Second Thoughts

The Most Insincere Form of Flattery: The BBB Steals My Idea of Honorary Consul

By Prokofy Neva, Virtualtor

From my "Honourary Consulate of Titania" installation at the Home & Garden Expo Design Contest in SL in 2019. 

Shorter-than-your hand summary: the Bellisserian FIC did in fact steal my idea of honorary ambassadors (here's the proof below) but it doesn't matter because it's not copyrighted. I called it "honorary consul" in my inworld story because that's more the proper term in my view;  but let's be thankful at least the residents in this RP aren't all Americans, many of whom actually acquired in our virtual world their first experience of something called a "passport" -- and can't find RL countries on maps. At least some of the BBB aren't Americans and have some grasp of international affairs -- I think -- such as to work up models for government and foreign policy to replicate in virtuality (shudder).

I don't want to be one of those people because I'm my own ambassador of my own projects, and so should you be. I think there are better ways to sell premium accounts -- which ultimately is the purpose of this strange RP of a RL government and foreign office. But likely it will be mainly harmless and eventually sink of its own weight. It's worth following so they don't start trampling in your back yard. But remember, there is only one way to stop an exercise in player government engineered by the game company: make your own, and displace it. 

 

Slamming Operation Mainland

So Jezebel Bailey is "no long with" the BBB, and yet the august personages at the BBB still saw fit to leave her permissions on to the comms. I personally wouldn't do that if someone left my business or project, but ok. So Jezebel got on the horn the other day in the BBB Users Group (population 567) and ragged on the Forever Tourist program of Operation Mainland (population 699). I have my differences with OpMainland but generally I think they're a good thing, like I think the BBB passports and travel are a good thing. I'm all for exploring, especially the Mainland. I personally am a solo player and have my own small group Mainland Appreciation Society (population 44), and larger, long-time project, SL Public Land Preserve (population 850, of which about 650 have logged on in the last year), which has many supporters, but I'm not really here to be in the virtual equivalent of my high school government or college newspaper editorial board; for one thing, I don't have the stamina to sit for 12 hours or more a week in interminable play-meetings where nobody pays me.

Just for the record, because you can't find these things out unless you 1) own property in Bellisseria and therefore are eligible to 2) get a BBB passport and 3) get invited into the BBB Users Group if you apply for to host stamp in the passport game, here's Jezebel's note verbale to Operation Mainland:

Just wanted to put in my 2 cents because you can never totally leave the BBB when you love and believe in it as much as I do! The BBB is expanding as it has to to keep everyone happy and enjoying their passports! Just know this, the BBB is accepted and has the LL backing. You will never, ever get sent to a sex club, a shopping mall, or any place not authorized by both the BBB and LL. The BBB offers unique stamps for your enjoyment and fun in finding them in hunts, or from the weekly list that Sun puts out,
Every placement of a dispenser is carefully selected by the owner of the dispenser. No you do not make your own stamps for anywhere you happen to go to. But if you want or think a stamp dispenser could be placed somewhere, either mainland or Belli, drop a not to Sun.
The reason for this little tirade other than saying HI, is because someone thought they might be considered disloyal for going to another site. I didn't know what they were talking about. I thought they were talking about the expansion of the BBB to mainland. So here is what I think!

1. The BBB works with the moles and lindens on placement, both in Mainland and the BBB.
2. You have the most incredibly talented people working almost 24/7 on making sure everyone who is a part of the BBB, enjoy being part of our BBB group,
3. You cannot be disloyal. Just remember WE do not show places on our web page that have not passed all requirements to hold one of our dispensers.
4. If you want a travel list for us, we do not take the our list off of the places search engine. That everyone can access.
5. I LOVE THE BBB AND WHAT WE HAVE ALL CONTRIBUTED TO ITS GROWTH. Also, the moles and Lindens that have assisted with its growth.

With all this dribble passed on to you, my friends, its a free to you, game within a game that keeps on growing. Thank you all for your continued support! (do I sound like a politician yet?)

Safe travels!
Bel

Now, OpMain may have a blog where this is posted, but I only know that it is issued in the group, which I will join now to fetch and leave, because I don't want to be in groups that are like my own groups, I have enough to do. Oh, except the link in the group is no good. Ok, hmm....After clicking like an idiot for 15 minutes I finally found it -- they really need to put "BLOG" on the splash page so that you don't hunt until you find it under "location list" which isn't intuitive at all.

Again, for the record, here is Fionie's Memorandum:

Because I genuinely want to help residents travel the grid, please understand that there should never be any ‘feelings of disloyalty’ for having any kiosk from any other participating passport program. It honestly doesn’t matter to me HOW a resident finds a cool place to visit - just that they do. For location owners, I want you to do everything you can to promote your SecondLife businesses and locations - if that means having every possible kiosk of every type of game on your land, I encourage you to do so! 

Forever Tourist was never created to upset anyone - it was designed to include businesses in a passport style game AND to create community by allowing ANY resident to be able to instantly participate. If you want to understand the specifics of why I created Forever Tourist, I did an in depth video talking about it’s design, what my goals were, and the steps I took to start the process. You can watch it here. 

I have been and will continue to work with the LDPW team to try and find a way to make it easier to grab a stamp on some of these public places by placing a Forever Tourist kiosk. I only want to do this if that means we don’t have to change the rules that we have in place to let everyone participate. I haven’t been able to create a way for this to happen just yet, but conversations have happened with ‘the powers that be’. Don’t worry - I won’t give up. 

(For those who want to deepen their foreign ministry RP, here's a list of terms from the State Department you need to learn.)

It's been interesting to me to see how people who try to suck up to get along with the Lindens and deal with them in partnerships then get burned, jaded, cynical, etc. It's partly because nobody knows history; they ought to read about Clubside Granville.

The old forums archive are a rich depository of history and more people should mine it before the Lindens some day delete it, like they did the townhall transcripts. Oh, the reason I'm not in that thread is because at that particular period in history I was banned from the forums.

In any event, Operational Mainland took the higher road and made a statement setting the record straight about Jezebel's jab -- which I guess was motivated by the fact that somehow within their circles, some people thought getting involved in OpMainland meant "disloyalty" to the BBB (or visa versa). Interestingly, while this was playing out, OpMainland was featured in Destinations and constantly on the splash screen, so at some level, Lindens "want to be fair" and recognize any resident group "doing something positive". Some people are on their own planet or don't want the kiss of death or live in bitter rejection but I've always found that if you want a sustainable project where you are free and not co-opted, you have to play SL without the Lindens as much as you possibly can, given that you still rely on them for things like roads, clean water, and hospitals. Wait, I mean, just the first thing, the roads. Oh, but not in Corsica, where -- oh, never mind.

The FIC is Not a Conspiracy, It's a Report

Fionie Frimon wants to be a Mole, i.e. one of the select contractors of LL with the last name Mole which involves certain privileges but also involves enormous amounts of hard work, especially as they are now tasked not only to build roads and houses, but to be sort of Gentils Organisateurs like Club Med and organize "fun," moderate the forums, and help build community centers launched with two residents' wedding, at which Patch Linden will be best man. That last bit has raised more than one eyebrow among oldbies and several acknowledging, "Hey, Prok, you were right about the FIC."

The FIC (the Feted Inner Core or privileged caste of SL with connections to the Lindens) is not a conspiracy. It's a report. (Read the original thread about the origin of this term.) My critique about the FIC isn't rooted in jealousy because I'm "not a coder or a maker"; I just think there should be demonstrable quality and there isn't always. I think there should be activities that involve a registrational approach -- a set of criteria for a contest or an event, which anyone can apply to and participate in, rather than a discretionary approach -- where you apply, hope you meet the criteria, which can be arbitrarily applied, and then get rejected for reasons that are unknown. In the US, anyone can form a corporation by sending a small fee to an office in Delaware. It's only later, if you fall afoul of the law or don't file taxes, that bureaucrats then focus on you and restrict your activities. In Russia, the theory is the opposite: first, you take an applicant and drag him through 14 offices and grill him and  put him under the scrutiny of everybody from the secret police to the cleaning lady. Then you issue the registration or permit -- but it's on sufferance, if you stop  doing favours for the bureaucrat. Well, different countries have different cultures...

Also I think any FICness should be publicized. I don't know this lovely couple; I personally couldn't marry a man named "Riot Hax" but that's just me. I've sure he's a lovely fellow. My further comments are here. PS no need to put me in the ban list as a) I don't have a tuxedo and while I have a wonderful petite avatar from Fallen Gods, I don't like getting stepped on in big crowds. I'll wait to see the community center after all this lag inducement is over and hopefully there will be freebies.

I imagine -- I hope? -- that this initiative didn't come from the Lindens, but came from the betrothed residents (unless, of course, one or both of them are Lindens themselves lol). And I imagine that the Lindens, keen to build up Bellisseria and get some traction for their new community center in Fantisseria (and more sales) -- especially after the rather botched Trick or Treat pumpkin thing -- decided to accept the request and justify it by publicizing it on the forums so "anyone" can come (if they follow all those elaborate instructions and can fit on a sim meant for 44 people) and say that it's really about opening a civic center "anyone" can use (if they are premium and in Belli, of course).

There Can Only Be One

So Fionie has built her own very ambitious program, populated it and rolled it out successfully, while also managing an abandoned land reclamation business and doing her own building and writing and of course managing her RL jobs and family. But from what I gather, the Lindens -- the Moles -- have not granted her the recognition of having Mole locations within her network, unless she joins the BBB -- merges with them, really, only as a Mainland "honorary consulate" in a sense -- which she doesn't want to do. She is still "in talks" -- just like Bill Burns is now in Moscow with the Russians.

I think for her, the problem with joining the already-blessed BBB-Linden alliance is that you weren't there at the formation, and you will play second fiddle and if anything, hurdles will be devised to make sure you don't disrupt the program by actually joining. I suppose OpMainland can always issue stamps "on the fly" by merely going to a Mole location and issuing one but you know? Through their "DIY Kiosk" system. If I get time, I will try to figure this out and do it for Magellan's Crash in Columbia.  There are a lot of places in SL. You don't need the Mole places to have fun -- and you can have fun visiting them without all the stamp stuff.  "Don't burn down Party committees; build your own." (Jacek Kuron, Solidarnosc).

The Lindens are guided by a concept that they can't cater to "all these groups" (even though there aren't many of them; it's actually a small world; and only a few would pass muster given their usually strict and arbitrary and not always  public criteria, as with the newbie gateway helping centers. I'm not sure the BBB is so wild about such a merger either, but I personally have put stamp machines in both; I travel on both and enjoy the sites, and I don't want to get too deeply into it because I sense it will involve long waits at drafty aerodromes at high elevations without visible rentomatics, waiting for Rick to bring the letter of transit, and sadly concluding "We'll always have Ahern."

The template, of course, is the sailors and Blake.  Read history, please people. And, fast-forwarding from that post in 2009 to 2021, I think I don't have to argue any more (as I used to have to do) that such amalgations that "cross the blood/brain barrier" are about commerce, first and foremost. Sailing brought the Lindens more business, and why not? That's a good thing. It brought the "Lindesidents" in their Linden/resident "Sea of FIC" group WINDFALLS in rentals and sales of land around Blake -- that can't be argued. Was that a good thing? No, because it helped create havens for monopolists charging outrageous prices and in fact suppressing participation in SL. Are there ways to play SL without getting caught up in all this? Yes, just like you don't have to get into the best parties in the Hamptons to have fun. Will the Lindens drop their FICing to ultimately get more sign-ups? No. Not only does Silicon Valley not work that way, high school didn't, either.

What is an Honorary Ambassador?

In any event, that skirmish was last week's news, and now there's today's news, which is the BBB has now formally stolen my idea of "Honourary Consuls", which was part of a story I started in 2019, and which is manifested at a BBB stamp location called "Honorary Consul of Titania". (The "us" is European/Canadian spelling I got used to long ago going to university in Canada and Russia and working for European outfits, but if you don't have enough space, like on a limited stamp template, you drop it). I could start a long explanation about how "Honorary Ambassador" is really a different thing in the UN or OSCE or other multilateral institutional context, like with Wonder Woman. Graham Greene wrote a novel about the other kind of figure, the Honorary Consul. Ultimately, it doesn't matter, you can do what you want in SL and mangle world culture in any direction, who cares.

The "Honorary Ambassador," Bellisseria edition frankly sounds like it is modeled after the Soviet Friendship Society's latest incarnation in modern Russia, Rossotrudnichestvo which is basically the arm of the Russian state that goes out and runs influence ops abroad to recruit assets.

How to explain this for the young? Well, no one has yet proved Michael Cohen was in Prague (but keep in mind that unlike the Bear Castle, where your BBB stamp would prove you were there, and you would need another BBB stamp to prove you were at Eulennest -- Michael Cohen could have gotten a stamp in Italy and flown to Prague and it wouldn't show up) I did find that the then-rep of Rossotrudnichestvo who shows up in the Steele memo did not tell the full truth about his own trips to Prague.

ANYWAY of course the SL version of this is basically just about the Lindens having some trusted comrades who can go and rope in other residents' groups and bring them under control association with Linden projects. Nothing sinister in that! If it leads to rentals/land sales down the road, keep in mind you have to work nights and weekends getting even a Blake Sea business launched -- do you all realize that?

And from their perspective, this kind of roping in is necessary. I was the one saying the other day that the Lindens don't have the equivalent of the one-way propaganda stream Radio Tochka (a rather abominable thing in Belarus which you can't turn off) to beam messages to all or at least some select residents, since people don't read the forums, bat away splash screen announcements, and don't read emails with the word "spooktacular" in the header. You know? So that's all good, again, from their perspective. We're not going to wait for Committees of Correspondence to be formed on every sim or even every continent to deal with the Lindens now, are we.

Honorary Consulate of Titania

I've run this story of Titania and its hapless Honorary Consul M. Carter Blanc of Telehub Ross (as in carte blanche, get it?) for some time now in various forms. It lasted through over 3 years of the Home & Garden Expo design contest participation where I won prizes for "best story"; it then had various sequels on my blog and inworld manifestations, and then it became a place in Bellisseria in Porridge Pot, and then finally it got a BBB stamp.

There's a very low-key "Letters of Transit" game associated with it, which few people play because it's very obscure and hidden and almost analog in nature -- and that's not usually what works in SL where attention spans are miniscule.

Even so, it's a thing, I chisel away at it sometimes and sometimes I get messages from it that there are "3 people" who played it or "0 people" in a row some weeks. It's just one of many things I tinker on, I think it's cool, and actually not so hard, but surprisingly few people who get stamps even bother to go inside a house to get its freebies, let alone play some mini-game within it. Oh, well.

So when I applied for the stamp, I explained some of this to Jezebel Bailey, at that time dealing with the applications. So here's the conversation (and remember kids, it is not a crime to publish chat logs outside the SL servers -- they don't have jurisdiction over other companies' servers in their TOS! In fact, it's a duty, to hold both residents and people in power to account -- that's important in any world. And it's all part of the gorgeous mosaic of SL history.

2021/04/07 19:45] Second Life: Inventory item 'Bellisseria Passport Application 2021 - Prokofy Neva' offered
[2021/04/07 19:46] Prokofy Neva: Hi, here's my passport application. Thanks
[2021/04/08 11:35] Second Life: secondlife:///app/agent/81f1414f-62d6-482a-a0e6-366ba7998661/about is offering friendship.

Would you be my friend?

(By default, you will be able to see each other's online status.)
[2021/04/08 11:35] Second Life: Friendship offer accepted.
[2021/04/08 11:35] Bel (jezebel.bailey): ty
[2021/06/18 15:33] Prokofy Neva: Hi, how do you get the HUD for the extra passport pages when you run out?
[2021/06/18 15:33] Prokofy Neva: or does it automatically deliver to you
[2021/06/18 15:34] Bel (jezebel.bailey): do you need a new hud?
[2021/06/18 15:34] Bel (jezebel.bailey): or another hud
[2021/06/18 15:34] Prokofy Neva: I have the upgraded passport already
[2021/06/18 15:34] Bel (jezebel.bailey): you should have gotten 3 of them named visa
[2021/06/18 15:34] Prokofy Neva: ok let me look
[2021/06/18 15:35] Prokofy Neva: why yes, it helps to search under the word "visa" and not "passport"
[2021/06/18 15:35] Bel (jezebel.bailey): haha that should hold you at this point
[2021/06/18 15:36] Prokofy Neva: yes I'm not excessively traveling
[2021/06/18 15:36] Bel (jezebel.bailey): but we can give more when needed
[2021/06/18 15:36] Prokofy Neva: I do have both vaccine shots but
[2021/06/18 15:37] Bel (jezebel.bailey): if the other person doesnt
[2021/06/18 15:37] Bel (jezebel.bailey): yours is no good
[2021/06/18 15:37] Prokofy Neva: yes I realize
[2021/06/18 15:37] Prokofy Neva: I realize you may start giving out shots soon
[2021/06/18 15:37] Prokofy Neva: I have a rare immune disease in RL but I don't think it applies in SL
[2021/06/18 15:38] Bel (jezebel.bailey): YES thats what we need next time
[2021/06/18 15:38] Bel (jezebel.bailey): next upgrade that when you go to locations for stamps it asks if you have any of the following
[2021/06/18 15:40] Prokofy Neva: you have to have your shots yes
[2021/06/18 15:41] Prokofy Neva: you seem like an important bureaucrat
[2021/06/18 15:41] Bel (jezebel.bailey): and if you reply wrong it denies you the passport
[2021/06/18 15:41] Prokofy Neva: yes
[2021/06/18 15:41] Bel (jezebel.bailey): hahah I shall talk to NOrth
[2021/06/18 15:41] Prokofy Neva: it could be random
[2021/06/18 15:41] Prokofy Neva: if you are important I will send you a thingn
[2021/06/18 15:41] Bel (jezebel.bailey): send away not sure how important I am but I have a bit of pull
[2021/06/18 15:42] Second Life: Inventory item 'Confidential Envelope 2' offered
[2021/06/18 15:42] Prokofy Neva: so this is a Letter of Transit from the Honorary Consulate of Titania
[2021/06/18 15:42] Prokofy Neva: these are rarely issued
[2021/06/18 15:42] Prokofy Neva: and they entitle you to certain goods and services
[2021/06/18 15:43] Prokofy Neva: which you cannot be told about
[2021/06/18 15:43] Prokofy Neva: altho one thing is known publicly which is the Diplomatic Pouch in 3 Bellisseria locations
[2021/06/18 15:43] Prokofy Neva: where you get a gift
[2021/06/18 15:45] Bel (jezebel.bailey): the diplomatic Pouch is that a private thing?
[2021/06/18 15:46] Prokofy Neva: no it's public but only works if you wear the Letter of Transit
[2021/06/18 15:46] Prokofy Neva: which you can only get at certain times
[2021/06/18 15:46] Prokofy Neva: if you think the BBB is bureaucratic, Titania is...glacial
[2021/06/18 15:47] Prokofy Neva: but since the prizes are all things I make, let me say that this isn't what you would call a high volume game
[2021/06/18 15:47] Prokofy Neva: : )
[2021/06/18 15:49] Second Life: Inventory item 'Honorary Consulate of Titania' offered
[2021/06/18 15:49] Bel (jezebel.bailey): would you mind if we used some of your ideas tweaked a little?
[2021/06/18 15:50] Prokofy Neva: well they aren't copyright at the US Bureau of Patents
[2021/06/18 15:52] Prokofy Neva: are you a Linden on your day job?
[2021/06/18 15:58] Bel (jezebel.bailey): hahah yeah but we are pretty careful on the things we use and if its ok its ok, Brat!
[2021/06/18 15:58] Prokofy Neva: well I will denounce you on my blog for shamelessly copying my ideas but let's see I think I had 37 readers yesterday
[2021/06/18 15:59] Prokofy Neva: I noticed that when I posted about a slidehow I had at one of my locations from Xenon Linden some Mole HASTENED to put up a slidehow TOO
[2021/06/18 15:59] Prokofy Neva: so trust me, it will not be the first time in my 17 years of living virtually that someone has copied my ideas and not even credited me
[2021/06/18 15:59] Bel (jezebel.bailey): hey word of mouth is the quickest way to get things out there and bad word of mouth is even faster
[2021/06/18 16:00] Prokofy Neva: We do not have a free press in Second Life
[2021/06/18 16:00] Prokofy Neva: in Bellisseria there are only groups
[2021/06/18 16:00] Prokofy Neva: so I'm sure your capacity to put out bad word of mouth is enormous but honestly, I don't care, I do my thing
[2021/06/18 16:01] Bel (jezebel.bailey): oh we will credit you!
[2021/06/18 16:01] Prokofy Neva: so what is your Linden name?
[2021/06/18 16:01] Bel (jezebel.bailey): when people start bitching about having to do the shots records I will give you all the credit
[2021/06/18 16:01] Bel (jezebel.bailey): I am not a linden I just run the BBB
[2021/06/18 16:02] Prokofy Neva: the Lindens have written in their TOS that they can take any creation of any creator and use it in their PR and have a paid-up perpetual license to do so, and really, that's common
[2021/06/18 16:02] Prokofy Neva: yes sure, you'll give me the credit to pile up more hate on me, that's understood : )
[2021/06/18 16:02] Prokofy Neva: I personally am pro-vaccine but you will find a lot of anti-vaxers in SL so good luck
[2021/06/18 16:02] Bel (jezebel.bailey): well I am not a Linden so I dont steal your stuff
[2021/06/18 16:03] Prokofy Neva: well as I said, my things are not copyrighted or patented, that would cost too much to do in RL
[2021/06/18 16:03] Bel (jezebel.bailey): at least I ask before I do
[2021/06/18 16:03] Bel (jezebel.bailey): yeah it would
[2021/06/18 16:03] Bel (jezebel.bailey): to bad you couldnt pay for it with Lindens
[2021/06/18 16:03] Prokofy Neva: I would think an attempt to do a vaccine like thing, even though it fits perfectly with the passport idea, will get all kinds of static
[2021/06/18 16:03] Prokofy Neva: but you could leave it to the venue owner maybe
[2021/06/18 16:04] Prokofy Neva: then they absorb the grief
[2021/06/18 16:04] Bel (jezebel.bailey): We would
[2021/06/18 16:04] Bel (jezebel.bailey): we would put something like Make sure your records are up to date
[2021/06/18 16:04] Prokofy Neva: hmm would I put this on any of mine? Maybe?
[2021/06/18 16:07] Prokofy Neva: I think there are two basic ingredients that define a virtual world
[2021/06/18 16:07] Prokofy Neva: 1) a sense of place 2) drama
[2021/06/18 16:07] Prokofy Neva: so you get this working for sure
[2021/06/18 16:09] Bel (jezebel.bailey): Absolutely

So fast forward to November 2021, and we find I'm not getting the credit because they didn't choose the obnoxious and controversial thing (vaccinations! whew, what a circus that would be!) but chose the "honorary ambassador" idea (I think this convo makes clear that I would only get credit for bad things that would lead to more hate, right? That would be consistent with past experience lol).

Why do I say "insincere" form of flattery? Because the idea is being stolen in fact without the credit -- but then we knew that -- and of course without me being offered an application to be one of those "ambassadors" or to "be in the room where it happens." But again, I don't want to be one, I'm my own ambassador for my own groups and locations (and so should you!). We can all be happy if the Lindens get more premium accounts, right? It's good for Second Life as a whole, yes?

Yes?

I used to be more confident affirming that premise of "the tide that raises all boats" than I am now, still...

I have to have a chuckle about how these people must not study international affairs in even the most casual way. So in real life, you have "ambassador plenipotentiary" -- that's appointed by a government, the "permanent representative" at the UN -- the US has five of them in New York alone and some poor countries only have a budget for one, in Geneva. Or you have honourary consul -- that is a lesser status usually more informally designated to represent their country's business interests in a city where there isn't already an embassy. So there isn't "honorary ambassador" in the way they are using it (which is more like consul). 

So what happened in recent years for all kinds of reasons, one of which is people don't understand what "honorary consul" is (an archaic term from the British Empire) and confuse it with "consulate general" -- yet another function which gives out passports. So now at the UN, they have "honorary ambassador" AKA "goodwill ambassador" to take on cultural functions on a specific issue, like, let's promote women's empowerment. So then you get this - a debacle around Wonder Woman (yeesh). The "honorary ambassador" or "goodwill ambassador" in the UN context is usually promoting a theme or an event, or a campaign, like "the Millenial Development Goals" as I saw in my 15 years covering the UN for various NGOs.

So they are not going out and recruiting various constituencies of people to "advocate for them in their home country" (in this case Bellisseria, as the newsletter explains). So the "honorary consul" in say, Nizhny Novgorod from America, is trying to drum up business for American companies there (well, at least until one professor of business who had taught there for 20 years was arrested for supposedly not having his visa in order). So ideally, if he is not in jail, he is helping Americans with contacts; he's not trying to find Russians to take back to America to help them develop businesses (and why do that when you have Donald Trump to do that for you -- or in theory, the Russian honorary consul in, say, Miami). Diplomacy is a system of reciprocities based on elaborate international law like the Vienna Conventions and practices; the informal "consul" or "goodwill ambassador" fits into the official structure. It's not one way, as it is in the SL edition -- the Lindens pick some people they like who they think will service as evangelists -- to use the Silicon Valley term borrowed from the Bible -- of their premium account -- those people round up the usual suspects under colour of "representing their interests with the Lindens" -- and then they buy premium.

Of course people argue about this sort of thing in RL --  different countries have different traditions -- and guess what, again, it doesn't matter, because we're in a virtual world and who cares.

With the BBB, we already have confusion generated by their term "Travel Advice" which sounds too much like "Travel Advisory" in real life. The BBB's "Travel Advice" is a list of recommended sites for tourists or businessmen, to promote more travel. The State Department's "Travel Advisory" is the opposite! It's to warn travellers of dangerous conditions. For example the State Department has a grade 4 Travel Advisory about the country Colombia due to COVID, civil wars, and -- as my son and his wife who just went despite these official US government warnings and warnings from their parents -- it has terrible drivers that make New Jersey look like a day at the beach. The first time I saw a "Travel Advice" from the BBB I did a double take -- were these aerodrome operators actually going to blacklist Mainland venues they didn't like? But no, it's ADVICE not ADVISORY -- you're supposed to slum it for an afternoon at the Mainland and get stamps!

How to Get People to Buy More Premium Accounts

So these grand personages in our virtual world will fan out and spread Belli love among non Bellis lol "They will represent and advocate for Bellisseria on the relevant continent. They'll be expected to get close to local residents and also to become their advocate within Bellisseria," as the BBB newsletter says.

Nota bene -- I don't wish to apply for this job and I suspect trying to manage all these "goodwill ambos" will become a burden, like keeping up the persona of the grumpy BBB official, and it will be retired. Maybe those people who always want the Lindens to build a railroad through my land in Grote will get recruited by this thing (land which the Lindens themselves auctioned, which was purchased by a furry, from whom I bought it). But these sorts of volunteer jobs are work, and doing them in a virtual context often leads to burn-out.

If I need to "advocate within Bellisseria" -- where I am a property owner -- I can handle that on my own I think? Or file a ticket with Support? I'm not planning a Trash Can Cuisine picnic with three-legged sack races any time soon in Belli so I don't need any Linden connex.

Ultimately, the Lindens can only justify the "honorary ambassadors" if it leads to more competition with Prokofy's rentals  more premium accounts of people who get homes in Bellisseria. I mean, how could you validate the staff time otherwise? As for the residents who sign up for this, one imagines it will fall closer on the spectrum to the American notion of such a job, involving sending people like Shirley Temple as ambassador to Czech Republic for a political favour because she donated to the presidential campaign, not sending highly trained British cadres with languages and years in foreign posts, or sending Russian officials abroad who are extremely loyal and now need to be rewarded for their service to the Motherland. 

I'm hazy on the part where these ambos "advocate" for say, Mainland customers of Linden Lab who are in, say, railroad groups that grew up around the old SLRR, "in Bellisseria". How does that work? They get these old furries to drop their grumbling about different guages and ride the rails in Belli? PS they need more than two rez areas to build up usage of that RR, and they need to overcome the tech fussing and put it in obviously places like Camp Sandwich and Ramstein Forest or whatever those places are called. BTW, if you are in Randelshtam, or whatsis, which has the great zip ride, the Honorary Consul of Titania is right behind it so come get a stamp.

I imagine that isn't going to work with that constituency. Or say, they go to one of these elaborate old elven communities or centaur havens like Rose Haven and get them to buy into Fantisseria, which is mainly norms who just put out some witch stuff now and then, not fullblown RP (and that's a good thing). Nuh-uh.

Really, the puzzle for the Lindens is this, and I feel for them: how to get real people and not yet another alt of GhostofaGhost Ghostly -- or Prokofy's alts, for that matter -- to pony up $11.99/mo or $99/annualized. 

The fact that the Lindens now send the Moles to moderate the forums (!!!) instead of using their actual talents building and scripting lets us know that the Lindens are meddling experimenting in the Metaverse again.

Showing Up

I guess they will have to iron out these details but I think as Woody Allen said, 99 percent of life is just showing up (but you don't want him to show up). I think some people wouldn't want Lindens at their wedding nor would they want to be strung into helping the business of some Belli House Beautiful matron who makes house add-ons. As the earliest Lindens used to say: "Lindens don't scale." Hence, the birth of the Moles, who scale better because you can pay Ukrainians $10/hour and it will seem like a lot of money. But the job is big and Moles don't scale ultimately, either, plus, after you recruited and trained all these people and you are done (for now) rolling out Belli homes, what can you do with them? (Oh, I know! have them moderate the forums!).

So who can you have scale? The FIC, the trustees, the worthies, the people who aren't even like Ukrainians and don't even need $10/hour, although the prospect of having their DJ business pump up could be attractive.

I think it's important to remember that many, many people bought premiums and joined Bellisseria, and not just the old FIC and their 10 alts each. It's a good thing for new people. And the lion's share of these people are not in the 120 or so Bellisseria groups, and not only because they said bad words and got evicted. The overwhelming majority of the "citizens of Bellisseria" did NOT put out the Moles pumpkin Trick or Treat buckets. And that's actually the hope of this Trumansville -- that it will live and thrive on its own terms, without the "help" of insider residents and their Linden/Moles.

 

Update: I tried my idea of using the Operation Mainland DIY Kiosk, which you put on your head, to record a Linden site (in this case Magellan's Crash). I took the picture, clicked on the box -- but oops, it doesn't work because scripts are turned off for "everyone" at these Linden sites. So I stood on my land adjacent to it, to get it to work. Not very satisfactory as there won't always be resident land you can stand on with scripts turned on for "everyone" near Linden sites, either. The Lindens make it hard to bookmark many of their "newer" sites in Nautilus, Corsica etc because they merely call it "Protected Land" and its name doesn't save on a landmark. You have to make the landmark and right on the spot, rename it to the Linden name of the place, or your own name, or a sim name, to find it again. They do make it hard! 

PS Notice I didn't get into a discussion about how the BBB, which is basically the same thing as the core founders of Campbell Community (it took me awhile to figure that out), may not be the best "ambassadors" to be sending out to community groups to recruit them to Bellisseria/premium accounts given how they and their land baron of choice just treated the "hinterland" residents who supported their community and even some of their core -- by putting all the easements and roads to sale in large batches for low prices when their land baron Maecenas found his business wasn't doing so well and had to shorten sail. Unsuspecting residents were lured into Campbell to buy nicely landscaped parcels in a planned community on the open market in Mainland for 0.4/m -- a rare occurrence on Mainland. Then a few days later, the easements and roads all went to sale -- got bought by various people -- got abandoned -- leaving these sections in a plight something like Pleasantville in the Twilight Zone with Anthony Fremont. And here we all are. But this is for another post and another day. 

PPS It occurred to me -- I should have realized this earlier! -- that this particular FICing with the Hax-Anatine nuptials is to keep up with the Jones in the Metaverse. Recently, Roblox made new people-like skins for their blocky kids that look like Legos. AND they announced that you cannot have partners, weddings -- you know, sex -- in their angular world. Makes sense, because it's mainly for children.  No politics, either -- but that would have been harder for Patch Linden to fete -- no politics are allowed in Belli or the forums, although tacitly conceded inworld on the Mainland and on private islands -- there are still Trump lawn signs all over the Mainland and various socialist and anarchist and even communist projects, one of which harasses me routinely in Marietta at my anti-communist memorial.

The Lindens want to show with a high-profile society wedding also launching the community center that you CAN get married in SL (although not everyone is going to get a company representative as a best man, but most people won't care about that part).

I don't know the estimated share of the economy that weddings possess but it's a very big business. Not everyone wants to get e-married but some of the content produced for weddings (like Atelier's new items at Anthem) could be purchased for any occasion, especially bouquets. Many people feature their wedding in their picks as the highlight of their virtual lives, just as in real life.

The Lady in the Back Seat

I was just reading the January 28, 1935 issue of Time magazine. I got the hard copy off ebay because one of my hobbies is to collect everything about Kathleen Norris, the 20th century author who published in the 1920s-1940s (not the modern author by the same name).

And what's significant about the advertising then from 1935, which is of a familiar type to those who browse vintage sites, is that they illustrate something about how people grappled with technology.

There isn't much written about how people over the ages have adapted to technology -- except yes, of course there is, by all sorts of overnight specialists writing quickie Mcbooks. But there isn't really good, enlightening, well-researched stuff, it seems to me. There aren't studies of say, the Scobles of yesteryear and how they tried and wrote about technology and how ordinary people dealt with it. What you do find now is a lot of urban legend sort of hack stuff, of the sort Clay Shirkey puts out (like his fantastic notion that during the Industrial Revolution, gin carts were brought around and people kept perpetually drunk, and this is how they "coped"). Tekkies who write about this topic usually tend to exaggerate how technology has shaped and changed people, and exaggerate their adaptation to it -- and exult their own role, of course.

We would tend to think of something like the automobile as well-established and already affecting people's lives and already transforming society by 1935. Of course, I think you could say that it wasn't until during and after World War II and the national parks system and interstate highways were built in the U.S. that you could talk about a car culture. In the earlier days, cars were like horses, kept in barns and with staff assigned to them, mechanics who had to work them full time, constantly fixing them and driving them.

What we tend to not realize, because there really isn't any place where you'd find it, is how unfinished something like "the car" is when it was "already established". If you read the novels of Kathleen Norris, you realize that in the 1930s and 1940s, people going in cars were like people going on plane trips. They always arrived tired, dirty, jaded, and cold. They'd have to be wrapped up in blankets for the journey, I guess because it was drafty and perhaps there wasn't internal heating.

This ad for a car lets you know just how uncomfortable cars were, by the way the ad is touting a brand new invention by General Motors that fixed what apparently was a common problem -- neck whiplash just from riding in the back seat, i.e. not from an accident:

PainPoint

PainPoint is a new program available from, um, I think Microsoft or some start-up that maybe MSFT is about to buy, I didn't quite get the specifics. Like PowerPoint, it's fairly easy to use, but dumbs down thought.

PainPoint is a fabulous new interactive software tool that enables you to manage your customers with alacrity and simulated concern and leads to optimalization of suppression techniques for massive customer conflict.

Here's how PainPoint works -- it's proprietary but has lots of customizable modules.

1. To get started, conceive of a drastic and painful measure that will boost your bottom line, and have the austere brilliance and will to execute it flawlessly, without divergence. If you have trouble coming up with ideas like this, we have another software package, Machiavelli, which enables you to prototype and map various YouRule scenarios that will help you devise the right decision.

2. Announce the harsh decision on a Friday night before the weekend when you have only a skeleton staff, or the night before you yourself leave on holiday.

3. Close comments on your corporate blog, and siphon comments off to a forums, which is heavily moderated.

4. Let people howl and scream and carry on about your harsh decision. Have some minions periodically arrive and say soothingly they are listening, or they sympathize, but they are waiting for instructions. Let the forums go for 1500 -- 2500 -- even 3500 entries is not too many for a PainPoint thread -- promise you will "read every one" and sound as if you mean it.

5. Allow existing or newly-created inworld groups to vent, complain, hate, screech, spread disinformation -- but strategically select one or two very visible community members who symbolize the issue and knock them down hard if they use the "F" word or step out of line. Then appear to have succumbed under community pressure to be lenient on that community leader's punishment -- or to blame a subordinate for the penalizing and apologize.

6. Hold an impromptu fireside chat, and strike a pose of weary contemplation and burden with the world's problems, soliciting "help" in "solving our mutual problem" from your angry customers, whom you now treat as bosom friends at your hospital bedside.

7. Externalize, globalize, universalize the problem. The problem isn't, say, evil leaders with bad policies on food or health care who cause little children to starve, the problem is "global hunger" or "poor nutrition" which is like the weather, and has no address or agent. Externalized forces of Nature like "lag" or "networks" or "the Internet bottlenecks" can be invoked as an agentless phenomenon, much like a hurricane, that we must "all work together as a community" to solve.

8. Divide the community. Figure out which responses are the most radical, which are the most moderate, and which are your most conservative loyal sycophants thinking your PainPoint decision is "right," and then play them all off against each other. You can maintain 24/7 capacity with PainPoint, which can quickly pull key words and repetitive phrases for you, tag community members, red-flag rabble-rousers and portray to you in real time a dynamic "picture" of "where this is all going". Plant firmly in everyone's minds the idea that "some people" have overused the resources and broken the rules and "sadly" we will "all have to pay".

9. Remain starkly silent when some community journalists attempt to play "gotcha" and "hypocrite" and try to accuse you of the very thing that you are accusing the community members of doing. Remain silent for a good long time. Let them blog, rant, rave, post Flickr photos. On about day 3, come forward and say, "But those were never openspace sims, those were full-prim sims, it's merely that our Moles prototyped them and built them on OS sims and moved them."

10. Use PainPoint's sentence-generating feature, which enables you to move the slider on "Vague" and "Unspecific" and "Future Points in Time" to come up with "solutions" that can spread along a continuum of "Maybe, If You're Good" to "Not On Your Life, Even Until the Heat-Death of the Sun". Make it appear that you are making a reluctant and even sorrowful "promise" that in fact states nothing whatsoever.

11. Continue to seed through long posts, chats, groups, blogs actual phrases that say exactly what you will do, which remains unchanging and unswerving from your PainPoint No. 1 state, but swathe them in yards of cotton batting that makes it appear as if you *might* change your mind.

12. Issue another blog or two that makes it appear that you have "backed down" after "considering the painpoints of the community" -- but change nothing.

13. You've now got a set of data that shows the community's key painpoints -- numbers, tags, vectors, profiles. You'll see a rich set of cues that will show you a) who will break b) when they will break c) why they will break d) what they will break over. At this point, you may want to adjust *one little thing* unrelated to your original harsh decision. This might be something like "we will provide you with new ways to monitor your OS performance so you do not overload the sim," but without changing a thing about the new pricing structure.

Lindens in the Content Business: Magellan's Latest Adventures

Tipped off from some FIC on the forums who follow the Magellan legend closely (and always seem to get early wind of this peripatetic Linden's latest travels), I headed out to the still-new Nautilus continent to see the Lindens' new builds.

With no full sims going on the auction for months, the Dept. of Public Work Lindens and their mole friends have lots of spare sims to play on. I was expecting from the forums post to find one or two sims with some builds, which they'd use to anchor a continent and give it a story, or perhaps make an infohub out of it (there is an infohum sim called Hyannisport that has lain fallow for months, apparently also slated for use someday).

To my surprise, I found something like 20 sims with an enormous ruins build -- the Citadel, the Temple, and miles of wall and fallen rock. As described, there is a giant bore, that has something to do with Magellan, with bottles of beer and slices of pizza strewn around. Apparently there is lots more, but I couldn't find it all, with my draw distance forcibly dumbed down to 64 due to incompatibility with Windlight.

The Lindens are definitely in the content business. I have no idea what they are going to do with this giant build spanning many sims. Make it an attraction in Showcase for newbies to visit? Hold events? Rent out the many tented Middle-Eastern looking buildings as stores like the Galleria or Busy Ben's?

Railroaded

This is a story I can only tell one side of, because as is often the case in our closed society of Second Life run by a single executive authority, the other side is in a black box. That is, from the transcripts below, apparently Michael Linden is going to ask his boss about the right essentially to keep resident content from being destroyed (would that boss be Cyn Linden or Jack Linden, I'm not even sure who really is "in charge" of something like the Department of Public Works, but I think it must be Jack).

Perhaps some of you recall the meeting we had a few months ago at the Society for Virtual Architecture discussing the railroads of SL. The old Linden line on the atoll continent stopped working due to physics issues or something. Various residents continue to run their own rail stock on that line, or make their own railroads. Crucial to this operation is an invisible guide rail, that makes it possible to use the rail line not just as a rut, but as something with an actual feel of a railroad -- where it rocks back and forth, hugs corners, announces stops, etc. I have a great Hellbound Train made by Jer, one of the rail enthusiasts, which I occasionally drive around Tuliptree or Obscure, setting forests on fire when I crash. It even has a gun turret which I haven't figured out how to operate yet.

Naturally, getting the railroad working again now that physics are said to be improved with Havoc 4 would be a really fun thing in SL, where the track is laid in the atoll continent across several dozen sims. Nigel Linden is no more; he used to take are of this.

So it turns out that the DPW "moles" want to strip out this guide rail, that would prevent resident-made trains from operating, and put in something else, or just retool the old Linden line. Of course, fear of "crashes" is a bit silly in a virtual world; if there were crashes, what of it? No harm done. The train re-rezzes. Residents could also find out the schedule and plan accordingly. It doesn't seem as if this guide rail causes lag or prim overload anywhere -- but that's how it is told to me.

What's frustrating about a thing like this is that all the efforts of all the hundreds of railroad enthusiasts is now in danger of being destroyed, even though this is supposed to be "Your World/Your Imagination". The residents burgeoned with their own contests, displays, clubs, machines, etc. while the LLRR lay fallow, and now it's as if they are being punished for it. I really LOATHE the idea that these moles are getting to decide what content should go in everywhere, in views that we have to look at, and can't participate in the decision-making about. Hence the publication of these memos, which were sent out to about 300 people already.

The issue here isn't just one guy trying to save his vehicles, from what I can tell, or a class of vehicles. It's saving *what is here now* against the "Bright Future" the Lindens are sketching out that they *might* put in tomorrow, which is more complex. And that's what rankles.

Off to See the Wizard

A group called MOO that I know nothing about has made a sim after the Wizard of Oz theme. It's called "The Magic of Oz". I don't think it's the usual corporate thing because they offered people to rent stores on the build. I got a tip from Jessica Ornitz to go check it out, and discovered it was in a quick preview, and was about to shut down.

So I flew around taking pictures with my crappy non-Windlight viewer, hence -- not the best.

They did the whole thing in sculpties -- which I don't usually like. Maybe it's because sculpties look like giant balls when I arrive on the sim and fly about and take awhile to rez into stuff. But these sculpties more or less work.

There isn't any real big nod to Hollywood or to Frank L. Baum's original book's illustrations. So it's Oz by way of Straylight and Elves and Hobbits. The Munchkin part is very elfy -- and it works. Sculpties enable you to make lots of warm, organic shapes which are perfect for this build.

Moth Temple Infohub

I haven't had as much time to blog in recent weeks, not only because of the start of the school year and extra work, but because during those times I'm on SL or am thinking of SL, I've been working at the new build by Jessica Ornitz at the Moth Temple in Iris.

This project has taken two years to come about, in the way that things in SL can take forever because basically, nobody pays us to be here lol. Back in 2006, suddenly the land around the Moth Temple in Iris, one of my favourite places in SL with a brilliant Asian temple built by Xenon Linden, went up on the auction. This was about the time the Lindens were starting to auction off all that unused telehub land I guess. Of course, originally, they had talked about having NO telehubs at all in the New Continent (as Hetero-whatsis was called then, the atoll continent with sims names for types of moths). But then it turned out there was absolutely nothing technically difficult about putting up a telehub whatsoever. It was literally a matter of putting out an object, and hooking it up as the teleporting position, as we all do on private islands ourselves. The object didn't even have to be visible.

When it was seen how hard it was to sell land and have any commerce on a continent without telehubs (the Lindens were delayed apparently in their p2p and map pinpointing implementation and weren't quite ready), they were forced at first to put one in at Iris and one in Hyles -- and later more. They were hoping to prevent urban sprawl or mall lag (which is one of those fictions of SL) so they sequestered about 10,000 m2 around the temple. The first buys on that sim went to malls anyway, but one was a very tasteful and nice mall exactly in the same atoll textures, but it went belly up as malls often do. Suddenly, the Lindens put that 10,000 m2 up on auction, and in 3 separate pieces (thanks!) making it a chore to claim. Clubside Granville, who has pumped a great deal of time and money into SL, stepped up to the place and bid on the auction, having to bid against another guy who owned some land on the sim and said *he* wanted to make a preserve, and bid so that it wouldn't become "a mall" even though we told him it wouldn't -- annoying. Miraculously, Clubside was able to secure all three pieces and we dubbed it "Moth Temple Preseve" -- but there it sat for two years.

Well, first I tried to find a volunteer builder, as I really didn't have any funds. I was hoping to get Rez Menoptra, who had done this amazing build over in Waved (sadly, now gone, even though it was sold to a store owner who did keep it for awhile). His style was perhaps "too modern" for the ancient primitive temple build, but I thought it might be an interesting contrast, and he would know what to do with the space. At first he said he might consider it, as he loved the atoll sims, but then it was 2007, the year of numerous big corporation contracts and Rez was hugely in demand by the Electric Sheep and others where he put up even more amazing builds, most of which are now lost in the electronic sands of time...

For some unknown reason, the Lindens pulled all the lanterns and all the moths that used to come out every night at like 7:48 at dusk to cling to the light. I have no idea why. I asked about it; no one knew. Eric Linden, their maker, was gone from Lindenhood -- and didn't have that account anymore that had once owned them. Rez came up with one pole and lantern that he had somehow gotten from a Linden -- but it wasn't copyable, and the moths didn't come out...Sad...

I put up an old Spanish galleon and some orientation stuff and some markers for the Land Preserve and had to call it a day. I didn't have the money or time to go further. Clubside provided the tier on the land as well -- a very kind soul. I then hoped to get Jessica Ornitz to work on the build in 2008, but she kept getting busy on corporate and educational builds -- she's very much in demand, too. I wanted to do something like the Memory Bazaar in Ross, built on the Memory Palace concept.

Clubside did some more nudging, and finally I said, let's do it, we decided to split a modest fee for Jessica between us and get the show on the road. So please come and tip generously, and donate tier to the SL Public Land Preserve, or just join the group for $50 one-time fee and help support this effort, as it is now being born on just a few shoulders, and specifically Jessica's generosity of time and talent to keep going the extra mile. Oh, and you can rent ad space on the flags there for $200 a week!

Meet Me in Second Life?

Crap, looking like Death Warmed Over, Velouria, and Intlibber, rendering as a gray as if he had logged in from a public terminal. Yes, I have the special advanced top secret SL 3.0 browser (a copy was secretly sent to me by an inside source) that renders all Extropians as grey so you can stop the spread of their influence.

My topic was kind of jumbled tonight, as I both wanted to discuss whether SL is really ready for -- or beneficial to -- business meetings, after getting some PR hype from a company promising to enhance this, and also reading about humdog, who died in RL, and thinking about her seminal piece Pandora's Vox, and how I came to see some truth to it, although I think my arguments against her Marxist/victimologist framework in "Boad Ho" remain valid.

But the topics while disparate do come down to whether you can use SL technologically, and spiritually or psychologically, to form relationships, whether for business or romance. There's a lot to hobble you, and yet a lot to offer as well -- and I think everybody's ideas and expressions here give you a window to the good and bad.

I have no idea why Intlibber had to parachute in to pontificate about the wonders of the Singularity and Extropianism, but I guess these born-agains take their tent revival to any sim that hasn't banned them -- and of course he will be immediately expelled as a supporter of the Woodburies and b/tards griefing me and my tenants. What an ass.

SL seems to me now like a kernel that does contain the popcorn but it's a question of whether the skillet has the right few drops of oil to start and then whether it keeps from getting the batch burnt.

No, It's Not Really About the User Interface

I took an instant and visceral dislike to the entries in Dusan Writer's contest to design a new user interface. Well, hey, what's a picnic without ants. It's not just that most of the people are people I just dislike as avatars in SL because I've had to counter them on forums (for example, the Nacon problem is much like the Wagner problem, even a work of genius from that slug will be forever tainted by his horrid, vicious little "dearie" persona on the Herald -- ugh!).

Truly, too much is at stake to let this sort of public discussion be yet another arty cliquey FIC thing where the Lindens are overthrown by a small grouplet lobbying for certain geek affectations. I want people to retain, and they can only retain if they don't encounter modern sleek geeky stuff -- seriously.

I truly would like to be at this party and be appreciating people's hard work and all that -- but I don't. It's art school. It's more of the same problem. It's designers and geeks being designery and geeky in their imagination that they are making Art for the People. The one possible exception is Roy Cassini, who at least had a cleaner, sharper interface along with a concept for tutorials which was incremental -- but I've been in games that tried that method, and even the OI tries that method with it's "quest" -- and no, you can't make people bat through screens.

For example, one of their ideas is that you should get rid of the task bar on the bottom, and put sidebars just like they claim the "mass" use of big-screen computers. Uh, wait a sec here. There aren't these masses with big screens -- even the new computers in the below-$1000 range just aren't that big, although they are flat screen LCDs now and not clunky terminals. But they have that envelope problem that occurs when viewing some movies. I find it hilarious that the same gang that would have a heart attack if you put back frames on websites, that being on-so-1990s and passe, would come up with a viewer that essentially puts frames back by running buttons and bars along the side and dragging your eye to the side. Uh, no thanks.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a task bar on the bottom. It's what we like to call the "normal way" to do things -- on a PC. Yes, we don't have Macs. No, we don't want something fanning out like Safari, ballooning up your last-used application at you like a surprise attack instead of becoming available through a normal cursor move. Most people have task bars on the bottom. It's fine. Of course, perhaps some things could be taken out of it ("build" would be my vote of a thing to bag completely and hide in some other experts' accessible menu for when people are ready for it).

I've always thought there are really only two tasks to fix the viewer, neither of which anyone wants to do (the Sheep in part did one of them). The first it to take the SEARCH button, down at the bottom, and move it up to the top. I'd even change it back to the word FIND to get away from Googlianisms -- it in fact used to be FIND. In a world, you want to find, not search. I'd make it bright and blue and in the center, but not a bigger balloon cartoon. One gets the feeling that some of these designs are like people shouting English at a foreigner in the belief they need it louder to understand. Nacon has a particularly bad idea taking up half the real estate of the viewer with long lists of friends AND below that long lists of groups. They're perfectly fine tabbed one under the other. It's not like you need to constantly access 25 groups and 100 friends such that you need to have a console spread out like you're an air traffic controller. And if you DO really have to access those people, taking up half the view you have to fly in isn't the solution.

What is the Birthday Announcement?!

By Guest Author, Dr. Meridian Maginot, Clairvoyant

Some months ago, when speculation abounded around Philip's stepping down from the CEO position and a possible IPO or something from Linden Lab, I went to the various oracles and other devices which -- as I conceive of it -- don't so much see into the future, as pay very, very close attention to the present. (A lot of what passes for "the future" is merely the present unfolding or manifesting).

The fortunes told weren't so helpful -- see what you think:

The Oracle of The Past whispers: The sun near signifies happiness and popularity. Near snakes, mice and dark side of clouds presages vexation.
The Oracle of The Present whispers: Roses indicate beauty and rugged health.
The Oracle of The Future whispers: Wine is the symbol of cheerfulness and gaiety.

No snakes nearby that I could see -- so far so good, but what did it mean?