>If you look to your left on the table, a computer *does* rez when you select one. You can even touch the parts in that holo-PC/laptop to customize. I like your idea about the display screen, too, with a 2-D picture. I’m trying to figure out where I could put one without the whole thing looking too crowded, too busy.

To the left on the conveyor belt is the computer you already select, when you’re done making it, you press and it spits out. I clicked on it, but I couldn’t see that any parts were changeable.

I’m talking not about the result at the end of the process, but the screen/work desk itself. To have pictures there, and even the 3-D image there while you are making the selections, where you can see it. Most people aren’t going to look to the left behind a conveyor belt, especially if there is no instruction to do so.

>Understand what was referred to is a pop-up window saying who the item owner is. The item is called “Dell Configurator”. It’s still an interesting point; I’ll ponder that one.

The owners of islands and their groups and objects shouldn’t be the metaversal agents, but the ultimate customer so that they always retain brand identity. What’s the point of buying the name “Dell” for $1500 if it leads to “Hiro Pendragon’s Dell Configurator”?

I don’t understand this reluctance of game companies and computer companies (and I’ve seen it before) to name one brand that is utterly and perfectly suited to play the game. We all know that brands differ, and you can really get screwed on certain graphic cards especially even if they are on spec. So I don’t know why companies aren’t willing to step up and say “SL-perfect Computer”.

I dunno. Ask the Lindens. I would think if they felt they could get some kind of real-world benefit from cutting a deal with you, you’d have heard from them by now. Instead, they go with companies like Dell, whose “RL reputation” is clearly of value to them. It’s like you’ve got 14 truckloads of beets to sell to McDonald’s, and you’re unhappy to discover that they want 4 truckloads of potatoes. Going on about the perceived injustice of the situation doesn’t change the fact that you don’t have what they want to pay for.

But since it took me a very long time, armed with the Dell material, having owned several prior Dells, and asking oodles of questions all over the forums and of everyone I know, seems to me that Dell could put something that says, “Best for SL,” and would sell a whole bunch that way.

(And doubtless to me – quite possibly causing me to choose a more expensive Dell, in fact; just because Dell said that one would be best.)

Maybe, though, they would be up a creek with every new update, since each update could conceivably make something in that Dell build NOT be best for SL anymore.

Still, I swear they would sell a gajillion Dells to SL players if they would just put one of those up as, “Optimum Dell for Playing SL.”

In any case, it’s just a thought. Probably the worst problem most SL players have who aren’t real techy is trying to get a computer that will be optimum for SL.

2. If the item is named “Dell Configurator” then I’m fine with that. I thought “Hiro Pendragon’s” was part of the name.

I know that some people take on the company last name, such as “Hiro Dell.” That might be best for Dell, but personally, I don’t think it’s best for the individual designer. Which means that Dell (or another company) might not get the best designers, if they are forced to give up their own names.

I misunderstood. As long as the person’s name isn’t in the object title, then I see no problem with it.

coco

>> A holovendor would be a great solution here and certainly Hiro knows how to make those.

If you look to your left on the table, a computer *does* rez when you select one. You can even touch the parts in that holo-PC/laptop to customize. I like your idea about the display screen, too, with a 2-D picture. I’m trying to figure out where I could put one without the whole thing looking too crowded, too busy.

…

Coco:

>> “Having something on that island that would configure up the perfect SL-playing Dell” …

The computers that Dell selected were top of the line at opening of the island. The PC has a quad-core Intel and dual graphics cards, and the laptop has a duo-core. They’re designed for hard-core gaming. Dell announced a water cooled upgrade of the PC at the Consumer Electronics Show recently, and that’s why I say, “were”.

>> “Hiro Pendragon’s Dell Configurator” – not good.

Understand what was referred to is a pop-up window saying who the item owner is. The item is called “Dell Configurator”. It’s still an interesting point; I’ll ponder that one.

Because you can call people socialists, capitalists, FIC, blah blah bleeh blah blah, that makes you an expert?

Get over it. You aren’t special. You don’t bring anything to LL.

In fact, if you disappeared, I’m sure no one would take notice, except maybe your ownself on a story you put out there about how the capitalist, socialiest, elitist gubmint forced you out.

You have NOTHING in the way of expertise in this area. IF you did, you’d realize how idiotic you sound, when you say “Sure it’s okay for RL to RL companies to have business arrangements, because they are forced to show everything.” Then go on to say that LL is what? NOT a real business?

Fact of the matter is no, no company gets audited unless by the IRS for a hint of a scandal. No company is forced to reveal ANYTHING to ANYONE. In fact, the IRS’s audits in confidentiality, which is required by law to not have public info. What you hear, that gets to the public is usually released by PR firms, in response for the businesses to help maintain damage control for investors. You are dead wrong. Don’t feel bad, I know you are gonna go ahead and ramble some idiotic statement to this anyways.

However, I do think it funny that you say that special arrangements are okay, since they don’t directly involve you.

Both Dell and SL gain from a partnership. In fact, it’s quite a VERY common practice that almost every business has ‘preferred’ customers. You gonna go stage a protest against airlines that offer more mileage to frequent travelers just because you don’t get the perks they do? Gonna get pissy at USO’s in airports for allowing military in to eat, drink and watch TV while they wait, and you can’t get in? Gonna get pissy because the local grocer allows someone they know to pay with a check but won’t let you? Fact of life: no one is equal to every other person and company. Are you gonna let the next person who knocks on your door in your house and lounge about just as one of your RL friends would (if you do have any), because you think everyone should be treated equally? Are you gonna let someone rob you because someone else got robbed a few days ago and it should be equal? Or are you gonna go rob someone because the guy next door did?

Are you gonna stage a sit in and the next plumbers union meeting because they get to be plumbers in a group and you don’t?

NEWSFLASH: You are nothing special. You offer nothing to LL but lunacy. I don’t see anyone jumping over themselves to do a story on you, yet there are literally hundreds about Dell coming into SL. Why? Because they provide PR to EACH OTHER.

So if they allow Dell to pay with a cashier’s check or money order and not some random employee or owner credit card, more power to them. In fact, to be honest, most business dealings with corporate to corporate transactions don’t use credit cards. And chances are, they pre-paid a set amount of time, say 1 year worth of tier, plus costs of islands and account. In a year, they’ll revisit and decide whether to pay more.

You know why I know this high and mighty ‘no one every knows’?

I do the books for my family’s businesses. And in my family, we own 5. So that’s alot of books and alot of business dealings.

When I do transactions with the lumberyard for one of them, they let me use a tab to pay a cashier’s check at the end of the year. Why? Because my family’s entire time in business with them (more than 15 years) they have been the exclusive supplier. Would an unknown be able to walk in and start a tab? No. With the bar, there is allowed personal checks from several patrons who have been going there longer than I have been alive. But we’re certainly not taking a personal check for 10 kegs purchase from some random person. The local volunteer fire department runs pull tabs there as well, and my family handles the money and presents them a check. The bar across the street, doesn’t have a key to thiers.

It’s all about relations, and ANY good business person knows that you make allowances for certain people who will benefit you. It’s common business sense.

Dell pays Linden Lab directly – they’ve said as much. That is the truth of the matter, all that matters, and quite frankly while perhaps not the way it should be done, it is the way it is done.

Only a change to the laws governing such transactions can change that – and I don’t see that ever happening. Verbal protest on a Blog won’t change it, petitioning the government won’t change it, it’s a fact of life – Get over it and move on already.

The fact that some keep using the same words (or are they really words? I can’t find them in any dictionary so I suppose they are not words after all now are they?) to describe anyone that decides to slam reality in the face of those complaining ….

If people are so incapable of facing reality and so incapable of keeping up with the times, then it’s high time they stopped attempting to make sense out of everything.

This is 2007, not 19xx, or even 18xx. Nothing short of a full scale government take over or a complete revolution to replace the government will change this. ever. Arguments to the contrary just show how naive the person making them really is.

The Age of Revolution by Protest is over. You want something to change? go out and DO something.

How witless. It’s not about the fact that companies buy from each other. That’s ridiculous. It’s that this company gets some kind of confidential arrangement that evidently involves getting a discount or some perks (or it wouldn’t have to be kept confidential) — merely on the strength of “RL stake and clout” which Philip Linden always claimed is not a value to make up the Better World. And yet…it is.

McDonald’s has open books that are audited. There’s far more transparency involved in any one of those companies you have named than this as-yet not-profit-making company and its cronies. Cronyism is not a way to run a society and have it succeed and prosper in the long run. Having long-term relationships with vendors and giving them discounts isn’t cronyism because it can be explained by obvious, demonstrable criteria that is available to any long-term bulk supplier, for example. That can’t be said about Dell, now, can it?

Corporate connections aren’t wrong in and of themselves, because in RL, you can understand the rules for how to get them, and they are applied more equally and more openly. In SL, it is a secretive and cult-like atmosphere. And you help fuel it by trying to downplay this reality, and minimizing it.

That said, I still maintain that it is not unreasonable to expect a large, multi-billion-dollar corporation to receive different treatment from Linden than an individual customer. While you may have invested more money and time to date than Dell has, it’s not unreasonable for LL to expect–or at least to hope–that Dell has the potential to invest quite a lot more over the long run.

No, Chavo, that’s not how “capitalism works” — and I see little to indicate that YOU are an expert on this subject, anyway. Capitalism in a liberal democracy would tend to reward those companies that have a track record of performance in a given situation. They would be your client or supplier or partner for having some demonstrable good. What is the demonstrable good from Dell? I’m sorry, but it’s only it’s RL reputation, and that’s not good enough for me when we’re all here supposed to be building BetterWorld (TM) *cough*. Like I said, put very coldly, Dell has 4 islands; I have 14. What has Dell down for Linden’s bottom line that I haven’t done more of?

What you’re failing to see, as always, due to the tekkie literalist problem, is that I’m using myself as an example, not as someone to get special pleading. I don’t need a thing from Linden Lab. They have a webpage with land on it, I click, I buy it. End of story. The rules on that page say that in a group, as an incentive, I get 10 percent extra tier as a bonus for more group contributions. That’s the kind of incentive that makes sense, as it can apply to anyone across the board merely by fitting the same grid of criteria.

Cronyism involved in the FIC stuff and now the Corporate Inner Core is different, as it is secretatiev, not demonstrable, or merit-based, or anything of the kind.

What you can never understand is the concept of LEVEL PLAYING FIELD. Under the Rule of Law. These are basic principals. You must always misunderstood this as equal outcomes — which it is not — or special pleading, or jealousy, or dumbing down — which it is not. It’s making fair rules for everyone.

Well when you show up at LL with a few million in a bankroll then you can get special treatment too. Now if you have an issue with a corporation doing this then you need to go change the entire corporate law in the US that allows a corporationto effectively act as a single entity. And as a very wealthy and powerful entitly it can command special treatment.

Oh, I could entertain this as a concept…when I see the corporations roll up with a few million *US* in the bankroll.

Um…where is that? Get out your microscopes. What Pixeleen’s story highlights unwittingly is the degree to which it’s the FIC’s sherpa companies rolling up with the hint of a bankroll, all hat and no cattle, so to speak. Where’s the wealthy and powerful entity that has actually done some big splash in Second Life? IBM has a tiny fraction of the islands of Anshe Chung or Azure Islands.

Dare I say I’m not impressed here?

>I have already pitched a proposal to my company to create an SL presense. We represent 5 major companies around the world with billions of assets and can generate an entire revunue stream selling a product from within SL that can be used both in and out of the simulator. You can bet your ass we will want special treatment too. And if I have my way I will be a consultant for the project and their sherpa. I wouldn’t mind the extra cash.

>Get over it and accept the reality of what money can do.

Uhh…ok, there, champ, when your proposal is accepted and your billions are flowing, um, get back to us on that will you?

What I *can* accept so far is the reality of what a big mouth, a big e-peen, and an anonymous Internet can do for a little dweeb like you bragging about some big company you work for as a peon. I truly find it risable. I guess the Metaverse is made for creatures like you.

I agree with Coco that Hiro Pendragon should have kept his dumbass SL name off the Dell branding device. He can be listed on a plaque somewhere but honestly, we need more modest — and more skillful — sherpas here, folks.

Yes, if Dell won’t do it, then one of these companies has absolutely GOT to sell the perfect SL configured computer. I bet they will be afraid to do that all around, and LL itself might discouraged them.

I’m a regular Dell user. Having something on that island that would configure up the perfect SL-playing Dell, and the second-best SL-playing Dell, and the third-best, would be terrific.

In fact, I’m getting ready to buy a new Dell, and that would have been great.

Not just for me; I bet you would sell a whole lot of Dells that way, because non-techy people are hard-pressed to come up with a system they feel confident will work well with SL.

“Hiro Pendragon’s Dell Configurator” – not good. Don’t mess up your brand name with that of an individual in SL.

coco