tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21946045.post2292160592725958375..comments2022-11-03T11:39:13.662-05:00Comments on Andromeda Media Group: Stockholm SyndromeWill Burnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369186130470176679noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21946045.post-4380406696017690172013-12-04T11:40:05.669-05:002013-12-04T11:40:05.669-05:00I think the TPV issue is similar to content create...I think the TPV issue is similar to content created for SL. Linden Lab sees TPV's as just more content created at no expense to them. Linden Lab has been, for a long time, all about getting other people to do their work for free, then taking all the credit for it.Neuralhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01117992949557559293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21946045.post-39882690138275044032013-11-25T04:29:26.979-05:002013-11-25T04:29:26.979-05:00Reina - you've pretty much hit the nail on the...Reina - you've pretty much hit the nail on the head. Just about every person who has told me "Liquid Mesh" is better has been of that group who have Stockholm Syndrome with Linden Lab - no matter what happens, they praise them and act as the poster child. There's no reason Mesh Deformer couldn't have included support for the extra rigging points/bones and had a default "Automatic" mode to cover all the clothes not rigged specially (which is a few years worth of content now).<br /><br />If the Mesh Deformer did not detect the rigging for the extra bones in the garments, it could then default to an "Automatic" mode instead of the Liquid Mesh mode. There was no reason to waste a year of time and other people's money to make a statement of politics.<br /><br />In that statement of politics, the word "backwards compatible" went right out the door in favor of "quick and dirty".Will Burnshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369186130470176679noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21946045.post-75599638306096732312013-11-25T04:14:57.052-05:002013-11-25T04:14:57.052-05:00Where it gets interesting is that after dictating ...Where it gets interesting is that after dictating the dismantling of Emerald viewer and then dictating who is allowed on the team for Phoenix afterward, people like Skills Hax were on that Blacklist as a condition for Linden Lab giving them their blessing and allowing it (Phoenix). What's to gain there? Their biggest rival in viewers was all but dismantled, major players in that team blacklisted/banned, and Linden Lab was now dictating to Phoenix team what they can and cannot do - something Linden Lab wasn't able to do prior to Emerald. So now, Linden Lab has the TPVs tightly controlled to make certain that a third party viewer doesn't overstep what Linden Lab is doing or introduce functionality that Linden Lab doesn't have themselves - and they are making sure that TPVs are playing at a big disadvantage to the official viewer.<br /><br />After all, Linden Lab doesn't have to maintain two viewers (Second Life and OpenSim), and their coders are being paid for the effort on the official viewer. Whereas TPVs are coding for free, and double the effort to keep up with Second Life and OpenSim separately. And in the instances where the community raises the money to pay a coder to introduce new features or fix issues, the circumstances are now in favor of Linden Lab to send the message "You're wasting your time and money, and we're going to continue wasting your time and money if you try."<br /><br />So there's the take-away, and who benefits. It's a game of politics and control now, and Linden Lab is at the top of that hierarchy by force and deliberate manipulation. After all, who would have thought after dictating that certain members of the Emerald Team couldn't be involved with Phoenix (to make damned sure Emerald was dead and buried and Phoenix was immediately on a tight leash) that Linden Lab would have had Skills Hax cleared to contribute code to the official viewer without making a public statement about it, and while also acting like this wasn't a big deal when it was brought up?<br /><br />They jumped on the bandwagon to dismantle, block and punish the team responsible for Emerald - dictating a laundry list of conditions for Phoenix Viewer to exist, and after they decimated the biggest TPV competition while making sure the new version (Phoenix) was essentially under tight reign from Linden Lab, they went ahead and had one of the same people they forbid from contributing to Phoenix team start quietly contributing to their official viewer.<br /><br />So when we ask "Cui bono?" (Who benefits?) the answer is ultimately Linden Lab on all accounts, at the express and deliberate expense of the community on the whole.<br /><br />There really is only one word that can describe Linden Lab at this point - and it's the combination of Dastardly and Bastards. Bastardly.<br />Will Burnshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369186130470176679noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21946045.post-33466249598935827432013-11-25T04:14:25.600-05:002013-11-25T04:14:25.600-05:00Therein again is the issue - Linden Lab (having mo...Therein again is the issue - Linden Lab (having more money than God) could have easily done that a year ago and worked tightly with that team as a collaborative effort. So Liquid Mesh comes along, in much the same manner as Sculptie came along in the void of Linden Lab not having Mesh - as a make-shift interim solution to sort-of get the same results in the meantime while clothing designers waited for something better. Just like Sculptie, it was a quick and dirty hack of existing things used in a manner not originally meant to be used in that way, and even in the Notecard for Redgrave, they made this clear that it may or may not be broken going forward because they were using the rigging in a way that wasn't normal.<br /><br />This was exactly the "out" that Linden Lab was waiting for, and so they jumped on it, throwing their support behind it and dropping the fractional shred of fake support they were giving the independent Mesh Deformer project. By doing it that way, they didn't have to take the stigma of arbitrarily snubbing the Mesh deformer team and Qarl, but now could say "But Liquid Mesh is a better option" so their decision seemed totally legit.<br /><br />But it wasn't a legit decision, because at no point in the entire year or more than Mesh Deformer was ongoing did Linden Lab say that adding a few more bones and rigging points would have solved it satisfactorily, and even if they did, nobody at all got together (most importantly LL) to figure that out with the existing project and team who was already trying to solve the clothing issue.<br /><br />And this all ties back into the prior post (Emerald City Blues) in that Emerald was the most popular viewer for Second Life and it posed a very real threat to Linden Lab and their official viewer, much in the same way Phoenix/Firestorm posed a threat (and still does). That's why "Shared Experience" came about - because the TPVs had this nifty little feature where you could tell what viewer each person was using because of the tag over their head. It was blatantly clear from that tag that the official viewer was the equivalent to Internet Explorer and it made Linden Lab look bad - so they enforced that new "Shared Experience" and are doing their best to homogenize all the TPVs to fall into step with Linden Lab at the helm.Will Burnshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369186130470176679noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21946045.post-53247825558885289172013-11-25T04:13:52.579-05:002013-11-25T04:13:52.579-05:00I would suspect this goes back to all of the chang...I would suspect this goes back to all of the changes made to protocol after Emerald viewer. Part of that was the Lab's official viewer wasn't the defacto and that 3rd party viewers were ultimately more popular than their own. During that time, TPVs were implementing things that weren't part of the "shared experience" but still innovative nonetheless. <br /><br />So the premise being that the community was essentially going over Linden Lab's head for a lot of things and then not necessarily including Linden Lab in the advancement or that Linden Lab didn't want to include those things on their own. So the changes made to "shared experience" and the TPV rules were rewritten to grossly favor Linden Lab and force TPVs who made viewers for Second Life to get permission from and work with Linden Lab - a major shift in power out of the hands of the community and into the control of Linden Lab for all things dealing with Second Life. if you wanted to make a TPV, you had to play ball with Linden Lab or else. We saw this with the Emerald viewer situation where Linden Lab was making a lot of demands on Phoenix team for who can and cannot stick around to contribute code to their team and then later the total overhaul in protocol for them to adhere to in order to remain TPVs in Second Life.<br /><br />Mesh deformer, was one of those "loose ends" in how the community did things before emerald, where the community (whether it was 114 people or not) got together and independently raised the money to have Qarl code a solution to the issue of mesh clothing not fitting and then submit it to the repository for implementation into TPVs and of course Linden Lab could also use it. But that was the problem... in that it wasn't "sanctioned" by Linden Lab and they were now in a situation where they didn't like not being in control - especially when an ex-Linden (one whom they aren't on good terms with) was hired to do the job that they didn't want to do. But they couldn't just come right out and say that, so essentially what they did was drag their feet for a year and not really give that team (or Qarl) any indication as to what such a solution needed to adhere to, and if it didn't adhere to their future plans, Linden Lab could have easily ponied up the money to pay Qarl as an independent contractor to code it in a way that would have been favorable to the total situation.<br /><br />Will Burnshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369186130470176679noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21946045.post-79035963090652814552013-11-24T18:11:03.865-05:002013-11-24T18:11:03.865-05:00Cui bono?Cui bono?Yoshiko Fazukuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04343191796288070151noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21946045.post-44938534806972633392013-11-22T21:27:59.296-05:002013-11-22T21:27:59.296-05:00Is it possible that the upload fees for mesh items...Is it possible that the upload fees for mesh items are so lucrative that LL would want to deliberately adopt an inferior solution in favor of one that would force people to upload everything a second time allowing them to get the fees again?<br /><br />That's probably silly and a bit on the conspiracy theory side of things but I can't say I know enough about this liquid mesh to be able to make an informed opinion about whether or not it is or is not inferior to the deformer. But I do know the deformer is already here and apparently working so I don't see why adopting that would be a problem rather than messing up every mesh clothing item already on the grid. <br /><br />I did check the SLU forum after reading this and the few people making arguments that the liquid mesh is superior to the deformer are people who seem incapable of being critical of LL so I'm currently inclined to be distrustful of this move. LL hasn't done anything of late to deserve the benefit of the doubt on this.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02046954472352935970noreply@blogger.com