DISQUS

SL can a game as any "RL" activity (and the life itself) can be. Media calling SL a game just shows their lack of knowledge about what they report about. It's the same as calling the web server a game.
And then... fun in the education is not bad thing at all. On contrary. Assertion that anything worth and fruitful should be boring is a product of a poor mind.

ops, this was supposed to be under iYan's comment.

You made me think here :)
It may be a cultural thing, but recently I've heard enough "angry freelancer waiting to be payed" stories that it seems that some things are more in human nature than in local culture. maybe percents differ (I hope they are).

Actually, for me it's more personal thing. Name is also just a social construct. And i happened to realize that fairly early in life. I got my first nickname before I was born and got a real name. And nobody ever use my "real name" to the extent that I might not notice if somebody call me by it. So much about that name being "real". :)

I apologize for not being clear.

I know I sounded a bit confused up there, but I actually tend to trust people (even if they are presented by avatars). Call me a witch but I largely rely on the intuition :) And call me a geek but I do whois as well to support the intuition.

But I also say that name is not a proof of anything. We can say whatever we want, and we can register our websites with fake names (though it is illegal). There are lot of usable names and pictures on Facebook and scanned ID's and driving licenses on Google image search, people successfully used them to verify on Aristotle. You'll agree that having a company name is a bit more trustworthy. If nothing else, you have to pay that domain from company's account (there is no cash and no questions option) and governments usually take care of companies and their businesses.

As you see it is not a matter of possibility to sue somebody. If things go to the court I find it a problem. Lawsuits take a lot of time and money, and one is in lose even if winning the case. And additional problem is that suing somebody for US$100 costs much more than that.

There are two aspects of reputation. One is old way, the one that is much older than the Internet, and is usually called "word of the mouth". We have heard from somebody we trust that entity X is trustful. That might be or might not be true. And we can hear opposite experiences from different sources, which exactly happened to me recently. Second one is based on reputation systems, like on eBay. That one also may or may not be true. And that one can be cheated. So, both of them involve some risk, but it's better than having nothing.

Problem with reputation systems in SL is exactly what you said, there is not enough data to make it work good.

But there is something about it that we don't agree. Reputation can work without RL names. One can connect reputation with RL name, or avatar name, or company. It doesn't matter as long as that name is a persistent one. If one change the name, reputation rating resets (or at least there is some actions needed to transfer it). Of course, legal contracts are signed with RL names (we got agreed about that on digado blog), but which name will be connected to the reputation is mere marketing decision.

Yes it is. But that's the one of the activities one can hope never to be caught in. That's exactly why it happens so often. many people just don't feel fine with providing all the info that will be available to the whole world.

Don't get me wrong. I am not against reputation. Actually, that's the only thing we can have to prevent the problems. That's exactly how financial institutions function.

But if reputation system fails only thing we can have is law. And law is not efficient in the cases of small amounts of money in the international cases.

LL is obliged to give info to the RL authority in the cases of criminal prosecution. As is any other ISP. problem with LL and the law is that they are holding all of us as hostages of one country's law. As an European I am allowed to gamble online and to make drawings of whatever. Still, they break my rights and prevent me from doing do on the account of the country their servers are in. But, that's beside the topic now.

Third party agency that would handle the reputation system and/or RL data might be something I don't want to trust in a way I trust LL. So it has to be opt-in thing.

iYan, this has nothing to do with IMM/AUG debate. Those two are ways of experiencing the media and even not opposing each other. What you are probably reffering to is pseudonymity or corporate identity. While it sounds like connecting RL name with SL name would provide security in VW business, it is not like it seems.

Few months ago, when one of the virtual credit cards businesses appeared in SL I had to question myself what would make any of those institutions sound trustful after Ginko affair. So, I consulted a couple of economists to see what actually make a RL bank trustful. To my surprise, answer was: "almost nothing". They have to have a certain amount of money on their account (depending on the state law, usually several millions of US$) to register and start business but their trustworthiness is based on the reputation. That's why banks are so proud of their founding years. Sure there are names of the members of the board and employees, but nobody is protected in the case that bank crashes unless some of those persons actually transfered money to the private account.

But let's take a look at simple on.-line business. What makes us trust to a biz based on the web? Whois gives the name of the person who registered the domain, but we're all aware (hopefully) that that name might be not responsible for the actions of those who are running the site, like in the cases when registrar is the person who did the setup of the website. And we know that name can even be faked. Even if the name is true, is it always reachable by the law? If an US resident is cheated for US$100 on the site registered by an European (or any similar scenario) law suite is a very complicated and very expensive thing, much more than those US$100.

But still, for my SL affairs, I would check the web site and search for the section that clearly states that SL resident with specified avatar name is approved to do biz in the name of the company whose site that is. And to trust the site, well I'd expect registrar to be registrated company not a person name. And would hope for the best.

To roll this back to IMM/AUG problem... I wouldn't trust Artesia because there is iAlja's and iYan's RL names and photo on the site, but because the site is registered by a company that I can find responsible by the court of law in the country that I can reach.

I'm glad that topic is being raised in the meatspace. It would be great to have a peek there.

Great images, Torley. Thanks for a fresh breeze on the login.
You might be interested in this short discussion about empty landscapes on login screen http://www.plurk.com/p/21why

Hardly that I am restrictive in many ways, but Barbie World is a place I don't want to see my kid. Not even for free. When I heard of the place for the first time, I wasn't lazy, so I registered and took a short peek in there. And raised many questions and doubts.

In short, Barbie World is a terrifying world where new generations of consumers are grown. All the creativity is killed and there is even censorship over the chat. No, I really don't want any kid to play in the world where all the things s/he can say are predefined 60 sentences, most of them containing TM sign.

Welcome to the matrix.

You know, weapons used in grief attacks are rarely those used in combat. Griefing is a matter of security of the software not existence of weapons. Speaking of which, we could do a bit more about security. Please sign this JIRA. Thanks.

We do have parts of the grid that are weapon free, right?

Oh no! That will take all my money again.

Thanks for this tribute.

I also prefer all sidebars on the right, but that's personal. You should try sandbox. It offers more space for playing if you don't get headache by CSS (as I do). I would suggest not to touch the colors but I am already sure you won't.
You might want to place one box in the sidebar for video tutorials and maybe one for the posts you are very fond of. Something like "start here" for new visitors.

Development and implementation of 3D cameras will be a nice thing to watch. There is an initial tech development, and that one will took next year. But after that, we will see an attempt to use those, and it is not just plug and play. Every new bit of interface hardware has a long path of shaping to our needs, and that shaping is on the both side or camera's eye. Using mouse and keyboard,no matter how those two might be inappropriate for some tasks, have one big advantage. We are using them for decades. We don't think about moving a mouse or rght-clicking. Those became very straight-forward actions. Same goes for typing. All of a sudden. some other actions will be required to interact with computer and over the computer. And some actions, that were in a "blind corner", that were insignificant and without a meaning to our computers" will be followed by actions of our avatars. We'll become aware of the moves of our heads and hands, for example. No matter how 3D cameras sound intuitive to use, we'll have another learning process.

Yes. Give it a spring refreshening.

Social networks are communication tool as any other. They give just as much as we put into them. If one is using MySpace for self-absortion, then MySpace will give just that, is MySpace is used to stay in touch with friends then one will get just that. Same goes for self-promotion and reputation building or any other aim. If one is feeding Twitter with notes about going to lunch, bed or toilet, then they will read about other people's food, sleep and s*it. Or one can meet some great interesting people. It is up to each of us what we will get from the tools we use.

And yes, there are so many different services around. We try many of them, we stick to some, other are thrown on the pile of forgotten accounts. It depends on us, usability of the particular service and the people we find (or call) there. Personally, I find Pownce much better than Twitter. But, for unknown reasons, I never got in tune with the former.

Great! Street art is not just about a nice image on the wall it's about integrating in the environment ;)

Facebook is annoying with their insisting on "real persons" that is actually more privacy and security threat than providing a good service and value to its users. Web was doing great in the old times without all that anti-pseudonymity movement.

Great job. It feels good to see movie-like editing for a change :)

Awwwww... hello blinky (pets blinky up the nose)

Happy rezzday! And many more great logins to come....

What a nice motivating post. I'll keep it somewhere to get me going through the dark days.
Thank you Torley.