Dartagan Shepherd

Wasn't really directing that at you in particular. Just making a joke about them promoting "your world", then taking our products, our money converted to fake money, our tier, all of our sinks and sucking some who knows ... 70% of the global pie unto themselves and then disclaiming away all liability which they can mostly only manage because of the "fake" nature of the world, it's products and its money while we get the smallest piece of the "economy". At any rate, going more in depth would just be a thread derail, I'm waiting for government to do the defining and for the TOS to reflect something like reality.. But regardless of the TOS and their rights or profit, claiming no guarantees, no liability and the ability to change any thing at any time ... just a bit on the ludicrous side. Like I said, just providing a punchline to the whole thing.

So, I think I'm getting the gist of this. LL is really saying ...

Vista Barnes wrote: Will the linden value go down, there will be a decrease on the market... Any economist arround? You wouldn't need an economist for the same reasons that we don't need engineers to inspect the structural integrity of buildings in SL. You probably won't see much of a difference in value or volume, regardless of what happens unless it's so extreme that the fiction of user to user trades simply can't hold up any longer. The pool of money is there, but gamified to the extent that economy doesn't apply. That's my story and I'm sticking to it until I see the transparency of exactly who's buying and who's selling to whom.

True, that's the bit that would need implementation for any customer. All users are already "registered" with the marketplace as it ties in with the SL user system. I get what you're saying ... at first glance that falls under the domain of profiles where all users are and so the logical choice would seem to be there. I just think that in the end it's a purchase/commerce feature, the heavy lifting belongs in the marketplace. It's a good point, as to where the front end actually belongs, if it needs to belong in only one space.

I don't mean to be butting in here, just adding my opinion as a feature. There are quite a few ways it could be implemented but the thing that I liked about this suggestion was that it plays off of a feature that already exists ... the favorites feature of the marketplace so it's really not a from scratch endeavor. A user could choose to make their favorites public or not. Right under the link to visit a persons store could be a link to view their wishlist. They could add a link or two here and there to search wishlists or a specific feature. There's certainly no reason why it couldn't be also implemented in profiles as a link to the wishlist in the marketplace. If they really wanted to they could create an RSS-ish feed out of it and it could also be propagated to wherever it applied. One way or the other though, if someone is buying ... they're going to go to the marketplace. I suppose they could go in-world to buy that item, but that would defeat automatic deletion, possible integration with deals or perks or seasonal promotions which is in the domain of marketplace functionality. There are two main types of wishlists, which I think is the issue here. One is the external type where you can buy someone something from another site(s), and the type that's integrated into the commerce system. I think you're suggesting something like the former while the OPs suggestion is the latter. In theory direct delivery fixes the issue of whether or not the user is online when something is purchased. Of course given marketplace snafu's you could buy someone an ivy covered cottage from their favorites and end up sending them a set of extra large mesh breasts.

It's the difference between shouting your desires on a street corner (transitory and hit-or-miss), as opposed to making a list for Santa and giving it to your parents. Wishlists can be automated. When a purchase is made, it can be automatically deleted from the wishlist. Not as clunky as a 6 month old tweet that no one will remember or read. Besides, social networking can give you hives.

The old Jira was visible to others, therefore it's closed. New Jira's are not visible to others, therefore they're recommended replacements. What do addicts and LL have in common? *cough*denial*cough*

Have you checked the solution provider listings? Can't say what percentage of them are active, but it would appear some are. http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Solution_Provider_Directory

Lexi Zelin wrote: I don't understand this... I got the email and it changed the pictures but it changed it to PORN pictures... So, now I have 3 listings that don't even EXSIST! They're named as ollldddd items from my old store and I can't even remove them BECAUSE THEY DON'T EXSIST! LL won't remove them and I did the picture thing and LL put a picture of a girl sucking two guys off ON MY MARKETPLACE as a replacement for what the pictures are... Really? I mean like seriously!? LL has trolled me and I really hope these 3 listings are REMOVED... If you go to my marketplace and chose oldest first you'll see what LL has put as pictures.... Thanks alot ll i really appreciate it -............- AngelRED Couture @ Marketplace Oh, jeez. I look at things like this, and then the hiring ads on the company website and I see one listing saying one thing an LL employee applicant should have is a thick skin. They need thick skins so they can laugh off tons of valid complaints of customers and people trying to run a business in their cartoon world as trivial while convincing themselves that all of this is in some way acceptable or normal out there in the business world. I would say that it could be worse, but explaining exactly how would be impossible here without a paragraph full of bleeps.

For some reason the 2 links to the exchange articles over on Hypergrid Business have just gone to 404s today. Not sure what that's about. The rest of the articles are fine.

Marit Huet wrote: This new TOS is again showing the residents and business owners that developing business in SL is a risky business. Some dudes at linden lab proven in the past and now again they have totally no respect or consideration for their users. It's always risky doing business in someone elses sandbox as an entire business model. Had said before the rule of thumb on doing business with LL seems to be that if it makes less than 7 figures it's fine. If a venture starts making 7 figures it gets re-built or acquired by LL. This has happened with the original exchange once owned by individuals before LL decided to build their own, independent marketplaces and even now with breedables invested in by Phil Rosedale and ex-Lindens. That's why I don't believe that this exchange mess is entirely about regulation. It's also a profitable move for LL. The house always wins, even when they refund marketplace ads that you can't cancel. Not that all exchanges were profitable, but as pointed out by someone else, one exchange in particular was growing while the Lindex remained flat. Apparently LL thinks changing the world means using us to determine the most profitable business opportunities for them and then taking their piece of it. Also, they're going to be wanting to use L$ as currency to monetize their new products when the time comes if those products take off. These pesky third party exchanges would only gunk up the works. Welcome to utopia.

Czari Zenovka wrote: Dartagan Shepherd wrote:. But on the bright side, LL will now have some extra millions of money/L$ passing through their hands directly and can perhaps buy a new CEO that will bring us more than Linden Realms, pathfinding, disfunctional chat in a new wrapper, less data centers and new products such as childrens software masquerading as creativity tools. From your mouth to LL's ears. Well said! Well, Phil Rosedale is no longer listed as being on the LL board of directors, this is a recent thing. http://www.lindenlab.com/about I would joke about a coup taking place because Rod brought too many Electronic Arts people here with him and they tarred and feathered poor Phil who then ran off to start High Fidelity in a huff ... but that would almost make a morbid kind of sense. Seriously though, just one CEO with common sense bent on improving the existing product without bringing in projects that just increase SL's technical debt would do the trick.

Heheh. Stick to your guns though, it's absolutely a worthy addition in my opinion. LL will get it eventually ... the collective wisdom of thousands of merchants neck deep in this "stuff" outweighs the wisdom of a commerce team of oh ... 6 people or so.

Oh agree, it should have never been deprecated or pointed to a third party in the first place. It needs to be fully integrated as suggested here.

Spooky, I think LL has forgotten http://wishlist.secondlife.com is still connected to something. A good feature suggestion though, yes.

Pamela Galli wrote: It is dangerous and terrifying to behold. It is also a rather interesting shade of mauve. Jeez, that entire thing gave me chills, but I was willing to brave the TOS except for the quoted bit. It had me clutching my flannel shirts tightly. Mauve being only one shade worse than the SL teal. I actually had a reaction to teal ... someone I was visiting was showing me some designs for business cards and I shoved the teal one away saying "noooo ... Second Life". Got a puzzled look for that one, but waved it away with a "don't ask".

Thankfully I can't take credit for defining the way LL can screw up the most basic of concepts. We can rule out inbreeding, so I'm going to have to chalk it up to a substance abuse problem with LL management or some new form of virus that eats away at the common sense portion of the brain. Some Lindens have managed to escape un-infected by the D-Virus and have gone on to start building Cloud Party, so there is still hope.

Lasher Oh wrote: I don't understand why LL didn't give advance notice and a cut off date to the community - well actually I do but stating it here would require distinctly unparliamentary lanquage and get me banned. Which is why we needed a brand new word: lindened verb: Screwed up, botched, ruined. Something is said to be "lindened" when a situation is made worse by an action that was intended to make things better. This word originated in the Second Life community in response to the chronic troubles following Second Life upgrades. My brakes were squeaking a bit so I got them worked on - now they are completely lindened - it won't stop at all. From: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=lindened

Agree, security is important. That's happened to us ... our password was hacked and the thief took off with some L$. We didn't get all of it back, only what LL claimed to be able to recover (what thief is dumb enough to leave money behind anyway?). I couldn't blame LL for someone guessing my password alone but Jesus ... learn how to implement a PIN number or something on transfers. Other types of hacks though could be paid out of todays cash flow rather than holding every transfer back. They could do something but it's kind of like stolen products here ... they can't stop it all, but they could police it much better and take more measures to prevent it. I could be unlucky, our transfers have been taking upwards of 7-10 working days rather than 5 the last 4 months or so. Agree that the planning ahead for the delay isn't a deal breaker A delay is kind of a pitiful excuse for security though. Edit: added the word "could" and this bit stating as much so as not to annoy anyone getting forum posts to email.

Perrie Juran wrote: just for the record, i am not defending LL's action. just stating the facts as i see it. the problem as i see it is government intrusion into our lives in the name of 'fraud, crime & terrorist control.' their intrusion into our personal lives is a fraud all of its own. Belated response ... I wasn't thinking you were defending LL. I also share your dislike of government intrusion. On this one though ... when LL tries to bear zero responsibility for well, just about anything it's a case of a company pretty much exploiting loopholes in order to make up their own business rules. LL has never learned (or cared to learn) about the difference between having a winning product and doing "that" as opposed to playing masters of the universe and turning maximized monetization into science. Some companies need to monetize and those that do tend to be competitors in saturated market. It's the lowest common denominator in the startup world. If it's not innovative enough or really "all that" as a product, or something like yet another game in an app store it needs to monetize. SL never, ever needed that. It was once an innovation in virtual worlds and successfully out-competed and won. Their monetization above and beyond an already expensive service was pure greed and ignorance of a how to do business when you've actually got a product on your hands. When I couldn't cash out money that I earned because LL wouldn't approve my limit, when people get billed multiple times for marketplace "enhancements", when we pay for 3 premium accounts which LL happily processes and flags the credit card after the fact? Then yes, government regulation that requires virtual currency to be treated as real money is required. LL had 10 years to take responsibility for this stuff and create the type of business environment that merchants, solution providers, land barons, companies and universities expected. Instead, their takeaway on both LL's new products and the chairman of the LL board Phil Rosedale projects decide that the monetization of people and what they produce or provide is more important than the product. It's about time for a little government intervention. Mitch Kapor once called us the wild west and early but troublesome adopters. All along it's been LL skirting these issues that have brought the unsavory wild west bits to business. A couple of years ago I'd said to watch that as LL declines, they'd continue to cannibalize bits of SL. Seeing this as a regulatory excuse to do just that and still claim no responsibility to the end user that currency people pay for has real value because it was ummm ... paid for with real money. License to use parts of the service indeed. Dunce hat to LL in 5.1 of the TOS that states L$ are a license and not providing any license. Sorry your honor, we forgot.

You could, yes. At least until LL "tried" to add a restriction to the TOS that items that are under your copyright and ownership by their admission are no longer able to be sold without L$ (good luck with them attempting that one). For instance Paypal Micropayments charges $0.05 (a mere 5 cents) plus 5 percent. In practice, you could actually make more money via Paypal directly than you could using L$, if your customers would use it. There are other payment providers doing micro-transactions these days as well. The bottom line is that LL uses Paypal as well, so you're paying two people to chip away at your money currently ... LL and Paypal. At this point, LL is becoming more of an unnecessary middleman, providing more of a convenience for in-world spending and to provide in-world user to user giving/receiving of money without a transaction fee. As always though, people will pay more for convenience, so using outside payment providers would have to gain traction with customers.

"5.1 Each Linden dollar is a virtual token representing contractual permission from Linden Lab to access features of the Service." Meanwhile most of the rest of the world says that the value of any product or service is equal (or greater due to things like potential lose of income, etc.) to the money paid into it. Whether by a choice of morality and good business or government regulation, it will be nice to eventually get to the place where $10 USD worth of L$ is worth .... well, $10 USD. LL may define it as they wish. Government is beginning to say the same rules apply in any world. Then again, merchants have always known their goods, work and the L$ are worth the real money put into and taken out of it. It will be nice when we're finally validated and protected by the same laws as everyone else. It's a shame that yet another business opportunity like third party exchanges have to be victims of LL's acquisitions and liability dodges in the process,and the difficulties it will make for some people to cash out, though. But on the bright side, LL will now have some extra millions of money/L$ passing through their hands directly and can perhaps buy a new CEO that will bring us more than Linden Realms, pathfinding, disfunctional chat in a new wrapper, less data centers and new products such as childrens software masquerading as creativity tools.

As we discussed here in the merchant forums in the Rodvik thread back in March, the new restrictions set forth by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network re-classify the way LL has to deal with its virtual currency. You can see from changes in the TOS recently that LL will not be accepting any liability for their currency from anyone but themselves, and liability to themselves at a bare minimum. Stick a fork in third party exchanges, they're done. As for LL offering more payment processors to their offering, it's doubtful, but you can surely run it by them. To the outside world, this is mostly about Bitcoin. However, FinCEN and other agencies make no such distinction ... virtual currency is virtual currency. Forbes is projecting now that virtual currency will be on the IRS radar for specific regulation if it isn't already. http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2013/05/02/irs-takes-a-bite-out-of-bitcoin/ Agree a wire transfer is too costly and clunky for many merchants, but alternate payment processors are doubtful at this point. Related to LL and non U.S. processing is this: http://www.dragonfishtech.com/news-events/2009-archive/articles/second-life.htm Let's just say that LL is not good with exposing the details of these "user licenses" and "tokens". Section 5.1 of the TOS is becoming obsolete.

Czari Zenovka wrote: *Waves my official Dart Fan Club banner* Edit: Typo You're going to get me shot doing that. Wait, there's an official one? Shouldn't there be royalties involved?

Top on the toilet paper issue. I doubt you'll find many bottom feeders here. Otherwise, boxes. You folks should be ashamed of yourselves for not considering how the products feel. Products should be shipped in boxes with proper ventilation. Why do you think no copy items don't use DD? Because it would be inhumane to squish those poor breedable critters into folders.