Welcome to our Robotic Overlords, or is that Overladies?

I love robots.

Ever since i was 12 and cut a small pic of C-3po and R2D2 out of Time magazine and pinned it to my wall I have watched their progress closely, and from time to time buy one of the more advanced ones out of toy/electronic shops to keep my neices and nephews amused (well thats my excuse).

Anyways..they took a step closer to what I, and others, have imagined for years when i saw this news release...

A cyber sensation: World's first robotic model to star in her own fashion show

Robots could soon be gracing the catwalk, thanks to a black-haired cybernetic beauty who is preparing to make her debut at a fashion show in Japan.

Fetchingly named HRP-4C, the humanoid has 30 motors in her body that allows her to walk and move her arms as well as eight motors on its face to create expressions like anger and surprise.

In a demonstration the robot tottered out, blinking, and said, 'Hello, everyone,' in a tiny feminine voice while its mouth moved.

Weighing just 6st and 9pounds she is light enough to fit into the size 0 crowd. However, the robot's developers are doubtful HRP-4C currently makes the grade as a fashionista.

During the display she kept looking surprised, opening its mouth and eyes in a stunned expression, when the demonstrator had asked it to smile or look angry.

The developers said the big challenge in creating the robot was making the small 'feminine' parts.

HRP-4C is 5ft2" and was designed to look like an average Japanese woman, although she is clothed in what appears to be a silver and black space-suit.

Slowly the landscape changes

Living on the mainland in Second Life has certainly had it's ups and downs over the last two years. I started with a 512 sq metre and have slowly build it into a medium size set of connected parcels spread over 4 sims.One of the major problems with buying and building on mainland is "ad plots". Their are some valid uses for the tiny ad plots, but mostly they are used to extort large sums of money out of residents. An ad plot is a 16 metre sq of land... if priced at average pricing of land they would cost $60 linden or less (about 20 US cents). A few notorious people buy them cheap and sell them for prices up to $15000 LD (about $55 US Dollars!). And these extortionists are quite happy to hold these tiny parcels for several years cause the payback is sooo good.

Typical of these extortionists is their practice of "checkerboarding"..buying a plot of land..dividing it into ad plots squares and selling them. The picture at left shows a typical scenario..my land is in blue... 'for sale' land in orange.. red land is not for sale. This checkerboard prevents my land from being joined - which means i cannot build a large building there, or have a path from one of plots to another.

Recently the Lindens decided to do something about this practice of checkerboarding... however in typical Linden fashion it amounted to all hot air and bluster.

First they put a forum up for residents to air their views on what should be done about checkerboarding.. then after 65 pages of irate residents outpourings they decided 3 things.

1. Checkboarding is no longer allowed..report it as an Abuse Report (ARs are a joke system)
2. They realised the top 10 ad plot owners were responsible for over 40% of ad plots (duh) and will have a 'word' with them
3. They understood that it is the extortion aspects that pain the most people. They will address that sometime in the future.

Then closed the forum!

What a joke... a mere tip of the hat to the actual problem of extortion..forum feedback was ignored (people wanted price cap on small parcels), and they could have easily talked to the top ten ad plot owners at the start... and used their rule of "things that affect SL negatively" to stop the practice.

But they won't do anything like banning extortion on these ad plots - that would lower the average land price to probably less than $1 linden per sq metre and they already stated they want it at $8 LD per sq (currently 3.6 per).

SO... in the last 6 months the Lindens have;

• Limited advertising networks to 50 ads per person - which were mainly used by extortionists to force quicker sales - but also used by valid advertisers (like me) to advertise our sales and shops. Tough luck valid users!
  
• Tightened the rules on bullying a faster sale by use of ban lines or large glowing rotating prims, and instigated a rule where land set for sale cannot have advertising on it (extortionists already work around that one).
  
• Pushed the price of one very popular type of private island (openspaces) up 60% to force people back to the mainland.
  
• And now... Banned checkerboarding of land.
  

They do this to try and keep mainland alive...as they repeatedly state they see a thriving mainland as essential to a healthy Second Life (i agree).

None of the Linden new rules has addressed the core problem... all they have to do is make people want to live on the mainland ..and they never will while bullying extortionists are allowed to do their 'thing'.

Cap prices on small parcels and then there is no value in the extortion.. a very simple solution