Socially|Mundane

Best Practices for Creator Support in Second Life

2010-07-02T08:33:00.001-07:00

Four years on the grid and I can count failed "customer support" from in-world creators on one hand. And in those cases, it always was a case of "AWOL" where no response to my inquiry was ever received. Of course, I've dealt with my share of rude, crude creators, but as a rule of thumb, I've always received excellent support from practically any creator when I needed it.

I am willing to share my simple recipe for success in the scenario of needing creator support. When I say creator support, I am referring to those times when you need to contact the creator of something you have purchased in-world. These scenarios include, but obviously are not limited to:

Failed deliveries on purchases
Wrong permissions from those advertised
Missing portions of a "package"
Something does not operate as expected
Something becomes broken
Something becomes lost

Before I go into the "best practices" for obtaining creator support, I'd like to pass a quick message to the creators themselves:

When someone is asking you for support, remember it is a 99.5% chance they are not trying to rip-you off. Whatever it is you sell in Second Life, except for the initial work in creation, it costs you nothing to throw it around for free. So why not just replace it?

Secondly, there really are very few reasons to sell your items as no-modify, no-copy. You aren't preventing theft in any way, shape or form. What you are doing is irritating the hell out of your honest, money-spending customers. It is no secret that no matter what permissions you put on your stuff, with the able illegitimate viewer I can copy it with full permissions, no matter what you do. So stop it, please!

Now, back to "how to ask for support" and actually get it recipe:

First, prepare your case before you make contact with the creator. When you make a purchase, if something doesn't seem right and the vendor is spewing out weird statements in open chat: copy that chat and put it into a notecard! First, you are doing the creator a favor. They may not even be aware their vendor is on the blink and needs a hard reset.

Check that the money was actually deducted from your account. Note: this could take up to a few minutes if there are grid issues: You buy, money is taken... nothing delivered... money returned after three minutes. Though this is pretty rare.

Go straight to your account page on the Second Life web site and copy the entire line of the transaction history! Paste that into the notecard.

Rename the notecard and be absolutely sure to include your full SL name in the notecard name with a summary of the problem. For example: "Failed delivery-Ari Blackthorne"

I cannot count how many times I have received a notecard asking for support, and there is no name in the notecard whatsoever - inside or out. Or just a first name. I know, you might argue "but the system says who gave it to you". True, but if I have a butt-load of messages when I come in-world, I refuse to sift through all those messages in chat history to discover who sent what. If you want me to be in a good mood when I try to support you, make it easy as possible to contact you. Don't make me jump through hoops.

And, as mentioned: include your full SL name inside the notecard. I repeat: rename the notecard with a summary and your SL name. If I receive a notecard called "new note" I instantly decline it. I refuse to accept notecards where the person sending it is way too damned lazy to at least rename it.

Open the creator's profile and before you do anything, read it. If the main profile does not say anything of substance pertaining to their business or your product, then go straight to the PICKS tab and look for a tab called "Support" or something along those lines. Do not just start sending IMs and dropping notecards willy-nilly. It's rude and could piss-off that creator to where they just ignore you.

Besides this, if IMs become capped, they won't get your IM or your notecard. When IMs become capped, anything dropped to that person while offline goes into a black-hole. It is not delivered - it disappears. So it is best to read the profile to discover if there are any particular instructions of how to get the fastest service needed.

And be patient.

Depending on any particular "support" instructions, always IM the creator first, before dropping anything to them. And in the case of a "broken" item, never, ever drop that to them (for the reasons I just mentioned above about capped IMs among many, many other reasons).

In your IM, be polite. Be nice. Try to indicate that you are not taking things too seriously and that you understand the problem is more likely a simple SL glitch than anything else. In your IM, paste a copy of your transaction history. Do not drop the notecard to them (unless instruction in their profile specify to do so) - the notecard is simply a back-up record for yourself. As often as creators ask you to drop notecards, just as many (myself included) hate notecards.

In most cases, a creator will immediately take care of you if you:

are polite
say what the problem is in detail (what is happening, not what is "not happening")
include your transaction report, the creator will likely ask for it anyway
if you broke it, or accidentally declined delivery - be honest and say so.
also polite
be nice
be courteous
be polite again

In the case where someone accidentally screws up (breaks something, declines delivery, etc.) and they admit it outright, I will replace their item without question when they show me their transaction report. I appreciate honesty. And in that case, because they are honest in what for some could be an embarrassment, I often go the extra mile to assure them that mistakes happen and I understand that.

The main points are this: send an IM - don't just start dropping items (object or notecards) into their profile (it is incredibly rude to those who don't explicitly ask you to do so in their profiles), read their profile in full and understand it before anything else, be polite as you can and always give them what they might ask for anyway: your transaction report and a complete description of your problem.

And finally, in the case of a product that appears broken, wrong permissions, or otherwise isn't "right"... RTFM (Read The F*c*ing Manual) - read every notecard you have received with the product. look for your answers there first.

If you IM a creator with a perceived problem where the answers to your difficulty are in the documentation that came with it, all you will do is irritate the creator. When looking for support, that's the last thing you want to do.

The customer is not king. The customer is simply a business associate. The creator does not deserve to be abused or spoken down to. And if you are "pissed" because of some difficulty you are having: shut up and keep it to yourself. Expressing that to the creator, no matter how polite you might be just causes them to put their own guards up.

And besides, if you are "pissed" then you are taking things in SL way too damned seriously for your own good. Lighten up and give yourself a reality check.

Sorry, Folks, but Emerald Viewer = Meh

2010-06-21T09:05:00.001-07:00

Viewer 2 is wonderful for the Second Life uninitiated. However, it also is a disaster for those of us experienced with second Life for more than a month with the "classic" viewer. Linden Lab had announced open-sourcing the Second Life viewer in 2006, there is now a smorgasbord of "official Linden Lab Second Life Viewer" alternatives.

Among all the current third-party viewers there is no question that the Emerald Viewer by Modular Systems is the best known, most popular and most actively in-use non-Linden Lab viewer on the Second Life grid. I like Emerald, but I have some reservations about it, which if you'll indulge me, I will explain below. I promise to do my best at keeping pithy about it all.

The short answer: most popular does not translate into "best".

The Official Linden Lab viewer was "branched-off" into a second incarnation called Snowglobe right about the time Emerald was just starting to become well-known. During this time, for me anyway, I had just discovered the Gemini viewer (which Skills Hak, the Gemini Viewer developer has now since become part of the Emerald viewer team) which at the time had better features than Emerald and I also really liked the amazing graphic features of the Kirstens Viewer.

Back then Kirstens viewer was blazing fast at rezzing (drawing the world when arriving at a new location on the grid) - it was stunningly fast. About the same time, Linden Lab released their Snowglobe viewer. Someone convinced me to give it a go.

I was shocked at the stunning speed with which the Snowglobe viewer rezzed the world. Literally shocked. So much so that I recorded a comparison machinima between what I considered for myself to be the four "front runner" viewers at the time. And I don't. do. machinima. ever.

Take the time to view this video. it's long (about eight-minutes). Even though it is a very old comparison, the results still apply today. And it will put what I explain below into a very real context. In short, nothing beats Snowglobe for rezzing performance to this day. (Sure, you can proclaim otherwise but you're only lying to yourself and you know it.)

The premise of the video is my "60-Second Viewer Rezzing Test": Official Viewer, versus Gemini Viewer, versus Emerald Viewer versus Snowglobe Viewer. Rules:

clear cache before starting each viewer
stop the test at exactly sixty-seconds
compare the picture as rezzed by the viewer
In all cases, stay in the same script and prim-heavy location
(to ensure a heavier-than-normal "load" was placed on the download and rezzing abilities of each viewer)

Sowglobe wins by a massive margin by having 90% of the world rezzed where the next best viewer was Gemini at about 75%. Emerald came in about the same as the "official" Linden Lab viewer.

So, what does all that have to do with all this?

Problem: Emerald features or Snowglobe performance as it seems neither the two shall meet. Answer: Imprudence Viewer.

Because of the massive disappointment of Viewer 2 from Linden Lab, and LL turning it into the only "official" Linden Lab viewer, the Emerald Viewer have made massive inroads into the grid in terms of popularity and mindshare. It seems everyone knows about it and most of them are using it.

However, for me Emerald feels a bit "heavy" - bloated if you will.

There are too many "features" in it, most of which goes unused by the majority of its users. Frivolous things like "rainbow-colored" selection beams and "bouncing primtits" and such. Not to mention a bunch of features that technically are against the Linden Lab Terms of Service and Community Standards. For example: resident privacy: it doesn't matter if you try to "hide" from other people by turning off the "Show in Search" option in your profile, or allowing only friends to see when you are online and all that stuff. Emerald bypasses it all.

Then there is the whole controversy surrounding the Emerald development team, how most (if not all) of them were griefers and hackers "back in the day" and how they, and by extension Emerald Viewer can't be trusted security-wise and so on and so forth.

But I don't care about all that stuff. The dealbreaker for me is simply the abysmal performance of the Emerald Viewer. It is no different than the "official" Linden Lab viewer. Most certainly because it is based off the Linden Lab "official" code base. Kirsten's Viewer is still very good, but the problem there is that it is "bleeding-edge" technology. In perpetual beta (and sometimes alpha) phase. Though stable and rock-steady, it requires updating a bit more often than I prefer.

More important to me than bouncy primtits is rezzing performance, hands-down. I have said time and again that Linden Lab badly needs to take the Snowglobe "code" and inject it into their official viewer for the performance aspect alone. If Viewer 2 was on Snowglobe engine, I'd swear by it, the majority of population opinion be damned. Kirstens is doing Snowglobe code already. The Emerald team also is doing it. Unfortunately, the Snowglobe version of the Emerald Viewer must be a very low priority for the developers as it has been in beta for longer than I can remember, and it's buggy as hell.

Thus, the only reason I would truly enjoy the Emerald Viewer: Snowglobe "engine" is missing, thus for me Emerald is: fail.

Finally after several months of trying my damnedest to actually like Viewer 2, I needed a replacement, more based on what I spoke about previously, not it's User Interface or the way it works. I looked at Kirstans and Emerald again. Kirstens is still bleeding-edge and Emerald still has lackluster rezzing performance.

I am speaking only for myself when I say that performance is the most important feature for me, no matter how well Emerald caters to nerdy-geeks of Second Life. It also just feels bloated to me with so many unnecessary "features" (including the naughty ones, like showing "true online status" abilities and such).

I decided to give Imprudence Viewer another look after several months away. I've newly noted that it has all the "best" features of Emerald already built-in and the kicker for me is that the Imprudence development team have already fully migrated to the Snowglobe engine. They most certainly haven't been sitting still. I applaud the Imprudence development team!

Imagine my surprise to find most (if not all) the Emerald features already included in there as well, right down to bouncy primtits, even though they do not "advertise" these features on their blog or the informational page on the Second Life TPV page. The main difference here is those features which don't really require a preference setting (such as just how "bouncy" primtits can be) are set to default values, thus the preferences window doesn't include them.

This gives Imprudence a very clean, lightweight feel with blazing fast rezzing speed. And unlike Emerald, there is no "controversy" over the Imprudence Viewer or its development team as, according to many reputable journalistic sources¹ , Imprudence is more transparent and license-compliant than any other third-party viewer. In other words: it is very easy to trust the developers and the viewer itself.

One "deal-breaking" feature of Imprudence Viewer for Emerald viewer users will be the lack of the "secondary attachment points". Yes, this is a feature. Why? Because that "feature" of Emerald is terribly broken.

In other words, for the majority of Second Life users (anyone not using the Emerald Viewer) will not see your Neko tail coming out of your ear and your faerie wings coming out of your ass (which is what happens with Emerald Secondary Attachment points).

Besides the very few Emerald "features" not included in the Imprudence Viewer, you might want to just give it a go for the shear performance aspect alone. User-friendly User Interface (read: familiarity) and the way it is easy to find everything (even the "Advanced" menu is invoked from another menu - great discovery here). My only suggestion might be to go through the preferences window as soon as you start it up and log-in for the first time, and set the "Pie menu" to the "classic" (I forget the actual title) layout. Of course, if you are willing to learn the new layout, you might just like it better.

So, for me...
Linden Lab Viewer 2: fail.
Modular Systems Emerald Viewer: meh.
Imprudence Viewer: win
Imprudence Viewer with 90% Emerald features AND Snowglobe engine: STUNNING.

Go ahead, give Imprudence a go. I recommend the most recent "weekly build" as they are rock-solid stable. Visit the Imprudence blog here.

From the Imprudence Wiki:

The Imprudence Quality Pledge:

This software is not provided or supported by Linden Lab, the makers of Second Life.
Imprudence has lots of surprisingly awesome functionality.
See the features list and release notes for details.
We won't expose your privates. Please see our privacy policy.
If you need help with the viewer, please post in the forums.

The best features from Emerald and the Snowglobe engine make Imprudence "win", here are "some" of the features of Imprudence for those of you unsure about it (found at this web page):

Countless user interface improvements 
Improved OpenSim support Support for up to 100 groups, 99% hollow prims, 1% hole size, megaprims up to 256m in size, and prim Z position up to 10km on OpenSim. OpenSim grid names are also used instead of "Second Life." 
Content Backup Export and import objects, scripts, and avatar shapes that you created. 
Minimap Radar The minimap features a built-in "avatar radar" to tell you who is nearby. 
Enhanced Minimap The minimap has better zooming, panning (Shift-Click and drag), double click to teleport, and other improvements. 
Built-in Animation Overrider 
Restrained Life API Imprudence supports the Restrained Life script API used by BDSM toys and scripted gadgets. 
Double-click Teleport and Autopilot 
Advanced Build Options 
Build Math Expressions 
Building hotkeys to cycle through prims in a link set 
Windlight Toolbar 
Grid Manager  [Second Life, Open Sim, etc.]
Client Identification and clothing layer protection 
Improved Pie Menu Layouts The layouts for all pie menus have been improved to be more consistent, useful, and easy to learn. Legacy pie menus are also available. 
Search Inventory by Creator or Description 
Inventory Quick Filter The Inventory window has a new Quick Filter list to easily show only items of a certain type. 
Free Temporary Texture Uploads 
Worn Items Tab The Inventory window has a new "Worn Items" tab which shows you all items that your avatar is wearing. 
Unread IM Count The "New IM" popup button now shows you how many new IMs you have, and the Communicate window title tells you how many unread messages you have in other IM tabs. 
IM Autoresponse Send an auto-response when someone starts typing/sends you an IM . Includes sending inventory along with your response. 
Middle-mouse Paste for Linux When running on Linux, Imprudence supports the common Linux idiom of copying text by highlighting it, then pasting by middle clicking. Imprudence also works better with stardard Linux clipboards than the regular SL viewer. 
Confirmation dialogs to prevent accidents Certain actions now have optional confirmation dialogs ("Are you sure?") to avoid harmful or embarrassing accidents, such as teleporting home or taking off all your clothes when you didn't intend to. 
Restore to Last Position This little feature uses the sim co-ordinates saved in the object to place the object back at its last location. It will use the same co-ords for every sim and works with all objects  
Offer Teleport button in IM window The IM window now has a button to offer a teleport to the person you're IMing with. 
Double-click to wear attachments in inventory You can now double click on inventory objects to wear (or unwear) them as attachments. 
"Phantom Avatar" Mode 
Breast Physics 
Asset (Texture) Browser 
Animation List 
See object's Last (previous) Owner 
Ground Sit Anywhere 
Hide Selection Outlines 
Choose Default Chat Channel 
Disable Login/Logout/Teleport Screens 
Search/Replace in Notecards 
SpeedRez Increase rez speed via draw distance stepping. 
New Profile Layout Includes the ability to copy an avatar's key and invite them to a group. 
Optional Message When Paying a Resident The message will appear in that Resident's transaction history online.

Nice.

"Imprudence is one of our favorite after-market Second Life viewers, and the only third-party viewer that we're certain complies with all of the source and asset licensing." http://www.massively.com/2010/03/01/imprudence-1-3-0-beta-1-released/ All Massively announcements regarding Imprudence Viewer: http://www.massively.com/search/?q=imprudence+viewer&invocationType=wl-massively↩

LONG-LIVE Second Life Viewer Version 2!

2010-06-17T11:00:00.001-07:00

Kill it before it multiplies! That's what Linden Lab should do. But they can't. They have championed it too hard. So they will allow it to whither away as Terri Sheivo was, except as quietly as possible.

"Download Viewer 2.1 Alpha Now! Sound Like Donald Duck!" (Or whatever).

That has been the Message Of The Day for some time now as you go through the logon process into the Second Life grid. This MOTD is worrisome to me. Not so much all by itself, considering the ramifications of pushing Alpha-phase (ALPHA!) software to a mass population who can barely understand the operation of release version software. But rather in the "between the lines" message I suspect is being sent along. If you aren't seeing that message, allow me to highlight it for you...

We all know of the big nuclear news of last week and my condolences to all those laid-off. As that news trickled-out and became a bit more accurate and solidified over time, one small piece caught me off-guard, as it no-doubt did for a lot of people: T-Linden (Tom Hale) is among the casualties.

Linden Lab needs the grid to grow or it cannot remain profitable. In a nutshell, Second Life saw it's heyday at the time when the motto was "Your world, your imagination" and Linden Lab was all but completely hands-off. There were no rules whatsoever and truly anything - any. thing. - was possible and allowed.

Of course we all must be careful what we wish for. Many wished for Linden Lab to get involved in handling this problem or moderating that problem and enforcing this new policy and banishing that activity and so on. It was a slippery slope back then and the snowball is rolling downhill at an exponential rate of speed by now.

As I read on another blog: Linden Lab has essentially sold and regulated itself into a stalemate. Too many "regulations" and policies, selectively enforced (more because most are unenforceable en-masse) and growing too fast in the sale of more estates than there is mainland, blah, blah, blah.

Linden Lab needs new users - especially as population decreases drastically through attrition: oldbies moving on out of spite, disillusionment or just plain boredom. The problem is the new visitors coming in to take their very first peek at Second Life aren't coming back or staying. One attempt at improving any possible solution to this problem had been to simplify the first hour experience. Linden Lab's best answer was a new "simpler" viewer.

I used it. Exclusively for a few months. It has some seriously welcomed features. However, the interface, though not bad, was a jarring, shocking slap-in-the face experience at first. The problem is how we all have learned the "traditional" interface over several years. Thus the differences are like throwing boiling water onto a frozen windshield. For a brand-new user unfamiliar with the traditional interface, it was definitely a very good design. However Linden Lab tried to pass it off as the new deal for everyone.

Tom Hale, (T Linden) was the lead developer on the Viewer 2 project to my understanding. In the aftermath, among the many things spoken on, Mark Kingdon (M Linden,) CEO if Linden Lab has mentioned a serious effort to bring a means of getting into the Second Life grid via mobile applications such as the iPhone and iPad and also via a web browser (likely through a plug-in).

So this week I have finally bailed on Viewer 2. Not because it's a bad viewer. But rather because I can see the "writing on the wall". V2 is all but completely dead. After several months of use, I liked it. But it is now time to go back to the old style because the new style will be abandoned by Linden Lab and I don't want to be stuck in a dead-end interface paradigm. My new viewer of choice is Imprudence Viewer, as it contains most (if not all) of the features of Emerald without the frivolous stuff. I like it a lot.

Why did I "go back" and "abandon" V2? Because I have a sneaky suspicion that is exactly what Linden Lab is doing: abandoning Viewer 2. Refocussing development effort on the customer-facing technologies into iPad-style Apps and Web Browser abilities. Why else would the lead developer of V2 be asked to leave the company? Because he isn't needed anymore.

Why else would Linden Lab, or anyone for that matter, release an Alpha version of any kind of software and actually ask their entire customer base to try it out? Allow me to repeat the operative red-flag: Alpha version. Because that's basically where everything is left-off at... no more active "deep" development.

Mark my words: Viewer 2 is now officially dead. No longer will it be developed as a going concern. Sure, Linden Lab may continue a little: fix what bugs they can, try to make it relatively stable. Then, at the right time, they will announce that development of V2 is being "redirected" toward newer viewer technologies (such as the aforementioned iPad App).

If I am mistaken: then I challenge any Linden to reply to THIS blog post and say "No, not true, development of Viewer 2 will continue full-steam ahead until properly completed". However, that won't happen. Take heed now: Viewer 2 is definitely dead. Linden Lab just can't bury it right now because of all the championing they have been involved with and trying so fecking hard to get every resident migrated to it. They would look like complete idiotic fools to shit-can it right now in any public way. They simply can't. So they will continue to champion V2 as long as they are able.

But you, dear reader and Second Life user are smarter than that. We know that if a rose smells like a pile of bullshit, it's probably really just bullshit. It's so obvious what's going on. I mean c'mon, they have to throw cheap candy into the mix. Hey, Linden Lab, the voice-print thing so I can sound like a hot chick even though I'm a fat, old pervert was promised to SL users several years ago when voice was first introduced to the grid.

A little too little, too late I think. Convincing existing residents" to actually use V2 now? Good luck with that.

Long-live Second Life Viewer Version 2.

ZOMG! It's A Run On The Linden Lab Second Life Banks!!!

2010-06-11T07:44:00.001-07:00

I've been hearing from some that there's a panic run on the LindeX (Linden Exchange). After going in and taking a good look, my reaction is more or less: ummm, no. Actually, a "run" on the LindeX (in the current way it is happening) is a good thing, because the exchange rate between the Linden Dollar and U.S. Dollar is becoming ridiculously stable.

Is the LindeX being affected by the sledge-hammer news dropped by Tateru Nino (Massively) and confirmed by Linden Lab with regard to a 30% cut in their workforce? Short answer is yes. The good thing is: not by very much. Unless you are exchanging money by the higher-end hundreds of thousands of Linden Dollars for the tens of thousands of legal tender dollars, you wouldn't feel much at all - pennies, actually.

So why all the worrywarting? Because most people do not have a comprehensive grasp of just what the LindeX really is and how it works. So I'll explain in as pithy a way as I can.

First, LindeX is not a bank in any sense of the term. You are not placing money (virtual or real) into any kind of account. Rather the LindeX is simply a trading post. You are trading money: whether it be Linden Dollars (L$) or U.S. Legal Tender Dollars ($US). Additionally, your are not trading anything with Linden Lab at all. Rather, you are trading with other people who want what you are offering.

Whenever you buy Linden Dollars, you are not buying them from Linden Lab. You are actually buying from other Second Life users who are selling their Linden Dollars (also called "cashing out").

Linden Lab's only hand in it all is to act as the escrow agent. So, if you have L$1000 you want to trade into $US, you offer it for trade (or as LindeX puts it: for "sale"). Someone looking to "buy" L$ will then trade with you. The question is how many Linden Dollars will you give them for each $1 U.S. - and how many Linden Dollars the buyer gets for each $1?

So here is how it works:

Linden Lab creates a "money strong box" or "pool" for each trading denomination equal to $1 U.S. like so (I apologize I tend to interchange "strong box" and "pool" throughout this post, but they are meant to be the same thing):

L$250
L$251
L$252
L$253

...and so on. Call these trading "rates". The bigger (higher) the number of L$, the lower that value of each L$ - which means the value of the U.S. Dollar is higher. So, when you sell Linden Dollars, you want to sell at the lowest number possible (higher value for the Linden Dollar).

Most who buy or sell Linden Dollars will just do so at the current trading "rate", whatever it is at the time they actually place the order. However, if you click "Manage" in the LindeX portion of your Second Life Web Site Dashboard, you can actually specify your own rate if you are selling Linden Dollars.

These "manual rate" people are the ones who are determining the current exchange rate. If you look at "Market Data" in that LindeX part of your dashboard, you'll see several graphs.

The table at the bottom shows the "closing" (midnight SLT) exchange rates over the last so many days. A brief look at this table will show you just how stable the Linden Dollar has been over the last 30-days or so. Now, remember my example of the "strong box" above? It is easy to see it.

Click the "Sell L$" link in the "Manage" section of the LindeX area of your dashboard (not the "Sell L$" link under the LindeX title - click MANAGE first).

You are presented with two methods of selling your Linden Dollars: Immediately at the current exchange rate or you can specify exactly what rate you wish to sell for. Below this section is the exchange rate "pools" - the amount of money offered for sale at the differing exchange rates. If you choose to sell at a specific rate, your Linden Dollars will be placed into that pool.

The number next to each exchange rate is the amount of money in that "strongbox" waiting to be sold. One thing that is confusing to a lot of people is the low and high of the "sell" when you are selling Linden Dollars. So I reiterate: the lower the number, the higher the value of each Linden Dollar as you are getting more U.S. Dollar. So the idea is that you want to sell your Linden Dollars where the exchange rate shows the lowest possible number of Linden Dollars for each $1 U.S. L$1000 will go a little further in this case (hence, the Linden Dollar has more value).

[Edit: special note... notice these are the "best 20 rates" - to see the current exchange rate, look to the right for the best 20 rates in the BUY table, which is not shown here.]

Notice in this chart (the left side of the window called "Open Sell Orders" (screenshot taken at 0630, June 11, 2010) how many waiting orders there are at L$257? L$258? L$259? They are creeping up, aren't they? Look at that whopping number in the L$260 "box"!

That is the "run" on the LindeX people are speaking of. All those people looking to "cash-out". Hardly anyone willing to trade at L$261 (though it is early in the morning when this screenshot was taken). Here is why the "run" will actually stabilize the exchange rate:

In the case of L$261/$1 - the "current best selling" rate, all who buy Linden Dollars (at this rate) will get that many for each $1 U.S. they spend. This is a good deal for the buyer. However, when that pool of (as shown) L$973,770 dries-up, the next batch of Linden Dollars purchased will start coming from the L$260 "pool" - until more end-up in the L$261 "pool".

So, think of Linden Dollars as water and each exchange rate as a bucket - with the higher number of L$ being a "smaller" bucket. As the water is used-up from the smaller bucket, water is then taken from the next larger bucket, until more water is added to the smaller one.

It's a constant fill, empty, refill, re-empty and so on.

Here is where the stabilization comes from: see that L$260 "bucket"? It has a LOT of "water" in it. All that "water" (L$) must empty-out before the next "bucket" (L$259 rate) can be used at all. And not to mention the L$261 "bucket" will constantly be filled and emptied - and whenever there is "water" in that L$261 "bucket" - water is not removed from L$260 - it's "frozen".

Because of this, it will take a long time before any of the L$259 sell orders are ever filled. A very long time. However, if more people become impatient and decide to manually sell at L$261 or L$270 or more... then their could be a serious devaluing of the Linden Dollar. That would be a real "run" on the market.

Of course this is a constantly, fluid process. Rates are fluctuating wildly, much like the real world stock markets. Except that the LindeX is not a stock market (you are not trading ownership in anything, but rather directly trading tit-for-tat virtual currency for real currency: tokens.)

This is why the current "panic run" on the LindeX is a good thing.

At first blush, it would appear in the above graph that people are buying a lot less Linden Dollars on the 10th (causing some panic to set-in for some people).

However, this chart can be rather misleading. Looking at the table of transactions summary (below) will show that people have been purchasing Linden Dollars at the normal average rate. However, because of the mad rush to cash-out and place sell orders at a specific rate (L$260) as noted above, there is suddenly a massively large pool of sell orders at that rate. More than usual sell orders with "normal" number of buy orders causes the chart to appear skewed as though a minor "crash" is happening, when it really isn't.

Notice the Volume as compared to the Average. There is the answer. With such a flush of sell orders at L$260, there were some Second Life users who manually chose to sell at L$261 - causing all Buy orders to take from that pool first. And so it climbed as high as L$272 - an awesome deal for the buyer, not so much for the seller - a panic seller apparently.

Learn how to read the LindeX information, and then understand the information it is giving you. Disclosure: I am not any kind of financial analyst or anything likewise. I am explaining the LindeX as I understand how it works through simple logic and experience. Thus, responsibility for any transactions you make through the LindeX is yours and yours alone.

Linden Lab Nuclear Option: Viewer 2

2010-06-07T18:39:00.001-07:00

All government manuals (such as military field manuals and the like) follow a very simple, consistent rule with regard to callout notifications. A plain three-tiered level system designed to be clear and easy to understand with the concept of saying what it means and meaning what it says. These callout usually highlight something important you need to know as you follow the instruction on the main page and usually have to do with "If you do A, the result will be B".
The three tiers are as follows (with ridiculous examples):

The "Notice".
As in: "NOTICE: If you do not replace the light bulb, the brake light will not function when applying brakes."
The "Caution":
As in "CAUTION: Attempting to shoot your rifle while the barrel is plugged-up with mud could damage the rifle."
The "Warning":
As in "WARNING: Do not inspect the end of a tank barrel during live-fire exercise or serious bodily injury or death could result."

The rules are pretty simple and consistent: A "Notice" simply means a certain way of doing things might not get you the expected result. However, a "Caution" could irreparably damage the item you are working with. And finally a "Warning" means screw the equipment, you could really end-up with a bad day if you fuck-up.

Now, back to Linden Lab's nuclear option regarding Viewer 2: It's like drugs... use it and your hooked. No, not emotionally, but rather kind of like a "once you use it, keep using it or else".

I don't believe for a second the way this all works is intentional by Linden Lab, but rather a side effect of some of the new features of viewer...features I really like. Specifically: the new "inventory links" that allow the "Outfits" portion of the sidecar (my word for "Side Bar").

Here is what is happening: if you fire-up Viewer 2 (V2 in my own vernacular) then the system takes a "snapshot" of you. Your shape, outfit, HUDs, all of it. This snapshot is updated regularly. However, this snapshot will prove dangerous for a lot of people.

In a nutshell: If you use V2 and logout (or crash out) then go to use another viewer, ANY other viewer, including the "old official" Linden Lab viewers, that snapshot sits idle waiting for V2 to access it. The other viewers don't mess with it and don't even know it's there. If you return to V2 later, that snapshot is restored.

In case that didn't make any sense to you, or you are unclear, I'll be very clear right now. Any and all changes you make in any viewer other than V2 are not saved to the system snapshot. Shape, skin, hair, outfit, HUDs, any and all customizations to any of these (including the contents of HUDs)... anything that is "attached" to you... none of the changes are recorded in that system snapshot.

In fact, if you already do use V2 - try it out. Set a look in V2. A particular outfit, HUDs, hair, whatever. Then logout (or crash-out as seems so often in V2 right now) - then fire-up any other viewer. Change things around a bit. If you are like me, you have many avatars. Go ahead, switch into the dragon or evil kitty or whatever. Change things around. Detatch your HUDs and attach different ones.

Now logout and then use V2 to login again. Whatch what happens. It's as though you never stopped using V2. Everything you have changed around in the other viewer is "erased". The state of your avatar and attachments (including HUDs and their contents) is "restored" to the last state they were in the last time you were using V2. It's as though you never logged in and changed things around at all.

So, the download page on the Second Life web site where you grab V2 should have a large box in bright red headline-size text on a black background with a skull-and-bones that says:

"WARNING: Playing ping-pong with different viewers could destroy your entire Second Life as you know it and be massively detrimental to your real life sanity!"

Case in point (and this is for all of you who "tried" V2 way back when and then decided to wait for the bugs to be worked-out - be warned): A friend tried V2 back when it was first "released" (a few months ago). She then fires it up last night. Go ahead. Take a wild guess what happened.

Here's the "nuclear" part: in utter WTF frustration, killing the V2 and returning to (name any other viewer here) does NOT reverse that snapshot restoration. Meaning the V2 restores your state to what it was the last time you used it. Going back to any other viewer and what you get is however V2 left it.

KABOOM. Mushroom clouds galore. (I can envision Outy Banjo's super-poofer right about now.)

So, if you want to evaluate V2 properly (and I do think everyone should evaluate it, really I do) - here is the "proper" way to do so:

Download V2, Install it but don't use it yet. Instead, pick a day and time, for example Friday evening. Fire it up. Use it all weekend and do NOT use any other viewers. The reason is to give V2 a fair shake. Linden Lab at least deserves a fair evaluation, rather than people getting frustrated after 5-minutes then bad-mouthing the viewer and Linden Lab. It's just not right (for any product).

Vow to yourself you will use it at least all the way through Sunday night, no matter how frustrated you might get. Or better yet, all week long. Because this is going to be the one and only time you will make your decision regarding V2 altogether, forever. And besides, it gives you a chance to find all the preferences to make V2 usable again.

Side note here: Linden Lab has screwed-up a few things in a major way: First, the preferences in v2 are scattered all over the place. Not all preferences are in the preferences window. Learn to right-click everything, every interface element. You will find preferences that help bring back a lot of the old style functionality. Such as seeing parcel permissions and coordinates in the "location bar" at the top of the screen. And restoring tabbed IM window. (Hey Linden Lab: Make-up our minds, will you? First it was separate IM windows. Then you changed it to tabs and we all hated you. You have trained us for two years to use tabbed windows. Now you change it back... WTF!?

The second thing is that the opposite preferences are set to default - such as what I mentioned being off, not on like they should be for migration reasons. Also, you already know about CTRL-ALT-D for advanced menu. The new "Dev" menu is CTRL-ALT-Q. You definitely want that menu.

Okay, there are a few bugs (God I hope they are not "features") that will hopefully be fixed in the next update: music plays every goddammedtime you come into aparcel, no matter your preferences. You always go into fly mode when you stand from sitting on a prim (including teleporters and the like). TP to a new destination and the viewer can actually freeze for 10 to 30-seconds at a time if your draw preference is set very high while textures download and so on.

At the end of your proper evaluation you must decide: keep it? Or dump it?

If you choose to dump it then do so. And never, ever even think about using it again. Especially because the longer you wait to return to it, the more fecked-up your account will be (all changes you make in the 'between" time will be erased.)

If you choose to keep it, then make it your primary viewer. Use other viewers sparingly and don't make massive changes while using them. I suppose for all you Emerald lovebunny fanbois and gals out there the answer would be to not touch V2 with a virtual 100-foot pole. Evar!

The one caveat to everything I state above: I have not tested how V2 will "react" after a full uninstall and then reinstall. In other words, if that "system snapshot" is stored locally or at the server level.

I would suggest you exercise WARNING just the same.

Not caution.
Not just a notice.

Facebook & Second Life: Successful Failures?

2010-06-01T17:05:00.000-07:00

A while ago, it was "My Space", the grand social place to be. Then the site was run into the ground by the My Space powers that be. Facebook rose up to fill the gap as it is more or less a My Space with a prettier face. Now with the whole uprising regarding Facebook and user privacy, one would think with all the shrill screams and shouts, Facebook will soon suffer the same fate as My Space: insignificance. It won't happen. Many will shout the same things about Second Life and how the powers that be (read: Linden Lab) also will run it into the ground, or at least turn it more insignificant than it already is. I beg to differ.

What I would refer to as "successful failures" - meaning a "failure" to those of us who use it and expect more, but not in the least as far as the general public is concerned. They simply don't know any better and thus, they maintain the successful nature of the thing. Even though a huge number, possibly a majority of users are completely inactive. At least this is how it feels on Facebook and the SL Grid. Not so with Twitter because it's a rather targeted system. We each create our own little worlds or "rooms" where we find and see only those we follow directly. So it feels busier than it might be at the big picture level.

It just depends on which side of the door you're standing on, I suppose. I never have been much of a twitterer even though I have a Twitter account The same is true with my Facebook, Lined-In and myriad of other "social media" accounts. However, I decided to try a little experiment to see if my gut-feeling on a few particulars about "social spaces" were accurate. They are.

Within a few days, I received so many friend requests from people I've never heard of and who no doubt have never geared of me all coming out of the woodwork like crazy. I had to turn off my email notifications because of it. So here we are, a few months later. Not a single one has written on my "wall" or mentioned me or even written on their own walls it seems. Not so much as said a single "hello!"

It's a game. For many, it's a simple game to see how many friends I can get in my friends list.

How many followers I can get on my Twitter feed. How many RSS subscribers I can get on my blog. So I can feel important. As though people actually give a rat's behind about what I think on anything. At all. This is true for anyone and everyone who creates these accounts on these social media spaces and chooses to use their Second Life (or other anonymous) persona. I think the same may be somewhat true on the grid also. But one thing I have discovered about Facebook and Twitter and the Second Life grid: your friends aren't. Not really, anyway. Some turn into really strong acquaintances. Many are drive-by "hiyas". Most are just a number. Another notch on the "friend stick just so I can say I have more than you or worse to make myself feel better about...myself.

Of the hundreds of friends I have so mysteriously obtained on Facebook, I think two or three actually wished me a "happy birthday" Saturday. Of course it was just the system sending them a system message "these friends have birthdays today" and they shoot-off the messages like clockwork. however, I agree it was at least thoughtful they took the effort. As far as Second Life grid and friends go, there are three I work with as part of our (we are a team) store. I don't know which of them remembered, but they three each passed along happy wishes and I do appreciate that more than any others.

Except one.

I saw it this morning. A couple days after the fact...
A simple "happy belated birthday".

This happy birthday wish actually carries the most weight with me. It feels the most sincere. I know there wasn't some computer calendar reminding them of the day. I know they didn't have to send the message. I know they went out of their way to send it.

It was from someone who only addressed themselves as "L".
You know who you are.

And you know what? I know who you are, too.
Thank you.

Your God-given Human Right to NOT be Offended?

2010-05-25T07:51:00.001-07:00

/me groans.

Okay, fair warning here: anyone who really knows me knows I don't like to beat around the bush or soften things up for anyone. I actually do try hard to say what I mean and mean what I say and sometimes truth just plain hurts. So, I'm getting ready to offend a lot of people and you could be among them.

First I want to say I am sick and tired of the "you are intolerant' crowd because to use the very word is to proclaim yourself intolerant. The word itself is an oxymoron when used as an accusation. And only morons will ever throw it around that way.

With that said, I will boldly proclaim myself more tolerant than anyone else I know. I see something I don't agree with, I might whine and bitch about it but that's more or less the end of it. I won't demand you change whatever it is I think you are wrong about. For example: Linden Lab proclaiming the letters S and L as a trademark. I proclaimed that I will not recognize "SL" as a trademark of Linden Lab, but I haven't demanded they stop using it.

See? I'm "tolerant".

Homosexuality is another example: I have no problem with it. Whatever you do in your own home is your business and none of mine. What I actually do have a problem with is you always trying to rub it in my face by forcing a public discussion of it like I have a need to know.

Keep it to yourself, please and we'll all be just fine. See? I'm tolerant.

I also am sick and tired of the "media" agenda and biases. It's more than a month since the British Petroleum oil gusher under the ocean. Yet I don't see people lambasting and blaming Obama or his administration. If it happened only two years ago, impeachment proceedings would be in progress for Bush AND Cheney. I find many liberals to be two-faced hypocrites of the highest order. Unfortunately most of the established "media" is riddled with those versions.

For instance: how they seem to all be anti-semite, anti-christian and pro-muslim. (Yeah, lower-cased intentionally).

It seems the former two get all the apathy but we "must learn to understand and embrace" the muslims. In fact, that idea is running rampant through our schools. They are brain-washing our children beginning at the youngest ages. "Holiday Tree" instead of "Christmas Tree" for example. Remember students: "Christmas" means "Christ" which is bad, bad, bad! Holiday is a truncation of Holi (Holy) Day, and we can't have that, so we'll actually change our grammar rules for this one word that states a single vowel followed by a single consonant will be used in the long form and, instead we will pronounce it Hahl-ih-day from now on.

Look, I respect your right to practice and exercise whatever your choice of politics and religion. Really, I do. In fact, I wouldn't even mind you trying to convert me to your side of it all. But if you're going to do that, try an inclusive approach. Try doing it in a way that appeals to me. If you're convincing enough, you might even make some headway.

However, there is no constitutional or even "human" right to not be offended

So, if I offend you, tough nuts. Leave my presence and go somewhere happy-go-lucky for yourself and leave me be. The same is true with regard to anything Linden Lab does to piss you off: don't like it? Then GTFO. After all, it's one thing if I am the outsider who comes into your presense and offends you. Then - and only then - you are right to tell me to go away. But don't you dare come to my home and tell me I offend you. GTFO.

So when I get an offline (or any line) that looks like this, my hackles go up real fast (and please note, these thoughts of mine have always been thoughts of mine. This IM only gave me a reason to actually write about it):

[1:33] SALLY [redacted]: hello
[1:34] SALLY [redacted]: plz u made islamic texture in dragon
[1:35] SALLY [redacted]: iam moslem
[1:35] SALLY [redacted]: plz clear it it's bad for our religon
[1:35] SALLY [redacted]: we r about 20 person here
[1:36] SALLY [redacted]: we wont that
[1:36] SALLY [redacted]: plz
[1:36] SALLY [redacted]: clear it when u r online
[1:36] SALLY [redacted]: thx for your time

Thanks for my time? Do me a favor and go jump in a lake or something, because you can kiss me where I sit. "Moslim" is bad for "Christian" - you offend so how about you remove your religion? (One statement is just as bad as the other.)

Who the feck are you to tell me to change something of mine because it offends you? Why don't you, whom I have never met, just come into my house and tell me to change the paint because the color of my bathroom walls are "offensive" to you?

My knee-jerk reaction? "Kiss my ass, get the feck out, don't come back and I'll help you with a full-sim ban-hammer on all my sims and other properties". No, I didn't follow-through with my knee-jerk want. I might be stupid, but I'm not dumb. Rather I sent a simple IM back:

Sorry, I can't do that. I suggest you simply don't visit anymore.

That's it. Simple and pithy.

Of course I should have just sent a typical Steve Jobs email reply:

No.

----
Sent from my iPad.

And I said what I meant and meant what I said.

Linden Lab to You: Get A Freakin' Life Already!

2010-05-19T07:24:00.001-07:00

Okay, not Linden Lab's words. Mine.

It's no secret that with the Second Life Viewer version 2 there are leaps ahead in features and leaps backward in performance and stability. The same is true with the entire "search" function on the grid and because it's a direct link, on the web-side.

There are a lot of complaints from the usual, typical minority about it and the complaints are the same old tired arguments that couldn't hold a single ounce of water.

Ciaran Leval, God bless him and his passionate, albeit always seeing the glass half-empty self, has blogged about the current search result situation as it applies to the Second Life grid.

He makes many good points and I, overall, agree with what he says and complains about. However, to take the "discussion" just a tad further, I reply to Ciaran's post with this (forewarning: /rant on)

Ciaran is absolutely correct that there is a "disconnect" between Lindens and "users". And because of this user comment example:

" Search is up the creek many people are loosing there rl incomes..."

...I choose to side with Linden Lab in the "disconnect" aspect. They must be getting sick and tired of this ridiculously stupid argument. It's one reason why if I were offered a job with Linden Lab I'd likely not last the week because I'd surely tell it like it is to a lot of these self-serving, entitlement-attitude, give me everything for nothing or else people.

Yes, search is hosed and it shouldn't be. Yes, I side with "users" in regard to how search is broken and absolutely must be fixed. I also know better than to take anything Second Life so seriously as to generate heartburn over any of it.

Like the Lindens, I agree it is NOT a show-stopper (in Ciaran's original post, he mentions that a Linden changed the Jira bug report from "show-stopper" status to a "critical" status). In fact, I'm really not even sure it fills the "critical" category. Any dumb-ass fool who reaps their "RL income" from Second Life (illegally, I might add as they are not reporting income taxes) - deserves what they get for placing their livelihood at the mercy of a company who's sole purpose is to make a profit by running a game. As for getting what you pay for, you are. Else you wouldn't still be there. It's as simple as that. And I am willing to bet that most of those who like to throw out the "losing my RL income" dud likely doesn't even have "payment information on file" - fekking losers, all of them.

Search is broken. Search needs to be fixed. But, it is a moderate problem at worst. Events should be listed first. They are of a time-sensitive nature. If you don't see what you are looking for (when shopping for products), turn on the elementary thinking cap and click on the "Places" tab.

Big.
Fat.
Duh.

Of course everyone has a right to be a complete helpless imbecile. So let them. If you are running a business on the grid then find other avenues of publicizing and stop relying on the search mechanism. It's business. Run it like a business. You must be proactive in obtaining customers. But you rather "build it and hope they will come" and when they don't you blame Linden Lab.

It's like blaming your car manufacturer for the pothole that popped your tire because the road wasn't paved right.

Certainly search is important. But it's more important for the shoppers and that is who the algorithms are targeted at. Not the business owners. Adjust your stupid listings so it works correctly instead of expecting Linden Lab to bend over backward to make things work for YOU.

Linden Lab is Apple and You are Adobe. Screw you, Adobe. You want to work with Apple then you follow Apple's rules, adapt so it works according to their house or get the feck out. Same with you second Life "business owners": work with the system, don't expect changes to the system just so it can work with you. Pretty damned conceited of you to think your are anything other that a statistical number, dip-shit.

Take it.
Or leave it.

Search results certainly shouldn't be your main method of contact with potential customers, especially if your are really so stupid as to rely on the income of pretend money from a pretend business to fund your real life. In such cases you actually need to get a real life! SRSLY!!!11!!1!

But then again, people stupid enough to do that are also stupid enough to do things wrong and (crybaby sounds with violins here) rely on Linden Lab to do everything for them, rather than doing for them damned-selves.

Including changing their own smelly diaper. Such is the problem with the Second Life and Real Life societies. Entitlement attitudes.

Proof-positive: Greece economy (too many hand-outs from the government, which the people are too stupid to rely on instead of doing for themselves, so the government ends-up running out of other people's money.)

Unlike Greece (and the U.S. and the E.U.), Linden Lab (rightfully so) doesn't give a rip-shit about you and your piddly little problems. Especially if your too stupid to figure out that Second Life is for "entertainment purposes only".

In summary:

Search appears to be borked because "uR dOin' it WroNG!"
Deal with it. Live with it. Love it.
Adapt and move the feck on.
Do for yourself.
Don't rely on someone else who owes you nothing.
GTFU¹ and get a real job in the real world instead of being a lazy-ass and trying to get something for nothing all you entitlement-attitude idiots.

(/rant OFF)

Ciaran's original post.

"Grow The Fuck Up"↩

More than he bargained for

2010-05-18T05:23:00.001-07:00

I was so alarmed when I saw Ari hasn't updated even once this whole month, I sent him an email. When he didn't immediately reply my email, I got even more alarmed and sent a tweet. Ari, you must understand the enormity of this; I hardly ever use Twitter, because I hate it! :p He didn't respond to that, either. I was about to go into major panic mode when he finally replied my email, two days later. Phew. *stops hyperventilating*

So, I'm going to post something I meant to post months ago... in January, to be exact. I'm the queen of procrastination. I've procrastinated over my Master's thesis for two years. ("How far have you gotten?" "Err... I haven't collected any data yet?") Nevertheless, I'm currently aiming to finish the darned thesis by the 3rd quarter of this year, so I guess it's also fitting that I finally write the post I had always planned to write here.

Luckily I already have the picture loaded on my server, because my Internet connection is being a bitch (it's ok to use words like that on your blog, right, Ari? *bats eyelashes*). Or rather, my ISP is being a bitch. That's what I get for living in a Third-World country. The connection's been horrible for about two months now. I can't get inworld at all. Just as well that I took the picture for this post back in January. When I intended putting this up. Uh-huh.

Ari's always given me grief about my avatar not having enough flesh, even after I fattened her up a little. The guy is super hard to please! In a fit of pique, I decided to try making Quaintly as fleshy as he could ever wish for. Be careful what you ask for, you might just get it!

Happy now, dude?!! *sticks tongue out and quickly makes a dash for it*

Linden Lab: More Like Apple or Adobe?

2010-04-30T07:47:00.001-07:00

Unless you've been is somewhat of a vacuum of late, you already know Apple CEO Steve Jobs refuses to allow Adobe Flash (Player) on the iPhone OS, hence all "iDevices" will not and cannot play anything that requires the Flash Player.

There have been just-short-of-expletives lobbed at each other between Apple and Adobe, primarily between Apple CEO and Adobe Engineers. My personal opinion is that the Adobe side of the argument is outright laughable. They proclaim developers don't have a choice (by not being allowed to develop the Flash platform on iPhone OS) and that users of said iDevices don't have a choice to choose whether to use Flash Player or not.

I beg to differ.

The fact is, developers do have a choice: develop for the iPhone OS or not. If they choose to do so, then they must follow the rules as it is Apple's house. The same with the end-users: they have chosen to use the iDevice, even though it doesn't have the ability to use the Flash Player. This is because there is nothing developed on the Flash platform compelling enough they are willing to forego the device for.

I personally have yet to see anything developed in Flash that I simply must see or use. Nothing at all. It's not Adobe's fault. It's the developers of Flash' fault as they create crap.

The big news yesterday is the open letter Steve Jobs has written regarding "thoughts on Flash"¹ ; and Adobe's response² (via the heretofor silent Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen) going at it in a far more public fashion.

Do I have a problem with the Flash Platform? Actually, no.

My problem is with the Flash Player. And frankly I think Apple made a slam-dunk in their arguments against it and Adobe's response was adolescent at best.

My problems with the Flash Player are pretty simple:

It bogs down and uses far too many recources on my OS-X computer (my personal platform of choice) - but not on my Windows system. Adobe proclaims it is the OS-X system that is the problem, yet nothing else causes these issues. Only the Flash Player. Go figure.
Flash Player is buggy. It causes crashes. Not very often, but practically every browser crash points to the Flash Player.
Every.
Single.
Time.
The Flash Player is riddled with security holes. And every new incarnation or update brings feature-bloat. It is a fat pig, both on hard disk drive and in RAM requirements not to even mention system resources and processing cycles. An ugly beast.
Finally, the developers who develop on the Flash Platform have yet to develop anything compelling enough to make keeping the Flash Player around at all.
There.
Is.
Nothing.
NOTHING.

Most people who have and use the Flash Player do so because it's already installed on their system and likely don't even realize they can turn it off and even remove it completely. So they tolerate the utter garbage that invades their Web Browser windows day in and day out. (Among the top Firefox Extensions download is "Stop Flash" - a Flash blocker and on the OS-X platform is Click2Flash, also a Flash blocker).

The fact of the matter is that since I have removed the Flash Player plugin from all my systems (Windows and OS-X) - web sites load much faster and my system is considerably more stable.

So how does Linden Lab and Second Life users fit into this diatribe of mine?

Simple: it's about the company's target customer.

Adobe is going for the middle-man. Creating the tools for developers and designers to create stuff. Then, let those creators go out and sell to the end consumer. Therefor, Adobe wants their tools on every platform possible. It's more money for them. However, the developers want to go where those buying end-consumers are so they can sell more. It's a simple economy.

Apple is going directly for the end consumer. They know that if they get enough end consumers to buy into their product, the developers will follow. And as an aside, Apple provides those developers with tools to cater to Apples end consumers.

It's a simple paradigm difference; two different means to the same end.

In Second Life, anyone who creates anything could be considered a "developer" - looking to sell to an end consumer. Xstreet SL is like the Apple App Store. The in-world grid is like the Internet Web in general.

At first, Linden Lab was like Adobe:

Hey, all you developers! Come to me, use my tools, make money!

However, there is a paradigm shift going on.

Linden Lab wants (needs) more main-stream end consumers in order to grow and remain relevant, not just to be a geeky playground. They must convert their current Adobe paradigm into the Apple paradigm and appeal directly to the end consumer: the average grid-surfer. This means simplifying the viewer to appeal to those average people who don't want complicated things. (I have been an I.T. professional since 1987 - and I love the iPad for it's basic simplicity. I just don't have to even think about anything in order to use it.)

This means they must create a compelling product - like Apple does - that will draw the masses at large. Simplify and beautify. It's really that simple. The developers must come secondarily. And they will come. They will flock to the grid to cater to those end consumers. It is a simple mechanical shift in how the economy works.

The idea is to influence choice.

Linden Lab, rightfully so, wants end consumers to choose to use Second Life and the Second Life grid. There are many "developers" to support those end consumers, so they do not carry quite as high a priority as the end consumer proper (for lack of a better term.)

The fact is the developer also has a choice: to develop for the platform or not. In doing so: follow the platform rules. So, all you creators and "business" people of Second Life who twitch every time Linden Lab sneezes: you can cry, whine, bitch and otherwise stomp your feet. It doesn't matter because Linden Lab must act less like Adobe and more like Apple in order to remain relevant and grow their business.

Linden Lab (like Apple and Adobe) are in business for themselves. They must do what they feel best in order to maintain not only sustainability, but growth.

Certainly you can proclaim that Linden Lab "doesn't care" - actually, they do. If they really didn't care, the virtual continent of Zindra wouldn't exist and neither would all the deviant poseballs that salt-and-pepper the grid among so many other things. They care about their core business: the grid and it's accessibility to the masses. Just because you prefer deviant kink doesn't mean you are in the majority and have priority over anyone else.

I can't even count how many times I've said it before and I'll say it again: It's (Linden Lab's and Apple's) house. You (Flash and Second Life) developers are a guest. Follow the rules or get the hell out and quitcherbitchin because it only makes you look the foolish, whiney-assed crybaby whose diapers are overdo for a serious changing.

Second Life Whiners and Adobe Flash Developers: you stink.

Steve Jobs: Thoughts on Flash: http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/↩
Shantanu Narayen via Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/29/adobes-ceo-jobs-flash-letter-is-a-smokescreen-for-cumberso/↩

Linden Lab to Woodbury: Good Riddance and Don't Come Back

2010-04-23T06:38:00.001-07:00

Second Life in 2006: Gray Goo griefer (griever) attack shuts down the grid for a few days. Other griefer attacks are constantly creating an unstable grid, combined with the horrific instability and bugginess of the SL viewer makes Second life, at times, a terribly miserable place to be. Well, griefers always have been a part of Second Life, but it's become a lot better since then for the majority of grid-surfers. But the Woodbury institution was apparently a bee-hive of griefer activity, or at least a hideout.

I don't remember when I first started reading about "Woodbury" - an educational higher learning institution having their own sim and it always had to do with being a haven for griefers - at least according to all the articles I've read and what I've heard about.

Even though many of those article must be taken with a serious grain of salt as the "reporters" of these stories tend to sensationalize everything, there seems to be no doubt as to the "community" of the Woodbury region...or anything "Woodbury.

I don't really care to remember whether it was 2007 or 2008 when Linden Lab sank the Woodbry sim on grounds of... whatever. I don't recall if it was a billing issue or a griefer issue. But that's moot at this point.

Linden Lab to Woodbury: get the hell out and stay the hell out, have a nice life:

"Linden Lab has decided to no longer support Woodbury University in Second Life," said an E-mail notice from Linden Labs sent to Edward Clift, the dean of media, culture and design at Woodbury.

"We are making this decision based on historical and recent events that constitute a breach of the Second Life community standards and terms of service. We ask that you please respect the decision and do not take part in the Second Life platform in the future."

To me, it is ridiculously ironic that it has taken Linden Lab this long to drop the ban-hammer. Must be someone intimately involved with Woodbury as done something to call down the Linden thunder and that lightning has struck.

Of course the griefers of Woodbury will not fade away. They'll just disperse and regroup. The destroyed bee's nest that scatters the swarm, who only regroup later to build another nest. Often somewhere nearby.

/me shrugs.

I suppose it was nice knowing you, Woodbury.
Not.

link: California College Loses Second Life for a Second Time (usnews.com)

[art: 'Big Daddy K' via Flickr]

Who's (Left) In The House?

2010-04-20T08:06:00.001-07:00

Last person on the region please turn the lights off.

I still am amazed at the amount of land-to-population ratio when it comes to the Second Life grid. I'm not even referring to the private estate regions, but rather the Linden mainland.

I remember seeing those television commercials for Philadelphia Cream Cheese where they loved to proclaim "ounce-for-ounce less than half the calories of butter!" However, when spreading that cream cheese over your toast or bagel, you need to spread it thick. Really thick else you won't even taste it. Thus, even though that brand of cream cheese might be less than half the calories of butter per ounce, you put three to four-times more of it onto your food, negating any benefit of "less calories". The only benefit is to spread the stuff thin. But then you can't even taste it.

It would seem the same is true with the second Life grid.

There are many who may not be genuine "newbies" in Second Life, but not yet of complete understanding with regard to the dynamics of the grid. So they will proclaim "Second Life is a ghost-town!" others will debunk it, but both are correct.

The argument against the "ghost-town" proclamation is usually about how the grid is international and that when you stand all alone listening to your own echo in an empty region it may not be the case at other times of the day. A good point to be sure.

But opening the map and looking at the pretty little green dots as compared to the virtual land mass and it is pretty easy to say "yes, you're right and that applies to about 5% of the entire grid." It's a lot like butter on toast... the users are spread thin across the grid.

Incredibly thin.

Linden Lab charges a monthly tier for mainland parcels, most of which are virtually sized between 1024 and 4096 square meters, which when looking at the map is a lot of tier. Yet 95% of the grid, and those parcels go uninhabited.

True: many of these parcel owners are likely elsewhere on the grid when in-world... a dance club; sex club; private cuddle club, shopping club or whatever. But that still could only account for about 10% of the grid. So how many of those parcels are sitting dormant where either the virtual owner is still being charged that $15 tier every month and they either don't realize it, or the account is simply in default and Linden Lab hasn't gotten around to "condemning" it and setting it for auction...or intentionally not doing so, else the map would show a helluva lot more purple than yellow or green.

Looking at the dots on the map, I would take a guess that at least 50 to 60% of those are bots, alts or otherwise "illegitimate" accounts (as far as genuine "population" numbers go).

It might explain why Linden Lab has this major push to get new users. Genuine new users, not alts and bots. A major part of that push is the new Second Life Viewer version 2, which I refer to simply as V2. Beyond that it's currently buggier than Microsoft Windows Vista - (that says a lot here, folks) - it also is highly "builder unfriendly".

MarxDudek made post at his blog where he mentions the idea that Linden Lab is slowly "corralling" the population into a highly moderated state - completely opposite of what the intent at the beginning where the grid and its activities were practically hands-off as far as LL was concerned.

I agree and have felt this was the case ever since the bank shutdowns back in 2007. Linden Lab has been actively "cleaning-up" the grid over the last year at least and is steadily pushing harder and harder in this direction and the red-light district south of the tracks called Zindra just proves it.

Whenever Linden Lab sneezes or farts or coughs, there are shrill shouts of how evil the Lab is and how they are ruining SL businesses and all that junk. Then there are the loud cries about how someone will abandon all their land, give away all their inventory, tier-down, and cancel their premium subscription and "LEAVE!"

My personal reply to any and all who proclaim this is simply: "good effing riddance, don't let the prim door hit you in the ass on the way out."

I myself have one foot outside the grid now and I am heavily leaning in that direction. And to be clear about it: I really don't care if you care. I mention that to mention this: it's not so much for anything Linden Lab is doing or not doing or their policies or anything like that. But rather because the grid is becoming more and more boring.

I have already told my friends that when I "leave" SL it won't be in some dumb-ass self-important fanfare fashion. But rather in a quiet, discreet and imperceptible fashion as possible - mostly because I believe one should never say "never". I'll just stop logging in one day. I do not have any intention of doing that right now (super-secret coded message to friends who read this and start freaking out: don't be concerned, it's not going to happen yet! I'm just closer to it today than I was yesterday kinda thing.)

Over the years (I came into the grid originally in Spring, 2006) the virtual landmass has grown exponentially in comparison to the virtual population. Add to that the idea that every two of three concurrent users is a bot or alt account and the "total population" (number of users logging-in in the last 60-days) is a laughable farce. Divide by three, at least. And it seems the empty echos have been getting a lot louder over these last few months.

Open Sim is still immature compared to the Second Life grid, but it has come a long way. There were often many shouts and rallying cries to "dump Second Life" and join-up on the open-sim grids. Those irrational evangelists have mostly fallen silent (thank you because the noise was beginning to be really annoying).

However, how many people are simply logging into the grid less and less to the point where they just don't feel the urge anymore? Quaintly Tuquiri has mentioned that her current connection issues are preventing her from spending much time on the grid at all of late. And she states clearly that she doesn't "miss" it.

She also mentions that when she does login she tends to sit idle... no exploring, no chit-chat with old friends (who also seem to never be around any more,) no shopping...

Her epiphany: "why?"

And I agree. I now login when I need to: to handle customer care, run some numbers and names to the business team members, answer questions and that's about it. I login mostly when I need to get something done. Once the task is completed, I might idle around for a few minutes, but if nothing grabs my attention then logout again. I don't like sitting dormant.

I have an iPad 3G coming soon (3G versions aren't shipping, yet) and I don't own an iPhone or iPod Touch, but already have purchased software that will make it less necessary to use any SL Viewer. It is an iPad App that will allow me to login to Second Life (from anywhere with the iPad 3G as it were) at any time and be able to chat in IM, pay money, send inventory and all the rest. All for three bucks. Combine this App with the V2 "building experience" and the grid boredom and I am left to ask "what reason is there to log into the grid At all?"

So, how long does it take before interesting play becomes boring work?
For me, just about four years it seems.

[art: Ein Provinzler]

XstreetSL: Flash Ads = FAIL

2010-04-13T07:47:00.001-07:00

I'm cruising XstreetSL this weekend and I noticed that stupid pop-up window on my browser about "Plug-in Content" and how I need the plug-in to display the content. It was irritating. I dismissed the dialog and continued on.

Then a few pages later it appeared again. My first thought was WTF? What has Linden Lab broken now? Then I realized what was going on. Bonehead merchants buying banner advertising at XSL are now putting-in Flash-based advertising and it's their loss and waste of money.

The last time I purchased a banner advert on SL Exchange (as it was still called back then) - only JPG or GIF images were allowed. Nothing else. Hence, Linden Lab has obviously changed the rules - probably charging even more for a Flash advert.

Here is why it's a waste of money:

First, it's a banner ad. Non=targeted, meaning whomever it is shown to probably isn't even shopping for whatever you're selling. You might get one click-through in a thousand.
It's a banner ad. People have trained themselves to tune-out banner ads for the last couple decades. Fewer people will even notice it there, much less pay a lot of attention to it.
It's a Flash banner ad. Flash is obnoxious and people already know the low-quality spammers who use them so often, therefor more unlikely to actually click on it.
It's a Flash banner ad. A significant number of people (not saying it's a lot, but significant) actually have Flash turned off. However, the advert was still served, so it still counts against your "impressions" number. You paid to show me the ad I (happily) never even saw.

Flash is so Windows 98. It's an old, useless, unstable and radically unsecured platform. Hackers and crackers target Flash all the time. It also is easy to develop Flash whatever, so Flash developers usually end-up becoming lazy, putting-out garbage, crap, shit.

I'm serious here. There are three instances where I see Flash used at all:

Garbage, obnoxious, irritating, loud-mouthed advertising from spammers and scammers, sometimes legitimate companies.
Flash "games" which are waste-of-time trinkets targeted at 5-year-olds whose attention span is but a few minutes at a time.
Video presentation - which anyone who even cares about the video they produce would never, as Flash is among the worse CODECs (COmpressor/DECompressor) around. It sucks computer processing cycles, crashes computers, causes the computer to work overtime and overheat and is riddled with holes for hackers and crackers. And above all: the video looks like shit, even when displayed at half the size of a 3x5 index card. Only "throw-away" video is distributed in Flash format - or Flash is the alternative, not the primary distribution model.

Now Adobe is releasing Adobe CS5 - and they are tooting the Flash horn. The "big thing" about Flash CS5 is the ability to write a Flash "application" (using that word in the same sentence as "Flash" is a fucking joke) once and be able to "port it" or "export it" into many platforms, including iPhone OS (though Apple put the kerbosh on that idea with upcoming iPhone OS 4 - thank God).

Show me a single, useful anything that was created in Flash. Anything. Anyone? Show me a Flash "application" that is useful and that I would miss by not having Adobe's crappy plug-in installed on my system.

You can't.

There is nothing. Perhaps some big company has created a proprietary application for internal use - but 99.99% of all viable companies are not that stupid. Ask any I.T. department anywhere. The security of Flash is laughable. The use of it opens all kinds of doors into their networks (and coincidentally: your own computer).

All these bullshit claims that the Internet is "crippled" on the iAnything because they don't support Flash is laughable. Not supporting Flash on the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad is a feature.

Gee, thanks Linden Lab for taking a massive leap backward by allowing/implementing or whatever...introducing: Flash anything on your web sites. You dip-shits. Doesn't matter, I have one foot outside the grid now and leaning heavily in that direction. Go ahead, come up with another something new to push me over the edge toward the outside.

I know: whether I and many others come or go isn't even worth a fleeting thought to you. But it does to me.

And I rest my case with this:

Was watching #Adobe #CS5 launch videos, alas the #Flash plugin crashed my browser. O the irony --Trilo Byte

Is Second Life as Hard to Quit as Nicotine?

2010-04-07T07:11:00.001-07:00

Hardly.

Quaintly has been mentioning to me about her internet connection difficulties. More specifically, her difficulties in connecting to the grid (and probably other high-bandwidth destinations).

Our short discussion bursts have come to that all-too-familiar subject of "what if I leave SL, will I miss it? Go stir-crazy? Have withdrawals?" Those are my words, not hers.

The dramatic divas of the grid like to be shrill about it. Whenever Linden Lab sneezes, farts, coughs policy or anything to do with how something works system-wise, they become shrill and start shouting about how they are leaving Second Life forever as though Linden Lab (or anyone else for that matter) cares a single iota.

Quaintly views it the way I do: nothing Second Life or Linden Lab for that matter is important enough to really care about. Let's face it: virtual worlds are a discretionary option; not needed in the least. Thus, it's really either "entertainment" or "experimental" but nothing more.

90% of the virtual population are in it for the entertainment value, which to me the "social" aspect of it falls within that bubble. "Experimental" would include those professional organizations, commercial or educational or government who are experimenting with ways to use the virtual world to help further their overall organizational mission.

One thing Quaintly said that I had realized probably two years ago is (and I paraphrase with my own words):

All the comments on the official and other blogs, plurk, twitter and the rest with regard to anything Linden Lab does or the latest skins or fashion are not only not important, but are actually starting to sound outright stupid."

Ummm...ditto.

To be clear, Quaintly has said she is not leaving Second Life. It's just more of a forced hiatus with extremely limited in-world time - more due to her connection problems than anything else.

It's one of the reasons I have converted this blog from "Common Sensible" to "Socially Mundane" because I felt the title and description better fits the entire Second Life ecosystem on whole. It's all "stupid". Especially when dimwits like Stroker Serpentine go ballistic at Linden Lab over something impossible for them to have any control over, and in return causing them to throw-down the gauntlet on top of everyone's heads.

I don't blame Linden Lab for any of it. They are a business in business to make money and be profitable. Thus their terms of service and all the rest are intentionally designed to protect them, you be damned.

And I support it. Go, go Linden Lab!

As for the "withdrawal" of being in-world? Well, sooner or later you learn quite rapidly just how unimportant and yes: stupid it really all is.

I remember long, long ago a television commercial for Tootsie Pop. A kid wondered how many licks it took to get to the Tootsie Roll inside the hard candy on a stick¹ . He was told to ask the Owl as he was wise and knew everything. The Owl licked once. Twice. A third time and gave-up. Then he bit into the hard candy to crack it open and eat the Tootsie Roll chocolate inside.

His answer to the boy was "three".

I've been spending a lot less time in-world. In fact, the only reason I come in-world any more is to support customers who need it and to continue what needs to be done in the management of Zodiac House - because I have promised friends I would do so.

Otherwise, unlike the shrill drama-divas who really do need to get their lives into perspective with regard to what's important: I won't announce any departure in a self-loving, self-important shout-out to all those who couldn't care any less than they already do.

First because I never say never. But also because that "magic" might be rekindled at some time in the future. But for now, it just isn't there.

/me shrugs.

I don't know Quaintly. We are long-distance acquaintances. But I consider her a friend that I suspect will voluntarily keep in-touch, even if loosely outside the grid, albeit our one real thing in-common is the grid.

So all of you who take Second Life more seriously than you should be forewarned: your attitude readjustment is down the road and it won't smack you in the face. Rather it will sneak-up on you slowly and by the time you realize your disillusionment and just how stupid all of it really is...you'll already be well down that road of "who really cares?"

It will start when you realize how ridiculous the commentary at SLUniverse, Alphaville Herald and Shopping Cart Disco really are. You'll know it when you finally question yourself with "are these people actually serious?"

Unlike nicotine, Second Life is a helluva lot easier to "kick the habit".

There's no Great Old Owl to ask so I guess we won't really ever know exactly how many minutes, hours, days or weeks away from being in-world it takes for anyone to realize how unimportant it is, and by extension how stupid all the drama surrounding it is.

That's for you to decide on your own.

Boy (voiced by Buddy Foster): Mr. Cow... Mr. Cow (Frank Nelson): Yeeeeesss!!? Boy: How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?! Mr. Cow: I don't know, I always end up biting. Ask Mr. Fox, for he's much clever than I. Boy: Mr. Fox, how many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?!! Mr. Fox (Paul Frees): Why don't you ask Mr. Turtle, for he's been around a lot longer than I?!? Me, heheh, I bite! Boy: Mr. Turtle, how many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop? Mr. Turtle (Ralph James): I've never even made it without biting. Ask Mr. Owl, for he is the wisest of us all. Boy: Mr. Owl, how many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop!? Mr. Owl (Paul Winchell): A good question. Let's find out. A One... A.two-HOO...A tha-three.. (crunch sound effect) Mr. Owl: A Three! Boy: If there's anything I can't stand, it's a smart owl. Narrator (Herschel Bernardi): How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop? (crunch sound effect) Narrator: The world may never know!↩

Idiots of Second Life

2010-04-01T07:21:00.001-07:00

Linden Lab unleashed a months-worth of blog posts in a single day. Among that truckload of information was an update to the Linden Lab Terms of Service (ToS) - which is really just a rephrasing of what already was in there. In the blog post, to help make clear just what the changes were, those changes were summarized in the blog post itself, so one did not have to go through and read the entire thing trying to pick-out the difference between the previous and now current versions.

Except the summary had a suspicious, albeit major omission.

In all the comments regarding the ToS changes, it is that very omission and new policy that has riled a lot of feathers, perhaps rightly so. However, in the end, Linden Lab has every right to force you to agree to their rules. And the most important rules can be summarized as follows:

Rule 1: Linden lab owes you nothing. Zip, zilch, nada.
Rule 2: it is Linden Lab's house and if you don't like the house rules, don't allow the door slap your ass on the way out.

As is typical there is a massive number of users of the Game of {Second} Life whom, because of their entitlement attitudes, actually believe (in their own twisted minds) that Linden Lab actually owes them anything. These are the idiots of Second Life, starting with Stroker Serpentine in my opinion.

So what was the massive omission left out of the summary of ToS changes as described on the official Linden Lab blog?

(Paraphrased): By agreeing to these Terms of Service, you also agree to the Third-Party Viewer (TPV) policy.

Ouch!

Even I didn't expect that one.

To summarize, the TPV basically makes it "illegal" to connect to any of the Second Life grids with a third-party viewer that allows you to circumvent any of Linden Lab's rules, including but not limited to circumventing of the permissions system that allows creators to maintain the "rights" and "license" of their creations. In other words, if the viewer allows you to download or otherwise copy anything, in-world or locally, that you did not create the entirety of, then you are breaking the rules.

Most reasonable people would find this to be a, well reasonable rule. Except for this part:

(Paraphrased): If you create a viewer, you are responsible for it and anyone using your viewer. If you or they break any of our house rules, you and they can be banished to Second Life hell forever and a day you naughty bee-ahch.

If you so much as even use a third-party viewer that is able to break the rules whether you use those abilities or not, and whether you even know if it has those abilities or not, or even if you are a blithering, mindless idiot who doesn't even know what a viewer is, then you also can be banished into Second Life purgatory forever and a day, tough-titty, said the kitty, but the milk tastes good so suck-it-up and drive on.

Or not.

This is a game-changer (read: game-killer) for most if not all third-party viewer developers. In fact, the Imprudence team has already made announcement that they will discontinue development of their viewer where it will be able to connect to Agni (the Second Life grid) and they are weighing their options with regard to continuing development for connection to TPGs (Third-party Grids, such as "OpenSim").

However, can anyone really blame Linden Lab for these updates to the ToS and the TPV policy? Linden Lab owes everyone nothing. In fact, all real life legal tender, a.k.a. "money" only flows one-way: into Linden Lab. Nothing flows out.

Ah, I know what you are thinking, dear reader: "what about the LindeX - Linden Dollar Exchange?" But that is not Linden Lab's money. The Linden Dollar never was a currency, never was worth anything. It is simply a "point" system in order to measure a perceived value of something. It is a simple trading "token". Always has been.

If you are fortunate enough to "level-up" with a truckload of point tokens...er, I mean "Linden Dollars" and decide to "cash-out", you head off to the LindeX. You sell your tokens. I mean Linden Dollars for real dollars.

However, the real dollars you receive are not from Linden Lab. They are from other users looking to buy Linden Dollars. You are simply trading with other Second Life users.

However, because so much trading between SL users for what amounts to Monopoly money for real money goes on, there are a lot of SL users who take SL far too seriously.

So, why the heavy-handed language in the new ToS and TPV?
In a ridiculously-simplified nutshell it boils down to just a couple of events in Second Life history:

The first is when Linden Lab open-sources the Second Life viewer software.
This was good because it got a lot of people looking at that nasty "spaghetti" code and helped to clean it up. A horribly buggy and unstable piece of software matured into a nicely stable and polished piece of software with only a few bugs.

However, this was a bad thing as it also gave access to anyone with the know-how to peek into that code into the inner-workings of how the software worked. Specifically: how objects and textures and scripts and basically everything except the actual management of the toy-token called Linden Dollars were handled.

The fact of the matter is with regard to computers: if you can see it, you can steal it. Now the inner workings of all this stuff is out in the open for anyone to abuse. And abuse they did.

The second problem is when entitlement-attitude-minded people like Stroker Serpentine (whom I believe to be a seriously whiny-assed crybaby idiot) who has too much time and money on his hands goes and initiates a lawsuit against Linden Lab over something they (Linden Lab) have absolutely no control over.

For the remainder, I will use Stroker's name to stand in place for all the dip-shit idiots on the grid who think anyone anywhere with relation to Linden Lab or Second Life owe them anything whatsoever.

So Stroker initiates what he hopes to be a class-action lawsuit against Linden Lab because they "haven't done enough" to curtail the whole "copybotting" phenomenon. It doesn't matter that Linden Lab has no control over this as it is a literal impossibility to prevent - something about how computers and networking actually work - he goes and wets his diapers and threatens and shakes his fists jumping up-and-down like a lunatic 3-year-old anyway. The dip-shit causes Linden Lab to throw-down the gauntlet.

Can anyone blame them?

In other words, since Linden Lab has already placed the Second Life Viewer code into the open-source community they can't actually revoke all that. So they do the next best thing: scare the shit out of anyone developing or even using a viewer that breaks any of Linden Lab's rules while connected to Linden Lab's servers (Second Life grids) into using the "official" Linden Lab-released viewer.

A highly-effective maneuver if you ask me.

I have no doubt that if Mark Kingdon were C.E.O. of Linden Lab at the time the decision was made to open-source the viewer, that decision would have gone the other way (correct me if I'm wrong there, Mark).

Though I always have proclaimed my opinion that Linden Lab are (mostly) not tyrants and are not "out to get" people, I'm not stupid either. Though I have stuck with the official Linden Lab "Snowglobe" viewer, I will do-so doubly now as well.

I have way too much invested to risk the stupid crap. I always have felt the Emerald viewer is a bit bloated with too many useless "features" for my taste and yes, I know, there are many who feel differently - good for them.

So all the riled feathers flying around boil-down to this very thing:
Will the Emerald development team continue the development of the Emerald viewer since they will be responsible not only for how their viewer works, but how any user on the grid uses it?

And the Emerald-using population are in fear not only that the Emerald viewer will go defunct, but that many of it's features will be discontinued as they are now "illegal" on the Second Life grid.

In the end, I support Linden Lab and concur and agree with the ToS changes, right down to the requirement that all users agree to the TPV as well.

The side benefit is this, though: anyone who gets their ass handed to them by the CDS system can now be abuse-reported and likely face a ban from Second Life for using a detected known-to-be-illicit viewer.

Remember this, people: you might be "anonymous", but your viewer isn't!

That would be a "good riddance" for the entire grid as a whole.

Xstreet SL: You Bee-ach, You!

2010-03-29T08:58:00.001-07:00

As a shopper, I love Xstreet SL. However, as a shopper I hate Xstreet SL. On the other hand as a merchant I love Xstreeet SL. But I also hate Xstreet SL for the extra work is causes me.

You can't live with it and you can't live without it. I won't hold my breath for something better to come along.

As a customer:
Xstreet SL is probably the easiest and fastest way to "shop" for anything Second Life. I didn't say it was easy or fast. Rather it is easier and faster than hunt-shopping on the grid in-world. Thus, making it easiest and fastest, but still really sucking the "hind teat" as far as things go.

As a merchant:
The experience of creating and maintaining a listing is the evil incarnate. I must maintain a separate "inventory" box, jump through the most inefficient web design "dashboard" known to man (okay, known to Second Life merchants) and keep all this stuff synchronized. Additionally, the web interface is inefficient and outright a pain-in-the-royal-ass to use with too many damned clicks here and there and page refreshing. Is there any web-tool worse?

As a customer:
Shopping on XSL is hit or miss. Does it cost less in-world than on XSL? Is the XSL "version" up-to-date with the latest script versions? Is this really all this merchant sells or is there a much larger selection in-world?

As a merchant: I have to box everything (extra work if that's not needed in-world); I have to take a lot of pictures of my stuff (extra work if it's not needed in world); I have to wrack my brain to write a creative, convincing sales pitch to put onto XSL (extra work if it's not needed in-world). Effing XSL sucks, but I have to do it because it's not only a sale outlet, it's advertising.

As a customer:
I face a damned double-edge sword with Xstreet SL because I might be paying more for the same thing than if I buy in-world, I might be getting an old version of the same thing in world, I might not be seeing the perfect product I'm looking for because it's not listed on XSL, but it is for sale in-world.

As a merchant:
I will ignore Xstreet SL at my own peril because such a large potential customer-base will shop there or at least conduct their shopping search through there. The extra work is miserable where I must take and edit pictures of every damned product, even though they aren't required in-world (because my products are rezzed for use and perusal); I must write-up something to convince the browser to actually teleport to my showroom or even less: make that purchase right then and there; I have to maintain two inventories of the same stuff.

As a customer:
I love to hate to love that damned Xstreet SL for all the damned garbage I must filter through to even see the stuff I am interested in, then decide if I am paying more than I need, am getting the current version of something and even if a creator has what I really want, but aren't listing it there.

As a merchant:
I love to hate to love that damned Xstreet SL for all the extra hard work I must do explicitly to list my stuff there even through all that work is unnecessary in-world, so it's really easier to list only my older stuff and get to the new stuff when I am bored out of my head and have absolutely nothing better to do.

I love to hate to love you, XSL. You suck hind-teat¹ . Damn you.

"Sucking hind teat" refers to being in a tenuous or unsavory position. It is commonly used during poker games or tournaments. The phrase is based on the understanding that the anterior teats on a sow are considered to be more desirable then the posterior. The hind piglet must face the likelihood of being bumped off when a new piglet approaches, usually wedging between the first and second position. --Wikipedia.org↩

New Version of Copybot Hysteria is Laughable

2010-03-24T08:05:00.001-07:00

Copybot scenario has run rampant without anything to hold it back since mid 2006. The only thing keeping the activity at bay was the technical geeky knowledge one must have to make it work. Then along came the open-source Second Life viewers where all the computer code that explains how things are put together on the grid were unleashed. So, of course the copybot scenario moved from the uber-geek crown far closer into what one might call "mainstream" abilities. It becomes too easy for anyone and everyone to "copybot" anything on the grid.

So the first salvo in fighting back, almost three-and-a-half years later, that has any real meaning in terms of any kind of effectiveness is the "Client Detection System" ( properly: CDS Ban Relay) by Skills Hak.

The system uses discreet and covert methods to determine which Second Life client software (viewer) you are using, then matches that information against a database of known "illicit" viewers; hence the viewers that can be easily used to break the Linden Lab Terms of Service on the Second Life Grid.

Now there are three chapters to the entire copybot hysteria controversies:

The original fear by creators of being "copybotted"
The ridiculously shrill and vehement copybot "vigilantes"
And now the CDS Banhammer against anyone known to have (or had) copybot abilities via the use of an illicit viewer.

Obviously these are highly-charged emotional issues. Creators work hard to create their creations. Often is it a labor-of-love and at other times it is painful, gruelling work and when that work in either case is stolen it is painful enough. But when others actually make a profit from that theft, especially when it is to the detriment of your remaining business, it can be outright soul-killing (emotionally-speaking, of course.)

Here is where things become laughable...

When copybot first hit the scene in 2006 there was wide-spread outright panic. Sim-owners would actually shut everything down, denying access to anyone. Even parcel owners whose retail stores were salt-and-peppered through the grid put-up the "ban" lines and preferred to take zero business for fear of being ripped-off. Misinformation was rampant and half the grid literally shut-down. Then came the scam that a simple chat command could disable the copybot system and the other half of the grid would spam open chat with stupid statements every 10-seconds.

Except for the sheer unnecessary outright panic, this was a genuine concern.

Then came the idiot vigilantes who, by inspection, don't know what it is they are actually looking at. More often than not they see what they think is copybotted items and start Abuse-Reporting people left and right. Spewing vitriol in vigilante groups and raising the mob with torches and pitchforks to overwhelm someone's place, spreading rumors and lies as fact, sometimes ruining someone's business and reputation over false information.

Now it is the flip-side of the coin: The CDS comes along. The first ever tool for creators to even attempt to fight-back against "copybotting" and the vitriol continues. Whenever the CDS system is spoken of in the SLogosphere, the comments section always contains the requisite idiotic replies:

"I use the (name of copybottable viewer) and I don't steal anything. This is stupid and unfair!"
"Just because I use (name of copybottable viewer) doesn't mean I'm a thief!"
"This is stupid. I am boycotting every store that uses the CDS!"
"The CDS is illegal! It illegally scans your hard disk!"
"The CDS steals your personal information! I have a right to PRIVACY! It should be BANNED!!!11!ONE11!!"
"What if I become banned? Where is the list of viewers it won't ban? ZOMG! I'll be banned on the official viewer!!!!!"

Here is why all the above statements are utterly ludicrous:

"I use the (name of copybottable viewer) and I don't steal anything. This is stupid and unfair!" Having the ability to copybot anything also is unfair. The fact of the matter is you can't be trusted. Why? The answer is simple: you actively went through the research and motion to seek-out a copybot-capable viewer, downloaded and installed it and actively choose to use it even though there are many other very good viewers out there. Since you actively chose to go out of your way to obtain that software, the use of its capabilities was your intent, regardless of whether you actually exercised that intent. And if you have chosen not to, you would discontinue using that viewer as the non-illicit viewers are better and more stable. Hence your argument is moot or an outright lie. You simply cannot be trusted.

"Just because I use (name of copybottable viewer) doesn't mean I'm a thief!" Perhaps. However, in that case my use of the CDS system is not meant as a strike against you. I must go with the lowest common denominator and that is the illicit viewer itself. Not because you are using it. But because the unscrupulous thieves are using it. Thus, it automatically becomes "guilt-by-association". If you choose to continue that association then I have no answer for you. You are foolish enough to continue using that viewer so if you get your ass handed to you by that system, by all means do file an appeal to be removed from the grid-wide ban list. Certainly your upstanding citizenship will be taken into consideration and mercy will be poured all-over you in this case.

"This is stupid. I am boycotting every store that uses the CDS!" Wow. This is actually a good thing because you are likely not the kind of "customer" I want. First, based on the previous two arguments and also because unless I advertise that I use CDS (why on earth would I do that?) the only way to know its presence is by getting yourself banned (hence you fall into the groups above) or you're an alt of someone banned or you accidentally bumped into the actual prim (which is hidden). Thus, the only way to know which sims to "boycot" you must either be an illicit viewer user or you run with those who do: guilt by association.

"The CDS is illiegal! It illegally scans your hard disk!" No. It's not illegal. No. It doesn't scan your hard disk drive. If not outright "blessed" by Linden Lab, it is approved by them. The system is totally vetted. As for the whole "scanning" your hard disk drive idea? Pah-leeze. It would mean that something on the grid would have to be scripted to tell your viewer to do that exact thing. Are you really ignorant enough to think Linden Lab would dare put that kind of ability and power into their scripting language? In truth, the only Second Life anything that will (and likely does) scan your hard disk is that illicit viewer you are using that the CDS is designed to detect.

"The CDS steals your personal information! I have a right to PRIVACY! It should be BANNED!!!11!ONE11!!" This is probably the most laughable argument of the bunch. Even if the CDS does track your I. P. (Internet Protocol) address, that is not "private" information in the least. Go to http://whatismyipaddress.com/ to see just how "anonymous" you truly are anywhere on the internet, including Second Life. The only possible way your "privacy" can be protected is to not connect to the internet at all. Good luck trying to connect to the grid with that.

"What if I become banned? Where is the list of viewers it won't ban? ZOMG! I'll be banned on the official viewer!!!!!" The CDS system is vetted and approved by Linden Lab. I know this is hard to believe for a lot of you, but Linden Lab is not out to "get you". They also will not knowingly allow anything that could be out to "get you". There are protections and fail-safes built-into the CDS system. This is why it is "only" 80% effective (as reported) because it will err on the safe-side, creating an environment of zero false-positives. In other words, when it catches an illicit viewer it doesn't make a mistake. If it is unsure, it will go with the safe-side and not ban that user.

In short:

CDS is vetted and approved by Linden Lab, meaning it not only meets ToS requirements, but also is friendly to the Grid system.
CDS will not falsely ban anyone using a legitimate viewer - unless that person is already banned previously on the same or another sim on the grid while actually using an illicit viewer. The system will remember you and if you are banned at one sim that uses CDS, you are now banned from all sims where the CDS is installed. Thus, if you were banned for using an illicit viewer yesterday and login with a "safe" legitimate viewer today: you are still banned unless and until you file an appeal and are removed from the grid-wide ban list.
Privacy and "scanning" is a misnomer with regard to the CDS system. If any of that happens to you it's not the CDS system, it's the viewer you are using. The CDS system is a scripted object. Linden Lab certainly would not allow such abilities in their scripting language as that would open them up to some serious legal action.
CDS is practically invisible. The only way to know one exists on the grid is by divulgement (the parcel owner actually advertises that they use it); by actually seeing the CDS prim object and knowing what it is; or by having your virtual ass handed to you when you encounter a sim using it. The only other way is by word of mouth which doesn't do much for your credibility with regard to your associations. Thus, by proclaiming your "boycot" of sims that use CDS only tell me that you are full of crap and your bark is a magnitude worse than your bite or you are a flat-out lier and thief trying to convince me otherwise. Your boycotting me is probably doing me the favor.

In a nutshell: the CDS system is a good thing for creators and builders. It's the only real defense in almost four years against the scourge of thieves and ne'er-do-wells running rampant across the grid.

It's not about the money

2010-03-22T07:56:00.000-07:00

Since Ari *cough* ranted *cough* about people who complain about LL's services... I thought I would put my two cents in :p

As someone who doesn't own a business in SL, I don't complain about losing money when the grid is down and transactions are borked. But it does irk me sometimes because it means I can't do the things I wanted or planned to do. It's like you planned to have a picnic outside under the trees, but suddenly the skies open and rain begins pouring down, so you have to change plans. Or you wanted to drive out, but you get in the car and discover the car won't start.

I don't see why residents shouldn't feel unhappy when Linden Lab sneezes and the grid goes wonky. I feel unhappy when it rains and I can't go on my picnic, even though that dude up there who controls the weather doesn't owe me anything. I know LL doesn't owe me anything, but they are providing a service, and since they choose to provide this service, I expect them to provide a reliable one.

It's their prerogative if they decide not to worry about reliability, of course. But if they want people to use their service, then reliability has to be emphasised. Because if people find the service unreliable, they become frustrated. When they are frustrated, they will leave.

You see, for most of us, SL is like a hobby, something we do in our spare time... something we do for fun. Ari has said he doesn't rely on SL to provide him an income, and of course I don't either, since I don't have an inworld business. In my case, SL actually bleeds me of money because I don't have a way to get other people's cash to pay off my obligations to Linden Lab, as Ari so nicely put it :p

So why am I still here?

Ari suggested that I'm still here because I believe I'm getting my money's worth: "Based on the real money you spend with Linden Lab, are you getting what you pay for? Obviously you do, else you wouldn't still be in-world," he said rather wickedly. Nice way of boiling things down, but the problem is, that's the wrong argument to use. Hobbies can't be measured in monetary terms. They can't. Because cost is not the issue; the issue is enjoyment.

So if the grid were unstable to the point where residents were unable to get anything done, the frustrations would likely make everyone give up on SL. The thing is, although people complain about downtime and hiccups, it actually isn't a terribly regular occurrence. It occurs frequently enough for people to groan, "The grid is borked again," but it doesn't occur so often that SL residents find it impossible to have any semblance of a normal, enjoyable Second Life. Otherwise, people would have thrown in the towel in frustration long before this. They wouldn't find their hobby worth so much stress and annoyance. Hobbies are supposed to be enjoyable!

Of course, people still complain despite the fact that the grid is much more stable than we generally make it out to be. There doesn't exist a single person on this earth who hasn't complained when things aren't going their way. That's human nature. If the grid had zero downtime, residents would still find something to complain about. Life is like that. *shrugs*

Linden Lab SNAFUs: Where Are the Clowns?

2010-03-19T07:34:00.001-07:00

You know that every time Linden Lab sneezes, the naysayers and crybaby whiners come out of the woodwork, especially the begrudged who like to proclaim they pay Linden Lab umpteen hundreds or thousands of "real life" dollars each month (they don't). The sad thing is they all are clowns, but aren't pretending to be.

Anshe Chung, the Azure Islands, name your big-business-money-maker-here people and anyone who sends Linden Lab hundreds or thousands of so-called "real life" dollars in tier and other fees each month are all full of crock.

(Note: I have never seen any complaint from Anshe Chung company or the Azure Islands people, they are just well-known "big business" names I am throwing out as examples of "big money-makers". This post is about the vocal whiners who comment on blogs and the rest.)

In fact, they (the so-called "money-makers") pay nothing of their own money to Linden Lab. And here's why...

They are getting such a free ride. Their complaints of "losing money" every time the grid hiccups or Linden Lab conjures a new policy or idea might be true - sales could be down - but proclamations that they are "owed" anything for spending so much "real life money" is outright laughable.

I hold my nose and point.

Especially to the loudest idiots like Stroker Serpentine and all those so-called "land barons" who can only bitch and whine about the good things like the move of "adult" content to the walled garden of Zindra or the new Linden Home project and the rest.

I send Linden Lab hundreds of dollars every month, too.

However, unlike all those other "big players" who bitch and whine about it, I am a realist because I clearly recognize that all the real life money I send to Linden Lab every month isn't and never was my money. It's Linden Lab's money to begin with and any money (real life or pretend token) they don't take which sits in my account as a "credit" is money they allow me to keep.

And in it all, none of it ever was my money and never will be - unless I do a full cash-out and Linden Lab chooses - at their discretion and kindness - to deposit to my PayPal account or send me a check.

That's because all the money I play with in Second Life is someone else's money. None of it whatsoever is my money to begin with, meaning all those bitchers who whine to Linden Lab all the time also proclaim to be spending so much of their own money...aren't really spending a dime of their own money.

None of it. Not a real life single penny and not a pretend life single Linden Dollar. It all belongs to someone else. There are a lot of people who use LindeX - the Linden Lab exchange - to spend real money in buying Linden Dollars. Then they spend those Linden Dollars in-world. I, like all other merchants, hope to win their business so they spend it with me and my in-world "company".

I turn around and convert those Linden Dollars those other people gave me, which they purchased with their own money, into a real U.S. Dollar credit. I never owned any of that money up to now and technically, I still don't.

I leave my real dollar credit sitting their because when my tier and other fees are due to Linden Lab they will take what I owe from that credit first - before taking from my real life bank account. Anything left-over is what we all know as profit.

If I request Linden Lab reimburse me that left-over credit then, and only then does any of this become "my" money - which I will most unlikely send back to Linden Lab to pay any of my tier and fee obligations.

Hence: I am not spending a single dime of real life legal tender currency, a.k.a. "money" with or on Linden Lab.

Ever.

So the next time you see some whiner on the official blogs lambasting Linden Lab for whatever reason and they proclaim they "spend hundreds (or thousands) of dollars of "real life" money on Linden Lab" - debunk them. Call them out for the charlatan they are and tell them to first get a clue and second, learn real world business paradigms with regard to accounts payable versus accounts receivable and stop dishing bullshit.

I wasn't in-world yesterday, but I saw through the RSS feeds from the Grid Status page that the Asset Servers where having real issues all day:

[Resolved] Asset Server Error Messages Posted by Status Desk on March 18th, 2010 at 02:20 pm PDT

[Resolved 2:20pm PDT] We have resolved the issues with the asset server. Residents should feel free to resume in-world purchases.

[UPDATE 1:30pm PDT] We continue to work on the asset server issues.

[UPDATE 11:43am PDT] We continue to work on the asset server issues.

[UPDATE 9:42am PDT] Work on the asset server issue is still in progress.

[8:42am PDT] We are aware of a problem affecting some residents when rezzing or deleting items and getting asset server error messages. We also suggest temporarily refraining from inworld purchases until we give the all-clear. We are currently investigating the problem and will post updates here.

Ouch!

For approximately 6.5 hours the Asset Servers were more or less dysfunctional. This means you cannot rez objects from your inventory, pick-up rezzed items from the world, change your clothes and most important: spend any money.

I can only imagine the vitriolic shrill screaming that would be in the comments on those blog entries had Linden Lab allowed comments on that blog!

Then there was some issue with the support portal. Then, after that was this:

[RESOLVED] Logins currently unavailable Posted by Status Desk on March 18th, 2010 at 05:10 pm PDT

[RESOLVED March 18th 5:50pm] Login problems have now returned to normal.

[UPDATE March 18th 5:10pm] There are still some residual problems with logins, we are investigating the issue and are working to resolve it. Please watch here for any new updates.

[POSTED March 18th 3:45pm] Some residents may be experiencing issues attempting to login. We are aware of the issue and are working to resolve it. Please watch here for any new updates.

I do some International business in the middle of the night (Pacific time) but a large part of my business transactions occur during the SL day. So, imagine my surprise when I logged-into my Second Life account page to download daily transactions and the default list (from mid'night last to current time) was blank. The old "No transaction for this period" message.

Wow.

I would have expected something to be "down" as business for the entire grid was dead from 8;30-ish through 2:30-ish, but should have started picking-up around 3:00 P.M. or so (they did) - but then there was the double-whammy of login issues from about 4:00 P.M.-ish to 6:00 P.M.-ish; two hours for a total of eight hours of SNAFU. That really can put a damper in sales.

Though there is no report of any SNAFUs over night on the status page, what's to say there weren't any? The status page is often 15 to 30-minutes behind "real time" on the grid. Is it possible something exploded overnight and it just wasn't posted?

I don't know.

However, in the end it is wise that Linden Lab does not allow comments on the Grid Status pages because the whiners, crybabies and outright idiotic "hate-the-world-just-to-hate-it" knuckleheads would have a field day.

Which is really shameful because Linden Lab owes all of us nothing. And all those big-wig top "money-makers" on the grid who like to bitch about how they "spend thousands of real life dollars" with Linden Lab so therefor Linden Lab owes them something are a complete joke and a farce. Laughable clowns from my perspective.

None of that money was or is theirs to begin with. They are simply passing other people's money up the food chain.

They are conceited, stuck-up, self-centered, entitlement, whiney-assed buffoons.

And I know damned well there are a lot of surname Lindens thinking what I just said, but can't say it because their words would be bastardized into being some kind of an "official" statement or something or other.

As for all the money "lost" yesterday? /me shrugs. It wasn't and still isn't my money to begin with. As long as I am able to earn enough business from other people to use their money to pay my obligations to Linden Lab each month, I'm content.

Simply put: I'm not stupid and foolish enough to consider Second Life as any kind of "income".

link: Second Life Grid Status Reports

art:Joe-Nathan

Let The Sun...er, Shade Shine

2010-03-17T08:18:00.001-07:00

Linden Lab really wants you to use the Second Life "Viewer 2" - a beta version so you will report all that you find wrong with it, also it affords you the opportunity to get used to it. There are many comments and SLogoshpere articles on the merits (good and bad) of Viewer 2 and my own experience is that I like it much more than I dislike it.

As for bugs, the only real bug that bothers me thus-far is that my preferred inventory sorting method (by name, not date, and "system folder" not always at the top) is not "sticky" between sessions. Each logging requires these settings to be reapplied. This was in the original beta version released some time ago. So, in fairness, Linden Lab has just released an updated version. However, the blog post announcing it included a "detailed" list of bug fixes and this bug was not mentioned, so I'll pass on this round.

As for "features" - there are two that really irk me:

Setting properties (including permissions) on multiple items in my inventory. Previously a tabbed widget would appear, each tab representing one of the items. In the new viewer, properties appear in the slide-bar - and only one. So how do I change properties on multiple items in my inventory at the same time without dropping them into a prim and using the "batch" permissions change?
The other thing that irks be is that there is no way to see your grid/region coordinates unless you click the "location" bar at the top of the screen. Region coordinates are those number that tell you where you are: 128, 200, 21 - being on the map: east, north, altitude. The problem is you must click your location bar to see the coordinates. However, as soon as you begin moving again, they disappear. I use those coordinates constantly - most often the altitude, but also the east and north numbers.

I'll wait for the next beta (I often skip a version on most of the software I own anyway). So how do I know Linden Lab really, really wants you to use V2?

Take a simple look at the Linden Lab download page.

If you are logged-in to your Second Life account it's actually more difficult to locate the current release of the official viewer and considerably more difficult to locate the release version of the Snowglobe viewer. However, we are blasted in the face with the "download Viewer 2 beta" adverts on practically every page (even in our dashboards) - everywhere we go. I don't blame Linden Lab for this. Were I in Mr. Kingdon's shoes, I'd decree the same thing.

I rebuilt my computer system with windows XP again, and went to download the current Snowglobe and that is when I really paid attention to the location, navigation and availability changes regarding these downloads.

Side-note: when will Linden Lab get a clue? Why does Linden Lab officially maintain two release viewers? It's not only confusing but seems also to me to be a waste of Linden Lab resources.

Attention Linden Lab: Drop the twin-viewer nonsense. Take the performance code from Snowglobe, inject it into Viewer 2 then drop Snowglobe or vice-versa. Stop forcing us to choose. Get a freakin' clue, will you?

So in this fracas of trying to locate Snowglobe (I was in a hurry as I had nothing installed at the time) - and I knew I didn't want the official current release, nor the Viewer 2 Beta 1 and I'm really not interested in Emerald (a bit bloated with unnecessary features for my own tastes) I decided to go back to my old die-hard: Kirstens Viewer.

Until Snowglobe came along, Kirsten's was by-far the best performing viewer to come along. With the advent of Snowglobe, Linden Lab and Kirsten Cinquetti have been leap-frogging each-other with each new respective version. Kirsten's viewer first noted for it's stunning performance then became even better known for its "shadow-cast" ability.

Apparently there is shadow-casting code built-into the official viewer (and by extension third-party viewers) but that code is not only not officially supported and the use of it is even perhaps discouraged by Linden Lab. In fact, you have to be pretty darned technically-minded and jump through a few hoops to be able to turn it on. At first, Kirsten used this code but has since tweaked and tinkered and now her shadow-casting code is more or less a custom thing.

So I installed Kirsten's current S19 viewer (she already is working on S20, "Viewer 2" code-injection) and as always, the performance is stunning. Is it as fast as Snowglobe? I'm not sure. But it is certainly close enough (except for grid map-rendering).

The wonderful thing is how easy Kirsten makes it to turn the shadows feature on an off. It requires three easily-accessible check-boxes available in the main interface. Your computer will take a performance hit with shadows turned-on, but it's gorgeous and in my own case that hit isn't so heavy as it used to be.

So, with shadows turned-off I get blazing performance. However, as a picture-taker I can quickly and easily switch shadows on, snap away, then turn them off again when I need that performance back (such as when I am sailing and moving across the grid rapidly, especially in prim-heavy mainland areas.)

And the one single sole feature Emerald offers that I do miss: double-clicking to teleport is in the current version of the Kirsten viewer! And, no bloat with useless features I personally really don't care about such as bouncing primtits.

Now, if only Kirsten could set that shadow on/off option to a be one-click toggle (instead of three) - we'll really have something. As for updating S20 with Viewer 2 code: Kirsten, please note my two grievances about V2 above. I don't need or want another hud to tell me my region coordinates and I certainly don't want to dump inventory into a prim to batch-change properties.

Example pix... the first being what most see in SL with standard rendering. The second being the same view with Kirsten's "shadow-casting" turned-on. The only issue other than the slight (for me) performance hit is how shiny objects are treated (note the mariner bell, the lamp on the mast and the compass podium at steerage).

Here is the no-shadows, standard look everyone else sees:

And the same view with shadows turned-on. In both cases sunlight was manually set to "Midday". (Click each image to see the high-resolution version at my Flickr page).

Check out Kirsten's blog (and where you can get her viewer) here.

Home, Sweet Home: Shameless Plug

2010-03-12T08:00:00.001-08:00

It's been a couple weeks since Linden Lab started issuing Linden Homes to premium account holders and that first weekend was a nightmare for many as they "sold-out" rather quickly.

My first first difficulty was in deciding which theme to get. The last time I had actually visited the Linden Homes was way back when first announced and previewed - so I was going off memory with regard to some things. That and all the negative hype by naysayers on the Official blogs:

The lag is horrendous!
They are too close together, like sardines in a can!
There is no privacy!
All the window views are into the homes of others!
Even if the house doesn't count, you can't do anything with only 117 prims!

I thought the "Meadowbrook" ("California-style") homes to be the least visually creative and interesting, but I found they sold-out the fastest and I see why: they are the largest. I decided on this style and it took a lot of clicking and refreshing of the "order" page until I finally got one.

The first thing I noticed when I arrived is all of the above objections, save the prim limits, are total bunk. The house (and build) is quite nice. The window views are considerably better than I expected and no different from a real life view in a similar kind of neighborhood. Not only respectable, but actually pleasant.

Even with my draw distance set to 512 meters, once I allow the time for things to rez, there is practically no lag, save for computer lag (my graphic card trying hard to draw and keep track of all those prims in viewing distance) - I am easily maintaining 24-frames-per-second which is completely acceptable.

And thus, a new home-owner's tour:

The last objection all the whining crybabies threw-out a lot was the 117 prim limit. The simple fact is with some creative building and care these entire homes can be decked-out quite stylishly in every room with prims to spare. And so my shameless plug: six "Linden Home Edition" furniture sets designed from the beginning for the Linden Homes and their prim limits.

All four major rooms: a complete living room, bath room, bed room and kitchen. Menu-driven and animated sit-poses throughout in themed sets. Obviously they will work well in non-Linden homes, but to know that the entire house of furniture only uses between 92 and 103 prims (depending on the theme you choose) is a bonus.

See the sets here on XSL and click the "See it in world" link on the XSL page to see the sets side-by-side in the Zodiac House store. Oh, and my home is open to all visitors!

If you want to see our "Carmine" set (the most difficult as the Meadowbrook homes are so large and thus hard to fill-out) - take the SLURL below to tour my home in Linden Land (Clarabella region) and have yourself a personal tour to see a Linden Home (and the Carmine LH Furniture set) for yourself.

Links at the bottom of this post.

Visit my Linden Home in Clarabella.

Visit XSL to see our Linden Home Edition furniture sets. Oh, and if you have one of the "Fantasy" Elderglen homes, that theme will be available by Saturday after noon.

First "Blessed" Viewers Listed

2010-03-10T13:32:00.000-08:00

I love Kirsten's viewer. It's blazing fast (easily on the same class as Snowglobe) and offers awesome features, especially "shadow-casting". And that function is easy to switch-on, switch-off at will.

The "Kirsten Viewer" is among the first to be officially blessed by Linden Lab.

Congratulations, Kirsten!

Land Ownership and Tiers 201

2010-03-10T09:00:00.000-08:00

How do you move or transfer virtual land without throwing real money away by tiering-up?

I recently jump through some serious hoops wanting to tier-up and discovered that even after four-years on the Second Life (SL) grid I still have much to learn. Among all the things you can do and create in SL, among the most nerve-wracking and apprehension-inducing is land-management. This primarily has to do with the fear of accidentally owing Linden Lab more real life legal tender than you are willing or desire to pay.

The first article in this little series I am presenting is on how to read and use your land-management control panel on your Second Life account page - which you can review here.

In my last post here, I covered the "Land management" area of your SL account page in detail. So now it's time to show you how to save some real money when flipping, transferring, trading or otherwise moving your land holdings around.

A little qualifying here: Private estates and private regions are a completely different monster as far as "land tier" goes, so this information applies strictly to "Linden Mainland" parcels and ownership, which has its well-known drawbacks as compared to estates, but also has many serious benefits over and above estates. I personally choose the latter and thus own twice as many full regions on the mainland as I could private regions in an estate.

To help you better understand the concepts I am about to explain, we will use a few simple scenarios. However, to keep things simple, we will assume the following:

You are a premium account holder.
You own 2048 square meters (M2) of mainland parcel (ignore the tier-free 512 M2 for this exercise - we'll assume you have a Linden Home or something).
You have a nice little retail shop on your existing 2048 M2 parcel that makes enough money that helps you with your current tier, but not enough to cover the next tier level.
You pay the requisite $15 U.S. for the 2048 parcel you have now and even one more square meter will bump you up to the next tier level ($25) per month.

Now, let us get started, shall we?

As is always the case, you find your nice plot of virtual land and decide it suits wonderfully. Over time, for one reason or another, you decide it's time to move. But this causes a problem. How do you transfer to a new parcel, often in another sim entirely, without tiering-up?

The problem is that Linden Lab charges your account tier based on the peak number of square meters you have owned at any single moment. If my tier payment is due on the first of each month and I own 2048 M2, that payment is $15 on the first of each month. So if I pay my $15 on january 1st and purchase another single square meter (impossible on the grid, so for example only) and I then own 2049 M2 - my February bill will become $25 - as I have just "tiered-up". This also is a major waste of money, which we will cover in the next posting about land management on the grid.

Even if I immediately sell that one square meter in the next 60-seconds. The rules state that for that one minute, I owned 2049 M2 - for which the tier falls into the 4096 category and is $25 per month.

So this puts me into a predicament: I already have 2048 M2, which I will call "parcel A" - and I have looked around and I see a nice 2048 M2 in another region where I would like to move to, which I will call "parcel B".

However, all my stuff...my retail store, demonstration items, vendors, home are all set-out on parcel A. I can approach this in a couple of ways:

I can set parcel A for sale and go ahead an purchase Parcel B if I am willing to tier-up to $25 for one month.
I can sell parcel A and not purchase parcel B until after the sale - tiering down to zero (0) dollars per month temporarily until I purchase parcel B.
I can abandon parcel A and purchase Parcel B immediately without tiering up.

Let us look at each of these scenarios in turn...

Scenario one: tiering-up temporarily. I can set parcel A for sale, purchase Parcel B, and get started to setting B up with my store and home. Once that is done I will set a "we've moved" sign and landmark giver to my new store location.

The best way to handle this in a way to get the biggest "bang" for your extra buck is to do so as close as possible to your tier-billing day. If you are billed by Linden Lab for your tier on the 1st of each month, do this on the 2nd. This way you maximize the time you have to get that parcel A sold at a higher price and you can take your sweet time in setting-up parcel B. Set parcel A for sale at as high a price as you think you can get. If it doesn't sell in a week, lower the price a couple L$ per M2. Repeat if it doesn't sell in the second week and so on.

If parcel A doesn't sell by the 25th or 26th of the month (since billing day is the 1st of the following month) - drop the price to a ridiculously low level. If it doesn't sell by the afternoon of the last day in the current billing period: hit the abandon button.

In this scenario you are willing to pay the extra $10 for the month in the hope to make a little something back on the land sale and also to have the time to transfer everything in a more leisurely timeline. If you end-up abandoning parcel A, then think of the extra tier money as the cost for having a full month to move things around.

Scenario two: sell before purchase. This method allows me to move without tiering-up and paying extra money to Linden Lab for the month. However, it poses a couple of real problems I will be concerned with:

If my existing parcel A does not sell quickly, will the new parcel B I want still be available when A finally does sell?
When parcel A sells, all my stuff will be auto-returned to me and end-up in my lost and found folder in coalesced form - I won't know what is what!
I cannot start rebuilding my store and home on parcel B until I actually own it - which will be after parcel A sells.
My store will be gone as soon as parcel A sells and I will not have a store to sell from until I get it rebuilt on parcel B - which could be a rather stressful time as I rush to get the transfer of my store completed!

I certainly do not recommend this method of land transfer unless of course you are simply moving a home or whatever else you have that people aren't going to actually be looking for and throwing money at you for whatever is there. However, if you have a retail store or club or any other "destination" location, this scenario leaves too much outside your control to really be a wise business decision.

The answer, believe it or not, is scenario three!

Linden Lab may not like (or may not even care) what I am about to advise you on here, but it really is the best way to go about this from a money-saving business sense. Before you do anything, create the sign you will post - something to the effect of "We've moved! Click here for a landmark." - that landmark of course goes to the new parcel B you are about to purchase.

Next, go into edit-mode (CTRL-3 or Command-3 on Mac) - be sure to stand in the very middle of your store, select everything. Right-click and choose "More" then "Take a copy". You now have all your stuff, ready to rezz in a single drop.

Be sure your store is on the ground as teleporters may not work after abandoning the parcel. Go into land options and set things as desired. I recommend: allowing scripts, object creation, object entry, teleporting anywhere for everyone. In the objects tab, set autoreturn to about 10-minutes. Test your landmark giver and use the LM it gives you to be sure it works as intended.

Abandon the parcel.

Go to your Land Manager web page on your account to verify you are now tiered-down to $0 (it will not save your change to 0$ if you are not actually tiered-down - it might take a couple minutes for the web site to recognize you have actually done so).

Once verified that you are now tiered-down, go to parcel B and purchase it. Unfortunately the shape of parcel B is likely different from parcel A (which you have just abandoned). Go back into Edit mode (CTRL-3/Command-3) so the edit tools widget is showing. Also be sure in the View menu you have "Show property lines" turned on so you can see your parcel borders.

Remember that copy of all your stuff you took into inventory? Rezz it - when dragging from your inventory, put your mouse pointer at the absolute center of your new parcel. If any of your stuff goes outside your borders, they should stay put as long as you have the whole bundle selected.

Holding the SHIFT key, begin selecting those parts of your stuff that are clearly inside your border so they become unselected, leaving the other stuff outside your border selected.

Now, slide the remaining stuff into your border and again, shift-click to deselect. Continue this until all your stuff is now inside your border. At this point it's just a matter of cleaning-up and rearranging things.

Because parcel A was abandoned, your store and other stuff you left there will remain until a surname Linden comes along to return it all to you, which could be as little as an hour but more often a week or two. This allows people still teleporting into there to continue purchasing from you and more importantly: able to get that forwarding landmark to your new location while you get the new location all set-up over the next couple days.

Why abandon? Because it is a stress-free way to make the move without tiering-up. Additionally, it is unlikely parcel A would have sold very quickly unless your asking price is ridiculously low - in which case, the amount you would have made is most probably considerably less than the extra $10 in tier fee you would have to pay in the tiered-up level.

Consider the loss of a potential land sale to simply be the cost of the move. Sure, this scenario is counter intuitive, but as good business-sense goes: brilliant as you are saving a lot of real money.

Down With Poseballs!

2010-03-03T06:53:00.000-08:00

I am rather afraid that I'm a furniture snob. I refuse to buy furniture with poseballs.

I don't mean menu-driven furniture that rezzes poseballs. I mean furniture with poseballs linked to it. Yes, I'm appalled that in 2010, there are still furniture creators selling sofas dotted with poseballs. Witness this:

This couch and the accompanying loveseat and single seat, ladies and gentleman, is currently retailing on Xstreet for $600L. Do people buy this stuff? I guess I have to conclude that they do, since sellers are still offering this stuff. *shakes head sadly*

When I see something like this, it immediately tells me that this creator is living in his or her own little world and isn't in sync with SL. Poseballs were necessary -- and common -- in the earlier days, but these days most furniture makes use of sit target scripts to embed poses directly into furniture prims without having to resort to poseballs. I do not know how anyone can have been in SL for any length of time and not have noticed this development.

Further, a product like this tells me that this creator is not willing to innovate, or doesn't care about innovation. They don't care about improving themselves, honing their skills, upgrading their products. They are happy to do things the way they always have, because that's what they know and that's what they're familiar with. They don't want to try new things, to experiment, to learn.

And so I find this a truly unforgivable crime, because poseballs on furniture are so ugly. They completely ruin the aesthetics of the piece. You would think a creator, having crafted his product so lovingly and carefully, would want it to look the best that it possibly can. He ought to want to present it in the most flattering light. No, instead he blights the look with ugly poseballs.

But, even if the poseballs are textured invisible and therefore unseen, they take up unnecessary prims. Now, I've been accused of being a "prim Nazi" because I count every single prim. You can't deny, however, that the prims do tend to add up, and if you are on a small parcel, every prim counts. Witness the bench in the ad above: 4 prims (including 2 poseballs), it says. If the creator had taken the trouble to use a sit target script, that bench would only be 2 prims.

All in all, I truly see no reason for furniture to ever require linked poseballs. The minute I set eyes on something like this, I have a negative perception of the creator. Sometimes, as with the bench above, I rue the fact that the creator is so behind the times, because if not for the not-so-minor detail of the poseballs, the product would be lovely and well worth buying. It is such a pity, such a waste.

LLV2 Is Bad News For Open Sim

2010-02-26T10:43:00.001-08:00

Maria Korolov wrote at Hypergrid Business some interesting ideas about the Linden Lab Viewer version 2 (LLV2) and how LL is at the same opportunistic crossroad America Online was with the idea behind owning Netscape. Maria's argument is for Linden Lab allowing multi-grid support in their official viewer.

Linden Lab now has the opportunity to own the relationship with the world’s metaverse travelers by releasing a viewer that can handle multiple grids.

However, I frankly disagree. In fact, LLV2 actually creates more difficulty for all these "open grids" with regard to gaining any real popularity and it's a set-back for them in the relevancy department.

I see a lot of blog posts about all the other grids out there, including on Hypergrid Business blog. A noble effort on all their parts to champion and attempt drumming-up interest in those other grids, even though from where I stand, it appears to be a frivolous effort - but someone has to do it I suppose.

In truth, though Maria's comparison of AOL/Netscape paradigm to LindenLab/V2 is a good one to help the uninitiated understand what she is trying to say and a good summary, it also is an entirely different paradigm.

And here is why Maria and all others thinking like her are wrong...

AOL was a "walled garden" and Second Life (Agni grid) is a "walled garden": I agree 100-percent. However, Netscape (and all browsers) are just "windows" to the Internet - just like the Linden Lab Viewer is a "window" into the Second Life and other grids. Think "world-wide "grid" if you will.) And if each grid were like a web site, the idea would be to "bounce" from grid to grid as easily and cleanly as we do from web site to web site. But the Internet proper (Well, the Worldwide Web any way as it is really only a small part of the Internet) is still segregated. All grids are still "walled gardens". Until now.

Open sim and others like it are *not* the world-wide grid. They are just different "walled gardens". Albeit, what Maria is really speaking on here is in the likes of: AOL connecting to Compuserve, Connecting to Prodigy, connecting to local and national Bulletin-Board-Services...

All a bunch of walled gardens connecting through tunnels to other walled gardens, while the "world-wide-open" is still out there, outside. AOL provided "windows" to that open space outside - and so, AOL is still relevant even to this day. And so now, too does Linden Lab with Viewer 2 and the "Shared Media" feature.

Linden Lab is literally doing exactly what AOL did: Walled garden with "windows" (portals) out to that wild place we call the "rest of the Internet". This solidifies Linden Lab's place in virtual worlds. Period. Now, there is no need (from an individual perspective) for other grids. Who cares? For what reason would I go to any other grid now?

Linden Lab allows windows out to the world-wide-wonder from within its "walled garden" - that's all that needs be done, save creating a window from the outside looking in (browser-based viewer or means of getting in-world.)

Frankly, I see V2 and this Shared Media ability as actually causing the "other grids" as becoming even more irrelevant (in the "public-at-large" perspective) than they are right now, and it is that irrelevancy that they are climbing uphill trying to get away from. The problem with all these other grids is: no one knows about them, they are too difficult to get in and out of (my own preferred viewer does not have the built-in ability - so I must jump through hoops to do it - why bother?) and because of these: there is no one there.

The Second Life paradigm is social in nature. I don't want to go to an open sim grid and feel like I am a cast away all by my lonesome self. Additionally, until there is a strong monetary economy thriving... I am afraid (in my own hypothosis of course) that they will languish slowly and painfully. They won't "die" - but we are still at the very least, a decade or more away before they will become "relevant" to the public at large. Right now they are simply the turf and interest of "techno-geeks".

Linden Lab's V2, in my mind, actually causes a set-back for these other grids with regard to any real "reason" for visiting them. I can now go into "official" Agni grid and stay there - because I have access to the whole world-wide-wild-wonder from my virtual easy-chair.

I have no reason to go anywhere else.

link: Will Second Life be the next Netscape? - Hypergrid Business

[Update - see the comments below as a multi-grid experience I have not had is more clearly explained to me - which renders my comments above about irrelevancy more or less misguided, for which I apologize. As much as I follow blogs and even Hypergrid Business blog specifically, it seems the actual explanation of things as described below simply isn't happening enough. Here I am: four-year veteran of SL, adept at all things grid and viewer and yet, I was not aware of this ability. What about the average user?

The "build it and they will come" routine is a pipe-dream for anyone and "customer education" must be fast and fierce, no matter how "easy" the actual process might be.

Based on the descriptions Maria has provided there is still one glaring problem: if I can teleport from Second Life Agni grid-proper into one of the open-sim grids so easily, how do I discover where to go and learn the teleport "address"?

For instance, I intend to try-out these steps Maria describes below, but how will I know where to go? This is a real problem. Yes, there are web links provided, but the real solution would be a way to provide a directory in-world.

Maria: SLV2 has the new "Media Sharing" feature - even though it's just a cube with one face showing a web page: someone should make a HUD that shows the links you provide.]