These are interesting times...

These are interesting times...

Linden Lab fired over 60% of its staff, primarily folks working outside of America, but also long-time Lindens of good repute in many cases. They're also canning the Teen Grid and moving the kids (those of 16 years of age at least) to the main grid with everything they own, as well as retiring their firewalled version of Second Life for corporates.

These are interesting times...

Modular Systems abuses the trust placed by over 1/3rd of SL's active unique population in its Emerald Viewer and launches a distributed DOS on a griefer's blog using its users' resources via a login page. Naturally, just because the target is a gray or black hat doesn't make it right, and Fractured Crystal has been fired from the team in favor of Baghdad Arabella. LL finally works out that Emerald has problems keeping to the straight and narrow, and yanks its name (albeit at the team's own request) from the Third Party Viewers list (but not banning it yet)

These are interesting times...

One of New Citizens Incorporated's oldest helpers, Nardok Corrimal, buys the farm abruptly. She wishes for a quiet departure from this world, so the only things that happen are a vanishing profile, a quietly placed tombstone surrounded by memorials, and a barrelful of good memories.

These are interesting times...

In real life, I was taken ill in mid july, on the cusp of a great second semester at my art school. The illness is nearly fatal, but fortunately, I recover thanks to the medical dab hands at National University Health System's facilities. It takes a month though, and I'm still hooked to a bottle of antibiotics that has to be changed daily along with my dressings.

These are interesting times...

Indeed.

Kewlage: Second Life's New Automated System Requirements Test!

As a Second Life Volunteer for almost two years, I've come across my fair share of technological cluelessness. For many people, a computer is something that you plonk out of a box, plug in and push your needs around with. If the PC has a 'Dual Hamster Wheels' CPU and two blackboards manned by tiny radioactive weevils, who cares as long as it works?

For many applications these days, provided you spend a not-unreasonable amount (and it is not a very big amount either), that is exactly what you get: a box that will service your spreadsheets and help you keep track of your media collection (legitimate or otherwise), and run most ordinary applications.

Unfortunately, some applications are a bit more fincky. Second Life is one of them.

Despite using a relatively modest generic graphics engine (even with recent upgrades considered), standard full-service Second Life viewers demand a higher level of grunt from the PCs they run on. It's a world where the only things that are 2D in nature remain so because abstracting them to a 3D metaphor is inefficient or sheer stupidity - script editing or menus, for instance.

It's a world where your view changes with alarming regularity and broadness in a way that is rarely seen in your garden-variety MMO. That places serious demands on your Internet connection in a way that recommends against most connections below a certain level of speed, latency and potential for forced retransmissions, especially if you teleport regularly through the world.

There have been times when I have met residents in world who are experiencing issues that are more often than not the product of running Second Life on a rig that either fails to meet minimum requirements or just barely glides over the limit.

When faced with a lack of hardware hindering the ability to use Second Life, the best thing that a Resident can have is another person who is at least conversant with reading system requirements and/or arranging for the necessary upgrades to get their PC up to speed. That is not always a possibility. Sometimes, that leads to wasted money as someone buys a new PC to enter Second Life, only to be told either by a passing Resident or (worse) actual bizzare visual or connectivity issues that whatever they bought isn't going to cut it.

For the less technically inclined who run Windows PCs and lack such close-range technical support, Linden Lab recently introduced a browser-based test that allows users to check that their PC can run Second Life properly @
http://secondlife.com/support/systest.php which is provided by a company called System Requirements Lab (Apparently a company with more technical bones than imagination...) .

Currently, Linux and MacOSX users are SOL, still stuck with the old 'look up yon system config and system requirements' schtick that has existed ever since someone decided how nice it would be to start diversifying what you could put into a computer all those years ago, but in theory there's no technical reason why the same tools could not grab the same details from such computers as well, so here's hoping that's exactly what happens.

Setting that slight niggle aside, I don't have to tell you just how much this eases entry into Second Life for potential newcomers on Windows-powered PCs.

What the test does in absolute terms is check your Windows PC for certain hardware details, such as CPU speeds , memory availability and video cards, and compare them against what Linden Lab believes to be minimum and recommended requirements for accessing Second Life.

(Disclosure: pitting my standard RL working laptop, a earlier model Inspiron 5150, against this test put me almost halfway to having a recommended rig for Second Life. As noted on so many technical forums and blogs dedicated to laptops, the GeForce FX5200 2 Go is a dog, and this alone blew away my ability to meet recommended system requirements. But I'm still happy. And no, this is not a reason for me to be so 'shiny' about this new test.)

What the test does, in plain English, is tell you as well as it can whether Second Life will run properly, well, or at all on your rig.

Like many browsers and other forms of media viewer, however, even a system that meets recommended system requirements for Second Life access may not necessarily be a panacea for all issues.

For one thing, Second Life's biggest cause of lag beyond what you can control, is pretty much the entire world: Grid glitches (as regularly experienced), poor internet connectivity, abusive script use in a sim, the presence of large numbers of people, even poor in-world design decisions (spraying a truckload of 1k x 1k textures on everything you own is being a poor neighbour and a major cause of lag, people!). And with Linden Lab continually developing and improving the grid and the way it operates, system requirements will inevitably change. Your world beater of today will eventually start gagging on Second Life several years later, I can practically guarantee that.

In the end, maybe all that anyone really needs (aside from a computer that meets or barely exceeds the minimum sysreqs) is an open mind and a sense of personal rightness to have fun in Second Life. Just ask the thousands of people who dance in nightclubs every night to framerates that nobody in their right mind would accept in supposedly more 'visceral' things like first-person shooters...

Kotomori on Koinup!

Another day, another Koinup from Second Life. This time it's just Kotomori, the little girl who wandered into the Millions Of Patches cubbyhole one day and never really left... or is it only her? o_O;

Merry Christmas to one and all!

It's certainly been shaping up to be a most interesting Christmas in Second Life. When you've done stuffing yourself full of Christmas meats, popped open the box on your grandma's eighth gift of woolen green socks (Why granny, you shouldn't have! xD), and roasted Chet's scrotum on an open fire, consider this:

Please put a penny in the poor man's hat.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

The Patchouli Council - Partying with a Partyfennec

Our first interview of Patchouli Council members is with Patchouli Partyfennec, a mentor in the Second Life Official Mentor Corps and a raver fanatic. (All opinions expressed here in are personal and are not necessarily shared by Linden Lab, the Patchouli Council as a whole, or blue colored fennecs around the metaverse)


TheWorldOf Tomorrow: Thank you for taking the time out of your schedule to speak with us on everything under the sun.
Patchouli Partyfennec: Pleasure's all mine.
TWOT: Why don't you start by telling us a little about yourself, Pat?
PP: well, there's not really much to think of. I was born about 1873 in Malacca. Father passed away shortly after I was born, due to complications from pregnancy.
TWOT: Ahh... usually, it's the mother who dies from complications from pregnancy.
PP: The poor man was really flustered. He apparently keeled over from a stroke in his panic to get the midwife over.
TWOT: Oh.
PP: Prior to that, he was kinda fretting about finding the money to keep me properly educated on being a fine young fennec.
TWOT: It must have been hard on your mother.

(Photo: Picture of Mama Partyfennec in a calmer mood)

PP: Yes, yes it was. I understand I wasn't very polite or well-behaved as a child. But she really took pains to make sure I had a semblance of a normal childhood like any Peranakan girl deserved. My being an only child possibly helped.
TWOT: So you had a good childhood and grew up into a perfectly upright fennec there, I see. That's it? no dark disturbing secrets?
PP: Well I may have indulged in opium a tad bit before it was banned. There was a den near my home, and the ventilation wasn't exactly airtight.
PP: I may have inhaled a few times as a kid whilst walking by...
TWOT: Opium? How... quaint. I've seen people on harder drugs straight from the local pharmacist.
PP: Like that Seclimine stuff Gideon Teevee drops occasionally?
TWOT: Yeah, that stuff.
PP: A bit distasteful to me. drugs is for people who can't take meta-reality.
TWOT: Agreed.
PP: But those days are pretty much behind me now. Being a mentor means being disciplined in public.
TWOT: all the time?
PP: Welll... not all the time. Like anyone else , I do have my own foibles, but I don't smoke anything at all these days. As for anything else, you may not dig further on this detail, young man.

(Photo: independently sourced picture of Patchouli Partyfennec shaking her moneymaker after duty hours at Dance Island)

TWOT: Ah... right. ^^; So moving on... how did you wind up in Agni?
PP: Charming fellow from some little town named Caledon visited and offered to pay my passage and my school fees. Naturally, I sprung at the chance. How was I to know it wasn't exactly a boat trip down to Koala Lumpur in a week?
TWOT: That was a pretty hefty teleport there, yes. Do you regret making that trip at times?
PP: At times, yes, I am a tad homesick
PP: but you live with the world you know, not the world you want
PP: and there's enough going on here that I rarely have time to indulge myself in any lowish moods.
PP: Besides, the Peranakan Museum here is pretty close to what I would have had if I hadn't been so hasty about my choices in life.
TWOT: Nicely spoken... so what's your biggest pet peeve these days?

PP: Illiteracy.
TWOT: Illiteracy?
PP: While working, one of the biggest problems I face as a mentor is getting people to read. While it's not really solvable when the person in question doesn't understand the language used, it's rather appalling at times how some people don't have the same spark of curiosity that I used to have.
PP: They just walk right past the sign, and they don't even think of examining it, or touching it.
TWOT: Maybe they're too busy to do so?
PP: Excuses of the lazy. if you know you can read something in front of you, you should. it may be important enough to your enjoyment of the world, perhaps even your wellbeing, to do so. There are so many examples I laugh/cry over.
TWOT: Like?
PP: For example, the newbie who didn't read the danger sign shortly before he tipped himself into a grinding machine at a shop for gore fans.
TWOT: Could the possibility be considered that maybe he INTENDED to try out the machine?
PP: ... possibly, but you'd think the pain would be a negative selling point. And then there's the greedy guts I see sometimes.
TWOT: Like?
PP: It's amazing how many people actually attempt to sell freebies. FREEBIES. FREE-bies. What part of that is not understandable to these people?
TWOT: The 'free' part?
PP: The thought had occurred to me, yes. We are talking about the labour of the people involved in creating these items, which is worth something, but being given for nothing, just being ripped off.
PP: It's appalling, and if I had my way they'd be dangling off a nice hanging noose for it.
TWOT: You live with the world you know, not the world you want, remember?
PP: Pssh.
TWOT: You've been around long enough, are there any locations that you would recommend personally to anyone?
PP: I would recommend any newcomer to Second Life hang out at a new resident support organisation such as The Shelter or New Citizens Incorporated .
PP: For eye candy, Light Waves' work at Black Swan (formerly Rezzable Hallucinogen, formerly Error) has to be seen to be believed. just the ones that come to mind right on the spot.
PP: You must excuse me, I have other matters to attend to soon.
TWOT: cya later? and thanks for taking the time to say hello there.
PP: Indeed.

The Patchouli Council Interviews

Over the next few posts, we will be interviewing members of the Patchouli Council - partners in crime of Patchouli Woollahra. We're not sure how boring this will become, or how controversial... or stupid.

Anyways, keep watching.

Nota Bene: This series of interviews will be conducted mostly by TheWorldOf Tomorrow. If you enjoy it, be sure to tip your reporter woozl :D

Lawd, I Love This City At Midnight...

Picture taken at Midnight City, 4am in the quite hours of the Agni morn.

The Wronged Feral - Tiberious Neruda

In recent days, some of you may have seen video on Sky News of a 'paedophilia in SL' scandal. While childporn is one of the things I have had terminally serious issues about, I feel I have just as much in the way of issues with people who I call my friends being maligned.

His name is Tiberious Neruda, and he is a friend of mine.

The 'Truth' is A Lie.

Certain individuals who believe they have the license to lie as journalists have painted this tiger in army slacks as a childlover.

I have known Tiberious Neruda almost since my first days as a Agnian in November 2006. Like most residents he has his penchants, his flaws, even his fetishes. Those fetishes do not extend to humping little kids. He would not associate with builds or groups known to indulge in sexual ageplay, and he has no love of ageplay whatsoever.

He is a professional, and a good friend, however. He was providing security for a friend, and keeping a hands off approach to anything that went on. He had no reason to believe that the management was attempting in any way to provide sexual ageplay or child porn, and would have most likely abandoned his posting without due notice if this had indeed been the case.

Like most tigers however, he has a big bite when he is clearly wronged. I cannot imagine he would simply let this slide, and I don't imagine whoever did this will come out of this in one piece. Well, maybe he will.

I just don't think it will be the same-sized piece. That's the thing about big bites - they tend to make things smaller.

As a personal request, he has asked that I not disclose extra details of this matter beyond what I have noted so far to anyone else, pending further action, and I will respect that as a friend. The only three things I would ask are these:

1. There are people who have known Tiberious Neruda for several years, in a world where one's personal foibles become all too well known pretty fast. (It must be something in the air in Agni or something.) Why was he not turned in earlier if sexual ageplay or child pornography was illegal in Second Life, as it always has been? or is there something that the journo has not revealed, because doing so would make a total mockery of what he intends to write?


2. If you know Tiberious or have known Tiberious in his time in SL or RL, on a genuine personal, unmercenary basis, please show him your support in these trying times. That's what being a friend is all about.


3. If this is eventually going to lead to where I think it is going, you can have anything else, but I want the head to mount on my wall.

I will not comment on this further until after the matter is resolved in a matter that is deemed satisfactory. It would not be... fair.

XSS Attack on Second Life logins and My Recommendations

(Special Thanks to Ordinal Malaprop for pointing this one out)

pdp over at GNUCITIZEN highlights a serious exploit that affects Windows-based Second Life Users. Read this like your SL depended on it, because it does!

Explaination of exploit:
The exploit basically uses a inline frame tag with a deliberately malformed set of parameters. (This is a common trick in Cross-Site-Scripting Attacks) it passes what is apparently a secondlife protocol link, which should fire up the SL client by default and pass along the parameters following it.

In a proper secondlife:// link, it would simply be a sim name and XYZ coordinates in a segmented URL). However, this hack truncates the URL awkwardly and instead passes on command-line options that specify that the client should fire up the client and automatically and submit login details, including a MD5 hash of your password if "Remember Password" is enabled in the client, to a specified server at another URL other than the one for the Agni or ADITI grids as run by Linden Lab.

This is a severe compromise, as a false login can be performed at the genuine Second Life authentication servers simply by playing back the request from start to finish (actually logging into the Second Life website would require a further step of unscrambling the password hash, which is possible, albeit tricky, no thanks to pregenerated 'rainbow tables' from projects established to break MD5.)

Until this issue is publicly addressed and fixed by Linden Lab, my recommendation would be to disable password caching by unchecking "Remember Password" at the client login screen. An attempted auto-login would still send your name and client version and type as in a normal login request, but without a saved password to hash, no password will be sent along, rendering this exploit mostly useless.

Switching to Firefox would also help. The vulnerability in IE that is used to run this exploit also used to exist in Firefox, but was patched within days of recognising its existence (yay for FOSS). Attempting the same attack on a updated copy of Firefox would merely result in Second Life being passed a odd "Startup Location" rather than actual command line options (with the security leak that could be used to create)

Good Grief! - Laetizia Coronet asks about coping with griefing

Laetizia Coronet writes in her blog "A Virtual Village Voice" about responding to spates of griefing like what is oging on in the past fortnight:

http://laetizia.wordpress.com/2007/09/14/good-grief/

Some good proposals, and comments are welcome at the original post as always. Your opinions will help make up proposals on the matter she plans to put forth to the people above - make it count :D

Patches of Insanity #3: The Price of Poor Hearing

This post was originally going to be big, special, spectacular even, for the SLCC. It seems to have sputtered out before it even began though.

I wonder why... ^^;

Small leap in furry avatar uncanniness - Muzzletalk

Matt Deigan just built this:



Cool stuff, if you can wrangle it. the toolkit from NORTEC LABS is available on SLExchange at http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=297916

zomg Bioshock

Apparently, this is causing serious disruptions with Second Life beyond Linden Lab's control:

Bioshock Steam Preload

Under normal circumstances, I would question a claim like this for any other game...

Except for one problem here: Bioshock is System Shock with a new genetically engineered Art Deco flavor.

Bioshock has the world's best water since idiots tried to put infinite planes in Doom and call it water.

Bioshock has a seriously disturbed art design and direction. Even their idea of kawaii goes into the spooky.

Bioshock will do System Shock and unlike the previous two versions, it will be a major hit. I'm going to save you the continued blurb and let you google for it - it's been plastered all over the place repeatedly in recent weeks.

In short, I'm not normally keen on system disruptions... but if it's for dozens of people giving a good game the attention it genuinely deserves, I think I can live with it. Just this weekend.

Seriously, if you're running a modern, over-powered DX9.0+/10 rig and you're only using it for Second Life at the moment, you seriously owe it to yourself to go over and grab a copy even if you're not exactly a FPS junkie by default (the game has ways of playing through that deemphasise twitch if you look carefully enough, though one might question exactly what sort of sacrifices are required)

Watching Ginko Closely - Tateru Commentary

No sooner had I written the previous post than this article lands up in Second Life Insider.

"Welcome to BarterTown"

Vandeverre is right ... and wrong when he says "have no monetary value". You see, as long as he sticks to first party tokens (W$, in this case) he's right. We're just talking game tokens. However, any interaction with Linden Dollars (L$) or other currencies messes up the statement. -Tateru Nino

Take it away, Tat!

As with any commentary or advice, always think carefully based on your own circumstances as well. I for one do not imagine I will continue to invest in the WSE if this is true, but I'll be asking my accountant for a second opinion.

Watching Ginko Closely

To be played softly while reading this article:


This letter just arrived in my mailbox. for those of you who have funds currently trapped in with Ginko Financial, it bears reading:

---

Dear Customer,

GINKO FINANCIAL ACCOUNT TRANSFERS COMPLETED!

All Ginko Financial account holders now have an account on the World Stock Exchange and all Ginko Perpetual Bonds have been issued.

Any Ginko account balance with decimal values has been transferred to your new WSE trading account balance. WSE trading accounts earn a base yearly interest rate of 15.95% calculated daily and paid fortnightly (every 14 days). *Subject to change without notice.

If you did not have an existing WSE account please reset your password by visiting a WSE ATM and typing: "reset password".

You can view a list of WSE ATM locations by visiting: https://www.wselive.com/education/atms

ABOUT THE WORLD STOCK EXCHANGE

World Stock Exchange (WSE) is a fictional securities exchange developed for use in virtual worlds such as Second Life. The exchange provides Virtual companies with the ability to raise capital using the fictional Linden and World Internet Currencies.

The journey started in December 2006 with an opportunity which was followed by the vision of Australian entrepreneur Luke Connell. Today the concept of an Internet based World Stock Exchange servicing the virtual world community of Second Life has achieved over 24000 trading accounts and over 60 virtual companies exceeding 400 million linden dollars in trading volume. The WSE has exceeded all expectations however it is an emerging and development market that will always be improving. This is only the beginning.

The World Stock Exchange includes enhanced security features such as 256-bit SSL encryption, Risk API for Second Life residents along with the ability for general Internet users with a browser to trade on the World Stock Exchange using the World Internet Currency.

The World Internet Currency acts as one fictional currency bridging the gap between the real and virtual worlds. This will encourage growth in the virtual economies around the world especially in Second Life while providing the everyday Internet users with the ability to LEARN - HAVE FUN AND PROFIT.

By visiting and using the World Stock Exchange website (www.wselive.com) you will be accepting the WSE Terms of Service ("TOS" located on www.wselive.com. Please read them carefully and if you disagree with the TOS in any way, then do not use the web site or services provided by the World Stock Exchange.

The WSE provides users with a fully automated trading platform that operates 24 hours, 7 Days per week. Traders have access to real-time and historical trading data allowing them to make informed decisions.

To learn about the World Stock Exchange and how to use the our services please visit our Education Centre which can be found at https://www.wselive.com/education

USEFUL INFORMATION:

*'Virtual Company' refers to an Internet based business generating income from a fictional currency and includes many businesses based in virtual worlds and 3D multi user environments such as Second Life.

'Fictional Services' are all "Fictional" services provided by HopeCapital on the World Stock Exchange. Fictional services are an imaginative creation in a simulated gaming and education environment that are without basis in reality and hold no legal monetary or asset value.

'Fictional Currency' is used as game tokens and have no monetary value in and of themselves and as a result are not be taxable as income. In most cases a fictional currency constitutes a limited license right for use by account holders and is subject to the terms of each Fictional Currency provider. The World Stock Exchange supports the "Linden Currency" (Linden Dollar, LND$, L$, Lindens) and the "World Internet Currency" (WIC, WICS, W$).

The financial and group operations of a virtual company are controlled and managed by the controlling WSE account holder who is assigned with the title CEO.

Kind Regards,

LukeConnell Vandeverre,
Chairman and CEO,
World Stock Exchange

Kind regards,
World Stock Exchange
http://www.wselive.com/

---

An interesting turn of events, to be sure. a 15% p.a. return may be considerably lower than what Ginko was offering, but more realistic (although this rate is normally associated more with credit card bills than most deposits)

I gotta ask: will you hold, or will you fold? Replies in the comments please :D

Ginko Doubles Down - Bigger Bust, or More Secure Future?

Well, with the recent upheavals that have been going around, it seems a bit obvious that depositors at SL Banks might feel the need to put more of their trust in real-life currency rather than Agnian L$. This has obviously caused a run at several banks.

Now any bank, in any world, will more often than not have very little of the finances it claims to own available for withdrawal. Money sitting in actual currency rather than sunk into investments is money that does not earn money. However, not having enough of this float to cover depositor's regular demands up front is dangerous: word gets around fast and eventually, the bank loses consumer confidence. There are also costs involved in cutting and running from investments prematurely. It's a balancing act on tightrope, perched above fiducial damnation.

One of the biggest victims of this run on SL Banks has been Nicholas Portocarrero's Ginko Financial. Eloise Pasteur writes in the Second Life Insider a summary of the matter as well as some good links to other websites that practically thrive on reporting this sort of thing. Nobody Fugazi has also attempted to tease more answers about his intentions out of Nicholas as well, and the results are in his KnowProSE blog.

It is not as if Ginko was a stranger to controversy. Since the moment it offered what was initially an effective interest rate of about 72% p.a. in its heyday, the company has been accused (fairly or otherwise) of being a Ponzi scheme by many residents on one hand, . On the other, you have Residents who have ridden the tiger and profitted significantly (encouraged in part by the explosive growth in signups in Second Life.), who urge that Ginko can be a valid investment like any other investment instrument that is native to Agni provided you do your homework before investing and never risk anything that you can't afford to risk.

So withdrawals per day from Ginko have been significantly capped, and its offered interest rate reduced significantly since then. To make matters worse, prudence has dictated that the Ginko Financial Lottery be shut down in case it falls foul of LL's recent ban on wagering inworld. While part of the rake from tickets was always going to seed the current draw and the next, there was also a portion being funnelled back into Ginko's fund.

While I was browsing over earlier today, I found that Ginko Financial has introduced two things:

• It has cut interest on openly accessible funds to 0.1% per day from the 0.13% it offered in previous weeks due to a earlier run by residents to other banks perceived to have more financial stability...
• and it has introduced term deposits.

What are Term Deposits anyway? Especially if you're a teen fresh off the TSL or someone who's not particulary keen on financial knowledge, this might sound newfangled.

Unlike a normal bank savings account, a term deposit is essentially a contract with a bank whereby you hand the bank an agreed amount of money for an agreed period to earn an agreed interest rate.

For the duration of this contract, you cannot take any of this money out for use on other matters. This is money that the bank does not have to budget for in its cash float till the day it matures at the end of the term, and can be sunk in to investments that require more stable funding but promise greater interest. Some banks in real life DO offer early term deposit cashouts, but impose onerous penalties to ensure that depositors do not do so unless they have absolutely no choice.

On the flip side however, the bank also pays a price of sorts for this stability in its investment funds: many term deposits are tied to a higher interest rate than the current interest rate set by the banks in order to compensate for the inability to access the funds involved, and this increases slightly with every extra month or dollar tied up in the deposit. This rate is also not renegotiable for the term of the contract - bad news for the bank if the interest rates fall.

And it still has to be repaid at the end of the term. It is still possible for a bank to default and fail to be able to make payment of depositors' demands in the end - only worse, because all that extra interest means more money owing.

Different banking jurisdictions will have different ideas about what to do in the event that a bank falls over from the weight of its obligations. For instance, the FDIC guarantees up to US$100,000 per investor per insured bank on any bank defaults in America (with extra insurance provided in certain cases), with anyone who has more than the insured limit basically plumb out of luck for the excess barring any successful legal action. Other countries may have more generous offers to cushion the blow, or totally fail to provide a safety net - check your local governmental body on finance for more details.

And there, for most of us, is the nub. In Second Life, regulation is not a cornerstone of most of our activities (excepting possibly the Terms of Service, The Big Six, and whatever covenants our landlords require us to agree to). Who watches the bank? Except for a few million depositors and a couple of more attentive, more inquisitive residents, most finance in Second Life is virtually bereft of oversight, not to mention guarantees or insurance. if a SL bank falls, you're going to be left picking up the pieces barring the appearance of some damn fool who doesn't mind spending money to pick up the tab (and possibly some other ulterior motives - banks don't get bailed for altruistic reasons)

It is a double-edged sword: it cuts out a lot of the costs many oversight bodies inflict on banks as a result, and allows them to take risks that a oversight body would disapprove of or even deny coverage for. But then, there's a reason why they were so prudent, these bodies. Having dozens of trained eyes to keep looking for possible problems in the system isn't cheap either.

So is taking out a term-deposit with Ginko, at what is effectively twice as much interest per day (and if you're taking a compounding interest deposit, considerably more than double the dividend due to the power of compounding) a good investment?

Yes. No. Maybe.

You have to ask if the future of Second Life is going to be bright enough that whatever portion of it Ginko can get hold of will be enough to service your deposit, especially if it's a compound interest deposit.

You have to ask if you can afford to let go of the money. You do NOT put your rental money into extremely highrisk investments. Let's be brutally frank - Ginko is inherently that with its lack of transparency and its insane interest rates (even if it HAS honored most withdrawals till recently). Money you don't mind losing is the best money to invest, especially with such risky instruments.

You have to ask if you can afford to let go of the money for long enough. whatever you put into term deposit is something you're not going to see for a long time. Possibly up to 360 days (just shy of a year) in this case. and especially more so if you're opting to keep the interest in play with a compounding deposit.

It's a personal choice. Best way to deal with them is to look at yourself and ask the questions you do want to hear... and the ones you DON'T want to hear (but really should).

Good luck out there.

(DISCLAIMER: The Author has sunk a modest amount she can afford to lose in a 30-day compounding deposit with Ginko. The author also recommends that the reader ideally seek more professional advice and opinion prior to committing to any financial investments, and will not be held responsible for any damages incurred due to failures in investment with Ginko or other banking companies.)

The result of too many surnames in SL Episode #1

Until one or two years ago, Linden Lab used to retire lastnames when 150 people had gotten each of them. This was done on the basis of Malcolm Gladwell's socialogical writing "The Tipping Point". These days, you get about several thousand people sharing the same surname... and the results are startling. On a recent go through I found these people sharing my prims in Second Life:

• Catherine Fitzpatrick (I have it on good faith that whoever took this name is Second Life is NOT the genuine article. And so you know - judge a person in Second Life by his or her actions, not by his or her name...)
• CatherineAnn Fitzpatrick (EDIT: so Prokofy Neva registered this instead to play safe. Rationale: the horse may have bolted, but the pony hasn't... so shut the door already!)
  
• Oysters Fitzpatrick (Erm... I thought that stuff with the bacon and cheese bake was Kirkpatrick?)
  
• Paul Debevec (doesn't ring a bell? Think HDRI)
• Paul Huldschinsky (1944 Academy Award Winner - Best Arts Direction - for the movie 'GasLight")
• BaiOu Chemistry (Bio-chemistry. geddit? xD)
• NoDetectable Paulse (No Detectable Pulse xD)
• Vincent Price
• Half Price, HeavilyDiscounted Price and RecommendedRetail Price
• TheWorldOf Tomorrow
• PennyPinching Miszer
• Jonah Lomu
• Camui Gackt
• LetMeTellYouA Cooljoke
• Natsume Aya
• Ham Burger, Beef Burger, Chicken Burger, QuarterPounder Burger
• Maccaron Charron (think 'batmanbox')
• Judi Dench
• Electric Eel, Moray Eel
• EbbAnd Flow
• RollingInTheA Lisle

here's a hint, not all of these names have been actually taken... which ones though? :D

[EDIT - clarified actual ownership of Catherine and CatherineAnn Fitzpatrick names in Second Life. Catherine is owned by some random person, CatherineAnn by Prokofy Neva. Apologies for the misunderstanding]

Why Prolonged grid issues are harmful...

[22:49] Patchouli Woollahra: for dinner tonight we'll be having fillet of gridbork served with gridbork sauce, with a side of gridbork salad. To warm your appetite up we will first have some soup: cream of gridbork. For dessert, gridborkcake.

[22:49] Patchouli Woollahra multiplies into a horde of SL Vikings and chants 'gridbork' repeatedly.

yeah, me noggin's taking a funny turn. losing IQ points on a visible scale, even.

[2:17pm, 31/07/07] - Things are looking up more and more. TPs still borking regularly, and item rezzing not working perfectly, but considering where we were earlier, it looks better.

Going to sit for a while longer, then go to sleep in the sun.

End of The Line

I woke up late this morning and found my Wake Up News clock had pulled this up:

Wagering In Second Life: New Policy

Now I don't know about you, but I'll bet this is going to be a total bitch to enforce. Seriously guys, where do you draw the line? This is a question that needs a relatively clear answer.

All I can say is that Torley's office hours this Friday are going to be decidedly less civil. Ah well.

What worries me is the abruptness with which this policy is being announced. Governments that abruptly announce an about face on national tradition and prior rules tend to make abrupt turns like this only if they're totalitarian. More fuel for Prokofy, I say.

---

People are also asking me how I can continue to defend the Lindens after repeated incidences of this. I need to clarify some matters:

1. The Lindens I work with are associated with first responses. They help to ensure the rules are followed, and that wrinkles in the system are followed.
2. The Lindens I work with do NOT have much say as to exactly how rules should be formed. They also do NOT have much say to voice their opinions on this sort of thing, as to whether it is good or it is bad.

I feel perfectly justified and willing to stand behind them on the matter until there is clear evidence that whatever they are doing is contributing to the current situation. Not something that has happened... yet.

It just wouldn't be fair. It would be something I would be against doing.

Off-Topic: The Theory of Cat Gravity

A friend of Robin Wood nee Sourjourner came up with a curiously compelling theory as to why felines seem to exert so much gravity on others around them...

Cats, as everyone knows, sit on the window ledges where, as everyone knows, they collect solar rays. What everyone does not know is that they transform these solar rays directly into gravity. You can tell that they are doing this because when they get into the window they hardly ever make any noise; but when they get out they almost invariably go "thud."

You can't seriously make stuff like this up. To read the entire text (which makes a almost Agnian sort of sense), click over to: Robin Wood's Cat Gravity Poster. xD