Linden Lab is building a NEW virtual world

[MB Robonaught]

 First of all I would like to commend Linden Labs in the new direction they seem to be taking. I've been in Second Life 6 years now and seen a lot of changes in that time. Some of the changes were not as well thought out as they should have been like when the format was changed to a more new user oriented and less creator oriented set up. I watched the online count drop from 90,000+ to less then 40,000 online during peak periods. This time, however, I can see nothing but good coming out of this new direction. The introduction of mesh objects, new LSL functions, and many other additions to second life have made the Second life experience awesome compared to the day.

 As far as the new SL2 goes, I can't wait! I can't understand why some can't see the advantages of such a venture. I have a rather large business in Second life with a large inventory that I may not be able to transfer to the new version. Personally I say so what? About 90% of those items were made obsolete when mesh was introduced and been the last two years updating anyway. I have all all my creations on my hard drive and though it may be a bit of a pain to convert to a new system, but it pales in comparison to the advantages of a modern well working system.

 Any major change seems to bring out the chicken little mentality in people. When XP replaced Windows 98 people panic thing it was the end. Yet by the time Win7 Replaced XP, those seeing the end of XP thought Win 7 was the end. With Second life it is no different. When sculpty's first came out there were the horrors of them being the end of Second Life and when Mesh came out the same thing. I just wish people would try to look at the advantages before saying the world is ending. Give it a chance.

 To me as a real life programmer, it boggles the mind that the original Second life runs as well as it does and a testament to the engineers behind the scene making it so. From looking at the viewer code and other things Second Life appears to be wrote mostly in a language called C++ which is notorious for handling memory. Most of the problems we experience can be traced back to this like crashes and other performance issues. I gather this is why, among other obvious reasons, why Linden Labs is embarking on this new venture. By starting from scratch and utilizing a modern language and other modern tools most of the problems we face today will be delegated to us old users saying “remember back in the day...”.

 I do have one suggestion/request I would like to submit. There are many of us that own regions on the RC servers and or are real life programmers that really want to help in the advancement of both versions of Second life. How about allowing us to be more a part of the improvement process? Maybe give us tools that gather data on sim performance or other tools that can spot bottle necks and other issues that can be then given to the staff of Linden labs. While creators are the backbone of Second life, programmers in Second Life are a vast untapped resource. Just some thoughts thanks.

[irihapeti]

yes. I find the Directive codified into UK law here:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1999/2083/schedule/2/paragraph/1/made

the provisions you mentioned are contingent on the meaning of unfair. The meanings of unfair are in Annex 1 and 2 of the Directive. They codified in the link above:

I just run thru them and give my reasonings. Can argue them bc is just what I think. So here goes:

(a) dont apply. Nobody dies or get injured on SL
(b) dont apply. LL dont limit the legal rights of anyone to sue them in the event of not providing a service for which the customer has paid
© dont apply. LL dont bill you for a service then reserve the right to determine if you going to get it or not
(d) dont apply. Customer can cancel any time without penalty
(e) dont apply. Dont have to pay anything extra to LL other than what you owe
(f) dont apply. Customer can cancel any time without penalty. LL do have to pay back any monies owed to cancelled accounts. A US Court said so
(g) dont apply. LL cancel accounts when they believe they have serious grounds to do so
(h) dont apply. Customer can cancel any time without penalty. Fixed-term contract customer can just not renew without penalty
(i) dont apply. ToS on the startup page of viewer for new account. Must confirm agreement before viewer will allow login 
(j) dont apply. LL gave a valid reason (which was in the old ToS) when they unilaterally changed to new ToS
(k) dont apply. LL gave a valid reason when they changed the ToS. valid by law anyways
(l) dont apply. Customer can cancel account at any time without penalty
(m) dont apply. LL has a disputes process
(n) dont apply. LL dont have any agents
(o) dont apply. Customer can refuse to pay the bill if get crappy service
(p) dont apply. LL give no guarantees
(q) dont apply. LL dont hinder the customers from suing them in the Courts

 +

eta

you need to look at the Apple ruling. look at what was determined to be unfair. The act of unilaterally changing a ToS/contract is not unfair in itself. The unfair part is in the last 2 sentences/paras you quoted

 

[Gavin Hird]

Well, this paragraph alone makes the TOS  invalid in my view:

“[a] contractual term which has not been individually negotiated shall be regarded as unfair if, contrary to the requirement of good faith, it causes a significant imbalance in the parties' rights and obligations arising under the contract, to the detriment of the consumer”.

The TOS are highly unbalanced, and the change to grant them full rights to your IP falls under the "to the detriment of the consumer"

Obviously this is complicated, but the TOS needs to be cleaned up, and the developer and distribution related stuff needs to go into developer/distribution contracts to get out of the claws of consumer legislation. 

[Drake1 Nightfire]

ENOUGH!!! You both have different opinions, we get it. Stop arguing about it. and change the damn title of your posts so it matches the OPs. I get confused seeing different titles pop for the same thread in my Emails.

[Innula Zenovka]

---

Gavin Hird wrote:

Well, this paragraph alone makes the TOS  invalid in my view:

“[a] contractual term which has not been individually negotiated shall be regarded as unfair 

if, contrary to the requirement of good faith, it causes a significant imbalance in the parties' 

rights and obligations arising under the contract, to the detriment of the consumer”

.

The TOS are highly unbalanced, and the change to grant them full rights to your IP falls under the "to the detriment of the consumer"

Obviously this is complicated, but the TOS needs to be cleaned up, and the developer and distribution related stuff needs to go into developer/distribution contracts to get out of the claws of consumer legislation. 

---

Is someone who voluntarily uploads content to SL in order to sell it via the Marketplace or inworld stores really "a consumer" as far as EU law is concerned?    She might be;  I ask because I do not know.  

What precedents do you rely upon?

[Gavin Hird]

---

Innula Zenovka wrote:

---

Is someone who voluntarily uploads content to SL in order to sell it via the Marketplace or inworld stores really "a consumer" as far as EU law is concerned?    She might be;  I ask because I do not know.  

What precedents do you rely upon?

https://join.secondlife.com/?lang=en-US#0 

Do you see any Business to Business oriented here? :-)

LL s clearly in the Business to Consumer market.

 

 

[Dresden Ceriano]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

No offense to either, but both Phillip and Gwyneth have ideologies that are riddled with contradictions.

---

What gives you the idea that Gwyneth's ideology coincides with Phil's?  All she stated on her blog is that Phil has a clear business model for HF, described it and gave reasons why it might succeed or fail.  Never did she state that she agreed with the ideology of what he was trying to do.

...Dres

[arton Rotaru]

Yeah, this title changing should be prohibited. It's getting annoying indeed.

[Dresden Ceriano]

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Perrie Juran wrote:

 

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Dresden Ceriano wrote:

ETA: I'm also willing to do without animated mesh penises... for a few months at least.

---

 

 

 

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Perhaps I should have used this pic instead...

...Dres

[Gavin Hird]

I would think it is actually better as most modern email clients can thread email messages by subject heading. If you do that you will get this nicely tucked away by itself and you can just delete it without reading. 

Just a friendly hint ;-)

[Mony Lindman]

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Teager wrote:

Ebbe,

While catching up on the last 10 or so pages of posts which happened last night, I've noticed a lot of you saying, in essence, "SL1 won't change; if you don't like it, don't switch." I can understand the reason behind that response. I, too, am getting tired of reading dozens of rude comments by the same handful of naysayers. But, speaking as one of many content creators whose full real life income is earned from Second Life, this response isn't helping to build my confidence. Any way you look at it, the launch of SL2 will divide our user base between two virtual worlds. (Possibly four, depending on launch dates of High Fidelity and the Facebook virtual world project.)

I believe all that I, and several other creators in this thread, want to convey to you and the SL2 dev team is that we need as much backwards compatibility as we can possibly get between the two grids... because, for us,

not

switching is not an option. If we don't move forward to the new grid, we divide our income in half. Even when we do switch, we as creators will be slowed by having to format our products for two different worlds. We won't be able to put out items as quickly as we could. My avatar projects require a detailed rigged mesh, dozens of textures, 100+ animations, sounds, scripts, HUD designs, addons, accessories, and third-party creator tools to be made, as well as extensive bug testing. Each of my avatars takes me an average of 10 months to complete (working full time, because SL is my full time job). By the time I complete my next avatar, SL2 will be in beta. By the time I've finished the one after that, SL2 may be approaching its launch date. Will those 20 months of work still be worthwhile when SL2 launches?

I'm thrilled to see that custom skeletons are something that have appeared on your roadmap; I'm hopeful that this will allow a lot of re-use of older meshes and animations, and I look forward as well to seeing the improvements that can come as a result of that feature. I'm hopeful that SL2 can grow to be a wonderful thing, and I'm eager to see what you come up with. All I ask is that, as you move forward and lay the groundwork for this new world, you don't fall into the trap of "you don't have to switch if you don't want to". Make us WANT to switch. Make it EASY to switch. And put high priority on maintaining as much backwards compatibility with SL1 as you possibly can. Custom armatures will greatly help with reusing meshes and animations. What can you do to reduce the workload of re-writing scripts? How about textured clothing and skins? The idea posted earlier of allowing some sort of method of matching old SL1 content in users' inventories to new SL2 updated content is a good one. Please make the transition as painless as possible. Don't let yourself become dismayed by the panic; find a way to excite us. Be on our side. Because we, the creators who form the backbone of the virtual world, need to be on your side too.

---

They don't have to be "on our side" nor do we have to be "on their side" coz such sides do not exist ! We are in the SAME BOAT , whereby they may be the boat and we may be the passangers but that makes no difference coz.. if we sink , they sink, if they sink , we sink .. its that simple.

This is what they HAVE TO UNDERSTAND, preferably before shooting their own boat (our boat) with heavy torpedos desguised as "anouncements".

 

[Gavin Hird]

---

Innula Zenovka wrote:

---

Is someone who voluntarily uploads content to SL in order to sell it via the Marketplace or inworld stores really "a consumer" as far as EU law is concerned?    She might be;  I ask because I do not know.  

What precedents do you rely upon?

---

 

Here is the definition in the EU directive: 

(b) 'consumer' means any natural person who, in contracts covered by this Directive, is acting for purposes which are outside his trade, business or profession;

I suppose this will cover the bulk for all initial signups, but you might argue that some alts falls outside the definition if they were created to solely run the business side of things. 

Even more reason to get this sorted contractually. 

[Innula Zenovka]

---

Gavin Hird wrote:

---

Innula Zenovka wrote:

---

Is someone who voluntarily uploads content to SL in order to sell it via the Marketplace or inworld stores really "a consumer" as far as EU law is concerned?    She might be;  I ask because I do not know.  

What precedents do you rely upon?

https://join.secondlife.com/?lang=en-US#0 

Do you see any Business to Business oriented here? :-)

LL s clearly in the Business to Consumer market.

 

 

---

You're the expert in EU contract law, not me.    You must have some authorities for what EU law considers a consumer.

[irihapeti]

am not sure how what I said about Ebbe and Rodvik is contradictory to your general position. You have said other times that you strive to make great products to the best of your ability (given the sometimes constraints of  the environment you are doing business in) so that can satisfiy your customers. And from this you can derive the best income/money possible

+

in terms of your philosphical position which seems to be that money is the measure of a mans worth/value

Locke would argue that you are limiting the philosophical position to narrowly. Locke argues that property is intrinsic to man. That money is only one form of property. That a mans thoughts and his freedom to act on those thoughts as he chooses without hindrance are the truest and purest form/measure of property intrinsic to man. That when man is free to exercise/act as he chooses then tangibles (like money, land, possesions) and intangibles (like esteem, prestige, standing) flow from this more freely

To support his philosophical argument Locke posit that a man not free to act as he chooses can still accumulate vast amounts of money, land, possessions if that is all he values. He was refer to vassals when he made that argument. Men of great wealth and prestige who were subservient to a monarch and whose very existence could be obliterated on that monarchs whim or mood swing. Swap Olden Monarch for Modern State and from Locke's philosophical pov then is no dif. And many on the political/philosophical right today agree with this

+

you probably know John Locke and his works which form the foundation of pretty much every strain of libertarianism and every other political/philosophical rightwards thinking ism in the world today

i just put here a link for anyone else who might be interested in him John Locke: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_locke

[Zena Zemlja]

 

---

Chic Aeon wrote:  

And yes, for those of you that do not use the LL viewer it would be good to at least install and try it. LOL. It is pretty painful when you are used to all your powerful bells and whistles. I had to use it for awhile when materials came out. I cringed a lot but made it through.  I predict that the viewer will be a BIG part of the acceptance of the new world.  

---

Agree!

And yes, I tried the original viewer, to find out how some tool I use for my business works there, so I could explain it to a customer who used original viewer. What can I say... I survived... and then I thanked Firestorm on my knees for their viewer. 

---

Chic Aeon wrote:

AND -- I am not sure about something you said earlier about the Z axis. You CAN change that in the Edit Shape menu -- first pane which I think is "body" or something like that. Bottom. It is called Hover. If you are going to USE that shape you need to save it. If you are just taking photos and need your feet to touch the ground, you can simply minimize the window.

LL was very nice and included that in a round about way when the original height changing was broken due to some improvements; I can't remember what exactly broke it. 

---

It was a feature in old phoenix viewer, one could change it in preferences, phoenix tab, avatar. Now that phoenix is gone, the feature is gone too, as Firestorm does not have it. I tried the edit shape option, but it does not do the same with the same effect. Just one of those things one is used to and you miss it when it's gone. My worry is that this will be the case in the new world with a lot of features. 

[arton Rotaru]

Thanks for the friendly hint, it's still annoying though. Not just in this thread, alone, you know.

[Medhue Simoni]

---

Dresden Ceriano wrote:

---

Medhue Simoni wrote:

No offense to either, but both Phillip and Gwyneth have ideologies that are riddled with contradictions.

---

What gives you the idea that Gwyneth's ideology coincides with Phil's?  All she stated on her blog is that Phil has a clear business model for HF, described it and gave reasons why it might succeed or fail.  Never did she state that she agreed with the ideology of what he was trying to do.

...Dres

---

I don't think I was implying that their ideologies coincide, just that both of them are riddled with contradictions.

[Medhue Simoni]

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irihapeti wrote:

in terms of your philosphical position which seems to be that money is the measure of a mans worth/value

Locke would argue that you are limiting the philosophical position to narrowly.

---

I'll just say that I was making a point, not neccessarily to what you were saying, but what is commonly the view of many people that somehow profits are evil. There a vast amount of reasons why profits, in a free market, are beneficial to all.

Of course, if I understand your knowledge of the matter, I likely would not have responded as I did. I was obviously assuming when I had no reason to.

[Dresden Ceriano]

---

Suspiria Finucane wrote:

I was curious if you can say whether the brand Second Life will be on the new product and the old SL would be something like SL classic or SL legacy?

---

While I probably wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire, I must commend you for bringing up something which has been on my mind for days now.

It might serve LL very well to name the new world Second Life and re-brand the one we have now with one of the names which you've suggested.  I believe naming it such would go a long way toward enabling people to accept that, though it may be new and improved, it is actually based on the very same concept as the world which they know and love.

Not only that, but it would quell the fear that the textures and templates which are compatible with the new platform, won't be portable because if EULA issues.  Since most EULAs indicate that such assets are only to be used within Second Life, naming the new world Second Life would automatically legitimize their use in that new world.

Of course, when considering this, one must give thought to the "stigma" which is attached to the name/brand Second Life... but, I seriously doubt that re-branding it would wipe that stigma away, since every time it gets mentioned, it will forever be associated with SL anyway.

Plus, if you ask me, the name Second Life is about as perfect a name for a virtual world as can be.  By comparison, High Fidelity is woefully inferior.

...Dres

[Phoebe Avro]

The viewer will be all and end all, if its not 100% right and LL should not be asking us whats great agout TPV's they should be testing them out!

Put it this way if another company started a new fantastic world next week dont you think LL staff would go look see what they had and check out the viewer if any? so why dont they know whats the alternative viewers offer i would want to know?

one word "arrogance"

[Dresden Ceriano]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

---

Dresden Ceriano wrote:

---

Medhue Simoni wrote:

No offense to either, but both Phillip and Gwyneth have ideologies that are riddled with contradictions.

---

What gives you the idea that Gwyneth's ideology coincides with Phil's?  All she stated on her blog is that Phil has a clear business model for HF, described it and gave reasons why it might succeed or fail.  Never did she state that she agreed with the ideology of what he was trying to do.

...Dres

---

I don't think I was implying that their ideologies coincide, just that both of them are riddled with contradictions.

---

I vaguely remember you implying it in a previous post, though I must admit that I've read so many posts in the last few days that my brain is suffering from information overload and could very well have gotten it wrong.

...Dres

[Zena Zemlja]

---

Perrie Juran wrote:

---

Dresden Ceriano wrote:

Alright Ebbe, I've been reading a whole hell of a lot of what other people have been writing about this (what I consider to be) exciting development and, after careful consideration, have come up with the one thing which would make my migration to this new platform extremely uncomfortable.

Of course, I only speak for myself when I say this, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who would feel this way... I know that you've already said that it's important that we're able to transfer our identity to the new world, but my identity, for me, is more than just my name or friend list or inventory or $L balance.

This is me...

This is what represents me in the virtual world.  This is the image which I've created over the last almost six years by tweaking my shape and carefully choosing elements created by others.  I may not be much of an original content creator, but I assure you that putting this avatar together was definitely an exercise in creativity.

I love my SL home and my SL land; I adore the people on my friend list and I treasure many of the things in my inventory, but none of them compare to the emotional investment in which I've made to my avatar.

I've been to other virtual worlds... Inworldz, Open Sim, Cloud Party, Blue Mars... I just never felt comfortable there for the simple fact that I couldn't look anything like what I thought of as myself.  Could I have gotten over it, had I have given myself a chance to do so?... possibly.  But, I'm more than certain that, should I had been able to enter those new worlds in a form with which I was familiar and emotionally invested, I probably wouldn't have left them as quickly as I did and would have, at least, tried to judge them on thier own merit once I got there, rather than have left them because I simply couldn't connect with my avatar the way I do in SL.  Emotions can be a very powerful motivation.

If you ask me, emotional investment is the very thing that has enabled Linden Lab to keep SL alive for as long as it has.  My suggestion to you would be to capitalize on the emotional investment of your users by pandering to it.

With that in mind, here's my idea... make legacy avatars portable to the new platform from the get go.  That way, it creates the illusion of using one's current SL avatar to explore the new world as their old avatar self.... in which they've got an emotional investment.  Yes, I'm suggesting that you enable the use of the old antiquated avatar base in the new world... yeah, it's ugly... but it's familiar.  And, if your new avatar system is so much better (which I'm sure it will be), I'm certain that people will start adopting it in droves, once they get there and can see the difference.  Why else would mesh body parts be such the rage nowadays?

...Dres

 

---

Very good point.

I'm not sure exactly how long it was after I started that I first customized my Ava, maybe a month or so.  I had been friended / adopted by a small group of who had migrated to SL from Myst Online (Uru).  They gifted me several thousand $L's for the purpose of fixing up my Ava.  I spent the next three days shopping for a shape and skin.  My representation of myself was important to me.

A couple of years later friends started bugging me to "upgrade" my skin.  On my third rez day I was gifted $Ls again for this purpose and the search for a better skin began.  That took me two weeks because I did not want to change my essential appearance.  I finally found a skin that did the trick and I was a very happy camper.

Ebbe, for many of us this is a very big deal.  If I should choose to move to the New World, it would not be with the intent of changing my identity.  And a big part of it is how I look.  I'm sure there will be people who will look at it as a way to start all over.  People do that all the time now, create new accounts from scratch and leave the past behind.  But for me, I have no desire to do this.

---

This actually is one of my concerns too. If the avies will be mesh in sl2, will we be able to customize them ourselves, like we can now with the shapes we get when we register? First thing I did in sl after registration, was editing my shape. I customized it to my rl me, and I never changed it since. Only bought new hair and skin, but my shape is my own creation, it's one of a kind and nobody has a copy, except my own alt. I hope we can do something similar in the new world, and not need to accept some non-editable mesh thirteen-in-a-dozen doll to be us. 

[Dresden Ceriano]

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Phoebe Avro wrote:

The viewer will be all and end all

---

I disagree, I survived for years on the official viewer simply because I was intrigued by SL and it was the only option there was at the time.  Of course, the difference now is that I know how much functionality that TPVs can provide and would surely be disappointed by any less.  But that in itself wouldn't be a deal breaker.

...Dres

[Chic Aeon]

---

---

It was a feature in old phoenix viewer, one could change it in preferences, phoenix tab, avatar. Now that phoenix is gone, the feature is gone too, as Firestorm does not have it. I tried the edit shape option, but it does not do the same with the same effect. Just one of those things one is used to and you miss it when it's gone. My worry is that this will be the case in the new world with a lot of features. 

---

It was in Firestorm long before Phoenix disappeared, but as I say wasn't Firestorm's choice to remove it. The functionality was no longer then when it became broken by some new feature (sorry, I don't remember what at the moment - some FS support folks no doubt do). So HOVER is all we have now in any viewer and it is certainly better than having to rez a pose ball and add your pose etc etc etc, so grateful they gave us that.

 

 

[Love Hastings]

I guess I'll ask again on Tuesday.