Linden Lab on SL and protecting young users
It is sometimes hard to talk about Second Life. Just as the name of this MMO implies, it’s a virtual representation of our real lives. Anyway, as much as there are a lot of things going on, we have a way to squeeze all of these: go directly to the heart of SL – Linden Lab‘s real life office and an interview with Vice President Joe Miller.
First of all, Linden Lab is using two server farms (one in San Francisco and the other in Dallas) to maintain SL‘s operation. All in all, there are a total of 4,100 computers working day and night to accommodate 60,000 users on the average. According to Miller, they didn’t quite expect this kind of success. He then likened Linden Lab to a surfer:
We feel like we’re surfing a very large tidal wave of popularity and we’re staying out ahead of that crashing wave and surfing it successfully right now. There are some bottlenecks in the system. We’re actively working to remove those bottlenecks so that we can distribute the load that is perhaps causing some performance reduction at peak time.
More than the usual technical problems, Second Life is faced with questions concerning economics and social dilemma‘s like prostitution. Prior to all these, Linden Lab has provided certain measures to make sure that users, especially the young ones, feel safe inside the virtual community.
Within the SL‘s walls, there are these so-called Teen Grids and Adult Grids. Needless to explain, the teen grid was put up for the younger users to shield them from the adult-dominated environment. According to Miller, the said grid is also being used to tackle delicate issues. He commented:
They were interested in helping other students learn about it so they could protect kids around the world who are being taken advantage of. It’s a way to share what it’s like for kids who are held captive in the sex trade. They built this maze as a project on global sex trafficking.
Currently, Second Life is home to over one million residents. The company had previously predicted that the population of the virtual world would explode to five million by the end of next year.
Via BBC
It is sometimes hard to talk about Second Life. Just as the name of this MMO implies, it’s a virtual representation of our real lives. Anyway, as much as there are a lot of things going on, we have a way to squeeze all of these: go directly to the heart of SL – Linden Lab‘s real life office and an interview with Vice President Joe Miller.
First of all, Linden Lab is using two server farms (one in San Francisco and the other in Dallas) to maintain SL‘s operation. All in all, there are a total of 4,100 computers working day and night to accommodate 60,000 users on the average. According to Miller, they didn’t quite expect this kind of success. He then likened Linden Lab to a surfer:
We feel like we’re surfing a very large tidal wave of popularity and we’re staying out ahead of that crashing wave and surfing it successfully right now. There are some bottlenecks in the system. We’re actively working to remove those bottlenecks so that we can distribute the load that is perhaps causing some performance reduction at peak time.
More than the usual technical problems, Second Life is faced with questions concerning economics and social dilemma‘s like prostitution. Prior to all these, Linden Lab has provided certain measures to make sure that users, especially the young ones, feel safe inside the virtual community.
Within the SL‘s walls, there are these so-called Teen Grids and Adult Grids. Needless to explain, the teen grid was put up for the younger users to shield them from the adult-dominated environment. According to Miller, the said grid is also being used to tackle delicate issues. He commented:
They were interested in helping other students learn about it so they could protect kids around the world who are being taken advantage of. It’s a way to share what it’s like for kids who are held captive in the sex trade. They built this maze as a project on global sex trafficking.
Currently, Second Life is home to over one million residents. The company had previously predicted that the population of the virtual world would explode to five million by the end of next year.
Via BBC
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