Lordfly Digeridoo

It's a common misconception that's consistently reinforced by a lot of these grids' "marketing departments".

hey come here, it's the best, you can do aaanything you waaaant it's so coooooool your friends are heeeeeeeeeeeere*






*friends not really here. client will eat your dog. FakeopensimCorp not responsible for dead friends or eaten pets.

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http://www.lordfly.com/

Aliselia Aeon

no problem. I've done it too. lol

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"Push 100cc of Social Skills, stat!" ~Casey Pelous

Aliselia Aeon

I would have said more like..10 years old, maybe.

Gaga Gracious

You lost me

Melanie Milland

Normally, I don't appear in Forums. I don't appear in blogs, unless someone writes about me there.

I don't tweet. I don't Facebook.

My business is, normally, well, my business. I keep it that way to save myself from drama.

Well, there goes that, out the door. But I guess by starting Avination, I have put myself into a position where I have become a public personage and the public wants to know.

So, to shed some light on the things lost in the murk of time, where I would rather they'd stay...

In the beginning, there was Central Grid. It was run by Frank Corsi at that time.

I was doing business with Frank, providing a payment system (hosted on my servers) for his grid to give him a trusted platform to trade currency on.

Lala Legend (RL name on file) bought the grid from Frank and then contacted me. She had the name from Frank's contracts and originally it was about continuing the payment services for her instead of Frank.

When she found out that I was a well known OpenSim developer, she asked me to support her staff in setting up Legend City, which was to use the user data from Central Grid, but not much else.

In the course of these negotiations, she found out that I was also starting a grid, Xumeo, and I came up with the idea to link the two.
I had just added clustering support to OpenSim and it appeared to be a perfect way to test it. So, Xumeo and Legend City were linked, Xumeo with 76 regions to Legend City with 128.

We also found out that Lala and I shared some places and times in our lives, in particular our time in the L.A. of the 1980s, and it seemed like the beginning of a wonderful friendship.

When Lala managed to get Simone into Legend, User count jumped by 5000 within two days, it was incredible and nearly blew the lid off the servers. It was 24/7 work by yours truly to keep it all together. The future looked bright.

Then things turned bad. With a fair portion of the original contract still unpaid and no further monies having been paid to me, I was already in a bad position. Lala had the grand idea to make Xumeo a "Men's World." Read as "she wanted to keep the profitable female avatar business in her part of the world." Additionally, although we were peers and supposedly equal, she began to talk down to me and to treat me like a subordinate. I didn't like it, but I tried to make the business work as well as I was able to.

Then, she threw out Simone. Today I can lift the veil of silence that dropped over all this a little; I couldn't do that at the time for fear of reprisals. Yes, from Lala.

Even so, all I will say is that Simone was right and Lala was beginning to show her true colors.

In short order and after numerous arguments, I separated the grids and offered Simone a presence in my grid, now independent of Legend City. Simone, however, was fed up with it all and had lost interest in other worlds and their risks.

Lala would not leave me alone, with threats and insinuations going as far as to physically threaten my children.

I used the services of a spanish law firm to divest myself of the entire thing and closed down Xumeo. The grand total of cash I got burned for on this venture was us$16800. Total loss without insurance, and in addition I didn't deem it safe to start another grid or to continue Xumeo. Being bound into the server contract amounted to an additional €7000 that I had to pay over the following two years.

As far as Legend City is concerned, I am a victim, and actually I took the largest single loss of all involved. The true extent of Lala's duplicity wasn't apparent until after I researched her with the help of some appropriately placed friends in the US government. It also turned out that her threats were baseless and that freed me to start developing Avination. It was created over the past two years and, yes, there is a technology partnership with Meta7. It is limited to the exchange of technology, no one from Avination has any operational role in Meta7 and no one from Meta7 has any operational role in Avination. We merely pool development resources.

Avination focuses on the content creator and aims to prevent the things that have blighted content creators in SL. These things include, but are not limited to, copybotting, bots, freebies and adfarms.

Looking at SL freebies, one has to admit that nearly 90% of them are copybotted content, mostly items made by creators no longer in SL, and of a quality approriate for the time at which they were made. It is often not possible to find the true pedigree of these works, and we therefore decided to prohibit their import into Avination.

In a prior post I was quoted out of context and the freebie policy was misquoted.
The Freebie policy states that it is not allowed to import SL freebies unless you are their original creator. It also states that you can not give away more items than you sell, this, however, was represented as unit count, where it is, in fact, the number of items offered. You can not have one kind of shirt you sell and five different freebie shirts, but you can have five pairs of pants you sell and one pair in a freebie box.
Also, we believe freebies have the purpose of raising awareness of a creator's products, rather than allowing people to live inworld without partaking in commerce. Therefore, we believe freebies should be no transfer, so that anyone who wants them has to pick them up at the creator's store, creating traffic and sales.

Finally, we are very transparent. Melanie Thielker is my RL name, and I never kept is secret, not even in SL. Yes, I am an OpenSim core developer and yes, I am the director of Careminster Limited. All this is a matter of public record, it being a duly registered company. That is pretty transparent, in my humble opinion. There is other staff and we will also add more people in management positions soon, who will appear on the website as they officially join the firm.

And, to confirm, I work pretty closely with Diva Canto, who I will meet up with on February 24th. That will be our second real life meeting. The first time we put our heads together, Hypergrid 1.5 was the result, this time, I'm hoping for a push towards HG 2.0.
I do promote the secure Hypergrid; Avination is not a walled garden by choice. However, to keep the work of our creators safe, we can't, with the curent state of HG security, safely enable hypergridding in Avination. Rest assured that, once it can be done without inviting wholesale permission exploits, it will come to Avination.

I hope this has cleared up some of the confusion about me and Avination.

Melanie

Melanie Milland

I do not consider it hostile to creator freedom to prevent the spread of freebies imported from SL and usually not made by the importer.

Avination is a European run grid and the staff are a mixed bag of nationalities. The person in question is of Turkish nationality and culture and her manner of speech may have come across wrong. For that, I apologize for her.

In another post, the practice of quoting out of context was mentioned, and that is just what happened here. I did by no means equate the normal user with freeloaders, the context of this was that we would not try to provide an environment suitable for freeloaders. Freeloaders are, in my opinion, a small minority of potential users and not, as the quote hints at, the norm.

Melanie

Ayla

@ Melanie,
Thank you for your post and exposing yourself and your past here. I know that is not easy. But when you have been linked to people like LaLa Legend there really is no choice if you want to clear your name. So bravo and thank you.

With that said I am still very concerned about your involvement with Meta7. You will continue to have your name associated with them and that is not going to help the reputation of Avination. But that is your call of course.

I do not and will never agree with your stance on the freebies. I think it is too much regulating for my taste. I go to virtual worlds for a bit more freedom than that and I won't be visiting your grid because to me it seems like you cater to the elite (just my view btw). I also won't be part of SpotOn or Blue Mars because at the moment I feel the same way about them.

I will gladly link your post to my blog that I wrote about your grid and let everyone decide for themselves what they choose to believe.

Linda (aka Ayla Holt)

Gaga Gracious

@ Melanie

Thank you for a detailed account of your past involvements which I am sure will go a long way to clear the air about Avination which some people have sought to rubbish here on this thread with very questionable "facts".

I am glad to see I got some of my own facts right and I want to thank you, Deva and the rest of the core developers for the years of hard work you have put into Opensim and Hypergrid.

I look forward to HG 2. Oh, and better physics, lol

Melanie Milland

My involvement with Meta7 is only in delivering technology. I have no position in Meta7, I do not have any control over their content.

The only people who would take a dim view of that are rumormongers. Sadly, there are way too many of those.

Melanie

Ayla

To be fair ... Melanie didn't show any "facts" either. She can type anything she wants. Some will believe her and some will not. It is my guess that the people who got screwed over in the LCO thing probably won't be too quick to believe.
Also I don't see where she or anyone else has disproven anything. What was said about her involvement in Legend City Online was correct. And although she may be a victim too she was core developer of a company that messed up alot of people and screwed over alot of people.
I do appreciate that she took the time to come here and post and show some transparency though. But the facts are still the same it's just now there may be an explaination for them.
And the involvement in Meta7 stands.

Ayla

People will view things the way they want. It doesn't have to be rumors. Just the fact that you are tied to them in any way will upset some. Anyway, with that said I want you to know that fair is fair. .... I posted a link from my two blogs about avination back to your post here. I think it is important for people to get a full view when forming an opinion.

Good Luck to you.

Hypatia Callisto

This thread keeps delivering drama like the Energizer bunny. Forces myself to look away from the trainwreck and actually accomplish something in RL now.

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"To begin with," said the Cat, "a dog's not mad. You grant that?"

"I suppose so," said Alice.

"Well, then," the Cat went on, "you see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad."

"I call it purring, not growling," said Alice.

"Call it what you like," said the Cat.

Melanie Milland

I'm certainly not going to post the legal documents here. Some parts of the case are still open and I would not even be allowed to.

I am an OpenSim core developer. I was not an employee or developer of Legend City, although Lala liked to call me that, I never accepted that.

So, I take it, you will hang the gunsmith for the murder that was committed by another, using the gun he made?

Melanie

Gaga Gracious

Melanie dosen't owe an explaination to anyone but she has given it and cleared up some of the facts. But you still smell a rat, Ayla.

Well, I smell a rat about InWorldz but I haven't troubled to dig any deeper, unlike you have with Avination and, to be honest, you are making some pretty daming accusations about Meta7 and still drawing a link with Avination and Melanie.

It's getting to look like you want to fan the fire here so the smoke sticks to Avination. Trouble is, InWorldz could suffer too in all this.

Ayla

Hmmm a bit catty there. Yes, I was going by what LaLa stated about your position in LCO. I never saw you post anything to state that wasn't the case until right now. And all I am saying is that it will be hard for some people to believe you. I don't expect you to post any proof. I think that this thread was good and got a lot of information out there for people to read. They have enough now to form an opinion of their own.

You are not being targeted personally. People have had some questions about your grid and you came here and answered some of them. You may get more residents because of this or you may have people change their mind about their involvement. This is what happens when you run a buisness that is this public.

So, once again let me say thank you for coming here and posting and giving us more information. It took guts and it is appreciated.

Ayla

Do you think I care what you dig up about any other grid? I am not smelling a rat. I am stating that people will form their own opinions. I am so sorry that the world does not share yours . I know that must be hard for you.

Now I am done with this. I think that the use of this forum to air things out was a good thing.

I hope that everyone does research on every single grid or business that they plan on being a part of. Everyone should have their eyes wide open.

Gaga Gracious

Well, actually, there are people that share my view of you article as witnessed on this thread and equally so there are people that don't agree with your mischief making and slander. Like I said, its pretty easy really to weave a damning tale of half truths which is what you did. I am sure I can do similar with InWorldz.

Ayla

Yes I know that there are people who share your views. And that is a good thing. The fact that different people have different views is actually "good". I think I expressed to Melanie that I was thankful that she shared her side of things. I think that took alot of guts. I know these things can be stressful.

I think it will help a lot of people change their bad view of avination. I will be a sceptic because that is how I am. And I have the freedom to make the choices I want to make.

I did link her response to my blog. I am playing fair and there is, in no way, any slander going on.

In fact I think you might be the only one upset here. I think Melanie is going to see good things come from getting this out in the open.

Reguardless of what you think... it's ok to ask questions. It is ok to investigate and look into things you might want to put your time, effort and money into.

I don't understand why YOU are so upset about this. All that has been done here on all sides is people putting out information.

So please stop with your anger. It is not called for and it is not doing anyone any good except to give people a show of more forum drama.

I dont' know you and did not intend on upsetting you with my questions.

I do see that you like to get the last word so go for it. I am bowing out now.

Good luck to you.

Gaga Gracious

Okay. i wil have the last word, "Go to bed, Ayla!"

Ah well, I couldn't sleep so went to Ayla's blog and read some more.

My word, and Ayla says she doesn't have an agenda.

This from her blog...

1. I hear comments like "their land is so cheap" . So according to the Avination website under the FAQ it states
" How much does a region cost in Avination?
At the moment we charge only $40 per month for a full simprims and has a space of 65536 square meters"
Take note of the 15,000 prims. In InWorldz you get a sim starting out with 30,000 for 75 dollars . So do the math. IW is cheaper. And if you buy more sims you get more prims in IW.

2. I know that InWorldz founders do not cater to the elitist. They are proud of the big name businesses as well as the starter businesses in world and of all of their residence. This is NOT the case with Avination and here is my proof..... according to their FAQ about upload fees it says
"As a content creator, I bring value to your grid. I don't want to pay for that privilege through upload fees!
And you don't have to. As a known content creator committed to selling your products in Avination, you are eligibe for upload credits. This is a limited time offer. Please contact Melanie Milland inworld.".
Take note InWorldz doesn't charge ANYONE upload fees. And SL charges EVERYONE upload fees. Fair if fair people!


You say people can make up their own mind, Ayla and I am sure they will.

Jim Tarber

Everyone has an agenda. You do too. I do as well.

I know Ayla well enough to predict (hopefully accurately) that two things drive her recent agenda:
- speaking out against things that shock or disgust her
- speaking up in defense against things she believes in, in this case the way InWorldz is run and the people there.
Neither is anything to be ashamed of. It shows good moral character, and I am proud of her.

Meta7 falls into the first category. And for the second, as the popularity of InWorldz grows, the number of strange and unfounded negative statements have been made against that grid. This is to be expected, and I tend to ignore them as irrelevant -- the truth will be known sooner or later -- but some of the residents feel so passionately about InWorldz that they feel they must step up in its defense.

For the most part, I think this tends to backfire; it just draws more attention to the uninformed person (or the intentionally-malicious miscreants) making the statements that are misguided at best. I wish they would just let it go and let people avoid or find InWorldz on their own. Anyone with a false impression of it will eventually end up there anyway, as some of their friends check it out and find the same things that make the current residents feel so passionate about it. So it really doesn't matter in the long term.

InWorldz has been growing at a rate of about 50% a month since I became a resident there back in June, and it's very difficult to keep up with that kind of growth anyway. If this delays a few people by a few months that might actually be a good thing. It's still in beta anyway.

Also, I fully believe that there's no need for any kind of grid-based competition, except in the interest of making any or all of the grids stronger and better. We are all growing the one virtual world community, and like the browser environment in the 90's, it makes no sense to fight over a market that has a saturation of 1% or so. Grow the market together and we all benefit, tremendously.

I'm jumping in here just to remind everyone that if someone bad-mouths your favorite grid, it really doesn't matter anyway. Just keep saying the positive things you like about it and those few negative comments won't matter to most people.

Reading back, the one thing that the link to the old blog discussion showed me was that Elenia (one of the InWorldz founders) rubbed Gaga the wrong way a long time ago, and Gaga still has a personal conflict with her. It didn't show anything more than that. So be it. If everyone just opens their hearts and minds and tries to understand the good places this passion is coming from, we might all benefit, and if not, then I hope everyone is very happy with the management of which ever world(s) they are a part of. Either way, it really shouldn't matter to anyone whether someone prefers a different grid.

Don't worry about the little stuff; anyone reading this will know that neither extreme is likely to be true; the truth is somewhere in between, and the only way to know is to try it, with an open mind, and see for yourself.

I've found some of the grids to be very friendly and helpful; I was greeted on thirdrock by someone who was very helpful and nice (I think maybe it was the/an owner, I don't recall). I was greeted on InWorldz by Elenia back in June, and that too was a great experience.

I looked at the professional hosting, security, backups, proper networking and focus on stability and performance for growth, and mostly the attitudes in the policies of the founders there, and knew that InWorldz was where I would settle. But I am thrilled that there is so much choice out there. I'm happy Pathfinder found a place, and for the grid travels group he is part of. I'm glad to see Qarl and others finding places, and so many developers and others volunteering time in the whole alternative grid movement.

There's no need to be so defensive, any of you. If someone rubs you the wrong way, maybe you should look within, and find some more tolerance.

Joshua Nightshade

OpenSim, which remains the case with InWorldz, regardless of what they've done with the code, is hardly even stable enough to make full use of those 15k prims let alone 30k. I seriously wish these grid owners would stop acting otherwise.

I can make the viewer display that you have seven billion prims and it's just as irrelevant if the sim is going to commit seppuku by the time you get to a fraction of that number.

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Joshua Nightshade

Reading the thread, I see most of the complaints are opinions. As in, someone has an opinion that the grid is user-hostile and condescending/contemptuous to the sorts of people who are there to consume content, not create it.

You don't have to back opinions up with anything, and they don't become air-quote "facts" because someone disagrees with those opinions.

If someone happens to feel that Melanie's stance towards end users is unnecessarily snobby, they're entitled to feel that way. Quite frankly it's a stance I share and I think it's utterly ridiculous to treat your users like freeloaders before they've even been given an opportunity to demonstrate otherwise.

I have failed to be impressed with any of the astronomical number of third-party grids attempting to compete with and unseat Second Life by using OpenSim and it usually comes down to the behaviour of the owners. Melanie, and everyone else, is entitled to run their grids however they wish to, and the market will determine the success. I do hope she takes a look at the issues that have brought down every other one in the past and revises her feelings towards users; as a core developer she's in a better position than most to watch this cycle repeat itself to infinity and I hope she has a better set of ideas to change the route.

Chalice Yao

What kind of irks me more, to put it simple, is that even one of the official OpenSim devs decided to make a commercial production grid with alpha software.

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"Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?" - George Carlin

Misty Harley

May I ask why Chalice? Morals, legality, a code not up to par (but what if they are changing it and re-coding it, using it as a base if you will)?

(and no, I'm not being snotty when I ask--since I Have come across that way towards Gaga in thread, I'm just curious on your thoughts)

Chalice Yao

A few simple reasons;

1. Alpha code is not production code. That's why it's Alpha.
2. But despite this, all the commercial grids out there act as if it's all fine and ready to go and an SL alternative where people should set up stores and shop without worry.
3. If even an official OpenSim developer does this, pretty much all third party grid managers can go 'of course Opensim is ready for production grids! Look, even the devs do it!'.

Way to go.