Let me try to cut through all the bullshit here, and make the point about what is wrong with the Sheep browser. In threads on the forums (where GENERAL is basically back, and forum toads like Malachi Petunia can call me "the Unabomber" and not get reprimanded), or in Giff Constable's propagandistic explanations on his own blog (where he has blocked my totally legitimate and rational questioning of his so-called explanations), you still can't see the issues. That's because people whose business it is to compete with LL in the Sheep (Chosen Few is on the Sheep payroll, for example, something that isn't immediately evident from all his bloviation on the forums) and who have a vested interest in trying to protect the Sheep aren't letting people see what's up. Of course, a major problem is that the viewer is SECRET and can't be seen before the show October 24th!
Here's what's up.
When you go to the regular LL browser in Second Life, you go to SEARCH at the bottom of the browser (one of the reasons people find it clunky -- it's at the bottom!) and then you pull up a view that has tabs showing ALL, CLASSIFIEDS, PLACES, etc. Most people, unless they are very new, simply never chose ALL. That's because ALL would be like going to amazon.com and typing in a book's title, and pulling up everything from games to kitchenware, instead of going to BOOKS where it is sorted. LL's browser works more like amazon.com than google.com
If you type, say, "prefabs" into ALL, here's what you get: "PREFABS PREFAB LOW PRIM HOUSES SKYBOX BEACH HOUSES VILLAS STORES & CAMPING make money". Here's a place that isn't the best prefab place; it has camping and money, is gamed, and therefore comes up first.
But if you go to SEARCH and then PLACES, here's what you get: Romance dance date,flirt love music romance prefabs sculpted furniture spanish greek italian beach sand -- also not very relevant. But if you go to the number two, less gamed spot, here's what you get: prefab homes, house, custom homes, window tint, home, houses, sculpties, animals, sculptie, builders Camping chairs Diner 2/10. That is, it has camping, but it is a real prefab store, where camping isn't the main attraction. Go to the 11th return -- and many people are already "trained" to ignore those first, gamed entries, and you get a genuine, non-camped traffic and prefabs of merit: "Bars,PLAYABLE Pool Tables & Darts,Living Room,Beds-Bedroom Sets,Kitchen,Dining,Aquariums,Hot Tubs,Bathrooms,DJ,Club,Outdoor"
That's because SEARCH PLUS PLACES PLUS TRAFFIC = SALES. That's because the traffic AFTER the first few games slots IS relevant and IS helpful and IS used to make MOST of the sales in Second Life!
The Sheep browser will give you one little box with the ALL of search. That means it will turn up crap automatically. That means the next thing any searcher will likely do is tab over to SHOPPING, a custom Sheep tab that drives them only to ONREZ links and products on their shopping site. Where will he get the news that another browser with tabs is possible? Nowhere.
If you go to the regular LL viewer and press on CLASSIFIEDS, you get Home Depoz: "Scripted Furniture,Living Rooms,Dining Rooms, Bedrooms,Complete Bathrooms,Complete Kitchens,Building Center,Garden Center,Patio Center,Office Center,Texture Center,Pet Store, Prefabs,Outdoor Center". They have paid to be there. And they will not be viewed when the CSI watcher goes to type in "prefabs" in the ALL box which is all that the Sheep provide *on the first layer* of the view. What will come up in ALL isn't Home Depoz, who paid to be in the top slot; it isn't the most merited Home Sweet Home parcel which truly is very popular and in demand, but whoever has SEXY POSEBALLS AND CAMPING. THAT is the problem with search without the social media networking and usage of THE WORLD -- but it's a problem the Sheep EXACERBATE, not solve.
This is such an obvious problem that I fail to see why even rational people normally able to distinguish search problems don't get it. But they will get it when they see their sales plummet if a million (or even 20,000) new customers come in who will never get past the SEARCH ALL keyhole that the Sheep are providing. Look at the screenshots. THAT is the problem -- the delivery of SEARCH ALL as a "solution" when that is never the solution in the regular browser.
SEARCH PLUS PLACES PLUS TRAFFIC = SALES. Few people really grasp what this means. They all think they can make something better with Google. They cannot, in an interactive, social media like Second Life which is NOT repeat NOT the Internet, but *a world*. When this is gone -- either by being covered up by the Sheep, or removed by social engineers at LL when they change their SEARCH, boy will they get it fast. Because their sales will plummet. People claiming "nobody uses classifieds" or "nobody uses SEARCH" or who imagine "this is just peculiar to real estate" have the following problems: a) they work for the Sheep and are competing with other viewers; b) they are geeky sandboxing types who don't really care about, or use the inworld economy; c) they are meta-geek analysts who also do not understand or use the inworld economy; d) they have no inworld businesses; e) they have them but have some niche boutique word-of-mouth clientele. ''
These people generally a) don't pay tier b) don't buy much inworld c) don't get what Second Life and its inworld economy is about. Therefore, it's simple: they should not rule our world. Our game-gods, the Lindens, may wish to kill off "our world, our imagination" -- perhaps it's in the way now. But let them be clear about it, and not hide behind fake statements -- as I got from Lindens at VW07 -- that having the Sheep take over with their CSI watchers "helps us all". It does NOT.
Somebody like Chosen Few (apt name, that) doesn't get any of this, and shows a rabid animosity and hatred of the issues involved, because he is indeed one of the chosen few -- one of the early settlers of SL, if you will, who sees the world through the keyhole of his free-tier-for-life 4096 in an old colour sim, Indigo, who now works for the Sheep. Let me reprint most of his post in full, as it is so very telling of the deep problem at the center of Second Life -- the inability of the Feted Inner Core -- the people and companies promoted by Linden Lab since time immemorial -- to see beyond their own narrow, selfish, creator-fascist experiences and privileged vantage point.
In RL, if I don't like a particular part of the world, I just don't go there. I don't like most fast food, for example, so I don't go to fast food restaurants. The fact that there happens to be a McDonald's down the street doesn't make me feel like fast food has in any way invaded my life.
Similarly, I feel I can choose "just don't go there" as a perfectly vaible option for keeping MY second life the way I want it to be, just as I do in my first life. So how could it be that some people don't see the same principle as equally applicable in both lives? To me, it can't get much more simple than if you don't want to experience something, don't go where it is.
As I see it, this theoretical "competing virtual world" of which you speak, the one that would keep corporations out, absolutely can and does exist within SL already. All you need to do to be a part of it is live in an area away from corporate builds and don't participate in corporate events. It couldn't be easier.
That seems way too painfully obvious though, so I feel like I must be missing something from what you were saying. Maybe you can explain it to me like I'm a six year old here. How could the very fact that XYZ corporation happens to own a sim affect you if you'll never visit it? It doesn't make any sense to me that it could.
Maybe it would help for me to explain my own SL experience. Maybe you can pinpoint where mine differs from yours, and thus show how you're maybe more susceptible than I am to forces of which I'm maybe unaware.
My own little corner of SL is the NW quarter of Indigo and the NE quarter of Crimson (neighboring sims, both on North coast of the old continent). I've had the Indigo part for 4 years now, and just recently acquired the neighboring land in Crimson. I can promise you, neither the appearance nor the atmosphere of my place has changed in any way as a result of RL corporations started taking an interest in SL. The same appears to be true of all my neighbors' lands as well. Things basically look the same now as they always did.
The types of events I used to attend 4 years ago are basically the same kinds of events I can choose to attend now. There are just a lot more of them to choose from. (Well, no more gambling, but that's a different subject, and I never did that anyway.)
The people I meet these days when they happen by my place are more or less the same kinds of people I've always met.
So what's different now? How does the fact that CBS and NBC and Showtime and NBA and so many others now have a presence in SL affect me as an individual? I can't think of a single way that it does. Unless I want it to, in which case I'll head over to their sims, and/or participate in their events.
In short, my sense of reality is that I've got the option to pay attention to that stuff or to ignore it completely. It's entirely up to me. I really cannot fathom how anyone else could possibly think they don't have the same choices and the same freedoms.
The only thing that has changed due to corporate presence is my professional life. I'm one of the lucky few whose career now exists fully in the virtual world. Surely if I, who work on those corporate builds all day long, can so easily forget all about them when it's time to punch out for the day, then those who don't actually need to go near them can ignore them utterly if they so choose. Why does anyone think they can't?
Isn't it just possible that this stuff in actuality makes no difference to anyone's personal life at all, just like it makes no difference to mine, and that the real truth is the following? Some people happen to have been born with an unusually large supply of high-octane ready-burning super-charged fuel in the "complaint centers" of their brains, and corporations make for conveniently large targets at which to aim flame throwers.
The fact that I quoted you in the beginning, Colette, does not mean I'm implying in any way that you either are or are not one of those people. So please don't think I am. You seem to be one who sees the complainers' side of it more easily than I do, so if you (or anyone else) can explain it to me in non-complainer terms, I'd be grateful.
Let's parse this from a perspective OUTSIDE this charmed and magic chosen circle, shall we?
1. Chosen Few shows a completely biased and very poor grasp of what happened when the corporate invasion came. It totally skewed the world. The labour market was turned on its head. The top creators stopped innovating and making new products *for the world*. All the scripts, prefabs, skins rot in their vendors, gathering dust -- selling next to nothing -- yet like dog-in-the-mangers, their copyright protection of things they no longer care about or need to sell mean that no one else can make these same things -- to innovate, they have to start from scratch -- and with none of the struts the privileged oldbies had with free-tier-for-life, event grants, stipends, developer awards. If these oldbies today were actually in the market, showing their wares, innovating, and competing, they would get better, newbies would have something to aspire to and also make cheaper versions of, and even better versions. Instead, their products, perceptions, and innovation circa 2003 sits there like a tombstone, a drag on the economy (their freebies also drag on the economy). It's one of the reasons for the economic slump, quite frankly.
2. Prices have now increased 10 fold on many things, because people have to work harder to make something to get noticed beyond these tombstones and place-markers of oldbie glory; they also now are in a labour market where Forseti Svarog, instead of selling his L$250 cottages to make a living in SL, now earns more like $500 US a day as a real-life company consultant. He has no motivation to return to his little cottages; others do, but they don't have visibility, market share, placement (especially since the Lindens pulled the telehubs, and the open market malls that used to provide a great competition to oldbie boutiques in the boonies.) Camping is the poor man's answer -- his rebellion -- to the advertising problem created by the Lindens a) pulling the telehubs b) selling classifieds to the highest bidder rather than at a set price like a magazine.
3. Corporate invasion of welcome areas has dragged people out of the economy. If they go to the Pond, they buy condos from the Pond, a real-life company. They don't fly into the rest of the world and start a tiny condo business themselves, or rent from other oldbies or midbies. They are in a cul-de-sac, now cared for in a company town. In the same way sites like L-word or Pontiac offer either actual land, or actual hang-out places and very privileged places for the ingroup sellers (like Barnesworth Anubis, who got to have a shop on the L-word sim, and is a consultant to the metaversal agencies as well, and has no objective need to sell prefabs anymore). Therefore those people are torn away from the inworld economy. There's your slump. The corporate invasion *causes the skewing of labour prices, item prices, and drags new customers out of the economy*. Try to grasp this.
4. If you could argue that "all those corporations are on their own islands and I don't have to pay attention to them and I can stay here in my little world," well sure, that's true up to a point. You can come on, join SL, make your little widget, sell it on your Brazilian mall sim, or whatever -- but it will have to be very much lower priced, and your labour is now much less compensated -- in part because the Lindens, in order to keep a stable currency to make Lindens cheap must artificially depress wages -- cashouts -- by themselves printing and selling anywhere from a half a million or a million US dollars worth of Lindens per month. The price of the Linden does not float to its natural free market value. It is kept artificially low to incentivize masses of customers to be able to show to the corporations that there are supposedly "eyeballs". That most of these people then are facing depressed wages and an economic slump and a world awash with freebies and tombstone objects from oldbies, and frustrated in entering the market, and then leave and never make the middle class, is a subject Lindens or corporations or their metaversals never contemplate. They can't. Because they need people to stop participating in the inworld indigenous economy, if you will, and come over and buy directed, targeted, feted content from corporate sims, or not even care about buying anymore, as they get free land, free cars, etc.
5. Chosen Few can sit on his lag-free Indigo, with no spinning ad extortionist signs like all the new sims, and no one devaluing his view or his purchase (or free tier for life land) -- old sims don't have the 16 m2 scourge of the ad farmers. Unlike the thousands of newbies coming in to buy land, he doesn't risk his purchase turning to ash by the next day afterwards because of poor Linden zoning, lack of Governor Linden land for easements, and rapacious extortionist practices -- things he never has to experience as a privileged oldbie sitting on a colour sim. Chosen Few doesn't get out much. He doesn't see THE REST of the 13,999 sims out there with a completely different life. He doesn't see that *a real-world corporation* that he thinks is "over there on its own island somewhere* now BUYS AD SPACE from the extortionist Chrischun Fassbinder -- and devalues the view and everyone's land. It's completely opaque to him as a problem.
6. Chosen Few doesn't participate in the inworld economy. He's now a metaversal myrmidon, working for the Sheep, and while not earning what Forseti makes, he's making a RL living now, and utterly, utterly -- and I mean UTTERLY -- indifferent to all the inworld issues for inworld busineses like lag, sim crashes, broken scripts from patches, ad extortion, depressed wages, inflationary prices, lack of meaningful advertising capacity, lack of mass media and many other things that make SL actually a miracle that it DOES work to enable at least some people to make something, even a living -- because they do so against incredible odds! The world's issues aren't Chosen Few's issues -- and never will be.
7. As someone who never has to participate in the inworld economy, he doesn't use SEARCH a thousand times a day, and doesn't really "get it". If his favourite little term "science fiction" didn't turn up HIS old tombstone lot with that theme, he pouts. SEARCH and CLASSIFIEDS now turn up a 100 other things that are perfectly interesting and fine science fiction theme sims, games, parcels, products -- but not his museum in Indigo. Welcome to the big world of Second Life, Chosen Few. There are other people besides you in it.
8. The problems that Chosen Few, and his Chosen Few comrades in the FIC, can't grasp, is that there are other people beyond his little beta-test love fest in SL now; they have other needs; they participate in an economy not of his making, nor of any interest to him; they don't need him; and his take on their issues is entirely skewed. Yet...working for the Sheep, he can get on the forums and tell everybody to shut up, that they are filled with FUD, that progress is coming, that they don't need to worry if their sales slump, and that we can all go play detective on a CSI sim, keep his engineered sims in traffic and eyeballs and accept advertising pushed by his bosses, and keep him in clover.
But..why should we sign up for THAT? We shouldn't. This is "our world, our imagination". Sure, Philip *really* meant his fellow tekkie gekky sandboxing goony types who first pushed the envelope and broke everything so that he could see what was needing fixing, then designed meta stuff to help him launch his larger Grid Uber Alles concept. He didn't really mean the rest of us. Understood.
But we pay the tier. Chosen Few's bosses pay *some* of the tier, but even buying up 300 islands, or whatever they needed for this CSI caper, they still aren't the majority of sim owners. And that's why we still have leverage, and that's why we need to PROTEST AND SURVIVE.
While these Lindens still take tier from us, and as long as their viewer is OPEN SOURCED, these large corporations shouldn't be allowed by them to take something that is OPEN SOURCED and turn it into a PROPRIETARY SECRET PRODUCT that we have no affect over, and yet it affects our world profoundly.
And that has always been my critique of the FIC: not that there *is* a FIC and that they were the prototype for the metaversal service agencies and their big clients -- they were. That's fine. What can you do? As Spin Martin says, we can't make different drinking fountains for small inworld virtual business and big corporate outworld business. But...if they begin to destroy us, we sure as hell CAN complain. And that has always been my critique of the FIC. They don't lobby just for their own privileged existence, and the right to pay for the top slots due to talent, money, or connections. That's life that they do that. But...they go so far beyond that. They lobby to rule the world and affect its every feature because they wanted to rule the economy completel to their benefit back then, and want to rule it now:
o Tringo on the events list drives the masses away from their geeky events -- they want to kill Tringo because they were all living off developer grants from the Lindens, and these got diluted when there were more people not them
o Telehubs drove people to mass consumer malls away from their boutiques in the boonies, and that scared them and lost them sales when they still needed them -- therefore telehubs had to go
o SEARCH doesn't turn them up anymore because they have no traffic whatsoever -- they don't merit traffic with their tombstones. SEARCH turns up not just gamed slots however, but those who work their asses off making good stuff that people really come and buy and see and stay at. That infuriates them -- so SEARCH PLUS TRAFFIC has to die -- die for their sins, because neither their oldbie tombstone lots, nor their new corporate client lots have any traffic of merit. They cannot compete in the inworld search economy. Therefore...that inworld search economy has to die.
o Orientation sucks. The way to fix it is to have open bidding for both profit and nonprofit users regardless of any outworld business or API registration coding ability to be able to really help people if they are motivated. But that would, again, drive newbies not into FIC arms (they used to stand as mentors in the WAs and troll for newbies to pick up and take to their stores). So now, orientation has to so suck, in their view, that only a special list of corporations who can bring in new customers on themes -- or just be HANDED the random newbie signup (as they are now!) to compete. Corporate islands and tombstone oldbie stores by themselves can't get people. So HAND THEM OFF the newbie stream, as Philip does now, and keep them trapped there. Maybe they will see an ad and buy something.
There are many more things I could say about how bitterly and maliciously the oldbie class is fighting for their privileged economic position, and how savagely they are trying to kill off the inworld economy -- but this should show you the broad outlines of the problem. It's exasperated by the personas of people like Chosen Few -- cynical young male assholes who constantly achieve influence by belittling those who disagree with them. And as everyone knows: I push back.
Take a clue from the largest land barons today. They have stopped expanding. They have stopped buying new sims from the Lindens. Perhaps you should consider doing the same thing, simply because of the profound lack of concern for the inworld economy we are seeing now.
If the Hail-Mary pass of CSI and other projects doesn't work, or works like SL always work, where 9 out of every 10 people brought in leave, watch for the Lindens to get more savage -- they'll have to! It's insect politics!
YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE A COPY OF THE SHEEP BROWSER. This is all heresy!
Posted by: Tenshi Vielle | October 19, 2007 at 09:47 AM
"That's because the traffic AFTER the first few games slots IS relevant and IS helpful and IS used to make MOST of the sales in Second Life!" - Prokofy
This is certainly true for Fate Gardens. Survey says that two-thirds of our customers find us in SEARCH. Most of the rest are sent via LM (word of mouth). Our only other source of advertisement are a standard 50L classified, which gets several views but not many teleports, and an SLU listing which garners a few eyeballs a month.
What I don't like about the web-based agencies is that people list every single item they sell. A search for "chair" currently results in three-hundred-sixty-two pages at OnRez. The first page is half filled by a single bubble chair with each listing being a different colour. The third page is ahlf filled with the same antique dining set sporting different colours of cushions. The fifth page is likewise half filled with different coloured velvet chairs. Only three-hundred-fifty-seven pages to go! At this point, I'm reverting to the inworld search mechanism to find shops that sell chairs. At the risk of projecting, my opinion is that most shoppers will shy away from using clients that force them to search through individual item listings because it's just too darn tedious.
I agree with points 1,2,3,6 and 7, especially 3, and can wholly identify with and corroborate 5.
Let me note however that there was a sizable camp who believed that telehubs were too limiting to our general ease of travel through the world. I know that people capitalized on the locations, and had no inherent problem with that; but simply didn't want to have to travel through sims from hubs to get to a known destination. That seemed wholly artificial, senseless and tedious to me. It's unfortunate that the issue had to be divided into two and only two and you must support one or the other wholly to the last detail of every aspect of thinking I chose to attribute to them schools of thought. But I suppose that makes blogging easier than considering whole myriads of ideas and mindsets that don't blindly follow every argument a larger group puts forth just because they happen to support a specific issue. Nobody can type that much fair coverage a day.
Posted by: Khamon | October 19, 2007 at 11:02 AM
Beautifully concise post on this subject, Prokofy. Don't you ever get tired of explaining to these people how one plus one equals two? Oh well, keep on trucking.
"This is all heresy!" That statement is either really funny or really scary.
Posted by: ichabod antfarm | October 19, 2007 at 12:09 PM
The concern I have about sheep providing anything to the LL membership is that the sheep collects information on members and sales and use it in ways for which they lack permission. This is much like the way the sheep collect content creators in SL under the guise of wanting their talent when the motivation is to prevent that content creator from making content for sheep competitors by putting the them under an exclusive contract arrangement.
The SL membership has suffered through one Linden love affair after another since day one, and sheep are just the flavor of the month now. Those who have been around witnessed the painful and very public LL love affairs with Spellbound, Bedazzle and Aimee Weber, and one day sheep will join the ranks of those discarded and forgotten lovers when the new stud in town shows up, most likely IBM.
But, in the meantime, I would not trust the sheep one bit with my browsing activity, my sales or purchasing history, my password or any information their browser is capable of detecting because they secretly collect and use information without permission for their own commercial and competitive advantage.
Posted by: katykiwi moonflower | October 19, 2007 at 01:17 PM
Is IBM good in bed, katy? I guess I'm hoping that the Lindens, after their smoking servers cool from the detectives invasion with CSI, will come back to us, their scorned lovers, finished with all these tarts.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | October 19, 2007 at 04:19 PM
Khamon,
On the telehubs, I've never taken some diametrically opposed position as you imagine. I was always for JUST KEEPING THEM IN PLACE so that if you typed in a sim name, you'd go to them, rather than 128/128 and land in the water, and then adding on p2p.
That was my compromise position.
I don't see that p2p is used. I realize that goes against the Holiest of Holy Sacred Doctrines of the Highest Most Most Sacred All Hail the Central Grid, but it's true. People do not use p2p.
Why? Because they:
o press on an ad, and use the ad thingie to teleport
o get teleported by a friend
o opening the map is too confusing and lags their game and they are lazy
o Americans never learned geography
o they fear landing in the middle of somebody's poseballs, getting an angry bounce out or landing in the water
o even if they do open up a map and p2p, it won't get them to a store that will rez slowly around them anyway -- for that, they are much better off just typing the store's name in search
o people use the map list of sim names much more, it's just somehow easier than pulling that map up and struggling to view it and prick it.
Know what I mean?
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | October 19, 2007 at 04:27 PM
"I was always for JUST KEEPING THEM IN PLACE so that if you typed in a sim name, you'd go to them, rather than 128/128 and land in the water, and then adding on p2p." - Prokofy
That was my compromise as well.
Using the Teleport button in Places, Picks and Landmarks *is* P2P. If you remember, using those features when we had hubs, even through you knew exactly where you were going, *still* ported you to the nearest hub and beaconed the location. *That* was totally senseless and needed to be repaired. Eventually we realized that the Lindens didn't have enough sense to separate the functionality of being able to port directly from the functionality that telehubs offered the commuuuuunity. So everyone was forced to support either leaving everything exactly like it was, or chunking the telehubs out with the bathwater.
I still think the whole thing was more of a exercise to gather public opinion and reaction data than a sincere attempt to improve the feature set and environment. Of course now we know that the whole "virtual world" formerly known as Second Life can vanish tomorrow as long as the platform now known as Second Life remains viable.
Posted by: Khamon | October 19, 2007 at 04:50 PM
"So what's different now? How does the fact that CBS and NBC and Showtime and NBA and so many others now have a presence in SL affect me as an individual? I can't think of a single way that it does. Unless I want it to, in which case I'll head over to their sims, and/or participate in their events."
Chosen Few is either being deliberatly obtuse, or is too busy guarding the source of his/her paycheck to adcknowledge reality.
How does it affect players, even that stay away? EASY! Chosen! Open your eyes...the servers start to die (asset, then login) at over 40K...NOW, ESC's bringing in hordes of clueless TV newbs to play scavenger hunt. Geee, I REALLY want to try to log in to build or USE THE LAND I PAY TIER FOR when the servers are lagging and I can't access inventory.
Seems these old-timers have been hanging out in the rarified air of LL and Corporate circles so long, lack of oxygen has caused brain damage. Corporates want eyeballs to market to. That means MANY more 'players' (I prefer tourists, since most the CSI newbs WON'T stay once the new wears off and the contest ends) and each artificial 'wave' adding more and more stress to an already overtaxed system.
Posted by: Maklin Deckard | October 19, 2007 at 04:55 PM
well, sure, it's p2p, you're right, but the much-vaunted map concept never took off. It's too geeky.
yes, I sure do remember flying 1,000 meters every day to work in Ravenglass out of Waterhead, banging my head on that dumbass wooden roof in that campters' build, and flying hard out to the hidden lake sims -- and for a long time, never getting across the sim boundaries.
It wasn't senseless. If I went to my old club in Refugio, I had to drop into the mall in Ross, the telehub took me there. I was forced to shop. I did. I was forced to socialize. I did. That's not the worst thing.
And you know how I know that's not the worst thing? Because Desmond Shang, left to his own devices to design a perfect world, in making Caledon put...a telehub that...forces you to land, socialize, and walk past stores GASP!
Well you're speaking very basically, Maklin. I guess I don't know how many of the 50,000 are corporate simps tho. 5,000? I just can't tell. The traffic isn't such as to bear it out -- their traffic sucks. Their deleterious effect on the world is shown in more subtle things I've just outlined.
Except on Oct. 24, boy will we get a look-see on how this stuff is going to work -- or not.
I'm betting they'll have preferred log-ons. They'll just have to. They can't risk having the New York Times write the next day that the thing flopped because angry indigenous tier-payers logged on and wouldn't let the detectives log on.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | October 19, 2007 at 05:05 PM
Hehe, Lindens are rolling out THEIR search Lookie here.
http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/10/19/new-search-currently-under-development/
[14:25]
And my IM to Jeska:
[14:32] Prokofy Neva: Hehe with that post...but by getting rid of traffic as a metric for relevance, however, you are going to deliver a really harsh blow to the economy. Try to suspend your judgement machine about those first few camped spots -- which are merely the poor-man's classifieds. Think of avatar footfall on all the other parcels -- the 90 percent of sims NOT camped and gamed and in business -- that now have no way to reward their hard work unless they a) buy a classifieds b) hope someone puts them in picks they won't figure out for weeks after joining c) makes a landmark. Webizing the integrated social world of SL is a bad idea when you push it too far.
Traffic is now dead. We will have to hope that this scotch-taped jury-rigged "relevance" cobbled together by these California social-engineers will be an adequate substitute.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | October 19, 2007 at 05:34 PM
I still don't know what you are rambling on about when you have not tried the viewer, but I guess you are just mad that you have to wait like everyone else.
Anyway...
"When you go to the regular LL browser in Second Life, you go to SEARCH at the bottom of the browser (one of the reasons people find it clunky -- it's at the bottom!) and then you pull up a view that has tabs showing ALL, CLASSIFIEDS, PLACES, etc."
I will say this again, and maybe you will read it this time, the only Search difference in the OnRez viewer is that the search button is on top. Search is defaulted to LL. It looks the SAME, it acts the SAME, it IS the SAME! Seriously. All this time you waste spreading false information with out fact. I wish I had that much free time!!
Hope this eases you a lil.
Posted by: TheDiva | October 19, 2007 at 07:59 PM
TheDiva is on the Sheep payroll.
TheDiva doesn't read. I don't care if I have to "wait" because um....it was viewable at VW07, other people like Hamlet have blogged it, and shown screenshots, and I get what the problem is, and explained what's wrong with it.
Do they pay you for after-hours evangelizing, TheDiva??
And...it's not the same because...it defaults to show ONLY A BOX WITH ALL FIRST. If it DOES NOT do that, no one has said it. And...the screen shots show that.
Oh, and that SHOPPING button to the right? What does that do?
BTW, the shop.onrez.com search is really terrible.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | October 19, 2007 at 08:15 PM
". . . is a subject Lindens or corporations or their metaversals never contemplate. They can't. Because they need people to stop participating in the inworld indigenous economy, if you will, and come over and buy directed, targeted, feted content from corporate sims, or not even care about buying anymore, as they get free land, free cars, etc."
Exactly.
The thing is, though, I think LL is courting the least stable sector.
I think regular residents are far more valuable, and longer-lasting, than the Lindens give them credit for. I think we are the world, in the most meaningful sense.
I think the corporate things could end up being a flash-in-the-pan, a sort of fad.
Not NECESSARILY, but definitely possible.
Then what - the Lindens look back wistfully on all the residents they cheerfully threw out with the bathwater?
I think they would have been better off keeping the good thing they had, rather than throwing away their original concept - of a world created by and for its residents, and of a thriving mini-economy - to supposedly go for the whole world on a platter, which actually just translates mostly into corporations.
Cause we get killed off more and more by the day.
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Haha Katikiwi, how wonderfully put!
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Maklin, Chosen Few also overlooked the entirety of the SL economy when he suggested the influx of corporations wouldn't have to affect us "unless we let it."
Just because corporations don't care about sales and give away items we charge for, and provide content, entertainment and games totally free, merely as ads for their REAL world products - naw, that won't affect us.
Just because we are individuals now competing with wealthy global corporations on the exact same playing field for the same eyeballs and dollars - no, surely that couldn't affect anything.
Not to mention the effects of sending people to proprietary welcome centers, or allowing them to log in with skewed ESC viewers with their skewed search.
But oh no - no need to let that sort of thing affect us, OR our pocketbooks.
Right.
So when your sales go down, well . . . just choose to not be affected. I mean, it's not like you have to VISIT these other places, and that's what counts, right? Just close your eyes . . . you'll be okay.
Come on, LL competitors - build us a place for US, before we get chewed up and spit out entirely.
coco
Posted by: Cocoanut Koala | October 19, 2007 at 08:24 PM
"Come on, LL competitors - build us a place for US, before we get chewed up and spit out entirely." - Coco
Amen! I am starting to think LL and SL are a lost cause. LL is gutting the search too...and you read the blog EVERYONE seems to love the idea. Then you realize the posters are A) BIGNAME retailers that will be the last to be crushed by the corps, B) Corp fanboi's employed by ESC and others, C) Tourists with no stake in the economy (aka, no land, no business).
People like you, me and Prok are right in the crosshairs of the labs...we get to take the bullet for their golden boys and girls at ESC and their parent corps. I just hope I am still around when the corps move on to the next 'hip' thing and LL is left twisting in the wind. I am not religious, but I'd call that Karma. :)
Posted by: Maklin Deckard | October 19, 2007 at 09:48 PM
Maklin,
You've summed up the problem with the 100 posters very well--and that is ALWAYS the problem in SL. The fanboyz line up and screech and defend the Lindens or some conservative conformist status quo devised by geeks. None dare contest it! It's like the thread about Cory Linden and the town hall, where I questioned libsl and the reverse engineering, and was booted from the blog entirely. They cannot handle a challenge.
Or there are sandboxers and kids and script kiddies who don't care about land or business or an economy, they just loaf and freeload.
Or you get the giants who are unaffected. But the average tier-payer IS affected.
Cocoanut, you put it very well, noting that we are playing "on the same level field with corporations" -- except...it's not a level playing field lol.
I don't wish LL harm and I don't believe in karma at all. I believe that they can see their errors and correct them. They have shown a capacity for that in the past. A far worse enemy of the truth and progress is this legion of fanboyz and sherpas who want to stick it to other sectors of the economy that essentially both compete with them and form a hedge against their excessive powers.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | October 20, 2007 at 02:13 AM
This is all very troubling. My sentiments and feeling's are very much like cocos, maklin and prok's regarding this sheep mobbing over the viewer. I'm just wondering, even though they state the only data they will capture is consumate with that captured by other other e-commerce sites, will the have the ability to retail our passwords given we are typing that information into their viewer.
I don't blame sheep for doing this, I blame the lab for enabling other company's to assume such roles of power over second life denziens. I'm not an important or well known person in SL, but if anyone in SL ever tells me they are using the sheep viewer I am sure as hell going to make them aware that the viewer could be impeding or restricting or limiting their view of Second Life, and make sure they know there is a Linden Labs viewer ready for download.
Posted by: Maxx Something | October 20, 2007 at 03:58 AM
"YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE A COPY OF THE SHEEP BROWSER. This is all heresy!"
This is the greated Fruedian slip of all time. :)
Posted by: Chav Paderborn | October 20, 2007 at 11:25 AM
/me rolls her eyes
Prok: You don't have a copy. Seeing pictures is one thing, but you'd have to actually use the thing to be able to form a coherent product opinion, and you don't. You're just being a mouthpiece of anything bad that you can find.
Posted by: Tenshi Vielle | October 20, 2007 at 12:10 PM
"I blame the lab for enabling other company's to assume such roles of power over second life denziens."
Yeah, Maxx. People don't like that. (Just as they don't like players running a government.)
Other groups assuming roles of power is just what open source leads to, and I think that sort of thing, more than anything else, will lead to the dispersal of residents.
It's one thing to be the willing patsy of the game gods, but quite another to always be finding yourself the patsy of god knows who.
coco
Posted by: Cocoanut Koala | October 20, 2007 at 03:07 PM
I trust no company who wishes to conceal an agenda that has an enormous impact on society. Sheep's browser seems to have just that, especially if it hinders newcomers from commercial aspect of SL the way that we see them now. I also have concerns about privacy. I konw what they said they will and will not do, but I want to know if they have the capability to retain our passwords since we are inputting said informaton into "their" viewers.
Posted by: Maxx Something | October 20, 2007 at 05:28 PM
"Prok: You don't have a copy. Seeing pictures is one thing, but you'd have to actually use the thing to be able to form a coherent product opinion, and you don't. You're just being a mouthpiece of anything bad that you can find. " - Tenshi
Flak much for the ESC? I noticed on the many sites with picture extolling the vitues of clean interface, simplicity, etc, you are not posting telling them how they cannot judge how good it is, but when Prok says something negative, Tenshi to the Sheep's rescue!
Works both ways, might wanna jump on some of those fanboi sites and tut-tut the folks making decisions about how good it will be for newbs about how they cannot make that call yet Oh wait, its only wrong when its against the sellouts or posted by Prokofy...Nevermind.
Posted by: Maklin Deckard | October 20, 2007 at 07:17 PM
Franky, I am amazed at the rabid legion of well, umm, sheep, who have latched on to and refuse to question or criticize a single word from the sheep's mouthpieces. While I admit I anxiously await the release of the viewer so I can firsthand see what impact it will have on SL, I also at the same time fear the implications the viewer and the sheep represent. I've spent enough time in corporate america to under the motivation of greedy little animals whose interested lie solely in exluding those who represent commercial opposition.
Posted by: Maxx Something | October 20, 2007 at 07:51 PM
Why am I not complaining? Because no one can point to public knowledge I can complain about without violating the NDA, and a few other fun things. So my blueprint: Wednesday, give you guys a chance to yell at me about something I didn't create (the new browser). Thursday, explain how to do almost everything the old browser does (basic menu enables). Friday, deep analysis on the possible economic impacts of the browser, with some user numbers, comments. All of this will be on the website listed here, also it is on my profile. Enjoy!
Posted by: Economic Mip | October 20, 2007 at 09:52 PM
The deepest menu-enable would be to not use the Sheep browser.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | October 20, 2007 at 10:50 PM