in all media. As you dig deeper there are pretty interesting things to explore and people to talk to that don’t involve sex.

For many, SL is playing virtual “dress up” with themselves without childlike restrictions on what they can say or do. If some office worker wants to dress up their avatar like a dominatrix, what’s the harm? Everyone can’t be bottled up all the time. Aside from the visuals and “gaming” aspects of SL, The joy of the experience is conversation, and learning about people when they aren’t parsing their words for propriety’s sake.

What’s also interesting that in my travels i met someone on SL who is (claims to be) a parapalegic, and that SL gives her the chance to do things she’ll never be able to do in RL again.

While SL might not be the ultimate metaverse, it’s a good beta test of a different way to look at social media. I look forward to watching the evolution of the space.

just had F*in genius idea -

Lets fight our wars;

War on Terror
War on Drugs
War in Iraq
War in Afghan
War in …. everywhere else US is …

- I suggest; we fight them in a virtual Second life; I call dibs on being halliburton ….

ok, i get to be blackwater…

Caryle Group!

Second life for me is a chance to live and lead an alternative lifestyle without boundaries and full of imagination. I understand some of the perspectives posted here. It is about creating a second ego, a personified projection of a dream. A posibility to explore and live through lifestyles that otherwise would be impossible. It is the lack of regulations and the anarchical theme which is interesting to me. Anyone who experience second life for more than 3 months understands that the sex and the gambling is just the initial steps of the “noob” development… Kinda like puberty sparkled with foolishness and curiosity. I rarely see fully develop avatars engaging in this kind of action unless there is a real attraction and true feelings for the other in the in world reality. Sometimes this reality can transcend to the real world.

I just think many ppl speak from ignorance when the judge and stereotype this world. Because in essence it is truely multidimensional and full of wonder. And for the record I have not been griefed in the past 4 months. I guess I am hanging out in the right places.

As for the past post about lack of goals… What happens is that ppl do not understand that this game its all about developing your self impossed goals, whether it is business, community building, self expression, art, construction… just like in real life but with less effort, no boundaries and more immediate gratification. It is just fun if you have an open mind. If not, this virtual reality might not be for you.

Happy discovery

Flying penises will always be funny.

Talk about a waste of resources. Government agencies around the world should send them a bill for time wasted investigating all the bs in there. But seriously….this company sucks hard…why bother reporting it anymore, there’s nothing, I repeat, nothing technologically special about it. Once the hype stops, they’re dead. I do think, eventually this kind of thing will be great, but it’s not ready for prime time yet, and certainly not with this company. Could you imagine if the entire internet was controlled by one company?

John- agreed.

Duncan… why is scheduled downtime for maintenance (something they do every other week at the same time) part of this story? Have you really spoken to people making money in SL who are upset by Linden Lab upgrading the service? If they are making money in SL they’ve probably been there for a while and everyone knows the whole thing goes down every other Wednesday morning.

Others have already mentioned it, but the only way to have a big hole appear on a sim in SL is to give users the permission to do it. That’s not the default setting for land in SL, so some moron at ABC must have purposefully set it that way. It is equivalent to using chmod 777 for all of your files on your web server.

TechCrunch usually has decent coverage, but this writeup is amateur hour at best, trying to make headlines on other blogs vs. real coverage. Michael… reign in your stringers!

The problem is that the people who are complaining about the server downtime are the ones who demanded bugs be fixed. Now, when the bugs are going to be fixed they complain about the downtime. Which is it? People just have a need to whine and it’s those whiners who make the biggest noise. All MMOs have downtime. Deal with it.

And griefers exist in everywhere. If someone were able to actually delete ABC’s assets then perhaps they should go after the island administrator since they didn’t set the permissions on who could do what. ABC dropped the ball on something simple.

Investigations into “cyber-rape”… While I’m sure that the person who was “violated” might feel they were wronged, there’s a simple solution. It’s called LOGGING OFF. Done. I’m sorry, this is a joke. You don’t even need to log off if you don’t want to. Teleport somewhere else… mute the “rapist”… and if they were using “naughty bits” on their avatar then they should have known that they can set permissions on who can do what. Hell, it’s in the notecard that you first see when you purchase the damned things.

Pedophilia. Yes, this is disgusting and has NO PLACE in SL. It does exist in some of the seedier areas but not like news media outlets are making it seem that it’s rampant and widespread. Much like you can find crap like that on the internet, you can find it in SL. But it’s suddenly a bigger issue in SL since it allows interactive visuals representations? While distasteful and disturbing, many media outlets fail to make mention that the 2 individuals who were involved were adults (54 and 27, I believe). Is it a crime to pretend to be someone younger?

When does it become a crime to play Counterstrike or Halo because you’ve just commited virtual homicide? Will I never be able to play an RPG again because I might be arrested for cyber-theft by walking into a villager’s home and taking a healing potion from the cupboard? I’m sorry, certain RL laws just can not be applied to virtual worlds. It’s just insane to think that they could.

PRIM-tastic!

After reading the tripe on Gamer.blorge: “including Sculpties — an advanced graphics feature offering a new way to integrate Quicktime or Flash with an object’s shape or texture”, I knew right away they basically had no clue what they were talking about. Why on earth you’d cite them is beyond me. Slow news day, maybe?

I’m with foobar, this is amateur hour. And many of the comments sound similar to the arrogant stuff I heard in the early 80’s when people voiced their “knowing” opinion that average people would *never* have a use for a home computer. History repeats…

After reading this story, I’m reminded again that if human beings had an opportunity to start the world over, we would end up in the same mess we are today.
The Second life anarchy and discontent is a proof of this.

More grief and mis-understanding on what Second Life can (and will) become. The point raised are correct; no one can unwittingly do what happened to ABC, as best I understand. Unless the folks at LL have missed something - usually it just des not not happen to others.

That ppl feel a need to express themselves by costing ppl time, effort, Lindens, Dollars, whatever - pretty inane and sophmoric; but happens.

Virtual rape???!?! Criminal Offense?

give me a break

@SP

It may not sound so stupid. Doing an act in a virtual world, may set pretenses for doing it in a real world.

If your sick enough to get off “raping” someone in a virtual world - at what point to you draw the line to say that it couldnt happen in the real one?

Someone got duped by an ARG.

“If your sick enough to get off “raping” someone in a virtual world - at what point to you draw the line to say that it couldnt happen in the real one?”

Quite right. So let’s ban every fighting game, every FPS, every war game or simulation.

You know which soundclip I hear in games more than ANY other? “headshot”.

It’s all about globalizing us gaming act wich was just signed. The goal, simple the us democracy is no better than a structurized stockmarket, they group of people that pay will get what they want. The problem with second life is that online-casino-monopolists that fueled the congress and this bush administration with money doesnt like competition. So they needed to selll the idea and when just the argument of illegal gambling didnt work some idiot came up with the brilliant idea that there is illegal sex…. same old, same old, what’s gonna be next that saddam hussein smuggled his WMD’s to SL and that this virtual world now posseses a threat to us national security and for that reason this virtual world can’t be left anymore under the brutal dictatorship of linden lab, yes i guess we agree we need democracy, so money is power, freedom is slavery, and monoply is competition.

–>It’s all about globalizing us gaming act wich was just signed. The goal, simple the us democracy is no better than a structurized stockmarket, they group of people that pay will get what they want. The problem with second life is that online-casino-monopolists that fueled the congress and this bush administration with money doesnt like competition.

… right.
Looks like some folks need to get a “third life”.

I’m SLPD SWAT, and let me tell you. Second Life Liberation Army pisses me off. They are like the al-kida of SL. And they are on every KOS list in sl.
If you need me IM me on SL
-Colbyson Kyomoon (SL name)