Yeah, that about sums it up. If anything, Open Sim and similar projects will bring VR to the point that LL should have brought it in the first place but failed. Philip always boasted about wanting to be the new web, making VR available world wide to anyone etc etc blah blah blah, but all it turned in to was bottom line corporate profit and pricing themselves out of existence. They focused on the dollar and courting big business and in doing so lost support of the people that always make this kind of thing work: the everyday hobbyist and gamer.

When Open Sim allows ANYONE to host a sim at prices nearly anyone can afford, we’ll finally see Second Life turn into what it should have been: OUR WORLD. Each sim owner will be his own boss, each world will operate according to its own theme, TOS and security measures, and bugs will actually get fixed. It will still need some kind of central organization and moderation, otherwise it will just become a mess of individual “fixes” like Unreal Online. But if people do have the sense to work together for a final, organized product, Open Sim will be a very interesting development.

She’s against OpenSim because it means an end to her little real estate bid so she’ll have to get a job if it becomes successful.

Otherwise all this outsider-looking-in speculation is just masturbatory. The key to finding out if this was a good decision on LL’s part is in what happens in the next 6 months or so. If things get better then it was a good decision. If they stay the same or get worse (equivalent to staying the same in SL hehe) then it was a bad decision.

Either way I think LL will slowly become irrelevant if projects like OpenSim continue. They provided the foundation and that’s something no one can deny but just like charging by the hour for internet went away in the old days, so, too, will LL’s virtual land enterprise…which means so, too, will the land barons!

So yeah, I’m not seeing SL going away anytime soon…just LL.

She’s against OpenSim because it means an end to her little real estate bid so she’ll have to get a job if it becomes successful.

Otherwise all this outsider-looking-in speculation is just masturbatory. The key to finding out if this was a good decision on LL’s part is in what happens in the next 6 months or so. If things get better then it was a good decision. If they stay the same or get worse (equivalent to staying the same in SL hehe) then it was a bad decision.

Either way I think LL will slowly become irrelevant if projects like OpenSim continue. They provided the foundation and that’s something no one can deny but just like charging by the hour for internet went away in the old days, so, too, will LL’s virtual land enterprise…which means so, too, will the land barons!

So yeah, I’m not seeing SL going away anytime soon…just LL.

New users log in daily, using up system resources and asset servers, further clogging the system and burdening the databases, then get fed up with the bugs and lag and leave, their data footprints remaining on the system. It increases LL’s bogus PR numbers, but it doesn’t benefit the system at all.

The points about griefing and use-by-minors increasing dramatically is absolutely correct (I was there). There are so many kids on SL today faking adult identity it’s absurdly obvious, and LL’s hilarious “age verification” step appears to be nothing but a useless facade attempt to legally cover their butts in the wake of charges of pedophelia activities on their system. “Oh, but we have an age-check system! It’s the responsiblity of our users to implement it!” The old tried-but-true Linden Lab “blame the customer” gimmic. You see, customers are directly responsible for everything from lag to overburdened asset servers because they just have so much inventory and dare to actually put prims and scripts on their sims.

LL is a master at passing the blame, and that’s all that “age verification” does.

Well, I could go on and on, but that’s enough to give a general overview of my perceived current status of LL. From Flack’s post above, it’a apparent I’m not the only one who’s taken the blinders off, and from posts I’ve seen on other blogs and forums, many people are well aware of these things. When we remove the false “hotrod” covering, we find there’s a clunky rustbucket of a car underneath. And while that car rusts further and further, the neighbor next door building a dragster.

LL is a master at passing the blame, and that’s all that “age verification” does.

Well, I could go on and on, but that’s enough to give a general overview of my perceived current status of LL. From Flack’s post above, it’a apparent I’m not the only one who’s taken the blinders off, and from posts I’ve seen on other blogs and forums, many people are well aware of these things. When we remove the false “hotrod” covering, we find there’s a clunky rustbucket of a car underneath. And while that car rusts further and further, the neighbor next door building a dragster.

New users log in daily, using up system resources and asset servers, further clogging the system and burdening the databases, then get fed up with the bugs and lag and leave, their data footprints remaining on the system. It increases LL’s bogus PR numbers, but it doesn’t benefit the system at all.

The points about griefing and use-by-minors increasing dramatically is absolutely correct (I was there). There are so many kids on SL today faking adult identity it’s absurdly obvious, and LL’s hilarious “age verification” step appears to be nothing but a useless facade attempt to legally cover their butts in the wake of charges of pedophelia activities on their system. “Oh, but we have an age-check system! It’s the responsiblity of our users to implement it!” The old tried-but-true Linden Lab “blame the customer” gimmic. You see, customers are directly responsible for everything from lag to overburdened asset servers because they just have so much inventory and dare to actually put prims and scripts on their sims.

LL is a master at passing the blame, and that’s all that “age verification” does.

Well, I could go on and on, but that’s enough to give a general overview of my perceived current status of LL. From Flack’s post above, it’a apparent I’m not the only one who’s taken the blinders off, and from posts I’ve seen on other blogs and forums, many people are well aware of these things. When we remove the false “hotrod” covering, we find there’s a clunky rustbucket of a car underneath. And while that car rusts further and further, the neighbor next door building a dragster.

@Flack: I think your post is one of the most realistic and insightful I’ve seen on this blog.

@Prok: As usual I disagree with almost all of your post, but respect it as your view. People can disagree with you all they like (and I often do) but your posts are head and tails above the useless troll flamers. You may be wrong (snicker) but that’s what freedom of speech is about. You’ll probably think I’m wrong here to, and I have no problem with that. I do agree with one statement you made: LL going open source would be a financial disaster. But at the same time, they’re headed for financial disaster anyway. I have a pretty good idea how they could save the company… but all things considered I’m not particularly inclined to tell them. They built their bed and forced others to sleep in the rickety mess. Then they set it on fire. Let ‘em burn.

I fully agree with Flack that LL’s decision to open up their board to no identification (along with very poor moderation) stamped a big “flamer board” sign on their system. The reason they did it (apparently) was not out of altruistic desire to include everyone possible as part of the “experiment” (although that is surely what the propaganda stated). It came at the same time they were courting IBM and Nissan and Microsoft to be bed-partners, and they wanted sheer numbers to prove they were playing with the big boys.

In order to accomplish that, they cut corners, they overburdended asset servers, and like Flack accurately stated, such growth was premature and unsupportable. Probably made Cory tear his hair out on a daily basis. What was the result?

At one time, Second Life contained 15000 to 25000 hard-core users… and most of those logged in every day, hours a day. That went to 50,000 and even then, the board could handle it and from the usage stats, most of those were equally devoted to the board. Then LL opened the system up to anyone who could fake an email. Now, accurate, Linden Lab demographics show that 95% of those “residents” NEVER log in. Of those who do log in, 33% are KNOWN alts (no telling how many more are unknown). Less than 2% of their claimed residency are actually paying members (not that there’s anything wrong with freebie accounts. But freebies don’t pay the electricity bills). (pt 2 coming up)

@Prok: As usual I disagree with almost all of your post, but respect it as your view. People can disagree with you all they like (and I often do) but your posts are head and tails above the useless troll flamers. You may be wrong (snicker) but that’s what freedom of speech is about. You’ll probably think I’m wrong here to, and I have no problem with that.

I fully agree with Flack that LL’s decision to open up their board to no identification (along with very poor moderation) stamped a big “flamer board” sign on their system. The reason they did it (apparently) was not out of altruistic desire to include everyone possible as part of the “experiment” (although that is surely what the propaganda stated). It came at the same time they were courting IBM and Nissan and Microsoft to be bed-partners, and they wanted sheer numbers to prove they were playing with the big boys.

In order to accomplish that, they cut corners, they overburdended asset servers, and like Flack accurately stated, such growth was premature and unsupportable. Probably made Cory tear his hair out on a daily basis. What was the result?

At one time, Second Life contained 15000 to 25000 hard-core users… and most of those logged in every day, hours a day. That went to 50,000 and even then, the board could handle it and from the usage stats, most of those were equally devoted to the board. Then LL opened the system up to anyone who could fake an email. Now, accurate, Linden Lab demographics show that 95% of those “residents” NEVER log in. Of those who do log in, 33% are KNOWN alts (no telling how many more are unknown). Less than 2% of their claimed residency are actually paying members (not that there’s anything wrong with freebie accounts. But freebies don’t pay the electricity bills).

New users log in daily, using up system resources and asset servers, further clogging the system and burdening the databases, then get fed up with the bugs and lag and leave, their data footprints remaining on the system. It increases LL’s bogus PR numbers, but it doesn’t benefit the system at all.

The points about griefing and use-by-minors increasing dramatically is absolutely correct (I was there). There are so many kids on SL today faking adult identity it’s absurdly obvious, and LL’s hilarious “age verification” step appears to be nothing but a useless facade attempt to legally cover their butts in the wake of charges of pedophelia activities on their system. “Oh, but we have an age-check system! It’s the responsiblity of our users to implement it!” The old tried-but-true Linden Lab “blame the customer” gimmic. You see, customers are directly responsible for everything from lag to overburdened asset servers because they just have so much inventory and dare to actually put prims and scripts on their sims.

LL is a master at passing the blame, and that’s all that “age verification” does.

Well, I could go on and on, but that’s enough to give a general overview of my perceived current status of LL. From Flack’s post above, it’a apparent I’m not the only one who’s taken the blinders off, and from posts I’ve seen on other blogs and forums, many people are well aware of these things. When we remove the false “hotrod” covering, we find there’s a clunky rustbucket of a car underneath. And while that car rusts further and further, the neighbor next door building a dragster.

Were you referring to my post? Because I clearly stated such things as “so early on” and “jumped the gun”. Obviously it was a long term goal of LL to see wider adoption. I’m stating that their technical infrastructure, their codebase, their human services, etc., were not ready for it at the stage they leaped in. Now, perhaps they were hurting for VC cash injections, or were spooked by competition, or most likely, they just made a bad decision and gambled on timing. That doesn’t change the outcome.

Prokofy: “The biggest blunder that LL could make now is open sourcing too fast because they imagine all these OpenSim geeks represent competition.”

Open sourcing the server code doesn’t represent the threat you think it does. One of the main selling points of SL is the interconnectivity of residents, and the ability to bring your inventory with you, regardless of servers. You don’t get that magical ability by just providing code. Open Sourcing server code won’t make high-cost data centers spring up in geeks’ basements, nor make it in any way possible to connect disparate servers to the main grid without LL’s approval. But this is old news, try keeping up with the SL-Dev mailing list, and perhaps look into the Working Group.

You sure do stick to your talking points though. I’ll give you that.

The idea that Philip fired Cory because SL is broken is the hysterical imaginings of people inside the cave. If anything, Philip would say, “Break it some more, just make it cool.” That surely wasn’t what it was about.

Another really common user fallacy is that the free accounts represented the death knell of Second Life. They represented nothing of the kind. They are what enabled the population to really grow, not just fake-grow in faux statistics, which of course they did massage. They enabled non-US members to join en masse. They are what turned the corner for Second Life, making it the subject of all mass media everywhere, influencing its further growth. Sorry, but the presence of griefers among these accounts, or their purported use of resources, aren’t offsets enough against the plusses of everything that the Lindens got out of them — and they essentially got their success out of them, and not out of us, who till the soil and pay tier. That’s the sad but true story: alone, as a class of content makers or land barons, we could not produce enough ink about stuff like Aimee’s lingerie or Anshe’s million — there were only so many stories that could be done on that topic. But once everybody and his brother could join and use SL for a lot more purposes than the early and later adapters, it could get in local and international news.

Ginsu and Robin didn’t do anything wrong, such as to be followed. If anything, they got promotions — or should. Ginsu shephered LL into all its international grid sub-sets. Robin skilfully handled the nightmare of ageplay and age verification. Sorry, but putting a damper on the kiddie porn parade doesn’t get you fired in RL; it gets you a raise.

The biggest blunder that LL could make now is open sourcing too fast because they imagine all these OpenSim geeks represent competition. Let’s hope they have enough intel on them to realize that’s not the case.