Plea for the best idea, which I expect/suspect is already in the making,...?
I really expect the Second Life Operations team to come up with better ideas for the huge new contignent Belisseria ect. accessible via roads, water and air. You have to think big about such planning.
Namely, the solution regarding the connections by air, water and road - which are currently not there along the entire West Coast on Satori (which will not be solved with the proposals placed above) - must be tackled in a much more structural way and I think the SL Operations team can only solve this with a wide two water sims waterway and one or two huge bridges between the new and the old land: between the continents
One can connect this new waterway in the South with Buffalo Springs and Carmine Sky. Then all the way up to Tuulikki and Atanua: there the connection with the old land has to end and from there you can continue your trip by boat or plane on the existing waterway, because from those sims the route is wide enough.
Actually, I am sure The SL Operating Team wil know how to follow the route with watersims,... In the South a complete fill of the gap with water sims and depending on how they place more North other (water) sims and take a good look at how all this can be solved halfway through Satori. As noted, I'm assuming a waterway that is at least two watersims wide! A new large open sea would then arise. In my view, such a new sea is very justified, if you have housed such gigantic numbers of people in an enormous new contignent and do not place normal infrastructural connections against it.
Moreover, in addition to the fact that on the west coast of Satori it is now not possible to fly and sail (or drive). I would like to say, there are people as well in that part of Satori, who currently lack all connections, and find it necessary to have those. They also pay their bills neatly to LindenLabs every month, they also want to fly or sail to the Blake Sea.
Just imagine what a huge improvement that will be and what new possibilities will arise. Such as for example inter-continental sailing and flying races. The essential connection to the Blake Sea, but also to the entire other ancient land, cannot be completed via the 10 meter wide ditch on the sim Lamashtu.
- Petros Aabye, Klytyna, Marianne Little and 1 other
3
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ExpandPlea for the best idea, which I expect/suspect is already in the making,...?
I really expect the Second Life Operations team to come up with better ideas for the huge new contignent Belisseria ect. accessible via roads, water and air. You have to think big about such planning.
Namely, the solution regarding the connections by air, water and road - which are currently not there along the entire West Coast on Satori (which will not be solved with the proposals placed above) - must be tackled in a much more structural way and I think the SL Operations team can only solve this with a wide two water sims waterway and one or two huge bridges between the new and the old land: between the continents
One can connect this new waterway in the South with Buffalo Springs and Carmine Sky. Then all the way up to Tuulikki and Atanua: there the connection with the old land has to end and from there you can continue your trip by boat or plane on the existing waterway, because from those sims the route is wide enough.
Actually, I am sure The SL Operating Team wil know how to follow the route with watersims,... In the South a complete fill of the gap with water sims and depending on how they place more North other (water) sims and take a good look at how all this can be solved halfway through Satori. As noted, I'm assuming a waterway that is at least two watersims wide! A new large open sea would then arise. In my view, such a new sea is very justified, if you have housed such gigantic numbers of people in an enormous new contignent and do not place normal infrastructural connections against it.
Moreover, in addition to the fact that on the west coast of Satori it is now not possible to fly and sail (or drive). I would like to say, there are people as well in that part of Satori, who currently lack all connections, and find it necessary to have those. They also pay their bills neatly to LindenLabs every month, they also want to fly or sail to the Blake Sea.
Just imagine what a huge improvement that will be and what new possibilities will arise. Such as for example inter-continental sailing and flying races. The essential connection to the Blake Sea, but also to the entire other ancient land, cannot be completed via the 10 meter wide ditch on the sim Lamashtu.
Thoroughly agree with you there Mike. Would be interesting to know at least if there are any further long term plans for additional water. Sailing can't be treated like a Linden railway line, seeing boats feebly struggle to keep to a track or squeeze along a tiny channel carved at the edge os a region. LL know that the lure of the water is big otherwise the explosion / demand of houseboats & Stilts would not have happened, or the myriad of rivers in some of the new land. There creation of Blake's Sea many years ago after the approach by the sailing community brought a whole new life to SL that still thrives to this day. Developing new, wider areas of sea would also take the pressure off the coastal areas of Blake where group purchase of land with Protected Water access for rental concerns is rife. There is another complication as you touched on, which is the one of aviation. Due to banlines, insta blocks, the interior of mainland is a nightmare for flyers, therefore they prefer to fly along the Protected Waterways, understandably. However this also means airports are contructed along the coasts, generally between 50 & 100m high (so that owners can try to make some money with mooring rentals beneath). Unfortunately we don't know how much abandoned land there is in the interior but no doubt LL have land management maps they can easily refer to - but if there is a general glut of dormant land in there, could there be a case for LL creating 'Air Corridors' across continents, the land over which they cross be subject to a build covenant (height restrictions, less Li, No Ban Lines etc) but then offered for sale at a reduced Tier. Yes, less tier revenue on the face of it but increased because in the long run there would be less abandoned land. Aviation Groups would see the practicalities of cheaper land (most of it tarmac & concrete) joined by guaranteed air routes. This may at last see some of the coastline revealed once more instead of buried under massive airports. (Just fly along the north shore of Satori and see how many airports stand at 60m along there with no coastline to be seen). I know this may seem at fist glance to be off topic but the creation of new Linden Home Regions should be done with a global picture - which I'm sure it is........ by the way has anyone seen that Evergreen container ship blocking the Belli ship canal? 
I disagree. New water sims north of Stromberg are not needed.
I was able to sail HMS Dragon (10m wide and 120m long) from Atanua southwards through the narrow protected water channel in Chloris and Atira to the new pier in Chiffre. And it was easy.
All you need to do is ride along the outer border edge of these sims at a low speed. As long as the root/physics prim of your vessel stays in the water channel, it's quite an easy manoeuvre.
Also, the wider water which lays between Satori proper and these coastal parcels is also fully navigable, although one parcel has a 45 second timer that will kick you home.
Using your minimap Property Lines filter to show parcel boundaries helps with navigation too.
I really like virtual sailing and up-wind you just need the space. I hope the Lindens read my plea and I hope they take into account essential amenities appropriate to the size of the world (read: Bellisseria) they've created.
- diamond Marchant, Klytyna, Nika Talaj and 4 others
- 5
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I really like virtual sailing and up-wind you just need the space. I hope the Lindens read my plea and I hope they take into account essential amenities appropriate to the size of the world (read: Bellisseria) they've created.
Happy to have you aboard team "connect the continents". At present, most of us are looking for any connectivity of Linden protected waters and if that is a mere 10m channel on a region edge, so be it. We are but 6 regions from connecting Bellisseria to the Blake YaY! These things are coming in baby steps, but steps none the less.
by the way has anyone seen that Evergreen container ship blocking the Belli ship canal?
ha ha I checked... all is well
btw, PBS Nova made an episode about it... Why Ships Crash quick take... wind blew the Evergreen toward the bank. It speeded up to get more control but the hydrodynamics of increased speed and the shallow bank resulted in an effect of sucking the ship towards the bank. Ships that did not speed up did ok.
usual typos
Just to be very clear about Mike's point, you did not "sail" your Dragon through those channels. You BOATED under power through those channels.
If you are attempting to actually sail, a10m wide waterway can be a nightmare of continuous tacking and jibing, something Abnor at least knows well. But SL sailors who are not absolute purists have options:
1. Change the wind so you can run downwind for the entire channel.
2. Get a sailboat where you can drop sail and proceed under power if need be - I believe all the Bwind and Bandit boats can. For verisimilitude, SL sailboats under power often have slower top speeds than actual power boats.
Having a rez zone at both ends of a multiregion narrow channel could help the situation, too - you could change to a speedboat until open water is available.
If you are attempting to actually sail, a10m wide waterway can be a nightmare of continuous tacking and jibing, something Abnor at least knows well. But SL sailors who are not absolute purists have options:
Yes. In groups such as the Leeward Crusing Club, we actually enjoy venturing into channels. As you mention, we have the option of charting a course ahead of time, configuring navigation HUDs, and setting the wind so that using sails (rather than a motor) works. We also make it clear that sailors are free to use any wind speed/direction and/or a motor. Below is a sample chart.
ExpandI disagree. New water sims north of Stromberg are not needed.
I was able to sail HMS Dragon (10m wide and 120m long) from Atanua southwards through the narrow protected water channel in Chloris and Atira to the new pier in Chiffre. And it was easy.
All you need to do is ride along the outer border edge of these sims at a low speed. As long as the root/physics prim of your vessel stays in the water channel, it's quite an easy manoeuvre.
Also, the wider water which lays between Satori proper and these coastal parcels is also fully navigable, although one parcel has a 45 second timer that will kick you home.
Using your minimap Property Lines filter to show parcel boundaries helps with navigation too.
I do not call that sailing, as much as transportation from A to B.
Riding on a border edge is very restrictive, the boat is set on a track it can not move from. You can move away from the edge, but in reality you can't because it is no room over long distances.
That is how I am thinking. The point is to sail as long a distance as possible.
But SL sailors who are not absolute purists have options:
Thank you Nika,
With races a Race Director [RD] tells us how the wind blows and what the speed must be. And of course I never cheat.
My plea is for the complete West Coast of Satori, Inclusieve from Imelza up to Stromberg. Those shoreline sims there are currently among the slums of Second Life. While it is so easy to solve that right away.
Edited by Mike McGregor- Klytyna and Eirynne Sieyes
- 2
So you want a two region wide Satori coastal boat channel from Imelza up to Stromberg? This would be a total of 38 water sim regions.
Who pays for these 38 regions? They aren't "free" just because they're empty water spaces. They would need space on the AWS servers, all of which need to be paid for each day/week/month/year.
I also once had similar hopes for that same route, but "only" using 19 regions, which was ultimately rejected because I was told 19 new water regions would be too expensive.
And you want 38 of them, plus possibly an additional 11 more north of Stromberg too because you're too much of a "sailing purist" to ride along some sim border edges?! 🤣
Edited by SarahKB7 KoskinenI also once had similar hopes for that same route, but "only" using 19 regions, which was ultimately rejected because I was told 19 new water regions would be too expensive.
If I may ask, who told you that? Was that on this forum and when (where)?
Through my own and other people's various Feature Request JIRA proposals to LL.
Edited by SarahKB7 KoskinenThrough my own and other people's various Feature Request JIRA proposals to LL.
I think I would take your Jira response as a not now (back a year ago?) rather than a never type reply.
I will be over the moon with a Stromberg connection and will happily use it for cruise routes, but I think Atanua still something to hope for.
The 10m wide channel from Stromberg is very narrow and especially so on the corner. Reliably traversing the route depends on the goodwill of landowners especially on that corner. As a recent thread illustrated many would see no wrong buying that land up and effectively blocking it with security measures. No other intercontinental connection are so narrow. A one region wide line of regions up to Atanua is a relatively modest proposal compared to the two region wide connections elsewhere.
My plea is for the complete West Coast of Satori, Inclusieve from Imelza up to Stromberg.
That is not needed by sailors as we already have a north/south route to Satori via new regions in Bellisseria.
Thought experiment... if stacks of protected open water regions were constructed there... what would actually happen?
1) Sailors would have a second north/south route.
2) Linden Lab would have additional expenses.
3) Coastal landowners in the newly connected regions would experience windfall profits.
Should Linden Lab have some extra regions, I would prioritize connecting Bellisseria to the East River in Sansara.
In an ideal virtual world where south-west Satori had a wider coastline, I would hope to see the respective parcel owners in these numerous regions being a lot more cooperative with each other and organising communal water space areas in each sim, creating harbours and boat channels to allow boats to sail in (and out) from the wider grid.
Edited by SarahKB7 KoskinenThe 10m wide channel from Stromberg is very narrow and especially so on the corner.
Here is a slightly revised map of the protected water path from Stromberg to Atanua, showing channel widths. There is a 90 degree corner in the SW corner of Eostre and a 90 degree corner in the NW corner of Chuginadak. We do depend on governance to keep these channels free from overhangs.
Those shoreline sims there are currently among the slums of Second Life. While it is so easy to solve that right away.
The sailing community winning friends as usual ...
Those shoreline sims there are currently among the slums of Second Life. While it is so easy to solve that right away.
The sailing community winning friends as usual ...
Many of those properties are quite nice 
There are occasional challenges when flying over them
ExpandHere is a slightly revised map of the protected water path from Stromberg to Atanua, showing channel widths. There is a 90 degree corner in the SW corner of Eostre and a 90 degree corner in the NW corner of Chuginadak. We do depend on governance to keep these channels free from overhangs.
It doesn't take much of a slow handover in that Chuginodak corner to end up on someone's land. There are 3 parcels there fortunately currently in sympathetic land owner's hands... but depending on their goodwill for an intercontinental connection doesn't seem wise as a long-term plan.
on another topic:
Anyone have a clue as to what we can expect next from LL regarding the homes? Will there be any additional styles this calendar year? How about updates to the Traditionals?
In the real world projects on this scale are exposed in the open by the initiators and project developers. The users may then shoot or embrace it. Apparently things are different in Secondlife. In this world we have to wait and see what 'people' (I don't know them) have come up with for us. In itself this is remarkable and at the same time the source of all speculation. It would be so much better if LindenLabs were a little more transparant, clearer. I can handle that. And it's always nice to be surprised!
- You, diamond Marchant, Petros Aabye and 2 others
- 3
1- 1
The sailing community winning friends as usual ...
I've tried to smarten up and open up some of this area, showed Diamond a part last year.
Most of the water is open, with most neighbours leaving it that way for passage.
I will put an LCC Rez post & clubhouse in there if it was ever open to the sea. Currently the area is openly adevtised as a place for mermaid community to swim around. Fendhal & Absorbaloff.
- Nando Yip, Aethelwine, Nika Talaj and 5 others
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This plea was also posted by one of the land holders in Khan (where there is a small corner of protected water connecting to the strip at Blofeld and Klebb).
The region owners at Blofeld have it all accessible. Most of the water at Klebb is currently as well, though a large parcel of land and water there is for sale, so that could soon become blocked.
I think it's wonderful that Bellisseria is getting all this water to go boating on, but owners of mainland are paying for Premium subscriptions, so it would be nice if they could get a bit more sailable coastline too.
Edited by Persephone Emerald- You, Feorie Frimon, Aethelwine and 7 others
- 10
Now that's very interesting, I never realised until now that there are protected boat channels along the coasts of Blofeld and Klebb. I'll have to go looking for more!
EDIT: I've just finished looking around all the 19 sims south of Stromberg and have confirmed Blofeld, Klebb and a tiny southwest corner area of Khan are the only sims with protected coastlines.
Edited by SarahKB7 Koskinen- You, Petros Aabye, Eleanor Anderton and 5 others
- 8
Apparently things are different in Secondlife. In this world we have to wait and see what 'people' (I don't know them) have come up with for us. In itself this is remarkable
Is it remarkable? It might be better to compare SL to other "games", rather than the real world (tempting tho that may be because of SL's extensive continents). There are many MMOGs that allow users to create content, but are there any that give users a voice in defining new content that the game makers are developing?
[Honest question, I know very little about other MMOGs]
Is it remarkable? It might be better to compare SL to other "games", rather than the real world (tempting tho that may be because of SL's extensive continents).
You are absolutely right, of course it is more realistic to compare SL with other games and not with real life. But I don't know anything about other 'games', if you can call SL a game? The moment you yell 'Hi' in my IM, you are already in my real life. That's how I feel.
I'm someone who even thinks it's a good idea to create an electable civilian board in SL, hence. An electable participation committee would be a good start. This is just a wish! I am not telling others what to do, please. Sure hell, SL would become ungovernable,...
I do know that the residents in SL build the content (partly), but at the moment they have nothing to say about the infrastructure. That's a little 'shame', I won't change that, my contribution may even be undesirable if I read some of the comments here. I'm just trying to create a better and, above all, optimally usable world. No, I don't pay attention to the costs. A new sea strait between Bellisseria and the Blake Sea (the old land) is also just a wish, but probably the best idea.
Edited by Mike McGregorYou are absolutely right, of course it is more realistic to compare SL with other games and not with real life. But I don't know anything about other 'games', if you can call SL a game? The moment you yell 'Hi' in my IM, you are already in my real life. That's how I feel.
The moment you sit down to use a game or any other application on your computer, you're already in your real life, just like every other moment between your birth and death.
I'm someone who even thinks it's a good idea to create an electable civilian board in SL, hence. An electable participation committee would be a good start. This is just a wish! I am not telling others what to do, please. Sure hell, SL would become ungovernable,...
This thread will be FOUR years old on August 20. It has provided hours of entertainment for those of us who enjoy speculating about something we have no real knowledge about. The policy of Linden Labs has been to provide no details about the future... just vague statements about "new themes" or something might happen "soon". A good insight comes from @Abnor Mole, who has shared that "regions must pay for themselves".
Given the current state of affairs, I believe this policy of opaqueness is entirely justified. In the scheme of things, Second Life is super tiny. We have but 40,000 active users on a good day... we could all sit in Fenway Park and watch a Red Sox game (baseball). Additionally, we are not growing which is not a good look for any business. The best we can hope for is that Linden Labs is breaking even so that the decision to shut us down is not a no-brainer. They do not have the luxury of telling us what they are planning, much less allowing us to participate in any meaningful way.
ExpandThis thread will be FOUR years old on August 20. It has provided hours of entertainment for those of us who enjoy speculating about something we have no real knowledge about. The policy of Linden Labs has been to provide no details about the future... just vague statements about "new themes" or something might happen "soon". A good insight comes from @Abnor Mole, who has shared that "regions must pay for themselves".
Given the current state of affairs, I believe this policy of opaqueness is entirely justified. In the scheme of things, Second Life is super tiny. We have but 40,000 active users on a good day... we could all sit in Fenway Park and watch a Red Sox game (baseball). Additionally, we are not growing which is not a good look for any business. The best we can hope for is that Linden Labs is breaking even so that the decision to shut us down is not a no-brainer. They do not have the luxury of telling us what they are planning, much less allowing us to participate in any meaningful way.
This is so insightful and a sad reality about Second Life. They're not giving us actual metrics so we don't know the actual growth rate, but if it is growing at all, I would guess not by much. In some ways I think Linden Lab is not trying to please the current user base, they already have our money and attention. What they want is to attract younger crowds, the tiktok-ers, etc. What do THEY want? Linden Lab is spending a lot of time and money attracting them with music venues (Club Arcane), comic regions, games, etc.
This is so insightful and a sad reality about Second Life. They're not giving us actual metrics so we don't know the actual growth rate, but if it is growing at all, I would guess not by much. In some ways I think Linden Lab is not trying to please the current user base, they already have our money and attention. What they want is to attract younger crowds, the tiktok-ers, etc. What do THEY want? Linden Lab is spending a lot of time and money attracting them with music venues (Club Arcane), comic regions, games, etc.
I think it should be at least moderately encouraging that Bellisseria is growing so fast. Remember that LL doesn't want to build new regions if they don't think they'll pay off. Every one of these regions represent about 20 people paying for a Premium subscription. Of course some houses will be empty, but LL must have data to make them think there won't be too many empty ones.
I suspect some of this growth is in preparation for removing the old Linden Home regions, but those aren't that full. What is being added is far more than what will be necessary to absorb those Premium account holders.
Edited by Persephone EmeraldThe moment you sit down to use a game or any other application on your computer, you're already in your real life, just like every other moment between your birth and death.
Yes and no. I think it is important to remember that for a WHOLE LOT of people, gaming, particularly SL, is all about escapism. In SL you can easily escape to be a completely new persona, you can use SL as a scratch pad to develop new traits, you can escape limitations of your real life to be the person that you may always have imagined yourself to be ... a person whom those who see you daily in real life DO NOT KNOW.
A person whom those who you interact with daily (perhaps not positively) ... cannot reach.
The moment you sit down to use a game or any other application on your computer, you're already in your real life, just like every other moment between your birth and death.
Now we're getting philosophical,...
(Sometimes I meet people that like to separate there SL from there RL)
All is Real Life, I agree!! This means there are (yes/no) computer games, and (yes/no) virtual worlds, but indeed if you look at it that way. That, then, is the moment my father impregnated my mother,... That, me, when I was 15, and bought a computer, is an afterthought. It won't be long before I die, I'm so terribly old already. Kiss, smarty pants. I think I have said enough and move on.
I think this forum is perfect, I am just joking!
Edited by Mike McGregorI think this forum is perfect, I am just joking!
1
1Second Life is not actively trying to attract the under-25s, they can't because that age group is playing games like FFXIV, Genshin Impact, League of Legends, PUBG, Smite, Apex, Fortnite, even Overwatch. They want to build a house? They play Minecraft or Roblox.
SL's largest population is aging and happy with opening our wallets to pay for fake houses and bodies/faces. We are what is referred to in the gaming industry as "whales" (FFXIV even has a flying whale mount you can buy in an ironic meta humor reference). One of my gamer friends calls people like us "wallet warriors" since we pay to win - and winning in SL means more land, bigger houses, more clothes/accessories, etc.
People over the past few years have been whisper-screaming "metaverse!" and I think the Lab figured they might be able to capitalize on this trend. I just don't think they can make it happen, and I think the whole idea of a true metaverse is a fallacy anyway. When a company only gets a couple thousand views on their You-Tube videos about their product, Twitch has banned them because mass amounts of adult content could pop out at any time, and there's no real way to make TikTok vids within the game - Linden Lab has bigger problems than being a part of the "metaverse."
The fact that the Lab is investing money in expanding Bellisseria is proof that the wallet warriors are the true kings and queens of SL and the ones who pay their bills. They've never been 100% forthcoming with what their future plans are about anything in the game, but that is typical of all gaming companies. Bless their hearts, though, Linden Lab keeps trying to evolve even as they come up with Premium Plus to help keep the lights on, the moles paid and the servers running while they try (once again) to figure out how to be more socially relevant. I truly wish them luck, after all I've been kicking around this game for over 19 years myself.
I think the LDPW has made the channel at SSP Landho and SSP Josie Banks wider than it was originally. Looking at the channel on the north east end of what might be a water passage between the Newbrooks and Chalets, I wonder if they'll widen it on that end too?
Remarkable progress by the moles, this is how far north the new land now extends:
The new area is largish. I flew around its edges and did not see any sharply cut off land, but Abnor is still there creating it, so didn't take pics. On its east edge it extends straight up for 4 new regions from the current regions, is 3 regions wide at its top, and then on the west there are a couple of stairsteps making it broader until it rejoins the existing houseboat regions. If that whole area will be houseboats, when they're done they will have built a continent of houseboats larger than Sakura now is.
Also, in other news, I've never seen this before. Most of the tile buildout area up in SSP land are offline, except for specially named ones. The regions seem to still exist at this moment, tho who knows, perhaps on their way out ...
I wonder if they'll widen it on that end too?
Hmmm. Considering that would essentially involve moving and redoing everything on at least half the region... including terraforming, parcels, infrastructure, and every bit of content squeezed by the widening of the waterway... AND another full QA pass... If the question is "Are we going to take a region that is completed, done and ready for release to make a water channel a few meters wider?" Let me see...
ExpandHmmm. Since that would essentially involve moving everything on at least half the region... including terraforming, parcels, infrastructure, and every bit of content squeezed by the widening of the waterway... If the question is "Are we going to take a region that is completed, done and ready for release to make a water channel a few meters wider?" Let me see...
I was not expecting all that anyway. Maybe one house changed from a 1024 m to a 512 m parcel and then the sidewalk in front of it moved back? But given that the region is close to release, I didn't really expect that either.
Thanks for the reply, and it's better than "Reply hazy, ask again".
Edited by Persephone EmeraldFrom the official SL Map website... https://maps.secondlife.com/index.php?q=Stromberg
Stromberg: "I've been expecting you, Mr Bond!"
SSPTiedown Inlet: "Eh? Err, I'm not James Bond and how the hell did you find me?"
Stromberg: "By using my Super Secret Pointy-clicky (SSP) SL Map machine!"
SSPTiedown Inlet: "Oh okaaaaay.... err, nice to meet you?!"
Stromberg: "And I see you've brought fifteen other spies too!"
SSPTiedown Inlet: "Are you feeling quite alright, Mr Stromberg?! It can't be easy being stuck out here alone for so very long."
Stromberg: "But Mr Bond! I am not alone! *manic laughter* This continent is full of other SPECTRE Agent named sims!"
SSPTiedown Inlet: *blinks*
😜
Edited by SarahKB7 KoskinenExpandFrom the official SL Map website...
Stromberg: "Hello there! I've been expecting you for a very long time, Mr Bond!"
SSPTiedown Inlet: "Eh? Err, I'm not James Bond and how the hell did you find me?"
Stromberg: "From my Super Secret Pointy-clicky (SSP) SL Map machine!"
SSPTiedown Inlet: "Oh okaaaaay.... Anyway, nice to meet you, neighbour!"
Stromberg: "And I see you've brought fifteen other secret agents too!"
SSPTiedown Inlet: "Are you feeling quite alright, Mr Stromberg?!"
😜
Two more regions! Two more regions!
/me does a happy dance. 💃 😃
I found Stromberg is also the name of a German comedy series inspired by The Office.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0428167/
Edited by Persephone EmeraldThere's a replica of the James Bond villain Karl Stromberg's secret underwater lair (called Atlantis) hidden in SL. But unlike in the film, it's not underwater. It's inside a huge volcano found in the final level stage sim of the Linden Realms game regions!
Try not to steal Magellan's whisky if you find it....
Edited by SarahKB7 KoskinenSSP Shell Yeah has an interesting island with a flat green top.
SSP Tiedown Inlet has a deep channel facing Stromberg.
Bugs bunny views the new land area 😂
Not much here for rabbits.
copy that.... just a two region connector and OMG!!!! we at Stromberg. They added rows of 5, 4, 4, and 3... total of 12 regions, mixed Newbrookes and Houseboats. Appears to be THE END of northeasterly expansion as this block is surrounded by water channels on all nothern borders.
Is it remarkable? It might be better to compare SL to other "games", rather than the real world (tempting tho that may be because of SL's extensive continents). There are many MMOGs that allow users to create content, but are there any that give users a voice in defining new content that the game makers are developing?
[Honest question, I know very little about other MMOGs]
FreeSO, which is a reverse-engineered and updated version of the old EA.com The Sims Online, which has a small but avid core of devs and users, put in the commuty voting program for "mayors" which used to (sort of) function in the original TSO. And then there are options to chose which regions go in the community and their themes and activities. It's not exactly democracy, because you need an independent judiciary and free press and free civil society for democracy to function, and no virtual world ever has that.
I continue to think that the JIRA is the worst place for land requests, as it is supposed to be for software and is quite undemocratic and wonky to use.
I think the Features Voting System we once had should be returned, and collect a simple up-and-down yes/no vote on each proposal, and when a proposal reaches X minimal votes, it should get a Linden comment of "can't do" or "do," whereupon it can continue to collect votes, but with the understanding is that it will not be a priority.
Edited by Prokofy NevaI think the Features Voting System we once had should be returned, and collect a simple up-and-down yes/no vote on each proposal
Prok, read the room. We are all wetting our pants over the new regions that just dropped. No time atm for rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic (sorry for the worn out cliche).
ExpandYou are absolutely right, of course it is more realistic to compare SL with other games and not with real life. But I don't know anything about other 'games', if you can call SL a game? The moment you yell 'Hi' in my IM, you are already in my real life. That's how I feel.
I'm someone who even thinks it's a good idea to create an electable civilian board in SL, hence. An electable participation committee would be a good start. This is just a wish! I am not telling others what to do, please. Sure hell, SL would become ungovernable,...
I do know that the residents in SL build the content (partly), but at the moment they have nothing to say about the infrastructure. That's a little 'shame', I won't change that, my contribution may even be undesirable if I read some of the comments here. I'm just trying to create a better and, above all, optimally usable world. No, I don't pay attention to the costs. A new sea strait between Bellisseria and the Blake Sea (the old land) is also just a wish, but probably the best idea.
I don't know if you're aware of the fact that one group of residents who started an RP group for fun called "Bellisserian Bureaucratic Bureaucracy" in fact surprisingly (or not, if you know SL history) morphed into *the* resident "civilian board" that the Lindens now deal with on Bellisseria on a variety of issues, whether "exploration" with their stamp game or events on public lands or various schemes to encourage premium accounts and Mainland "nature".
So you could try to get into this group, which seems to have a very severe vetting process both on the Linden side and the resident side (it's a hybrid group really) -- good luck!
As for Mainland proper, or "Legacy Mainland" (the Lindens do not treat Bellisseria as "Mainland" and it is not part of Governor Linden's large Estate, which is all of the old Mainland) -- nothing can stop you from forming something like the Confederation of Democratic Simulators, which is on islands. You can start it, and see who shows up. You can try to get the Lindens to pay attention. Good luck!
In the old days, there were meaningful Town Halls, meaningful workshops (such as on reform of the Group Tools) and meaningful meetings with Philip Linden and other top Lindens on vital matters such as a code of conduct for LL, a policy to end Linden endorsement of resident businesses (since abandoned), deployment of telehubs, and the telehub land buyback plan. I think since those days, following the "Virtual World Winter" after the boom in 2006-2007, there hasn't been anything like this "Magna Carta" effort of sorts.
I find there is only one way to "vote" in SL: 1) pay tier or 2) abandon land. When enough people pay tier or buy premiums, the Lindens keep doing the thing (Bellisseria). When enough people abandon land (continents without roads and water), the Lindens don't keep doing a thing (maintenance, building).
The only real way to get something done on land is to buy it, alone or in groups, and put in what you want, like Corsica South Coast and other such Mainland communities.
Again, in the old days, when there were furious fights over resources on every level, three main political groupings were formed to lobby the Lindens, and their antics on the forums cause the Lindens to entirely shut down "General Discussion" to control them (I'm not counting the griefers' group which led to Philip banning about 50 accounts in the early days).
Roughtly speaking, these groups were:
1) Leftists, consisting of oldbies, scripters, designers, Linden friends or even past/future Lindens, who treated SL as a "platform" and were known as "platformistas";
2) Centrists, who wanted regulated commerce, rules for Mainland to encourage nice verisimilitude - they were "worlders".
3) Conservatives, mainly big land barons who wanted less regulated commerce or policies favourable to themselves like bulk discounts.
Thus groups like "Metaverse Justice Watch" was born and hotly contested by warring factions.
Today, most of the loudest voices in these old groups are gone completely from SL.
I do think it is time to have a more conscious Mainland lobbying group, which is why I started Mainland Appreciation Society, by I really don't have the capacity to lobby Lindens other than by those two methods I mentioned above: 1) pay tier 2) abandon land. Pro tip: MonCierge meetings are NOT a place to lobby Lindens, as these Lindens are among the most powerless, with the least amount of clout within management.
The real action is in the code-cave meetings like "Web Developer" or "Server" etc which are meetings largely populated by computer specialists but which could really use some attendance and sharp questioning from informed "norms". Follow all the YouTubes thoughtfully provided by Pantera on YouTube; read all of Inara Pey's summaries, and jump in with pointed requests.
It's shocking to compare and contrast the MonCierge and the code meetings. In the former, very nice and helpful Lindens listen to your woes, and try to suggest remedies, but are reduced mainly to telling you to file a ticket and then fill the silence by reading off the Linden blog which we already read.
By contrast, the code meetings often have more Lindens than residents, and powerful Lindens who actually run the code and decide on their own about the features from that code, without even "troika" input (and I'm not even sure which Lindens make up the troika these days). Firestorm developers laze along the decks of Linden offices, or skate around or jump with their shoulder pets while Lindens lavish them with praise for doing this or that code chore and ask how fast they need this or that little thing to be coded *and it is*. It's just SHOCKING.
Of course, the things they ask for and do sometimes seem obscure, like "fix avatar foot shadows" or "the rising moon is blue" or "jpegs of X size won't load under Y and Z odd circumstances". Yet occasionally, they casually announce that they're "going to get rid of the ability to comment on reviews on the MP" -- because some diva's feelings were hurt in these meetings and stamped her little foot until it was done.
Nota bene: when these very forums were recently nerfed, and there simply *had* to be some outlet for protest and Linden engagement, the Lindens steered those people who could break away during the work day to a Web meeting (coders) and wheeled out Kiera Linden to field questions. This at least created a pipeline in theory for complaints by emailing her (see how far that goes).
As I said it is SHOCKING. But it all cries out for engagement if you have the stamina. I go to one meeting a year. I may increase this to two. But I'm old and sick. You sound like a strong young fellow.
Edited by Prokofy NevaProk, read the room. We are all wetting our pants over the new regions that just dropped. No time atm for rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic (sorry for the worn out cliche).
I'm not answering the pants-wetters but the person who made the interesting comment, McGregor. The "room" that you imagine needs to be "read" consists only of the tiny percentage of people who can play "Game of Homes" with multiple accounts, not the bulk of even the Bellisserian residents.
The issue of how the continents connect up, and the issue of how waterways on Legacy Mainland function especially on the way to Bellisseria, remains BURNING. Read THAT room which isn't only in this thread. As a non-sailor (I just ride the railroads or my Megapuss on the roads), I don't have a stake in this issue, except to note that apparently major commercial/reputational forces seem to be at play, as it is a windfall for both the sailing communities and their commerce and those landowners fortunate enough to have bought land proximate to these areas where they can put rentals.
The Lindens still see the Mainland useful as a safari destination and a place to prospect for new premium accounts. I don't notice them turning away the large payments on the auctions for Blake Sea land and any sailing land on the way to/near Bellisseria.
Edited by Prokofy NevaThe "room" that you imagine needs to be "read"
This room is called "SSP?" and the topic is regions beginning with SSP.
This room is called "SSP?" and the topic is regions beginning with SSP.
I realize how you view SSP as a topic within your own business realm.
But SSP as a topic inspired two other residents, namely Mike MacGregor and Nija Talaj, to comment that there really is no mechanism for having a say in how the land is managed, or how/when/what styles are rolled out with Bellisseria, and how unlike RL this. And "how unlike RL this is" is the theme song of the entire Metaverse these days, and makes it or breaks it. So I replied to them as I think their concerns are valid.
And when a tasty-looking new region is rolled out, it always invokes all the usual mixed feelings of awe coupled with envy of those who can play "Game of Homes" avidly with hundreds of accounts and dollars, and the kind of sailing challenges that persist in and around those SSPs. SSPs are not in a vacuum.
You can always AR a post you find "off topic" and see if you can get the post removed.
Edited by Prokofy NevaYou can always AR a post you find "off topic" and see if you can get the post removed.
Don't tempt me, Prok. If I report your posts for being OT, the Mods might decide to lock the whole thread instead. It's safer to just ignore them.
Don't tempt me, Prok. If I report your posts for being OT, the Mods might decide to lock the whole thread instead. It's safer to just ignore them.
Well, not everyone is as prudent as you are, but I do hope those with their hands at the ready on the AR button AR the people to whom I responded, not just me, but ok, I saved the entire thread and it can be discussed on my blog if you like.
The SSP regions (closed the public ones) are now saying offline / invalid location. This is a major change this week after months of not much activity over there. Only a handful of regions remain it seems that still online.
The latest group of sixteen regions have appeared on the inworld SL map.
They are from top left:
SSPCurrent Sea, SSPShell Yeah, SSPTiedown Inlet,
SSPSteelhead Shoal, SSPBlack Dog Island, SSPNightwind, SSPBluebottle
SSPTwin Coves, SSPSolomon Reef, SSPSriracha, SSPClear Day,
SSPSlushy, SSPThunder Quay, SSPManatee Wharf, SSPRhonda Beach, SSPRum Deal,
Edited by SarahKB7 KoskinenI'd also like to point out that Blofeld and Klebb regions in Satori continent both have fully protected west coastlines and are worthy of being connected to wider sea regions too.
This in turn could prompt private parcel owners in regions to their south to cooperate, redesign and rearrange parcels as communal water areas which allow vessels to move between Satori's coastal regions, such as they currently are, using Blofeld and Klebb as an exit/entry point to elsewhere.
However, should LL be in a particularly generous mood, they should fill the entire void between Satori and Bellisseria with sea regions instead, which should help reduce the anticipated amount of inter-parcel and inter-region arguing and disputes between Satori's landlocked inhabitants about water travel rights. 😜
If private parcel owners were able to cooperate and had set their land to allow for a pathway along the coast for travelers there wouldn't have been a need to bypass that area in the first place. They could have done that already when Bellisseria was connected to the mainland the south and they still can. They haven't done that because there is no guarantee that any one person along that route could not shut off access at any moment. Simply having a vestigial strip of protected coastline does not warrant adding 4, 2, or even one region at that location for the same reason. Sadly, such a connection would most likely only ever benefit the owners of the land directly bordering that region and them alone.
Everyone along that edge can still can have open access to the water to the south if they can all agree, and there is nothing stopping you from approaching them to see if they are open to coming to a mutually beneficial agreement to do so. I wish you luck with that because all it takes is one person to say no.
Edited by Abnor Mole- You, Aethelwine, Alexina Proctor and 9 others
- 7
- 5
Not following. If you put a protected water region to west of ANY of the Satori regions south of Stromberg and north of Imelza, it's the same. You are simply increasing the real estate value of those parcels. That existing 12m channel in Blofeld and Klebb is irrelevant. Oops, Abnor said it first
abnor said it first
YaY square houseboats
.
Edited by Persephone EmeraldThe island at SSP Shell Yeah looks to be taking shape as an airstrip. There's a rez zone at the tip of the V. I wouldn't be surprised to see a water rez zone, but I don't think there's one in this region yet.
The island at SSP Shell Yeah looks to be taking shape as an airstrip.
woo hoo!!!! and a rez zone already installed.... did two takeoffs and one landing... all is well
Edited by diamond MarchantI know what everyone hoping but part of me thinks Abnor teasing us and next regions to go in will be like this:
- You, Always Incognito, diamond Marchant and 5 others
- 4
- 4
People are enjoying sailing in the new regions before the houseboats go in.
Meanwhile, Tasha found this scary-looking Eye in an undisclosed SSP region in Fantassia.
I've just had a look at the world map to check the extent of private region relocations showing how much space is available to further develop Bellisseria. The second map shows the same in the north east where the new land is being developed. Everythng below the red line is clear.
I wish you luck with that because all it takes is one person to say no.
Indeed and so it is! I did investigate this option. Imposible 
You know Abnor, and you know that, there are people in SL who automatically pay their Premium Membership every year and own a 1024m2 free plot. But they never log in. Try to reach them? Sorry that won't work.
And there are people on the coast there between 3 high walls and a lovely see view. There land is made privat. And you think starting a conversation about making a passage , Naah.
@Lloyd Overland Here's one I made earlier, with recent additions.
You sound like a strong young fellow.
I understand you've bumped your head countless times. My comment is one I make often, everywhere and nowhere. I wonder who are all those people who make decisions for others. And can we join the conversation? Participation? Apparently that's not the intention, I can see that, I'm not blind. No, I'm not young enough to go through this life as an activist...
I do pay a little under 500 USD to LindenLab every month, without earning a cent back. If everyone did that, the strait I envision should not be a problem.
Thanks for the history lesson.
Indeed and so it is! I did investigate this option. Imposible
You know Abnor, and you know that, there are people in SL who automatically pay their Premium Membership every year and own a 1024m2 free plot. But they never log in. Try to reach them? Sorry that won't work.
And there are people on the coast there between 3 high walls and a lovely see view. There land is made privat. And you think starting a conversation about making a passage
The powers-that-be will always take advantage of the atomization and fractiousness of civil society to prevail, and can always count on the factions not getting along, or people being indifferent, or one person blocking everyone else to give himself a sense of power in a powerless world.
So there's only one thing to do, behave "as if" you already had this civil society and build it out. Eventually it becomes a fait accompli. There are all kinds of methods you could use, in and out of SL, to try to get those coastal blockers to come around -- maybe it's worth IMing them all? but that's not really the way to do it. The way to do it is to get so many sailors in a lobbying group that concertedly requests this that the endless invocation of the need to herd other cats eventually gets dropped. After all, there were quite a few merchants who wanted the telehubs to remain, but the Lindens listened to mainly oldbies who wanted them to be eliminated, demolishing the hubs and buying back mall land purchased around them.
Of course, precedents don't have much weight in a land with no independent judiciary etc but still.
It seems to me that the sailors of SL have been accommodated more than any other group. They got the Blake Sea, first as Linden seas kept clear but ultimately involving adjacent land which they converted into the highest value real estate of the grid. Time and again, sailing routes are created and the continents in fact have been hooked up here and there. There are a zillion house boats and stilts and waterways. Aren't there enough sailing routes already? Does everybody *really* have to sail to Bellisseria all the time?
Looks like this latest SSP is in fact accommodating the airplane lobby and what looked like pristine sand bars now have been ruined by air strips.
ExpandI understand you've bumped your head countless times. My comment is one I make often, everywhere and nowhere. I wonder who are all those people who make decisions for others. And can we join the conversation? Participation? Apparently that's not the intention, I can see that, I'm not blind. No, I'm not young enough to go through this life as an activist...
I do pay a little under 500 USD to LindenLab every month, without earning a cent back. If everyone did that, the strait I envision should not be a problem.
Thanks for the history lesson.
I think it would actually work in reverse of what you say, but it's theoretical anyway.
The way to do it is to get so many sailors in a lobbying group that concertedly requests this
Now this is a good advice, the rest is rubbish (with you around it's not easy to stay positive).
Edited by Mike McGregorCan't agree @Prokofy Neva. We are all in here for a specific reason, whether it be sailing, rental RE, etc. Myself, it's landscaping & design. None of us want limitations.
ExpandIf private parcel owners were able to cooperate and had set their land to allow for a pathway along the coast for travelers there wouldn't have been a need to bypass that area in the first place. They could have done that already when Bellisseria was connected to the mainland the south and they still can. They haven't done that because there is no guarantee that any one person along that route could not shut off access at any moment. Simply having a vestigial strip of protected coastline does not warrant adding 4, 2, or even one region at that location for the same reason. Sadly, such a connection would most likely only ever benefit the owners of the land directly bordering that region and them alone.
Everyone along that edge can still can have open access to the water to the south if they can all agree, and there is nothing stopping you from approaching them to see if they are open to coming to a mutually beneficial agreement to do so. I wish you luck with that because all it takes is one person to say no.
Private parcel owners have the responsibility to cooperate and set their land to allow for a public pathway along the coast for travelers? No, I don't think so. It's a lovely idea but people paying tier for their own land aren't all going to be cool with leaving a water passage for public travel through their property. This is a next to impossible ask... I agree with Mike here, many people can be unresponsive and even the best advocate/activist for this idea, to hopefully sail unencumbered south just to sail north again, is a lesson in frustration.
The northern west coast of Santori, meaning sims that already have northern ocean access to the Blake Sea north, and all the sims connected to the Blake Sea, are going to massively benefit from being able to have an ocean route to the south. The land prices there are high already and after a southern water connection through Bellisseria they will go up even more. Don't exclude the southwestern Santori folks because you think they will get a windfall if they sell their land or because you think they are too selfish to donate water easement through their private parcels. Everyone benefits from a new water route between the new SSPs and the southern west coast of Santori. I'm hoping in the future that there will be a water passage of pure ocean water between the new SSPs and Southwest Santori all the way north/south.
Indeed and so it is! I did investigate this option. Imposible
You know Abnor, and you know that, there are people in SL who automatically pay their Premium Membership every year and own a 1024m2 free plot. But they never log in. Try to reach them? Sorry that won't work.
And there are people on the coast there between 3 high walls and a lovely see view. There land is made privat. And you think starting a conversation about making a passage
There are also people who have their land blocked from entry and yet have off-sim obstructions hanging over onto Linden land or water.
ExpandThe powers-that-be will always take advantage of the atomization and fractiousness of civil society to prevail, and can always count on the factions not getting along, or people being indifferent, or one person blocking everyone else to give himself a sense of power in a powerless world.
So there's only one thing to do, behave "as if" you already had this civil society and build it out. Eventually it becomes a fait accompli. There are all kinds of methods you could use, in and out of SL, to try to get those coastal blockers to come around -- maybe it's worth IMing them all? but that's not really the way to do it. The way to do it is to get so many sailors in a lobbying group that concertedly requests this that the endless invocation of the need to herd other cats eventually gets dropped. After all, there were quite a few merchants who wanted the telehubs to remain, but the Lindens listened to mainly oldbies who wanted them to be eliminated, demolishing the hubs and buying back mall land purchased around them.
Of course, precedents don't have much weight in a land with no independent judiciary etc but still.
It seems to me that the sailors of SL have been accommodated more than any other group. They got the Blake Sea, first as Linden seas kept clear but ultimately involving adjacent land which they converted into the highest value real estate of the grid. Time and again, sailing routes are created and the continents in fact have been hooked up here and there. There are a zillion house boats and stilts and waterways. Aren't there enough sailing routes already? Does everybody *really* have to sail to Bellisseria all the time?
Looks like this latest SSP is in fact accommodating the airplane lobby and what looked like pristine sand bars now have been ruined by air strips.
Damn, Prok. I agreed with you up until that last line.
You know yourself that there is nothing pristine about SL land. It's all created textures and prims. The only pristine part of SL is the open water surface and the empty sky. We don't even know if there will be 2 airstrips or only 1 when the Moles are done with that hill, but we can expect it will be nicely landscaped.
Why do you have to hate on sailors and air vehicle flyers when their "lobby" as you call it opens up lanes of movement for all of us? You talk about people needing to work together, but then you stir up division yourself.
The stilt/chalet region at the southwest corner of the chalet area is now named Indecent Sea and has no border on it. Didn't see any other named ones on a quick wander, but it does mean there are still signs of life in those unreleased regions.
ExpandPrivate parcel owners have the responsibility to cooperate and set their land to allow for a public pathway along the coast for travelers? No, I don't think so. It's a lovely idea but people paying tier for their own land aren't all going to be cool with leaving a water passage for public travel through their property. This is a next to impossible ask... I agree with Mike here, many people can be unresponsive and even the best advocate/activist for this idea, to hopefully sail unencumbered south just to sail north again, is a lesson in frustration.
The northern west coast of Santori, meaning sims that already have northern ocean access to the Blake Sea north, and all the sims connected to the Blake Sea, are going to massively benefit from being able to have an ocean route to the south. The land prices there are high already and after a southern water connection through Bellisseria they will go up even more. Don't exclude the southwestern Santori folks because you think they will get a windfall if they sell their land or because you think they are too selfish to donate water easement through their private parcels. Everyone benefits from a new water route between the new SSPs and the southern west coast of Santori. I'm hoping in the future that there will be a water passage of pure ocean water between the new SSPs and Southwest Santori all the way north/south.
The Lindens set up this conflict vector long ago when they rolled out more and more continents on the auctions with very narrow coastlines where there were very thin strips of Linden sea or even the entire water was sold. On Sansara, there are very definite Linden protected waterways. On Heterocera, less so. The parcels of mainland and sea often were auctioned separately or then got separated. People abandoned water land because it wouldn't sell or rent and it seemed it was never taken for years on end -- until the Lindens began a campaign in the last year to get rid of the abandoned land as fast as possible. It could have been done differently; it wasn't.
Even a small creek through sims named for the Great Lakes (which have no lakes on them) becomes blocked by one person and the Lindens refuse to cut into their actual Linden land there that is earth, not water, to remedy this situation, because if they answer one ticket like that, they figure they will have thousands.
They could have made it possible technically for 32m all the way around a parcel (or even just 16m) not to take effect from group- or list-access-only ban lines or a security orb. Imagine if such easements were automatically incorporated and couldn't be overridden. It would change the nature of the Mainland dramatically. There would always be a route between parcels. The prims within those sections would be available; they could even be built on. But they couldn't be bannable. That way people could still have their privacy and block to intrusion, but people attempting to pass by their land could get through. Likely that's not practical to code, but I have sometimes suggested this to intractable neighbours -- cut a 32 m2 wide swathe around your parcel on the waterside, leave the no-access off there, put it on the rest of their parcel. I've never found anyone to accept this solution, but if it were imposed by Lindens, it would be done.
On one river I know on Sansara, there is Linden waterway, but because it meanders and land was sold in a dog-leg, suddenly sailors are unseated because of someone's ban lines, causing the yacht club to put up a big ugly red sign saying WARNING BAN LINES which ads to the general havoc.
Once again, when will the constant windfall benefits to sailors end? Never? Blake Sea was an enormous windfall, the gift that keeps on giving, and yet it has proved "not enough". There is plenty of sailing opportunity in and around Bellisseria. Why does every area have to be navigable? The Santori people would get a windfall like anyone else with this proximity and some enterprising barons are even now snatching up parcels.
I have land on a corner of Sansara which the Lindens never made navigable and never will, although if they linked up the water between their help islands and the nearby sims, this would be a boon for travel and a windfall to some owners (not me). But I have never considered this "our right". The people in Santori are no more likely than anyone else to collaborate and prevent one person from blocking the coast.
The idea that "everyone benefits" from sailing is misplaced because not everyone sails or cares about sailing or is content to sail around just the 7 Linden seas that might be near their home.
Of course large land barons and those with dozens/hundreds of accounts to play Game of Homes shout loud enough, they will likely get their way. Yet the Lindens have appeared time and again to say that the Amazon move cost them more than their old server farms and that they don't have a budget to just casually lay down dozens of sims here and there to connect continents.
Edited by Prokofy NevaLooky, a map from the FUTURE!!!
ExpandDamn, Prok. I agreed with you up until that last line.
You know yourself that there is nothing pristine about SL land. It's all created textures and prims. The only pristine part of SL is the open water surface and the empty sky. We don't even know if there will be 2 airstrips or only 1 when the Moles are done with that hill, but we can expect it will be nicely landscaped.
Why do you have to hate on sailors and air vehicle flyers when their "lobby" as you call it opens up lanes of movement for all of us? You talk about people needing to work together, but then you stir up division yourself.
I wonder how a comment that I don't *care about* sailing turns into "hate" of sailors. I have many tenants who are sailors and flyers. I sail very occasionally. It's just not a priority and believe it or not, there are many others for whom it is not a priority.
The lobby -- indeed a lobby -- has been granted enormous windfalls in the past (Blake Sea, and various more recent "connect-the-continent" projects). The idea that "everyone benefits" when only a small number of people actually sail there is ludicrous. It seems like a public good only in a world where you require waterways to move commercial traffic as you still do in cities like New York on the East River. There is no objective public benefit to waterways; it's for one group of residents to enjoy as recreation, and for an even smaller group to enjoy in the form of lucrative land sales and rentals. I personally don't wish to get into this corner of the land business and never have, so I assure you it's not "jealousy," but I point out the obvious economic dynamics at play.
Edited by Prokofy Neva08/10/2022
Failed Linden Mainland Experiments Over the Years - UPDATED
Riderless pod spamming a Heterocera sim.
By Prokofy Neva, Virtualtor
Jack Linden: "thankfully there will always be a mainland. v"
The nearly 20 years of Second Life's history are replete with ambitious experiments on the geographically-contiguous Mainland, both by Lindens and residents, and I think it's safe to say many of them ended in tears because of unintended consequences ("the tragedy of the commons") or damages to this or that legitimate group interest.
There is always the inherent problem of the Lindens' contiguous Mainland and its many discontents and support tickets, way more than the minimal Linden staff can handle, and their seeking recourse in favoured resident volunteer groups who are not particularly deserving and generally serve themselves and their friends. This ultimately causes the Lindens to disband them or cease rewarding them.
The Linden Greco-Roman style palace in Tenera is a particularly vivid example. (I have my Silva Beach community across from this build in Sylvia). It housed the 8,000-strong (!) group of selected resident volunteers, managed by Lucy Linden, who were used as volunteer mentors and translators into "foreign" languages and other chores. It was essentially abandoned as a group and this Linden left the Lab, but not before one enterprising more-equal-than-others volunteer used the advantage of the land group settings to build a home in the sky for himself and his friends, not noticeable unless you happen to scan all levels of the sky regularly as I do as a nearby landlord. It's a gorgeous build and I'm for leaving it exactly untouched and for NOT reviving any volunteer groups of this nature.
This week, the ambitious owner of Operation Mainland (operation! like a war!), Feorie Friman, rolled out yet another project, involving a "subway in the sky" or metro of TP centers across the grid to "help explore historical Linden builds." It's actually another resident who has quietly and efficiently catalogued and promoted those old builds -- Aethelwine on the forums, who is also involved in the sailing community -- but Feorie is poised to coopt all that labour now into her "Operation" and "drive traffic" to old Linden builds in the hopes that, as the now-deleted thread revealed, she will be allowed either to put her stamp game in them (so far she has been blocked as the Moles favour only the BBB) or even be allowed to "repurpose" them or help in deleting and improving others. I personally don't want to play with empire-builders who work with forced and deceitful cheer combined with blatant suck-ups to Lindens (she may have mercifully removed her off-key singing tribue to the Moles) and other powers-that-be in this small pond to buff a resume that it is hard to know where else may be used. I originally took this in better faith than I do now -- I have withdrawn all my sites from "Operation Mainland" and blocked Feorie inworld. I note that the Lindens leave her provocative and deceitful post up about what Patch Linden allegedly said about "repurposing Linden builds" but removed all my content. I do get how it works. The only way to win the game is not to play at all.
So the "subway" follows her other ambitious projects, some of which are neglected (like the stamp game, which never got Mole love, and is now sprawling and hard to follow), and others which outright failed, like the plan to buy up and "beautify" abandoned land for $1/m, and flip it as a completed "community" for slightly more $$, which didn't work because people can do this themselves for less and with less overstuffing of landscaping to save prims. Having failed to get Mole sites in her stamp game, Feorie ambitiously bought into expensive Bay City, the urban enclave built by the Moles and populated with their best friends, whose land is among the most expensive in SL. It's not clear to me that she has been lovingly received there by Maryanne McCann and the other worthies, but like draws to like. Aggressive persistence can pay off in SL.
In recent weeks, she and other Bellisseria royalty launched an ambitious Linden-loved NatureCon, building on her recent funding (or only management of?) the Corsica South Coast venue Glastonbelli in collaboration with Bellisseria. This may or may or may not fall into disuse -- the history of Corsica Coast South, formerly Campbell Coast, has been tortured with the usual resident high-tier woes and land baron exploitations and is now going through yet another revival (I own some small amounts of land there which I rent out and sponsor some roads there).
Feorie, who was born in 2009 and took part in some little-known building projects for more than 10 years without fame, may tire completely of SL and go back to RL or to another world more suited to her ambitions (this may take awhile to come into being). Or perhaps she will live and thrive and finally obtain that Linden/Mole love she so desperately seeks.
Fortunately for us all, the Mainland is still vast enough and untilled enough that anyone can maintain or start their projects without impingement from these aggressive management types, and that's what I and others do. I maintain my 14 or so sims' worth of land across 55 regions and do not look for Linden love and try to walk around Linden indifference or hostility. I show my appreciation to them by payment of tier which I try to cover from my small rentals business and content sales. This is still possible; I encourage you to do this all on your own without interference as it can be hard, but very rewarding. I maintain about 3 sims worth of public land open in the SL Public Land Preserve which I believe is the oldest "nature preservation" project in SL and certainly one of the largest.
At one level, a project like the "Sky Subway" is "useful," and can't likely aspire to grid-wide or multi-continent presence unless the owner has endless resources to buy sometimes highly overpriced land. While focused on "the community" and "historical Linden sites," it *is* on resident-owned small parcels of 128 or higher to show up in search and fit a small "subway" build. Feorie might or might not use it to advertise other aspects of her business or her commerce circle's business and non-profit projects enhancing reputation. That's how SL works and it's fine -- people need to get tier paid and need to draw people to their projects in a world with crippled search and advertising capacity.
But I think it's important to pan out and take a wider look at the history of aspiring grid-wide projects and how they impact the Mainland, and mainly for the worse. It's not merely about this or that person's project. It's about the nascent Metaverse and how that replicates. Philip Rosedale has been very vocal about what the Metaverse should not be and really alone in the wilderness of Metaversal wannabee Big IT -- and that is he is adamant that it is "not for everybody," should *not* be built on blockchain; should have capacity for collaborative builds and a contiguous nature and so on.
I think he himself could focus more on inworld governance and democracy. His own world is replete of examples, some of his making, of the "tragedy of the commons" which isn't just about one person's sheep eating all the grass on the commons but about the nature of the commons itself and how it is governed. It is not merely about commercial interests but the interests of non-commercial reputational enhancement such as to gain recognition and social control in a closed society.
Here is some history.
Generally, the Lindens' formula seems to have been in the last 4 years to throw up their hands at the ills of the Mainland, some of which came from conflict vectors they themselves created, and to drive customers to Bellisseria, their zoned and managed communities with limited types of housing and landscaping and prims. Then, seeing they needed to still get reluctant Mainlanders to take the plunge to Belli if they had premium accounts (or not), they devised the BBB (Bellisseria Bureaucratic Bureaucracy) "Embassy" system, the stamp game, and NatureCon and "friendship" between their legacy customers on the Mainland and their more-resourced "Game of Homes" players in Bellisseria, and encourage more premium accounts and "exploration of the Mainland" as "things to do" is the perennial problem of all Metaversal engineers.
While these all have their pluses, they have decided minuses in that they funnel Mainland traffic to a select few groups and ignore or avidly block others, and they tend to turn the Mainland into a safari, where you make short, safe trips to culled and vetted locations in the hands of a few, and where land, if it is to be bought, is to be managed closely by select groups with restricted activities.
But some of us do live here. And not all of us want to stand by the roadside trying to sell our beads and glazed pottery and posing with tourists.
So let me cite some of these historical experiences over the years, not necessarily in chronological order and see if better proposals and outcomes could be sought.
o The Lindens created a "dwell" system whereby visits to people's original venues acquired points which then converted into actual monetary value in the awarding of Linden dollars, convertible to real cash. This quickly became gamed so that the most popular clubs, not necessarily the most beautiful, artistic builds, got the "dwell". On group land, the dwell could either be distributed equally to all members or accrue only to officers. Islands did not yet exist, so this was about the Mainland, and when they did come into existence, few afforded them, so it remained a primarily Mainland experience. The Lindens retired this system when they realized they weren't sponsoring art and education but wet t-shirt contests.
o The Lindens created a reputational point system with plus- or minus-ratings of points in categories like "appearance" and "building skills" which then eventually degenerated into popularity contests where people even paid for the points or held events and point parties where they could collect more points. Neg-rating became a form of griefing. The Lindens first nerfed, then removed the system.
o Now here's where it gets more interesting. The Lindens permitted a Features Voting System separate from the JIRA in which anyone could write in plain text a proposal for addition of features to SL or venues. So these ranged from "a pony in the welcome area," the famous meme directed at Lindens to "give the residents everything they want", to sandboxes or roads in continents where they were missing. This was beneficial and interesting but began to get sprawling and develop duplicates. People could still hold voting parties and even pay for votes, as they pay for "Picks," but the system was big enough to be self-correcting and not reward such gaming (the way the original Bitcoin was supposed to work). Eventually one empire-builder enamored with Capture Roleplay sites named Angel Fluffy (!) decided to take over the system. Concerted tyrannical forces always appear in virtual worlds to make the Internet be what they want, under their dominion.
So he scripted his own system to scrape the feature voting pages and volunteered to "get rid of duplicates," creating lists for busy Lindens that they were grateful to receive. On the way, he simply removed proposals he didn't like, or as on the JIRA, felt the Lindens "couldn't do," thereby sparking a lot of dissent. The Lindens nevertheless let him "clean up" this sprawling Feature Voting System which they couldn't devote staff time to do. When some groups of people saw how one resident was allowed to change and destroy one system and saw their favourite proposals missing, and began loudly protesting, the Lindens got tired of the forums drama and one day Torley Linden simply deleted the entire system, not even allowing an archive.
The Lindens created the telehub system, based on Philips admiration of famous urban planner Jane Jacobs. These functioned as planned to enable exploration and shopping and expansion of residences across the grid, but also became highly valued adjacent real estate selling for a fortune on the open auctions, so that only two large mall builders (Anshe Chung and Blue) began to win every high-priced auction because they had the investment of venture capitalists or their own resources. Rentals at these malls were also high priced, yet they democratized the oldbie guild system of stores very far from telehubs (which is why they vehemently protested them), in which older players would give newer creators a corner in their store until they got on their feet sufficiently to buy land themselves and attract visitors.
o Facing protest particularly from oldbies in older locations on the grid about lack of traffic to their stores, usually cloaked as concert about malls as avatar traps and builds that were laggy and hard to get around in, the Lindens built a whole new series of telehubs providing more access at least on new continents, which were more bucolic, with 4096 m2 of grassland or waterfalls instead of concrete around them. They built things like the Juice Bar in Brownlee. As fast as the Lindens could build these, the same two land barons and perhaps a handful of newer ones bought up this land.
o The Lindens sponsored a contest to win a sim without purchase price (then $1500 for islands and more for good Mainland auctioned sims) but with ongoing tier costs (also higher then). Very few residents responded, because of the high recurring fee. The famous "socialism on one sim" experiment of Neufreistadt was launched, as well as an experimental game sim whose owner then got fed up with the limitations of SL's code and performance. The socialism culminated in terrorism by one oldbie who destroyed all her builds made on the sims -- communes in this controlled world often end this way as I can attest to from personal experience -- but the group re-organized and has what is claimed as the "oldest democracy" in SL, although Luskwood is a democracy of sorts, too, and if democracy needs an adjective like "socialist" which is even hidden in this case, you can guess it's not too democratic. One of its other short-lived members more on the right-wing sidse also stirred up havoc on the forums and JIRA before leaving SL.
o The Lindens sponsored a building contest to build their inworld office by Waterhead, won by Adam Zaius' group, not surprisingly. It's one of the builds that other oldbies now itch to remove or refurbish and is no longer used.
o The Lindens promoted the SLRR and various rail enthusiast groups were born, notably the Virtual Rail Consortium in Tuliptree. I had the idea to have a building contest for a mall or park or other public property along the borders of the SLRR to encourage its use. When I publicized the contest on the forums and inworld, it was horribly griefed by people wishing to discourage any "realistic" or "business" use of SL in any way. While the Woodbury griefers and 4chan types were among them, I think there were Linden alts among them. Nevertheless one Linden (Garth Fairchang, who died in RL) gave me a model train to use in promotion. I persisted with the contest, but in the end I had to drop the "railroad" concept and awarded the build to Aliasi Stonebender who created Solar Plaza in Hartwick, and supported a resident-made railroad through 4 sims for a time.
Meanwhile, the Lindens coopted my idea and sponsored their own contest to build railroad stations along their route, for which they would donate the land (in my plan, residents would tier their own land, but Lindens will forego income rather than let go of their favourites, through whom they hope to rule their empire, like Russians through Central Asians). Some of the most interesting historical builds resulted, such as the train station by Fallingwater Cellardoor in Neumogen.
o Another resident-made railway got a lot of Linden support and support from me in the form of donated land and through passage through rentals land. Nevertheless, this resident blighted the view with huge pillars and overpasses, forcing move-outs and abandonment, and then left SL himself, abandoning all his hard-won land. The Lindens grabbed it and dubbed it "Linden Right of Way," but never built anything on it. For a time, a clack of furry RR fans badgered me to give up land to put another railroad through, and urged the Lindens to re-start their railroad. Michael Linden appeared to mark the "Linden Right of Way" in Grote, but then not long after, was let go from Linden Lab (which was a shame, as he was a leader of the Moles and a long-time and experienced Linden). The furry caucus ranted that Lindens "sold me land" (they didn't; they auctioned some of their own protected land and a flipper bought it, and I bought it from him). To date, the "Linden Right of Way" remains fallow.
o The Lindens originally had two zoned sims, Brown and Boardman, where a 512 could sell for US $100 on the auctions, it was astounding. The same people who were in TSO's old Sim Arts, of which I was a member, Ingrid Ingersoll and Barnsworth Anubis and some others decided to "beautify" these sims and built a lot of Craftsmen-type houses to fit the suburban tree-lined streets. They began a campaign to get Jack Linden to tear down the old, dead palm trees (he removed a lot but not all of them) and re-build the marketplace to be less ugly (it now has wooden stalls that are passable) but he left a few odd old Linden things like Ryan Linden's very early prefab home which is more like a stall than a home you can move around in. The strange SL logo hand that came looming up at you from every mailbox on the properties was removed. It never really looked THAT great and its curious persistence in selling for high amounts doesn't seem justified, given that Brown is General and rents poorly. The Lindens ceased to police a rule they had there that skyboxes could not be put up in the sky (it's General) and never policed much the rule that commerce could only go in the MP area.
o The Lindens built another zoned area called Schermerhorn which also had houses to provide it a better look but residents bought the land and returned them, as they always do. This area was wildly popular and then suddenly wasn't, maybe when Linden Homes were built. The same thing happened at the sci-fi themed adult continent of Horizons, which sells for a fortune and has easements, beaches, and roads that help it look better, and even a "something to do" Linden-made game in the middle, but it has little use. Linden zoning efforts basically failed until Bellisseria, where Moles finally got the right mixture of house styles, easements, and better looking landscaping than in the original Linden Library -- and forced residents to keep homes good-looking by not allowing them to return them, although supply a half dozen or so styles in each theme to chose from.
o The Lindens retained the traffic system from the old "dwell" program, although they retired their leaderboard of the "most popular venues" as these were gamed with "camping" and other rewards system. But at a certain point they modified search to be more random and contain other algorithms not based on raw visitor numbers so that search would be "more fair". Then they began slowly to break search in many ways by incorporating Google Service Appliance. As fast as Lindens changed search, residents would develop new ways to game it and still do.
o The Lindens created a "First Land" system whereby only newbies of X age could buy 512 m2 of land to get started in SL at $1/m. They made postage stamp sheets of this land on new sims, which then quickly filled up with untended plywood and ugly builds. They tried to scatter them around more, but oldbies created alts and bought them. Soon land barons could see the advantage in making a lot of new accounts and scanning sims to buy First Land and flip it, sparking anger and protest on the forums. The Lindens tried cracking down on this, in part with their rule (which they say still applies) of "five accounts only" presumably on one credit card.
o The Lindens rolled out a map in which Anshe and other more alert land barons could see a PTP system was in the making, so they bought up telehub land and this time sold it, rather than renting it. Unaware players, thrilled with land going for sale which had previously been out of reach, bit hard. When the Lindens announced PTP and the impending removal of the telehubs, land barons, especially the bilked newbie barons protested loudly and threatened a "bait and switch" lawsuit as the auctions continued right up to the announcement, despite the plan. The Lindens offered a compensation of $7/m for all telehub land, or the prospect of entering the program for resident-run infohubs. The Lindens then rolled out new sandy coastal mainland, forcing Anshe and other land barons to now spend all the Lindens with which they had been compensated on that new desirable waterfront area, or lose business. The Lindens always win. It's their game.
o In the early days, the Lindens allowed 16 m2 parcels by -- imagine this! -- allowing all abandoned land to disintegrate into numerous 16-m parcels. The theory was that people on that sim would come and take only what they needed for a few extra prims. Instead, such land was abought by ad farmers and ads were placed all over, sometimes in the middle of pristine waterfront. Extortionist prices were put on the land forcing people to "buy back the view". One enterprising fellow put "Impeach Bush!" billboards on the extortion-sale land, figuring that liberal Lindens and many residents would not successfully complain about them and get action. Another less "idealistic" ad farmer just put a big happy face on his billboards. New continents began to sell far less on the auctions (back when entire sims were auctioned) because their views were so quickly despoiled. Land owners lobbied for four long years for the Lindens to develop an "ad farm" policy, which they eventually did, although it is unevenly applied today and certain seemingly non-commercial things like obelisks infest the grid even more.
o When the Lindens created the brand-new, pristine "nature" continent (then) of Heterocera, the Moth Continent with builds from the Magellan legend and the famous Moth Temple in Iris, they placed NO telehubs. You could not teleport there by any means and had to fly long distances -- which in those days was difficult across the void sims where sometimes your computer would jam or crash. Players with more expensive rigs would jeer at us newbs who needed "flying lessons". A few enterprising residents such as one on an old "colour" sim with an airplane system and another with a boat on the shore charged to haul residents to the new desirable continent. Some created "log-in lots" such as myself and charged low rents for them so that you could log right in to that continent. But without telehub transportation, sales and commerce languished.
Forums "nature lovers" complained bitterly about teleport lag and commerce blight and land barons and urged the transportation systems not to be installed. The Lindens went all out, putting Linden trees and grass on Heterocera plots that did not count on your prim count. We were all hurtling toward "All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace" with computer drives turning into spinning flowers, when finally, a group of land dealers who had bought the land on the auctions informed the Lindens that they would dump the land and/or cease buying new land on the auctions -- those paying Linden's bills for this new continent -- if they didn't stop listening to the forums hippie caucus, made up of people who didn't own land in the area. They relented and put in about 4 telehubs only at first -- it turned out that all you needed for a telehub was an invisible prim disc, just like those made for landings on private islands, and you could put any build around it, it didn't have to be those squat brown urban uglies of the earlier era. So they put them within the Moth Temple or at Hyles Swamp. Eventually they added more as they realized "nature" wasn't selling -- people value "nature" tiered by Lindens or other residents but don't want to pay for it.
o Before there were scripted bot avatars, land barons bought up ad farms and deployed scripted boxes to scrape land-for-sale data and therefore get on top of the deals quickly -- then remain at the top of the land-for-sale list by flipping land they grabbed which had been put to sale for fire-sale prices or abandoned (whereupon they would request it). The Lindens eventually banned land bots, and some of these land flippers went out of business, but scripted boxes evidently used for land scanning (although who knows) still persist in many places.
o In the old auction system, all persons who bid on the land, as well as the winner, was visible, and therefore residents could see which land barons were deliberately bidding up prices to keep land prices in general high, and avoid them, and also see which land barons bought up smaller pieces of isolated land on sims to put extortionate prices on them to force people desperate for prims to buy them. Eventually the Lindens changed to a new auction system, based on e-bay (a founding investor of SL was Pierre Omidyar, the e-bay guy), that showed no names at all after the bid although they do briefly leave up a record of the sales so those patient enough could fly around and observe what's happening. It's still a system only a few land barons control. An effort to create resident-based auctions to try to defeat this rent-seeking failed, in part because of land barons disguised as ordinary end users as alts, and buyer's remorse leading to drama and further abandonment.
o The Lindens permitted two driverless vehicle systems, enabling the scripters to send vehicles of various kinds over the grid at will. One of them enabled some of these cars on Linden land to be purchasable, a violation of the TOS, and they also tended to crash and pile-up on other people's land. That person had most of their accounts banned. The other person was more discreet and the cars crashed less and was rewarded with selection of the system also for Linden-run events like SLB. Still, the Lindens didn't permit these driverless simplistic "pods" to spam up Bellisseria, likely because residents there wouldn't tolerate them. On the Mainland, they spam every 15 minutes and nearly 100% of them are empty. Polls I have done whether larger or smaller show significant percentages of residents oppose or don't even know about the pods, which is denied by their supporters.
o A resident concerned about the failure of vehicles at region crossings proposed a system whereby the BDSM viewer called RLV would be used to pick up residents and forcibly cross them at sim seams. This was rejected even by RLV users and the Lindens didn't adopt it, but continued to encourage grid-wide monitoring and proposals for vehicle crossings.
o The Lindens permitted a Grid Survey which used bots to scrape information on new islands, demise of old islands, and percentage of Linden and resident ownership on the Mainland. This was widely accepted as useful and interesting, but the owner faced problems both of a bot nature and of RL time needed for such a project to be constantly updated.
o Surveying the Mainland wreckage they had wrought, while paying their server and other bills, and noting that the revenue was so far less than from islands or even content sales on the MP, yet sucked up the lion's share of customer service time, the Lindens finally decided to build Linden Homes and give the residents what they wanted -- nice homes with predictable landscaping and the view never getting ruined in the commons by neighbours or barons, with plenty of roads and waterways (which are entirely missing on some newer continents, laid out hurriedly by Lindens for quick sales even as past continents filled with blight). This "Linden-Assisted Living," as it was dubbed, didn't really take off until the Lindens made bigger homes with even prettier landscaping in Bellisseria, then Fantasseria and Sakurasseria.
o Enter the BBB, a resident created RP group aspiring to be the bureaucracy that ran municipal services in Bellisseria which was then blessed to run various public events on Linden land and an exploration system with the stamp game, which included Mole or Linden builds, some new and expressly built for stamps, and some old, to which they were added. Alone among residents, this group now has a home on a 4096 m2 parcel with 936 prims and two rez areas surrounded by water, unlike ordinary mortals with only 1024 and 351 prims, often island. No commerce is permitted as this is banned in Bellisseria -- although very active groups expressly targeting Bellisseria events have enterprisingly figured out that the way to sales through Bellisseria is to create groups and events where freebies are distributed, and then spam people with sales IMs later. The stamps had to be vetted and accepted and a kiosk issued on a discretionary basis, which meant that the appearance of new locations was slower and more controlled. A second resident group appeared (Operation Mainland) with a more democratic system whereby essentially anyone could register and upload a stamp site and provide gifts, with stamps allowed at commercial sites. This quickly acquired many more sites and traffic but wasn't tended as well, had uneven quality especially on commercially-driven sites, and could be hard to navigate if you aren't facile at Google Docs.
o The Lindens endorsed NatureCon, an ambitious event to bring together all nature recreational/explorational groups mainly from the BBB and related circles with LDPW endorsement and participation and a system for build applications and booths which remained closed and at the discretion of the organizers. This event, coupled with the BBB stamp game, places an emphasis on "Bellisseria as premium account ownership for residences, Mainland as exploration and recreation," while steering it away from Mainland *residences* -- which spawns the need for more customer service and unleashes protests about the blight induced by ad farms and grid-wide would-be monopolists. If you only temporarily visit the Mainland on a controlled tier, what's to complain about?
o The Lindens tolerated the Get the Freight Out game (founded in 2016) which has deployed miles and miles of concrete trucking terminals across the grid, causing those nearby not to buy or to move out. There isn't any perceptible link between GTFO and LL -- possibly they aren't compliant enough -- and they do not appear to have been "blessed," but let's just say that unlike the breedables space, where there are plenty of other breedable companies besides KittyCats and Teegle horses, there aren't any other transportation games that have ever gotten started. Yes, this seemingly "free game" in which the players tier the land their huge concrete monsters are built on, does have a HUD and add-ons you have to buy to play. GTFO often appears with big ad billboards and near ad farms, and that precise relationship has been documented in some cases with GTFO management but also remains unclear.
For months on end, due to the Virtual Railroads Consortium leader Qie reselling some 16ms I had in fact given to him back in the day to GTFO operatives, I had a giant ugly ad billboard in the middle of the sim next to my rentals. So I built a brick wall on it. Another VCR operative put a "night watchman" with a chair on another 16m2 roadside and kept returning the (invisible) prim on a build of one of my tenants, mystifying him. I finally got Qie who I had always respected and found helpful to stop the specious prim returns, whatever their "encroachment," but the GTFO took a lot longer to get off the sim. It was most definitely the billboard of a GTFO owner, not leader, whose land was right next to their headquarters. There has been a changing cast of characters owning GTFO over the years, and one of the current owners and operators, Famous Dismantled, a fae, claims she is conccerned about 16m2 blight on the old Teen Grid (evidently she means the Sith obelisks -- agreed).
I also dealt with a witless booster of GTFO on the forums claiming that only "some" of the builds are warehouses when anyone can see with their two eyes all over the grid that MOST of the builds in this FREIGHT game are WAREHOUSES with acres of concrete. The fact that a few farmhouses or parks or whatever are mixed in to claim otherwise doesn't cut it. Again, I'm all for having "things to do" and I don't complain where I haven't bought the view. In Adscita, until I had to deal with Winning Witte's machinations, I turned my back to a GIANT and LAGGY GTFO hulking over the lake there and put out rentals which I ran for a few years more or less happily. But it is a buzz kill. That 2000 regular players in the group get to despoil the view and drive away residential lots for numerous sims across the grid is a key example of "tragedy of the commons". Long ago, the Lindens could have made zoned areas -- beach, urban, mountain, country, off-beat -- as The Sims Online did with naming categories of sims. Then GTFO could go on the urban sim along with all those giant tall buildings that ruined the value of Nautilus in its early days and forced me and tenants out after laying out $50,000 Lindens on the auction for a 1024. Of course they didn't have the staff for policing zoning, and weren't content to leaving it to the Gladys Kravitz's of SL to AR. Then came Bellisseria, where zoning is built in.
I will likely think up more, and so can you, but you can see the patterns. Monopolists aspiring either to crude money-making schemes -- or more typically, more sophisticated reputation-enhancement schemes that lead to social influence and power -- get the Lindens' ear (within the staff, among residents-turned-Lindens, or residents chosen by Lindens for that "successful failure" combination of "competence but compliance."
Fortunately, entire swathes of Mainland (not to mention the bulk of the grid, private islands) remain out of the reach of the Monopolists and the Influencers, especially in the non-English speaking world, and there are still wild and untilled vistas where you can build your dream. For how long?
07/12/2022
At Refugio Flea Market This Afternoon
Prokofy Neva, Virtualtor
Read @prokofy to follow this prolonged debate with the Contraptioneers; see this blog and that blog and the other blog.
[13:33] Alkaia Exonar: is this prok?
[13:33] Meridian Maginot: I'm an Contraption shopper!
[13:34] Meridian Maginot: or was!
[13:34] Alkaia Exonar: there you go, try it out prok
[13:34] Meridian Maginot: now take it out of the box and sell it too
[13:34] Meridian Maginot: We don't allow business in a box here
[13:35] Meridian Maginot: For that reason
[13:35] Alkaia Exonar: what do you mean
[13:35] Meridian Maginot: We don't allow people to sell out of boxes items that they did not create or which they don't own and sell out of a box like a gatcha
[13:35] Meridian Maginot: don't you know what "business in a box" is???
[13:35] Alkaia Exonar: It's not selling out of the box, the box is the item
[13:35] Meridian Maginot: it's all the ripped stuff all over SL, like kudzu
[13:35] Alkaia Exonar: The box does the distribution
[13:35] Meridian Maginot: business in a box IS that
[13:35] Alkaia Exonar: no I mean
[13:36] Meridian Maginot: putting a ripped item in a box
[13:36] Meridian Maginot: now take the ripped rip and put it for sale "as is"
[13:36] Alkaia Exonar: The box could be a plate of food, or whatever
[13:36] Alkaia Exonar: It's not a product in a box, the box is the product
[13:36] Meridian Maginot: my God your literalism will kill the world, you kids
[13:36] Meridian Maginot: the product is in a prim box; it is business in a box
[13:36] Meridian Maginot: so let's see you put the rib itself for sale
[13:36] Meridian Maginot: that's important too
[13:37] Meridian Maginot: hello?
[13:37] Alkaia Exonar: I can't put the rib itself for sale as a standalone rib. What I can do is put it for sale as part of, say, my own trash can plate, and redistribute it as a functional item in the same context you originally sold it.
[13:38] Alkaia Exonar: see?
[13:38] Alkaia Exonar: It's a food giver
[13:38] Meridian Maginot: well, gosh, why can't you put the rib itself for sale, Alkaia?
[13:38] Meridian Maginot: given all your abilities
[13:38] Meridian Maginot: why on earth would that be
[13:38] Meridian Maginot: go ahead put it out, and let's see why you can't put it to sale as is
[13:38] Alkaia Exonar: I can take all the food from your trash can cuisine, put them all in a new plate, and then distribute it as a food giver
[13:39] Meridian Maginot: that's not the question
[13:39] Meridian Maginot: the question is can you put it out for sale on its own?
[13:39] Alkaia Exonar: that is the question. It can be redistributed as a functional item.
[13:39] Meridian Maginot: no, then you don't understand the most mass use case in SL
[13:39] Meridian Maginot: put the item out for sale as is
[13:39] Meridian Maginot: if you can't, well, explain why
[13:39] Alkaia Exonar: That's an incredible narrow definition
[13:39] Meridian Maginot: no, it's very wide actually
[13:40] Meridian Maginot: apparently you don't live and work on the Mainland?
[13:40] Meridian Maginot: do you log in often? stay on your RP sim only perhaps?
[13:40] Meridian Maginot: PS if you want to sell a ripped rib distributor, you should make it on "touch" so that people can test it
[13:40] Meridian Maginot: that's what luc and many others do, including me
[13:40] Meridian Maginot: I mean his aren't ripped, nor are mine
[13:40] Meridian Maginot: I pay for all my models and I follow the TOS
[13:41] Meridian Maginot: if it any time I determine I can't follow that TOS then I take it out of my product
[13:41] Alkaia Exonar: I mean if your position is "the only copy protection that is relevant is specifically preventing people from pulling out an object and selling that object as-is, rather than including it in a product" then yes, your copy protection script (which is more than an anti-rez script) does stop that particular occurrence.
[13:41] Alkaia Exonar: It is on touch
[13:41] Alkaia Exonar: it's just for sale right now
[13:41] Meridian Maginot: no it wasn't on touch
[13:41] Meridian Maginot: it was on buy
[13:41] Alkaia Exonar: Want me to rez it back out so you can click it agan?
[13:41] Alkaia Exonar: there you og
[13:41] Alkaia Exonar: touch it
[13:41] Meridian Maginot: I don't even like ribs
[13:42] Meridian Maginot: but would you say this rib will now stay in my inventory?
[13:42] Meridian Maginot: yes or no
[13:42] Meridian Maginot: BTW you may be British and may not realize that there really truly are restaurants in the south in the US
[13:42] Alkaia Exonar: the rib is temp attached, so no. If you purchase the box, then you will have a rib distributor in your inven for as long as you care to keep it
[13:42] Meridian Maginot: that put these dishes out on trash cans
[13:43] Meridian Maginot: so I'm glad you can concede that temp attach means that the general public clicking on this item can't steal the rib
[13:43] Meridian Maginot: the owner could steal the rib if he went through various steps including turning off scripts on his land
[13:43] Alkaia Exonar: temp attach means that regardless of the scripting inside it
[13:43] Meridian Maginot: you concede you can't sell the rib as is, because it would poof before you could sell it
[13:43] Alkaia Exonar: The owner does not need to turn scripts off on land
[13:43] Meridian Maginot: you'd have to put it a box
[13:43] Alkaia Exonar: it can be done very easily in a matter of seconds
[13:43] Meridian Maginot: temp attach is a script, too obviously
[13:44] Alkaia Exonar: You have to put it in a distributor of some sort - it doesn't have to be a box. I could recreate your trash can cuisine, for example
[13:44] Meridian Maginot: look, I do grasp that a "box" is any container, not just this literal prim box
[13:44] Meridian Maginot: but the use case is "business in a box" prevention and most malls, yard sales etc don't allow "business in a box"
[13:44] Alkaia Exonar: Sure, but my point is that it isn't a container for a product, the box *is* the product, in much the same way your trash can lid *is* the product
[13:44] Meridian Maginot: so they can't stop Copybot re-sales except by social cues
[13:45] Meridian Maginot: it's a component of the product, it's the giver
[13:45] Meridian Maginot: and the mashed potatoes etc are the productlets
[13:45] Meridian Maginot: out of which it comes
[13:45] Alkaia Exonar: yes. And I don't think anywhere on the grid disallows you to sell a giver
[13:45] Meridian Maginot: PS were you able to rip the trash can lid and sell that?
[13:45] Alkaia Exonar: Like, your trash can cuisine doesn't run afoul of any laws
[13:46] Meridian Maginot: well no event I've been in has ever objected and I comply with all the rules
[13:46] Meridian Maginot: I'm not here to break them
[13:46] Alkaia Exonar: If I wanted to copybot it it would be trivial to do so, but as is the trash can itself is no trans and I have no desire to try and circumvent that via TOS breaching
[13:46] Meridian Maginot: if I find something is later disallowed, like many of them now require sales prices = to what the model cost
[13:46] Meridian Maginot: I then remove that item from my stores or revise it
[13:46] Meridian Maginot: well I'm glad you concede that you do live under some kind of rule of law
[13:46] Meridian Maginot: even if you believe only in code-as-law
[13:46] Meridian Maginot: that's helpful
[13:46] Meridian Maginot: ok so our work here is done
[13:46] Meridian Maginot: you couldn't sell the ribs as is
[13:46] Alkaia Exonar: But I can full redistribute it as a functional product
[13:47] Meridian Maginot: only by turning off scripts on your land and fetching it out of a box could you put this single rib item for sale
[13:47] Alkaia Exonar: It took under 40 seconds
[13:47] Alkaia Exonar: No, scripts were on the whole time
[13:47] Meridian Maginot: well how many people need to have separate ribs in inventory?
[13:47] Alkaia Exonar: I can do it again right in front of you if you like
[13:47] Meridian Maginot: you think many people wake up in the middle of the night and say "I think I'll get those hot ribs out and have a bite"?
[13:48] Alkaia Exonar: I don't think you're quite understanding what I'm saying
[13:48] Meridian Maginot: oh well one way to put even the thing itself to sale is to go to a no-script sandbox or griefer home
[13:48] Meridian Maginot: no I do actually
[13:48] Meridian Maginot: You just didn't think through all the criminal use cases as I am forced to
[13:48] Meridian Maginot: as just an amateur creator and Mainland rentals agent worlds below your stratosphere
[13:48] Alkaia Exonar: What I'm saying is I could, say, get a vending machine mesh of market, then take all the food items out of your trash can lid, put them in the vending machine, and sell the vending machine with functional food
[13:48] Meridian Maginot: just interested in helping other people buy and sell besides you top creators in the Ren Faire
[13:48] Meridian Maginot: yeah
[13:49] Meridian Maginot: you could make it more aesthetic!
[13:49] Alkaia Exonar: Or less, as I did
[13:49] Meridian Maginot: you could make a table with porcelain dishes and candles!
[13:49] Meridian Maginot: innovate!
[13:49] Alkaia Exonar: here, look, I'll show you how fast you can get a product out
[13:49] Meridian Maginot: I got it
[13:49] Meridian Maginot: I know
[13:49] Meridian Maginot: my scripter, who is no fool, look him up, does too
[13:49] Meridian Maginot: deterrence is the main goal, and making it so people don't fish things out of inventory
[13:49] Meridian Maginot: which lessons the fun
[13:50] Alkaia Exonar: Did your scripter script the trash can cuisine?
[13:50] Meridian Maginot: but hey, if we have to have people fish no-transfer items out of inventory and attach them, we'll do
[13:50] Meridian Maginot: of course
[13:50] Meridian Maginot: and we walked through all the exploits of it
[13:50] Meridian Maginot: we're actually not stupid
[13:50] Meridian Maginot: he especially is particularly clever
[13:50] Meridian Maginot: just not as famous as you but maybe because he didn't attach himself to an Alpha Wolf
[13:50] Meridian Maginot: He values his originality and freedom
[13:50] Meridian Maginot: he answers to no one from what I can tell
[13:51] Meridian Maginot: maybe someday you will break away and achieve that freedom
[13:51] Meridian Maginot: instead of being in someone's shadow
[13:51] Alkaia Exonar: Tell him he can use llGetLinkName to consolidate all the 17 scripts in the trash can lid into just one single script that distributes everything based on what you clicked
[13:51] Meridian Maginot: worshipping at the feet of a giant statue
[13:51] Meridian Maginot: oh ye knows that
[13:51] Meridian Maginot: it's me who wanted to make them separate
[13:51] Alkaia Exonar: why?
[13:51] Meridian Maginot: I mean he can't control what use I make of his scripts
[13:52] Meridian Maginot: because I used them alone in some settings, the dish by itself, or the dish was in other products
[13:52] Meridian Maginot: I mean he could add to the script weight I suppose
[13:52] Meridian Maginot: PS these aren't laggy and aren't like anti-rez
[13:53] Alkaia Exonar: I mean every unnecessary script adds lag. It's pretty trivial to make a script that can handle being standalone or part of a bigger thing
[13:53] Meridian Maginot: indeed
[13:53] Meridian Maginot: so you may not admit it, but you've conceded the use cases that matter for most people
[13:53] Meridian Maginot: most norms
[13:53] Meridian Maginot: most people just in this sector of having to deal with full perm models with a huge variety of TOS/EULAs
[13:54] Meridian Maginot: some of them insanely restrictive and crabby, given what they are, others more lenient
[13:54] Meridian Maginot: but those people work hard with no credit
[13:54] Meridian Maginot: AND THEIR CUSTOMERS AREN'T ALLOWED IN THE MAJOR EVENTS
[13:54] Alkaia Exonar: Not for anti-rez. The exact situation of nm/c/t temp attach items does warrant copy protection (though ideally as part of a single script, instead of standalone). Anti-rez does not function as copy protection in that situation (or any other situation).
[13:54] Meridian Maginot: AND THOSE EVENTS ARE NOT LET IN TO BE ADVERTISED ON SERAPHIM
[13:54] Meridian Maginot: Of course the world of the little people doesn't matter to you and Walton only feigns that it matters
[13:54] Alkaia Exonar: Your specific copy protection very narrowly protects, but does offer more protection than anti-rez (which I said in my tweets), but could be much better
[13:55] Meridian Maginot: I have never, at any juncture in this debate, had anything positive or ameliorative to say about anti-rez
[13:55] Meridian Maginot: I don't use it; I don't buy things with it; but then I hardly buy clothes
[13:55] Alkaia Exonar: What do you mean by "the world of little people"?
[13:55] Meridian Maginot: the world of people making products from full perm meshes
[13:55] Alkaia Exonar: Also the ENTIRE DEBATE was about anti-rez lmao
[13:55] Meridian Maginot: no
[13:55] Meridian Maginot: it was a corrective on behalf of a type of script used for other use cases that might be lumped under anti-rez
[13:56] Meridian Maginot: it might have been a 4 tweet conversation but the only reason it wasn't
[13:56] Meridian Maginot: is because Walton was peremptory and haughty
[13:56] Alkaia Exonar: Copy protection and anti-rez are different (though you should really have your scripter tighten up your copy protection script)
[13:56] Meridian Maginot: Hello There! he writes to me, his customer, who has talked to him quite a few times for years
[13:56] Meridian Maginot: He then conceded this, but his flying monkeys, sensing they needed to on attack mode began threats and mocking and ridicule
[13:57] Meridian Maginot: 1) I know that; but they are lumped together 2) he knows that as well
[13:57] Meridian Maginot: 3) Walton even conceded it, but YOU told him he was wrong!
[13:57] Meridian Maginot: so I dunno, live in your castle, not everybody can be in Engine Room
[13:57] Meridian Maginot: unlikely Engine Room accepts people using mesh models
[13:57] Meridian Maginot: because most major events DO NOT
[13:57] Meridian Maginot: they want original created mesh only
[13:57] Meridian Maginot: because they don't want these very problems of origin and theft
[13:58] Meridian Maginot: understood
[13:58] Meridian Maginot: but the rest of the world wishes to live
[13:58] Meridian Maginot: and we will go on living
[13:58] Meridian Maginot: Likely with less shopping at Engine Room lol!
[13:58] Alkaia Exonar: They aren't lumped together at all. Especially considering we had specific examples (the shuggles script) brought up very early
[13:58] Meridian Maginot: I'm the one who brought up Shuggles
[13:58] Meridian Maginot: precisely because it is open and you can look at it
[13:58] Meridian Maginot: so be a man
[13:58] Alkaia Exonar: Also, yeah, I mean, allowing non-original mesh is a whole can of worms
[13:58] Meridian Maginot: ask Shuggles why he sells a product to girls who imagine they now warded off Copybot
[13:59] Alkaia Exonar: To make money
[13:59] Meridian Maginot: yes, we are worms, I totally get it. In cans, even.
[13:59] Alkaia Exonar: Shuggles and bosh's anti-rez scripts are fully useless
[13:59] Meridian Maginot: yes I get that, but Bosh has lots of useful scripts like resize, colour etc that everyone buys and is happy with
[13:59] Meridian Maginot: I'd rather they use mod than resize but whatever
[13:59] Meridian Maginot: Now there are other use cases besides anti-Copybot which I tried to outline
[13:59] Alkaia Exonar: Not talking about bosh's other scripts, am I?
[14:00] Meridian Maginot: and which Bosh's customers who aren't all dumb twits would explain
[14:00] Meridian Maginot: well Bosh's useless anti-rez script didn't ruin his business
[14:00] Meridian Maginot: and people who use it have other reasons
[14:00] Meridian Maginot: I mentioned them
[14:00] Meridian Maginot: not likely the idea of study of their product in the round by those who didn't figure out how to turn off scripts
[14:00] Meridian Maginot: it's like not everyone figures out you can sit through a locked door
[14:00] Meridian Maginot: a locked door still has uses even with that hack
[14:01] Alkaia Exonar: Anti-rez isn't a locked door though
[14:01] Meridian Maginot: so someone using anti-rez cuts down on the number of people who will not turn off scripts to look at their item inside out
[14:01] Alkaia Exonar: it doesn't.
[14:01] Alkaia Exonar: because you can wear it
[14:01] Meridian Maginot: of course they could go on a poser and look that way
[14:01] Meridian Maginot: they can use their camera and look all around as they are wearing
[14:01] Meridian Maginot: but people like to rez things out like the parrot vest that um En Pointe I think was selling
[14:02] Meridian Maginot: just to see, how can I fix this? How can I adjust it? Or even how can I make a thing like it?
[14:02] Meridian Maginot: so that's what people deter, they don't like that
[14:02] Meridian Maginot: they want you to wear it, adulate them, and shut up
[14:02] Meridian Maginot: you know, like Walton basically wants
[14:02] Alkaia Exonar: If they want to copy it they can just wear it, though. It's not even an inconvenience really.
[14:02] Meridian Maginot: and you imagine that you can take a set of best practices like mod/copy/no transfer and 'a fair price' and deter ripping
[14:03] Alkaia Exonar: yes.
[14:03] Meridian Maginot: I'd invite you to rent land for $25/50 prims and see if you stop overprimming on group land
[14:03] Alkaia Exonar: Not eliminate, but deter.
[14:03] Alkaia Exonar: what does that have to do with anything?
[14:03] Meridian Maginot: I'd invite you to sell the things I sell for low prices on mod and prevent ripping
[14:03] Meridian Maginot: it's just madneess
[14:03] Meridian Maginot: it's just magical thinking
[14:03] Meridian Maginot: it's just you think your magical thinking is better than someone else's
[14:03] Meridian Maginot: OHHHHHH
[14:03] Meridian Maginot: I'M SO GLAD YOU MENTIONED THAT DETERRING INSTEAD OF 100% IS A VALID OBJECTIVE
[14:03] Meridian Maginot: BE STILL MY HEART
[14:04] Alkaia Exonar: Yes. Anti-rez doesn't deter. That's my point.
[14:04] Meridian Maginot: ok I need to wait on customers
[14:04] Meridian Maginot: I didn't say it did
[14:04] Meridian Maginot: I said protection does
[14:04] Alkaia Exonar: The whole convo was about anti-rez
[14:04] Meridian Maginot: no it wasn't, not the original convo with Walter
[14:04] Meridian Maginot: and he conceded that and he eeven apologized for talking down to me
[14:04] Alkaia Exonar: Like, "a reason to use anti-rez" is not "Something that's not anti-rez can deter people in narrow circumstances"
[14:04] Meridian Maginot: I have filed any number of DMCAs on behalf of my builders
[14:05] Meridian Maginot: like the builder of this very building we are standing in
[14:05] Alkaia Exonar: Cool. Keep doing that.
[14:05] Meridian Maginot: I've commissioned numerous such buildings
[14:05] Meridian Maginot: before he was born
[14:05] Alkaia Exonar: That's the one actual redress we have rightn ow
[14:05] Meridian Maginot: so I don't need to be talked down to because I'm not in your posse
[14:05] Meridian Maginot: will never be
[14:05] Meridian Maginot: well no
[14:05] Meridian Maginot: there are many others
[14:05] Meridian Maginot: but evidently beyond the ken of most of your flying monkeys
[14:05] Alkaia Exonar: I'm not talking down to you, and certainly not because you're not part of my "posse"
[14:06] Meridian Maginot: if you think Linden Lab won't lock this viewer and/or block Firestorm when their lawyers find Copybot with Firestorm to be too much of a problem
[14:06] Alkaia Exonar: I'm just trying to tell you what is and is not actually functional protection.
[14:06] Meridian Maginot: I invite you to review what happened with gatchas
[14:06] Alkaia Exonar: Okay, actually, wait
[14:06] Alkaia Exonar: Lets talk about firestorm
[14:06] Meridian Maginot: Again, I have much more hands on, field experience with Emerald griefers and Phoenix liars than you do, surely
[14:06] Alkaia Exonar: I saw (before you blocked me on twitter) that you wrote a big blog post about how like, firestorm is responsible for copybot
[14:06] Alkaia Exonar: Even though the firestorm viewer itself can't copybot
[14:07] Meridian Maginot: it is, because you can't control use of open source software
[14:07] Alkaia Exonar: and, correct me if I'm wrong, but your general point was that they're responsible because people are taking their viewer and altering it to be able to copybot
[14:07] Meridian Maginot: if someone wants to take firestorm code and make all avatars appear green, they can make a viewer like that, and FS can't stop it
[14:07] Meridian Maginot: yes they are responsible
[14:07] Alkaia Exonar: Yes, right
[14:07] Meridian Maginot: you know, like that dad that didn't lock up his guns and his teenage son is now a school shooter
[14:07] Alkaia Exonar: okay, but, firestorm legally has to be open source
[14:07] Meridian Maginot: like that
[14:07] Meridian Maginot: yeah
[14:07] Alkaia Exonar: And if they're open source, they can't stop that
[14:08] Meridian Maginot: well read the contribution agreement -- which, over the years, has been redacted, and which isn't fully complied with even now
[14:08] Alkaia Exonar: So why is it their fault, instead of someone further up the chain
[14:08] Meridian Maginot: the Lindens are too dependent on FS
[14:08] Meridian Maginot: of course it's their moral responsibility and yes, their fault
[14:08] Alkaia Exonar: "Their" here still being the FS team?
[14:08] Meridian Maginot: and again, if this grows to be a significant issue we can see with THESE owners including the attorney from the US Trade Office, they will lock it down
[14:08] Meridian Maginot: Tonya was in Emerald for 3 weeks, he tells us
[14:09] Meridian Maginot: during that time he scrubbed the code furiously to make Phoenix compliant for LL to accept
[14:09] Alkaia Exonar: I'm just confused as to why you think that copybotting is just because of firestorm, and not, say, because LL open sourced their viewer?
[14:09] Meridian Maginot: what is the link between Emerald and Phoenix? Tonya
[14:09] Meridian Maginot: oh of course that's the problem
[14:09] Meridian Maginot: which is why I opposed it from the get go especially as all those goons griefed me and my tenants and crashed our sims for months while Cory Linden laughed
[14:09] Meridian Maginot: sure that's the problem
[14:09] Meridian Maginot: but yeah, did you know my rental script is open source?
[14:10] Meridian Maginot: I've had oh, 6 coders over 18 years work on it and refine it
[14:10] Meridian Maginot: Swear by it!
[14:10] Meridian Maginot: tho it has some glitches now and then
[14:10] Meridian Maginot: Don't want to be a slave of Casper
[14:10] Alkaia Exonar: Because shutting down firestorm wouldn't actually stop (or even slow) copybotters - the hydrastorm is perfectly capable of spoofing itself as an official viewer, and further there are copybot clients that are just flat out based on the SL viewer platform instead of firestorm
[14:10] Meridian Maginot: yeah Open Source runs the Internet! Twitter!
[14:10] Meridian Maginot: And yet...and yet...Tonya scrubbed like a housemaid to get that thing compliant to LL at least optically
[14:10] Alkaia Exonar: So I don't really get why your opinion is that it's FS
[14:10] Meridian Maginot: it's all about the optics
[14:11] Alkaia Exonar: Well, yeah, because emerald had a bunch of issues
[14:11] Meridian Maginot: yeah there are other rogue viewers not related to FS
[14:11] Alkaia Exonar: So why is it FS
[14:11] Meridian Maginot: the Lindens have a variety of ways of stopping them, not all just literal search strings of code
[14:11] Alkaia Exonar: And not the people making the rogue viewers, or LL?
[14:11] Meridian Maginot: because they are in the hands of 90% of the customers
[14:11] Meridian Maginot: The question is why Ll doesn't just buy and or declare FS official
[14:11] Meridian Maginot: because
[14:11] Alkaia Exonar: But they're not actually *doing* anything to encourage or allow copybotting
[14:12] Meridian Maginot: THEY DON'T WANT THE LIABILITY FOR COPYBOT
[14:12] Meridian Maginot: they don't do the things that libsl did to at least declare they weren't encouraging
[14:12] Alkaia Exonar: Like I said, there are currently operating today copybot viewers that operate off the SL viewer codebase
[14:12] Meridian Maginot: like make a core group of devs and not allow certain ones in they knew to be using it to copybot
[14:12] Alkaia Exonar: If that was their worry, they'd be *currently* liable for copybot
[14:12] Meridian Maginot: you should study what Overte does
[14:12] Meridian Maginot: a fork of High Fidelity
[14:12] Alkaia Exonar: They do have a core grgoup of devs
[14:13] Alkaia Exonar: Who are the only people allowed to push code to FS
[14:13] Meridian Maginot: they made a club, as NGOs are called in Germany, it has a small membership fee, they have rules, they voting even
[14:13] Meridian Maginot: imagine if Firestorm did that
[14:13] Alkaia Exonar: they have that
[14:13] Meridian Maginot: one point about a paid fee is RL names
[14:13] Alkaia Exonar: https://www.firestormviewer.org/developers/
[14:13] Alkaia Exonar: That's the list of people allowed to contribute
[14:13] Meridian Maginot: Jessica gets skittish even if her RL corporation on a government web site is published, and gets Hamlet to block the image
[14:13] Meridian Maginot: reidiculous
[14:13] Meridian Maginot: but anyone can take the code as you have stated and they have stated
[14:14] Alkaia Exonar: I mean, tying their RL names to that wouldn't change anything because *it's still not firestorm doing the copybotting*
[14:14] Alkaia Exonar: Yes
[14:14] Meridian Maginot: and being in that club of "allowed to contribute" did they make a public pledge never to use Copybot? I missed that
[14:14] Alkaia Exonar: Anyone can take the code because that's a legal requirement
[14:14] Meridian Maginot: you want to keep exonerating them
[14:14] Meridian Maginot: yes that's what open source is
[14:14] Meridian Maginot: and the LL viewer is an open source viewer, more's the pity
[14:14] Meridian Maginot: and PS search is terribly crippled
[14:14] Meridian Maginot: I personally prefer Alchemy, has the best search UI
[14:14] Meridian Maginot: wonder why Cinders left FS
[14:14] Alkaia Exonar: I just don't understand why you're pointing at FS as the reason copybot thrives
[14:15] Meridian Maginot: I should ask her
[14:15] Meridian Maginot: she's my tenant
[14:15] Alkaia Exonar: Instead of at the open source LL viewer
[14:15] Alkaia Exonar: or the copybotters themselves
[14:15] Meridian Maginot: because they are the largest market share of users, Oz won't tell you the numbers; no one will; but it's got to be 90% plus
[14:15] Alkaia Exonar: Right but why does that matter?
[14:15] Meridian Maginot: I poll my tenants and I see that only newbies and people with some beef with FS use the regular viewer
[14:15] Alkaia Exonar: If FS didn't exist, those users would just be on a different viewer
[14:15] Meridian Maginot: Did Firestorm core devs take a public pledge not to use Copybot?
[14:16] Alkaia Exonar: If someone came out with a copybot viewer based on alchemy, would that be cinder's fault?
[14:16] Meridian Maginot: yes it would indeed
[14:16] Meridian Maginot: Since CInders is not in the mind meld with you all, e.g. on the spam pods on roads, and other issues
[14:16] Meridian Maginot: she might say "I insist all my core devs take the pledge"
[14:16] Alkaia Exonar: so even if you legally have to have your code available for download, you are responsible for whatever any random person on the internet does by changing that code?
[14:17] Alkaia Exonar: it's not the core devs creating copybot viewers
[14:17] Meridian Maginot: "if we catch any of our little friends using Copybot we ban them from our land/stores/homes etc"
[14:17] Meridian Maginot: Did they take a public pledge saying that?
[14:17] Meridian Maginot: you're not answering that
[14:17] Meridian Maginot: you who have magical thinking about mod, good prices, and bein decent to customers
[14:17] Meridian Maginot: which are all organic principles of decency that you are hesitant to approve on other fronts
[14:17] Alkaia Exonar: I mean, I'm not sure if they have or haven't, but would making that pledge absolve them of responsibility in your eyes?
[14:18] Alkaia Exonar: I don't have magical thinking lol
[14:18] Meridian Maginot: The question to ask if why they haven't taken such a pledge
[14:18] Alkaia Exonar: I just think addressing the whys is good
[14:18] Alkaia Exonar: Because it's a meaningless pledge?
[14:18] Meridian Maginot: and you know full well that in their own ranks, the debate would go like this:
[14:18] Alkaia Exonar: I've never taken a pledge like that. Have you?
[14:18] Meridian Maginot: "but I use Copybot to debug which is a good thing"
[14:18] Meridian Maginot: "But I just use Copybot to adjust my RP clothing personally"
[14:18] Meridian Maginot: "but I just use Copybot to see what the rogues are up to these days, it's research"
[14:18] Meridian Maginot: therefore we can't take that pledge
[14:19] Meridian Maginot: Yes, I'm happy to take the pledges of my world, I don't use bots at all of any kind
[14:19] Meridian Maginot: none
[14:19] Meridian Maginot: they use up resources
[14:19] Alkaia Exonar: Yes but have you actually taken that pledge
[14:19] Meridian Maginot: I don't ad farm, ever, never do I sell a $16 parcel for anything more than $1/m
[14:19] Meridian Maginot: etc
[14:19] Meridian Maginot: of course
[14:19] Meridian Maginot: I've had to put it on my blog over and over
[14:19] Meridian Maginot: as this army of griefers claiming to be Ravenglass bots
[14:19] Meridian Maginot: who aren't even bots
[14:20] Meridian Maginot: invade groups and shout racist Trumpkin crap
[14:20] Meridian Maginot: I'm an Obama and Biden voter
[14:20] Meridian Maginot: I don't invade groups to sell my rentals
[14:20] Meridian Maginot: but an easy way to get people mad at me is to invade groups with the name "RavenglassBot!"
[14:20] Meridian Maginot: and shout crap
[14:20] Meridian Maginot: and it takes the Lindens five minutes to ban them
[14:20] Meridian Maginot: but it takes months to get people to realize they aren't me
[14:21] Meridian Maginot: so yeah, I know how griefers work and I know about pledges
[14:21] Meridian Maginot: OK Alkaia, you didn't take the pledge, you didn't do a lot of things
[14:21] Meridian Maginot: but thanks for your time and your tips
[14:21] Meridian Maginot: it's all appreciated
[14:21] Meridian Maginot: I need to help some customers
[14:21] Meridian Maginot: bye
07/10/2022
Virtual Verse, Same as the First
- By Prokofy Neva, Virtualtor
This is a useful thread from VirtualVerse One to review and more systematically rebut when I have some time some day. I've copied it because they, like the Lindens, disappear content there often.
For one, it helps in making my case that the trans women community in SL, many of whose leaders are on Virtual Verse One now (the old Sluniverse) are utterly intolerant of anyone who changes their gender in any way that they haven't approved of. They are horrid exemplars of totalitarianism. If you think your condo board or your office performance committee is authoritarian, wait until you see these people.
They also curiously imagine that if someone hasn't transitioned in the way they imagine, and hasn't had surgery, let alone cross-dressed in SL, that they must have some psychiatric issue, some "dysphoria," or something wrong with them.
It's amazingly hard to change your avatar's gender in SL for this reason, in any direction. The wall of intolerance, the wall of hatred and harassment from people who themselves say they have been harassed all their lives is just astounding!
In RL, I've given birth to three children, one of whom died, and I have had a number of surgeries over the years for various conditions, some related to my rare immune disease, and I can't imagine anything worse -- for me -- than going for any kind of surgery at all. I've never gone to a surgery, and emerged better off than when I went in. It's always worse. That's just my own personal preferences. We get to have those, right? Or we don't? Even if I had no personal history of other medical surgery, I would never wish to perform that surgery, and that's fine, correct? Or are you medical totalitarians like Mengele and Sudoplatov?
If someone wants to have any and all surgeries to transition from one gender to another to a gender they believe is inherent (and which I am happy to accept as inherent for them), that's their call. Why would this same set of people get to harass and heckle and bully other people who either didn't make this choice for themselves, or due to their traditional beliefs, can't accept it? Eventually people with old-fashioned beliefs die out. I don't know anybody reliant on a horse and carriage now. But if you need to hasten their demise and bully them into non-existence, yes, you are totalitarian.
I'm not interested in changing my gender in RL just to have an SL avatar of the opposite gender. Listen to yourselves! Do you really think that is required? Do you really think we are not free?! Why did I choose a male avatar in SL? As I explained for Designing Worlds: because I can. That really is all the reason anyone needs or should require. We get to change our genders in SL. Have you?
But...If you criticize tech bros; if you criticize the open source cult; if you criticize big or small tech (something I had no company doing 20 years ago, but have plenty now), it means you have just lost all your rights, if you ever had them. Criticism of tech -- which has many, many features that are eminently open to criticism -- doesn't mean you are stripped of your right to change your gender or not change your gender, or PS to have privacy in RL, something that all these people feel has always been fine to deprive me of for "higher reasons," namely, my criticism of tech.
If you criticize the high priests of our little world, or the tech world at large, these harpies believe that OF COURSE you have to be hounded, harried, doxxed, and exposed as punishment. OF COURSE. You lose your rights.
Today, those immersed in the transgender movement have a term for this: "transmedicalists". See, there's a term for everything. I personally don't make any of this my cause, when there's been the war in Ukraine for the last 8 years, my more immediate and I think deserving focus. I mean, paragraphs like this have about three too many buzz terms I'd need to look up for me to play:
Maybe I’ve just become more aware of it recently, but there seems to have been a rise in the amount and vehemence of people identifying as transmedicalists/truscum online, which is an ideology stating that people have to experience dysphoria to be transgender, though the severity of the ideology varies, to the extent some people think you have to be binary and want every kind of medical intervention possible in order to “pass” to be really trans. And many of the people who believe this make it their life’s work to harass trans people who don’t fit their idea of what a “real trans person” is — for instance, Kalvin Garrah (a truscum youtuber)’s multiple lengthy videos on gothfruits (a non-binary transmasculine gender non-conforming makeup artist/youtuber) calling him a transtrender.
You would never know from the SLuniverse posse that transgender experience might not be monolithic.
Of course these authors I'm quoting would never use the term "trans totalitarianism" as I do, but that's how I see it. I could gather enormous numbers of examples of how this has worked in SL, where I first recognized, and on social media, where we can all see it now. Some of them are in this thread.
Under this rigid totalitarian cult, if you once had a female avatar (I don't recall any avatar named "Elizabeth" at all and I don't think one ever existed), why, you are not allowed to have a male one, and you must then "shut up" if someone exposes this. Even if someone produces some screenshot with me in an avatar with the name "Elizabeth," so what? Everybody has alts. I have my name. His pronouns are he/him. You do believe in pronouns, right? Or not? Or you believe some people who don't believe as you do get their pronoun rights stripped away? Then, you are totalitarians.
TORLEY IN WATERHEAD IN 2004
In 2004, I remember going to the Waterhead telehub. I had on a pilot's outfit I believe I got from Cubey's venue. That avatar had a female appearance -- I had a variety of avatar shapes and outfits I had experimented with when I first came to SL -- one African female got enormous attention from the Herald at the time -- but then I picked the male avatars because I wished to do so. You get to do that in SL.
So at Waterhead, I ran into an old friend from TSO and she remarked that I had a female avatar, which I rarely had had in TSO, where my main and alts were male, and I said, oh, yes, that's the one today, but I don't think I'll keep it, etc. Nearby was sitting Torley Linden, at that time Torley the resident, playing Mahjong with another resident whose name I don't recall.
Torley on her alts, or Cienna Samiam (Cienna with other last names) as an alt of Torley, or whoever that resident sitting with her at that time, would then endlessly invoke this incident as if it were some kind of "gotcha". They would never admit they were a Linden, then or now. They would never admit that they were a friend of a Linden, then or now. They would replay this incident over and over on the forums as if this was some kind of grand expose.
Imagine doing that. Imagine Lindens being like that (they were and are). Torley is a male who had a female avatar and another RL male who had a female avatar as a partner. THAT was the root of the animosity -- the greatest chorus of haters and totalitarians I've experienced frantic to misgender me are totalitarian trans women in SL.
When she became a Linden, Robin Linden insisted that Torley remove her partnership. (If it were me, I wouldn't have become a Linden then, but people need to work and live.) Soon enough that took a toll on that relationship when she agreed to do so to become a Linden. That person, who, unlike Torley was always nice to me, later married a woman in RL. That vicious Cienna, who made eyeglasses that were about the only ones available in SL and who was immensely popular, endlessly heckled and harassed me on the forums and inworld on the mistaken belief that she had some kind of "gotcha" merely because I didn't choose to reveal my RL gender when I began SL and didn't choose to note that I remembered exactly what incident she was invoking. Later, my identity was forcibly dragged from me by both the Herald (whose editor was mad that I criticized his take on TSO in the New York Times) and by the forums, with Lindens approvingly presiding. I'm going to describe this in more detail soon, it's important.
You can change your gender in SL -- but only if you hang with the posse and obey their rigid, totalitarian rules. I choose not to.
CRITICIZE THE ELITE AND LOSE YOUR RIGHTS
It's helpful to remember why the vicious mob on the old forums, some of whom remain today, decided I "needed" to have my RL identity and gender "outed," something which I always took in stride, "making lemonade out of lemons." I'm not anonymous. You are.
It's because I criticized the privileged insider relationship that some of the scripters, designers, and other kinds of "creatives" and devs had with Linden Lab, a system I called "the Feted Inner Core" or "FIC". I criticized them for obtaining inside knowledge of discounted sims, always obtaining media interviews when the media contacted LL to the exclusion of others, obtaining endorsements for their businesses, winning contests and saying later that it was because no one else applied -- and so on.
To their credit, later, LL cleaned up some of this obvious favouritism and graft from the early days, when 1/3 of the staff came from the user base so it was a revolving door of insider privilege and commerce circles elevated to staff powers. But back then, these people wanted to get revenge. A Linden falsely told a resident, based on reading my RL name on my account and Googling me (a gross breach of resident privacy for which that Linden should have been fired), that I was on alimony and wealthy and sitting with the box wine all day dabbling on SL. I've never been on alimony and had only modest child support from my partner with whom I have raised our children over the years and I've never bought a box wine in my life.
Other Google witch hunters, or that one, decided I was a journalist who had been fired from a newspaper for plagiarism and announced solemnly to the forums that I was "indicted for RL crime". Of course, plagiarism in academic and journalism isn't exactly a "crime," but it is actionable. But...I have never been accused of, or have been found guilty, of plagiarism. The problem is that I have a very common name. The people with my exact same name, even including the middle initial, even with the same age and location, have done all kinds of things -- worked for the State Department, worked for other government agencies, worked for Greenpeace or worked in journalism or worked or had very public messy divorces. None of them are me.
EXCEPTIONS FOR THE RULERS
Most of all, I criticized and exposed these people for never getting disciplined on the forums. Ulrika Zugzwang, among the founders of "socialism on one sim" in SL, copied my forum avatar and turned it into a bloody exploded head, and made that into her own forums avatar. Nothing could be done about it. It was "creativity" or "parody". But when I said Aimee Weber's name was "like" a cheerleader's name, one of those people who put little hearts as the dots above their "is," I was permabanned. These children, some of them directly related to the Lindens, were terribly thin-skinned! And still are. The nearly 20 years they've had to grow up hasn't helped one bit.
Today, when friends of the Lindens get to have their virtual wedding in a new community center in Fantasseria, when the BBB gets a 4096 and double prims for their RP game in Bellisseria, when certain businesses are touted in front page videos and blogs and others ignored, causing forums drama, I don't have to explain about the favouritism system at all. If only if were just a favouritism system! If only it didn't also involve selective Governance inaction, and even the enabling of griefing of dissidents who won't worship at the altar of the selected ones, and call out their grift. I think some of you have no idea what it's like to live in a world where you see the Lindens hanging out and partying with people who have constantly griefed you and crashed your sim.
The other point is that I have never worked for the US government or any government as any kind of "agent" or staff person or analyst. I was a freelance translator and news writer as a contractor for RFE/RL, which is a US Congressionally-funded set of radio stations and web sites broadcasting abroad. It properly has "state media" as a label on Twitter. It was and is a tremendously valued resource. That it was funded by the CIA at its origins in the 1950s, and was closed in the 1970s when I was in junior high school as part of a general whistleblowing on CIA support of various US organizations, is irrelevant to my career today or even 30 years ago. When you work for these kinds of agencies, or Russian state TV as a translator, which I did for a time at a NYC TV station, it doesn't mean you are a government agent. And most of my jobs have been for non-profit organizations, and this is all a matter of public record. I'm not suffering from some kind of angst or nostalgia from "my days as a Soviet analyst" because a) this isn't the kind of job I had -- journalism isn't government analysis -- and because I've always had jobs up to the present related to the post-Soviet space, which of course, has many features that grew out of the Soviet Union.
I wish more of these kids would study the history of the Comintern to understand the origins and methods of their beloved Anti-Fa movement as well.
Weatherwax, who is evidently a failed creator who left SL for a time and now has re-spawned as a live musician, falsely denounced the makers of gatchas as greedy grifters. He got static not only from me, who will be the elephant who never forgets on this one, and partially beat a retreat, and remains a non-entity.
THREAD ON VIRTUALVERSE ONE
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Epic meltdown when I laughed at her instead of rising to the bait, earned her a 5-day ban.
Now the dumbass is seeking out places where I've played music in the past and ranting at the venue owners on twitter and other platforms.
I guess my ridicule struck a little snowflake-nerve?
le sigh....
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bubblesort
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I think trolling Prok into a meltdown is a rite of passage in SL. Most of the time you never hear of Prok, but when you do run into her, even if you aren't naturally a troll, it's just too hard to resist messing with her a bit. She just brings out the inner troll in regular people.
Don't worry about the clubs, David. Nobody will take her seriously at those venues. Every time I've seen you, you've put on a great show. No club owner who knows what they're doing will ditch a performer like you over Prok's weird drama. If they do, just tell the FIC about it, that'll show em! LOL
Gear
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GoblinCampFollower
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I've been using Grumpy Cat "Good" quite often lately.
Prok is Prok, If I was running LL I'd have banned her from the forum AND the grid years ago....like 2006.
Prokofy Neva, Salome calls her the Crazy Cat Lady of SL. Hates anyone more successful or popular than her, calls them FIC. Also hates Linux users and MTF transfolk. Don't call her she, he uses a male avatar. I suspect Prok is a self-hating FTM. Prok is one of the few SL users I've WANTED to troll when I see her. Basically I'd call her Comrade and wave around a kitschy Soviet flag that plays the soviet anthem on Kazoo. Not that I've actually done it, I've just wanted to do it.
GoblinCampFollower
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ewwwwwwwwww, nothing I can't stand more than people in oppressed groups who think they should be a special exception to their own bigotry... Kind of like gay men who hate lesbians and feminists or immigrants who want to shut the door behind them.
Romana
The Timeless Child
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Noted and edited. He may be a jerk, but I'm not OK with misgendering.
Da5id, what did you say that set him off? I couldn't find it. Was it one of the ones that Kristen Linden removed?
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Some of his posts do make sense.
Spirits Rising
Voice of Reason/Quite Blunt
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Until that one (Prok) directly states that they are - indeed - Trans, you are not misgendering whatsoever.
Abigail Longmeadow
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Katheryne Helendale
🐱 Kitty Queen 🐱
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What's his Twitter handle? I feel like having some fun!
Katheryne Helendale
🐱 Kitty Queen 🐱
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He's not unique to SL. He got his start in the TSO community, pretty much alienating everyone even then.
I've been using Grumpy Cat "Good" quite often lately.
Prok is Prok, If I was running LL I'd have banned her from the forum AND the grid years ago....like 2006.
Prokofy Neva, Salome calls her the Crazy Cat Lady of SL. Hates anyone more successful or popular than her, calls them FIC. Also hates Linux users and MTF transfolk. Don't call her she, he uses a male avatar. I suspect Prok is a self-hating FTM. Prok is one of the few SL users I've WANTED to troll when I see her. Basically I'd call her Comrade and wave around a kitschy Soviet flag that plays the soviet anthem on Kazoo. Not that I've actually done it, I've just wanted to do it.
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Robert Jung
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I didn't understand what was happening then , and I certainly have no more clue today, but it's always been one of my strongest memories , reminding me we can't always predict what will happen in SL.
Noodles
At least I tried to try.
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Beebo Brink
Climate Apocalypse Alarmist
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He was banned from SLU, and because of that, Cris asked that we not discuss Prok in our forums since any discussion was one-sided. Aside from the occasional oblique reference, we pretty much held to that line.