Socially|Mundane

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="220" caption="Kumbaya!"][/caption]

Well, I don't 'hate' Linden Lab at all. I do hate the way they tend to do some things, communicate other things and overall manage + communicate what they are managing and how. It's okay to do anything you want, Linden Lab, just please either do a better job at communicating it or don't communicate it at all. Too many Second Life residents get too confused and, of course, there will be those who scream 'bloody murder!'

As for the title question: Yes. Soon. I have said before that 99% of all Second Life residents haven't the faintest idea of the technical power of Second life. Rendering a 3D image thirty times a second, when a few years ago a single frame would have taken hours if not days. And now, not only a 3d virtual world, but soon a true development platform.

I always have said that in most situations, I stand with Linden Lab. No, I'm not a Linden apologist and I am certainly not in the tank for them. But I also am a realist. Linden Research is a for profit company. Their job is to make money. They even have a fascinating model for doing so without relying on after-market advertising. Even radio does that.

Linden Research can only make money by keep their customers as happy as possible. Unfortunately the old adage rings true, and we all know this one: "you can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can never please all of the people all of the time.'

Yes, I know, I have substituted the word "please" for the word 'fool'. But you get the point. So, when Linden Research®, and subsidiary Linden Lab® make decisions, it is what keeps the majority happy, at the expense of the minority. However, it is often the minority that is vocally the loudest.

To me, it also makes for absolutely wonderful entertainment to see most of these people whine and bitch over things that show themselves to be with a serious case of entitlement attitude where none is promised, given or deserved.

"The best way to show a fool is to let him have his way." But more to the point: "It is better to allow people to think you a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." These are among my favorite quotes and thy apply oh so often with so many residents. Obviously, Linden Lab tries hard to not fall under these categories. This also explains the vagueness of much of their communication with the outside world.

I always have been saying that I know Linden Lab and their employees are simply working to make Second Life better as a whole for the majority of users. Some of the massive usability enhancements in the new 1.20 viewer prove that. A lot of fantastic little user-targeted features that weren't even asked for, such as double-tapping the walk button to run, and being able to click any name that appears in chat history to instantly open their profile page.

This weeks release of the newest server code proves my point. It includes the Mono runtime engine. Something I have personally been anxiously waiting for.

Babbage Linden sez:
"As well as providing immediate benefits, the integration of the Mono virtual machine makes many future improvements possible: the use of mainstream languages to script Second Life alongside the existing LSL language; the removal of arbitrary per-script limits on script resource usage and the use of mainstream libraries and tools for scripting to name a few."

This is wonderful news because of the gargantuan improvements to the user experience, first in the way Second Life operates under the hood, but also because there are a lot of wonderful software developers who will be able to bring their desktop application into Second Life.

Additionally, the sheer power and flexibility of Mono will make things a lot more stable and faster.

From the Mono FAQ:
'...multiple copies of scripts with the same asset id will only take up as much room as one instance. Imagine some script that you use a dozen times on your land. If each of the objects containing the script is separately compiled from text source, you will use up a dozen times the script's size of memory. But if instead you simply drag a copy of the single, already compiled script into each of the dozen objects, then no matter how many copies exist they only take up the size of one script (plus data) in memory.'

I know a lot of what is said above may not make a whole bunch of sense to most people, but I can assure you: it's a good thing.

So, Linden Lab: There really are some of us out here who will chastise you often, but we also know, down inside, you hate the instabilities, resident extortion, bugs, resident-to-resident rip-offs, you-name-it about the software and what goes on in-world - just like the rest of us. We also understand you want to be open and transparent as possible. And we understand there are some things where you just can't do that, for many business-related, possibly even legal reasons.

However, we also know you are trying hard to make Second Life the best it can be with what you have and no-one can predict the future, so you simply rebuild the existing code.

Hello, look at what a horrible mess Microsoft Windows is!

So, from myself to Linden Lab: I know you work hard, are frustrated as much as I am and thank you for all your efforts and a great product, warts and all.

Source: Mono Launch « Official Second Life Blog