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Slow Worlds
In places where the availability of computing resources is linked to financial or other physical-world resources, poor virch worlds may find themselves shrinking in size, having to lower their Resolution and/or run more slowly.

This has led, in places, to clusters of 'slow worlds' running much slower than real time but each as fast as their resources allow. These are similar to the 'Slow Clubs' in Old Earth writer Greg Egan's 'Permutation City'.

This has also lead to some resource-poor high toposophic virch entities being limited in what they can do and how fast they can run by their funds, and so also having to run very slowly, and in very slow virch worlds.

The availability of computing resources has also been the cause of virtual wars for processing power and the like being fought among virtual clades in any number of larger computing spaces, sometimes even spilling out into the physical world. In many cases the virch entities concerned are sufficiently different from physical world entities as to be essentially indistinguishable by baseline physical-world entities, but their differences (and need for computing resources) are nonetheless very real. Subtle virch attacks, secretly reducing the Resolution and time flow rate of the target virch world so that it uses less resources, which then become available to the attacker are often used. These can be particularly effective against solipsist virch worlds where, without contact with the outside world, they are unlikely to even notice the change.
 
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Development Notes
Text by Tony Jones
Initially published on 31 August 2003.

 
 
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