Linden Jacks Land Prices 66% — Residents Outraged
by Jessica Holyoke on 28/10/08 at 7:47 pm
Nautilus sim hit by tidal wave of angry avatar protesters
by Jessica Holyoke
In the wake of “Price” Jack Linden’s announcement of a 66% monthly tier increase – Openspace Pricing and Policy Changes – angry residents flooded the newly opened Nautilus sim. The protests were sparked by both a 50% increase in the upfront “purchase” price for OpenSpace sims – from USD$250 to USD$375 and the news that all OpenSpace “land owners” will face a monthly tier increase from USD$75 to USD$125.
In an economy where many are barely able to tread water, avatars were protesting they are now awash in new fees and higher prices. According to my translator, as many of the residents during today’s protests were German or French, and were asking what justified the Linden’s demands for more clams for tier fees, why the new policy won’t allow for a change of captains from the owner to a renter, [does Jack assume the captains will stay tied to the mast while he empties their wallets? - the Editrix] or why even the schools, the poor schools, would now have to pay the same price as everyone else.
Jack Linden claims that mo mo money is needed because the OpenSpace sims were only really intended for open water due to the simulators being sardined in groups of four on a server. The Linden line is that heavy prim use, where more prims were being used per Open Space sim than envisioned, tested the buoyancy of the servers and threatened to sink the whole metaverse – unless residents open their treasure chests. Some residents wondered why the Lindens couldn’t simply limit the resources consumed on the servers to cut the weight of the added cling-on prims. But Linden Lab refuses to have their resources sponged up while looking for a way to fish themselves out of the situation they created with the release of Open Space sims and followed by raising the prim allowance on those sims.
While there were reports of a great Blue Linden whale sighting, when this reporter sailed onto the scene, in the sea of avatars, there were no traces of the Lindens.
It seems that after ad policies, VAT and other mis-steps by Linden Lab, M Linden finds himself in another fine kettle of fish.
TheBimboCheerleadrs
Oct 28th, 2008
Some of the group members were talking about this exact same thing today. We came to the conclusion that if Linden Lab continues to give SL residents the shaft, then it would not be too long before SL residents choose to spend thier Real Dollars on Real Life things and not Worry too much about Digital rent paied in Linden Dollars.
Rico Roizman
Oct 28th, 2008
This is indeed outrageous. Everysingle Openspace sim land owner is ticked off with LL. Now our company owns almost 200, roughly in that area and some of them or open spaces that are mostly privatly owned. So it causes a major problem. And LL uses their bogus excuse saying “We didnt know it would be used in heavy ways” So what, dont give us that crap now. LL was so excited to release their OpenSim campaign with “Wow! So Cheap” “So Useful!” “Buy Now!” But where was the sign that said “If heavy use fees are going up”
But meh. We need to stand up as a whole instead of letting LL change crap left and right the Second Life world is created by us, and Created for us. But im thinking this was probaly planned, They waited until many people started to invest in OpenSpace sims, where it got to the point that residents had so many, because of the price hike it would be idiotic to drop them all at once for buisness etc. So LL outtricked us, they waited until this happened and now we HAVE to deal with the price hike as for we cant toss the sims aside. But dont worry LL, Itll turn back on you.
Maks Vendetta
Oct 28th, 2008
It wasn’t long ago void sims (Openspace sims) had a simulator maximum of 1,800 prims. After an “upgrade,” these sims enjoyed a reasonable mark up to 3,750 prims.
The whole performance argument is utter bullshit. This is just manipulation of the growing popularity of Openspace sims.
Linden finally does something right by making Openspace sims available, upgrades them, then fucks it all up.
byebyewholesim
Oct 28th, 2008
I had been leasing an OpenSpace sim from a Land Baron for $120 usd per month. Now they are going to want at least $170 per month so I am packing up all my stuff and am moving out before the end of the month.
Second Life usually puts 4 sims on 1 computer box. When you take 1 of those 4 and chop it up into 2 pieces each piece would have 1/8th computer power. If you go all the way and chop that sim into 4 pieces for 3750 prims each then you have 1/16th computer power to run that OpenSpace sim. If you factor out the fact that you are used to using 1/4 compubox power for a standard sim, then it would feel like an Openspace Sim would have about 1/4th the computer power of a regular sim. To me former owner of an Openspace Sim, the computer power seems more like 1/10th.
Add the fact that scripts dont run right due to the lack of computer power coupled with these new high prices, it makes it NOT WORTH IT ANYMORE.
The openspace sims had gotten a lot better with the lastest server version and was suitable for a small home and a store up high and a few other things, if you watched your scripts you could make an OpenSim work out, slow but it worked ok.
But now that they are jacking the prices and making other changes its not worth it anymore, so I’m going back to my 4096 for $25 usd on the private island with normal script execution again.
Oh well, didnt want a store anyway, nobody is buying anything…
Alyx Stoklitsky
Oct 29th, 2008
I think it has been proven time and time again that LL’s customers are already so emotionally and psychologically invested in SL that LL can Jack their prices up to whatever the hell they want.
I mean christ, if you’re renting an ‘open space’ sim, you’re already paying the price for full server rental at your average datacenter for a measly 1/16th of the actual server itself.
That’s effectively a 1500% mark-up on what it actually costs to run the server, per customer. If you’re only now thinking that LL are ripping you off, you’ve been had long ago.
LL now wants $2000 per month on that single, 16-sim server, and $6000 to fill it up. I wonder how much their servers themselves cost. Most likely less than $3000.
Farley Crabgrass
Oct 29th, 2008
Is Linden Labs In Trouble Financially ?
Linden Labs are not bullet proof to the current state of economic affairs in the US. This would explain their misrepresenting the tier costs of OS sims as recent as yesterday and taking money from people knowing full well they were going to boost tier. Disclosures should have started the day they knew they had a problem.
Companies in trouble often make panicky financial moves, very similar to this price increase.
If they are not in trouble now, they might well be when the smoke clears – Tier income is going to drop dramatically. Don’t underestimate the effect this may have.
“DO NOT HOLD LARGE CASH BALANCES IN YOUR ACOUNT – IT MAY BE AT RISK”.
Think like an investor – keep as little as possible in your account and transfer in only what you need – minimize your risks.
One wonders how much they are leveraged and if they hold leveraged positions in other companies – suppliers for instance – the margin calls sweeping the US could explain the sudden financial need.
Orion
Oct 29th, 2008
Well, Linden has officially forced me out of Second Life. I can no longer afford to keep my land or business. Screw it, I’m renting my own server space and creating my own grid with OpenSim. Far less frustration and certainly less of a stab in the back!
Rott
Oct 29th, 2008
“And LL uses their bogus excuse saying “We didnt know it would be used in heavy ways” So what, dont give us that crap now. LL was so excited to release their OpenSim campaign with “Wow! So Cheap” “So Useful!” “Buy Now!” ”
IIRC, the lindens did indeed state that openspace were designed to eliminate the edge of the sim from an island. so that the water edge wouldn’t be two feet from you on your island. they were cheap and had a few prim so you could add waves and boats and stuff. That’s all. Check the blog way back. “OPEN” “SPACE” people.
People cheated and used them as ad hoc islands, they are just crying crocodil tears because they got caught. when people were using Ford cars as electrical generators and as tractors (and not buying actual tractors separately), ford told them if they did all that with a regular car they wouldnt be able to get it fixed (or something like that). Only in this case, LL is saying if youre gonna do that you gotta pay the piper.
And they raised the prims probably because of people whining that they couldnt do something or other on their new ‘ocean’ space or ‘wild’ space and they needed the prim so the Lindens caved. You guys thought you were goning to pull one over the lindens, they caught you and making you pay, and now you are bawwing.
if you’re really so upset, pull out of SL and use the money you save to pay your water bill, take a shower, and go outside and enjoy your first life while you have it.
Rotten
Oct 29th, 2008
Rott you are so full of crap. There wasn’t any “overuse” involved in Openspace Sims. People were given 3750 prims to use on a 65535 m2 chunk of land and thats what they did. So they made land and put up a house and lived in it instead of having water and driving around it in a boat. Very little difference. It was all about the Lindens thinking up a new way to haul in more $$ per Server Box. And it backfired.
The thing that really hurt Openspace sim performance was when they added Mono. That meant another whole runtime engine for each sim supported on each computer box. That would be 4 extra runtime engines on a normal Computerbox and as many as 16 on an Opensim Computer box if its one where they have 16 Openspace sims running on one Computerbox. I noticed a BIG hit in Openspace performance the day Mono went in.
Mono and Havoc4 I would say are the problem (even though I love mono). Sculpties and Voice Chat are the other 2.
But the WHOLE GRID has been affected by LL making these changes and sucking the life out of the SL Servers.
Remember the days when you could have more than 20 or 30 avatars in a Sim and hardly notice it performance wise? Or a mainland sim cut up into little parcels each with the owner making his or her own Club, or Camping area, or have a Zillion particles shooting all over, or giant Rotating things, hundreds and hundreds of scripts running on a sim and almost no performance hits? Those were Resident’s Resources, the essence of the virtual world which allowed the people who lived there to have a life. But they were systematically taken away from us with each new version of the SL Server and Client that has come out over the last 2 years.
The Openspace sims simply magnify by a factor of 4 or more the bad things which are happening on ALL the sims within Secondlife…
Witness X
Oct 29th, 2008
I’m going to disagree with Alyx – I usually do anyway, because he’s incapable of coherent thought (“I was a PN toolsmith and a Woodbury goon at the same time, but there’s no link between the PN and Woodbury.” Please.) but here we go anyway.
I think LL *thinks* we’re so invested that we’re mindlocked and won’t leave SL no matter what. However, the people who run Star Wars Galaxies now serve a user base of about 15,000 people. This is down about 85% – what happened? They sold everyone a “must have” upgrade pack, then two months later changed the service so as to make that upgrade pack worthless. They openly admitted that it was to try to attract gamers from Worlds of Warcraft. They had defrauded their users out of $50 each, and as much as the people on that service loved Star Wars and loved playing the game, they all voted with their feet. The new users from WoW never showed up, so the whole thing blew up in their faces. Linden Lab, learning nothing from the mistakes of others, is repeated them.
Linden Lab has a history of ignoring its customers’ needs, but it’s never done anything that you could point to and with a straight face point to it and call it wholesale fraud. Until now.
To say that we’re astonished that M Linden heard this plan through and approved it is an understatement, but he’s directly responsible for this. The thread on the official forums is dozens of pages and growing fast. Linden Lab already has a scorched, smoky reputation with regards to its customer service, and this is what’s been holding it back in terms of the dramatic increase in its customer base that it’s been looking for (but that hasn’t materialized).
Pro-tip to Linden Lab: No, you cannot just rape us. You have to give reasonable value and service to your customers, or pretty soon you won’t have tem.
Rott
Oct 29th, 2008
“Rott you are so full of crap. There wasn’t any “overuse” involved in Openspace Sims. People were given 3750 prims to use on a 65535 m2 chunk of land and thats what they did. So they made land and put up a house and lived in it instead of having water and driving around it in a boat. Very little difference. It was all about the Lindens thinking up a new way to haul in more $$ per Server Box. And it backfired.”
I never said the lindens weren’t trying to rake in more money per box. I stated that they opened thsee up for people for OPEN SPACE. Just like the lindens have open space oceans on the main land continents. the fact that you built homes and stores on it means you guys were exploiting a loop hole to try to save a buck. there is nothing wrong with that, you saved your money by exploiting it . the Lindens are now closing it.
And there is a difference between having an ocean and having an house. not just a ‘little’. The lindens crammed openspaces togehter because they did not expect people to use them for living, stores, building, etc. as I said, they were there to just to be a void. A VOID.
Here are the blog posts. Why did no one read these?
http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/09/21/information-about-openspaces-void-regions/
Quote:
“they are provided for light use only, not for building, living in, renting as homes or use for events. As a stretch of open water for boating or a scenic wooded area they are fine, but we do not advise more serious use than this and will not respond to performance issues reported should you not use them in this way.”
Announcing the changes:
http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/03/07/announcing-changes-to-the-openspace-product/
Quote:
“An Openspace is a type of private island intended for light use countryside or ocean.”
Rott
Oct 29th, 2008
“They sold everyone a “must have” upgrade pack, then two months later changed the service so as to make that upgrade pack worthless.”
except the Lindens are not forcing you to buy an Openspace. They never said ‘buy openspace instead of mainland or islands!” The value you paid for openspace was for open space. you use it for more than that and of course they are gonna charge you for it. they had a lower value because the Lindens did not expect people to use them like they are using them now.
the lindens are not forcing you to buy openspace or continue paying for it. as witness x said you can vote with your feet and leave. the customer dictate prices to the company? Sure, if the company wants to stay in business tehy should respond to demand, but they aint going to respond so they wontchange anything. Besides, it is just people crying because they have to pay for what they are taking, like gas prices rising. everyone in the US cries ‘oh no I have to pay for gasoline at prices like the rest of the world?’. Openspace people are cryin g “oh no I have to pay for the open space i am using like an island, working around prim limits with temp rezzers and stuff?’
Rott
Oct 29th, 2008
“But meh. We need to stand up as a whole instead of letting LL change crap left and right the Second Life world is created by us, and Created for us.”
just one more comment. it says somewhere in the terms of service that second life is the lindens’ product and they can change it any time. Just because you dont read the terms of service doesnt give you the right to complain when they actually use it. ignorance of the law does not excuse you from it.
also, if you think it was planned from 2006 that two years later they would raise the cost then you are giving the lindens far too much credit.
Tak Alexandre
Oct 29th, 2008
This is good news. Open Spaces have been totally abused and mainly by LandLords pretending newbies with no SL membership could ‘BUY’ land there. In fact they were renting. It is this that has caused Lindens to make changes. Lies and Greed in making money … mmm where have I heard this before? All those with a sign that says FOR SALE on a bit of open space they are the ones to blame. No one else.
Malcontent
Oct 29th, 2008
Rico you’re a fucking dumbshit!
and Anyone else that is upset with this move by LL is equally retarded. It’s about the cashflow folks! Cashflow tied to hard assets (servers) and the cost centers associated to their operation, perception of value (by paying customers) and the balancing act between the two.
“Second Life world is created by us, and Created for us.”
NoooooO
Second Life was created by Linden Research based upon an expectation for numbnuts such as yourself to fund the cashflow of a corporate project, a money making endeavor. What they did DO was pass you the koolaid (some smidgen of perceived power and control in world) and gave you some tools to see if you could further the effort by virtue of supporting the hype.
Do you guys realize how many people (just in the U.S.) are walking away from homes that were purchased based on values artificially high on perception? Walking away from homes that not only have 1st mortgages on them but 2nd mortgages based on equity that no longer exists? Or how about putting aside those folks, and looking at the millions more struggling to make basic necessity payments month to month or just plain nervous as all hell about potential downsizing by their employers. Let’s not forget about the trillions of dollars lost in retirement holdings and the hysteria demonstrated by the masses with holdings pulled from retirement accounts, sold at 70%, 50%, even 40% of January ’08 values.
If anyone in their right mind has 5, 10, not to mention 200 SIMs collectively, and are now pissed as all hell over this “cash flow” control by LL, you fucking get what you deserve for not understanding the deal you signed up for. The thousands upon thousands of non-paying Second Life account holders collectively Laugh Their Asses Off at the likes of server share investors like yourself – and they sleep somewhat better at night too! ; )
Hold Cash or Buy Gold!
OH – and Sell SIMS!
Wait.
You say you can’t because no one wants them?
You did!
LOL
Witness X
Oct 29th, 2008
Rott, I think you misunderstand the problem: yes, I agree, people don’t have to buy opensims. And from now on, they probably won’t. The problem is that Linden Lab did a bait-and-switch. Look at it this way – you don’t get to “keep” your cell phone plan either. You have to rent it, just like an island on Second Life. How would you feel if you signed up for a $75/month plan, then before six months had gone by, Verizon says, “hey, woops, you’re actually USING that cell phone, we’re going to have to nearly double your rate. Pay it or lose your cell phone?”
People have built their in-world businesses on the availability of these sims, and a lot of people built homes on them. YES, yes, I know, it’s all pixels. Duh. But pixels or not, it’s an extension of these people’s lives, just like the cell phone and those text messages you send every day that you can’t imagine living without. Hundreds of sims are going to go dark because of this, and Linden Lab thinks that’s going to ENHANCE the user experience in Second Life. Instead, it’s going to isolate some communities, drive others off the grid entirely. It’s already created a huge consumer backlash, and Linden Lab has earned every last scrap of it.
lawl
Oct 29th, 2008
Rott, stfu. Seriously, go back to trolling the World of Warcraft forums. LL’s “disclaimers” about Open Space Sims were nothing more than a “cover your ass” excuse put into place so they could do exactly this sort of thing. They KNEW damn well that with full sims being the enormous fucking ripoff that they are, that people would flock to Open Space sims simply because of the price difference. An open space sim is almost affordable, a full size sim isnt even a possibility for most people.
Pro tip, obvious troll is obvious….. You fail at it.
Malcontent
Oct 29th, 2008
Perception of Value!
Rock Ramona
Oct 29th, 2008
Amen Malcontent!Sell yer Sh**t,leave SL,we really dont give a damn.SL isnt going to fail without you.We are not even going to feel a bump in the road as you leave,LEARN TO LIVE WITHIN YOUR MEANS,its really NOT NICE to disrupt an entire community just cuz you cant afford to play babrbies the way you wnat,now you all want to take yer barbies and go home in a huff,can you all see how childish this looks?no injustice here except a small group of crybabies ruining it for everyone else,i seriously hope none of you have kids that can see or hear about this
Claude Kirshner
Oct 29th, 2008
The Lindens have no idea of the problem they would create with a 67% increase in tier on OSS. If this had been RL, there would be a damn revolution with this sort of “tax” increase! Their’s is a foolish proposition and would ultimately lose them millions in revenue. I pray that they will see this before its too late.
I personally own 13 OSSs. I experimented and discovered that cpu resources allocated to them were not enough for anything much more than a house or two and a few residents. I usually rent out 24km-48km and use the rest as true “Open Space” for my residents on adjacent SIMs. This model has worked beautifully. I do know, that a 67% increase in tier to *me*, would have to be passed-on to the residents. I don’t typically charge more that $5-$10US over my tier for rents … so someone renting an entire OSS from me currently pays $23000L per month. That would increase to $38500L per month. I can assure you, at least 3/4 of my residents would pack-up and leave, because they cannot afford that increase.
So …. who is left holding the bag? Me! Now I have to scramble to find someone who is willing to pay those higher rents. But how long will this take? How many months am *I* going to have to foot a tier bill for hundreds of US$$ until and *if* I can find renters? The most likely scenario is, that I won’t find the renters in time. I will likely first try to sell my OSSs off. If that fails, then I’ll have no choice but to simply abandon them. I can see this story be repeated over and over again in SL.
I do view this as a true “Breach of Contract” on the part of the Lindens. Bait and switch. They provided a product, that initially had a negative effect on my rentals on the regular SIMs …. but gradually I figured out this “new” market and recovered. This latest proposal for a 67% increase has no solution. I will kill the land market in the game and will ultimately reduce LL revenues significantly. Is this their goal?? Have those on the Left Coast of the USA been drinking too much of that magic koolaide?? This is not a business decision, this is just plain stupid!
I love the game and have spent $1000′s of in here and made many good friends …. but I’ll be forced to leave if this goes through. How can I trust a company that chnages the game rules so dramatically and that they won’t do it again??
Rott
Oct 29th, 2008
“Look at it this way – you don’t get to “keep” your cell phone plan either. You have to rent it, just like an island on Second Life. How would you feel if you signed up for a $75/month plan, then before six months had gone by, Verizon says, “hey, woops, you’re actually USING that cell phone, we’re going to have to nearly double your rate. Pay it or lose your cell phone?” ”
Actually, yeah, they do have something like that. When you go over your minutes, you pay a fee. Just like second life and open space here. people have gone over their minutes. they now have to pay for going over.
I will say tho that the way they are handling it isnt the best. i am sure there are people who are using them like they were intend ed, and for thos i feel sorry that for the actions of others, they have to pay.
“LL’s “disclaimers” about Open Space Sims were nothing more than a “cover your ass” excuse put into place so they could do exactly this sort of thing.”
No, i am not a troll. i was not aware taht expressing an opinion was being a troll. Also, arent all disclaimers about covering your ass? If you didnt heed them, and now it is biting you in the ass, it is your fault. Read teh fine print next time.
chmarr
Oct 29th, 2008
ok this was bound to happen sooner or later, LL are doing this so they can fill there pockets.
heres a rough break down on hardware costs.
one server blade = 4 normal sims or 8 void sims the price for this single blade is $3000-$4000.
the average rack holds 20-25 of these blades add this up
i’ll go for the 20 blades at 3k = 60k
so thats 60,000 USD MINIMUM per rack
thats roughly 80 sims minimum
now the start up fee for a new sim if i remember is about $1250 per sim so thats 5k per blade and for 20 blades thats 100k so LL is making 40k more JUST in sims being bought.
now 295 per month for so called maintanence thats another 5900
so for the 60k spent in getting the rack n blades LL are making 45,900 JUST for opening sims on one server rack, add up all the racks LL have lets say 2000 racks thats 8000 sims and a profit of 91,800,000.
LL are being greedy fuckers, will smith said it best “shitting on the lil guy”.
LL also get grants from the us goverment for providing a service to the public and they also get money for collecting rl data on forgein ppl.
add in the massive cash injections from IBM and other big companys and you will see LL make over 200 million a year, take out all the other fee’s for fibre high speed connections, staff wages, power, water and advertising and they still walk out with more than 100 million a year.
linden labs motto should be “all your money belongs to us”.
fuck me theres a world wide cash crisis and LL dont even see that, all they see is money its fuck the ppl that made sl what it is and go corporate, they already changed there motto twice and were caught out, anyone remember the “our world our imagination” that was quickly reverted back to the “your world your imagination”
ll bunch of fucking hypocryts
Ruprecht
Oct 29th, 2008
“hey, woops, you’re actually USING that cell phone, we’re going to have to nearly double your rate. Pay it or lose your cell phone?”
It happens. Just happened with my ISP a few weeks back.
It’s life.
I just have to laugh at the whiners whining about their rental businesses on OS sims.
You were told they weren’t for rentals.
Rott has the right take on this.
Alyx Stoklitsky
Oct 29th, 2008
@WitnessX: “”I was a PN toolsmith and a Woodbury goon at the same time, but there’s no link between the PN and Woodbury.” Please.”
This is like saying there’s a link between the US Government and Freemasons because the founding fathers were freema-
Oh.
Anonymous
Oct 30th, 2008
Rott: the problem with ford doing that is, unlike SL, which is more or less a pay-to-play service, is that with a car, YOU OWN IT.
Witness X
Oct 30th, 2008
In your case, Alyx, you were actively in both groups till the PN figured you out and threw you out. Then, since like all emo kids, you decided since it’s all about you anyway, you posted that tell-all article. No wonder you and Tizzers and Intblubber get along so well – your minds all work the same way (defective, but the same). To tell the truth, I’m just waiting for the next shoe to drop – FrizzleFry will be admitting the same thing any time now, going public, trying to become “PN, Esquire” or some bullshit like you and Tizzers tried to do, and then admit he’s the biggest furfag since N3X15, and that job he had as a “dog groomer” was more than just a job to him.
George Zimmer
Oct 30th, 2008
I think the more important topic of discussion here is that LL is collapsing under the weight of their own stupidity like we’ve been pointing out for the past two years. The difference is in the management and their adaptability. LL cannot adapt to changes or adversity very well, whereas our organization of fine, upstanding afro-wearing, suit-clad individuals have not only adapted to change and adversity, we plunge our plump phalluses directly into the anus of adversity, and fire our steaming white hot hatred directly into its veins.
The point I want to make here gentlemen, is that the PÂool is Closed.
I guarantee it.
Rott
Oct 30th, 2008
“Rott: the problem with ford doing that is, unlike SL, which is more or less a pay-to-play service, is that with a car, YOU OWN IT.”
Good point and a bad example on my part. although that highlights another fact that in second life you don’t really own land, just rent it but that is not at issue here.
Alyx Stoklitsky
Oct 30th, 2008
“In your case, Alyx, you were actively in both groups till the PN figured you out and threw you out.”
Actually I was thrown out of PN for being in Furnation Admin – Woodbury had nothing to do with it whatsoever. Learn the truth before you speak.
WebISPGuy
Oct 30th, 2008
LL: I know why your here, Neo. Why you hardly sleep at night, why your now afraid to live alone, and why night after night you sit at your computer. You understand something you cant see. We looked at one time too and evolved beyond that. Neo if you pinch yourself do you feel pain? Is that air your breathing? You think because you “log off” this game your out of the matrix. Your wrong Neo. Do you think your a free man, Is that money your spending real? Neo your still asleep in the Matrix, your a slave to the commonwealth of the british government, IRS is not a US Government entity is a corporation owned and run by the British. Neo you will never be enirely free till you wake up and step out of the box and realize that which you believe is real is not real at all. Neo you still worried about Second Life? Wake up NEO you chose the red tablet its time to see the world for what it really is. There is a much bigger problem for you than Second Life. Second Life will become quite insignificant in the grander scheme of things when you wake up and realize the blanket that has been pulled over your eyes and your living in two Second Lives, the one you sign into every day and the one you have lived all your life that is right before your very eyes in plain sight.
franky sertie
Oct 30th, 2008
Linden Lab wants more voided OpenSpace sims? Fine! Let’s all sell our lands and move to OpenLife… this way the Lindens will more empty space than it wants.
George Zimmer
Oct 30th, 2008
By the way, I hope you enjoyed your crashed protests.
Sigmund Leominster
Oct 31st, 2008
OK, so the original conditions for OS include the phrase “they are provided for light use only, not for building, living in, renting as homes or use for events.” So anyone whining about “their rentals” should keep quiet. Last night I talked to someone who said they are going to leave the OS sim they are living on -not because it is THEIR sim but that their LANDLORD is having to sell it or convert it to full sim. Wait a minute… landlord? It seems the “landlord” bougth a number of low-price OS sims and then rented then out.
Oh come on, boys and girls! That’s profiteering, no more no less. While folks are climbing on high horses and crying “bait and switch” (it’s not “bait and switch”- just a huge price rise that although seems usurious and political inept, is quite legal) some of the folks crying are guilty of breaking the contract they entered into when they agreed NOT to rent out the place. Give me the proverbial break.
Yes, it’s a bad idea to punish all the folks who did the right thing instead of punishing those who broke the rules, but let’s not make those bad folks the heroes.