All Out by 2009?

Speaking of Computers, Corporations, politics, NAFTA, governments etc.

See the Movie "Bordertown" with Jennifer Lopez and Antonio Bandaras and Martin Sheen. its recent on DVD and showing on Pay per view.

This movie was never released in theaters in the US because of controversy. I think it was the most important US movie in 2007.

Actually the latest numbers seem to indicate it is stagnating, not prospering. The platform has apparently reached it's limit either in popularity, ability to support higher concurrency, or both.

Okay, it APPEARS in "Lies my teacher Told me" on page 220 ( 1/4th of the way down on the page.) in the chapter concerning multinational corporations and their influence on US foreign Policy

In the book the Author cites Pierp Gleijesus "The Other Americas" (from 1992) as the source.

Although obviously being from 1930's it couldn't have originally came from that book either.

I suppose it may have come from the book you listed. I don't see it in those excerpts however. The webpage formatting is pretty lousy and I may have missed it.


--------------

Your other page you listed claims its a quote originally was published in 1935 from the newspaper "Common Sense"

I thought that Honor went to "Talladega Nights."

A true message movie I bet...

Second Life's only serious competitor in the corporate space right now is Forterra Systems, the company that owns There.com. Forterra's angle is different though: They produce (and enable the development of) private grids for companies and organizations. They are corporate grids for corporate use. There's technical requirements are lower than Second Life's but it's still a 3D environment, and anything in 3D requires more power than the average office notebook. Forterra can give you better stability than Second Life (you can even build your own grid and maintain your own servers), but they're not really about creating public-facing environments like the corporate sims in SL.

Any of SL's future competitors are going to suffer the same issues SL does today: Steep hardware requirements and frequent downtime. While Gartner certainly raises good points- everything they mentioned is a serious issue- most of SL's future competition is actually going to be based on Linden Lab technology (like the many new "open grids" popping up) or a total copycat of SL (see Hiphiphi).

All out by 2009?

You mean the pool will close in 2009?

Just as I thought, a troll post by the Gartner/PN Alliance.

====

This is the same Gartner that says by 2011, eighty percent of internet users will be users of virtual worlds.

SL is no longer unique. There are quite a few alternatives revving up their engines and personally I don't think its going to take them much longer then the end of 2009 and to be up and running strong, since learning from the myriad mistakes Linden Lab has made is going to make the correct path much easier to find.

Examples: Opensim and all the little grids popping up from it, Croquet Project, Multiverse, UWorld, Hipihi, hell even Utherverse.

IBM is already moving forward with projects in OpenSim and UWorld. Why do you suppose they are doing that? Could it be that they feel Linden Lab isn't up to the job or are they just putting their fingers in everybodies pot to get a little taste of all of 'em before rolling out their own solution to Linden Lab's ineptness at creating a serious 3DWeb business platform?

You can poo-poo Gartner's analysis all you want, it doesn't really matter. It's not a trash publication, and it is taken very seriously by people who take themselves and their investment dollars very seriously. You can laugh at them misusing Sony's Home as an example, but I've just listed a half dozen developing alternatives that you can easily find by typing Second Life Alternatives into Google.

Linden Lab started out proclaiming "Your World. Your Imagination" at the top of Philip's lungs to attract creative and nerdy folks interested in pioneering and building a virtual world for its residents to use as a social platform/creative experiment. This built Linden Lab a fairly interesting place, that for 2 years was pretty sparsely populated. "Log-a-Thon 5000" anyone?

Then there came Open Registration. "The World is free for all!!!", they shout, "come, enjoy, make money!!!" I found the one post to this thread amusing that said "wow, it seemed like right after I joined in late '06 a LOT of corporations showed up". Well, pardon, but... Duh! Open Registration insured that there would be a high enough resident population to attract corporate advertising depts and the portion of their budgets alloted for alternative advertising.

Then came the big boys, with their complete lack of understanding what kind of a world the people who built this world (that would be the residents, by the way, not Linden Lab, since they can barely keep the place running at times) wanted or how those people used the platform. All they noticed was that someone was filling the screen with crude imitations of penises. Why, this wasn't a serious business platform at all... this seemed more like a ... (god this is where the flames will really start....) game.

In my mind this is where Linden Lab really phucked up. They never could decide what this place was or how to use it. They have flipped and flopped and floundered, heralding utopia to its pioneers only to sell that dream to the very sort of people that many of its pioneers were seeking to move away from... homogenized corporate entertainment. Who's dream are they going to sell out next?

What is Linden Labs business plan and how do they intend to stay relevant in the fast-changing movement towards virtual platforms they touched-off? I've been here 4+ years and I haven't a clue. But you know, I don't think Linden Lab does either.

If Linden Lab loses a lot of corporate money because corporations are investing in alternatives to the SL platform because all they know is what they read in Gartner, and they can't get residents to pay for a premium account because they made the platform free for casual residents, if they can't make this platform stable or reliable for any of us... what do they have?

Especially when everything they have is being open sourced.

I think you make a lot of good points, Pie.

I remember the log-a-thon lol,

We never did get 5000 that day right? it was only 3800ish? if I remember correctly.


Miss those days.

Still think people are crazy thinking SL is better big than it was small. Seems a lot of the "big" is bloat.

but relative to what? I think SL is small in comparison to something like facebook, Myspace, Youtube etc

Interesting to me that this thread has not been locked, when a few days ago several were locked and one completely deleted. Dozens of all-over-the-map threads later, it is now clear this was a shameful abuse of a moderator's power.

Relative to what it was before.

There is a considerable difference in how SL was in early 2006 and now.

And no I am not talking flexies and sculpties.

Something tells me there wasn't even any shame involved.

Before anyone ops out of SL, take a look at the photos in this thread:
http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/168436-post2.html

Until a competitor can provide stunning landscapes like this and adult poseballs, SL is going to continue to exist, and maybe even grow someday.

your new sig makes me glad I don't drink beverages while surfing here. Once again, you win the forumz.

I'm doing enough drinking for the two of us.

Don't get me wrong I love Second Life but many of us have been griping to LL for years about the stiff video card requirements we must have to run Second Life. I feel we have been ignored. Apparently this report supports us.

If Linden Labs really wants to create a business platform and a "new internet" they might want to consider their customer's needs instead of trying to be cool and charging ahead blindly upping the ante with each new upgrade.

What we are looking at is a shared 'world' platform, rather analogous to a typical computer in terms of use.

Nobody ever decided what a computer was for, or how to use it; it's a sort of standard platform that means many different things to many different people. Some may use it for typical things like MS Word or email or saving their digital pictures. But the power comes from the generality of the platform, not the application.

I'm an old embedded systems guy - I used to design computers from the chips up to do various dedicated tasks (I still do from time to time but consulting is pesky business). From nav systems to automobiles to military to commercial/industrial. When it comes to just about any dedicated application, the architecture of a standard PC is basically unoptimised, wasteful, pointless crap.

The power, and the point, comes from the fact that it can do *all* these things. In the case of the generalist platform, you don't want to choose a preferred app - you'll break your general platform to do it.

* * * * *

The Company plan, if you believe in mission statements, is this:

"It's our mission to connect us all to an online world that advances the human condition."

citation: http://lindenlab.com/about

Now, I've worked in plenty of places where I thought the mission statement was bullshit. Color me crazy, but I believe this one. Explanation of why I think so follows in a few sentences.

Meantime, there is a separate, but also valid direction being taken:

http://secondlifegrid.net/why

This espouses all the typical mediaspeak things in a nutshell about standalone grids - you can make your own grid, virtual space, here are some typical things you can do with it, yeah, yeah, yeah. Some of it is pie-in-the-sky (how are you going to monetise content on your own private grid!?) but sure, I can see an online college making a night school teaching grid, or a big company making a training grid. Personally, I don't think this direction is a big deal to Joe Average *unless* it connects to the main grid. But hey, you got product, you offer it.

So why are these guys talking about the 'human condition' - why has tens of millions of dollars been poured into ... what? We still don't know what the grid will become ten years from now. Forgotten, obscure? The basis for true cyberspace? Nobody knows.

Well, here's why. Look at the founders, the history. We are talking about the Kapor's and the Omyidars here - the eBay founders. These guys made their money. Believe me, if it was about making more money, the good bet is on some oil company or defence project somewhere. But it's not about that, is it?

How many of you know of the connexion between Second Life and the environmental movie "An Inconvenient Truth"? Yep, funding in part by Pierre Omyidar. So is Second Life supposed to be a big money maker - is that the design? It just doesn't add up.

So what I see is that these guys really are trying to leave their mark - that's what you do when you have money coming out of your a-, er, when you have a lot of assets. They don't really care if Second Life is 'the' platform in the end - if someone completes the 'mission' with a better project- they still win. There is no fail, other than total obscurity.

If I was a competitor to Second Life I'd be scared to hell though, because if the board ever decided SL needed a boost over a 'wrong' direction, they might make a few phonecalls and drop another 20 or 50 million on it. Then just stand back and watch. Don't forget the early rounds of funding - these guys dropped eight million, eleven million, whatever needed.

So yeah, that's why I believe they are serious with that kinda offbeat mission statement. The grid as we know it wouldn't exist otherwise.

* * * * *

I don't think corporations will all shy away from this grid because of what they read in Gartner. Corporations come in different flavours, from stupid to cavalier to innovative to our most common type: "follow the herd." Right now, Second Life is a household name in high tech households and corporate boardrooms already. The Pope himself could decree against it, and the mention would just make extra hype.

And point of fact, the 'free' aspect of all those free accounts isn't being paid by the Company at all. It's being paid by you and me and most of the people in this forum - the people with land!

Yes, dear reader with tier fees or rental property, *you* are footing the 'free user' bandwidth, engineering and support - and none of them ever even sent a holiday card. Sad huh?

A final comment about 'open source'. Open source worlds are great - definitely a place for them. I'm sure their future is bright. But will they ever unseat the main grid?

I doubt it.

Consider: how many people in the general population use OpenOffice instead of MS Word? Why isn't Linux on just about every computer in the whole world? People in general won't value "free" or "cheap" - it's just plain cultural. The effect is so strong, some people even pay a buck for a bottle of water, when they have more than good enough water available direct to their home. Us wild, crazy humans - gotta love us, but we do some crazy things with regularity.

* * * * *

Not picking on you Pie - I just thought your questions were worth an answer.

Personally I think none of it will matter - private individuals not corporations are the backbone of the grid's income and possibly always will be. It meets personal needs for socialisation, entertainment, all that stuff.

That's my take on it at least - we'll all see soon.

Good answers.

Hello all
I have to say that this thread is very interesting. To be honest,I didn't read each and every page,but from what i am gathering LL is not listening to you guys,the residents.
Before I go on,I have to say that personally I have no critics.I am a new resident and so far I like what I am seeing.My only problem is I have a hard time figuring how to live and where to meet people in.

Now onto the subject of the company not listening to its users(the residents).
In my opinion there are two sides to this issue:

1.the company who doesn't listen or is unwilling to correct mistakes.

2. players(in this case residents) that only complain.

Let me explain.
In my experience(I was one of the many players rebelling against the Americas Army devs about 1-2 years ago.I was also a mentor/volunteer game master for Acclaim Games and I had to deal with Acclaim who are very slow and unwilling to fix things), the only way a gaming community can get the devs to respond with good answers and correct any mess ASAP is by the community to rebel against the status quo.
There are many ways to do that:

1.harass every single LL staff member 24/7 in game,by email and/or messenger
2.cancel your subscriptions in mass and make sure that LL or whatever company you are dealing with understands that you will be back only when they will fix all mess and whatever other conditions the community wants to put .
3.use the public/gaming community opinion by posting bad reviews on every single gaming site and the likes

Now,I am not trying raise any hell.
Like I said,personally I have no complaints at all against LL.I am happy with SL so far/
My point in what I am saying is that complaining is all well and good,but at some point, the community has to stand up to the devs.And what I have seen so far on this thread is complaining,which does no good to anyone.

Please forgive me if I offend anyone with the above.
I have the bad habit of saying what i think .If I offended you,I hope you can forgive me

The "human condition" is central, but what is the predominate "human condition"? That condition is going to come to the fore and dominate. If greed and self-interest predominants, then it will cannibalize itself at the level of the lowest common denominator, if allowed free rein. One look at the world and it is pretty easy to see where it stands.

For me the Mission Statement has been implemented backwards, putting too much emphasis on technology in a vacuum, and not enough on protecting the users from the lowest common denominator and failing to give the residents (those paying the LL bills and salaries) their own local property. Instead they took the route of charging insane amounts for sims, creating the haves and have nots, pyramid/hierarchy, which is ripe for gaming the system.

The whole thing is a microcosm of issues societies always have to deal with and while the philosophical and ideological disagreements continue, the lowest common denominator gets in there and savages the situation, laughing at the philosophers who sit deadlocked.

Some people see any controls in SL as a bad thing, There are some people who seem to have the attitude that trying to control anything is trying to sweep back the sea. Some people seem to turn SL into the game of "who is the best scammer?" and "who has the least ethics?" These people are here for what they can get right now and to heck with anything or anyone.

You can't pretend to be altruistic while accomodating the scams and phoney things that go on and wash your hands of it as LL seems to do.



It has to be self-supporting or it will die. That is just reality. To support it, they have charged excessive fees for Sims meaning that only a handful will ever have them. That became their technical and business model. The amount of premium accounts is very small and the amount of people with at least one sim is even smaller.

We are supposed to believe that the servers are so expensive that LL has to charge high fees for them. Yet everyone has their own hard drive(s), which essentially only plays a tiny role in SL. All we have to run is the client. That might be fine for an MMO that does not include selling us "land," But to pretend that we "own." the land, or own anything we create, is ultimately a deception and a FUD if it is not local to our own storage, and cannot be used independent from the grid.

The animation and modeling tools in SL are primtive. I'd rather be able to use my own modeling and animation software to build my world according to a set of specifications compatible with an SL grid so people can enter my world and I can enter theirs. The primitive SL building tools, compared to the high end modeling and animation platforms are very limited but could be used to begin.

It should have been built from the ground up with all our own computers storing the sims collectively and totally compatible with Softimage and Maya and the other modeling and animation platforms. Instead, the internet server model was used, and sio we have to enter our own Sims hosted and owned by them and have to use the primtive tools and have little control over our own security or stability.

IMO each premium account should include a SIM and the software to add as many sims as we have our own computers/storage for. LL should then link us together as a grid. The way I see it millions of people would pay $15.95 a month to plug into the grid, if we had our own sims and property local.

Start each person off with a modifiable Sim that can be added to using whatever tools we like.

Making the code Open Source or available to the hackers is not thinking of security at all and reflects the chink in the armor of the LL mission statement. The real world would already have to be based in a high "human condition" predominantly, before that will ever work.

It's like humankind going into space. If the predominant human condition is still greed and animality, at the lowest common denominator, then they will just bring the wars and courruption with them into space. SL itself can't change the Human Condition, but SL could be a tool for human communication that could help people get together and work out the bugs in the human software.

You can't start out with the ideal of a utopian happy anarchy and expect it not to turn into a mess if left to it's own devices.

You have been feeding him I hope?

I hope that view is correct.
I had the same view when I floated "What do the investors believe they are investing in?" back in Post#67.


A platform backed by wealthy visionaries is always going to have a huge advantage over "me too" platforms created by bean counters.


Wealthy and Visionary these people might be, but not so silly as to fund a static playground for a minority.
SL has to continue to evolve capabilities in order to keep the right kind of investor interested.
Residents play a huge role in this by creating the content and pushing the limits of the platform capabilities.
Anything that has arrived at a plateau will have to fund itself.

[/url]


Bluesky...

Challenge One: Provide a lightweight browser based viewing client that works in firefox and explorer... not at pretty, but usable. Everyone else uses the normal pretty client...

Challenge two: Redundant sims for business use... a specific inworld area for business with no downtime....

Challenge three: Deal with challenge one and two, no need to deal with challenge three...

I personally think that the big short term threats to the Grid as a whole is financial scams, following on from Ginko and other banks, and now the looming WSE issue.

The issue is focused around the concept of the Linden dollar as a means of fungible value and exchange. All the time the legal/financial authorities believe that the Linden is essentially a "game type" currency it may be left alone. If however that perception changes I can see all sorts of issues. In short, Government like to control their own currency and dislike competition.

If however the Linden disappears (legal action over financial scams etc) then where is the potential reward for content creators and land owners.