I Think NWN's Analysis of How SL Should Grow Its Revenue Is Flawed

I think the reasoning in this article is deeply flawed. I don't wish to do an 'argument from authority' or something like that, but I have been involved in the strategic financial and business planning at the highest levels of a Fortune 50 company. So, I do have an inkling as to how you go about positioning the company for growth, customer retention, etc.

What I learned foremost is that if you have a handful of customers providing over 80% of your revenue, you do everything in your power to please them. You build features just for them, you continually meet with them to find out what their needs are. You analyze why they spend that much money with you and you make it easy for them to spend more money with you if possible. If they are big enough, you provide them with their own individual account managers whose only job is to keep that person happy, fix their issues, track down problems, etc. For the biggest, you send representatives and the account manager to where they are at to look at their workflow and find ways to streamline it or see how you can change things to help them. Gather their requirements and build things for them. Basically, you coddle them in every way possible.

These customers have already demonstrated they will spend large amount of money with you - the rest of your customers haven't. You give them specials, discounts, and every incentive you can create to allow them to spend more money with you. You do exit analysis and 'diving saves' when one leaves, offering incentives, even ones that temporarily mean you lose money on them just to keep them as customers. Hopefully things will turn around for them and they will start to make money for you again. The *last* thing you do is change things in a way that displeases them. And you definitely don't ignore them for the big pile of customers that provide you with less than 5% of your income. Those customers haven't demonstrated a willingness to spend anything appreciable with you.
Because of the analysis of 'what makes the big guys spend money with you', you can find the ones in the 'second tier' of customers that fit those models that you can grow into bigger customers using knowledge learned from 'the big guys'. Give them special benefits as well, this is how you replace the biggies on your platform when they do leave. Spend some people on this but not large numbers.

It'd be nice to know the percentage of new users that actually spend money in SL. It looks like the average 'low end customer' spends about US$6 per year in SL. If you estimate high and say 50% of new users spend money in SL, you'll see that you need to find about 24 *million* new users to replace the 5500. Even at SL's hey day of user growth that would take many years to accomplish. And anything you do now won't pay off in that large a number anytime soon. You spend a couple of employees in the entire company to worry about how to achieve that, it's a long shot bet. You definitely don't change things to please them that would in any way affect your most loyal customers.

You also analyze the new customer demographics and provide ways for them to mature into that 'second tier' of customers. Hopefully, one of those new ones will eventually grow into one of your biggies. But don't spend too many resources on achieving this, it's another long shot bet.

Given the analysis of who spends the most money with you in SL, you go out and market directly to those people who aren't already customers with you and who fit the demographics of the 'big spenders', hopefully you can attract a few directly into the 'big spender' fold. You offer them incentives, reduced prices and remove all barriers for them to become customers.

If the average big customer spends $11,000 a year with you, you know you can give about $11,000 worth of incentives to attract one of those - sure you don't make money on them in year one, but in year two they bring in more money for you than nearly 4000 new signups would. This could translate to something like, 'we will give you a free extra sim with no setup fees for a year if you sign a contract for two years.' Tweak this so you still make money, you might be able to squeeze that to less than a two year contract to attract more people willing to sign that contract. Find a way to lock in future recurring income as much as possible. The cell phone companies have that right. A diving save would also include a temporary reduction or hold on charges to give them a chance to recover financially, that little bit may be enough to fit their new financial status.

Sure, a lot of the biggest customers make their money by renting land, and for that you need new customers, you need to pull in more people to replace/grow their constituency. There are also a lot of people who make their money from creating content - improve content creation tools.

But whatever you do, don't piss off the people who actually spend money with you. Bend over backwards to please them, even reduce your profit margin on them if it means they increase their spending to compensate.

A company of LL's size needs to focus on their core and their strengths, rather than continually spending significant resources to reach out of that. It's like the apocryphal story of the American table tennis team that goes to China. After the US gets trounced, the US coach comments to the Chinese coach about how the Chinese players were all 'one trick ponies' using one or two swings all the time. He advised the Chinese coach to work with them to make them more 'well balanced' players. The Chinese coach responds, "Why would I spend time working with my players to improve a swing that wins 25% of the time to one that wins 50% of the time, when I can spend the effort to improve their best swing from a 96% win rate to a 99% win rate? They shouldn't use the swings that don't win as frequently as the best one."

LL should focus all their resources on reaching the point where diminishing returns make growing their biggest customers not worth it. I doubt they are anywhere near that. They shouldn't spend resources pursuing something else until that point.

There are a number of things that the number estimates I made don't take into account like costs to support them, but you get the general idea.

A Bimbo's Viewpoint on the highly charged 'Blonde Marriage' debate

Linda Strawberry outlines her viewpoint on the controversial subject of blonde marriage that has recently taken hold of the public discourse.

I believe that if we let people with Blonde hair get married it will cheapen the value of our non-blonde marriages. I define marriage to be between two non-blonde people. But don’t call me blonde-aphobic. I have a friend or two with blonde hair. I sometimes watch shows with people with blonde hair like Ellen. I just don’t think blonde haired marriages are moral

.

Many of you may be surprised to find out that I agree wholeheartedly with this viewpoint. Civil unions are more than enough, marriage is a religious institution and should be kept out of civil law entirely. I don't care what dark-haired people get up to in their religious enclaves, but the Constitution firmly guarantees a separation of Church and State. Let's keep it that way.

It's only because the dark-haired people controlled the early State that marriage and public law became so co-mingled. I know I'm a bit out there in my belief about this, but between the dark-haired people's desire to enshrine marriage in law and the deluded blonde's desire to mimic the poor dark-haired people who have been in control of the entire framework of society for too long, I think they are both fighting for the wrong thing.

I believe marriage should be removed from civil law entirely and not pollute it. Justices of the peace should only be able to perform civil unions for blondes and non-blondes alike and priests and the religious can have their marriages to themselves. I think it's a pity that so many blondes wish to ape their dark-haired counterparts, relinquishing their position as the people who push the boundaries of culture, breaking the molds of intolerance built into our society by the emotionally crippled dark-haired. We blondes embrace diversity and are accepting of all, regardless of their hair-color and fashion-sense.

This will serve both blondes and non-blondes admirably. The dark-haired and their regressive churches that refuse to marry blondes can keep to themselves, the churches that celebrate hair-color rights and diversity and allow them to marry may choose to do so, and everyone wins when old fashioned religious notions are removed from ensconcement in civil law.

Seeking marriage for all is a vane attempt by the blondes to achieve "equality" with the dark-haired people when, in fact, they are superior in every way. I call upon the other blondes to shake off the shackles of cultural convention and leave the dark-haired people and their quaint notions of marriage to molder with their rapidly obsolete non-light hair colors.

Blondes are happier, freer people when they are acting the most blonde. We lack the brooding, overly intellectualized and easily emotionally upset stereotype that haunts the dark-haired people. The poor, misbegotten people that go to ever darker haircolors with their 'Goth' and 'Emo' lifestyles and clothing especially need our acceptance. These people choose to ostracize themselves from even regular, dark-haired culture in an attempt to show their 'non-conformity' by coloring their hair black and dressing all in black like the other 'non-conformists'. They can't break away from their 'non-conformist' mold long enough to see that they have merely established another sub-culture that demands conformity to its conventions for full admittance and to be seen as 'one of them.'

Many of my friends are Goth and they have accepted me into their midst. I am truly grateful for that. They understand and appreciate oppression by the majority of the dark-haired culture, for they too have been rejected by 'mainstream' dark-hair culture. I fit in well there, they never prejudge me for not having dark-hair and all I need to do is show a bit of solidarity by wearing 'Gothy' clothing. And who doesn't enjoy 'walking on the wild-side' a little by wearing really 'out there' Goth clothing and it's taboo-pushing fetish styles. We blondes are often seen as overly sexualized and fetish ourselves.

Blondes are accepting and tolerant of many people with different hair-colors, welcoming them into our cultural refuges when we are denied entry into theirs. Our pride in our blondeness is evident with our very flamboyant Blonde Pride parades where even the dark-haired come to celebrate blondeness with us. And the acronym BDPR (Blonde, Dirty-Blonde, Platinum, and Redhead) has made it into the mainstream cultural landscape.

The poor redheads aren't mentioned much even by us, but they truly are the 'redheaded step-children' of society. Blondes have gained great cultural acceptance, able to hold hands and kiss in public for example, and many popular sitcoms now have a 'token blonde' to be the butt of stereotypical jokes. Whereas redheads are still mostly looked upon as rare 'freaks of nature'. Many comedians have dressed as redheads for a cheap laugh, but drag redhead performers like Bozo and Ronald McDonald have begun to open inroads into mainstream culture. But they are still laughed at and snickered at behind their backs as 'over the top' with their highly stylized makeup.

Only the foolishly serious, dark-haired people need marriage because that's they only way they can get regular sex - everyone wants to party and have fun with the blondes, not them. Marriage is only a trap created by the dark-haired people to capture a blonde and keep them captive so they can have regular sex with one of us. Keep the blondes free where they belong.

Even when married, the dark-haired people often sneak away from their partner to have illicit affairs with blondes. Many public figures have been caught with their pants down with blondes and their political careers have died because of it. Going so far as to hire blonde escorts or having frantic sex with a blonde in a dirty, public bathroom to avoid being seen as 'closet blonde' themselves.

So many people go through their "college blonde" phase and their "blonde-curious" stage of development, but we all know it's only a rebellion against their parents. They eventually return to their drab brunette ways, unable to cope with the blonde lifestyle and the disapproval of friends and family.

Blondes take better care of themselves, often looking and dressing better than brunettes. We dress in sexier clothes and wear better makeup than them. I fully support the metro-blonde fad with their blonde tips and highlights, their increased attention to personal hygiene, and their progressive fashion sense. Who wants to look at fat, ugly, dark-haired people anyway? This at least makes them publicly presentable. But that has it's problems, everyone thinks they are closet blondes and not as 'serious' as other dark-haired people.

Blondes define fashion and culture, often being the creators or modelers of the best and newest fashion. We are sought out to pose nude in 'blonde' magazines, which we know almost every dark-haired person has a subscription to and hides from perusal by others. Especially by their non-blonde spouses.

I deeply regret the attitudes of the conservative, religious dark-haired people who think they need to 'cure' blondes with re-education camps where they try to show us how 'unnatural' blondeness is and to brainwash us into accepting the drab, boring dark-haired lifestyle and convince us to abandon our blondeness and 'pass' amongst normal culture by dying our hair dark. Thankfully, we blondes often lack enough brains to wash.

They try to demonstrate that 'blondeness' is only a recent aberration brought about by the development of hair dyes and bleach when any person with a knowledge of history knows that blondes have been here all along.

I personally belong to the very progressive 'Blonde Bimbo' movement, with our increased emphasis on happiness and acceptance of everyone. Unhappy emotions are tiresome and unnecessary and we promote the appreciation of rainbows and butterflies as objects of true beauty.

I applaud early Bimbo pioneers such as Mae West and Marilyn Monroe who bucked the standards of their day and were open, obvious blonde bimbos paving the way for the rest of us to follow in their high-heeled footsteps. Especially Marilyn, who in the highly charged 60s Civil Rights era, made the culturally landmark 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes' movie, asserting that blondes have a place in society and that we will no longer be ignored. Her performance of 'Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend', cemented her place as one of the blonde bimbo icons, expressing what we all hold dear to our hearts - shiny, expensive, pretty things.

It is a shame that she died during that era like many other notable civil rights icons, killed by a society eager to stick with the old ways and fearful of what it would become if bimbos were allowed equality. Perhaps her dying at her peak has set her up as a martyr for the bimbo cause and a pinnacle of acceptance, happiness, and bimboness that many of us can aspire to.

In More Barbie News...

The Reverend Barbie

It appears that Computer Engineers aren't the only people with their own new Barbie, the Episcopal church has it's own too. The Reverend Barbie even has her own Facebook page.

She presides over the parish of St. Babs-by-the-Sea in beautiful Malibu and her entire group of friends are joining the church as well.

She will soon be joined, I am happy to say, by a diverse group of friends. Bishop Barbie will be African-American; the soon-to-be finished Canon Ken will be Latino, and Ken’s friend will be Deacon Steve, also African-American.

I can't wait to see what her animal companion for this one will be. Probably a fish. Too bad it won't have legs or tentacles though.

Evangelizing Shopping

For those worried about her outfits, she has multiple clerical outfits as well, so she will always be at the height of fashion for the pulpit. She's planning on spreading the good word of Barbie.

“Barbie’s very versatile that way,” said her owner. “She’s open to new possibilities, so evangelism is definitely in her future.”

I can't wait to read the Gospel according to Barbie. "In the beginning there was shopping..."

Lively Is Anything But

Well, it appears that Google's Lively does not allow sexual content of any kind.

"Our community standards prohibit sexually explicit images and rooms intended for sexual activity, even if virtual. When we become aware of 'sex rooms' that violate or Terms of Service, we'll work to remove them."

No sex chat at all. Period.

"We don't allow nudity, graphic sex acts, or sexually explicit material. This includes making sexual advances toward other users."

You can't even flirt with someone - that would be "making sexual advances." There goes the breast cancer education photos as well - that would be nudity. This makes "the nipple controversy" at SL5B seem downright trivial.

"When browsing or searching for rooms, some Lively citizens come upon these rooms as the top results, which can erode their Lively experience...Lively is intended to be a place for Lively citizens to connect with each other and express themselves freely and in a safe environment," Google said.

You can express yourself freely, as long as you adhere to Google's Puritanical sense of morality and their sense of "free". Free as in you cannot create your own content and you cannot express yourself without fear of the "sex police" finding fault with what you said.

What does that leave?

"Hey, nice weather we're having. What about those Mets?"

"Let me show you this *awesome* hat I got!"

To which everyone takes out and wears *the exact same hat*.

Zero differentiation on appearance, on action, on conversation.

Oh, did I mention that it's slower than SecondLife?

I think I'll stay with SecondLife where I can have all the sex, drugs, and rock and roll I desire. Even if I'm not allowed to show a nipple...

Copyable Animations

Most animators do not sell copyable dances - I don't understand this. I like to have a copy in my inventory and another in my AO in case of the dreaded inventory loss. If they think transferrability is so important, why don't they use some of the very nice vendor systems that allow you to buy for other people and have it sent directly to the gift receiver?

In general, I dislike "no copy" anything. I like to mix and match, wear a set of shoes with more than one outfit, etc. And I like to put an entire outfit into a single folder, where a quick "Add To Outfit" will put the entire thing on. No rummaging through my shoes folder, trying to find the pair that I know works perfectly with the outfit, no trying to track down which folder that piece of underwear that I'm wearing is hiding in, nothing like that. I put it all in one folder along with sub-folders and happily don't care.

Except for the "no copy" objects. If I want to use a single piece with something else, I have to always go track it down. But maybe I'm strange, I don't like hunting through tons of folders trying to find the one piece I can readily see in my mind but that I can't remember the name of.

The maker of the Huddles animation tool is keeping a list of animators that sell copyable animations. She receives tons of requests for how to recover animations lost through inventory bugs.

I for one plan to patronize those merchants who sell copyable animations and outfits more and more. I'm tired of it. When I lost an important piece of inventory, it included L$20,000+ worth of animations, *poof*. And very few merchants are willing to give you another copy, that is if you can even remember all of the animations you had, which I did not.

Is Your SecondLife Naked?

This is so pathetic - someone has a version of the SecondLife viewer that allows you to strip the other avatars around you and see them naked.

STRIP ANYONE AT THE CLICK OF A BUTTON!!!

There she is, body made for sin and the face of an angel. If only you could see more...
Or that hot group of ladies at the club what better way to really know which one is your
dream girl than to have them all naked before your eyes.

With NakedLife you can!!

As simple as an IM, but much more interesting!
Click anyone into PERFECT NAKEDNESS! Just Imagine it. And when you are sick of just imagining..
It’s very simple BUY the NakedLife registration pack and have the real eye candy at your fingertips!
WHENEVER and WHEREVER you want!!

Yes, you too with the click of a button could turn any avatar around you naked for the low, low price of L$3200. And please, stop!!! all!!! the!!! exclamation!!! points!!!

With L$3200, you can go to any strip joint in SL and get all the naked avatars you want.

Or, go to a skin store and stare at all the naked boobies you want - for free! You could even stand around and ogle the avatars that newly purchased skins or are trying on demos if you want to see moving naked avatars.

Hey, wait a minute - I could go to a *men's* skin store... hmmmm.

Tip from Alicia's blog.

Speaking Of Bad Grammar And My Love Life...

Speaking of bad grammar and my love life, for some reason, Power Source blog is running a poll, "Is Veyron and Tiessa a Item?" First, it should be "Are Tiessa and Veyron an Item?" I have to have top billing, my adoring fans expect no less. And second, the post is Power Source's 69th post, an amusing coincidence.

Now, if she'd only stop following me around and saying, "Wanna fcuk?" all the time...

And I thought she was angry at me for the last one...

Anshe Chung Isn't The Only One Attacked By Flying Penises

Is SecondLife imitating RealLife or RealLife imitating SecondLife? Which world was the first to give flight to the penis?

Gary Kasparov, internationally known chess champion who is now a political activist, was giving a press conference when a dildo, equipped with helicopter blades, took flight.

Link to the original video on a page with no embedding code for the video.

Politician Speaks In Favor Of Nationalsozialismus

Normally, I try to stay away from politics, except in SL, but recently I posted about the lack of history education in this country. I'd like to tell you about another amusing incident in recent politics.

Imagine, if you will, a political candidate who is asked to speak at an event of a different political party than his own. The event commemorates the birthday of one of the most famous members of this other political party. This political candidate frequently speaks out against what he feels are the biggest moral atrocities in modern America, porn and prostitution, and he is asked to speak out on his favorite talking points. Whatever your opinion of his views, this probably sounds like a decent speaking gig, a place to spout his opinions to a different audience and possibly win some converts to his own political campaign from this other party.

Afterwards, the press asks him why he spoke in front of the other political party, he replies, "I'm keeping my promise. I'll speak to any group." When asked if he thought it would hurt his political career, he said he was willing to take that chance. Finally, when asked whether he sympathized with this other political party and their positions, he replied that he didn't know enough about the group to either favor it or oppose it.

Curious, I wonder why he didn't research this other political party before he went to speak in front of them. I know its a bit of a small political party now, but at its peak, it was fairly famous.

And now, as Paul Harvey would say, it's time for the rest of the story...

The political party he was asked to speak in front of was the Nationalist Socialist Workers Party (stop giggling those of you who already get the joke - it gets better :)

For those of you who don't know, the Nationalist Socialist Workers Party it is often known by the abbreviation of its name, Nazi.

When asked about this, the political candidate remarked that he didn't believe the event he attended included people necessarily of the Nazi mindset, pointing out the name isn't Nazi, but Nationalist Socialist Workers Party.

Let's see if this political candidate had enough information at hand to determine what was going on...

First, he was speaking at the anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birthday.
Second, he was standing in front of a big picture of the mass murderer himself.
Third, he was flanked with Nazi flags displaying the swastika.
Fourth, the guys on either side of him we wearing armbands with swastikas.

Look for yourself, do you think you could figure it out?

I don't know about you, but it looks pretty obvious to me. I like how the news article helpfully points out to everyone reading that, "The German leader was responsible for the genocide of millions of Jews and others during World War II." I'm glad they told me that, otherwise I wouldn't have known, I would have went on thinking the German's bombed Pearl Harbor.

Although, he did say in his speech, "...fight America's economic collapse and reinvigorate the white working class."

It sounds like he may telling a small lie when he said he doesn't know enough about them to know if he supports their views or not. But then, we all know Nazi sympathizers are very truthful people.

The original article has a few more bits, but I covered the bulk of them.

Eminent Psychologist Calls Lillie A Whore

It seems that a number of people have taken exception to Lillie's article about men and why they go to prostitutes. It's weird, all of this controversy over an article that basically boils down to "Show appreciation for what he does and don't use sex as a weapon."

I don't know how anyone can argue with that. I wonder if they've even read my assertion that blow jobs are useful relationship preservers? That'd really get them going.

They also seem to have problems with the word "training", probably because it's an ego issue, but we train children, we train people for their jobs, we train each other all the time. This is just raising the awareness that you could also be inadvertently training men to respond in ways we don't want.

Evidently, some psychologist got his nickers in a twist and posted a blog post about it calling Lillie a whore - on his professional blog. Yes, he definitely looks pretty professional after that.

Let's look at his argument's against Lillie's article. His argument against her has many holes, all of them common logical fallacies. A logical fallacy is an argument that commits various fundamental reasoning mistakes.

Perhaps his inability to form a coherent argument is why he is writing on a blog instead of doing meaningful psych research. That kid's is an example of an ad hominem attack or a genetic fallacy, the same sort of fallacy that Dr. Grohol uses when calling Lillie a whore. I called the argument into question, by disparaging the person giving the argument.

Using a disparaging term to call into question your opponent's judgment is a tried and true tactic of people with little behind their own argument. That dear readers was an example of a sweeping generalization, similar to his assertions that her observations must be flawed because of the nature of SecondLife.

If he had anything to his argument, he'd have better proof, that is a moralistic fallacy, stating how things should be and using that to convince people, like he does with his appeal about how men and women should be acting and appreciating each other, thereby she must be false, because as we know people always act out of selflessness and honesty.

Finally, we get to the meat of his argument, a list of papers and research, purportedly backing up what he says. That is an appeal to popularity as well as an appeal to authority. By giving a series of articles that he knows no one is going to go read and refer to, he is giving a false sense of authority. I have no idea what those papers state or if they even exist. He could be making them up or they could already be discredited in the psychology community.

By throwing a bunch of various theories around, he's trying to muddy the waters a bit to show that all of those other ones are more credible, more likely, etc. Rather than addressing the question, he is saying that since those other arguments are possibly true, Lillie must be wrong. That's actually a rather interesting fallacy, sort of a, "We already have enough theories, we're all full up here and don't need any more. There's no room for your argument."

He ends up with more moralistic babbling about how things ought to be.

His entire argument is a false dilemma, though, he is saying, "You can either believe Lillie or you can believe me, and only one of us can be correct". Hold your horses, there are only two options? No "door number three"? No compromise? No synthesis of the two?

Finally, my own argument here is entirely a fallacist's fallacy, I'm stating that his conclusions must be wrong because his argument is wrong. In reality, all I'm really trying to point out is that we have no idea if his assertion is true because he provided no credible evidence to support it.

Try again.

I bet you didn't know I was a Master Debater ;)

The Power Of The Blow Job

Lillie has a great post on "Men: The Missing Manual". She talks about how to keep a man from straying in a long term relationship. In essence, she gives suggestions on how to drive her out of business.

A quick summary would basically, go: "reward men for the things you want them to do, and not for the things you don't want." She makes a good argument for how we train men to stray in a relationship, rather than train them to stay. How sex and our moods train men to behave in certain ways and not always to our benefit.

Even though I'm not in a committed relationship right now, I do have a number of "friends with benefits" relationships going in RL. And I can offer my support for her thesis.

It's nice to have all of what I do naturally explained to me ;)

Generally, I reward the men around me when they please me. I flirt a lot with them and all men like attention. I flirt more conspicuously when they've done something extra, like flowers, presents, extra-nice dinners, etc. I make it obvious to them that they've pleased me and that I appreciate that. I touch them more, look at them more, laugh more, and basically give off all of the "signals" more. Consequently, I get *lots* of presents, flowers, and invitations to nice dinners :)

I don't live with anyone and I suspect that "the daily grind" causes some of this to wear off after a while.

However, we expect men to notice when we do something for them and reward us with appropriate attention. I suspect a lot of this is just lack of attention to what he is doing and a presumption that he *should* be doing things for us. I bet it rankles if he expects you to cook, clean, and pick-up for him without appropriate reward. The same is true for him, don't take anything for granted, he probably dislikes that feeling just as much.

If he has problems picking clothes up off the floor, one of Lillie's examples, try noticing it once when he does, stop to comment, "You know, I really appreciate it when you help out and keep the house looking clean, thank you, you're wonderful." Follow that with a passionate kiss and you've begun to train him to do the things you want since you showed physical appreciation.

Finally, never disregard the positive benefits a blow job. I know, some of you are "ewww", "ick", "gross", or "only on special occasions". Even when I am not in the mood for sex, the occasional blow job for "being so great" is a quick and easy way to keep his attention and show appreciation. It doesn't take long, can be done fairly impromptu, and satisfies his sexual urges, while giving him a big ego boost and a Pavlovian reward. It's amazing what taking a few minutes for a quick blow job can do for a relationship.

I bet if he's getting a couple of blow jobs a week, an investment of less than an hour of your time, the relationship will stay much happier. He won't go off to have cybersex with a trollop like our Lillie :) if he's just gotten a blow job for picking his clothes up off the floor. He'll be running around trying to clean the house more.

SecondLife Displayed On An Apple IIc

Yes, you heard me right, an Apple IIc. Joshua Linden spent some time over a weekend to get the SecondLife client displaying to an Apple IIc via his Windows Laptop streaming the data. He says he gets a little over one frame per second. That sounds about right for the client's performance.

The is one of the more wonderfully nerdy things I've seen in a while.

Evidently, I'm In An Activist Mood Today

There have been many reasons cited in the past for why voice is good or bad. This is one weighing in on the side of bad:

I witnessed a talk between some people in Waterhead - one of them as black in real life as his avatar in virtual reality. Some others were ganging up on him, trying to make him lose his cool, teasing him with questions like ‘Why is the hair of black people so dirty?’ or ‘Do you have a Jheri curl?’

I am not sure what they were trying to do, but part of it is probably because it is pointless to send abuse reports about things said in voice. There is no proof, there is no record, and so all of a sudden it is safe again to play such silly games. To say stuff to a black guy that you don’t dare say to him in public, face to face. Or typed out in text chat with your avatar’s name attached to it. And so I can only conclude that it is the cheapest form of cowardice - a comparison to gangs of men in white hoods is a gross exaggeration, but the basics are there. You pick a nigger and you go after him, hiding behind a mask or an avatar.

That is just so wrong. I don't think voice is bad because some people will abuse it like this, but the inability to force accountability for actions is definitely a problem. In the Abuse Report, you can provide text and pictures. Perhaps, if there was a running 10 minute audio buffer that you could click a button and it would be attached to the AR along with the names of those nearby would be useful for stopping this sort of nonsense.

Eudeamon

Veyron gave me a story late Sunday night, Eudeamon, it's available for free from the author at that link. It's over 75,000 words long, but I read the entire thing in one sitting and stayed up far too late. The story is very well written and I highly recommend it to anyone. It made me laugh and cry, but most of all, it made me think. In other words, an excellent book.

In the story, a reporter investigates a new method of criminal punishment being used, Banishment. Exclusion from society is an old form of punishment, but this had a new twist, the criminal was placed in a special suit that prevented all forms of contact and interaction with others, an AI in the suit monitored the criminal and punished them if they violated the rules, then, the criminal was allowed to roam free wearing the suit. Isolated from society, but forced to be amongst it, the criminals, called a Bane while in the suit, were able to watch others enjoy their lives and yet be unable to participate. When their sentence was over, they were released. Nearly no criminal relapsed.

A very spooky kind of punishment. The reporter was trying to find out if it was inhuman. Were the makers of the suit subjecting the criminals to permanent mental and emotional harm? The program was only a few years old, so little was known of the long-term effects. She wanted to find out. The only problem, no one, not the makers, the city council, the police, not even the ex-Banes themselves would talk about it. She kept trying to interact with the Banes themselves, but they were unable to communicate with her and usually ran away since they were punished if they tried to interact.

Then, she discovered two things that drove the rest of the story of the book and made all the difference. First, some of the Banes who had been in the suits the longest, for more than a year, were beginning to commit petty crimes, lengthening their punishment and requiring them to stay in the suit longer. Second, in a park, in the middle of the night, one of the Banes communicated with her, writing a few words in the mud with a stick, replying to her questions about why it didn't want to be let out of the suit.

She cleared the silt and wrote slowly and carefully. You cannot understand. Only bane understand. Beauty beyond words. My perfect Eden. She stopped writing for a moment to hug herself again. Pleasure you’ll never know. Love you’ll never know. She underlined ‘love’ several times.

The story is good with action, excitement, humor, romance, and drama. A good plot, solid characterization, and numerous twists, turns, and surprises to keep you interested.

Now, if you've stuck with me this long, you're probably wondering what this has to do with Second Life. A few people have made their own Bane suits and one person has set up a Banishment program in Second Life, trying to replicate the book as well as possible. The suits in the story, made of a black latex like substance, along with the isolation appeal to certain types of subs and they have tried to duplicate the experience in Second Life. A few who have tried it, not knowing how it would affect them, have written about their Bane experiences.

As for me, while I'm curious, I'm more curious about how much of the experience of the book they have been able to replicate. I naturally isolate myself enough on my own and I don't want to make it more complete by doing the Banishment program for a week or more. Part of what I like about quiet and solitude is being able to watch the world, and I don't think SL has enough depth and detail to keep me from being bored.

The Power And Uses Of SecondLife Still Stun Me

Over on Eshi's blog, she tells how, on the anniversary of her husband's death, she spent some time 'with him' by changing her avatar to look like him.

Wow.

The power and uses of SecondLife stun me at times like this. I would never have thought of doing this, but I'm glad she could spend some time with good memories of her husband in such a very powerful and deep way.

This is the true transformative nature of virtual worlds; they allow us to grow and become more human.

No Promises Relationships

After taking a spirituality in SL survey, Kean reflects on how she makes SL relationships work.

One thing I found that works very well is the 'no promises' frame. It would be so easy to cheat, run away, make another alt. But all that is not needed if you really set the ones you love free. It takes balance, honesty and huge buckets of empathy to make it work. And it takes refraining from scheduled meetings. 'No promises' has the good point that you won't get disappointed because there’s no promise to be broken, and when you meet up its just icing on the cake.

Another benefit is the presence. When you don't know when you will meet again, all you really have is the present moment. And to be present together is really the greatest gift...

I agree that this model of relationship seems to work well in SL. While I try to be on during a regular set of times and I coordinate with a few other close friends times to meet, I do have RL things that come up and I won't make it online. Moving to a "I'll see you when we are both on." seems to work well.

These virtual relationships remind me most of phone/email relationships. I have a number of people I've moved away from over the years that I keep in touch with via phone or email. While we may try to have regular conversations and times, what often happens is that RL intrudes and we end up calling "whenever we have time" or exchanging emails "whenever something happens."

What I need is a quick way to interject a message to friends in SL, the "I'm running late, but will still meet you at the restaurant" phone call that you do in RL, but that I find hard to do with SL meetings since I can't fire up the client "on the run".

The True Impact Of Griefers

Melissa points out an article about griefers and the true harm they can do.

Internet griefers descended on an epilepsy support message board last weekend and used JavaScript code and flashing computer animation to trigger migraine headaches and seizures in some users.

Griefers are immature scum who have no empathy for others. That is the real problem.

I'm In The New AlienHearts Music Video

AlienHearts invited me to be in their newest music video and it's finally out. Being a long time fan of their music, I jumped at the chance to be in it. Like all movie/video shoots, it was mostly standing around and waiting, interspersed with a few moments of making certain I didn't talk or move my avatar in an inappropriate way. All for a few seconds of footage of me being in the music video. But it was worth every moment of it, since the AlienHearts DJs are great to hang out with, and helping out in their project was definitely a blast.

I'm the blond playing the violin with a close-up of me around 5 minutes into the video.

Helena's Moved Her Blog To Blogger

Helena Kirkorian has moved her Paradise Lost blog to Blogger. Maybe she'll update it more than her MySpace one. Go over there, subscribe, and make a comment so she knows we want to hear more from her.

Helena, for those of you who don't know, is the Madame of Paradise Lost, a wonderful club that has fallen mostly silent due to her absence. I've written about her and Paradise Lost before and she'll feature in my next chapter as well. She's one of the nicest people I've ever met in SecondLife and her on-going preoccupation with RealLife is annoying.

Your Abuse Report Has Been Added To The Queue

A number of bloggers are talking about the new Linden Lab policies regarding logos, naming, use of trademarks, etc.

My simple reply to Linden Labs is, "Your Abuse Report has been added to the queue, I am currently dealing with lots of copyright infringement cases that have currently gone unhandled by Linden Labs, when those are resolved, I will be able to handle your request."

Preferrably, I'd like to see Phil do one of the naked ads protesting copyright infringement...