Faster cashouts to paypal for those with good long-standing cashout histories PLEASE

[IvanBenjammin]

You should've definitely been told - I was. They opened up a support ticket on my account and explicitly told me my money was being held. So not sure what went wrong, there, but its definitely not common practice to not tell you about it.

[Sassy Romano]

---

MIstahMoose wrote:

It surprisingly is more secure than you think. There is a reason the heartbleed bug wasn't able get inside of linden labs system.

Oh, how dare they. Seeing their family on weekends, shame on them!

---

Either, LL foresaw the vulnerability before everyone else and disabled heartbeat.

Or, they didn't bother to update their OpenSSL to version 1.0.1 and thus did not inherit the vulnerable version when it was widely adopted in March 2012.

I think you'll find it was the latter and security through using old versions by accident isn't generally a good thing!

[Dartagan Shepherd]

---

MIstahMoose wrote:

 

I am just tired of seeing all these complaints tbh, because they don't even have to offer this platform for the public. Nor do they have to allow you to make money here, but hey, lets throw rocks at a company who is in the midst of switching CEO and is trying to please their investors while keepign the community from falling apart. Sounds like a good idea, lets..ya'know, try and tell everyone how crappy linden labs is when we should really be promoting them. Sure, it has some Flaws, but if you look to a virtual world A.K.A. VIDEO GAME (Oh no the cursed words of death and dooooom!) For your #1 RL income then you really can't blame the provider, If you're as skilled as you want to preach, go get an RL freelance job. They'll pay you on time and don't usually come with bugs in their system, just a lot of NDAs and signatures~

 

---

I know that they don't "have" to run a business that makes money from other peoples stuff while making them agree to give away virtually all rights to their content and then handling real funds like amateurs with less professionalism than a local bank in podunk, but that doesn't give me the warm and fuzzies.

After some years of nonsense that doesn't change much I've cut them out as the middleman. Don't need them.

I think you need to step back and ask yourself where their money comes from. And why SL is so special that it doesn't have to be subject to the same expectations from their customers as any other business. They use fake money to get around the restrictions and responsibilities of real money, they offer a ToS that doesn't resemble a contract between parties, they offer no guarantees of any sort, no resolution, prohibit you from even taking a case to court and barely communicate.

It's nice that SL still has fans. I think that expecting them to drop all common sense and be appreciative of a business that doesn't resemble a business for the sake of being a fan rather than a customer of a product with reasonable expectations is a bit much though.

User money, user content, customers-not-residents. As business models go, SL is the leech here. They can afford to pay people in a reasonable period like that bank in podunk. Or like any reseller site.

I was wondering where my old cheerleader uniform went.

 

 

[Perrie Juran]

---

Sassy Romano wrote:

---

MIstahMoose wrote:

It surprisingly is more secure than you think. There is a reason the heartbleed bug wasn't able get inside of linden labs system.

Oh, how dare they. Seeing their family on weekends, shame on them!

---

Either, LL foresaw the vulnerability before everyone else and disabled heartbeat.

Or, they didn't bother to update their OpenSSL to version 1.0.1 and thus did not inherit the vulnerable version when it was widely adopted in March 2012.

I think you'll find it was the latter and

security through using old versions by accident isn't generally a good thing!

---

Soft Linden's replay on this is interesting:

"Yes, the reason the authentication sites were not vulnerable is because they were on old versions of software. Only security fixes were backported, while new features like Heartbeat were not added without a chance to mature. Jumping to the newest version of server software isn't always the best practice. In fact, that practice is the very reason why so many sites were vulnerable. You can read more about this security philosophy here:

https://www.debian.org/security/faq#version

https://www.debian.org/security/faq#oldversion

Apparently the way LL handles these particular types of updates is overall industry standard.

[Sassy Romano]

It's a vicious circle though and if there's a different vulnerability that is fixed in a later version that unknowingly inherits a new time bomb vulnerability as yet undiscovered, which route do you choose?

Most apply security updates rather than not as it's better to patch what is known to be wrong than avoid what might be.

I'm referring to security fixes here, not just new versions because they happen to exist.

In this case, LL didn't avoid heat bleed because they knew it to be insecure, just that they didn't install the latest version. More by chance, they missed this one and were lucky.

[Perrie Juran]

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MIstahMoose wrote:

<snip>

I am just tired of seeing all these complaints tbh, because they don't even have to offer this platform for the public. Nor do they have to allow you to make money here,

</snip>

---

But the fact of the matter is that they do make the Service available.

Certainly they do not guarantee that everything will run flawlessly.  But neither does E Bay nor Amazon nor the hundreds of other E Commerce sites that are out there.

So the question becomes what are the responsibilities and obligations of all these E Commerce sites?

Right now they all operate with almost total impunity.  The only thing holding them to any standard of service is their reputation and the effect a bad reputation would have on them.

I understand that it can get tiresome seeing all these complaints. Sometimes I get tired of seeing them too. But you know, sometimes when complaints hit a company's website it means that something has gone on way too long.

Right now if I understand you correctly you are opening an In World Store.  What will you be thinking if after six weeks of trying to get it fixed the SLURL to your store does not work?  I can point you to a thread on that.  A Club owner who after six weeks was unable to get it fixed.  Person A tells her to contact Person B who tells her to contact Person C and round and round in circles. 

True it was "optional" for her to run a Club here.  She didn't want to, but that combined with some RL circumstances resulted in her having to scale back. 

Now I will agree with you that we have a new Sheriff in town, a new CEO, and that he needs to be given a chance to work.  It is unfortunate that he has inherited some long standing problems.  But inherit them he did and that was his choice.  And they are going to come up on this Forum.  Because where else are people going to talk about them?  Are we supposed to just sit here silently and assume a wait and see attitude and say nothing at all?  I think that is a good and honest question.

 

[Perrie Juran]

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Sassy Romano wrote:

It's a vicious circle though and if there's a different vulnerability that is fixed in a later version that unknowingly inherits a new time bomb vulnerability as yet undiscovered, which route do you choose?

Most apply security updates rather than not as it's better to patch what is known to be wrong than avoid what might be.

I'm referring to security fixes here, not just new versions because they happen to exist.

In this case, LL didn't avoid heat bleed because they knew it to be insecure, just that they didn't install the latest version. More by chance, they missed this one and were lucky.

---

Maybe I am misunderstanding something but if I read correctly they were applying Security Updates, just not upgrading to new versions and for the reasons cited in the linked articles.  And in this particular situation if the practice of not upgrading to new versions had not been the standard operating procedure for many businesses the problem would have been a thousand times more severe. 

Looking through some of the lists of companies who were and weren't affected by this one thing that is noticeable are the names of companies who were not infected because they had not upgraded.  There are many financial institutions who have a much larger stake in being secure.

 

[Medhue Simoni]

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MIstahMoose wrote:

Oh, how dare they. Seeing their family on weekends, shame on them!

---

Seriously! Can you not do both? I do. I live in Detroit, and probably 1/4 the people that work in this area work on Saturdays. Plus, there are lots of way to do things. Not every1 needs to go to work 9 to 5 only from Monday to Friday. I can't even drive anywhere between 3-6pm during the week because so many people aren't creative enough to work outside of those set times. Those same people spend over an hour driving to work because of the traffic. That's 2 hours a day they waste, which is 10 hours every week, and 500 hours a year they waste just because they have to work at those set times. If they had different hours, and work days, they might save a crapload of time in their life and see their family more. I work every single day of the week, 365 days a year. It doesn't bother me 1 bit. I also goto every single 1 of my son's ball games, play golf with him as much as we can, and I drive him to and from school every day. Of course, I love what I do, but every1 should. If you do not, then do something about it.

Like I said, this is 2014, not 1985.

[Medhue Simoni]

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MIstahMoose wrote:

I am just tired of seeing all these complaints tbh, because they don't even have to offer this platform for the public. Nor do they have to allow you to make money here, but hey, lets throw rocks at a company who is in the midst of switching CEO and is trying to please their investors while keepign the community from falling apart.

---

You don't understand business that well do you? Do you even own a sim here? I do! This means that I support LL in the best possible way, by directly giving them money. Not only that, but I help the community as much or more than any1 in this virtual world. What do you do? Complain about complaining? How productive is that?

Let me give you a clue. If a business want to make more money, listening to their customers is usually the way to go. I didn't say do whatever the customer tells you. I said listen to them. If every1 took your view, then we'd all be too afraid to say anything and nothing would ever get better, as LL admittedly doesn't even use their own product.

[LillyBeth Filth]

How arrogant is that? To ask that they favour people who make the most money and put their needs first ?

If someone cashes out $10 a month it should be treat exactly the same as someone who cashes out $1000 a month. 

From what I can gather, they are currently dealing with the whole TAX form demand in stages. They slapped that on my out of the blue 2 days before my Paypal should have had the cash.

But since I completed those forms and before that, it has always been 5 working days give or take one or two payments which I had to chase.

I have no idea why they leave it for 5 working days but you can't compare it to websites like Contentparadise.com or Turbosquid.com that pay their merchants on a set date every month because there are thousands of people all selling money on Lindex every day of the month and then requesting payouts every day of the month,  so that has to be time consuming.

They don't just have one deadline to aim for, like a specific date in a month, they are dealing with a constant stream of cash out demands day in day out.

That's a full time small department office in itself. 

As for week-ends. Yea, I find it weird that any website or e-commerce company shuts at week-ends when sales and transactions are occuring 7 days a week.

I would never complain about Second Life or Linden Labs. Without them, none of us would have the luxury of working from home doing something we love AND getting a financial return.

Never bite the hand that feeds you  

 

 

 

[LillyBeth Filth]

I will rephrase that last line.

I am careful NOT to piss LL off because I am aware they could at any time shut my account down and there goes a big part of my income.

If it wasn't for LL and SL I would never be in the position I am today (came off sickness benefits 7 yrs ago) 

So I guess what I am saying is, I take the rough with the smooth and kick off directly if i need to but ranting in their own forums is akin to crapping on their doorstep. 

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LillyBeth Filth wrote:

They are currently dealing with the whole TAX form demand in stages. They slapped that on my out of the blue 2 days before my Paypal should have had the cash.

But since I completed those forms and before that, it has always been 5 working days give or take one or two payments which I had to chase.

I have no idea why they leave it for 5 working days but you can't compare it to websites like Contentparadise.com or Turbosquid.com that pay their merchants on a set date every month because there are thousands of people all selling money on Lindex every day of the month and then requesting payouts every day of the month,  so that has to be time consuming.

They don't just have one deadline to aim for, like a specific date in a month, they are dealing with a constant stream of cash out demands day in day out.

That's a full time small department office in itself. 

As for week-ends. Yea, I find it weird that any website or e-commerce company shuts at week-ends when sales and transactions are occuring 7 days a week.

I would never complain about Second Life or Linden Labs. Without them, none of us would have the luxury of working from home doing something we love AND getting a financial return.

Never bite the hand that feeds you

 

 

---

 

[Sassy Romano]

Never bite the hand that feeds you should be a reciprocal arrangement...

 

Last I checked, LL get paid for providing the service.

[Medhue Simoni]

Expand LillyBeth!

Today, I'm not even sure that SL makes up 1/4 of my income now. I get income from about 8 sources today, besides the big contracts that I get offed on occasion. LL is competing with those other platform for my time, and losing, bigtime. I really have no idea why I keep paying for my sim here. It is probably because I still love SL, the people I know here, and my customers. I'm continuously frustrated by LL's actions and the work they put out. I increasingly do not see a future here. I want them to shape up. I want them to make SL what it could be. They don't feed me at all. The money I get from SL represents value that I am giving to LL. That money that people pay me, and the products they get help SL, as much or equally to what I get from them. It's a 2 way street, and I will never bite my tongue like a servant would, as I'm not their servant. I'm their customer, that can bring more to them than any employee they could ever hire.

[MIstahMoose]

Just by your replies you seem to hold yourself of too high esteem. You can bring more to them than anyone they can hire? What do you bring? Do you code their program? Do you setup their servers? Do you know about business? Do you know how difficult it is to listen to a community when you have investors breathing down your back? Oh who would have known business is profit oriented.. I think I understand now that you have clarified you live in Detroit. Must be rough, I'd be desperate for money too if I didn't have an RL job. #ohburn

Speaking back to your reply on why they don't work. WHO THE HELL WANTS TO WORK ALL THE TIME. Especially with an extremely demanding community? Would you want to be on call during your weekends? Your days off? That's stupid. People need a break or they'll suffer from burnout. Get off your high horse. There's plenty of people who do what you do for the community. You'll be replaced. And not missed.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

What are you on about? Content creation and specifically CG work is brought down to pennies here in SL relatively speaking. It's independent work. LL provides the framework and the people. I could say they deliver the buying power here in their walled garden although they do that horribly in some cases (oversold advertising on the marketplace for example).

LL's entire business model is built around content of their customer. Aside from land, the rest of their model is built on free-play mechanics designed to leech money from every area of the service from sales and re-sale of the funny money a bunch of sinks designed to keep most of the money people paid for with real dollars, etc.

In the real world there are reasonable contracts, consumer protection and many things  we take for granted that simply  don't exist here in SL because their currency games and ToS that skirts around many requirements of RL business.

Difficult to listen to the community ... what? Every business has a "community" and they're called customers. I think you may be drinking the Silicon Valley startup Kool-Aid. Every business must listen to its customers, and when they don't as in the case of LL, it declines slowly over time.

If you don't have the same expectations from LL as a merchant that you would with any other reseller as an independent contractor then you've veered from reality.

As for those investors ... Phil Rosedale stated years ago that the investment was paid off ... there are no investors to pay back, there is only a board that collects profit from SL and has  for many years.

They  can afford to run a better service without breaking the bank and they might stop declining when they realize how to treat their merchants as professionals and not residents.

[Medhue Simoni]

I bring them customers, or at least I did. Today, beyond my videos, I won't advice corporations, that contract me, to do anything in SL. There was a time that I did. We, the customers do all their advertising, and the more they piss us off, the less advertising we'll do for free. Employees are easily replacable, customers that advertise for free, are not.

Personally, I'm on call, all day, every day, even when on vacation, and I've been doing this for 8 years. I don't know what your problem is, but I can do multiple things at the same time. It doesn't bother me 1 bit. There are times that I'm contracted by multiple companies all at the same time, and we are all on skype updating each other on the progress of things. I love it. I live for it, and my son. Getting burnt out is not part of my thought process. This is what you do when you run your own business. The people at the Lab have cushy jobs, and get paid very well for only an 8 hour day. I didn't say they had to work all the time. You inserted that so that you can rant about stuff I never said. I implied that LL's management should organize the work schedules and employees in a way that doesn't leave the corporation dormant on weekends. Companies do this all the fricken time, but apparently not in silicon valley, where they are on their high horse.

If there were "plenty of people" then it would be kind of hard for me to make a good living. The fact that I do, and fairly well, says I'm needed. This is what the market and economics teaches you. If you aren't making money, then you need to rethink your situation.

[MIstahMoose]

---

Dartagan Shepherd wrote:

-snip1-

 

LL's entire business model is built around content of their customer. Aside from land, the rest of their model is built on free-play mechanics designed to leech money from every area of the service from sales and re-sale of the funny money a bunch of sinks designed to keep most of the money people paid for with real dollars, etc.

-snip1-

-snip2-

As for those investors ... Phil Rosedale stated years ago that the investment was paid off ... there are no investors to pay back, there is only a board that collects profit from SL and has  for many years.

They  can afford to run a better service without breaking the bank and they might stop declining when they realize how to treat their merchants as professionals and not residents.

-snip2-

---

@snip1 ~ Its as if everyone thinks Linden labs doesn't do anything but Secondlife. Not like they are working on Desura, or other business expeditions.

@snip2 ~ Yes and if the board is not pleased what happens? They each take out their share of linden labs and causes it to fall apart due to lack of funds, sounds like they have something invested in LL to me.

 

 

---

Medhue Simoni wrote:

I bring them customers, or at least I did. Today, beyond my videos, I won't advice corporations, that contract me, to do anything in SL. There was a time that I did. We, the customers do all their advertising, and the more they piss us off, the less advertising we'll do for free. Employees are easily replacable, customers that advertise for free, are not.

Personally, I'm on call, all day, every day, even when on vacation, and I've been doing this for 8 years. I don't know what your problem is, but I can do multiple things at the same time. It doesn't bother me 1 bit. There are times that I'm contracted by multiple companies all at the same time, and we are all on skype updating each other on the progress of things. I love it. I live for it, and my son. Getting burnt out is not part of my thought process. This is what you do when you run your own business. The people at the Lab have cushy jobs, and get paid very well for only an 8 hour day. I didn't say they had to work all the time. You inserted that so that you can rant about stuff I never said. I implied that LL's management should organize the work schedules and employees in a way that doesn't leave the corporation dormant on weekends. Companies do this all the fricken time, but apparently not in silicon valley, where they are on their high horse.

-snip-

If there were "plenty of people" then it would be kind of hard for me to make a good living. The fact that I do, and fairly well, says I'm needed. This is what the market and economics teaches you. If you aren't making money, then you need to rethink your situation.

---

If you're so delightfully good at what you do, which I am going to assume is animations, Why not go work for pixar Get a cushy job with a luxury workspace. I feel like you might be the one on your high horse here. Or maybe just the jealous horse? Could you not land a job in silicon valley? Are you jealous they get paid more than you for working less?  And to having to work more when you own your own business, this is true to a point. Though are you the ONLY person working in this business? I fear that would be freelancing and not actually a business, rather just selling a skill. The beauty of this is that you have the power to pick your own hours and work, in which you seem to be neglecting everything except work. Take a walk in the park, calm down some, and maybe enjoy more time with your son? I know when I grew up I hated my dad being on call 24/7, Your son might hate it too and just never tell you. "Hey dad want to go play some ball" "Sure son let me get my -ring ring - JK LOL gotta work"

Tsk tsk tsk

[Dartagan Shepherd]

"@snip1 ~ Its as if everyone thinks Linden labs doesn't do anything but Secondlife. Not like they are working on Desura, or other business expeditions."

Desura and friends were recently acquired and probably aren't in profit yet. Again, paid for with the profits of the main SL product, not with "investor" money.

Some were not successful and were recently cut (tried to tell them dusting off Interactive Fiction from the 80's was as much of a dud now as back then)..

Blocksworld is apparently profitable according to the new CEO, Desura is iffy, the others such as Patterns are probably not in profit at all. The jury is still out with LL on some of those products.

 

"@snip2 ~ Yes and if the board is not pleased what happens? They each take out their share of linden labs and causes it to fall apart due to lack of funds, sounds like they have something invested in LL to me."

I don't know what that means. As I said, investors were paid off years ago. Other products were not investments, they were expenditures.

 

[Medhue Simoni]

As I said, I'm with my son all the time. No, I'm not working all the time, I'm just on call all the time. I can discuss something while I'm on the golf course with my son, if I need to.

There are 4 reasons I won't apply for a job in silicon valley. #1 is that my son's mother lives here. #2 I'd need to learn Maya more, which I do use, but I love Blender much more. #3 I love Michigan, but not the cold months. #4 I think game development is expanding at a rate that gives freelancers more control over their life, especially with the flood of Unity developers today. It's also worth noting that I turn down more contract jobs than I take on.

I actually looked up animations jobs in silicon valley this year. Every single major game companies had numerous job openings for animators. It was seriously the most abundant position needed in the industry. The only game company that I would want to work for, is Ubisoft. They are miles above the rest. After seeing the WatchDogs preview, I might learn Maya just so I can apply for a job there. I'll animate rocks, if I have to.

[Rya Nitely]

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LillyBeth Filth wrote:

 

I would never complain about Second Life or Linden Labs. Without them, none of us would have the luxury of working from home doing something we love AND getting a financial return.

Never bite the hand that feeds you

 

 

 

---

I get annoyed sometimes with payouts and this and that, but generally it's minor irritations - nothing when I compare it to what I've gained out of SL over the years, and imagine what I would do without it.

For me, I'll go with your first reaction.

[Spica Inventor]

If the 'goodies' wheren't all 'stuck' in SL, then SL would actually have real competition in the present sense. That would require them to do what the customers want, which would be more profitable for everyone involved in the long run, and then we could stop criticizing L.L. and have a nice Kumbaya. I'm affraid for that to become a reality, an antitrust lawsuit would have to carried out. Something that governments these days are very loathe to do. Particularly in the virtual world.

[IvanBenjammin]

Wow, this thread got hostile.

Reposting from another forum where I asked the reason for the 5 day waiting period:

* One of the founders of PayPal (Pierre Omidyar) was an original investor in Second Life. Linden Lab got a very good deal - $1 flat rate to cash out, which is what we residents get charged, but they get a float on the money for 5 days. Not sure if Linden Lab or PayPal gets interest on the float, but someone does.

* The delayed cash out is one of the anti-fraud and money laundering methods. Otherwise someone could buy lots of L$ on a stolen card, send it to an accomplice or alt, and cash it out before the card-holder notices. There are other limits on charging, cash outs, and L$ transfers (I know, because I hit them when I was a Lindex trader), the 5 day delay is just one of them.

So its not that they can't do it faster, but that they have a deal with paypal.

Original Post

[Perrie Juran]

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IvanBenjammin wrote:

Wow, this thread got hostile.

Reposting from another forum where I asked the reason for the 5 day waiting period:

 

* One of the founders of PayPal (Pierre Omidyar) was an original investor in Second Life. Linden Lab got a very good deal - $1 flat rate to cash out, which is what we residents get charged, but they get a float on the money for 5 days. Not sure if Linden Lab or PayPal gets interest on the float, but someone does.

 

* The delayed cash out is one of the anti-fraud and money laundering methods. Otherwise someone could buy lots of L$ on a stolen card, send it to an accomplice or alt, and cash it out before the card-holder notices. There are other limits on charging, cash outs, and L$ transfers (I know, because I hit them when I was a Lindex trader), the 5 day delay is just one of them.

So its not that they can't do it faster, but that they have a deal with paypal.

Original Post

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I hadn't thought about the Funds Availabilty Act and how this might cypher into this either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expedited_Funds_Availability_Act

I know when I look at my bank accounts online there are two columns:  Account Balance and Funds Available.  It's not unusual for the funds available to be lower than the Balance.