Hard News: Too busy with First Life sorry
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My desk neighbour decided to experiment with Second Life about 6 months ago.
His avatar was a naked dude with a fox's head and tail.
That was about the point I lost interest...
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Instead of Second Life, I'd like to see a beefed up Google Earth world.... basically a Second Life style copy of the real world, where I can join you in a 3D copy of your actual office on the other side of the world.
Heh, one day, it will almost be as awesome as actually coming to meet me in my real office. Gagging for it.
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i just watched that clip of russian rug and it takes me back to being a 15 year-old lying on my bedroom floor playing the bilder' schwimmen in der see 7" on the family radiogram (one speaker model). that song was the very first i ever heard to clue me into the freakpower nature of music and i've never looked back since.
I know exactly what you mean. I was a little older, but there's a sense of being out on the perimeter in those records.
i wish i could join you at the masonic, russell, but the new boy has finally arrived this week. in 15 years' time i will be sure to lie him on the floor and see if it can provoke the same reaction in him.
Congratulations! Stay home! Bask in the warm glow!
PS for others: When he was at Flying Nun, Paul oversaw the Bill/Bilder/Builders CD reissues, which were a great thing. But seeing as I wrote the liner notes for the first one, I probably would say that.
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OK, in my 4 years living in South Korea I can honestly say that I do not recall looking at pornography on the internet. Apart from this one time when I was so blind drunk that my mate leant over to my computer in a pcroom and brought it up on screen while I was admiring the floor. I won't provide any further details to that story.
I did have a Korean friend who seemed to have an impressive collection that he had downloaded which he forced me to watch some of but aside from that I would say 64% is way, way, way the hell over the mark. Especially considering that about half the internet traffic in Korea is females chatting with one another or football or baseball nuts, or teenagers discussing the latest k-pop group or folks visiting one of the DOZENS of Korean news portals.
The 64% figure would be a bit like Koreans declaring that 53% of NZers have dreamt about sheep in an inappropriate manner. Of course the number would be much closer to 50%.
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Sue,
ooo YAY for robyn!!!!
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Chat doesn't use much bandwidth. Porn does. But I wouldn't accept any figure on usage without evidence. It's not an arena where 'what feels right' is any safe guide to the truth. I don't download many movies or much music, but maybe a lot of other people do, and when they do they use a ton of bandwidth. I'm sure they might be surprised just how much data I download when I need to - when it happens it's typically massive zips of customer data, hundreds of MB at a time, or entire installation DVDs of software.
I would, however, be surprised if the lion's share of bandwidth isn't being soaked up by spam. A lot of that is about porn, if not actually pornographic itself.
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While Second Life may often be empty and boring, I have had a few constructive private business meetings there. ...But having 20 countries come together in a virtual world creates a much better sense of 'prescence' and team interaction than a group conference call, even video conferencing, would.
Exactly. Working as I do now for [redacted] that overall, engages in vast amounts of needless carbon-chewing air travel in order to ostensibly save the world, I totally disagree with Russell. I think SL is precisely the kind of boring, empty, pointless virtual 3-d space that could really work for frustrated bureaucrats and NGOs who know that actually important stuff happens in the corridors, not during the meeting itself, who have found informal networking is impossible during phone conferences, and who don't want to destroy the planet with their pointless conference travel. Oh yeah, and who can't type fast enough to IM effectively. The biggest drawback with all this, is the massive digital divide, particularly with regard to Africa. But it's not like anyone here (in this particular non-real forum, not [redacted workplace]) is thinking about Africa... or are they?
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But it's not like anyone here is thinking about Africa... or are they?
Great. Now I've got that stupid Toto song stuck in my head.
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I think virtual worlds as a substitute for real world meetings or even IM is still a little far away - unless easy to use technology that maps one's movements or voice to an avatar while many other people do the same in real time are freely available. Then look at the trend in video conferencing - HP or Cisco (or both?) have put a lot of money into making the VC experience more real, but it costs a lot of money
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Bureaucrats having informal meetings in virtual corridors, on their way to the virtual water cooler? Can't see it. The true joy of the informal meeting is that it is 'off the record'. Which isn't really a possibility if the other person could just cut your entire chat out of a window and keep it to use against you, or push the record button on their workstation. The other part of the point is that you're catching people face-to-face doing something normal humans do, like drinking water. I don't know how many people hang around virtual workplace corridors, and when you meet them you won't be gauging their level of agreement through all the non-verbal cues.
For formal meetings it could work, but I can't see the advantage over Skype or a dozen other mature conferencing packages. I use Skype for international conferences every week, saving a ton of carbon, and most of the time they're still shit-boring and I work during them. Which could be difficult if I have to wander around a virtual world.
As for Africans with no broadband, Skype's excellent. They can IM if the talk don't work, or they could Skype-In or Out and just use POTS.
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the other point is that new zealanders don't really have all that much invested in africa, do we? so not much interest.
why be concerned about the digital divide "over there" when it's hard enough to get bureaucrats to use a wiki? and almost impossible to get soem types of small businesses to download information off the web? (if anyone has a solution to the latter digital divide, please email me)
as for virtual reality becoming a substitute for travel, the first question is what percentage of the bureaucracy actually get out of the country on junkets annually? i reckon you'd find the amount is a lot less than the private sector, and setting up the infrastructure to support it will cost more than the airfares!
once again, 2nd life is a snazzy idea that just won't really catch on. especially in the public sector.
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I think 2nd Life's real appeal is in the SciFi-ness of it, not the actual practicality. Much like space travel, where we've all read about it for over a century, and have had the means for over 40 years, but the practicality of it means that pretty much everything we thought would be cool just isn't going to happen. It's an anachronistic view of the future, that we will want to voyage forth on to colonize the universe, much as humans have done on Earth. And I think it's an anachronistic view of virtual worlds that the best thing that could happen in them is for them to mirror real-life in an immersive way. There is, in fact, nothing profound or modern about losing yourself in a fantasy world, humans have been doing it since time began, using the simple tool of their imagination, which for some is incredibly immersive and realistic. I've never played any game that had the feeling of really being there half as much as the dreams that I have every night.
If 2nd Life really want people to do business there, they'll have to do a hell of a lot more than just provide a mirror of reality. We already have reality, and it's about as immersive as it gets. I really do feel like I'm in my office having a conference call with people all around the world, reporting tedious details of my work, half-listening to other's reports of their work, and giggling politely at the nerd-jokes that abound. I'm quite happy not to be in an actual conference, where sneaking off to get a coffee during the boring guy's part wouldn't be tolerated, and actually doing productive work would be totally impossible.
The last thing I'd want would be a WOW scenario where a bitter crowd of gamers take it out on you anytime you leave the computer. I have not played it myself for that reason, but I went to a friend's place and it was quite literally 20 mins before he could tear himself away from the game to join the company he had invited around for dinner. I'm quite happy with where the boundaries between fantasy and reality lie.
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cyberspace also has this innate appeal to a particular kind of meat-space people, if you get my meaning.
It's an anachronistic view of the future, that we will want to voyage forth on to colonize the universe, much as humans have done on Earth
i've been heavy on the sci-fi reading lately, and the idea i like best is stross'.
tinned monkey doesn't cut it in space with current tech. our best hope is to send our autonomous avatar out into the void in spaceships the size of a coke can. uses vastly less energy, low risk, blah blah blah.
all these virtual worlds we're making are probably just prototypes of the spaces our avatar will live in on that journey into the galaxy.
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cyberspace also has this innate appeal to a particular kind of meat-space people, if you get my meaning.
Not really. You mean they are meats? Or that it's a meat market?
tinned monkey doesn't cut it in space with current tech
Indeed, since exploration is the main purpose of just about all our dealings with space, a small probe suffices. If all it needed to do after getting up to full speed was go into power saving mode with pretty much only the clock running, and maybe something listening for messages from home, it's hard to imagine a more efficient way to cross the void.
Unless we could ever get it together to go Orion. But even then, it would probably be better to us to just use it as a delivery vehicle for a whole bunch of probes. If it even seems worthwhile at all.
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ooo YAY for robyn!!!!
Aw, thanks, Sue! I'm sure I'll write a review or something once I've read the book.
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do you think the guy who posted this comment on Huffington Post
has A Life, let alone a Second Life?Speak 4 yourself you loser you like what clearly seems to be semi-nude pornography...
PLUS IT'S FALSE BEAUTY WITH PHOTOS LIKE THIS BEING
DOCTURED TO THE INFINITE POWER...Get ready 4 the fires of hell...
If you're a male get ready 4 a domino effect style
homosexual raping 4 all eternity with you being constantly violated orally & anally without ceasing = LEARN 2 BREATHE THRU YOUR NOSE...If you are a woman prepare 2 be repeatedly raped in every orifice with whatever fits by qrotesque
beasts / demons forever & ever without ceasing...Again learn to breathe thru your nose...
Both will be a endless conscious awareness of what
is actually transpiring - that will never stop...That is the punishment awaiting those who end up in the lake of fire - DO ENJOY IT...
To you I may be a whack-job = BUT THE TRUTH HURTS
demon seed like yourself & that is obviously what you are JEZABEL / LILITH...THUS SAYS THE LORD...
AcitizenNJ typed:
as for the end of days comment above
you brain-dead fucking idiotic moron = YOU WERE THE TOP COMMENT - SO WHERE'S THIS COMMENT ABOVE =
YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ABOVE
OR BELOW = SO WHEN YOU SAID ABOVE -- YOU REALLY MEANT BELOW --------- DUUUHHH I'M INTELLIGENT...don't worry the end of days is still coming & just
like you can't tell the difference between above & below = YOU OBVIOUSLY DON'T KNOW THE DIFFERENCE
BETWEEN RIGHT & WRONG / GOOD OR BAD & TRUE OR FALSE...WOE UNTO YOU..........
Clearly the moderation on HuffPo isn't as vigilant as PAS
:)
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Gloating should be a mortal sin, imo.
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But I'm also boggled as to why the media seems to fixate on Second Life so much more than any other MMORPG.
I dunno. Perhaps it's not as full of the kind of dickwits that infect most MMORPGs.
My drug of choice (Eve) has such charmers as the Alliance that decided to name all their space stations after Nazi death camps and refer to themselves and their allies as the "Rapetrain Coalition". Only this week the head of my group had someone track down his real life identify, and start spamming chat with pics of his daughter and charming messages about having sex with her.
The daughter in question is 2. Eve is supposedly one of the more grown-up and less toxic multiplayer games.
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We already have reality, and it's about as immersive as it gets.
Well yeah sure, but the knowledge to be gained by running simulations in a virtual earth are fairly sizeable I would think.
Or maybe use it to try rearranging your office furniture, demonstrate how new buildings will look, plan for disasters, town planning, the possibilities are endless.
Not to mention capturing historical 3D virtual snapshots of the earth at any given moment.
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poveyjo, of course simulation is useful in many ways. My point was that the immersiveness is not enough to capture a massive market - there is way more to it than that. If Second Life did anything you have in your examples well it might be a lot more useful.
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