Interesting article by the Linden Lab CEO, Philip Rosedale

"Philip Rosedale 05.07.07"

When did Linden Lab include llTimetravel as an lsl function? That doesn't happen for a couple of weeks?

Broccoli

On the basis that most 'updates' put functionality back in time, its only reasonable to expect LL to have the opposite effect in their coding.... it's just that they haven't used it until now..... its an exclusive code for Phillip so it would seem

>1) There is no physics in WoW.
>2) The entire world is static and unchanging. Everything is already installed on your hard >drive and doesn't need to be downloaded.
>3) The level of interaction between characters in WoW is extremely limited.

You left out one other major differance... WoW uses state of the art servers, not atiquated junk because their so greedy they wish to pocket every cent they can for their own fat and getting fatter pockets!

I think the article being in Forbes magazine is most likely the cause of that statement. Who is the target market of the magazine? Entrepreneurs and the like. So, he targets them. If he were to write an article for "Teen Scene" Magazine, I'm sure the article would have been far different.

My 2 cents.

Still, love the gooey gumdrop approach to all things SL, as though nothing at all could possibly be wrong with it. *sarcasm*

Article seems to accept comments. I've submitted this:

This is the theory.

In practice Second Life is buggy, very laggy and often unusable. Linden Lab's hands-off approach means that anarchy reigns and your business is at risk from griefers, hackers and clever developers who script tools and bots to gain unfair advantage. The refer-a-friend scheme is the least transparent affiliate program ever seen.

Linden Lab needs to improve SL considerably before it becomes a hot place for business. For now it's just good fun.

I don't really see how you can claim that just scripting something is an unfair advantage.

Doing something that's of questionable morality, like the Sheep scanner bot, can get you an unfair business advantage - but that can happen just as much when the action doesn't involve any scripting, and exactly the same thing happens in RL business too.

You answered your own question.

I wasn't around when CopyBot was unleashed and caused all the problems it did, but that's an example of someone developing a tool that undermined a lot of businesses. Would anything of the sort be allowed in RL?

The question of morality is a difficult one to argue given LL's hands-off approach to governance. So if we're talking about morality, which one applies and why?