Wants to sign up for the new Vint Second life grid…)

Yeah, just lemme learn C# and new features will appear, including “Create-An-Avie”!. Hehe….

Well, for regular users, this means nothing, aside from potentially better running (or poorly performing) sims. I certainly hope the connection fee is cheap, because it will take a lot to offset the cost of bandwidth and a substantial server inherent in running your own sim, though it won’t matter in the end really.

I am considering opening up a sim here to add 3d online training as part of my company’s offerings. I haven’t made my decision as of yet though, I’ll have to take into account who my client base is.

I would say that this offers a decided advantage over opensim if you’re a retailer, or want to demo/offer your products/services in a virtual environment (I will not use the term social/spatial virtualization) but no more than the current iteration of SL offers. If you are a ’services provider’ though, it becomes less of an advantage, because you benefit less from the grid’s population at large.

Granted, most of this is a broad oversimplification, but it hits the major points. I can’t aptly summarize a multi-hundred page project scope in a comment box. One thing I will say is that their site is vague enough to entice, and probably the best marketing I’ve ever seen SL do. You have to wonder at their timing, I would say wait at least 2 quarters and see what emerges as competition, because linden labs seems to have an air of desperation about them right now, and that is telling.

Good start at trying to write a political post, Vint!

However, here’s the problem:

1. The Lindens didn’t do this yet. And they might not do it this way.

2. What they’ve also said about what they will *in fact* do is that they will have a short list of special friends to whom they will license the server code — the trusted servers.

3. Therefore, this is more like oligarchism or chaibolism, something the Lindens constantly tend toward when they aren’t doing Snowcrashian anarcho-capitalism or Leninist socialism.

4. The cost of servers and labour are greater than all these fanboyz and geeks imagine they will be, and they’ll find that Linden will stay ahead of them in pricing and diversity of content probably for a while to come.

5. The idea that when there is an archipelago of egos called “My Own Hosted Server” that it will be easy to navigate and chose “the best” or that we will be able to form “civil liberties unions” is…touching. Balkans, anybody? Err…Chechnya?

6. Explain to me why the public has to pay for art when the public doesn’t get to participate meaningfully in designing what is esthetic?

7. If I have to chose between a venal ex-Linden or rapacious SL-land baron or Gorean Master as the new “host your own” option, the old LL-run mainland will look better and better to me. In fact, it’s looking pretty good right now : )

@Prokofy: Some of uf geek’s already run servers *giggle* as SL servide or a web-servers isn’t that big difference. I don’t think the LL land at the moment looks like it’s going in the right directions, all later big changes have been to the worse for me.

They added voice till all, but the Linux users, and tried to hide that fact. Not that i like voice but anyhow.

They added ID verification, nut that it make sure how anyone is, but that shifted the limits of pg, mature, and extra mature.

I know many more people that i trust much more that the lindens… Thats include some land baronesses, all land barons i know actually, are much much more reasonable then the lindens at the moment. In fact the lindens looks pretty bad at the moment :-)

At the moment I only feel the need to repeat this quote of a “wise and old man”, who can provide us, immature kids, with a lot of good advice..

“Anyway, this conversation with the self-indulgent and the redundant kids has gotten boring. Um, play among yourselves!”

You cant help it, do you Prokofy? If we over here have nothing meaningfull to say, no valuable opinions at all, why then, for Gods sake, do you keep coming back??
Because at least you get OUR attention..?? Because the reactions of some tribal thinking fashionista bimbos are better then nothing at all??
Because here, at least you find the drug to avoid going cold turkey on your ego-addiction??

You reproach us that we are tribal-thinking.. well how can we possibly deny that.. Everybody can be classified one way or another.. can be fit into a group..
Even you Prokofy… you are doing so much the best you can to appear as an free-thinking, ultra-independent, opinion making writer, that you (unaware??) adopt all the clichés of it.
And thus, you too are part of a tribe.. following every archetypical convention of it..
Aint that a beautifull contradiction?? An independent tribesman… :-p

Clichés?? : what about, as a would-be writer, choosing a name based on a character out of a russian novell…. Look at me!! I read books!!! oh please…
Or your ” I am your worst nightmare ; I am an American who cares..” statement.. CAN it be more pathetic??
Why should it be our nightmare?? We know there are Americans like that… and we welcome them..

With all this emphasis you put on our (supposed) youth and your age and “wisdom”, and the kind of “look what vocabulary I use” writing style, I was thinking for a while you were a retired, or burned out, schoolteacher.. frustrated by the fact he cant keep up anymore with the pace of the kids..
Or maybe someone who really works for a newspaper.. taking care of the classified ads.. feeling frustrated that younger, more talented people are passing him over his heath.. Who, via this scribbles wants to show his editor in chief that he too can write..

But taking a closer look, at your comments, you blog, your foto (the hands on the vintage typewriter…Marlowe, anyone??), even the in-world newspaper you like to brag about.. It became clear to me that all this, inculding your comments here, are an inherent part of your SL experience..
Maybe being one of the above, first of all you are ROLEPLAYING a journalist, arent you? Which explains a lot..

Its true, that like you stated in your comment, maybe the “art” at the Cannery isnt to be written with capital “A”.. (to come back to that topic), and that there are to much “Oh, this is awesome” ’s.. But it is made by some enthusisasts..
But same goes for your articles.. they remind me of some critics I wrote for the highschool newspaper, back in those days when I still was a enthusiast, hungry youngster with a need for attitude…
Thats why, up till now I gave you some credit..
But we arent going to insult YOUR readers are we? Calling them retarded just because they like what you write and do consider you a real journalist??? Because they dont see what you really are??

Nothing wrong with roleplaying… I myself get in the role of a dancer, or even a fighter-pilot sometimes.. roaming SL skys in my armed bi-plane..
But this ends when I leave SL, or even the dedicated sims…
I have not at all the presumtion that I am a topgun ace in RL…

But it seems to me that in your case the borderline between the 2 lifes is becomming blurry.. To paraphrase your words, again, : “Deal with it!” , or get some help.. there IS a real world out there.. WITH real journalists..

Its ok for me that you “play” journalist… everybody is free to do what he wants in SL.. that is what WE stand for..
But, please, do it on your own blog.. let us “play among ourselves..”
This is OUR (well, mainly Vints) playground.. dont come littering it with this pseudo-intellectual mental masturbation you call journalism..

Is this getting personal?? Well hell yes it is.. but it werent us who took it to this level…

@ Vint: Very interesting thoughts, thanks for sharing.

@ Prokofy: Even is good and interesting to know the opinion of everybody, your tone is unpleasantly paternalistic. Sadly i have to agree with Veronique after taking a look at your comments and blog. And what the hell means Chaibolism? Call me stupid if you want (i don’t care about it) but is not on the wikipedia, not on the Merriam-Webster dictionary, and if you google it just appear three results, all in SL related web pages or blogs, surely wrote by you or by one of your “fans”.

I’ll bite. What the heck is Chaibolism? Government by small groups chatting over a shared pot of spiced tea?

If things move like the LL voices have been talking about, there will first be a handful of picked partners who host sims. Over time there’ll be more partners, then the handpicking will become too much of a burden and some sort of process will be put in place. Eventually there’ll be sim setups like the apache/ubunto distributions - run the disk and you’re ready to go. There’s always the possibility that LL won’t release control of the sim code. Or that a handful of people will appear in one market or another and grab control (think of diamonds and the De Beers.)

I’m much more interested in whether and how universal inventory access happens.

Well…. according to Philip’s words they are posponing the opening of the server code for two reasons:

1) they want to squash some big bugs before that, which is reasonable. They don’t want kids to laugh at them :) and they are aware that the whole system needs reorganization which would be much more heavy thing to do if the whole developing community is hacking around.
2) They don’t have a clue how to make universal asset and money access.

However, it is not the question if they will open it or not. Once the OpenSim goes out they will have to. Actually, they might need to run before that moment. That is a matter of years but it is not a long run either. In that time somebody will think about asset and money issues. And it seems most probable (and much better) solution that it will be third party solution. Money problem is showing signs like MetaCard, Anshe’s stock-market and WIC. I don’t know if any of these enterprises can or is willing to cover the whole metaverse, but they might be a first step in the positive direction. Inventories will probably be larger bite for all of us.

And I am sure there will be sim setups like you have mentioned. I am also sure that those ISO images will be on torrent just like any linux distro is.

About the “Explain to me why the public has to pay…”, i think Vint was very clear.
Anyway, in my opinion, the public DOES get to participate meaningfully in designing what is esthetic, buying art to support a creator, visiting exhibitions, even saying “This is awesome…”

And LOL at “Chaibolism” definition by Storm.

/me is still amazing “SecondLifeGrid.com” is official. (See the Linden Lab logo on the bottom, no one but LL can use it)

I was thinking of PayPal too, but it doesn’t work with micro-currencies. Maybe each grid can manage to do exchanges via PayPal but then one should convert money for each trans-grid teleport (wow, that sounds spacey :p ) We need some kind of stock exchange, and serious financial institutions, and we need at least several of them.

About other question…. I really don’t know… I am not following that tangent….

Hmm, perhaps a PayPal-like service for SL called PlayPal? Hehe. Though, no one dare use that name without my permission or I will cross the grid border and kill yo avie! Rofl.

Lol, I mean, just like PayPal but supporting micro-transactions and no fees (of course, until you pay BIG).

Hmm, Merchandisers sounds nice, I guess people with X income and over, will pay fees and people with Y income and under, won’t pay/pay low fees?

@Storm: excellent. Although, “βολή” is “throw” in greek, so being in those governments must be a pretty dangerous business - first they drink, then get drunk, then start throwing the cups with the hot tea… Or they drink too much tea and then they “throw” it in another sense.. Anyway, here is a pretty useful resource on the matter, IMHO.

@dandellion: well, the money problem could be solved by trivially using paypal. Although it is so tempting to try something fundamentally new…I think I do have a few cyberpunk ideas on the topic of money (and society, part of them I had already posted at one point on my blog) - i think the technology can enable us to utilise the “archaic” monetary systems without much inconvenience. Still need some more time to think before posting anything which is publicly consumable, but in the head it looks rather fun. Will take some time to crystallize, if ever.

@Vint: make a fully decentralized system and you do not need any explicit “fees”, imho. The costs are hidden and distributed.

No, no. no…. no dividing people/customers/residents by income. That leads to serious social problems not to mention violating the privacy. But system where fees are proportional to the transactions is possible.

Dalien, we talked and agreed about that earlier, things cannot be hidden when money is in play. Totaly distributed system sounds great but is it really possible? At least, somebody has to control and record the flow of money. (I don’t believe I am saying that somebody has to control and record anything) And whoever that is needs to pay the bills for the server electricity…
But, I am waiting for both ideas, cyberpunk and archaic.

Ugh, seems my reply didn’t go through the lousy PS3 browser :-/ *CLICK*:

“Dandellion, I meant, money coming into the ‘account’, not real life income! Yuck!. Although it is a bad idea… Though we should put different options for different account types if we ever do it. Like PayPal’s Merchant, Business, and Enterprise accounts :p.”

Money coming into account is a RL money. As long as one can buy and sell lindens it is real life money. Yes, they are mostly small amounts but 250L$ dress is 1US$ dress. And yes, 1US$ may be small amount but it is still cash. Because the dress creator can make RL living out of making virtual clothes. And because, when that dress disappears from the inventory, Linden Lab is actually guilty for the material loss one had. And, because ona can abuse virtual world’s economy to do the money loundering and all sorts of crimes.

Hmm, some kind of service needs to “store” Transactions so that if someone loses their, “Kobra V5″, or, something, the seller/creator can look in the history, and see he/she purchased it, then give another copy, or refund, although 99% of our grid gives no refund and has a strict refund policy, as the newb teens tend to “buy, use, return, laugh”.

I think transactions are stored… but, just imagine Lindens who gives data for every lost item. :))) And, who knows that database isn’t screwed just like inventories are. It is just that an item shouldn’t be deleted from the inv until it is rezzed properly. But they won’t fix that until people organize and sue them for material loss.

Hehe… True, true. Though SLX, OnRez Shop, and TSLE purchases online are recorded, so that’s covered up. Our TSL Emporium also covers unregistered avies :p.