Wednesday, October 29, 2008
How do you spell incompetence? (2)
The small controversy surrounding Openspace sims makes me think of an easy comparison in the telecommunications industry at home, in Canada.
By selling a product, not limiting its use and cracking down on its customers, the giant company called Bell Canada alienated many people. Bell offered unlimited Internet access to its mobile phone users but put arbitrary restriction clauses in the contracts. In fact, this made people pay for unlimited use without granting them actual limitless service. Once some mobile phone customers started to use their wireless connection as an unlimited one, they were told that they were not expected to do so.
In a way, Linden Labs' decision to unilaterally upgrade Openspace sims to Class 5 by telling people that they were overusing them is comparable. It offered something that was too good to be true. It made estate ownership easy but did not put limits that would prevent people from adding textures, scripts and objects once there was enough to eat up the sim's performance.
It would have made sense to cap the use of a sim's resources instead of slapping everyone with a forced upgrade. This is yet again an example of lack of foresight from the Lindens.
Here is some of that foresight they badly need: Bell Canada is one of the most despised brands in Canada because it has historically treated its customers in such a way. As soon as competition started offering a credible alternative for home phone services, customers left in droves. On a national level. They took their Internet and television services to the competition's attractive bundles and are now enjoying better customer service.
I ask this for a second time: How do you spell incompetence?
I suggest this answer: an L, an I, an N, a D, an E and another N
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