Cut the Cutting

I don't know why there'd be any long discussion on this subject of Land Cutting.

The Lindens aren't *really* asking your opinion, they already decided what they're going to do:

They will have a Policy. The will not have a Technical Fix.

So any discussion about it is retarded. Completely.

The Lindens will have a Policy. That means you can AR land cutting that is intended for extortion or to force a buy.

It will be manually audited, just like the ad farming extortion stuff. They will get abuse reports, they will go to the scene, and examine it with their two eyeballs in their organic heads, not through bots, technical menus or scripts or whatever (as has been proposed by some on the JIRA).

So if it's a big field of cut up lawn that is decided to force a sale, it will fit the policy and the person will be warned. If it is Weedy Herbst on Ravenglass sim with her secretive weird "family business" (har har) where she and her "husband Dave" need to audit the scripts on this sim for some unfathomable reason, the Lindens will pass by, like the angel passing by the blood on the lintel.

All of this screeching, edgecasing, hysteria is -- again -- stupid. Kim Anubis blogging her consulting services maximization is -- again -- stupid. The Lindens can tell if someone oh, desperately needed just this very 16 m for their uh...slex box.

BTW, in due course, the Lindens will get rid of that magic box stuff anyway as they merge inworld and web accounts, obviating the need for an inworld thinger completely. Duh.

All the other ridiculous fisking, edgecasing, whatiffing, etc. is all moot. Who cares? The Linden out there in the field can tell the difference between your mall, with search/places adds stuck in a row for tenants in 16 m2, or your field of extortionist selling. Please.

So the questions the Lindens might reasonably ask, giving his is a POLICY, is, "Are there any cases when chopping up your real estate sell into little bits would be justified?"

Um, no. Because the end user of an entire parcel who might have to carve this or that 16 m2 out for a landing point, a different search ad, or just a place to give his little Nautilus trophy object it's own very special bounded home -- will be doing so with land that is all contiguous in one group. It won't likely end up being sold separately as a donut, etc.

The Lindens and their little friends can think about edge cases til the cows come home. In the end, who cares, because they have a *policy* and that means manual, organic eyes on the subject, not a tool inside the viewer to prevent cutting smaller than 128 or sales smaller than 128 or something. Anyway, let's get done with this one quickly and move on to the other more pressing issues of the mainland, like NUE on the mainland, for instance.

Comments

[Kimberly Rufer-Bach]

Wow, did you just mention me in your blog for the third time in the last week or so?

You said, "Kim Anubis blogging her consulting services maximization is -- again -- stupid."

I don't blog. Are you talking about my comments on the forum? I was far from the only poster who was confused initially about the definition of land cutting and what LL had in mind, thinking it might mean no subdividing parcels into very little ones for any reason. If you had thought that, you might have written something about it, too.

The fact that I own a development company doesn't make my views more or less valid than yours or anyone else's, and regarding this subject, what concerns me about this right now -- and what I wrote about on the forums later in the discussion -- is mostly my mainland parcel where I have my old shop. I have had that shop since 2004 and I love it dearly even if it's probably bad for my consulting business to leave a cluttered, outmoded thing like that where clients can see it. I run my consulting business from an island. If there were a policy change on the mainland that botched up a client's build, it'd probably be good for my business in the short term, because then my company would be hired to move their stuff to an island.

However, I don't think it's a good idea to keep changing the rules on land owners . . . openspaces, small parcels, whatever. I think it might make it feel risky to buy land when the rules of what you can do with it change too frequently. I think that can hurt us all. And I just don't like having the rules changed on me, either.

I, personally (not my company), have bought and sold small parcels for a variety of reasons, for reasons other than making someone else's life miserable or making money. You know, for FUN, which is why I came to Second Life. I don't want to lose the ability to do so. If you want to label everything that you don't personally care about as an "edge case" and declare it doesn't matter, go ahead. If you think this is not a pressing issue, if you think "who cares?" and that the Lindens should focus on something more important, then why are you bothering to blog about it at all? Just so you can make a jab at me and Weedy?

Which goes back to . . . wow, I was in the Prokblog for the third time in about a week. Freaky!

[Prokofy Neva]

Oops a typo! I meant to say FLOGGING not BLOGGING. You really should get a BLOG so you can FLOG better, Kimberly.

The fact that you "own a development company" (how many people work there besides yourself I wonder lol) in fact doesn't make your views special. And what happens is that because you are in all these snuggly groups with the Lindens, like the Solutions Providers and Devs and whatnot, you have their ear more than the average person.

That means you privilege your clients outworld interests -- where your bread is buttered -- over what is good for the public inworld. That's a huge problem. You're a lobbying group with too much power, and you need beating back.

Generally, what your lobbying group always demands -- in its own interests, and clients' interests -- is maximalization of the platform's capacities. Nothing can be nerfed or reduced or curbed in the "freedoms" of the capacity to script, build, etc. so that the consultant has absolute maximum "scope".

But your need to be able to cut up 16 m2 cannot trump the need of inworld businesses to stop having their land devalued. It's just that simple. Your needs do not trump others needs in this economy.

The idea that we "can't change the rules" and that means "stability" is insane. The Lindens have many stupid ideas frozen in their status quo of 2003 or 2004 and desperately need to change them to bring about true stability, and end the distress and strain and churn on the mainland.

Since most consulting takes place on islands, and every policy Jack has brought about re: ad farms and ad cutting only relates to the mainland, indeed one has to wonder why you are squawking on the forums. And obviously it's because of some perceived offense that might happen to your old mainland parcel. To which I can only goggle in stark amazement, as the area where your shop is has been blighted insanely with ad farms and extortion for years, harming your view among many others, and has only begun to subside now. That you would stop progress because you think it might theoretically stop you from experimenting with some vendor or script on a 16 m2 is just preposterous. And yet that's how you think, and that's what you posted, and that's what sticks (you don't come back and say, "Oh, I'm wrong").

How one could be so blind to the problem of cutting and ad farming, but still keep bleating in oldbie fuck-you hedonistic propertarian fashion, about the need for "fun" -- well, it's beyond me.

[Kimberly Rufer-Bach]

I hope you don’t think I was mocking the blog/flog typo . . . I really didn’t understand.

I said myself in my previous comment that, “The fact that I own a development company doesn't make my views more or less valid than yours or anyone else's.” You’re the only one who seems to think it matters.

I’m not a lobbying group. I didn’t go stand by someone’s office door and buttonhook them. I didn’t bring it up with my favorite five Lindens while they gave me the FIC pedicure treatment and fanned me with peacock-feather fans. I didn’t casually mention it at a meeting with LL upper management. I posted just the way other SL residents posted, when LL asked us to post our opinions on the forum.

I do worry about the possibility that the rules of land ownership could change too frequently and hurt us all by making land ownership seem risky, but that’s not the main reason I bothered to post about this. I did misunderstand, as some others did, and post something in defense of cutting parcels into small pieces at all. I left that without editing after Jack posted to clarify because some other people have still posted after him to say that no parcels under 256, or 64, or 512m2 should be allowed at all. I didn’t know that Prokofy the Post Police was going to bother blogging because I didn’t go back and edit it. Do you really think anyone other than you and I noticed or cared? Because I don’t feel that my opinion on this subject has much influence relative to the huge heap of other posts on the subject by other people.

Yeah, as you pointed out, I know my home is set in a neighborhood that’s seen better days. My old build looks shabby compared to what I build now, too. But it’s home, still. And I feel that this policy that’s under discussion has a potential of messing up what I would like to do there. It would also have a bad effect on one of my most favorite things to do for fun, which is to buy some cheap little parcel and build something cool on it, then sell it, and then go find another -- I posted about that on the forums, so if you’d like to heckle it you can go read it without me retyping the whole thing.

It seems to me you let your incorrect notions about my motivations blind you. If you think I “would stop progress” you really need to take another look at what I posted there, including the bit where I said I thought LL should try the approach suggested by Desmond.

I can’t figure out why you bothered posting about me, other than just because you wanted to see if I’d come out and play. I mean, I don’t feel I’m going to sway LL or some coalition of SL residents to make some big decision on the basis of a post I made while I was busy procrastinating on cleaning the catbox one afternoon. So, while I’m now successfully procrastinating on doing the dinner dishes by posting this, and most people like to talk about themselves when given the opportunity (including myself), I can’t figure out why any of this matters at all to *you*, or why you would bother typing about it so much. Do you really think I have enough power to merit it? Cause that would be pretty flattering, and it might make me feel like enough of a rockstar to leave the dishes in the sink til morning.

[butthurt holding company]

I know we're secretly best friends and all that but you may be interested in this thread http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=314474&page=1&pp=15 LL are taking an interest in the family business were it is causing annoyance and holes in peoples land.

[generic viagra]

I don't think it's a good idea to keep changing the rules on land owners . . . openspaces, small parcels, whatever. I think it might make it feel risky to buy land when the rules of what you can do with it change too frequently.