Lab Culture

Everyone knows Linden Lab is a revolutionary new (since 1999) California software company that is doing this revolutionary thing called streaming a 3-D world on the Internet, just like many websites a few years ago began to stream media through RealPlayer and other devices to add video, sound, Flash, etc. to your web experience.

This is all so new and exciting and fabulous that you may not really think about how they made this or how it got that way. Once you are inside the streaming world, at the business end of the stick, so to speak, you might begin to study it harder and want to know what's "up".

On the one hand, you look at www.secondlife.com and you see headlines like "Making a Living in Second Life" which thousands of people are clicking on, and joining SL for free, then flying into buildings and wacking older residents with the head with demands to show them "where u make $$$".

If you're one of those people who spends a lot of money but hasn't really made very much money from SL, you'll know from the forums that you just have something wrong with you. The competition with your resident-based business you might experience from LL itself; the hate campaigns inspired by a feted inner core of socialists, tekkies, wikinistas, creator-fascists, etc. against land or service interests in classes they views as "enemies" are just part of the cost of business. Ignore them, and ignore stuff like "a businessmen doesn't complain; a businessman makes a profit" and other Social Darwinist comments that come from some of SL's youngest and therefore most easily feted and spoiled earlier adapters.

Persist in your study, and you might begin to wonder how the company explains itself to outsiders as a company, as distinct from the PR stream on the fan site at www.secondlife.com

For that, while hearing in one ear that you can have "your world and your imagination" in SL and "make a living in Second Life," from your other ear, you can hear this, if you click on "About Linden Lab":

"Linden Lab is a privately held company established to develop an extraordinary new form of shared 3D entertainment. Through its first product, "Second Life," Linden Lab offers a truly collaborative, immersive and open-ended entertainment experience, where together people create and inhabit a virtual world of their own design."

That will pretty much tell you what you need to know. Again, imagine you are in the eye doctor's, trying on lenses. Try this lens:

Your World. Your Imagination.
Join a burgeoning new online society, shaped entirely by its residents. Here you can be or do anything. Explore an ever-changing 3D landscape. Meet new and exciting people. Create a masterpiece - or an empire. Second Life is yours - to imagine, invent, and inhabit.

Then this:

"Linden Lab is a privately held company established to develop an extraordinary new form of shared 3D entertainment. Through its first product, "Second Life," Linden Lab offers a truly collaborative, immersive and open-ended entertainment experience, where together people create and inhabit a virtual world of their own design."

Ok, did you get that? Repeat, like at the eye doctor's, if you're not sure. This? or This? And the answer is: you're in an ENTERTAINMENT. If you didn't find it entertaining to risk your RL money on land or your RL unpaid hours on content creation, you need another game! While this isn't a game...part of the entertainment package is both convincing you it's not a game AND making you suspend your disbelief and get you to believe that you are "making a living in Second Life".

Entertainment is about illusion. I've compared Philip Linden to the Pied Piper or the guy with the gold braids on his red uniform jacket who takes my money at the movie theater or possibly he's the little man behind the curtain. He's a genuinely nice guy. But what he is, is not an Employment Office or Craig's List or a course that can get you your Novell license or a Help Wanted sign. He's an entertainer. Once you accept that, and once you realize that if you are *not* being entertained, then you need a new game! Or you need a better place to spend your discretionary entertainment dollars.

A girl on the forums said she finally cottoned to the fact that she was a) making content to b) sell to newbies who came and bought her elf stuff then c) cashing it out to pay tier so that she could d) pay LL for keeping her land to make content and sell to newbies, who included basic free accounts -- something that helps Linden Lab.

Ok, if you are not here riding the Tilt-a-Whirl, and you are also resenting being the man who earns $3.87 an hour running the Tilt-a-Whirl at the country fair, and if you are not one of those very, very lucky people who gets a seat on the country plannnig board merely to take the people's budget and decide where county fairs go in the next year, well, you're in the wrong county. The way out of town is that-a-way.

If you decided to sign on as the Tilt-a-Whirl guy (like me), and entertainment for you also involves just following the whole creation of the Metaverse and being a part of it (thought it is likely, as Neal Cassidy famously put it, "all about the Big Grab from Washington to Moscow"), well, you may develop a keen curiosity about the culture of this company.

The "pass the love stuff" was one of the more recent indications of wierd hippie shit coming out of this bunch in California who one forums poster has described as coming to work in flip-flops and Che t-shirts. I used to imagine these more clean-cut young fellas, many of them barely just shaving, as more the Coke and Ring-Dings sort of folks. That was based on my observation of many other tekkie teams over the years whose performance and enthusiasm levels I suspected were tied to their blood sugar levels. I was then enlightened on this score by someone who explained that Ring Dings aren't what they have in California; they don't have Baby Watson Cheesecakes, either, and I'm thinking they don't even have Gyros. I'm figuring pizza is a safe bet, probably that kind that comes all organic with crap like pineapples and asparagus tips on it and whole-wheat crust, but honestly, once we learn the junk food of choice of these folks at the Lab, we'll be well on our way to anaylzing the Lab's chemistry better.

We'd already began to get glimpses of the culture issue in the last few months when we'd asked more senior Lindens (seemingly) just what the hell is going on with something like the Suicide Girls being ushered en masse into SL, despite the legitimate protests of many more thoughtful and serious people on the forums who complained that putting "Suicide" into the list of names in a world was disturbing and gross. I take the sarcastic point about the use of this name, which refers to their hair-colouring techniques or something, but I feel it's wrong to do, in a world where teen suicide is a real epidemic in many towns and where many of us know suicides that have devastated families and communities -- erm, like that big homocidal/suicide thing they had on 9/11.

The response of these senior Lindens would be like this: "Oh, that's Wilder's project. Talk to him. *Shrugs*".

Or take what seemed like the really questionable concept of competing with resident rentals and sales by going into the Unrealtor business, making Blumfeld, Shermerville and the rest, and then not even granting Linden-zoned status at the end of the "experiment" (remember, that's why they call it the Lab!). "That's Lauren's project, not mine," Pathfinder could blandly tell a community meeting.

Or take the forums -- please! If you bitch about that, you might hear another Linden say defensively, "Jeska's doing a good job, give her ResMod concept time to gel."

At first I thought this was about "departments" in a "company". ROFLMAO, silly me. No, it's about a mod new cool concept for management whose name I'm not even sure about. It might be called in part "distributive decision-making" (those most affected by decisions get to decide priorities). Or something like that.

What that means is that your onslaught of Suicide girls, your business competitor, your loss of a businesss and service you performed -- these are all the results of this or that Linden being given rein to do basically anything their little heart desires, and basically whatever the fuck they want, with that patch they've been given domain over.

I began to get glimmerings of this a year ago when I was permabanned and from things this or that Linden or in-the-know FIC would let slip, I'd get that the decision to ban me was made in some kind of collective Kumbayah sort of experience, where no doubt "those most affected," like a Jeska or whomever is on the receiving end of loads of AR's deluged by indignant little fanboyz, is able to make a decision about a resident or even a new policy -- like "you get banned from the forums/you get banned from the game" -- a policy that Philip Linden professed to know nothing about when I first talked to him about it and protested it.

Of course, some Lindens talk to you as if certain features or decisions are made "above my pay grade" or "I'm on a need-to-know basis" or "no comment" or "that's Superior Boss Linden's call, not mine." So you suspect, of course, that like any new modern California thing -- this new management techniqueis probably something layered over the same old shit that still goes on in the same old way everywhere.

Don't that distract you from the new management thingie, however.

It's hard to know whether they are talking about this stuff more because they've made a conscious decision to explain themselves more (there were intimations that they were going to bring in journalists and other opinion-makers into the office in California so they could grok on it all; there's also more game blog buzz now like at the Herald), or Philip took the lid off by mentioning the "pass the love" stuff at the town hall, or whether the Dysfunction Junction has reached such a critical mass, that the wierdness is starting to seap out.

Remember Andrew Linden? He's the fellow who famously said that if there wasn't some clique artificially throttling the game and its population, he'd be inclined to allow one to exist because it would throttle growth, which was coming too fast, evidently.

Andrew has made what I find to be the most fascinating glimpse ever into our favourite entertainment company's management culture, in response to a discussion of what they call the Big List of Things To Do (BLOTTD):

Here is an experpt from our internal "Vision and Mission", which is considered required reading for LL employees. This is actually just an internal wiki page so it should be considered a work in progress and no, I did not write it. This justifies why we do things the way we do and why I can talk about this stuff on the forums:

...

Choose your Own Work.
Given how dynamic the challenges are we face, and the opportunity for increased job satisfaction and productivity, Linden Lab places a high premium on choosing your own work, rather than being told by anyone what to do. By choosing your own work, you are more likely to have more fun at work and add more value to Second Life. By setting your own goals, you are more likely to meet them. When you commit to a team project, be prepared to be directed by the team lead, but when deciding what project you will take on next, rely first on your own best intuition and the counsel of peers.

Be Transparent and Open
There are many ways to emphasize responsibility, accountability, communication and trust. We believe that the one key principle that best supports all of these values is transparency. As much as possible, tell everyone what you are doing. This transparency makes us responsible to our peers, makes us accountable to our own statements, and replaces the need for management with individual responsibility. Over time, it creates and reinforces trust. Be willing to share ideas before you feel they are ‘baked’. Report on your own progress frequently and to everyone.

...

I should mention now, before somone points out inconsitencies between those principles and LL's public actions in the past, that the "transparent and open" item above is talking about internal behavior rather than public behavior. That is, there are some things that LL can't discuss publicly (some business, financial, or legal issues) as well as some things that may be unproductive to talk about (such as some strategy decisions or tentative plans). So while LL is not totally transparent to the public these internal principles affect our external policies which is why LL is as open at it is.

At first glance, especially the young and inexperienced fellow without any RL work experience might think "great"! Why work for The Man in some cubicle in some big evil corporation where the managers are all people who, if you worked at the Post Office and were unionized and were a former war vet who automatically got 25 points for free on the clerical speed and accuracy test, you'd cheerfully shoot before punching out for the day. "There are some people who just *need* killing," a postal-worker friend once remarked to me. Why have bosses from hell and contribute to something that is not only probably not providing health care for your family, it's probably exposing workers in China to pajama fabric asbestos fibers and sneaker glue and killing them, too?

Of course it looks a lot more, well, fun to work at a place where they probably don't really watch the clock as long as you get your work done, and where Urizenus Sklar's tabloid claim about their "fatty breaks" may actually be true.

We've all worked on projects where a good group of people get humming and people just all shoulder their burdens and do what needs to be done. But there are groups and there are groups.

Let's say you're on a construction site -- I've been there. Let's say you're not a particularly talented builder but you can more or less competantly do the scut work that is on any job site in reams. So if you're short, you're put on the task of "taping" or putting up the plaster on the lower dry walls and somebody else who is taller *and* a "master taper" will finish the whole wall off. Or let's say you're screwing in all the electrical sockets throughout all the bases because the electrician is presumably busy doing more important master stuff like wiring all the ceiling lights. On such a job site, you'd have a "punch list," so called because a builder usually takes a stubby broken No. 2 pencil and punches a grimy piece of paper into an unfinished wall somewhere and scrawls what people doing white-collar work in a clean and dust-free office call their "BLOTTD". As you complete all the taping, the electrical sockets, laying the tile in the bathroom, etc. you "punch" or put a hole next to that scrawled job.

As you get through that crazy last 24 hours when the customer's deadline is looming, everybody has to get on the punch list and just punch it out. The punch list itself which was the "collective wisdom of crowds" as everybody walked by and scrawled stuff is the moderator and driver of the project, and it's not personal -- nobody really feels like trying to scrub some old piece of marble the client insisted having in the bathroom with muric acid, but it's got to be done, so however isn't busy on wiring is down on their hands and kneeds with the muric acid.

But where punch lists go wrong is when the original concept and schedule is all fucked up. Let's say somebody didn't think to calculate that the shellac for the floor is going to take overnight to dry, not 3 hours, so that if he shellacs the floor, everybody else has the awful realization that either they go on taping and sanding and traipsing around with wheel barrels trying to not walk on that floor and failing, or they leave it and come back. The people who had already rented the sanders for the day are realizing they are paying a day for nothing. But the other jobs can't wait. In the end, the client is furious at the fucked-up floor even after it's buffing and sanding and ends up hiring another crew to come in that just does that piece of the job 100 times better than your team does because that's *all* they do and they know how to organize the job better, and with better products that dry faster, etc.

So punch-listing is a great thing that helps a job and everybody always adding and prioritizing on the fly is great, but what is the master vision and where is the external accountability? The client *paying* for the job is the external force. I may feel he is a total idiot for importing some old stupid piece of marble that requires muric-acid cleaning as a completely ridiculous waste of my time and his money when we could be putting down cleaner and less Old Europe marble, but it's his bathroom, not mine. There's also the exigencies of the job itself: I may feel like I don't want to wait 12 hours to buff the varnish, but I'll have to, and I'll also have to make sure the spackling and painting in the kitchen is done *before* I put the neat's foot oil on the kitchen counter.

What's missing from Andrew's "vision thing" is any sense of anybody being in charge -- ok, fine, it's California, let it go. But what's also missing is the sense that there are any exigencies of any kind whatsoever, or sequencing awareness, that has to guide the project. Surely there must be.

If anything, he rushes to tell us we can't play gotcha with any call on his indication of "transparency" because they are transparent to each other. Of course, when we also learn that they actually get cash bonuses for how much love is passed to them, we begin to give it all the fish eye.

Can we really believe that no Linden, especially the younger and friskier ones, aren't gaming this? Like getting together, as we all used to do in SL clubs, and say "You plus me up with the posrate thing now on all your alts, I'll plus you, bring in your friends, we'll give Donny traffic and plus each other, and walla, our stipends will be fatter on Tuesday." They could say, in their office, "You love me up this week and get me a cash bonus, I'll love you up next week and get you a cash bonus." Meanwhile, both parties could be at a fatty break and who's to know? Like their nerfing of the internal SL ratings systems, these Love Bombers may have taken any negative out of their ratings system. Is there also a negrate that reduces the cash flow? And if not, why not? I mean, if we're going to play Skinner's Box here, at least have it work with stimulus both in the form of incentive and disincentive.

So what about the customer, or even the long-term health of the company?

Enabran has a response to this that I think many of us had:

Everyone thought I was an asshole when I posted a thread last year because I explicitly stated that the Linden mission doesn't seem to have much in the way of customer focus. I asked what that mission might actually happen to be, and no one from Linden Lab responded. The peanut gallery chimed in with nonsense mission statements and I don't think many people took me seriously when I suggested a solid, cogent, end-user focused mission would be helpful for LL to have.

Well, now you see what happens when your stated mission is based on the production team enjoying themselves, rather than focused on delivering a specific and consistent end-user outcome.

Now, to be fair, this is certainly a small excerpt from a larger document. Still, it reads like an excerpt from a declaration of independence penned by software engineers rebelling against the top-down, objective-driven corporate structures beneath which they had toiled for years and years. It reads like a cry of joy from someone who is delighted to abandon structure and follow whimsy.

But there just doesn't feel like there's an objective driving development beyond personal satisfaction for the folks involved. That objective could be anything, for all I care, be it platform stability or feature innovation or simple customer satisfaction.

But satisfaction of the research and development staff? I don't know if that's the priority I'd be spending my time emphasizing. And given the inconsistencies we see time and again with promised features that later disappear, I feel like everything makes a whole lot more sense now.

It's all very utopian and everything, but I think it completely explains most of the failures and inadequacies that really piss off long-term customers of this service.

So let's follow this line of thinking, certainly further than young Enabran is willing to follow it. If we find features in the client that reward or at least enhance machinima and vehicle makers; if we find streaming video that rewards the porn sites; if we find features that help builders or other content creators, at the expense of other things, it's in part because of this BLOTTD approach where some kids just chose what was more fun for them to do -- in collaboration with the kids that were their friends when they were residents -- since many Lindens were once residents.

It kind of reminds me of the scene in the preschool, with the idiotic child-centric approach that some newfangled educators schooled by warmed-over 60s and 70s social philosophies are still peddling. Little Tommy breaks a metal train over your own child's head. While you comfort your howling child, the teacher is reasoning with little Tommy. "You must be feeling frustrated and angry, Tommy. Do you want to talk about?" The train is not removed from the little felon's hands, nor is he made to sit in the corner. Instead three caregivers are in an earnest, interactive consultation with the future psychopath, asking him if he feels like a juice, or another toy, until finally the ADD-riddled future taxpayer burden selects a video game to play involving learning consonants with a Tetris-like thinger and is held at bay and kept from harming his classmates for another 20 minutes. You wanted the three educated adults in the situation to take the train away and put the kid in the corner for a "time out" at least, if not worse punishment like no cookies for something egregious like a train-wreck on your kid's head. Instead, he is offered a rich interactive environment where he can find something even more expensive and compelling to keep his distractable and finicky attention. The teachers, meanwhile, emailing and Blackberrying each other about the next Serious Games conference they'll all be attending, feel like they have a rich educational environment.

Customer service need not factor in at all. And that's because...well...it already did. Did you read that other interesting post of Andrew's? Gosh, this is a week for revelations. Customer Service is to blame for taking away the job of a partially-disabled long-time customer who essentially had a job picking up old lots people abandonded, cleaning them off, resetting them, and dealing with other customers willing to buy them for a reasonable price.

Customer Service Lindens did that because they were responding to what they viewed as really burdensome, hard-slog requests from customers who accidently abandoned their land. When that happened, they'd be ask to get the land back. And by that time, due to land-scannes, it was not only bought, but already resold maybe even a number of times, as the bottom-feeders who deal in land-scanning and flipping often flip most of all to each other to even our tier or move around their properties on tier due dates, etc.

No matter that when you abandon land -- and I know because I've done it a number of times deliberately  and a few times accidently -- you have to go through a number of error screens. While once it was fairly easy to be stupid and press the "Release" button because you thought that released it out of a group to which it had been deeded and back to you, today, with all the hand-holding menus they've stuck in, you'd have to be a fairly chronic retard to miss all the cues now.

The answer the CS Lindens had to this problem that created more trouble tickets for them was to have all abandoned land come back to the Gov -- where it will sit and sit, because they don't have an automated system in place (and that task is not high up on the BLOTTD list) to auction it (more on this issue later!) That is, their answer evidently still involves work for them, in allowing the land to sit 7 days where people may be able to ask for it back, but all that does is increase the number of idiots who can't learn from this stupid mistake (like I did once) and increase the inability and paralysis of this community to shame bottom-feeders into giving back mistakenly released land. For example finn Jenses of anshechung.com always asks me, if I have released land that he has scanned, or even if I have land out for just a low price like $2, "did you deliberately release or set this to sale for $2?" -- and of course I'll say yes if it is scruggy PG snow that costs more than the powder to burn it.

A company where everybody just does what they feel like when they want to, favouring their strengths and avoiding their weaknesses, and passing the love to everybody for subjective and arbitrary reasons without any external judgement or even internal criteria of a mission that is comprehensible to outsiders seems like a company that cannot sustain itself.

At one level, the Lindens don't have to worry about customers. They have loads of them. More coming. They're always another guy to buy the island. Can we help you tier down? There's no shortage of "add to my shopping cart" clicks on the auction  of entire $1000 sims, or the private island Land Store they have now. There is $250,000 USD of business turning over in the world with even only 4000 people logged in. Somebody could try to sink the LindEx with a packet of $2 million LL because they could earn that much from this game.

So those niches of customers who don't feel served or feel they are being stepped on are just being slighted in favour of other customers who are happy -- and happy to keep clicking on all the "buy" buttons.

Many companies go through arduous "mission-finding" processes where they create strategic planning committees and wrestle with the Macmillan Matrix and try to figure out their "strengths, threats, opportunities, and dangers" and refine their mission to a phrase, their purpose to a sentence, and their strategy to a paragraph. We don't know what those things are for the Lindens, except for what they used to have on their website, which said basically, "we're the coolest company and you can be the coolest person working here" (now under "employment" there's just a business-like click to a form to submit your resume under job titles like "business reporting analyst" which seems to involve not actually reporting the world's real business data to the world or the external public, but involves feeding back LL's own perceptions and beliefs about their economy and company to everyone within the company).

The self-referentiality of it all, the failure to respond to external stimuli, the plasticine, electronic grins with cheerful bouncy replies like "We like it," when you narrow your eyes and ask something penetrating about their wierd management culture -- this all lets you know that you are dealing with something rather like a cult.

I can say that many new things do start out seeming like cults. I remember when faxing was brand-new, and when telephone conferencing was brand-new. I vividly remember the time in the 1980s when I was patched in to speak to a group of 10 strangers in some Western state where the people were all wacky peacenik types but with lots of dad's trust fund money or something. They were obviously all heavily involved in group-think, collaboration, mind-mapping, mind-memes, and bunches of other hippie stuff that didn't have names then and do now. These wierd, disembodied voices were all questioning and probing me about various areas I knew something about trying to come to some decision. We were in space. They were entranced with their technology. One phone call and a memo might have done -- but we didn't even have much collective office email in those days. After two hours of this stuff, I finally put the phone down...I believe they may still be talking today. Meanwhile, other companies copied them and other wierd hippie stuff and merged with other more normal stuff and a boring telephone conference where everyone gives their activity reoprts and does collective decision-making pre-choreographed by some honcho anyway is the norm.

Soon we'll study the white papers or get the names of the books and the Amazon links to this wierd hippie management Lab culture. It will more than likely freak some of us into pulling out their money or at least reducing their involvement. Others will be inspired by it.

It does much to explain all the vicissitudes of the world. You realize that something that vitally affects your well-being in your Second Life is just the subject of somebody's pick off the BLOTTD. That somebody is not under adult supervision. They aren't guided by any other concept of a Higher Power -- God, the customer, the bottom line, the corporate version -- but what they find "fun". Making a romper room for such brainy kids to feel "fun" in, is of course, what the adults have done because they didn't want to deal with those other harsh realities of the kid who breaks a train over your kid's head.

I've finally had the epiphany I have sought for exactly a year now, in my quest to understand the Origins of Fuck-You Hedonism. The reality at the core of our world -- where the desire to do what the fuck I want because it feels good is the guiding principle and elevated to a religion -- comes not from just modern culture or something, but from Lab Culture.

They do what the fuck they feel like doing. Is it any surprise they let others do the same?

In the old days, that is, like 5 years ago, there were still concepts like "the company" or "our customers who are always right" and "self-sacrifice to something higher than myself."

Lindens often whine that they work long hours. They pick that fun thing on the BLOTTD but then of course, as we know from our favourite discretionary entertainment called "making a living in Second Life," that it can be a Hard Slog sometimes and you have to rein in your tendency to do fuck-you hedonistic stuff and be just a little bit more considerate for at least part of the time. They work those hours because they chose the fun list, and they hate it when all of a sudden it isn't fun and you crank at them because you're still seeing grey squares, the Bush guy, or your desk top aquarium fish because your game is crashing again. (I've started to name mine, I see them so often...hey, there's Bluey!)

Comments

[Cocoanut]

Damn straight!

This corporate culture explains SOOO much that has seemed inexplicable, including the nonsensical management of the forums.

I, too, agreed with every word Enabran said.

Just this afternoon, in fact, for the first time, I thought about maybe pulling out. What prompted this was a comment by a resmod as to why that douchebag/culturally offensive comment wasn't pulled, despite being reported. (The answer was basically, "It didn't bother us." That's not exact, though - I will find it and copy it at some point, on your Second Citizen thread.)

Then I thought, well no - you could just pull out of the forums, if you feel that strongly about it.

So as always, I will continue to just do my own thing in SL and enjoy it, while the enjoying's good. But when horrible inexplicable things happen - which they do on an average of probably once a week - I will no longer be agape with befuddlement.

For a while there, I half-way thought the Lindens did these astounding things on purpose, in order to keep the buzz going, to keep people passionately involved. But now I think, no - it's just some guy somewhere decided he'd do some thing just because he felt like it would be fun, with little thought of responsibility toward the customers.

And yes, I was quite taken aback to discover that the reason for doing this about the land scanners was something both banal and, in hindsight, predictable: Something had been inconvenient for some of the Lindens.

Wouldn't it have been better if they had at least discussed this first, and tried to come up with a solution that took the customers into consideration, and hopefully didn't put some of them out of business?

With everybody and his dog putting whatever they want to on a list, for everybody and his dog to pick from as they feel like doing it, it's little wonder the end product so often makes so little sense.

With the emphasis on employer fun and satisfaction, it's no wonder that the effects of things on the customers receives such short shrift.

One advantage to it I can think of, though, is that when a Linden decides to listen to customers concerns and actually try to do something about them, there isn't much keeping him/her from doing it.

coco

[Prokofy Neva]

Yes, it does show you that there is absolutely no friction between what somebody thinks is a cool idea and convincing them, especially if you are a peer in the IRC channel, and you are already fellow beta residents and fellow geeks enraptured with geeky stuff together -- most of this stuff relates to the geeky stuff mind you.

You can see why my concept of "FICing the Platform" isn't just a conspiracy theory but THE WAY IT IS.

I remember this moment at SLCC when I asked about voting for policy rather than feature, and Cory said basically, in a curious way almost like a kid, that's not my window, that's Robin's window and we're not doing that now. So I'm thinking there could be a constraint on all this flip-flop stuff by the bailiwick in which you are put in. It's odd, the way sometimes they talk as if they are in a rigid hierarchy unable to speak out of turn or take initiative on their own to solve problems. Other times, they are all over the place. It's wierd.

[Prokofy Neva]

I also had an unpleasant experience last night trying to engage a knowledgeable Linden on this GOMing of what had been Weedy's job. "Can't you just put it back the way it was?" I asked if in fact they had an automated system now that not only automatically took all the abandoned land into Gov's account, but then redistributed it to first land, auctions, whatever.

Well, no, they don't, and they can't. That is, it now goes to Gov Linden. But when I said well, why are you hoarding 500 sims? Is this turning over the land something you can do easily and quickly? Is it hard work that has to be done manually, so that in fact residents COULD be doing that...and another thing I'm going to attempt, which is to prioritize an auction list to present to them of land sitting for months on sims that they never get to? Is there a policy/feature behind this 500 hoard, or is it just the result of nobody finding it fun to pick up Purina Dog Chow duty off the BLOTTD?

Well, his answer indicated that's exactly what it is...but the other piece of it is that he answered me with one of their plasticine smiles (I always assume anyone putting a smiley icon into their speech is not sincere and has to put in a marker of fakery to get you to override your suspicion...which in fact only reinforces it).

"I hear you saying that you'd like more features to make it easier for residents to sell land."

When somebody does that kind of child-centric playschool stuff on me, I really reach for my gun.

No, I'm not dialing in as a fanboyz with no clue, saying "Give me more features for residents, waaah?"

I'm asking for the kind of accountability their system doesn't have, which is to tell me why they are sitting on 500 sims? Why? Because of X policy with Y purpose, yes or no?

Instead, I get that cheery psychobabble, "You must be feeling this..."

The fellow probably learned it in preschool, when he clubbed a fellow studen with a toy train and the teacher said, "Somebody needs a nap!" or "You must be feeling frustrated! Why not try this distractible toy?" instead of putting him in the corner.

[Hillary Melville]

When I read about the Big Thing of Lists to Do I was incredulous. No one could possibly think to run a company this way. A small side project, maybe. You might give the engineers a day a week (like Google does) to work on their pet projects. But to run a company like this? Even for San Francisco that's very very strange.

I wonder how many other people thought: "Maybe it's time to scale back on SL until they get some adult supervision."

[Aldo Stern]

You know, I used to think that SL was a free-form social experiment using the customers as the test animals, and that there was actually some comprehensive faremwork guiding the decison-making process at LL.

In effect, at some point when the metaverse test monekys had settled in with one set of paramters and had shaped their activities and goals to fit, the minions of the all-powerful LL-Oz would report to their master that the monkeys had manged to take the two million typewriters they had been given and were now getting close to producing Hamlet and were quite happy. And Lo, the great and powerful one would direct them to change the paramters of the "platform" in a new direction, one so throughly irrational as to appear brilliantly random(though of course, they REALLY couldn't be that erratic, because certainly such moronic choices must be part of a deliberate scheme following some great eternal plan).

And Phillip and his minions then would sit back and see how the test monkeys would adapt to this new set of circumstances. Would they adjust? Who would fail? Who would succeed? Will they continue to fling their own feces at each other? Will they eat their own young once again? Will the weak be left on an iceberg to float off into the white and silent vastness, or will they invent some new virtual atlatl to gain a temporary advantage over Nietzche's surly children? And once they do, and start to get comfortable once more, the process begins again with some new bizarro change.

Furthermore, if some weird anomoly evolved in game, such as some douchebag putting up unattractive signs on small plots of land and using this visual pollution to extort bananas out of the other test monkeys, the kids in lab-coats would mouth enough platitudes to make the more gullible among the test group think that someone actually friggin gave a rat's ass, all while eagerly waiting to see what the test animals themselves would do about the really big kindergartner peeing in the pool.

Well, that's what I thought. And now I see that I was incorrect. It seems that the LL employees are test monekys as well. Hillary is right, it is no way to run a business--but dammit, it certianly is a fascinating way to run a massive experiment, in which the lab workers as well as the test animals are being forced to adapt and make choices as the paramters shift. This particularly makes sense as the lines between the employees and custormers are increasignly blurred and the two roles seem more and more interchangable.

Wow, tell 'em soylent green is here.

[Prokofy Neva]

Does Philip have minions? See, I think that's part of the problem. Philip *doesn't* have minions.

[Brace]

Well I had been thinking along the lines of Aldo as well.

But like Aldo we can see that this whole kit and kaboodle is indeed what we've feared, even a whole lot more scarier.

As much as folks dropped they jaws on reading that BLOTTD - I really wasn't all that damn surprised.

My closet theories had been 1) They were just experimenting with us all - seeing how much we could take and pay for it too 2) Disorganized mayhem 3) philly not really being at the helm.

Its a frightening combination of that and more. I'm glad to finally see it in black and white.

LL broke my heart long ago, and I'm grateful that I've gotten over it, so that this revelation is just another blip on my screen.

I been tellin folk to just enjoy what there is to enjoy etc and don't freak out when Teh Shit Hit Teh Fan - cuz it WILL happen.

You California bash a lot on here Prokovy, and since for all intents and purposes, I'm a Californian (now moved the fuck outta Cali) I hafta agree with you.

"That's no way to run a company"

Damn straight.

The thing that broke my heart is simply this: I've been on the damn net since the get go. I've been a part of interesting "new" technologies and concepts.

I've worked for companies who've tried to do the cutting edge thing, but through mis-management and frankly that California Crap stuff you mention - end up failing miserably.

OMG they have no idea what they have here.

Maybe they do.

But its all going to fall to the wayside if they keep up that kinda oh just do the fun shit and forget everything else.

Breaks my damn heart. But I also have hope and look to that glow on the horizon. Because if LL fails to do it - somebody else will.

Let me find this quote right quick, that sums up why I'm still in SL, even tho I bitch about it:

"The fact that we're 'paying to beta-test' hasn't much bothered me because it's a bit like, I dunno, paying to beta-test the first working faster-than-light drive; I wouldn't forgive myself for passing up the chance."
~Aliasi Stonebender.

While I have tiered down and gotten my paying to beta test expenses down to a tolerable level for myself - I'm like Aliasi - for right now, this is the shit.

But trust me - I'm gonna be the first one in line for the next level shit that comes out.

[Aldo Stern]

"Does Philip have minions? See, I think that's part of the problem. Philip *doesn't* have minions."

Prok, that's my point exactly--in my earlier delusional phase, I figured he had minions. Soembody had to be monitoring how the experiment was progressing, right? But now it seems ther are no minions. He is minion-less as what some of us thought were his poorly-paid flying monkeys, his bargain-basement beefeaters, his virtual eunuchs watching over the harem of paying customers--were, in fact, simply more test animals.

Now the big question--does the all-encompassing experiment have a point? It is it really only a complex engine for mining some distinctive niche marketing data that LL can sell?

Or perhaps as Brace argues, is it actually a Beta test with the innovation of the beta testers paying to be smeared with new variants of lipstick and force fed new experimental Pringle recipes? Then by all means it really is worth the price of admission, not just for the pleasure of being Laika in a vehicle that may or may not fly too well, but also because...unlike the dogs who sit there wishing that cocksucker Pavlov would quit ringing that fucking bell and just give us our goddam kibble...we know it's an experiment. Meaning we can fuck with the outcome.

Like you told me the other day Prok, there's a certain number of the lab rats who are going kick over traces and burrow sidways through the maze wall. Yeah, somedays we may chose to eat the soylent green (I never liked grandma that much anyway), and sometimes maybe we'll just want to commune with it through the medium of interpretive dance.

[Kyrah ABattoir]

interesting , very interesting reactions.
But i guess that when your CEO is a rich man from Real networks, he can afford to create a company where the aim isn't the total satisfaction of his customers, and where the goals are set by each and every employes.

you keep using child comparisons for Linden Labs, well maybe it's not a way to run a company when you have nobody to backup in case of problems or when you want to become as big as microsoft, well maybe. But if these goals aren't yours?.

from the explanations that we have read, LL is managed like a laboratory, they do what is needed to make money enter and for the rest, they enjoy experimenting and creating something they like.

The only complains Prok is that you have an agenda and you are furious because they have no intension to look into it, not because itsnot in theyr corporate goals, but simple, because they dont want to do it.

I dont know , in a way it makes me feel good, because it is the way i make my living, and so far, it work.

[Cocoanut]

Hiya, Aldo! Long time no see!

Yeah, I sometimes think of us as ants in an anthill, and sometimes the Lindens drop a lighted match on us or something, just to observe and catalogue the reaction, lol.

coco

[Mikalias]

I think if they used Dilbert comic strip for a bussiness plan they probably would run much better but instead they seem to be using Zippy the Pinhead for a bussiness plan.

Mik

[Prokofy Neva]

Brace, I California bash merely as a kind of metaphor. You know, "Left Coast, USA," etc. Of course there are a lot of people in CA who voted for Schwartenegger or Bush or whatever, of course they're not all hippies. It's just a way to capture the wierdness of it.

Kyrah, you are just as dumb as a post sometimes, you really are. I think there's wide agreement on this. I don't have an "agenda". Um, what would be my agenda, to buy up all the land and rent it? I'm not even the largest or richest rentals agents, there are many many more than me. Um, to take over SL politically? Er...how? It's a diffuse, chaotic place without any mass communciations except the Lindens' idiotic MOTF and Squaqmire's InfoFunnel.

Uh...get everyone to think like me? How am I going to do that, implant electrodes in their brain? Honestly, it's so brainless and clueless to write stuff like that on a forums. LL doesn't "have" to do my agenda -- we haven't even defined what this supposed "agenda" is. I think it is well worth criticizing the creators and pioneers of the Metaverse. They are leaving their fuck-you hedonist stamp on a lot of things that will be indelible.

The notion that you benefit from a creator-fascist world and set-up, well, um, why am I not surprised? lol

Also, I suspect when you kick over the traces and burrow sideways though, that's some kind of learned behaviour too, and they are busy cataloguing that and thinking up some new thing to thwart it. You don't ever get to be Truman and break through the wall here!

[Kyrah Abattoir]

thank you for your "oh so nice comment prok, i think you are really dumb, too and there is probably an as big (if not bigger) agreement on this.
And i am far to be dumb, i do not need to make a crap uncreative second grade job in SL (yes i talk about land renting and sales), because i can do MUCH more than doing a job a robot could do (there wasn't someone putting hooks on the sl client?). The thing you seems to enjoy soo much in sl .(or is it just the money it bring that keep you "hooked"?)

Since i have to explain everythin to make it enter in your thick head, by agenda i mean that you have request and needs from linden labs (the kind you are bitching about pages after pages on this blog) and they seems not to find it important - or , after the new informations - integresting.

Think whatever you want from me but as long as LL's business model function i don't see anything bad to say on it.

If you think you can do better, start coding your own, if you dont want , then just put on your headphones, so you are the only one listening to your "i knew it", "how dare do they" , "communist" , "fascist world" , "tekki wikinista ","FIC","SIC","group think" and many more of these "ready tu use" concepts you brandish proudly like a flag, as an excuse to explain why you aren't doing better and why you are always bitter "its not my fault it is them the game is not fair and they keep me at a distance on purpose, FIC FIC FIC!"

According to your ice age thinking the customer is always right, however i can tell your from experience that customers like you are always wrong, lets take the freeview affair, even when proved that it was working, IN FRONT OF YOU you still denied it. You are an angry looser, you refuse to admit you can be wrong...It is so deeply incrusted in your little head that being wrong isn't an option. You remind me a few peoples i saw, but they are in retirement house now if they haven't passed away yet...

Also you on your side you seems to be profitering of a land-fascist world and set-up. (see your words, slight changes and hop it is prokofy neva that pop out of the box!)

i also suspect when you stay deeply rooted in your ice age (group?) thinking that it's some kind of learned behavior too, you can slam your head as hard as you want on the wall if after the second time you don't get to be Truman and break trough it, maybe you should think about packing and giving up.

i don't care if you are the queen of prussia or the pope, what you show is what you are, and what you show, unfolded like a book pages after pages on this blog is... nasty, nasty and at the same time, pathetic.

see i have one positive feeling for you, the pity

[Me]

I wonder what kinda desktop fish you have and if they have bubbles too..

I named them bob bob and bob.

Love the way you write about this all and think you are actualy right. Wanted to post my name but am to afraid they will come after me in SL and that will hurt my bussiness ;-)

Me

[Prokofy Neva]

Kyrah, many people share my assessment that you are aggressively stupid. I was right and still am right about Freeview. It often doesn't work. It's very badly created and not intuitive in its instructions. Recently I discovered that it requires even turning it on and off, powering it up and down -- the dumbest way to make a technical thing work -- to get it going, something that it shouldn't require, and isn't in the instructions, and wasn't required a few game patches ago. I imagine game patches might bork it up, but its creators care naught about their customers, because it's free.

It doesn't matter to me if LL doesn't heed my criticism (shared by many others) and doesn't do anything I ask. It's their game. It's also my right to criticize.

The little hot-house world that creator-fascists you live in is a marvel -- because you still continue to liberally take advantage of the liberal world that provides you many things you scorn, like advertising, and even free advertising. If you were to live for one second under the regime you embrace and prescribe for others, we'd hear you howling.

What's particularly lame about your comments is the implication that anyone who criticizes what's obviously wrong in a society is somehow "without a life," or "ready for a nursing home" or "suffering from envy". That's how creator fascists like you are able to cling to the fabric of their unreal world, by impugning sickness or lameness or the kind of emotions they themselves apparently are dominated by in their own little hothouse regime.

I'm so happy I'm free : )

[Kyrah Abattoir]

"Kyrah, many people share my assessment that you are aggressively stupid" --> as i explained peoples many share mine too

"I was right and still am right about Freeview" --> nope you are making up stuffs dear, in all the examples you described, YOU is the only common factor.

" It's their game. It's also my right to criticize." --> critics are supposed to bring a change, if you belive they serve nothing why do you keep making them, that's called self masturbation.

"The little hot-house world that creator-fascists you live in is a marvel -- because you still continue to liberally take advantage of the liberal world that provides you many things you scorn, like advertising, and even free advertising." --> i still don't see what is fascist in this, please be more clear.

"What's particularly lame about your comments is the implication that anyone who criticizes what's obviously wrong in a society is somehow "without a life," or "ready for a nursing home" or "suffering from envy"." do not generalise, you are quite unique in your kind, this paragraph was just aimed to you and your mindset, not everybody else.

You managed to piss every single employees of Linden Labs since i know you, it is obvious they do not apreciate you. And since they devellop based on their "liking", you can be sure you are only "tolerated" here (your cash is still good to take)

well i am free too thanks ^^ i just need to put you back into your place in order to stay free.

By the way why where you at the SLCC if you where worried about keeping your personal infos hidden?

[Cocoanut]

Well, all I know is if they don't start thinking about how to run the business as a business and not as a hobby, they won't have a business for very long.

Ditto if they don't start caring a bit more about customer satisfaction than employee satisfaction.

Employee satisfaction is great, autonomy is great - all that stuff. But the balance seems to be way skewed.

Creating a bunch of bitter and pissed-off customers who remember the name "Philip Rosedale" isn't exactly a good way to further a career or a business.

coco

P.S. Kyrah, the fact that they develop "based on their liking" is not only bad, it's all the more reason not to suck up and kiss ass.

[Hillary]

I suppose that as a privately held company, Philip can run LL any way he likes. I mean if he wants to schedule mandatory foot massages on Wednesdays for his employees, that's not a problem for me.

But since I'm paying for his whims, I'd hope that he'd make at least a nodding attempt at keeping me happy. Maybe with a Small List of Things That Need to Get Done Before You Get Your Next Foot Massage.

[Prokofy Neva]

As I've noted before, going to SLCC is something I very reluctantly decided to do just for the interest of hearing people like Philip Linden or Hamlet Linden speak in person. And I decided not to go with an anonymous avatar so I could participate with my POV, which I believe was valued. And just because someone goes to SLCC doesn't mean they've signed away their right to privacy in SL and the right not to be bullied and harried and harassed and linked to the first life in some fashion. That ought to be clear. If it isn't, you're an asshole, pure and simple : )

By the same token, your childish notion that Lindens are all "pissed off at me" lets me know the juvenile world you live in. Lindens either ignore me, haven't heard of me, or are polite in dealing with me for the most part; some seem to be engaged in an interesting conversation. My "Linden pipelines" as someone once called them aren't the greased wheels of all the FIC and SIC, but I guess they'll take an IM from me, or at least 1 in 10 of IMs. It's funny how the presence of one free person who just refuses to be bullied can so upset your world, and shatter it into so many pieces that you even have to IM me inworld to reprimand me, and fantasize that I'm about to be "permabooted".

Is this a national psychosis a la the Dreyfus Affair? I'm trying to understand the pure evil of your constant wishing of ill and expulsion to a person you merely disagree with. There isn't a single person in SL I'd want to be banned from this world; the only exception I could think to that is those who have deliberately crashed the grid, which is against the rules. But there's no one on the forums or in the world with whom I've disagreed or debated that I'd want to see banned and harmed. That's really what makes me different than you. And I'm proud of it : )

[Brace]

Och Kyrah yet again you miss the POINT.

Its all well and good for LL to run they shit how they wanna.

But get this.

They advertize all over the web and everywhere damn else that they are the type of application that is pretty much in total opposition to the reality of what second life actually IS.

My main beef is that if you gonna hobby around - then dont charge for it, and certainly don't lie about it to the public.

If he was all that rich and whatnot why all the price hikes? Why charge? Why not keep it Beta and open it up to the public so they can run they little lab tests?

why all the bullshit and lies?

I'm happy that you make a living from SL. But consider this. How much revenue have you lost during down times, grid closures, technical problems, broken teleports, objects and items not rezzing.

I can't buy what I can't see. I can't purchase anything if I can't get to the store.

This is not a working and completed application. It is advertized as such, and now we all know for damn sure that they aren't even running it like a business, yet that's all they preach about during interviews and articles.

If yer happy with the dishonesty thats been perpetuated, then well and good. That says a lot about ya darlin.

(Oh and Prokovy - that Califorina Crap is real and its wrecked companies and LIVES. Keep on bashing, cuz its NOT a metaphor at ALL. Trust me, I lived thru it right on the frontlines. Its just sad to see that philly hasn't learned a damn thing from what has gone on before.)

[Prokofy Neva]

You know, I'm not entirely persuaded that Philip is actually thoroughly "Californian ". I think he's from San Diego or something and not Berserkeley, I don't know where he went to college but the fact that he doesn't really come across as totally cliche spacey hippie may be the salvation of their company. I quizzed Philip on the Grateful Dead trivia and it seems he's not really a Dead Head.

[T_S_Kimball]

Thanks for the note; I've been away from SL over a week now and only did a cursory glance at the forums.

It seems I'll need to accellerate my extrication from it, and possibly discuss with the IL folks if they really want to continue with their project in SL after all.

After all, there are now other platforms available where you can totally control things (in particular that new MMO foundation code, whose name is eluding me currently), and probably have better XML-RPC/external hooks too, and also be a HELL of a lot cheaper than what we're having to shell out currently (they have appox 1/8th sim in use).

--TSK

[Prokofy Neva]

I'm not knowledgeable about the areas you're discussing TS, I believe there's a platform called Multiverse but it's one of those things accessible to tekkies and not the average person so we haven't migrated there yet.

I've had tekkie tenants complain to me about his XML-RPC issue, not sure what is in the menu for that, you'll have to ask the Lindens.

Yes, 1/8 is not cheap, and even when I use to offer this to experimenters for $1 a prim or less, pay-per-use, it became hard to justify because there aren't that many people who use that type of land. Most people either write off the expense as "server storage" at work, or they get the non-profit rate, or they get their Linden pals to feed them a contest, or they just figure out some way to use this land. Usually buying cheap PG and putting it in a group is the best way to go with the most control for you.

[Prokofy Neva]

I've been reading your website, and I had never heard of "Uru" is that any good?

[Cocoanut]

Can you make things in Uru?

coco