Socially|Mundane

The other shoe on Openspace sims, now known as "Homestead" sims is about to fall in July. When the initial tier increase kicked-in on the originally priced at $75 per month "Openspace" sims, where tier was bumped up to $95 a month, there was a massive sell-off.

Sims were either sold, abandoned, or in the case of quads, consolidated into a single full-powered sim.I have no doubt myself that the massive virtual "land dump" was disconcerting to Linden Lab and a Costco case of Pepto was making the rounds for a month or two.

However, in an effort to prevent the same, or in a genuine olive branch of good-will, Linden Lab is allowing those at the $95 tier level to remain grandfathered in at that rate.

By announcing it now, it is certainly hoped a new land rush will occur as people move to purchase new Homestead sims ahead of the tier increase date as all sims at that rate will remain at the rate when the new tier goes into effect.

Update to July 1st Homestead Pricing Plan

So, given that things seem to have stabilized in the Second Life economy and that Linden Lab's business remains strong and our revenues are healthy, we are able to forego the planned Homestead price increase in July for one year, but only for Homesteads purchased (or reactivated, see below) before July 1, 2009. In other words, any Homesteads purchased before July 1, 2009 will have their monthly fees Grandfathered at USD$95 per month until July 1, 2010. This includes any Homesteads that you currently own at the time of this post.

[From Good News: Homestead Pricing to be Grandfathered if purchased before July 1st, 2009 - Land and Sea - Second Life Blogs]

The one part of this wonderful announcement that seems missing is: do remember that even though your tier will remain steady, your allowed and available prim agent (avatar) count and script-running abilities will be going down.

Update: It is my misremembering the specifics on what "goes down" in terms of homesteads. Prim count will remain the same. However, the number of scripts allowed to run (script ability) and the maximum number of agents (avatars) that will be allowed on Homestead will be lowered as per this statement from Jack Linden on January 4, 2009 under the area called "What to expect":

"All of the other Openspace regions will become Homesteads after the restart. There will be no change to the prim limit for Homesteads, but there is an agent cap of 20. Classifieds and events will work as usual. The billing for Homesteads will move to USD$95 per month, starting on the next bill date that falls on or after the 5th January. If you normally bill on the 25th, then your January 25th charge will be USD$95."

Original post by Jack Linden is here.

If a picture is worth 1000 words, does it take 1000 words to draw an accurate picture?

Perhaps these days: yes.

Of course this is an exaggeration. But the point being that our verbal communication is really in the dump these days. We simply do not have command of our own languages any more. Our minds have become lazy, or face a dearth of knowledge due to the simple education most of us have received where over the years schooling has slipped from hardcore education into liberal agendas and the like. We are brainwashed into gullible sheep, often taking what is hearsay as fact and easily believing almost anything presented to us.

The second life blog is a clear example of misunderstandings on a regular and consistent basis. So much so that the same people are ping-ponging their comments often in answer to a previous comment. This is actually good thing, but unnecessary had our verbal communication skills really be up to snuff.

Our verbal skills have slipped considerably and I'll be the first to admit it for myself and it's not just the simplified education we receive either. I would venture to suspect ever since the photograph and now motion-pictures have helped our language to whither.

Jack Linden followed-up on a previous post about "traffic" bot and bots in general, including landbots, camping bots (and camping chairs in general) and so on.

Among jack's comments was:

"Are there other uses for so called Camping Chairs other than for Traffic?"

I actually concur with this statement.

Of course this also brings-up the subject of "lucky chairs" where a prize or Linden Dollars is given to the 'lucky' individual whose name begins with the random letter that appears. I believe the original idea was to both help create traffic while promoting one's wares by gifting items.

The 'traffic' angle comes from the small horde that will stand around the chair waiting (and hoping) their letter will come up next. However, as prolific as this was back in 2006 and 2007, it has faded greatly over the last couple years due, in part to the massive influx of evil freebies across the grid and also because now there are huds that allow users to literally teleport all over the grid, landing directly at lucky chairs that already have their name letters up.