What's Your Take? - SL's Dire Future

Mitch Wagner of Information Week recently called the financial future of Linden Lab "dire." What's your take?

Mitsubishi McGee Notecard Spammer	Ozma Sojourner Mermaid Fetishist	Davros Prototype Stripclub connoisseur
Why don't the Lindens quit fooling around and get themselves some jobs? Anshe Chung hires coders that are willing to work.	If Second Life goes bankrupt, I'll just go back to my first love, my husband.	There is only one answer to all of life's little problems: more catgirl.

:o

I Am Iron Man

IN THIS ISSUE: Kanomi sells out to a major Hollywood hype machine in a desperate attempt to earn more Lindens!

Marvel Comics and Sony Pictures and Stark Enterprises and whoever else is involved in shilling the new Iron Man movie is forcing Second Life residents to humiliate themselves in an Iron Man outfit by dangling a 125,000 Linden prize in front of their greedy, cash-starved campers' hearts.

Well Doctor Doom, it worked. Since that's like, $400 in real life, or enough money for a couple of trips to the gas station, I of coursed entered the contest.

Suck it up candycane, this is the future of the Metaverse. This is why visionary Linden Labs founder and CEO Philip "Philip Linden" Rosedale was replaced by an online vegetable salesman named "M Linden."

The M stands for Mephistopholes, an old Sanskrit word that means Marketing.

For the record, here is my cheesy contest entry. I consider it a postmodernist ironic commentary on the commercialization of the Iron Man ethos. I hope it wins and it gets printed up on ten thousand T-shirts to be sold to fat tourists at the airport, along with the I NY bumper stickers and Elliot Spitzer Commemorative condoms (special flavor: shame).






Iron Man was going to pose atop the virtual Twin Towers, but he couldn't fly up that high. I am just not Iron Man material, I guess.

CAST (IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE)

TONY STARK / IRON MAN - Philip "Philip Linden" Rosedale

DOCTOR ROBOTO - M Linden

REZBIAN - Kanomi Pikajuna

OFF STAGE VOICE - Bunnypet Hugsalot

TONY DANZA - Tony Danza

What's Your Take? - New CEO

Linden Labs has announced the hiring of its new CEO, an ad executive from organic.com who will go by the in-world name of "M Linden". What's your take?

Coolguy25 Bling enthusiast	Bunnypet Hugsalot Hair model	Darkchylde Daggerheart Primcock sculptor
I am cautiously optimistic. I ordered some asparagus from organic.com one time, and it arrived crisp and on time.	I have sent "M" a group invite to my Story of O themed bondage simulation.	So they hired somebody with no experience keeping complicated networks with tens of thousands of concurrent users up and running? Great, he'll fit right in.

:o

Bling is My Thing

We at Tiny Dancing are committed to bringing you interesting and thought provoking commentary about Second Life. To that end, we have been scouring the metaverse to find the most educational, informative and witty pundits to expand our editorial roster. With that in mind, please welcome our newest columnist, Coolguy25. We think you'll like what he has to say.

Bling is My Thing
by Coolguy25

Word up! Listen up peeps -- one of the best things about Second Life is that everybody gets a chance to shine. Whether you be making threads, spinning tunes, or coding up crunk rides, we all show off our creative lights. My special ability, and one that I believe I have really polished to the next level, is wearing Bling, or as we rockhounds call it, "Blinging."

Blinging is not as easy as it looks, believe me, even though it's one of those skills, like building or designing clothes, that looks simple. There is a low barrier to entry, to be sure, and so you see a lot of newbies doing it. All you have to do is just put on a diamond necklace with a lot of shine, right?

Damn, snizzer! It don't work like that! You can't just throw on a diamond-studded "777" neck snake on your first day out clubbing and tell people, "Yo, I'm blinging." Sorry Harley, but it ain't that easy. It takes years of dedicated hard work to Bling properly: to develop a repertoire, a wardrobe, and the confidence to wear 250 prims of glowing rocks that say "SUCKA 4 LIFE" to a Linden's Office Hours.

First things first, you have to have a solid collection of Bling, not just some random rock you grabbed out of a freebie dungeon. You have to know where to shop for Bling. You have to know how to shop for Bling. You have to know all the top Bling designers, from IceRock Samaritan to the GettoTiez Crew. You have to join the Bling groups like Shine On You Crazy Diamonds or the Ice Palace Posse (shout out to my boyz in the I.P.P! you boyz be HARD! Oh yeah you know what I talking bouts! HOWLZZZ!!) so you will be informed immediately when a new piece of custom Bling is available.

But quantity is not enough. Quality matters too. You have to hunt far and wide for the best Bling, like the ultra-rare Rainbow Rhinestone Playa Belt, which was released as limited edition piece by Djcashmoney back in April, 2007 before he quit the game. You don't see many of those on the Exchange anymore, my blinga! That's a rare, priceless collector's items in the Blingdom community. Or a Carbonite Creations FlexiTwister -- give one of those to a diehard shineboy and you will have a friend for life.

Another thing about Blinging is that you have to know the lingo. Half the time we don't even call it Bling -- it's "rock" and "ice" and "shine." Good Bling is "heavy" and it "rox." Bad, cheap, or prim-heavy Bling is dismissed as zirconian, or "zirc." Calling someone a "zirc jerk" is about the worst insult you can dish out in the Blinging community. Most newbs you see fronting with their freebie ropes are straight-up zircs, the fronters and the fakers! Those fools get played under the Sploder balls for the sucker rope-chuckers that they are!

So as you can see, Bling is my Thing, and I am excited to be able to talk to you about my Bling here every week.

Under my interests, you will, of course, find "Bling." I've also added it to the free text field underneath the Skills selection boxes, in case you should be interested in hiring me to wear some Bling for you at your next event.

Peace out.

Après moi, le déluge

The slogosphere is on strike! The Lindens have conceded too little, too late! The avatars want no more of your virtual cake, monsieur! In the wild spirit of these times, we at Tiny Dancing will strive to fill the void of Second Life-related entertainment with this epic story chronicling Philip 'Philip Linden' Rosedale's adventures in France.



The man in first class had sandy blond hair, a salesman's smile, and the rugged yet boyish good looks of a GQ model, provided the GQ model was modeling something that appealed to paunchy guys past middle age: like a watch or something; a De Beers diamond for the second wife.

But this man was no wristwatch model, forever doomed to smile with interest and pleasure at a metal band coiled around his own forearm. This was Philip "Philip Linden" Rosedale: technological visionary, founder of Linden Labs, and sperm-father of the metaverse. As the jetliner touched down at Charles De Gaulle international airport in France, he was busy keying a new 'To Do' list into his Blackberry: "1) Visit louver 2) buy Kanomi flowers 3) get a big win-win sale like the IBM one!!!"

This was going to be a good trip. He could feel it. He was meeting with the president of the largest consortium of winemakers in France, and he brought with him that same sense of euphoria, like back in the go-go days of the Internet Nineties. This could be big, RealPlayer big. Just think of it: Virtual vineyards in Second Life. He could change the world. Again.

The plane landed. Customs was a formality, a chauffeur gathered his bags, and he was whisked off in a limousine to his appointment. Along the way he placed a quick call to his cohorts back in the States: "Hey guys, I'm down in Paris. Yes, let's have that meeting about the rogue bloggers like we planned. It will impress the client, okily dokily? Talk to you later."

His call complete, during the long, slow ride afterwards, he noticed how Paris traffic was deeply inefficient. Musing at first, he then began to furiously fulminate ideas, comparing the traffic on Paris streets to packet traffic on the net.

Ideas came a dozen a minute, and he furiously made notes into his Blackberry: "Parisians should use virtual taxis to attend virtual jobs. Using multi-agent learning algorithms to route virtual traffic. Download a new client each day, before journey. Talk to Mitch ASAP!!! Maybe call him? Impressive!!"


Shortly thereafter he arrived to meet his host, the president of the winemakers. Monsieur Claude du Vin was a prototypical Frenchman: portly, with a sweaty Gallic nose and the florid countenance the hue of a fine Merlot. The man's breath wafted through the luxurious office like a supermodel's vagina, freshly tasted.

Philip 'Philip Linden' Rosedale stepped forward and squeezed the man's offered hand with a firm, steady American grip, the kind of grip you can invade a country with: "Howdy-doody, my friend. Let me begin by talking to you a little bit about 'virtual worlds', what they mean for the winery industry, and why I am so excited to talk to you about virtual wineries today." Without further ado, he began to unpack his laptop.

Monsieur du Vin waved his arms emphatically. "I am familiar with the 'virtual worlds.' My son, he likes the Warcraft, no? Or the buggy, European equivalent. Now I would like to see this virtual world as a business idea. And please hurry, I only work four hours a day, for three days a week, as is our custom here. So if you please, get right to the part that gives me money."

Philip 'Philip Linden' Rosedale gave another gracious smile "Yes, yes of course," he said, smoothly shifting gears deeper into his well-practiced pitch: "Second Life is the perfect evolution of the traditional working environment. 'Space' as we know it no longer needs to constrain the ambition of the corporation. Economics has become 'Metanomics.' Dollars and Euros are just electronic entries on a computer screens.

"We at Linden Labs are boldly pioneering this global move towards virtual business spaces, not only by developing these cutting edge technologies in concert with our user community, but also by employing these tools ourselves in our corporate culture everyday." As he spoke, he powered up his laptop.

"We hold all of our company meetings within the world of Second Life, allowing colleagues who are traveling or working remotely from home to fully participate in our planning sessions. Company wide notices about our parties, holidays, and not parking in my parking space, are all handled by the in-game 'Groups' and 'Announcement' functions.

"Each worker has a real life cubicle and a virtual one, with the complete freedom to customize and decorate their virtual cubicle with as much freedom as the real one. Even our customer service teams work strictly inside the world, carefully answering each customer service email in world, using an 'instant messaging to email' interface and monitoring our Forums one post at a time, using HTML on a prim."

Monsieur Le Vin interrupted: "But monsieur, isn't that inefficient? Can't your workers just walk down the hall to talk to their colleagues?"

Philip 'Philip Linden' Rosedale shook his head. "No no, not at all," he said. "Our coders are busy coding. Our concierges are busy concierging. Our communications team is busy communicating. It is completely inefficient for them to get out of their desks and walk down the hall and into a conference room that has to be booked in advance and may not have enough chairs, and so on, when they can simply rez as many chairs and conference rooms as needed in the virtual world."

"Allow me to demonstrate," Philip 'Philip Linden' Rosedale said, as his laptop finished booting up. "I am about to attend a crucial staff meeting with our marketing and public relations team. This will be a real meeting with real people in a virtual space, and I think you will be impressed. Once I log in, you will see how easy and effortless it all is." With a flourish, he fired up the Second Life client, typed his username and password, and waited to log in.

After several minutes, his host asked: "Why does it not let you log you in, monsieur?"

Phili 'Philip Linden' Rosedale pounded his rugged wrists on the keyboard: "Because it's a fucking piece of shit!!!"



Le Fin

All the news that's fit to link

Probably my favorite source of SL news right now is Massively's, even if it is just a cog in the brand-violating Joystiq machine. And Joystiq in turn is owned by America Online, that hoary old relic from days gone by when we had to use Morse code and copper wires to get together for vampire bondage roleplay.

And AOL itself is but one part of the vast Time Warner conglomerate, which makes Massively's star reporter Tateru Nino a card-carrying member of the mainstream media conspiracy that is directly responsible for everything from NAFTA to the disappearance of bees.

Anyway, it's not like Massively has a lot of competition. Reuters won't write about SL anymore unless a giant corporation issues a press release announcing that they are entering the world, or six months later issues another to announce that they are leaving.

The Second Life Herald has become a venue for excruciating poetry and naked catgirls, which is a step up for them perhaps, but nothing you can't get anywhere else on the Internet.

And as far as I can tell, SLCN is focused primarily on curiously enthusiastic videos of snail races, while the SLNN is pioneering new trails of blandness and non-controversy on its Opinion pages, when it's not busy draining all life and humor out of an actual funny piece of John Stewart comedy.

Then we have the AvaStar, which is published as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file, the most utterly useless inconvenient format imaginable from an online writer's point of view: unlinkable, unquotable, and unsearchable.

I appreciate their hard work in creating fonts and layouts, but I think they could be working a lot harder to make their content even more inaccessible, especially from within the world itself. Perhaps they could compress it, encrypt it, and hide it behind a firewall. Or perhaps dispense with the text altogether and focus on graphic design.

So Massively it is, despite their insistence on assigning me a World of Warcraft user icon and refusing to let me change it. Yeah, nice outfit you are wearing today, Tateru. Was it paid for with dirty money from Blizzard Entertainment!

Anyhoo, one of their features that I enjoy is the daily roundups of vital Second Life statistics. However -- and this is typical of the mainstream media, which is controlled by the New World Order foisted upon us by CIA handlers imposing the alien agenda -- these Massively roundups are heavily censored.

Fortunately we at Tiny Dancing are unafraid to shine our light into the darkness, for the truth shall set you free:


Second Life Daily News Uncensored
by Kanomi Pikajuna Apr 13th 2008
Filed under: Second Life, peoplehappy, peoplescared

Second Life daily news:

• 10,326 new Bots signed up bringing the total to 13,196,588 Bots signed up.
• A peak concurrency of 5,212 catgirls was achieved at 2:00PM, and a minimum concurrency of catgirls 3,154 at 1:25AM. Median concurrency for the day was 4,511 catgirls.
• The 'HOWL' gesture was played approximately 56,942 times. The 'HOWL' gesture server will be upgraded with the new Havoc 2.2 release to more efficiently serve up 'HOWL' gestures.
• Release candidate 1.20.13 was released. It will turn all of your buttons blue, randomly rearrange menu items, and crash like Icarus on a meth binge.
• Avatar Rocco1981 Glitterbuck won $200L in a "Best in Bling" contest at the Black Box Nightclub. He was AFK at the time.
• The Prokofy Neva Twitter Insult Index for the day was 47.78 (lower is better).
• Approximately 88 residents logged in to see sci-fi author David Brin type sentences about the future of technology into a chat window.
• Approximately 26,457 residents were welcomed to Bad Girls.
• Residents spent US $109,529 at an exchange rate of L$265 to US$1 on virtual fellatio.
• Phil Linden would like to see you in his office regarding Branding Violations. Uh oh!

Ask a Second Life Exotic Dancer

Dear Second Life Exotic Dancer,

Ever since the new client update, I've been having a lot of graphical problems. Any avatar that's more than a few meters away look all gray and pixilated. Whenever I look at something that is white or light in color it hurts my eyes, like looking into a spotlight. And finally if I turn around too fast I crash. Help! What do I do!

--Bunnypet Hugsalot

Kanomi spins and smiles, a naughty look on her face as she accepts the tip from the beautiful anthropomorphic (sp?) bunny woman in the pink dress. "Thank you so much sweetie," she smiles, slipping the Lindens inside the back of her satin panties and flashing just a bit of bare bottom. "That is so sweet!"


Dear Second Life Exotic Dancer,

Last month I just bought a new island I called 'Warzone Cyberland' as an investment I just paid $1400 for this land! Now the Lindens have lowered the price of a new island to $1000 they have robbed yes robbed me of $400! Godammnit I work as a bag handler $400 is a lot of money to me this island cost a lot of money how can I get my godammn $400 back!!!

-- Cyberguy43 Baskerville

Kanomi turns towards the handsome man in the power armor and with a shy yet coy giggle, unlaces her top. Playfully she holds the satin bodice against her firm, young breasts before dancing over to give him a kiss on the top of his helmet. "Thank you sweetie, that is so sweet!"


Dear Second Life Exotic Dancer,

I am married in real life to a really nice guy and we are really happy and everything. But I also have a boyfriend in Second Life and we have a really intense relationship and everything except he's really married too. We're both thinking about really calling each other or maybe more outside of the world but afraid of 'crossing that line' between SL and IRL. What should we do?

-- Cookiecat Sandcastle

Kanomi slips off the stage and up next to the lovely mistress with the raven dark hair and the latex bodysuit. "Oooh baby, thank you for the generous tip," she smiles, dancing so slowly and so close to the mistress her body grazes against the curves of the bodysuit and her secret surprise swells up excitedly inside her panties as she brushes against the woman's toned, lean body... "That's so sweet!"


Kanomi Pikajuna is a syndicated columnist whose weekly advice column, "Ask A Second Life Exotic Dancer," appears in more than 250 illegal blog content theft feeds worldwide.

So Why Do We Bother?

A month ago I started blogging about Second Life, thinking, "This will be fun. I will post pictures of myself and my friends and write about parties, clubs, and stores."

Instead, I have become a war correspondent reporting from a disaster area, knee deep in the flood plains as the pixilated bodies drift by.

In this one short month, the CEO quit, new copyright guidelines have panicked grassroots supporters, and the infamous Wagnerian Grid has been about as stable as pill-poppin' Hollywood starlet.

Next the U.S. Congress turned its all-seeing eye upon the world and declared it a likely recruiting ground for terrorists.

Comedy Central followed them in, calling Second Life "the online game for people who don't have a first one" and depicting us as naked anthropomorphic dolphins.

The outside world regards us with horror, disdain or indifference; ninety percent of those who try Second Life give up in the first week; and the company itself seems hell-bent on alienating players and destroying the art of ballet.

Even the players in other virtual worlds -- who will eagerly spend hundreds of hours linearly progressing through a pre-packaged pixilated product in order to earn the same flapping hippogriff owned by every other Level 50 Nerd -- consider us freaks squatting in a cubist garbage dump beneath a perpetual rain of plastic penises.

In short, blogging about Second Life is like being a medieval monk chronicling the Dark Ages:

4-6-2008: This day the servers were raided and pillaged, and there was much lamenting.
4-7-2008: Woe unto the dancers! For King Linden hath banished prostitution.
4-8-2008: On this day, five thousand heretics were banned for violating the Brand.

So why do we even bother? This is where I was going to write something amusing and uplifting, but I confess I haven't come up with a thing to say.

On the other hand maybe I figured out why there are so many subbies in SL -- only the masochists remain.

:)

The Chair Looks Nice

"Um, the chair looks nice -- how do I sit?"


Like a catchy hook to a good novel, that question kicked off an entertaining, hour-long discussion at this weekend's Sunday Salon. Featured this week was Robert J. Sawyer, a futurist, science fiction writer, and a man with a PC incapable of entering the metaverse:

"Forgive my lousy typing; I'm using my wife's computer with an unfamiliar, ergonomic keyboard."

Fortunately for Robert, the crowd was warm and accommodating, with one eager young man rushing onto the stage to demonstrate that metaversal chairs are quite ergonomic and can, in fact, be sat upon, metaphorically at least.

After a moment Sawyer did manage this vital act, thus ensuring himself protection from being sent into orbit in a manner not of his choosing. This preludatory posterior planting was greeted with a polite smattering of applause.

Sawyer's in-world name "SF Writer" matches that of his website, www.sfwriter.com -- hey, he's got that branding thing down! -- and he was there primarily to talk about his Hugo Award-nominated book, Rollback.

Much to my surprise, Rollback is not a story about a Linden Labs server upgrade gone horribly awry, but has something to do with space aliens and the Canadian healthcare system. I guess there's no medical insurance on Zeta Reticuli, so they're all coming to earth for life-extending anal probings.

The discussion kicked off with Sawyer's take on the Extropian movement. Now since most of my regular readers are probably not familiar with the fascinating nuances of transhumanist and futurist discourse but are here instead for red hot tgirl porn, I will spare you the definitions and direct you to this Gilbert and Sullivan version of Kurzweilism instead.

The gist of Sawyer's plaint seems to be that, you know, wishing like a child upon a star doesn't make it so:

[2008/04/06 12:28] Sophrosyne Stenvaag: Rob, you speak of the coming decades as "the age of miracle and wonder" - yet seem to disagree with the notion of a technological singularity - can you nuance your views of what's ahead for us?
[2008/04/06 12:28] SF Writer: Yeah, I was on a panel about that with Vernor Vinge at a conference in Florida last month. See, I like Ray Kurzweil and all, but there's a fair bit of arm-waving. Moore's law isn't coming to an end, he says, because, well somehow we'll find a way around the limitations. And so on... that's like saying we've managed to go faster and faster every year so the speed of light can't be a barrier.

Yes! Thank you!

Next came a forty-five minute digression into how many transistors can fit on the head of a pin, accompanied by optimistically blithe statements about releasing Von Neumann nanobots into the atmosphere to create a self-replicating, sentient cloud computer that will solve the energy crisis, end world hunger, and reverse the heat death of the universe -- all laudable goals, to be sure, but just not going to happen when the fraudulent kleptocracies that rule this planet with blood and fear will turn any Wintermute baked up in their Strangelovian bunkers into yet another instrument of Neorwellian oppression upon which to stomp upon faces, transhuman or otherwise, forever.

Such dreariness aside, it wasn't until the close of the lecture that things were put back on track by a nimble-fingered nympho with a heart of gold:

[2008/04/06 13:35] Kanomi Pikajuna: Robert, as a futurist you are a connoisseur of technology and savvy to upcoming trends. So what do you think I should be -- blonde, brunette or redhead?
[2008/04/06 13:35] SF Writer: "Um, the hair looks nice -- how do I sit?"

Speaking of Rollbacks and leather boots, I was at another meeting today where a Linden mentioned that this weekend's server outages were so bad that, "Even Phil was up at nasty hours trying to straighten things out with the ISPs"!

Phight the good phight, Phil! just like last time, we's got pictors. Thanks to Soph for another wonderful Salon, and be sure to visit her site where the official transcript will magically appear. See you at the next one -- and David Brin, if you're reading this: I will give you 1,000 Lindens if you show up with Prim Hair!

POSTSCRIPT: Nobody told me David Brin was bald! :o






=]

Baby, We Can Work Things Out

"We are experiencing various inworld issues at this time, such as region down, logins failure, transactions, teleporting, timeouts on the webpage etc.

"We are aware of this problem and are working to resolve this as quickly as possible. Please refrain from any transactions at this time, as possible."


Baby, I know we can work things out. I know you can get a little stressed on the weekend. There's a lot of pressure on you. Everyone wants a piece of you. You get a little slow, a little angry.

But sugarchips, don't start throwing my inventory around. Come on honeyboard, treat me right. Don't drop me off in a place and refuse to come teleport me out.

We all got issues sweet-sockets. We can work these things out. Baby-byte, I was just looking at that other site, I swear. Just looking baby. Cutie-port, I could never go over "there." You know that, right?

Come on honey-core, don't be like that. You know you're my loving login, my sugar ping. There's nobody but you, you're my sweet Second thang.


Oh baby, did you have to go and change clients on me?

Poseballroom Dancing

The one-month anniversary of Tiny Dancing is crashing down towards us like a friend doing the teleport tapdance on your head.

That's quite a long time; in Second Life terms, probably something like forty-five years worth of posts!

Equally impressive, Tiny Dancing reached a new traffic milestone recently: five visitors. Look out Official Second Life blog! I am in your domains, stealing your traffics.







In fact, things are going so well here, I was just solicited by Doubleday for inclusion in their new coffee table book of blog posts. I will be on page 324, right in between Gothgirl17's update about cutting:

Oh god. The mall is soooo slow today. I am so sick of this shit. If I have to work one more shift at Hot Topic I am going to kill myself.

and the teary-eyed confessions of a comment spam-bot:

Oh god. This server is sooo slow today. I am so sick of this spamming shit. If I have to figure out one more way to type V1agr4 I am going to kill myself.

Doubleday asked me for one succinct post that typifies my "typical posting style, subject matter, and tone of voice":

Oh god. Second Life is soooo slow today. I am so sick of this lagging shit. If I have to download one more release candidate, I am going to kill myself.

So I am quite pleased with my blog.

After all, it's quite an accomplishment for someone whose only talent in Second Life is being naked.


:o