Former US Secretary of State and US Representative to the UN under President Clinton, Madeleine K. Albright, will be helping the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin launch the school's new Master of Global Policy Studies degree with a public discussion on 'the emerging global and transnational challenges of the 21st century and how the next generation of young leaders can contribute to developing innovative strategies to meet these challenges' at 4PM Wednesday, 10 September (US Pacific Time).

Those of you not able to attend the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin, Texas may, however, find it both convenient and particularly appropriate that you can view the event live via the 21st century transnational virtual environment, Second Life by visiting the amphitheatre at GSD&M's Idea City Island. Regardless of your political affiliations, the discussion should prove to be a lively and interesting one.
» Read More 

Massively: Terry Pratchett is coming to visit Second Life. Go back and read that again. Yes, it's true.

While Pratchett's Discworld series alone has sold 55 million globally in 35 countries, you'll probably not find a single, larger concentration of fans of his work than in Linden Lab's Second Life. Indeed, the virtual environment already has cadres of role-players, recreations of various Discworld settings, and Discworld-themed merchandise.

Sometime on Thursday 11 September (UK time) an island called "The Nation" (not yet visible within Second Life -- though heaven knows, we looked for it) is supposed to open for one month, until Friday 10 October.
» Read More 

Massively: Over the course of the week, we've been getting scattered reports of problems on the Second Life grid relating to the new Mono script-engine runtime that was deployed as a part of SLS-1.24. The key phrase seems to be "catastrophic mono bytecode serialization failure".

The problem itself doesn't appear to be highly reproducible, but by the accounts we're getting, when it occurs, the Mono runtime flings a complex exception, and most or all of the Mono scripts in the simulator where the exception occurred shut down, and stay that way, pending individual and manual attention.
» Read More 

Massively: Back when the new in-world, Google-appliance-powered search for Second Life was put together, it had one glaring absence. While the search was entirely Web-based, there was no actual form on the Web. Recently that's changed, with Linden Lab quietly replacing the search field on most of their Web pages with an interface to search.secondlife.com in a recent update.
» Read More 

Linden Lab has announced the winners of this year's Hippo Awards (otherwise known as the Linden Lab Innovation Awards), which focus on the open-source community that surrounds their virtual environment, Second Life.
» Read More 

Jack Linden has dropped the next shoe on mainland policy changes in Second Life, while gamers can expect plenty more shoes, this one at least seems to have been widely welcomed, increasing the overall crack-down on what are known colloquially as ad-farms.
» Read More 

Massively: "In a lot of ways, we've got a bit of a traditional streak here at Massively. We like the good, solid, family values like "Kill a monster. Steal it's treasure". One tradition that we hold particularly dear is "Announce the software and then make it available". Yes, we know that makes us awfully old-fashioned in the modern, cool, vaporware world of the kids these days.

In the wake of our announcement and hands-on piece with the new Second Life SLim VoIP/IM client, Linden Lab has in turn announced it, stamped it "coming soon" and yanked the availability of the web-page and associated setup process. This all seems a bit backwards, to be honest."
» Read More 

Gamers may remember Richard Minsky, founder of The Center for Book Arts in New York City and owner of SLART Magazine. We previously wrote about his assertion of his rights and obligations with respect to his SLART trademark, which covers (among other things) Minsky's SLART magazine. The SL portion obviously represents Second Life, and the ART well... that's art.

Minsky originally filed his SLART trademark on 22 March, 2007. It was published for opposition on 18 September, 2008, and finally granted formal registration by the US Patent and Trademarks office on 18 March, 2008 (registration number 3399258). SLART, therefore, is owned by Minsky insofar as the US Government is concerned at the present time, whether that grant was conferred rightly or wrongly, unless it is somehow overturned or abandoned.

Now he has filed a civil suit in a federal court, naming Linden Lab, Philip Rosedale, Mitch Kapor and one or more other Second Life users (as John Does) for (variously) trademark infringement, trademark dilution, tortious interference (that is interference that causes injury), and fraud.
» Read More 

Second Life user Jacek Antonelli has announced a new, user-interface oriented project called Imprudence as a major fork of the Second Life viewer. Citing difficulties and delays within Linden Lab's own development and quality assurance pathways, Antonelli and McCabe Maxsted have created the basis for a community effort to rework the viewer's user-interface.

'The Second Life Viewer suffers from a stifling atmosphere of non-change. This atmosphere emanates from Linden Lab, whose attitudes and policies discourage all but the smallest and most superficial improvements. This is the result of the nature of Linden Lab as a corporation,' they write, listing lack of resources, burdensome QA that punishes change, and a paying customer-base that actively resists alterations.

Antonelli and Maxsted believe that a community project can overcome all of these obstacles -- and that if users do not choose to attempt it, the status will continue to remain pretty much quo for the foreseeable future.
» Read More 

Telstra BigPond (a major Australian Internet Service Provider, with an approximate 50% market-share) already has among the most successful corporate presences in the virtual environment of Second Life. Right now, BigPond is in the process of launching a new initiative: A dedicated kiosk where BigPond customers can get support from live staff, both in text and through Second Life's integrated voice system.
» Read More 

Destructoid writes: A woman wanted for the attempted kidnap of her ex-Second Life boyfriend has been caught after a search that spread across several states. 33-year-old Kimberly Jernigan had an online affair with a 52-year-old man via Second Life, and when he ended the relationship, she became quite distressed ... as well as demented, if this story is anything to go by.
» Read More 

Gamepolitics Reports:

"At one time, Second Life was viewed as having great potential for promoting political campaigns.

However, the Houston Chronicle points out that in the current presidential election, Barack Obama and John McCain have largely ignored the SL metaverse:

Campaigns haven't figured out how to reconcile the all-important image and fundraising with a world in which a Gothic nymph can sit in on a congressional hearing - or a Teddy bear might try to donate to a political campaign.

So for now, the Second Life campaign headquarters of Barack Obama and John McCain are pristine, glistening and completely vacant most of the time...

Fundraising is still not an option in Second Life, as there is no way to monitor where the donations are coming from, and the majority of players are from outside the U.S."
» Read More 

Massively reports: "Actually, we're talking about the other Gibson for those of you who were thinking about William Gibson. Gibson Guitar corporation, the famous manufacturer of acoustic and electric guitars (their website is down due to a configuration error at the time of writing), are launching an island in Second Life on Wednesday, 16 July to promote their products, and the work done through the Gibson Foundation (ditto on the website cock-up, sorry).

While Gibson Island (not to be confused with the more famous Gibson location in Second Life, the cyberpunk dystopia named for the aforementioned William Gibson) is not yet open to the public, we were able to get an early peek at the site (a really long lens comes in handy) while Metaverse Media Group staff and contractors were finishing up construction on the site."
» Read More 

Waseda University opened a campus Tuesday in Second Life, an Internet-based virtual world operated by a U.S. company. The private Japanese university will use the virtual campus to promote joint studies with Princeton University of the United States, which has already opened a campus in Second Life.
» Read More 

Yahoo reports: How would it feel to walk for the first time in 30 years? One severely paralyzed Japanese man found out this week, courtesy of a team of Japanese scientists.

In an experiment taking place at Japan's Keio University heralded as a world first, the man donned headgear which sensed brainwaves relating to his arms and legs. Just by imagining he was moving his limbs again, he was able to "walk" a character around Second Life, a popular virtual world.
» Read More 

GamePolitics reports: "Congressional pressure applied by Rep. Mark Kirk has apparently gotten the attention of Linden Lab, operators of popular MMO Second Life. Apparently, players who use child avatars will not be allowed to participate officially in the upcoming Second Life 5th Birthday (SL5B) celebration on June 23rd."
» Read More 

Via the Sydney Morning Herald: "Former world chess champion turned Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov has been on the receiving end of an unconventional prank launched by his political foes - one that draws its inspiration from the virtual world of Second Life.

Kasparov was attending a weekend meeting of a coalition of opposition groups which had assembled in Moscow to launch a symbolic alternative parliament. As he was addressing the gathering of more than 500 delegates, he was buzzed by a remote-controlled flying phallus.

The device - which appeared to be a modified twin-rotor toy helicopter - caused an sudden commotion with security guards springing to attention.

A video shot at the event shows the modified chopper briefly evading capture before a man later identified as a security guard leaps from the stage and swats the device with a well-aimed left hook."
» Read More 

Researchers at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have given a Second Life avatar the ability to think and make its own decisions, according to a report by the Associated Press.
» Read More 

Recently, GamePolitics reported on efforts by Rep. Mark Kirk to regulate Second Life over concerns about "toilet sex" and other adult content. Rep. Kirk's efforts have not gone unnoticed by Second Life satirist General JC Christian, who has penned an open letter to the Congressman.
» Read More 

Some very real money was on the line when a Pennsylvania lawyer recently sued a San Francisco-based company over a online property deal that went sour.

The real estate at the centre of the dispute was entirely imaginary.

The lawyer, Marc Bragg, was seeking thousands in damages for breach of contract and unfair trade practices after he purchased virtual property in Second Life, a 3-D world that exists only online. And when owner Linden Lab terminated his account, he sued. The dispute was eventually settled out of court in a confidential agreement.
» Read More