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Yes, I know I’m a special case. I may be the only one of SL’s users in this position, but it’s terribly frustrating to know that the hard work, and real money, I’ve poured into SL, with the intent of eventually setting up a business, here, could suddenly vaporize at the whim of a high-ranking Linden Lab officer who let him/herself be convinced by all the anti-verified diatribe I’m seeing here and in almost every other blog thread. Amazingly (at least if you read the blogs), this attitude isn’t shared by the majority of verified SL users — only a few who seem to come here just to vomit more of their prattle and run virtually every blog thread off-topic in the process.

Frankly, I think people who post off-content material should be banned from the blog, but that’s probably not going to happen, in spite of “the rules”, which are seldom, if ever, enforced. I have to go back to work, now, where I hope to make some more money to send the way of Linden Lab — even though I’m *gasp* an “illegal alien” in eyes of many of our fellow blog posters. Well, I’m doing *my* part to keep Linden Lab, afloat. How about you whiners chipping in and sending some more of your Real Life money in, too? Maybe we could help them increase the size of their server farm, and maybe upgrade to a more robust data base system.

I’m gone. Have a wonderful time, people. See you all (I’m sure) in the next blog thread that gets twisted into a bitch-fest about free and unverified accounts.

I don’t understand what it took to keep the program going. A link on the webpage and a code generator? I can’t help but think this is more a statement then a policy shift?

I agree if LL wants premium account payers they need to do more to entice that. At this point why buy the cow when the milk is free?

However, I would suggest not doing away with the Gift of Second Life, just change it. Verification is important, and right now credit cards are the only way it is done. However, one friend introducing another friend is also a form of verification. The person being introduced into SL is known by at least one other resident. This results in current residents inviting in those people they want in-world with them.

If you change the Gift of Second Life to, let’s say earn $L 200 for every friend invited to sign up and provides verificaiton, I thnk we would experience a greater growth of residents (which us developers of content want) but you will find the quality of new people coming in will be high as well.

Now about the secondary topic here - I don’t like the “unverified” accounts, either. Like others have said there are multiple ways to validate people without using a credit card. Also, I don’t like newbies that approach you on a sandbox with something hanging out and “Wanna f**k?” These may or may not be “unverified” accounts - I do read profiles, but cannot say offhand what the average is. Perhaps a lesson in manners would be appropriate while learning how to pan with the camera and how to edit your appearance.

Next, quit whining about $10 US a month - ’cause it’s only $7.50/mo when you go quarterly and $6/mo if you pay annually and if you’re already using a credit card then you probably have $22.50 available every 3 months. Most of you probably spend that at Starbucks in one month anyway much less in three months.

I only get $400L a week, so I’m sorry your $500L isn’t enough - plus some members are only getting $300L a week. I also would love to see a “Preferred” membership that would get a stipend of a sort but not be able to own land. Why would you want to buy land when it’s outrageously priced and I never can find “first land” at the $512 price anyway? Plus there are places where you can rent a room for $250L a week.

I’ll get off my soapbox now - I agree that some changes need to be made - I remind everyone that “you can’t please all of the people all of the time.”

Thanks for your time.

I find it hard to believe that even a COLLEGE student can’t afford 10 dollars a MONTH for a basic subscription here. If you can afford 20 bucks for booze every weekend, then, stop whining about not being able to afford for something like SL.

Besides, this particular blog is about the expired gift thingies. We were ALL newbies at one point and time on Second Life. The fact is, SL doesn’t HAVE to be here. They COULD do away with all the free accounts. Heck, they could just, out of the blue, raise the PREMIUM rates. At the core, this is ’supply and demand’. I have NO CLUE how hard it is to write code, do updates, deal with griefers and such. True, I don’t like it when I can’t get into my SL house because of “bugs”, or to have completely lost two items that i purchased worth over 3500L in the past week from my inventory. I sent in a bug report about that.

So, until I can learn how to write code, and come up with something that even just BARELY blows SL out of the water, and since I don’t know what it’s like to have to deal with SIM crashes or to fix “bugs”, all I can do is just hope that the ones who DO KNOW will be able to get things fixed.

Anyway, enough of MY off-topic rant. I’m tired, and I’m going to slam my head into a PILLOW, thank you very much!

This is ludicrous. I’ve seen off-topic posts before, but this takes the cake. Just to end this argument once and for all: Free accounts improve the economy, those who buy Lindens inflate prices. Long story short, because free accounts don’t get stipends, they work for a Second Living. This means that *gasp* Lindens actually circulate instead of being created out of thin air by the LindeX. I may be biased because I use an unverified account, but really, this whole Premium vs. Free argument is pointless.

So please, let’s get back on the topic at hand. Gifting Second Life is gone, and I for one will miss it.