Gamasutra reports that the virtual world Second Life is boasting 100,000 users. They've had a large influx of users since they opened the games for free to non-property owners. From the article: "Statistics released by the creators say that the game's inhabitants hail from 95 countries in all 7 continents (apparently including Antarctica). Users spend an average of 4 hours per day playing the game, which has no specific completable goal, but places importance on in-game item and building creation by Second Life citizens."

Table-top Roleplaying has had a big year. There have been a number of important releases from several of the well-known product lines. Sales and turnout from August's Gen Con Indianapolis event would tend to suggest that the downturn the industry has experienced recently is a temporary problem. That's good news for Wizards of the Coast's well known Dungeons and Dragons line and the FanPro published Shadowrun campaign setting. Both are heavy hitters in the world of Table-top gaming, and today I have details and opinions on what you can expect in your Friendly Local Gaming Store from the latter half of the year. Read on for a hardcore dose of nerd.

Grimrod writes "Dave Long of GamerDad has some musings in his column this week on the virtual world of massively multiplayer online games and the legality of selling virtual goods." Mr. Long is commenting on a story posted last week at Plaguelands detailing a supposed duping bug in EQ2 that allowed a small group of players to make thousands of dollars in U.S. currency. From the GamerDad article: "For me personally, it's impossible to grasp the idea of buying virtual goods to make my in-game character better. A lot of people seem to have a lot more money than sense though and for them that's perfectly reasonable. To further cloud the issue of who really owns virtual goods, in EverQuest II a crafted weapon keeps my name on it as the creator. If I want to sell that to someone for real money, there's no better defense than to say, "I made that!" and look right there online to see my name on the item."

norburym writes " Essential Mac OS X Server Administration, written by Michael Bartosh and Ryan Faas, has been eagerly anticipated by the OS X Panther Server community. The wait is finally over and the authors have satisfied their audience with a meticulously written and detailed volume on OS X Server administration. This is not a book for the beginner: if you're an IT professional with an OS X Server deployment and want to gain a thorough understanding and appreciation of integrating Panther Server into your particular environment then this book will fully meet your expectations. Bartosh and Fass present a complete exploration of OS X Server software and services and client considerations between the covers of a volume essential to any systems administrator responsible for a cross-platform network." Read on for Norbury-Glaser's detailed review.

V_M_Smith writes "Showing it's possible to make real profits from 'play money' - Julian Dibbell set out to make a mint selling virtual goods on Ebay and elsewhere - and (at least for the last month) he succeeded. There's a story about the feat over at The UK Guardian and another over at Terra Nova, which explains Dibbell's 'year-long experiment in virtual item trading from the fantasy world of Ultima Online netted him, in its final month, a tidy profit of $3,917. Over the course of a year, that would be $47,000'."

Thanks to Wired News for its article analyzing the commercial potential of the trade in MMO virtual items, focusing on Internet Gaming Entertainment (IGE), of which CEO Brock Pierce claims "has more than 100 full-time employees in Hong Kong and the United States... [and] is hiring about five new people a week." Pierce also makes claims that: "In this industry, it's eBay and us... we're the major players", and elsewhere, a Sony Online spokesperson "is aware of IGE and has spoken with the company" with regard to their EverQuest item sales, concluding: "At this point, we're still sort of trying to decide what direction the company's going to move in on this topic." We've previously covered the financial dealings of IGE.

Digitus1337 writes "Wired has an article up about a new online service known as 'FunHi.' You sign up and join a community, and give your fellows gifts, but as Wired has reported, 'these are not ordinary gifts. They're purely digital: little flashing icons of cars, planes, diamond rings and other virtual representations of expensive items included in messages members send each other. And FunHi members don't seem to care that the real money they're spending on the gifts, at prices as high as $30 an item, is going straight into the company's coffers." This leaves just one question unanswered... why didn't I think of this?" It sounds like an April Fool's Joke, but then, so does online trading of Everquest loot.

Thanks to Planet GameCube for its article discussing Nintendo Japan's rolling-out of the store-based JoySpot service for the Game Boy Advance wireless adapter. According to the article: "Consisting of wireless base stations - also known as hot spots - at retail locations around the country, JoySpot acts as a miniature server and hub for GBA games supporting the wireless adapter." Although players can use the limited-range wireless adapter with friends separately of the JoySpot locations, "...players can download news from the JoySpot station in Pokémon Fire/Leaf via the virtual JoySpot kiosks.. [and] can also take part in special JoySpot challenge battles among other gamers within the station's range by talking to them in the [virtual] union room."

Thanks to Wired News for its article discussing the pitfalls which may face virtual item and currency trading in MMORPGs. The piece discusses previously covered sites such as the Gaming Open Market, whose founder ruminates on possible issues with TOS violations: "We're getting to the point where we're getting a reasonable amount of attention. I'm sort of afraid that the game companies are going to step in and terminate my accounts because we're violating the terms of service." Another commentator also worries about long-term dangers of virtual item/currency trading, "...because games like Ultima Online and EverQuest have flaws that allow cheaters to duplicate currency, and that ultimately leads to what Hunter calls 'MUDflation,' short for inflation in a multiple-user dimension."

madgeorge writes "According to a Waterthread post, MMORPG item trading businesses Yantis and IGE are now one and the same. I'm definitely in the wrong business." The specific press release mentions that "Internet Gaming Entertainment, Ltd, the worldwide leader in the market for buying and selling virtual property used in multiplayer online games, announced today that it has agreed to acquire substantially all of the assets of Yantis Enterprises, Inc.", and notes: "With more than 80 employees and thousands of suppliers, IGE is the largest provider in the world of virtual currency exchange and game-enhancement services to players of MMORPGs. The company provides 24x7x365 customer service and tech support from its state of the art operations center in Kowloon Bay, Hong Kong." We've previously discussed IGE and its relation to alleged 'MMORPG sweatshops'.

Thanks to Play Money for its post discussing the rise of the big-business MMORPG trading entrepreneur, with particular reference to Internet Gaming Entertainment, of which weblog author Julian Dibbell says: "In addition to the half dozen executive types working out of IGE's Boca Raton headquarters, the company employs another 65 Chinese citizens at its Hong Kong base of operations, the majority engaged in 24/7 delivery of virtual goods." He continues: "Imagine, furthermore, my wonder at learning that some of IGE's chief suppliers are mainland Chinese subcontractors running EverQuest-playing sweatshops in the hinterlands (at a level of production perhaps only hinted at in the famous but abortive Black Snow sweatshop in Tijuana)."

Decaffeinated Jedi writes: "In a news item posted earlier today, GameSpot stated that they 'had learned from sources working on the project that Sierra is developing a new game in its classic Space Quest sci-fi adventure game series.' While GameSpot didn't give go into detail about the game, it looks like Roger Wilco is finally making a comeback! Check out Roger Wilco's Virtual Broomcloset for all the latest developments."

Last week you asked Bradley Kuhn, VP of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) questions about working with RMS, his views on software freedom, and much more. He's answered at length below, on everything from becoming a saint to the "web app loophole," perl, and the next iteration of the GPL.

heiho1 asks: "I recently began consulting through a service known as Freeagent.com. It is a company which is hyped as a 'virtual corporation' for 'free agents'. The idea is that you work as an employee of a corporation but you are free to set up contracts with your own clients. You pay a monthly fee to Freeagent.com for their services [something like $220/month]. You provide the services and Freeagent handles invoicing, lawyers, $5 million in liability insurance, accounting, etc. They also provide re-imbursement for expenses. The last part is interesting because they do not allow for many of the typical business expenses [for example, computer hardware (my PowerBook!) is not considered an expense even though I would normally depreciate such an item as a corporate expense]. All in all they are supposed to save you time, money and headache. I've gone the incorporation route before and am trying this out to see if it does save me grief. I'm interested in the opinion of Slashdot about the pros and cons of such an approach. How does it compare to just owning your own corporation or LLC and getting your own accountant?" There's more on the site than just ways to get work as a freelancer, there's legal advice and discussions on the site as well. Is this the future of freelancing?

Nerds writes "There's an auction on eBay for a console game library that goes back to about 1986. The seller has included all of the boxes and manuals for over 13 systems and a few hundred games. Everything from the NES to the Virtual Boy to the Dreamcast is represented, along with several systems I'd never heard of. Current bid: $15,000. " Its got tons of normal stuff (NES, SNES, SMS, Genesis etc) and a phenomonal number of games. Even a 3DO (when I was a kid, god I wanted one of those things... course now it doesn't even hold up). I hope you get a little jolt of warm memories when you read it too.

Some writers on the Free software movement speak as if the kernel hackers, security experts and fanatical sysadmins who drive Linux and other Free operating systems are martyrs -- folks who may code out of love, but who ultimately are on what could be seen as a suicide mission rather than a milk run. The typical free software guy (and in fact, the typical software guy, period ) gets treated as a one-dimensional character, with the projects they work on reduced to meaningless blurbs. Peter Wayner knows better -- he takes to heart the notion that history is written by the winners, and proceeds to write history. Read on to see why I'm recommending his new book Free For All to my father. A correction: Theo de Raadt (whose name I had originally mispelled, sorry Theo) pointed out that I'd slipped in "Open" where I should have said "Net." Apologies to all involved in each.

ICANN's elections are now underway. (We've covered this before.) ICANN's Nominating Committee has picked several candidates for each of the five open seats in a closed primary process; now there is a "member nomination" process underway where several more candidates will be selected to run for each seat. Civil liberties groups are actively attempting to promote democratic involvement in ICANN, such as the Civil Society Democracy Project being spearheaded by CPSR. We've asked each of the people seeking to be candidates for the North American region board seat to answer one question; here are the responses we've received. Update: 08/17 14:04 by michael : Two more responses added.

Snaller writes "Everquest is an online roleplaying game where you have to work for long hours online to get your hands on the magical items... unless you buy them. Buy them in game using game currency, or on Ebay where players have been spending real dollars on buying virtual items. After you pay, you meet the seller in game and, hopefully, you get the item you payed for. But no longer, Sony has decreed that selling your virtual items is no longer allowed - try it and you may find yourself banned from the game. " As a somewhat related side note, obnoxious GMs are roaming the worlds and forcing people to change their nicks to crappy D&Dish names. Really ticked off friends of mine who spent months building up charachters only to have their identities forcibly stripped from them. Of course since EQ constantly crashed for me so I gave up and returned to hoping Diablo 2 runs under wine and is released before my first heart attack. But I find it interesting that virtual property is being regulated: trade restrictions between virtual worlds and the real one.

Monday we had over 550 assorted questions and comments for and about Bjarne Stroustrup. Excellent moderation (Thanks, Monday Moderators!) helped cull this mass down to 10 extremely high-quality questions Bjarne has kindly answered in amazing depth, for which he deserves a loud round of applause. Update: 02/28 02:12 by R : Bjarne later took the time to dig through all the comments and reply to some of them. The additional material is appended to the end of the original Q&A session.

If you click the read-more link below you will be treated to an excerpt from our own Jon Katz's new book Geeks. Regular readers know my aversion to paper books, but I've read this one, and it's worth your while. Katz explores Geek culture by following a couple of geek kids from Idaho to Chicago. It's a true story, and Jesse and Eric are Slashdot regulars. We don't feel right writing a review of the book since we'd be sadly biased, so read this chapter, and make up your own minds about it... but I hope you enjoy it. This is a story that I think many of us will understand.