Artificial Boy

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While the economic stats published by Linden Lab have been frozen (see JIRA WEB-948 ), the SLNameWatch bot has been indicating something different. Sometime in the last two weeks, more than 430,000 accounts have disappeared from the in-world search. Last names that previously had a consistent number of residents under them, query after query, for 1.5 years, suddenly have seen their usage count reduced by as much as 50%. Read the rest…

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NYTimes article, “Report Calls Online Threats to Children Overblown“, seen on Slashdot, “Internet Not Really Dangerous For Kids After All“. The government commissioned a task force to see what could be done about our rampant online predator problem, as highlighted by “To Catch A Predator” among other things. Instead, the task force reported back that “Social networks are very much like real-world communities that are comprised mostly of good people who are there for the right reasons.” The report went on to suggest that the government instead focus resources on child-on-child bullying.
One of the key state attorneys general pushing for the report spat out this gem of a response, Read the rest…

My first post on this blog is I won the “Cutest Snowman” award!. Well, it’s another year, and naturally I’ve won another snowman award at Boy Scout Camp. This time, a silver trophy. Woot! Here are pics. Read the rest…

(( At the beginning of last year I made 10 predictions, then evaluated their accuracy at the end of the year. This year, I predict…

1. There will be a major blow to freedom of expression in the Second Life World™
2. One or more of LL’s products will undergo an abrupt price change, and there will be protests.
3. Linden Lab will face a challenge regarding customer privacy. For example, perhaps it will be revealed that LL has provided server logs and chat logs to be used in an investigation or as evidence in a legal proceeding. Or, perhaps it will be revealed that a court has granted a wire tap on specific communications and activities in Second Life. Linden Lab will cooperate with authorities and not take any inordinate legal risks for the sake of their customer’s privacy.
4. Perhaps as a result of this, someone will build automatic two-way text encryption into a third-party viewer, similar to pidgin-encrypt
5. LL will announce that certain services are only available in the official Second Life viewer, and perhaps some authenticated third-party viewers. In particular, the abuse reporting tool will be restricted to prevent forged snapshots.
6. The will be a change in the permissions system, perhaps to accommodate grid interoperability.
7. There will be a welcome improvement to the offline message system.
8. Someone will die.

Hmmm.. looks like only 8 this time. Maybe I’ll think of two more by tomorrow. Maybe not. Have a good 2009, everyone.
-Big Adz ))