Drax has radio show #16 out. Ciaran Laval has a quick summary of the show, not much detail. See: The Drax Files Radio Hour Episode 16 – Drax Meets The Lindens.

If you do not want to take an hour to listen to the show, below I have my take from listening. Of course with that you get my opinions and biases affecting what I heard. So, listen to the original audio if you take exception to something. Also, I skip a lot and just touch on what I found interesting.

01:15 – Drax is, I think, pretending to be amazed that the Lindens are people with the usual human traits; emotions, hard working, enthusiastic, their own ideas…

01:35 – 04:00 – the obligatory promotional section. SL Go, an OnLive app, is a new sponsor of the Drax Files Radio Show. If you have not heard of SL Go… where have been? This is an app that allows tablets (and my Android phone) and older computers to access Second Life™ or other high-end video games. Drax and Jo relate some excellent user cases for SL Go. At US$1/hour or $10/month for unlimited time, this is a great possibility for many people. Listen to this section if you have an interest in alternate ways to access SL.

04:00 – Education for working in virtual worlds. What RL universities are doing.

06:15 – The bit on Spanish education for SL… about teaching Spanish speakers how to use SL.

07:00 – Teacher speaking about use of virtual worlds in a class.

08:15 – Sound track of a child explaining how to do things in SL.

10:00 – Discussion about the idea some educators have that games have no place in the classroom.

They discuss one schools choice to go with OpenSim over SL because they could control their virtual world and limit who comes in and where their students could go. Like in RL students are restricted to a classroom for the duration of a training secession.

Drax and Jo feel just being able to control teleporting in and out of a region or set of regions would make SL much more appealing to educators.

12:00 – Discussion moves to Drax’s discussions on subject with Ebbe Altberg, Linden Lab’s CEO.

Drax refers to Jo’s ideas of how to create promotional pieces that connect people to the creativity that is possible with Second Life. Listen to Jo’s dramatic description starting at the 13:00 minute mark. At 13:50 another idea is presented. These are interesting ideas. Check them out. About 15:00 Drax chies in with his idea, which is kinda funny.

16:30 – Discussion about Drax’s bromance with Ebbe… not really. This begins the coverage of Drax’s experiences with the Lindens. This section will give you a sense of who the Lindens are and what they like. Drax describes this well and I won’t try to cover it in detail. Reiterating, Lindens are people too. And probably not like what you think they are like or how the company is run.

20:00 – Drax slams the New User Experience Video that people have been talking about… well not the video, the experience it portrays. I’ve forgotten where the video is. Suffice to say it shows an awful experience. Jo and Drax are pointing out the things wrong with the new user experience.

22:30 – Drax explains his idea of branded viewers. For region owners that want to build a closed experience this would be great.

Drax thinks handholding is important to the new user experience. Jo, not so much. Both seem oblivious to the studies and research done by academia and the Lab in these regards. So, we have uninformed media again giving opinions of what they think should work rather than looking at what hasn’t worked, why, and coming up with new ideas. It is a general failing in media and seems to be some basic part of some people’s nature to attempt to re-invent wheels. In the following discussion Danger points out the same problem manifesting in Linden engineers.

25:50 – Discussions shifts to the interview with Danger Linden.  Actual interview 26:15. Danger describes Second Life as play, but not a game.

In the original SL people walked from place to place without teleporting. But, those were the days when SL was a few dozen regions. Now with 30k regions teleporting is something necessary. Also, allowing people to flee from a disagreeable situation by making a teleport-exit is important.

The discussion is wide ranging but focused on SL/LL, some of the history and reasons things are as they are and why the Lab did and now does some things the way they do. An interesting discussion and worth listening to. Jump to discussion section.

50:19 – Closing comments; SL11B, Last Walk Outside – about a terminally ill woman, Apple holographic patent, and net neutrality.

Drax and Jo see the net neutrality issues in the limited way socialists and progressives look at things. But, Drax is right, one should educate their self on these important issues. But, I think one needs look at the issues in historical context. It was the free market part of the world that developed the Internet. In the US net neutrality the discussion is really about whether we keep the net in a free market private system or lock it up in government controls.

The idea that the small user will be pushed off the net or have to pay more unless government protects us sounds persuasive. Historically in a free market increasing prices and limited supply is not what happens.

As more people attempt to compete in the market and increase the ‘supply’ prices are almost always driven down. There is the fear of the big companies taking over control of the net and limiting competition. That is a rational fear and historically something that our anti-trust laws have resolved. (Read about the breakup of Bell Telephone in the 80’s.)

With Google, Facebook, and other companies looking at building their own Internet like services, I doubt we will have to deal with a monopoly situation driving prices up or limited bandwidth slowing us down. Drax and Jo just have things backwards.

What is more important than net neutrality right now is the idea that the US will give up control of the Domain Naming System (DNS) run by a private company paid by the domain name fees and over seen by the US government. Russia, China, Iran, and other dictatorships are pushing for the US to give up control and allow them to control DNS. If you think the UN has people’s best interests at heart consider this disheartening news: Iran to Oversee Human Rights for UN.

The UN is majority body of dictators. Democracies, not just so-called democracies but actual democracies, are a minority of the UN.

So, not only do you need to learn about what the laws say, but who they will give control to. Because we have a number of government agencies and politicians that do not abide by the laws. Making rules to allow freedom of speech via the Internet and then expecting Putin or Jinping to enforce those laws when they have a say in the control of it is unrealistic. Do we want to place ourselves in a position that we would have to fight a war to keep speech free on the Internet? No… so we avoid doing dumb things that lead to bad consequences.

54:30 – End – Audio play discussing the Mental Health Symposium in SL.