Concurrency

The Daily Telegraph has an article in its technology section suggesting that the end is nigh for Second Life and yet again we see a half baked article that ignores lots of progress.

The Torygraph doesn't mention that we've been hitting record concurrency levels as they play the lies, damned lies and statistics game.

There are some points in the article that are worthy of note:

"Paul Jackson, of Forrester Research, warns that if Second Life is too draconian in clamping down on its seedier side it risks alienating its current users without the guarantee of securing new followers. "

Yes a common sense statement, not from the author of the article it should be noted but yes, know your audience and look after your existing customers, however if you want an idea of how far wide of the mark the article is then look at the following quote:

"Valley Wag, the respected Silicon Valley gossip blog, has meanwhile created a Second Life “death watch” as it believes the site is on its last legs."

Valleywag? Respected? Are we talking about the same Valleywag?

The article points out that some business have left, however it doesn't point out that companies like Adobe, IBM, Orange and Sun are very much still here. I'm not sure what Toyota are doing but I recall reading that one of the car companies planned to use Second Life sporadically, open something, do a bit of marketing close and then come back for another round. I can't remember who that was. { Read more }

I'm claiming a new word today: "Bunderfelded". When you have been Bunderfelded you've had your comment on a forum removed, generally rather quickly, for no other reason than it upsets the person running the forum due to the nature of the tricky questions you pose. This is of course inspired by Bob Bunderfeld, I'd point you in the direction of some example comments on the official forum but they've been Bunderfelded!

The anti bot movement is growing in popularity. Some of the growth without doubt stems from a misunderstanding of the purpose of bots, the load they place on the servers and the way in which they are used.

However some of the complaints are justfied even if bots aren't the cause of the recent login problems. At this point we should step back and look at Asimov's three rules of robotics:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Now let's look at rule number one. There are definitely cases where the actions of bots allow humans to come to harm, land bots who buy at obviously mistaken prices and whose owners refuse to do the decent thing being one, of course it could be argued it's a human doing the harm, but a bot purchased the land.

Now with regard rule number two, bots certainly seem to follow orders, do those orders conflict with rule one? Well if you can't get into your home sim because camping bots have filled the area you'd certainly think so, but again it's the human behind the bots doing the real damage. { Read more }