Zalificent Corvinus

And THAT is why they didn't add any, because they HATE the people that use their viewer. If nobody used the Fail-Viewer, they wouldn't have to work so hard doing constant hotfix patches on it. *walks off whistling innocently*

There's a real estate company here in the UK that specialises in commercial property. Some years back, they had a £500 million portfolio of property, and ZERO cash. "Book Value" £500 million. So, they SOLD £300 million worth of property to a bank, THEN leased BACK the property they sold, incurring substantial rent/lease payments. Then they claimed that they owned 200 millions worth, controlled 300 millions worth, AND had 300 million in cash, and that therefore their "Book Value" was now £800 million, a 60% increase which raised share prices substantially, and then the board voted themselves big fat "performance related" pay bonuses. By REAL WORLD accounting, they sold off 60% of their assets because they were broke, then wasted a big chunk of that renting back what they sold, and their new "book value" was just smoke and mirrors and snake oil.

The stereotyping iss coming from the Positiivity Cultists... "But... But... Fake Money Crypto-Crap Enablers Inc of Singapore will allow those POOR people in 'Under-Banked' Africa to finally send money to SSL for a Pwemium sub, and a belli house!" These people talk about Africa as if they don't have banks there, or connections to Western Banking networks, and only St. Thunes can save the planet!. Never occurred to them that places like Kenya have perfectly good banks, and perfectly good access to international banking systems, and credit cards for those who can afford them. No, they sseem to think some poor African, is DYING to log into SSL with their whyPhone, but can't because there's no mobile app, and without St. Thunes, no way to get their money out of Africa. Reality is, that St. Thunes, has NOTHING to do with access to 3rd World markets, NOTHING. It's strictly a B2B enabler, for shifting crypto from Tax Evasion Havens to the world banking system and back. The only buyers I could imagine for SL are either somebody nut with a lot of pocket change who has secretly enjoyed SL for a decade or more, and wants to own it so it wont close down,. Or. Some failed "metaverse" rival, who'd want to close SL, with a "preferential migrant" package for the active users, in the hopes that transplanting the SL user base will save their multi billion $ fiasco, for a cost of a few hundred million in buyout fees. Do they? Traditionally, working for LL seems to have been a "dead end" for many, nobody wants you after you worked here. Very possible. But we're not talking about the employees here, but the OWNERS. If SL gets sold off for a quick buck by the OWNERS to people who will shut it down and break it up for scrap, the employees lose out even more than we do. Hahahahaha. Most places seem to be "more cashless" than the USA. Here in the UK, pretty much every store has cashless payment options, even the "food trucks" take cashless payment by credit/debit cards or smartphone apps. Indeed the whole banking situation in places like Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, etc., is why I laugh so hard at the "positivity Cult" claptrap about how the Blessed St. Thunes of Crypto-Crap Transer will SAVE those POOR people from not being able to spend $99 on a "Pwemium Subscwiption" like Califorrnians do. The poster of that nonsense comes across as a paid Thunes Shill, who actually thinks 95% of SecondLifers live in California.

The Takeover Triumvirate is headed by a guy who specialises in "Takeover, repaint, slice up and sell". The company got rid of it's high profile Tech and Marketing VP's. The "tech improvements" we've seen have all been a bit "one guy working half a day a week on the project" with the other 4.5 days spent on general emergency hotfix patching everything else. NO "strategic investments in technology" at all. All of this suggests that the goal is to make SL more "sellable" so it can be offloaded as well, like Tilla, and Sansar, so the takeover triumvirate can move on to new targets. Absolutely! Obviously those Masai Warriors living in traditional villages in Kenya, who don't have electricity, cell phone towers, or optical glass internet cables, will soon all be logging in on their brand new Awful Mac whyPhones to sign over 3 months wages for a Premium subscription, and claim one of the "Little Boxes made of Ticky-Tacky that all look just the same" in the Bellicosian Privacy-Haters Zone. How could ANYONE doubt the "inclusive vision" of people who assume everyone has access to fancy modern tech, with a cell phone tower behind every elephant, and dozens of miles of glass cable running across the veldt to a village of 40 people.

My belief is they are more likely to spend the cash on paying off some of the leveraged buyout loan, and share holder dividends. An SL lumbered with buyout debt is harder to re-sell than one that's clear of debt, and would fetch a better price. Here we go again with the "vast untapped new market" that doesn't actually exist nonsense again. What a load of Bollocks. Thune's is a B2B network, they specialise in connecting fake money crypto-cap not-banks in Tax-Avoidance Havens to real banks in the civilised world. The don't do "customer facing" or "payment processing". The Third World Countries, where people earn a $ a day, paid in cash you mean.. Heads up, people who earn a $ a day not only have limited access to credit cards, and paypal, but also have limited access to PC's capable of RUNNING SL at all. Awful Mac whyLaps and whyPads are not common accessories in economically deprived "unbanked" areas. "A VAST untapped new market of people who can't PLAY SecondLife because they don't own and can't afford to buy the hardware!" is no new market at all.

It has a TUNOVER of over $500,000,000, apparently, but that is NOT the same as "makes", that's before they pay employee wages for LL and Tilla, the bill from AWS for the servers, the bill from Akami for the CDN, the rent/mortgage on the HQ, the repayments on the leveraged buyout loan, and of course, the T. A. X. ( spelt out rather than said because Muricans are severely allergic to the word ) paid to the IRS. That's why you'll hear "turn over of 500 mil" AND on other sites "makes [whatever] mil".

And THIS is why LL's Livechat support is basically useless.

Imagine you ride the bus to work every day. The bus company has a monopoly on the route. The bus is always dirty, do you complain? The bus is la always late, do you complain? Today the driver is drunk, and has forgotten his glasses! Do you complain, and ask that he stop the bus before he crashes it and kills all the passengers? Or do you just sit there as the dirty, late bus swerves all over the damn road, singing the praises of the people who DIDN'T DO THEIR JOBS PROPERLY? Only by people who LIKE riding on dirty, late buses driven by almost-blind drunks while singing the praises of people who don't deserve any..

If outsourcing billing is so beneficial to LL, why did they choose option 2.C, instead of 2.B back when? Why form a subsidiary instead of just outsourcing. They deliberately decided to NOT take your advice, back then. Why use an owned subsidiary rather than a 3d party outsource? Because your owned subsidiary basically doesn't charge you big bucks to use their service, as it's profit margin is YOUR profit margin. Outsourcing to a 3rd party will usually be more expensive than outsourcing to an owned subsidiary. With a subsidiary, you pay their operating costs. With a 3rd party you pay their operating costs, AND their profit margin, AND run the risk they will scr*w you over in any number of ways.

It's not that whyPhone Wastrels wont pay $1.99 for 5 mins of "fun", it's that they will get bored and sod off when they discover they have to mess around for an hour or 4 before they get that f mins of "fun". Once they have paid their $1.99, they expect that 5 mins of "fun" to happen right there and then, that's where SL will fail to hold their attention, and why we won't see "a vast untapped new market" of whyPhone users who want instant fun on demand. The whyPhones wont wait long enough to get that far, hell, most will give up after 15-20 mins in disgust, staring at the hud for the noob island Sux-Ra suburban jogger-mom fail--atars, exclaiming loudly that they want to "PLAY the game" not spend "ages" trying to make an avatar. And existing SecondLifers will just play on their desktops and laptops, which will for the most part be far superior to the phone app. And yet, so far on this Forum, the MAJORITY of people saying they are looking forward to the mobile app, say that what you call "silly and reductive" is in fact, what they want it for.

No "logical gymnastics" required, since your statement is just a "LL can do no wrong and everything is just fine!" spam post. Here we go, ready? 1. LL used to manage their credit card/paypal OWN billing and made their own software to handle that. 2. New regulations came in, with more red tape, and LL had a choice. a) Carry on as before, and deal with the extra red tape. b) Outsource the work to one of the many billing processor companies that serviced web sites, but who were showing a tendency to refuse to deal with anything "adult (like the time Renderotica had its billing stopped because a A rated CGI Art gallery had A rated CGI art on it ). c) Hive their own inhouse system of into a subsidiary company called Tilla. 3. LL outsources all it billing to this company called Tilla. 4. Takeover pirates notice Tilla exists, and want it, because buying a company that's licenced to transmit money in 48 states, iss easier than getting licenced to transmit money in 48 states from scratch, also, that bespoke software they ae using looks interesting, it would be ideal for dealing with other online world/games companies. 5. LL get taken over by the takeover pirates. 6. The takeover pirates sell 25% of Tilla to a large American Bank. 7. Fake Money Crypto-Crap Enable Inc, who mainly concentrate on shifting crypto-cap from USB wallet sticks in dodgy places to reputable banks, think that Tilla looks EXCITING!, 8. Fake Money Crypto-Crap Inc buys Tilla. 9. LL realise they are now RIGHT BACK at Option 2.B, and negotiate some 5 y "promise" not to sc*w them over out of Tilla's new owners. 10. Tilla's new owners scr*w over LL A Ten Point Plan, that ends with all of us getting scr*wed over with hiked cashout fees, hiked transaction charges, hiked Premium, etc., as Tilla try to squeeze out as much cash as they can from LL, and LL compensate by squeezing all of US. Since Tilla was how they collected the MONEY from all of us, for operating SL, it WAS their "core business".

You already can, and could do so for years. No need for Fake Money Crypto-Crap Enablers. You just need a "verified" paypal account, that is, one directly connected to a bank account, at an actual bank.

See, the REAL problem with the whole "LL MobileLife Fail Viewer will bring in a VAST untapped new market and make SL GREAT AGAIN!" Cargo Cult, is that it ignores the reality of SL, and of typical mobile gaming. Lets take some not untypical SL "gameplay". Log in, spend 15 mins trying to get into a new shopping event, spend an hour and 45 mins browsing the stalls, spend an hour unpacking your purchases and stuffing them into your organised folder tree, spend 30 mins deciding what new stuff to wear, spend 30 mins teleporting around looking for people, spend 2 hours at a DJ set, spent an hour playing greedy. You spent 7 hours in SL that day. Now let's look at a typical mobile gamer "gameplay". Arrive at bus stop, take whyPhone out of pocket, play for 5 mins, get on bus, play for 20 mins, get off buss, walk into workplace, spend day at work, walk to buss stop, spend 5 mins on whyPhone, get on bus, spend 20 mins on whyPhone, walk to home, do food n stuff, ( optional ) USE A REAL PC to play REAL games. You spent 50 mins in SL that day. All of it in small chunks, spur of the moment stuff. To a mobile only gamer, SL is TOO slow, and too expensive, and too DULL. They took their phone out of their pocket because they want 5-25 mins of INSTANT fun, RIGHT NOW. Not 4 hours of preparatory work, before doing "fun". The only REAL market for the MobileLife Fail Viewer is basically EXISTING SecondLiers who want to check their IM's on the buss home to/from work, or during their lunch break.

There's different kinds of "Valuable" with books. Some are old and rare, and valuable as investments. Some are beautiful, regardless of how many editions they have printed. Some are valuable because they contain useful information, or great entertainment. And some are valuable because they are very thick, printed on very thin paper, and can be acquired for free from bedside tables in hotel rooms, and will, if hung on a nail in the outhouse, last ALL winter!

Theirs are ALMOST as believable as... LL's. Almost.