Newsmaker: Taking 'Second Life' to the next level

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When?
Rosedale: I have seen demos where three or four people could talk at the same time and I could understand them perfectly. So that is a huge potential feature. But not everyone wants voice all the time. And text (communication) is very, very powerful. For example, I can use (a translation tool) I am fond of, but that only works when, socially, we are using text and are therefore tolerant of a slight delay. So ideally, the implementation shouldn't push one over the other, or have everyone with voice "forcing" those without it or not wanting it to use it. So we are going to be careful with any built in capability, to make that work.

There have been several recent grid attacks and other security problems in "Second Life." What do you say to frustrated residents?
Rosedale: We are going to go through growing pains where people will attack the grid and we will have to design new systems for defending it. This happened with the Internet/Web, and is still happening in some ways. Look at early denial-of-service attacks, and look at spam today. Many people have called for us to do things that would be overly restrictive, like force everyone in "Second Life" to be credit card-verified. That isn't the right direction.

What is?
Rosedale: We need to build local and global tools that balance the tremendous individual power that people in "Second Life" have. I think this will take awhile, and I wouldn't promise smooth sailing for a while. However, it is definitely possible within the design of "Second Life" to strike a balance that works. One thing that will help is when attacks on "Second Life" are properly treated and prosecuted as cybercrimes, and we are working a lot on that.

There is so much media attention on "Second Life" and Linden Lab these days. Is it a distraction as you try to implement features, fixes and the like?
Rosedale: We probably spend a lot less time on media than you would think. Many of the stories happen without us knowing, or with the help of residents or some of the newly emerging consulting/services companies like Electric Sheep, Millions of Us, etc.

Howie Lament (from the audience) asks: How is Linden Lab going to avoid coding themselves into a corner? Isn't it tempting to do big changes that would break backward-compatibility with the old world?
Rosedale: The way we will stay "out of the corner" is by making "Second Life" heterogeneous. That means that we can try new features out on a small group of (simulators). We think we will get there in the next few months, in terms of the needed protocol and systems changes. This will allow us to deploy not only to preview, but to a small part of the main grid. Or to deploy a "beta" client, for example, that connects to the main grid.

Jonathan Sprawl (from the audience) asks: Is stability, security, and uptime Linden Lab's top priority, and are you willing to forgo new features and growth pursuits until it gets better?
Rosedale: Yes, security and scaling the main systems to handle capacity is our top priority. But that doesn't mean you will not see us do new or different things. If we didn't make steady progress on multiple fronts, we wouldn't be able to hire great people. Also, there are only so many people who can work at one time on specific scaling and security challenges.

Lastly, is there any likelihood of partnerships between Linden Lab and Sun Microsystems or any other big technology companies?
Rosedale: There really isn't anything specific we are looking for. It is of first priority that we keep "Second Life" a level playing field for all, meaning that there are many types of strategic relationships we won't do. But I think as we get bigger and more relevant there may be ways to get help in making "Second Life" work better or be more stable where we work with other companies.

Such as?
Rosedale: Well, any help where we effectively get great development teams working on problems. That is good. 

More Newsmakers

[caudio_roma]

Second life = Chat with difficult to use 3D

It is really amazing the Hype out of Silicon Valley!
This Second life 3D chat has idea been around since 1997, 1st it was VRML in browser then a host of companies such as Blacksun, etc. etc.
and each and every time it was proven people may spend a few minutes to chat in a 3D world but given the fact that ultimately why people are in a chat room is to chat then the 3D aspect soon becomes just a burden. A burden for both the chatter & the company that has to create/maintain the 3D chat world.

But I guess if you put enough media hype behind a useless nothing of a thing, then you may be able to take it public or sell it for 1.6Bill to another one of the Silicon Valley hyped companie.

[thedreaming]

There's more to it

You've never seen or used Second Life, have you? There more to it than just chat.

[peterichards]

can you say: "Blow job?"

<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/12/terdiman_secondlife/" target="_newWindow">http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/12/terdiman_secondlife/</a>

[juicyarchive]

Blowjob

Most beautiful porn star and films with she.
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://juicyarchive.deluxepass.com/pornstars/jenna_haze-pornstar.html" target="_newWindow">http://juicyarchive.deluxepass.com/pornstars/jenna_haze-pornstar.html</a>

[Chrischun Fassbinder]

Ahh, But Residents Do Spend a Lot of Time in SL

Spend some time in SL and you'll see what you've said...

&gt; "each and every time it was proven people may spend a few minutes to chat in a 3D world but given the fact that ultimately why people are in a chat room is to chat then the 3D aspect soon becomes just a burden."

..doesn't hold true for this virtual world. Unlike VRML or other VWs, many of the "chatters" do have an emotional tie to the locations and overall environment.

Looking at the past amount of time and money that has gone into online, interactive, 3D worlds it's obvious many humans have a deep interest in this type of interaction. Just because the technology, companies and projects along this line of evolution have been outright failures or half imagined successes doesn't mean the metaverse isn't going to happen. I see SL as a living sign that it's getting close to the point where such a concept is technologically practical and actually can increase user interaction to another level.

[JarekDejavu]

SECOND LIFE SPEECH TOOLS

Well? In real, there is a better solution in Second Life, which is solving almost all disadvantages of this one. Its called Second Life Speech Tools and it assigns to people good quality voices and they can write as usualy and SAPI engine will convert the chat to speech and you hear people talk. You can use speech recognition as well so it converts what you will tell to text. This solution is much more blending in the current SL world and is more usable for people who dont want to use their own voice or just don?t want to use headset etc. And when used only at client side, there is no lag caused etc. You will understand much better what people are talking, you can assing voices on your taste etc. It can be used with this new Second Life feature very well, so people will not need to speak to microphone. They will just install Speech Tools, they will select some voice and they will be talking aloud when writing as they are used too. This will help in a big way and people will still have chance to hide their identity and to be writing as they are used to. So no worries.