Several weeks ago I read this story online, and for the life of me I can’t remember where I found it. I’ve scoured my bookmarks, browser history, searched Google and AltaVista, even searched Slashdot and Usenet, but I haven’t come up with anything.
It was set in a future where copyright and patents had gone too far, and scientific progress had nearly stopped because of the maze of patents and licensing issues necessary for performing any experiments.
A professor (or one of his students?) invents a powerful computer and a way to upload his mind into it, so he can run around in a virtual world, shaping a virtual landscape. He discovers that because the computer is so fast, time is slowed down in the virtual world - 30 minutes of virtual time are equal to one minute of real time.
He gives some of these computers to friends and other scientists, who use the virtual world to do their research - the simulation is good enough that they can perform their experiments there, they can do 30 days’ worth of experiments in one day, and they can happily ignore the patents that would make the experiments illegal in real life. The computers are distributed in the form of a package of nanomachines and a container of raw materials, which produce a computer when combined.
Among the characters I can remember are the professor’s evil twin, who is exiled and can’t be seen by the other members of the community, and another main character’s clone, who lacks a sex drive.
Does this ring a bell for anyone? 