At the grid’s current rate of decline, the number of private estates will fall to 19K by Christmas. This means that they are losing about a year’s growth every nine months, so Linden Lab is losing ground significantly faster than it took to gain that ground in the first place. Technically they could continue in this downward spiral for another 3 to 3.5 years before there are no private regions left at all. Long before this happens, the drop in concurrency will be great enough as to permanently damage the in-world economy. When that happens, commerce will begin shutting down and the vendors will begin leaving Second Life en masse as the Second Life economy enters a full, irreversible economic decline.

The mainland regions have remained constant since October of 2011, so all the losses have been occurring in the privately held regions. Since Linden Lab makes the vast majority of its money from the lease of these islands, the Second Life grid will very likely cross the line into unprofitability before the three year mark is reached, probably no longer than 2.5 years.

New link:

http://www.politie.nl/vermist

Getting back onto topic your observations are fair ones, though the American public and media also need to know what an “Assault Style” weapon is… The term literally means nothing more than “it looks military”. This obfuscation of fact by the Mainstream Media is part of the problem as well. A public that is given poor facts, will vote according to those poor facts.

This is one of those bills that a politician proposes to make it look like he’s doing something constructive, when in fact he is doing nothing useful at all. The fact that Congressman Matheson bought into the debunked myth that violent computer games are responsible for the sharp increase in mass murder shows that he either has no idea what’s going on around him, or doesn’t actually care so long as he looks good to the casual observer – because it’s easier than getting on board with comprehensive assault weapons bans and having to face down the NRA. Another sign Matheson isn’t paying attention is that the NRA lost nearly all the races it backed in the last election, and is no longer the powerhouse on Capitol Hill it once was. Nobody wants to take anybody’s guns away, but the overwhelming majority of Americans want gun law reform, regardless of party affiliation.

So this is a shadow play, and a response to a political situation with respect to the power of the NRA that no longer actually exists.

Getting back on topic, I’m getting me my AD&D 2nd Edition collection back again! Yay!

Anyone else remember the game ‘Paranoia’? That one was a hoot.