Why don't you all strike?

I have found the registration changes to be good for my business, regarding both my inworld shops and RL clients. I'm sorry some folks are getting griefed a lot. But I'm not going to be striking with you, and wouldn't even if I were being negatively affected by the reg policy.

I already waved a pitchfork at the Lindens almost two years ago, and a bunch of them showed up and waved pitchforks too and spoke so caringly and directly and humanly about the concerns we were protesting about that I was utterly embarassed by my own behavior.

They really do know what they are doing most of the time (which is pretty good, considering this is a brave new world), they pay attention to what people say about their policies, even when it doesn't seem like anything is going on they're in meetings trying to improve things, and they have a remarkable and rare ability to admit when an experiment has failed and to try something else. They never ignore member feedback on something like this, and I certainly don't see it as necessary to treat them adversarially. Just because Torley is the Linden who sometimes allows you to see how upsetting that is and how much she cares doesn't mean that the rest of the company is made up of automatons. I *like* the Linden idealism. It works for them most of the time. Coming from a long background in this industry, I was very cynical about it at first, but over time I have come to trust their judgment.

I don't think an adversarial approach is the right way to go, and I don't have a problem with the new reg policy. I'd like to see improved parcel tools that would help everyone to manage this stuff themselves, though.

Okay, off to a meeting. I'll be back to read the flames later.

I'm not quite sure how punishing myself through lost sales and my customers through inconvenience would be very effective, personally. I'm not a pick up my toys and go home kind of person and I won't stop paying my tier and trying to service my customers until such time that the grid has become so lawless that it's no longer possible to do business. LL will make changes long before things are allowed to deteriorate to that point. They aren't stupid. We're all only looking at anecdotal evidence and can't see the actual statistics. LL can. While I question the wisdom of the new signup process I don't think the folks at LL are sitting around finger painting and sniffing glue while Rome burns.

You've always struck me as an empiricist; is this wishful thinking or can you point at anything that supports this view? This is an honest question, not flamebait; I'd love for you to be correct, but so many pieces give the opposite impression. I shall refrain from "is not"ing in the interest of not turning into this into a flamewar, but I do respect your observations and would love to have mine altered.

I don't entertain any notion that I'd do a better job of running SL than Linden Lab does. There are certainly decisions I don't necessarily understand or see the logic of but that's true of any endeavor run by human beings other than me. I remember when 1.2 came along and introduced land tiers and tied prim use to land ownership. I thought they were out of their minds. As it turns out it was a hugely beneficial change for SL. For more evidence, go to google.news and set up a news alert for Second Life, the proceed to be amazed that a three year old virtual world receives the enormous amount of press coverage that it does, much of it in mainstream venues that rarely cover computer gaming. I'd say that's an indication that LL is doing something right... a lot more right than they're doing wrong. Sure, sometimes I lapse back into thinking they've lost their minds over some decision they make or needed feature they overlook, and then I get over myself and go back to doing whatever I was doing.

It's lose and losing money! LOSE and LOSING!!! Got it?!!

And the person responsible for the sacking has now been sacked.