seriously, its simply true. after ending beta and going public in July of 2003, sl has introduced change after change, improvement after improvement, sometimes on a weekly basis.

i remember thinking, when they introduced version 1.1, “good, this is going to fix the problems and smooth things out.” sigh.

isnt there a point where you have a genuine polished product ready for paying customers? is there just an endless beta mentality in LL? will i never see a stable platform with some bandwidth and reliable performance? is this it? am i living the dream already and its just forever patching little things and never fixing the fact that i cant see to shop for ten minutes after i land in a mall?

im not very computer savvy at all. i dont really understand how this all works. but a while ago i went to world of warcraft by blizzard, my only other online gaming experience ever, and was astounded at how fast things work, how pretty things are, and how many people could crowd into a given area. lag there means something might take a whole 5 seconds to load, or u might slow down some in ironforge.

im probably comparing apples to oranges in my admitted ignorance here. it just seems to me, if that is possible there, why not here?

in the end we are just an experiment it seems. some big shot gaming company or software company will buy up sl and dismiss all of us.

anyway, its nice to see this article. and im not interested in joining a a debate about prok.. but simply point out that prok has said all this in the past. one way or another.

And you don’t think in any way that you’ve brought it upon yourself?

“”"”2. I don’t rip other content writers; I rip people who try to damn me by giving praise by others and slam me to boot in a facetious and silly way, because I *HAVE* said the same things.”"”"

So you are jealous of others praises? Yet, you did the exact same thing. Doesn’t that make you a hypocrite? That person stated a perfectly thought out opinion considering the blow up of your recent articles, mis information, horribly choiced worded write ups, etc. Ironic, that you make op/ed pieces, which by the way wasn’t very factually checked, with twisted words and then slam someone else for THIER opinion.

“”"”3. It is half quotes — but that’s fine. The art of a good SLH piece is taking the pulse and getting the right quotes that sum it all up.”"”"

Ironic that you say that considering the recent events.

Wow… can you not get any fuller of yourself? First you rip the other content writers, then don’t stand behind an editor, who allowed you to speak your mind in the first place, the chance to get things sorted before more damage is caused, now you rip the writer of this article, because ‘you’ve said this already’ and ‘it’s half quotes’.

I love it when people hide behind anonymous nicks to harp at others.

Much of this article is stuff I already said, and reported on. It’s very well put together, but says nothing I didn’t already say — and thousands of other people said, as they are in fact making up more than half of the article in the form of quotes. I’m all for doing that, and it’s a good piece, and we need more of them at the Herald, but that doesn’t take away from my pieces one bit, nor serve as a justification for your nasty swipe.

Regarding the profitability of SL, and the confusion on that:

1. Philip has stated that SL itself is very profitable.

In other words, it pays for itself, and then some. What we pay in tier and other costs (buying and selling Lindens, etc.) is plenty to keep SL nicely in the black. (And probably at an ever-increasing profit.)

2. Philip has stated that SL will soon have the investors paid off.

In other words, once that happens, all the profit from SL will be applied to itself, rather than used to pay back the investors (including Philip himself, though his seed money probably already been paid back.)

Interestingly, his new hiring kick coincides very neatly with the new cost for islands, and the way they manipulated that into a buying panic.

I think if we knew what these higher-ups are paying themselves, we would probably fall over in a dead faint.

coco

Step 1: figure out someway to allow users of both X-Box Live and the Playstation 3 Network to run the SL client

Step 2: hold an IPO to fill the coffers and repay the VC the $20m that Philip says has been spent thus far on SL

Step 3: buy Google