Sapphire

According to Rebbenu Bachya, the word "Sapir" in the verse Exodus 28:20 means "Sapphire" and was the stone on the Ephod representing the tribe of Issachar. The legality of these practices is now most definitively in question. The major deposits are: Sri Lanka, Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, Nigeria, Madagascar and Australia. Players buy Simoleans on Ebay and use their "unreal" money to perform game exchanges, which include virtual sex acts, some of which have apparently involved children. It refers to a "blue gem," either the sapphire proper or possibly lapis lazuli. Meanwhile, simulated and paid for, prostitution, gambling and other such activities continue to proliferate on the game, while real money is apparently changing hands on it. The word sapphire is probably Phoenician in origin, coming to English from the Ancient Greek word σάπφειρος, through the Latin sapphirus. TSO is listed as a "T for Teens" game and has many players as young as twelve who play it, possibly younger.

Wafers of single crystal sapphire are also used in the semiconductor industry as a substrate for the growth of gallium nitride based blue and green light emitting diodes. There have been many attempts on the players' parts to end this rather infestatious Mob rule, but the company in charge of the game seems to have done virtually nothing to combat, change or alter it, even in the face of charges of illegal activity occurring on it. Such slices are used as watch faces in high quality watches, as the material's exceptional hardness makes the face almost impossible to scratch. This has turned many people off of the game, as the Mob rule and total lack of substantial policing by Maxis and Electronic Arts, intimidate many game players. Pure sapphire ingots can be sliced into wafers and polished to form transparent crystal slices. When players enter any city on The Sims Online, a thriving Italian Sims Mafia presence can be found there. In these lasers, a synthetically produced sapphire crystal with chromium or titanium impurities is irradiated with intense light from a special lamp, or another laser, to create stimulated emission. Another highly volatile problem on TSO is the presence of a force that styles itself after the Mafia.

It can also be easily modelocked. Although the patch deterred some people from using third party programs, many are still in use. While this laser has few commercial applications, the Ti-sapphire laser is popular due to the relatively rare ability to tune the laser wavelength in the red-to-near infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. The patch punished the Sim by lowering the payout if the maze was completed too fast. The first ever laser produced was based on the ruby chromium impurity in sapphire. Maxis eventually introduced a mandatory patch for the problem. As well as gemstone applications there are many other uses:. These programs could complete rounds of money objects hundreds of times faster than if done by a human.

Synthetic sapphire crystals can be grown in cylindrical crystal ingots of large size, up to many inches in diameter. This inflation was made possible by third party programs that exploited the money making objects in the game (Most notably the Tomb Hunters of the Lost Llama, also known as the MAZE object). Sapphire is also the birthstone associated with September. The Simolean reached an all time low from Winter 2003 to Spring 2004, when Simoleans were selling as low as 3 dollars for one million Simoleans. Cornflower blue is one of the most popular colors for sapphires (the other choice color a deep royal blue), though there is little objective consensus about which shade of blue is the most cornflower or the most desirable. As of Jan 2006, one million Simoleans sell for around 10-15 dollars (One million Simoleans in Betaville sells for about 20 dollars). Lady Diana Spencer's engagement ring from Charles, Prince of Wales was a sapphire ring. The Simoleon (Sims Online currency) has been through much instability.

It weighs 423 carats (84.6 g). Still others will use non-interactive solo objects which rely on a single skill to determine payout. The Logan sapphire is one of the largest blue sapphire gems known. Many players use group job objects such as a pizza machine or core business unit to make money at their convenience. A manufactured star sapphire called the Linde Star shows a very regularly-shaped and distinct asterism because the formation process is more tightly controlled than it is in nature. As in the offline Sims games, promotion depends upon skill levels and number of friends. Although natural sapphires can show an asterism, the shape of the star is usually somewhat irregular and sometimes indistinct. There are three jobs available: a restaurant job, a robot factory job, and a nightclub job with two different positions.

A version which shows an asterism is called a Star sapphire (see picture above). Technically notable is that the Maxis servers behind The Sims Online are rumored to run the open source software JBoss. The tell-tale sign of synthetic sapphires is the crystalline growth lines which are usually curved due to the pulling during the accelerated crystal growth process. As a result, many reviewers described the online game as dull and was more like the world's largest chat room instead of a vibrant MMORPG. The chemical compositions and physical properties are identical to the natural sapphires. The reason for this poor performance may be attributed to the players' failure to cooperate as well as the beta testers of the game did; another reason may be that one of the major attractions, for some players, of The Sims was creating and using custom objects, which is not possible in The Sims Online. Gem quality sapphires and rubies occur naturally and can be easily and cheaply produced in the laboratory. As of early 2005 this is not the case; TSO has seen only a fraction of the subscription numbers aimed for by the game's publisher, Electronic Arts.

They have a hardness of 9 on the Mohs hardness scale (Diamond is 10). As with The Sims and its numerous expansion packs being the best selling computer game of all time, many experts predicted that TSO would become the most popular massively multiplayer game. The crystals are exceptionally hard, with only diamond being harder among natural gems. After purchasing the game, players pay a monthly fee to play online. Traces of iron and titanium give sapphires a blue color. While often called a role-playing game (making it an MMORPG), it has as much in common with socially-oriented virtual worlds. Pure sapphire is transparent. Because the other characters are played by real people, TSO is less a game and more a social environment than the original Sims.

It is the impurities in the aluminium oxide crystal that give the color variations, with different impurity chemical elements giving the different colors that can be found. This variation allows a player to create up to seven Sims, each on different servers, but control only one at a time, with the exception being Betaville, where players can play up to four Sims at one time. They were found in many countries especially in Asia such as India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar, and Cambodia. Players are in complete control of a Sim. However a pink-orange sapphire, called a padparadsha, is highly prized. The Sims Online is a massively multiplayer online game, allowing thousands of players to play together simultaneously. Pink, yellow, green, white, and parti-color (multi-colored) sapphires are often valued less than the blue variety of the same quality and size. .

When color is not specified, sapphire refers to the blue variety. It was published by Electronic Arts and released on December 17, 2002 for Microsoft Windows. (The red variety of corundum is also known as ruby.). The Sims Online (TSO) is a massively multiplayer online variation of Maxis's highly popular computer game The Sims. Sapphire is any gemstone-quality corundum that is not red. .

It can be found naturally as gemstones or manufactured in large crystal boules for a variety of applications. Sapphire is the single-crystal form of aluminium oxide (Al₂O₃), a mineral known as corundum.