A-Void-Ance

I see from looking at the Linden Blob that there's to be an Ides of March Concierge Party and also a new feature where you can buy void sims for $415 and $75 tier which will have double the old 1875 prim limit.

Now, that should cheer the average disgruntled Concierge customer who is tired of sims not working, crashing, HTML on a prim, which was so exciting at first, causing crashes, etc. But it doesn't cheer me. And it's not only because I'm Done With the Lindens, but there's more:

o I will never go to another Concierge party because the Lindens conspire and collaborate with griefers. I'm sorry to have to say that, because it sounds like absolutely tinfoil hate nuttiness and crazy batshit looniness, but the fact is, the last time I went to a Concierge party, with the best of will and a song in my heart and a thanks to Jack for his lovely builds and service, I had to endure total unadulterated bullshit from griefers, right in front of two Lindens, Jack Linden and Spike Linden, who only laughed. Maldavius Figtree, who I guess is a concierge customer by dint of having one sim or something (or he got TP'd in by Intlibber as a date), kept flying up and standing on my head, over and over, which is the favourite "look at me, Lindens, I'm under the radar, doing a griefy thing but you can't ban me for it" sort of thing. To add insult to injury, Alyx Stoklitsky, who I rather doubt is a concierge customer, but may in turn have someone come in as somebody else's "date," was then on hand to stalk me around, stand on my head, sit down on me wherever I sat down, etc. etc. Spike Linden looked on in glee. What normal people would do if they were hosts of a party, even if they didn't like you, would flick children like that off the server, instantly. It wouldn't even be a warning. It would be a flick. You don't act like that, period. Pixeleen Mistral indulged in that kind of gleefully malicious behaviour at some book party Uri dragged me to months ago, too. When people do that, and the hosts can't stop it, I don't go back to their homes -- ever.

Besides, I could never reach the high of my very first Concierge Party, where I got to dance with Lee Linden, it makes me gerrlish heart flutter ta remember it even now, alackaday.

o I've figured out my demands now for reinstating my helpful, constructive communication with the Lindens (seriously): a) unban me from the forums b) process my abuse reports on the grieftard ad extortionists who put up big-ass signs on the former extortionist-cut-up ad land...and took it off for sale. Even a good-faith gesture in either of these directions would be acceptable, i.e. processing of *one* of the complaints in one obvious area (Baileya or Alice) where it's deliberate stalking or even restoration of my posting privileges to Resident Websites (my original Terms of Restraint had me enabled to post in the classifieds and on the resident website, but Torley removed this when I questioned the heavy advertising of obscene w-hat builds with huge obscene penis pictures on Resident Answers. Torley never likes anyone to push back against libsl, w-hat etc because she feels instinctively that not only is the Motherland in Danger, the Tribal Lodge is Burning. Run for your liiiiveeees!

o I thought about the new void sims (we must think of a more attractive name for them -- the Lindens cleverly har har started calling them agagin "open sims" to compete with...opensim lol laff riot). But seriously, folks, does it make sense to put even US $415 into a void sim? Because the Lindens are going to opensource and...it's not clear what happens next. We could be left holding very big bags if we don't have $20,000 to spend on new T-1 high speed lines and a set of servers of our own to host our sim thingies on.

And that's it. The inability to think about, plan for, talk about, take thoughts and suggestions on, about the day after, the open sourcing of the community, if you will, and not just the hardware.

The Lindens can readily make an Architectural Working Group and discuss hardware and software til the cows come home.

What they can't do is discuss soulware (I don't know what else to call the thing that isn't the hardware, or the software, the programming, but is that thing that the arrogant tekkies call Problem in Chair Not in Computer, the PICNIC that is people. What do you call that stuff? Socialware? That sounds like something that I'm definitely against, politically.

Anyway, the concept for how people who own 3 or 30 or 300 sims but who aren't able, for whatever reason, or willing, for whatever reason, to hook up themselves to their own servers and lines -- what's in store for them? What about the people with no talent, indeed?

Here, I can't tell whether it's better for us no-talents to be buying islands, which are sort of stand-alone thingies by their nature, which the Lindens might be willing to go on serving or calfing off to one of their Lindesident spin-off start-ups, or whether the Mainland makes sense, which they might close at some point, or make impossibly expensive like some hugely costly toy train hobby set or something.

I'm sure Desmond Shang, who coins money off his steampunks, will likely buy up a raft of them, but Desmond, if it came to it, could put all his sims on to his own hosted servers, he'd be able to buy them, or get them, and run them. Having to go buy them, or rent them, or hire people to run them, well, it's a big new cost. One might assume such a cost, but...you can't plan for it when no one is coming clean with the plan for how they will open source.

This is avoidance of the inevitable: the need to face the customers and say, look, it was fun while it lasted, and we've enjoyed squeezing the last out of you, but it's over now, and we have to say So Long, Too Bad, So Sad.

Comments

[Prokofy Neva]

Oops, got that wrong -- the Lindens call their void thingies "Openspaces" not "opensims". lol

[Ciaran Laval]

Two things.

1. I'm surprised to see you not going to an event because of the actions of others, you've always truck me (despite our differences) as someone who won't be intimidated.

2. I wish you were back on the forums with the crap they've pulled tonight with mods deleting and locking posts about land scams.

Today's decision to allow estate owners the option to purchase void sims singularly and w/ double prims is a good thing. An owner could easily rent each sim out for 100US or more per month.
But you raise some good points. With the opening of the server codes which allow private grids to be created easier, will LL be viable? Will they sell out ? Will the new grids connect to LL grid? I think LL WILL be around awhile. As I have posted in other blogs, I think LL would like to become the Microsoft of virtual worlds. The standard-- which would be pre-installed on future PCs. Opening their code to others will result in numerous private grids-connected to the "mother" grid, LL.
Future web browsing and computing will be 3D and incorporated into this standard, pre-installed client..We will be able to work, research, relax seamlessly in this world WITHOUT having to open up so many windows on our screen. Instead of folders on our desktop, our avatar will open and manipulate in-world folders with our various programs in them. The virtual desk will have a working copy of MS WORD in which to create a document. I will be able to teleport to my in-world bank to pay bills, tp to a travel agent to book a flight, tp to a fully functional library to research,tp to YOUTUBE to watch video clips, TP to eBay to buy and sell , tp to Amazon etc...
Currently, what we see in SL is a shell of what is to come. I see so many offices and desks in SL that have zero function. We rez these because we like the idea of having a fully functioning working office in-world. Imagine using your keyboard to type an in-world document, edit a blog on an in-world screen, or simply writing a letter to a friend. Imagine connecting your RL tablet to your PC to sketch an in-world drawing, to write or draw ON your prims.
However Prok, you may be right. At this point, we are dependent on LL to stick around ..to not screw it up. Either LL will become another Microsoft or they will drift away like the Atari 2600 game console. A fond memory.

[Prokofy Neva]

1. Oh, hell, Ciaran, I'm not *intimidated*. Intlibber and the likes of them can go fuck themselves. If I worried about griefers, geez, I'd never log on.

No, this is about principles. It's about Lindens unable to stop obvious, direct, impudent griefing right in their face, and laughing. And that doesn't get a reward in my book. I just don't go back. I get done. *Shrugs*.

2. Not only was I permabanned from the forums in June 2005, you all were permabanned in September 2006, was it? When they closed General and Polysci and Land and Economy. The resmod system is corrupt and doomed.

[Prokofy Neva]

You know, anonymous poster, whoever you are, you need to put up a Second life first and last name.

And all your cheery-by stuff is nauseating, really. I've heard it a hundred million times. I don't care what YOU fantasize it will bring. I care that Linden Lab, whom I pay a fantastic $2200 or more a month in tier, TELLS ME STRAIGHT what they are doing. That's all!

All that imagine stuff you are going on and on again is worthless, frankly. Because it's vapour-ware.

I don't need the existing 2-D web to represent to a 3-D world as you suggest -- although this is a fond tekkie concept. We've already seen that this doesn't work, and creates all kinds of problems with servers, linkages, XML, data security, anonymity, blah blah blah. The regular 2-D Internet is just fine, not to mention the real bank is just fine with the paper check. There isn't enough firepower and capacity behind this now...and it may simply be too costly and too unwieldy to scale, and we don't need it.

Instead, what I need my 2-D banking website to do is to keep up its good work offering security of transactions, and customer service in email, and account pages and check copies. But what it can add is the ability for me to have a meeting with a banker in 3-D to solve some of the constant annoying problems that crop up with banks, and to talk f2f in avatar form about products like CDs or loans. I don't need the check to be on my little avatar's desk, it can stay on a 2-D page, my God, we're not children.

[Cocoanut Koala]

For some reason they aren't allowing anyone to buy these "openspaces" unless they already own an island.

Probably time for me to sell my mainland and get out of the whole thing.

coco

[Prokofy Neva]

Hmmm. I wouldn't sell your mainland with the store on it, I think a mainland store is essential for prefab sales, people on the mainland buy them.

[Crap Mariner]

- I've never made it to a Concierge Party. I'm not one much for scheduled events of that nature. I'd rather they implement a subforum or mailing list among that level of customer for rolling discussions.

Slim Warrior's forums have been great for getting musicians together to discuss issues. I'd think LL could take a pointer or two from what works out there.

The open spaces/voids sounds great for sailing communities or people looking to make low-cost private islet extensions to existing island clusters - a way to "activate" gridspace at low square meter cost. But I think you may see a lot of congestion and head-butting between island owners as the current grid starts to fill up.

- I'm not sure I would link up SL servers I'd run on my own hardware, but I would certainly use them as a test bed for designs, animations, whatever... a great way to make sure things work and line up and appear right without the cost of uploading or constant messages and IMs and notices from the groups I'm in. A nice quiet private sandbox... I think Stuart Warf is using an OpenSim that way for filming his vidcast on building... might work as a quiet photographer studio for others.

Not sure what the motivation for LL to push people in that direction... companies, yes. Private industrial zones off the ebaten path that, when the whistle blows, they can hop into the social net... got to ponder this a bit more.

[Desmond Shang]

Yes, I've been looking at options re: the voids and wondering what to do, quite frankly. I've got a huge waiting list of people interested in such voids. But that may be because I deeply subsidised them just like many of the other land barons have done.

If you have a mini-continent it is *expected* that you have open areas. You can rent them out, sure, that's fine - the residents who control them are gracious about letting others come through. But you gotta have 'em.

It's sort of like the free fancy coffee and the putting green at the Jaguar dealership. If you are in the upscale car business, you don't stick people in a greasy room with a candy machine and 1990's issues of Cosmo. If you are in the upscale land business, you don't hold back on open waters. That's just how it's done.

And I'm sure not going to double the tier on existing residents even if they get double the prims - so it's a great boon for the residents, but doesn't do all that much for me directly. Indirectly it's great - plainly put it does make the 12 void regions I have all that much more desireable. Talking to some other people renting voids, they were of the same mind - at least regarding existing residents.

I have no room for disliking the move anyway. Coincidentally, just last month I was asking the Company for exactly this prim doubling of voids. Reason why was that I had seen that the class 5 voids were not performance limited by their prim counts. The static primcount of the void regions is a mere shadow of the prims dragged in by avatars during gatherings - to little ill effect - so why not raise the static prim value of the voids for a 'win-win' situation?

Of course it's ridiculous to assume that I was the only person on the grid to ask for more prims in a region, or that the Company didn't already know about this technically, so don't scream FIC at me quite yet.

* * * * *

I'm not terribly interested in running my own servers. Why? Two factors.

First, I'll let someone else do it first, and mine through the hard bedrock of abstruse technical failures before I add risk. I'm doing okay without it. No resident is going to tolerate the tech issues if it only serves to pad my margins. And honestly, most of the residents are upscale enough that saving a few bucks for themselves isn't their goal. Instead they generally want a higher quality experience - they would rather I made things nicer for more $L, than turn into the Fast Eddie of cheap, glitch-plagued regions.

Second, as you say yourself, the grid is more than just servers. It's the people, the economy, all that. As I understand it, there would be a sort of 'portal' to private grids - maybe one region connected to both grids. (I may understand this incorrectly)

As such, if there was just a 'black hole' single-region gateway, or a 'checkpoint charlie' sort of situation - I'm immediately less interested. There is value in having open borders to one's neighbours, to the main grid map. This is the most wonderful thing about mainland too - its incredible connectivity.

In fact, if you look at the inworld grid map, that is my focus now - connectivity. Complementary, and even competing businesses cluster for synergy - and I am more interested in 'building a world' in the immediate vicinity of Caledon right now than vanishing down a rabbit hole.

That rabbit hole may be a great solution for some, but I feel that more isolation isn't the way - how the actual connectivity of private networks is done will matter greatly.

I forsee the holes in the grid largely filling someday, especially near the tiny 'core' of the first ten thousand regions or so.

[Prokofy Neva]

There'd be no call to double tier, Desmond, as the tier for you is only going up from $73 to $75 or something like that, the tier raise is negligible.

I can't feature buying voids to tack on to my islands because...then the people who used to see the synthetic sun rise on absolutely pure and empty waters surrounding the island are now going to see...the butt end of the other tenants' condos and McMansions. I'd have to zone half the void sim not to be filled with anything, and I'm not sure even that would work.

I can put the void sim anywhere, so they say, but then...it's not part of a growing community but just stuck there and a future transfer cost.

The only advantage of all this is that I may now be able to keep my existing void sim fully occupied at all times and charge a bit more for it now that it will have double prims.

I will scream "FIC" as its clear that the Lindens listen to people who quietly put in requests to them that they can see to their advantage, and stubbornly ignore people who campaign volubly about their duties that they can't see any advantage in. Not surprising!

I totally agree that whoever grabs 10 of these to make a cheap-ass tropical flat pancake empire on the down low will find himself plagued with constant tech difficulties. The reason they call them void sims or openspaces is because...they are not meant to be packed with 20 tenants maxing out the script times on their pose balls and diving dolphins and pets and horses and security orbs.

I don't see that the Lindens will likely be able to maintain this protected island-surround forever. I don't know how they're able to maintain it now. They'll move to symmetrical no-draw, as Daniel Linden called the whiting out of the world I don't like as a solution to the problem of seeing your neighbour over the next sand dune...

[Tammy Nowotny]

One interesting change which the Lindens just implemented is that abuse reports go to estate owners... and (although the press release was vague on this point) the reports now go ONLY to estate owners.

LL only deals with abuse issues on their own estates (i.e., the mainland.)

This leads to the interesting question of: what does one do if one is abused by an estate owner (aside from avoid that estate)?

I have luckily never been abused by an estate owner personally. However, I did have a case once where I was banned from an estate (and was even banned from a vendor space I was renting there), after responding to harassment from a friend of the estate owner.

[Prokofy Neva]

As for 'letting someone else run the servers,' I don't believe it. If your beloved Company quietly came to you and made a gentleman's quiet FICy agreement to hook you up for a fee to your own servers that they might even help you find a way to purchase in bulk, you'd do it, of course.

There are 16,000 sims on some 4,000 or 8,000 or whatever servers. The most logical way for the Lindens to "open source" and unload the hassle of taking care of these servers in the server farms is to...rent them to you with more controls. Or let you buy them, but keep them there in that same facility. You will be allowed to buy the condo you rented, and now pay more maintenance money, just like New York City, when your apartment building "goes co-op" and you get your independence and now have "property of value".

[Prokofy Neva]

Tammy, we heard about this for ages and ages in the G-team meetings.

But it's total hogwash.

The Lindens retain the access to the IP address and the real-life information of each customer -- and that's likely a *good* thing. Only that information gives you the power to ban property and fully, or even take real-life legal action.

If there is a griefer on my island, or one neighbour harassing another, or a former disgruntled boyfriend coming back to harass an existing tenant -- they come to me first anyway. What, they're going to file an abuse report into a gigantic queue that goes nowhere?! Of course they'll IM me and get me to immediately boot and ban the miscreant.

They do this in IMs directly to me, or in emails or notecards. So...now all that happens is they pull down a laggy template and try to type on a stupid very character-limited box with other rigid requirements like having to put in the name of a griefer that the Lindens already banned by the time they notice the grief prims?

Again, much easier for them to reach me on email or IM for me to quickly remove the prims.

And Tammy, for months and months and MONTHS (2 years even? because this conversation was started TWO YEARS AGO) we said THE EXACT SAME THING to first Daniel Linden, who led the working groups on governance back then, then Adam Linden (later Chadrick) who led the office hours on this subject, then Michael Linden,who headed the G-team (both of whom are ALSO gone now). Duh? Isn't it what any intelligent reasoning person would ask?

And their answer was: well, go on the mainland and file an AR there where it will work.

Wow, that's original!

And...think about it. If you are a tenant on an island and your landlord to whom you have to now file an abuse report is sexually harassing you or calling you racist names, you press refund or you live his little commune pronto. You might file an abuse report, but what are you doing on an island with an ass like that anyway?

You can go to the mainland and file a report on it, and in time...what will happen? He will go down for 3 days because he had...a PG rated island for a store and he called you a dirty word?

I mean, this is all pretty lame.

The incident you describe -- being banned from an estate even if you had a purchased deeded land there (a long-term lease) or a vendor in a store with the cube paid -- this isn't something that an AR can fix anyway, Tammy! You know that by now. The Lindens do not intervene in disputes between residents involving sales, rentals, relationships, accusations of libel, etc.

So the lion's share of unhappy tickets out of islands aren't any that the Lindens will deal on ANYWAY.

that's they the entire thing is RETARDED.

I hope you can see that while you are turning into this just fresh and new now, with curiosity, interesting hypothetical questions, perhaps even a positive outlook, I've been hearing it for two long years. Two long years in which the real griefing that the Lindens could be dealing with legitimately under their TOS isn't dealt with adequately.

This sort of nonsense is just make-believe. It's their pretend way of making it seem like they are freeing people and preparing them for the journey of hosting their own some day. It's bullshit, of course, because it does nothing of the sort. It's like bantustans.

[Charity Stohr]

Awww, I was looking forward to meeting you. ;_;

[Stroker Serpentine]

It really doesnt matter how much they lower the price of Open Space sims. They are absolutely useless for an commercial concern. I recently sold all the ones I owned because you cannot run scripts on them. Sure, you can build a park or a marina, but if you get more than 4 people with AO's and shields the sims come to a screeching halt. Caveat Emptor.

[Desmond Shang]

Sounds like you had class 4 voids, Stroker. The class 5's do better.

I've seen 100 people on a class 5 void - maxed - with about .97 time dilation and sim FPS of about 43-44 or so. Not kidding.

In that crowd - it was a Caledon event - I'd say maybe 75 AO's out of the 100 avatars there. If not higher. Granted, the animations themselves were a bit delayed after about the first 50 or 60 showed up.

The way I see it, script performance on voids is more a question of how the new Mono implementation is going to go. I think we'll see some rather remarkable performance gains soon - well, at least in the scripts that actually survive the transition to Mono.

As for significant commercial concerns... I haven't seen too many on void regions - if any. Boutique scale businesses would do okay. You are probably right about anything of any significant size, but WalMart Lost At Sea would just be kind of an odd thing, anyway.

* * * * *

>>"If your beloved Company quietly came to you and made a gentleman's quiet FICy agreement to hook you up for a fee to your own servers that they might even help you find a way to purchase in bulk, you'd do it, of course."

Prok, I'm not in any of their pilot programs except for the Havok 4 Early Adopter, which was announced openly and I applied and got in just like anybody else.

How do I even begin to explain this to you. Sometimes a corporation just has to work with some customers to work out technical bugs with a pilot program, because the cost of dealing with an entire userbase all at once on a new development is just too high. The alternative would be a costly duplication and simulation of the entire Main Grid. Prok, we don't want them to do that. Even GM and Ford run pilot programs with customers - it's just another fact of life in a capitalistic, relatively free market society.

99% of customers aren't that technical, and just don't care the details. I sure don't. I'm not an IT guy. My background is chipscale - embedded systems - coreward enough to make most IT guys faint. But likewise I haven't a clue how their VPN's or their load balancers or their asset serving works. I don't even *want* to know half the time. As such I doubt they would want to do any pilot programs with me.

So they shake down a new system with a dozen or so (or however many) friendly customers - so what? Prok, as evil as it may sound to you, such shakedowns do have their benefits overall.

If, someday after all that they had an independent grid package that made sense for both Caledon residents and I, sure, I'd consider it. But I'm not terribly interested in being a separate grid - I'm deeply involved in being a part of the main grid.

The most important phrase for 2009 I think would be this: "The main grid is the new mainland." Think of it that way. And in that grid-level sense, 'ich bin ein mainlander' too, Prok. Just on a new level.

Prok, I have the same tools at my disposal as you do (email, office hours, phone, saying hi inworld) and I am pretty sure I use such contact far, far more lightly than you ever have.

[Ciaran Laval]

The sales pitch for any independent grid is going to revolve around the ability (for a fee) to hook up to the main grid.

Sure some people will choose not to take up that option, but any commercial enterprise is going to want people to be able to find their grid from the main grid and vice versa.

Now the costs of this aren't going to be low. LL aren't going to bankrupt their business model by sending scores of people to independent grids with a low hook up fee that will undermine their own hosting solution.

[Prokofy Neva]

Um, no need to explain. I got it the first time. And let me say it again, it holds just as true:

"If your beloved Company quietly came to you and made a gentleman's quiet FICy agreement to hook you up for a fee to your own servers that they might even help you find a way to purchase in bulk, you'd do it, of course."

Sure, a program is open to anyone -- if they don't mind sacrificing their income to buggyness, which could hit very hard, if they only have one or two islands, and have as their customers not witty and enduring fellow steampunkers, but a huge variety of mainly ordinary people who don't have much time for buggyness and press refund because "Your land is buggy and laggy," they tell you (even if all of SL is broken).

Right you are, Ciaran. The hook-up fee could completely un-do whatever huge cost savings all the script kiddies think they will find with opensims.

This concept that companies have special feted little customer groups that they give advantages to in order to beta-test something is one of the deep illusions that Silicon Valley has produced in the tekkie mind -- illusions that...because they do it that way in California that a) they do it that way everywhere else or b) this is a normal way to run a society writ large.

You can't even argue that it's a normal way to run a company, though. Verizon, Con Ed, Typepad, these busineses based on technology and related to the Internet don't have special programs where they give businesses dependent on them special insider privileges that give them a leg up. They couldn't do that and survive.

The evil of it isn't even the privileging of the Smug Burghers like Desmond. The evil of it is that a) they think this is a way to run a society and b)this works for testing lol.

MMORPGs at least are open about it. The Sims Online makes Test City. Where they test stuff. Your stuff is wiped. You have triple scores and more cash in the game, but you can't take it anywhere. Anyone can go to Test City. lol.

The minute your customers can come somewhere else than from the Linden sign-up stream, from a website somewhere, from anything, you will be dropping this pretense of being tied to a grander online community in a heart-beat, Desmond. You are such a phony.

The moving of the phase of "the islands that are the existing Second Life who pay tier to SL" is "The New Mainland" means...the existing Mainland has to die for your sins, and the sins of the Lindens.

I don't believe anything that anyone tells me about their altruism or their future do-gooding intentions in Second Life.

The second comment above is from me, Razrcut Brooks. I do not know why it shows a blank where my name should be and I am not anonymous. I am logged into Type Pad and do not know why my name did not show.
Prok, your comment: "nauseating cheery" etc..ad nauseum is funny. It is also a by-product of communicating through a blog. No doubt in person you would have understood. I re-read my comment of what the future of web browsing will be. Trust me, I was not smiling when I typed it. Like you, I am completely satisfied with how we surf the net. Like you, I am also middle-aged and stubborn.. Prok, just because you don't want it to come does not not make it go away. The future of the Internet will incorporate 3d , virtual worlds. I am sorry to be the one to break this to you :) Posted By Razrcut Brooks aka Lao-Tzu

[Razrcut Brooks]

Prok, I do not know why, but at times when I post, my name disappears. It happened again in my above post.

-Razrcut Brooks

[Prokofy Neva]

Um, you are definitely retarded Razrcut. I've always said myself (read my many entries in this blog) that the future of the Internet will have 3-D worlds. Of course it will. It already HAS them duh.

But there is a legitimate debate to be had about *what kind* and *what system* they should be on. There is nothing whatsoever to say that it is "inevitable" that they must all be open sieves through which script-kiddies, anonymous griefers, thieves, and hustles must pour in, scrapin whatever content and ideas they can off hapless people lured into them to create.

They might in fact more and more be closed worlds, with more and more draconian rules to keep the criminal elements out. That isn't my idea of a fun world, but I could just as easily argue that THAT is the inevitable that YOU must embrace as you argue Thugs' World.

[Desmond Shang]

>>"The minute your customers can come somewhere else than from the Linden sign-up stream, from a website somewhere, from anything, you will be dropping this pretense of being tied to a grander online community in a heart-beat, Desmond. You are such a phony."

Bull.

You know, I've been well aware of the reg api (which allows signup from a website somewhere) waaaay before you ever knew it existed. Just by using that ultra-secret, conspiratorial, espionage-y method of... (gasp!)... asking.

And I haven't done it. There's no secret to it now either - if you look in the SL Developer's list (public to anyone) there are coders that will even set it up for you for a fee. Turnkey. Yes Prok *even you* could do it.

Here's your ultra-secret handshake into the club:

http://secondlifegrid.net/programs/solprogram/directory

Too bad I don't "lol" - this is almost worth one.

* * * * *

Altruism - Prok this isn't *about* altruism.

Let's assume for a moment that I was this heinous villain you make me out to be.

Well, gee, WHY would I ditch the main grid - what would I get?

- Caledon's tier is intimately tied to the grid economy at large. It isn't a giant residential cul-de-sac. I get massive amounts of tier from content barons who in many cases clear several hundred a month past tier in their own right. Their shops and their personal estates are directly, intimately tied to the SL economy.

Wander around, look at names - about half of Caledon functions this way from inworld $L. Do you think I'm stupid enough to cut that off?

- Very few are 'Caledon only' residents. Your typical Caledon resident will have a Caledon estate, some mainland, some land on another estate somewhere, and in many cases half a dozen full regions of their own. Why would I think it intelligent to try to drag everyone away from their main grid friends? Dumb. Move.

And Ciaran *is* right. Why would the Company offer me a discount as it would only undercut their own business? Take on this question - and if you have a great response, email it in to Phil, please! I'd love to be wrong on this particular point.

Prok, it's sad you don't get the point about testing. There *is* a separate beta grid that anyone can go to.

But if you don't see the difference between testing stuff on a tiny beta grid and massively multiparallel testing on the main grid by willing participants... I dunno, why not push for a 100 million dollar Beta Grid with 50,000 concurrent hamsters logging in as avatars or something. You can donate the first symbolic $L 1 toward it.

The beta grid as it now stands can't flush out all the problems as well as an active userbase just doing their thing. Drop beta grid code onto the main grid cold and you are gonna have a lot of pain. It's as simple as that. Remember 2003-2006 and Update Wednesdays? That's what happens when you do it.

[Prokofy Neva]

Some little funny follow up points:

Stoklitsky outing himself as PN all along (wow, wow, what a surprise!)

Stoklitsky in the spam box, as he is banned here, as a griefer of me and causing of damages:

"For the record, I got into the concierge party by sending an IM to one of the lindens present and asking for a TP."

So...the Lindens at the concierge party not only tolerated and asswipe griefing me and following me around and annoyingly sitting next to me, flying around my head, etc., laughing the whole time. They also TP'd in a known harasser, a PN member, a non-Concierge member, just for lulz.

And people wonder why I'm not going to the Concierge party?!