The official Linden blog has a good article that includes the history but focuses on the usefulness of the “debug menu.” This is a menu that is not open by default in your SL software, because it does have the potential to, um, mess things up. I don’t recommend just mucking around in it. But Torley Linden explains “10 debug options you should know about” in such a way as to enhance your experience while keeping you safe. It’s at least worth knowing that “yes, you can do that.”
Month: July 2007
Just about ready to ride again
This blog has been relatively quiet this summer. For one thing, we’ve been on “summer break.” That doesn’t mean much, except that I wasn’t physically on campus as much. Other things had more of an effect.
- I had two (really, three or four) major PHP projects for which I was committed.
- I taught an online speech course.
- My youngest daughter wound up in the hospital again, her 18th hospitalization.
We’re not back in regular session yet, and Hannah isn’t home from the hospital yet. But I’ve turned in summer grades, and I have a connection from the hospital, so this is as good a time as any to crank it up.
I need to do something. I have bookmarked 33 pages that I had intended to tell you about, and that I haven’t had time to get to yet. I hope some of them still mean something by the time I get it all taken care of.
Linden Labs shuts down gambling
I have mixed feelings about this one. I don’t gamble, and find the gambling activities in Second Life to be obnoxious–not because of the usual moralistic concerns, but because of what it does to the landscape. Much of the mainland has been overrun by casinos, and they tend to be flashy, noisy, intrusive (in the sense that objects are scripted to talk or shout as an attention-getting strategy), and lag-inducing (scripts and crowds). From a personal standpoint, I’m glad to see them go. There will be much more land that is attractive for buying, “living” on, etc.
On the other hand, I wonder about the economic impact. Will there now be a mass exodus from SL as people who came there primarily for gambling? Will that leave tons of abandoned land, as casinos shut down and owners no longer want to pay tier? Will that cause a drop in the real estate market? How will the lack of spending/paying/winning/losing affect the exchange of real-world money with Linden dollars?
Also on the other hand, one of the things I appreciate about SL is its “mind your own business” libertarian approach. It seems ridiculous to me that so many governments are attempting to extend their brand of running someone else’s business into virtual space. It makes as much sense as attempting to include the moon in Columbia’s jurisdiction just because it happens to cross over its “airspace” while orbiting the earth. Anything that lends legitimacy to such lunacy should not be encouraged.
In any case, they have announced a new policy, effective immediately, that unambiguously shuts down gambling across Second Life, regardless of local laws and their application. In other words, it’s now a Term of Service. Whether online gambling is legal for you where you live, either as a participant or a casino owner, is immaterial.
Details can be found in a an official Linden blog post.
Great demo of educational sim
You’ll have to look quickly, because it won’t be up long. Go check out Dante’s Inferno, used as a teaching tool as part of the Literature Alive series, itself an effort of Lehigh Carbon Community College in Schnecksville, PA. Even if Second Life were nothing more than a souped-up chat tool, it would arguably be useful, but builds like Dante’s Inferno help show how much greater the potential is than “just” as a chat tool. Quick, before it goes away! It’s supposed to just be up for a week.
Business sheds light on education
I realize this is an article about “big business,” but their experience in using SL as a means of communicating with customers sheds light on the nature of SL for education. The thing that, in particular, strikes me about Mitch Wagner’s Information Week article on “Using Second Life As A Business-To-Business Tool” is this comment:
The real value of Second Life for Cisco is the opportunity for spontaneous customer interaction, said Christian Renaud, chief architect of networked virtual environments for Cisco…. “I bump into customers and partners multiple times a day in Second Life. In 11 years at Cisco, walking through the parking lot in San Jose, I never get people come up to me and say, ‘I’m a Cisco customer, have a second?'”
Renaud confirms what I’ve seen for myself, and learned talking to other real-life businesses in Second Life. Second Life is a social networking tool, like blogging or Web discussion forums. It’s a way for people to come together and talk. It’s a way for companies to come together and talk with their business partners and customers.
At the risk of sounding like Martha Steward, that’s a good thing. In the classroom, it’s easy for two or three people to dominate discussion. In a Web class, it’s easy to feel disconnected from everyone else in the class. Both situations have been shown by research to negatively affect learning. If SL can counter that, then it’s useful.