Philip's announcement in the Town Hall

Just to clarify, I did not say anything in this thread about malls/clubs/et al, just responding to your post. We all have our biases, Chip, yourself included, so calling me biased does not detract from my point. I did congratulate them in the news item I posted about this on Second Edition last night. I have never been pessimistic about SL, and I continue not to be. However, people expressing their opinions or being afraid of something are not whining. That is such an arrogant, dismissive statement, and that is what I was responding to, even if I was not "whining" in the first place about any of this. Even gratuitously highlighting most rational people is an attempt to call anyone who views the news badly as irrational, is pretty arrogant. You cannot speak for most rational people, only yourself. I personally think it is excellent news, but I would not attack someone who doesn't. The eBay connection is enough to spook a lot of people. I tend not to be easily spookable.

A very good example of good news/bad news thing was the recent announcement that Jasc software had been purchased by Corel. On the surface, great news for Jasc and Corel. However, the news was met with disappointment by many customers of Jasc, because Paint Shop Pro is an excellent product, and Corel has a history of a lot of missteps. For many who see the further commoditization of SL as a bad thing for their dream of SL, I can understand their fear, even if I don't subscribe to it myself. Everyone is different - cautious optimism I personally think is thebest approach.

Under most circumstances I'd agree with you, Cristiano, but when you hear the same horse beaten for the ten thousandth time it gets old. I really don't care if my characterization of it as whining is arrogant or not. It's simply my personal opinion as someone who is sick to death of hearing it from certain people. I think some people enjoy worrying themselves and having something to be bent out of shape about regardless of how far removed from reality it is. Choosing to let the slight possibility of negative influences from the VC sources outweigh all the potential greatness that can come from this is a perfect example of the kind of pessimism that's starting to really grate on my nerves. There are certain posters in this thread who've made a career of it. This world truly is what we make of it, and I wish some people would put their energies into making a corner of it into the kind of world they want to live in instead of taking every possible opportunity to sow their seeds of discontent in everyone else's garden.

Apples and Oranges - Microsoft is successfull due to a strong desktop environment and ease of use for novice users.

Also being prebundled with existing machines is a big business bonus.

This is not a linux strongpoint (although it has improved vastly over the last 5 years - proof positive was my wife managing to use Linux out of the box for the last 4 years , with minimal help).

Where Linux has been strong is as a multiuser server. And remains to be strong.

We could easily transplant this argument..
"Laptops suck, if they were any good why are there more desktop PCs?"
"Cell Phones suck, if they were any good why are there more phones on tables?"

If Linux sucks so bad, why is it driving the SL servers?

Apples - Oranges.

Siggy.

Yes. I'm not sure which side you think I am on. Of course my inability to work out which side you are on might go some way to explaining this. So let me attempt to clarify where I am.

Investment in Linden Labs
Linden Labs is a corporation. It does not have my interests in mind and will, ultimately, put profits before anything else. That is really neither here nor there; everyone does it. You can either accept it or work on finding some way off the planet.

No matter how great the CEO of a corporation is, ultimately, it is the corporation not the CEO providing you with a product or service. CEOs can and will be replaced. Your emotional involvement with a corporation should reflex as much. You can be pleased that people that have worked in the past to provide you with something you like are being rewarded but that is as far as you should go. It is unlikely that their work will always be in line with your wants and needs.

That being said, Linden Labs currently thinks it can profit by providing a scriptable multiplayer game. This is very much in line with what I want and thus their getting eight million dollars is a good thing for me. It makes it more likely they will stick around to continue to provide me with a product I am interest in. If they go out of buisness there is no chance they will continue to provide me with any interesting products. Thus I am happy that their work is being rewarded.

Clubs and Malls
I have no love of malls or clubs. I don't use them and I don't go to them. I have my quiet 512 m^2 and I rarely leave it. If I ever want to be completely free of them I can get an island and not leave that.

However, it is what other people want. If you want fewer malls and clubs, convince more people not to use them. You really don't want to start down the road of Linden Labs policing what we can do with our land.

With Second Life, quite unlike the real world, there are not limited resources that everyone must share. It is quite possible to completely cut off all contact with people and things you do not approve of and continue to be able to do whatever you want.

The objections to malls and clubs boils down to be an argument purely about aesthetics. It offends some people that the world is filled with ugly malls and clubs. While, as I mentioned before, I do not care for such a world it also does not prevent me from doing anything I want. Failing harm to myself, how can I claim to have the right to tell others how to conduct their lives? How can anyone?

People want malls and clubs and they should get to have malls and clubs. Those of us who don't should just learn to shutup and deal.

The overall objection to them in SL is not about aesthetics. It boils down to disproportionately using server resources that we share. If you have 10 land owners in a sim, and one land owner manages to use up the server resources for their build to the point that it degrades significantly the experience of the 9 others, this is a problem (and not a problem affecting the tiny minority of SL that Chip claims). It has always been about respecting the people around you, which I know is unpopular with the "it's my land, I can't do what I want" mentality that is prevalent in SL. We are all paying customers and deserve a quality of service for what we are paying for.

I would not care if there were an ugly club in my sim, if it were also not destroying the use of the sim in the process. Club Elite is a giant black box, hardly the nirvana of aesthetics, but at the end of the day, it was not about how it looked or even what went on there - if it had not affected the land around it and made it impossible to move and build in the sim (or even get into the sim half of the time), it would not have been a problem.

I really don't believe that a world full of mediocre crap is what we have to 'settle' for. I'll never believe that, I'm sorry. It just boggles my mind that a plywood box is ok, flashing z-aligned surfaces are fine....where is the pride in what you make?