People have been studying virtual worlds for a while now, but there has been little discussion on the money supply. Currently, most virtual world developers do not publish data on the money supply and so I developed a method in estimating it. Using economic theory and the exchange rate, I was able to check the accuracy of my estimate. After applying my method to World of Warcraft, I believe there is over nine billion gold on North American servers. If that gold were converted to USD, it would be worth $192 million, and if the same held true for all World of Warcraft players, there would be $747 million.
Not close to enough to help with the current banking crisis, alas.
The Main Event is a third year law student at the University of Miami. He writes dungeon mastering advice in his Pain of Campaigning series. He also writes comic reviews for 411 Mania. In between full time school, various internet tasks, part-time work, and socializing The Main Event is an aspiring author.
I invite Mr./Ms. (probably Mr….) Event to drop by and say hi.
Reports are trickling in about the impact from the Conficker worm, as infected systems passed zero hour at midnight and began downloading additional malicious components.
Here's a quick roundup of some of the more notable incidents caused by Conficker so far, according to published reports:
– A nuclear missile installation near Elmendorf Air force Base outside of Anchorage, Alaska briefly went on a full-scale military alert after technicians manning the bunker suspected that several of their control systems were infected with Conficker.
According to wire reports, the remote facility temporarily moved to Defense Condition (Defcon) 3 in the pre-dawn hours, but quickly backed down from that posture. An airman at the installation who asked not to be identified blamed the mishap on “way too much caffeine” consumed by occupants inside the secluded underground control room.
Consolidating its position at the cutting edge of new media technology, the Guardian today announces that it will become the first newspaper in the world to be published exclusively via Twitter, the sensationally popular social networking service that has transformed online communication
Gmail Autopilot is Google's latest step in its plan towards world email domination. Basically, it pulls sample text from emails you've sent before and offers you a draft reply to email piling up in your inbox. They suggest you can even send them out without reading them, but won't allow endless loops:
What happens if a sender and recipient both have Autopilot on?
Two Gmail accounts can happily converse with each other for up to three messages each. Beyond that, our experiments have shown a significant decline in the quality ranking of Autopilot's responses and further messages may commit you to dinner parties or baby namings in which you have no interest.
