1  ...  23  24  25  26  27  28  ...  47  |   Order by default

Jul 19, 2001, 2:10am

Alrighty, folks. I'll give this one more day and then, tomorrow night (Thursday)
it'll get shipped out to every AWCI staffer on record. The only thing that could stop
this now is an email from Facter saying "Ok, they read your message at the meeting
and want to work something out." :P

And for the record, we've got 32 signatures so far! Obviously not 500, but it's
definitely a start.

[View Quote] <snip>

--
Goober King
A day of reckoning is at hand...
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Jul 19, 2001, 3:16am

And while I'm thinking about it...

For those of you who may be a little reluctant to sign this letter because you
disagree with "certain parts", then please, let me know what parts you think should
be changed, and I'll see what I can do. After all, this should be something that all
can agree on. Of the people, by the people, not just my spew. :P (Just don't forget
to sign it after the change has been confirmed!)

And I'm assuming that those of you who've already signed it are perfectly ok with how
it is now...

[View Quote] --
Goober King
Should be representative of the community view...
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Jul 20, 2001, 1:09am

Last call, ladies and gentlemen! In one hour, this letter is getting shipped up north
to Massachusetts, so any of you who've been waffling this whole time better sign now!
This train is leaving the station at the stroke of midnight EST!

ALL ABOARD!

P.S. We're up to 36!

[View Quote] --
Goober King
"This is Mr. Conductor talking... I know what I'm talking about!"
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Jul 20, 2001, 2:05am

*bong*

And with 38 total signatures, this letter's out the door! Now to sit back, and await
the response...

[View Quote] <snip>

--
Goober King
Assuming there is one...
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Jul 20, 2001, 12:01pm

Do you even know how many employees AWC has, JBELL? Well, I'll tell you: 15. 15 total
employees, and that's including the people like HamFon and others who work remotely
instead of at the HQ in Newburyport. AWC isn't "huge" by any stretch of the
imagination and the idea that they can't even be bothered to implement *one* (1) idea
or answer *one* (1) concern of the AW citizens, people who have been with them for
*years*, is LUDICROUS! Hell, the Dudes In Charge aren't even listening to the few
employees they *do* have! *That* is what I, and everyone else who signed the letter I
might add, have a problem with.

See, this isn't about ME. This isn't about what *I* want them to implement or change.
This is about what EVERYONE wants to see done. There are things that all sorts of
people have been complaining about for YEARS that AWC has just completely ignored.
They didn't even give us the decency to explain why certain things can't be done!
You'd think they could at least do that, but nooooo!

And as for comparing AWC to "other" huge companies, (which is pretty much apples and
oranges) what about Netscape? What about ezBoard, or Valve, or even Napster? All of
these companies, which are 10 times bigger than AWC, somehow managed to still be able
to listen to their customers (yes, Napster *does* listen to it's customers) and
implement their ideas and concerns. Maybe not *all* of their concerns, but at least
some were implemented, and if they couldn't be, they were told why. Is that too much
to ask?!

[View Quote] --
Goober King
Wake up and smell the coffee.rwx!
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Jul 20, 2001, 12:06pm

We're not asking them to drop everything they are doing and implement every single
little idea that we come up with. All we're asking is that they consider SOME of our
ideas and concerns. They haven't even bothered to truly consider ANY of the ideas
that ANY of us have brought to them, either through the Wishlist NG, through Facter's
suggestion box, or through email directly. If they were to suddenly turn around and
even implement ONE idea that the community wanted to see, then I, for one, would be
happy and you'd never hear from me again. Is that so hard to grasp?!

And as for "magnitude", check my post above.

[View Quote] --
Goober King
Just because they're called "Corp" doesn't mean their a big one.
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Jul 19, 2001, 12:38am

I agree, kellee. We need to stop the bashing and condemnation, and focus on the
future. The problem is, we need to be *listened* to in order for that to happen, and
so far, it hasn't happened. Even if we were to all turn around and congratulate AWCI
on all of the things it did right, do you think they'd listen to us then? That's what
my letter was all about. It wasn't about condemning AWCI, it was merely pointing out
where they went wrong, and how, by listening to their valued customers once in a blue
moon, they can start to make things right again.

[View Quote] --
Goober King
We must be heard before we can present ideas!
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Jul 19, 2001, 2:12am

Well, I personally, am not doing any petition to lower world costs, but I'd like to
think that if my little letter-writing campaign is successful, it might make it
easier for those who want to see change like lower world prices. Better go back and
read my [long!] post. :)

[View Quote] --
Goober King
Communication is key!
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Jul 19, 2001, 6:03pm

Don't worry about off-topic posts, Fac. Eep's the only who ever cares that much about
them anyway. If someone posts something off-topic, then people can tell them where
they need to go, and that'll (hopefully) be the end of it.

And it's not as if the off-topic posts are taking up space, so you don't really
*need* to delete them. And as for determining what's "off-topic" it spells it out
right there in the Charter:

"Submissions unrelated to the AW Community shall be rejected. Commercial
advertisements unrelated to AW shall be rejected; all personal ads shall be rejected.
Submissions containing ethnic slurs, or submissions intended to hurt any given race,
religion, gender, or sexual orientation, shall be rejected. Personal attacks on
individual posters will also be rejected. Attacks on AWCOM, its employees,
contractors or partners will be rejected."

Of course, that makes it sound like the off-topic posts would never get into the
newsgroups in the first place. So if you really want to follow the Charter to the
letter, then you probably should remove off-topic posts, but personally, I'd rather
you not. In fact, I think the Charter's in serious need of a rewrite...

[View Quote] --
Goober King
They may be off-topic, but that doesn't make them any less valid...
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Jul 20, 2001, 12:18am

Perhaps we should make that part of the Charter rewrite. Hell, if Facter's too busy,
I'd be perfectly willing to write up a draft for him that could then be modified and
ratified by all NG participants. *WE* can set our own rules, and then AWCI (through
Facter) can enforce them. :)

[View Quote] --
Goober King
Or someone else can do it, no biggie...
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Jul 20, 2001, 12:13pm

Now you know how we feel, J-Boy. Our recommendations have gone unnoticed for YEARS,
and we are very much angered that we've been ignored. Starting to see where we're
coming from now?

[View Quote] --
Goober King
He's usually slow to anger...
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Jul 24, 2001, 7:39pm

Then perhaps it would surprise you to learn that at one point in their storied
history, citizenship purchases made up the *majority* of their income! So why weren't
they listening to us then?! Because they never cared in the first place.

As for WildAW's "death", that wasn't entirely the community's fault. You can't just
build a world, leave it as is, and expect a community to spring to life around it.
There has to be proof that the world is *alive*, meaning things are changing and
going on all the time. It's exactly the same reason why communities in COFMeta,
Atlantis, and a ton of other worlds dried up. Because nothing was ever changing, and
eventually, the novelty wore off. If you want to make worlds active, you have to
*keep* them active.

[View Quote] --
Goober King
He's been gone for four days, so sue :P
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Jul 25, 2001, 10:18am

"seemed to"... Exactly what kind of input are we talking about here? Feature requests
at Tech Talk don't count, since Roland doesn't make those decisions anyway. :P

[View Quote] --
Goober King
They listen to one, but they don't listen to many...
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Jul 26, 2001, 12:30am

Heh, well since I don't see it on the Worlds list yet, I'll assume it's nothing more
than a pipe dream for now. In fact, we can use it as a test... if AWDebate ever
opens, then that'll prove (to me, at least) that they're listening to us in some way,
shape, or form. Until then, I shall bitch! :)

[View Quote] --
Goober King
This is a test... It's only a test! Give it a rest!
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Jul 20, 2001, 12:19pm

I don't see how you could require someone to post something intelligent. In your
view, that's about as lame as requiring newbies to know enough to not post in HTML.
Some people just aren't smart enough to be able to do anything besides flaming. Those
people are subsequently beaten to death here in the NG until they either shape up, or
leave. It's been a pretty effective tool, for the most part...

[View Quote] --
Goober King
Besides, intelligence is relative...
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Jul 24, 2001, 7:50pm

Note the distinction: "Facter" is listening to us, not "AWC". Facter is indeed
listening to our every word, and ever agrees with us on a lot of things. But what
good is all that if Facter himself is subsequently ignored by his superiors? *This*
is the problem we're faced with. We need to rework the brand of thinking at AWC from
the top down.

[View Quote] --
Goober King
Don't believe me? Ask Roland :P
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Jul 25, 2001, 1:44am

Umm... I'll pretend that made sense and some how had relevance to the thread...

And yes, this is a pointless flame ;P

[View Quote] --
Goober King
Because he CAN!
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Jul 25, 2001, 10:10am

Unfortunately, I doubt even that would have much effect. After all, for all the
regulars who stop paying for their citzenships, there's plenty of Juno users or some
other suckers to take their place. As far as AWC is concerned, we're expendable.

[View Quote] --
Goober King
You won't see him expending any time soon...
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Jul 20, 2001, 5:07pm

Sinew's not asking for Eep to add them to the OP, but to make them on his site so
sinew can use them in the build, that's all.

And this is more of a personal email thing, not a newsgroup thing... :P

[View Quote] --
Goober King
This *does* violate the current charter, y'know...
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Jul 25, 2001, 1:50am

Don't make me have to smack both of you... IE is atrocious because it breeds poor web
design skills and has no concept of standards whatsoever, whereas Netscape actually
*forces* you to think about what you're doing and to do it right the first time. Once
they get all the minor bugs out of NS6, Netscape will proceed to flatten IEvil and
web developers will scream bloody murder once IE6 comes out, I guarantee you that.

[View Quote] --
Goober King
And people wonder why most websites suck :P
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Jul 26, 2001, 12:24am

If you've been following the Mozilla builds, then Netscape 6.1 will fix most, if not
all of the bugs that are currently in NS6.0, plus add some more features. You'd
better believe that once 6.1 is out, I'm switching to that! :D

[View Quote] --
Goober King
Just one thing to say: Woo Netscape!
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Jul 24, 2001, 8:23pm

Hrm... I leave for a few days, and suddenly I'm a leader? *boggle*

Hey! Maybe if I leave for a couple weeks I'll come back and find out I'm CEO of AW!
Then my conquest of AW shall be complete! Mwahahahahaha! ;)

[View Quote] --
Goober King
Ego says "Thanks, I needed that!"
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Jul 25, 2001, 1:42am

heh well, if the name is any indication, then God help us all! :)

[View Quote] --
Goober King
Proof that Goobers ARE as dumb as they look.
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Jul 27, 2001, 2:47pm

Let me get this straight... If someone starts talking about you, it's ok to start
screaming and swearing at them, right? Well then, what did Eep say about you to get
you so worked up and jumping up and down at him? Last I checked, it was *you* who
started cussing up a storm over his comments about the world.

And just a little hint: The whole advantage of conversing in a newsgroup is that you
actually have time to think about what you type and check to make sure you got it all
right. Not doing so makes you either look lazy or look like an idiot. And swearing
unnecessarily every other sentence just makes you look like a 12 yr old. :P

[View Quote] --
Goober King
As if we *need* more of them in here...
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Aug 1, 2001, 7:21pm

Yeesh! What did you put in the ol' cereal this morning?! :P

[View Quote] --
Goober King
Motions to the men in the big white coats...
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Jul 27, 2001, 10:05pm

It took them a week to do, but AWC has finally responded to our "To Whom It May
Concern" letter. One response is from Flagg, and the other is from Mr. Rick Noll
himself. Here they are, in their entirety. Feel free to respond as you wish. I still
need to ponder this a bit longer...

P.S. To those who missed all this, the original letter is in the post titled "To Whom
It May Concern... [long!]"

------------------------------------------
Flagg's response:

Hi Goober King,

Thank you for taking the time to voice your concerns regarding our Activeworlds
product. We value all our customers opinions and appreciate the time and effort many
of our users put in to help make Activeworlds the wonderful 3D environment it is
today.

I apologize that you feel yourself and other users have not been listened to, but I
have to disagree as I feel we our listening to our community and addressing what we
believe are there most important needs. At Activeworlds we get tons of
suggestions/recommendations every day and usually respond to all of them with
information regarding there ideas and what we can or can not do about them. I did a
small search trying to find unanswered suggestions you may have sent in, but
unfortunately I was unable to find to any. If you would like to take the time and
outline for me your ideas I will be more than happy to respond to each and every one
of them. We also have a suggestion box at
http://www.activeworlds.com/products/suggest.html and though we do not respond to
suggestions placed through this form most of the staff does read all the suggestions
every week.

As for the rumors that we only cater to corporate clients well that is just untrue.
We cater to both the community and corporate clients and I would say it is about a
50/50 split, neither really get's more attention. We have added many user requested
features and improvements over the years like whispers, telegrams, light sources,
Direct 3D and many more. In addition 3.2 has some user requested features like
skyboxes and software mode. (25% of Activeworlds users still use 2.2 because they do
not have a 3D graphics card). Of course our number one goal is always improving the
Activeworlds product and that is what we focus on. Sometimes a release may be more
corporate focused and other times it may be more community it is just the way it is.
Our users suggestions come in much faster than our new versions go out and it is
completely impossible for us implement every suggestion especially sense some of our
users suggestions generally conflict with each other.

Activeworlds has been around a long time now and it is enjoyed by a great many
people. Activeworlds is what it is and we will keep improving it over time. For
$19.95 a year, that's $1.66 a month I think we provide a very good product and I do
believe the majority of our paying customers would agree.

Attached to this e-mail is Enzo's response to some of your comments regarding the
early days of Activeworlds.

I look forward to hearing your suggestions and discussing them with you.


Sincerely

Tom Fournier
Customer Service / Sales Manager
Activeworlds.com Inc.
95 Parker St.
Newburyport, MA 01950

www.activeworlds.com

*(PLEASE INCLUDE ALL PREVIOUS DIALOG IN ALL REPLIES TO ENSURE A FAST AND ACCURATE
RESPONSE)*

------------------------------------
ENZO's response:

Dear Goober King and all the others who have signed his letter,


I thank you for your letter and for your obvious concern about both AW and it's
community of users. I think that I am at least one of many who share the privilege of
being "Whom It May Concern". Allow me to first introduce two sites that hold much of
the information relevant to why.

http://tnlc.com/mauz/awhistory.html

http://www.multimania.com/nmf/cof/events/meeting.html

This meeting of course is the one where I say, "* E N Z O: if we can get 1,000,000
citizens by Sept 97we will NEVER have to charge"

Please let me address this issue and some of the others you raise in your letter:

I am sorry to say but that did not happen. We were not able to get a critical mass
necessary to sustain ad revenue like many other sites did in 1997-2000. In the past
year you have seen the implosion of so many "free" services and dotcom's. It was a
reasonable and logical step to charge for citizenship while at the same time offering
a free tourist mode to any who wanted it.

As we moved forward from that day, it became clear that the idealized views we
shared were not the only things needed to keep AW up and running. First there was the
purchase of the assets from Worlds. Then there were licenses and legal bills. Then
the bandwidth and servers. Then came the salaries for employees.

Since beginning my work as consultant to Worlds Inc. COF was funded on credit cards
and overdrafts. COF made just enough money to allow us to operate out of my parent's
garage and keep our server up. Shamus worked for extremely minimal pay and his fianc
sold off savings bonds to finance his groceries. Ellen and I were never paid a dime.
I had several side jobs to support the little shop we had going and we worked around
the clock to make sure it stayed alive. Worlds was never able to pay us and instead
we rolled the money they owed into an initial purchase bid when they went under. With
the small amount we had in savings and credit cards we struggled to keep our end
alive. When the owner of the world Atlantis, JP, came on board, he also put in his
own money and never received payment. Several times we were running to the bank to
make another transfer from savings or checking into the company account so that the
checks we had sent out wouldn't bounce.

We didn't do this with the knowledge that the coming years would bring about the
dotcom revolution or that we would ever get any investment at all. We didn't do it to
be rich.

We did it because we loved AW and wanted to keep it alive.

And that brings us to the Transcend and the now infamous meeting where we made
promises and then supposedly broke them. Here they are as I recall:

· We do have a newsletter.

· We have worked to get rid of vandals

· We have opened new worlds with new models

· We have added models to the worlds already open

· We have partnered with the users for content, SDK coding, events

· We offer servers for a lot less than $495.00 some option at almost $100.00

· There is a T-shirt

And that brings us to the issue of charging. We were not able to bring the number of
people to AW we needed by the time our cash reserves ran out. The choice at that
point was close up shop, let the programmers go and let AW die. A paid citizenship
made a lot of sense then and still does. I am sure if you do the math or compare AW
to anything else, you will realize that it is well worth $19.95. I don't know about
you personally but most people spend that on a movie and popcorn, which only lasts 2
hours.

Now I would like to address your concerns about the way we do business. AWCI does
need to run as a business. There is no way around this fact. In order to stay alive
and keep AW up, people need to work here.

Somebody needs to answer support email, somebody runs the servers, somebody repairs
and upgrades them, somebody needs to do artwork, somebody needs to code, somebody
needs to make bots, somebody needs to make sure the lights stay on and the rent is
paid.

I will also tell you that although we began paying salaries to all the employees
starting soon after that meeting, neither JP, Ellen or myself ever got a cent until
January of 1999 when we got our first round of investment. Added together that is a
period of 10 years fulltime (if 60 hour weeks and no weekends count as fulltime). No
other employee, even the ones that love it just as much as we do was ever able to
work for no pay except for Shamus and Lucrezia for which we were and will be
grateful.

To make sure all these things happen we need to grow interest in AW from the outside
world. This means working with partners and projects that you probably don't care
about. You may feel that things here are done solely on the basis of marketing or PR.
That is your right, it is mine to disagree. Look at all the features AW has gotten
since 1997. Some are:
· whispering,
· file transfer,
· unique tourist names
· avatar "fade out" effect
· avatars in the main scene
· mousewheel support
· help files online only
· speak and bot rights
· built-in administration utilities
· encrypted protocol, an SDK, lighting
· fog
· move and rotate
· acceleration
· higher cell data limits

…and I name only a few of the most obvious. I have heard that 3.2 is ALL about
corporate users because it includes firewall support. Don't any of you think some
non-corporate users are behind firewalls? Don't some of us use NT and would like
hardware acceleration that Microsoft doesn't support? Won't a software rasterizer
help more than a few? And what about skyboxes and 200 meter vis? What corporate and
educational users benefit from that? But do not get me wrong, our corporate users are
just as important to us, and just as much part of the community as anyone else who
uses AW. We will continue to add features both the corporate users and the AW
community at large benefit from.

I am also unaware of the "world server prices skyrocketing". In fact as far as I can
tell if you buy the smallest world server we offer you renew it at $10.00 a year! And
that includes a FREE citizenship. How can you say the pricing is unreasonable? Ten
dollars doesn't send even any kids I know "scrambling".

All of us here want AW to be a better place. AW is not just about software, it is
about people. The reason we work here is to make it happen. We enjoy it and we enjoy
the community you all have created. We want you to enjoy AW as much as we do. We
would be happy to work with you in any reasonable way.

Sincerely,

Rick



Rick Noll
CEO Activeworlds Inc.
enzo at activeworlds.com
------------------------------------------

--
Goober King
This is not to be taken lightly....
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Aug 11, 2001, 7:15pm

Good lord, kA! What crawled up your preverbial rear and died? This is
the exact reason why ENZO has been avoiding posting in these NGs in the
first place, because he believed he would be attacked no matter what he
said. Let's not start proving him right, ok? I'd like to think we're all
better than that...

[View Quote] > and... WHAT IF YOU LIED??? it really wouldn't surprise me if you did...
>
> KAH
> PS. it's your fault nobody (except those that play nice so they get free
> worlds...) REALLY trusts you...
>
[View Quote]
--
Goober King
Maybe he's giving everyone too much credit...
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Aug 12, 2001, 8:27pm

Whatsamatta, Lane? Had to dig out your dictionary for that one? *chuckle*

[View Quote] > "prerogative" oOooOooooOOOOooo big words..
>
[View Quote]
--
Goober King
And Lane calls *other* people idiots...
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Aug 30, 2001, 1:21pm

Umm... how is talking to me in person cowardly? If there's anything
cowardly, it would be *not* telling me face to face. If you have a
problem with me, then tell it to my face. Don't avoid me for days on end
and then suddenly decide to post this in the NGs.

And besides, I never said that *I* would ever represent anyone. The only
thing I would ever do is get the Union set up and choose the other
representatives and then let it go on it's way. But, I guess since ENZO
shot that idea down, it's a bit of a moot point...

As for the smirking, what does that have to do with anything?! The only
reason I ever *smirk* is because I'm demonstrating sarcasm, which can be
hard to do in a text-only environment. Just because someone smirks (even
in real life) doesn't mean that person isn't trustworthy. Perhaps if you
tried to learn about the kind of person I really am, instead of avoiding
me like the plague, you would have a better understanding of where I'm
coming from here...

[View Quote] > I do not think Goober King would make a good man in charge here. Go ahead
> and flame, I'm ready for it (shield is up). I could have telegrammed GK and
> told him......I could have told him last night when I saw him in somebody's
> town.......I have had a couple of opportunites to tell him when very few
> were present, but that's cowardly. I choose to air it out in the ng, where
> I think it belongs.
>
> I do not trust a guy that smirks and he isn't going to represent me.
>
> AW Explorer
>
[View Quote]
--
Goober King
Beware assumptions, for they are dangerous things...
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Aug 31, 2001, 4:10pm

Tell me, when did I ever smirk in my dealings with ENZO or anyone else
from AWC? When dealing with people in a professional setting, I'd like
to think I know how to conduct myself, which includes no smirking. But
in a casual setting, such as these NGs, there is no need for me to keep
up appearances and I can "let my hair down", so to speak. If the leader
you're looking for needs to act like he/she has too much starch in their
underwear all the time, then I guess I'm not it.

[View Quote] > When people have a problem with who might become a leader, they speak about
> it in public, in the correct forum - not sending little private messages to
> the person or by taking a trip to Outer Worlds (or similar) to protest. If
> it was a personal problem I had with you, I would send a private message.
> Smirking, in my opinion, is a sign of aloofness. When you are representing
> the Active Worlds Community, humble yourself, Bub - that's the Real Deal.
>
> AW Explorer
>
[View Quote]
--
Goober King
Do people eve read these sigs? :P
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

1  ...  23  24  25  26  27  28  ...  47  |   Order by default