Beggars in a Strange Land

Friday, March 21, 2008 Friday, March 21, 2008

Getting hit on by a beggar is not uncommon in Second Life, but twice today it happened in ridiculous places. Where does one go to escape them?

It began at CG Linden's Friday open discussion on software releases. Myself and 10 others (including new friend and fellow blogger Ciaran Laval) showed up to ask questions and get answers from the well-spoken CG Linden. Much I had heard before, but a few things were new to me:

  • Evidently Linden Lab keeps a "blacklist" of banned scripts. Each region's simulator checks the UUID of scripts against the master blacklist to ensure that bad-guy scripts are unusable across the grid.
  • The BETA grid (a separate virtual world used to test radically new software in a safe manner) is currently testing MONO, a more effective script engine. One of the participants suggested that particles would require a lot of work on this new software. Now that got my attention! The notion of re-writing my 200ish particle scripts is a scary thought.

As the meeting drew to a conclusion, questions for CG kind of petered out. Suddenly, a quiet guy in the corner spoke up and told the crowd that he's "looking for work" and is "available for interviews". Somehow his topic didn't really relate to the highly technical discussion up to that point in the meeting. Worse, when no one responded to his plea, he continued on, saying: "Anyone? Anyone? I need Lindens to have a place to live!", "Boy, you guys must be rich!" and finally: "Please give me L$1000!!!!".

Sad. Amusing. Pitiful. In spite of all that, the crowd was very polite and provided sage advice on where the best freebie shops could be found. Eventually he disappeared. Or ejected, I'll never know.

After CG's meeting broke up, I decided I'd better test my scripts on the BETA grid, just in case I have months work of rewriting unbeknown to me. I'd never been to the BETA grid, and I landed on a small area of only four adjaecent sims containing some basic structures and facilities. I was mostly interested in the sandbox where I could perform the testing.

I usually try not to test particles in public sandboxes, as they often attract a lot attention and I end up answering questions instead of building. On the lonely BETA grid the same phenomenon occurred, as I was approached by several gawking spectators wondering what was going on.

A freebie-equipped standard avatar approached (not the one pictured here) and asked a few questions. Suddenly, she asked me, "can u borrow me some money?" And then I began laughing, a lot.

Why? Because any money on the BETA grid stays on the BETA grid and won't transfer back to the main grid where it could be used to buy cheap hair and pole dances.

Beggars in all places, even where money is meaningless.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes it was good to meet you and it was a very interesting meeting. I think they have something place to deal with mega prims too, they don't always manage to prevent them from being placed but rebooting the sim removes them.

First time I'd been to that office hour and it was a very civil one, unfortunately I'm not usually free at that time but I'll make them when I can. Nice crowd there.

That guy asking for a job was hilarious!

Dedric Mauriac said...

I hope you shared the love and gave her a few L$.:) I find it funny in regards to the money. I suppose you could buy products from a few of the vendors, but the next refresh would remove the products from your inventory.

ArminasX said...

Hah - that would have been a great gag - give her 10,000L and watch the surprise! Didn't think of it, but will do next time. Thanks for coming by, Dedric!

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