Land

General reply here;  I think changing the tier for educational and non profits; sends a clear message to educators and non profits;  and that message is obviously that LL no longer wishes to support your efforts.  Other grids would be very happy to have all of you; even if LL isn't.

.

Doggie,

> "I can't see a system of monitoring actual use and billing sim owners on a pro-rated system of bandwidth usage or something of that nature, it would be far too involved and complex and have negatives you didn't consider, namely, the more visitors, including unwanetd ones (griefers etc) would run up the cost. In that case a group of griefers could heavily traffic a sim they dislike, with all their buddies knowing they are running up the costs for that sim owner. Conversely it could mean sim owners restricting access across the grid to keep costs down."

 

Me: Well, 'I' can see a system of monitoring actual use, because... that's what S3 does.  And as for griefers, ban them and they're gone.  People should not adjust their lives because of fear.  And as for sim owners restricting access, they can do that already, and do... but! by lowering usage, they do not get a discount, so most don't bother.  Thus, nothing you just said in this paragraph, is salient to anything real?

 

>  "What you mention is similar to the web site or local isp  bandwidth charges if you went over a certain number a month, and if you did you had to pay extra."

 

Me:  Yes, that's why I gave that example... to contrast standard services to what Linden enjoys using the Amazon S3.

 

> "As for what I think the reason might be, tough question doctor, my gut feeling is these half price sims are across the board, with some variances of course- being run by LL at wholesale cost, some will cost more some less, but averaged out over the whole I honestly believe what LL is charging for them is what they actually cost LL (another grid with less overhead would be different of course like any business)"

 

Me: But Linden doesn't have to do blind accounting like that, they have an advantage... 'computers'.  By using computers, and the S3 statistics, they know 'exactly' what the costs are.  Interesting huh?  Thus, even if your supposition is correct, and the discounted price is a no profit situation, you'd think... Linden could start a separate part of their company, a 'nonprofit part', and charge just enough over the wholesale cost to run its operations and continue to support non profits and schools on a grid,... IF... they wanted to?  So I guess it is an emotional issue after all.

 

>  "I feel also that many regular sim owners seeing the 50% discounts have probably expressed some anger or "concern" to LL about that big a difference in what people pay here, since there are far more regular sim owners than non profits in SL, the majority, especially if more vocal, would tend to get notice by the corporate board."

Me: Well, I can see for THESE folks that it is for sure! an emotional issue.  How sad that these folks think that funding for non profits and schools are monolithic.

I can see that everything I said about these brave evangelists working hard to get a representation into SL to begin with, and the fact! that SL is not an typically accepted place to either be, or teach, much less be talked about in the open for fear of being ridiculed... meant nothing, and means nothing to these people too.  The fact that education, world wide will one day take place mostly... that's MOSTLY on line in advanced VR worlds and these people are making that happen... means nothing.  The fact that education itself, is the only hope for mankind, means nothing, and the fact that not all things of value are attached to sales and marketing of products... I'm sure especially means nothing... and your paragraph describing OUR neighbors emotional position of both jealousy and anger over these groups having a discount, shows that... how sad.

 

> "It could be that LL saw potential with all the universities, being able to advertise that they have this one and that one and the other one, all these prestigious universities in SL they could have seen as advertisement worthy to draw people in, after all, if the University of Texas (or whatever University you wish) is here, then every other academic and everyone else should be in here TOO.

Maybe that didn't pan out as well as they hoped or thought it would, we are only assuming number traffic and customer wise these edu's may or may not have brought into SL as paying customers who spend money, we dont know what those numbers are, LL probably does, and maybe those numbers are not as great as people here thought."

Me: I think that means they needed to fire the person responsible for the program and get someone who was much more effective in meeting the actual needs of that marketplace, so that it could track rational assumptions and expectations and grow at a realistic rate?  I don't personally support turning on your clients and proving to them, that THEY failed to meet YOUR bottom line profitability and promotion expectations, when they are doing a pretty miraculous job, based only on their altruistic enthusiasms... but hey!, that's my opinion.  I believe that most people, think altruism is nothing but a ruse to pilfer funds from authentic money making concerns, essentially a liberal socialist conspiracy to take a free ride on other people's backs, and so none of this is very shocking, no, it's more like... disappointing.

.

Linden Lab you have missed an important issue in this post no matter  if you are an educational user or a premium user of this game your performance has decreased significantly over the last 4 years. On a linear scale beginning in 2004 when I joined  I will assign the random value of 0 to 2004. 2005 brought a very good increase to 40 then in 2006 a nice increase to 80 until something happened after the release of ver 6.0 then a massive dip to 35. In the years 09,08,and 09 you rebuilt the performance back to 65 or 70.

During those years you introduced eye candy and physics engines that were supposed to be the cure all.

 

They failed to live up to the promised goals then the network upgrades again another transparent achievement

 

Recently you have again mastered the ability to reduce the game to an almost unplayable level I have never seen such poor resolution times for 256 x 256 textures let alone the massive amounts of 1024 x 1024 you allow to be splattered across the venue. You have in your infinite ability's now created editing errors where an adjustment of the x or y axis makes a nice jump in the z axis try and build with that little bug it is a pita

 

Oh did I mention the time outs waiting for teleporting and search you have reduced the effectiveness of a once useable game to something I visit to pick up and convert my Lindens to real life cash

 

The economy is affected in all of these areas I rarely shop in game but I did the other day, what a travesty no wonder people can not make money here not when you have to wait 5 minutes for vendors to rez needless to say I wont be shopping again soon

 

Now to the relevance of this comment How dare you state that prices will be frozen for another year  with the current state of the game they should be reduced your arrogance is appalling. YES this is a great platform but through you inability to modulate the progression it has turned into a POS

 

I, at one time, maintained 6 premium accounts but because we maintain a store on the mainland ,have reduced to 3 but now I am close to removing all Premium accounts

 

The speel checker is a joke here also very laggy and confused most of the time

 

Oh one more item why do not you go back and fix a few of the basic items "you know" I introduced a bug report in 2005 about default hand and body poses over riding uploaded poses of any priority level.

 

I am really tired of seeing the sculpted nails that I spent many many hours creating hanging in space because you will not introduce a simple switch in the debug menu to turn them off I do not need you pathetic hand anis to make my avatar look good

 

Perhaps as I have said many times before It is time for someone to effectively manage how the code is modified it is a common joke that every time you fix something you break 2 or 3 other things

 

Obviously your programmers have never prepared anything for the FDC or they would be on the street

long ago

Err, Amazon S3 is a glorified file hosting system. Used mostly I believe for hosting viewer downloads.

Well played Linden Lab, only last year you managed to get the entire state of Texas to invest in over 50 sims, and now you make them pay double for it once they have invested all their time and money into Second Life.

.

> "Err, Amazon S3 is a glorified file hosting system. Used mostly I believe for hosting viewer downloads"

 

One of the 176,000 links found with 'Amazon S3 and Second Life 2010':

http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2009/07/Amazon_takes_recruiting_virtual_with_Second_Life_job_fair_50245647.html

Oh. and just for enhanced function here, this is a site that's fairly rich in SL economics:

http://dwellonit.taterunino.net/2010/09/10/second-lifes-second-quarter-economy-metrics-revealed-and-analysed/

Ok, I know I'm going to get blasted for this, but I seriously am disgusted by many of the comments in this blog post. 

Reality Check!

When is the last time any1 ever heard a college or university announce they were lowering their rates. Oh, that is right, NEVER. They all charge more almost every single year, to the point now that rates are completely indefensible. It is nearly impossible for many people to ever pay off their college loans. The only reason many of the kids can even goto these places is solely because of government money. So, basically, all of us pay higher taxes to pay for people to goto these colleges and universities.

It is not the kids that are getting free money, it is the colleges and universities. Not to mention that all you professors take that stolen money. Yes it is stolen because, if we all don't pay it, we goto jail. How much do you professors think you would get paid without this stolen money? Hello, you all make a hell of alot more than 90% of the SL public. Even high school teachers make more than most of us, with less hours and alot more vacation time and benefits.

Same thing happens in SL, they get the deals and all the rest of us pick up the slack. You can bet that educational sims need way more assistance than any1 of our sims. Who pays for that assistance? We, the public, do.

Yet, you all want to sit and whine and cry about some spare change. Booohooo, the educational corporations have to pay their fair share. My heart is bleeding. I was sympathetic at the start, but after reading these blog comments and seeing all the ridiculous crap on the net about it, I've lost all my sympathy. When you stop taking government handouts just to line your pockets, maybe you will get some of your selfrespect back.

Oh, and some of you actually say that your peers and students make the best content. Please, give us all a break. I've seen hundreds of amazing things in SL and none of them were on an educational sim. If you think your people make the best stuff, then prove it in the marketplace, on a level playing field. Do not just make statements that have no actual basis in fact. Plus, if this were the case, why would you need a discount? I easily pay for my sim, usually in a few days.

Don't think I'm some kind of LL fanboy, cause that is practically the complete opposite of who I am. I do love SL tho.

As Barr notes, the Second Life client is served up from Amazon's S3 cloud storage service.

As I said, client here meaning viewer. S3 is for viewer downloads.

Don't mean to be contrary, but you really shouldn't fall for the economic woe myth. I know that's a bit off topic, but SL is projected for a $500M gross in virtual goods this year, and as of a few days ago Phil did say we were still in profit.

These are cost cutting measures to compensate for some rough economic times that many companies are facing and MBA's among you understand it for what it is, as well as an equality pricing standard for all.

User growth is also modest in terms of previous boom years, but increases steadily.

.

Blast.

HoHumm... some humans,

whatcha' gonna do with them?

Oh well...

OMG!  Can you imagine how absolutely cool that would be to have 800 million re-log ins per month??!

WHOA!  We'd be kicking WOW butt bigtime!!

No, that's 800,000 per month... hehe

Doggie if you are interested in seeing a few of the highly detailed UT sims you can contact me in world. Some of them are closed to the public because they regularly hold classes on them. If you contact me in world I will be glad to give you a tour so you can see for yourself what some educators are doing and how much time and money was put into these. I know it is easy to jump to conclusions when you cant see somthing.

Yeah it would Doctor, misprint in the article?   I copied that line verbatim.

There always seems to be around 50,000 logged in at any one time more or less, you never see 2 million logged in at the same time.

.

Hello Gentle,

from what for a source do you have that statement:

 

"Approximately 20% of the total population in Second Life has some form of disability. "

Thanks,

 

Ann

General reply here;  I think changing the tier for educational and non profits; sends a clear message to educators and non profits;  and that message is obviously that LL no longer wishes to support your efforts.  Other grids would be very happy to have all of you; even if LL isn't.

Happy enough to discount their rates by 50% ?

General reply here;  I think changing the tier for educational and non profits; sends a clear message to educators and non profits;  and that message is obviously that LL no longer wishes to support your efforts.  Other grids would be very happy to have all of you; even if LL isn't.

 

OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK DAMN IT!

I THINK THE POINT IS CLEAR RIGHT NOW: THERE ARE OTHER GRIDS OUT THERE WAITING FOR US/THEM/YOU. THANKS FOR THE REMINDER!

Sorry for caps but this is getting really to a grief level.

i would add that I, for one, pay my tier fees - that are charged of an additional 20% due to VAT -  and i bet i have a much lesser budget compared to the last third world University

Guys, put there ten bucks each and you are done, i don't think you are homeless

Well Miss Anneli i myself have a severe disability affecting my bones so i would consider myself as one of those counted in the 20% although my condition is rare affecting around 50,000 in the uk alone but those numbers are unconfirmed, i use sl as a getaway from the constant pain im in and able to do things in SL i cannot do in RL such as being a sub in SL which i cannot do in RL due to mobility constraints SL is more than just a game to me it is a world without physical pain,  myself and my Mistress were going to look into the non profit organisation side of sl to set up a virtual area for promoting the charity we are both members of for my condition in the uk, alas with the land pricing changes this has now had to put on the back burner as we would be funding this personally with the charities consent...i fear this will cause alot of non profit and educational providers to leave SL and leave those that depend on their help and assitance in the dark, SL is basically flaunting the disability laws that are in place in RL by goverments by forcing certain organisations to fall in line with every other business i am sure this would not happen in RL cause the general public would be up in arms about it.

Just my two pence worth on the subject of disabled peeps in sl

I think i've waffled on far to much now *smiles* so im going to poof now

Debbi

so I guess you are the ONLY one who pays your tier fees and has to pay vat also? I bet if you had to pay up front for a whole year like many in here did you would have a diffrent view of things.

and how do you know that i didn't have to? Sorry Kimo, but if you want to argue  my post you will need to understand what i mean before. Nothing personal, of course. I'm all with opensource, no-profit-educational side. But - and as a 20 years experienced professional developer in RL i think i'm entitled to have opinions about software and also about how invoices are calculated - it's up to me to send the invoice to my customers and is up to them to say if it is too high and  ask to some colleague. I call it 'freedom'.

But nobody in my experience comes in my office when i meet a customer and says "Hey there are other developers cheaper out there". Sure there are developers cheaper than me. developers more able than me. But looks like i'm good enough and cheap enough for my customers.

Same pattern here. If SL is not up to your standards feel free to leave but not to piss anyone else off.

thanks

Well Rockerduck if you come in here with your guns blazing full power  and want to argue MY post you will have to understand me as well. I have just as much experince as you  and probably more. I dont cry about who pays more or less for my services or others. Everyone pays what they can afford.  Some have alot of money to spend and some dont it is as simple as that but what does that have to do with anythng? This post is about how LL went and changed the rules AFTER everyone  went and planned and submitted there budgets for the next year. Had they had known before hand this was going to happen they could have adjusted to it but they didnt know and now alot will be falling short of there goals. So yeah..alot can move on and alot can stay....everyones situation and needs are diffrent. I dont come in here to piss everyone off like you seem to imply..I only state the thruth...and YES SL did not meet my so called "standards" like you call it and I moved on to greener pastures but that is a diffrent story and has nothing to do with what this entire post is about. If the blogs "dont meet your standards then feel free to leave but not to piss everyone off" "thanks"