Welcome our new Fascist Overlords shall we?

Linden Lab, the developers of that wonderful world of Second Life, have sunk to an all-time low. I couldn't think it possible for a Corporation like Linden Lab, who "talks" about valuing the FREE SPEECH of everyone and valuing the OPINIONS of everyone, has now become some sort of Marxist Fascist Censors.

Today I was busying myself answering questions during the New Resident Q&A event that I host every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. During this time, I was asked the normal questions you would get asked during a New Resident Q&A, and also was asked about this past weekends remarks on the Second Life Blogs.

I re-told the story of WHY I had taken up on this action, and WHY I was fighting to get our Fascist Friends in San Fran to actually FIX Second Life and LISTEN to the Community. I can honestly say I did not saying anything that was untrue, nor was defamatory in the slightest. Shortly after this though, I was "logged off by an Administrator".

To my surprise, I was being "watched" and apparently, my criticism of our Marxist Overlords was not taken well, and therefore I was banned. I received an email that attempted to explain WHY they had taken this action, but as you all know, those emails are quite convoluted and they really don't explain EXACTLY what occurred.

I can only guess what the issue here was, so let's try and figure this out. Paragraph by Paragraph let's dissect this email:

Linden Lab individually investigates the circumstances of every Abuse
Report we receive. Following a careful review of our server records and
logs, we have determined that your recent actions violated the Second Life
Community Standards or Terms of Service. The violation in question occurred
on September 19, 2007 in the region of Kissling.

We know that during this "report" of infraction, I was hosting the New Resident Q&A. I'm sure many of you have attended this event before, and you know I have never said anything about Linden Lab or her employee's that wasn't true and I couldn't backup with hard evidence; today was no different.

Contrary to popular belief, when I'm busy doing the New Resident Q&A, I'm concentrating my efforts on one thing and one thing only; the New Residents. I answer their questions, and I mean all of them. Since I'm no longer a Mentor, I no longer have to dodge those questions that sheds some light on Linden Lab and the way her employee's DON'T do their jobs. So, while some might believe that I was actually swearing and making up stories to make Linden Lab look bad, that really isn't necessary. Linden Lab, on a daily basis anymore, does something stupid and has the act of making them look bad, well in hand.

Violation: Community Standards: Rules of Conduct

Within Second Life we want to support residents in shaping
their specific experiences and making their own choices.
Our rules are simple: treat each other with respect and
without harassment, adhere to local standards as indicated
by simulator ratings, and refrain from any hate activity
which slurs a real-world individual or real-world
community.

The rules of conduct are interpreted with the broadest meaning possible.

Apparently the Rules of Conduct now stifle our FREE SPEECH abilities within Second Life. Although, like our friends in San Fran like to say, we should follow the laws of our local jurisprudence. This means, and these are their rules not mine, that the Residents living within the border of the United States, should be able to practice FREE SPEECH, just as long as it's not meant to incite a riot, cause injury to someone or something, or defame/slander an individual or community. Since my speech this afternoon didn't even come close to any of these three exceptions, I must assume that Linden Lab now chooses to censure those people that would criticize them. It must be difficult when you, as a company, can't handle not only criticism, but also the truth, and that truth which has been proved.

I see now why I haven't been able to get the folks at Linden Lab to move on these issues and start correcting bugs and stabilizing our world; they have the maturity of a Sixth Grader who gets mad when someone reveals something about them that they are ashamed of.

I suppose really that this shouldn't come as any great shock to us. Linden Lab has chosen NOT to listen, except when people sing their praises. If someone does manage to get in their criticism, those people are immediately made out to be hate-mongers and trouble-makers. This sounds an awful lot like China to me, perhaps we now know who is really behind the development of HiPiHi!

I imagine that I'm going to be "watched" carefully for the next few weeks, to be sure I've "learned" my lesson. It will be nice having a Linden Lab employee following me around, perhaps the next time I lose an object, I won't have to wait a MONTH before someone even tries to recover it.

So, if you see me in-world, be sure and say HI, to me, and my invisible friend from Linden Lab.

It's wash day here...what to wash first?

As I've told you all before, I've been cruising the other place I make my feelings known today, and if you all want to follow along, you can look at Robin's entry about going to Austria, and then the Consensus Information blog posting to find out what's got me going off today.

Well, in Robin's recent Blog Posting, I titillate the other comment posters by airing just a tad bit of Linden Lab's Dirty Laundry. Since it's wash day in my house, I think I should come clean with the full story and let you, the humble reader decide, just how crazy you think Profky is by saying there is a Fetted Inner Core (FIC).

It was during Beta time, and Olive was still a sandbox SIM. Normally I didn't have a problem with Olive being a Sandbox, as I lived and sort of looked after Slate, who was Olive's neighbor. Now, my Log Cabin in Slate was abutted to the Olive Border, as Olive was actually quite high above Slate, and at the bottom of the SIM border was my Log Cabin. Now, I didn't mind the "once in a while" loose object falling off the border onto my Cabin, but one particular Resident had made it his lot in life to actually see just how much Griefing he could get away with by pushing over multiple level buildings onto my Cabin, or by firing missiles into Slate every 5 seconds or so for 4 hour periods. Well, this lasted for about 2 weeks, and by then I was livid. I contacted Robin Harper of Linden Lab and told her my issue and said I wanted to speak with Herself, Philip, and one other, I forget his name, he was head of the Mentor corp., then. Anyway, we setup a meeting at the Log Cabin, and I sat down with these three and told them in no uncertain terms that I would no longer tolerate this griefing. At first they gave the usual comments about how they don't interfere, but then, as I had figured would happen, my little "Monkey Boy" showed up and started his griefing. It became so distracting that the head of the Mentor Corp., left the meet, told "Monkey Boy" to stop and then kicked him for a matter of hours because "Monkey Boy" got lippy with him. I went on after that to tell Uncle Philip and Aunty Robin that I and the Slate Community wouldn't tolerate this, and we would find an appropriate way to vent our issues if something wasn't done. Two weeks later, Olive became a MATURE SIM and we never had trouble from them on.

Now, just why is this DIRTY LAUNDRY, and aren't I, your congenial host, just as wrong as Philip and Robin in all this. Let's take that last question first. Yes, I was wrong in taking this problem to Robin and Philip, although, I will say I did it for the Community, and relied on that Community's popularity with Philip to force Linden Lab to act. Philip and Robin could have easily just had said, "Sorry, we can't do this", and we would have gone on from there. Instead though, afraid of any type of bad publicity, they gave us just what we asked for, that Olive be re-districted as a Residential SIM instead of a Sandbox. They did this because I asked them to, not by going through any of the "channels" that were setup, I just IM'ed them and emailed them. They did this because they didn't want one of their "popular" and "supportive" customers to start ragging on them in the presses.

So, what do you think about the FIC now friends? Can you see that some people, more then just me, were, and still are today, given preferential treatment over others who deserve the same treatment, but will never receive it?

Linden Lab is currently all about hiding and hoping they can hold on. They aren't there to help the Residents or Customers, they just want us all to be happy little sheep and be quiet or hum a merry little tune. I for one am tired of taking advantage of my "position", I for one and tired of seeing others loose valuable objects, only to be told by Linden Lab that they can't recover them or that the problem is the Resident's. I'm tired of Linden Lab acting like a perfect little angel, while we all know they are just DIRTY LITTLE LIARS.

So, Uncle Philip and Aunty Robin, now that I've told this dirty little secret, I wonder WHICH ONE I'll tell during the next laundry day at my home?

Flood Support!

Well friends, I just realized how we can all continue our fight with those lazy friends in San Fran, and it's really a lot of fun.

You see, for every SUPPORT TICKET you file, they allow you, if you are not satisfied with their answer, to REOPEN that TICKET and give a comment and then CC those comments to whomever you like as well.

So, if you have a closed SUPPORT TICKET that you didn't get any real action on, I urge you to go into the SUPPORT area of the Second Life website, login as yourself, look in your HISTORY tab and REOPEN the TICKET(S) you don't feel have been given DUE RESPONSE by our lethargic friends in SAN FRAN. Don't forget to CC Uncle Philip and Aunty Robin, just so they know you aren't going quietly into the night!

What will it take?

Over at the other hangout where I make my feelings known to Linden Lab, I've raised some questions concerning the stagnation of the Resident population within Second Life.

It seems to me that many of the "regular" and even "older" Customers have grown weary, if not just downright angry, with Linden Lab and how they've chose to ignore the Customer pleas to stabilize the world, the Asset Server, the GRID overall. In as much, it seems many of those have chose to stay away. Most likely, not because they don't like Second Life, as I've admitted many times before, I am a HUGE supporter of Second Life, but instead, out of the constant LIES and deceptive practices of Linden Lab. When the proprietor of a product starts to blame the Residents for the problems they see within the World, then one must strongly question whether that company can succeed in the business.

Linden Lab has claimed, and I have the logs and emails to prove this, that the "missing objects" problems are due to insufficient machines of the users, the objects are really there, they just can't see them. Now, I MIGHT be willing to believe this, but when they claim the same for myself, then I know they are just lying. You see, I'm one of the lucky ones when it comes to graphics capabilities, I have TWO 7900 GTX boards connected together thru SLI and there's no game out there at this time that I can't handle full force. I was even able to run the "Middle Earth Online" beta with FULL GRAPHICS MODE and never saw a single lag issue related to graphics, so to claim that MY COMPUTER GRAPHICS aren't up to snuff and my objects are in-world but I just can't see them, then you are lying to me, and I know it, and so do you.

This is the overall problem at Linden Lab. Their product required many of us first users to have very powerful computers at the time (over 4 years ago) and it also required a very technical knowledge of our computers in order to get the most out of Second Life. This is a two-edged sword for Linden Lab. First, it brought in competent people that could solve most of their own issues, and also practice their creativity thru LSL or the building system. Second, it gave them a user-base that knows when they are being lied to. While Linden Lab wants to believe they know more then their own Customers, these same customers they know turn to and ask for help to fix bugs, they all but turn a deaf ear to those who know how networks work, speak about adding more crap onto the GRID without bolstering the GRID first, and why that effects the Residents of Second Life so badly.

Now the problem is, a lot of those same technical people are starting to stay away from Second Life, tired of hearing their nonsensical excuses and lies about what is causing the problems. There's a wealth of information out there in these "stay away Residents" that Second Life residents now don't get to draw upon, and so, Second Life is taking a HUGE STEP backwards in it's Community knowledge. This is the direct fault of Linden Lab, make no mistake of that. When a company like Linden Lab reports the same problem every single week in their blog, and most cheery Residents just stroke their egos, it serves to give them a false sense of security. These cheery Residents will one day start asking the same questions others before them have asked, and where will that put Linden Lab then?

What will it take then to get Linden Lab to stand up, accept responsibility for it's own mess in Second Life, and start to fix these issues? Will it take the death of a beloved product, like Second Life? I hope not, but then again, apparently Linden Lab believes everything is OK and they have nothing to be worried about. I wonder just when they will start worrying, will it be when they start seeing only 10K people online at a time, or 5K, or just 1K? By then it will be too late for the world, and Linden Lab will realize it, and then we all lose. So, what can we do? The only thing I know is to write Uncle Philip and Aunty Robin and tell them to fix the world. Otherwise, we will watch our world die a slow and much too early death.

A Real Hero of Second Life

While our friends in San Fran continue to show their incompetence and uncaring, one in our community is really stepping up trying to keep Second Life going for us all, Nicholaz Beresford.

You might remember me mentioning Nicholaz before, it was to vote for him during the Linden Lab "oh look we care" awards at the recent convention in Chicago.

Well, Nicholaz was voted Community Person of the year for his countless and endless dedication to making the Second Life client better for all of us.

If you haven't yet checked out Nicholaz's website, you should, his clients certainly won't leave you crashing every 5 minutes like those other guys in San Fran seem to.

If you can't fix the problem, blame the Resident

As most of you are aware, I recently had my first run-in with Inventory Loss in Second Life. The first time my very unique and needed Texturing Tool was lost, I wrote Aunty Robin, who asked Kona Linden to look into it, who then recovered the tool all within 5 hours. The second time, Aunty Robin wasn't so "welcoming" and told me I needed to go through "proper channels" to get things done.

Instead of arguing, I decided to give "Support" a chance, who knows, maybe they've gotten better? I logged into Support and started my trouble ticket. A day went by, and nothing was done. Another day went by, and still nothing was done. I wrote Aunty Robin again and asked if this was the level of Support one gets when he follows the "proper channels"; 48 hours and no action? Aunty Robin apparently then contacted Kona Linden, who took over my acct for a couple of hours to check on things, and then went back to the location where the tool was lost and spoke with the person that rents that area of land. That person tried to tell Kona that my Texturing Tool wasn't the only thing lost, that she too, had just the night before, lost a Chimera Dance machine that was loaded with over 10,000 Lindens worth of dances. Kona glossed over that, and focused only on the task at hand. While Kona was talking, apparently Kona decided I was to be blamed for the terrible lag in the area and for the losses. As Kona explained to the Resident that textures over 512x512 cause tremendous lag and:

"[16:03] Kona Linden: and Bob's builds are infamous for using rather large textures"

It's amazing, I thought, since Kona couldn't find the real problem, that he/she should blame it on my build, rather then, oh let's say, the crappy implementation of VOICE, or the memory leaking Second Life Client. It's even more amazing since, and I was quick to check this, NONE of the textures used in the build, are over 512x512.

So, what we have is still one lost Texturing Tool, and one Linden Lab Employee who would rather place blame for a problem on the shoulders of a Resident, then accept that Linden Lab is the problem.

I guess Support has changed over the past few months. Now if they can't figure out a problem, they just blame the person reporting it.