put on the collar of roses, and bite upon the silver chain

Cats can fit anywhere.

(I moved to the new blog! Find me there!)

(And, just to reinforce--no, not EVERY entry is moving, just the more salacious content, and/or solely prim breast content.)

I was disappearing in plain sight

This article bothers me, and on more than one level. First, it was written recently, which means this is an educational demonstration taking place in part of the virtual world long after education was primally discarded by the Lindens, and post-Teen Grid collapse. (Which I admit still irks me beyond all reason, as it was something that Philip Linden swore to us he would never do, before reversing himself and saying that it was perfectly okay to merge Teen and Adult grids, because seriously, what could go wrong?)

But the most galling thing about that article is that, two-thirds of the way through, the writer comments that fifth graders are the best age to embrace Second Life--because "who knows more" than a fifth grader? And yet the article starts by mentioning how much the writer's third grade student loves Second Life.

Granted, in the main the discussion centers on a specific, highly restricted form of SL, and I'm not even sure that actually exists, in terms of the main grid. It may be entirely separated servers, specifically designed for that museum project. But the average age of a fifth grader in the USA is ten. Ten. And the average age of a third grade student is eight.

I'm still here, I still log into SL, I don't do a lot beyond clear my IMs and clean out old inventory at the moment, but there are things I would likely enjoy doing. And maybe, someday, I'll get back to the point where I want to go to dances, or participate in events. Maybe even make things for sale again, or just play about making things for me. But I am well over the age of majority; anything I choose to do in Second Life, regardless of the type of content, is solely my responsibility.

Setting ten-year-olds--and even worse, eight-year-olds--free to roam the wilds of SL is a terrifying concept. Start to finish.

And this is why Facebook is dangerous.

Also, according to this Reddit thread, double doors in Minecraft might start working much better than they do now: with the added feature set in 1.2 of splitting door data between upper and lower sets, they'll now hinge properly and effectively when set up, as opposed to one side reading always as 'closed' and one side reading always as 'open'.

Which is just in time for the other new feature coming up in Minecraft: zombies being able to knock down doors. So good timing, Mojang. Glad you're pushing both of those out at the same time.

And--while I don't normally get into RL politics on this blog--this hurt my brain too much not to share.

There are folks in Wales building hobbit holes. Not even kidding. The one featured at the moment is gorgeous, and very eco-friendly. Also, speaking of ecology, there's at least one purple squirrel in Pennsylvania. I really can't add anything to that.

paralyzed, no clarity

So, over the last few months the folks behind the Doomed sim have been making a concerted effort to remove all Adult poses, all sex beds, all interactive Adult props (including the lovely Sensual Stoneworks pieces that charmed more than a few players). I'm not really sure why, though I am tempted to drop a line and see what response I get to asking the question. But alongside that, they've also revised their rules.

The one revision that comes strongest to mind is rule four:

4. APPEARANCES - Visitors are asked to dress up in theme. No cel shaded avatars, My Little Ponies, cheerleaders, etcetera. Think of the films Alien or Event Horizon, or videogames such as Doom 3 or Dead Space. There is a free maintenance uniform for those lacking an appropriate outfit for their avatar.

Also, while furries are not banned and are welcome to explore we do ask, for the sake of maintaining the theme, that you adopt human/demon/creature avatars in theme with the environment if you wish to join the ongoing role-play.

Actually, they have ones tailored to gender, even--there's a male and a female version, both including skins, shape, complete outfit, animation overrides, and I think hair (and if not, hair's easy to track down). But here's what confuses me--didn't they go Adult several months back? Did that change? And also, if they're not interested in Adult-rated play, then why still offer Adult props on the Marketplace? (I'm referring specifically to the Breeding Drone, the Altar of Corruption, and the first part of the Corrupted Water System.)

Maybe they're just that tired of having My Little Pony avatars walking around trying to roleplay with dizzily blonde cheerleaders and infants. Maybe the hope is to get down to the core of what they want their group to be--and they've always been more closely centered to survival horror over sex.

For just slightly over three thousand US dollars, the USS Enterprise can be yours. Or at least a hand-carved and finished replica, coffee-table size. It's crafted from ash, poplar and cherry wood, and it took the artist, Barry Shields, a full month to create--including cutting and finishing the sweeping 1/4" thick glass tabletop that sits over the ship itself.

There's a very good reason why the Chief Operations Officer behind Facebook--and a large part of the reason why Facebook is such a huge success--should stand up for what she believes in...but as eloquent as that article is, I truly don't believe it will ever happen.

Why? Because being that close to the top of an otherwise all-male company still means she's that close to the top of an otherwise all-male company, and all Zuckerberg needs to do if she becomes problematic is fire her. As much as it would be an amazing act of gender equality for her to say "Hire more of us, or I walk"...she won't.

Meanwhile, over at MIT, scientists have developed something that may very well revolutionize power and technology. And by "power", I don't mean political, I mean electrical. From the introductory paragraph of the article:

Researchers at MIT have developed photonic crystals that, in as little as two years, could enable the use of hydrocarbon reactors in portable electronic devices, and nuclear power sources everywhere else.

They're not kidding. And while some surely will be wary of carting around mini-reactors in their back pocket, think of how many people could power their entire house with one of these in five years. What about countries that are without power now? How many people would this help to save, help to feed, help to treat?

Finally, Boing Boing's Rob Beschizza's put together a (nearly) comprehensive presentation of every product Apple's ever made. (If you want the slightly more sarcastic version, there's also a video featuring every NEXT product in 30 seconds. Of course, I'm fairly sure they left out one...) And both are worth watching for the technophiles in the audience.

won't you take me back to oblivion?

Random vampiric conversation:

[11:02] [Hxxxxx]: Never got the attraction of sleeping in a coffin. crap, hard sides, no room to stretch role, get in odd positions
[11:02] [kxxxxxxxx]: but...its not the same freak factor as a coffin
[11:02] [kxxxxxxxx]: that in itself is like a home invasion deterrant.
[11:03] [kxxxxxxxx]: its very OMGWTF IS LIVING HERE.

Weirdly, in SL, sleeping in a coffin is simply a matter of making a doublewide coffin-space and inserting poses. In some sims that's almost the definition of normal.

Issues with the newly-launched Spring Fling in City of Heroes:

Spring Fling Known Issues

There are a few Known Issues with the Spring Fling event that we would like you to be aware of:

• The Ski Chalet is accessible to players who get a Spring Fling mission that points them to the Ski Chalet entrance door.

• Spring Fling Hero teams that go on missions that lead to fighting Carnival of Shadows enemies will spawn level 40 Carnival of Shadows enemies even if teams are under level 40.

• Please note, that if there is a Villain or a Rogue on the team, the Carnival of Shadows enemies will spawn at their appropriate levels.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused by these missions, and we are working to resolve them as soon as possible.

Thank you for your patience!

Paragon Studios Community Team

Argh. Basically, translated for non-players: you can't just hang in the Ski Chalet like you could during last year's Spring Fling (though admittedly, that will cut down on the level of ambient anime schoolgirl futa roleplay); and, if you're just playing hero to other heroes for other Spring Fling missions, you'll spawn level 40 Carnival of Shadows bad guys--even if it's a mission that restricts the entire team to level 15, or 20, or 25. So there were a lot of asks in Pocket D about villains or rogues to go on Spring Fling missions with heroes.

So while we're shuffling about, ensuring that we have rogues, villains and heroes on all teams, I overheard this in Pocket D--a conversation between a confused demon in a business suit, and several superheroes/supervillains:

[Local] Corporate Devil: I will not be bound!
[Local] Son of Consolation: [You don't have to.]
[Local] Spark Fighter: All right! Here we go!
[Local] Corporate Devil: You get no new conditions!
[Local] Nitrile: Oboroboroboros
[Local] Corporate Devil: I will not kill my secretary!
[Local] Nitrile: WE WANT HIGHER TAXES!
[Local] Corporate Devil: And you will never get a girlfriend!
[Local] Delligan Conagher: KILL HER DAMMIT!
[Local] Nitrile: FOUL FIEND!
[Local] Corporate Devil: His girlfriend?
[Local] Radiopath: I WANT PEOPLE TO STOP MISTAKING IRISH PEOPLE FOR SCOTTISH PEOPLE.
[Local] Delligan Conagher: KILL HER IMMIDIATLY!
[Local] Nitrile: WHAT RADIO SAID!

Ooookay. *backs away slowly*

There's now a way to make solar panels from grass clippings and leaves. So that's neat.

Too many bars! Run!

In SL news (sort of), there's a new Dutch court ruling that makes virtual property equal to real property--so virtual property stolen, or transferred under duress, equals real property loss and can be prosecutable under the newly established law. Miss Tateru Nino originally covered this, and while I'm not sure it would hold up in non-Dutch courts, it still creates intriguing precedent.

I'm also asking the same question as the Rock Paper Shotgun blog--does the space core showing up in Skyrim mean that Elder Scrolls and Aperture Science are set in the same universe?

And obviously, I have no idea where this image came from, but taking it purely as the advertising for skin, makeup or eyes...I think it fails. Why? Because that image is using not only Windlight programming, advanced shadows, and depth-of-field photography techniques, but a soft-focus slight blurring either achieved through PhotoShop or through a tinted/glowed filter over the photographic field itself.

No one is going to look that good on Second Life, ever, who's not standing in a photography studio being retouched on the fly. Products being advertised should reflect slightly more reality than that, people, even virtual ones.

slowly spin beneath the day

In wandering through the spam filter, I'd deleted this next one, but I did take the precaution of copying it out beforehand, just in case. I suppose this is that 'just in case', case:

From: "jannet watson" [email redacted]

Magical spells really work!! I never thought there were still honest, genuine, trustworthy and very powerful spell casters until i met the spiritual helper, MERUJA OWO.

That link, by the way, in case anyone has a passing interest, doesn't lead to Meruja's site--it leads to a Google search snapshot of just how many random blogs between June 2011 and Febrary 2012 this twink has hit with this same exact comment.

last week he did a love spell for me

.....

"Love spell". Jannet, I'm a practicing pagan and I have difficulty accepting that statement.

But just for the giggle factor, I also did a Google search for that, and what came up was eminently hysterical:

• Love Knot Spell (note the instructions to buy your yarn "at Walmart")
• Easy Love Spell (which says that the more you "feel sexy", the better this one's going to work)
• Email Love Spell (I have no words for this one. I'm laughing too hard)

and it worked effectively and now he just casted

Seriously, she actually typed "just casted"? The hell.

another healing spell for my friend who has fibroid and family problem

One assumes the "fibroid problem" and the "family problem" are not related...

and now she is totally free and she is presently the happiest person on earth, she keeps thanking me all day...

Um...good? No, wait, this "Meruja" cast a healing spell and her fibroid "problem" just...what, vanished into thin air? Also, apparently fibroids cause depression? I mean, switching from whatever "family problem" it was that made her "the happiest person on earth"...

I just thought it would be good to tell the whole world

The whole world doesn't read my blog, lady.

about his good work and how genuine he is,

I won't even bother justifying a claim to be "genuine" from someone with a throwaway email address who's hit six hundred blogs with this same message...

i wasn't thinking i could get any help because of my past experiences with other fake casters who could not bring my husband back to me

Err, your husband is still alive, right? You mean ex-husband, not ex-person?

and they all promised heaven and earth and all they are able to do is ask for more money all the time until i met with this man. he does all spells, Love spells, money spells, lottery spells e.t.c

Wau. Amazing diversity of talent, there. I am especially intrigued by the "e.t.c" spells.

i wish i can save every one who is in those casters trap right now because i went though hell thinking and hoping they could help me. i recommend MERUJA OWO for any kind of help you want.

his email address is: [nevergoingtobeonmyblog.com]
if you want to ask me anything my e-mail is: [don't really care, not linking you either--save to note she lists her last name as "madeson", not "watson"]

Kind Regards,

Back atcha,

jannet

So, is it a good sign or a bad sign that my spam rates are picking up? Personally, if they're all as entertaining as this I won't mind overmuch, but seriously--does that mean I'm getting traffic from more places? And, ultimately, does it matter since I'm not going to directly publish anything from spammers at this point anyway, so it's kind of a waste of the time they took to spam the blog comments.

Tough luck, "jannet". Better luck next time. But do feel free to return and leave a comment if you actually have anything to say about any entry I send out.

Oh, wait. That would require that you read things. And clearly, you don't even have time to correct your own typos in this mass-spammed 'reply'. More fool you.

my head's a blur, the picture fades; my eyes, they keep on shutting down

There is definitely a reason to go on the Tainted Love hunt. At least, to hit Miasnow, if nothing else. (Of course, I also want the full version, which is slightly cheaper on the grid than on the Marketplace, but can be acquired in either location.)

And wau, I'm so not keeping up--Miasnow has an print shop now, too! (She can also be found on Miasnowworld, but for some reason, that page takes forever to load for me.)

Meanwhile, over at Malfean Visions:

Spring makes for silly moments and confusion time, and I've hit the creative roadblock. So I'm turning to you guys, my favorite freaks.

Yes I'm putting myself to the mercy of hundreds of you to slap the creative muse around with a small set of questions. Totally anonymous if you want it to be too.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dG90QTZXNk52QTBiWmU5cG1tNjQ5Tmc6MA

I figure, more voices won't necessarily hurt, because she's not just selling to those of us in her group.

(And if you haven't seen the Avengers Superbowl ad, here's your chance.)

There's a second Mona Lisa now, the Prado Mona Lisa. From just a strict art outlook, I think this gives us a much deeper perspective on what La Lisa actually looked like, as well as the second artist's particular take on her face--which is different as each artist's painting would be, but also confirms they were working from the same model--or the apprentice gave his take on the final, commissioned work.

Finally, there's a new semi-cheapie themed event in Second Life, and it's called Flux. This month being February, every contributor has done their take on Mardi Gras. So, from SN@TCH's latex fleur-de-lys tops to katat0nik's jester babydolls, from gleefully oversized glitter dresses to skin, makeup, outfits and furnishings...It's run by Ghost Mannequin, who at one point in the far distant past was Putrid Gloom. All for supporting her, but damn, nothing designed by her in this? And will we ever see Show Me on the Doll open again?

You can find Flux in Glitter. Prices run between L$800 (for a full reproduction N'Awlins-style shotgun cottage) to free (masks and beads, I think). It's worth the wander.

gripped in the arms of delirium

It started here, on a blog I'd never read before: an enigmatic series of portraits that showed up on a texture search for antique lace I was doing for a separate project. Along with these haunting words:

"I tried to forget
but you grew roots round my ribcage
and sprouted flowers
just below my collar bones.
All day I pick their petals
but I have not yet ascertained
whether you love me
or not"

And thereupon began the search for the rest of that quote.

I found this, which is a tutorial that just begs me to track down items for it and make it for one of my own walls; I found this, which contains a great many fascinating quotes; and then, I found this. But no last name was given, so I went to the "about" section of that blog. And I found another:

i have known the ticking of the clock
and i stumbled down the concrete sidewalk
broken where the weeds pushed through
there are too many stars tonight
i can not count them all

the music sounds different now
thinner
stolen by the fleeting hours
and the broken watch
no longer keeping steady time
there is nothing so loud as memory

So now I have two enigmatic snippets of prose, and only one name: "anna".

And then I found her blog.

So, is the author of these fragments Anna Peters? Budding photographer, writer, potentially poet and seeker? It is, as evidenced by this, which is a fascinating offer I'm now going to save up to get.

Because the prose piece that started this, reposted here from an earlier, unsaved post, can be had for twenty dollars from her print service (where you can also buy prints of her photographic work, on the main site). For those twenty bills, she will type your favorite selection out (assuming it's not marked "personal") on cardstock, put it in a vintage frame, and sign it and date it.

A bargain, I muse, at thrice the price.

here is the truth about december:

and the world splits into inside and outside,
softened by the silence of frozen impressions collecting in drifts.
groundfrost and stiff joints, blood dulled to lukewarm;
small pleasures like small lights clinging to skeleton trees,
no two the same.

In my current struggles between embattled sleep and fatigued waking, her words are perhaps speaking stronger to me than they would otherwise. But I can practically taste them on my tongue, soft as mist and sharp as sugar, leaden with old melancholy worn into nostalgia.

Here is the small truth
hidden between the drops of dancing rain:
it was always everything
and will ever be nothing at all.

I would kiss the clouds if I could,
leaden with water as they are,
for the taste of perpetuity.

I deplore that I first found her words (and in a real sense, found them nearly everywhere, the same day) with no attribution, but I am very glad I found them, in the end.

she thinks she might be turning into something nocturnal
it has to do with the street lamps
and how they purr into the glazed night
a bed cowering in the wrong corner
and the eternal hurricane whose eye rests
just behind her temples
and she wonders sometimes
what kind of dust she would find
in the corners of her skeleton
if she ever took the time to let it settle

Anna Peters. I am very pleased you exist in this world. Very pleased, indeed.

drag him out your window, dragging out your dead

Near the beginning of the comments on the throttling JIRA from February 2nd came this:

I'm importing this issue; we will investigate to see whether the throttle can be adjusted without risking grid stability.

~~Maestro Linden

Okay, so whatever the issue is, it's still affecting total grid stability as a whole; it wasn't just a temporary exploit. Still, without knowing what that issue was, I can only assume that the cure is worse than the original sickness, at least where merchants, gallery owners, event organizers, and the like are concerned.

This is unfortunately the problem with griefing as a whole--without telling us what the issue was, we're left with the scant information we have to try to figure out what went wrong. But if the Lindens tell us exactly what form the griefing took, that so impacted their systems, they're also revealing to any present griefers what the problem was. Which means griefers will, sooner rather than later, start attempting to fix the fix--and get into the systems again.

Could I suggest something to solve this fiasco? Add a object owner check that cross checks if the object owner is also the sim owner OR an estate manager. If it is the sim owner operating the device, do an exception on the throttle. Voila. Problem solved. Sim owners that operates SoM like system won't be throttled and endure the side effects of it like vendors getting blocked, and it still solves the griefing problem. Unless I missed something about the issue.

~~CodeBastard Redgrave, maker of machinima, photographer, and designer of poses and scripted HUDs designed for fellow photographers, among many other things she's done in SL

While I'd normally agree with that, it's not just sim owners that need a workaround for this. And as some others point out, it establishes a clear caste system in LSL as a coding language. Not good. (We already have a clear caste system in SL, that only varies depending on which dominant group runs any particular sim/collection of sims. We don't need more fuel on that fire.)

Creepers are terrified by cats. It's true. (There's a longer version, like a bit over twenty minutes longer, by the same fellow, but that's the short and punchy version.)

Do you value online piracy? According to the FBI, that means you're a terrorist. I am not liking this development. It seems we're not so much creeping towards dystopian government-versus-the-internet cyberpunk futures as sprinting on fire at this point. Not good.

In the meantime, there is still fan rage over the concept of prequeling the Watchmen comics. I truly think the best thing I've read so far comes from Sean Witzke: it is cogent, incisive, and pulls no punches. But it's also a reactionary piece, to an original commentary from Josh Flanagan. And while I recommend fervently that you read Witzke's article, I'm going to spend more time breaking down Flanagan's. We're starting with a paragraph near the beginnning:

Well, yes of course they have the rights. When they signed a deal with the creators, the deal stated that the rights will revert back to the creators when the book goes out of print. At the time, it wasn't a big deal, but the book kept selling, so they kept reprinting it. Rights never reverted back to the creators, because it didn't happen.

Here's the basic problem with this perception. Throughout the history of publishing, there have been contracted works. Each of those contracts were presented to the author, the artist, the scripter, whatever--and while there were good and bad contracts (there always have been), they generally always get to a clause about how long rights will last before reversion.

This is not new. I think what might be new, however, is Flanagan trumpeting that the dodgy language in the Watchmen contract to Moore and Gibbons simply means Moore (especially Moore, since Gibbons is later stated as being "all for it. He’s a team player") wasn't as legally savvy, and signed whatever was put in front of him, poor dupe that he was.

Whether you favor Moore, or dislike him (and there are oh, so many reasons to dislike Moore on principle), in the end, it's not so much about him, is it? (Though it might very well be about the things he's done as a comic writer, in the end.) It's about the medium, and who's currently in charge of the medium. And about what they're willing to do to deny the rights of the creators, not specifically because they're trying to deny creators' rights, but because they seem to believe creativity is just something people do. That anyone can do, really, it's something interchangeable between one artist and another artist, one writer and another writer. Between the poet and the screenwriter, it's all one thing--a commodity, to be fully regulated and exploited like electricity, or any other mindless, exploitable force.

Now let's go back to a sentence in the first paragraph of Flanagan's article:

They want and need to replicate the immense success from the launch of the New 52, and keep their momentum going, and show the parent company that even though their revenues are sort of miniscule in comparison to other divisions of Time Warner, they’re still valuable.

Now, let that fully sink in a moment. What are they saying here, exactly? Point by point:

• the "New 52" launch of DC titles was incredibly successful from both a marketing and a sales standpoint (Big tip: that's not true)
• DC Comics has a vested interest in pushing that "success" forward (which they do, but that success wasn't there to begin with)
• DC Comics needs to parlay that "success" into a reason to continue existing, so that Time/Warner won't sell them off to a competitor, or piecemeal to the highest bidder

And it's that last one that's so telling.

It could go badly, but that line wide relaunch got a lot of similar reactions too, and look how that turned out. Huge success. For a time.

Not huge success, is the problem. But yes, even that minimal success was better during the first month of the relaunch than during the second, or any month thereafter. (At least until you hit January of 2012, wherein DC rebounds with ten solid titles in the top ten...though Marvel still picks up the overall top share in everything sold, not just individual books.)

Flanagan on Alan Moore:

His best stuff (which he regularly decries) does not belong to him. That's not a great thing, but it's also important to remember that he exists on a timeline of evolving stances on [creators'] rights and work-for-hire practices. The deal Moore got was better than the deal almost anyone before him got.

And that's depressing indeed if true.

Here's the point I'm aiming at, what all this boils down to for me, because while I am a fan of the Watchmen books, I largely do not admire Moore as the mini-god people seem to cast him as, again and again. What is becoming inescapably clear with this article, and countless others over the years, is that someone--and likely, a whole boardroom of someones--at Time Warner really equates art with any other commodity that can be bought and sold. In one sense, why shouldn't they? Traditionally, comics artists, pencillers, inkers, and writers have been very nearly phobic about unionizing, or even protesting and standing up for better working conditions. Even the companies that form from artists and writers who've gotten sick of life with the Big Two are scared to take any negative stance--and sadly, I understand that as well, because their artists and writers might get hired by one of the bigs to take on a new comic, which could make money, and end up giving them a little more to survive on at the end of the day.

It's like watching trickle-down economics in action, and trust me, it's not pretty when you're standing under the stream.

Was it a bad deal? Maybe. Rumor says the creators get something around 2% of the profits on Watchmen. But at the time, there was no precedent. Moore and Gibbons would get the rights back after DC stopped using the characters or printing the book for a year. It never happened. It broke one way no one expected, and as happens, the house won.

And that, right there, is the problem. At the time there was precedent, established, literary precedent--only DC Comics didn't want to continue literary contract history.

Because comics aren't literature, right? They're just for kids. They're momentary, discardable, meaningless. And I guess artists and writers are, too.

The problem we should be having with the Watchmen prequels isn't particularly about the creators of comics, however, or any other artistic medium. It's about corporations treating the creators of comics, or writers, or artists in general like something infinitely replaceable. This mode of thought leads to buildings with windows that don't open, or social groups that band together to kill music programs in schools. And that's the real issue.

Create the book, don't create the book--DC has the rights to it. It's not the worst thing they've done; really, it's not the worst thing they've done in the past two years, even. But they need to abandon the disposable-artist mentality. They need to start fostering creativity, not grinding it for the sellable by-product. They need to ensure that their writers and artists don't starve; get medical care; have decent places to live.

Do that, and there'll be no stopping them as a comics company. Because those stories and pictures they so desperately want to validate their existences to Time Warner will emerge, and shine, and glow, and radiate, with the same life and health and joy that their artists and writers know.

Unfortunately, this won't ever happen. The greed for the best product for the least amount of coin is too entrenched at this point. And that's the problem with comics at DC.

it's really nothing new, the others had it too

First, an update on mesh versus sculpts from Miss Shichiroji. It's not a long article, and it's well written; you should take the few moments to go read it.

I only have one issue, really, and it comes down to graphics, as usual. To be more specific, it's that 70% figure of mesh-adapted viewers. That's a great number if it's accurate, but that also means that 30% of all residents on the grid still can't see mesh. And I think it's also important where that 30% resides. (Granted, these days, I tend not to go anywhere, because I've hit the second bout of "figure your life out, this is ridiculous"...but even so, if I walked around in a full-mesh avatar, who'd see me? If I went to Curious Kitties, would everyone see me? If I went to Caledon, would everyone see me? How different are the adoption rates between the Curious Kitties sim, and the Caledon sim, for instance?)

That's the big problem, and it's only going to increase with the implementation of visual "muting" mentioned earlier. Because, silly me, I was thinking the visual loss of other avatars meant that they weren't being downloaded into our potential viewing buffer; I forgot that's now how textures and sculpts (and mesh) work in SL. So that's a solution to a problem that actually doesn't touch the problem at all. Not only do we now have to worry about folks that can't see mesh, at all; now we have to worry that if we do adjust our visual settings, that we're still being hit with high-attachment/high-sculpt residents, before the muting can get in.

I don't have her optimism, but I'm glad she does. And to be fair, I've seen some impressive work from the makers who've converted to mesh.

Next, a long (long long, LONG long long) time ago, I was (briefly) part of the SL Bloggers' group. Right before the group folded, so I think I met all of three people in the group before I went on my meandering, unmerry way.

Now, apparently, it's back. Glad to hear that, and really, I think there should be more blogger interaction, it would keep us all better up to date on the happenings. But I'm annoyed enough by the group chats I have now, so I'll have to consider this carefully.

Next up, something I've been meaning to address for a while: io9's latest opinion post on rethinking steampunk. While I understand the point they're trying to make, I am a dogmatic thinker. Given time with a concept, and some mental crowbar work, I can ponder issues as a whole, and see the grey between black and white. But my first reaction always tends to be a starkly polar one: good/bad; white/black; yes/no.

Add to that the fact that (while I've spent the last several months waffling on this) I've been doing my best to codify what makes a certain sound steampunk, as opposed to another style of music entirely. While I've pondered many "grey" options, at the end of the day I still want to be able to say yes or no to that question.

Rather than assembling a list of elements which a work must have to qualify as "steampunk," we can say that as long as a work has some of those elements, it is steampunk. This frees us from having to define the list and number the elements, which might include "Victorian setting," "alternate history," "steam-powered technology," and so on. Any combination of those will do to make a work "partially steampunk," and a large number of those elements together will make a story "mostly steampunk."

According to the article, I'm a pretty staunch prescriptivist, and while I see the value in adopting definition states closer to "fuzzy logic" than dogma, it still makes me twitch a bit. And while I can definitely see the benefit of refusing to define something as wholly steampunk, or not, but instead to concentrate our efforts on what that particular work brings to steampunk (sound, culture, literature, film) as a whole...I'm still stuck in the desire to have things A or B.

To me, there's no question: Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age is a powerful work, but it's not steampunk. If anything, it's closer to cyberpunk, because of its reliance on transformative technologies (to say nothing of the transhumans within the book). And it has plenty of dystopian touches for the critics who deride any cyberpunk work that's not a grim view of the potential future. There's a lot of grim to embrace in The Diamond Age.

Now, though… Neal Stephenson's science fictional novel The Diamond Age, which is full of nanotech and a radically altered future history, is "steampunk." The fantasy tv series The Last Airbender: Legend of Korra, which has superpowered humans on a different planet, is "steampunk." Martin Scorcese's Hugo (based on a YA novel by Brian Selznick), which is entirely mimetic apart from a marginal unreality involving a writing automaton, is "steampunk."

And to me, it's painfully clear that none of these things fit any traditional criteria to be steampunk, so I'm woefully confused trying to figure out why these three, in particular, are even under discussion as steampunk works.

Maybe I'm too dogmatic to embrace "fuzzy logic" where steampunk is concerned. But if we're going to move from an understanding of what works define this genre to what general tenets of steampunk do these works reflect...well, shouldn't we pick works that have more than modern-day buildings in a magic setting, or perfectly acceptable automatons which were operant in the time period, or a future culture clash so severe that half of the working poor have become a linked hive mind, and half of the ruling class have embraced the stiff gentility of (what they, at least, understand to be) Victorian class restrictions, to recommend them?

Oh, and there's a new Hunger Games trailer out. Do watch.

have we put these childish things away?

More from the wilds of City of Heroes. It started with a fairly simple request:

[Help] Trioceros: Looking for Villian Group! Please send tell! Thank you!

It's "villain", but proceed.

How'ver, a short while later:

[Help] Trioceros: Looking for villian group. Please send invite!

It's still "villain". You're getting it wrong.

A few minutes past that:

[Help] Trioceros: Oh please! Arent there any Villian Groups around?

Still "villain". He doesn't seem to be grasping that.

In the meantime, a relevant conversation had sprung up in the background:

[Help] Star-Witch: Can you recolour APP powers?
[Help] Trioceros: Isnt there any Villian Groups?
[Help] Merryl ShockClaw: Not yet Star
[Help] Selachii Satellite: No, you can't, Witch.
[Help] Trioceros: I didnt understand a word you two just said.

Okay. "APP" stands for "Ancillary Power Pools", aka, your Epic powers that you only get at level 35 or higher. This is more traditionally known as "Epic powers".

Some friendly advice was offered:

[Help] Polar Ray: trio i don't think asking that frequently will get you anywhere, you might want to check the server forum for sg directory thread.
[Help] Trioceros: Are you nembers of Villian Groups?

"Nembers"? Yep. He really typed that. Also, still "villain", and for added fun, for those who don't know, "sg" is short for "supergroups"--essentially, large groups of folks bound by RP rules, or specific fandoms, or to get together for weekly task or strike forces...or just the love of the game.

[Help] Star-Witch: Boo. Thanks for the answer, Selachii.
[Help] Trioceros: Uh, hello?
[Help] Star-Witch: Hello?
[Help] Gearhouse: Hey
[Help] Trioceros: Are you a nember of a Villian Group?

This is getting recursive.

[Help] Star-Witch: No, I'm a hero.
[Help] Trioceros: Hello?

She said "hero", not--oh, never mind.

[Help] Gearhouse: Hallo, das auto??
[Help] Trioceros: (eyelids half closed)

As will become obvious later, this does not indicate he is sleepy. It indicates he is upset. Though I'm not sure how "eyelids half closed" registers. "Eyes narrow" might have been better. "Eyelids half closed" signals to me that the medication's just kicked in.

[Help] Trioceros: Are. You A. Nember. Of. A. Villian. Group?
[Help] Mender Kumquat: No. Nor am I a member of one.

I just have to say, "Mender Kumquat" is an awesome name.

[Help] Gearhouse: I think therefore I am not
[Help] Star-Witch: No. I Am. Not.
[Help] Trioceros: Well is there anyone out there who is?
[Help] Trioceros: Hello?
[Help] Phoenix Du'Black: hi
[Help] Trioceros: Oh, this is ridiculous!
[Help] Alexander Akiiki: No, this is Patrick.

Really, can't blame anyone, here, save for maybe Trioceros, for asking so very many times.

[Help] Polar Ray: so, how is your aspergers treating you Tri?
[Help] Alexander Akiiki: Woah Ray, no need to go there
[Help] Bane Widow: That's not asperger's, that's impatient teenager.

I tend to agree.

[Help] Gearhouse: the help channel is not for disparagement of those with disabilities please keep it to pocket D

Well, that's also true. As a friend told me, there are people with disabilities in Pocket D. We must respect those anime teenage catgirl half-demons who are not, after all, futa (and that link contains an image which might be the merest bit NSFW). It creates a terrible disparity to be a young lesbian feline angelic robotic cyborg demon schoolgirl vampire without a penis. We feel for them, and we empathize with their pain.

[Help] Trioceros: Okay, I'm in Mercy.

No one cares.

[Help] Polar Ray: he must be trolling.
[Help] Trioceros: (eyelids half closed)

Remember, "sleepy" equates to "irritated".

[Help] Alexander Akiiki: It's pretty tough to find a group at this time of day/night, so maybe try later.
[Help] Gearhouse: you see the eyelids as half closed, i see them half open
[Help] Trioceros: All I want to do is join a Villian Group! I never thought this would be so hard!
[Help] Sword Droid: its not
[Help] Sword Droid: when people are awake
[Help] Alexander Akiiki: Like I said, there's not many people on redside at this time of day/night/afternoon

Yeah. If you don't get a good response, hey, ask another time. Or maybe, ask in broadcast on redside. That might work better, than the Help channel, which is broadcast to the entire game.

[Help] Sword Droid: come back in 5 hours - I'm sure you'll be fine
[Help] Polar Ray: or when you weren't spamming the help channel, of all channels.

Yeah. What Ray said.

[Help] Bane Widow: OK, I'm calling impatient teenage troll.

Pretty sure I agree.

[Help] Clarissa Myers: also, there aren't many redsiders to begin with ^^
[Help] Recon Bot M12: This time of day there's not many on Trio, only us eurotrash and a few American insomniacs
[Help] Trioceros: Oh, do you really think i'm that gullible?

Yeah, we really do. But also, again, all this started at three in the morning. Get real.

[Help] Bane Widow: I promise, your attitude won't get you invited into any VGs worth being in.
[Help] Trioceros: Well, what do you know?

Well, even villains value politeness.

[Help] Sword Droid: No - really - no need to make a fuss - come back in a few hours when the rest of the country has crawled out of bed
[Help] Alexander Akiiki: And some aussies.
[Help] Sword Droid: what time is it in Aus?
[Help] Mender Kumquat: 9:30 in Australia.
[Help] De Profundis: party time over here
[Help] Polar Ray: so, tell us how it is like to live on the moontime?
[Help] Alexander Akiiki: In my part? 10:23 in the PM on a saturday.
[Help] Sword Droid: hey hey - aussies are more afraid of you than you are of them

It went on like this for a while, rather convivial, until:

[Help] Trioceros: The horror of living in a polutted part of Madagascar is more like it!

Yeah....so let's put aside "polutted" for a moment; what does he have against Madagascar?

Just a few moments after:

[Help] Trioceros: Okay, my patience is wearing thin. Looking for Villian Group.
[Help] Carnival Warwolf: Redside is as dead as Batman's parents.

Well, I wouldn't say that. I still think there's a lot of individual villains on redside that are reasonably active; it's just that there aren't as many as on blueside. Plus, a lot of the bigger blueside groups have both redside and blueside members; so there are fewer redside super-groups overall.

Still, I don't think it really was that there weren't any villains on at this hour; I truly think it was the perception that Trioceros was an ass within two minutes of hearing from him that made no super-group willing to toss him an invitation to join.

Three minutes later:

[Help] Trioceros: Would it help if you americans werent brain damaged.

Yeah, guy, I get that you're frustrated, but this is not the way to go.

[Help] Isis Enyalios: when looking for a VG or farms you need to log in with the rest of the [player base]
[Help] Clarissa Myers: trioceros, careful, with no patience. you don't want to end up like ed gruberman.
[Help] Trioceros: Gruberman?
[Help] Daddy Long-Legs: Boot to the head!

I suppose Trioceros can be forgiven for not remembering the Frantics; after all, at this point we were all pretty sure he was fourteen, at the maximum. More likely twelve.

[Help] Selachii Satellite: I'm brain damaged? CRAP. I wish I would have known.
[Help] Trioceros: You are all weridos.

That's "weirdos", and that's your biggest insult?

[Help] Clarissa Myers: naaaah, we could be worse
[Help] A Befuddled Knight: You are trolling/racist
[Help] Trioceros: You are worse.
[Help] A Befuddled Knight: Probably.

He just never seemed to fully grasp that other people, on the internet, were finding his outrage funny. Also, his sarcasm filter is in dire need of repair; obviously, it's burnt out.

[Help] Carnival Warwolf: I just realized something.
[Help] Clarissa Myers: we could have CATGIRLS here.
[Help] Thistlebeam: Clarissa: we DO have catgirls here, who are you kidding?

It's true. People complain about the amount of "furs" on City of Heroes since the Beast pack came out, but cat ears and tails were always options in the game.

[Help] A Befuddled Knight: Meow
[Help] Trioceros: Something tells me that you ARE nembers of Villian Groups but you're too stupid to let me in them.
[Help] Gearhouse: *slowly raises neko paw*
[Help] Selachii Satellite: I'm not feeling too stupid right now, to be honest.

I don't think anyone was...save for, possibly, Trioceros. And again, it's "members", not "nembers", you loon.

[Help] Mr. Gibbs: can't we all just....get along!?
[Help] A Befuddled Knight: Calling people idiots is a bad idea if you want something, bro

Generally.

[Help] Trioceros: For a start I would like to join a Villian Group.
[Help] A Befuddled Knight: Hurr hurr

Stiv? O Lord, you play City of Heroes?

[Help] Carnival Warwolf: Trio, you're not even giving out what kind of information you want pertaining to a VG. Are you an RPer or power leveler? Do you run TF's or are you looking for casual play?
[Help] Trioceros: *facepalm*

See, that's a good question too. There are entire supergroups that are bound to very specific RP scenarios--some based around the conventions of Paragon City/Rogue Isles, some based in other fandoms. There are groups that limit themselves to ERP (erotic roleplay). There are other groups who gather at given times just to run fire farms in Architect Entertainment--a way to really rack up XP fast for power-leveling.

The supergroup I'm in, for example, is fairly relaxed about chatting; many of its members have actually met offline, or are personal friends from other games. Also, they run weekly task force runs two days out of every week, and they actually have officers who meet an additional hour each week. You get out of it what you put in: if you don't want to talk, no one will make you; you just get access to the supergroup base and a nifty title.

Other groups are more restrictive, it varies group by group. But if we don't even know what he's looking for, how can we advise him where to go?

[Help] Isis Enyalios: 6:45 EST isn't a good time to join a VG
[Help] Trioceros: Its 11:49 in britain.
[Help] Mender Neo: But since you aren't on a British server, that doesn't help much.
[Help] Trioceros: I dont give a damm about what time it is in america.

Of course you don't. Are all English people this dim, or is it just you? I'm betting it's just you.

[Help] Mr. Gibbs: i dont give a damn about zucchini but you dont hear me complaining about it
[Help] Polar Ray: trioceros, on a sacel of 1 to 12, how old are you?

That's "scale", but otherwise, it's a good question.

[Help] Polar Ray: *scale

Thanks for catching that.

[Help] A Befuddled Knight: Uh
[Help] Trioceros: You can put a sock in it too you know.
[Help] Trioceros: You people are driving me to insanity.

Why? That's been my question all along. What part of "We can't help you, ask later" is in any way unclear? What part of "We can't help you, ask later" means keep asking all damn night? Seriously, Trio, you're a menace, and you're fairly clueless, and you seem incapable of having fun in the first place.

[Help] Selachii Satellite: Right then. Mission accomplished. I have laughed myself to tears, and driven Trio to the brink of insanity. I can sleep well tonight.

It's not the worst victory condition.

[Help] Trioceros: But you have concealed fates of others in VIRTUE! I will delete this character, remake him, find a villian group, and CREATING HAVOC! GOODBYE, LOSERS!

"Concealed"? What the hell does that even mean? What the hell is wrong with your brain, Trioceros? Honestly!

[Help] Polar Ray: gents we created a monster.
[Help] Mender Neo: Have fun with that.
[Help] Selachii Satellite: Was it Godzilla?
[Help] Carnival Warwolf: No Gents, we -are- the monsters.
[Help] Clarissa Myers: *evil laughter*

Okay, fine, but seriously, Trio was his own mini-drama bomb. And I can't decide if he was serious or just trying--ineptly--to troll the channel all night.

[Help] Mr. Gibbs: he's hot, i love a man who enjoys being mental
[Help] A Befuddled Knight: JAZZ HANDS

*snickers*

[Help] Selachii Satellite: Oh, snap. I misread that for a second.
[Help] Selachii Satellite: I was like "HEY NOW, TMI!"
[Help] Mr. Gibbs: everyone has one thing on their mind at this hour
[Help] A Befuddled Knight: Not me
[Help] Mr. Gibbs: poptarts
[Help] A Befuddled Knight: I let my mind wander

Never a good idea. I'm never sure if it will come back if I let it wander.

[Help] Selachii Satellite: *ahem* Now that I have literally laughed myself to tears at this insanity... I'm gonna get some sleep before work. Good night, Virtue!

Good night, indeed. I only have one more quote to preserve for...well, not posterity, it's too ridiculous for that. After the conversation turned from the flouncing exit of Trioceros to random insanity, this came up:

[Help] Clarissa Myers: horse? ponies? My little Porny - Friendship with Benefits?
[Help] Neptunes End: this is the weirdest porn ever
[Help] Mr. Gibbs: more like the BEST porn ever

Okay, seriously, why is there so much My Little Pony sex on the net? I do not understand. (And yes, while I've tried to keep actual pornographic images out of the link, childhoods may well be destroyed by some images. Not my fault if you click; you have been warned.)

(And believe me, I could have gone a lot worse. I just don't get why there are so many fans of adult...ponies. I mean, they're...ponies. The hell.)

many opportunities come rolling off your lap

I submit that your overall approach to fixing this problem of back-end instability and griefing is fundamentally flawed, for these 3 reasons:

1. There is no load detection capability available to developers. This means that systems cannot play nicely with the current state of throttle potential, and therefore any algorithmic attempt to stay beneath the throttle is nothing more than a hopeful guess.

2. There is no load detection capability available to users. A person has no way of deciding "Oh, I shouldn't use X or Y right now because they'll cause my throttle to be hit."

3. The penalty for hitting the throttle is ridiculously severe. The thought that a subscriber sending out messages too fast could cause a clicked landmark giver to stop working ... is mind boggling. Explain to me how giving inventory in response to a user's click can ever, in any universe, be considered griefing.

I hope and pray that I've misunderstood your throttling approach.

~DavidThomas Scorbal, maker of the very popular PoseAnywhere HUD, as well as other HUDs, scripted vendors, and scripted animation vendors.

Okay, so point by point.

• 1. To be fair to the Lindens, they just announced this. They likely didn't have time to introduce throttling measures in the scripting language, nor give the tools for load detection to sim/store owners.
• 2. While I agree the Lindens should have put such measures into place--or at least thrown some brown-bag meetings to developers and users while they were working this out--they felt they didn't have time to do so. This, again, may be something they're planning to introduce.
• 3. "Ridiculously severe" is a very good descriptive for what's happening, though. Because of some undefined griefing potential, which they felt was slowing the entire game down, they rushed to get this out, without, I think, considering the merchant cataclysm awaiting them. But at this point, the Lindens aren't going to back down. I know some makers of vending and subscription systems are working like crazy to get fixes out; that's good. But in the meantime, it's causing more resentment than joy, and is yet another strike to the heart of the trust issue, where the Lindens are concerned.

I'm not entirely sure if the Search Engine Watch blog released Axi Kurmin from her reporting duties; I'm hoping she's just been too busy to breathe. But I'd love to know her take on this issue.

While I don't agree with everything Ciaran Laval says in his take on the issue, I think he makes one remarkably valid point--the issue is in sending individual inventory items to large groups of people, be that inventory bit a notecard, a texture, a landmark, or an object. What if each notice was simply that, an IM notice, that gave a typed URL for an announcement page?

For example: while Aki Shichiroji doesn't always do this, for the most part when I get a notice from her, it's just an IM, that points me towards her blog. And while--often--my IMs are capped by the time I get into world, thus "losing" her message, the IM still comes to my email. Which makes it quirkily easier to just click the link from Gmail and go directly to her blog to view new product releases.

Now, does every merchant on the grid agree with establishing external (or Second-Life branded affiliate internal) pages for product releases? Probably not. But each send to each customer wouldn't hit the wall of llGiveInventory throttling. And that would be a good thing, right?

Kelly Linden again:

David: There already is a 2 second sleep on llGiveInventory. The systems that are hitting the new limit are using many scripts to get around that sleep.

And David in reply:

Right so, how does it make sense to silently fail, instead of increasing the delay per user, if needed? I mean, you're going to have the same problems with the back end capacity if the user base grows and more people use llGiveInventory().

I would bet my life that if you polled SL scripters, you'd get 99.9% voting for an extended sleep period on throttle, over a silent failure. Surely you understand there is no way to detect or recover from this failure - and even following the "recommended" timing, is no guarantee that the throttle won't be hit.

Oh gosh, and just for laughs, how about stopping the abusers? Forcing this work onto us is just cheap, alienating and really discouraging to scripters.

Again, he's got a point--several, actually. First, he's right on the silent failure. When we send too many IM messages, we get a warning about writing too often. It's annoying, but it forces us to pace communication. When we send an item to someone in busy mode, we get notification back that the target did not receive our inventory send. That's also annoying, but again, it paces us. And entire product lines have come about due to this second "feature"--the system in place at Alchemy being one of the best, in my opinion. It sends a notecard to me, but if I'm not online, it 'sleeps' the return send request. Likely Ms. Cyannis gets a little missive that I'm off the grid, but more importantly, I get a polite little message that, because I wasn't online for the last send, it will try again later.

This, nearly always, is enough to get me to log in, even currently when I have only forty-two Lindens to my name, and have for nearly a month. Had I been possessed of more, I likely would have gone to the store and perhaps bought the item advertised, or another item--and in days past when I've been more flush, I've done exactly that. Her system works, and while it's not impossible for her system to hit that same llGiveinventory throttle, I'd imagine it does so far more rarely.

I'd also like to pull one line out from the above message and repeat it, because it sounds vaguely important:

Forcing this work onto us is just cheap, alienating and really discouraging to scripters.

I would slightly restate--I think it's really discouraging to scripters, builders, merchants, makers, and casual residents on the grid receiving no notice from their many subscription stores. While yes, for the last few days it has eased the announcement glut that's sent to my email, that's not a good thing--not if I want to peruse new products, go to new places, hear about new events. Because, again, hitting this limit now results in silent failure--and, in at least a few cases, the subscription kiosk happily churning away, sending out messages that are auto-muted from the moment it hit the inventory cap, and never once telling either the owner of the kiosk or the subscribers that this was happening, at all.

That's not good. That's kind of the definition of not good.

I wandered over to Crap Mariner's blog. I figured she'd have some perspective on it, and I wasn't wrong.

(Let me take a step back and explain the "she" thing. Gender, perception, identity, these things are fluid--and not just on the grid. But I tend to fix on the person as first encountered. I first encountered Crap as female. That has fixed my perception. I'm not saying my perception's the correct one--frankly, the only "correct" perception, in that tone of voice, is Crap's, flat out. But there, explanation, we move on now.)

There's not a large section of mention, but what there is, is worthy of pulling out here for added emphasis:

Not that I'd ever come close to the llGiveInventory() throttling surprise that the Lindens are throwing at people sending messages and notecards, mind you, but it seems that whenever someone comes up with a clever workaround to the unreliable core technologies of SL for the benefit of content creators and performers, the Linden developers work hard to close those loopholes faster than fixing the fundamental problems.

Crap and I are both cynical where the Lindens are concerned, no surprise there. But when the people who helped you build your platform, expand it, explain it to other people, and blog about it--and I don't think anyone can deny Mariner's one of those people--well, when those people start eyeing the exit doors? Not that the Lindens are going to ever realize this, but hey, it might be a heads-up from the universe--theirs or any other--that maybe they've got some wrong ideas. And just maybe they might want to fix them.

Not that we haven't said this before.

Jumping ahead, just a bit, I ran down the post mentioned in Mariner's entry, Notes from the Trough of Disillusionment. This is a concept developed by industry analysts Gartner, who detail several stages on the IT map:

• the Technology Trigger (the breakthrough event, the product launch, the [usually press-based] discovery)
• the Peak of Inflated Expectations (the press frenzy that follows, complete with over-enthusiastic embracing by early adopters, and the unrealistic expectations of total technology transformation that soon will not live up to the hype)
• the Trough of Disillusionment (when the product or the event fail to meet expectations, and are then dismissed as 'dated' or 'unfashionable'; this frequently leads to press coverage of the product or the event as 'formerly great' or 'once-valid')
• the Slope of Enlightenment (even though the press, for the most part, has run away, some businesses/individuals still use the product or event, and spend their time experimenting with the ways it does work instead of trumpeting its flaws)
• the Plateau of Productivity (the product or event, through time, experimentation and longevity, is realized to be a good and helpful thing; this can also mean the original technology or software has been largely rewritten and recoded to be more stable, more reliable, and better adaptive)

So why does Iggy say that Second Life is in the Trough of Disillusionment? Look more closely at what that means in the cycle of hype:

• Second Life has largely failed to meet user, press, and business expectations.
• Second Life is now covered by the press, if it's covered at all, as a laughably outdated relic, or worse, a predatory environment filled with the most perverse things the reporter can imagine (cue: accusations, now constant, of pedophilia being rampant on the grid; it's not, but that doesn't stop the press from saying it).
• Second Life, at this point, has gone beyond loss of users into actually hemorrhaging users and businesses. It's wounded. It is weakening. Combine this with the loss of owned sims and we get a virtual world that's not only getting smaller due to fewer users, but is actually getting smaller in terms of the amount of owned sims.
• Inside Second Life, the bright spirit of exploration and discovery has dimmed for many. "It's not as fun as it used to be" is now an accurate statement, not an inflated one.
• Also inside Second Life, we seem to have moved from Lindens and residents operating in concert, to Lindens and residents actively at war, with neither side (generally or effectively) understanding the other.

Okay, none of that's good. But what else? Well, there's his list of factors that contribute to Second Life's loss of content and customers. Some of the points I found particularly relevant:

• the educational disaster. While there are pros and cons to education in SL, from beginning building classes to online medical training, the decision by the Lab to end discounted pricing for educational and non-profit customers was pretty lethal. A lot of universities left in October; some few waited until January of 2011 to leave, hoping the Lindens would change their minds. (Pro tip: the Lindens never change their minds.)
• the rise of competition. It's not just OpenSim, there's now more than a few alternate virtual worlds rising. Whereas in 2009, there was zero competition for the Second Life user experience, now there is. There are former residents of SL who've moved lock, stock and pixel barrel to OpenSim, HyperGrid, or another virtual platform; some other users have left Second Life for places like World of Warcraft, even though the full socializing aspects are missing, because if they're going to be screaming at the screen over a game, they'd rather do it trying to fight evil, not the Lindens.
• the fact that logging into SL these days requires major upgrades that, still, most people just don't have. (While I understand that, to be competitive, SL wants to equalize the 'look' and feel of the game with semi-equivalent MMO game worlds, what that has meant to the end user is a game that perpetually changes the rules for access. At this point, to use everything SL currently offers, with the latest version of their software, the end user pretty much needs to already own a dual-core computer system. If not, at some point, the experience will start to limp for them. (Pro tip: most users of SL don't have more than a single-core computer board. This has led to widespread dissatisfaction with the additional graphic demands on users.)
• this one I'm lifting from Iggy directly: The stability of the virtual world and the need for frequent client upgrades (both largely resolved today). Mainly because my perspective is different, and I'd state it as the instability of the platform, and the need to hop about sometimes once a week searching for new builds of third-party viewers, to ease the insane memory leaks and hopefully, find a stable browser that won't crash every 60 seconds.
• another one I'm lifting directly from Iggy: The relatively slow pace of empirical evidence for teaching effectiveness in immersive 3D environments. Ironically, this has emerged in 2010 and 2011, but by them many campuses had decided to focus more on mobile technologies and social networking for teaching. I'd only half-disagree--I think there are good and valid reasons to teach in SL, from the simple (learning SL building, for example, is kind of impossible if you can't build along with the instructor) to the arcane (sociologically, people seem to learn better in virtual spaces if they can see the instructor's face, or their fellow students' faces. We're strange that way).
• and, ultimately, the combination of the loss of the educational discount, with the lack of strong evidence that SL learning was inherently "better", with the long-held opinion (mostly by the press) that people just don't learn in "games", meant very, very few non-profits or educational concerns wanted to be affiliated with Second Life, or Linden Lab.

And nothing on that list is good. It's pretty much a case-by-case point for why Second Life is failing so utterly right now. Can they turn things around? Well, obviously, but the Lindens' chief problem is they keep pulling boneheaded moves like Ursula/Zindra, the OpenSpace debacle, the RedZone debacle, and the current inventory throttling catastrophe...among others...and never seem to realize that these incidents are retained in memory, and it becomes that "one more thing". Sooner or later, if the Lindens don't snap out of it, their world will fail, because they'll be the only ones on the grid.

And in the meantime, the world becomes emptier every day. How depressing is that?