Massively^™

Meet Jay. Jay started in Second Life in April this year and was interested and involved enough to get himself some Linden Dollars via a currency exchange. A lot of Linden Dollars.

Unfortunately, Jay is now out-of-pocket by US$110, and is being told conflicting stories.

Remember this website? Well, apparently they've given up on trying to scam people through assorted survey fakery. They've stepped up to straightforward theft, and want your account credentials -- in exchange for L$25,000 (which, quite obviously, you would never actually receive).

You'd have to be unspeakably naive, or somehow functionally retarded to actually provide them with your account details. Right now, they're spamming across the grid with a domain name that redirects to this site.

Dubai Women's College is, as far as we can tell, the first educational institution in the Middle East to open a campus in Second Life (are we wrong? There's a lot of educational institutions with setups and sites on the grid).

The island, Dubai Women's College, isn't, as yet, a whole lot to write home about -- a mosque, some signs, some classroom-platforms, out in the middle of community-college-ocean. There's a college map, and a museum-under-construction.

Oh, and a sign out front that proclaims: 'The extent of a teacher's imagination is the only limit to what or how teaching can take place in this learning environment.' Well, that and a functional grid gets you a virtual-world-enabled education.

So, whose site do you think the above image comes from? No, definitely not from Linden Lab. Over the last week there have been a number of accounts (all apparently now banned) that have been spamming out a link to this site, or links that direct to it. We assume Linden Lab is even now sharpening their pens for cease-and-desist letters, based on use of trademarks alone.

The site itself contains some material that might not be safe-for-work or suitable for those under 18. The majority of content, however, is probably not safe for anyone much, really. It's a sub-site of a site that involves imagery that is quite definitely NSFW.

It's one of those fill-out-surveys-to-get-Linden-Dollars sites, and we've yet to see one that wasn't some sort of scam -- so we've got no reason to believe that this isn't also one. Given that, we cannot recommend that anyone give this site a try.

Luke Connell's 'fictional' stock exchange, the World Stock Exchange (or WSE) has abandoned the use of Linden Dollars for reasons which seem a little confused and unclear other than apparently fear, uncertainty and doubt. The exchange has been closed for some time for a software refit that seems to be taking a lot longer than anyone expected.

If you had Linden Dollar balances with the WSE - well, tough. They've been converted to World Internet Currency (WIC) and you can try to cash them out for some value (that is if people want to spend real money on valueless game-tokens) - when the WSE goes live again (a date that is, as yet unclear. Maybe March. Maybe not).

But since Connell asserts that all the businesses, money, shares and all that that are involved are just role-playing, that's no loss to anyone at all, right?

If you've kept away from learning to model in Second Life because of the non-intuitive user interface, you now have a new option available to you. Archipelis Designer is a 3D creation program that reportedly operates on the simple premise of drawing a 2D outline of your desired object, and working from there. But how do you get your creation into SL? Why, with Archipelis SL Exporter!

From the website: 'L$10 are taken for every uploaded image [into SL]. A 3D model from Archipelis Designer will be converted into images to get scuplty prims definition (one image per shape and one image per texture of a shape). Thus L$100 to L$200 is required for one model (hopefully, it is a small amount of real dollars).' Here, it's my understanding that they're talking about how many shapes you use to create your model. So, depending on the complexity of your model, it could very well cost a bit more.

Now, not having used Archipelis Designer, I can't verify how difficult or easy it is to create a model. At $55, however, it's a fairly inexpensive modeling program, and the Exporter itself goes for $5, so if you think you might have a future in content creation in SL, this might be a great investment to make.

The Metaverse Journal has an unedited interview with LukeConnell Vandeverre, owner of the - as he puts it - fictional World Stock Exchange. In it, Vandeverre asserts repeatedly and firmly that the WSE is a game, and nothing more, and that no real profit is available through the WSE.

"[I]t is not real, holds no real value and it is not an investment and does not provide investment opportunities." - Vandeverre.

The interview is full of contradictions. Vandeverre appears to claim that the 'fictional' currencies have value in the real world, albeit indirectly, and then reverses course and appears to claim that they don't.

In an announcement that has snuck on to the official Linden blog, Linden Lab has announced that anyone running a bank in Second Life will have to produce "proof of an applicable government registration statement or financial institution charter" or have their content removed starting in two weeks time. This follows the collapse of Ginko, which we covered in exhaustive detail, and complaints that several other banks have defaulted on their 'promises' and are still advertising unsustainably high interest rates (which is, of course, part of their attraction too).

The wording affects anyone offering interest payments, which means, I believe it will also affect WSE's practises - they offer a low rate of interest on saved money, although a normal stock exchange business would still permissible since dividends aren't interest as I understand the law.

It will be interesting to see if any of the banks survive this transition, and if they don't, what comes along in their place. It will also be interesting to see if there is a run on the banks now.

In response to our piece on the both speculative and historical use of fraudulent funds transfer in Second Life as a griefing tactic, Peter Gray of Linden Lab's PR agency, LewisPR sent us an unsolicited statement yesterday.

In it Gray begins, "The policy stated at http://secondlifegrid.net/programs/api/risk seems to have caused some confusion. .... The policy stated at the above webpage is directed at operators of Linden dollar exchanges; if Linden Lab identifies that the operators of these exchanges have PURPOSEFULLY purchased fraudulent L$, Linden Lab may recoup 150% of the amount. The fine mentioned on this page is a potential repercussion of an exchange operator purchasing fraudulent L$ where Linden Lab has identified an intent to collude in fraudulent behavior. To date, this fine has never been levied."

Which is all very well - but actually has nothing at all to do with what we are talking about.

Linden Lab today have a lengthy set of warnings about possibly fraudulent third-party exchanges for the purchase of Linden Dollars for Second Life . In it are listed a number of common-sense precautions and warnings. However there are two particularly that we think are worth comment.

Firstly, there's this "You therefore purchase these third party L$ at your own risk: if they are discovered to be fraudulent - in effect phony - we will recoup them from your account." - well, that goes just a bit further than you might be expecting.

We have some reports (and I've also experienced it myself in the last couple of hours) of L$ payments not showing up immediately for Second Life users this-evening. The money is there, but account balances in the top corner of the screen are not updating until you've paid someone at least one L$.

More confusingly, L$ transactions of L$1 and higher dated 4 November SLT (US Pacific) tonight are not necessarily showing in the transaction history unless you include at least November 2 (or earlier) in the search range. Some users say that the transactions show up after an hour or so, some have to increase the search range several days in order to see L$ transactions that took place this-evening.

[Update: 11:30PM SLT (US Pacific) - We are starting to receive reports of problems with inventory transfers as well. No word from Linden Lab at present]