Time, first time vs. second.

I'm afraid half of my questions belong here... but I don't know where the other half go.

I'm looking at the variable by the "You Last Visited:" message. I see 12-31-1969. That's about 36 years ago, if we look it in first (real earth) time. But it's only a couple of hours ago in second (Second Life) time.
So, I'm wondering if the date is variable, or has been increasing as the Second Life servers began. Also, I'm wondering if second time is faster? Or is every second minute matched by every first minute?

Also, does Second Life (its servers really) refer to itself as a globe, or is it like the movie The Thirteenth Floor, where the simulations (agents?) and players realize that they can find the "edge" of their "reality"?

Finally (here's a matrix question) can a script become "sentient" and move about like it was a player, into other maps, etc? I'm using "sentient" meaning a script that has dealt with enough reactions from people to finally fool people (i.e. a Turing Test winner) into believing it is another player... if somebody were built, what (virtual) rights would they have?

Anyway, thanks for your time,

Dom DaSilva.

Welcome to Second Life! You seem to be a perceptive sort.

December 31st, 1969 is a placeholder login, meaning that this is probably telling you it's your first login. This makes sense, since I just checked your profile and looked at the creation date. Most time tables are listed in real-world time, so it should list real dates from here on in.

Although the forum "clock" is a little wonky if you haven't set it.

Second Life features a variable-scale "grid" of servers that do indeed have an edge. No continuous "world wrap" here - you can very easily meet the edge of the world if you go far enough. Fortunately, falling off is very difficult.

An interesting quirk is the Second Life day-night schedule. In a nutshell, the actual cycle of the sun is predefined and does actually move for all servers consistently. More advanced stuff can wait for now.

And scripts can definitely behave like real people! In fact, some enterprising users have attempted to pipe ALICEBots into the world already. If you really want to mess with someone's head, you could always rig an ALICEBot to your avatar. Could be fun.

Of course, someone might catch on when they realize the text is colored differently. Avatar and object text have different colors by default... so don't expect to fool people for long!

Hope that helps.