Ciaran Laval

When I was a lad the interweb was full of “Rate my ….” sites, it probably still is, the novelty wore off ages ago. However not so at Linden Lab where there seems to be some bizarre childish tendency to still want people to be the most popular kid in the class.

The rare sight of a Robin Linden blog on the official blog contains some potentially positive moves, coupled with that absurd and imamture “Vote me, I’m popular” nonsense that reminds me of way too many American teen movies, by the way in the good ones the geeky kid wins the moral argument!

What is this big obsession with voting at Linden Lab? The Jira works this way, unless it’s something they don’t want to touch with a bargepole. Why on earth can’t common sense be involved, there’s no need for this voting nonsense. If someone has a good idea, it’s a good idea. The blonde cheerleader who is having it away with the captain of the football team is going to have a lot of crap ideas, but heck look at those votes. Never mind the quality, feel the quantity hey? Read the rest of this entry »

The clue is in the title, it really is. VAT is a tax where value is added and passed on. However in Second Life it’s not quite so straight forward due to the way the world works.

Linden Lab want to engage residents in a discussion, as announced on the blog, and a very welcome develpment that is in terms of communication so I hope it works. However people’s ire over VAT should not be aimed at Linden Lab, it should be aimed at the greedy good for nothing, trough munching, incompetent, Mommy knows best, bureaucrats in Brussells who never tire of finding ways to tax Europeans.

This really is simple, if you’re European, go and contact the European Union here and send them a message telling them that the way this taxation applies in Second Life is unfair, that it actually creates the unfair playing field that the legislation was introduced to prevent. Complaining to the greedy bureaucrats is the sensible place to complain. Read the rest of this entry »

So there I was on Sunday trying to understand a couple of Spanish residents, one of whom was a new renter. Altavista babelfish really wasn’t cutting the mustard. So she of the Kryptonite boots offered to help, Quaintly Turqiri has a friend who can speak Spanish!

Hooray I said. This however soon turned to chaos and there was quite an entourage on the parcel by now, so with people struggling to be understood what happens? Yes, hand out the dance animations and just do something we can all understand!

Onigokko, breaks down all language barriers!

I still have no idea what the tenants wanted!!!

Land in Second Life is always a contentious area. When Jack crashed island prices a lot of people were quick to point out that it’s merely hosting space, binary numbers on computer hardware, it’s not real land. They’re right, it’s not real land, it is hosting space, binary numbers are involved but there’s more to it than that. If there wasn’t anymore to it than that then all land would be priced the same.

On a daily basis people all over the world exchange pieces of paper for goods, it’s just a piece of paper, but it has a value attached to it, it has worth, these are the basic principles of business and have been for some time. The fact that money is often “just a piece of paper” doesn’t make it worth the price of a piece of paper.

Land in Second Life is worth what people are prepared to pay for it. This is an important concept and with a thriving economy based largely upon the land market at its heart, it is important to realise why land owners get twitchy at the boom and bust land cycles.

I also disagree with the lovely Gwyneth Llewellyn about hardware costs being a key factor. As a quick aside if you haven’t read Gwyneth’s blog go do so, she writes extremely well. Where was I? Oh yes, hardware costs, they do of course matter, but not in the way Gwyneth categorises them. Read the rest of this entry »

There appears to have been an outbreak of wild optimism regarding Mitch Kapor’s keynote speech and the announcement that avatars managed to teleport from the Second Life word to open sim as announced on the official blog. Can we all get real please!

We’re a million miles from the 3D interweb. We’re a million miles from the masses embracing Second Life technology. The platform is not stable, there may be trouble ahead, ooh look out for that iceberg!

I’m all for new technology and enterpising advancements, but I’m afraid we’re not there yet. Has everyone forgotten the way windlight cast aside users for the sake of eye candy? I don’t know how public service departments run in the United States but I can assure you that in the UK many of them are not going to take kindly to being told they need to upgrade their graphic cards for the sake of fluff, where I work if I was to present a proposal to bring Second Life to the masses and get funky graphics cards and high bandwidth, the second word would be “Off”. Read the rest of this entry »

One of my tenants awarded me this, sometimes it really is all worth it.

I’ve noticed a definite downturn in land rentals lately. Maybe it’s the summer, maybe it’s my prices, maybe it’s just that more people are renting land but I’m seeing a downard trend. Admittedly there’s also an issue whereby I get five people renting in one go after a week of no new tenants but something seems amiss.

Now I know it’s not just me, I’m not a member of any landlord groups (I was once but the 25 group limit bit me) but I do observe what other landlords are doing.

Sarah Nerd mentioned that she was converting an island to open spaces because she couldn’t rent the island out.

Steve Mahfouz of Ecstasy Realty is selling two of his 21 sims, relocating tenants. Now maybe Steve has other plans, maybe he’s expanding in other areas but it all points to an issue of having too many vacant plots.

Then of course there’s the whole issue of openspaces. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m pretty much at the end of my tether regarding VAT and Second Life. Months of arguing my case have fell on deaf ears and produced a largely patronising response from the bureaucrats, a sort of patting my head and saying “there there, Mommy knows best” approach to the simple fact that I’m being ripped off by paying VAT.

One response even came complete with a quote from American jurist and member of the US Supreme Court, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. “Taxes are what we pay for a civilised society”

There is nothing civilised about being taxed just because they can tax you, tax should serve a purpose, it should empower people, not penalise them and VAT on Second Life penalises European members. There is no added value and it creates the very problem that the legislation was intended to create, it puts Europeans at a distinct disadvantage.

However Second Life doesn’t have the shakers and movers to bring pressure to the Eurocrats, so they patronise us with small talk.

So it’s with great interest that I note that Irish citizens have rejected the Lisbon treaty. Read the rest of this entry »

I have been offering some free store space for people, however it would seem that people don’t want free store space so I think I’ll go down the rental route instead. I’m not sure why, maybe people think it’s a trick, after all there is no such thing as a free lunch.

The concept of price is a strange one, I sold an item once that someone later said they didn’t initially want to buy because it was too cheap, the item was what they were looking for and it worked fine, but the low price, rather than attracting interest, made people think it was cheap and tacky.

Strange thing value.

Avatar rendering cost, this sounded quite helpful when I first saw it blogged by Pastrami Linden. However I’m a person who is willing to change his mind (see trademark policy whereby I changed my mind more times than a twisty turny thing). I’ve now changed my mind on avatar rendering cost. The premise is good, the execution, it’s starting to look ugly.

I’m now of the opinion that only I should see my avatar rendering cost, you can see your own. To this end I fully support Kathy Morellet’s Jira proposal. The whole divide and conquer routine that’s being espoused over this issue just turns my stomach. I’ve checked my own score by the way, I’m currently in the green zone.

However the blog says that this is about awareness, about carbon footprints and education. However one thing the blog doesn’t mention is that this is about shame, and alas from some of the comments I’ve read on various forums, it is about shame. Read the rest of this entry »