The Coming Mainland Whack and Groups
Interesting that the Lindens are saying more now about what they are doing with groups. Kelly Linden even says he's "leaking" info from inside the devs' magic circle. Whatever the deliberate manipulation involved in this -- or the genuine sense of himself doing that (and we can't know the difference), the high-signs have already been given out by his bosses -- when I asked Philip in Skype at the Town Hall last week about the coming mainland whack, Philip answered very frankly that he was aware that this was unfortunate, that the islands got a feting ahead of time, and he explained matter-of-factly that this was because "the coding was just easier to do". He implied that the gap of favouritism wouldn't last long -- a week? Maybe 2. Maybe more. (Now we can see from Kelly that it will be more.)
I don't see a transcript yet, but basically, I was confronting him, as I did actually at the last town meeting, about his continued privileging of the private islands versus the mainland in the development of Second Life.
The funhouse mirror world of SL is such that private islands, who enjoy the lions' share of the rentals and even sales business now, can still perceive themselves as "victimized" by not being able to sell out of the client in the same way -- remember Ellie Edo and the furor she caused on the islands with Lindhar Lehane and other alts? Remember the absolute storm of harassment that they unleased, also with Cristiano's help, in getting the Lindens to go out of their own queue and deprecate the function of being able to advertise islands in the for-sale list??? Remember all that drama? That scarred the island dealers for life, and they imagine that they *go on* being disincented, though of course with a faster selling and higher-price selling product, and a product they can advertise in Classifieds, they are nothing of the kind.
Remember that old joke we used to tell about the guy with the withered hand who came up to Jesus? "Lord, lord, make my hand like the other one!" Pause. Then..."No, the other way, the other way!"
That's how I feel the Lindens are behaving with group tools and changes to the private island features.
They had this epiphnay that the problem with the islands is that you can't sell pieces of them, and the problem of the mainland is that you can't zone. Of course that isn't really the problem of the mainland, but that's another story. Suffice it to say, that Jesus Linden keeps zapping Withered Hand Man Mainland the wrong way, and he now has two withered hands instead of one.
You can pick up a card in my office in Alston that outlines all the differences between islands and mainland, from which you can see that the islands have some decided advantages; only in lower cost, more freedoms, and more flexibility can you say the mainland, as a purchase or a rental, has more freedom. It's an interesting list to peruse and think about the economic stages and current economic life of SL -- it would never have occurred to me that TV-deeding would become the central economic issue I should have known it to be, seeing as how much time I have to spend on it : )
The one great difference between the two, the last advantage the mainland could really be said to have in any significant market terms, was the ability of anyone who had bought a mainland parcel to instantly set it to sale on their own, without having to summon a staff member of a private island system, like in Ansheland, and without having to then go search for a willing buyer through all kinds of inefficient methods like
Starting in the next game patch, island owners will now be able to set the options such that people who deed land from them will be able to set those deeded parcels to sale to another person though the client, i.e. by ticking off a box on their own game's tools on their parcel. These parcels are then to show up in the client or user interface "Land for Sale List".
So let's try to think what will happen when this kicks in. Currently, people will pay anywhere from $0 to $50,000 or more for a nice 4096 m2 parcel on a PI, and then ever after be willing to pay $25, as much as they pay Lindens, for the tier each month. In competition with Anshe, there are island dealers coming up with prices for as low as $15 to $22 for that same 4096 m2 monthly tier -- as well they should, given that at the bulk discount level, a land dealer paying $195 tier per island is paying only $0.002960 USD per meter, or $12 per 4096.
Of course, the private island owner will still retain nominal control over the land that you own, deed, and then resell. If you sell your Victorian-themed sim to someone who comes in and puts a metal Goth store with strobe lights, Anshe or Alliez or Hiro could, under their rules and terms of engagement, terminate your ownership. That's why the Lindens are trying to hurry to come up with a covenants system, so they can put this into place for island owners to ensure their investment and hard work in creating and maintaining themes isn't undone, the way it's routinely undone on the mainland. We're likely to see some nasty incidents develop, as people rush to use the new freedoms of selling deeds, their second or third generation buyers give weaker allegiance to the theme, and disputes develop over what is or is not within the theme or rules, i.e. not building a certain distance from the property line.
Many people enjoy the island parcels. Anshe has some 525 customers listed in the Dreamland group now -- that's 50 more than it was a few months ago, and she now has more than 100 islands. These aren't little 512 owners, either -- people buying a quarter or half or even full sim from her as a deed are common.
Currently, when people wish to sell their deeds, and try to make back what they put into it, they have to struggle, and sometimes take buybacks from Anshe or other deals, or huge losses, just to get rid of that recurring tier bill.
So several things are likely to happen now:
o Many people who have been hanging on to their island paradises just because they can't unload them easily will set them to sale now for what they think, and log off
o Freed up from endless labour involved in all these manual transactions for buys and sales, the Ansheland staff will first put all new parcels to sale, i.e. the newbie starter parcels they have for only $1024 for a 1024 on new islands like "Sakharov" (I can't help thinking that the RL Sakharov, whom I knew, would be startled to find himself commemorated by rows of flat sugar-cube squares with canals dividing them and waving palms LOL). This will enable them to turn over land faster -- volume always works in their favour -- and free up staff time for more mature development like extending their terraforming, prefab builds, etc. to new islands
o Those 6000 plus would be land sellers in the mainland list now, some of them with parcels that languish even for the bargain price of $4/meter, will now be facing competition not only with $1/meter attractive starter land way better than Governor Linden's First Land on the islands, but much larger and prettier and safer parcels than for most mainland areas -- and they will find their land increasingly hard to sell, except to others who are on the same sim with them and need prims, or people who just have a fine conoisseur's eye for these often difficult-to-build-on but geographically interesting mainland parcels. So they will liquidate -- to Anshe, of course, and sometimes for a trade to a PI, or to many other liquidators now available, some of them freeing up or adding tier now for just this coming mainland adventure in firesales.
o There will be people who do stuff like buy up all the PG or all the snow or all the waterfront or all the feted colour sims or whatever, just as has happened in the past, and then raise the price on it. So while there will be mainland deals to be had during this period, there will also be scalpers and it's worth waiting even 60-90 days for the scalpers to get tired of their tier and let it go.
o With owners of deeds vying with each other to sell, with private island owners creating now more and more cheaper parcels (they've been positioning themselves to do this for awhile), the price of private island deeds/rentals will come down to more comfortable levels and many people will find it an attractive option.
o To keep their income high, the private island dealers are already creating more attractive and expensive options, or more attractive bargain options, i.e. the "skim sims" as I call them, sims without their full prim usage, say, only 1875, the amount you'd get in a 8192 m2, placed over half a sim or 32k plus -- that way you get space and vista, something that you don't often get on the mainland unless you have open, Linden-protected sea, or own a whole sim or set of sims. These 4-pack skim sims will cost the same as one island, but will appeal to some people for their seemingly very low cost (Dana Bergson has them for $32,000 or so upfront cost now, and $40 of tier a month to have the feeling of half a sim around you). I already see other communities developing rapidly with very intense and intricate builds, themes, features, commons, shoppings, etc. continuing on the overall intense development phase that began in SL since the Lindens began to social-engineer and demand that the land industry not just "flip land" but have "value-add" to their parcels, i.e., convert land to *content* as befitting their content-driven world model, rather than to continue to perceive land in that old meat-world notion of "private property I have as a bulwark against the state" lol.
o Anyone coming into SL would have to ask themselves the sense of having a premium account -- private island dealers now rightfully point out that it is cheaper to live with them and pay the same tier to Linden Lab like $25 a month -- but without that extra $9.95 a month you'd have to pay in subscription (or $6 annualized). People will get
o More and more people going to islands, where they don't need to use tier, will have a 512 left over.For 18 months now, I've already been offering people the option to donate that left-over 512 m2 or 1024 m2 in a couple or whatever to my land groups like Ravenglass Rentals, in exchange for a $250 or $350 discount off rent. I have dozens of people who do this and it works great, despite the insane campaigning against this concept that Jauani Wu and other oldby FIC types do out of some odd jealousy.
Now that Laukosargas has climbed on this bandwagon and called on everyone to put in their 512s for an events space they could share, something I've already done for ages with the SL Public Land Preserve which also has tier donors, it will be interesting if Jauani keeps savaging it. Of course, he does this primarily as a way to find a way to jeer at me, so he's likely to do nothing to counter another "community-minded socialist" like himself like Lauk.
Of course, Lauk's project has that same in-group, restricted feel to it. It's "our club, those of us who feel we can share, and share something complex like an events space." Of course, when I offered to people earlier this year to save Lauk's nest, I got like one offer of 512 lol (I was willing to put tier on it, but not cash -- in the end she declined to save it that way collectively, and got some individual buyer who agreed to preserve it).
Group projects have a troubled history in SL, and often flounder. Still, I persist with my 512 tier donation idea because it's absolutely the right thing to do to get some usage for people out of these free 512s that otherwise sit there. At one point we heard that only 6000 out of 9000 premium owners had bought land. That'd 3000 unused 512s, that could have been bought and sold for a profit first, then the tier freed up for other projects.
o If the Lindens completely stop manufacturing mainland sims during this period -- and I recall at one point they said they had plans to make X number more that we had calculated would run out by September or something, then two things could happen: the mainland will be pronounced dead, or the mainland will be a kind of mixture of vintage collectors' item land sold for higher prices, sims with people who just dig in and keep up prices by trading prim land to each other, and the wasteland that everyone associates with the mainland -- something that is as incorrect and hysterical a notion as the commonly held misbelief that telehubs were laggy and grabbed avatars.
o I see that a number of people have viewed the continuing Linden land glut, the privileging of the islands, the delays in group tool reforms to advantage the mainland, as a signal to move to islands. I haven't. I continue to believe in the open society of the mainland.
Of course, in doing so, I'm well aware that when I continue to ask Philip about this over-privileging of the islands, I'm something like the old high school girl friend who goes to visit her boyfriend in college, and is dismayed to find he "didn't stay as sweet as you are" as the old high-school yearbook adage had it, because he has now found his old home town to be backward, his old girlfriend and uncomfortable reminder of his youthful ideals, and merely an embarrassment.
Whatever Khamon says, Philip didn't stick to his One Mainland All Hail the Mainland concept and let the "united we stand, divided we run free at last" adage rein supreme.
o At best, what will happen now is that many weeks (not "a week" or "a month" as was implied) after the private islands continue to run roughshod over the mainland, engaging in deliberately false and negative advertising, enjoying new tools, and getting the lion's share of
(Indicative of that was the bewilderment I had at a thread about sterling customer service with glowing contributions from people like Desmond Shang about Cyn Linden. Cyn Linden never answers my emails or offline IMs, and if I get her in world, she usually promises to do something she never does. I ask her to find a way to get autoreturn on and clean up garbage over and over on certain sims -- I also ask her about things like whether a police blotter on a "griefer wall" might be a sign of hope that there will be more enforcement of the TOS against mainland ugly-build griefers.
My bewilderment is merely a function of my naivety about what this Concierge system is for. See, I thought it was for anyone who owns a sim or more. But it's not. It's for private island dealers exclusively. In fact, I don't think there's even a department for mainland sim owners equivalent to the concierge, which is why I'm reduced to having to try to catch Governor Linden himself online, and have conversations with him like this (I'm not kidding, he actually talks to me although I think he doesn't have any corporeal presence.
Prokofy Neva: Hi, I'm your tenant : )
Governor Linden: Good day to you Prokofy!
Prokofy Neva: Can you come and deed my video?
Prokofy Neva: Just kidding!
Prokofy Neva: When will the group tools be fixed so that we who live on your estate can catch up with the private islands? They're getting privileged again in the next patch! They'll be able to sell from the client like we do here.
Governor Linden: Sorry, the phone won't stop
Governor Linden: I may have to lock it in a cupboard.
Prokofy Neva: Could you reveal yourself to us? Do you have a grey beard and a 3-piece suit? Could you put your picture in your profile?
Prokofy Neva: This absentee landlord stuff has *got to stop*.
Governor Linden: Bringing better tools, especially Group tools is right up the list and we have lots going on in that area
Prokofy Neva: Timetable?
Governor Linden: Mainland is, of course, extremely important but it is harder an implementation than for islands in some features.
Governor Linden: I don't have an ETA i'm afraid.
Governor Linden: A picture of Gov Linden? Hmm that would be a tricky one
Prokofy Neva: If it is "extremely important," why don't you a) put on autoreturn by roads to prevent garbage piling up and b) put it on for longer on water sims for boating; and c) get rid of that eyesore road running out of Brownlee?
Governor Linden: Gov Linden is, more a function than a person.
Prokofy Neva: well, do you exist? or are you a fiction?
Prokofy Neva: well could I suggest that's your main problem?
Prokofy Neva: If youd don't believe in yourself, who will?
Governor Linden: lol
Prokofy Neva: he's a function...who doesn't function...cuz he's not a person!
Prokofy Neva: Honestly, the mainland is sucking hind tit Gov.
Prokofy Neva: Garbage everywhere, land extortion, "uneven sim performance"
Prokofy Neva: what have you done for the mainland *lately*! YOUR estate!
So...now that we've envisioned the coming depression of mainland sales and rentals (for some -- and windfall for a few liquidators or nimble vintage-land purveyors) -- what can we expect down the road?
When I first began campaigning for group tool reforms last year, I thought they might be the salvation of the mainland. If only people had the ability to bring in partners who wouldn't steal land out from under them, if only they could give at least some tenants basic rights like being able to deed their own TVs, or even return others' prims from their land, or terraform group land, then perhaps some of the riskyness of land ventures and other projects might be removed.
What's been amazing to see is how people have adapted even using the crappy tools.
o people buy up whole sims, because it's easier to do, put out 12 or 16 or more rental units, and by securing the whole sim, they can reduce griefing, the ugly-view problem, etc. Of course, many of them opt to make cookie-cutter, Levittown type arrangements, but that sells for some. It's hard to make a living from sims these ways -- I often fly around and notice people are making less than $100 per sim, and often only like $32 or not even breaking even, even if they have full occupancy. But as I've found, by combining mainland rentals with sales of land and sales of content, as well as ensuring volume and fresh opportunities, you can try to lift the profit margins.
o People even deed away land that they can't get back to others in a trusted group and do share projects and do make use of the 10 percent tier bonus. Given this latest favouritism of the islands, the Lindens better not even THINK of removing the 10 percent bonus that anti-land Sheeper Hiro Pendragon maliciously campaigns against, or the Techno-Socialist Entity Wu campaigns against, or the Terrorist Entity Zugzwang campaigns against, or others who just *hate* competition of any kind under "no business but my business" ethic.
Like the whopping 4 million of sources that the Lindens now cut in half when they removed dwell payments for land and club owners -- when contrasted with the whopping 59 million in stipends used to feed the content barons' businesses -- the 10 percent bonus on tier can't possibly be as significant as other "losses" for the Lindens -- instead, 10 percent incentive to group land and stay on the mainland sounds like just about the right level of compensation people should have for enduring everything from the Bush guy to this overstacking of fancier private island sims on their backs -- I am now routinely finding through Max Case's "Neighbours" that my laggier mainland sims only supposed to have 4 on them if they are class 4 have now 5 or 6, usually islands. Thanks, Linden Lab!
(BTW, I had to get a huge ROFL out Torley Linden transmogifying this rather pointed social commentary on the unconscionably bad Linden practice of over-stacking servers into some kind of "hey kids, look what fun!" kind of adventure in seeing what one's neighbours are. But look:
Furness, on a class 4 server that is supposed to hold 4 servers, has:
Farfax
On Maryport, a class 3 server, there should only be 2 servers:
This ostensibly laudable exercise in getting the Lindens to be ashamed of their practice will probably fail but as we'll see in a coming post, Max Case himself is like most third-party data-scrapers in not wanting to be terribly forthright about how he might use this information that we can't know too much about how he gets.
As we all know from Lee Linden's celebrated post, servers stacked up as neighbours do not impact each other. That is, if I draw a heavily used Ansheland Plush server on to my lovely field in Jubata, as I have today, that shouldn't have a smidgeon of effect on Jubata, correct? Fine. But...if indeed Max is correct that "a class 4 server should only have 4 servers on it" and it has 6, well, I'm thinking that over-stacking is going to be an issue, no?
I personally am at peace now with Lee Linden. Lee Linden once told me that a sim I complained about as laggy in copious detail of the kind he demands in this thread was something he couldn't determine to be laggy, but as he pointedly noted, maybe that's because he was looking at the sim *when there were no avatars on it* -- and as I've long since understood, if I want my tenants to be happy and not have *any* lag, what I need to do is not have tenants, and perhaps just keep my land group members for a kind of fun hobby where we can get together on one sim and gaze into the other empty sim next to it, and admire its performance.
So what's the ultimate conclusion for the mainland?
o cheaper land will become available just when the group tools get improved in ways that the mainland can really use, and everything from rentals to businesses to art projects can get a big boost by using cheaper, less large and cumbersome and hard-to-manage land for their ideas. Perhaps there will be a revival of Philip's original dream of the One Grid the True Grid the Way it S'pose to Be.
o more griefers and ijjits and violently script- and particle-happy club owners will jump on a lot of cheaper land, too, meaning that these groups projects will continue to struggle with problems of unwanted neighbours on their sim or the next
o the advances in covenants and dispute resolution will go on being held out as a chimera to those still suffering on the mainland, but will be a very long time in coming (and maybe that's a good thing)
o Premium account memberships will drop so far down that the Lindens will finally feel safe in removing the stipend, because their biggest and fiercest critics of stipend removal -- the very active and land-owning middle class that views them as a "payment" or "sweetener" for all the shit they take in SL -- will be reduced in absolute numbers.
o An issue could arise with a slump in private island sales with all the land glut whereby the Lindens will start making budget choices of their own, not to upgrade servers on the less-used and less-valuable mainland, where a lot of the land is owned by Governor Linden or is for sale or even abandoned. They will upgrade island servers, and stiff the mainland.
o The land-glutting propensity of the Lindens on the mainland land auction will increase in a frenzy for a time, as the Lindens find parcels aren't even getting any bid at all -- why buy land and pay tier on risky parcels and pay recurring subscription fees? Even Anshe is likely to stop bidding on mainland sims -- she's doing so less and less-- and the enthusiastic land barons who came in the door with articles in Fortune or Business Week and bought up these sims for more than they really needed to pay (to compete against Anshe)
o In a few weeks the Lindens will overcome any mild resistance they experienced eternally or externally to a really wild case of feting -- streaming spawning newbies right into islands now, ending forever their concept of "First Land for $512 from Governor Linden." In fact, we might well see an end to the First Land program completely. Would anyone miss it? A pious Linden announcement is sure to be coming, "We're finding that like the Developers' Incentive Award, the First Land program is not being used in the way we intended. People are buying up 5 accounts and farming the First Land and making groups out of them. Even those who just buy one piece now turn over as much as $5000 or $15 US from the sale of their subsidized first land -- a gift we cannot justify giving them when our main purpose here is to give cheap cash to newbies so they can buy content from our oldbies.
When they remove First Land, only a few old idealists will bitch, and people like Cristiano will applaud their difficult but important decision, which ends forever the evil exploiting capitalist running dog Cocoanut Koala who used her lackey-avatar Cocoanut Cookie and Cocoanut Shortbread to get more first lands for her evil capitalists goals of selling cottages to the unsuspecting masses.
Lindens will tell idealists like Prokofy that they should applaud the removal of the First Land swamps and ghettoes because they will create more rentals customers for Prokofy.
o The appetite from all sorts of special friends of the Lindens for FirstIsland will become so great, that the Lindens themselves will either give out way more non-profit sims for $950 and $150 tier only, that will be only very loosely connected to any notion of real non-profit work or they may even enter the island-leasing business for $250 a month. This temptation will be very great and they will not be able to resist it, despite their claim that they don't compete with their customers. First they will do it for special events and special friends, then finally when somebody bitches about favouritism, they will put it on the announcements board as a feature like the current renting of entire mainland sims for $4000 Lindens a day.
o Mindful that a lot of barons are getting payments of tier in PayPal completely bypassing their silly system of Lindens, LL will institute steeper chargers for PayPal transfers.
What's interesting to me is that the rentals business on the mainland is booming. I have more customers than I know what to do with. I don't have land enough to satisfy them all, and frequently am at full occupancy even with PG and snow. What's hard, however, is the constant drop in the Linden, and the constant expense of buying prim land or buying vulnerable land to save the view.
I see other rentals agents springing up all over, with anywhere from 2 cabanas to 4 sims with 64 units. They aren't always at full occupancy but the better managed ones do well. If the owners can forego the LL brass ring of volume and the lure of new fresh fast sims, and stick to their lasts building up slowly and on a manageable scale, they can do well.
But this increase in mainlands rental businesses may hit a wall now, with this coming whack and privileging of the islands. And the group tools, even if put in tomorrow, and tomorrow enabled us to be able to offer tenants the right to deed their own TVs, wouldn't right that forever skewed balance.
I'm going to keep thinking about it, but it won't matter what I think, I will either feel it in the pocketbook or I won't.
Hi Prok.
Glad to see you are using neighbours as intended. One thing to be sure of, since I know you are a _very_ busy individual, and may have missed this on the neighbours site, is that if you are showing more sims than your class server can hold, you should re-register ALL those sister sims, to make sure the data isn't out of date, or that the sim still exists. Hope this helps!
Soulmates 4evah Pr0k!!!
-Max
Posted by: Max Case | May 22, 2006 at 07:20 AM
"This ostensibly laudable exercise in getting the Lindens to be ashamed of their practice will probably fail but as we'll see in a coming post, Max Case himself is like most third-party data-scrapers in not wanting to be terribly forthright about how he might use this information that we can't know too much about how he gets."
I am quite forthright. When Prok gets around to poising his side of the story, I will post up mine, and you all can judge. I get the info from devices people wear. Pretty simple. I am also quite forthcoming with the info, and have shared my sim DB with others who need it. You just generally rub me the wrong way with your tone of entitlement. You think because you are FIC you can order people around.
As usual, you misinterpret my intention - not surprising, just tiring. I didn't attempt to shame the lindens into anything. I just thought it would be a fun idea, and allow me to play with DBs and the Map API in a fun, and potentially useful way.
-max.
Posted by: Max Case | May 22, 2006 at 07:24 AM
Just to echo Max's statement- I found my home sim had four neighbours (five in total) until I went round all with the updater. After that, there were only two reported neighbours (three in total) I'm guessing another sim somewhere still in hiding.
Posted by: Ace Albion | May 22, 2006 at 10:46 AM
Max, you're the FIC, and trying to "turn the tables on me" only entrenches you deeper in your FIChood. We can't know what you do with the data. You scrape it. You're a scraper. You can assure all you like, but we have only your word.
Um, so the public's "right to know" is now a "sense of entitlement"? Well, why do you get to cull stuff from things that avatars wear? I mean, sure it's a public service, but who the hell are you? These qustions need to be asked, you're not from any recognized government.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | May 22, 2006 at 03:18 PM
Anybody with the right scripting kung-fu can cull this information from SL. No special FIC status needed.
All Max Case did was _ask_ people to wear this gadget _voluntarily_. This gadget, upon entering a sim, would send info about that sim to Max's server. In particular, he seems to be collecting the sim hostname (using llGetSimulatorHostname), the name of the Avatar sending the update, and the date/time of the update.
Whether Max collects other information, that is up for debate. The trouble is, unless every object you use and wear that contains scripts is handcrafted by you, you cannot easily know what is going on. This is where a small amount trust comes into play. Still, whatever information he collects is not using any FIC-privileged tool. Check out the LSL wiki sometime. It is amazing what anybody can collect. And by amazing, I do not mean good or bad. You can apply those terms if you want to.
Posted by: Thaniel Baphomet | May 22, 2006 at 10:12 PM
Thanks Thaniel, you said it better than I could.
"You can assure all you like, but we have only your word."
Yes prok, thats exactly it - that's what I trade on in SL - my word, my rep. I like that it's a reputation based environemnt. People are welcome to take it or leave it.
"Um, so the public's "right to know" is now a "sense of entitlement"? "
See, you always confuse yourself with the public. I was specifically referring to your tone in our exchange, not the public at all. Really, see someone about your FCE- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consensus_effect
ps - I put out a distributor in a more commercial area, as you requested.
With Love,
Max (flourishy font here...)
Posted by: Max Case | May 22, 2006 at 11:11 PM
oh, and here's a copy of the script.
http://www.maxcase.info/lsl/registrationtron_PUBLIC.lsl
Posted by: Max Case | May 22, 2006 at 11:24 PM
Many geeks who take what they want from SL think they can do so with no input from civilians, unlike RL, where they face more controls including from their own bosses in IT, whom they normally hate with a passion.
They believe the Metaverse is a special playground built just for them to endlessly do stuff like scrape and track and analyze other human beings --just because they can. If we complain, or even merely slightly question, or wish to have some transparency about, these practices, these arrogant geeks begin spouting crap about us wearing tinfoil hats, and embarking on faux-patient condescending monologues about how data is constantly being gathered merely because you show up, and you essentially agree to this merely by showing up, and that if you had any notiong that your avatar key is something "yours" that is "private" or related to your identity set that you should be able to control, why, you're a fucking idiot.
We know all that, duh. But it's very important to keep asking the questions, to see what answers are given, and to see whether people who arrogate to themselves this function of collating and aggregating and analysing our doing *with this knowledge to advance themselves and their own agendas.*
Nobody says that using data scraping tools means you are FIC. Anybody uses them. A rentomatic that takes an avatar's key to enable him a refund if he presses "refund" is taking an avatar key -- if that makes you FIC, then I'm FIC lol. That is just fucking stupid. It is not said anywhere.
Obviously anyone with technical knowledge can figure out how to do a lot of things, from reverse-engineering, to setting up scripts, to making third-party sites to harvest data *and they do*. But who watches all this and who looks out for the consumer?
Certainly not you all, with your contempt for people like me or many more timid with the same question -- your contempt reveals just how much we can trust you to look out for us (not at all). All you're doing is faux-patiently (dripping with condescension) explaining the obvious that we already knew. This is like...rocket science?
Max is FIC not because he *can* scrap data but because he *does* and uses it to enhance his reputation as a geek. But mainly, he's FIC for being covered by Hamlet.
I will never, ever, EVER forget the time Max Case came to a meeting I arranged when relatively new, to make a group on the new continent to promote business and the formation of a yellow pages. It was a great idea and had some support. We also fought for telehubs to be put in, and that was a successful campaign because there were quite a few granola-eaters who wanted the Lindens not to put telehubs him at all and they were absolutely destroying land value and commerce and even normal residential travel.
For some reason Max came to this meeting and heckled me mercilessly. It was sophisticated, nasty heckling that disrupted the meeting and turned everyone there against him and made the fight with him the subject of the meeting -- and to no good larger purpose that anyone could see. He remained floating up in the air the whole time with his ridiculously pompous Buddha avatar, which he also inflicts on the landscape as if he is in friggin' Bamiyaan. He did this kind of event-griefing against me several times.
What Max, as a card-carrying FIC, is trying to do now, is use this "sophisticated" stunt of trying to turn the tables on me and call *me* FIC,yuk yuk, what a joke!
I don't have any "false consensus," there are many people who are concerned in general with the way in which information is constantly harvested off them. These questions are constantly raised. If you think they aren't, then you'd have to ask why there was such an outcry over the news that phone conversations were being culled by the NSA. People understand there are tradeoffs to be had in the electronic age -- ease of purchase and movement and the Metaverse construction itself -- but there needs to be checks and balances, and geeks within SL particularly act as if they should have none.
When we saw the enormous lengths that Cristiano went to recently to out some anonymous critic whom he feared was "one of his own circle," we see just how these tools can be misused, and are misused -- and usually without our knowledge.
>All Max Case did was _ask_ people to wear this gadget _voluntarily_.
Duh! I know that, because I voluntarily went and picked it up, and voluntarily used it to refresh information on 4 sims that appeared to be out of date on his list.
But I *ask the question* because of a prior history in which Max had some stupid little 16m squares next to me in Barton and pranked me about it when I asked him if he was putting up data collecting posts all over SL using 16m squares, something that people do all over. It's not because I "fear teh intarwebz OMGODZORRZ!1" but because I like to ask when people scatter stuff around like that what they are doing. If they do it on their own land, LL protects their right to harass or lag their neighbours incessantly as we know from the Bush Guy but a lot of resistance was put up to him and he is no more, eh?
Remember the long fights on the forums about Pete Fats and his land scanners? There are several people with alts named "rascally varmint" and "jumpy Grasshopper" and "Jedediah" something who scatter temp on rez prims constantly. That is, they claim they are temp on rez. But what I find is that they scatter regular non-temp prims on land without permission if autoreturn is off -- they figure that gives them cart blanche to do so. Banning them doesn't prevent them from doing this. As a person with lots of parcels all over, many with autoreturn turned off as a convenience to new customers and newbies who don't get it yet, I'm constantly plagued by these assholes who think the world is their sandbox to scribble on, and who put out scripts like this. They remain on the parcel, and are not "temp on rez" -- they appear to be used to launch other things that may be temp or they are just one-prim scrapers or who the hell knows, but THAT they are there and REMAIN there over time I've tested, and I've also confronted these alts, and listened to their fake circular reason and lies about what they're doing.
We don't know who these alts are; we don't know the agendas; we don't know if people like Max, who have a history of nastily griefing events and heckling new people they view as some kind of competition, in fact is using squares in this way or whether his HUD does more than what he says -- how the hell can we know?
If I didn't already have a history where Max had griefed my events in the really insidious nasty way he does (a statement supported even by oldbies who know him and also find him a pain in the ass), if I didn't see he was prepared to prank people and make up shit to annoy them like writing shit like "max's super secret listening post no. 1029898y blah blah" on his land, I might be inclined to belive Max is just some nice guy providing a service. But he's not. He's an arrogant ass.
>This gadget, upon entering a sim, would send info about that sim to Max's server. In particular, he seems to be collecting the sim hostname (using llGetSimulatorHostname), the name of the Avatar sending the update, and the date/time of the update.
Well DUH. Like that is fucking ROCKET SCIENCE? Do you realize that people in SL who can master enough technical knowledge to log on and keep their games working KNOW THAT?
If all they did was just gather data like robots and produce only this narrow data set, then who could complain? But in the context of SL, where people are raging rabid fucktards, here's what else they can do:
o find all out all sims Prokofy travels to, get a list of all his lands owned, and publish it and invoke it in some way to harass Prokofy (this is no secret, BTW, look in FIND or ROAM or whatever, I want my lands to be found and rented, but i just posit this as the kind of thing that could be done in an effort to harass someone)
o look at places Prokofy travels to frequently, match it with other data also grabbed from avatar keys like his shopping patterns, who he also associates with in sims -- data matching
o catch alts by seeing if he travels to places that in fact show ownership by other avatars
o many things I can't even imagine
The *uses* to which this data are put are things we have no control over, nor can we stop Max, Adam Zaius, Cristiano Midnight, and others from colluding to gain control over others by matching and analysing the data.
>Whether Max collects other information, that is up for debate.
And *that's why I open up the debate*. Each time I open up the debate, I know I'll be subjected to a million rabid arrogant fucktards telling me that oh duh, it's just your avatar key which you can't shut off anymore than a fingerprint etc etc etc. I know all that. My level of questioning is higher, and I'm willing to suffer any amount of ridicule to keep asking it:
1. Who supervises the third-party sites in SL who cull so much data from us? LL refuses to do this and to develop any policy regarding third-party sites.
2. When we sign up for SL, we give our private identification -- at which point does some of this begin to be compromised by LL's refusal to supervise or create standards for third-party sites?
3. We don't want LL to control third-party sites, especially sites related to free speech -- other games do that and it is disastrous for freedom of creativity. But what reasonable checks can be placed on things like a private email being sent out automatically to Cristiano's site, for example, or to 100 other people in the Community Round Table, or any other sort of activity where the Lindens aren't taking care to control this.
4. There's an even larger issue here, which is the false sense of "server transparency" this gives -- the idea that it will compel better Linden accountability.
The first thing any Linden looking at your complaint based on Max Case's Neighbours will say is: "this is out of date". They will be able to default to saying that every time because of the massive percentage of times it will be out of date. By his own admission, his data can be wrong, and you have to keep refreshing it using the HUD device.
It's out of date even using his HUD device within 24 hours often, however, because Lindens stack up sims dynamically. I may report 6 overstacked sims on a class 4 in bug reports, but by the time I can persuade a Linden to review this within 48 hours, the stacking is gone.
The entire point of the exercise was for Max to try to show up Lee Linden and try to prove a very deeply-held belief, especially among tekkies, that the Lindens deliberate lie and stack up servers. Maybe they do. But then we're actually undermining the project to get the Lindens to be more accountable by turning in so many "false positives". I bet the Lindens are going nuts with this stuff.
Perhaps if Max had a dynamically changing map on his server showing the overloaded servers blinking in regions and we could see that it looked like a terrible case of chicken pox, perhaps the Lindens could be rightfully confronted to end this practice -- and frankly, I can't know that they may be forced to engage in overstacking just like airlines have to overbook due to limits on what their system can bear. Obviously, if they stack 6 sims on 4 and 2 of them are voids or new islands or old sims that never have anybody on them, the consequences are different than if they stack 6 active sims with clubs and malls.
>The trouble is, unless every object you use and wear that contains scripts is handcrafted by you, you cannot easily know what is going on. This is where a small amount trust comes into play.
No, that isn't the point about trust I'm making. I'm making the larger point that people who behave badly in world and heckle you, people who write nasty comments on forums, people who act like condescending arrogant asstards most of the time, cannot be trusted. I have no reason to trust them. I have every reason to keep asking the questions I do.
>Still, whatever information he collects is not using any FIC-privileged tool. Check out the LSL wiki sometime. It is amazing what anybody can collect. And by amazing, I do not mean good or bad. You can apply those terms if you want to.
FIC isn't having some special tool, it can often mean merely leveraging whatever tools there are to be had, and combining that with things like Hamlet Linden's reputational enhancement in columns, to see what you can get away with.
So I hope you can see that you've misunderstood the FIC issue with Max -- no one claims he got some special tool from the Lindens. If anything, the Lindens may be pissed that all he will do is generate a million claims of server overload from irate customers with false positives from outdated information.
The Lindens say they are going through and replacing all the servers to class 4s. So they will also hide behind that.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | May 23, 2006 at 07:57 AM
O. M. G.
ahem.
"I will never, ever, EVER forget the time Max Case came to a meeting I arranged when relatively new, to make a group on the new continent to promote business and the formation of a yellow pages..."
I will never forget it also. http://www.maxcase.info/?p=186
It was my first time being accused of being an Alt. As I told you, you posted a discussion, and I came to discuss. I was just challenging you on some of your assumptions. And I was being much nicer than you were at the library meeting, but basically fulfilling the same role.
"But I *ask the question* because of a prior history in which Max had some stupid little 16m squares next to me in Barton and pranked me about it when I asked him if he was putting up data collecting posts all over SL using 16m squares,"
Actually, I have a few 16m outposts (check my picks) and all they do is run a machine that flips a coin, over and over and over. And sends me a message every few thousand flips
The object 'PFM Outpost Eta' has sent you a message from Second Life:
Total: 88500000 Heads: 44251357 | Tails: 44248642 | Total: 88500000
"If I didn't already have a history where Max had griefed my events in the really insidious nasty way he does (a statement supported even by oldbies who know him and also find him a pain in the ass),"
Sure senator mcarthy - I have a list too. Who are some of these oldbies?
"...Max, Adam Zaius, Cristiano Midnight..."
I think this is the only time I will ever be on a list with these 2. Thanks prok - you always make me feel more important than I am. And use my last name - it's better for my google juice.
"The entire point of the exercise was for Max to try to show up Lee Linden and try to prove a very deeply-held belief, especially among tekkies, that the Lindens deliberate lie..."
Will you STOP guessing at my intentions already? I stated what the goal was - the idea just came to me - i thought it would be a fun project. No more, no less. You are the only one looking to show up the lindens.
"No, that isn't the point about trust I'm making. I'm making the larger point that people who behave badly in world and heckle you, people who write nasty comments on forums, people who act like condescending arrogant asstards most of the time, cannot be trusted. I have no reason to trust them. I have every reason to keep asking the questions I do."
By your own criteria, your renters have no reasons to trust you.
forever yours,
-Max
Posted by: Max Case | May 23, 2006 at 10:37 AM
Um, you weren't being at all nice, you were being manipulative and nasty. You didn't come there because you were interested in the subject, you came because you didn't like what I wrote on the forums and wanted to harass me inworld. You richly deserved and still deserve a triple negrate for that.
Too bad I didn't keep a transcript, but I assure you that you were far more obnoxious than i was at the library meeting, where in fact the record shows I merely asked a pointed question -- are they qualified to do this? And the answer is, no. So why are they opening with this suit? It's really a valid question.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | May 23, 2006 at 03:48 PM
anyhow, this is turning into a he said she said. I went to the event because i was genuinely interested in discussion. Yes, I asked some pointed q's at the event. I am sorry I hurt your feelings. I didn't know you back then, and had no idea challenging your base assumptions would hurt you so much.
Sincerely,
Max
Posted by: Max Case | May 23, 2006 at 03:55 PM
It wasn't that you "hurt my feelings" dumbass, it's that you were being manipulative and annoying about trying to overthrow the meeting and grief it deliberately to try to undermine what I was attempting to do. There was no question of "challenging my base assumptions," and you know it. Many people have already told me their experience is identical, and the people who were at that meeting that day all unanimously asked me to eject you, even though they didn't even know me.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | May 23, 2006 at 05:05 PM
:)
Posted by: Max Case | May 23, 2006 at 05:32 PM
Pi and it's 4096 plots are a poor example.
Those 4096 plots go for just enough to cover the monthly costs of the sim.
It's more a socialistic "developers commune" than a capitalistic for-profit business, so I don't expect you to understand. We created it for the low-lag build area and the company of having other developers around to work with.
I think it's working well, we have 6 people on the waiting list at this time.
Posted by: Lasivian Leandros | May 23, 2006 at 08:05 PM