Philip Rosedale CEO of Linden Labs (the makers of  Second Life)
is now presenting his company and virtual world.  He immediately
went into a demonstration of Second Life … walking around the virtual
world, interacting with objects.  He pulled a kiosk out of his
pocket, and had it play a life streaming video, and then wandered
around until he found other users.  He quickly created some
objects, took pictures, put the pictures on objects as a texture, and
even showed some of the physics by linking objects and swinging them
around.

I have heard there are weapons in Second Life, and he showed his pistol
and shot at some things.  The core server farm is 1200 machines,
and they are using ~200Mbps of bandwidth.  He indicated that the
average is 70-80kbps per client machine.  There are currently over
50,000 users, with ~10,00 unique users per day … about ~3,000 at any
one time.

The top in world avatar in making ~$150,000/year in Second Life, with
many people making ~$100+ per month.  I have to admit that I am
very interested in these virtual worlds and the many potential revenue
sourrces that might exist.  Hmmmm ….