Some Clarifications?

Heyas... I'm bored.. and was thinking about some things in SL I don't really understand, so hey, why not ask? I'd like to know, and maybe someone else would too!! And nope.. not trolling, flaming, basting, or anything else that isn't nice..just asking some questions.


1. What the hell is a land baron? I mean.. what do ya do to become one? I own 10km, is that enough? Sounds distinguished

2. Why does it say (hippos) sometimes? I finally got why people called them that because I got one myself, but I've never found why it does that.. any answer?

3. Will the age verification actually last? It seems like it's going to be 'too hard' for LL considering they need methods that work and are legal in all countries SL exists in. This one could cause some debate but..oh well.. I wanna know.

4. How many Lindens are there? I've searched in SL and got like.. 150 but how many Lindens are there that actually do anything that residents would notice?

5. Is it 'legal' to have camping chairs that don't pay just to have bots occupy them and bring up your traffic? (Not your bots.. I mean they draw them away from actually getting money so yeah... kinda a civil service almost =P)

6. Is there any way to find out how much the richest person in SL has? Or who they are? Like.. 4 billion L$? =P


OK well..those are my Qs.. thanks for reading and/or answering!

I'll bite

1.) Land baron IMO is someone that buys an island or more than one solely for the purpose of turning it into a paypal or similar method rental community. The one's who send bots out to buy up every scrap of cheap mainland are not, only wannabes. Not saying that they don't own alot of land, I just think it takes more than just the amount of land owned to be classified as one.

2.) Not sure on the (hippos), but I just like telling the people that they are now a hippo, usually gets a good laugh.

3.) As this one has already sparked numerous threads, I think it will last only because it has to. Sure the current system they are implementing has some serious flaws in it, but they have to find some kind of system that will work.

4.) Only the brave ones make themselves known .

5.) Legal?? Yes, I would say it's legal, and can understand why someone would do it. It's just mildly disappointing when you see a place thats real high on traffic, and what the proprietor is selling there is a step up from freebie.

6.) Don't even want to know, that'd be far too depressing.

I'll try my best to answer your questions, for I am also bored. These answers are just my opinion and not set in stone.


I think it's someone who uses land bots to swoop in and buy land faster than the humans can. They may just be land hungry people who happen to have lots of land and are in the business of buying and selling it.

I'm not 100% as to WHY it says this, but it happens when the server is having problems or your inventory is not fully loaded when you install SL for the first time. I think a programmer put it in there to be funny; it means there is a friend there whose name has not loaded yet.



Good question. It is rather early to determine that one; it is in beta after all. However, it seems like it's not going to work with Aristotle; their information is so outdated, and they can't seem to verify people outside of the USA. I could see a lot of people just being like ..."hmm hmmm hmmm, flag my parcel? I don't think so...."

Well, I think there are around 200-250 LL employees? maybe..if I read that one blog post correctly... How many make a difference? That's hard to tell; they might do things in the background that we notice, but we don't know who did it. Some popular Lindens are Teeple, Torley, Robin, Sidewinder, Philip, Pathfinder etc. They all do things we notice, such as make age verification blogs, tips of the week, or Windlight updates.

I don't think this is 'illegal' until the bots and their master take up more than their fair share of the sim's resources. It is pretty unethical.

I bet it's Anshe Chung.

You won't find a bookmaker who would take that bet and pay out. Even if running a sportsbook was legal in SL.

For #2, it says (hippos) as a kind of inside joke. Apparently there's a 1 in 10 chance of the viewer displaying (hippos) instead of (waiting), by design. Hippos have some historical significance to SL, but I'm not that old

For #5, I don't think it's illegal, but I think it's despicable.

For #6, no, there is no way to know for sure.

I don't plan on doing it by any means, but I'd like to know why you think it's despicable?

Someone did a test once a little while back where they had non-paying camp chairs out which drew in bots, essentially making the bots not gain money. SO they were taking money away from the people who use campbots for personal gain, which in my opinion is despicable. This is what I meant.. the traffic bit would actually just be a side effect that many would consider useful.

I don't mean having actual people sit in the non-paying, maybe even put up warnings (As mentioned in that long ago thread =P)

So how's it despicable to prevent campbots from getting money? I'm truly wondering.. and I haven't really put all that much thought into it.. but will. (I mean the situation..not doing it.. I hate camping in general)

It really does? When exactly? And why have I never seen that yet?

I think of the people who own and run multiple sims, like Desmond, Garth, and Anshe, as the "land barons". In fact, Garth even wears the title, "Baron FairChang".

The landbot runners need a different name. How about "land shark"?

I've seen the (hippos).. it's rare though.

As for non-paying camp chairs to mess with camp bots being despicable... I don't know if if I'd call it despicable. But it would feel wrong to me in any case. As they say, two wrongs don't make a right, but three rights make a left. So make your own judgement call.

-Atashi

so 3 wrongs then? SO add a sign saying they pay billions and its right?

=P

Anyway okies ^_^

I love watching Torley Linden's Videos!

In the wild, so far I've seen Soft Linden, Richard Linden and (just yesterday) Cogsworth Linden - as an IoW Steam Hatchling, smoking a cigar, in a very interesting-looking sled.

(Are we allowed to post photos of spotted Lindens?)

1. Someone who buys and sells lots and lots of land, I believe. Usually noted for slightly suspect business practices, I think, but I don't believe that's necessarily always true--Desmond Shang would qualify as a "land baron" but if so, he's an outstanding example of the breed, as are others.

2. The (waiting) (hippos) are an easter egg that was supposed to turn up only rarely, from what I've been told... unfortunately, since the Friends Lists are taking longer to load these days, a lot more people are seeing the hippos waiting than previously...

3. Age verification, I have no idea. Probably so, but I think they'll need a more functional, rational system first. The current one's not working for most outside the US, it seems, and a lot of folks aren't so keen on sharing personal info with a third-party group, so... yes, I hope they'll work out something better before trying to implement it in-world.

4. There are probably more Lindens than we know about, mwahaha. They lurk in the shadows and wait with the hippos, p'raps. Also, I've often wondered how many new folks wandering through SL are actually Lindens in plainclothes. There's a thought. ^^

5. Legal... technically, from what (little) I know of the rules, I believe so. It does lag the sim they're in and the grid overall, though. Even idle avs take up a lot of resources.

6. I suspect there are a few Lindenaires in-world that we never hear much about because they just haven't cashed out--either putting their money back into the game or splitting it between alt accounts or who knows what? I'm sure a list has been compiled somewheres online for the others, but I'm not sure where you might find it.

Edit: Drat my slow typing... these have all been answered already, d'oh... ^^

from the knowledge base when searching for hippos or (hippos)

# Hippo
Our support staff are collectively referred to as Hippos.

A land baron is any user whose main business is buying and selling and renting land. It doesn't in particular matter how much land they own, only that they devote their Second Life to making money on the land market.



It means that the client asked the server about the name of a resident, and hasn't had a reply yet, but needs to display that resident's name right now, dang it. When that happens (and it normally shouldn't happen at all), it displays (waiting) 9/10ths of the time, and (hippos) 1/10 of the time. Why hippos? As far as I know it's an inside joke that the hippo was originally the mascot of SL, or something like that. I know that many of the original InfoHubs had hippos on them, too, and pressing some key combination (ctrl-alt-h, perhaps?) in the client makes "Hippos!" appear in the chat bar.



Who knows.



That depends: there are Liaison Lindens, Builder Lindens, Coder Lindens, etc.. and I don't think that every single Linden Lab employee necessarily has a Linden account on SL. www.lindenlab.com says that Linden Lab has "over 200 employees".



It's legal to have any form of camping on your parcel as long as you're not deemed to be exceeding your share of sim resources (by, for example, having 40 camping chairs on 512sqm of land)



No. But there used to be - in the very early versions of Second Life, you could select "View -> Leaderboards" and see not only who was the richest, but who had gained the most in the previous week! (The answers were fairly predictable - Anshe Chung I think was usually richest, followed by the major clothes brands.) Nowadays, it wouldn't be so useful, because the richest avatars aren't necessarily the ones making the most money - working for an MDC pays far more than most in-world jobs, but it's paid in US$ direct, so it wouldn't show up on such a scale. Also, this only showed amounts of L$ that were still in people's SL accounts rather than cashed out - so it's entirely possible that other people were making more than Anshe, but Anshe just had to keep the largest "operating fund" on hand in case sudden land bargains became available..

4 billion L$ is equivalent to US$15 million, and nobody has ever made that much in Second Life. Anshe's business was supposed to have a _net worth_ of US$1m (L$266,000,000) at one point, but that's a net worth (ie, what she would have if she sold all her land), so I doubt she carries anywhere near that amount of L$..

Where does one see these elusive Linden animals? I've never seen one.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Office_Hours

The grid is supposed to be back up at 11am, just in time for Robin's office hour which should be very heated .

failed log in s so it's not up here. sighs
Many Blessings everyone

11 SLT!! SLT!! ALWAYS!!! They tell you in SLT cause they are in SLT. It doesn't come online for brits at 11 there and such..its 11 SLT.. anyways, still 15 minutes till 11 SLT

>.>

i has sleep nao

now me mind is slt refresed, or rather rebooted lol, ty so very much for reminding me.
Blessings

I too had this, but only once. Usually it just says waiting.. Too bad there isn't a prize for it huh..

I saw Soft Linden at a builder "Show and Tell," Richard Linden was flying around (wearing one of those futuristic-looking flying suits with those tank-propeller things on the back) on land next to our previous rental and showed up on radar (yeeaaa Mystitool!), and Cogsworth Linden was on the Isle of Wyrms Winter Festival grounds.

OH! And:

From the official blog:

"The Fourth Annual Second Life Winter Festival
Tuesday, December 4th, 2007 at 11:55 PM PST by: Teeple Linden

It’s time for the Second Life Winter Holiday Celebration! It kicks off the evening of Friday, December 14, and will close the evening of Friday, January 8. This year, we’re planning some of our traditional events, as well as brewing up a couple of new surprises.

Grid-Wide Snowball Fight

On Friday, 21 December, hunting season lasts all day long. Lindens will be in world here and there throughout the day, strolling about the countryside. (OK, running for their lives.) If you spot one, feel free to start a conversation by lobbing the biggest, slushiest snowball you can find. We’ll also have announced gatherings during the day. (If you’re short on snowballs, we’ll have dispensers with freebie snowball attachments!)

Great chance to see - and lob snowballs at - Lindens. (Was sorely tempted to lob one at Cogsworth, but afraid it violated Linden hunting season. )

I've seen J... and B.. shopping,

and
Socrates and Plexus playing with "Sexposes balls" . . .hehe - no they were there to clean up the casino next to the forum land (I could, I suppose, remove their names from the picture if that is seen as something needed to be done).

As of last week, there were 214 Linden avatars.

Verification is inevitable, IMO. Both kinds: RL ID, such as a department store or Amazon.com might want to do business; and also some means of establishing that the account is in the name of a verified adult. ID will cut down a lot on fraud, griefing (because griefers will have to go to James Bond-like lengths to get back in once banned), malbots (because they will have identifiable owners), and any other nastinesses that people won't want their names attached to. Verified-adult will give the cops and the lawyers someone else to go after when the fit hits the shan, as they say in church rectories and straight-laced forums. The big obstacle, IMO: Establishing all this to the satisfaction of lawyers and cops while preserving the confidentiality and security against identity theft people find essential to their SL existence. When will it happen? I'd say a business day or two after LL decides it no longer needs unverified accounts to inflate its Resident numbers to impress the unwary.

I read somewhere once, that there used to be a hippo that told other people what your interests were, and you'd leave your hippo somewhere that was interest-based and someone could connect with you that way. Of course, I can't find the reference now.

Coincidentally, Hippos is also an open source content management system, and I suspect that the two were/are somehow loosely connected.

Further, I found these references:

http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/08/25/innovation-award-winners-announced/

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Hippotropolis


And here: http://secondlife.wikia.com/wiki/Did_You_Know

I also found this quote from 2003 in Wired:

"The world certainly needed ... lightening up at that time, so I asked (on the game's forums) who likes hippos," said one player, known as Darwin Appleby.

"The world took to it quite well. If you look at the first responses to the thread, you will see that they were saturated with political jokes, mostly about the speculated political view of the hippo. It really just kept going, until someone proposed that the hippo be the official animal of Second Life."