Second Thoughts

Er, Remind Me What the Problem Was Again?

Every time I see that hokey new phrase "Solutions Provider," I ask myself: "Er, what was the problem again?" Reminds me of the quintessential Marxist superstructure in search of a base...

Glenn Linden has a post up about the SPs today, and nowhere does he give us the number he gave us, gosh, about 18 months ago now I think, that came out to US $7000 a year per SP, i.e. not a living wage. Even this high a number came out washing big projects like the first installment of what was ultimately the $10 million that CBS gave to the Sheep for a variety of projects against all projects, to make it average out better.

What he does give is the figure of "$70 million" for this "space" as the trendy term for this sector of the economy is denoted -- but we don't know what piece of that the Lindens own. Guesses out there?

Being an SP of course gives you special parking near the Lab...somewhere in the Metaverse lol. And you get to be in special closed-door meetings with the Lindens on sensitive topics like OpenSpaces, where you don't compete for airtime with uneducated nits and griefers, and where I suspect the ratio of sychophantic fanboy isn't as high, either. Pity we don't have that for inworld business, which pays more of the Lindens' bills.

Or...does it? We don't get that information, either. At one point -- again, ages ago -- Glenn told us what percentage of sims were owned by SPs and their clients: 15 percent. And now? In other words, if the Lindens make at least $108.5 million in tier from private islands and mainland a year (that's a rough calculation assuming uniformity of tiers), what percentage of that comes from RL business? Could someone go in the thread and please ask these pertinent questions? That number would let us know a) how successful this program is in replacing us, which is the goal and b) how much business really did leave SL, or did it in fact not leave as much as the MSM tells us. So try to get that number! I'm betting it is the same, or even growing a bit, because there are all kinds of non-English language firms putting up all sorts of stuff -- I think they have softer launches than they used to.

The Motherland Must Know Her Heroes!

The Motherland Must Know Her Heroes!

I wish I could call on Tatlin or Malevich or even Gorky to make up the art or poetry that could go with these revolutionary cadres who showed such great prominence in our revolutionary OpenSpaces struggle, but unfortunately they are all dead. And my tenant, Nikolai Sapunov, who has, er, surfaced after that unfortunate incident in 1912, is off on a drunk because after being sent over the moon by the sale of 3 of his paintings to the famous Filthy Fluno, I had to tell him that it was a pity purchase and that he has to move his ass out of my rentals and I'm even going to move in Filthy instead -- because Kolya has not paid his rent in 4 months. My support of deadbeat Russian artists can only go so far...

For some of these heroes and their transcripts, "Commentary is Excessive", as the Russian saying has it, but let me say that these distinguished ladies and gentleman do need a little commentary from this faithful revolutionary chronicler.

First, I give you...

KALYRRA HEART, EXTORTIONIST-TURNED-EXECUTIONER. I don't know whether Kalyrra herself drew the bloody, torn hand on the protest poster, with the ripped out eye hole (that idea was actually stolen from Nikolai Sapunov, as he keeps reminding me about every five minutes, although his hands weren't bloody). I first saw the flag waving from her parcel in Nautilus, and then saw everybody copying it. But it might as well have been her emblem, as it signified the ugly, nasty, hateful, Bolshevik terrorist nature of some aspects of the OpenSpaces Rebellion which she exemplified. In the Concierge group, at raucous inworld protests, in various protest groups, she called for blood -- and set the most extreme tone.

Kalyrra of course did enormous damage to the grid in her years as an ad extortionist. There was always something very puzzling about her work. She had a zillion signs for a tacky porno dance club. When you went there, you found it had gadzillion traffic, no doubt from bots. But there were no people there. The links to her content store always seemed to be broken (she made some sort of tacky ho outfits). The entire thing looked like a front -- like one of those mafia Italian restaurants in NYC with the windows shuttered. Her ads were circular -- taking you to her club...which took you back to her ads. Sometimes the ads would flash and turn to some other Internet site, which always would flash through about 10 URLs, taking you to those grab-and-infest sites that are illegal, with names like "Friends" and "Sexxxxxy Girlzzz" etc. The entire thing was of course an ad extort racket, with the "business" a mere thin overlay. She also sold the hugely high-priced land in Bay City and elsewhere, and has joined the throngs of land barons in Nautilus, with land priced almost as high as the highest gougers, although mercifully, with no ugly content (that's not allowed now as it used to be) and just ugly flat freebie cherry trees and rainbows.

I've been shovelled voluminously long Kalyrra incitement transcripts. If there is some ardent student of the revolution who would like a full copy, email me at dyerbrookME@juno.com, but here's a typical rant:

Still More Special FICness

Ordinal is wondering whether the SLDEVDIR notice about the Gold Program is faked -- I'm asking about this now, but it sure didn't look faked.

Meanwhile, she provides a link to something that is even more annoying, a special "Council" -- and perhaps that link is faked too? Though it shows a Linden as an administrator.

Here's what's truly despicable (if true) about this special Council: Ancient Shriner, despoiler of the mainland, hijacker of the view, parasite of all eyeballs on other people's land, is on the council. I've heard senior Lindens describe Code4 as one of the main "solution providers" but I don't know what they accomplish, really, since their Coldwell Banker spectacular flop. Anyone?

It does provide some possible insight into why the Lindens backed down from their position on licensing ad networks, in favour of just trying to use the TOS (a position I favour, but which I have little faith in them prosecuting properly).

More FIC Institutions: Going for the Gold

Hamlet nee Linden Au scrubs the provenance of the FIC theory, and its reality, from his own book, and the book he helped edit that is the "official handbook" of Second Life. But more than ever, the Feted Inner Core, those enjoying special privileges and connections and a front-row seat in the economy and media coverage, is being institutionalized in ways I could never have dreamed 3 years ago, when I first coined the term on the forums. Some serious PR massaging has occurred on the SL Wikipedia entry -- for a time, it had a rather fair portrayal of the FIC theory and noted me as the reason who conceived of the idea (they've taken out all mention of residents now).

Two recent developments indicate that while the inworld economy might be suffering its retractions, the FIC is developing nicely, proving the eternal maxim, which I learned from a Tibetan leader asking a Chinese official who said that Tibet had to be controlled "for the sake of development": "Whose development?"

SL-DEV mailing list (the grungier one about scripting and open architecture, not the elite one, which I'll come to in a minute) recently ran two advertisements for talks. Grant Linden, whom I don't know, said he was turning over his office hour to Jacek Antonelli to talk about his viewer and the Imprudence Manifesto, which I blogged about earlier. I protested about two things: a) since when do Lindens pick residents to promote and give them the amplification of the office hour to showcase their goods and services, free or commercial? b) why fete this particular service, as Jacek makes it clear that he only wishes to put a stick in the public's eye about their protests of viewer changes? That was beaten back, I was put on "moderated" status to be cleared henceforth for asking these questions and then it came around again -- Grant advertising somebody else with some scripted thingie was going to be shown off in the office hour (this reminds me of those professors who always bring in guest lecturers because they're too lazy to prepare lectures themselves, I guess).

So I raised an eyebrow and a protest again, and furthermore said that advertising "Freedom Day" touting all the opensource dreck was really a biased promotion and shouldn't be done off the Linden's dime, let them put a add in classifieds, of course, if they have any money after all that time in the Freetard Republic. I never made it out of the mod queue with that one, but the issue stands: what's up with showcasing residents now in Linden Office Hours? Hey, I want a piece of oh, Jack Linden's office hour to advertise my rentals in! Perhaps Robin could carve out 10 minutes for me to pontificate about my anti-OS sentiments, so that there can be equal access and air time for all, given how much air time the OS gang got off Grant. And so on. So, there you have it, the mysterious Linden office hours, which aren't updated any more on the Google Calendar, are not in the Events List, are not on their profiles, and are something you have to "just know" by being in "with the right sort" are now even further out of reach as the Lindens are not only going to nod like bobble-heads at their darlings gushing in fandom, they're going to be featuring their pets in office hours.

This is peanuts compared to the Big Time however, which is the Gold Program. It should be self-explanatory, below:

SLURL Hurl

Good Lord, is this the best they can do?

Blue Linden has been working behind the scenes on NUE -- New User Experience -- doing AB experiments and whatnot where the compare A to B and trying to figure out ways to get newbies through that rough first hour.

I'm all for that -- who isn't? I've got lots of ideas about that -- who doesn't?

But the last thing I'd do is hurl them on a SLURL. That would be cruel. SLURLS are a hose. They DO NOT WORK.

I've picked my share of SLURLS out of blogs and want ads outside of SL and tried to press on them. SL will open up and it will ask me if I want to teleport to this place. Sure do! I click and click and click...

...and click some more. I refresh the page. Nothing. No SLURL. No teleportation. No nothing.

It used to be that the way the script worked was that a SLURL triggered a pulling up of the map, with a bull-s eye red dot, and you had to the click on the map. That was deemed to clunky, and rightly so, given that for some people, the map stays grey and doesn't rez or is confusing. I liked it better, and still use that script in my rentals, because there's nothing like bringing up a map into people's view with a red bull's eyes that says "Now you're going to go someplace" and oddly enough, they get it!

The other thing that happens now due to map-loading issues and the retiring of that other method is that the system generats you a bookmark with a picture. That bookmark is "supposed" to show up in your lower left-hand corner, and you "just know" to click on it. What happens is...it never comes.

You refresh, you click -- nothing. I have this problem; customers have this problem. I've concluded therefore that...it's a problem, silly me. Oh, I know that literalist fisking geeks will be along any second to say snottily, 'Oh, but it works for mmmeeeeeee nyah nyah nyagh" and you must have an aging Commodore 64 system.

Look, SLURLS are a hose. They were cumbersome before requiring people to look at a map, maybe even additionally sign up for SL, and then press on something and click on something -- you lose people. WoW doesn't work that way; most people get it that you are entering a world not pretending you are dipping down from the Internet for a sec.

The other problem that remains for me to this day is that it's not clear how you get a picture into your SLURl if you want one other than what your land already has, which would be helpful for business -- there probably is some way to do that besides looking at a watermelon tutorial but I don't know.

There's a worse thing cooking I sense here though and that is that the Lindens are very likely --

The FIC 2.5

Well, it's that time of year again boys and girls -- the SL Birthday Season! -- when we have that very, very special announcement for you that I know you have all been waiting for so anxiously!

And yes, I've gotten an early leak of it and of course I'm *hastening* to share it all with you! I hate to rain on Mitch Kapor's parade, but it's better you hear it from me first!

And yes, it's the long-awaited update to the FIC 2.0 list of 2007, the FIC 2.5 list!

Ok, ok, I'm hearing some sighs of disappointment in the room that we're not at FIC 3.0 yet. Yes, I said, last year, "Dare to Dream!". And yes, after another fun-filled, but, uh, challenging year, we still have some bugs and some bugs-disguised-as-features that we haven't worked out yet. But I think you'll agree that we're better off than we were before. We're that much better off than we were last year, or last week, or a minute ago, when we were younger, stupider, laggier...and less closer to our goals of a Better World That Pays Us Online.

What is this FIC of which you speak, you may ask? For those of you playing the offline home version of SL, I realize the FIC, or the Bosses, may not matter to you deeply, or you may wonder why this term is always used, or find it "an interesting myth" as Robin Linden once called it. Google it. And read on...

FIC -- which rhymes with "bike" and not "Bic" -- stands for Feted Inner Core, which you can think of as "the kool kids" or "the jocks and cheerleaders" or "the inside dopes" or however you called it in your high-school or your office, where perhaps you rage and gnash your teeth at the fact that people who seem to do less work or have less talent or even less fabulousness than you still get ahead through connections, favour-banks, or sleeping their way to the top. Or even if they DO deserve their spot in the Hall of Fame, because they DO work their asses off and DO have talent, you feel, but wait...what about the people with no talent? What about justice? What about fairness? I work hard, too!

The wonderfully magic software of Second Life has shown itself to have astounding transformative powers. It can take a shy store clerk with barely a high-school education in Colorado and make him a famous virtual building contractor with tens of thousands of real-life dollars flowing in the door. But, you say, I'm a shy store clerk with barely a high-school degree in Colorado *too* and it's just not coming together for me! Well, your world/your imagination. With my handy lists here, you'll know to whom you have to suck up, or "fete", and whom you have to avoid as last year's spent nuclear rod.

The Software Democracy

I really have to marvel at the injustices of Linden Lab and its little coding kiddie pets, really, my eyes roll 360 degrees in their sockets.

You have to see today's SLDEV list. For some reason, three or four of the particularly loony and aggressive arrogant coder fucks -- and that's a report, not a name -- went off the deep end on the list and started linking to my blog calling them "arrogant coder fucks" and saying choice bits like this:

"Software engineering is not a democracy. Patch or GTFO".

Gosh, what an, um, democratic and all-inclusive and liberal concept *cough*. Look, software engineering BETTER BE a democracy, I reply, or people won't pay for this sandbox.

Then of course that smarmy mama's boy Strife Onizuka comes on and begins a long stemwinder about sure, software can be a democracy but all the basic accounts get a vote each "just because" and rich fat cats can't decide democracy by stuffing cash into the box. Um, right, so...freebie fucktards get to decide what to do with my land? How does that work lol?

Then Soft Linden comes on with a completely awful intervention in which he claims that in fact these forums where economic and social issues are decided as if they were "technical" will get to go on doing this, essentially, by pretending it really *is* technical only (as if!) and anyone who thinks otherwise can go to other forums, and the people who decide these things aren't on this list anyway (now that's weird, eh?).

I wonder if M Linden ever reads this stuff -- it's pretty awful stuff. But he may be of like mind, I can't understand exactly.

Yes, I'm used to the Soviet-style of argument -- no one can disagree or object to the coding cabal because we need to Get Things Done.

More FIC Stuff: Endorsed Helper Groups

> LL puts a heavy hand on helper groups if they want to get its endorsement.

More FIC stuff coming down the pike -- Endorsed Helper Groups. Sigh. Not surprising, given all the other clutchiness of the Lab lately to become involved in resident life -- SLB5, Certifieds, Devs, SL Views, InSL, Mentors, etc. etc. I heard Blue Linden proposing this bad idea a few months ago and feigning to get "feedback," but of course that means "We're going to do it anyway and see how badly you will protest." This is how LL gets more retention to sign-ups for free, but without having to manage all those awful mentors and volunteers (they should dismantle that system).

I had always advocated that Lindens simply create a grid of job activities for the newbie stream, and outsource it on an open multiple-bid system, i.e. hire both for-profit and not-for-profit groups, pay them, or let them monetarize their activity in some fashion through ads or sales or tips, that they approve as a business model, and then let the free market of contracted services bidding for placement, reviewed and rotated now and then, go to work on this problem. That's how you do it in real life.

The existing inside-the-vest-pocket method of doling out portions of the newbie stream to oldbie dev friends or newbie corporate buddies just doesn't work. BTW, I work on an infohub with newbie streaming. And I have to say, that without ads, without tip jars, without sales, you cannot sustain it except as a loss leader. That is, even if you put stores, rentals, content around the infohub, you cannot expect much. Newbies don't have money. They come to the infohub -- then move on. It's a long-term prospect.

What I don't like about this "endorsement" is the controlling nature of the vetting by discretionary means, the lurking danger of police groups despite their claim they won't allow them, the subjectivity involve, and this constant ideological control with the Tao of Volunteer stuff (which is for the birds). I'm told they improved this system somewhat by agreeing not to subject each group to Mentor control (ugh, dodged THAT bullet). But the net effect is: some animals are more equal than others. Four legs good, two legs bad!

The Special Thing

This announcement from the Lindens regarding a "special guest speaker" and a "very important announcement" has put all the SLogosphere into a frenzy.

Those of us in the cheap seats won't find out until the ceremony during the week of June 23-29 I guess, but of course if I understood one FIC leader correctly, it was known about as long ago as May by some special folks, and now FlipperPAY is bragging that he knows what it is on sluniverse.com -- but won't tell. Sigh.

I was thinking at first it could be something that *some* people might find wonderful, but others won't -- so often that's the way in SL. Like, flat tier (all tier costing exactly the same).

But, we're told this is something that everyone will appreciate, and not all are tier-payers. And it is a "special guest," which sounds like someone outside of SL. So, take it away, Philip:

"And let me announce today our special guest, Sam Palisano, CEO of IBM, here to tell you about IBM's new investment in SL and joining our board..."

"And here he is, Lawrence Lessig, who is here to tell us that all land will henceforth be free, as information would like to be free, too..."

"And let me introduce to you presidential candidate Barack Obama, who will be turning all of the United States into Second Life..."

"And away we go! Here's Will Wright, coming to join LL and bringing with him 50,000 former TSO members whose game is closing August 1st..."

Knowing how the Lindens are, their idea of a "special announcement" of course could be something like, "Oh, woot, we have mono," by which they don't mean a kissing disease. Or, "Oh, woot, we have web on a prim," which has always totally underwhelmed me, as I already have web...on my computer screen in the other window lol. Or, "Woot, puppetry..." Sigh.

If the special thing I was told about at VW07 was the same thing being announced now (and I'm not sure it is), I was told this would "restore faith in Second Life" and was unequivocally a good thing (i.e. that I would think so, too, not as Lucifer is speculating, that it will "make me shit my pants". It seemed back then it wasn't coming until the fall, but maybe they are rushing it. When I said, "Is it open source?" (not something MOST people would either understand OR think is a good thing if it devalues the SL economy) I got the impression it was a "no," but...again, not sure we're talking about the same thing... It's possible FlipperPAY was told something false to see if he'd talk...

Do you need a "special guest" to announce the open-sourcing of SL? No. That's why my guess was IBM.

Ruth Among the Alien Corn or IBM Can Haz Your Stuff?

Ruth, now subdued and suppressed on the commercialized Linden Second Life (TM) and turned into a mere blur, escapes to OpenSim where she can be herself...Photo by Zha Ewry

An event that didn't get any notice down on the cyber farm but which had the Metaverati all agog in recent days is this story of what you might call "one small step for man, one giant leap for avatarkind"...or something. What happened, is that the ubiquitous, computing Zha Ewry has laid some wire out of Fortress Linden into the Vasty Unknown of the Metaverse, AKA Adam Zaius' Garage.

When I first heard this news, I felt, gosh, about as excited as that one time the Time-Warner cable guy came and laid a wire in my house. Wheeeee! Now I get to watch Family Guy, Fugitive re-runs if they will ever put them back on, and fires in New Jersey!

That is, I couldn't really get THAT excited, given how, well, we already learned back in the 1960s that "You Can't Put it Together, It *IS* Together," and the Internet is already all hooked up to itself and its parts, anyway. So if the "virtual Internet" (but isn't the Internet virtual *anyway*) now hooks up -- in and out of the Lab, and behind the IBM firewall, and out to Adam's Garage (yes, I realize it's some other guy's garage, too, but you know what I mean), ok, then...can we now go down and watch the paint dry on the hardware store again, please?

Because of course, that's not all. And now comes the hard part. And here I'm glad that one of the anonymous liferz in the Architectural Working Group, another ubiquitous computer Saijanai Kuhn, has really shown his hand here. He got on the Metanomics group to brag -- and soon, when asked why he and a few others got to decide this on behalf of the entire virtual world, he gloated that it was merely because...he can. Because...he is a trail-brazer. Because he showed up first.