Friday the 13th and the bad luck party was struck with bad luck. Robin Linden’s leaving party was so popular that the sim struggled to cope.
Continue reading “Regrets, She’ll have a few, but then again, too few to mention”
Holy Toledo! Robin Exits
Robin Linden has announced on the official blog that she will shortly be leaving Linden Lab, I’m extremely disappointed, although not at all surprised by this news.
I don’t know who I’m going to whine to now about Linden policies, there’s only Jack left whom I’m comfortable with and he has such a difficult task on his hands.
I first had doubts about Robin’s role when she stopped her office hours. Then she was involved in the worthy stories from Second Life along with Katt, but Katt’s departure seemed to suggest all wasn’t well, although Katt was Katt and she was a bit feisty.
I mentioned to Robin that she was too quiet, Prok (whom I’m extremely annoyed with right now for his sleights on me) pointed out that with the new hires it seemed that Robin and Catherine would have an office in the car park. Continue reading “Holy Toledo! Robin Exits”
2008 Reviewed
I was going to do this in the style of a meme I used to do on Livejournal whereby you’d take the first couple of lines or paragraph, from the first post of each month to give your year in review, but that doesn’t quite work for me here, although it’s a fun meme, I’ll do a little bit of that, quickly go through the months, throw in the odd picture and review the year that way.
January
LL’s new policy on banking certainly caused a storm, and more than just one in a teacup I popped down to JTF to check out the scene and we had a run on the banks in full swing, of course later in the year we had the far more serious issue of people running to RL banks such as Northern Rock to withdraw their funds.
Continue reading “2008 Reviewed”
Can We Have Some Ethics Please
Early reports are filtering back from the traffic meeting with the underlying message that they are a waste of time. I’ll hold judgement on that until I attend one, I think I’m booked in for Thursday.
However one issue that is related is the showcase and I’m having a hard time not finding it unethical in a world where we’re supposed to have a marketplace. I’m simply uncomfortable about the idea of stores being promoted in this way. I wouldn’t find it so objectionable if places with stores were being promoted, but highlighting a particular store makes me a tad uncomfortable.
The first thing that should be made transparent about this, the very first step to retaining business credibility, should be that no Linden Lab employees, their family members or their close personal friends are promoted via this process. The sort of thing that happens when companies run competitions, employees not allowed.
Personally I’d prefer them to have awards and the winners showcased, that would have more of an ethical feel about it. The winner of the best building designer for whatever period, a month, a quarter or even a year, gets a showcase spot. The winners would have course have to be picked and probably by the very people making the picks now, but the whole process would appear to be more ethical, and maintaining standards is a very important issue in a business environment.
I wouldn’t even mind if the showcase featured those paying the most for their adverts, I know some don’t consider that fair, but it’s a metric that’s hard to dispute and I don’t object to those who pay more, getting greater exposure.
Environmentally Friendly
Avatar rendering cost, as blogged yesterday by Pastrami Linden in his own stylish way is a good move in my opinion. Inevitably a Linden blog has rubbed some people up the wrong way and some of the wording isn’t exactly tactful but in the wider scheme of things, the underlying message is a good one.
People have mentioned before that residents should take some responsibly for issues in Second Life, back in early february Dandellion Kimban urged people to reduce the clutter from their inventories to reduce load on the asset servers, an ecology drive it was described as, but the message was similar to the one Linden Lab are encouraging.
After that I attended an office hour with CG Linden where the issue of alpha textures was raised, with a sigh, that too many people employed them. My point then, which is the same view I hold now, was that education was required. Many photoshop tutorials mention alpha textures and many people therefore believe they must be included. I’m not a clothing designer myself, but I do believe there’s an issue with a white chalk line feature if alpha textures aren’t included, but I’m not sure exactly what the issue is, hopefully one of you bright readers can help me out on that issue. Continue reading “Environmentally Friendly”