Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Answers to Questions

And you commute to San Francisco?????

This is ok. But this is also why I said: we need more professional staff here! To show up frequently and in time in different time-zones - to have more than only one contact person, and since this is an international audience: in different languages - well briefed people wich are knowing what they're doing.

And logical it is possible to answer 50-100 questions a day, ...., every student and teacher is able to answer 100 questions a day.

But we need a service staff, for all millions of dollars we pay to LL!

Then it is no drama, if one person has issues.

...

He always says "back a few pages," even when there's been 50 new pages since his last post.

Is it news that LL isn't really that interested in what's going on here? There have been about 10,000 posts on this topic now and they've got one Linden posting here...


You're making assumptions about the goal of these 'discussions' that may not be correct..

Give me one good reason not to put you on my ignore list, Blondin.

Moon, you and Argent have made my day today

i quote this just for the sheer hell of it

Y'know... Speaking of land issues, I wonder how all those folks who spent beaucoup moolah for a 2048 parcel in "all mature" nautilus.

When LL finally makes some kind of in-world announcement (or on the day that bunchs of people can't go to their own land) You are going to hear a peculiar popping noise- It'll be the sound of tens of thousands of Butts *slamming shut*.

-V-

Or offer it up to the Corps so they can establish their mainland marketing presence.

just as an aside...

in case you hadn't noticed, LL employees are not very good at the analysis part of anything, which is why they get us to do the thinking for them when they have one of their "policy ideas".

every time you make a suggestion as to what you think they'll do with the land, it probably gets put on their list of things to look at. They're effectively using you as an ideas tank.

Now, I don't have a problem with that as long as it benefits us. But some of the last few pages have probably just given them lots of free ideas that may help them to recoup their losses from this.. Which is a shame as I rather like the idea of them suffering losses.

that's just me though.

Not surpising, considering how much of where SL is today is the product of the residents, from content to bug fixing and improvements. While that's not unexpected given the nature of SL, how LL treats those customers, with disdainment bordering on contempt is just sad. I have to admit a part of me would take pleasure in seeing SL and LL disintegrate over this. I just hope another place comes along for all you true believers out there.

It is time to create a TOS for our ideas/work and to write some bills. 5 weeks, endless brainpower, international consultants, some are academics, the time we gave in so far, the results we made so far - measured at similar services on the globe, McKinsey and such - even some austrian mafiosies of the consulting scene, hm, hm, yes, I would say: 5 Million Dollars would be ok, but wait: taxes, exchange fees, stress-factor, recession time, customer (LL) is rude: 10 Million Dollars. Anyone votes for 20 Millions? Ok. 20 Millions. We share then.

Blue Mars is due to release its beta in June, just in time for the chaos that is bound to happen when the eviction to ursula takes place at the same time period. Too bad that Blue Mars only runs on Vista. I think it has its own economy build into it too.

Yeah but there are plenty of major flaws to Blue Mars that make it impossible for it to be a serious competitor to SL. A few listed below


1- You have to be licensed (i.e. pay a huge fee) to build

2- Consumer only economy, if you're not a builder you can't cash out

3- Designed for large builds by already established companies

4- Non scaling graphics, this may be wrong but last I read the system requirements are much higher for this

5- Designed almost entirely for the $2000+/seat animation software crowd, again my understanding of what I've read but unless you're into really high end 3d models and for creators unless you are an expert at using them to build a large island's worth of builds with them then you aren't wanted there.



Nothing that is out so far can compete because none of them have an economy which is a key component.

A bit off topic but even the SL clones (also known as Opensim et al.) haven't been able to replicate that . They all have permissions problems, nobody trusts thems and the few that do actually do virtual dollar to real dollar exchange can only do so at a fixed rate and the only ones who have the money to do so are the people who have bought sims. Until they can build trust in content protection and until they can build at least some semblance of a service sector they're pretty much hopeless as alternatives.

Don't worry, they are too involved in their own mindset. If they had been listening to any of our ideas, they could have fixed so many problems, including the bot problems that plagued the performance and drained their resources, but the management is not that technological savvy to comprehend these issues. They are too involved into cleaning up their image to make it appear to be a viable company, but other companies are not stupid to see through the core of their problems.

It's not much different from the Detroit big 3 auto companies who dug themselves into the hole because of their mindset of how they think user market is, and behave exactly alike in all respects, and how little do they understand what customers want. It is the classic Henry Ford mentality: "You can buy any color of car you want as long as it is black." Have they changed that mindset even at the blink of bankruptcy?

I think, on the contrary, their competitors are probably watching this closely and see that they can do to avoid the same. Because the outsiders are not entrenched into their mindset, that is where real change occurs. Look at how Avatar Reality created their in-world model with different technologies and different in-world environment that completely resolves the long-standing unresolved issues that plagued SL. They had been named among the 12 top FiReStarters startup technology for a good reason. http://www.futureinreview.com/firestarters.php That is revolution rather than the slow and painful evolution here.

Are you sure we are reading the same specs? What I read is exactly the opposite.

They are using CryENGINE™2 graphics engine which is completely scalable, and uses mesh and voxel tools which is the industry standard in 3D graphics. It would be better if they use CryENGINE™3, which is used by Playstation 3 and Xbox. Look at the realistic 3D graphics generated by http://www.cryengine2.com or http://www.cryengine2.org There is no comparison to SL. Avatar Reality already paid for the license to use CryENGINE™2, so it is free for you as developers to build using their SDK kit and sandbox at no cost to qualified developers.

I don't see where the huge fee you mentioned. They only charge a setup fee for the server (just like LL charge your for your sim), monthly maintenance fees based on concurrent user load (just like LL charge you for tier, but much better because they charge you proportional to user load, which is much fairer than the flat tier that LL charges you even if no one is dwelling in your sim), and collect a small percentage of your online transactions (just like XStreetSL charges you a small percentage of your purchase.)

I don't think there is anything that prevent you from owning your own small parcel by buying from these estate owners, just like in SL. I guess we have to wait and see how much they charge for their sims.

What they have is even better, where you can build your own city, and inter-connect them, just like what Open Grid would provide you with connecting your own Open Sim. It is like the estate owner owning a large chunk of sims to build their cities, except that their cities are in their own grid, independent of each other. I think that is exactly what LL wanted to create with their corporate partner to inter-connect their mainland with IBM in their wishlist.

They use 3DSMax and Maya and even Flash-based HUD and user-interface, which open door to much better user-environment for end-users and for content creators too, unlike the stupid rigid blue dialog box you see in SL

They have encryption file system and secured server for content management system to protect the IP rights for creators. Did you miss reading that?

They have secured transaction backend for micro-transactions, pay to play, trial to buy, and subscription service, which is any payment model you can imagine, especially trial to buy which makes it a much better environment for both users and builders. So did you miss that too?

Because SL's code is not multi-threaded, there is no way they can take advantage of the multi-core CPU you have on the computer, even if you have a quad-core computer. That is why their performance issue can never be resolved even if they have much better hardware. It is a dead-end. Blue Mars is multi-threaded.

These are the things that you wish to have in SL but probably will never see the light of the day. Even if LL is stealing the ideas, it would take them years to catch up to it, and have to completely re-write the code to make it happen. You can't simply modify the code to make it multi-threaded; you have to completely re-design from the drawing board. SL probably has a realistic lifetime of about 5 more years before it becomes obsolete.

Since Blue Mars was brought up, thought I'd just offer this to anyone interested in reading about it. At the end of the comments Jim Sink, VP Business Development of Avatar Reality answers some questions about BM.

http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2009/03/blue-moon.html

I totally agree with you Brenda in every way That is why I answer these so that it maybe minimizes further damage just a little bit and the people that have read the mis information can correct themselves based on what has been said rather than what they think has been said but its a losing battle in so many ways

A week later down the line and still the audio has not been posted and that is after LL said it would be posted in a couple of days after the meeting, so i can understand everyones frustration, mine included and i was one of those at the meeting and it doesn't instill much confidence in me lol

But for most that are here to make their fortunes this game will only allow developers to cash out and there are as yet so many unanswered questions.

From this page: http://npirl.blogspot.com/2009/04/new-answers-and-more-questions.html?



I don't think LL has to worry about this one just quite yet as there are some major differences as i see it, there is an ongoing thread here for those that want to discuss it here: /327/70/317029/1.html

I'm beginning to wonder just how deep the LL rethink is on this. If they're just going to flush the whole thing and do something completely different there wouldn't be much urgency to addressing the backlog of the brownbags, the blog, the knowledge base, the forums, etc.

On the other hand, we've grown to expect eerie silence from Cyn's organization, so it could just be Business As Usual.

In my opinion, Blue Mars is dead in the water. The developers simply don't understand human creativity and basic economics. Only a free, organic polity with low barriers to entry will generate a creative matrix. Planned and regulated 'utopian' economies die of asphyxiation. LL take note.

I vote for business as usual myself, I've not seen anything yet that hasn't gone according to normal LL business practice.

I agree, i was thinking that earlier as well. I doubt though that they will do a U turn but it would be nice to be surprised. Maybe the issues that have been raised here etc. have made them stop and reconsider certain actions before going ahead with them, its just the lack of communication from them that I detest as this does affect everyone on the grid in one way or another and is probably the biggest changes I have ever seen since i first tried SL.

But as i have always said LL treats the customers like Mushrooms, keeping us in the dark and feeding us Bullshit They seek advice etc. but never seem to be able to be honest with what is happening. Even some honest stuff like, "We are working on things and are considering what to do and re evaluating things, as we have received so much valuable input from our customers" would go a long way to re building some of the lost trust.

Just my opinion though. I don't hate LL per say, just wish they would treat us as adults and customers instead of like idiots

No building or scripting, except for city owners and licensed developers approved by city owners. The whole place will be more restricted than the worst nightmares of SL residents.

Very valid opinion. I actually hoped they would consider making it easier to apply to be a content provider in their world. More like a registration if you will so that they can track content and piracy since that is the desire. But still there is that issue of being able to be free to simply create without having to apply and meet some kind of criteria. Not everyone is a pro, and not everyone desires the work of a pro. But I still think Blue Mars is far too young at this point to really make up my mind if it would be entertaining or not.


Moving on to SL and these changes... To me, this really isn't about defining what is Adult, it about re-defining what is Mature. This is how I view it because this is how it will effect me in particular. They are going to re-define Mature, thus limiting what I can do on land that I purchased that was specifically mature because of the freedom it allows. Had I wanted limitations, I would have purchased PG land. If the Adult category had been an option at the time, then I would have definitely purchased Adult Land. Looking around, I think most of my neighbors would have chosen Adult land as well, and some will even be required to move. But the Linden's have already stated they have no intention of preventing land extortion on Ursula, and this is what I'll have to deal with. So if the intention was to limit the choices of some, so that others could have more choices, then I applaud the Lindens, because that is exactly what they have done.

The more I think about this the more it pisses me off.

I'm sure that many residents would have chosen "Adult" land if it had been available, and had they known "Mature" was going to be redefined as "PG". Will we be eligible for the land swap, or do we get to fight it out with the land speculators?

Yeah, maybe this is great for someone. Land speculators I guess. The rest of us get stuck either paying L$60,000 for a 1024, owning worthless effectively PG land, or just abandoning it.

Yeah, that's great. Fortunately I don't have a much invested in it, so it won't hurt that bad to let it go when Linden Lab finally pisses all over it.