Stagecoach Island defects to ActiveWorlds

Er ... why? This is the same kind of thinking that bugs me about Teen Grid and other "side" projects LL probably has - the main grid has enough problems, bugs and deficiencies which should be addressed before LL goes off to please kids, universities or corporations.

Except, of course, LL gets 80% of their income from the top 20% of people.
While I'm pulling these numbers out of my ass, these things do tend to follow a power law.
Anshe has 100 sims, but the next big baron probably has less than 50 and the next one less than 25, etc.
The vast majority of SL users do not bring LL any income, and cost them a lot of money in bandwidth, support and maintenance. This is what prok never really got - democracy is a horrible idea if you're running a business and all your customers aren't equal.
Every company I know has tiers. My gf briefly worked in our giant monopolist telecom's tech support call center when she was younger, and they had explicit ranks of users according to how much money they paid, with guidelines on what kind of treatment to give each rank.
The concierge program is only the beginning.

A giant machine on the welcome island (or whatever it's called now that they first log in to) would be good as well, but there are issues around multiple people using it at once that may make it less user-friendly, especially if you want visual cues on the "interface". For instance, if you clicked a button to show the selection of trousers, that's going to interfere with somebody else, or somebody might get frustrated because they have to wait - we're after something instantly accessible here I guess. That's why I thought a HUD would work best. Of course that would require LL (thinking about it) to pre-attach the HUD when the avatar is first created but I'd be suprised if that was more than trivial (famous last words!)



Cripes no, not at all, be my guest This was just something that purely sprung into my head after reading the post that I replied to. I'd love to see what you come up with.

Just so you know, and to avoid any problems in the future, my team is already working on this for a pitch that is covered by an NDA. We are looking at both ideas, as we are trying to overcome just the same problems: having some things decided immediately using HUD or adapted UI, and some things in-world using innovative dispensers.

We have been experimenting with controlling the in-world experience in completely different ways for just the reasons already cited: to make it easier for players to begin playing straight away.
bws
Cali

Not sure what "problems" you refer to *shrug* I mean, it's hardly rocket science or a particularly novel idea - it's part of what HUDs are there for in the first place. So don't worry I won't be claiming ownership of the idea (which is all I can presume you mean).

Yep.

This is why I'm such a kind bugger to people these days, doubly so when I'm making support calls (with very, *very* rare exceptions). I've been on the other side of that call, understand 150% how that feels, and things tend to resolve faster if both sides work together in an amicable manner.

Getting somewhat back to topic - I'm also involved RL in helping to make such types of decisions as WF may have done. Difference is that I would have done proper research on all the main platforms before even giving their sales depts a call (especially since the 'testing' would have been free). That may have made them goto AW from the start, who knows. But from what I'm seeing on the thread it would appear to be the best fit for their project at this time, from a technical standpoint. *shrug*

I'll be dead honest and say that I'd never suggest *any* of the 'meta-world' platforms for cross-over testing or learning. Its just so much easier and cheaper to get hold of a few very good web developers and do it the 'traditional' way. Nothing against LL/SL, but as mentioned elsewhere we're still a bit bleeding edge here.

This will also be a powerful learning experience for anyone who puts any trust at all in Linden Lab conducting itself with morality, forthrightness, or good faith.

You heard in November that Wells Fargo was dropping their contract with you and you declined to tell any of your content creators about it? That's astoundingly rude. Of course section 5.3 of the "all your base belong to us" Terms of Service protects your ass from anyone making any claim at all against you for any reason, but how about decency?

Linden Lab thought it would be better to have the creators find out by accident that not only was their work thrown in the virtual trashcan, but that it was hoisted out and reused? I'm sure this will inspire hordes of people to work on your next doomed project.

I can only properly express my sentiments in new taglines for your firm

1. Your imagination, our failed contracts
   
2. Aiming to be the Nike of Virtual Worlds
   
3. Communication? Never Heard of It.
   
4. Ask not for whom the stagecoach bell tolls - It tolls for thee
   
5. The Wells Fargo Wagon is a'Going
   

I'm tempted at this point to note all the failed business ventures that Linden Lab has managed to blunder through:

1. Avalon
   
2. SLexchange
   
3. Anshechung.com
   
4. GOM
   
5. Wells Fargo
   
6. Quicktime
   
7. ATI
   
8. I'm sure I missed some
   

Do you folks have any feathers in your cap? Oh yeah, over 100,000 "subscribers". Didn't Microsoft Bob beat you on that count? I would say that Linden Lab ought to be ashamed by this latest failure but I know that is something that you've become rather accustomed to.

Oh, I'm sorry, it was late November, you folks must have been busy with the holdiays and it just sorta slipped your mind. Perfectly understandable; nevermind.

Well...it was just the topic of the thread was a bit close to home, and it has happened to me several times recently that someone has told me they are working on something that I or the team are also working on. It's always difficult, and given that this thread is partly about the removal of the Wells Fargo project, but also about the pinching of people's products and ideas across to ActiveWorlds, I thought it was better safe than appearing to have pinched the idea and run off with it .
BWs
Cali

Hmmm, bit gloomy this thread isn't it?

Well, I can only hope that lessons have been learned. Hopefully people will be a little more careful in future before getting involved with projects like this. Maybe requiring a RL contract regarding IP at the very least?

And maybe LL have, at last, learned a valuable lesson: That you can't perpetrate things like 1.7, or allow griefers to run wild and repeatedly crash the grid and expect to hold onto lucrative RL businesses (nevermind plain old users...).

Furthermore producing a game/development platform that requires a high end/state-of-the-art computer to run acceptably is not the way forward. It makes about as much sense as producing a 'Mac only' game/development platform would.

(Apologies to Mac users - I have two, but my PCs do a better job where SL is concerned - I'm just using it to drive home the point there just aren't that many owners of SL friendly computers out there compared to owners of computers that won't run SL acceptably)

I'm aware of the tiering. But the top 20% of people have the same problems as the rest. Or do Anshe's sims have better physics engine? No sit bug? Loading textures? (etc etc) I'm only saying that it would be nice if LL made the main grid work first, without diluting their already understaffed teams with side projects.

This is where the real question is. Did Bedazzle sign a contract with Wells Fargo/Swivel that gave them rights to all content provided by Bedazzle? Did Bedazzle provide 3rd party content to Wells Fargo/Swivel without letting the developers know the implications? Was 3rd party content provided to Wells Fargo/Swivel explicitly as non-Bedazzle work that does not fall under the contract? Did the contract fail to mention sub-contractors?

Here is a clause I put into our contracts on request:

"Any and all inventions, discoveries, developments and innovations conceived by the Contractor(s) during this engagement relative to the duties under this Agreement shall be the exclusive property of the Company; and the Contractor(s) hereby assign all rights, titles, and interests in the same to the Company. Any and all inventions, discoveries, developments and innovations conceived by the Contractor(s) prior to the term of this Agreement and utilized by him or her in rendering duties to the Company are hereby licensed to the Company for use in its operations and for an infinite duration. This license is non-exclusive, and may be assigned without the Contractor(s)’ prior written approval by the Company to a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company."

If I as the Contractor use 3rd party work that does not fall into this clause, I have to negotiate that with the Company. Also note, anything we make while on the job is property of the Company, anything we made previously but use on the job is licensed to the Company.

Except that it's commonly known as "work for hire" or "work made for hire" not "worker for hire."

But it is good that you bring this up, Jake, as an independent contractor should understand what work for hire is and who retains copyright with such a contract.

U.S. Copyright Office's information circular on Work for Hire

But is Anshe the best example here? Sure she writes LL a nice check every month, but where does she get that money? She's not pulling that money out of her bottomless purse. A whole lot of low and and middle rank "nobody" players are making payments to her. Now, if LL wants to pursue policies that make her happy, but tell low to middle rank players to screw themselves, then Anshe and LL might find themselves chasing a diminishing stream of customers.

Just to clarify something briefly
Bedazzle did sign a contract with Swivel Media that did give them the rights to use our work for SCI. All textures where provided on a CD and sent in the mail to Swivel Media. This did not give Swivel media any rights to use any creations or textures from any of the vendors who contributed and help out in SCI. We found out about SCI being moved to Active worlds yesterday morning and we where in shock to find out that it was recreated on another platform without us clearly knowing this was being done. It seems since they never made this clear to us that they did not know what we created and what was the vendors work who contributed. I did notice that some of Cubey's stuff was recreated and looks identical to what he has inside of SL and have ask them to please remove or redesign his work. Bedazzle was not involved with this transition of SCI being move to Active Worlds and there was no third party involvement.

I would think the reason behind this decision is downtime and unexpected crashes from unstability. As a casual user, I love SL and can tolorate such things, if I was a top financial corporation looking for a service to represent my business, I would look at all alternatives as well.

Thanks for the clarification Foxy. Let us know how the cease and desist turns out.

This deserves emphasis.

Would this situation be covered under LL's ability to use any resident's creations for any purposes related to The Service? I'm not saying it's right, but if the content was provided by LL to WF/Swivel to use (for-sale content would probably have been provided as part of the total "Stagecoach Island" consulting package), then LL was perfectly within their rights under the TOS to do so.

I am confused how they could take something Cubey made in SL and put it in AW. Was this a plane? If so it would have to be reconstructed, at which case it would not be Cubeys, just designed to look like it.

Someone please explain to me what type of content besides texture that was lifted?

Went in and took some pictures, looks quite similar from what I've seen of the pictures.

I didn't get into the SL version of SI, so don't have any comparison pictures..

@Moopf, I haven't come across any skates or bubblegum, but I'll let you know.

Second Lot..

Almost Done..

Last Lot..

This won't help the forums, uploading picture glitch thing, hey? Oh well its the pics that got me intrested the most, hope they look..

Its not at all hard to sign up and get in, took me about 40 seconds before I was in..