By Prokofy Neva, Virtualator
Screenshots of Second Life showing security orb messages as you attempt to sail down the river from Cub
This first part is reprinted from the forums because it's a thread that is a) likely to see my own content removed; b) be closed because of other people's content.
My reply to Leonardis Ducatillon:
I'm glad your class of wealthy Blake Sea sailors and other "round-the-world" sailors who perceive SL as only for yourselves and your friends were able to throw the Lindens on this one.
I remember the late MarkTwain White who was able to improve a Mainland area with sheer persistence and will and Lindens who met him halfway. Not everybody gets their island to hook up to the Mainland, however. That has to be understood.
But I think part of the problem here is you are not aware of yourself as "an interest group" who "does not represent everyone." I know that can be hard to hear, especially on the forums but let me step it through for you.
Not everyone sails; not everyone can afford the best land for sailing or the best boats; not everyone even likes sailing because of its annoyances; I personally don't like sailing, and prefer rail cars, because every time I look at something interesting on the Mainland I want to zoom into, I have to stop navigating the boat and then zoom or I fall out.
Rail cars just keep going, and you can then adjust your camera. And please don't tell me lots of technical stuff about how I could reset my camera this or that nerdy way or do this or that -- I dont want the experience of sailing in RL which is complicated and hard transferred to SL. In RL, on the East River, we call a boat "a hole in the water into which you pour money". It is the same in SL. The end.
The Lindens could have just not joined the continents because TO JOIN THE CONTINENTS MEANS THEY HAVE TO TIER THEMSELVES NUMEROUS VOID SIMS OR EVEN FULL SIMS. Or: they could have joined them 20 years ago when they first made them -- and for extra credit -- finish off their edges instead of leaving abrupt no-sail walls. They didn't, in their wisdom.
Am I for Linden Lab adding to their bottom line Amazon costs like this to satisfy a tiny cohort of people in their fun? No, I'd rather they pay full-time, benefited, alert, in-office and WFH staff to address the many serious problems on their grid which don't just involve the need to portage.
So why now?
If they joined the continents with Bellisseria, it was because they were desperate with this huge population of Bellisseria owners who bought these cookie-cutter homes like the Little Boxes on the Hillside Made of Ticky Tacky, and then began to get bored after they decorated their homes, couldn't make their own fun, and then looked for Things to Do. So frantic Lindens scrambled, because hamster picnics and such weren't grabbing everyone -- and sailing seemed like a reasonable thing. Maybe they could just get some people to run ferries. Etc.
But this largesse on the part of the Master served only a small cohort, nonetheless.
I mean, no one is busy trying to stop the portage in Portage, right, because no one cares about how you get from The Sea of Fables to the in-fact land-locked Seven Linden Seas adjacent to them, or how you solve the problem of a Linden dam built on one of the possible routes. Look at the map.
I occasionally hear irate sailors who get up that far in Sansara -- since you want to talk Sansara -- accusing ME of somehow causing this problem merely because I own part of the land under the dam. This is a fluke, or an Easter Egg, if you will. The Lindens put the land for sale long ago, as they do, they were heedless of sailing, water paths, etc. back then. Anshe bought it on the auction and resold it. At one point -- hard to believe now -- they put an elevated highway on pylons -- a cement monstrosity -- in the Seven Linden Seas area around Cub - Wakeley etc to join it up with the road by the Sutherland Dam and their telehub road in Brownlee. Naturally all the people who had bought prime waterfront and deep-sea water on those sims off their auction RIOTED and it was taken down and the debacle blamed on an intern who was let go. Honestly...
The fact is, the Lindens of yesterday did, unlike God, make things "That Than Which No Greater Can Be Conceived" -- things they themselves could no longer jump over or fix or smooth out unless they completely re-did 16 sims. None of us have asked them to do that in Hidden Lakes or other areas.
But those pushing Blake Sea narratives or "connect Bellisseria" narratives get their attention. Is that somehow the Lindens "sometimes paying attention" such that all of us should "give them credit for what they do"?
Of course not.
I think you also need to zoom out from beyond your own perch in the endless Linden Office Hours and ask what it means for somebody like SarahB -- also interested in sailing and continents and maps and things -- to keep making proposals and keeping having them closed. I'm not saying her requests are legitimate -- I have no idea without looking at a 100 things I don't have time for.
If you ponder the social good of "let's help newbies stay in SL" versus "let's allow a wealthy cohort sail between Bellisseria and Sansara," frankly, I'm with "let's help newbies stick" because that's good for the economy as a whole. There is PLENTY of sailing room in SL ALREADY without having to "connect the continents" but if some people stamped their little avatar feet and got them connected, great, but as always I'd ask: a) at what cost to the Lindens; b) at what cost to other special pleadings; and c) at what cost to the public good writ large?
EXAMPLE:
I've asked the Lindens in voice, in chat, in office meetings, in notecards, in Support tickets for some 3 years now or more to PUT BACK 'set home to here" on all their Welcome Areas, infohubs, and other Linden land areas including the Resident-Run Linden Telehubs-Turned-Infohubs (there are about 12-14 of those still). It was there from time immemorial; then all of a sudden it disappeared permanently on SOME but not ALL.
Yet "Set home to here" works on SOME of these areas but not others. I thought at first there plan was to put all the newbie landings on there most newest Bellisseria Welcome Area to drive them into Bellisseria. But they don't even turn it on for THAT hub, strangely. The reasons for this have to do with not a technical problem, but some political problem in their office, possibly relating to some Governance decision by someone who might not even be there. So the Lindens can listen in an office hour; tell you to file a support ticket; take the suggestion a few hundred other times, and never do the thing. It's their game.
Many of us here on the forums or out in the world can tell you of gadzillion types of suggestions like that. So to come on here and say "I got them to do mer-homes just by asking" is pretty misleading. Not everyone is a mermaid. Not everyone can afford a Linden home.
Having rented Legacy Mainland non-Bellisseria deep-water areas for ages, I can tell you that MOST PEOPLE are not interested or skilled enough to make a grotto and put their mermaid in it. Hard to hear, I know, but here's another secret: most people do not want Tiki homes, even much better-built Tiki homes of the type by Bee Designs. If the Lindens on their better manicured Mainland called Bellisseria, where they remove everything they don't like in real time (unlike their behaviour on the Legacy Mainland) to make grottos work for you, great. I have a grotto myself as a stamp venue. Likely I won't keep it. Like lots of other people churning through Belli.
I feel you are unfortunately manufacturing a disagreement here. Rather than tarring me with the same brush as people who may have rubbed you up in the past simply because I might enjoy the same past-time, perhaps consider what I wrote again and whether there is anything actually worth getting so riled up about.
You disagree? Fine, your prerogative to do so. No need to go overboard (no pun intended).
Some of the other suggestions you have made above do make sense and are beneficial. I don't think they should be mutually exclusive though, should they?
No, you need to hear every word of my "wall-o-text" bro.
Sit and read it again and readjust your attitude.
You don't get to go on the forums and claim you can sit in an office hour and make a self-serving suggestion and then get it fulfilled and whip up fanboyz activity here without a pushback from me.
Sail from Sutherland to Portage and then come back and tell me about it, big guy. I'll wait. Or go to Yelas and just, well, see what happens.
And on and on and on in areas you don't care about, don't live in, don't sail in, don't think are important, and aren't hooked up to Bellisseria.
I used to run a Mainland Appreciation Group location where about 5 years ago was it? 4? we laughingly put up a "Sail to Bellisseria!" sign. It was doable -- past that Pyri fun house sim the Lindens made -- with a huge amount of effort and workarounds and usually failed.
I even had a "Sail to Bellisseria" advertisement (as a joke) in a sim where I had an SL Public Land Preserve site on another sim where there are still people who want to buy my land who actually think the Linden road is coming through and will even lead to some kind of rez area in which you can "Sail to Bellisseria". I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell them.
Fast forward 5 years, and some areas now really can "Sail to Bellisseria" but that's only because Bellisseria enlarged and grew many sims larger and came out to meet them LOL.
It does sound like you're broadly in support of regulating minimum-warning TP-home and Eject orbs on Mainland too (at least at ground level), so I'm not sure why the annoyance. I know you're not in favour of all of the ideas in that feedback request, but surely that is exactly the point of such a thread - to give the Lindens something to think about. I am sure they will do their deliberations and not come to anything that will be harmful across the board.
And by the way, I'm by far not just a Blake Sea sailor, or part of that cohorot. I have also lived on SL Mainland for 20 years like you, including in Sansara and most of the other large continents too (with the exception I think of Satori). I have explored on foot, I have had homes invaded (so I know why people have orbs etc and can see they still need to be there in some form). Like you, I have also run rentals - although not to your scale.
If you look at Philip's proposal, it was precisely worded to see what the unintended consequences might be of what he was suggesting. Surely, that's correct approach rather than just blindly going ahead? In that sense, your suggestions are as valid as anyone elses - perhaps you should say them and contribute hopefully to the right decision being made.
I'm not wedded to this particular solution, so if there are better ones, let's hear them and try to get them enacted
People flying airplanes can fly above the level at which ban lines work. Hell, even I can fly above that level.
But then they would have less visibility of various sights below now, wouldn't they?
People flying airplanes are not necessarily in or around Bellisseria or Blake Sea or the "better areas". Imagine, I see them all the time and have their crashed airplanes on my rentals, often not on autoreturn at the customer's request -- and I return them. Same with drivers -- and same.
Nope. I'm not "broadly in support of regulation of minimum-warning or eject home orbs" and I think it's important not to pie-slice someone's precise or global opposition to these bounce fuctions into your particular lobbying point in some odd forums coalition-building of the unwilling.
No thank you.
Read my lips if you can't read my posts: I'm for deprecating the bounce script COMPLETELY from SL as -- imagine this! it was a thing! -- Philip once readily promised as he readily experienced their mayhem at our request. Then he was thrown by the code-cave Lindens who said "But elevators."
When was the last time you rode an elevator in SL?
So Philip promising a thing, thinking of it as a thing to solve with a string of code and universal deployment, etc. etc. -- this is a very old story for me and other through-hikers and long-haulers so I take it with "a grain of salt."
I'm also not for deploying a universal, system-wide "all ejections must wait 5 seconds" system because it won't solve every problem; it won't even solve a 30-second problem I've provided screenshots for, reporting from "protected" Linden water in a narrow passage. The notices of these devices in your face are as annoying as their possible or actual teleportation home or bounce. They can sometimes freeze or lock up your screen and crash you even if the orb itself doesn't sending you home.
To imagine that you can cook up some ideal "second interval" and deploy it globally is absurd. You can't. And you won't, given the static we can expect from everyone deploying them -- a huge, gigantic, large cohort that utterly dwarfs sailors, drivers, and small-time rental landlords who won't allow them. You realize that, right? DWARFS. ENGULFS.
The idea that you can stealth-deploy past them as Qie suggests is morally wrong and also politically stupid as they will eventually vote with their feet.
I am for deploying a completely different concept as I've already said twice here which is make such scripted devices simply not apply at 16 m2 or 32m from the property line edge so that boats, planes, people can pass on Linden "protected" highways, byways, and waterways unmolested. All of them. The narrow ones on the old Legacy Mainland. The wider ones on better-planned Bellisseria-continent hookups by those with the Linden hookups.
Since most people really only need "mah privacy" and "my home is my castle" only around the actual perimeter of their actual home, and maybe through a yard, sacrificing the 16m and 32m around the edges of their little empire shouldn't be such a big idea.
I've tried to get this notion enforced manually (it never will be globally as it is "too expensive") -- where, due to bad Linden terraforming set in stone (which they won't change), to apply by just widening an existing Linden river on ONE side so that people can sail AWAY from some ban lines on the OTHER side -- and the Lindens WILL NOT due this. And I get it. They have to say "our early Legacy Mainland adventure is set in stone and shall never be changed, forever and ever, Amen" -- because otherwise they'd have a million tickets with this or that blade of kudzu somebody doesn't like inside their house.
Philip didn't make a proposal. He responded by intensive lobbying from a few individuals not representing even an interest group with a QUESTION, a sort of pulse-taking or straw vote. I personally save my nagging of Philip on Twitter for really world-burning matters as I know that he doesn't have time or attention and for me personally, he might answer one in 50 tweets sent directly to him or replied to him.
I thought I detected a rentals business interest behind this post -- and I wasn't wrong. [The OP later denied he had any current rentals business--PN]. It's good to be transparent about your business on your profile and in the forums.
If you've been around for 20 years an experienced some of these nuisances, that's great, that's grand, but I'd be willing to bet real money that these nuisances do not plague your current rentals business as they may mine or the lives of end users, and your special pleading is related to how your business depends now -- on better places in better times.
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The OP's ardent pleading of the sailors' cause may not be related to his business NOW, but it is related to his intense social activities illustrated on his profile. The Lindens really need to end this custom of allowing either blank profiles of people who are in fact mains inworld with far more robust profiles that explain their special interests, or even alt or completely blank-inworld profiles that are utterly misleading.
If you look at the profile inworld, you see it is chock full of sailings groups and events for this person and their boyfriend/friends/alts/whatever they are. It's the center of his life. Understood, it's fun and relaxing and a great basis for socializing. We get how the Lindens immediately grabbed this and centered it in their everlasting quest for "Things to Do" and favoured it to sell their products. I don't need or want "Things to Do" and sailing is something I'm content to enable just for my tenants who -- I noticed, by the way -- are largely NOT sailors. I sometimes marvel that my tenants take prime waterfront, even deepsea waterfront that you'd think would be full of docks, boats, underwater mermaid grottoes, you name it, and they'd be sailing their asses off and asking for more prims for their new big-ass yachts but...no.
Most are NOT sailing. Sailing tends to be for the more wealthy and at rentals such as along Blake Sea. That's fine. I don't fear wealth disparity or differences in a world as long as it is regulated fairly for all. I will have more to say about this point in due course.
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And now, a coda to this wondrous post about such a lovely class of people, and I'm sure you will enjoy this love-ly mel-o-dy:
[13:09] Schickzal: (Saved Fri Mar 07 11:44:57 2025)Hello Prokofy ! Sorry to disturb you ! I am here with my canoe : Sutherland (202,31,21) and of course i am blocked. Do you know if there iare sluices in SL and where ? Thank you ! Bonne journée 👋
[13:14] Prokofy Neva: No there are no "sluices" in SL. And if you don't like the dam construction, call the Lindens who built it. Oh, they're gone from the Lab now. Well, call somebody. Let me think who you can call. Um, file a ticket maybe? with Support. And they may build you a sluice...someday. If you mean you are banned from the land, well, perhaps there is good reason? But you cannot canoe from Cub through Sutherland to the Sea of Fables, and that is not because of "Prokofy's Land". Prokofy owns a part of the dam merely due to a fluke but the entire road and dam are LINDEN LAND AND WATER and they do not change what they built, ever. Good luck. You can fly in SL. I suggest flying, with your canoe.
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[21:49] Schickzal: Hello Prokofy
[21:50] Schickzal: thank you for your long answer
[21:50] Schickzal: i dont hate the dam i like thee daam
[21:51] Schickzal: just wheen i saw it i think to sluices, sorry if the word is not good its google translator that gave it for écluses
[21:53] Schickzal: and thanks forr the suggestion but i will not fly with my canoe. What a pitty you think i am rude with my demand. Hope you are not like that in real life ! 🤣🤣 take ccaree of you
[21:53] Schickzal: ciao dude
[23:02] Prokofy Neva: Yes, I'm EXACTLY like this in real life, my dude because there is nothing unreal about Second Life; it's as real as real! And you need to read this thread -- and fortunately, I'm not stupid and realize you came and nagged me about 'sluices' after reading this thread -- predictably: https://community.secondlife.com/forums/topic/521142-if-you-are-unhappy-about-any-land-policy-or-account-perks-level-come-to-the-meeting-with-the-lindens-today-at-12-noon-slt/page/3/#comment-2871824 and others. The sailing lobby on the forums constantly drums up anger about the dams and curiously blames me for it consistently and has for years because they imagine this is "my land". Or that I have obtain some "special favour" from the Lindens. None of that is true as I explained. If you did NOT read that thread and are NOT engineered by the forums, that's great, but you are merely repeating the same hackneyed experiences of thousands of people before you. You have contacted me with the belief this is my responsibility.
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[23:05] Prokofy Neva: But once again I urge you to look up outside your boat and see the Linden owners of the land and road and grasp that this is how they made it. It is not me "blocking you". I lived for many years on the Erie Canal and know what a sluice is; what a check gate is; what all kinds of things are. The Lindens did not make them. If you want to move through the Erie and Barge canals in my native state, you use a series of "locks" also known as "check gates": https://www.waterwayguide.com/knowledge-center/news-post/12206/locking-through-the-erie-canal The Lindens didn't create working lots. Neither did I. I am not a sailor. I boat occasionally and if the boat can't get through I put it into inventory and fly. I will be exactly as rude as I need to be to people like you with a sense of entitlement instead of a sense of wonder. Good day, sir.
That link goes to Linden protected water by the Sutherland Dam.
There are many, many, MANY places to sail around SL with all kinds of affordances you wouldn't believe, with rez zones and channels and connected continents -- you would think all of a Second Life is a goddamn Moby Dick novel with Capt. Ahab at the help. And yet you get annoying ditzes like BJoyful stumping for STILL more rez zones for sailors in Bellisseria.
For the literature challenged, an AI interlude:
Captain Ahab is the iconic, obsessive, and vengeful captain of the whaling ship Pequod in Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick, driven by a relentless pursuit of the white whale Moby Dick, which he holds responsible for the loss of his leg
