Reader Questions & Comments I Wish I Put to Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg

Last Friday I had a long, fascinating, occasionally testy talk with Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg, and plan on posting the video later this week. I asked variations of some questions suggested by readers, but here's some other solids queries I wasn't able to put to him that still deserve an audience:

It's very quiet about the possibility to choose a second name for the "Resident" avatars. Is that cancelled - or can we hope to see it this year?

Posted by: Yadleen (Clara Mayef)

Why can't we have a modernized prim system that allows for more constructive modelling and voxel terrain editing? IOW, make Second life on par with many of the dozens of games and systems that it is competing with for attention?

In the older days, people would stand around and watch other people build things. They would have conversations and learn to build together. With the arrival of sex toys and mesh, that is all basically gone.

It was the community that made Second Life to enthralling. Now it's just a cesspool of deviant behaviour.

Posted by: Todd Adams

Several more, about the mainland, Premium accounts, and an intriguing idea to certify content creators:

Ask Uncle Ebbe, after 6 years of talk are they ever going to upgrade the terrain textures on the mainlands!?..I bet they could find resident volunteers to offer the textures and work at no cost.

[And w]ill we ever be able to gift premium membership to friends? also why not add an optional cool badge to premium members profiles for those who want to show their love.

Any new profile features coming?

Posted by: *etter then *zra

It is possible to have more protection for those who create content on the Second Life platform, in addition to the "DMCA" document, a quick, instantaneous alternative method, Example: Photo proof of who commits a violation, name of an account that commits an infringement, and sending, that only a creator content have the advantage of using?

Posted by: angelwh M. 

I'll forward these to the Linden Lab PR team and hopefully have some answers by the time my full interview with Altberg is up!

Comments

[Amanda]

My lay person understand is that LL has to use the DMCA process or they could lose their safe harbor and become liable for content theft. Maybe someone out there who handles this kind of thing professionally can tell us more.

[Mike Danielsen]

The texture thrashing problem has been with us for 16 years and 3rd party viewers have allowed more graphics memory than the 512M that the SL viewer has been stuck at since the beginning. My graphics card supports 11G of graphics memory but the SL viewer still holds me back to this ancient limit. Textures go crazy blurring and unblurring all the time even though I have a high end computer. Can anyone fix this problem. It has been talked about for years. And I am beginning to think that LL does not have any one capable of fixing it

[seph]

The answer to most questions about technical improvement to Second Life, especially those that involve user created content and how it's rendered, is usually a no or otherwise resistance from Linden Lab on grounds of technical debt and not wanting to break old content.

It's too late to ask, but a good question to Linden Lab would be, at what point are the possibilities of new, better looking, better functioning, and more attractive to modern audience content worth more than stuff in our inventory from 2012 or before?

The internet is used to having old features deprecated and then taken away to usher in the new. Why is Linden Lab so religious about content from 2006 still working today when often it means falling even more behind your peers in tech?

Because of this devotion to not breaking olds things, Second Life will never again be apart of GDC or other trade shows that're about evolving with and pioneering new tech in rendering and simulated experiences. Linden Lab would probably be ashamed showing off Animesh and how it works to a room full of creatives at whatever gathering you met with Ebbe at, and the reason for that shame is Linden Lab religiously embracing technical debt and backwards compatibility to stuff creators are desperately hacking around and trying to get rid of.

The excitement from Linden Lab announcing a new rendering engine for texture artists, custom uploadable skeletons/rigs for animators, a modern well-known scripting language for programmers, etc., would far outweigh whatever old things that need to go.

Yes, you'll be destroying old things in people's inventory that they paid for a really long time ago, but again why should Second Life be the hold out on the internet in not breaking old things? There's apps I've paid hundreds for in 2008 that don't work anymore, dozens of video games 10 years ago that have all sorts of issues that I don't expect to work anymore due to their age. Old stuff working isn't a religion outside of Linden Lab, so why should it be within?

There'd be backlash to breaking old content to enable new kinds of content, but that backlash is defeated by making what's gained way better than what's lost.

[Gordon]

Last Friday I had a long, fascinating, occasionally testy talk with Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg, and plan on posting the video later this week.

What happened? Where is the video?

[Wagner James Au]

Just posted it!

[Gordon]

Thanks!

[Horea]

I have never heard about this before but it sounds interesting.
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