The Alphaville Herald

63 Responses to “Is First Land for First Time Buyers?”

1. 

   Prokofy Neva
   

   Dec 12th, 2006
   

   This issue surfaces every so often and gets people so roiled because it is a metaphor for all the “what about the children” issues of SL.

   First Land does not HAVE to be paid for only once; and now, if someone is enterprising and can buy 30 accounts and buy 30 first lands — that is legal. Furthermore, I’ll show you that it is stupid, and that’s why most land barons don’t bother — it’s something some percentage of stupid kids do, and you cannot stop that phenom unless you control the market even more artificially than it is already.

   The issue of just how much, and who, and when, and how first land gets to be bought is very much contested in the forums. Of course moralizers and hectorers like oldbie Cristiano Midnight, who has 4096 m2 free tier for life (not 512 ROFL), tell you that you can’t get more than one 512 for yourself. But you are were legally entitled to 5 accounts; and now, under the new rules, you can buy as many as you want. Yes, each one can get first land, it’s like buying the ticket to Atlantic City round trip to go to the casino, and getting free chips and a coupon for the steak dinner. This is the example I cite endlessly.

   The moralizing and hectoring about this stems from the scarcity, among other reasons. But the scarcity isn’t caused by old people or land barons taking more than one; it’s caused by lots of new people. Other new people have trouble realizing that not only are they new; there are lots of them. If we go by the official statistics, there are more than 8000 first-landers just in November. Not everyone uses their first land option of course; some never buy land and some skip it and buy more than that 512, but hey, whatever, it *comes with the account so deal with it*.

   There are many other options other than brow-beating those who legally buy more than one account and legally get more than one 512 discounted parcel with it. One is to wait until more is put out. Another is to rent. And a third is to realize that this whole system is silly and subsidized and one of the many things the Lindens need to let go — and people should not fuss so much about it.

   Why? Because first land is merely a gift of $3000-5000, and the Lindens can’t afford that. Because first land sucks, and you can buy much better land by simplying buying the the $10,000 or so you need to buy a 1024, and pay the $5 in tier. The difference should not be breaking you, if you are on the Internet on a DSL line in your spare time anyway.

   Again, shortage is caused by a general shortage of sims. Look o the auction. Sims off the mainland auction now are going for an unprecedented huge price of $2600 US because the Lindens, when they get servers online, prefer to sell them as islands with more features than as first land.

   So don’t blame other newbies; land barons; or people who buy more than one account; blame greedy Lindens, if you must, for turning over a server not to the socialist cause of newbies cluttering up subsidized land like public projects in the ghettos; but to the capitalist cause of getting a higher purchase price and higher tier for new islands.

   The way out of this madness is to have servers that are perentially available for newbies — if you want to be socialist, go all the way. Buying the premium account enables you to move into a 512 for 30 days, let’s say, to get you use to land. When your 30 days are out, you are erased, and the land is cleared for the next person, not sold by you or land barons. That way, the server is always there, and the land is much more available. Of course, I suspect more land only meets a growing demand, especially for free stuff.

   Another way is simply to dump this system and sell servers off the auction with some kind of incentive to land barons. They can buy a server and take 60 days to pay tier rather than 30 if they are willing to turn over 1/4 of the sim to new land for free to newbies, let’s say. Then they have an incentive to manage booting you off, or letting you resell it, or whatever.

   Try to see the deeper problems here of the artificial land market itself, Seola. Barons are not evil. They capitalize off a system *the Lindens themselves created and thrive in*. So they flip land? So what? The Lindens enable the flipping. And they don’t buy first land in pieces — that’s silly. Even a newbie baron realizes that buying an account even for $72 a year and using it to buy one 512 and doing that over and over is just plain stupid and non-economical.

   It’s much more practical for barons to buy an entire sim and chop it up.

   Finally, the barons that seem to get land so quickly are just quick at what they do, sometimes by remaining awake 24/7 or having staff 24/7 to swoop. It’s what enables sims to finally recover from the stress and idiocy of first land which is a kind of griefing, where people put up giant penises and spinning purple boxes and don’t show any consideration of their neighbours. Thanks to land barons willing to hold tier and hold land while it sells to more conscious end users, the sims begin to improve in looks and usage.

   Finally, I talked to Adam Reuters about those numbers. They are patently fake. There aren’t any 360,000 accounts. I went over this with him. The statement he got from the new VP was that this was the number of people paying a monthly fee. But wait, that means people who don’t have premiums, but have islands they are billed for. And it includes people who buy extra accounts at $9.95 that one month. What is a monthly fee? It’s a fee paid *that month* in inflated Lindenomics.

   The figure of 8,000 extracted from the sinks to Governor Linden for land is probably more reliable.
2. 

   Sativa Prototype
   

   Dec 12th, 2006
   

   Also to note, if you have bought land before, you cannot buy First Land. First Land is a first purchase land choice, so if you buy a bigger plot and decide to scale down to just 512, its a no go. So First Land must be the first land purchase for an avatar.

   So, do the numbers crunching on how many new avatars the barons have to churn through to keep this First Land cycle going, avatars that are counted towards the population total.

   And I don’t think you should be lambasted at all Pixeleen, LL themselves are always saying that not everyone is working on dev.
3. 

   Prokofy Neva
   

   Dec 12th, 2006
   

   BTW, Feature Suggestions is always the bastion of both Lindens and residents plotting some feature change that leaves everyone else out of the discussion — I hate Feature Suggestions. But *kicks self* — I have to get into the habit as should everyone eager to have SL not be taken over by this or that faction to monitor what is being proposed and applauded by Lindens there.

   Here is Seola’s idea:

   >For the first 45 days you purchase first land, it cannot be resold except as first land again, it cannot be deeded to a group for 45 days either.

   That would require 2 months of premium and cancel out the profit from land barons.

   Would this be at all possible?”

   This makes no sense because it opens up all kinds of questions:

   o 45 days is not a cycle the Linden billing system recognizes — it would have to be 30 or 60
   o “Cannot be resold” but…to whom? To other newbies? But how will you check who those newbies are, Seola? They could be those same “evil swooping land barons” you feel so prudish and fastidious about and so protective over other adults with DSL lines and discretionary income about. There is simply no realiable way to do this without involving discretionary hours of time — staff — by Lidnens, and that is not feasible
   o Why would it cancel out profit? The same land barons who you hate swooping and buying land will appear 45 days from now or 90 days from now. You imagine this little newbie is now more educated; but he can be educated in 24 hours just as easily. THere isn’t a uniform way of “educating people to be smart enough to not sell their land for under market price*. Why? Because land markets want to be free, like people. Some people want to unload their doggy first land ASAP and will take $1000 for it — hey, that’s $512 times two. Others don’t care about what amounts to…um…$10.00 US? the price of a latte and a Marshmallow Crispie or something? It’s really not worth getting agitated over.

   Honestly, monkeying with first land is the devil’s own work. Either you leave it alone and stop the moralizing, or end it, or, if you want to play socialist, play it the way I indicated — make an endlessly cleaning slate that deletes every 30 days. I don’t think Lindens will like an idea that might require human eyes or flagging, but they may be able to script it to do this for them, just like some rentals do it.
4. 

   Prokofy Neva
   

   Dec 12th, 2006
   

   My biggest question is, is it possible that the Lindens may be losing out on thousands more dollars by people who are waiting to go premium until they can get first land.

   Seola, the Lindens are not losing out on anything of the kind. What first land is, is a subsidized GIFT. It is worth more than $512 Lindens per parcel. They subsidize its purchase. The market value is $5000 — 10 times that. So not onl do they GIVE the newbie a nearly-free gift, they give him ANOTHER free $5000 worth $17.50 at today’s LindEx prices. Try to grasp that. The Lindens don’t care about first land in any deep way because it doesn’t pay them anything.

   Sure, they get $9.95 per account, and a few people buying $72 at once for the year (most don’t). And in theory, these are potential tiering-up accounts. But…most aren’t. So you have to wait them letting people have free items that they can make $140,000 US off per month, or have the Lindens make that $140,000 US themselves by selling full sims and letting barons chop them that way.
5. 

   Prokofy Neva
   

   Dec 12th, 2006
   

   *you have to weigh them letting people make $140,000 out of thin air, or making that $140,000 or more themselves with sim sales.
6. 

   Seola Sassoon a.k.a Random Writer
   

   Dec 12th, 2006
   

   Actually Prok, some people cannot afford to buy whole sims for quite some time. This is an effective way of making a profit without more than 1500USD investment.

   Without the ‘children’ of SL, who’s gonna take the place when long time members finally throw thier hands up, or create an influx of people who shop, rent, buy, etc.? That’s like telling the RL children, no one cares about you! We don’t want to cultivate you into being a productive member of society, fend for yourself! Can you imagine the wonderful SL we’d have without some of the best people in thier business because LL said, ‘we don’t care about you or your money, so go shove it, but feel free to look around!’

   If these barons don’t operate for a month, then LL doesn’t get the money, plain and simple. If a premium account who DOES get this land and remains in game, then they still get it.

   If they don’t open first land for 3 months, these premiums still pay the bills, while the land barons do not.

   Just because something is legal, doesn’t make it right or fair. (Someone made a quote forever ago, “Just because it’s right, doesn’t make it fair and just because it’s fair doesn’t make it right”) Hell politics is built on this! I’m not specifically talking about land barons that buy sims and break them up. I’m talking about the ones who specifically abuse a system aimed at getting and keeping premium accounts for new users. Before you go on about how it’s not profitable, I suggest you speak with a few of them. One mentioned that they can make more then 2kUSD a month doing this putting full time into the effort, and it’s certainly not McDonald’s pay. Hell, that pay is better than 1/2 of American pay scales out there and doesn’t require an education. While you may not think this is great money compared to the millions you must be making, that’s certainly enough for food and rent for a family of four in America.

   If I were to take the technique and use it, with only maybe 30 bucks initial investment, I’d never have to pay another dime and continue to profit off of it. Certainly a far cry from taking the risk of buying a whole sim at 1650 to break it up, and not the almost 300 a month. Rotating roughly even a 40 dollar tier a month, that’s certainly not even coming close to spending that much in sim money. The method that allows this, doesn’t even include creating a single alt off your main account, but rather new accounts, which is quite easy to do in America.

   And while you say they aren’t losing out… how can you even mention that, when they are losing money over possible long term premium accounts and all those waiting to go premium until they can buy thier first land? Right now, LL’s profitablity on those who buy first land to resale is directly limited to how many first lands they put up for sale, as opposed to running premiums who may stay longer, regardless of how much land is put up.

   I guess by your theory, since the Lindens setup allows this to happen, then it’s okay that you are griefed to hell because, technically the Linden’s have a system that allows it? But weren’t you the one who was speaking of being griefed? As long as the platform and set up allows it, all is fair and free game?

   As for what I posted as a semi fix, read down farther on the posts speaking of the subject. I wrote that first land can only be resold as first land in that time period, which means that they’d have to hold tier for each parcel for 2 months, eliminating profit. If they buy a first land from someone that had it 45 days, then they’d be on the 45 day timer.

   As for billing, that has nothing to do with it. It’s land settings, you don’t get billed, the land is just ‘unmarked’ as first land and can be resold at any price upon that time. This gives 2 weeks for newbies to try and make back the money they spent if they choose not to keep the land or to upgrade in size.

   And what are you talking about a year premium? I’m talking about a MONTH of premium that nets this size profit. They get the premium, buy the land, transfer the land, cancel premium.

   As for barons making a profit, and it’s a good thing because of newbs putting up giant penises or whatever, I suppose you think 60m high neon orange ads are less offensive? Personally, give me the tiny penis that I can block with a hedge, than a giant rotating flashing neon sign.

   Shortage is not caused by the lack of sims, there’s gobs and oodles of Linden maintained land, that is ready for first land. It’s lack of putting enough on the market in large lump deals. Flooding the market is another option to making it non profitable. Put up 400 new first lands, and while land barons may snap some up, to take over 400 lands, would be quite a feat and induce price wars, getting so low that they are just trying to cover costs.

   And not everyone wants 1024 or needs it, why buy and pay for something you don’t need? I certainly don’t need it, my 512 suits me just fine… so why should I care about 1024m and pay another 5 bucks a month? So you can make a sale on a 1024 to someone by telling them, ‘this is what they need’?

   But I’m sure glad LL doesn’t take your all or nothing approach, or we’d have no SL at all.

   So don’t worry Prok, I’m not attacking you in this article as a land baron, remove the podium and actually think of what you are writing. (Does make me wonder though if you aren’t participating in it.)
7. 

   Seola Sassoon a.k.a Random Writer
   

   Dec 12th, 2006
   

   P.S. As for Adam, he listed premium accounts, which to me means someone has paid them the fee.

   “”"”The number of Second Life premium users, who pay a monthly fee in exchange for a stipend and the ability to own land, also rose 29 percent, to 365,000. The November figures are preliminary and subject to revision.”"”"

   That to me doesn’t mean monthly fee, plus all those who don’t….
8. 

   Cocoanut Koala
   

   Dec 12th, 2006
   

   Interesting piece, Seola. I started this same conversation yesterday over on SLU.

   I also questioned the “almost daily” thing as surely not right, and in contradiction to everything else the Lindens have said about it, as well as not my observation or that of many others.

   As for your experience, that’s interesting, too. I have had two recent experiences that were different, though.

   One was a batch of land opened up behind Rosieri, where my shop is. That was jam-packed with actual regular new people, all busily setting up regular new people diverse 512 houses.

   Another was a friend of mine, a new player, who wanted first land. When some finally came up, he TP’d me there, and then bought it. I went home, and right away, he was messaging me that there was a guy there offering 1500 (I think, maybe it was 2000). By IM, I told him to ask for 5k. The guy just laughed at him and moved on to the next newbie.

   Another person was shouting, “4K for your first land,” to everyone.

   So I think those sorts of situations are probably as common as the ones you report.

   coco
9. 

   Artemis Fate
   

   Dec 12th, 2006
   

   Excellent reporting Seola, i’m really not surprised to hear that land barons do this, it seems they’ll sink to any depths to make a profit by ripping people off. Really it’s the same thing as the camping chairs, yes camping chairs are LEGAL by ToS standards, but only because the ToS is too ill defined to catch them and it’s an abuse of a system at everyone’s expense for a person’s own personal greed.

   You know Prokofy, I find it funny that your FIC paranoia always seems to stop at the border of Land Baron country. Doesn’t matter how much stuff they do to prove they really have your so called FIC powers, like Anshe getting the ToS changed inadvertantly when she wanted to sell accounts, you never seem to call them on it.
10. 

    Hiro Pendragon
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    First land resell rackets have been around for years. Folks have discussed how to end this. *shrug* What’s worse is these land racketeers put up huge, spinning, “Impeach-Bush”-like signs advertising their services. It’s a truly awful experience for new users.

    Here’s a simple suggestion: Make the land have to be resold for 512L$ for the first 30 days. This forces these unscrupulous land grabbers to pay a month’s worth of tier on the land, and would be a huge friction factor against them.

    Here’s another simple suggestion: Make the giant spinning signs against Community Standards in land for the first 30 days.
11. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    Coco, your experience is exactly mine — many nights I see new land open, and I see lots of actual, real newbies struggling with autoreturn, prefab houses, etc. There are LOTS of them, and they aren’t evil land swoopers.

    Very soon, these “evil land swoopers” — necessary in an economy that has both wierd land gluts and needs liquidity and also has wierd shortages — come along and offer newbies money for their land. If they don’t figure out how to sell it for $4500, well, that’s their first lesson in the rigours of the SL economy *shrugs*. So many of the people coming in now are 15-year-old kids. I’ve verified this over and over and OVER again. Why am I supposed to create an entire new teen grid for them with safeguards and easy explanations, Seola? Why? Let their parents find babysitters for them or let them go to the teen grid.

    >Actually Prok, some people cannot afford to buy whole sims for quite some time. This is an effective way of making a profit without more than 1500USD investment.

    What on earth is your point here, Seola? This is the kind of gratuitious slap designed to guilt-trip and distract. Der, I know people can’t afford whole sims. Ya know why? Because I, too, when I came to SL couldn’t afford whole sims. In fact, I started with 512 m2 and sold that first. It was many months before I could raise money, from a combination of buying smaller parcels off the auction, selling my sim in TSO, and just putting up some money, that I could buy a $1500 sim, which I then had to scramble to sell — I couldn’t just keep it and pay all that tier.

    So I know about this *the hard way*. Do you? And I have absolutely no sentimentality about anybody who comes in, buys lands here, and whines that some evil land baron “took their land”. Anyone with a DSL line and properly of age for this game can figure out this basic truth. If they can’t, and get robbed, it’s no different than getting robbed in Mexico City or Marrakesh as a tourist who is stupid in the marketplace. That’s life. You learn its lessons.

    >Without the ‘children’ of SL, who’s gonna take the place when long time members finally throw thier hands up, or create an influx of people who shop, rent, buy, etc.? That’s like telling the RL children, no one cares about you!

    Again, Seola, what kind of emotional wierd blackmailing shit is this? Huh? New people are needed. They can buy land or not. They don’t HAVE to buy land and don’t HAVE to sell it — no one puts a gun to their head. They can *figure it out*. It’s a lesson to be learned. If you have the time to stand around helping newbies, well, help. I do tons of it. I have an infohub, and notecards that I use to explain to people constantly that they can get $4500 or more even for first land now, not $1500. But even if 100 of us do that, it won’t be enough to “educate the children”.

    All your agitation is going is forcing yet another unjust example of Linden/state intervention into the land market to remove yet more freedoms in this market to bork it and nerf it to this putative vulnerable class you are ranting for. Please. I had to learn about first land. So does everybody else. It’s not rocket science either.

    >We don’t want to cultivate you into being a productive member of society, fend for yourself! Can you imagine the wonderful SL we’d have without some of the best people in thier business because LL said, ‘we don’t care about you or your money, so go shove it, but feel free to look around!’

    Huh? When I go to Mexico City or Moscow, I don’t expect the town fathers to provide me with chaperones and guides and notebooks explaining that I shouldn’t by THIS rug or basket in the marketplace but THAT one. That’s just ridiculous. A free market is a free market. Caveat emptor. If you are uninformed enough to sell something you go not for four times its worth but only two times, well, so what? You got something nearly for free, duh. You capitalized at least double your expense on it. So, next time, be more savvy. But is the whole system stupid? Why should Lindens give people a grant of $4000 to start the game for only $9.95? If anything, they need to charge more for premium. These same 14-year-olds you are wheeping and whining about either spend their own money on WoW for $15.95 — $15.95!!!! — more than three times the figure for the poor vulnerable newbies you hallucinate about in SL. Their moms are cajoled into spending the money if the kids don’t have it. So…I’m supposed to worry about people who spend $9.95 and then whine that they couldn’t flip their land for $3000 L? Huh?

    This infantalizing of newbies is one of the biggest hobbles to the management of the newbie problem. When you and the Lindens get over this infantalizing and are willing to look at the real newbie stream we have — which I estimate to be about 40 percent underage kids now and 60 percent real adults, including about 25 percent foreigners without English — then you can adjust the information. But whining and venting about evil land barons swooping on fragile little children is just a ridiculous cliche.

    Seola, admit it — like Coco, you had one, maybe two, perhaps as many as three *anecdotal* experiences. But they are not indicative. Have the courage of your convictions to go out, as I have done, and actually spend night after night observing how new land works. I often do this because people who are tenants either ask me for advice how to move on from a rental to get to their own land, or they wish to sell their own land to get a $250 discount by putting tier in my group. And there are thousands — and I mean thousands upon thousands — of perfectly fine, non-vulnerable, non-stupid newbies coining money. I see $6000 even changing hands. The kids are alright, Seola. Most people figure it out, make some money, and move on. Borking the entire system around the handful that can’t figure it out is silly, especially now that at this point, we have enough checks and balances on the land menu itself.

    This is a completely short-sighted notion. What is YOUR solution for making a free land market, Seola? Or aren't you supporting that idea? Who will make the land barons "go away"? How will YOU or a Linden distinguish between the "good" land baron who gives a newbie $3000 for a land, and a "bad" land baron who gives him $2950?? It's absurd.

    You may own a 4096 m2 somewhere. Do you want to get $50,000 or $15,000 for that 4096, Seola? If you begin tinkering, subsidizing, controlling this aspect of the market, other aspects will soon be controlled, too. The idea that some set of putatively evil land barons "not operating for a month" is a solution is a band-aid at best, but more like a meaningless thimble in the ocean.

    If you have a free market in first land, it's free. That means some people swoop; some people are naive. If you wish to have a free market -- and you will when it comes time for YOU to sell YOUR OWN land at a valued price -- then you can't monkey with this too much UNLESS you say that having giant projects and warehouses for newbies to have absolutely free, 30-day only land.

    I really marvel at how this tiny clique of browbeaters to which you and the FIC belong on the forums have horsed the Lindens into actually looking to review this and create some more socialistic response, no doubt. My God, it's just astounding. Here's this game company that has a million bigger problems to fix, and you and a few others whining about "land shortages"

    When things are in shortage, the Lindens have to do several things. One, in keeping with their socialist beliefs, is to work harder and make more land to glut with to keep it cheap. But even our socialist game gods are getting tired. They figured that they have to charge more for islands when they got scarce, i.e. Lindens couldn't buy them and get them on line fast enough. So they have to do the same thing with the premium account. Charge more for it, $15.95.

    >If they don’t open first land for 3 months, these premiums still pay the bills, while the land barons do not.

    This is absurd, because first land shortages never, ever EVER last more than a week. 7 days. That’s it. And people buy premiums mainly for the stipends, not the land. You pay for a premium not for land, may I remind you, but for 512m2 of free tier. Free tier is instantly given you, and instantly applied to any piece of land in SL. So your argument goes out the window. Those newbies who can’t wait the maximum of 7 days that first land might not be available are welcome to buy a 1024 on the next sim over with their free 512.

    Oh, you’re weeping because the guy didn’t get to buy a 512 for $512? Well, he can do that if he is willing to wait, there’s a shortage now given the sale in Filene’s basement.

    >Just because something is legal, doesn’t make it right or fair. (Someone made a quote forever ago, “Just because it’s right, doesn’t make it fair and just because it’s fair doesn’t make it right”) Hell politics is built on this!

    But like freebie selling, this isn’t legitimate as an argument. You can buy another account, and you have no literature from the Lindens, and no literature the Lindens would dare put out on help islands, that says you are now allowed morally and socially to do something that is legally allowed by the SL tools itself.

    Abortion is legal; I happen to believe it would be immoral *for me*; others don’t, and that is their right. But this is different even than the old “legal but not right” argument because there is a) no official explanation that it is not right (no one has ever been able to get Lindens, who just want to sell accounts, to play that social game) b) no way for any newbie to find out from the Church Ladies of the game that it isn’t “right”. You can’t make something immoral when no one has news that it is so.

    >I’m not specifically talking about land barons that buy sims and break them up. I’m talking about the ones who specifically abuse a system aimed at getting and keeping premium accounts for new users. Before you go on about how it’s not profitable, I suggest you speak with a few of them. One mentioned that they can make more then 2kUSD a month doing this putting full time into the effort, and it’s certainly not McDonald’s pay.

    Seola. Run the numbers again. Climb off the high horse. And realize it is not profitable. If it is a short-term gain, then the person will be stuck with tier on laggy, stupid, ugly land in the game for weeks — months. I know, because when I used to offer to buy first land for tenants, I would get stuck with real DOGS for MONTHS ON END. I’d finally be forced to put them to sale for the $1500 that I probably should have paid them in the first place (but I paid more like $3000 at the time). So please, don’t instruct me about this. Whatever bragging idiot kids you see doing this for some short-term misguided reason will be driven out of business within 30-60 days.

    The Lindens, of course, could mechanically take care of this by putting in the same block they used to have preventing people from ordering lots of accounts at once — IP blocks. But they need 2 million…3 million…accounts now. They will not be worrying about this moral outrage you have over some kids making a buck in SL.

    >Hell, that pay is better than 1/2 of American pay scales out there and doesn’t require an education. While you may not think this is great money compared to the millions you must be making, that’s certainly enough for food and rent for a family of four in America.

    I don’t make any millions. You don’t know me, and have no clue what I do. And I just explained, that your silly notions of people cleaning up on first land have a glaring, obvious, hole in their logic: a land baron may get 10 or 20 first lands cheaply and sell them, but at a certain point, if he buys cheap land off newbies, he is STUCK because the stuff just won’t sell.

    >If I were to take the technique and use it, with only maybe 30 bucks initial investment, I’d never have to pay another dime and continue to profit off of it. Certainly a far cry from taking the risk of buying a whole sim at 1650 to break it up, and not the almost 300 a month. Rotating roughly even a 40 dollar tier a month, that’s certainly not even coming close to spending that much in sim money. The method that allows this, doesn’t even include creating a single alt off your main account, but rather new accounts, which is quite easy to do in America.

    Seola. Please take a deep breath. And please explain how someone, paying $9.95 or even $72 a year to get the cheaper $6.00 a month can keep justifying the cost of those accounts and the wait to sell the land — and getting stuck at times — with whatever “windfall” you think he gets. Your whole system is predicated on the idea that a) no other people will do this and not create competition for that baby baron; b) he will be able to flip all this “ill-gotten” first land, which he can’t do in the Purina of the mainland c) that people are all stupid and pay him when they see he’s taken over a sim or part of a sim; d) that people who gain from this system — they do, after all, get $1500-5000 from this fellow — will not find it a service and applaud his efforts. See all the problems with your outrage?

    >And while you say they aren’t losing out… how can you even mention that, when they are losing money over possible long term premium accounts and all those waiting to go premium until they can buy thier first land? Right now, LL’s profitablity on those who buy first land to resale is directly limited to how many first lands they put up for sale, as opposed to running premiums who may stay longer, regardless of how much land is put up.

    Because…they are losing out? If they give every newbie a chance to acquire $3500 or so for free? Having loads of little 512 accounts is also billing labour. The Lindens have never been motivated to promote premiums, because it means more work on all kinds of levels. They’ve always preferred bigger buyers. The idea that they get more tier per sim doesn’t wash with them, as they also get more trouble tickets, billing problems, and churn per sim too.

    The new guy Zee Linden may have convinced them to make more premiums available as a way of luring people into buying bigger pieces of land and paying more tier, that’s all.

    First land is a loss leader for the Lindens; it is a loss-leader for any land baron; most of the major and middle-level land barons don’t even bother with first land. These swooping barons that disturb you so much are merely kids who haven’t figured out that businesses have costs in them, as well as profits. Laggy stupid ugly land on a newbie sim is a cost center, not a profit center ultimately.

    >I guess by your theory, since the Lindens setup allows this to happen, then it’s okay that you are griefed to hell because, technically the Linden’s have a system that allows it? But weren’t you the one who was speaking of being griefed? As long as the platform and set up allows it, all is fair and free game?

    I hardly see any comparison between allowing a free land market and allowing people to buy and sell at whatever price they set, and a system that enables griefings to terrorize people. Huh?

    What you fail to see, Seola, is that a free market is where a WILLING buyer meets a WILLING seller. Free will. All you can do with your socialist and child-care aspirations is try to impugn that this is “willing”. But it is. Fly around and watch all the deals. Most newbies fly away satisfied and netting $3000 or more. *Shrugs*.

    >As for what I posted as a semi fix, read down farther on the posts speaking of the subject. I wrote that first land can only be resold as first land in that time period, which means that they’d have to hold tier for each parcel for 2 months, eliminating profit. If they buy a first land from someone that had it 45 days, then they’d be on the 45 day timer.

    Seola. Again. Could you please understand that a land baron buying land from a newbie at a cut-rate is now holding land he cannot sell reasonably most of the time. And a newbie who enters *that* situation with swoopers and other ordinary customers trying to sell land and then buys and tries to flip land will be *waiting* to do so. He WILL be holding tier. Follow it over 30 days and you’ll see what I mean.

    >As for billing, that has nothing to do with it. It’s land settings, you don’t get billed, the land is just ‘unmarked’ as first land and can be resold at any price upon that time. This gives 2 weeks for newbies to try and make back the money they spent if they choose not to keep the land or to upgrade in size.

    And that’s a good thing. And once again, people buy tier, not land with the premium account. Tier available for use from minute one. You are confusing tier and land as many do.

    >And what are you talking about a year premium? I’m talking about a MONTH of premium that nets this size profit. They get the premium, buy the land, transfer the land, cancel premium.

    And I’ve just explained all the problems with having this as a rational business model.

    o They can’t depend reliably on flipping the land for the $3000 you imagine in a glutted market.
    o They cannot depend reliably on flipping it *within 30 days*.
    o A Linden seeing the same person present the same data for premiums that they keep buying and cancelling will flag their account and ban them and put them on the police blotter. Hello? haven’t you seen the periodic bans for “abuse of first land” by which they mean a farmer buying 50 accounts? The Lindens have alarms that go off when those kinds of things are done. But if someone gets 5-10 accounts to flip, they probably don’t bother.

    >As for barons making a profit, and it’s a good thing because of newbs putting up giant penises or whatever, I suppose you think 60m high neon orange ads are less offensive? Personally, give me the tiny penis that I can block with a hedge, than a giant rotating flashing neon sign.

    Um, you need to be around as long as I have to see the horrors of first land.

    >Shortage is not caused by the lack of sims, there’s gobs and oodles of Linden maintained land, that is ready for first land. It’s lack of putting enough on the market in large lump deals.

    While the Lindens may have parcels here and there they haven’t converted, no, there is a shortage of sims. Definitely. Look at the auction. Prices are hugely high due to a current shortage that has been the case for more than 60 days.

    >Flooding the market is another option to making it non profitable. Put up 400 new first lands, and while land barons may snap some up, to take over 400 lands, would be quite a feat and induce price wars, getting so low that they are just trying to cover costs.

    As I already explains, your Lindens have no incentive to do that. If they can get their hands on 400 servers right now, they will sell them as $1695 islands, not wait for them to sell off painfully bit by bit for a subsidized $515 Linden per 512 m2.

    >And not everyone wants 1024 or needs it, why buy and pay for something you don’t need? I certainly don’t need it, my 512 suits me just fine… so why should I care about 1024m and pay another 5 bucks a month? So you can make a sale on a 1024 to someone by telling them, ‘this is what they need’?

    I don’t sell land? And I have never been in the first land business. Why? Because like any educated adult, I could see that buying first land is stupid, because it doesn’t sell? It’s an illusion that it can sell in anything like the amounts needed to pay COSTS.

    And you’re wrong about the 1024 m2 stuff. Look at the figures, and you’ll see there are more people who own more than 512 than who own 512.

    >But I’m sure glad LL doesn’t take your all or nothing approach, or we’d have no SL at all.

    But they do. They put out first land like socialists. They subsidize it. And they let people behave like capitalists in the hopes that it will lead to LL getting more tiering up. They can’t keep up their socialist plan due to scarcity that they must live with. So they prefer to sell islands out of their scarce servers, not first land. You will simply have to face the fact that your Lindens cannot go on subsidizing everybody’s game; they have to pay for their own now.

    >So don’t worry Prok, I’m not attacking you in this article as a land baron, remove the podium and actually think of what you are writing. (Does make me wonder though if you aren’t participating in it.)

    Rolls eyes. Seola, watch this situation for more than the week you may have spent looking at a few anecdotes that got you indignant, and try to grasp that the system benefits more newbies than it “harms” becaue they are adults who sell their land normally for a good price. If there are kids trying to flip land, they will only get so far as the costs of the accounts, the risk of large amounts of churn being locked off by the Lindens, and the risk of being stuck with land they can’t sell are all still great enough to deter massive amounts of gold-farming.

    >P.S. As for Adam, he listed premium accounts, which to me means someone has paid them the fee.

    Again, I discussed this with Adam. He realized after discussing it that it cannot possibly refer to premiumm accounts. You’re welcome to go ask Adam yourself, or better yet, ask Zee Linden and get the full page of statistics. These are definitely not new first-land premium accounts.

    “”"”The number of Second Life premium users, who pay a monthly fee in exchange for a stipend and the ability to own land, also rose 29 percent, to 365,000. The November figures are preliminary and subject to revision.”"”"

    Seola, these figures have been mistakenly presented and mistakenly labeled “premium”. It’s a mistake. IT’s a figure that describes people who bought premiums; who bought and were billed for islands; and who bought one extra alt account. It’s a figure showing who paid a fee that month, not who bought a premium account. Understand?
    That to me doesn’t mean monthly fee, plus all those who don’t….
12. 

    Ace Albion
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    Don’t they charge $10 to downgrade an account from premium to basic?
13. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    Hiro, geez, if you are going to have the Lindens police spinning signs, why should only new lands get to be free of them? I say remove them all over, they’re ugly. Take “rotation script” out of the library. See, once it involves control of a *script* then all of a sudden you’d start squealing. But honestly, why do I have to suffer from a stupid spinning sign for months in the oldbie FIC sim of Celadon, and a newbie gets to be free of *what works for sales of land* which is a spinning sign attracting the moths who buy? Sadly, the reason people using spinning signs on land is because it works — to attract people to buy, or, more often than not, to

    All this moralizing about scams is humorous. What community of WHAT people think they can police this in a world of 2 million sign-ups by the end of the year? Huh??? You no longer have that power on the forums. You can huff and puff on the pages of the Herald, but who will hear you? Oh, I forgot, your Lindens! Yes, you can still put a bug in their ear and get them to bork or nerf new land — but even they have their limits of socialism.

    What you can’t affect is the legions of people coming in who will not get informed; and who will not find your “dangers of first land” hortatory homiles persuasive at all.

    >Excellent reporting Seola, i’m really not surprised to hear that land barons do this, it seems they’ll sink to any depths to make a profit by ripping people off.

    Why is this an “excellent report,” when Seola essentially takes a few anecdotes, and also gets the numbers wrong? Seola has not filed a convincing article that shows us any practicality or widespread use of this latest “land baron scam”.

    >Really it’s the same thing as the camping chairs, yes camping chairs are LEGAL by ToS standards, but only because the ToS is too ill defined to catch them and it’s an abuse of a system at everyone’s expense for a person’s own personal greed.

    Camping chars=evil. Money trees run by FIC=good. Creative Commons tip chairs run by SIC=good. Yet they are the same thing, all of them.

    >You know Prokofy, I find it funny that your FIC paranoia always seems to stop at the border of Land Baron country. Doesn’t matter how much stuff they do to prove they really have your so called FIC powers, like Anshe getting the ToS changed inadvertantly when she wanted to sell accounts, you never seem to call them on it.

    ? The single greatest “evil” of land barons — getting telehub land buybacks not fitting the dates of their notice — I’ve exposed many times. Practices like chopping land; selling water for high prices to hostages on waterfront; I’ve constantly written about this.

    But I can’t expose an evil when there isn’t an evil. Why is selling accounts illegal? It has always been legal. The Lindens remove their liability with a TOS making it illegal to give a password, but if the selling of accounts was the illegality you say, Anshe and other hugely high profile account buyers would be banned, eh? Yet they are not. This is a widespread fallacy.

    Land barons aren’t FIC. They have no access to Lindens. Lindens hate them, too, like the tiny cliques of tekkies dominated by people like Hiro. They hate them for ideological reasons. But they are hypocrites because they sell land themselves in their main business model. They are like Lenin selling the rope, I guess.

    In any event, I can think of 100 things I’d like the Lindens to fix before they begin to devise an entire clunky system to deal with the problem of a handful of gold farmers who haven’t figured out yet that what they bought isn’t gold, but Purina dog food.
14. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    *more often than not, to pay for the sign to stop spinning.
15. 

    Artemis Fate
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    “But I can’t expose an evil when there isn’t an evil. Why is selling accounts illegal? It has always been legal. The Lindens remove their liability with a TOS making it illegal to give a password, but if the selling of accounts was the illegality you say, Anshe and other hugely high profile account buyers would be banned, eh? Yet they are not. This is a widespread fallacy.”

    That’s exactly the point i’m making. One day Anshe is announcing on public chat channels after buying Vicious Volos’ account that she’s looking for more, despite at the time it being against ToS any transferance of accounts for any reason, then suddenly later the Lindens say “oh we changed it so you can do it with permission”. Anshe SHOULD have been banned, but instead of sanctioning her break of the ToS they just changed the ToS so it wouldn’t be illegal anymore.

    “But I can’t expose an evil when there isn’t an evil.”

    Of course, you have shown that you have no lack of ability to show evil in things that aren’t evil before. Suddenly you find yourself deficient on finger pointing when it comes to one of the most powerful groups in Second Life, a group that ordinairly you would have a field day blaming everything on? Of course, none of this lack fingerpointing would have to do with you being one of the land barons, no?

    “Land barons aren’t FIC. They have no access to Lindens. Lindens hate them, too”

    Oh Imagine the Lindens WOULD hate the people paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. Yeah, that’d certainly gain their ire. If you haven’t noticed yet i’m being highly sarcastic.
16. 

    Carl Metropolitan
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    I don’t think we are going to see the end of the First Land program–or any signficant changes soon. The way I see it, its all about the Lindex.

    The First Land program makes economic sense for LL. It’s a loss leader to drive the purchase of premium accounts. They need that. With the reduction of the premium stipend down to 300L$ per week, a premium account is not nearly the deal it used to be. And people who buy First Land are more likely to buy more land, turning them in to tier-payers–which is where LL makes its real money.

    And LL can’t just kill First Land and offer every new premium account 5000 L$ directly as a sign-on bonus. That’s an instant incentive to churn hundreds of premium accounts for the L$ with _much_ less work than it takes to flip First Land (which sounds to me like a pain-in-the-ass way to make 10US.).

    Nor can LL pay that 5000L$ signing bonus out over a year–that brings them back (within 4L$ a week) to 400L$ premium stipends. Which would panic the Lindex. And since LL is in the business of selling their own currency, they can’t have that.

    On the other hand if those new premium accounts get First Land they will realize that you can’t do much with 117 prims though I have a very nice 30 prim living room set for sale at CMD Gallery in Deimos A whole lot of those new residents will want more land–and buy L$ from Lindex to get it (whether they buy island or mainland, LL still gets its cut).

    People are paying stupid money for land right now. A plot of coast land in Deimos near my store went for 40L$ per m2 this weekend. Nice land, but not double prim or fully terraformable. And a lot of that stupid money gets bought on the Lindex–where LL sold 77.3 million L$ last month, or about 280,000 US$. So far in the first third of this month, they’ve sold 61,147,825 L$, or about 225,000 U$. If SL can maintain its current growth, I can easily see LL having a million US revenues per month off the Lindex by end of first quarter 2007.
17. 

    Cocoanut Koala
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    They used to, Ace.

    But apparently they stopped. And when I was trying to get at the bottom of this, via Linden Answers, all I could get from Robin was, “We do not charge a fee to downgrade.”

    But I believe they once did, as I was once charged for this. It could be, though, that they charged it only if you downgraded within the first week of getting your land, and I can’t be completely sure that I didn’t do that.

    However, a friend of mine who had had his account forever was really pissed one night, I remember, when he downgraded after much thought, and was charged $10 for it. And apparently it happened to others, too.

    So it could be they never INTENDED to charge this, unless you downgraded within your first seven days, but it happened accidentally anyway. Or it could be that they know perfectly well they once did this, but just won’t say, or that some of them know that, but others don’t.

    Bottom line: Who knows.

    coco
18. 

    Hiro Pendragon
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    Hey Prok, responding to some of your comments:

    > “if you are going to have the Lindens police spinning signs, why should only new lands get to be free of them? I say remove them all over, they’re ugly.”

    I’d agree if I had my way, heheh. In this case, the whole concept of “first land” is sort of a special case to the grid anyway. Since that special case has already been established, making other rules to ensure this gets implemented properly is much more justified as a ruleset change.

    Additionally, Lindens don’t police, they respond to abuse reports. There’s also documented proof that there is a deterrence effect by banning something.

    > “Take “rotation script” out of the library.”

    Well, no. The signs would be just as ugly if they weren’t rotating. It could be worse – they could be blinking. *grin*.

    > “Yes, you can still put a bug in their ear and get them to bork or nerf new land”

    Could you point out where anyone’s suggestions would bork or nerf new land? The spirit of “first land” is to provide low-cost land to new users. Certainly, Prok, being a champion of newbie-rights as you claim to be always, you would want to make sure that their right to first land is protected? Or would it hurt your land renting business if some protective changes were made?

    > “Money trees run by FIC=good”

    First of all, these are freeware. How is that FIC?

    Second of all, money trees don’t require users to stand around and do nothing. How does that compare with camping chairs?

    > “Land barons aren’t FIC. They have no access to Lindens. Lindens hate them, too, like the tiny cliques of tekkies dominated by people like Hiro. They hate them for ideological reasons. But they are hypocrites because they sell land themselves in their main business model. They are like Lenin selling the rope, I guess.”

    You are 100% wrong on this. Perhaps this is your experience, but if I were a service providing company, I wouldn’t want to deal with a customer who continually accuses my company of lies, favoritism, and all sorts of unscrupulous acts. I guarantee you that other land barons get much better treatment.

    And I don’t hate land barons. I hate the practice of flipping first land, sure. But the land barons, ever since private islands became widely available, have been a force for building better communities in SL. That’s something I admire about your business, too, Prok.

    And on a practical manner, when a business is ordering servers by the hundreds, you better believe any company will make sure they have good service.

    Oh, p.s. — A few of us have figured out your game. When SL really explodes, you’re setting yourself up to be a widely known commentator. Very well played, indeed.
19. 

    Szentasha Salome
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    Thanks for reporting on this. I have been hearing that this has been a problem for some time now. LL should take better care of its noobies. It is very sad that people are manipulating the first land system to the detriment of new players and that Linden isn’t treating it is a priority issue right now.
20. 

    Seola Sassoon a.k.a Random Writer
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    “”””Very soon, these “evil land swoopers” — necessary in an economy that has both wierd land gluts and needs liquidity and also has wierd shortages — come along and offer newbies money for their land. If they don’t figure out how to sell it for $4500, well, that’s their first lesson in the rigours of the SL economy *shrugs*. So many of the people coming in now are 15-year-old kids. I’ve verified this over and over and OVER again. Why am I supposed to create an entire new teen grid for them with safeguards and easy explanations, Seola? Why? Let their parents find babysitters for them or let them go to the teen grid.””””
    So you’ve carded and carded and carded each and every person and judge that most are kids? Yeah, I find that an outright lie.
    “”””What on earth is your point here, Seola? This is the kind of gratuitious slap designed to guilt-trip and distract. Der, I know people can’t afford whole sims. Ya know why? Because I, too, when I came to SL couldn’t afford whole sims. In fact, I started with 512 m2 and sold that first. It was many months before I could raise money, from a combination of buying smaller parcels off the auction, selling my sim in TSO, and just putting up some money, that I could buy a $1500 sim, which I then had to scramble to sell — I couldn’t just keep it and pay all that tier. “”””

    Uh duh, YOU brought up that it was much more profitable to buy a sim instead of FL’s… so why bring it up if it isn’t a point? Trying to double talk and getting flabbergasted?
    “”””So I know about this *the hard way*. Do you? And I have absolutely no sentimentality about anybody who comes in, buys lands here, and whines that some evil land baron “took their land”. Anyone with a DSL line and properly of age for this game can figure out this basic truth. If they can’t, and get robbed, it’s no different than getting robbed in Mexico City or Marrakesh as a tourist who is stupid in the marketplace. That’s life. You learn its lessons.””””

    Oh really? So there is a plethora of information available on first land that’s indisputable and agreed upon? No. But you CAN research Mexico City in DEPTH, such as the exchange rates, crime rates, police to report to, etc. I’ve been on Cozumel, I’ve been to the British Isles and you can bet your ass I found out the info in case of an emergency. That’s not the case with SL. Lindens are often contradicting themselves and there’s nothing clear on ANYTHING in the game. What a silly comparison.
    “””Again, Seola, what kind of emotional wierd blackmailing shit is this? Huh? New people are needed. They can buy land or not. They don’t HAVE to buy land and don’t HAVE to sell it — no one puts a gun to their head. They can *figure it out*. It’s a lesson to be learned. If you have the time to stand around helping newbies, well, help. I do tons of it. I have an infohub, and notecards that I use to explain to people constantly that they can get $4500 or more even for first land now, not $1500. But even if 100 of us do that, it won’t be enough to “educate the children”.””””
    What the hell does buying or not buying have anything to do with this? Again, your making a point that has nothing to do with anything to hear yourself talk some more. I’m so glad you hand out notecards, I bet that’s a crowning achievement for you, however it doesn’t help newbies get their land in the first place, does it? Frankly, most newbies, if known to associate with you are warned away. I can say this from experience when I was a newbie. I frankly didn’t care because I rented from you, paid my money and did my thing, but there are reputations out there that can still shy others away.
    “”””All your agitation is going is forcing yet another unjust example of Linden/state intervention into the land market to remove yet more freedoms in this market to bork it and nerf it to this putative vulnerable class you are ranting for. Please. I had to learn about first land. So does everybody else. It’s not rocket science either.””””
    As opposed to your bitching about being banned from the blog? I guess all the bitching you do about LL, (yet you still pay them monthly, ironically enough) isn’t considering showing your agitation and I guess you don’t expect change because, *gasp* it might hinder a freedom… but as long as it isn’t your agenda, then it doesn’t matter right?
    “”””Huh? When I go to Mexico City or Moscow, I don’t expect the town fathers to provide me with chaperones and guides and notebooks explaining that I shouldn’t by THIS rug or basket in the marketplace but THAT one. That’s just ridiculous. A free market is a free market. Caveat emptor. If you are uninformed enough to sell something you go not for four times its worth but only two times, well, so what? You got something nearly for free, duh. You capitalized at least double your expense on it. So, next time, be more savvy. But is the whole system stupid? Why should Lindens give people a grant of $4000 to start the game for only $9.95? If anything, they need to charge more for premium. These same 14-year-olds you are wheeping and whining about either spend their own money on WoW for $15.95 — $15.95!!!! — more than three times the figure for the poor vulnerable newbies you hallucinate about in SL. Their moms are cajoled into spending the money if the kids don’t have it. So…I’m supposed to worry about people who spend $9.95 and then whine that they couldn’t flip their land for $3000 L? Huh?””””
    But the town fathers DO provide specific info on shops and such, it’s called the tourist center that has tons of information on anything you need and it’s set in stone. There isn’t 15 different people saying different things. What’s interesting is because of your land status, you assume everyone MUST and HAS to have bigger plots than 512, not everyone wants to take people for a buck like you. I own a 512 for my store and it’s perfectly suitable. And WoW is for children, I’ve been there and I hated the level of immaturity there, but there’s a difference, by ToS, you can’t turn a profit off in game into RL. Not to mention that it’s certainly not a sociable not game platform, there’s a directive in the game, SL… purely social. But I wouldn’t guess you could discern the difference.
    “”””This infantalizing of newbies is one of the biggest hobbles to the management of the newbie problem. When you and the Lindens get over this infantalizing and are willing to look at the real newbie stream we have — which I estimate to be about 40 percent underage kids now and 60 percent real adults, including about 25 percent foreigners without English — then you can adjust the information. But whining and venting about evil land barons swooping on fragile little children is just a ridiculous cliche.””””
    Newbies ARE infants when they come into this world. The knowledge base is most of the time out of date and gives conflicting comments, along with the blog. So wait, now you ‘estimate’ that they are children, as opposed to personally verifying? Tell me, what exact science did you use to get this estimate? I’d also say it’s a ridiculous cliché to advance someone’s own interest, while blowing up at others who wish to fix a broken system and make it fair as opposed to scrapping it. But I guess again, if they scrap the system, then people like you would be turning more of a profit.
    “”””Seola, admit it — like Coco, you had one, maybe two, perhaps as many as three *anecdotal* experiences. But they are not indicative. Have the courage of your convictions to go out, as I have done, and actually spend night after night observing how new land works. I often do this because people who are tenants either ask me for advice how to move on from a rental to get to their own land, or they wish to sell their own land to get a $250 discount by putting tier in my group. And there are thousands — and I mean thousands upon thousands — of perfectly fine, non-vulnerable, non-stupid newbies coining money. I see $6000 even changing hands. The kids are alright, Seola. Most people figure it out, make some money, and move on. Borking the entire system around the handful that can’t figure it out is silly, especially now that at this point, we have enough checks and balances on the land menu itself.””””
    Admit what? To what you want to hear otherwise it isn’t true? That’s bull and you know it. You pick Coco out for inferences, but I guess since you’ve been banned from the forums, you can’t really pay attention, now can you? Most people figure out how to have kids, doesn’t mean that makes them instantly expert parents either.
    “”””This is a completely short-sighted notion. What is YOUR solution for making a free land market, Seola? Or aren’t you supporting that idea? Who will make the land barons “go away”? How will YOU or a Linden distinguish between the “good” land baron who gives a newbie $3000 for a land, and a “bad” land baron who gives him $2950?? It’s absurd.””””
    Uh duh, I already mentioned an idea that takes out the profit but allows gain back if it’s spent. Interesting, you spend all your time questioning others but aside from abolishment, come up with nothing of your own.
    “”””You may own a 4096 m2 somewhere. Do you want to get $50,000 or $15,000 for that 4096, Seola? If you begin tinkering, subsidizing, controlling this aspect of the market, other aspects will soon be controlled, too. The idea that some set of putatively evil land barons “not operating for a month” is a solution is a band-aid at best, but more like a meaningless thimble in the ocean.””””

    Wow, do you really not read what anyone writes before opening your mouth, I said I owned a 512 which is perfectly acceptable to me. And I don’t want to sell it. While you call it bad, you haven’t even explained HOW or WHY it would be bad to delete profits from first land.
    “”””I really marvel at how this tiny clique of browbeaters to which you and the FIC belong on the forums have horsed the Lindens into actually looking to review this and create some more socialistic response, no doubt. My God, it’s just astounding. Here’s this game company that has a million bigger problems to fix, and you and a few others whining about “land shortages” “”””
    As opposed to your hard hitting story that does nothing but give unfounded rumors and does absolutely nothing to benefit anyone but yourself? And interesting enough, here you are believing that EVERYONE must be fixing bugs… I thought you were at least smarter than that.
    >If they don’t open first land for 3 months, these premiums still pay the bills, while the land barons do not.
    “”””This is absurd, because first land shortages never, ever EVER last more than a week. 7 days. That’s it. And people buy premiums mainly for the stipends, not the land. You pay for a premium not for land, may I remind you, but for 512m2 of free tier. Free tier is instantly given you, and instantly applied to any piece of land in SL. So your argument goes out the window. Those newbies who can’t wait the maximum of 7 days that first land might not be available are welcome to buy a 1024 on the next sim over with their free 512. “”””

    Read what I wrote and not what you want to argue that’s moot. Free tier is given upon premium account… now if the land barons don’t get to swoop and create premiums on first land, those that own it and pay premium still pay, if they could find first land.
    “”””Oh, you’re weeping because the guy didn’t get to buy a 512 for $512? Well, he can do that if he is willing to wait, there’s a shortage now given the sale in Filene’s basement.””””
    Oh you’re weeping cause you can’t post on the blog? I mean seriously, you’re gonna complain about someone whining after writing that story? I got a good laugh out of that one.
    >
    “”””But like freebie selling, this isn’t legitimate as an argument. You can buy another account, and you have no literature from the Lindens, and no literature the Lindens would dare put out on help islands, that says you are now allowed morally and socially to do something that is legally allowed by the SL tools itself. “”””
    K, so the SL tools allow me to blow you up… guess you should be waiting and quit complaining about how others treat you.
    “”””Abortion is legal; I happen to believe it would be immoral *for me*; others don’t, and that is their right. But this is different even than the old “legal but not right” argument because there is a) no official explanation that it is not right (no one has ever been able to get Lindens, who just want to sell accounts, to play that social game) b) no way for any newbie to find out from the Church Ladies of the game that it isn’t “right”. You can’t make something immoral when no one has news that it is so.””””
    So now it must be news and a widely held belief before it’s either right or fair? Don’t be narrowsighted. Here you sit, now saying there isn’t clarity from the Lindens, but yet you sit there and say there is when it comes to education newbies. So which is it?
    “””Seola. Run the numbers again. Climb off the high horse. And realize it is not profitable. If it is a short-term gain, then the person will be stuck with tier on laggy, stupid, ugly land in the game for weeks — months. I know, because when I used to offer to buy first land for tenants, I would get stuck with real DOGS for MONTHS ON END. I’d finally be forced to put them to sale for the $1500 that I probably should have paid them in the first place (but I paid more like $3000 at the time). So please, don’t instruct me about this. Whatever bragging idiot kids you see doing this for some short-term misguided reason will be driven out of business within 30-60 days.””””
    Run the numbers where? Please, inform me of how it’s not profitable. Just because YOU were paying X amount whenever, doesn’t dictate what’s happening now. Just because you say it’s not profitable, please give me YOUR graph on how it’s not profitable. I showed it was… let’s see where YOU are getting it wasn’t profitable, just because you didn’t make money based on how you were doing it.

    >Hell, that pay is better than 1/2 of American pay scales out there and doesn’t require an education. While you may not think this is great money compared to the millions you must be making, that’s certainly enough for food and rent for a family of four in America.
    “”””I don’t make any millions. You don’t know me, and have no clue what I do. And I just explained, that your silly notions of people cleaning up on first land have a glaring, obvious, hole in their logic: a land baron may get 10 or 20 first lands cheaply and sell them, but at a certain point, if he buys cheap land off newbies, he is STUCK because the stuff just won’t sell.””””
    You aren’t getting it. They aren’t buying it off NEWBIES. They are buying the FL themselves with new accounts. Half your argument is based on them buying from newbs, when that’s not what I have said. Again, read before you ramble.
    “”””Seola. Please take a deep breath. And please explain how someone, paying $9.95 or even $72 a year to get the cheaper $6.00 a month can keep justifying the cost of those accounts and the wait to sell the land — and getting stuck at times — with whatever “windfall” you think he gets. Your whole system is predicated on the idea that a) no other people will do this and not create competition for that baby baron; b) he will be able to flip all this “ill-gotten” first land, which he can’t do in the Purina of the mainland c) that people are all stupid and pay him when they see he’s taken over a sim or part of a sim; d) that people who gain from this system — they do, after all, get $1500-5000 from this fellow — will not find it a service and applaud his efforts. See all the problems with your outrage?””””
    I guess you’ve lost touch with the rest of the real estate people, 512’s are going in some places more than 7kL, certainly more than the profit I pointed out, but it’s happening. Let me say this again, I’m NOT TALKING ABOUT YEARLY PREMIUM. Again, read before you ramble. Let me say again, I’m NOT TALKING ABOUT BUYING LAND FROM NEWBS. I’m talking about buying first land itself. Again, read before you ramble.
    “”””Because…they are losing out? If they give every newbie a chance to acquire $3500 or so for free? Having loads of little 512 accounts is also billing labour. The Lindens have never been motivated to promote premiums, because it means more work on all kinds of levels. They’ve always preferred bigger buyers. The idea that they get more tier per sim doesn’t wash with them, as they also get more trouble tickets, billing problems, and churn per sim too. “”””
    Billing is automated, it’s not labor. And please, prove to me, show me direct information on what exactly is the best for LL. Or is this more spec?
    “””First land is a loss leader for the Lindens; it is a loss-leader for any land baron; most of the major and middle-level land barons don’t even bother with first land. These swooping barons that disturb you so much are merely kids who haven’t figured out that businesses have costs in them, as well as profits. Laggy stupid ugly land on a newbie sim is a cost center, not a profit center ultimately.””””
    Wrong, it’s profitable. If it weren’t why is it still happening by people who have been doing it for months? Again, I’ve shown it’s profitable… show me YOUR setup on why it isn’t.
    “”””I hardly see any comparison between allowing a free land market and allowing people to buy and sell at whatever price they set, and a system that enables griefings to terrorize people. Huh?””””
    So you see no comparison in making the argument that LL’s system allows this to happen, versus LL’s system allowing it to happen?
    What you fail to see, Seola, is that a free market is where a WILLING buyer meets a WILLING seller. Free will. All you can do with your socialist and child-care aspirations is try to impugn that this is “willing”. But it is. Fly around and watch all the deals. Most newbies fly away satisfied and netting $3000 or more. *Shrugs*.
    “”””Seola. Again. Could you please understand that a land baron buying land from a newbie at a cut-rate is now holding land he cannot sell reasonably most of the time. And a newbie who enters *that* situation with swoopers and other ordinary customers trying to sell land and then buys and tries to flip land will be *waiting* to do so. He WILL be holding tier. Follow it over 30 days and you’ll see what I mean.””””
    Again, READ WHAT THE HELL I WROTE!!! I’m not talking about people buying from newbs who bought the first land. I said BUYING IT AS FIRST LAND.
    “”””And that’s a good thing. And once again, people buy tier, not land with the premium account. Tier available for use from minute one. You are confusing tier and land as many do.””””
    No, I’m not saying anything about tier, I’m talking about making money back from premium.
    “””And I’ve just explained all the problems with having this as a rational business model.
    o They can’t depend reliably on flipping the land for the $3000 you imagine in a glutted market.
    o They cannot depend reliably on flipping it *within 30 days*.
    o A Linden seeing the same person present the same data for premiums that they keep buying and cancelling will flag their account and ban them and put them on the police blotter. Hello? haven’t you seen the periodic bans for “abuse of first land” by which they mean a farmer buying 50 accounts? The Lindens have alarms that go off when those kinds of things are done. But if someone gets 5-10 accounts to flip, they probably don’t bother.”””
    3k, is definitely reliable, take a look in the land sales and see how many are up for 3k. None. That’s because those who are flipping the fast profits are reselling within MINUTES for 3k. Hello? Haven’t you seen people griefing who are allowed back? Catching one person doesn’t do anything to them all, even if they *could* prove all that filtered money was a result. They aren’t stupid, they are reselling the land several times between trash accounts, funneling the money and then putting it on their main. LL alarms don’t go off at all. Maybe in your dream world of policing, but no alarm sounds when a newbie sells first land. No alarms go off when that land is resold. They don’t track each purchase of land over and over and watch where the money goes. There’s absolutely nothing, short of individual investigating, and checking each account money is funneled through several times over to even attempt to catch someone.
    “””Um, you need to be around as long as I have to see the horrors of first land.”””
    Yes, because time equals expert…..
    >Shortage is not caused by the lack of sims, there’s gobs and oodles of Linden maintained land, that is ready for first land. It’s lack of putting enough on the market in large lump deals.

    “””And you’re wrong about the 1024 m2 stuff. Look at the figures, and you’ll see there are more people who own more than 512 than who own 512. “””
    Umm.. duh, when you compare one size versus thousands of others… seriously, is this
    “”””Rolls eyes. Seola, watch this situation for more than the week you may have spent looking at a few anecdotes that got you indignant, and try to grasp that the system benefits more newbies than it “harms” becaue they are adults who sell their land normally for a good price. If there are kids trying to flip land, they will only get so far as the costs of the accounts, the risk of large amounts of churn being locked off by the Lindens, and the risk of being stuck with land they can’t sell are all still great enough to deter massive amounts of gold-farming.””””
    Oh so wait, now MY credibility is being questioned, but we can’t question your shoddy reporting simply because, you can’t reveal your sources. Just who the hell are you to question me? Pot, this is Kettle, you’re black.
    “””Again, I discussed this with Adam. He realized after discussing it that it cannot possibly refer to premiumm accounts. You’re welcome to go ask Adam yourself, or better yet, ask Zee Linden and get the full page of statistics. These are definitely not new first-land premium accounts.””””
    So he corrected the information on numbers, but not the wording…
    “”"”The number of Second Life premium users, who pay a monthly fee in exchange for a stipend and the ability to own land, also rose 29 percent, to 365,000. The November figures are preliminary and subject to revision.”"”"
    “”””Seola, these figures have been mistakenly presented and mistakenly labeled “premium”. It’s a mistake. IT’s a figure that describes people who bought premiums; who bought and were billed for islands; and who bought one extra alt account. It’s a figure showing who paid a fee that month, not who bought a premium account. Understand?””””
    Well, since you demand so much of others… proof please in how this was garnered. Why would Adam post something that he knew to be a lie, and only correct numbers, and not how he presented it?

    Anyways, most of your rambling has nothing to do with what I’ve said, and all you’ve done is say no no no no, without offering any information or proof and rambling on about things that don’t make any sense.

    If you actually care to debate what’s said and not what you want to argue that has no contention, feel free to ramble some more.
21. 

    Seola Sassoon a.k.a Random Writer
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    Thanks Artemis!
22. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    Szentasha, you cannot fairly say that there is some kind of rampant “manipulation” of the land system when all Seola has done is cite a few cases she got mad at, about which she cannot cite all the facts — nor respond to my issue about.

    Aremis is a tekkie socialist who consistently puts forth these sorts of argumentations. Let me try to dismiss them all again. And let me note I don’t have any reason to protect evil land barons. I’m not an evil land baron; I’m not even a land baron period as I don’t buy and sell land. I buy it and rent it and only infrequently sell what isn’t getting use. And these people doing this farming you imagine are not any land barons either, they are kids misinformed about how the market works.

    >So you’ve carded and carded and carded each and every person and judge that most are kids? Yeah, I find that an outright lie.

    Um, no, there is no “carding” capacity in SL, I ask them how old they are, and they innocently tell me. Their spelling and knowledge also gives them away. There is traffic of 18,000 on the info hub where I stand for more than an hour every day now, Artemis. Do you think I might have *a little bit more fresh field data* than you, sitting on your IRC channel all day with oldbies???

    >Uh duh, YOU brought up that it was much more profitable to buy a sim instead of FL’s… so why bring it up if it isn’t a point? Trying to double talk and getting flabbergasted?

    No, when someone keeps talking about “land barons,” I take the term at face value, as meaning someone in business in SL, part or full time, selling land for a profit. A kid who flips 10 premium accounts isn’t a land baron. A person who can’t afford to buy a sim to do this more rationally and profitably is *by definition* not a land baron.

    If there is someone who bought 50 premium accounts to flip, um, show me? Because…the Lindens put people like that on suspension and put them on the police blotter, sometimes even without an abuse report. Where is this rampant abuse, multiple cases, and lack of Linden response? I don’t see it. Instead, I see just the opposite. Again, Seola is extrapolating from a few anecdotes, whereas the rest of us countering this view are using months of experience of numerous stories, not a few recent anecdotes.

    >Oh really? So there is a plethora of information available on first land that’s indisputable and agreed upon? No. But you CAN research Mexico City in DEPTH, such as the exchange rates, crime rates, police to report to, etc. I’ve been on Cozumel, I’ve been to the British Isles and you can bet your ass I found out the info in case of an emergency. That’s not the case with SL. Lindens are often contradicting themselves and there’s nothing clear on ANYTHING in the game. What a silly comparison.

    I’m just going to burst out laughing at this one. The literalist tekkie mind knows no bounds of logic. We are in a synthetic world. Upon entry into the world, you click on orientation stations. One of them has more information than you’d even need about first land, saying, first of all CAVEAT EMPTOR, and secondly (a thing I’ve fought against for ages), YOU DON’T NEED LAND TO HAVE FUN. If someone skips this and skips it again on the mainland orientation stations, and winds up in my infohub area. they will get a card that explains they don’t have to buy immediately as there is no deadline; they can shop around and wait to get better deals; they can sell their land for $3500 or more. They get the same thing at NCI. I dunno, I gotta say, the info in the synthetic, controlled, Linden-informed world of SL may be poor on land in general (due to the hatred of land, land barons, and the tekkie predisposition for sandboxes and IRC channels, not land) but it has everything any newbie sincerely looking for land help needs to know, which is CAVEAT EMPTOR.

    >What the hell does buying or not buying have anything to do with this? Again, your making a point that has nothing to do with anything to hear yourself talk some more. I’m so glad you hand out notecards, I bet that’s a crowning achievement for you, however it doesn’t help newbies get their land in the first place, does it? Frankly, most newbies, if known to associate with you are warned away. I can say this from experience when I was a newbie. I frankly didn’t care because I rented from you, paid my money and did my thing, but there are reputations out there that can still shy others away.

    More bursting out in laughter. No newbies are warned away from me in any kind of mass numbers or my newbies and rentals wouldn’t be overflowing, don’t be silly. If there are some oddball sectarians that make it their business to grief me by taking the trouble to warn a newbie away from me (erm…on what grounds lol?) they make no dent. Whatever your IRC pals tell you to do is a sect, Artemis, not the broad public masses.

    And I don’t even need to cite my cards in the info hub I’ve taken responsibility for, which is Ross, traffic yesterday 18,000, cards delivered — too many to even count! I’m talking about the standard Linden info package which is in the library, in the OI, in the HI, and elsewhere — including, gosh, on the web pages! It’s never enough; but frankly, at the end of the day, the first land market shouldn’t be run by Lindens who don’t care enough about it; let it be run by land barons who are in business full-time and wish to stake reputations on good service, and that will displace the gold-farming kids, if they really are the issue you claim — which I question.

    >As opposed to your bitching about being banned from the blog? I guess all the bitching you do about LL, (yet you still pay them monthly, ironically enough) isn’t considering showing your agitation and I guess you don’t expect change because, *gasp* it might hinder a freedom… but as long as it isn’t your agenda, then it doesn’t matter right?

    I don’t know what this blather is about — it has nothing to do with the topic.

    >But the town fathers DO provide specific info on shops and such, it’s called the tourist center that has tons of information on anything you need and it’s set in stone.

    Um, yeah, and they have that in SL, too, even more so: OI, HI, mentors, and things like NCI and infohubs. Duh?

    >There isn’t 15 different people saying different things. What’s interesting is because of your land status, you assume everyone MUST and HAS to have bigger plots than 512, not everyone wants to take people for a buck like you.

    Actually, I don’t take any people for a buck. My overflowing newbie communities, of which I have 2 apartment buildings and 4 land communities — are all SUBSIDIZED and what I get from newbs doesn’t pay my TIER. So, why do I do this? I try to help. But when it’s not appreciated by people like you with their heads up their asses on the IRC channel, why bother? Well, I bother because I know that most people, including my happy customers, don’t accuse me of “making a buck,” but are more than happy to be paying $1.87 US a month instead of $9.95 a month for their SUBSIDIZED newbie rentals.

    My land status is beside the point. I look at Linden figures on their statistics page; I look at the map. I draw the logical, normal conclusion that there are more owners over 512 than under. But hey, prove me wrong? Using those same statistics? Please. Since I’m happy to join you in this socialist utopian view of a million 512-owning socialists in SL reading to storm the world!

    >I own a 512 for my store and it’s perfectly suitable. And WoW is for children, I’ve been there and I hated the level of immaturity there, but there’s a difference, by ToS, you can’t turn a profit off in game into RL.

    So? what does your 512 store experience, or the lovely 512 store experience of my happy subsidized tenants (and not just subsidized, but low-cost rental tenants) have to do with the price of fish in China? And your notion of WOW is also besides the point. People coming into droves in SL are ages now 15-20, and they leave –in droves. And I don’t understand why we need to get really really torqued about saving these people from paying not $9.95, and not getting

    If I didn’t *already save hundreds of these people* Artemis, I might feel different but as someone ACTIVELY ASSISTING AND HELP AND SUBSIDIZING NEWBIES I can only say: put your goddamn money and your socialist sentiments where your goddman mouth is.

    >Not to mention that it’s certainly not a sociable not game platform, there’s a directive in the game, SL… purely social. But I wouldn’t guess you could discern the difference.

    The 14-year-olds I know that left the Teen Grid of SL for WoW find the socializing so much better, and there’s no Blue Linden selling out the best sims to the teen FIC — the GMS play more fair there.

    >Newbies ARE infants when they come into this world. The knowledge base is most of the time out of date and gives conflicting comments, along with the blog. So wait, now you ‘estimate’ that they are children, as opposed to personally verifying?

    When people can overcome their ideological hurdles and begin to confess that yes, the many newbies in SL now on free accounts with no verification are in fact teenagers and young children, we can have this conversation. In my hours of SL per day, I’ve verified this to my satisfaction. If you can’t do that, well, we will disagree. There is a huge child problem now in SL — and I mean HUGE. It is definitely an accident going somewhere to happen.

    >Tell me, what exact science did you use to get this estimate? I’d also say it’s a ridiculous cliché to advance someone’s own interest, while blowing up at others who wish to fix a broken system and make it fair as opposed to scrapping it. But I guess again, if they scrap the system, then people like you would be turning more of a profit.

    Um, how do I turn more of a profit? I don’t buy or sell first land. In the era when I did on the odd occasion, I only lost money doing it. It’s the sort of thing you turn your hand to as a college kid, I guess, or a stay-at-home mom with the hours to flip the land list and swoop. I couldn’t do that.

    >Admit what? To what you want to hear otherwise it isn’t true? That’s bull and you know it. You pick Coco out for inferences, but I guess since you’ve been banned from the forums, you can’t really pay attention, now can you? Most people figure out how to have kids, doesn’t mean that makes them instantly expert parents either.

    No, I just expect someone demanding that the Lindens bork and nerf the entire first-land system come up with more than a few anecdotes that are half-thought-through without any notion of what a free land market *entails*. I say, if you are going to be prudish and socialist about it — then do what I’ve suggested. Don’t cook up elaborate methods to not sell land to others, or not deed to groups, or have this deadline or that deadline. Be socialist all the way through. Don’t allow selling at all. Let it reload every 30 days, scraped clean. It will rapidly look like hell — but then it does already. Furthermore, you deep aspirations to protect the kiddies will be fulfilled — they will be on free, non-sellable land where they can put up their giant penises and make them twirl around with purple particles all they wish!

    >Uh duh, I already mentioned an idea that takes out the profit but allows gain back if it’s spent. Interesting, you spend all your time questioning others but aside from abolishment, come up with nothing of your own.

    Because the Lindens cannot administer even the socialist system they’ve created, Artemis, and will not add more staff time; only blowing it up, charging more for it, or radically altering it will work now.

    >Wow, do you really not read what anyone writes before opening your mouth, I said I owned a 512 which is perfectly acceptable to me. And I don’t want to sell it. While you call it bad, you haven’t even explained HOW or WHY it would be bad to delete profits from first land.

    Um, I was talking to Seola? And this was a hypothetical? Actually, the hilarious thing about this discussion is that Seola is my tenant in good standing ROFL. I forget the details but I think she has a 4096 — and for a lot less than what she’d pay the Lindens. Oh well, I guess as a newbie, she wasn’t warned away from evil Prok *shrugs*.

    Last time I checked, it was ok to have a free debate even with someone who is your tenant! And hey, if they don’t like my heated debates, they could press refund, but somehow, I don’t think that’s likely.

    >As opposed to your hard hitting story that does nothing but give unfounded rumors and does absolutely nothing to benefit anyone but yourself? And interesting enough, here you are believing that EVERYONE must be fixing bugs… I thought you were at least smarter than that.

    If you are referring to the story directly below, what do you know about SL Views, eh Artemis? Nothing? Everything, from your FIC pals? And…it’s true? They will be licensing some form of SL. They will be having some companies who have third-party registration APIs and even more, to make skins for the software. This is a reality. In fact, it’s already been available for months and tried; the only problem is that evidently it happens to be broken right this minute due to a patch, but that is said to be temporary. My God, I thought you were at the very heart of SL there in the Channel — have you been AFK???

    >Read what I wrote and not what you want to argue that’s moot. Free tier is given upon premium account… now if the land barons don’t get to swoop and create premiums on first land, those that own it and pay premium still pay, if they could find first land.

    It may shock you to discover that quite a few people take one look at socialist first land from the government, and run screaming. They do not spend their $512 on a little spit of land that will park them next to a rotating dayglo penis for 30 days. Um, no. Imagine! Instead, armed with their free 512 tier and their $300 LL in their boxes, they go hunting for a for-sale 512 from the regular market and pay perhaps $3500-5000 to have it by *gasp* buying or earning the Lindens needed.

    >Oh you’re weeping cause you can’t post on the blog? I mean seriously, you’re gonna complain about someone whining after writing that story? I got a good laugh out of that one.

    Um, did I weep or whine about not posting on the blob lol? Hardly. Read my blogs and my posts. I can’t whine about being cut off from a censored and sanitized news source, can I? I’ve never whined about the hardships of SL. When they get too hard, I imagine I’ll scale back and leave. I don’t see the need for whining, but I won’t deprive myself of robust critiques.

    >K, so the SL tools allow me to blow you up… guess you should be waiting and quit complaining about how others treat you.

    No, because that’s PvP assault. Against the TOS.

    >So now it must be news and a widely held belief before it’s either right or fair? Don’t be narrowsighted. Here you sit, now saying there isn’t clarity from the Lindens, but yet you sit there and say there is when it comes to education newbies. So which is it?

    The clarity you seek will never be present in a socialist-run government and game. It can be provided by the market up to a point. And the socialists have got it fairly covered, frankly, to their credit. They’ve improved their notecards in the last year.

    >Run the numbers where? Please, inform me of how it’s not profitable. Just because YOU were paying X amount whenever, doesn’t dictate what’s happening now. Just because you say it’s not profitable, please give me YOUR graph on how it’s not profitable. I showed it was… let’s see where YOU are getting it wasn’t profitable, just because you didn’t make money based on how you were doing it.

    Not profitable because they can’t guarantee their sales. They themselves create a glut on their own market. Prove that they make sales to cover their costs. That you cannot do. Whatever one-day picture you have on this, take it over time. Oops, they can’t make the sales to cover their costs.

    >You aren’t getting it. They aren’t buying it off NEWBIES. They are buying the FL themselves with new accounts. Half your argument is based on them buying from newbs, when that’s not what I have said. Again, read before you ramble.

    Um, the landbarons that she is objecting to also put up signs everywhere and swoop on new land areas to buy from newbies — and the objection here is that they buy at too cheap a price, then uglify the sim with ugly for-sale sims hawking the land.

    And der, I saw the main thrust of her post is that they are buying from LL. See all my argumentation above about: a) costs not covered in time period required for tier; b) tier not rational when you pay for it in 10 separate accounts each with 512 instead of in one account with 8192 (should have mentioned that little fact before, that scuttles most of what you are saying) and c) Lindens do police large one-day purchases of accounts and police-blotter and ban the people.

    >I guess you’ve lost touch with the rest of the real estate people, 512’s are going in some places more than 7kL, certainly more than the profit I pointed out, but it’s happening. Let me say this again, I’m NOT TALKING ABOUT YEARLY PREMIUM. Again, read before you ramble. Let me say again, I’m NOT TALKING ABOUT BUYING LAND FROM NEWBS. I’m talking about buying first land itself. Again, read before you ramble.

    Um, read before YOU ramble? I haven’t lost touch with shit. I have to go buy new land all the time for my rentals. I have to study the new land sales constantly. I pull up and read the prices on the land for sale list constantly. And while sure, you can find a $6000 land actually going for that, $7000 isn’t the norm, it’s a pretty wild exception. These are crappy little parcels amongst shit, Artemis, go look? Um? Have you? or are you just spouting shit for the sake of spouting shit?

    And READ WHAT YOU JUST WROTE for starters. If you posit the idea of kids flipping premiums, the only rational way to do it would be to — as Seola pointed out — get themselves $6/m to pay in costs rather than $9.95 — and that is achieved…how? by paying the $72 annualized sub. Der? But, if your idea is to hold water, it posits kids so young and stupid they can’t fence the $72 per so they spend $99.50 for 10 accounts for total of 5152 m2 and try to make money. But…they will get stuck without sufficient sales, they will then also have to reckon with the fact that paying $40 for the 8192 m2 account might have been the wiser move. Der?

    >Billing is automated, it’s not labor. And please, prove to me, show me direct information on what exactly is the best for LL. Or is this more spec?

    I’m talking about percentage rise of trouble tickets, not automated billing, duh. Having billable accounts on a sim creates X amount of cases that draw on the system for help and trouble tickets. It’s a gamble to put 40 people on a sim instead of 2 as a way to make more money — hey, that IS something I know about!!!

    >Wrong, it’s profitable. If it weren’t why is it still happening by people who have been doing it for months? Again, I’ve shown it’s profitable… show me YOUR setup on why it isn’t.

    First land, sold for only $512, giving a free gift of $3000 to people who did not buy those Linden on the LindEX but made them out of thin air, is not profitable. I rest my case on that one.
    Stop it, with the monkey math.

    >So you see no comparison in making the argument that LL’s system allows this to happen, versus LL’s system allowing it to happen?

    Nope, because this is a falacious tendentious reasoning on your part. It is not possible for either gold farmers or LL to get rich or even profit a little for any length of time off first land.

    If you ever actually tried to buy and sell it — or rent it — or subsidize it for hundreds of newbies, you’d get this? Go back and work on CopyBot or something, you are out of your league here.

    >Again, READ WHAT THE HELL I WROTE!!! I’m not talking about people buying from newbs who bought the first land. I said BUYING IT AS FIRST LAND.

    Um, neither am I? That is a separate point I made. Re: this point, let me spell it out again: after he buys his first land he has to sell it? Hello? Your concept is that he buys up 10 accounts to flip for a song…but then…your concept means he has to be able to flip it all within 30 days. And I say, not so, G.I.

    >No, I’m not saying anything about tier, I’m talking about making money back from premium.

    Your concept again implies that Gold Farmer is able to buy lots of premium accounts, sell all the land in them, and cancel the accounts. And I’ve amply explained why that is not the EZ thing you imagine.

    So let me repeat my point again:

    And I’ve just explained all the problems with having this as a rational business model.
    o They can’t depend reliably on flipping the land for the $3000 you imagine in a glutted market.
    o They cannot depend reliably on flipping it *within 30 days*.
    o A Linden seeing the same person present the same data for premiums that they keep buying and cancelling will flag their account and ban them and put them on the police blotter. Hello? haven’t you seen the periodic bans for “abuse of first land” by which they mean a farmer buying 50 accounts? The Lindens have alarms that go off when those kinds of things are done. But if someone gets 5-10 accounts to flip, they probably don’t bother.”””

    >3k, is definitely reliable, take a look in the land sales and see how many are up for 3k. None. That’s because those who are flipping the fast profits are reselling within MINUTES for 3k.

    Look at the list? Look at the map? To see the lie? There aren’t many that last long, but one reason is that legitimate other singleton newbies buy them? To make up 1024 out of their original 512? And as Cocoanut could explain to you much more simply, this is the big market for first land: other first landers who want a 1024 now. And…your plans for nerfing the market will kill those people’s freedom. That’s one of the key reasons why it is stupid.

    >Hello? Haven’t you seen people griefing who are allowed back? Catching one person doesn’t do anything to them all, even if they *could* prove all that filtered money was a result. They aren’t stupid, they are reselling the land several times between trash accounts, funneling the money and then putting it on their main. LL alarms don’t go off at all. Maybe in your dream world of policing, but no alarm sounds when a newbie sells first land.

    I go by the police blotter, which has repeatedly banned people for “first land abuse,” ie farming lots of parcels at once.
    As for returning griefers, if you want to make money and cash it out AND you want 512 premium accounts, you have to give a credit card. That kinda puts a cap on how much farming can happen.

    It’s not the huge problem you imagine; it is not even documented beyond the few anecdotes you have.

    Until I hear a Linden say, “We have documented hundreds of people massively farming first land to the detriment of the short supply” I won’t believe it. I don’t see it. And they won’t say that. These Lindens need numbers of accounts, not Church Lady activity.

    >No alarms go off when that land is resold. They don’t track each purchase of land over and over and watch where the money goes. There’s absolutely nothing, short of individual investigating, and checking each account money is funneled through several times over to even attempt to catch someone.

    Artemis, are you daft? When someone buys 50 premium accounts at once, assuming the system lets them do that, or is the same individual with 5 credit cards doing that, or is shown on their system as having this activity, they act. So…you have no story and no case here.

    >Oh so wait, now MY credibility is being questioned, but we can’t question your shoddy reporting simply because, you can’t reveal your sources. Just who the hell are you to question me? Pot, this is Kettle, you’re black.

    Call my reporting shoddy if you like, but I’m not required to reveal sources. And the Lindens aren’t hiding the fact that they are going to make third-party registration APIS available, and will someday also license their software for host-your-own or partnership relationships. This is already in the works. To pretend that it isn’t is silly when they are all over every game conference with this stuff. The only thing not known is the timetable, and who gets to grab it first.

    >So he corrected the information on numbers, but not the wording…

    Adam is new to reporting this stuff, and I’m afraid that if he has left that wording, it’s just wrong.

    There are no 300,000 premiums or people with recurring fees. There aren’t that many log-ons per day. That number HAS to be something constructed out of island payers, premium payers, extra account payers, and I dunno, whatever. It’s a fake number.

    >Well, since you demand so much of others… proof please in how this was garnered. Why would Adam post something that he knew to be a lie, and only correct numbers, and not how he presented it?

    Because he still doesn’t get it? Because the Lindens have handed him something stupid in their statistics that he was unable to question?

    Repeat: what he wrote is still wrong. There are no 300,000 premium accounts. And the Lindens didn’t say there were. They said something different. They said there were “monthly fees”. That means premiums, islands, extra accounts — and I still don’t see how that is 300,000, and it has to be questioned to the hilt. If there are only 100,000 log ons per day, and of these only a percentage are land-owners, where are the 300,000 people willilng to pay $9.95 a month and not show up?

    >Anyways, most of your rambling has nothing to do with what I’ve said, and all you’ve done is say no no no no, without offering any information or proof and rambling on about things that don’t make any sense.

    The challenge to you, and Adam Reuters, and Zee Linden, is to come up with some rational explanation for this number pulled out of their asses: 300,000 premium accounts. It’s fictitious.
    One way to tell is to look at stipends. There you see a huge number explained also in part that old basics before X date also keep getting $50 a week as a stipend. That’s probably another thing he’s adding in, those old basics that have money still.

    >If you actually care to debate what’s said and not what you want to argue that has no contention, feel free to ramble some more.

    Yes, I care about documenting facts and not anecdotes.

    I have seen this cycle probably 24 times now. Each month, first land runs out. Newbies and socialist newbies scream with great indignation. The shortage lasts 2 days — never more than 7. More comes out and is sold. Lather, rinse, repeat. Each month OMGODZORZZZ scammers are exposed. Remember the girl with the smokes who put a sign on every single Governor parcel saying “I will double your money instantly?” She did not commit any crime, but the posse went after her viciously. Governor Linden should have put on autoreturn.
23. 

    Joshua Nightshade
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    Seola, you’re better off ignoring The Prokofy if you don’t know her reputation already; she’s going to pull you in to a fight that isn’t worth dealing with.

    Nobody drinks her kool-aid anyway so you’re safe. Take care!
24. 

    Cristiano Midnight
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    For fuck’s sake, what is Prokofy raving on about again? Oh yeah, the same stupid shit the bitch is always ranting about. * YAWN * So many words, so little point. I am at least glad to see that the 4096m tier for those who paid for lifetime accounts when they were offered still gets her all riled up though. Good show – keep poking at her, she will write another 10 billion word screen.
25. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    Yes, Cristiano, you paid $225 once, was it? And got tier-free 4096 m2 for life, with no upfront purchase price of that land. Great deal! So, don’t bitch about somebody buying 5 annual accounts for $360, paying $2560 Lindens and getting 5,120 m2? Same diff, eh? That’s all. That’s all it has ever been about, and your “fuck’s sake” and YAWNS not withstanding, it’s absolutely no different. You get 4096 m2 for paying $225 once — and the next year it is free. Somebody else less lucky than you who came later paid $360 US and $2560 Lindens and got…5,120 m2…which he then has to pay membership fees on AGAIN the next year. So…stop whining please?

    It’s good that people like me continue to challenge the Lindens and Adam Reuters. Read, please, the latest that Zee has put out:

    http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/12/12/growth-of-second-life-community-and-economy/

    >Premium Residents. There are two types of accounts that a Resident in Second Life might have: Basic and Premium. Basic accounts are free. Premium Residents pay a recurring fee to buy land directly from Linden Lab, and receive a weekly allowance of Linden Dollars called a “stipend.”. The orange graph shows that the number of Premium Residents has grown from 5,000 at the start of 2005 to over 36,000 at the end of November 2006. The blue line shows that the number of Premium Residents has grown 10 to 40% each month since 2005. Premium Residents, aren’t the only ones who are contributing to the economy, however. Since its inception more than 90,000 unique Residents have bought currency on the exchange. Basic Residents account for significant economic activity.

    36,000 premium members — not 300,000. So when I said, gee, it must be more like 8,000 in just November, I was right. Hello?
26. 

    Cristiano Midnight
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    Wrong as usual, I did pay an upfront cost for the land – I have paid market price for every piece of land that I own, with the exception of a small plot of snow sim land, which was a gift from a friend. Most of the land I own I paid at least $10L/m for, some substantially more. I am in the $292 a month tier even with a lifetime account, so the 4096m is hardly doing much for me, but it is of course nice to have (along with the 1024m my alt has for premium because of being grandfathered in). There was no first land program at the time, and even if there were, I had already owned land so I would not have been able to use it anyway. ILand was very scarce – most of it was bought up by Rathe Underthorne, who I ended up buying some of my land from – the rest came from other residents, not LL. So there was an upfront purchase cost on the land. As far as the free tier, that was the reward for taking a risk and investing at a time it didn’t look like SL might ever catch on. Take a risk, get a reward. I know that burns you in your ass, but it has nothing to do with why it is lame to keep buying up pieces of First Land. Regardless, I haven’t said a word about this since the thing with Cocoanut, so I don’t know why you are dragging me into your lame, redundant fight, except that you are an obsessive cow. Kindly fuck off and go back to trying to pin the Titanic disaster on Millions of Us.
27. 

    Mabb Dilweg
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    I’d like to see a word-limit on comments, and also a multiple comment limit. More than that, I’d like to see many more people commenting on their own perspective on this issue, but one often is rather … put off by certain people who monopolise by posting lengthy and complex side arguments through an interface that is just not fit for interactive discussion.

    I *like* to read people’s comments, but when they become a full-blown discussion/argument they need to move to somewhere more appropriate. Leave a link for those who want to participate. Then those of us who don’t, don’t have to wade through screens of unrelated text to read comments on the actual article.
28. 

    Cristiano Midnight
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    Mabb,

    I have never understood why the SLH does not have their own forums – blog comments are not suitable for ongoing discussion – you see the same problem on the Linden blog. I think more people would participate in the discussion of a lot of these articles if the comments section were not such a clusterfuck dominated by one verbose poster, and were instead in the form of threaded discussions.
29. 

    Urizenus
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    You guys should learn to use scroll bars.
30. 

    Cristiano Midnight
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    Lame comeback, Urizenus, but it doesn’t change the fact that a giant page of comments is not the best format for a discussion. It has nothing to do with not knowing how to scroll. There is no reason you could not have a forum thread linked to each article that people could comment on and have a discussion. With the volume of responses you often get, it would make it much more enjoyable to read, follow, and participate in. God forbid that.
31. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    >So there was an upfront purchase cost on the land.

    And that price was…?
32. 

    Artemis Fate
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    “Artemis is a tekkie socialist who consistently puts forth these sorts of argumentations.”

    Whoo I got enough of Prokofy’s blind ire for him to characterize me in his vaguely defined group of people he hates that he can blame everything on! Go me.

    “Yes, Cristiano, you paid $225 once, was it? And got tier-free 4096 m2 for life, with no upfront purchase price of that land. Great deal!”

    I have free land from LL too because I joined before 1.1 and paid every 3 months, really I think we deserved this since LL was so dependant on these contributions to stay afloat as they were trying these new ideas. I mean, it’s not so much buying land or an account so much as it’s investing in the company of LL. It’s a risk to buy a lifetime account, SL could have been a failure, and the 225 dollars spent on the lifetime account would have been a waste of money. I know this was one of the reasons I went through that made me not get a lifetime account (a decision I have been regretting ever since I realized i’d be in SL for the long haul and when they announced the free land people would get based on their accounts, but C’est la vie). So we got the free land for being the foundation and economic support of which LL was able to survive, and i’m glad they were nice enough to give a little back.
33. 

    Cristiano Midnight
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    Prokofy,

    You don’t even read, I already answered how much I paid so I don’t know why you are asking again. You just think if you keep hammering someone and pretending they didn’t answer, you will be able to keep the lies going, but it doesn’t work. I very clearly stated in the same answer that you selectively read that I paid $10L/m and higher for the land, depending on the plot. None of land was bought at the $1/m rate. When 1.2 came about and they gave us 4096m of tier for lifetime accounts, I already owned about 25,000m, so I was immediately paying tier even with the account. I have since added on over 100,000m more, all bought at $10/m or higher except for a single plot in Meribel that was gifted to me by someone leaving SL.
34. 

    Cristiano Midnight
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    Urizenus,

    Even threaded comments, which cnet does very well, for example, would be an improvement to just one giant comment list. It makes it much easier to respond to specific comments from others and follow them.
35. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    I read your statement, Cristiano, but didn’t realize, that when you said this, “Most of the land I own I paid at least $10L/m for, some substantially more” — that you were *including the 4096s.” You are saying you paid an upfront purchase price for your 4096 m2. that’s what I was asking about — whether you pay a separate price for the land, as all those subsequent had to do. And the clear answer would be, “No, Prokofy, I paid $10/meter for it”.

    So…you got tier-free land, with no upfront purchase price. You paid for a subscription for a fee of $225…but then you got tier-free land after a certain point, by contrast with the rest of us. And you and others can begrudge somebody a 512 they got on a second account???? I remember how you brow-beat Coco over this — it was just ridiculous.

    What amazes me about your deeply fucked arrogance, Artemis — you and Cristiano’s and all of you FIC types — is your belief that you helped LL in its hard times, that you believed in LL, that you paid some heavy sacrifice and some heavy price…and that you the only ones, and that when the tier/fee structure changed at a certain point, that all those who come after aren’t helpers, aren’t investors and believers, but are just crude, evil, land barons. It’s just amazingly insane.

    And I’m here to tell you that it is total, fucking bullshit — what do you think I’ve done here, or hundreds of other people??? We have done *exactly the same thing*. EXACTLY. *Believed during tough times and put money down.* So why do you think you are special?!

    It just amazes me, that you can write this: “So we got the free land for being the foundation and economic support of which LL was able to survive, and i’m glad they were nice enough to give a little back.” — like YOU are the foundation and economic support of SL because you paid a mere $225 for a lifelong subscription that gave you free tier on a $25/mo piece of land for life? Huh? There are many other people who came later who made far greater sacrifices.
36. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    >really I think we deserved this since LL was so dependant on these contributions to stay afloat as they were trying these new ideas.

    LIKE THEY ARE FUCKING NOT TRYING NEW IDEAS ***NOW*** FOR CHRISSAKES???? LIKE THEY ARE NOT STAYING AFLOAT BECAUSE OF PEOPLE WHO CAME AFTER YOU LIKE ME???? LIKE THEY DIDN’T JUST SAY TODAY THAT 70 PERCENT OF THEIR INCOME COMES FROM LAND AND ISLAND SALES AND RECURRING TIER???
37. 

    Cristiano Midnight
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    Prokofy,

    You are a fucking loon. How do you once again spin it back to no up front purchase price? I bought the land prior to 1.2 and paid L$ for it – some of it was quite expensive. At the advent of 1.2, I owned 25,000m of land – that i had bought and paid for. I was able to apply the 4096m of tier toward part of it, and then went into whatever tier it left me in and paid that fee monthly. That land didn’t come out of thin air, and I did not get it for $1/m – I paid a small fortune for my land in Federal and Stanford. There is your up front cost. My god, you are dense beyond belief. You keep trying to claim I didn’t pay any upfront cost for the land, but I did, and I’m not going to repeat it again, no matter how much you keep trying to claim I didn’t.
38. 

    Cristiano Midnight
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    Prokofy,

    Do you get so riled up that people at your cell phone company have plans with more minutes than you do, for the same amount or money or less because they signed up before you did or got them in a promotion? The lifetime account was a promotion, and a risk – and it paid off. I am so pleased that it pisses you off so much, because it is hysterical. What a stupid thing to fixate on, but then your obsessiveness never ceases to amaze me. Now hurry up, I think someone has a better cable package than you do! Bring them down!
39. 

    Cristiano Midnight
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    Artemis,

    Good job on getting Prokofy to freak out in all caps. Keep up the good fight.
40. 

    Mabb Dilweg
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    Urizenus, this interface sucks for discussion… it’s not designed for discussion, it’s designed for blogging. Despite what blog developers want you to believe, a blog entry is not a conversation, it’s a speech and the software reflects that.

    If the Herald *wants* conversation, they need to link in with a product designed for it, as Cristiano says. I’ll take his word on the technical feasibility and just add that I’ve seen this done elsewhere so I know its not impossible.

    On the other hand if you don’t want the Herald to be yet another discussion forum, then *please* see if TypePad can give you control over comment length etc. or at the very least ask posters to restrain themselves for the good of the rest of us.

    Frankly, those huge comment entries make the rest invisible.
41. 

    Urizenus
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    Why is this my job? I’m not the current publisher and I’m not the webmeister. I agree that forums would be nice. Why don’t you guys help Walker set it up.
42. 

    Cristiano Midnight
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    I didn’t say it was your job, you chimed in on it, Urizenus. I will talk to Walker about it.
43. 

    Tomas Hausdorff
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    If first land were assigned to one *person*, once and only once, that wouldn’t bother me. But the current approach appears make it profitable for a single person to flip first land with dozens of new accounts each month ad nauseum, forever and ever. Since first land is far from an infinite resource, this leaves the legitimate person seeking to purchase their “homestead” at a severe disadvantage.

    How this compares to someone who made a one time purchase of a perpetual piece of tier free land escapes me. They can’t do that over and over and over and over and over, consuming all of the available land that enters the market. Even if I hated the idea of someone else having the special privilege of tier-free land (I don’t), it isn’t the same thing at all.

    Returning to the original discussion: Seola’s proposed “cooling off” period, preventing purchasers of first land from reselling it for a period of time, makes perfect sense to me. A first time purchaser can still buy their 512m2 of land and resell it for a tidy profit: they just can’t do that 50 times a day every day forever and ever.
44. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    Oh, do you influence Walker, and get Walker to do things, Cristiano? Is that how it works?! Um, don't you have your own forums? Why don't you keep your discussions there in the tidy and controlled fashion you'd like?

    Um, I didn't question the fact of what you wrote, either, I acknowledged it. I don't know where you get off ascribing to me inability to read what you wrote. I recognize you paid an upfront price. It is acknowledged. But you weren't clear on *that piece*; you then clarified it. So? It still is a gift the likes of which none of us have ever seen, and we work as hard, and pay as much, into SL, and believe as much, and invest as much, and help LL through hard times as much -- if you want to put it in all those terms. And your belief that only you had vision and saw LL through tough times with your $225 is undermined by the fact that there are a lot of other people who did the same thing in other ways and still do in even bigger ways.

    I frankly think the Herald comments should be left just the way they are. I hate blogs that expect you only to clap and worship the poster in a line or two or put a link. There are blogs that are like that already; the official Linden blog being a prime example, where the straining angry and confused masses are struggling to be heard against a rigid mess of the blog format.

    And there are blogs with constant news and corporate press release summaries where comments are very short. Walker's is one of them, with always very short comments. In fact, I'm one of the few people that posts any more than one line, and anything critical. So Mabb you might be happier going over there were your commenting experiencing will be more, um, sanitized.

    The comments of the Herald are sacred -- it is where the real story really comes out often. And as we see in this story, once again, we are dealing with a group of hardcore FIC, who believe that they alone sustained SL; that they alone had vision; that they alone made the sacrifice and got the rewards, and that they have the right then, to go savaging new people who come along and make a buck by turning a parcel of land, and to go whining and pleading to the Lindens to control the land market with fake stories of injured child newbies.

    It's an outrageous, smug, insular, unacceptable way to be. And it's an old story, truly, because Cristiano's hallmark has always been "content uber alles" and land baroning or land development, in his view, is a sector that must always be kept down and suppressed.

    Mabb, you may not like long posts, but when someone parses your pose line by line and tries to get the upper hand in a discussion, I feel you have to come right back at them. Not everyone would want to deal with Artemis that way; I think it's merited because I think the real facts of the land market just aren't portrayed here: the evil gains of evil land barons are imaginary.
45. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    This is the kind of lame, stupid, inappropriate analogy we've heard a million times. If my cell company has less minutes than the next guy's, that next guy doesn't also control my entire experience log-in-to-log-off in a 3-D virtual world, deciding which features go in my world; deciding both large and small political matters; and getting to have little special confabs with Lindens in secret (does anybody have a single story yet out of the SL views this last weekend? Well??? Except the Herald?)

    Just because somebody paid $225 in 2003 and signed an NDA in 2003 doesn't mean they can go on influencing the world as much as they do.

    And here, right here in this thread, anyone can see the huge problem with the FIC, which isn't an "interesting myth" or a rabid tinfoil hallucination, but a reality, where people who are FIC -- and their supporters who come later -- band together and run to the Lindens and get them to change something about the world because of their interests, their agenda, and their impressions -- which I'm here to show them are false, tendentious, and skewed to their own agendas.

    The Lindens' prejudices against the land market are shocking; they don't even include land dealers in the list of business activities making a profit. It's truly astounding.
46. 

    Cristiano Midnight
    

    Dec 13th, 2006
    

    See, that is so typical of you, Prokofy. I said I would talk to Walker. I didn’t say Walker would do anything – Urizenus suggested talking to him. God knows if you think something should be a certain way, you bring it up. Don’t you have your own blog? Go bother with that. I think these comments here would at least be better suited to being threaded – there are some really interesting discussions that get lost. Hell, it would benefit you as much as anyone. I don’t think they should be moderated at all – but certainly could benefit from more structure. It doesn’t surprise me that you would want a free for all where you try to dominate and bully by sheer force of your overwhelming volume. Your MO has always been submission through repetition, but you don’t even keep your own stories straight, so that doesn’t work out so well for you.

    BTW, not sure what your obsession is with NDAs, but I have never signed an NDA with Linden Lab or any other company related to SL and was not part of the little confab about 1.2. I have signed many NDAs for business purposes, and also as being a frequent beta tester, but not any for SL. Sorry that doesn’t fit your latest bug up your ass theme.
47. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Dec 13th, 2006
    

    I don’t think they should be moderated at all – but certainly could benefit from more structure. It doesn’t surprise me that you would want a free for all where you try to dominate and bully by sheer force of your overwhelming volume.

    So typical of *you* Cristiano. I want nothing of the sort. And like Uri says, if overwhelming volume — which came in this thread just as much if not more from Artemis as me — disturbs your delicate eyes, then *use the scroll*. I don’t want it to happen that under the guise of “organization” some forums is put in that limits the size of posts and creates other problems. One of the reasons people even have discussions here is because they are banned from other blogs and forums *coughs* by people like you who in fact reflect that desire to lord it over others.

    I didn’t claim YOU signed an NDA with LL Cristiano — do you have a guilty conscience? Do you feel left out? I spoke of your class of old residents, the FIC, many of whom DID sign one for that version of SL they got the early tip-off about.
48. 

    Cristiano Midnight
    

    Dec 13th, 2006
    

    Prokofy,

    You did speculate in your blahg about whether I signed one or not. I was clearing it up so you didn’t suck me into future rants about NDAs.
49. 

    Artemis Fate
    

    Dec 13th, 2006
    

    “If my cell company has less minutes than the next guy’s, that next guy doesn’t also control my entire experience log-in-to-log-off in a 3-D virtual world, deciding which features go in my world; deciding both large and small political matters; and getting to have little special confabs with Lindens in secret (does anybody have a single story yet out of the SL views this last weekend? Well??? Except the Herald?)”

    Well, i’d like to know what I missed for the feted linden stuff, because I’m rarely in contact with lindens and have almost no power over how things change in SL, mostly I stick to small groups of friends and build/texture. At best, the connection between older members and those who are connected to the lindens comes from them being around long enough to gain those connections not some automatic ascribed “Feted” status. You, Prokofy, have more of a sway and connection to Lindens than I do i’d say.

    And the people who paid LL in the very beginning AREN’T the foundation? Yes, people have made bigger contributions later, (I’m sure you’d like to say Anshe to support your LandBaronwikkista views) but they wouldn’t have even been ABLE to make those contributions if SL had failed in the very beginning because people had no interest and didn’t pay money. This stuff was actually written (more or less) in the e-mail they sent all the premium members when they switched over to 1.2.

    I am amused that you responded in all-caps though, and that you seemed to have screwed up the board and made it all italicy.
50. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Dec 13th, 2006
    

    Do you have a guilty conscience or NDA-envy, Cristiano, that you needed to inject this into the discussoin?

    Artemis, you surely jest. Your participation in the highly-feted IRC channel is all it takes to FIC-i-fy yourself, as you know.
    Your possession of the eternally-tier-free 4096m2 in fact is your card-carrying membership in the FIC.

    I have to laught that I’d be charged with screwing up this board and making it all italics. How on earth could I be doing that???