Open Simulator - an Alternative to Second Life Grid

I've been a little quiet lately, because I've been looking into the OpenSimulator project, or OpenSim as it it referred to.

You can find more about OpenSim here.

I am currently testing out the latest version of OpenSim on an Ubuntu Virtual Machine. I have it up and running with a MySQL Database back-end. Now I'm looking to integrate something called ModRex, which extends the capabilities of the server when used in conjunction with the RealXtend viewer, which you can find here. The RealXtend viewer only runs on Windows, or via WINE on Linux.

I'll keep you all posted as I learn more and achieve more. If anyone is using this stuff - please let me know.

Second Life Rebirth

Well dear readers - anyone who knows me understands that I'm not a man to be kept down by circumstances (see previous post about my SecondLife account). I created a new persona in SecondLife, and I'm glad I did.

My SecondLife name is Metajunkie Frequency. Once you get in world, please feel free to add me as a friend and IM (Instant Message) me if I'm online.

Since last I was in SecondLife they have added the ability to voice chat as well. I haven't used this new feature yet, but this sort of ability would seem to be on its way to becoming ubiquitous in cyberspace.

The basic free account no longer even requires a credit card for sign-up. The main restriction for the free account is that you cannot own land within SecondLife. If you have never tried a virtual reality world before, SecondLife is a great way to start. The biggest thing that makes SecondLife so unique is that anything you create within the world is actually yours. Legally you own the intellectual property rights to everything you create. While most people won't be creating their own objects, for those of us who enjoyed Legos or Lincoln Logs as children, you might find some joy in trying to make something in this virtual world.

You can create your free account at the main SecondLife website. You will see a button or link to "Join Now >> It's fast, free, and easy!"

If you are new to SecondLife, I recommend going to the Welcome Island for an Introduction and some Training after creating your account. The alternative is to jump right into SecondLife by looking for a particular group or place within the Virtual World. By going to the Beginner's Island you will not only find information about how to interact in the virtual world, but you will also be able to find free objects such as four-wheelers, homes, clothing for your avatar, and all sorts of things to make your stay in SecondLife an interesting one.

One of the coolest things I've seen on this small island so far, is a free Google Translator. I clicked to get my free copy, but I haven't set it up yet. I did however see it working first hand. There was a German speaking person chatting with me and several other people. I saw the original German text appear in the Chat dialog box, and then the English translation below it. While it wasn't perfect, it did allow us to communicate. This is really an amazing technology.

Perhaps the best change I've seen in SecondLife so far, is the avatar creation process for newbies. If you are new to SecondLife, you are a newbie. An avatar, in case anyone reading this doesn't know, is the graphical representation of your person within a virtual world. When I originally joined SecondLife years ago, the process of setting up the "look" of the avatar was a bit of a drag too early in my cyber-adventure. I'm glad that Linden Labs, the makers of SecondLife, streamlined this process for the newbie.

No doubt you will probably spend more time on your avatar's appearance than you will want to admit to. If you are the sort of person who is into fashion and fast cars in RL (real life), you will no doubt want to impress your online friends with a stunning presentation. The fashion industry is one of the largest virtual industries in SecondLife. Talented graphic artists and programmers come together to make convincing "skins" and clothing for avatars complete with animations that allow, for example, your hair to bounce as you run and fly.

Did I say fly? Yes. You can fly in your SecondLife, and I actually recommend it be the first thing you do after you get onto the island.

Once you are on the island you can find a button to click in the lower left portion of your interface screen. The button is labeled "fly". Once you have clicked on that button, press the "e" key on your keyboard to increase your altitude (i.e. climb higher in the virtual sky). Then use your "a" and "d" keys to turn to your left and right respectively. In this way, you can get a quick idea of how small the island is. This is important to your sanity.

It can be overwhelming for a newbie to have for the first time in their life an "avatar" and all sorts of buttons to click to do different things. And, it might take you a while of walking around before you see exactly how constrained this initial area is. By flying up, and looking around, you will see that the island only consists of a central hub with five main off shoots.

There are really no more than about ten different areas with unique content. But some areas are filled with large quantities of content, and others only one thing. For example, one area has a house set up. By clicking on the sign near the house, you can claim a free copy of the house. In order to have the house permanently exist in SecondLife, you have to have a premium account, but you can own the objects that make up the house in your inventory until that time. A different location along this island's coast has a bill board with probably hundreds of free items. There is currently another area that has a piano for you to experiment with, and an area that has a game set up (which didn't work for me when I tried it last).

In World Update: While I'm writing this blog, I'm logged in. The Island was just defined to someone from Israel by a SecondLife Mentor via voice chat as a "Demo" of SecondLife. She mentioned that this isn't yet really SecondLife.

As I flew away, toward the large bill boards that the island has set up to explain, the voice chat faded until I was far enough away that I could not hear it. This was a good thing, because the conversation was actually a bit painful. I guess that it is good that there are mentors to help the hopelessly noobesque (no, that isn't a real word, yet).

So hop in and explore! If you like facebook, this should be like crack cocaine. When I'm too old to get up and dance, my avatar will still be doing the jig in Virtual Realities. As more and more online services converge, Silicon Worlds like SecondLife will no doubt become our primary interfaces to overwhelming flows of information. Your only price to admission is your time and the investment you have already made in your computer and Internet connection. Live life to its fullest - get a SecondLife! ;)

Economy Note:

The average exchange rate for the 10th of November, 2008 was $L 262.12 to the US Dollar. It seems the SecondLife economy may be more stable than our own. It is a very managed currency which has averaged between 260-280 Linden Dollars to the US Dollar since about 2006. You can check out the currency information at the LindeX Market Data web page.

SecondLife Disaster of the personal kind

Today, I tried to get back into SecondLife after being away for over a year. I had tried previous to this, but was befuddled by what I thought were client software issues. Not having time to figure out what was going on, it took a back seat to other life issues. On several different occasions I attempted to login to SecondLife with no joy. My client wouldn't update properly, then my password wouldn't work. It was a huge hassle.

Linden Labs, the makers of SecondLife updated their website since the last time I attempted. This time, I changed my password, but when I logged in after that, all I could see was a phone number to call. So I called.

The kind and courteous gentleman who assisted me informed me that my account had been deactivated for non payment. He said it was deactivated in October of last year. I got married in October of last year, and I moved into my new house in November of last year. But most importantly, I had lost a credit card and had it replaced sometime prior to that. That credit card was on file with Linden Labs. When its authoritative numbers were sent to the big bit bucket in the sky - Linden Labs was unable to withdraw my yearly payment. I'm sure they sent out messages informing me of this - but as I mentioned, a wedding, and a move which caused my email server to be down for several months positioned me to be the less than active netizen. Shame on me. :)

The kind gentleman explained that he was obligated to tell me that since I had been gone for over a year, that my SecondLife land had been reclaimed, all my Linden Dollars seized, and perhaps all of my inventory items as well. I didn't know what to say. He was being so nice, and I've always found English accents so disarming. All I could muster up was, "Ummm that's not good." I asked him if there was any way to know for sure. He looked into my inventory and told me that my inventory was still showing over a thousand items in it. That was a good thing, since I had created some of those items myself. I asked about my Linden Dollars. He said, "The account is showing a zero balance."

He advised me that the only way to reactivate this account is to pay the yearly fee. I asked him why Linden Labs didn't just revert my account to a "free" account. He stated that the account was set up to withdraw monies on a yearly basis, and that had not occurred. But, we already knew that. I'm not sure why they didn't just revert my account to a "free" one, which would mean that I could not own land. I asked him if I could have the account reactivated as a "free" account; but, he told me that was not possible. If I want this account reactivated, I need to pay the yearly fee.

I can understand the reclaiming of land. After all, if someone owns premium property and then disappears for over a year without paying - the virtual neighborhood could surely suffer. But, I see no reason to have seized my Linden Dollars. Especially when I had been saving to launch a business in SecondLife. I had in all likelihood accumulated well over 100,000 Lindens. At the current rate of exchange, 100,000 L is equivalent to approximately $386.

I don't know if there is any petition method to try and recover my lost Lindens; but, I'll try.

I'm writing this today, not to bash Linden Labs or SecondLife, but to warn others who may be allowing their accounts to lapse. Even though SecondLife is a virtual world, the money to be made is real enough. Even though the interface seems like a game, there is real work that goes into building and programming objects for this virtual world.

Because Linden Labs has pioneered "virtual property rights" within SecondLife, they deserve credit and respect of netizens across the world. But, because they have been so energetic about creating a virtual world with a thriving economy and personal rights, it seems all the more strange that my Lindens were seized.

You can donate to this blog with the PayPal button in the sidebar to help me get back into SecondLife. Thanks for all your help. See you in the Metaverse!

Online Privacy is an Oxymoron

While today it can take a while before your public posts on sites such as Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook find their way to search engine results, both Microsoft (with their new Bing search engine) and Google (with their... well, you know google ) are seeking to improve their ability to search such content and have it appear in their search engine results.

It is being referred to as "real-time" information. Microsoft is betting on it as a part of a strategy to compete with Google, who recently struck some deals with Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store and Amazon.com Inc. for the rights to post music links at the top of search results - according to a Wall Street Journal article released today.

Microsoft has made deals with Facebook and Twitter to allow them to better search this content. I suppose the question becomes, what is public content? Everything you tweet about on Twitter is public - there's no question there. But what about Facebook? You have to invite friends to join you online - but once someone is a friend, posting information to your "wall" is hardly a private matter.

I continually see people leaving comments on their walls and other peoples walls, as if it were a private, encrypted email. Wall posts such as "I got so drunk last night, I'm still hung over - give me a call girl-friend", and "I'm taking the family to Florida for a long over-due vacation next week!" are disturbingly common.

It is sort of like all of the world's technically-illiterate decided to assemble in the info-space known as Facebook. Because the service is easy to use - it is used - if not entirely in the way it was intended. We in the IT industry have seen this sort of thing before.

Back in the late 1980's, early 1990's, there was a huge push at many corporations to install Microsoft Windows Operating Systems (At the time, it was Windows NT Server 4.0). The promises of easy use, low maintenance, and high return on investment (ROI) sold executives into moving away from their legacy Novell Networks Servers. Windows Server looked easy enough. There was an easy to use graphical user interface (GUI), and everything just seemed to work, right out of the box. Then, of course, came the hang-over from that party. Massive amounts of unsecured servers connected to the Internet just waiting to be brutally penetrated.

It would seem the near future may hold similar realities for the mindless clickers and posters of personal information to online facilities.

Think about your Facebook wall like a bulletin board at work - or in a mall. Don't post things to your wall that you wouldn't post to such a public bulletin board. But, I'm sure I'm just going overboard about this. After all - you are all intelligent adults. You have all read the agreement you made with Facebook, right? You must know what you are doing. I'll shut up now.

Its time to hear what you have to say about this. Please leave me a post, and add to the conversation.

Metajunkie

google AdSense Account Disabled

cross posted from our cyber-justu blog ...

Some of you may have noticed that the cyber-justsu dojo walls seem a little bare. The Google Advertisements are missing.

Google has disabled our AdSense account.

In an email, they have asserted that our "AdSense account has posed a significant risk to [their] AdWords advertisers".

This would appear to happen frequently enough, that they have a FAQ established to provide more information.

From the FAQ:

"Because we have a need to protect our proprietary detection system, we're unable to provide our publishers with any information about their account activity, including any web pages, users, or third-party services that may have been involved.

As you may know, Google treats invalid click activity very seriously, analyzing all clicks and impressions to determine whether they fit a pattern of use that may artificially drive up an advertiser's costs or a publisher's earnings. If we determine that an AdSense account may pose a risk to our AdWords advertisers, we may disable that account to protect our advertisers' interests.

Lastly, please note that as outlined in our Terms and Conditions, Google will use its sole discretion when determining instances of invalid click activity."

So, we really have no idea why our account was disabled. If any of our readers have been randomly or blindly clicking on advertisements, you have not helped us. In fact, you may have shut down what might have been a great source of passive income for our blogs.

We have petitioned google to reinstate our account. If that happens, I encourage you all to only click on advertisements which are of interest to you. Don't be afraid to click on advertisements, that is why they are there - but please refrain from just clicking because you know it is generating revenue for us.

I don't usually cross-post between these blogs - but I will put this message on all of the blogs.

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.

Sensei Metajunkie

facebook: Cafe World game

Comparing Cafe World with premium MMORPGs was hardly fair. I've played the game now for about a day. While everything I mentioned in my previous post about crafting systems within MMOs maintains accuracy, Cafe World is really more like Sim City meets Greasy Tony's.

For those of you who didn't party with me in their youth, Greasy Tony's was a favorite after-hours Cafe that specialized in very greasy cheese steaks. It, unfortunately was torn down to make room for the expansion of Rutgers Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

If you can imagine rats leaving a sinking ship, and then replace the rats with drunken youngsters falling out of bars with a serious need for pizza, fries, and greasy cheese steaks, all descending upon this little cafe that stayed open for exactly that rush of business - you have a picture of what you might aim to achieve in Cafe World.

A game which seemed terribly simple at first has become rather addicting. As you successfully feed the never ending flow of people into your cafe, the popularity of your cafe increases. As the popularity increases, more people flow through your doors for a bite to eat. If you don't have an open table for them, they wait for a brief moment, but then leave. Of course, they leave disgusted, and your popularity drops slightly. Similarly, if you get them seated, but then not served in a timely fashion, they leave and detract from your popularity.

One nice feature of the game is that, after you have played it for a while, you can (it would seem) determine how hands-on your gameplay is going to be. For example: If you are cooking burgers, they are done cooking in five minutes. You need to be in the game five minutes after you start cooking them, to serve them. If you aren't, after a short while your food will spoil and need to be thrown away. Alternately, however, you could cook up a dish that takes fifteen minutes to complete, or an hour, four hours, or even a day or more. If one wanted to be involved in such a game, but minimally, these dishes which take longer to cook would be the way to go.

In addition to the compulsive adult (yours truly included), this game should appeal to younger people as well. In fact, with some prodding, a young person could easily learn a thing or two about running a business from this game. They would at least have an opportunity to look at profit margins between purchasing the materials needed to make a dish and the amount the end product sells for. I suggest some prodding though, one could easily just click their way through this game without ever giving it any thought.

For me, I find this game exactly the kind of distraction I need (or not) while I'm mining kernite asteroids in Eve-Online. I have several tabs open on facebook while I'm writing this post, and I can hear the "cha-ching" of my onion soup sales going through the roof right now. A cow just moo'd from my FarmVille tab... but we'll have to save that one for another post.

Facebook Game: Cafe' World vs. other MMO crafting systems

I recently played a game on Facebook called Cafe' World. This is another game by Zynga. Contrasting other Zynga games I've posted about, Cafe World is a game based on bare-bones 3-Dimensional graphical content that reminds me of early versions of The Sims. You are the owner of a cafe, and you cook different dishes to sell to customers. You hire your friends to help your business out. For example, unknown to my wife, she is a waitress in this virtual cafe I'm operating on Facebook.

The mechanics of the game are strikingly similar to crafting in EverQuest II. Even the sounds that are made while you prepare, cook, and sell food are reminiscent of the audio queues used by that games crafting system.

As an avid MMO player, I have crafted in such worlds as EverQuest II, Star Wars Galaxies, Vanguard, World of Warcraft; and, I currently mine asteroids in Eve Online.

Anyone who enjoys the game of Cafe World, no doubt has the particular temperament needed to succeed as a vendor in any of the more extensive silicon worlds I've mentioned above. The benefit of working in a more fully actualized virtual world such as these pay-per-month MMOs, is that there tends to be much more realism surrounding the task of crafting.

In this tiny Facebook cafe simulation, customers just continue to come into your store. While this is no doubt a boon for business, it leaves a player wanting a touch of more realism. The most basic notion of supply and demand seems to be lacking from the game. In contrast, the single most realistic online economy I have participated in, is that of Eve Online. If you haven't yet tried Eve Online, I recommend the free 14 day trial. Perhaps I'll see you in the asteroid belts someday soon.

If realism in crafting really gets you pumped up, you will no doubt enjoy the crafting system in Vanguard, Saga of Heroes, which is a Sony Online Entertainment game. If you prefer a bare-bones crafting simulation that gets you the stuff you are trying to make quickly, so you can get back to adventuring, you will probably enjoy the crafting system in World of Warcraft. The crafting system for Star Wars Galaxies is somewhere in the middle, but leaning toward more realism than that of World of Warcraft. EverQuest II had the most realistic and perhaps rewarding crafting system, until Vanguard was released.

I hope this sheds some light on crafting systems within MMOs. Please feel free to login with any OpenID account (such as a google mail account), and leave a comment to let me know what you think.

Facebook Games: Mafia Wars, Pirates, etc.

I recently joined Facebook and encountered some games which seem to be wildly popular amongst the denizens of the Facebook realm. Mafia Wars and Pirates are two games created by a company called Zynga. The terms of service are rather long, and intimidating for someone like myself who can be concerned with intellectual property rights. However, in a world where we click away our rights every day just to "make the damn thing work", neither game seems to be short on players.

These games are without a doubt Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMORPGs), but can we consider these games virtual realities? It seems most of the action takes place within the user's imagination, rather than in rich 3D virtual environments. But does a virtual reality require fancy graphics?

Would you consider the old MUDs (Multi User Dungeons) virtual realities? They too were certainly massively multiplayer online roleplaying games, but all of the action happened via text describing the scenes, events, and interactions.

These Facebook games, like Mafia Wars, are menu driven games which contain some static graphical content to enhance the text which drives the game. So, from that point of view, it would seem that they are slightly enhanced versions of the MUDs of my youth. However, one thing that the MUDs have over these Facebook RPGs is that the MUDs had a virtual environment which could be explored. For example, you could "GO NORTH" and receive text describing a new area of the virtual world. You could then "GO SOUTH" and return to the area you started in.

Conversely, it seems, at least from my limited experience with Mafia Wars and Pirates, that there is no "map" of their world. The virtual world of Mafia Wars and Pirates is devoid of static locations. The entire game world is made up of character development (including the acquisition of money and loot) and events (i.e. missions and mile-stones).

In a world where too many people have been raised on a diet of "gimme more" and "gimme it quick", these games may owe their seemingly addictive nature to a quick action fix and fast rewards of money and status. I'll give them some more time before passing final judgement on them - but right now, I'm having a hard time justifying how such a game could keep me from the much more wild adventures of mining in Eve-Online. :p

Announcement: City of Heroes: Halloween Event 2009!

For those of you who play City of Heroes (I have a nephew who loves it), they are running a Halloween Event from Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 through Tuesday, November 3, 2009.

They claim that there will be legions of zombies, werewolves, and jack-o-lanterns descending upon Paragon City and the Rogue Isles.

Will you be there to help defend or destroy?

Welcome to the Silicon Worlds Blog

This blog is dedicated to the virtual worlds that have been made, and are being made, within cyberspace.

This includes Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMORPGs) such as:

• Aion
• Eve-Online
• Dust 514 (when it is released)
• Star Wars Galaxies
• EverQuest II
• World of Warcraft
• Vanguard
• City of Villains
• Guild Wars (and the much anticipated Guild Wars 2)

This also includes Virtual Reality Worlds such as SecondLife.

We will also discuss topics such as Virtual Economies, and how the real world interacts with the online virtual worlds

When we cover things such as LUA scripting in World of Warcraft, and Programming Objects in SecondLife, the actual code segments will be covered in one of my brother-blogs: http://Hacking-Code.blogspot.com

Please leave a comment, if you'd like to talk about something else within the realm of Silicon Worlds!