Deltango Vale

@ everyone I am completely in favor of free accounts, but I can see absolutely no reason for wide-open, free, unlimited, unrestricted, disposable, anonymous accounts. Yes, I suppose if I left my car on a public street with the doors unlocked and the keys in the ignition, someone might find it useful. Perhaps if I left my front door open, someone might put flowers on the mantlepiece. More likely my car gets smashed up by joyriders and my house gets occupied by squatters. As for not supplying RL financial information, it is simply impossible to live in this world without providing someone online with RL financial information. Anyone reading this post is on the internet, by definition. That means that even if you live in a cave somewhere in the Swiss Alps, there is a cable leading from your cave to an ISP. Does someone surfing the internet in his cave then dig under a rock to get a bag of silver pieces to go shopping in the next village? Perhaps he trades a goat for a dozen chickens then returns to the cave to read the news online while building a fire with flint and steel? There are only six people on Earth who have never given RL information to an online service. Two of them live in a disused Minuteman silo in Idaho, two live in a stone hut on Ascension Island, one circles the globe on a raft and the other has gone missing, presumed lost in the Amazon rainforest. None of these six people has given RL financial information to an online service because none of them has ever been online.

Great article. It's good to see customers banging on LL's door, louder and louder. Regarding point 1: merging the teen grid was a mistake. Regarding points 2-6: Linden Lab currently operates what's called a perverse incentive structure. Free riders (griefers, spammers, scammers) currently have free, open and anonymous access to SL (and the fora). Meanwhile, Linden Lab and the residents must pay the cost of those free riders (technical resource costs, administrative, monitoring and enforcement costs, opportunity costs, morale costs, fraud and other financial costs, bad PR / reputation costs). The solution is to transfer the costs from LL and the residents to the free riders. This is done by requiring RL financial information. (Offer free accounts, but require RL financial information.) It would mean that a griefer/scammer/spammer would have to supply a real CC, DC or PayPal account or a stolen CC or PayPal account. That means a paper trail and extra effort (buying dozens of DCs, obtaining stolen CCs, hacking a PayPal account, risk of prosecution etc.). Currently, it costs a griefer/scammer/spammer zero while everyone else bears the cost. See also my thoughts on: the current high relative price of tier strategy in general

@ everyone I have turned off display names because it is simply too messy to have two sets of names displayed (in addition to group titles). Nor can I be bothered to remember the 25 million pet names people choose on a weekly basis. So, sadly, if someone accidentally chose R27jklhwrhkf7 as an account name (not realizing it would become an avatar name because of the semantic confusion on the signup page), that's what I see inworld.

Current thinking is that the company has a physiological defect that prevents it from understanding common sense. I believe a leading neurology journal will soon publish an article on 'Lindenitis'.

Sigh. The UK will go dark again at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. It would take maybe 20 minutes for Parliament to fix the problem (by simply leaving the UK on BST year round), but politicians breed in the dark. Thus, the UK will remain home to vampires and werewolves for another year.

I am suddenly reminded of the greatest computer game ever created: Sid Meier's Civilization II. If Linden Lab could bring the genius of that design into SL (while remembering that SL is a world and not a game), amazing things could happen. I have no clear idea how to combine the brilliance of Civ II with SL, but my instincts are ringing loudly that a brainstorming session is in order. Several crude ideas spring to mind: build an AI into the infrastructure such that one can optionally utilize it in some way (an engine for breedable creatures, a control or scoring system for inworld RP, a financial trading system or market management system, a market-match search engine, a land-script-object management system) create an AI overlay to SL that controls world evolution systems (seasonal changes in Windlight, astronomical changes in the night sky, adding natural resources to land and oceans, avatar aging or auto-adjust avatar for age selection) created special Civ II type sims with special features that enable avatar-terrain and avatar-avatar interactions through time (from simply playing Civ II within SL to a whole new set of local objects being processed through the Civ II engine) For the engineers among you, forgive my naivety. I read that LL does plan to add some kind of AI, so maybe I'm a million miles behind the trend. Perhaps the concept of combining Civ II with SL was discussed years ago. I don't know. Also, as all of you know, I am one of the strongest proponents of SL as a world and not a game, but I believe there could be merit to adding an optional goal-based component, which might appeal to RP- and game-oriented residents. RL is a world full of games. Perhaps combining Civ II and SL in some way could generate a killer app that rockets SL to a whole new level of virtual world dynamics. Done well, SL could potentially pull a lot of customers from the Farmville and gaming worlds - not to mention adding a new layer of sophistication to SL in general Thoughts?

I am cautiously optimistic. It is certainly good to see some new blood on the Board of Directors. Perhaps it's time for some old blood to retire. If Second Life is to prosper, it needs a massive injection of youth, enthusiasm and intelligence.

London follows Paris I adore Val's fashion threads and her sense of style. I see her as head of LVMH one day.

Sadly, there are two threads on this same topic running concurrently. In the other thread, I pointed out that this sale was a good deal for anyone who planned to own a full sim for a year (28% saving). In terms of the numbers, yes, it stems the bleeding of people out of private islands over the past 18 months, but it does nothing to promote long-term economic growth.

"I want what some of you guys are smokin'."

"I know I'm human. Some of you are still human. This Thing doesn't want to show itself. It wants to hide inside an imitation. It'll fight if it has to, but it's vulnerable out in the open. If it takes us over then it has no more enemies - nobody left to kill it - then it's won."

Since the 1960's, politicians have been grown in vats somewhere in West Virginia - a research lab buried underground, funded by MIT. It works something like stem cells: take a regular bureaucrat, grind it up into a mushy pulp, boil it for several hours then add growth hormones. After a few months, the blob develops lungs and other internal organs. A few months after that, it sprouts arms and legs eventually a head. When fully formed, the blob is taught language and given a law degree. This is followed up by an extensive program of injections to prevent the blob from learning anything important about life. Finally, the blob is polished with skin creme and dressed in human clothes, whereupon it is ready to enter politics. Your mission, Jim, should you decide to accept it, is to destroy the research lab and eliminate the blobs.

My only comment after all these years is that he needs a skinny belt - say rose brown with a silver buckle.

It would seem you and I are the youngest people on the forum, though I breached the big 30 a couple years ago Did you have a crush on Don Johnson of Miami Vice?

TV joined movie theaters, cassette tape and 8-track in the junk bin of history about a decade ago. Everything is now PC-based: DVDs, downloads, websites, streaming media etc. What is really weird is the archaic movie release system. The whole world has shifted to illegal downloads because film studios wait almost a year before releasing legal DVDs. I can't think of a single person who has been inside a movie theater (a building where people pay to sit in chairs and looks at a projection on a big screen) in the past five years. As for TV, our kids will laugh when they see them in museums.

Poor old Linden Lab just can't get its head around land. Go to http://gridsurvey.com You will see three small chart icons. Click on the middle one (solid blue). That chart tells you how much demand exists for a product that costs US$295 per month. Instead of sims, think of office space at US$295 per square foot per month. Think of the chart as if it were showing changes in the demand for office space. What do you see? Demand for 'office space' - 'sim space' - sims has been declining for 18 months. It's back to where it was two years ago. On the mainland, the high relative price of tier coupled with massive oversupply (2007-2009) has driven up the price of small double-prim parcels (Nova Albion, Nautilus) and destroyed the regular mainland market. Mainland has become almost valueless. Once-beautiful sims are being carved up into junk lots. You can't give it away. US$1000 represents approximately three months tier. Okay, that's nice; LL is offering your first three months free - for office space - for something long term. If you hold the sim for a year, it represents a 28% discount. If you hold the sim for two years, it's a 14% discount. If you hold the sim for three years, it's a 9% discount. The longer you hold the sim, the worse the deal becomes. Therefore, this 'sale' will benefit those who are looking for an island sim in the short term - and who are fortunate enough to discover the sale before it expires in two days time. It does absolutely nothing to stem the long-term decline in private sims (and the mainland), which is due to the very high relative price of tier. If Linden Lab had improved SL dramatically over the past five years, the current tier prices would be justified. Sadly, if anything, LL has made rather a mess of things over the past five years. Does the company plan good things for SL in the future? Who knows? There are lots of little hints scattered here and there, but never do we get a strategic vision of where the company plans to take SL. Nor does LL have a good track record of actually delivering anything complete or workable. Perhaps, Rod can move the company forward. I hope so, but, in the meantime, LL has no choice but to reduce tier to generate economic growth. See also: http://deltango.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/a-proposed-land-tier-fee-schedule/

Without the pie menu and double-click TP, I doubt I would use an LL viewer. It might seem trivial, but I use these two features a hundred times a day.

"Both Kirsten's and Firestorm have an optional pie menu. What is the worst part about the menus we have now, is that the options change. Sit is not always in the same spot. This forces you to have to focus on the menu to find the right choice. With the pie menu, you get the same exact options in all the same spots every single time. The options that do not apply are just not highlighted or able to be chosen. To me, the most important thing about UI is to make it so you almost not notice you are using it. When I have to actually stop and focus intensely on some tiny text on a screen, that is taking me out of the immersion that I'm currently in." ----------------------------------------------------- YES! On a related topic, I have frequently deleted items in my inventory because the right-click menu has a slippery order of options. Thus 'delete' is sometimes in the position of 'wear'. Getting dressed in a hurry often means deleting items instead of wearing them - with the added bonus of having to fish them out of trash and manually put them back in the right folder. Drives me crazy.

Oh if only he had first picked up a driving test instructor from the DMV.

"That is why I think we need a basic simple viewer that allows you the basic things but won't bother you with all the extra stuff." ------------------------------------------------------ I agree, but the viewer must be: Layered like an onion such that one begins at a simple, intuitive kernel and moves outward through compatible layers of increasing functionality. Intelligent. The viewer must conform to the thinking and behavior of human beings, not the whims of some technocrat who has never seen daylight. For all his faults, Steve Jobs understood how humans think. Surely, there is no one left in Silicon Valley who hasn't got the message. Open and organic in the way that the English language is open and organic. Do not construct a private, proprietary system disconnected from the wider world.

BTW, Alazarin, I have such good memories of sitting with you, Ceera and the gang around a table in her house five years ago. I was a pathetic noob at the time, but you guys made me feel part of a world. I still have your box of freebies, which helped me greatly, especially the LMs. It was because of people like you that I was highly motivated to learn the basic technology of survival in SL. It was through talking and learning from people like you that I did learn the technology. Without you, Ceera and many other residents, I would never have integrated into SL.

I'm with Ann on this. First, SL is not a game. It is a virtual world. (Facebook is a social network. WoW is a game. North Dakota is a world.) http://deltango.wordpress.com/2010/06/24/a-strategic-assessment-of-second-life-part-2/ http://www.peregrinesalon.com/2011/09/27/techfast-presentation-the-magic-circle-realistic-expectations-for-virtual-worlds/ Second, whereas the price of almost all technology has fallen significantly over the past five years, tier remains stuck at its 2006 level. The relative price of tier is now extremely high. The new tier schedule I designed last year is now itself outdated. http://deltango.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/a-proposed-land-tier-fee-schedule/ Third, the entire V2 project was a catastrophe. We now have a Tower of Babble situation whereby no one speaks the same UI language. This makes person-to-person education much more difficult. It has also damaged SL's reputation, much like 'New Coke' damaged the reputation of Coca-Cola. "There is a twist to this story which will please every humanist and will probably keep Harvard professors puzzled for years," said Keough at a press conference. "The simple fact is that all the time and money and skill poured into consumer research on the new Coca-Cola could not measure or reveal the deep and abiding emotional attachment to original Coca-Cola felt by so many people." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke Fourth, LL lacks strategic vision. The company is obsessed with improving upon the past instead of boldly reaching for the future. Having built a very sophisticated platform, the company remains stuck in an engineering mentality. We desperately need a 'Steve Jobs' or 'Richard Branson' to look beyond the codebase to the inherent desires of humans. There are many other problems that I could list in detail (the ridiculous single namespace, the griefer accounts, the underage accounts etc.), but that is for a longer article in the future. Bottom line: Linden Lab does not understand Second Life. In my opinion, this is because Linden Lab invented two overlapping products: a 3D IT platform and a virtual world. The company is struggling to improve the first, but is baffled by the second. Yet it is the second, the virtual world, the "self-projecting metaphorical interface with a user-generated economy based on a sophisticated private property rights structure" that represents the future. I agree, though, that until LL improves the technology and solves the pricing problem, the amazing potential of Second Life will remain crippled.

Bowser corrupts. Absolute Bowser corrupts absolutely.