The Alphaville Herald

30 Responses to “Other Worlds?”

1. 

   chaleco
   

   Dec 10th, 2006
   

   Not a single fact in this article, plus chock full of rumor and fear mongering. Great reporting!
2. 

   sundaypost
   

   Dec 10th, 2006
   

   a lot of facts on it
3. 

   Kelly Regent
   

   Dec 10th, 2006
   

   ‘Sell’? ‘SELL’?!? OMFG that is *SO* 1982. Didn’t you (or LL) get The Memo: you’re supposed to LICENSE software now, not SELL it.

   Let’s see… we’ll have the educational license, the large-scale commercial license, the small-business license and the home-user license. And… I guess we’ll license the clients too, for $40/year! Then we can ensure that everyone updates their licenses by distributing ‘upgrades’ to the server software periodically which make previous versions of the client inoperable. Sweeeeeet. It’s like owning HTTP, HTML *and* Mosaic all at once!

   What are the system requirements for the home-user version of the server software? What are the licensing fees? When will it be available in a box at CompUSA?

   …And most importantly: Where the hell is Yahoo/Google when you need them?
4. 

   FlipperPA
   

   Dec 10th, 2006
   

   (1) I thought you weren’t writing for the Herald anymore; another Prokofy flip-flop, as per usual.

   (2) As mentioned above, there’s not a single fact in the article, and the rumors are pretty far off-base as I understand them. My *guess*, and we’ll see when the time comes who’s closer to accurate, is that what is going to happen is a community of 30,000 people who don’t currently have accounts in Second Life will be joining all at once. Sort of like the Suicide Girls, but on a larger scale. Anything for a good bit of hysteria, as usual, eh Prok?

   Regards,

   -Flip
5. 

   Urizenus
   

   Dec 10th, 2006
   

   Well, I don’t know if any of Prok’s story is transmitted via reliable epistemic links, but isn’t this really the only business model that makes any sense whatsoever for Linden Lab? Alternative projects ranging from open source to proprietary web 3.D platforms are under development, and Second Life can’t compete with those in its current form. Isn’t the best that Linden Lab can hope for just this: release the source code and let other folks have their own personal versions of SL, allowing them to retro-fit it to their uses, and ask them to pay a licensing fee to SL? Is there any other solution for Linden Lab that makes sense?
6. 

   csven
   

   Dec 10th, 2006
   

   Along those lines, Uri: http://blog.rebang.com/?p=1027
7. 

   Prokofy Neva
   

   Dec 10th, 2006
   

   >(1) I thought you weren’t writing for the Herald anymore; another Prokofy flip-flop, as per usual.

   Hardly a flip-flop. As I publicly stated, I resigned when my posting privileges were removed, and I insisted that they be restored before I wrote again or before my byline was used — and they were. At least what I do is public, and doesn’t involve any NDAs. I’m not doing any flipping here, as my position remained the same throughout.

   And BTW, I don’t do flip-flops. I don’t grandly announce to everyone, “Oh, I am leaving Second Citizen” and swoon into a faint. I just leave. I stop reading and posting. If two months later, I see Satchmo is venting against me on there and needs to be answered where it will be noticed, I put a post on there, and leave — likely for more than two months the next time, as it’s such a cesspool. I have never participated in that community, and never will.

   I haven’t flip-flopped on a thing — whereas when I look at the statement that ESC says it had “no involvement in CopyBot,” while I can understand they may believe it to be narrowly and literally true, they surely open up the issue for questioning again when you, FlipperPA Peregrine, suddenly admits that you knew about CopyBot days before the scandal, and tried to call two friends of yours in libsl and get them to stop — and then admit that you failed to do so. This *is* involvement. That’s the sort of thing *I’d* call a flip-flop, for sure — just like all the flip-flopping we’ve seen around CopyBot I’ve documented amply — it is dangerous, it isn’t, it is broken, it isn’t, it is what was planned for NBC to log on 19 avatars at once, it isn’t, etc. etc.

   >(2) As mentioned above, there’s not a single fact in the article, and the rumors are pretty far off-base as I understand them. My *guess*, and we’ll see when the time comes who’s closer to accurate, is that what is going to happen is a community of 30,000 people who don’t currently have accounts in Second Life will be joining all at once. Sort of like the Suicide Girls, but on a larger scale. Anything for a good bit of hysteria, as usual, eh Prok?

   The article is posted with a question mark in the title, in the rubric “rumours, speculations”. *Sources* are quoted who make these claims, and it is sufficiently clear that these sources are being reported, without an establishment of “the facts” because we have nothing from the Lindens on this yet.

   The forums that you frequent have much the same type of rubric as their main center of gravity. This is a newspaper, and even while virtual, we try to get more than one source on a story to corroborate — and on this story, we got two, independently, and while saying somewhat different things, they spoke of pretty much the same thing.

   And yes, if there are 30,000 people somewhere in a community or webpage or something, they might likely join them all at once, and use some special shard or licensed copy of the client or even merely a glorified third-party registration. They might well in fact be people in a *world* that might or might not be a 2-3 or 3-D virtual world — we don’t know that. That’s why it’s put with a question mark, and a rumour.

   Flipper, you live in this world where you imagine that only you get to have information first and get to discuss it and speculate on it privately — and that you are then entitled to blast anyone else trying to find out what’s up. But we believe these kinds of issues should be discussed by the public, as they affect the public.

   I personally don’t think the Lindens should even have something called “SL Views,” an old-fashioned private lobbyist scheme, not a “focus group” as it is mistakenly portrayed as, especially when they profess to be such big believers in “the wisdom of the crowd” and “crowd-sourcing” and “direct democracy” and “open source” and all the rest. Here, all they can do is lock down information with their chums.

   As Uri notes, this business model has been discussed numerous times around Second Life, and LL might well follow it. My old idea that they will “sell off parts of SL” — like the blingtards to Sony or some other mass entertainer; the educational projects they might keep in their own non-profit with a government or foundation grant; the business sims they might sell to big buyers like IBM — that *is* licensing the software for private use where even the name “Second Life” may disappear.

   And for the life of me, I can’t understand picking on a phrase like “sell software”. Duh, software is licensed, but you BUY that license and they SELL it. When you go in the store, you buy a box with the CD instead. The store *sells* you that box. You *buy* it, take it home, crank it up, put in the code, and then you are licensed to use it (or you download it from the Internet after paying with a credit card). You can’t dig into that code, they’ve locked it up (unless you are a hacker), but you have BOUGHT something they have SOLD. Unless you imagine they will hand out licenses for free? Hardly. This kind of nit-picking is odd to me.
8. 

   Urizenus
   

   Dec 10th, 2006
   

   thanks for that pointer csven. Fascinating!
9. 

   On High in Blue Tomorrows
   

   Dec 10th, 2006
   

   @Urizenus: Good point. However, this would be the first step in the breaking of the snow globe that is SL – a spike in the centrifugal forces that are tearing it apart. I can’t think of anything that ‘big business’ would like to avoid more than their supposedly captive audience dispersing into the great wide internets.
10. 

    Urizenus
    

    Dec 10th, 2006
    

    Their “captive audience” here consists of at most 50 people, despite the Lindens talking about 16,000 avatars experiencing a hypervent. It’s probably true that it is easier to shard an event across multiple sims than across multiple worlds but them’s the breaks. Big business isn’t stupid, despite what we often say here, and they will come to see that a multiple worlds future is inevitable.
11. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Dec 10th, 2006
    

    csven’s post is fascinating, and it looks prophetic, if what we’re hearing as rumours out of SL Views turns out to be true or close to true (does Multiverse have 30,000 people in it yet? No? maybe with Ted Castronova putting in the 3-3 Shakespeare world? What is out there with 30,000 people in it?)

    However, as usual, csven is looking merely to the technical side of it, and golf-clapping LL and their brilliant moves and the tekkies who latch on for the ride with them.

    But there’s the social side, the client side, the side that involves “the rest of us”.

    Here are the operative points:

    “3) – The best way to move Second Life into a position for possible use as a future web 3D platform (perhaps one of several) is to open it up, which Linden Lab has recently done against the wishes of the SL community.

    4) – Instead of worrying about grid crashes or griefers, it’s actually in Linden Lab’s interest to have a bit of chaos on the current grid because that generates a need (or perceived need) for security.

    5) – With Second Life released to open source, Linden Lab can move into the “secure virtual host” mode; perhaps focusing on enterprise islands. If you were going to set up a continent like Anshe has done, would you want to handle that on your own? I wouldn’t.”

    So, if I understood this correctly, the Lindens planned SL as really a kind of long beta all along, and happily took the enormous tier payments of people willing to buy land in their business model, and encouraged people to create content to draw customers, and provided incentives to them, and promised them IP, all in order to create a situation that then could be persuasively and plausibly “chaos” and “a graphic illustration of the need for security”.

    And we are all unwilling bit players and walk-ons in that planned scenario.

    So when I post casually to the blingsider for the sake of discussion, that maybe the strangely seemingly-planned dates of 6/6 free accounts, the 9/6 dbase hack requiring mass password reset and the 11/7 CopyBot scandal are all part of a planned, prescribed action to “let the table win a few hands”.

    Of course, I’m supposed to be wearing a tinfoil hat for saying this.

    Then, having reliably established that RL media picked these security risks up more than any single other story about SL (remember all that stuff about “worms” the last few weeks?) and having reliably established that we’d all scream, then the Lindens accounce BetterWorlds, from which you can escale laggy, insecure, griefy second-rate Second Life — but for a price.

    So yeah, it looks like a con to me.

    Of course, Anshe would be one of those people who would be able to get a license — others of us would find it either too prohibitively expensive, or too technically difficult. So that’s too bad — stuff costs money, net neutrality is a fake cause — the Lindens will be the first to tell you just how much non-neutral kind of costs you have to charge to gain bandwidth and access.

    cven was also perspicacious in seeing the possibility of walking between worlds.

    Uri, with the ability to copy builds and even copy bots, you could have the 16,000 on the requisition hundreds of instances very easily — it’s got kinks to work out, of course.
12. 

    On High in Blue Tomorrows
    

    Dec 10th, 2006
    

    Well I don’t know just how smart ‘big business’ has ever been around web 1.0-style prototypes, and SL reminds me so much of the situation ‘big business’ created for Instant Messaging ca. 1999. All these protocols are still incompatible today.
13. 

    On High in Blue Tomorrows
    

    Dec 10th, 2006
    

    I guess what I’m trying to get at is that I think SL will have to a) start from scratch and b) open-source or else. Licensing cr*p isn’t going to cut it.
14. 

    Urizenus
    

    Dec 10th, 2006
    

    Well it doesn’t matter so much how crappy their software is, the question is what they have under patent, how broadly those patents are written, and whether LL wants to be aggressive about asserting their ownership rights. I understand there is nothing earth shattering about what they’ve done technologically, but people patent stuff like scroll bars and crustless peanut butter sandwiches, for crying out loud.
15. 

    Space Cowboy From Hell
    

    Dec 10th, 2006
    

    Prok-way-offy/Flip-Off

    (1) you’re both dicks

    (2) you’re both dicks

    Jimmy The Jam Rag
    Space Cowboys From Hell Founder
16. 

    Pikey
    

    Dec 10th, 2006
    

    Uri(nate)
    i think you should
    (1) ban whiney wannabe land barons who cant keep up with the competition who cry when they cant afford to follow the market leaders.
    (2) ban whiney gays from your site.
    pikey
17. 

    Phillip Rosedale
    

    Dec 10th, 2006
    

    secondlife is gay
    phillip
18. 

    Urizenus
    

    Dec 10th, 2006
    

    pikey, in the first place it is now spelled ‘ghey’, and in the second place, if I ban gheys from the site I’ll have to ban everyone except for me and my boyfriend Philip (we’re not ghey, we just like to roll that way sometimes).
19. 

    On High in Blue Tomorrows
    

    Dec 10th, 2006
    

    heh.

    Trolls aside, I think this is an interesting discussion to have. Hope you will expand your argument into a post before Dec 20 rolls around
20. 

    csven
    

    Dec 10th, 2006
    

    “csven is looking merely to the technical side of it, and golf-clapping LL and their brilliant moves and the tekkies”

    Incorrect as usual. There’s nothing technical about playing on people’s insecurities. And one doesn’t have to like a business tactic, to appreciate it on *some* levels.

    “So, if I understood this correctly, the Lindens planned SL as really a kind of long beta all along”

    I didn’t say that and nowhere is it implied. This may simply be a new tactic, *assuming* it’s one at all; there are no facts in what I’ve written. Only a few observations and thoughts.

    For a someone who is supposed to work as a translator, your inability to properly interpret most anything is mind-boggling. However, have a nice day anyway.
21. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Dec 10th, 2006
    

    Incorrect as usual. There’s nothing technical about playing on people’s insecurities. And one doesn’t have to like a business tactic, to appreciate it on *some* levels.

    There’s nothing “incorrect” about what I said. I called you on your approach — which is that you applaud technical brilliance and note the social manipulation involved on playing on people’s insecurities, but you then proceed not to condemn them, as you are enamoured by the technical brilliance. So I come along and say that, no, that is socially and politically and morally reprehensible, if the Lindens and their pals have done this, and your appreciation of this on “some” levels reveals your hand.

    A situation where the Lindens would count on some customers perennially being in the dark about their motives and agenda *is* a long beta. You may not see it as such; you’ve exposed it as such by your remarks. The problem with you, csven, is you resist, kicking and screaming, any translator who translates what you mean, along with what you say. You’d always like to sneak out of it and literalize and word-salad it to death, and not take consequences for your actual statements. You’ve articulated a series of premises about bad faith on the part of these coders, then refused to follow up on the social and moral consequences — that’s what I mean by the golf-clapping — quiet appreciation and hushed enthusiasm.
22. 

    Phillip Rosedale
    

    Dec 10th, 2006
    

    shuddup prokoky-as-eva you dipshit gay
    phillip
23. 

    csven
    

    Dec 10th, 2006
    

    Yes, there *is* something incorrect. Your comment:

    “csven is looking merely to the technical side of it”

    is wrong… as in Not Correct. As in, you apparently can’t read with comprehension. As in, you don’t read minds, so stop pretending as if you do.

    Everyone else can probably figure out that I’m looking at it from the social side and from *that* I’m deriving other elements. ‘Nuf said.

    “you applaud technical brilliance and note the social manipulation involved on playing on people’s insecurities”

    Once again, you mischaracterize another person’s words by running it through the “Prokofy Discombobulation Translation” routine or whatever it is you use to get it all wrong. Oh well.

    “but you then proceed not to condemn them”

    I don’t condemn people on speculation, Prok. That’s your game, isn’t it?

    “your appreciation of this on “some” levels reveals your hand”

    What hand is that, Prok? Is it something new you didn’t post in that wonderfully moronic entry about me? Is there some new facet that will warrant another silly post? Please do post something new. I get such a good laugh at your willing expense.

    “The problem with you, csven, is you resist, kicking and screaming, any translator who translates what you mean, along with what you say.”

    And the problem that I perceive with you is that you apparently believe you’re a translator. Based on what I’ve read, I have my doubts. I rarely see you get English-to-English correct so how the hell could you possibly deal with more languages? Consequently, I don’t think you’re really a translator at all. I suspect it’s the occupation you’d like to have, but don’t really have.

    “and literalize and word-salad it to death”

    *Someone* has to get the translation correct, Prok. You can’t seem to manage.

    “then refused to follow up on the social and moral consequences”

    Refused? Please point to where someone asked me to provide that additional commentary?

    You’re supposedly a translator, so why can’t use use the proper language? What I think you’re trying to communicate is that I *neglected* to follow up. Perhaps. But lack of interest should not be confused (as you’re doing) with some nefarious intent.

    “quiet appreciation and hushed enthusiasm”

    Quiet appreciation would negate posting about it; as would hushed enthusiasm. That you didn’t bother to pay attention to what I wrote is your issue and no one elses. And characterizing my attitude based on your ignorance is… well… pretty stupid, imo. Again, par for the course.

    So, I’m done here. A worthwhile exchange would have been nice, but given that Prok would be involved, probably futile. Consequently, any more time here is a waste of time for me.
24. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Dec 11th, 2006
    

    You spoke only to the technical side of things, and didn’t address the moral, legal, political, or social side. There it is, read it. Your belief that I or other people can’t read or comprehend, and your zeal in putting them down and diminishing their intelligence only manifests your own very real limitations of perception and reasoning.

    People who love to describe something evil or even faintly malicious and who even applaud it at some level do make my stomach turn, yes.

    There’s always nefarious intent with you, csven, because you can never have a debate, as soon as someone criticizes you, you have to a) question their intelligence; b) make cynical, snotty remarks about them c) drag in their profession and try to contrast the ideals of their profession with your imagined, hysterical view of their behaviour on a forum; d) find about 10 other ways to insult them e) never address the point. I’ve seen so many repetitions of this with you on Clickable Culture, and if I were alone in getting this treatment, I might feel persecuted, but as you do it to others — and they get mad at you — then I realize, um, it’s not my problem.

    The idea that only you get to decide whether/how the conversation continues is very typical of your blind arrogance.

    It’s never enough. You could agree with csven, you could point out that his post is “fascinating” and “looks prophetic,” but finding fault with some piece of it sends him into a foaming rage of word-salad tossing.
25. 

    csven
    

    Dec 11th, 2006
    

    “So, I’m done here. A worthwhile exchange {in which I could participate} would have been nice {for me}, but given that Prok would be involved, probably futile {since she seems to think everyone needs to read a translation of what I’m *already* saying in English}. Consequently, any more time here is a waste of time for me.”

    “The idea that only you get to decide whether/how the conversation continues is very typical of your blind arrogance.”

    I’m not deciding anything for anyone, nor have I the power to control anyone’s actions. I speak for myself only and said as much. That you can’t figure it out and spin it in the worst way is arguably sad.

    I think this Christmas I’ll donate to a mental health institution.

    Cheers to everyone else.
26. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Dec 11th, 2006
    

    When you stop making blanket comments and put in the caveats about your personal involvement, people might understand you, but your motives will still remain suspect. Anyway, good riddance, csven, you can never have a civil conversation without going off down the alleyway of jabbing and playing gotcha and literalist tekkie parsing of sentences.

    Now, I keep talking about this news with all kinds of people, and from what I gather, there will be some kind of community coming in, rather like Suicide Girls, let’s say, or Pontiac lovers or whatever. A pre-existing Internet-based community — but not a world like Multiverse (or so it seems). But then, they’ll make a world, and a world that will likely be separate from the rest of the grid, either on hidden islands, or whatever.

    Furthermore, I’m getting the distinct impression of a new kind of tap dance here.

    I could take some of the networks I belong to and contribute to in RL and suddenly cry, “I’m bringing in 30,000 people to SL”. What that might mean is doing something like have one of the organizations I work with suddenly declare that they’ll give a free SL membership or free SL help or whatever to whomever responds to their offer. So my offer to my networks of 10,000 or 30,000 that says, “Come talk to me in SL on an avatar” will be feted and hyped as “me bringing in my social network of 30,000 to SL”. It’s all pretty fake, though, as 90 percent of these people won’t come. Remember the Suicide Girls? I think a lot of them did…commit suicide out of SL, I mean. SLuicide lol?

    Anyway, I look forward to others posting what they know about all this. I keep hearing fierce arguments about whether the Lindens can or cannot offer something separate from their central asset server. I don’t quite get why there can’t be TWO central asset servers, one for bozos who pay nothing or $9.95, and others who pay $995. This is said by some to be “kludgy”. Comments?
27. 

    Urizenus
    

    Dec 11th, 2006
    

    The Suicide Girls were here? I didn’t get the memo.
28. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    Yes, they were. A Linden brought them in en masse. They got a special last name just for them — Suicide. This prompted lots of strenuous debate on the forums (back when they existed). Why do some people get special last names; why do they get nihilist last names that encourage bad things like emo and death among kids, etc. we were endlessly treated to discourses about how fun the suicide girls were, because “suicide” only meant their bad hair colouring adventures. And people who felt suicide shouldn’t be glorified in this way with even a last name (like me or Lewis Nerd) were told to fuck off because it was a “freedom of lifestyle” (deathstyle) issue blah blah.

    Bunches came and wandered around but had the same problems everybody does. It lagged, it crashed, stuff autoreturned and they couldn’t figure out how the hell it did that, etc. Bunches never even appeared to ever log on, like someone signed up a whole list. Today, look and see if any are online — not.

    A Linden whose name escapes me now was trying to make a career on this — Wilder? something. And did he/she? I don’t think.
29. 

    Artemis Fate
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    Yeah, the Suicide Girl event didn’t go anywhere, created a lot of controversy because it was the first public showing of he custom last name, and one of the Lindens personally was sponsering it by starting groups and such (I think it might have been Wilder, I forgot). So the Suicide Girls got like 100 free avatars with the last name suicide and nothing happened really, probably of those 100 avatars maybe 10 logged on more than once or twice, and of those 10 probably only 3 stayed in any relevant ways. Mostly they seemed to blend into the hoochie culture for a bit until they realized “Hey, i’m living the culture that they’re mimicking in real life! Let’s go back to writing bad poetry and posing naked under the guise of it being a launch point for my indie acting career!”, and then they were never heard of again.

    One got Second Life married, that was pretty funny. Mlinshi Suicide, I think that’s how it’s spelled, don’t know. Anyways, yeah, total non-event for all the hype.
30. 

    Artemis Fate
    

    Dec 12th, 2006
    

    The main thing I thought would be funny is all the female hoochie hookers played by guys in RL with suicide girl pics as their first life pictures would all be freaking out that one of the Suicide Girls would come up and say “Hey that’s a picture of me!”

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