Who is ginsu and what's up with this post?

http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/10/08/lights-on-at-the-lab/

"...it’s only fair that I make this crystal clear, just in case it wasn’t obvious already: Linden Lab has made more mistakes about Second Life than anyone else ever has."

"Of course, it would be ideal to never make any mistakes in the first place, but anyone who tells you they can do that has never done anything great."

"I’m pretty sure if there was a virtual world with the same features but with, say, rock-solid stability and faultless customer service, we’d hear about it every day until we came up to par or we went out of business trying!"

Very odd post...is this supposed to elicit our sympathies?

I responded:
Anyone who has played the earlier EA games like The Sims the game were terribly buggy and what made it worse was the users of the game literally stretch the limits of what the game was designed for.
The standard official policy from EA Arts was not to use and uninstall any user made products but what personally made the game as popular as it was at least for me and those who were hard core about was the customized parts and the community that surrounded this and their several content developers who began actually selling their content.
EA games I don't think ever really got it and still hasn't entirely got this from what I have seen. I spent lot of money on their products eventually I found SL and i wouldn't spend another dime on their products.
Personal note: Everyone mistakes just big companies make more expensive ones.

Re: who is ginsu

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Ginsu_Linden

In a nutshell, their business development guy, whatever that means.

Wasn't he the "legal counsel" at one point?

Broccoli

And he can cut through a tin can and then slice a tomato.

That's what the wiki page says.

Wonder how many mistakes he racked up in that capacity...

Id point you at the Bragg thread but you don't deserve that.

its just propaganda.

I started reading it while thinking "interesting".

Then I got to "For example, there’s the constant stream of information about our service status, straightforward talk about our grid problems, detailed explanations about governmental tax charges, .."

Ah! NewSpeak.

As far as I'm concerned the guy is a sock puppet for a PR muppet ( a muppet's puppet) - or he is a PR muppet.

Any one or any organisation that can vomit that sort of nonsense at us in the immediate aftermath of the VAT communication disaster genuinely believes that we are stupid.
They think that posting a bunch of happy-clappy drivel will make us all feel good.

There may well be some very committed and talented people inside LL.
However, as an entity, LL continually demonstrates that it has barely disguised contempt for the "residents".

yah that post was really insulting and you cant afford to be that vague about your mistakes when you make so many of them. all it does is draw attention to you negatively and makes people recite a list in their minds thinking of all the mistakes you really have made.

I did find the post unorthodox, to say the least. Someone please educate me, who would be telling LL management to be LESS transparent ? That one stumped me.

The bit, "[t]he amount of information we expose about the operation of Second Life is appalling, in the view of some" might have referred to board members or funding sources, perhaps. But my guess is it's actually residents who "just want it to work, without all the geek-speak."

Or so they say, *some* of the time. At one of Meta's office hours, one resident (nameless, but I think he's banned from these forums) said--in two successive utterances--not to use so much technical detail, and not to talk to us as if we were children. Communication is an art form, but to please some folks, the Lindens would need witchcraft, too.

Well I have travelled around the WoW universe and to date it has only crashed once, and that may have been (at least in part) my fault. Performance wise WoW is at least 100 times faster than SL (as fellow WoW players are aware) It has to be to avoid getting killed -

In addition there have been statements that the next expansion pack (Lich King) will enable the physical destruction of buildings, and some rumours homesteading may emerge, as well as much more extensive avatar customisation. On that latter point not all clothes you buy are amour. Ask a tailor about marriage.

There are people who currently make a first life living especially within some of the more difficult professions such as for example, enchanting. That comes close to mirroring SL's use of a script, texture, and prim based virtual world governed by platform software rules although I accept options in WoW are more focused in terms of design. The concept of "gold mining" also is not a thousand miles away from camping within SL either

On the point of crashing I discovered what is called an "exploit" I will not detail the realm or region location here, but suffice to say I travelled off world, killed myself getting there, and was able to resurrect my body and have a good look around before re-entering the world on foot. An AR to Blizzard on a Sunday evening relating to this issue produced a personal response the next day, Monday morning, telling me they were aware of this issue and asking me to not to repeat it. They used the word "please". Also by inference they trusted me.... and this exploit could produce a significant advantage to some folk there.

Finally there are very definite communities within WoW, which is guild based, group based, and location based, realm or location within WoW

ACK! I'd love to have just 2 MINUTES to bitch slap who ever is in charge of EA and controls their next big "money maker".

Signed- a Battlefield 2142 buyer.

When one talks abot corporate greed & screw ups, just watch EA. No company exemplifies corporate greed MORE than EA

I will do my damnedest not to buy any more EA Products.

He slices, he dices, he chops and fillets.....

*points Ginsu L at Dan L's SUV*

That's because everything you seein WoW resides on your hard drive, and the only time anything changes is when you download an update every few days/weeks, compared to SL which changes continually as we create things.



But you also cannot simply come up with an idea for an item in WoW, design and script it, and release it to the public like you can in SL. There's a HUGE difference.

P2

Looks like they have increased the number of comments allowed for some threads on the blog. Here is the latest comment in the Ponzi, err, Ginsu thread from Robin Linden:

# 138 Robin Linden Says:
October 9th, 2007 at 6:41 AM PDT

Thanks to you all who have taken the time to respond here.

As the person ultimately responsible for communication, I take your unhappiness with recent mistakes very seriously. Some of the things we’re doing to improve:

- hiring someone to *only* work on communication, including supporting forums, responding to blog comments, finding better ways to reach more Residents
- expanding the number of comments
- improving our processes for timing, review, and placement (combination of blog, email, message of the day, etc.) of our messages to Residents

Also, it sounds like there are still many questions about identity verification, so I’ll post an update separately. For the moment, we have been testing the process and working on a support plan for helping with failures. In addition I have been following up with Integrity Services regarding their own processes and privacy policy, in addition to reviewing the legality questions raised by some Residents in specific countries such as France.

Better late than never I guess. points 1 and 3 are especially important.

And if you call right now, you get two ginsus for the price of one!!!

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-6212325.html

Looks like they were too smart to buy the trainwreck that is SL...

"Also, it sounds like there are still many questions about identity verification, so I’ll post an update separately."

It sounds like ........ ?
Here is the news????

She has an opportunity in her update.
1. Post a rehashed bit of corporate PR muppetry, including the trust and safety nonsense
or
2. Tell it like it really is. It's all about insurance.

Despite the apparent dawning of some realisation following on the cpmments for the Ginsu NewSpeak, I'd bet on (1)

Glad someone else relates for years I just thought it was me.
I bought over 5 games, 4 were the sims to hotdate, wasted close to 100 dollars on TSO when it went public, and sim city.
Every single game I have bought from them is flawed and has some type of glitch that they will not repair and blame on user content,etc. I quit buying there products. We bitch about Linden Labs incompentency EA is hundred times worst the LL.

Where do I send my resume?