I never lost a sock in Second Life

It happens to me in RL all in a while.

A sock vanishes to somewhere in a rift in time and space.

While investigating my most recent loss in this regard (if you see
a black sock with a red “WALK!” written on the side on a rampage : email me)
I wiggled out the fact, that I never happened to loose a sock in Second Life.

I have lost many things:

– Some paintings through asset server issues.
– Some building designs by sheer stupidity.
– Lots of L$ when the bank ban broke loose a stampede.
– Minor stuff from my inventory.

But miraculously, I never lost one of my three pairs of socks.

I would either claim the reason behind this to be pure logic or
the to the limits of simulation.

Pure logic would demand that you can not loose single socks where
in SL they always come in pairs. I accept that this has its points, at least unless I interrogated people who use prim socks and testify that they lost one of those.

The more appealing reason is simulation limits:
LL did manage to create a world if not even a galaxy where nearly everything is possible. Flight, creation, love, game, communication.

But they did not manage to create the same “background-galaxies” that RL offers.
In this case, they did not manage to create the sock-galaxy, where socks could go to when they are lost.

So with no place to go… they stay.

Now if anyone opens a sim dedicated to socks only, I bet a L§ for a hundred LL-Pinetrees, it would be packed within seconds and crash due to millions of socks, which have now have found their escape-spot.

What exactly is a microparcel?

LL just released its new policy regarding dividing mainland.

See it here

 

Now, since the casino-ban, the bank-ban and the policy change on open sims, I was always having a sharp eye on LL in view to any new regulations they come up with.

 

Those policies caught users mostly by surprise and seemed unthought, highly unjust and in all of the cases unconsulted.

Means there was not even a hint on what was coming up to the users. In comparison, LL did a leap in communications already by having the topic on the blog discussion and giving netizens the impression their voice is heard.

However, what LL missed again is to set a clear wording in terms of where a microparcel starts. 16 squaremeter or 511 squaremeter? Or in between?

In law this would strongly require a layout of terms. But due to LL is no parliament they could have been more specific in what they rule out.

As a landlord in SL all the rumors about what coming where’nt too nice to hear and ponder about. And while the actual policy is a general relief, it leaves enough uncertainty to look back over the shoulder.

But, even though undefined , I have to agree that this will be helping the mainlands attractivity in my eyes.

Let us hope for the best:)

 

Witchhunt View on Second Life

Soda Domela was just so kind to to report me to LL for unsolicited promotion for passing on a notecard to invite her to associate with my prefab shop business.

Allow me to quote our little communication for your amusement:

(I have’nt found a way to turn of the smileys on these posts, so be assured there have been no smileays on Miss Domela’s side 😉

Soda Domela: (Saved Wed Jul 02 01:50:29 2008) do i know you?
Soda Domela: (Saved Wed Jul 02 01:51:48 2008) why have you sent me this notecard?

Calixus Voom: Hello there:) I just dropped you the notecard because I look for some classy shops to associate in the shops in my showrooms. I want to present my prefab shop designs “in action” and did spread the notecards to shops, I looked upon and saw good style in:)
[7:30]  Soda Domela: (Saved Fri Jul 04 02:14:46 2008) I ADHERE TO TOS AND REPORT ALL SOLICITATIONS.  BUSINESS IS BUSINESS and constant solicitations are an interuption, and block important messages.   TOS POLICY: 5.1 Participant Conduct. In addition to abiding at all times by the Community Standards, you agree that you shall not:  (vii) upload, post, email or otherwise transmit any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, promotional materials, “junk mail,” “spam,” “chain letters,” “pyramid schemes,” or any other form of solicitation;
[7:30]  Soda Domela: (Saved Fri Jul 04 02:15:32 2008) it is your responsiblity to read and follow Second Life Terms of Service,  the above is directly from my profile.  Your account can now be suspended,  good luck to you
[7:30]  Soda Domela: (Saved Fri Jul 04 02:16:06 2008) every mall here wants “classy shops” it doesnt mean that you can solicit people
[7:35]  Calixus Voom: Very well. I thank you for kindly taking some more of your doubtlessly valuable time to inform me and wish you a nice day:)

Well, so far so good. I am not really worried about a report to LL for sending a notecard to a a businesskeeper in SL to invite him to associate which is set in a decent language and offers the reciever the chance to read the headline and decide to accept or decline (is it a strange thought to think that his/her AV would be set to ‘busy’ if he is in a workflow, allergic to notes and wants to be left alone?).

What indeed worries me in this case is, that SL features individuals -businesspeople or not – which act as they where simply too important to take a glimpse on an incoming notecard report and press the accept/deny button on notecards, but on the other hand take the time file a report to LL,  copy a quote from TOS to you and wish you good luck with it.   

On this behalf I want to make a point clear to everyone, who intents to speak to me on any matter, pass on a note regarding business or having for any kind of communication which is articulated in a decent manner  and above the level of  “HEY YOU XXX FOR LOW MONEY!”:

I will be open for your communication and talk to you if my time allows it  and will at least take the time to read the title of your notecards before I decide to not accept it. I always tried to be a communicative person in SL for this is what makes the whole envivroment a much better place: the chance to meet new people.

Although I run a business in here for about a year now as a hobby, I always tried to be open to any chance to converse and also to look friendly on any business-related-communication that offers anything.

While some people seem to see freedom in SL in being the freedom to be left alone, I see it as my freedom to decide to be an open individual who looks at everything and replies to what he deems worthwhile.

View on the weather

Having no idea if the term is still up to date, “net-weather” today again became intereresting for me again.

While in RL, I look in my homes garden and see the brightest monday since months (and a holiday with that), I see sheer blackness while looking at my SL client, which tells me that there is no login due to asset server probs. Furthermore a shy look a the blog tells me that today net weather seemed to be on blizzard with several outages.

Unfortunately, that isn’t really new there. Since the upgrade to the new windlight-included client, things go worse. Sales drop, network jams, network brown-or blackouts.

And more and more often, I get to the point to think about blowing the whole show, revoke my premium account and simply sit and wait until any other massive envivroment comes up which allows creation and sale of own content to brighten its atmosphere.

It is not yet that I feel that LL abandoned their baby, but for considerably sure, they neglect it. There is about 60000 users max, I see to be online simultaniously (How many of them bots? Who knows.). And not one day passes, in which the grid breaks down like a old-age-wrecked railroad with a serious pneumonia.

This would be perfectly alright, if this would be an experimantel envivroment for a bunch of merry but unhappy students or beta-testers. Fact is, it is not.

The fabulous thing, LL’s vision had coming here is a grand thing, paid for by people who only want to have fun and can not because their inventory vanishes, they cannot move or simply are denied access by grid overload. Plus it is paid for by people who run a business and try to sell things they deem either nice or usefull to other people .

Now the problem with selling or even having customer relation is that you can not, if nobody can log in.

You can not have them, if nobody can teleport and follow your landmarks.

You can not have them, if nobody is able to see your shop because rezzing the surrounding on the new sim after TP takes ages for the customer so he becomes frustrated and leaves.

You can not if the customer buys anything from you and either the payment is going stale or the item is never delivered because of malfunctioning asset-servers.

I am sure, I would be able to talk about this kind of stormy net-weather all day. When you pay 125 US$ Tier per month (not to talk about an additional 19% VAT, my government never asked me for) plus the 6 US$ for a yearly premium account, you are surely not a big fish in the business, I know that very well.

But it’s the medium and small fishes that fill the net.

I find it hard to cope with the fact that coverage of the costs I have dropped from 100% with a little surplus now and then to about 20 to 50% because customers do not appear, are not able to see my shop in time or even cannot enter the whole grid. When you sell prefabs you are clearly at the end of the chain.

People have no sufficient net-weather, people buy or rent no land to place a home or business. Now if they don’t, they for sure buy no prefabs.

The sum of it is:

Even if you look at bright sunshine through your window, weather can be still stormy and clouded in  another life.

Newsflash from Ancapistan Stock Exchange

Today, I found something quite interesting and evenly disturbing on SL-News-TV.

IntLibber Brautigam, CEO of Ancapistan Stock exchange just stated in a press conference that ACE will be down for somewhat longer due to a serious bug in their database AND in the backup to it.

While he stated that deposits of anyone are safe, I cannot deny, that I AM ON THE COLD-FEET SIDE HERE AGAIN.

For the second time after the bank ban, my investments shake. It’s really like the feeling they must have had in the roaring 20s when all was possible.

CEOs, weekends and snow

Boy SL sees happenings lately:)

Some CEO ejecting and becoming head of the board. While some wiseguru-newsagencies again honk the SL-is going -down-horn due to this, I think it was the right decision. SL has become so big, that it needs a department for vision on top while someone else than Philip Linden does the anyday business. In my opinion, SL will gain from this. Fresh people may also mean fresh ideas. Not too bad in view to LL either:)

Well, back from the huge policy-plane, I m on easter holiday, which means, I had some time for neat improvements. Especially due to the snow outside in old Germany,  it was not too hard to get to my working platform, doing some of the administrational stuff for my shop. Did I mention that my to do list always tends to be my worst nightmare?:)

In fact I updated all my selling system to hippovend-technology and also developed some Comission Vendor to give away to people.

Another stroke of luck was that one of the three major shops ejected from the Dhaulagiri Sim, allowing me to buy half the place and to fill my land contingent. So now I have the prims to get back on my segment-shop idea with a decent primcount in my back to set a lifedisplay and rent out the shops there.

Right now, I am fiddling on a promotion-HUD to give away to people who do what i have no more time for: PRon group channels. So if you want that job, IM me:))

Weekend, Adfarms and the Flu

Its Sunday and I spent most of my weekend on the couch being ill.But while trumpeting in Hankerchiefs I luckily found time to update the last rezboxes (long life to the laptop!). They are now up-to-date to not produce a puzzle instead of a building when used on HAVOC-servers.  Also I continued to decorate the new Mainstore at Dhaulaghiri. Being sick has its advantages there *smirk*.

Now while being a mothership for viruses in general, I also scrolled the LL blog and found the post about another one of LL’s masterpieces.

The new Anti-Spam-policy.

Finally LL seems to have realized that there are adfarms in SL. For the unenlightened: An adfarm is normally a 512 squaremeter parcel of land, which is bought by some smartass, that parcels it into 16 sqm pieces and sets up ugly columns of advetising, ruining the skyline. So far so bad.

Betting on the effect that someone might be willing to pay for having this piece of goo out of his sight, the adfarmer sets the small parcels for sale on a rate which isnt nearly described by ridiculous. I have one such thing near my mainstore (see pic).

Now,  -as always – LL overdraws the whole thing. In an interview, Harry Linden rencently stated, that , due to the new policy even normal ‘For Sale’ signs can and their owners can be possibly banned if repeating their offence.

What’s the point here? The thing is, there we have the new blow to economy going into start positions here.

LL obviously hasnt thought about whom they also blow with this. There are advertising-companies in SL, that keep advertising-columns inworld on 512 parcels which they offer over the normal market price so they are not bought of right away or taken over by other ad-companies. These Adcolumns are normally well designed things that no not disrupt the view of the landscape as the everyday adfarm does. Will they and their shareholders go down the drain with this?

And what ebout Real Estate companies? They regularily set land for sale and place a marker on it to announce it. Now if you deem the price for this to high, you simply report them as spammers?. Nice.

Yes, I see adfarming as a serious harassment to everyone and as a factor that takes value out of each neighbourhood, but in my opinion, LL continues its policy to cut down economy with this by  simply not clearly defining, where spam begins.

So people will be freightened out of landsales or advertising their services in SL. Overruling takes the air from economy, but this seems to be a fact that LL will only see after more businesspeople take their ventures out of SL and try some other platforms.

I think I will follow the call of some real estate companies here and get the ball back. The method is easy. Simply fill an abuse report for any for-sale-marker you see, if adfarm or normal real estate and clog LL’s servers. It worked yesterday for of my 25 reports 10 where returned in a denial-of-service error.

Maybe this shakes them up.

Time for my pills.

The discovery of “slow”

After two days of updating rezboxes, I made a few philosophical experiences:

At first, I finally met a player who obviously gives a damn about what i call the “Barbie & Kenification” in SL.

He created a Diogenes-Avatar, an old man with a lamp and a little cup, with bare feet and a toga. Playing a grumpy old AV myself while being not that old (yes, I know 37 is Methusalem-like with some kids today), I instantly made friends with him and created him a barrel with some sitting pose in it as a home.

The second experience was to witness the timetravel, SL makes possible. While inworld, no more time floats by than you need to produce something from your inv to the ground, in, in RL, time stretches painfully over multiple minutes. Einstein would have gone nuts over this fabululous example for relativity!.

LL was so kind to provide this effect with a device called “asset-server”.

This miraculous device is able to bend time in SL and that way you can drink a comfortable and relaxed cup of coffee while avoiding the usual haste when trying to bring things thro and fro from and to your inventory.

No more stress, because you would have to stick on screen to see what happens at every second. These timebends allow you a far mor relaxed RL while in SL your business slows down that much, you would neither earn money nor be able to work for it as a builder.

Thank you LL.

LL Bank-Ban: My Personal Conspiracy-Theory

Coming back after a weekend and finding that bank-runs are underway because LL has banned banks on short notice 

No need to say that LL has once more managed to place a sensible blow with maximum impact to the economy in SL.

Slowly I get more and more to the idea that LL is nothing more than a Berkeley–macro-economics-lab simulation with some US-government-project that stated the goal to explore how much damage an economy could take.
In this scenario, LL takes the role of an entity, whichs only task is to come up with some “Black-Friday”-staging-incident to see wether this time the whole thing blows or not.

Points that support this view as follows: