“Yo, Hamlet, we need someone to do a writeup on some new development with that Second Life thingy that you used to work for those people for, so…uh…send something our way and we’ll, I dunno, toss twenty bucks your way, how does that sound? Oh yeah, and also you can continue to kiss a$$ in order to get that coveted ‘staff writer/real job’ position you’ve been jockeying for.”

Also Deadpan, that isn’t a bug, that is an awesome “suprise feature”. Nothing’s funnier than teleporting out just in time to avoid some dick’s orbiter gun, then hear “D*mn it…he got away…”.

You have to have a second life account, but the beta of the SLim application is here:
http://www.secondlife.com/slim

“Okay, I’ll see you folks later”
*Tele-porte!*
“Man, what a bunch of [colorful expletives deleted]”
“Uh…. us bunch of [colorful expletives deleted] can still hear you!”
“[expletive deleted]“

Practice shows that monopoly in telecommunication leads to a poorer experience and more expensive service — things that customers can hardly appreciate.

I believe that Second Life residents will benefit only having a truly competitive environment for their VoIP needs — by having more feature-rich and cheaper service.

Now, in all fairness, in-world voice is ranged where Skype isn’t (unless you count the conversation you overhear in the distant when a friend on skype doesn’t mute their mic when they step away from the computer). I personally haven’t had many quality issues with “SL Voice” but I, more times than not, find users who use Skype exclusively.

As a side comment, the second largest reason folks prefer Skype is the out-of-world text messenger capability with their SL friends–something SL failed to produce beyond an Alpha phase.