September 2011 – Page 5

September 3, 2011September 3, 2011

More Options Could Help Premium Membership

New Premium Features have been introduced for Premium Members, as announced on the official Second Life blog, which you can read here. The features include sandboxes for premium members only and some gifts exclusive to premium members.

I am a premium member but always have a bugbear when it comes to premium membership that people who are estate owners but not premium members should be taken into consideration. They don’t get the stipend and they don’t get a Linden Home, but they can buy an island, now considering how much they pay for their island, I think they should be included in perks such as these new ones and I asked that in the comments …. and got answered indirectly by Tateru Nino! Tateru’s blog post on the new premium features includes this comment:

“While it says premium only, Linden Lab spokesperson, Peter Gray, assures me that these two benefits are also extended to non-premium, ‘concierge’ customers.”

Good to see that response. However I think it’s a sign of getting old that I’m not up in arms about the free advertising for The Loft. Colleen Desmoulins has a highly regarded store there but these freebies do compete with other furniture makers and this is wonderful advertising for Colleen, usually I’d be all disgusted of Tunbridge Wells over this, but I’m not, maybe I’m used to it now, or maybe it’s because Rodvik is a Villa fan, whatever the reason I’m not too bothered about it.

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September 2, 2011September 3, 2011

JLU – Responses, Criticism And The Phantom Zone

The fallout, criticism, claim and counter claim from JLUGate continue to ripple through the Second Life Blogsphere and Forumsphere …. I made that one up!

Tracer Graves linked to a petition in my recent blog post on the JLU issue, the petition can be read here. Whether you agree with the petition or not, it’s worth reading as it has some background as to why this issue has blown up.

The JLU have made an official response on to the allegations on their site, which you can read here. This is an important development because JLU have been quite quiet in official mode, GreenLantern Excelsior has been making a lot of comments, he’s made some here too which I’ll come to later but he has never claimed to be an official spokesperson. This is an official statement.

GreenLantern Excelsior was interviewed by Prok, which can be read here.

The Alphaville Herald have an interview with the Prime Minister of Antiquity who explains why he regrets asking the JLU for help, which can be read here.

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September 2, 2011September 2, 2011

Real Name Policy Function Creep Needs To Be Halted

Cory Doctorow had an interesting piece in The Guardian this week about Google + and more to the point Eric Scmidt’s comments that nobody is forcing people to use Google +. This came on the back of Eric Schmidt’s comments to NPR’s Andy Carvin in Edinburgh. This was the same piece that led to claims that Google + is primarily an identity service, although Tateru Nino commenting on Hamlet Au’s blog post on social networks suggested it’s Google profiles that will be the identity service.

Cory’s post is largely about discussing the real name policy of Google + and why Eric Schmidt’s comment is off, I don’t entirely agree there, I’m someone who won’t use Google + because of their policy but there is an underlying function creep with these real name policies that could very well spread, I remain opposed to such policies for many reasons, one certainly being that in some ways they are anti social, you don’t need to know your friend’s real name on a social network because if that friend wants to interact with you, they will tell you their name, that’s often how friendships are forged, you meet, you say hello, you get to know each other, you get to know more about each other, this is normal human interaction. I’ve mentioned this before but in the days before Real_ID on World Of Warcraft the guys I play WoW with would share avatar and server names and then we’d all get into a guild together, that’s how friends work.

The arguments in favour of real name only social networking are flimsy to say the least, yet they come up all the time in these sort of threads. Why wouldn’t you want your name associated with a comment? What are you hiding? If you don’t want to be known don’t go on The Internet. All people who don’t use real names are just anonymous trolls, it’s tiresome reading the same flimsy reasons over and over.

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