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Second Life Avatars Consume As Much Electricity As Brazilians!
treehugger.com — With roughly 4000 servers running at full power at all times, the environmental implications of Second Life are not negligible. Nicholas Carr recently did a calculation comparing the impact of actual humans and Second Life avatars. Stunningly, it turns out that the average Second Life avatar consumes as much juice as the average Brazilian!
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- hanksname, on 10/10/2007, -4/+8I guess Al Gore had better get his own avatar too.
- ShazerFox, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1...and build a few virtual mansions and start driving his SUVs and flying his planes around, telling people to cut down on their virtual carbon emissions.
- Fpsguy, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1ZING!
- microkitty, on 10/10/2007, -17/+2Whoops -- my bad, I hit Bury by mistake (meant to get rid of some adjacent spam).
- TjLAXattack, on 10/10/2007, -4/+2whoops i just buried your comment
haha im just being an ass today
- TjLAXattack, on 10/10/2007, -4/+2whoops i just buried your comment
- Dysarthria, on 10/10/2007, -3/+27Call me when they consume as much as Peruvians.
- Niallgriff, on 10/10/2007, -0/+29Second Life somehow manages to both suck and blow....
- maxabazillion, on 10/10/2007, -5/+1much like your mom.
OOOOOOH NO HE DIDNT.
but yes you are correct.
- maxabazillion, on 10/10/2007, -5/+1much like your mom.
- Snarfy, on 10/10/2007, -7/+43Donald Rumsfeld is giving the president his daily briefing. He concludes by saying: "Yesterday, 3 Brazilian soldiers were killed."
"OH NO!" the President exclaims. "That's terrible!"
His staff sits stunned at this display of emotion, nervously watching as the President sits, head in hands.
Finally, the President looks up and asks, "How many is a brazillion?"
http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/jokes/bljokebushbrazilian.htm- paulisnotdead, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5MOM! I told you not to send your jokes to my email address anymore!
- otheruser, on 10/10/2007, -0/+11Second Life's network system is inefficient as hell.
- OJdidntdoIT, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v435/marty716/00032245.jpg
- theNazz, on 10/10/2007, -0/+21Who are these people playing Second Life? I know many PC gamers, but none of them claim to have ever played Second Life... Who is playing this thing?
- JD52, on 10/10/2007, -0/+23There are actually no real users. It has been taken over by advertisers who were told it would be the next new medium to push their products and services. Thousands of companies all advertising to each other.
- kronix, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6I actually worked with Reebok on a marketing project my senior year of college for an electronic marketing class and they couldn't get over second life, how popular it was and how it was going to change everything. Usually, because I was the only CS major in the class, most of the business majors took what I had to say to heart because I was actually experienced with technology. I tried to explain that second life is full of deviants and weirdos, not the people you exactly want championing your failing brand. This is why nobody but my grandfather wears reebok shoes, they're just bandwagon jumping idiots.
- Toast1185, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4I applied for a job posting at Quicken Loans, the job called for creating a virtual space for them on Second Life. They didn't seem to know what Second Life was, but just that other countries were there and they needed to be there too. My understanding of Second Life as it exists now is a place for Nike to advertise to Microsoft, who puts up billboards for the Google and Apple second life shills to walk by etc...
- ahawks, on 10/10/2007, -1/+10You already revealed the answer in your question...
"...I know many PC gamers...."
Those who play *Second* Life do so because they don't have a *first* life of their own, and thus you do not know them. No one knows them.- queenstarsha, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2oh, that's really sad.
- DDRRE, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7Gamers don't play Second Life.
- mtheoryx83, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8I dont even know how to "play" second life. It's not a game. It's just an AOL chat room reincarnated.
- flashingcurser, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1Probably women, who infrequently visit digg.
- JD52, on 10/10/2007, -0/+23There are actually no real users. It has been taken over by advertisers who were told it would be the next new medium to push their products and services. Thousands of companies all advertising to each other.
- JD52, on 10/10/2007, -4/+6Second Life? Who gives a *****.
- ahawks, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3I think that's the point. Second Life is a waste of electricity, and it's using a significant amount of it.
- Violette888, on 05/24/2008, -0/+0Your comments have been buried for being ignorant and arrogant.
- ahawks, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3I think that's the point. Second Life is a waste of electricity, and it's using a significant amount of it.
- mpn401, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10So...either Second Life is inefficent or Brazillians are conservative with their electricity...
- dromni, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Well, for starts the vast majority of houses use neither heating nor air conditioning. (Throughout most of Brazil the climate is tropical and with relatively small temperature variations along the year.) I guess that the average consumption of Brazilians is much less than that of an American, for instance...
- gorgonzola22, on 10/10/2007, -2/+0January 9th, 2007
- skyfire1, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Oh *****. We're all doomed.
- OJdidntdoIT, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1Well Second Life servers should get a break since Defcon is going on.
- gorgonzola22, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0http://digg.com/offbeat_news/Second_Life_Avatars_Consume_As_Much_Electricity_As_Brazilians
- TJATL, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5www.treehugger.com servers use electricity too!!!!! what's the chances of them going offline?
- remccain, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2yeah, but they only use 60% post consumer waste electricity.
- Abscess, on 10/10/2007, -6/+3Second Life spam is almost as bad as Ron Paul spam.
- juliustan, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4does anyone here play second life?
- Mingstasy, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2I do, but I rarely log in -- only to cash out about 100 USD a week :)
- ManOfVirtues, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1damn where do I sign up for passive income?
- naganooch, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1i do too, also cashing out a nice chunk of change from it
- Toast1185, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1how do you have this passive income from it? and can we really call it playing?
- queenstarsha, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1nope. logged in once. it sucked. never tried again.
- ylikone, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I login daily. I like to create... so, yes, I play second life.
- Mingstasy, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2I do, but I rarely log in -- only to cash out about 100 USD a week :)
- kahrn, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Second Life kinda sucks. It's full of people trying to get laid, and it appears to be laggy as all hell (possibly my hardware, but i exceed recommended specs). Nobody really LIKES second life afaik. A lot of people get drawn in by the pretty graphics featured on the site and the cool idea, but then the real thing seems to be really boring.
- Azuvector, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2That's about the most accurate summary I've heard. I got drawn into it about a year ago or so, and since then I've learned it's basically all about creating crap(Really: in the real world/other games, no one would consider the stuff that's created in Second Life to be worthwhile.), and selling it to random n00bs who haven't figured out that Second Life sucks yet. I get about $50 USD a month from crap I setup to sell junk automatically. Don't even log in. So, it's good for that, I suppose, but I don't really have the heart to actively continue with that though. It's boring to tears to create there, and there sure as hell isn't anything interesting to do outside of that. If you're into advertising and marketing to idiots though, I suppose it's both a gold mine and quite exciting.
- fuseideas, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0Most Second Lifers are Europeans and an increasing amount of Asians.
This story about energy usage is very old. Bury it. - TjLAXattack, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Dugg because my name is also Nicholas Carr. It was funny in college when my friends had to read "Why Does IT Matter" by Nick Carr, and they knew me as the go-to-guy for computer trouble. I'm pretty sure some to this day still think I wrote that book/article.
- mbraynard, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Perhaps they should use candle wax instead of one of the eletric wax-melters. Then the brazillians won't require any electricity at all.
- MrSparky, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Someone kindly explain, because I don't understand.
Roughly 4,000 servers, with only roughly 12,500 people online at once?! Sorry, but 3 people per server? I know there's a rational explanation - so shoot!- zephyrprime, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0I used to be involved with Lineage 2 servers and a single Lineage 2 server could host 2000+ people.
- Mingstasy, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Its about 40,000 Average Online Now -- the treehuggers like to exxagerate their numbers.
- digghasnoethics, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Its written in BASIC ?
- MrSparky, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Visual Basic, perhaps.
(Digg me down, lets face it most of you are probably VB programmers ;-) wink wink nudge nudge.
- MrSparky, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Visual Basic, perhaps.
- MrSparky, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Event that's ridiculous, though.
I'm developing an MMORPG at the moment and it's capable of a LOT more than 3 (500 - 1000 is about accurate, for a single server). So yeah ... bad figures I would guess!? - tinselsnips, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Every in-game "region" has its own server (that's how Linden rents out "property" to users- you're actually renting server space).
The game's so poorly coded, a server becomes nigh-unplayable at around 100 users (lag), so hosting multiple regions on the same server isn't possible.
(Though, this isn't 100% Linden's fault- the nature of the game requires EVERYTHING to be streamed from the server in real time, to every user. The bandwidth requirements for each region are enormous)
- shadowette, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3I play Second Life because my company asked me to. I work for an ad agency that's trying to figure out if it's the "Next Big Thing" in internet community. Being a WOW person myself, I was able to tell them in the first 5 minutes that it would never take off with the current interface. Moving around in that place really sucks. I felt like I was going to back to the original DOOM & QUAKE days. Except even those games were better than the SL interface.
- aflaks, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2 agreed, I tried to play for my class to try to discover a new business model to apply to it,I had to stop after 10 minutes because I could barely move my charecter. They should just take the WOW controls, much easier
- Violette888, on 05/24/2008, -0/+0That's ridiculous, shadowette. SL has already taken off ;-)
- keilly, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8We could easily solve the problem by placing Brazil's citizens in futuristic banks of pods and use them as batteries to power our virtual world.
- dino268, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Dugg for the Matrix reference!
- Godlike, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Awesome. "Full Circle" as it were.
- SPThom, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1The funny thing is a very large share of SL users *are* Brazilian. So... In actuality, Brazilians use a lot of electricity, they just have a long tailpipe, as they say.
Really though, I'm not at all surprised SL is such a power hog. Linden Labs (the company that runs Second Life) tends to combat bugs and network issues by throwing extra hardware at them... If they stopped being press whores trying to toss out new features to get attention & instead cleaned up their current features (this would require a *tremendous* overhaul at this point) they could probably have a lot of servers running idle. - zephyrprime, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1There's no way that this could be correct. This guy must simply be wrong with his calculations.
- MrSparky, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Seconded. So buried.
If they really do take 3 people per server they must be pretty bad at programming ... or very optimistic about the userbase!
- MrSparky, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Seconded. So buried.
- Niubai, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0lammers
- 0rion16, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1NERRRRRRDS!!!!!!
- norman619, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2YAY!!! Yet another stupid and useless "study."
- ratbastid, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1My god... What does it say about me that when I read "Brazilians" I thought they meant "Brazilian wax jobs"?
- satx, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1It says that you're an idiot.
- Xanadude, on 10/10/2007, -0/+24,000 servers? On average, that's a server for every 10 people online. Either they bought way too much hardware, or Linden Labs is full of hype.
- Godlike, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2They are filled to exploding with *****, actually.
- Godlike, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1So they use a brazilian watts of electricity? That's probably a lot.
- whatakoncept, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0Second Life needs to be killed.
- indicas, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3i like how people knock second life like it's useless. you can make a living off of second life. any service/place which has over $1 million USD a day passing through it is doing something right, for some one.
- Ascendant, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1people who say that second life sucks aren't saying it hasn't made any money, any more than people who say that britney spears' music sucks are saying she hasn't made any money.
- queenstarsha, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1yes, both of you. where there's money, there's awesome. just ask prince osama.
- frygar, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2All that yiffing won't power itself, you know....
I know. Someone had to say it.- queenstarsha, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1(inner turmoil over whether to open a new window for google, then:) what's yiffing?
- queenstarsha, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1ah yes. furries. right.
- wassim2k, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2It's not enough that we're destroying the planet in real life, we have to create a virtual life to accelerate the process?
- davecor, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2How many is in a Brazilian?
- sallos, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2and how much does each treehugger.com user use?
- fejas, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0What happens when more Brazilians start playing Second Life? Will the country's energy consumption increase as much as the SL consumption affected by this new wave of virtual citizens?
- Violette888, on 05/24/2008, -0/+0His calculations are wrong - see the comments on the original article.
For some reason people are always trying to bad-mouth Second Life. I don't get it.
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