Khamon

Thanks but I don't swing to you pink human types.

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But of bliss and glad life there is little to be said, before it ends; as works fair and wonderful, while still they endure for eyes to see, are their own record, and only when they are in peril or broken for ever do they pass into song. - Quenta Silmarillion

Please Visit Our Gardens and Our Website

Walker

Hahaha! That's really common in Australia. The British comedian Stephen Fry once branded it "Australian Question Intonation" and consigned it to Room 101 because it's SO annoying.

Scroll forward 8 minutes into this clip for a larf...

io Kukulcan

I applied to work at Organic a couple-few years ago. They make you write an essay as part of their screening process, on why you should work there. lol
I wrote a very sarcastic, scathing, i'm-a-designer-my-farts-don't-stink type essay.
I never was an employee of Organic.

Cocoanut Koala

Well, he's got it, and got it bad.

(Unless he's gotten over it since that video was made, which may have been in 2003 or 2005 or something.)

I always thought it was kind of an ongoing thing to (a) get the person to agree with you so far and/or (b) to make sure the person is with you so far, with the overall effecting ending up as more of (a).

coco

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Ten

"Storm's a-comin'", Momma said from her rocker, her face cross. "I'ma feelin' it in mah bones. I'ma feelin' it. Gonna be a big one."

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Dancien Graves

I'm going to hold off on crucifying the guy till he actually gets started working. Though, that may be the logic talking.

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Ten

Apparently M was shopping in Laqroki (previously RaC) the other night.

Must like shops whose names are hard to pronounce.

zenbones2000

I you coco, you rock. And yes, I have a partner so just *smooch*.

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SL is what happens to you while LL is making other plans

zenbones2000

Since noone elst has yet said it, Stephen King "The Stand."

I sure hope we are not headed thataway. Seems unlikely, but I'm moving to Boulder anyways LOL

zb

Beezle Warburton

Fight the Bull - Why Business People Speak Like Idiots

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Sooz Pascale

I have given a lot of thought to this. Here is what I have concluded.

Trying to analyze the actions, or inactions, of LL is a bit like trying to read tea leaves, chicken entrails or the guesswork that Kremlinologists indulged in during the Cold war trying to analyze the doings of the Soviet gerentocracy. That being said, let us start with one premise, to wit, people [and organizations] usually behave in a manner consistent with their perceived self interests.

Remember the "opening of the floodgates" back before my time in 2006 when Rosedale began flooding SL with free accounts. Now it makes little rational sense to me why a business would start giving away services for free, especially when the free giveaway seriously impacts the ability of the business to service its paying accounts. Undeniabaly, the flood of free accounts led to an increase in griefing, fraud, scams and technical instability. As an aside, the vast majority of people with free accounts are just fine and are good people. It did allow many, many unscrupulous people in who appreciate and misuse the shield of anonyminity. The sheer numbers of free accounts HAS led to grid instability. Tthe system can only handle so many people.

Next, despite promises to limit log ons by free accounts, LL has, instead, just limited log ins during peak hours. This means that people paying anywhere from $10 to $200 and above per month can't access the service while thousands of free account camper bots are in world. Why?

The only conclusion I can think of is that LL's grand stategy is that SL is basically an ADVERTISING platform. We are not "customers" per se or "residents." What we are are millions of captive eyeballs out there who can be sold or leased to people who wish to....MARKET their goods and services to us. That's it. We're just a potential audience for corporate advertisers.

Therefore it makes perfect sense to me that the next CEO is a marketing guy. I believe that the intelligent response to this is to give up on any hopes that LL will have the slightest desire to "fix" SL or make it better in any appreciable sense. What they will continue to do is the bare minimum, aside from PR puffery, to keep the millions of eyeballs somewhat happy and avoid mass defections.

In short, we can expect more of the same.

I have no inside information on this, have never met a Linden either in RL or SL and probably never will. Its just my opinion.

Sooz

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Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library - Barbara Tuchman

Malachi

I agree with your Kremlinwatching analysis in almost all points.

In answer to your first quoted question, LL was following in the footsteps of GMail, Skype, Facebook, etc. when they opened to any registrant. The prevailing internet service business plan was

1. Get a huge installed base
2. ????
3. Profit

It did work for some, but failed miserably for others (step 2 was the obvious toughy). I imagine that they really didn't expect what the huge boost in login hours would mean, or that they foolhardily thought that they'd be able to keep up.

As to why bots are so prevalent still rests on two things, LL loves the high concurrency numbers because it makes their service look more interesting to marketing types. The other thing is that they turn livid at "depriving" any mid-sized customers of any existing "rights". The answer to the bot problem is staggeringly simple. Get rid of traffic numbers. But there are island owners that would scream at the prospect of having their listings devauled. Taking out code is far, far easier than anything else LL does; furthermore, that much less bookkeeping would lower the burden on the asset servers. It should be - as they say - win-win. But LL simply can't see it that way. They'd hate for their concurrency numbers to drop by a third or more.

But the last bit - to my eye - obviates all that comes before. SL has demonstrated to be a horrible marketing loss for any company who has attempted to enter, and there have been dozens, none of whom got any benefit beyond their initial press release. So I am truly puzzled who the hell a marketing guy could appeal to? "Okay Alienware, Dell, HP, and IBM failed miserably in SL, but I can really see you gaining some traction here." just doesn't make sense. And it isn't as if these failures were secrets.

My guess? Mr. M knew someone who put a bunch of money into LL and wants to try to see something come out. Yep, 'tis Kremlinwatching again.

FlipperPA Peregrine

Ah, but you have! You just don't realize it.

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Peregrine Salon: Flip & Jenn's thang.

Beebo Brink

And herein lies the risk of a deathknell for SL. If creating an advertising platform is the underlying motivation for the grid (an all-too persuasive notion, given LL's actions), then we're doomed, because it's an inefficient, expensive and cumbersome medium for advertising.

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Sooz Pascale

Good points. I THINK step two would be to start charging for services AFTER the customer is "hooked."

Here's what I would like to see happen: (1) New CEO has a meeting with all available employees. He takes a copy of the Tao of Linden with him, tells the assembled employees what he is holding, tears it up and throws it in the trashcan. He then tells them the Tao of Linden is replaced - it is replaced with the Tao of Accountability. :You work on what we, as management, decide are our priorities or start reading the want ads. We don't want want any more useless darned features until this MESS is working. Next, he announces that all free accounts have 90 days to sign on to basic. If you can afford an internet connection AND a relatively high end computer, you can afford 10 bucks a month.

In 90 days, the goof offs at LL would hopefully be on their way out, profits would SKYROCKET and many of the grid instability problems would be on their way to being solved.

Its actually very simple. They just don't want to do it.

Oh, flip.. I'm not sure if I have met any incognito Lindens. I'm not a high profile SL customer and doubt VERY seriously if I have ever been in the same sim with a Linden, except for the conciege party where the few Lindens in attendance were busy ....socializing with others.

Sooz

Cocoanut Koala

Yeah, that would be good if the new guy did that, Sooz.

LL often reminds me of (forgive me) a very stubborn child. One who absolutely knows what they should do - the solutions are screaming at them - but they absolutely will not do it, if it kills us and them in the process.

Namely, the two solutions you outlined.

coco

Aodhan McDunnough

@Sooz, Coco, and others

Before you get your hopes high in the wrong area I think I need to clear some possible misconceptions.

TAO OF LINDEN

The Tao of Linden is very much like what we practice in our company. It's not a simplistic "Do what you want, ignoring the priorities." LL uses the Jira issue tracker (our company uses Trac, which has less features).

How that works is that issues are raised in the form of unassigned tickets. If you look at the Jira you will see terms like "normal" and "showstopper." Those are priorities. And when given the choice of tickets to pick up, a developer has to pick from showstoppers first unless he doesn't have the qualifications to work on that issue.

Priorities are assigned by someone in the know, usually a project head or committee who has full knowledge of how the system works. A CEO can influence these decisions but only at the general level, even more general now that the CEO is non-tech.

In summary, it's still a pick what you want system, but picking has to consider the priorities. Why do developers pick? That way you get the most willing developer who has the right capability.

So what am I expecting? M Linden is not going to have an influence on how fast our network issues are resolved. I think Philip being freed from the CEO spot will actually be the thing that speeds up solutions.

WHY SHINY BEFORE ASSET PROBLEMS?

Software developers are not swiss army knives. There are fields of specialization. Shiny stuff is the realm of the graphics/client programmers, asset issues are in the realm of database and network programmers. You rarely have people who are experts in both.

Fixing things or making new things is not like a recipe where you can tell in advance how long something will take. If the problem is a bug (e.g. permissions getting messed up) then the time is usually predictable. If the problem requires new capabilities (e.g. developing a new way of handling asset transfers over the network) then the time frame is VERY unpredictable.

Overall I really expect the Shiny team to keep churning out solutions at a much faster rate since they are mostly tweaking. The network group I expect to be running hundreds of experiments with other approaches to the network issues. I expect their solutions to be much longer in coming.

Fade Languish

If you weren't here before, how can you say this?

I was here before, and we had all of this. I'd be hard pressed to say whether it's increased or not (relative to the population).

edit: database/network issues seem to have increased.

Aodhan McDunnough

I agree with the statements on the surface, but disagree with it in spirit.

When you increase a population you expect an increase in both the good eggs and bad eggs. Opening the registration also brought us many beautiful people who have shared with us great times and great creations.

If a LL statement is to be believed, the griefing percentage decreased. So maybe before we had 8 good eggs and 2 bad eggs but now have 80 good eggs and 10 bad eggs. Those are still 8 more bad eggs but the percentage has dropped from 20% to 11%. In the meantime we have 72 more good eggs and percentage up from 80% to 89%.

On the issue of network, ALL networks suffer from decrease in performance when the population (load) is increased. MMOs, ISPs, office networks, home networks, wifi ... all are affected. What's the surprise there?

Maybe LL is waiting for the Internet 2 (OMFG fast) to deploy commercially.

Fade Languish

For sure.

Sooz Pascale

First, I no longer believe ANY of LL's statements....period. Others may and that is just fine. I don't.

In response to Fade, I was not alive during the American revolution, but I am QUITE aware of the factors that led to the British loss of the American colonies. Just because I wasn't around when rosedal opened the floodgates does not mean that I am uninformed enough to understand the impact that decision has today.

Jira is incomprehensible. Trying to understand what to do with it is like visiting a foreign country where you do not know the language. I believe this is deliberate to keep us PESKY non techinical people from complaining effectively.

As far as shiny team v. Fix it team, the solution is quite simple. I would tell shiny team to start working on fixes OR find a new job. For every shiny team member who left, I would hire a fix it person. I would reward successful fixers with bonuses and pay raises.


I DO realize that there are many many wonderful people who have free accounts. However, the sheer numbers of them make grid performance less than optimum. I am PAYING for this. I would have no problem at all with LL telling those folks to start paying or leave. I am POSITIVE that the vast majority of these good eggs, who certainly have the ole buckaroos for internet access and a good computer would not...mind...at ...all...paying $10 a month for the service which they enjoy.

Sooz

Fade Languish

That's a terrible analogy.

caroline ra

Im not premium. I have 3 alts that I use for various testing and inventory storage purposes, none of which are premium.
I spend money in SL and feel I contribute to the economy.
Do you really think I should leave?

Psyke Phaeton

I really can't imagine SL being turned into a good advertising venue. At least not in-world. Possibly in the Search tools but that seems quite limited income wise.

Something else has happened. Philip got deposed and they are casting about blindly for someone to fix it and have a game plan.

I see no evidence of a game plan so far.

What is happening though is the original plan. A 3d internet is springing up. SL was the catalyst but SL is just the Mosaic of the 3d internet. That is, Philip's and Cory's original plan is moving along.

Why make the SL client ugly and difficult? Maybe because it forces us to make and use more non-LL clients.

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Tyche Shepherd

If that was only true ... Here is a preview of the SL 2.0 RC client (tongue firmly in cheek ... but fingers crossed just incase)

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