The Third Sphere

Self Plagiarism?

thethirdsphere — Fri, 18 May 2007 19:40:33 +0000

What an interesting concept?

What an unfair and ridiculous concept! OMG!

In world interviews, real world jobs

thethirdsphere — Fri, 18 May 2007 19:33:09 +0000

Found this site on the talk show where Prof Halavais spoke on Thursday May17, at the Kojo Nnamdi show on copyright isssues.

Wished they had spoken about in world plagiarism issues in addition to turnitin.com and Shakespeare and copyright. They also discussed the CBS anchor Katie Couric who read a plagiarized commentary on the site last week.

Following were the guests on the radio talk show.

Timothy Dodd, Executive Director, Center for Academic Integrity at Duke University.

Donna Lind Infeld, Professor of Public Policy and Public Administration at George Washington University

Alex Halavais, Assistant Professor of Communications, Quinnipiac University

Mark A. Lemley, William H. Neukom Professor of Law, Stanford Law School Director, Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology

So back to the original topic of real world jobs through in world interviews at

Land Prices in SL

thethirdsphere — Thu, 10 May 2007 02:52:15 +0000

A student writes about his research paper on the land prices in second life. He writes, “The most important thing discovered through the research is that the limitations of searching for land in Second life introduced a selectivity bias in the collected data, and does not deliver complete information on the market to land buyers”. Read his paper.

Create organic shapes

thethirdsphere — Fri, 04 May 2007 22:45:26 +0000

The availability of sculpted prims will be a major milestone for Second Life creatives, like the introduction of custom avatar animation in 2004, streaming video support in 2005, and flexible prims in 2006. The fact that “real” 3D tools can be used to export sculpt-textures means that the universe of resident-created items in Second Life will only get better-looking.

Virtual Law blog

thethirdsphere — Fri, 04 May 2007 22:37:45 +0000

Misappropriation of major corporations’ trademarks in-world is now so ubiquitous, so safe, and so immensely profitable, that it has become a wholly transparent part of the Second Life commercial landscape.

Podcasts from Second Life

thethirdsphere — Fri, 04 May 2007 22:31:39 +0000

Second Life official Podcasts

BLog HUD

thethirdsphere — Fri, 04 May 2007 22:28:30 +0000

3 D Voice

thethirdsphere — Fri, 04 May 2007 22:26:05 +0000

Linden Lab announced early this morning that the Second Life client will soon include voice capabilities, allowing residents to speak to those in close proximity as well as in instant messages if they so choose. One thousand residents will test the program on a beta grid starting March 6, while a First Look viewer will be released at the end of the month.

In an exclusive telephone interview, Joe Miller, Vice President, Platform and Technology Development at Linden Lab, said that there will be three use cases for voice integration. In the first scenario, a resident will be able to simply walk up to another resident and begin speaking. The new addition to the SL client will provide visual cues to indicate when an avatar is speaking. The volume of speech will be modified according to the spatial relationship with other avatars, and up to 100 users can be present in the same audio channel at once

Lindens spent

thethirdsphere — Fri, 04 May 2007 22:22:25 +0000

US Dollars spent in Second Life over last 24 hours
$1,601,864 as of 2:00pm PDT

Tracking crime in SL by The Brussels Court

thethirdsphere — Fri, 04 May 2007 22:16:39 +0000

A very big part of the Second Life community consists of deviant personalities who dress up as ‘furries’ (mostly human-like cats) and interact with each other through all sorts of bizarre virtual sex toys.

Two Belgian newspapers (De Morgen and Het Laatste Nieuws) reported today that the Brussels Court will work together with the Federal Computer Crime Unit to “patrol in Second Life” because of a virtual rape case with a Belgian Second Life user.

Second Life is constantly evolving more into an extension of reality with its economy and apparantly also with its very sexual culture and it seems that we’ll continue to see more legal implications as a result of this in the future.