The World According to Jennyfur

Flip was featured on the front page of Philly.com the website for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Here is the article: http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/15802071.htm It starts off with the Marc Bragg lawsuit against LL and then moves into other Second Life related stuff.

What we have lost in the race to become the *metaverse* : I have argued in defense of Second Life as a platform for many months now and while I think Second Life provides a new array of uncharted territory for exploration I can’t help but wonder sometimes if we would be better off being “just a game”. Second Life’s interface can be used for gaming, content creation, social networking, real world business opportunities and more. It seems lately in the push toward platform! platform! platform! something has gotten lost along the way. What is it that makes Second Life what it is? Its the residents who have built the world into something tangible not the companies coming in and staking their claim on virtual representations. I think in the rush to become the *metaverse* (which at this point seems like a tired old lofty term for Snowcrash wannabe’s) Linden Lab has lost site of this and so have some of the residents.While Second Life may be a virtual platform let us not forget that it was created by an extraordinary group of individuals from across the globe. It wasn’t created by the multitude of real world businesses now entering Second Life because they see it as a viable economic option.

Sometimes more doesn’t equate to better: In the race to have a million users something has gotten lost along the way. Those of us who have been here since the early days (pre-2004) definitely sense this loss. In this race to boost user numbers, Second Life faces the grim reality of becoming completely unusable by the constantly increasing number of grid attacks. We can now refer to the time before open registration (B.O.R) and a time after open registration (A.O.R.) because that is where it all changed. B.O.R. there were grid attacks and instances of griefing however it wasn’t happening multiple times a day and multiple times a week and now in the era of A.O.R. we see the griefing growing exponentially. The problem with the grid attacks seems to be through abusing the scripting function for self-reliplicating objects. There does not seem to be a quick and easy fix for this since many objects have legitimate uses for self-replication though I am not sure why any object would need to self-replicate millions of times. My knowledge of scripting is limited, but Flipper suggested that this function could perhaps be restricted to users with payment info on account.

There has to be a silverlining somewhere: While I have many criticisms, as do we all, concerning the direction of Second Life and many of Linden Lab’s recent decisions, I have faith that all this will soon pass and things will get better. I just hope that we can all make it through these trials and tribulations. I hope that the truly wonderful people who have stood by through thick and thin to make Second Life the beautiful world that it is continue to perservere. I just fear Second Life becoming an extinct dinosaur beneath the sediment.

For future reference the results from the SLCC survey can be found here:

http://slcc2007.wordpress.com/2006/11/21/slcc-survey-results-general-in-world-and-slcc-2007/

http://slcc2007.wordpress.com/2006/11/20/slcc-survey-results-statistics-saturday-keynotespanels-and-sunday-panels/

The survey can still be accessed at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=368902507169

From the shop in Svarga you can teleport up to a sky build and float in what I can only describe as a virtual sensory deprivation tank… well with particle effects. Its very relaxing especially when you go into mouselook. If I had unlimited resources I would recreate this in my house, but first I would need to perfect floating or find a way to simulate it, perhaps a waterbed is the key.

I really hope that Svarga continues to thrive and lives on. By far this has been one of the most unique places I have ever seen in Second Life or anywhere for that fact. If you haven’t seen Svarga yet do so before its too late.

Update: Since the original posting of Save Svarga, many of SL’s prominent residents joined together in donating their tiers so that Svarga can continue to live on.