The monster drops 15 silver pieces of taxable income

Speaking of the game, I recently heard an argument that I find a little disturbing, if sensible.

The argument goes like this: at some point in the future, it's very likely that virtual property, stuff you acquire in virtual worlds like the game I play, will be taxed by our real-world governments.

How, you ask, can a government reasonably expect to collect real money from non-physical property?

Well, they can reasonably expect that because, as a matter of practicality, much virtual property does have real-world value.

For instance, for a long time now gamers have been selling valuable game items to other gamers for real-world cash. So, say they found a valuable game item that other people might want. They advertise this game-item on E-Bay or some such, somebody pays real cash for it, and the item is transferred in-game.

In fact, an entire cottage industry has grown up in China involving people collecting game money and items and selling them for real money. These "Chinese gold farmers" have been a significant presence in my game ever since I started playing it, and odd as it might sound, I'm told that some of them get enough real money that way to make a living from it.

So now your government gets involved. A government could possibly say, "Well, if this virtual property has real money value, then that virtual can be taxed for its real money value." And governments being what they are, this as-yet-unrealized possibility becomes a likelihood.

Of course the sale of virtual property for real money should already be taxable. Income is income. The argument here is rather that the transfer of virtual property...perhaps when the owner dies and wills the property to someone else...might also be taxable, even though no real money exchanged hands. The virtual property has real value, and it's being transferred between two people, so that would reasonably fit into the same category as other sorts of taxable property transfer.

There would be some obvious problems with this...how would the government reasonably keep track of ownership virtual property, or assess its value for taxation...but these are not problems without hypothetical solutions.

And governments sure do like to tax things, so there's motivation to find those solutions.

"Erigeneia" seems like a nice name

So I was playing the game last night, and as I was out in the wilds doing game-stuff, another player happened along. She asked me if I was on the quest for a particular item, and I said no, I was doing a different thing, so she wandered off.

A few minutes later, long enough for me to finish what I was doing and travel to the other side of the map, I saw a message on general chat from this player: "Does anyone know where the item is for this quest?" Ever helpful, I sent her a private message saying that the item she's looking for is back where we met, and gave her detailed directions.

A few minutes after that, I got a reply from her, "I found it, thanks so much!" So I replied back, "No trouble!" and expected that to be the end of it.

But no. She said, "I'm having contractions, but I had to stay and finish this quest! Can you say addicted, lol"

That gave me a few moments' pause, but not being one to judge others for their priorities, I suggested she name the child after me, and wished her luck.

I havbe found teh Intarnets

They were right where I left them.

So, after two weeks of my internet being down for arcane technical reasons (*cough*), I got a new ISP, and I once again have network in the apartment.

Given the choice in ISP's between DSL courtesy of SBC/Ameritech/AT&T/whatever else they're calling themselves these days, and cable courtesy of Time Warner, I went with the DSL. Time Warner wanted to bundle network with digital cable, which I did not much like, and while they had a decent introductory rate, the base rate sucked. SBC gave me decent bandwidth at a decent price, and I figured if the quality was bad I'd dump them.

Portability was also an issue; the DSL lets me plug the splitter into any phone jack in my apartment, so I didn't have to string hundreds of feet of CAT-5 cable around the place. (No, I don't agree that stringing CAT-5 cable "builds character.")

On the bad side, SBC made me buy their hardware, which is a DSL modem/router made by 2Wire. That wouldn't have been my first choice. However, the setup wasn't bad. Aside from having to figure out the port-forwarding issue, everything was relatively straightforward.

Anyway, the thing conected with few hassles, transfer speed is respectable (if somewhat less than the gigabit to which I became accustomed while at CWRU), latency is low, and all seems cool.

And I will say this: after two weeks of no network, when I started up my game and it connected, all was suddenly made right in the world. I have a monkey on my back that is internet addiction, and he is a vicious bastard.

I want it to loom.

You know when you have a friend who you think is pretty cool, but then something happens, they move away or you move away or somebody's life changes, and you're just not in the same sphere as them anymore? And maybe one or both of you try to hold on to the friendship in spite of that, but the day inevitably comes when either you stop writing emails (or whatever) or they stop answering them, and that's just it, you never hear from them again?

I hate that.

I even know it's going to happen, because it always does. But that doesn't help. I still hate it.

I don't know how other people feel about this...I can't imagine it's anybody's favorite thing...but as for myself, I don't often feel connected to people on any level, so when I do, it's very important to me, and I suppose I want to hang on to that if at all possible.

And if I should still feeling connected when the other person doesn't, that's a particular thing. If I'm making the effort to keep in touch and this other person just isn't, then that's kind of a slap in the face, isn't it? Sure, maybe they're busy with whatever, but that's ony valid up to a point. If they can't spare thirty seconds to respond to an email or IM, you know, "Hi, thanks for writing, really busy, bye," then they just clearly don't care at all.

Don't much like having my face slapped that way, especially by people whose opinions I actually value. I start thinking, well, that's great, they don't value the friendship at all, and hey, for all I know maybe they never really did, maybe they just kept me around for their own amusement value (*cough*) or whatever, and so on.

Yeah, I'd guess none of you know what the hell I'm going on about at this point. Alright, I'm done bitching now. Moving on.