Alex

@Justin A lot of you say sounds ok to me, i think we should not feel threatened by competition and I agree with you about the suffix that would better describe the user practices. Dont think it is a pigeon-hole or a drawer. This woud just help to give a new push to SL especially with medias keeping saying nothing is happening since 2007. And we all know this is a lie !!

It inspires me a post last night you’ll find on http://makemyworlds.blogspot.com/2009/12/is-second-life-ready-to-change-name.html

just profiled on News Report…PBS.

the push back to this corporate “inventory management of people as cogs”

c3

You’re reply has irked me, maybe it’s my days of being in TV journalism. I do have to follow this up.

I have followed the issues, I’m just not following your issues.

The truth here is that you’re throwing around high brow prophecies around irrelevant issues. How can you compare how Linden Lab run Second Life to a Russia Communist State and China’s repressive regime?! You’re trivializing human rights and greater issues around ethics. How right of right-wing are you? It’s an amazing leap of “faith”. It’s a rant in the realms of the numerous crazy New York bag ladies, or the late night callers into a WXPR News Radio Shock Jock You’re even accusing IBM employees of being child molesters. Are you nuts?! IBM will not stand for that kind of accusations. You even blog slanderous speculative accusations against a lot of people, the worst of which is focused on Linden Lab employees. Why are you risking provoking the hand that feeds you?

I spent a few minutes checking your sources. I don’t like how Justin spoke about content creators in July 2008. I do though find judging someone on one article, which is being reported in a certain way, a little unfair. The quotes he made were in context of the article’s thread, which is how Google, IMVU, There, Sony Home have/had chosen to work in the development of content. These companies chose a different path of development. It doesn’t matter if I think this is right or wrong. It’s a choice, simple as that. He never made any reference to Second Life being full of “substandard” content. This is totally wrong of you. What he did say was that brands had an issue with counterfeit virtual goods being sold for a personal profit. Also the “questionable” sexual objects being created and allowed into PG areas etc. Again, something that brands don’t like. This is a pollution issue, it’s also something that even Linden Lab have had to finally address at the end of 2009. This was why they had to create Zindra, this is a decent and logical decision. Not everyone in Second Life wants to have sex in their faces all the time. It was certainly an issue in 2008, it was also why other companies chose another way for content to be created. The world of hindsight is an easy world, now as we start 2010. We all know that the public-facing-Second-Life is a world of peer-to-peer objects and businesses. Which is thriving and growing. This is a world that is foreign shore for real life brands. Again, this is in hindsight.

This is also related to IP issues, this is not from corporate commercial pressure, but DMCA infringements being served by the likes of Stroker. Who as a long term resident is mighty pissed with the lack of action against *gasp* pollution, counterfeit goods… The residences of Second Life in 2010 are becoming brands, they want the same rules, protection as the real world *gasp*. Prok, This is not a “free market” there is way too much money involved now.

The original article from July 2008:

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/21100/page2/

The article you based your biased blog on:

http://foo.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2008/07/second-life-ima.html

What I find amazing, is that you talk about the Alphaville Herald, on numerous occasions as the lowest of the low. I would go as far as saying they’re your Nemesis. But you feel you can use their biased article as the ‘truth”, just because it suits you at that moment? This is like NEWSPEAK selective editing, just insert the words that make your story sound like you want it to be, how you want people to overreact and storm the doors of LL’s HQ in SF. Prok, as Alphaville Herald blog states, everything they say is “Always Fairly Unbalanced”. Congratulations Prok, you’ve delivered on their mission statement.

Prok, you’re wrong. Very wrong. It’s time someone called you out. You’re a bully and have got away with this kinda behavior for ages. In recent months, you’ve become more and more unhinged.

Linden Lab have over 40+ Gold Solution Providers, I don’t see this as a select group. They also have IBM and other massive companies. This is an open group, as I said before, if companies are interested in applying just apply. It’s not a closed shop. If you have the desire and experience you can be part of it. Linden Lab have made it open, if it was closed, this would mean LL totally controlling the creation of content. This is not the case. Linden Lab do not generate the sales leads, the SL developers do that themselves. There is no sales support. As for a preferred Illumanti based RFP process? This is totally conspiratorial and in the realms of paranoia.

Dominance? This is a total joke. This is not about RRR or even the other developers. Linden Lab have the dominance. This is not about “your world of land rental” in public space of Second Life. This is about Enterprise solution sales. Do you even understand what this means? This is not about procurement officers wasting a morning sifting through 1000′s of chairs. I agree with what a lot of people are saying, this is not just RRR’s thoughts, for real Second Life Enterprise success it has to have solutions and applications. The content is there already, it has to offer the market more. Prokofy, The real facts here, Linden Lab have actually given away most of the “content” already, it’s given away as part of the Second Life Enterprise server. It comes bundled and part of the base offer. Did you know that? They bundle buildings, avatars, furniture and much more. This is because the real relationship will come from the development of applications and solutions, plus the ability of developers to offer valued added services: consultancy, implementation, strategy etc.

The big mistake? Linden Lab should not have called their Enterprise solution “Second Life Enterprise”.

This is totally misleading, it’s a communication nightmare. The stand alone, behind the firewall solution is a separate division, product and offering. Linden Lab should have made it clearer that this is different, so that people like yourself, would not have made 2+2=5. Sorry Prok, I don’t think this is fully your fault, as the way this is being handled is open to conjecture and it’s playing to your inner demons and fears.

Even questioning Linden Lab’s Standards and company ethics and staff codes of conduct is nothing short of abhorrent. It slaps of the desperation of a cornered coward. I just don’t understand why Linden Lab haven’t taken action against your personal attacks, accusations and continued detrimental actions against *their* company and employees. OR maybe they just cannot be bothered, it’s what you may really want. Attention. Maybe nothing more than that, you crave Attention. These blogs give you notoriety. Which is a game all of it’s own.

Michael.

The people on the GSP are long-time sycophants — and P.S. — they *paid* to be on the list. As I endlessly have to explain to people like you: it’s not about being “jealous” or somehow not being able to figure out the path to, um, “excellence”. It’s about criticizing the sort of insiderism and monopolies that in RL would spark protest — and should in SL as well.

This constant nattering about LL “not being a democracy” and having to be a hard-nosed business just lets us know where you want your bread buttered. Any company making this much of a foundation of the Metaverse sets the tone. We went to all this trouble to “free” the Internet from the U.S. government which was supposed to make it “more free,” eh? And put it into the hands of IETF which is really run by IBM and nutters from SL foisting half-baked interoperability schemes on the uninvolved and uninitiated. By contrast, a government with oversight and checks and balances looks better. And in this field, corporations have huge influence and power and behave like governments, even when relatively small like LL. So it’s more than fine to speak of them as executive powers and to demand ACCOUNTABILITY from them.

It boggles the mind how venal the California ethics-free company is — such that we have to hear lectures from wannabee fanboys about how they’re not a democracy — when what is meant by *wanting* them to be a democracy is to be held to standards of accountability and transparency that corporations *ought* to be held to regardless of their private status. Standards like putting out RFPs and bidding out jobs openly instead of handing them to outsiders. Standards like company ethics and staff codes of conduct that are known and adhered to. The control of speech is simply a scandal.

You gotta love this, um, brave soul here who is anonymously trolling *me*. I don’t buy the notion of “troll” as it is merely a label that power-holders wield to try to discredit persistent critics who find their power illegitimate. I have never been “banned from Second Life” or any world. Being suspended for 3 days because you swore in PG or 7 days because you told the old hags of the FIC-dominated forum where to put it isn’t being “banned” but merely suspended. I am actually not banned any longer from the blogs or forums, the Lindens quietly got rid of this unfair ban more than a year ago.

As for being “banned from SLCC,” nothing of the sort occurred. A thin-skinned organizer who was critized by me and others for his very poor performance in managing the event — who was later forced to step down — decided to hysterically call for my “banning” — but of course everyone from Scoble to the Los Angeles Times objected to this kind of outrageous shunning and witch-hunting behaviour from the provincial early-adapter geeks in SL. Honestly, SL is a laughingstock for the way they lurch from tolerance of child rape simulation to censorship of critics of their insider favouries — all in a day.

Finally, Michael, you yourself are delusional and not aware of the facts. You clearly haven’t been following the issue of the shopping sites. There is no reason in hell that the Lindens have to bar content creators from selling to big business — it’s a grotesque protectionaist move without any technical basis whatsoever. The idea that only a select list chosen by LL who essentially pay to be on that list can decide who gets to sell to big business isn’t even the way China is run these days, or Russia.

Justin’s actions are completely indefensible. And that will become more clear as time goes on and people realize that you cannot let these companies dominate the market — and those that side with them will be the losers as their reputation with the public will suffer. There is always a cost to not being a good corporate citizen.

The social problem of our “online culture” is examplified by the “anon” ease of which the “entitled” feel they can blather on with no “real” responsability for their words or actions. This problem is further added to by the false memes of “meta tech” and “virtuality” that have their importance lessened and true affects newted by such blatherings of the ignorant- who are not quite experienced enough to see how large systems work, and who are rewarded for being a cog.

And they “like” it.

think about it.;)