Second Thoughts

Search and...Destroy?

Pretty soon, you'll be able not only to hunt for squids on SEARCH, but also find avatars who are squids.

Here's another tumbling and incoherent office hour, where we're all scrolling at once. Robin tells us about plans to change the SEARCH -- and I'd recommend also going to hear Jeska with more details -- although more than half-way through, she basically just said "it's a Google box" however Khamon will be delighted to hear she says distinctly, "You'll be able to search people's profiles."

What's interesting to me is that Robin is hinting (though not actually confirming) that LL might NOT take out traffic results -- that this might be *one* of the indices used to make up this Google-like search. Hmm, we'll have to get the goods on this.

Robin also clarifies some issues on gaming/gambling -- but not to everyone's satisfaction, of course.

Age verification is definitely coming -- and other kinds of things, not specified, which will also "build trust". LL is getting out of the business of establishing social mores (note that correct word here! not "moorings" lol!) and building "tools". Of course the open question is -- can you build social mores with tools lol? No!

SLCC: The Next Step

Adri, Slim, and Prok. More photos here.

Just back from the Second Life Community Convention, which was about one day too long, or one day not long enough, haven't figured it out. I think that's the last time I'll be taking the train for 18 hours anywhere but Arkhangelsk -- I did find Amtrak Coach Sleep Position No. 187 however, and that made it better coming back.

The fact is, SLCC has outlived itself for some, is not developed as what it should be for others, and has long since ceased to be a cool factor or business engine for still others, and so they have moved on, or will be moved on by next year. It shouldn't likely be attempted in quite this form again, or it will fail.

SLCC is known for who was there -- 860 people, perhaps half or more of whom never heard of anybody else -- but it's also known for who wasn't there. The SL Herald didn't cover it, Urizenus Sklar and Walker Spaight didn't come or even get Tenshe Vielle at least to cover the Masquerade Ball; there were no suite parties with tequila shots and gold-fish swallowing -- nothing. For both those two gonzo journos, SLCC is just simply not cool anymore. Even the SL Blingsider didn't cover SLCC live, or have stringers, or really say much of anything tangentially -- merely because I guess Tateru herself didn't come, and Aimee didn't come (always odd, that) -- and they, too, have evidently decided SLCC is just not cool enough.

Reuben Steiger, who was the star of the show last year, running around in a jumpsuit and pushing cool cars, was absent -- and evidently there were no MOUs either. Oh, and Hamlet Au of New World Notes didn't come, though arguably the SL community still makes up his bread and butter, and he should come. He didn't even have a stringer cover it. I didn't see any of the more prominent Metaversed.com authors like Nick Wilson or Onder Skall -- but then, Chicago is a long and expensive way to come, and quite frankly, I imagine, like others, they are saying to themselves that spending on Virtual Worlds 07 Fall is probably just the better buy. I can't disagree.

Chatlogged

SO telling to read Benjamin Duranske's parsing of the latest documents to surface in the Bragg case. NONE of that prosecutorial zeal and forum fanboyz' gleeful gotcha over the facts emerging pointing to Bragg's guilt. The Lindens have submitted the server chatlogs in the case, showing unmistakably that Marc Bragg (Marc Woebegon) knowingly and deliberately defrauded LL. He knew that he was using an exploit, and even enlisted other people in the scam. Bragg even plotted how not to appear "too greedy" on this "dollar auction".

SUCH a contrast to Duranske's firey and zealous coverage of Ginko, which has him shutting down Linden Lab for supposedly not complying with law, and putting Ginko in stripes by the end of the year, well, just because...because he once had a case kinda like that and thinks he's guilty. None of those wishes for stripes for Bragg, though it seems pretty clear from these documents that he's guilty of computer fraud under the laws of the State of California, those very same "real life laws" that "apply but haven't been enforced," as Duranske's notion of the Ginko case.

I guess this is what you call a liberal lawyer, one bending the law to an ideological agenda. His default is likely to hate those in authority or power, like Linden Lab, and figure whatever can "stick it to the man," i.e. prove that they defrauded the public by "false" claims of "land for sale." Proving either a) the validity of virtual land or b) that Philip lied about it being like real land, is simply more interesting to him. (Urizenus Sklar follows this exact same line of reason, brushing away Bragg's scam, and focusing only on what exposes LL.)

So for them, Bragg's fraud and theft and malice and cover-up simply isn't of interest. Duranske's dry, cautious tones completely contrast with his pronouncements on the Ginko case. What a surprise.

Plastic Duck Sucks Up

Trying to take advantage of my AUGUST SALE!!!, Plastic Duck, whose RL typist is named Patrick Sapinski as he himself writes, is trying to get off my enemy list. This just in:

Dear Prokofy,

I'm sorry for not agreeing with you and I hope that we can get along and
have fun at SLCC.

Yours Truly
Plastic Duck

The Second Life Record

started a new newspaper.

Come join me! Comments moderated. Looking for authors!

"The First Thing, Let's Mute All the Lawyers"

I attended the SLBA meeting last week, and frankly, I remain alarmed about this effort, seemingly benign, of a group of people with legal training from various countries to form an organization that seems so rapidly to move from the theory of what lawyers do well in real life -- protect rights -- to what they do badly in real life -- impose themselves as indispensable to conducting business. Everyone in business in SL -- or even anybody with a non-profit or informal project -- needs to be very wary of what these people mean, and what they are doing in Second Life, and keep a close watch so that they do not inhibit our virtual world.

I realize the presence of these people is inevitable, but that doesn't mean we can't whack really hard at it and try to prevent them from interfering with the freedoms of Second Life. Like baby barons drawn to the real estate business by the presence of Anshe Chung on the cover of Business Week, so some of these baby attorneys are drawn to the legal biz by seeing the ground-breaking cases of Mark Bragg (a sim-rustler who is now suing the Lindens to get his account balance back) and Kevin Alderman (suing an avatar for copying his widely-imitated sex bed). These lawyers sense that they can get in and make history, set precedents -- and most of all, collect fees from people draw to virtuality for all sorts of reasons, but prone to nervousness and even outright fear by the prospect of how they may be bilked and even harmed seriously by anonymous avatars. They have an objective need -- indeed, their bottom line may depend on it -- to portray Second Life as a wild and lawless frontier that is only fixed...by hiring them and letting them refashion the space.

Just as in Shakespeare, the first thing we need to do is mute the lawyers -- that is, to modernize the phrase in SL terms. That is, not listen to their at times shrill and even illegitimate screams about making themselves indispensable, or listening to their judgements about what's illegal or not. That's because the law isn't so formulated yet; their expertise given their own status and motivations as anonymous avatars (even if a RL name is nominally given) is suspect; and the context they operate in -- the grey area between real life and simulated life -- may benefit them, but has no demonstrable benefit to the public.

Rebuttals Page No. 2

Oh, how tiresome to have to keep returning to this sort of page again, but I just happened to notice that psychopath Joshua Nightshade is at it again printing his malicious and psychotic fictions. You wonder why people think they can get away with this on the Internet? Because everywhere, they meet with a sense of impunity -- nobody ever stops it.

There was an interview with me over at SLNN after I ceased to post at the Herald over the Lisae Boucher affair and other chronic issues I had to protest. So after this rather thorough and accurate article was posted, got a certain amount of attention, and some positive comments, of course Stalker Number One had to show up and try to malign it. Here's the refutation:

>I was contacted by someone who claimed to be the guy who passed your RL phone number and address around, part of where Plastic Duck got it from. He assumed I was a sympathetic figure

Yeah, um, stop right there. He assumed correctly, because Joshua has spent months harassing me on various forums, answering every post, making nasty, vicious comments, the usual treatment that has earned him the scorn even of Second Citizen. Joshua even printed entry after entry claiming he had "sightings" of me in real life; that he lived "right near my house" and that "hey, it's raining today and Prok has an umbrella". It was ridiculous, and there was no such thing. When challenged, suddenly he said he "moved" and wasn't in that neighbourhood anymore LOL. Sick.

>given the fact that you make up malicious fabrications about me at every turn.

What I've done is report accurately this little pathetic dweebs fakeries, and exposed them lol.

Linden Lab is a Non-Profit Organization

Gwyn Llewelyn has an interesting article, nearly hidden among the brilliant Uri vanity pieces, bukkake exposes and PN drama, positing that Linden Lab is really "barely profitable" but that it's going to have a hard time saying so unless it stays in a Ponzi-like growth scheme. Uri adds that its business model is merely to experiment and play with software while they make widgets they quietly patent such as to pwn the Metaverse's infrastructure.

I think she's seriously underestimating both their profit and their expenses (and losses), and also completely misses the boat about their true intentions, which are *not* to make a profit. And Uri's part-spoof article that the Lindens are in this for the patents and pwning the Metaverse is also seriously discounting the prevalance of their ideological motive versus their profit motive -- there's no point in pwning the Metaverse with widgets unless it's *for* something. That something is to push their Better World stuff.

First of all, just to do some back-of-the-envelope correctives to Gwyn's math, we have to figure that the Lindens have 12,000 servers (a few hundred more by now) which they collect $295 a month on tier. If you think that's an error, because they still have mainland tier coming in at only $195, and old islands at $195, you're missing the fact that since November, all new islands have indeed been sold for $295 monthly tier, and there are way more of those now than old-tier islands (and possibly even more than mainland, I don't have a way to check that). Furthermore, those few thousands of tiered mainland sims don't fetch only $195, the bulk discount rate for a whole-sim tier, but many smaller tiers that people pay of $25 US for a 4096 -- meaning more like $400 per sim tier. It's hard to calculate how many of those part-sim tiers are out there, so that's why I've simply decided to use the rule of thumb of 12,000 x $295 -- which is still probably an underestimate. $42.5 million per year in tier alone (yes, there is all that Governor Linden land, but no more new continents have it anymore, and in any event, it's an income potential that could be sold.)

Next, we have to figure what they sell those islands and mainland sims for. Let's figure that they can get $2000 per mainland sim -- except not any more, if you look at the auctions, and see they are now back to selling more like $1500 (which is why they raised the opening bid, they're not stupid, and it wasn't to cut the land barons a break, but to cushion their losses after the gambling ban). Still, let's give them $2000 x 100 x 12 or $2.4 million for mainland sims per year, because they sell a fair number of smaller parcels in dollar amounts that often fetch much higher amounts, and the prices could go up again if they print less of them. And let's figure they add 850 islands a month as they did in July (probably a low number) x $1695 x 12 -- my God, that's $17 million a year right there for the island sales!

So add $19.4 from land sales, $6 million for Supply Linden's printing and selling of at least $500,000 in Lindens a month to stabilize the money supply (erm the license-to-transact supply), and $42.4 million for island and mainland sim annualized monthly tier. That's $67.8 million in revenue, not $60 million as Gwyn estimates. Now for costs.

AUGUST SALE!!!! GET OFF MY ENEMIES LIST!!!

ACT NOW AND SAVE!

With the Dog Days of August upon us, and SLCC right on the horizon, enemies will find this an opportune time to GET OFF MY ENEMIES' LIST!

In an excess of good will and bonhomie, I've decided to review my enemies list in light of my Rule No. 2 (do not incite or cause RL or SL damage to me) and REMOVE Andrew Linden (yah, Andrew!)!!! Yes, while Andrew has publicly attacked me a number of times in ways that only reveal the Lab's insecurity, and has crossed the street even to violate Lab protocol and attack a resident in a forum (they're supposed to only be cheery like Torley on third-party blogs), he hasn't actually caused damage. He even apologized, after a fashion, though I can't find the link now (I know it's out there). WOOT Andrew!

Now...who's next?

Here's all you have to do to get off the shortest -- but most notorious -- enemies list in SL. 1) Unban me from your blog and/or land in SL; 2) write a note saying you're sorry and while you dislike me and don't agree with me, you will no longer incite SL or RL harm, i.e. you won't urge for me to be expelled from SL, to die a nasty death, lonely surrounded by 62 cats and 4,297 cardboard boxes filled with coupons; or be sentenced to fines or imprisonment for libel or defamation. It's really so easy, you'll wonder why you didn't do it long ago!

But act now, the window of opportunity closes August 31!st

Offer void where prohibited. You must be 18 or over to play. Members of w/hat/b/tard/v5 and their families and factions are exempted from this offer. You must supply an SL or SL name.

Second Citizen Shuttered

Second Citizen, that obscene, scatalogical cess-pool of a forum where I'm glad I don't post anymore (except for the occasional forray when I'm summoned to a thread, to defend myself) is closed "until further notice".

Odd, that. I have no idea why -- precisely because I didn't keep up with it much lately. I think I saw yet another "Open Letter to Prokofy Neva" where somebody was ranting the other day about something, but I didn't have time to see if it was new or necroposted. I think it was a thread where Jauani Wu accused me of pyramid-scheming tier from wide-eyed newbies through Ravenglass Rentals and then sex-trafficking them into third-world slave dens, while working for Bush as an agent to install wire-tapping in Second Life. I let it go -- you can't be everywhere.

I noticed there was actual closing of threads going on lately, which seemed highly out of character; maybe old Mother FIC was starting to fray at the edges. I believe Steve Mahfouz was accused of bad landlording by some guy who raged and spammed and finally it was closed. I didn't really see anything controversial there, like a hack tip to mine dead people's Social Security numbers and sign up for fake alt accounts, or glorification of the PN's infiltration of the grid --the the usual fare at the SC. But maybe someone knows?

One odd thing is that in the last few weeks, somebody went to a lot of trouble to do a massive advertising campaign of flashing fancy photoshopped logos and witty sayings as you can see here -- but they were only on SC, not on other blogs. Some of them were dorky but most showed some promise, and you realized that when whoever made them got over his bad meth or dope habit and got off Second Life and WoW, they might get a real job in an ad agency or even a metaversal myrmidonery.

I have no idea whether the sudden shuttering of SC is related to Karl Rove's resignation, the collapse and perpetual bonding of Ginko's or Mother going into rehab -- or one of these oft-threatened libel and takedown actions finally sticking, but I can only say that while I don't wish SC well, as it's an empty trash lot of rabid junkyard dogs, I'm never for any free press outlet being shut down.