/me groans.

Okay, fair warning here: anyone who really knows me knows I don't like to beat around the bush or soften things up for anyone. I actually do try hard to say what I mean and mean what I say and sometimes truth just plain hurts. So, I'm getting ready to offend a lot of people and you could be among them.

First I want to say I am sick and tired of the "you are intolerant' crowd because to use the very word is to proclaim yourself intolerant. The word itself is an oxymoron when used as an accusation. And only morons will ever throw it around that way.

With that said, I will boldly proclaim myself more tolerant than anyone else I know. I see something I don't agree with, I might whine and bitch about it but that's more or less the end of it. I won't demand you change whatever it is I think you are wrong about. For example: Linden Lab proclaiming the letters S and L as a trademark. I proclaimed that I will not recognize "SL" as a trademark of Linden Lab, but I haven't demanded they stop using it.

See? I'm "tolerant".

Homosexuality is another example: I have no problem with it. Whatever you do in your own home is your business and none of mine. What I actually do have a problem with is you always trying to rub it in my face by forcing a public discussion of it like I have a need to know.

Keep it to yourself, please and we'll all be just fine. See? I'm tolerant.

I also am sick and tired of the "media" agenda and biases. It's more than a month since the British Petroleum oil gusher under the ocean. Yet I don't see people lambasting and blaming Obama or his administration. If it happened only two years ago, impeachment proceedings would be in progress for Bush AND Cheney. I find many liberals to be two-faced hypocrites of the highest order. Unfortunately most of the established "media" is riddled with those versions.

For instance: how they seem to all be anti-semite, anti-christian and pro-muslim. (Yeah, lower-cased intentionally).

It seems the former two get all the apathy but we "must learn to understand and embrace" the muslims. In fact, that idea is running rampant through our schools. They are brain-washing our children beginning at the youngest ages. "Holiday Tree" instead of "Christmas Tree" for example. Remember students: "Christmas" means "Christ" which is bad, bad, bad! Holiday is a truncation of Holi (Holy) Day, and we can't have that, so we'll actually change our grammar rules for this one word that states a single vowel followed by a single consonant will be used in the long form and, instead we will pronounce it Hahl-ih-day from now on.

Look, I respect your right to practice and exercise whatever your choice of politics and religion. Really, I do. In fact, I wouldn't even mind you trying to convert me to your side of it all. But if you're going to do that, try an inclusive approach. Try doing it in a way that appeals to me. If you're convincing enough, you might even make some headway.

However, there is no constitutional or even "human" right to not be offended

So, if I offend you, tough nuts. Leave my presence and go somewhere happy-go-lucky for yourself and leave me be. The same is true with regard to anything Linden Lab does to piss you off: don't like it? Then GTFO. After all, it's one thing if I am the outsider who comes into your presense and offends you. Then - and only then - you are right to tell me to go away. But don't you dare come to my home and tell me I offend you. GTFO.

So when I get an offline (or any line) that looks like this, my hackles go up real fast (and please note, these thoughts of mine have always been thoughts of mine. This IM only gave me a reason to actually write about it):

[1:33] SALLY [redacted]: hello
[1:34] SALLY [redacted]: plz u made islamic texture in dragon
[1:35] SALLY [redacted]: iam moslem
[1:35] SALLY [redacted]: plz clear it it's bad for our religon
[1:35] SALLY [redacted]: we r about 20 person here
[1:36] SALLY [redacted]: we wont that
[1:36] SALLY [redacted]: plz
[1:36] SALLY [redacted]: clear it when u r online
[1:36] SALLY [redacted]: thx for your time

Thanks for my time? Do me a favor and go jump in a lake or something, because you can kiss me where I sit. "Moslim" is bad for "Christian" - you offend so how about you remove your religion? (One statement is just as bad as the other.)

Who the feck are you to tell me to change something of mine because it offends you? Why don't you, whom I have never met, just come into my house and tell me to change the paint because the color of my bathroom walls are "offensive" to you?

My knee-jerk reaction? "Kiss my ass, get the feck out, don't come back and I'll help you with a full-sim ban-hammer on all my sims and other properties". No, I didn't follow-through with my knee-jerk want. I might be stupid, but I'm not dumb. Rather I sent a simple IM back:

Sorry, I can't do that. I suggest you simply don't visit anymore.

That's it. Simple and pithy.

Of course I should have just sent a typical Steve Jobs email reply:

No.

----
Sent from my iPad.

And I said what I meant and meant what I said.

©2007-Present, Andr'Deco & Pixietale Studios, DBA Socially Mundane; Common Sensible

Okay, not Linden Lab's words. Mine.

It's no secret that with the Second Life Viewer version 2 there are leaps ahead in features and leaps backward in performance and stability. The same is true with the entire "search" function on the grid and because it's a direct link, on the web-side.

There are a lot of complaints from the usual, typical minority about it and the complaints are the same old tired arguments that couldn't hold a single ounce of water.

Ciaran Leval, God bless him and his passionate, albeit always seeing the glass half-empty self, has blogged about the current search result situation as it applies to the Second Life grid.

He makes many good points and I, overall, agree with what he says and complains about. However, to take the "discussion" just a tad further, I reply to Ciaran's post with this (forewarning: /rant on)

Ciaran is absolutely correct that there is a "disconnect" between Lindens and "users". And because of this user comment example:

" Search is up the creek many people are loosing there rl incomes..."

...I choose to side with Linden Lab in the "disconnect" aspect. They must be getting sick and tired of this ridiculously stupid argument. It's one reason why if I were offered a job with Linden Lab I'd likely not last the week because I'd surely tell it like it is to a lot of these self-serving, entitlement-attitude, give me everything for nothing or else people.

Yes, search is hosed and it shouldn't be. Yes, I side with "users" in regard to how search is broken and absolutely must be fixed. I also know better than to take anything Second Life so seriously as to generate heartburn over any of it.

Like the Lindens, I agree it is NOT a show-stopper (in Ciaran's original post, he mentions that a Linden changed the Jira bug report from "show-stopper" status to a "critical" status). In fact, I'm really not even sure it fills the "critical" category. Any dumb-ass fool who reaps their "RL income" from Second Life (illegally, I might add as they are not reporting income taxes) - deserves what they get for placing their livelihood at the mercy of a company who's sole purpose is to make a profit by running a game. As for getting what you pay for, you are. Else you wouldn't still be there. It's as simple as that. And I am willing to bet that most of those who like to throw out the "losing my RL income" dud likely doesn't even have "payment information on file" - fekking losers, all of them.

Search is broken. Search needs to be fixed. But, it is a moderate problem at worst. Events should be listed first. They are of a time-sensitive nature. If you don't see what you are looking for (when shopping for products), turn on the elementary thinking cap and click on the "Places" tab.

Big.
Fat.
Duh.

Of course everyone has a right to be a complete helpless imbecile. So let them. If you are running a business on the grid then find other avenues of publicizing and stop relying on the search mechanism. It's business. Run it like a business. You must be proactive in obtaining customers. But you rather "build it and hope they will come" and when they don't you blame Linden Lab.

It's like blaming your car manufacturer for the pothole that popped your tire because the road wasn't paved right.

Certainly search is important. But it's more important for the shoppers and that is who the algorithms are targeted at. Not the business owners. Adjust your stupid listings so it works correctly instead of expecting Linden Lab to bend over backward to make things work for YOU.

Linden Lab is Apple and You are Adobe. Screw you, Adobe. You want to work with Apple then you follow Apple's rules, adapt so it works according to their house or get the feck out. Same with you second Life "business owners": work with the system, don't expect changes to the system just so it can work with you. Pretty damned conceited of you to think your are anything other that a statistical number, dip-shit.

Take it.
Or leave it.

Search results certainly shouldn't be your main method of contact with potential customers, especially if your are really so stupid as to rely on the income of pretend money from a pretend business to fund your real life. In such cases you actually need to get a real life! SRSLY!!!11!!1!

But then again, people stupid enough to do that are also stupid enough to do things wrong and (crybaby sounds with violins here) rely on Linden Lab to do everything for them, rather than doing for them damned-selves.

Including changing their own smelly diaper. Such is the problem with the Second Life and Real Life societies. Entitlement attitudes.

Proof-positive: Greece economy (too many hand-outs from the government, which the people are too stupid to rely on instead of doing for themselves, so the government ends-up running out of other people's money.)

Unlike Greece (and the U.S. and the E.U.), Linden Lab (rightfully so) doesn't give a rip-shit about you and your piddly little problems. Especially if your too stupid to figure out that Second Life is for "entertainment purposes only".

In summary:

• Search appears to be borked because "uR dOin' it WroNG!"
  
• Deal with it. Live with it. Love it.
  
• Adapt and move the feck on.
• Do for yourself.
  
• Don't rely on someone else who owes you nothing.
  
• GTFU¹ and get a real job in the real world instead of being a lazy-ass and trying to get something for nothing all you entitlement-attitude idiots.

(/rant OFF)

Ciaran's original post.

I was so alarmed when I saw Ari hasn't updated even once this whole month, I sent him an email. When he didn't immediately reply my email, I got even more alarmed and sent a tweet. Ari, you must understand the enormity of this; I hardly ever use Twitter, because I hate it! :p  He didn't respond to that, either. I was about to go into major panic mode when he finally replied my email, two days later. Phew. *stops hyperventilating*

So, I'm going to post something I meant to post months ago... in January, to be exact. I'm the queen of procrastination. I've procrastinated over my Master's thesis for two years. ("How far have you gotten?" "Err... I haven't collected any data yet?") Nevertheless, I'm currently aiming to finish the darned thesis by the 3rd quarter of this year, so I guess it's also fitting that I finally write the post I had always planned to write here.

Luckily I already have the picture loaded on my server, because my Internet connection is being a bitch (it's ok to use words like that on your blog, right, Ari? *bats eyelashes*). Or rather, my ISP is being a bitch. That's what I get for living in a Third-World country. The connection's been horrible for about two months now. I can't get inworld at all. Just as well that I took the picture for this post back in January. When I intended putting this up. Uh-huh.

Ari's always given me grief about my avatar not having enough flesh, even after I fattened her up a little. The guy is super hard to please! In a fit of pique, I decided to try making Quaintly as fleshy as he could ever wish for. Be careful what you ask for, you might just get it!

Happy now, dude?!! *sticks tongue out and quickly makes a dash for it*

Unless you've been is somewhat of a vacuum of late, you already know Apple CEO Steve Jobs refuses to allow Adobe Flash (Player) on the iPhone OS, hence all "iDevices" will not and cannot play anything that requires the Flash Player.

There have been just-short-of-expletives lobbed at each other between Apple and Adobe, primarily between Apple CEO and Adobe Engineers. My personal opinion is that the Adobe side of the argument is outright laughable. They proclaim developers don't have a choice (by not being allowed to develop the Flash platform on iPhone OS) and that users of said iDevices don't have a choice to choose whether to use Flash Player or not.

I beg to differ.

The fact is, developers do have a choice: develop for the iPhone OS or not. If they choose to do so, then they must follow the rules as it is Apple's house. The same with the end-users: they have chosen to use the iDevice, even though it doesn't have the ability to use the Flash Player. This is because there is nothing developed on the Flash platform compelling enough they are willing to forego the device for.

I personally have yet to see anything developed in Flash that I simply must see or use. Nothing at all. It's not Adobe's fault. It's the developers of Flash' fault as they create crap.

The big news yesterday is the open letter Steve Jobs has written regarding "thoughts on Flash"¹ ; and Adobe's response² (via the heretofor silent Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen) going at it in a far more public fashion.

Do I have a problem with the Flash Platform? Actually, no.

My problem is with the Flash Player. And frankly I think Apple made a slam-dunk in their arguments against it and Adobe's response was adolescent at best.

My problems with the Flash Player are pretty simple:

• It bogs down and uses far too many recources on my OS-X computer (my personal platform of choice) - but not on my Windows system. Adobe proclaims it is the OS-X system that is the problem, yet nothing else causes these issues. Only the Flash Player. Go figure.
• Flash Player is buggy. It causes crashes. Not very often, but practically every browser crash points to the Flash Player.
  Every.
  Single.
  Time.
• The Flash Player is riddled with security holes. And every new incarnation or update brings feature-bloat. It is a fat pig, both on hard disk drive and in RAM requirements not to even mention system resources and processing cycles. An ugly beast.
• Finally, the developers who develop on the Flash Platform have yet to develop anything compelling enough to make keeping the Flash Player around at all.
  There.
  Is.
  Nothing.
  NOTHING.

Most people who have and use the Flash Player do so because it's already installed on their system and likely don't even realize they can turn it off and even remove it completely. So they tolerate the utter garbage that invades their Web Browser windows day in and day out. (Among the top Firefox Extensions download is "Stop Flash" - a Flash blocker and on the OS-X platform is Click2Flash, also a Flash blocker).

The fact of the matter is that since I have removed the Flash Player plugin from all my systems (Windows and OS-X) - web sites load much faster and my system is considerably more stable.

So how does Linden Lab and Second Life users fit into this diatribe of mine?

Simple: it's about the company's target customer.

Adobe is going for the middle-man. Creating the tools for developers and designers to create stuff. Then, let those creators go out and sell to the end consumer. Therefor, Adobe wants their tools on every platform possible. It's more money for them. However, the developers want to go where those buying end-consumers are so they can sell more. It's a simple economy.

Apple is going directly for the end consumer. They know that if they get enough end consumers to buy into their product, the developers will follow. And as an aside, Apple provides those developers with tools to cater to Apples end consumers.

It's a simple paradigm difference; two different means to the same end.

In Second Life, anyone who creates anything could be considered a "developer" - looking to sell to an end consumer. Xstreet SL is like the Apple App Store. The in-world grid is like the Internet Web in general.

At first, Linden Lab was like Adobe:

Hey, all you developers! Come to me, use my tools, make money!

However, there is a paradigm shift going on.

Linden Lab wants (needs) more main-stream end consumers in order to grow and remain relevant, not just to be a geeky playground. They must convert their current Adobe paradigm into the Apple paradigm and appeal directly to the end consumer: the average grid-surfer. This means simplifying the viewer to appeal to those average people who don't want complicated things. (I have been an I.T. professional since 1987 - and I love the iPad for it's basic simplicity. I just don't have to even think about anything in order to use it.)

This means they must create a compelling product - like Apple does - that will draw the masses at large. Simplify and beautify. It's really that simple. The developers must come secondarily. And they will come. They will flock to the grid to cater to those end consumers. It is a simple mechanical shift in how the economy works.

The idea is to influence choice.

Linden Lab, rightfully so, wants end consumers to choose to use Second Life and the Second Life grid. There are many "developers" to support those end consumers, so they do not carry quite as high a priority as the end consumer proper (for lack of a better term.)

The fact is the developer also has a choice: to develop for the platform or not. In doing so: follow the platform rules. So, all you creators and "business" people of Second Life who twitch every time Linden Lab sneezes: you can cry, whine, bitch and otherwise stomp your feet. It doesn't matter because Linden Lab must act less like Adobe and more like Apple in order to remain relevant and grow their business.

Linden Lab (like Apple and Adobe) are in business for themselves. They must do what they feel best in order to maintain not only sustainability, but growth.

Certainly you can proclaim that Linden Lab "doesn't care" - actually, they do. If they really didn't care, the virtual continent of Zindra wouldn't exist and neither would all the deviant poseballs that salt-and-pepper the grid among so many other things. They care about their core business: the grid and it's accessibility to the masses. Just because you prefer deviant kink doesn't mean you are in the majority and have priority over anyone else.

I can't even count how many times I've said it before and I'll say it again: It's (Linden Lab's and Apple's) house. You (Flash and Second Life) developers are a guest. Follow the rules or get the hell out and quitcherbitchin because it only makes you look the foolish, whiney-assed crybaby whose diapers are overdo for a serious changing.

Second Life Whiners and Adobe Flash Developers: you stink.

Second Life in 2006: Gray Goo griefer (griever) attack shuts down the grid for a few days. Other griefer attacks are constantly creating an unstable grid, combined with the horrific instability and bugginess of the SL viewer makes Second life, at times, a terribly miserable place to be. Well, griefers always have been a part of Second Life, but it's become a lot better since then for the majority of grid-surfers. But the Woodbury institution was apparently a bee-hive of griefer activity, or at least a hideout.

I don't remember when I first started reading about "Woodbury" - an educational higher learning institution having their own sim and it always had to do with being a haven for griefers - at least according to all the articles I've read and what I've heard about.

Even though many of those article must be taken with a serious grain of salt as the "reporters" of these stories tend to sensationalize everything, there seems to be no doubt as to the "community" of the Woodbury region...or anything "Woodbury.

I don't really care to remember whether it was 2007 or 2008 when Linden Lab sank the Woodbry sim on grounds of... whatever. I don't recall if it was a billing issue or a griefer issue. But that's moot at this point.

Linden Lab to Woodbury: get the hell out and stay the hell out, have a nice life:

"Linden Lab has decided to no longer support Woodbury University in Second Life," said an E-mail notice from Linden Labs sent to Edward Clift, the dean of media, culture and design at Woodbury.

"We are making this decision based on historical and recent events that constitute a breach of the Second Life community standards and terms of service. We ask that you please respect the decision and do not take part in the Second Life platform in the future."

To me, it is ridiculously ironic that it has taken Linden Lab this long to drop the ban-hammer. Must be someone intimately involved with Woodbury as done something to call down the Linden thunder and that lightning has struck.

Of course the griefers of Woodbury will not fade away. They'll just disperse and regroup. The destroyed bee's nest that scatters the swarm, who only regroup later to build another nest. Often somewhere nearby.

/me shrugs.

I suppose it was nice knowing you, Woodbury.
Not.

link: California College Loses Second Life for a Second Time (usnews.com)

[art: 'Big Daddy K' via Flickr]