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Two Important Updates on 2011 Land Pricing


Nelson Linden

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In February of this year, we shared our 2010 land pricing plan where we discussed pricing and policies for private regions and  addressed grandfathering, transfers, and retail pricing. In the spirit  of giving you as much advance notice as possible about changes that may have an impact on your plans and budgets, here are two important updates on 2011  pricing:

1) All retail private region maintenance, including grandfathered pricing, is expected to continue without increase through Dec. 31, 2011. 
What you pay now, as a retail customer, is what you’ll continue to pay through the end of 2011.

2) We will adjust how education and non-profit advantages are provided, effective Jan. 1, 2011.  
All  education and non-profit private regions of any type, purchased after Dec. 31, 2010, will be invoiced at standard (i.e. non-discounted) pricing.  All currently discounted renewals which occur after Dec. 31, 2010, will be  adjusted to the new price at that time. To continue to provide  entry-level, private spaces to educators just launching their programs,  we will be providing Homestead and Open Space regions to qualifying  organizations without their meeting the retail full-region criterion. Customer Support will be available to answer any questions that you may  have about these changes.

We  hope that these announcements help you effectively plan for the coming  year. And, we’ll continue to update you well in advance of any  additional pricing changes.

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i have no problems with the blogs or YEAH i would move on. I'm sick to read on the SL forum that Inworldz or other grids are better than SL. First of all, this is plainly not true, and after this i think that this is not fair. this is not to say that all of what you folks are saying is wrong, this is not my point and not my call to argue.

What i say is that, and if you read my first post on this blog or thread you can see by yourself that i have my very personal complaints for some LL moves, this doesn't change the fact that LL either have to deal with their budget, and it's neither my call nor yours to dig into that. We can accept or not the agreement and pay or not the bill, and to each of his own.

Last but not least, i did not say that YOU are pissing off anyone, i said, or, if you like, i meant that all this vocal aptitude about opensim grids, expecially if it is said hundreds of times in each thread in which it can be told, is pissing me and many others off. At the end of the day I doubt that it's wise from OS supporters to stress the point too much, at least until OS (and i run my own  in my LAN, so i speak by personal experience) is so far from being a viable alternative. Or more precisely, it could be a viable alternative (but not a FREE one anyway) for many entities involved (that BTW can keep their discount at the same level if renewing befor dec, 31) but not for the mainstream crowd. And, for that matter, OS is a clone of SL anyway, that wouldn't be there if Philip or his buddies didn't come out with SL.

Anyway, as i said, nothing personal, if you want to put it that way feel free.

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The good reason to promote less expensive alternatives like OpenSim is to encourage educational and non-profit organizations to continue developing their projects in virtual worlds rather than giving up completely.

A tremendous amount of work has gone into building the momentum and collaboration that exists in the education and non-profit sector of Second Life.  It is important to do everything we possibly can to keep these projects going.  Any project that drops out is a significant loss.

OpenSim looks like a light at the end of the tunnel.  It looks like hope.  It looks like a reason to hang on.

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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.


Online classes can cost a lot less than classes held in the real world.  You can go to school in a different country, or several different countries at the same time, without leaving your office.  Think of all the taxes you could save if universities could use virtual worlds for education.

Oh, and some of you actually say that your peers and students make the best content. Please, give us all a break.

There can be a pretty big difference between content based on peer reviewed research and content based on popular culture.  Pop culture can be way off the mark with facts.   Pop culture is often flat out fake and false.  A lot of people like fake and false, but there is still value in authenticity.  Even fake and false have to be based on something real to be recognizable as anything.

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again, i don't want to teach anyone what's better for him\her\them. If OpenSim meets your needs then i'm happy that you found a solution that fulfills you. It's ok, it's not an issue to me.

What i criticize and deeply disagree with is the argument that somehow LL do what they do just for fun, or because they are weird. I could even agree many of the criticism that is made about the LL late development, but i can't agree the argument that LL are evil weirdos. What LL built is one of the most brilliant intuitions i ever seen running on a PC. Like it or not - i repeat: like it or not - technically speaking there is no match, exactly like - and i'm aware that many will disagree because for some reason they don't understand the "technically speaking" part of sentences - exactly like, i was saying, there is no match between Viewer 2 and any viewer based on codebase 1. No match at all.

But this is not to say that to prefer a viewer based on codebase 1 is in absolute terms "wrong". "Technically speaking" means literally "technically" hence no emotionally speaking, or what i like or not. I strongly believe that the day people will stop to think that something is right just because they like it, will be the day i will see my personal light at the end of the tunnell. sure it won't happen, but hope is for free. I wish you all the best luck, but for what about me, Opensim is not an option. The day SL goes dark, i will find another hobby.

regards and good luck

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OpenSim may meet the needs of many institutions, or some other grid somewhere in the metaverse.  I neither know nor care greatly, personally.

Linden Lab has a perfect right to run their business as they sit fit, even if it seems to make no sense.

The rest of us general users are just simply helplessly watching as some of the best innovators, providers of content, and ... our friends drift off to other grids.  I feel no one is really concerned about what this means for the rest of us who simply value the contribution of educators, non-profit staff and non-profit volunteers in the SL community.  We attend their events, use gadgets they produce and invite them to our stuff too.  We learn and grow and make a difference in the real world through networking with peace groups, social justice groups, environmentalists.  That's all diminishing or ending.

We are the ones who will be left behind in a place that has had a good piece of its heart torn out.  Will it be a place we will want to stay?  I sincerely doubt it, speaking for myself.

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SL is a ghost world, and opensim is so packed and fun?  Are you referring to the 100 people online and only in one spot?  Good luck, bye.

 

and for someone else who visited the Texas sims, thanks for the report.  A normal person(person not gov't entity) would say my price doubled, and I have 50 empty sims, maybe I should have 25 sims for the same price designed more efficiently for people.

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Mar 4, 2010 ... AUSTIN – University of Texas System regents Wednesday voted to increase tuition at their flagship Austin campus by 5.4 percent next fall...The approved tuition and  mandatory academic fee increases for full-time  resident undergraduate students  at the nine academic institutions  amounted to 3.95 percent...Five academic institution proposals  also included student-initiated  fees – such as fees to fund new student  services and recreational  facilities – which were proposed by the students  themselves and have  been approved through student referenda, thus increasing  the total  costs at those institutions....

So when the University Unions had to find $122,000 in its budget for merit-based pay raises, tough choices had to be made.

"That $122,000 is not a one time number. That will be every year on," said the Unions' executive director....

Options included cutting hours at the Texas Union -- which meant laying  off staff -- or cutting funding to student events or cultural  committees.  Instead, they turned to the informal classes program.

...

 

From 4459/semester plus fees to 4900 in 2 years.  Inflation is still at near 0% as social security is having no increase for 2011.

These are the priorities you people defend?  No wonder so many people alledge SL is some fringe thing, no one in the mainstream would defend defending what is alledged here.

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Hello Ann. Thank you for your question. This was internatinal survey research done by Information Solutions Group for PopCap Games, and reported in the June 11 2008 issue of PRNewswire.

The headline reads: "Disabled Gamers" Comprise 20% of Casual Video Game Audienc


The sub-head reads:
More Than 10% Have Had Casual Games Prescribed or Recommended By A Doctor; Players With Disabilities Play Longer, More Often, And For Different Reasons

They surveyed 13,296 casual game players to collect this fascinating information. Note that no research I know of has directly surveyed the SL population. I'd be happy to learn of such specifically targeted research.

I will share a PDF of the news release with anyone interested in more details, such as the demographics of respondents, the benefits people with disabilities receive, and playing habits and preferences. It's quite fascinatng how this subpopulation differs from and is similar to the population as a  whole.


Gentle Heron

Virtual Ability, Inc.

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Once again, Linden Labs is showing their mixture of increasing short-sightedness, greed, and stupidity.  After the CGs, the TeenSL joining (i.e. add teens to the more expensive economy of main SL where they need to spend more), we have this:  the people who are motivated by their ideals and doing right in the world, being chased out in favor of consumers.

Many of the people I heard who own sims like this, are moving to other virtual worlds, such as 3rd Rock, OpenSim, Inworldz or OpenSIMulator.

Unlike the old days, when SL was the only virtual world of importance, we now have alternatives that are growing in ever-increasing pace, fueled by residents who have gained their experience here.

Linden Labs stated that they want to reduce lag.  Chasing 75% of your residents out of SL would probably work grand.  .

What I find laughable is that the ONLY comment from LL so far is a deletion of a post.  They're not even responding to the blogs anymore, since they appear to have no answers to give.

Second Life.  It had such potential.

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doo wap doo wap! oh yessssss!

here it is another one helping to improve SL.

Second Life. It had such potential. But whiners destroyed it.

Anyway, have a happy alternative. Just remember to close the door when you go. bye bye.

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It is my experience that in SL, the percentage of disabled individuals in SL is actually much, much higher than any normal online "game". It is this very factor that made me completely fall in love with SL. I'm not disabled myself, but I do have much experience with disabilities, which I will not go into here. Of course, I don't have any facts on the actual numbers. Personally tho, an extremely high % of people that I get close to in SL, eventually tell me about their disabilities. I shed a tear everytime I think deeply about how SL affects these people, and I'm extremely proud to be a part of something that does so much for so many.

Chances are, every1 in SL is friends with some1 who has a major disability, they just don't know about it.

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Thank you for that enlightened and well-thought through and eloquently phrased input, Rocker.

We've been helping to improve SL for the 2 years that I have been here.  My commercial exploits are negligible, if any, and we've spent a lot of time, effort and money on helping to make SL a better place.

I'm just getting very tired to see that all the hard work done by us and many others gets frustrated time, time and time again by short-sighted, short-term gain politics propagated by Linden Labs.

So yes...after the umpteenth time, I get cranky.  I'm in SL and, for the time being, I will stay. It's the non-profit and educational sims I know that are *forced* to move by these price increases.

If you had read my post thoroughly, then you would have realized that.

Still, like me, you have the right to place your opinion on this website and I will not take it personally.

Love & Giggles,

 

Bugs

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@Bugs

I'm always happy to see that people can get a joke. You can read my opinions above if you care, and i can't see any reason why you would care, so just a couple of enlightened thoughts just to say.

  1. If you use the term "hard work" in relation to SL, IMHO you are doing it the wrong way or you never carried a cargo of 50Kg concrete sacks up to the fifth floor  (sorry i don't know U.S. measures well enough) on your shoulders. I did it when i was young and i can tell you that THAT was hard work.
  2. Linden Lab. i have a couple of arguments for you to think over: the programmers, techies, managers, and employées of Linden Lab are WORKERS. Eventually, speaking of programmers i see them as colleagues. Your 'alternatives' that reinvented the wheel and use LL code to show it to your staring eyes are taking advantage of the work that has been carried on for years by LL WORKERS. The same workers that allow you to bash at them on THEIR blog, so that who HAS INTEREST in increasing the uncertain popularity of 'alternatives' can jump here and advertise. the same WORKERS that you call greedy and stupid and that if this coward campaign succeeds will loose their job while you will pay the fees to other people that is not out there to pay for the servers you will need. If you forgot that LL is real people with real families that CREATED SL from scratch despite their stupidity, i just invite you to remind this simple fact.
  3. SL is not a RIGHT you have, is a internet based service that you can use or not. If you use it, you agreed a contract, in which there are not statements that you will become the next Rockefeller. You can choose to rent land or not, pay premium membership or not, and you don't need to spend a buck in SL if you don't want. Still they are so greedy. And yes if they are greedy to offer the membership for free is really stupid. Expecially when people enjoy the play and spit in the face of those that make this possible.
  4. LL made mistakes, and they will do mistakes agin and again. well, so what? in my country we say that only who does nothing doesn't make mistakes. But they created Second Life. What about you?
  5. i'm sick of this thread so enough about this. I'm not a LL fanboy - i am rather grown to be called a boy- but i'm a programmer and, for one, i know that is not so  easy as you seem to think. So i'm with LL workers in first place. This is not to be against or to criticize Universities, educational, opensource and no profit - btw i release all my software, even industrial code under GPL - their concerns are  understandable and i hope that the current crysis will be resolved satisfactorily. In the interest of workers, students, teachers, and for those that can live in SL what they can not live in RL. What about the virtual Rockefellers? No comment it's not what i'm after at the moment.

regards

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All right. A short reply then.

 

1. I am fairly puzzled by your 50kg sack reference, since that would seem to suggest that the LL programmers you praise to highly (and rightly so), do not perform hard work, nor do educators, health professionals, and any other folk who do not perform this particular kind of manual labor.

2. I do believe my critizism was aimed at the policy makers who institute policy that will result in shrinking the SL user base, therefore creating less job security for the programmers and other staff employed at Linden Labs.

3. For me, SL is not about making money.  I never ended the month in the plus since the day I arrived.  It is a service I use and which I can reasonably expect to be civil and reasonable adequate.  If not, I do have the right to make my complaints - which LL acknowledges.

4. Making mistakes is part of the game.  So is learning from them.  They started something wonderful which we all helped develop.  That does not exempt them from critisizm if they do make mistakes.  And they started these blogs for that.

5. My brother is also a programmer and he is teaching me, so I know it is not easy at all - and I never claimed it was.  Once again, this point is contradictory since the current policies as stated in the original blog are detrimental to the non-profit and educational sectors and beneficial to the economical forces in SL - that which you call 'the Rockefellers'.

 

Now that we have established that we agree on a great many points, let us end this discussion, since it has no further value.  I do wish you a wonderful Second Life and will strive to keep the experience of others as positive as possible.

Love & Giggles!

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@Doggie

The whole mySQL matter that you carried out is way interesting. I agree on that, and so to say, there are alternative db engines, that implement a non-relational paradigm usally named "NOSQL". For example there is Cassandra engine from Apache Foundation. As far as i know Facebook itself has migrated to the NOSQL paradigm, given it has way better performances if the matter is to handle terabytes of data. But i'm sure that LL sysadmins know about that.

regards

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i agree to end the discussion if i can add that while i thank you for  explaining better your views and that i tend to agree points 2,3,4 and 5, i have to say that point 1 is out of target, given that the meaning of my point was as simple as this: dont take your hobby like a work or you will loose all the fun.

this said,

 

peace and love to you too

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> "These are the priorities you people defend?  No wonder so many people alledge SL is some fringe thing, no one in the mainstream would defend defending what is alledged here."

 

You're proud to be a member of this 'mainstream', ...the mediocrity?  Ok.  hehe  Whatever.

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Doc, i don't know you and i have nothing against you. i want not to argue but to add...mediocrity can be found in any human group, sticking with the 'normal' SL or contribute to other grids doesn't make anyone average or cool or impressive. Actually the most of the friends of mine that have some business (in a large sense) in opensim is rather unimpressive to be honest. Many university professors and phD are nothing but average, and sometimes less than average. there are best selling writers that make billions going after mediocrity.

that should be common sense if you think how it does really work. And nobody thinks of self as an average one. Think it over.

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Rockerduck

And yes  if they are greedy to offer the membership for free is really stupid.  Expecially when people enjoy the play and spit in the face of those that  make this possible.

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> "that should be common sense if you think how it does really work. And nobody thinks of self as an average one. Think it over."

I don't proclaim the 'mainstream' as the metric by which decisions should be made... ever!, so it's not me who is the 'average one'.

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As I read the thoughts of everyone and see our name mentioned I feel the need to add my thoughts as well.    Renaissance Island has been with Linden Labs since 2007.  During that time we have networked with countless of organizations  to name a few: Showtime to bring them in to show the Tudors.....  The Globe Theatre Grand Opening (featured Shakespearean Scholar Dolgoruky Umarov and Builder Charlene Trudeau, who presented two joint programs.......not to mention hundreds of volunteers who spend their own money preparing for events like the re-enactment of Henry VIII's coronation in celebration with his 500th anniversary celebrated around the world....We have teachers who chose to come here with their students and complete their dissertations using facilities like our the Globe Theatre, manor and library (as well as all over Linden's community sims......we promote any sim who gives learning opportunities)....  Colleges that now acknowledge Second Life as a reputable education opportunity and give credits for projects done is SL and include them in their fiscal planning....

 

I have the extreme pleasure of being part of Renaissance Island  which was created by Alliance Library System, who helped GREATLY to raise Linden Lab to a platform of public recognition. They gave free publicity net working with local news organizations, websites, and conferences promoting what Linden Lab created and what Second Life can offer to non profit organizations all the while encouraging the public to "join aboard". They promoted Linden labs and spread their name not only across all of Illinois but from coast to coast and over seas.  Sadly Alliance felt the ultimate government financial cuts and was absorbed into a state system.  These are very hard times for everyone.  Cut backs are hitting not only non profit organizations. Our Country is feeling the effects of the economy crunch. Even through this,  Renaissance Island found another loyal sponsor and continues to see a loyal community that donates and supports to the point of covering its own annual fees and therefore shares support and loyalty to  Linden Lab.  We continue to promote Second Life and Linden Lab as leaders in the education community and continue to call the "all aboard" invite.

 

I can understand that Linden Labs has a margin of profit they need to attain to exist.....  we all do,  but I beg them to please weigh their decisions against what the non profit and  educational communities have given to them and will continue to give to them and their customers.  We do this out of love, passion and loyalty -  not to make a buck.  Please remember that Education is the sustance that many of you Linden employees have had the pleasure of receiving that allows you to hold the position you have today in Linden Lab.  You have the chance of offering hte same opportunity to our future little Lindens who one by one can change BOTH of our worlds.  I beg you, don't force us to the archives!!!!

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