Evolutionary fitness, OR Things I'd like to see next in SL

Evolutionary theory is an interesting thing, and broadly applicable to emergent systems. The concept of a fitness landscape is very useful, where one imagines a surface whose height corresponds to some sort of 'success' within a system, and whose other directions correspond to different variables in the environment. Will Wright, for example, frequently uses this idea to explain the behavior of the Sims. Such a landscape inevitably contains peaks of varying height - if you are at the top of one peak you are successful, but off in the distance there are generally even higher peaks of potential fitness. For a large and complex system, the chance that any particular peak is the highest one attainable is very small. Applying this idea to Second Life, one can view the peaks as corresponding to different appealing (and therefore persistent and repeated) experiences that have been created.

Casinos and nightclubs in SL, for example, are clearly peaks. But evolution theory tells is that there is this problem of getting off a peak once you are up there - so in SL, having fun building, making money, or getting famous are examples of the environmental forces that tend to keep a lot of energy and people focused on those peaks once they are discovered. The problem is that while every peak is alluring, for the system to continue evolving, you need to somehow get everyone moving around on the landscape to discover other, higher peaks.

In nature, there are a variety of forces that tend to move organisms far enough off of a fitness peak that they have a chance to discover other higher ones - things like big mutations or sudden changes in the environment. But in emergent systems in general you have the risk that if local peaks are really compelling - if the forces are strong enough to make them act like little black holes in the phase space of possibility - you may not continue evolving. Financial markets and big business are a good example of how it is possible to get stagnant in this way - big companies often make only very small changes in their strategies, missing the really innovative work of smaller companies. They are driven by the pressure to make a few more dollars for shareholders and are therefore unable to make big and risky leaps to other places in the landscape.

You can probably guess where I'm going with this - innovators in Second Life will succeed by ignoring the small peaks in the fitness landscape that exist today, and boldly try new ideas that will turn out to correspond to big undiscovered opportunities. Some will fail but probably at least have fun trying, and some will succeed. I am quite sure that the peaks we see today are pretty unimpressive compared to those we have yet to discover. So as my own little gift to SL innovators (and always remembering you should value advice received by what it costs ya ;), I thought I'd give out my own list of stuff I'd like to see happen next:

Golf Courses

Where are the SL golf courses? Imagine playing in a foursome while wandering through a couple of sims filled with either a faithful replica of a real-world course or perhaps something totally unimagined... imagine the intrepid entrepreneur getting Arnold Palmer to design an SL-only course. A variety of clubs and custom animations for the swings, balls that are affected by the wind, sticky sand traps and roughs to hit out of. A UI for hitting the ball could use the same technique as the existing Deus-Via game (floating HUD screen), providing an interface almost identical to the best single-player titles. Golf carts, club houses. Oh and imagine selling custom houses along the edges of the fairway, just like Florida. 3 foursomes a day at L$200 for green fees would more than pay for a sim, right? Build one of these things and I'll happily drive around at your opening in a cart selling beer and candy bars.

Shooting Galleries

I love the one we built, but I haven't seen many more. The range of crazy stuff you can do with things being hit by bullets is totally unrestricted in SL. How about a haunted house where you shoot the windows and they break into lovely physical shards? Or clay pigeons tossed by a machine? If the find menu had 10 or so different shooting galleries, I'd go from place to place with my Seburo and never get tired. Presidential contender cutouts that have numbers above them counting the times hit? I don't know. There are so many good ideas here. If you're starting one of these IM me - I'll torment you with additional ideas.

Fight Club

Whether boxing or karate or whatever, the idea of two people duking it out in a ring seems like a natural in SL, if only to settle forum disputes. I like the idea of a combined prize - skill wins the match, but the spectators get to vote on 'style'. So not only do you have to time your blows, you have to be funny or cool or whatever. When I said in the press I'd like to be Uma Thurman, that's what I was thinking of - a little mortal combat in various sites in SL. What good is Hattori Honzo steel if you can't use it? A well designed set of rules could combine dexterity, style, and scripting - there could blossom tournaments and rated players, as well as weapons manufacturers, etc.

Real-Estate Agents

Everyone complains about land speculation, but where are the real-estate agents at the start area? Why, as a new user, aren't I tempted by a helicopter ride from "Buddy Kane, KING of SL Realty"? Buddy flys me around to all these cool different places in-world and finally puts me into a nice little starter home on 1024 meters on the edge of a lake. OK, so I agree many of our current population would no more buy a developed lot than show up at Burning man in Khakis, but this is going to change over time. I highly suspect many people showing up at the start area today would rather buy from Buddy than a 512m blank plot from the Guv'nah.

Comments

[Goshua Lament]

Hey Philip. I must agree with you about the golf course. There was a thread started by Al Bravo a while back about creating something like what you described.

As for the shooting gallery, yes, I need more places to use my Seburo. But that has some inherient issues. What about stray bullets, noise, and the neighbors? Would it just become a pvp frag fest? How would the dammage be worked out?

I like your idea about a real estate agency. I would be glad to open such a venture if I can connect with land owners and buyers.

Great ideas.

[blaze]

Post your idea of selling developed real estate under a pseudonym on SL and you'll get your answer rather quickly as to why no one is doing it.

Anyone who buys real estate and sells it for more (developed or not) is seen as a land baron, a social pariah to be neg rated into oblivion (or at least, wandering off to find a more friendly community..)

[Lisse Livingston]

I'm not so sure about hanging out at the Welcome Area - that type of behavior is usually seen as rather parasitic and underhand! I would like to see more Resident Advertising opportunities there, though.

I would love the opportunity for newcomers to find landmarks to my Realty office in Shaka, a list of properties on my books, and a warning not to leap into land ownership without learning the basics. Just last night I helped someone find their ideal First Land lot - but if he had not posted on the forums asking for help, he'd still be wandering lost, homeless and lonely in the far east corners of the world! (Okay, yes, we need a better in-world business directory than Find Places - and as part of the UI, it's not something Residents can do alone. The web site based directories are fine, but underused as they require a switch away from the SL window.)

Also last night I helped a First Land owner value her land, IM possible buyers, and look for a larger lot in a less commercial area. This morning, she is happily on her new land, having bought her remote 1024 for the money she got from her telehub-close 512. Without the knowledge that comes from several months in-game, that would have been nigh impossible.

I think that Land Development has potential - WHEN whole lot transfer tools are available, and the new influx of residents provides the demand. Till then, there is a very real demand for land ownership education and help, which is closer to a Real World real estate agent's role. After all, when you starting searching for a new home, you don't expect to be purchasing it from the realtor herself, do you? She merely "brings buyers and sellers together".

[Lisse Livingston]

Okay, Philip - I take it all back. I made a bracelet that suspended the text "Real Estate Agent For Hire" above my wrist, and headed over to Ahern to see what happened.

Within less than a minute, I was in IM with someone looking for specific land. It works. The demand is there.

Now, I need an answer to that question: "What's your commission rate?"

[Chris Altman]

These are all great ideas, Philip, but as you noted, the field of undiscovered peaks is huge. Given a rich environment in which to innovate and create, we should be seeing new things being tried out all the time, right? I'm still new to SL, but I'm already getting the sense of "been there, done that". There seems to be some not-quite-tangible ceiling on innovation. Why is it that the peaks you mentioned - casinos and night clubs - are the current pinnacles? What sort of incentive is needed to motivate the idea people to try something new? What tools are missing, if any, and what is lacking with the current tools? One of the things you mentioned is a UI in the golf scenario. As far as I know, we as residents don't have the ability to customise the SL client UI. Theoretically, a UI for such a game could be designed within SL itself with prims, textures and scripting, but how "natural" is it going to feel? How useable would it be?

Are the limits social or technical? I think there's a bit of both. The technical limitations that jump right out at me are the UI limitations already touched upon, and the hard limit on prim availability. The social limitations are quite a bit harder for me to try to quantify, but it seems that the current population of SL is very social in nature - the places that see the highest dwell are the aforementioned nightclubs and casinos.

One of my biggest worries is of SL being seen as little more than a 3d chat room. The innovation we're looking for is what can prevent that from happening, I think.

[Anshe Chung]

One problem with "Buddy Kane, KING of SL Realty" is that everybody enjoys the ride, but not many would pay the markup. Especially the example with the newbie area is kinda problematic. Even if the newbie would already be ready to buy land and pay your extra markup, which you would have to charge over Guv'nah's more simple service, expect being accused of "screwing the newbies".

Having said this, as land trader I regularily take customers on tours, showing them various locations for sale to find the exact type of land fitting their requirements and pockets. However, those people usually are not newbies but more established residents who contact me when in need of such service.

[Oz Spade]

Philip, you do not... talk... about Fight Club.

Actualy once I get a chance to get The Black Sun backup it should have a sword-fighting system. I was working on the coding for this and had a style simular to Mortal Kombat in mind, i.e. back-back-forward and other movement combos would switch your attack/defence. :)

Might think of implementing it for a fight club system for use anywhere with scores being sent via email to a host prim for high-scores.

[Awakening Avatars]

One reason Real Estate agents don't solicit at the Welcome Area is historically this behavior has been considered by many in SL to be rude behavior.

[Philip Linden]

responing to Chris Altman's post post - I agree that the process that best triggers innovation is part of the discussion. Ideas welcome!

On the topic of UI, look at the Deus Via game - you can currently fake a HUD UI nicely by changing camera viewpoint when sitting on an object. By doing this with the golf ball, you can (I believe) get a really nice effect.

[Jacqueline Richelieu]

Phillip,

The next generation of large-scale enterprises and innovative joint-ventures is quite close. What we need is the ability to form corporations; The ability to issue stock in exchange for corporate ownership and voting rights.

With the introduction of the corporation, opportunities about for new industries: the first SL stock market, investment banking, brokerage services, etc etc...

We're ready to begin innovating, we just need a little help from you :-)

Sincerely,
Jacqueline Richelieu

[Hiro Pendragon]

Phillip,

Already working on the fighting, at least with swords. It's only appropriate that a Hiro develop a good swordfighting script. *chuckles* It will include a universal scoreboard and I'm hoping to stretch the limit of what LSL control scripting can do. ETA should be a month or two depending on various factors. :)

-Hiro Pendragon

[Ace Cassidy]

Second Life Dragway, using vehicles with a transmission, rather than just a race to see who can hit up-arrow the quickest when the tree turns green, is already under development.

- Ace

[Piprrr Godel]

What kind of actor roles have you identified? Identifying features of interest is one thing, but you might do a better job of predicting them if you're familiar with the different kinds of users, their respective skill sets, and what motivates them.

Here is my WAG at some actor types:

- artist: a creative person, usually with a specific vision in mind. Minimally technically competent, though usually fairly familiar with the tools necessary for creating their artwork. (E.g., Photoshop, Poser, etc.) Motivated by effectively implementing their ideas and later showing them off. Example: the Uru refugees. Sub-types: scene artists, script writers, and costume designers.

- casual conversationalist: a gregarious person that essentially uses SL as a socialization mechanism. Typically not very technical. Motivated by making friends, and ease of chatting.

- entrepreneur: Someone motivated by having a popular business or service. Technical ability may vary widely. Motivated by making money and/or providing a popular venue or service.

- gamer: Someone interested in, well, playing games. Probably very technically proficient. Looking for something in SL not easily provided by the plethora of existing games, particularly those of multiplayer genre. Sub-types would be FPS, simulation, casual party games, team play, etc.

To return to one of your examples, gamers would obviously be the primary golf game target. However, clearly the entrepreneur would have some interest if they could somehow charge for game play; and, the artist type might be motivated in creating a nice, realistic looking golf course. The casual conversationalist, on the other hand, would likely not be that interested.

So, the things to concentrate on from YOUR side would be to make things easier for the interested actors. Obviously the golf game would have to be good enough to attract players. The entrepreneur already has a system for charging for use, so you probably don't need to change anything to accommodate them. The artist also has a system for creating a nice looking golf course. However, I think you can easily identify where the current system could be improved from each of their perspectives -- these would include UI and LSL improvements.

[Jack Digeridoo]

Golf Courses
- need to get the carts to drive like in first person shooters though!

Shooting Galleries
- yea breakin' glass is fun!

Fight Club
- need our anims and attachments to make contact with other av's though

Real-Estate Agents
- The hype in the forums about land barons does not give good perspective. I buy up all the cheap beachfront property I can find, it always sells. I love it. I expected neg rates and people to get mad, but I've heard nothing negative since I started buying and selling land.

[Lisse Livingston]

It's because we love you, Jack :)

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

Let's see if SimCast "takes off" as promised. While I'm not really a fan of MMORPGs, I can understand the appeal that such a venture may have on some residents who just say "awww just chatting is BORING".

Strangely enough, the current "stable" landscape, even if we are at one of those peaks and can't "see" the next one, has not lost its appeal. I also think that there is a big tradeoff in terms of time investment vs. payoff. Designing all the complexities of a golf course takes months, and will there be enough "innovation" to appeal a regular influx of L$? Remember that people (unfortunately) have to spend their spare time building the metaverse. If they start adding up the "real dollar" investment in such a project, things start to become quite hard for getting ROI.

Let's think about an example. Someone gets 4 sims to do the golf course, that's around USD $800 per month. Let's agree that he'll work on average 2 hours per day on setting up this golf course, and it takes 4 months to build/script. So we're talking about 240 hours for that. At an average of USD $100/hour (if you earn much more than that, rest assured that you'll find a designer somewhere in the world willing to settle for much less than that :-) and since SL is "global", it's always easy to find cheap labour somewhere) this adds up to $24,000 plus $3,200 for the sims' usage fees. So USD $27,000 or about 5 million (!) L$ as an investment.

Now if running through the course is charged as L$ 200, and assuming you can run tournaments on about 14 hours a day (allowing for different timezones which spread out residents), and that one run-through takes 4 hours... hmm... let's say you'll have 10 simultaneous residents golfing around. So, something like 100 run-throughs per day. That's around L$ 20,000. You'll have return in a little less than a year or so :-)

I think that no one really thinks that far ahead in SL. After all, you can set up a club in an afternoon (real word investment: around 4 hours or USD $400, that's L$ 80,000) and probably it pays off in dwell after a month :-) That's why it's "easy" to set up clubs, but doing a several-month project is too "expensive".

Of course, we can always use the argument "but I'm doing it in my spare time, so it doesn't really count". That depends. If *I* can build/script a golf course, fine. If I need to pay a professional graphical designer - even one that does special rates because he's a fan of the game! - I'll have to consider my "real world" costs.

This doesn't mean that I'm a pessimist. Rather the contrary! Radical ideas and innovation usually are done with lots of personal effort and without thinking about the "investment costs" (just the recurrent ones...), so I can well believe that people will do several innovative things without thinking twice about the "real world investment costs". If it weren't like that, I guess that Linden Lab wouldn't exist at all :-)

[Maxx Monde]

** Crossposted from LL forums to here for more visibility.

In reference to real estate:

The core problem here is a market that is not achieving the proper state for proper competitiveness.

Specifically, there are states now that exist in this broken system such as:

Occurance: Rare
Type: Monopoly - a single seller of a good (note, not the same as a natural monopoly - where over time a single seller becomes the sole provider because of the inherent inefficiency of mulitiple providers, such as power distribution grids in real life.)

Occurance: Common
Type: Oligopoly - a small number of sellers of a good, which *can* lead to a efficient market, but more commonly causes a few things to happen - such as price collusion (agreements among the 'cartel' cause artificial pricing), price leadership (where maximum profit is extracted among members who key their prices to match a large seller). Sound familiar?

Occurance: N/A - doesn't apply here, but provided to be complete
Type: Monopsony - only one buyer of a good. This may happen in some micro-markets in SL, but doesn't seem too likely overall.

Occurance: N/A - same as above, for completness
Type: Oligopsony - a small number of buyers of a good. Similar to a Monopsony.

Thanks for reading through that. My point?

Linden Lab (or further abbreviated as LL from now on) is the sole 'producer' of the 'good' which is land. The set price is determined by auction, or 1$L per sq/m if set public in the system. What we used to have, was a system like this:

Producer: (LL)--->(SL Buyer) ... with the possibility of (SL Land Owner)--->(SL Buyer)
What is so different, you may ask? Easy, the main difference here is percentages of market 'share'. Many users buying and selling to each other is about as efficient as a market can get. You'll get fair pricing and a multitude of available opportunities to buy or sell the good, in this case, square meters of land within SL.

Now we have a system like:

Producer: (LL)--->(SL Land Baron)--->(SL Buyer) .. because of ownership percentages, the diminishing occurance of (SL Land Owner)--->(SL Buyer). This is, quite simply, a Oligopoly that wasn't needed, but 'inserted' itself into the system due to the possibilities emerging to make profits.

This is also a market with asymmetrical information. What is that? It simply means that the sellers, the Oligopoly I'm pointing out here, has more information than the buyer. This is either through collusion, as mentioned before, or simply because of raw numbers. If I have most of the land available, I also have all the information I need to extract the maximum amount of profit, whether an open competitive market would arrive at this price or not. I control the prices of what I sell, my many buyers (the newbies and other uninformed people in SL) can't know what I know, so I manage to sell with abandon, pulling out as much as I can, in the most market-inefficient way possible.

This is the first thing that needs to be fixed by LL - open transaction transparency. Let me say that again, because its important.

OPEN TRANSACTION TRANSPARENCY

The reason most large land owners don't want this, is because it will kill their markup. Problem is, a market that is sustained by collusion and asymmetrical information leads to a few things, such as - average value reduces (no, this isn't a good thing in this context, it is a symptom), and the market can eventually decay to the point of non-existance.

Seems unlikely, right?

Consider what we see happening in SL:

Overall numbers seem strong - we don't have the necessary names to tie all land purchases to each transaction, so we can only consider them as a whole. This can lead to the misperception that the land market is booming, everything is just fine.

Problem is, there are tricks and loopholes that are allowing these Oligopolies to exist. This could lead LL to believe that expanding availiable land will allow a freely competitive market to emerge. It can over time, but that isn't the whole solution. What is a solution is for the market to be open, transparent and everyone accountable for each purchase. That means, that auctions are treated as immediate closed transactions, not opportunities for 'land kiting' (like 'floating' a check, but never making good on it) and other practices that ultimately undermine the land market, cause market decay, and will eventually lead to people (who are already) avoiding buying land from large Land suppliers because of their markup premiums.

Friendly econ-rant concluded, thanks for reading.

[frost]

there're a lot of posts so if anybody's said anything along these lines, please forgive me for reiterating. I'll try to be more eloquent. :)

as far as the displeasure at the idea of real estate agents, the "bad" guys and so forth, I've this to say.

the bad people in life, in games, etc, is a required evil. as there's no action/fighting element to second life, no goblins in the dungeon to fight and take gold from, there has to be some other way to get that same construct of strife. otherwise you're just playing the Sims, which was a game I tried to like but ultimately couldn't for the fact that just nothing happens. but even the Sims has that burgler.

for real estate brokers, and living in New York City has given me a "fine" appreciation for them, ahem, ofcourse you'd have to set up rules, there would have to be some sortof system in place to prevent abuse, but it's the same as real life. some brokers will just take that 15%, some will try and get from you however much they can on a crap property and tell you it's pre-war. these things are what causes life to be interesting.

it's the same thing as Philip was mentioning as far as the peeks are concerned. evolution isn't the only thing that causes a species to deviate from a peek, war is as well. fighting, conflict. these are the things that cause variation and horrible as they are, they're required for the human brain to not shut down from utter boredom.

so you might have qualms about instituting a system that has the potential for abuse, but-- and take this as indicative of my moral code or not ;) -- but abuse is what's needed. I'm brand new to SL but I already think it's amazing, it's very innovative. but if it's going to pretend to model itself after reality there needs to be something else, some higher level of Bad than just that asshole in the meeting area who everyone has to mute because he flames people. where's the Mafia? where's the syleized 50s film noir violence? where's the Second Life 5th Precinct? I mean really, there're so many further places this game could go, beyond building a house. there's a great saying I heard once but I can't remember where from, paraphrased it was something to the effect of, "what's the point of being on the top if there's nobody to push me off?" having a 3000000 acre estate with sixteen pools and fourty bathrooms is awesome, but eventually it's gonna get boring. I'd love to have a huge house but what's the point if it'll never get broken into? you know in the Sims that placing a fire/burgler alarm in every room will make sure the police arrive in time but the risk, the interest, is in the fact that he still comes again and there's always that worry that maybe he'll get away just a second before they arrive. it doesn't matter that it never happens and you know it'll never happen, it still makes your heart beat to worry.

and finally, need I remind anybody that the game is called second LIFE, not first utopia? ;)

[Rickard Roentgen]

Alright, I know it's been said before, but in relation to the shooting galleries and raceways here are my feelings. Yup, would be much fun had by all. I'd love to help create the venues and objects associated. I'm not going to invest too much time into that sort of thing until the physics engine is updated or what have you. I made a table that could be tipped over as cover in a shoot em up. After being hit so many times it broke apart into shards. It REALLY hit the sim hard and the sim wasn't that slow to begin with. likewise with bullets rezzing quickly. I have several weapons all with reasonable rapid fire (aprox 4 rounds per second). Holding down the trigger also hits the region. vehicles aren't usually so bad as weapons and associated object but even they aren't nice to a region with several of them in operation simultaneously. Until I can create and use the afore mentioned objects in fairly large numbers without seroiusly hurting sim performance, it just isn't worth it.

I know you all down at LL are working hard to fix all of our complaints and keep the game going. You're doing great :).

[Morgaine Dinova]

Philip writes:

"Golf Courses

Where are the SL golf courses? Imagine playing in a foursome while wandering through a couple of sims filled with either a faithful replica of a real-world course or perhaps something totally unimagined... imagine the intrepid entrepreneur getting Arnold Palmer to design an SL-only course. A variety of clubs and custom animations for the swings, balls that are affected by the wind, sticky sand traps and roughs to hit out of. .... 3 foursomes a day at L$200 for green fees would more than pay for a sim, right?"

Gwyneth has aleady pointed out the obvious problem with that suggestion, Philip. US$27,000 up-front investment with only a small chance of recoup over a year is probably not attractive even to an investor, and mind-boggling to an ordinary mortal with a normal wallet. The very idea that it's only people with such money who can set up a half-decent golf course in SL (as opposed to mini-golf) is rather repulsive except to those who have the money. After all, one of the key ideas of the metaverse is to overcome 1L restrictions where they are unnecessary in a virtual world.

And land area is not a restrictive resource in virtual realms, because land area merely requires server-side disk space which is extremely cheap, not CPU nor bandwidth. The reason it's a scarce and costly resource in SL is because the grid employs static server assignment and therefore you impose primcount/sq.metre prim density restrictions so that the single servers don't get overloaded. That's not necessary.

I have a thread just started in the Technical Issues forum which explores the possibilities arising from arbitrary zone and plot sizes that a dynamic server architecture would allow:

http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=25558

In the context of golf courses, these need a significant amount of land area to be realistic and interesting, but do not need many prims at all. Decoupling land area from prim allocation under a dynamic framework would pretty soon lead to gold courses in abundance, I would guess. And it would also lead to large race courses, and huge sports lakes, and everything else that needs a lot of land but doesn't urbanize it. Note that rental income resulting from prim sales (CPU and bandwidth) and from land sales (storage) would be entirely separate, priced according to the cost of the resource, and that would make land very cheap indeed. Many people would be giving away land acreage (not prims) as presents, because the recipient would barely notice the additional few cents on their monthly bill. Prims would set the limit, not land.

Scalability considerations will require SL to go dynamiic anyway in due course, so the problems of restrictive land availability will disappear as a side effect. But I strongly recommend biting the bullet earlier rather than later, because the pain of doing so later once you're fire-fighting the non-stop server overloads will be vast.

[Deklax Fairplay]

I have to wonder if there might be more real estate agencies if there wasn't Land for the Landless completely undercutting the newbie market and immidiate access to system-wide sales charts all over the grid wern't available at the click of a button. But they are. So why does someone need to be lead around? I gladly offer tours but I find most people dont need or want them. Just a thought ;)

[Morgaine Dinova]

Deklax, the reason why LL undercuts the potential newbie market for land barons (no, don't call them estate agencies, let's be honest here) is because LL profits depend almost entirely on the monthly land tax. Any additional profits from initial land sales are completely insignificant compared to the cumulative profit from tax.

And that is why nothing must stand between the new recruit and his plot of land, not even the disincentive of a small markup by land barons. If I were in LL's current position I would do the same.

That said, in their position I wouldn't use static server assignment at all but dynamic, and therefore land would be almost free --- it would tie up disk storage space only, and hence be extremely cheap. Prims would continue at similar prices to today though, since they reflect use of CPU and network bandwidth resources, but that would be entirely separate from land area.

[Yellow Poole]

Regarding the "fitness landscape", connections between SL and real-world data or device control would be MUCH easier by including a simple Applescript Library, within the SL application, that could simply pass messages to other apps.

.....at least within the mac version, PC users, is there a "PC version" of a standardized scripting language?

[Kiamat Dusk]

Say...all this talk about land, and the beautiful places people have created in SL-how about an SL travel agent? Poeple to lead tour groups? I'd do it, but I just don't have the free time.

[Alicia Eldritch]

Actually, maxx, I think Public Land is the biggest problem the economy of SL ever had, next to persistent monetary inflation, and probably created the "land barons" in the first place.
All new land should be auctioned from LL. That said, the system for LL to auction land should be fairly transparent.
Other than that I think you will find that the land barons are going to die out as the wealthy trade in their dollars on the GOM for RL$ and information on selling land spreads around -in fact the spreading of this info is the job of a "Real Estate Broker" - it would be a healthy sign to see more of them. In the long run, land will have to be (or potentially be) productive to be worth the fees, and that land will become well known by those in a position to do something with it. The oligopolies of the 19th century almost died, but the government stepped in and played right into their hands. The worst thing we could have in the SL economy is "regulation".

As long as newly minted land (other than first land) remains private and relatively close to the market clearing price for land, equilibrium will reassert itself.