Second Life

Second Life
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This article is about a virtual world. For the theory of multiple lives, see reincarnation. For the process of cryopreserving legally dead persons for eventual reanimation, see Cryonics.
Second Life
Developer(s)
Linden Research, Inc
Publisher(s)
Linden Research, Inc
Designer(s)
Linden Research, Inc
Engine
Proprietary, free and open source software[1][2]
Latest version
Main Client
1.18.2.1 (Windows)1.18.2.1 (Mac OS X)1.18.0.6 (Linux alpha)[3]Beta Grid1.18.0.5 (Windows)1.18.0.5 (Mac OS X)1.18.0.5 (Linux Alpha Client)First Look1.18.0.125 (Windows)1.18.0.125 (Mac OS X)
Release date(s)
2003
Genre(s)
Virtual world
Mode(s)
Multiplayer (online only)
Rating(s)
Not Rated
Platform(s)
Windows
Windows 2000 SP4
Windows XP SP 2
Mac OS X (10.3.9 or higher) Linux i686
Media
Download
System requirements
Broadband Internet access
256 MB RAM (Win, Linux)512 MB RAM (Mac)
50 MB1000 MB HD space for Disk Cache
800 MHz x86 CPU or better (Win, Linux)1 GHz G4 or better/Intel Core Processor (Mac)
nVidia GeForce 2, GeForce4 MX or betterATI Radeon Radeon 8500, Radeon 9250 or better
Input
Keyboard, Mouse
Second Life
Software
Linden Lab • libsecondlife • Linden Scripting Language • CopyBot • OpenSim
Society
Residents
Economy
Economy • Businesses and Organizations • Real estate
Related
Issues and criticisms
This box: view • talk • edit
Second Life (abbreviated as SL) is an Internet-based virtual world launched in 2003, developed by Linden Research, Inc (commonly referred to as Linden Lab), which came to international attention via mainstream news media in late 2006 and early 2007.[4][5] A downloadable client program called the Second Life Viewer enables its users, called "Residents", to interact with each other through motional avatars, providing an advanced level of a social network service combined with general aspects of a metaverse. Residents can explore, meet other Residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, create and trade items (virtual property) and services from one another.
Second Life is one of several virtual worlds that have been inspired by the cyberpunk literary movement, and particularly by Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash. The stated goal of Linden Lab is to create a world like the Metaverse described by Stephenson, a user-defined world of general use in which people can interact, play, do business, and otherwise communicate.[6] Second Life's virtual currency is the Linden Dollar (Linden, or L$) and is exchangeable for US Dollars in a marketplace consisting of residents, Linden Lab and real life companies.
While Second Life is sometimes referred to as a game, this description is disputed. It does not have points, scores, winners or losers, levels, an end-strategy, or most of the other characteristics of games, though it can be thought of as a game on a more basic level. It is a semi-structured virtual environment where characters undertake activities for the purpose of personal enjoyment.
In all, more than 8.9 million accounts have been registered, although many are inactive, some Residents have multiple accounts, and there are no reliable figures for actual long term consistent usage. Despite its prominence, Second Life has notable competitors, including There, Active Worlds, and the more "mature" themed Red Light Center.
Contents[hide]
1 Features of the virtual world
1.1 Residents and avatars
1.1.1 Appearance and Identity
1.1.2 Chat
1.1.3 Motion
1.2 Economy and real estate
1.3 Creation and copyright
1.4 Arts and creativity in Second Life
1.5 Businesses and organizations in Second Life
1.6 Education in Second Life
2 Pricing
3 Teen Second Life
4 Issues and criticisms
4.1 Virtual Gambling Ban
5 Parody
6 Technical information
6.1 Physics Simulation
6.2 Asset Storage
6.3 Software
6.4 Second Life protocol
7 Second Life in popular culture
8 Outside the United States
9 See also
10 References
11 External links
//

[edit] Features of the virtual world

[edit] Residents and avatars
Main article: Resident (Second Life)

[edit] Appearance and Identity
Residents are the users of Second Life, and their appearance is their avatar (often abbreviated to av, avi or avie). The basic avatar is human in appearance, but avatars may be of either sex, have a wide range of physical attributes, and may be clothed or otherwise customized to produce a wide variety of humanoid and other forms.
Avatars may be completely creative or can be made to resemble the person whom they represent.[7] A single person may have multiple accounts, and thus appear to be multiple Residents (a person's multiple accounts are referred to as alts). However, the use of additional accounts requires the Resident to register them and pay a small fee, though after May 2006, there is no verification process preventing users from creating multiple "first" accounts using false information, a common practice.[8] Also, a single Resident's appearance in Second Life can vary dramatically at will, as avatars are easily modified.
Your identity is much less anonymous in this virtual world, counterbalancing how your appearance is much more anonymous. Any other avatar and any thing can ask what your avatar's legal name is, what your avatar's date-of-birth is, whether real payment info is on file for your avatar, etc. The Linden servers discuss your avatar in these ways without asking you for permission and without notifying you. [9]
Your creations are likewise much less anonymous in this virtual world. The Linden servers register your avatar as the content creator of the design of any thing you create, in an explicit virtual copyright notice that travels with the thing you create. [10]

[edit] Chat
Within Second Life, there are two main methods of text-based communication: local chat, and global "instant messaging" (known as IM). Chatting is used for public localized conversations between two or more avatars, and can be "heard" within 20 m. Avatars can also 'shout' ('audible' within 96 m). IM is used for private conversations, either between two avatars, or between the members of a group. Unlike chatting, IM communication does not depend on the participants being within a certain distance of each other. As of version 1.18.1.2, voice chat is also available on the main grid[11] using technology licenced by Vivox[12], a provider of similar services to other MMO worlds.
There are some external websites that allow Residents to locate each other from outside of the virtual world, and SLurl.com allows external links through the Second Life World Map to locations in-world.

[edit] Motion
The most basic method of moving around is by foot (also running and jumping). To travel more rapidly, avatars can also fly up to about 170 m above the terrain (meaning 270 m if ground level is 100 m, 180 m if ground level is set to 10 m) without requiring any special equipment, and with scripted attachments there is currently no limit to how high an avatar can fly (although once past several thousand meters, the rendering of the avatar mesh starts to be affected).[13][14]
Avatars can also ride in vehicles; many vehicles are available—there is a basic go-kart contained in the object library and there are many Resident-made vehicles available freely and for purchase including helicopters, submarines and hot-air balloons. Airborne vehicles can fly up to about 4000 m high (the maximum altitude allowed for any object).
For instantaneous travel, avatars can teleport (commonly abbreviated to "TP") directly to a specific location. An avatar can create a personal landmark (often called an LM) at their current location, and then teleport back to that location at any time, or give a copy of the landmark to another avatar. There's also a map window that allows direct teleportation anywhere.

[edit] Economy and real estate
Main article: Economy of Second Life
Main article: Real estate (Second Life)

The Main Grid land map in March 2007.
Second Life has its own economy and a currency referred to as Linden Dollars (L$). Residents regularly create new goods and services, and buy and sell them in the Second Life virtual world. There are also currency exchanges where Residents can exchange US$ or other real world currencies for L$. Though the exchange rate fluctuates, as of February 2007 it is reasonably stable at around L$ 270 to one US dollar.[15] These exchanges are open markets, except that Linden Lab sometimes changes in world Linden Dollar "sinks" or sells Linden dollars to attempt to keep the exchange rate relatively stable. A small percentage of Residents derive net incomes from this economy, ranging from a few hundred to several thousand US$ per month, while a larger percentage derive a gross income large enough to offset most of their expenditures in L$. The currency has become the subject of concern in economic circles in regard to possible taxation.[16]
Premium members can own land (up to 512 m² without additional fees). Owning larger areas of land incurs an additional fee (which Linden Lab calls "Land Use Fee" but acknowledges that it is often referred to as "Tier") ranging from US$5 a month up to US$195 a month for "an entire region", but in reality it is actually charged for owning up to 65536 m² regardless of how many regions this land is based in. This pricing refers to "mainland", i.e., land that is on an Estate owned by Linden Lab. There are also Private Estates, see below. Some residents own more than 65536 m² of mainland, for which they pay $97.50 per month for each additional 32768 m² increment.[17] Linden Lab used to sell land at a reduced rate to new Residents in small 512 m² lots (e.g., 16 by 32 meters) through its First Land program, but this program ended on 20 February 2007 as the land was often being quickly resold at a profit rather than kept by the Resident.[18] It also sells 16 acre (65536 m²) regions. Once a Resident buys land he or she may resell it freely and use it for any purpose within the Second Life Terms of Service, provided that it is not used for a Mature purpose in a PG (Parental Guidance) sim.
There is a separate type of land known as Private Estate, consisting of one or more Private Islands or Regions, which has a completely separate set of regulations and pricing. The initial purchase of each private region can only be made by one Resident and not jointly by a group of Residents, and that Resident is termed the Estate Owner. The Owner may in turn appoint Estate or Region Managers, which may even be a Resident without a Premium Account. Individual regions may be joined together into a single Estate to ease the process of land management. Land purchased in Private Estates actually remains in the ownership of the Estate Owner as far as Linden Lab is concerned and so they will not involve themselves in disputes between Estate Owners and other Residents. This means, for example, that an Estate Owner can take back land that has been paid for and Linden Lab will not arbitrate in the dispute. As Linden lab only acknowledge the Estate Owner as a land owner, no other Resident pays Linden Lab for the use of land on a Private Estate, although the Owner will usually charge a Land Use Fee. As a consequence, land may be owned by a Resident without a Premium Account and without impacting on the tier level of their Linden Lab Land Use Fee. Each Private Region costs US$1675 to purchase, followed by US$295 maintenance fee for each subsequent month.[19]

[edit] Creation and copyright
One of the distinguishing characteristics of Second Life is that the Residents, not Linden Lab, create most of the content of the world. The Resident avatars are one example of such user-generated content.
There is a 3D modeling tool in Second Life that allows any Resident with the right skills to build virtual buildings, landscape, vehicles, furniture, and machines to use, trade, or sell. This is a primary source of activity in the economy. Any Resident can also make gestures from small animations and sounds from the standard library. Outside Second Life, Residents can use various graphics, animation, and sound tools to create more elaborate items, and upload them into the world. Once the creation is in the world of Second Life, the system makes efforts to help protect the exclusive rights of the content creator.
Second Life also includes a scripting language called Linden Scripting Language, or LSL. LSL is used to add autonomous behavior to many of the objects in Second Life, such as doors that open when approached. LSL has been used to create relatively advanced systems, such as the artificial life experiment on the island of Svarga, where a complete ecology runs autonomously (including clouds, rain, sunshine, bees, birds, trees and flowers).[20]
When objects are created (or instantiated) in-world and then transferred to the Resident's computer, they are said to "rez"—a reference to the Disney movie Tron. This also appears in LSL, where the command to create an object is llRezObject().[21]
A Resident who creates an item and the Resident that owns an item may retain certain rights, rather like copyright in the real world. The creator can mark an item as "no copy," which means that no copies of it may be made by others, "no mod," which means that others may not modify the item's characteristics, and "no trans," which means that the current owner may not give it to another.[22]
These rights and restrictions exist in world only by courtesy and law. The servers keep an explicit copyright notice together with every item, identifying the content creator who designed the item. The Linden Lab's client then refuses to copy, modify, give away, or resell the item unless the creator has included those digital rights in the copyright notice. Linden Labs has said that the Second Life terms of service and the controversial US DMCA law may discourage unfair use of client programs such as CopyBot. [23]

[edit] Arts and creativity in Second Life
Many of the (initial) residents of Second Life have a creative background. There is a large virtual community of artists and designers. They use Second Life not only as platform to demonstrate their art from real life, but also to express themselves and create new (virtual) art. The virtual creations from the metaverse are disclosed in real life by initiatives such as Fabjectory (statuettes)[24] and Secondlife-Art.com (oil paintings).[25] The modeling tools from Second Life allow the artists also to create new forms of art, that in many ways are not possible in real life due to physical constraints or high associated costs. The virtual arts are visible for example in the Second Life Louvre, a virtual representation of the Louvre Museum. Second Life also offers the opportunity for artists to go beyond verisimilitude, to create spaces and explore ideas that don't exist or are actually unknowable and unverifiable in the real life, such the depiction of Purgatory as a train station in which souls await reincarnation in Thursday's Fictions in Second Life. [26]
Live music performances take place in Second Life, in the sense that vocal and instrumental music by Second Life Residents can be provided from their homes and studios. This is played into microphones, uploaded to audio streams, and played in-world for the enjoyment of other Residents. This started with performances by Astrin Few in May 2004 and began to gain popularity mid 2005. For example the UK band, Passenger, performed on the Menorca Island in mid-2006. Linden Lab added an Event Category "Live Music" in March 2006 to accommodate the increasing number of scheduled events.

[edit] Businesses and organizations in Second Life
Main article: Businesses and organizations in Second Life
A combination of Linden Lab granting Second Life Residents the copyright over their content,[27] and legal trading of the in-world currency "Linden Dollars" (L$)[28] has encouraged the creation of solely in-world businesses, the creation of legally registered companies that were previously solely in-world, and the in-world participation of previously unrelated companies and organizations.
The Maldives became the first country to open an embassy in Second Life.[29][30] Estonia, Malta, Macedonia and the Philippines are also planning to open virtual missions in Second Life. The Maldives’ embassy will be located on Second Life’s “Diplomacy Island”, where visitors will be able to talk face-to-face with a computer-generated ambassador about visas, trade and other issues. "Diplomacy Island" also hosts Diplomatic Museum and Diplomatic Academy. The Island is established by DiploFoundation as part of the Virtual Diplomacy Project.[31]
In early 2007 the Swedish Institute stated it was about to set up an Embassy in Second Life.[32] The Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Carl Bildt, stated on his blog that he hoped he would get an invitation to the grand opening.[33] In May 2007, SecondLife Insider confirmed that Sweden had become the second country to open an embassy in Second Life. The Embassy serves to promote Sweden's image and culture, rather than providing any real or virtual services.

[edit] Education in Second Life
Second Life has recently emerged as one of the cutting-edge virtual classrooms for major colleges and universities, including the Open University (UK),[34] Harvard, INSEAD, Vassar, Pepperdine, Drexel, Rice, Ball State, University College Dublin, Elon, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Ohio University, New York University, University of Houston, Michigan Technological University, Australian Film Television and Radio School, Stanford, Delft University of Technology[35] and AFEKA Tel-Aviv Academic College of Engineering,[36] Second Life fosters a welcoming atmosphere for administrators to host lectures and projects online, selling more than 100 islands for educational purposes, according to a New York Times article.[37] The article quoted Rebecca Nesson, an instructor at Harvard who brought her Legal Studies class to Second Life in the second half of 2006. "Normally, no matter how good a distance-learning class is, an inherent distance does still exist between you and your students," she says. "Second Life has really bridged that gap. There is just more unofficial time that we spend together outside of the typical class session." Joe Sanchez, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin evaluated the use of Second Life in education in an interactive qualitative analysis, finding that once students overcome the technical and interface difficulties with Second Life, they "indicate a preference to social learning activities and find it enjoyable to interact with other avatars while learning in this space".[38]
Among the more active educators in Second Life are librarians. The Illinois' Alliance Library System and OPAL have teamed up to extend the programs currently offered online to librarians and library users within Second Life. There are numerous libraries within what is referred to as the Info Islands. A virtual reference desk in SL is staffed by real life volunteer librarians for many hours every week. They also teach workshops there to help librarians and educators learn more about Second Life.
Late in 2006, a trend emerged whereby large consortia purchased several islands comprising an archipelago of education-focused land. The land is then subdivided into smaller parcels and rented to colleges, universities, and educational projects. Typically, land is rented for as little as $200 per year and comes with permission to use some common space for larger events. Two prime examples are the Info Islands, which includes EduIsland I and II, and the New Media Consortium's NMC Campus which includes many Teaching Islands and a wide range of educational tools, services, and meeting spaces, a museum and library, and a planetarium. The consortial model has allowed for many more institutions to offer participation to students and faculty within a learning-centered environment. As a result, there are now hundreds of colleges and universities experimenting with Second Life, some hosting adverts for real life teaching facilities / jobs.[39]
There are now many universities, colleges, schools and other educational institutions researching the use of Second Life as an environment for teaching and learning which offers a community of practice and situated constructivist learning. Among the institutions bringing the use of Second Life into the provision for distance learners is the Open Universityin the UK which already offers a range of teaching and learning provision on two islands in the metaverse (CETLment and SchomeBase) and is gradually developing a range of tools and resources which support learners and offer a sense of presence and engagement to distance learners who can otherwise feel isolated and alone.

[edit] Pricing
Tier determines what residents pay to Linden Lab, and is separate from the Second Life economy where residents buy and sell to each other. There are two types of accounts, basic and premium. Basic accounts have no recurring fee, but do not include the right to own land on the Second Life mainland, though ownership of land on private resident-run islands is possible. Premium accounts pay US$9.95 per month, as of February 2007, and include the right to a small amount (512 square meters) of land, which still must be purchased.[40] It is perfectly possible to use Second Life for free. Premium accounts receive a weekly stipend (paid in Linden dollars) which somewhat offsets the membership payment. This stipend has reduced with time; as of February 2007, it is L$300 per week.[41][42] Basic accounts registered before 29 May 2006 receive a stipend of L$50 for every week in which they log into Second Life, but no stipend is provided to basic accounts registered after that time.[43] Originally, and prior to the creation of the Second Life Teen Grid, accounts were separated by land allowances. The prices varied by amount of land allowed, starting with 512 m², with each new allowance double the previous. Extra fees would be added for owning more land than your account supplied. The purchase of contintents included a basic cost, along with maintenance fees and other such including costs.

[edit] Teen Second Life
Main article: Teen Second Life
Teen Second Life was developed in early 2005 to enable people aged 13–17 to play Second Life without entering false information to participate in the Main Grid. Both Grids at that time required the entry of credit card details, but the Main Grid made it mandatory that the credit card be the Resident's own, whereas the Teen Grid made it mandatory that it belonged to a parent. (Since then, the requirement for a credit card to register on the Main Grid has been removed. Also, for players in some but not all countries, a parent's credit card is no longer required to register on the Teen Grid, only a valid cell phone with SMS enabled.)
New (voluntary) identity/age validation measures are also being proposed to further secure the distinctions between "PG" and "mature" regions on the main grid, ensuring that only validated adults can enter areas marked as containing adult material.
The Open University's 'Schome' project is one of a limited number of explorations of Teen Second Life as a learning space for 13–17 year old students. Their first three month pilot found that there was strong evidence that the students who had engaged within the closed 'Schome Park' island enhanced their knowledge age skills, and the environment offered affordances that other media lack.[44]

[edit] Issues and criticisms

This section has been nominated to be checked for its neutrality.Discussion of this nomination can be found on the talk page.
Main article: Second Life issues and criticisms
Because it is under constant development, and is an open environment that can be used by almost anyone with broadband internet access,[45] Second Life has encountered a number of challenges. These range from the technical (budgeting of server resources) and moral (pornography) to legal (legal position of the Linden Dollar, Linden Lab lawsuit).
Prior to June 6, 2006, all Residents were required to verify their identities by providing Linden Lab with a valid credit card or PayPal account number, or by responding to a cell phone SMS text message.[46] (Residents providing information were not charged if their account type cost nothing to create.) After that date, it became possible to create an account with only an e-mail address; even standard verification methods such as e-mail reply verification are not used.[47] Access to Teen Second Life still requires credit card details. Linden Lab has the ability to ban Residents from Second Life based on a hardware hash of their local PC,[48] preventing them from returning with other accounts.
The policy change to email-address-based membership brought about harsh criticism, including allegations of degraded system performance. Several users argued that the claimed "residence" figures were highly exaggerated, pointing out that the actual activity of the board was roughly nine percent of the claimed residency figures, with paying membership below two percent. Blogs and forum posts regularly allege exaggerated membership and performance claims.[49]
In January 2007, two articles were published on the Internet which compared the economy of Second Life to a pyramid scheme.[50][51] In the same month, a "virtual riot" erupted between members of the French party National Front who had established a virtual HQ on Second Life, and opponents, including Second Life Left Unity, a socialist and anti-capitalist user-group.[52][53][54][55] Since then, several small internet based organizations have claimed some responsibility for instigating the riots.[56]
There are also issues with SecondLife support being under resourced, with support tickets and billing issues going unresolved. Residents have complained of having money stolen from their accounts, having credit withdrawals fail and other related billing issues.
During 2006 several established members of Second Life ceased support of the system. Among these was Starax, SL's most popular sculptor and builder/scripter. Premiere live musician Astrin Few publicly posted a stern warning of intent to leave the system if host company Linden Lab did not pay more attention to customer needs. In late-2006 one of Second Life's largest groups, Elf Clan, closed shop stating land theft by a renegade officer (and Linden Lab's alleged refusal to correct such matters). However, many feel that since the land was, and is, in the hands of the person who invested in the land, that these allegations are without merit. Many feel it is not true to say the Elf Clan left SL as most of the active membership moved to a new group, which continues to grow to this day.
Criticisms involve continuing system technical issues such as lag, repetitious bugs, customer inventory loss and excessive downtimes. Also cited were issues regarding "self-serving" company policies, failure to police the system (including lack of protection of members from alleged unethical/criminal activities), and criticism of host company Linden Lab for gross misrepresentation of membership figures.
The same time period brought strong criticism against Linden Lab for their allegedly catering to big business and ignoring the people and groups who had helped them build the system. Such criticism increased dramatically when Linden Lab in anticipation of corporate investments increased first year costs of private virtual islands by some 32% and second year rentals by 50%, making it difficult for hobbyist users to afford such fees.
First year costs of private islands are US$1,675 purchase price and US$295 a month maintenance fees, for total first-year costs of US$5,215. Second year land costs total US$3,540.

[edit] Virtual Gambling Ban
On July 26, 2007, Linden Lab announced a ban on in-world gambling. The new policy bans wagering on games of chance or games that rely on the outcome of real-life organized sporting events if they provide a payout in Linden Dollars, Second Life's currency, or any real-world currency or thing of value. Earlier in the year, Linden Lab invited law enforcement officials to visit casinos in Second Life in the hope of receiving some guidance from authorities about the legality of virtual gambling. A company spokesperson couldn't immediately say whether those visits played a role in shaping the new gambling policy. The ban was immediately met with in-world protests[57].

[edit] Parody
Second Life is parodied by the website Get a First Life by Darren Barefoot, extolling the virtues of meatspace/real life.[58] Material from the site includes false links to such topics as "Go Outside - Membership is Free" and "Fornicate Using Your Actual Genitals."
Second Life is also parodied in the webcomic Kevin and Kell, in the form of an MMORPG called 9th Life.

[edit] Technical information

A graph illustrating the growth of Second Life from Jan 2006 to Mar 2007.
The flat, Earth-like world of Second Life is simulated on a large array of Debian servers, referred to as the Grid.[59] The world is divided into 256x256 m areas of land, called Regions. Each Region is simulated by a single named server instance, and is given a unique name and content rating (either PG or Mature). Multiple server instances can be run on a single physical server, but generally each instance is given a dedicated CPU core of its own. Modern servers with two dual-core processors usually support four separate server instances.

[edit] Physics Simulation
Each server instance runs a physics simulation to manage the collisions and interactions of all objects in that region. Objects can be nonphysical and nonmoving, or actively physical and movable, with complex shapes linked together in groups of up to 31 separate primitives. Each player's avatar is treated as a physical object, and walking/flying the avatar into another physical object can push it forward out of the way of the avatar. In the same way, avatars can be pushed by other physical objects and other avatars.
As of July 2007, Second Life is using the same Havok I physics engine as when the game premiered in 2004. As an early engine it suffers from a number of design problems, the primary one known as the Deep Think condition. When two physical objects intersect one another, the engine does not know how to separate the objects. It goes into a deep recursive loop analyzing the overlapping objects, consuming all available server CPU power and dragging the simulator to crawl. The newer versions of the Havok engine now offer an overlap ejection capability that allows overlapped objects to separate and propel apart as if compressing two springs against each other, without causing the Deep Think condition.
Though upgrades to Havok IV have been discussed, an actual implementation date has not been publicly announced.
While waiting for the upgrade, Linden staff have implemented a large number of hacks to deal with the Deep Think problem, such as quickly forcing physics to be disabled on any object about to cause a Deep Think condition, and not permitting physics to be enabled on multiple selected objects, as was possible in the past. But while these hacks protect against Deep Think, they have also limited the functional usability of the physics environment, and still don't protect against the most severe Deep Think conditions that can drag a simulator to a nearly complete standstill.

[edit] Asset Storage
Every item in the Second Life universe is referred to as an asset. This includes the shapes of the 3D objects known as primitives, the digital images referred to as textures that decorate primitives, digitized audio clips, avatar shape and appearance, avatar skin textures, LSL scripts, information written on notecards, and so on. All this data is referenced with a global unique identifier or GUID, a string of hexadecimal 24 characters long.[citation needed]
Assets are stored in their own dedicated MySQL server farm, comprising all data that has ever been created by anyone who has been in the SL world. As of January 2007, the total storage was estimated to consume 24 terabytes of server capacity. The asset servers function independently of the region simulators, though the region simulators request object data from the asset servers when a new object loads into the simulator.[citation needed]
As the popularity of Second Life has increased, the strain on the database engine to quickly and efficiently store and retrieve data has also continued to increase, frequently outpacing the ability of the Linden staff to keep their asset farm equipped to handle the number of users logged into the world at the same time.[citation needed]
Under severe load conditions it is common for the database engine to simply not reply to requests in a timely fashion, causing objects to not rez or delete as expected, or for the client inventory to not load, or the currency balance to not appear in the client program. Searching for locations, people, or classifieds may also fail under heavy load conditions. The database load is typically the most severe on weekends, particularly Sunday afternoons, while the system can function just fine when accessed during low-load times such as at night or in the middle of the week during the day.[citation needed]

[edit] Software
The Second Life software comprises the viewer (also known as the client) executing on the Resident's computer, and several thousand servers operated by Linden Lab. There is an active beta-grid that has its own special client, which is updated very regularly, and is used for constant software testing by volunteers. This testing software was introduced to eliminate the short amounts of time between real updates, and increase its overall quality. The beta-grid reflects the standard main-grid, except that the actions taken within it are not stored by the servers; it is for testing purposes only. Every few months, the standard software is replaced by the beta-grid software, intended as a big upgrade. The Second Life user-base is growing rapidly, and this has stimulated both social and technological changes to the world; the addition of new features also provides periodic boosts to the growth of the economy.
Linden Lab pursues the use of open standards technologies, and uses free and open source software such as Apache and Squid.[60] The plan is to move everything to open standards by standardizing the Second Life protocol. Cory Ondrejka, Vice President of Product Development, has stated that a while after everything has been standardized, both the client and the server will be released as free and open source software.[61]
The current in-house virtual machine will eventually be replaced with Mono,[62] which will reportedly produce a dramatic speed improvement.
uBrowser, an OpenGL port of the Gecko rendering engine, which has been used in the client since version 1.10.1[63] to display the Help documentation, will also be used to display webpages on any of the surfaces of any 3D object the Resident creates.
Linden Lab provides viewers for Microsoft Windows 2000/XP, Mac OS X, and most distributions of Linux. As of mid-2007, Microsoft Windows Vista is not yet officially supported although the viewer will generally run on Vista systems.[64] In the past, viewer upgrades were usually mandatory; the old viewer would not work with the new version of the server software. However, Linden Lab is working on a more flexible protocol that will allow clients and servers to send and take whatever data they may require, hence differing versions would nonetheless be able to work together. The project is known as Het-Grid or heterogenious grid and the first iteration of the server software was deployed to the Main Grid over a few weeks in August 2007.[65]
As of January 8, 2007, the Viewer is distributed under version 2 of the GNU General Public License,[1][2] with an additional clause allowing combination with certain other free software packages which have otherwise-incompatible licenses. Currently not all of the required dependencies have been released.[66]
The OS X viewer is a universal binary and is about twice the size of the Windows and Linux binaries.[67]
Animation editors using BVH such as Poser, and Avimator are compatible with SL.

[edit] Second Life protocol
Main article: libsecondlife
In May 2006 it was announced that the Second Life protocol had been reverse-engineered. A wiki was set up to further the effort.[68]
Since this project produced some useful software, Linden Lab modified the TOS to allow third-party programs to access Second Life,[69] enabling the project to be formalized under the name libsecondlife. Among functions developed are a map API, the ability to create objects larger than normally allowed (recently disabled), and other unforeseen capabilities such as CopyBot.

[edit] Second Life in popular culture
In Sam Bourne's 2007 thriller novel The Last Testament, Second Life plays an important part in the story and in cracking of codes.
Well known British comedian Jimmy Carr performed a virtual show on Second Life on February 3, 2007.
The Italian singer Irene Grandi figured in her musical video "Bruci la città" some scenes of Second Life gaming.
"Notre Seconde Vie" is a book from the French writer Alain Monnier which translates to "Our Second Life". The novel poses the question "will the Internet replace reading paperbound books one day?".
Second Life girls are rated #95 on the "Top 100 Hottest Females of 2007" in Maxim.
In The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert said that Wikipedia is like "Second Life for corporations."[70]

[edit] Outside the United States
Although Second Life has a largely American customer base, it also has a wide variety of non-U.S. and non-English-speaking customers, and localized versions of the Second Life viewer are available for several languages. In 2007, Brazil became the first country to have its own independently run portal to Second Life, operated by an intermediary—although the actual Second Life grid accessed through the Brazilian portal is the same as that used by the rest of the worldwide customer base. The portal, called "Mainland Brazil" is run by Kaizen Games, making Kaizen the first partner in Linden's "Global Provider Program". [71] . Previously, starting in late 2005, Linden Lab had opened and run their own welcome area portals and regions for German, Korean and Japanese language speakers. [72].