Scripting Is Not Programming, Free Java Leather Jackets, Werewolves and Fast Vista Shutdown Feature in Second Life

Bernd Oestereich the german UML-Guru, asked me a question during the interview about my opinion of Second Life. I actually tried to avoid Second Life so far (because my Real Life is already too exciting), however I became curious, so I downloaded the software, chosen the name and first possible avatar and logged in. The journey started on a welcome island - after 2 minutes it became boring and I started to search for Java - and landed at Sun Microsystems Pavillions and the Java Dome (use the teleport for this purpose). I picked a JavaONE Bag, a Java Cup, T-Shirt and women's (!) leather jacked and try to wear. It seems like the jacket wasn't typesafe, so I could actually wear it. However I met a cat in the Sun's Sandbox (a place, where you can build things, but they have to be smaller than 70m...), which typed something. I asked her/him:

"Are you programming?"

the cat answered: "No. I do not programming, just scripting".

After a chat, it turned out, that the cat wasn't a cat but actually a werewolf. I asked why, the answer was: "why not".

What is interesting as well - the Sandbox is maintained by guards - and they assists you, in case you have some questions. It seems like they are Sun Employees (a virtual job?).

I went to the server building and tried to get into a BlackBox. For this purpose, you have to push a button. I did it and my Vista system immediately crashed and my notebook turned off. It was the fastest shutdown I ever saw (you have to push the button on my notebook for several seconds to achieve a similar effect. I will use these feature to shutdown my notebook, in case I'm in hurry in future:-). However it seems like only Vista has this feature, with XP there were no problems. After a restart, I went (actually flew) to the microsoft pavilions (with the t-shirt and my women's java leather jacket) but they were empty...

Second Life is an amazing software system with surely interesting backend architecture and high scaleability demands (there were 35k logged in users this time...) - if you are a Java-Developer you should visit the Java Dome - it takes about 0.5h and is fun. The idea of a self-creating world is really exciting - actually Web 3.0...