Ugh, the FIC/SIC/Rogue Linden thugs are getting out of control again. Check out Hiro Pendragon's thuggish attempts to bully and intimidate me -- I won't waste any more ink on it, go read all about it at the Herald. I did check with one Linden who is supposedly "officially in charge" although of course the unofficial Lindens on their resident alts from beta-test days are in charge, too..but still...there is some modicum of order in the place. I asked him if I was going to be permabanned, or if an open ticket is being held over me, waiting for me to trip up on some technicality to ban me (swearing in PG? a tree waving on to some neighbour's property?). He said "Not that I'm aware of." Sorry to disappoint.
The grown-up Lindens who really supervise LL (or so we'd like to imagine) sometimes let that rogue group of young star programmer Lindens get out of hand -- along with their old FIC friends from the days when they were residents. (Given that 1/3 of all employees were former residents, it's a safe bet that a healthy chunk of Lindens are busy feting their old pals on any given day or project -- there is absolute impunity now for any Linden who wants to use their alt res for special projects, special bids thrown to old friends in their groups -- which they remain in -- etc. etc.)
It's a balancing act, to be sure -- those more adult Lindens who are wiser in years and brain cells and experience are busy, have a lot on their plate, and they have to weigh the constant supervision and disciplining of these young whippersnappers with keeping said whippersnappers motivated and earning that low salary in exchange for keeping the grid running and being content with the free Ring Dings and Diet Coke in the lunchroom, or the fatties breaks, or whatever it is they do give them motivation, other than access to pretty avatars in cybersex chat lol.
Tough job! Anyway, I've been busy and unable to post here, and gosh, my mailbox sure did fill up. Somebody is outraged at somebody who they think has become FIC and is being a total bitch to people on a Linden-sponsored project. -- they want my sympathy and presumably would love me to cover this story, too Hmm. Should I take that on? Are there enough hours in the day? It's sad to watch, really, how people who should know better, and aren't bitches, BECOME bitches as soon as they get involved in something that has a Jeska Linden or a Jesse Linden at the helm...
Somebody else is indignant that I didn't slam Lordfly for that incredibly outrageous post not only asking for us all to pay for his college! but asking us to let him go on being an arrogant dick about not making houses to meet his customers' needs!
As many of you know, I paid for college in two other countries, where I learned 2 languages, by: 1) earning As and getting scholarships; 2) serving in restaurants and diving for tips and washing dishes; 3) typing papers; 4) picking strawberries; 5) delivering the US mail; 6) translating; 7) literally watching Xerox machines perform in a mind-numbing QA test for days; 8) babysitting; 9) well you get the idea. This was back in the days before email, the Internet, and faxes, so we had to haul our words in looseleaf notebooks in our backpacks for blocks! Why, I used to get up before the crack of dawn and...ok, well, you get the idea.
Today's college boy, Lordfly, spends an hour seated at his fascinating computer exercising his mouse-clicking finger with one hand, and with the other, either eating lime-flavoured Tostitos or [fill in the blanks] while he goes about building a pixelated house for people to try to have avatar sex in without knocking their heads on the ceiling. He puts it out in a vendor where he can earn him at least $2.50 US per copy, maybe more, and he goes to play WoW. I mean, I don't feel sorry for him!
I used to get up at 4:00 a.m. to get to the fields, then finish my strawberry picking at 7:00 a.m., just in time for the first day shift at Xerox. I'd trudge from that to the night shift at the 7-11 store where I worked the deli counter, my fingers blistered from not only picking fruit but banging paper trays and loading stacks of Xerox paper. I was lucky I never sliced a finger off in that meat-slicing thing they have at the 7-11. Well, you get the idea.
To be sure, I had an offer of a reagant's scholarship from the good people of New York State, but I wanted something a bit better and more exotic, I guess, so I worked for it?
Anyway, I never have time to keep up with all these developments! So I reply sometimes to other blogs like Hamlet's -- except that he takes my posts off routinely now, even if they are normal posts without any personal attacks. !@#$!@$@#$ My post against The Lordfly Chutzpah hung for a day, and anybody who saw it knows it was perfectly normal, not an attack, and merely made the pointed point that if you don't want to make custom houses to the customers' specs, well, surprise, surprise, you aren't going to have customers!
Which brings us to today's rant. Hiro is fuming about first land again, Think About the Children, doing the usual demagogic trick that the Content Fascists do in their endless war against the Land Dealers. He's accusing unnamed "land barons" of swooping down and scamming newbies and force-selling land with spinning signs. Based on his one experience -- because of course he doesn't see, as we do, that this is a low minority of experiences, and doesn't reflect the actuality. Anyone who helps newbies, flies around new areas, and sees what is going on can give the lie to Hiro Pendragon. But of course, the well is already tainted with his insane take on the situation, and no doubt teams of Lindens are busy programming new and more complicated shit into the User Interface, sitting in on little feted development circle meetings with Hiro presiding. Geh. Look at all the extra and confusing stuff they've ALREADY put into the UI over land because of a few forums' howlers who don't even buy land anyway.
I hope the Lindens have the good sense to leave the first-land system alone. It's not great, but it works. They need to put out more of it, and sprinkle it around more in other sims, not just in one-sim ghettoes. That means getting on the backlog of abandonded land taken by the Governor, among other things. I keep reporting 3 of those parcels, that could have become first land weeks ago, if they want to call me.
Of course, no self-respecting barons like Anshe Chung or Bob Bravo or any of them, myself included, bother with buying first land. I mean, Jesus H. Christ, who are you going to sell it to? When? You'd hold it for 30 days with no sale, even at merely 2.5 its prices in some areas. It's just a total waste. Land barons buy in bulk at a discount off the auctions, or liquidated from other residents. Why on earth would they spend $9.95 to farm first land out of premium accounts? It's sheer madness. The few times when I've bought first land to help out a tenant who was willing to put 512 into our group, it was as a favour, as it sat there, unsold, for eons.
Only other newbies and wannabees and lowlife liquidators who are willing to bottom-feed in the first-land ghetto are going to bother. Apparently the term "barons" now applies to 1) other newbies trying to make a buck; 2) candidates for the teen grid who didn't figure out that all those charges for premiums are going to hit Mom's account, and BOY is she going to be mad. And frankly, these sign-spinners are just other newbies 90 percent of the time. If the Quix Bux people have gotten in there, well God-bless them. They are bottom-feeders, but bottom-feeders are needed in a free market to keep it liquid.
I could go on ranting against Hiro, but fortunately, the world is like a gadzillion times bigger than it used to be, so now normal, common-sense new people just explain it normally, as follows:
Originally Posted by Kaklick Martin
OK, how many of the people posting to this thread so far actually purchased first land within the last month or so? Hands? |
Well, no, not in the past month. I came in-world at the end of October, upgraded to premium a week later, and bought my First Land (in Leafroller, a new undeveloped sim) a few days after that. In mid-December, I bought a larger 1136 plot next door (just over the sim border in Lappet, as it happens) from a land baron, sliced off 16 and gave it to a neighbor to get into the 1024 tier with group bonus, and sold my original First Land to one of my next-door neighbors for L$3800.
So... how has it all worked out? The original sim has consolidated into a smaller number of hands; it was all First Land originally, but only a couple of 512 plots are still left. Many of the land owners in Leafroller are original settlers who bought out one or more neighbors to expand their holdings. It's still a hodgepodge of buildings, not nice and neat and planned like Dreamworld, but it's a living settlement and the neighbors get along.
About half of Lappet is now owned by one person, who bought it all from the land baron when he got tired of holding onto so much land. As a result, much of it is green space, with lovely swaying trees. The rest of it is in the hands of smaller holders like me. Again, we all get along.
My point... the First Land program seems to have worked out well for the people in that area. The ones who stayed got a jump start on buying land with the inexpensive plot. The ones who left got fair prices, mostly from neighbors. Leafroller had those rotating signs briefly when it first came up for sale, but so far as I know nobody sold their First Land plots to speculators -- and that happened despite the fact that we were mostly new players. Based on our experience at least, the program isn't broken.
i have to admit youa re the best person to announce us your departure, its good, very good, the sun shine brightly today, i just hope this error on the pile of your collection will be the one that makes you slip over the line
farewell prok we will miss you... or not
Posted by: Kyrah Abattoir | 02/26/2006 at 05:42 PM
I have to laugh at you little babies who don't understand the concept of law, and think the world will revolve around your likes and dislikes--NOT!
Sorry to disappoint, I won't be departing.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 02/26/2006 at 07:22 PM
i am sure you will prok, maybe next time ^^.
I don't see what law has to do in this however -_-
Posted by: Kyrah Abattoir | 02/27/2006 at 03:03 AM