Our World - You Obey - Our Viewer Only

3rd party viewer policy update includes Linden Goonsquads™ brown bag resident registry

[note: Caligula Linden - who might not be a Linden at all - provides an updated version of the Lab's 3rd Party viewers blog post -- the Editrix]

by Caligula Linden

Linden Lab supports an open platform with opportunity for all who comply with our ever-more corporate worldview. The flexibility of the content creation tools and open viewer allow for great creativity and innovation, but that openness also enables others to do things we decide, on a whim, that we don't like. But we are game-gods and can have whims. Thus, we announce our latest whim about third party tools used with our platform.

In the blog post that Philip Rosedale issued just before he left us, “I'm Outta Here! This Ain't Burning Man”,  he hinted at stifling changes ahead. Meanwhile, the rest of our team addressed the responsibility Residents have to obey us, unconditionally, lest we ban them, their alts, and their furry sex-slaves from our game. 

When “Map Boy” Rosedale started Second Life, we used to respect the intellectual property rights of others inside or outside our fake world, but that has become inconvenient as Reaction Grid, Blue Mars, and Nickelodeon suck our revenue streams dry. 

Philip has his little island now and has moved on. We don't need visionaries. We need money. Here's our roadmap:

First we fired a warning shot at wooly-headed college faculty by telling them they could no longer use our trademarks, even after we extolled their brilliance on our own site. They rolled over and played dead, the losers, so we decided we needed a more visible scapegoat. We would have whacked Rezzable, whose content put us to shame, but they decided we cost too much, then pulled out their content to Open Sim with a smart tool we'd never have dreamed up during our nerf-ball fights at the office. 

Then we realized that we have an army of clever and vulnerable open-source coders developing really nice viewers we could not. Most of these viewers are noteworthy because they show us the epic failure of our own viewer, barely revised in its UI for several years.

Badda-Bing! 

We are currently working on revisions to our policies regarding the use and management of third party viewers created by these cannon-fodder. To support those policy revisions, we will be implementing the Linden Goonsquads™ to help us bully our Residents.

Resident Responsibilities

When our revised policy goes into effect, any viewer containing functionality that can be used to impede our efforts to manage Second Life, to make boobies jiggle, or to remove all clothing from avatars during IBM training sessions will not be tolerated. 

While we reserve the right to employ useful alternative viewers such as Buck-Nekkid Life™ for Linden office hours, so we can look at residents' “packages,” we cannot permit Residents to enjoy such liberties.

Residents who use third party viewers with the functionality described above to violate our Terms of Service or Community Standards, will be warned and then forced to live with Profoky Neva until the miscreants die, or have finished reading the corpus of Ayn Rand's works and come to complete agreement with Prok. 

Death will probably come first.

What will Linden Lab do?

Such terror will be only the last resort. We will create new guidelines and policies to limit freedom and enforce compliance first, since we know that our addicted base of Residents would prefer to comply and not lose their daily fix of masturbatory delights.  

We regret that academics, coders, artists, and other smart people will flee in droves, but we estimate that a mass adoption of Second Life by lowbrow wankers will bring in all the revenue we'll ever need. Then we'll get a big tower in downtown San Fran so tall that the computer-lords of both Cupertino and Redmond can see our bare butts, with the Linden Lab tattoo, when we moon them.

One of the tools we will deploy against our enemies will be a "viewer registry" that will allow us to issue bogus and unenforceable cease-and-desist orders by Linden Lab's team of shysters. Over the next few weeks we will be holding a series of 'brown bag' meetings designed as working groups to help us with these challenging issues. Those not agreeing with us will be brown-bagged and hauled away by the Linden Goonsquad™ to Prok's apartment.

We're sure we will get many great ideas, more probably than we are able to implement, and we will ignore them as we have always done. Please participate and make your voice heard! A brown bag and The Registry await you!

Comments

[LIttleLostLinden]

Yeah, it was pretty sad how those boobies were jiggling for only a week or so and BAAAAMMMOOOOO!!!!

Lindens realized they needed to do something quick because they are falling behind the times.

Pretty sleezy move Lindens!

We want the jigglies and the shadows! If you can't provide Lindens, at least let the others provide!

[GreenLantern Excelsior]

Spelled "Prokofy" wrong.

Forgot to use the term "jack-booted thugs."

Fail.

[At0m0 Beerbaum]

what

[MattyK]

...What.
I join Second Life for three months, and the second my buissness starts actually making a TRICKLE, this happens...

...I'm seriously considering going back to Fizzadar and the Garrys Mod community. _._;;

[LOL]

@ the Alphaville Herald Staff

The Term "Game-Gods" should only be used to describe a higher power that is the supernatural being conceived as the perfect and omnipotent and omniscient originator and ruler of the metaverse.

Since WE THE RESIDENTS have as many claim "Created Our World with Our Imagination" the term "Game Gods" does not really apply to Linden Lab. A more suitable term for the employees of Linden Lab could be "GAME TYRANT" best described as a person who has taken power by their own means as opposed to hereditary or power as outlined in a Terms of Service.

[Pappy Enoch]

"Spelled "Prokofy" wrong."

Yep. Correct one am "Proctology Never."

Speaking of...bend over, LittleLost Linden! Doctor Wiggle's Proctology in the Home Playset™ am rite fun for all the famberly! I just bought me one. I'll even use a fresh glove on you.

Lindens git it for free! Shucks, they been bendin' us over for years...now we kin return them favors.

[Edna]

(Sung to the tune of Monster Mash)

I was walking through the Lab late one night
When my eyes beheld an eerie sight
It was Prokofy – he was nude – as were several Lindens
And then when I looked down - I saw they were all riding Scion chickens
I thought to myself these must be delusions from my flu
But when I turned around – I saw that Phil was there too

It was the Lab
It was the Linden Lab
The Linden Lab
The place was looking pretty drab
The Linden Lab
But they say the break rooms’s pretty fab
At Linden Lab
It was the Linden Lab

[Faye Serendipity]

I appreciate all the hilarious, it can sometimes be difficult deciphering these blog posts. Honestly I think linden labs wishes it never went open source.

[Sinden Lucks]

To the above, that is most likely true. Linden is turning into to an ol hag, and most likely won't exist in 5 years. At least not with their continued attacks against open source and progressive work towards better clients. The last time they wrote about this they pretty much outlawed backing up your own content and continue to state their "interest" in your content. The boat will sink. And the real work is done elsewhere anyhow. This goes to show exactly how proprietary software companies whom continue to ensure the public of their continued efforts towards open source is genuine. It's not, never was, and Linden wouldn't know what it means if it hit them between the eyes.

[Faye Serendipity]

I think the main grid shutting down might be the worst and best thing to happen to SL. If it does happen soon Open Sim provides many an opportunity already to run their own sims for fun. It may not be profitable anymore but the creativity, development for fun and education (at least in the graphical sense) should long outlast the money grubber. And honestly I rather this happen. Never bought into the virtual world, our real world is decreasing in value well without any help it would be great to see the internet stay *free* as it can for a bit longer.

[Jumpman Lane]

i can barely get the MAIN LL viewers to work properly, i gotta buy a mini fridge to keep my pc in or a fish tank and dunk it in mineral oil to keep ,my overclocked cpu cool not to mention my gpu geeze, is 4 ghz too much to expect

[Zauber Exonar]

The SL client's performance is just inexecusable. I can play Sauerbraten at full resolution (1680x1050) with maximum settings on everything, and I get more than 200fps. Even in the laggiest levels of Sauerbraten, I get higher FPS in areas with little or now client-side lag!

On the other hand, Sauerbraten's has one of the most heavily-optimized engines of any OpenGL application.