My 24 yr old daughter's played around with Second Life - I could ask her how to get off of "Orientation Island" if you like. She got bored with Second Life, and preferred zwinky.com. Lately she's been fooling around with a different 'other life' online thing - don't know the name off hand. She likes the interaction of other people in it (and messing with them). Seems to suck a lot of time out of the day if you let it though.
posted by starling02 at 10:09 P.M. EST on Thu Jul 26, 2007 #
You are doing good. You can leave orientation island by pressing the search button at the bottom of the screen and searching for a place to go. Once you find it, you can teleport there.
You can also click:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Isles%20of%20Ituana/176/121/58/
to visit my office. You will need to fly up to the fourth floor.
There are many cool destinations to go to.
posted by chrismyers at 10:29 P.M. EST on Thu Jul 26, 2007 #
l
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l
posted by upso at 01:17 A.M. EST on Fri Jul 27, 2007 #
Here is a shameless plug for my interests in SL. But since you are just starting, it is as good a place as any:
On your search window, choose the "Places" tab and search for "Boulevard Mystique". There are 13 contiguous private "sims" here (owned by the same people) that have a variety of retail shops, entertainment activities and residential rentals.
Here is a quick description of the structure of SL spacetime:
A "sim" stands for simulator, which is a square plane, 256 meters per side, of virtual area. The entire SL grid is made up of many sims. I don't how many sims there are at this point, but it is ALOT (many thousands), meaning that there is quite a bit of area to explore. Using a Big Bang metaphor, the SL universe is still expanding. In fact, in terms of an event horizon, the rate at which the area is expanding exceeds the rate at which you can explore it. One physical server holds only 3 sims - so you can imagine how many CPUs are ticking away to support the whole universe.
Many of the sims are managed by the host, Linden Labs. All of these sims are contiguous in a huge continent known as the "mainland". By "contiguous" I mean that you can seamlessly move across sim borders as if it were one big space.
You can buy parcels of land from Linden on mainland sims and then you control what you do on and with that parcel, including who you resell it to and for how much. But, on mainland sims, there is no real government control sim-wide between parcels - Linden is completely hands off. That is, there is no zoning or activity policies whatsoever other than those in the terms of service for the whole game. This leads to activities and architecture on the mainland being very "eclectic" to put it mildly. Anarchic is probably a better term.
Private sims, on the other hand, are entire sims, not on the mainland, bought from Linden by players. While the owners of private sims may choose to sell off parcels, they generally manage the zoning and other activities pretty tightly - even to the extent of who can and who cannot enter the sim. So, for instance, if you don't want houses next to your store or you don't want stores next to your house, you will probably want to locate them both on someone's private sim (or buy your own sim(s)).
_
posted by babbleman at 09:55 A.M. EST on Fri Jul 27, 2007 #
My friends and I always call "Second Life", "Get a Life".
Go out to a movie, get a real girlfriend, go walk in a real park...
posted by SensorG at 10:15 A.M. EST on Fri Jul 27, 2007 #
My friends and I call busy bodies that have advice for everyone else on how they should run their lives, virtual or otherwise, "nanny state liberals". Thanks, but no thanks, Sensor. Until you and your friends make it a law (which I'm sure you will in some form or another at some point) I will take care of myself.
posted by babbleman at 10:35 A.M. EST on Fri Jul 27, 2007 #
My daughter has had some fun with Second Live (now using a different virtual life) - I find it not much worse than relaxing playing video games, etc. Based upon what I've seen with my daughter though (and a few of her friends), these virtual worlds can eat up enormous amounts of your time, you can get so caught up in them you lose hours. I don't think sensorG was trying to be a busy body at all babbleman, or telling you how to live your life - he just touched on what sometimes can turn out to be a problem with SL and the rest, they can be addicting, although I hate the use of that word for it - I don't think they're addictive per se, just that some people can get consumed by them. At any rate - as long as it doesn't take over your real life, I don't see what the problem is. If you have time to blow, more power to you. My daughter (in her new virtual world) likes to create a male identity, and have him walk up to some guy & stand really close. The other guy keeps moving away, but she'll stay right on him, flirting. Funny to see the reactions.
posted by starling02 at 03:30 P.M. EST on Fri Jul 27, 2007 #
BM,
I just assume you stay home and play with the computer. More room for me and my non-virtual friends at the ball park, movies and bars.
I’ve known too many people who spend some too much time on Get a Life and WoW that they see to forget how the real world works or how to socially interact with others (BM). It’s kind of funny I wasn’t directing my comments at you at in particular but I seem to have hit a real nerve.
It’s a great day outside. With any luck you mom will unplug your computer and force you out of your bedroom in the basement to play in the back yard with the other neighborhood kids. Real world socialization is a good thing; I encourage it.
SG
posted by SensorG at 11:19 A.M. EST on Sat Jul 28, 2007 #
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