Digital Assets in Multi Player Video Game Worth Over US$1 Million
November 28th, 2006Get wiped out by the real estate bubble in the real world? No problem, just get rich off the real estate bubble in a video game.
The most incredible thing about this is that it’s not that different from how banking works in the real world.
The U.S. Dollar. Wow. The fact that it’s viable at all represents the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world.
Via: Fortune:
Anshe Chung, a real-estate tycoon in the digitally simulated world known as Second Life, has apparently become the first virtual millionaire–i.e., someone whose holdings in a make-believe world are legally convertible into genuine U.S. currency worth more than $1 million.
…
In Second Life, subscribers get a tool kit that enables them to build and create an avatar (a character in the world). They also get a small quantity of Linden dollars to start out with, enabling the participant to buy additional tools and objects within the world itself. Linden Lab converts currency at a floating rate that, at the moment, is about 257 Linden dollars per U.S. dollar.
Though you can buy additional Linden dollars from Linden Lab by paying U.S. currency, Chung says she has made all her additional Linden dollars via in-world buying, building, trading, and selling. The lion’s share of it, she says, has been made by buying, developing, and then renting or reselling “land”–i.e., control over the virtual real estate simulated by Linden’s servers. Each of Linden Lab’s servers simulates about 16 acres of in-world property. At the time I wrote my article in November 2005, Chung was developing private islands and setting up communities restricted to, for instance, East Asian, Victorian, or Gothic architecture, or to French-speakers, or to gays and lesbians, or to fuzzy avatars known as “furries.” Because Linden Lab has added simulation servers more slowly than it has accumulated subscribers, virtual property values have soared.
Ford Mortgages Assets to Pay for Overhaul
November 28th, 2006This is weird. I know Ford insiders read Cryptogon. Here’s my PGP key. What unanticipated events?
Via: New York Times:
For the first time in its 103-year history, the Ford Motor Company is mortgaging its assets, including factories, equipment, office buildings, patents and trademarks, and stakes in subsidiaries like Volvo, in order to raise $18 billion to overhaul itself.
The amount Ford is borrowing exceeds the total market value of all its outstanding stock by more than $2 billion.
Although other auto companies have put up manufacturing equipment and other types of collateral over the years to secure loan, Ford has never done so before. For many decades, its credit was so good that it could easily borrow without pledging assets.
By doing so now, analysts said, Ford is putting its independence at risk. If management fails in its latest attempt to make the ailing company profitable again, Ford may be left with little choice but to find a buyer or merger partner or file for bankruptcy protection.
“This refinancing tells us that they see very tough times ahead,†said John Casesa, a veteran automotive analyst with Casesa Strategic Advisers in New York. “Either they’re incredibly conservative, or they’re preparing for an extremely dark outlook.â€
Ford, in a statement, said it needs the financing “to address near- and medium-term negative operating-related cash flow, to fund its restructuring, and to provide added liquidity to protect against a recession or other unanticipated events.â€
France in ‘Vigilance’ Plea on Falling Dollar
November 28th, 2006The other day, in a comment, I wrote:
China holds all the cards now. Everyone knows it. They have been keeping the music playing these last few years, and they can pull the plug on the U.S. at their whim. Of course, it’s more complicated than that. The U.S. and China are now in a Mexican standoff. If the Chinese think they’re going to sell larger quantities of crap to people who pay in Euros, what do they think is going to happen to the Euro when Americans stop buying BMWs, Airbus aircraft and all the rest of it?
Don’t forget the stinky and delicious French cheese!
Via: Financial Times:
France on Monday led European concern over the rising euro in an apparent attempt to put pressure on the European Central Bank not to jeopardise eurozone growth prospects ahead of next year’s French presidential election.
Thierry Breton, France’s finance minister, urged “collective vigilance†in the face of the falling US dollar. He promised to raise the euro’s recent rally with fellow eurozone finance ministers at their monthly meeting in Brussels on Monday night.
Snitch Lies, Elderly Women Shot to Death While Defending Herself from Police
November 28th, 2006Do you get it yet?
Via CNN:
An informant cited in a search warrant as having purchased narcotics at an elderly Atlanta woman’s house denies buying drugs there, authorities say.
Undercover officers raiding the 88-year-old woman’s house shot her to death last week after she fired on them while they broke down her door in a high-crime neighborhood.
U.S. Army to Game Designers: Take Out Vulerabilities to Technology
November 28th, 2006They’re making warfighting doctrine internally consistant with the other fallacies of technological society. They’re not learning from Their mistakes in Iraq. The Myth of the Machine is so tantalizing, it blinds even the most power mad psychopaths, and opens them up to strategic defeat.
That’s good news.
In the early battles of the Rise of the Machines, victory will go to the side with the monkey wrenches, not the side with the terminator robots.
The bad news? The bad news will be the result of another couple of decades worth of autonomous weapons research and design. You won’t want that thing to knock on your door late at night:
Via Wired:
“They didn’t ask for hole punchers,” says Mark Long, co-CEO of Zombie, where the game was built under contract. “High tech has all kinds of low-tech vulnerabilities and they didn’t want the vulnerabilities programmed in.”
U.S. Dollar: Play Money for Tourists
November 28th, 2006Welcome to the United States of Tijuana! Well, not quite. Mexicans actually make lots of the goods that they sell in TJ. How much of the crap being sold to tourists in the U.S. is made in the U.S.? Uh…
Via: NY Post:
A depressed dollar is turning Fifth Avenue into a virtual flea market for global travelers as strong currencies like the British pound and the euro create a glut of great deals on fashions, electronics and hot status brands.
New York City is celebrating a record year from foreign tourists hitting town for weak dollar bargains – reaping savings of about one-third of what they’d spend back home.
Their bargain boom is fueled by the falling dollar, whose value in the past year is down 12 percent against the pound and off 10 percent against the euro, boosting foreign travelers’ purchasing power.
The dollar fell last week to its weakest level in 19 months, trading at $1.31 against the euro and at $1.93 against the pound. Analysts expect the greenback to slide as much as another 2 percent this week.
For the record 7.3 million foreign tourists expected to visit the Big Apple this year, the weak dollar is creating savings substantial enough to nearly pay for the trip itself.
Access Your Postal Mail on the Web
November 28th, 2006People do a lot of very stupid things as a matter of routine, but signing up for this service might take the cake. I wonder if new clients get a free dunce cap with this?
Via Slashdot:
“Remote Control Mail gives us one more reason not to leave our computers. Their service lets you access your postal mail on the Web. They offer scanning of mail contents, shredding, recycling and shipping. There’s a good writeup on Techcrunch, complete with a CAD animation showing some robotics technology (Flash Movie) that RCM is developing to automate mail handling. The service costs $25 to get started and $20 a month for individuals.”
Floating in a Most Peculiar Way
November 27th, 2006Via Rigorous Intuition:
The bastards are not omnipotent, but they are omnivorous, which only appears to be a God-like quality in a world such as this.
Offical Report Released on Mexico’s “Dirty War”
November 27th, 2006How many of these operations were tasked/supported by CIA?
A) All
B) Most
C) Many
Via: National Security Archive:
Mexican authorities released a groundbreaking report over the weekend on the government’s use of violent repression to crush its opponents during the 1960s-80s. The full report has now been posted here on the Web site of the National Security Archive.
The report by the Office of Special Prosecutor Ignacio Carrillo Prieto, named by President Vicente Fox in 2002 to investigate past human rights crimes, accuses three Mexican presidents of a sustained policy of violence targeting armed guerrillas and student protesters alike, including the use of “massacres, forced disappearance, systematic torture, and genocide.” The report makes clear that the abuses were not the work of individual military units or renegade officers, but official practice under Presidents DÃaz Ordaz (1964-1970), EcheverrÃa (1970-1976) and López Portillo (1976-1982).
The document’s release marks the first time the Mexican government has accepted responsibility for waging a secret and illicit war against its perceived enemies. Unlike prior investigations into the Mexican “dirty war,” the Special Prosecutor’s report draws on thousands of secret records from the vaults of Mexican military, intelligence and police agencies. It traces for the first time the flow of orders from the President, the Defense Secretary and the Interior Ministry down to the soldiers and security agents in the field, and the returning flow of reports back to Mexico City. The official sources are complemented by testimonies and eyewitness accounts gathered by the investigators.
Probably Related: Operation 40
Research Credit: MM
Poisoned Spy Visited Israel with Oil Dossier
November 27th, 2006Now we’re getting somewhere. It’s like the mafia, but with nuclear missiles.
Via Times Online:
A dossier drawn up by Alexander Litvinenko on the Kremlin’s takeover of the world’s richest energy giant will be given to Scotland Yard today as police investigate the former KGB spy’s secret dealings with some of Russia’s richest men.
It emerged yesterday that Mr Litvinenko travelled to Israel just weeks before he died to hand over evidence to a Russian billionaire of how agents working for President Putin dealt with his enemies running the Yukos oil company.
He passed this information to Leonid Nevzlin, the former second-in-command of Yukos, who fled to Tel Aviv in fear for his life after the Kremlin seized and then sold off the $40 billion (£21 billion) company.
Mr Nevzlin told The Times that it was his “duty†to pass on the file. “Alexander had information on crimes committed with the Russian Government’s direct participation,†he said.
“He only recently gave me and my attorneys documents that shed light on the most significant aspects of the Yukos affair.â€
Investigators have told The Times that Mr Litvinenko had apparently uncovered “startling†new material about the Yukos affair and what happened to those opposing the forced break-up of the company.
Several figures linked with Yukos are reported to have disappeared or died in mysterious circumstances while its head, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and others have been jailed.
Originally it was Mr Litvinenko’s vocal opposition to President Putin’s rule that led to accusations of Russia’s secret service involvement in his death, but police are investigating whether he made enemies through his links with a number of oligarchs.
Detectives involved in what they admit is one of the most complicated inquiries Scotland Yard has faced say that they are working through Mr Litvinenko’s formidable list of friends and foes, which includes some of the world’s wealthiest men.
