Open Spaces Announcement & Talk with M and Jack Linden

No you're not, or no you're not sure? You may have passed on the SL support role you mentioned, but you sure you never took on a blogging role with them?

Seriously, you really expect them to behave worse than this? And you're pleasntly surprised?! Can they behave worse? If so how? We're all ears.


Well online is just a pipe right. The business ethics still need to be in the company ... and I'm sorry to dissapoint you, but wheres the business ethics in this thread topic?

And a company behaving better than the average doesn't say much of the company at all I'm afraid. Come to think of it, to which 'average' online companies are you comapring that have done this to their customers? (67% increase?)

As for the basket ... luckily I said I'll pass. Thanks.

Anyone on here that thinks this is a good deal is nuts
1 linden sets up openspace and gives you 3750 prims and tell you to do what with it (Nothing) Bull they wanted you to buy the prims so they could make money but when that cut into them selling full regions then they tell you you cant use them the way that THEY
had been letting you use them all along!

2 what does it matter what you use the prims for if they give them to you you will use them
So if you make an island and put 3750 prims in trees or you put a house and trees using 3750 its still just that 3750
What they're telling you now is we want to charge you for 3750 prims but you can only use part of them

3 The price that they are setting the new product "Homestead"of 395usd to purchase and a tier of 125 usd for what amounts to 1/4 of a full sim is a ripoff its still 3750 prims with no extra benefit for the extra money that they want us to pay DO THE MATH
395 x 4= 1580 usd and 125 x 4= 500 usd why would you pay that It's just crazy

HOW LONG BEFORE LINDEN RAISES THE PRICE OF THE FULL SIMS BACK TO 1600 usd AND UPS THE TIER FEE TO AT LEAST MATCH WHAT THE TIER IS ON THIS OH SO GOOD DEAL THERE OFFERING
I SEE IT COMING SOON AND LINDEN SAYING " SUCKERS "

My cohorts and I plan to upgrade our OS sim to a full next month - soaking up every bit of that scandalous residential OS goodness before the price goes up, and saving a lot of money from not having to buy a sim outright. After that we'll just keep doing what we do...goofing off, making fun of things, creating havoc. Maybe buzz some Linden office hours in random avatars, see if any of them are still alive and not zombies or something.

Speaking of which, I tried to go to Blue's office hour today. I like Blue, he's visited the estate I live in a few times, and bought stuff from various merchants including me. Mostly I wanted to give him an update he was supposed to get months ago for something he bought from me, and has yet to get. I showed up something like 20 minutes into the hour, and found a bunch of residents simply talking amongst themselves. I was informed that Blue "had to leave." I wonder about that, as he wouldn't have anything to do with the OS debacle, being the Teen Grid Guy. I fear that M may have already eaten his brain, and those of the residents hanging around today as well. They didn't react at all to a large, winged nightmare landing on the arm of Blue's office chair.

They can change the TOS to lay claim over all in-world IP, for a start. That would only make them comparable to the competition, after all.
I think it says something about what the average is like.
How about shutting down their service and forcing you to buy everything you bought from them over again to keep access to it? How about suing their customers over a retroactive change in their terms of service? How about ripping off other people's intellectual property and then suing THEM over it? Christ, there's companies for which THAT is their business model. One just filed for a PATENT on burning companies by patenting things they forgot to patent.

67% increase? Have you bought gas lately? Some parts of the US it went up 100%. And then down again just in time for the election. THAT's a frigging coincidence.

And they had less of an excuse.

If you think what LL has done is bad, you haven't been burned by a corporation yet. Seriously.

I own a full sim where I've been building an RP community. To support it, I rent out some parcels and cottages. It's always been the long-term plan that when we could afford it, I would get more sims to expand the RP area.

A few months ago I happened to notice that someone had placed a sim three spaces east of me. I knew that if they should ever happen to expand westward, that would lock me out of eastward expansion. So, even though the main sim still isn't paying for itself and I am not yet in a position to afford it, I felt pretty much forced to buy another sim east of my main sim, just to keep from being locked out.

I got an OS. It was all I could afford. Adding another $75 per month to what I'm already losing every month was just not tenable, so I am renting out space on the OS, too. I've laid out spaces for five residential (RESIDENTIAL, NOT COMMERCIAL) builds, each with a 500-prim allowance, for a total of 2500 prims. We've used 418 prims for trees and landscaping. That's 2918 prims of the 3750 that the OS will support. I have been totally and completely honest and up-front with potential renters about the fact that this is an OS... I point it out in the informational notecard and all advertising.

There was NEVER any indication at all that this usage of my OS was in any way inappropriate, until this bombshell. It is now my understanding that my cost will be raised, period, end of story, because I am "not using the OS as originally intended".

Why, then, was the prim allotment raised to 3750? What were those extra prims "intended" to be used for, in a sim that's just open water or light landscaping?

To say I am not happy about this is putting it mildly. Upgrading to a full sim is not an option at this point. Neither is kicking everyone out and turning it into open water. Getting rid of it completely opens me back up for encroachment.

I don't feel that I have done anything "wrong", but I definitely feel that I am being taken advantage of.

That might be an improvement, at least they'd then have a reason for protecting it!

But seriously, based on the change just implemented (and previous 'landmarks'), you might be right - that's entirely possible down the road somewhere. Well spotted!


Ohhh.... thats nothing! ... How about this one : Take the service away and force you to buy it back AT A HIGHER RATE... like 67% more ... and heres the best part .... for a reduced service!!! Or if you can't afford that, then option B is for you : buy it back at the same tier; lose 80% (3750 -> 750prim reduction) of that service; and have strict new TOS rules applied which basically means its worthless! And don't forget to be happy customers!


Sounds about right too.

BTW: Did you know that many SL users affected by this 67% increase probably don't even know about it yet? And very likely won't know till its too late. Imagine them logging-in one day to find its all gone tits-up. How nice. Then likely faced with having to hoof the conversion bill too for the few that stay on.


You just know how I'd answer that one right?


Yeah ... that sure is an ugly picture you painted there ... wonder who you were drawing?


Well funny you should say that ... actually, if you look around, you'll see many many people are getting burned alive right now, right here.

Well, here's a scenario for ya:

You buy a fun little game which you can play together with your friends over a LAN, and, eventually, the Internet. The company who made the game, also provided a *free* service as an option so that you can "matchmake" games with your friends and have a competitive "ladder" for more public participation. However, the service is buggy, down a lot, full of miscreants and cheaters, and you throw your hands up at it. Someone comes along, makes their own matchmaker software backend which is Open Source, created without ANY help or code from the original company (ie, LEGALLY Reverse-Engineered), works great and allows you and your friends to have your own private matchmaker service, without all the miscreants, downtime, and bugs of the "official" one. Then, once the company gets wind of it, they sue the creator of the software out of existence, take their domain name, and proceed to drive development underground.

Yeah.. that really happened. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bnetd

The smoke and mirrors continue.
How dare you post a blog post saying how well second life is going while we sit here and wait patiently for this so called "talk" same as the so called "discussion" from the last thread.
This is beyond ridiculous.
Obviously there was no room for discussion, growth is great in SL we can afford to ruffle a few feathers and pull an obvious Bait and Switch scheme.
Be Ashamed Linden Lab, be Very Ashamed....

http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/11/12/q3-closed-on-a-high-note-with-an-unusually-strong-september/#more-2815

What happened to the good old Linden philosophy of advocating freedom and non-interference in resident's affair to allow residents to do whatever they want without any micro-management?

What has changed in these few months since Mark Kingdom took office?

Why is Linden Lab micro-manage every usage of prim, every movement of an avatar, every CPU clock cycle down to the nanosecond, and nit-picking every Linden dollar that residents spend on tier to death?

Doesn't M Linden have better things to do to create a better SL instead of destroying everything LL had created so far?

*Sigh***

You love that sound-byte, don't you, but it ain't true. It's the same service, slightly modified, and for a higher price. They never took it away... there was never any point in time where everyone's openspaces (by any name) just disappeared. Other companies haven't been so nice.

Sony has proven themselves no more able to protect themselves from people ripping textures from Everquest then Linden Labs has been able to keep people from ripping textures from Second Life.
Yes, I did know that. Did you know that you're not the only person in the world who reads these forums?
A company named "Halliburton" (heard of them?) is one, another is a company named "Intellectual Ventures"... that Bill Gates moonlights for.
Paying 67% more for a luxury item 8 months from now isn't "getting burned alive".

How about paying 3000% more for your house (ever hear of "balloon payments"?), or getting gouged several thousand dollars in international roaming fees, or being sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars for daring to defend yourself from alleged music piracy on the grounds that you never owned a computer?

Um did the popcorn machine break? Otherwise, after the initial post by you...this makes no sense. I mean, I thought your job was to eat popcorn and watch.

I am working on collecting your questions, and I'll take them up for response.

Thanks for your patience, it is appreciated.

-- Katt

Too little, too late Katt.

agreed.

" Announcing the $10,000 Linden Prize
I am very excited to announce the inaugural Linden Prize.
The Linden Prize will award one Second Life Resident or team with $10,000 USD, paid in Linden dollars, for an innovative inworld project that improves the way people work, learn and communicate in their daily lives outside of the virtual world. The award is intended to align with Linden Lab’s company mission–to connect all people to an online world that advances the human condition."

With all the furor regarding the openspaces Linden Lab obviously thinks we need a pacifier and offers Residents a chance to win this prize!
Don't get me wrong its a great initiative and the award itself is a good idea but right now its another slap in the face for angry, frustrated residents living in the Lindens' virtual world.
Not only has M Linden angered many, he has also snubbed any attempts at two way communications. The Lindens asked for and received feedback in the 'hidden away from the world' forums with initially 3000+ posts and many good ideas for fixing the problem Linden lab had caused.
Linden Lab made a pretence of listening to feedback. I say a pretence because the end result of 'listening' is far worse for most residents, with only educational facilities better off, than the original change proposed.
After the second 'Letter to residents' M Linden again took it to the 'hidden from the world' forums and asked for feedback. To date there are over 2500 responses with not a single response from M Linden and I believe only about 4 other Linden replies - Is that listening? Is that communicating? Is that building trust in Linden Lab?

This prize can now only be seen as a weak attempt to divert attention from the issue that has affected most of Linden Labs' staunchest supporters!
A lot of the residents and estate owners, I personally have spoken to, have all said the same thing - Linden Lab were perfectly aware of the use the openspaces were being used for and actively encouraged those uses, leading many to accuse Linden Lab of a 'Bait and Switch' manoeuvre by taking a working product and substituting a second rate product or, of course, paying extra for the same product (with more restrictions) that you originally bought.
With this and the forum snub from M Linden many residents are abandoning their sims, both openspace and full, and flocking to other developing grids.

On the LL blog, I read: "October results indicate that we should expect land growth to slow in Q4 as Residents reconfigure their land holdings to accommodate the change in pricing and addition of the “Homestead” island type. We expect to see some Residents consolidate their holdings to adjust to the new pricing and product types."

So it's a done deal, folks. Don't expect any changes in the new pricing policy. Ain't no use repeating arguments and questions for the umpteenth time - nobody at LL is gonna read them, let alone reply here.

We are expected to reconfigure our land holdings. That's all. Personally, I already did: my partner and me managed to sell our OS sim for a whopping 5K and got us two adjoining 512 parcels on Mainland for that money. There we await the delivery of the full sim, of which we purchased one third.

Hopefully, LL will refrain from any new surprises in the near future so we can finally build something we don't have to tear down right away.

Anyone got that link to save my SL inventory? i saw it yesterday but cant remember what page it was on now. i have alot of builds i would like to save. I signed up to OL this morning, actually not to bad, i did crash a few times and my ave was a little jolty, but i changed location and now seems fine. alot of people inworld actually, most were from SL.

Can we have a pool on how long that takes?

thanks lord . if anyone goes over to OL contact me if you would like a skin n shape, i did a quick one of each male n female this morning. because ooooh the aves are uuuuugly lol
name there is skyblue nightshade.

Austria here again. My favored newspaper openend today with the headline: Eurozone and USA reached serious recession. Straight on their way to depression. Thought I pass that over to a specific company. I think. useful informations about economical recession and depression are to find on wikipedia, wich is available for free.

If I were a CEO, I would now think about to refresh immediatly my intimate relation to my pocket calculator.

Could be useful.

Katt, you're just a messenger, and there's only one message you need to take to them:- "Stop being so cowardly and face your customers."

And there's no need to thank anyone for their patience because nobody has any.

no popcorn left at the beach, anderson?

Actually no .... like all the other SL users who spend real money in SL for services, I don't like it at all!

And it's not the same service, its going to be crippled (read the FAQ)... in fact as at this moment its not even decided by how much - but hey the price is fixed! Amazing. That suggest the 67% has absolutely nothing to do with the OS service - it was calculated to get the books on target, then forced down on OS users (the one group management is willing to risk taking a loss on), and a lame excuse formulated, and the metrics of the service restriction will be worked out at a later date. Which is likely just another strategy to keep users in doubt, and make the OS fallout even bigger.

And yes, they took the original OS's away, the 2 new services both offer less, at rediculous increases in price.

As is posted in the latest blog on Q3 returns ... the strategy behind targetting OS group is to increase premium accounts (and therefore mainland ownership). This therefore is herding the strayed sheep on a grand scale and restricting customers freedom ... what were we saying about integrity?

BTW: Was enough parcels made available on Nautilus to accomodate all the sheep ?


Lol, you go on believing that. Forget textures, in SL entire AV's, objects and businesses are ripped (even entire regions!!!) - and PLENTY.

BTW : You can bleat all you like about Sony, when Sony Home hits mainstream theres going to be another (big) kid on the block ... sure its not going to be as 'open' as SL ... but be sure its going to eat a MASSIVE slice of the cake - they already have millions of customers waiting impatiently. And while it may cost more, the users will have more confidence ... you won't see BS like this for instance.


And there we have is. Suddenly OS's ... long the only viable option for those on a limited budget to get some privacy and personal space, has been yanked from their grasp and elevated to the 'Luxury Item' status.

That same cycle has been repeated througout history since the beginning of time. Greedy monopoly sees lovely island/land ... goes in guns blazing, kills off all the natives (drives the few remaining into a reserve), wipes out all the lovely natural resources, re-zones it as luxury land and makes a fortune off it. Sound familiar?

And unfortunately, for many SL users ... this is "getting burned alive" - it brings an end to their SL property ownership, and for some their entire SL experience. (I thought you said you have been reading the posts here?!)


Well, you can dream up any sort of atrosity. And its impressive seeing you compare atrosities like that to this - they may have some similarities. However, fact remains - for the users affected by this - it doesn't get much worse. I'm happy for you that you are not, but you should have some sympathy for those that are.

Then again, as you seem to be an 'undercover' agent ... how can we expect anything different.

Shame on LL for forcing this on their users. Even more so at doing it selectively and discriminating against a particular group. I wonder if anyones bringing a discrimination case on this?

The ONLY honourable step to take here, is to back out of this fiasco. Admit another error in judgement was made, offer a free restore to those already abondoned their OS's, and some free tier to all for the victimization. And a guarantee that you will think and ask the community for direction before doing any radical changes in future.

At the same time, I suggest LL DO create a smaller 'void' type OS region at a tier or $25 and a prim allowance of 1000 with limits on AV and scripts, and run 12 instead of 4. That will be usefull for buffer regions between busy full sims, and to create some visual break, else incoming competition is going to eat you alive.

The beaches are gone, ripped away unceremoniosly

I've read the FAQ. Services change, all the time, without being a "different services". You're playing stupid semantic games to make the situation seem worse than it is. And note, please, that I am NOT saying it's not bad. I'm just tired of [expletives deleted] making up [expletives deleted] about it and people like you picking it up and running with it as if those kinds of stupid sound bites actually mean anything.
IT IS NOT TECHNICALLY POSSIBLE TO PROTECT DIGITAL CONTENT. Don't argue with me, argue with Steve Jobs and just about every damn security professional on the net who isn't employed by Microsoft or the RIAA.
There's already a bunch of "big kids on the block". Even IMVU is bigger than Second Life. But since none of them are the same kind of system (and, yes, the openness of SL is an essential part of what makes it what it is) none of them matters to people who are looking for the kind of experience SL provides.

Hell yes you will. Sony has *already* pulled nastier tricks than this. Ask anyone whose system has been trashed by Sony's DRM, or everyone who's got software that requires a Sony Clie to run. And no matter what company you care to name, I'm pretty sure I can find a forum full of people a lot madder than you about some idiot trick they've pulled.
SECOND LIFE is a luxury item. Got that? EVERYTHING in here is a luxury. Nobody needs SL, like they need food and shelter and antibiotics and painkillers and clean water and even, in many places, a car.
Losing an unusually good deal on land in a virtual world isn't being "burned alive". Having your skin turned into charcoal as you cook to death is being "burned alive".

(Drama much?)
I'm not dreaming this stuff up. I've lived through some of it. I've had big corporations make decisions over what amount to high stakes poker (for them) that put the company I worked for out of business. I've had my knee damaged for life because of a mistake by a karate instructor. I know people who took their lives over busted relationships. Having to pay an extra fee that's about what I pay a *week* on tollway tokens? No, friend, it can get a WHOLE lot worse than this.

I mean, really, the level of melodrama you're raising over this is just plain crazy. "burned alive". "it doesn't get worse than this". If you've never had to deal with worse than this you've had a damn secure and protected life.
No, I'm just a guy who's tired of all the drama over a series of mistakes that aren't going to be undone.