q: "where can i see philip linden this morning??" :)

a: http://energycommerce.house.gov/

TODAY IN COMMITTEE


Online Virtual Worlds: Applications and Avatars in a User-Generated Medium
Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet Hearing, 9:30 a.m. in room 2123 Rayburn House Office Building

just fyi in case any of ya want to tune in... i'm bummed that it's windows streaming; don't think we can stream it inworld. :\

p.s. sorry i posted a lame self-answering q/a here lol in a hurry and wanted to remind anyone already up if they wanna tune in... i only just remembered myself...

I wonder if he will be wearing his rhinestone codpiece. Some of the congressmen might try to mug him for it.

lol didn't secondcast finally pick out a new pair of pants for him??

this is interesting, even if they're just 'waxing each other's cars' right now... a few of these politicos seem to already be inworld (shades of that csi episode

p.s. here comes phil now!! p.p.s oh gee, not yet - they're still delivering their little prelim statements...

SO far......

bla bla kiddie porn bla bla scams bla bla terrorists bla bla

or at least wait for him in the men's room, tapping their foot.

now here's phil ... someone needs to tell the mixguy to run the mic into both l/r channels lol... i'm getting a left-earache lol

p.s. heheh HE CHANGED PANTS!! that's a first... this is probably the slickest pr vid of sl i've seen yet...

p.p.s heheh shoot, he had two more pages to go i guess ... 'please summarize mr. rosedale'...

hmmm on the subject of money-withdrawl scanning, do they do this also for those who move money to slExchange for conversion too? (lol plus i think any 'terrorists' inworld can only be pissy-pants griefers just trying to 'talk themselves up'...)

mr. shimkus sure is a nitpicker - ohhh awwww, 'i don't wike bein' compared to euwope!! we're great!! i'm awesome!!' - sorry mr. shimkus...

mr. shimkus, even if there's no griefers around there's limits to the sims... ahh phil's saying that too. ahhh lol!! 'gee i wanna go to church in sl' lol...

lol 'too much time inworld'?? limiting time inworld?? you would affect my business sir... self-employed persons frequently work much longer hours than any dayjob. (and gee right now i'm not inworld, but online just to watch this hearing... does that count as 'too much'?)

saving gas = saving money!! esp. these days... no concept of pre-viz?? have they never heard of such a thing before?

LOL id-switching and 'virtual house in malibu' ... lol sir you are making our argument for us!! omg people expressing themselves... is this a concern

APPLAUSE... okay it's over!! good job everyone...

I logged in just in time to see everyone get up and leave.

Don't those freaks on the East Coast know it's 8-bloody-AM here?

awwww :\ hi winter!! i wonder if they have an archive anyplace it'll end up in... i dunno, 'didn't miss much' it was kinda like hanging out in the forums lol answering newb q's

Funny that of all the ideas we came up with that it might be about, nobody thought of the one they all had in their opening statements and asked the panel about, "broadband".

It was pretty terrifying to me however that the "likelihood of purchasing stolen merchandise is lower in the virtual world" was an assumed concept and Phillip seemed to agree???

I'd never heard before that LL reviews every transaction over 10 USD. However it is kind of interesting that their fraud rate is 0.2% while the industry average is apparently 1%, I guess that doesn't include inworld scams, just RL transactions?

It was also funny the congressman from Illinois pointed out users were blocked from the inworld version of the meeting. I didn't even know there was going to be an inworld meeting until they said it on the webcast! Actually, I wouldn't have known about the webcast were it not for external posts or the forums...

Or a certain other kind of meeting? "My name is so-and-so and I also have an avatar."

What the heck was the purpose of this "hearing"?

It was very unfocused, and seemed essentially to be a few people who wanted to each ask their own asinine "pet question".

It wandered from "protecting the children" to "virtual terrorist training camps" to "online addiction" to "why have meetings in a virtual world, doesn't videoconferencing work?" to just all over the board.

I know the government just LOVES to waste time and money, but that seemed to me to be several levels above the average "useless hearing".

.

was it a meeting about potential later meetings?

Just confirmation that Our Representatives in Washington do not have a clue.

Frightening to think that these are the people who will be crafting the laws that regulate and tax this brave new world, isn't it?

What can you do? Write to your representatives. Explain, clearly and in simple language (imagine talking to an eight year old) what virtual worlds do for you. What concerns you have. What problems you think need to be addressed.

If you do it right, you could even find yourself in a consultant role, with a (small) say in what happens.