[geeks] SL = game? (Was: Ubuntu partition on Bootcamp Mac?)

[Jon Gilbert]

On Aug 2, 2007, at 9:58 AM, Doug McLaren wrote:

> My point is that your domain name is virtual, it's property, and yet
> you pay real money for it.  There's not even any `real' property
> behind it, like one would have if one bought stock.
>
> But yeah, I wouldn't pay dollars for a house in SL.  Perhaps I might
> though if I played the game, and thought that having the house would
> make it more fun.
>
> | And along the lines of a prior discussion - what happens when Linden
> | starts charging property taxes?  WHAT THEN?
>
> I thought they already did?  I thought that if you owned land in SL,
> you had to pay a certain amount in tax for it each month.  In Linden
> dollars, of course.

Well, Doug, all land in Second Life is basically just space on a  
server. When you buy an entire "sim" (256 meters squared of land) you  
are essentially buying a server on a rack somewhere, and your monthly  
fees pay for the electricity and bandwidth etc. (though I'm sure LL  
makes a decent profit there, just like a coloc facility does). Only  
thing is, you don't get any kind of root access to the actual  
machine; hence the proprietary nature of it. You can, however,  
analyze what is eating processor cycles, look at server lag, etc.  
When you buy a smaller parcel of land, you're just buying a portion  
of the land of a sim, and you don't get access to those more server- 
level controls and analysis tools.

And it's not just about having a play house; a lot of people buy  
land, then rent it out to others at a mark-up, to turn a profit. The  
advantage to renters is the same as the advantage to renters in the  
real-world: they don't have to pay a large fee up-front to purchase  
land. Other people buy land in order to set up virtual stores from  
which to sell their products, since owning virtual land enables you  
to have an in-world URL that comes up in the search engines when  
people search for a particular product or service they're interested in.

-
Jon Gilbert
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