Darrius Gothly

(general side-note: I wish there was a better way to highlight your words inline with mine. That red color is horrible on my eyes.) Phil Deakins wrote: On the contrary. Back in the 90s, way before SL was born, I wrote a multi-user graphics adventure game and put it online for testing. I was the one who did all the " finger-pounding mileage churning out code". Then I went off and did something completely different. That experience is of no use in this discussion, but I just thought I'd inform you on that point. I was not aware you'd written a game back in the 90's. That's why I used the word "MAY". I wrote a game or two as well .. but before then. It was in the early 80's and I had to hack the video controller to allow graphical characters and adversaries instead of the then-typical text-based game play. It was also pre-Internet, pre-home computer and pre-IBM PC. After I wrote those games, I moved to using minicomputers to develop English Language information retrieval systems. The code I developed was eventually licensed by AT&T as well as a few other *nix based companies; they used it to move their front-end support departments from "thumbing through the manual" to "ask the computer". There was also an abortive foray into using it for the medical industry, but the backers dropped out before we could perfect the video-player interface for use in the OR. And yes .. that too was just barely pre-IBM PC and continued into the early 90s. Now, are we done with the "mine's bigger than yours" contest? Can we get back to discussing the REAL issue here? Phil Deakins wrote: To be perfectly honest, Darrius, through your posts in this thread, you do sound as though you are miffed because you are not one of those who are helping with Sansar. If you were one of them, I have no doubt that you'd see things wholly differently. Okay .. one more try. Here goes ... Sansar will be a whole bunch of separate, distinct and individual "Worlds" .. each crafted by a Creator to suit their vision. They won't be connected with each other except through the framework of Sansar. They won't interact with each other and they won't have to live with each other. They will be wholly independent and also wholly unrelated to each other. Because LL won't be enforcing a singular "World" in which they all must live together and interact together, Sansar will instead devolve into an uncoordinated mish-mash of individual visions with no common thread that ties them together. It will shortly resemble a random collection of Facebook personal pages with no actual connection between them. They'll just have fancy VR renditions instead of pictures of you eating your morning bagel. My "displeasure" has absolutely zero to do with whether or not "Mah stuffz" will transport into Sansar. My displeasure is that LL is doing absolutely nothing with the resources they have that will push the technology forward. Bringing inventories forward from SL into Sansar is not THE REASON I am upset, it is THE SYMPTOM of how LL is failing to do something worthwhile or revolutionary. IMO LL is aiming too low, in a direction that will not achieve anything of worth in the VR or 3DVW realms. My perception is that Linden Lab is once again trying to dress up a pig with high-tech lipstick and sell it as "The Next Revolution". And my perception is that the marketplace of money spending curious and hungry customers will take a few looks and move on down the line. Finally, no matter how badly you continue to FAIL seeing the vision of the future that I see .. no matter how badly you misrepresent me or what I envision .. what remains is the truth that not a single one of your arguments or digs has shown why Sansar will be anything MORE than the same old FB pig in neon stockings and day-glow lip-gloss.

Here's an idea that should be fairly easy to implement AND will protect Land Owner's rights AND will let "Explorers" fly right on through your Land: Add a "Land Option" called "Display Parcel Objects for Group Members Only". If that option is enabled then anyone NOT in the Land Group will see a totally empty Parcel, devoid of all objects, avatars, media .. everything. The Viewer will simply display what appears to be a completely empty Parcel .. as though the Parcel Object list was empty. Of course the traveller won't be able to Rez anything or have any other means of interacting with objects or avatars on the Parcel, but they prolly won't stick around long either because .. hey .. it's just an empty plot of land. Right?

wherorangi wrote: is actual good reasons for why this is. I try to explain the Sansar criteria was that a person a) was a expert with Maya (the industry-standard professional content creation toolset) b) they had time to devote to the project c) that this project stage is technical design of the world model fundamentals and not artistic design as such d) that the person has prior experience working on this stage of similar business projects. People with this experience are typically academic researchers and industry professionals expert in the design of content delivery world model systems basically this is the alpha stage + i think that before end this year then it will move to beta, and opened to a large pool of content designers and users/players/testers. In other words open to amateurs and self-employed crafters, grafters and grinders at which time their content design feedbacks will influence changes to specific components of the model, introduce new tools, improve existing tools, without fundamentally changing the design of the world model delivery system itself + the fundamental design of the world model is a business decision, not a artistic one. LL as the business have already determined what that business design/decision is some of the specific business components have still to be decided on for sure also, if/when/how they might be introduced. The whys of have already been decided tho, in these kinda major business projects + basically the last thing you want in the early stages is a whole bunch of amateurs who dont know much about anything amateurs are better to come in later in the process. A example is the Bento project i am a amateur in this field. I never got involved in the early design phase of this bc is not my expert field. I left it to the actual experts of this. And they got most of it pretty right then when I did get involved it was over a specific component. And the technical experts took what I (and others also) said about this specific component, reassessed the technicals of it, and made subsequent changes/adjustments to compensate, without breaking the model design What you describe quite well is what could best be called the "Traditional" approach to product development. It works, it has merit and it has a long track-record of success. If my "issue" was with this process .. I'd be dead wrong. But this isn't where I have my issue. When Philip first envisioned Second Life, he had this head full of grand ideas about a Utopian World where everything was free, everything was possible and eventually the rest of the world would catch up technologically and philosophically. We caught up in the Tech sense, mostly caught up in the Philosophic sense .. and pretty much turned his Grand Plan into daily activity. But it was more than a decade ago that he first tasked his team with making Utopia. Since then the forces of Business, Finance and Reality have been steadily grinding it down, further and further. While not necessarily a "bad thing'', it has had some side-effects that we now see evident in Linden Lab's decision making process. Virtual Reality .. immersing participants in a simulated world populated with visual simulations of the real-world .. is an incredibly powerful and potentially paradigm-changing technology. Someone with their head just as full of Grand Plans as was Philip could climb out ahead of the pack and create a first use for it that actually demands its tradition-shattering capabilities. If ever there was a company that should be positioned properly to BE that tradition shatterer .. it is Linden Lab. They stand in the absolutely unique and powerful ground first marked out by Philip's dream. But instead of throwing their goal flag down the field into the fertile ground of the future .. they have once again tossed it a few feet backwards into the Social Interaction puddle defined by Facebook and the like. Oh and they glued a pair of VR goggles on the side. Yawn! In many ways the Second Life of today is still miles ahead of what Sansar will be ... what Sansar is DESIGNED to be. SL is even ahead of what Sansar is intended to be. Linden Lab has staked out a "safe bet" goal, spent a bit over a year working toward making it .. and now seems poised to roll out the first peek at what they charitably call "The Future of VR". And no one is impressed. Especially not me. At the risk of trivializing their efforts, it's as if Philip landed a UFO in the Town Square and everyone climbed on board. It couldn't escape Earth orbit and definitely didn't break any speed limits .. but it FLEW just the same. Now the Management at Linden Lab has announced "We've invented a better UFO High-Tech Orbital Transportation Device.. better because it has TWO viewports instead of just one." Then they slapped flight restrictions on it, confined it to running kids around the city park .. and added some really neat lights on the outside. Hooray? Many other companies have tried, unsuccessfully, to build their own UFO. Only one company has succeeded. Only one company has the prototype parked in their garage. Only ONE company has the experience, resources and guaranteed passenger list to build the next revision UFO. And they're gonna give us an amusement ride at Kiddyland ... (EDIT: Forgot there are legal ramifications to calling it "better" or a "UFO" .. sowwy)

Theresa Tennyson wrote: Darrius Gothly wrote: It's just freaking stupid to throw away all your existing customers, cherry pick only certain ones while shooing away all the rest .. and completely junk the lessons learned by every software company since techies first began using magnetic donuts to hold Ones and Zeroes. Okay, explain to me - how is not porting everything in Second Life now "throwing away all your existing customers"? (rewinds about 2000 pages and starts over with ... "The Basics of SL" ...) Everyone now using SL has devoted to them a Personal Inventory. This is nothing more than a database of in-world objects that they have acquired via various means. Many SL Residents have expended lots and lots of real-world money filling their personal Inventory with those objects. This is the seat of my earlier analogy to your clothes closet. That investment, the investment made to acquire those items? All gone in Sansar. Nada. Don't exist, Won't port. Have to start all over. BTW: Please note that as a male avatar, my personal inventory consists of very few personal items that I paid money to acquire. A few pairs of shoes, a smattering of clothing, some personal niceties. That's it. Skin off my nose to lose all that stuff? Virtually nil. But for many female avatars .. and a lot of males too .. that loss will be immense. Everyone now using SL also has amongst their Inventory various items that are meant to exist in-world and bring comfort, familiarity or realism to their shared experience. Houses, boats, planes, pictures, pets .. STUFF. The things you rez when you establish a new home or residence, put down roots or just find a place to hang out and socialize with your "family". In Sansar? All gone.There will be nothing you'd call "yours" at first. What will exist are the items and content created for your "Experience" by the Creators LL has permitted to participate in building and selling their own Worlds. Your investment in SL will be worthless in Sansar. That's the "functional" disposal portion. Now let's move on to the "operational" disposal. Many people characterize SL as a "social platform with simulated 3D interaction." Their perception of the platform is that it's a place where folks can dress up as whatever and whomever they wish to be then interact socially with others of the same mindset. This is the foundational paradigm upon which the Sansar model is constructed. It is a very accurate appraisal of a subset of SL participants. It is NOT an accurate description of what SL "is". Those wishing to engage in this form of virtual cosplay will indeed find Experiences within Sansar that suit them. They will of course have to start over from scratch, but on the upside they will most likely meet new people and find new experiences they did not find in SL. But every one of them will be shaped according to the imaginations and limitations of the Experience Creator. The vast majority of SL Residents won't find a home there because it will not allow nor permit the free growth, self expression and "limitless imagination' found in SL. It will become a nice place to visit .. much like a museum or art gallery .. but it won't be a home and it won't be a place where people engage in lasting relationships of any kind. ANY kind. That means inter-personal, business, artistic or any other form .. unless they step up to the role of Creator. Now let's look a bit deeper into that term: Creator. In SL everyone is a Creator of some ilk. Rez a cube, slap on a fabric texture and Presto! You've become a furniture Creator. Squash the cube flat, change the texture to your favorite in-world snapshot and Voila! You're an art Creator. But even with this incredibly low bar to being a Creator, in SL a majority of people actually prefer to have others do that kind of thing for them. This leads to an active and very diverse population of Creator/Merchants that make stuff that can be used anywhere on nearly any Sim .. and for pretty much any purpose. Sansar does away with this community in various ways. But most importantly it raises the bar much higher in the name of ensuring "Quality" ... and at the same time constricts the diversity to only those able and willing to engage in the sophisticated process required to be a certified Creator. As a very simplified analogy, it will be akin to removing from the Public Library every book not written by authors with approved college degrees in Literature and additionally whatever topic the book is about. This immediately eliminates a massive portion of the existing SL Community from even wanting to participate. They CAN if they want, but it's no longer worth their time or effort. For many, it won't even be within their reach. As you can see from my TL;DR response, porting of SL content is not just about moving objects from "here" to "there". It's about restricting the function, operation and participation so much that the interested parties remaining will not constitute a viable, income earning population. Now my final point, and I sincerely hope you listen closely to this part as well. Linden Lab has kept the full definition of Sansar "top secret" for far too long. They have granted sneak peeks to various wags and scribes. But those few selected have come away feeling as if they've been shown a canned demo or presentation and not really given a tour of what makes Sansar "special". And they are not wrong. Because Sansar is envisioned as yet another whiz-bang demo of what VR technology can do. NOT what WE can do with it, but as what a tiny subset of skilled, paying artists can accomplish given top-notch tools and a blank canvas upon which to draw. Because Linden Lab is not being FORCED to create a platform that can support the vast VAST diversity embodied in SL, they will wind up creating a three-dimensional rendition of a flat canvas with pre-approved and canned colors, shapes and experiences. And that will keep the rest of SL Residents from ever taking up the Dream and carrying it forward into the future.

Hmm .. y'know this may come as a shock to you but .. I have prim products. I have sculpty products. And I have mesh products. They all work just fine, but the new stuff? That's coming out in mesh because of the advantages it provides. Do I plan on withdrawing the prim products? No, there's no reason to. They work and continue to look good. Do I plan on withdrawing the sculpty products? No, again no reason. They also continue to look just great (to my customers and me at least). But will I spend a lot of time developing either prim- or sculpty based products? Not unless the economic tradeoffs make them more profitable. And I don't see that happening .. at least not for 99% of my stuff. What you are defending here is the indefensible and totally wrong assertion that you can either have new tech or old tech, but absolutely not a gentle transition between the two. There HAS to be a hook, a fade .. a gradual blending of one into the other or the shock is just too much for most of the customer base to grasp. The industry is rife with examples where version X+1 threw away so much of the "old familiar" embodied in version X that the product suffered, perhaps failed .. and even when successful took a much longer, more exhausting path to success. ALL to satisfy the tech-lazy whines of the develoment team who claimed (falsely so) that "it's just too much work to make the old stuff work too!" You are talking to THE TECHIE that's been responsible for a lot of software systems development. (Okay .. not THE techie, but absolutely ONE of THE ...) I know the lines, I've SAID the lines. I've heard them so often, hell I could probably copyright some. And I will tell you without any hesitation .. they're all a bunch of hooey. What LL is doing with Sansar is needlessly damaging its potential. They are kneecapping themselves solely to satisfy the inner urge to land the Big One, to build the newest neatest greatest end-all do-all thingamajig .. that will never be. They are increasing the odds against themselves for no good reason. Yet if they divorced themselves from that techie-tantrum and built a system with legs that starts running from the line where SL ends? They'd be a whole lot further down the track before they run out of money, time and investor patience.

Phil Deakins wrote: I've noticed in several of your posts that you haven't managed to grasp what Sansar is, OR that SL isn't going anywhere. When you accept the latter, you won't have any more concerns about the advent of Sansar. In fact Phil, quite the opposite is true. I absolutey realize that SL is .. according to the words from Ebbe and LL .. going to continue on as long as it remains profitable. However what I bring to this rodeo is something you may lack; experience with the software development industry. While I may not have actual finger-pounding mileage churing out MMORPG code, I do have rather extensive experience running the front office, running management and .. surprise! helping determine where companies spend their product development dollars. Second Life as a product has been inscrutable to LL almost since its inception. Philip had some really good ideas of what he thought would sell, he built a team and some fantastic on-ramps .. when suddenly and almost certainly as surprising to him as anyone else ... Ka-BLAM! Second Life caught fire and took off. His total fail creating a successful venture since is just more lead-balloon proof that he didn't understand the reason for its success any more than any other LL CEO. To be totally transparent, I'm not sure I have a better idea about the secret sauce either. But I am VERY sure I know what is not in the sauce. Rampant monetization of the customer base, disregard for past successes, and a total disrespect for the voices of the customers are clearly NOT ingredients. LL's other "blazing successes" using the same principles that have gone into Sansar should prove beyond doubt .. it's a fail on the run. And LL is not the only company to use these ingredients, mixed in massive quantities of investor money, and churned out flops on an epic scale. But hey, let's not look at the industry or the history of performance of other companies .. that wouldn't be right. Rather we should hold fast to the dream that "the next big thing" is right around the corner. If we just believe .. and all clap our hands .. Tinkerbell will live this time. Surely she has to .. Right? *coughGagpuke* Now .. back to Sansar .. shall we? Sansar is intended to be a new paradigm. A new take on the product niche loosely associated with Virtual Worlds. It is intended to capture the bleeding edge of Virtual Reality interfaces, give it a real reason to exist .. and power it with an economic engine that can run the distance and keep worthy people gainfully employed. Agreed so far? Good .. then consider this. That economic engiine depends on fuel provided by customers. But rather than borrow some gas from the SL tank, they've chosen to wall if off completely, design an engine that won't even share the same sort of energy source .. and yet somehow creates a new niche in a market that doesn't even exist yet. And they don't even understand the niche they're in now! I totally get that Sansar is going to be something new, unseen and untested. The whole freaking IT industry is built on exactly that foundation. But making something new has never EVER required tossing away everything old. Yet that is what LL is doing .. and militantly so to boot. But just to be nice, I'll even back out one more notch .. Even if Sansar has no data/content transportability. Even if the computers needed to run Sansar are a whole generation newer than those needed to run SL. EVEN IF the whole gestalt of Sansar is so radically new-thinking that it will define and attract a whole new demographic of customers ... It's just freaking stupid to throw away all your existing customers, cherry pick only certain ones while shooing away all the rest .. and completely junk the lessons learned by every software company since techies first began using magnetic donuts to hold Ones and Zeroes.

Theresa Tennyson wrote: From what I've seen your entire argument against Sansar is, "My ox is going to be gored. I don't want to get a new ox. Save my ox plz." That's certainly understandable. However, you really haven't done anything to show why your ox is so darned special anywhere other than where it is right now. Ahh .. okay. Allow me to yank your head out of the sand and explain it in very forthright terms. LL has an old aging platform that is past its prime. They have in-house talent and experience that could launch a new dawn in Virtual Reality 3D immersive experiences. They also hold the reins of 100's of thousands of active well-monied experienced and dedicated customers. They are throwing away those customers, ignoring the clearly stated desires of those customers and refuting the 14+ years of experience they've gained to chase down a flighty, immature, short-pocketed group of "Fad Chasers" who will spend less than a month on the platform and invest far less than $50 each. And my ox will go where I take him.

Pamela Galli wrote: Btw Darrius, I can't reply to your PM or message you, PMs are often broken for me. LOL No worries. I've since found the cure .. a heating pad. After hurting myself laughing at your initial reply to the OP, and being unable to find the proper mailing address to send Obama my chiropractor bill .. I had to search out a solution that didn't involve tax forms, long wait times in physician offices .. or getting half-naked in front of strangers. (although the latter has proven profitable at various times in my life. *wink wink*)

mikka Luik wrote: You wrote : "..And it can STILL provide compatibility to any SL content that can be legally exported and uploaded by the rightful owner." Interestin wording - as the 'rightful owner' is not defined. At its simplest? Anything built with in world prims I can export (with restrictions) - trivial but totally doable. On a non trivial level, anything I own outright (ie I am the creator of) I don't need to export - I uploaded it in the first place =^^= Slightly deeper level, we have had enough breadcrumbs re 'objects' to make a bet that at some point either DAEs or another common format will be let in - so anyone already making them is covered. (And as an aside - possibly flogging them elsewhere too). So yep - portable between the two. On the script side yes it is more tricky. Again, we have the c sharp breadcrumb...and no news on how it will present. (Considering there are some 400 odd LSL functions I am hoping that we don't have to write equivs for the whole lot =^^= That list is very SL specific of course but even so some bright spark will find a way to convert. SL still full of some very smart people). Even without that, it would not be the first time people have migrated a system from one language to another. If the key functionality is well thought out and copiously annotated (note to self - hide yer mess) then its again doable. Not forgetting that there are other places that all of current SL stuff can be used - if you are the rightful owner. Now if you wish to focus on the stuff you have bought from others - ownership has a bit of a different meaning. I chose that wording intentionally too. My specific reason is because Sansar has (so far) tightly restricted participants to a select handful of Creators. I am specifically considering this issue from the Creator perspective too. The transfer of purchased content from SL to Sansar is a whole 'nother bucket of worms. (Messy but not insurmountable.) Blocking Creators from porting their created content into Sansar is where I push back the hardest and is central to my primary concern. Even the conversion of Prim Objects into Sansar-compatible formats is doable; amply proven by such products as Mesh Studio and the like. So yes, I agree with you, over time some smart folks are going to figure out ways and means to move stuff from SL into Sansar. It will just be via the "back door" and once again employ glitches or exploits that might very well disappear at a moment's notice. Allow me an example that I think illustrates the situation quite well: MegaPrims. There was a time when a momentary glitch allowed folks to create prims with unheard of dimensions. There suddenly arose a massive market created by those smart enough to assemble collections of these glitched prims .. and sold or given to those within SL wanting or needing to use them for their own builds. But they were a hack, an exploit, the unholy offspring of a programming error and as a result they developed a reputation as being Sim Killers and the root of most of the evil in SL. Some folks went so far as to outright ban anyone daring to use them. Others embraced them with glee and employed them in new and unique ways that extended the range of creativity beyond what LL had originally envisioned. Today? After years of walking in shadows, MegaPrims are something you can create with the basic Viewer. They no longer kill Sims (although it's not really clear they ever did). With their newfound legitimacy, many more are finding them useful in unique and amazing ways. They can finally walk in sunlight and not fear uneducated scorn from those who don't understand why or how they can be used. Sansar will no doubt provide room to expand and improve the tools and creations from the community at large. Yet once again we have the Overseers ... err I mean Linden Lab .. placing restrictions and constraints on the limits of that creativity for reasons that seem contrived at best .. lazy at worst. Once again we face a situation where LL's own personal imagination is outstripped by the much broader imagination of their customers. And again their response is to place artificial limits on things rather than to open the door wider and formalize it to better serve the creativity of the customer base. To put it into a more current frame, consider the Modding Communities of many online games. Those games that have embraced their Modders and provided documented, tested and functional modding tools have also seen explosions in their customer bases and income streams. Those games that kept the door tightly shut and worked to thwart modding have either vanished or suffered greatly in the market. In one statement Ebbe espouses the desire to support the End-User Created Content that is the life's blood of SL. Then in his actions works to slam the door shut and restrict that content. It just makes no sense! Sansar can and should be not just an extension of Second Life in practice, it should be the Giant Leap Forward that Virtual Worlds need in order to fully utilize the upcoming advances in 3D Virtual Reality technology. I just keep looking at the decision to start off from a platform of "yes you can" while simultaneously chanting "oh no you can't" as quixotic, confusing and ultimately doomed to defeat.

PS: I've never found it to be a good thing to say to my customers "Go away and don't come back unless you bring more money." For some reason they tend to go away .. and then never come back. (just sayin ...)

Gavin Hird wrote: Darrius Gothly wrote: And I still do not see why that is a bad thing to do! It is not a bad thing to do. From their perspective it is a good thing to do because they will get rid of all the smut, the winers, the child avatars, the entitlement and so on that has kept LL from being seen as a serious contentder in the market. Cutting the ties provide them with a clean sheet to define a new market! Ahh . okay. But just to remind you: LL's definition of "problems" might very well be the same things that have kept them in business for more than a decade.

Theresa Tennyson wrote: Darrius Gothly wrote: I'm fairly certain you recall the backlash against EA when they cut off their old customer base with the introduction of Sims 2. With that lesson so obviously visible, I'm kind of amazed it wasn't heeded when laying out the "roadmap" for Sansar. (alternate theory time) Or .. I'm completely wrong and Sims 2 was actually such a giant boost in EA's income (that somehow didn't get reported or documented in the industry) that Ebbe used it as one of the selling points in his proposal to remake LL into a more profitable enterprise. It's possible. But y'know, somehow I just don't find it a convincing argument. You're completely wrong. The Sims 1 was the best selling game in history at the time, but The Sims 2 passed it, and was the biggest PC launch in EA's history. http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/the-sims-3-facts-and-figures Wouildn't be the first time .. dang sure wouldn't be the last either. Yet I remain unconvinced. I continue in my opinion that the decision to make Sansar incapable of using SL content is both a poor business decision and a poor marketing decision. Time will tell of course. Even if Sansar takes off on its own and becomes a stellar success in LL's offerings .. I will still maintain it could have done better had they simply taken the time and invested the effort to provide a level of portability between the two. BTW: Just to satisfy my own curiosity ... how much money did you spend on Sims 1 after Sims 2 debuted? If I'm right in my belief, your answer will be "zero or less." So in essence EA cannibilized the Sims 1 customer base with the release of Sims 2. On the face, EA would have gained a tremendous uptick in income as people repurchased Sims 2 Superficially it would then seem they gained substantially by that decision. But that disgregards the loss of customer loyalty and satisfaction suffered because of those existing Sims 1 customers that chose NOT to repurchase, not to continue spending money with EA, and instead went looking for other places to spend their money. The Sims is also not a direct match for SL/Sansar. While there was a "Merchant Community" within Sims 1, it was by no means as diverse or mature as the Merchant Community within SL. Sims, both 1 & 2, were also not the "Shared Exprience" type of platform that Second Life has become. Both versions of Sims were populated and usable with zero end-user content. They came preloaded with worlds that were populated and interesting right out of the box. Second Life never was that way. Sansar will not be that way either. To make Sims 2 the equivalent of Sansar would require wiping out all initial content and starting you off naked on a blank piece of dirt. When Sansar debuts, it will be "pre-loaded" .. to be sure. But it will be pre-loaded with end-user created content. And that content will be provided by only a small subset of existing SL Creators. Had LL provided a means to transport a bulk of SL content into Sansar, I am quite sure the "Grand Opening" would be a much richer, more engaging and much more diverse set of worlds to explore.

Gavin Hird wrote: Darrius Gothly wrote: This exactly proves my point. By maintaining the existing SL platform, they lend even more credence to the assertion that Sansar is indeed a completely new product without the slightest inference that it might be an update to SL. Which is what I originally said; They specifically call it a new product for legal reasons so they can call a clean sheet! ;-) And again I will disagree. They can call it "Donkey Kong with Sprinkles" or "SL V2" or "Chevy Toehold" and have no legal exposure whatsoever. They can close SL's doors the day they turn on Sansar and STILL have no legal exposure. The existing agreements give them full right and license to turn off, modify or extend the SL Service in any way they see fit. It is their choice, their interpretation and their decision. How that might affect their customers is expressly disincluded as having any influence on their legal obligations. If they choose to shutter SL today, with no notice whatsoever .. they have absolutely zero obligation to their existing customers. The TOS says so in very bold and plain language. Even the "money" you might think you have on deposit with them in the form of Linden Dollars .. is theirs and not yours. Be very clear on that point. They owe you nothing and you have no right to demand anything. They provide SL at their whim and fancy. Any rights you think you have .. you don't. But that substantially detours from the point at play here. Their decision to provide no path for transfer of SL content into Sansar is a technical decision only. It has zero dependence on any perceived legal exposure or liability. Not only are they protected fully against legal liability, but the simple fact that you access the two using two different points of access proves beyond any doubt they are separate products. Providing a method to use existing SL content causes them no exposure or liability in any fashion .. period. It would simply ensure that existing customers have another way to put money in LL's pockets with little effort. And I still do not see why that is a bad thing to do!

Your point about monetisation of the customer base is exactly why I have refrained from opening a Facebook account under my real name AND using my business identity here in SL. Facebook and Mark Zuckerburg have been very clear from the date of inception that their sole and primary purpose is to use their customers for income. On the face, that goal is precisely what most businesses do .. obtain and retain customers for the purpose of deriving income. However "most businesses" also make their goals and methods fully transparent, displaying in plain sight their methods and mechanisms for deriving that income. Facebook, and sadly to an ever-growing extent, many other "modern" businesses engage in income derivation practices that are explicitly hidden from their customers and, even worse IMO, place undue or unjust burdens on their customers. Some even go so far as to place their customer's private information and financial viability at risk. An all too common example of the latter are the rash of "As Seen on TV" companies that resell your name, address, phone number and use of a credit card or debit card to disreputable merchants. I've been subjected to phone calls from people who misrepresent themselves as agents of the orignal merchant, attempting to get me to divulge my full credit card details for the purposes of "verifying my order" when in fact they were only intending to use that info to place bogus or fraudulent charges against it. And that's from just ONE purchase over 3 years ago. (Yes, I still get phone calls from time to time about it!) IMO Facebook engages in practices that are, although not exactly the same, have the same "flavor" and moral rectitude. And it is for this very reason I do not open any accounts with them at all. I have been told that I am denying myself many opportunities to attract and obtain new customers. But that loss is more than fully compensated by the lack of exploitation I believe I would suffer just so Mark Zuckerburg can make another few bucks.

Gavin Hird wrote: To call it an upgrade there must be an upgrade path. In this case there is none because not a single item of your content (created or aquired) can be migrated unless there is so substantial conversion that the creator would have to add up to significant effort. SecondLife, the service, is close to pointless without content. Sansar, the service, is in the same way possibly pointless without content, but there is no customer migration path. It is therefore a new product. Windows 10 is a direct follow on to previous versions of Windows, there is a migration path and backwards compatibility in that applications created ages ago (even in the DOS era) still will execute. There is no such link between SecondLife and Sansar. I seem to be having a hard time making this point clear, so allow me to try again. Providing compatibility between SL and Sansar in no way whatsoever implies that Sansar is a revision or update or upgrade to Second Life. It simply says "all your old stuffz can work" in Sansar. It is a very common occurrence in the industry to provide backward .. or even cross-platform .. compatibility yet retain clear and full distinction between the different products. Gavin Hird wrote: Also, if Sansar is an upgrade, then the old service will terminate once the new service takes on the migrated customers. They keep telling us that SecondLife will exist as a separate service as long as it is viable. This exactly proves my point. By maintaining the existing SL platform, they lend even more credence to the assertion that Sansar is indeed a completely new product without the slightest inference that it might be an update to SL. And it can STILL provide compatibility to any SL content that can be legally exported and uploaded by the rightful owner.

Qie Niangao wrote: For me, the problem comes with the "property rights" construction, presumably deriving from my inalienable, god-given "right" to shoo young whippersnappers off my lawn. That and the immersive verisimilitude to Real Life, where if anyone rings my doorbell while I'm not at home, my Ring Video Drone attachment swoops down, vaporizes their car, and hurls them to the address on their driver's license. Doesn't everybody's? I recommend you get the upgrade. It now sweeps up any remaining ashes too ...

Rhonda Huntress wrote: ... I like my men how I like my coffee: ground up, in a can and stored in the freezer. Eeeps!! /me promptly develops a "Rhonda Detector" safety bracelet ....

Gavin Hird wrote: Darrius Gothly wrote: Gavin Hird wrote: Darrius Gothly wrote: It just strikes me as counter-productive to keep insisting "Sansar is nothing like SL" There are probalby very good leagal reasons for calling it "nothing like SL". They don't want it to be an upgrade with all the implications that has on continuing the user base (that LL really don't like), portability of content, minimum age of entry and what have you. Calling it the next generation of SL, or even "SL v2", implies no legal liability whatsoever. If that were the case Apple would have never released the iPhone 2. Oh, it absolutely does. For the content developers there is a huge difference. My content is only licenced for use in "the service" SecondLife, and not in Sansar. From a consumer legislations standpoint it also does. If it is a completely new product, they can reset the terms as they are not remotely related (except provided by the same legal entity.) This includes who can be a customer or not. For an upgrade, you drag with you all the legalese from the previous version, which in the example of Apple is exactly what they want – extend the terms from a version 1 to a version 2 of the phone. That "exposure" is yours, not LL's. Show me one single example where LL has acted in a manner to protect your legal liability either in addition to theirs or in deference to theirs. But that's beside the point. What they say is compatible is nothing more nor less but .. simply compatible. If your argument held any validity, we wouldn't be on Windows 10, we'd be on "Attic Vent Fan 1.0". Carefully examine the language of the TOS and all applicable User Agreements between yourself and LL. I'm sure you'll find very explicit language that tie the agreements to whatever they declare to be the Second Life service. They can call Sansar "SL V2" in the trades, they can provide it with full compatibility or none at all ... and still clearly and without confusion define it as an entirely distinct product/service. That's not a delicate bit of legal maneuvering either, it's just basic business practice.

Theresa Tennyson wrote: Darrius Gothly wrote: Tomorrow you wake up and discover that your entire closet is empty, all of your clothes are gone and you must purchase all new clothes in order to dress and go outside. Just how likely are you to suffer that indignity with happiness? I'd bet, not very likely. Considering the years you've put into crafting a certain look, your "style" and your private selection of comfy stuff .. you'd more than likely stay at home naked and happy. I came to Second Life from the Sims. I had a huge (for the Sims 1) neighborhood with many families and numerous expansion packs (which I paid for, mind you), and then The Sims 2 came out which was completely incompatible and extremely stripped down compared to where The Sims 1 was at release for The Sims 2 and required an entirely different approach to play. However, I quickly discovered that the engine of The Sims 2 allowed me to go much deeper into story telling so I re-created my town from scratch using the same characters and eventually had a town spread with hundreds of residents spread over several sub-neighborhoods. Because it wasn't the stuff i had, it was the ideas I had. Bravo for you. I am quite sure EA is tickled pink to have loyal customers such as yourself. And more power to 'em as well. Nothing I have said nor believe obviates the existence of those like yourself that are willing to jump into new ventures and products with zeal and $$$ too. You are most likely the demographic that LL is banking on to ensure the future success of Sansar. That's a good thing ... from their POV. But let's look at it from this perspective: According to Ebbe, last year SL Merchants cashed out $60M USD. If we assume that just half of the existing merchant/customer base chooses to abstain from joining Sansar that's a loss of $30M in the first year. That's losses from potential cashouts. There's every reason to believe that the amount cashed out is a fractional part of their earnings. Just for S&G's lets assume that fraction is 1/10th. So if we guesstimate their earnings equate to 10x the amount cashed out, they stand to lose $300M the first year. That's not a sneezable amount. If they invested 1/100th of that amount in development expenses, $3M in one year, that would pay for at least 10 full-boat technical bodies. A staff that large could easily accomplish the bridge creation to ensure SL inventories and technologies stay usable within Sansar. So for an investment of $3M in one year, they could conceivably capture $300M in income. AND retain customer loyalty at a higher rate, ensure market favorability, preserve their leadership in VWs .. and and and. I'm fairly certain you recall the backlash against EA when they cut off their old customer base with the introduction of Sims 2. With that lesson so obviously visible, I'm kind of amazed it wasn't heeded when laying out the "roadmap" for Sansar. (alternate theory time) Or .. I'm completely wrong and Sims 2 was actually such a giant boost in EA's income (that somehow didn't get reported or documented in the industry) that Ebbe used it as one of the selling points in his proposal to remake LL into a more profitable enterprise. It's possible. But y'know, somehow I just don't find it a convincing argument.

Gavin Hird wrote: Darrius Gothly wrote: It just strikes me as counter-productive to keep insisting "Sansar is nothing like SL" There are probalby very good leagal reasons for calling it "nothing like SL". They don't want it to be an upgrade with all the implications that has on continuing the user base (that LL really don't like), portability of content, minimum age of entry and what have you. Calling it the next generation of SL, or even "SL v2", implies no legal liability whatsoever. If that were the case Apple would have never released the iPhone 2.

Final note: Sadly it appears the merchant learned absolutely zip: 

I actually do read reviews. I don't read them just for the star rating though. I read them to get a sense of the reviewer's relationship to the product line and the product Creator. I read to determine the reviewer's overall veracity and their depth of understanding. I also read comments posted by others as well as replies from the product Creator. I've found it fairly easy (in my case anyway) to glean a tremendous amount of understanding from reviews. The vacuous sycophant-planted reviews stand out like laser beams on a moonless night. But so do those posted by people that truly gave it a shot and came up wanting more. When I encounter one that is obviously due to the buyer not reading the description or not understanding what the product was intended to do, those also aid my understanding. Were this a one-off situation, my response would have been much less harsh. Had this been based on a product with little history or from a newbie merchant, again I would have come away less than concerned. But neither of those applied in this case .. and that's what got my hackles up in such dandy fashion. Over my years selling products and services in SL I've had the delight to encounter reviews of a very glowing nature. They left me blushing and reaffirmed that I am doing things right. When I have encountered slams, digs, gripes and kvetching, I took the time to look first at my own "face" and try to understand what I could do to improve the product and the customer's satisfaction with my products. Sometimes I just resign myself to the fact that people don't always intend to help or benefit, they just needed to lash out at someone and I happened to be the Target du Jour. I make it a practice to leave those reviews .. 1-star and all .. right where they are. I trust that future customers will read the review, come to the same conclusion as I, and make a decision based on that conclusion. Other times I have taken even the snarkiest of reviews at their surface value and modified product, listing or both. I'm not always right. I have learned that lesson (sometimes painfully) over my years. I often tell people that I am but one mind and one perspective. I recognize that my view isn't necessarily the right view. And when it comes to products, my view is more often than not limited by my own myopic vision of what I believe can be done. It's the Customers that decide what sells and what doesn't. If a product has flaws, even flaws I never thought of or just didn't believe could exist, I always TRY to see the feedback from the point of view that it will help me make things better suited to serving the one person that matters most .. my Customer. To bottom line it (cuz I'm obviously getting all preachy again) the Creator could have and did eventually realize that the points raised were valid and the product did need to be fixed. But it still remains to be seen if this "lesson" will stick .. or if the pattern of behavior that led to the confrontation continues. It's in the Merchant's hands now, no one else can determine where this goes. I sincerely hope that growth, improvement and a healthy dose of "my stuff really does stink sometimes" are what comes out of the whole series of events. (soapbox off)

(This post is based on old knowledge and may in fact be outdated but .. when has being totally wrong ever stopped me?) There is also the option to download, configure and install your own copy of OpenGrid software. With that properly configured, you can create your own private Sim that is 1KM x 1KM per Sim and allows you to fly, explore and navigate absolutely anywhere you want .. banline and security orb free. You have total control of the entire sim, owe no money to anyone else and do not have to tolerate noisy neighbors or obnoxious builds of any sort. It is without limitation "Your Imagination, Your World". The silence can be a bit deafening sometimes. And the sparse landscape is rather boring after a few minutes. But hey .. there are no limits whatsoever to what you can do! (That's gotta be a big plus, right?)

Theresa Tennyson wrote: Can they open WordStar files? One of the reasons to go in a new direction is to use more commonly used formats instead of Second Life's proprietary ones. There's a reason that sculpted prims are only used in Second Life and its clones. One of my favorite SL stores has this motto - "Because you are not your f-----g prims!" The people who made those prims are who made Second Life what it is. If there's going to be a follow-up or even a continuation of Second Life it'll be those people, and new ones, who do it. Yes, actually I can open WordStar files. It does require an extra downloadable translator, but it can be done. But more to the point is that LL is throwing away not just old file formats, but old and very valuable imaginations, creations and customers. Tomorrow you wake up and discover that your entire closet is empty, all of your clothes are gone and you must purchase all new clothes in order to dress and go outside. Just how likely are you to suffer that indignity with happiness? I'd bet, not very likely. Considering the years you've put into crafting a certain look, your "style" and your private selection of comfy stuff .. you'd more than likely stay at home naked and happy. I get the idea of moving forward. I celebrate growth and progress. I live and have great passion for an industry that thrives on new stuff. But I see no logic in throwing away everything "old" just to provide something "new". It unneccesarily raises the barriers to adoption by customers. Sure, you attract a new flock that won't be upset at losing a month or two worth of inventory. But what about the 100's of thousands that have years worth? New and shiny is kewl .. I get that. But that does not mean that old and well-understood, well-used and well-loved are automatically worthless. In my particular case, I have many years worth of LSL code that might or might not be applicable to Sansar. But if it means I have to start over from scratch, discard every hour I spent writing and debugging all that code? Yeah, I'm gonna stay right here on SL and let the "kids" go spend their $25 on Sansar before they lose interest and go find the next "Neat new thing".

The product was delivered with a highly politicized set of opinions that were hard-coded to be replaced should they be removed or modified. The product specifically reset the displayed texture to show the creator's personal opinions on sensitive subjects and overrode any reasonable attempts to render them invisible. Regardless of one's personal opinion, agree or disagree, a commercial product is not the place to blast out your own personal feelings .. on any subject for any reason. Both the content of the messages and the product's deliberate programming to enforce their display were .. objectionable.