Interview w Hamlet in The Atlantic

[Coffee Pancake]

7 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

On another platform, the thumbnails once in cache, load almost immediately and the graphical representation makes it much simpler to locate the desired object then to for example have to wear several hairs trying to find the right one by their textual name. 

Yes .. but that other platform has a much simpler architecture which can't be transposed onto SL.

In IMVU you buy THE-THING .. Part of the THE-THING is a thumbnail image. THE-THING fits everyone because everyone is the same.

In SL, THE-THING comes in 4 sizes and 3 variations for booba size, a HUD, bonus extras, landmarks, notecards and maybe a image we could theoretically make a thumbnail from, and ZERO consistency in how any of it is presented, named or organized.

How does the viewer magically know which of the sub things should be attached when you click on the image? What happens to all the other sub things. How much work do you want to put in organizing your things.

What happens when you buy a thing and there is no included picture?

How much work do you want to put into organizing your things? Is it more or less than the CTS Wardrobe.

If Inventory was simple enough that we could have an IMVU presentation, we would just have that - It's actually a much easier system to program than the one we have.

 

I ramble some on the problems putting a CTS Wardrobe style system in the viewer here

 

[Prokofy Neva]

On 3/29/2022 at 4:04 AM, Persephone Emerald said:

You claim to be the great proponent of Capitalism, yet you also say you don't make any profit from your works in SL. You say your work in SL is at least in part to help other residents have nice places to live and that you spend much of your Human Capital in keeping SL vibrant and viable. You claim to be anti-socialism, but aren't some of your own drives socialistic in nature?

Real Life is never black and white, but rather shades of all different and often shifting colors. No economic or political system is perfect, but they don't have to be perfect to work pretty well. If one looks at the standard of living and self-reported happiness of people living under different forms of government, Democratic Socialism (or a Socialist Democracy) seems to work pretty well. Of course there are always multiple factors to consider, but comparing the vast landmass and resources of the United States to those of the Nordic European countries, then comparing the relative economic and personal satisfaction of their populations seems to show that a Socialist spin on Capitalism is probably not a bad thing. Neither pure Capitalism nor pure Socialism seems to work very well, but a blend of both might be a better option. 

Second Life obviously has to be profitable to survive. We can't just wish away the Capitalist system it functions within. Linden Lab can however, take note of the social and economic behavior of its users to try to adjust their policies to keep people using and paying for this platform. Collecting this kind of data might require using algorithms. (Not all algorithms are evil.)  We certainly have to use our computers and electricity inside of our warm and secure houses to also use this virtual world, so not all technology is inherently evil either. Humans are flawed, so the stuff we make is also flawed, whether that's a cake, a video game or a system of government. That doesn't mean we should toss out all this flawed stuff, but it does mean we're capable of learning from our mistakes and trying to do better.

Also, if you're paying more money in tier than you make in rent, you're not so much running a business as running a charity. You may be able to do this as an individual, but Linden Lab cannot afford to to this as a business that exist within a Capitalist economic system.  

I'm not a great proponent of Capitalism; I'm just a normal person like most Americans who is not a socialist and doesn't vote for socialists even being a member of the Democratic Party. I think in a place like the SL forums where various personalities and belief systems get amplified in crazy ways, you can easily forget that. But look at the US elections, look at who gets a seat in Congress, but then, not much else. Look at who gets to be president on the populist platform the socialists have abandoned in favour of identity politics; look at how he doesn't stay president. Etc. 

And PS I am a Catholic; look it up. Usually the doctrines promulgated by, say, the current Pope, are a mixture of antithesis of godless communism; respect for capitalism's work and value; and social conscience which they urge to regulate capitalism. The social goods of America that make people still flock to it as a place of refugee are not distributed only by charity, religious or secular. They are distributed by law, which varies from state to state. So in NYS, known as "the Vampire State" for its taxes, I live under what some people think is "socialism" having some of my medical care covered because I have a chronic illness, etc. But it's what people voted for in democratic elections and with an ideology for the most part that is not socialism. It can be done.

I'm not sure where you get the idea that my rentals don't make a profit; many of them have to make more than the tier I pay the Lindens, even by a slim margin, or I can't justify it. I have some heavily used cheapie areas ostensibly for newbies but I don't police the age any more because everybody is a poor newbie nowadays.  I take the proceeds and mainly put them into the land preserve and various projects I'm doing. I'm certainly happy to pay some bills in RL like a phone bill or doctor's bill. The days when I could send my daughter to at least the poor man's private school  -- Catholic grade school -- with my SL proceeds are long over, at least for me, at least on the Mainland, which is a fool's errand. Catholic High School now costs as much as a state college tuition which is why my children went to public high schools in NYC.

One of the reasons the idiocies of socialism and worse, communism persist is that people do not realize that you can have social good, you can have a social conscience, you can do social good works for others and society, without violent confiscatory policies such as communism induces, and lack of freedom, or even the milder sort of confiscation with onerous taxes and restrictive laws such as under socialism. And part of this is because they hate religious groups, even of the most benign, and they hate charities, because they are free and can decide whom they will help, right or left on the political spectrum.

I would never in my life expect AOC to do good for everyone in her community in Queens. She might do good for some people in her personal posse her close circle of advisors and some percentage of her constituents -- socialists always seem to do good for their circle first, which is why you see some BLM leaders under media scrutiny and even with indictments on charges of self-dealing. This is human nature and that's why you don't have socialism. Keeping Amazon out of your community is just suicidal as you have kept jobs and revenue for small business out of your area which is desperate. That's insanity. So Amazon merely goes elsewhere where people appreciate them and don't inflate the flaws of Amazon as a method to wage ideological warfare, which is what the hard left does. You didn't see our socialist mayor of NYC beating on Amazon, now did you? He may think saving carriage horses is more important than saving the homeless, and may have thrown in his lot with the awful Sandinistas in his day, but he gets it about Amazon, and not only because he orders from there.

And I don't think you "blend" socialism and capitalism. You don't have to, as capitalism in the modern world, even in places that people hold up as examples of socialism like Sweden, which actually has a great deal of capitalism within it, can be regulated by the rule of law so that manufacturers don't pollute the environment, sell insurance to poor old people who don't need it because they have Medicare, etc. 

Social policies incorporated over the years by the Democratic Party or even the Republican Party aren't "socialism". They are democratically decided social programs which is a good thing, and which is why "socialism" doesn't catch on in this country.  The "democratic" part is where socialism, even of the AOC or Elizabeth Warren sort, so often breaks down. So the socialist state of South Africa can have a Supreme Court ruling that the state is not rich enough to pay for kidney dialysis. And who can blame them, after all the suffering they have endured? You could call it a violation of "health care as a human right," but you could also realize that health care is expensive, even if you don't have evil Big Pharma grasping for payouts. So the democratic part is important, and has to be accompanied by a free press, due process, an independent judiciary, an adversarial bar, etc. 

So if our society decides it cannot give everyone a free college tuition, entirely free health care, and free parental leave of three years as France does, well, ok, it does enough. Get a job, get a hair-cut, too. Instead of witlessly demanding "Medicare for All," how about just starting with actually enabling "Medicare for People Disabled Or 65 and Older," which currently is not done in this country. It's incredibly hard to figure out all the pieces of Medicare and get them in the right configuration and not get punished for having to pay for "Part D" when you didn't have medicines to pay for earlier in your retirement.

There is a legion of predatory !!@#$!$@ who call and spam and mail old folks endlessly with deceptive literature that looks like it comes from the government, offering all sorts of pathways through the labyrinth of the Medicare system. For example, why is my main medicine not covered on Medicare's list one year? Forcing me to pay enormous sums or try to get on one of these Extra Advantage Help thingies, of which there are some, you just have to work the system. But how do the legion of spammers find out this information -- is somebody selling or hacking government lists or what's the deal? Why does that medicine then appear on the list the next year? Etc. So I'm for fixing Medicare and delivering it into the bank accounts of people with the efficiency with which the stimulus checks were delivered both under Trump and Biden.

Then do another thing, attack the lawyers' unions and PACS of America who helped bring Obama to power by ensuring that he never touched their lucrative practice of bilking enormous sums out of companies and people for accidents. Have a cap on accident settlements so that an OB/GYN doesn't have to pay millions in insurance due to litigious patients. These lawyers say, "Have health care for poor folks, but don't touch our loot.| But people want "socialism". They want ideologues like Sanders (who honeymooned on the Volga) and AOC to wave a wand and then have their sinister cadres do the dirty work. They don't want to attack seemingly benign lawyers and unions -- oh, and Silicon Valley -- who actually get and keep people in power on the Democratic side in particular. They don't even want to see it. They want big, fat targets like "Big Pharma" or "the Koch Brothers" and don't want to see how Soros funds the other side.

Democracy doesn't need an adjective to function very well and even provide social goods for the vulnerable of society. Socialism, in requiring the adjective "Democracy" in some form is just using deception and revealing its deficits.

LL, to its credit, both fails to collect data on its customers that other companies would greedily vacuum up, but also doesn't appear to exploit the data they do collect, so good for them. In part, it's because somebody may have realized that behaviour in a virtual world doesn't track into RL and isn't an opportunity to sell in RL so necessarily. I don't see why LL needs to engineer algorithms with their Google gurus. They should just fix search and make it work as it does on Firestorm, the end. Not rocket science. Then that bit of the economy that viewer does own, even if only newbies and 10% of oldbies, will function better and retain people.

I explained how LL can't be a charity, as much as people want them to tier sims they think have particularly fabulous builds, that their builders, programmers and designers with six figure incomes, can't be arsed to tier themselves. Etc. 

And I also can't be a charity, either. Something like the sales tax or an increase in cashout fees hits my slim margins hard, and then I have to get rid of a sim's worth of land or more to make up the difference, and have done so many times over the years. There is nowhere else for it to come from. That's why there is abandoned land all over.

[Prokofy Neva]

On 3/27/2022 at 7:59 AM, Theresa Tennyson said:

Because the gasoline was going, "Heeyahh!!! Let's get this party started! YOBO!"

 

Someone decided to put the properties of accelerants in the accelerants.

[Mollymews]

also about IMVU there are two inventory views.  A simplified version included in the main program, and a more comprehensive standalone version dedicated solely to managing inventory

i think would be great if we had the same in SL

might be able to solve the glyph issue as well more easily.  In SL Inventory Explorer there could be a preview pane (a modest rendering of the inventory object). Press Make Glyph button and it takes a picture of the preview pane, which is then associated with the object

 

 

 

 

[Mollymews]

7 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Radegast text client - https://radegast.life/

yes

[Mollymews]

7 hours ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

I didn't quite read the whole post but I definitely get the gist. Not quite what I had in mind but yeah. What you describe could be done using Experiences could it not? I was thinking there has to be some way to... combine is not really the right word but all I got at the moment so... combine the onboarding process with the Experience feature and somehow include a destination guide in that.

sorry about the burble. When I start thinking about how stuff could be done, I burble a lot. i have sometimes started a post with what I think is a good idea. Burble burble burble. And sometimes by the end I have contradicted myself and what I thought was a good idea turned out to not be such a good idea after all

getting back to your point tho. I am not really sure how portals and the destination guide can work together.  The destination guide is more of a HUD. And as a HUD it works quite well for the task - pick a destination and go

certainly tho, I agree, more Experience enabled activity can be done at the curated destinations. Am pretty sure the LPDW would love to do this kind of thing as well  in  more earnest.  Time and budget restraints usually the issue, not so much a lack of desire to do it. Same in many other companies

and yes as well. I am into pipe dreams also. Always trying to push the limits of my current level of imagination

[Silent Mistwalker]

15 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

sorry about the burble. When I start thinking about how stuff could be done, I burble a lot. i have sometimes started a post with what I think is a good idea. Burble burble burble. And sometimes by the end I have contradicted myself and what I thought was a good idea turned out to not be such a good idea after all

getting back to your point tho. I am not really sure how portals and the destination guide can work together.  The destination guide is more of a HUD. And as a HUD it works quite well for the task - pick a destination and go

certainly tho, I agree, more Experience enabled activity can be done at the curated destinations. Am pretty sure the LPDW would love to do this kind of thing as well  in  more earnest.  Time and budget restraints usually the issue, not so much a lack of desire to do it. Same in many other companies

and yes as well. I am into pipe dreams also. Always trying to push the limits of my current level of imagination

At least you can manage to get your thoughts down before your fingers can no longer keep up with your brain. Not even my mouth can keep up with my brain. lol 

Do not HUDs work with the Experience thing? Not being premium I can't use the things so I haven't bothered digging into it all. I've picked up a thing or two just by reading but nothing comprehensive.

I'm thinking Experiences combined with some kind of destination guide just might be the key to smoothing out the onboarding process.

This is something that the residents who can script and have Experience knowledge could possibly create a "working model" to show LL. 

Any takers? *ducks*

[Mollymews]

8 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

Experiences

Experiences are enabled by scripting.  Some quick examples

Bump sit.  When we walk into a couch (bump it with our avatar) then an experience script can sit our avatar on the couch

Touch wear.  We touch a drink on a tray of drinks. The script auto-attaches the drink to our hand.  We don't get the system dialog asking for permission to attach.  We already gave permission for the script to do this when we joined the Experience

a more complete example. The lady in the boat at Half Hitch

go to Half Hitch region thru the New Starter Destination Guide.  On arrival, a popup HUD of boat choices, pick one from the HUD. Boat is rezzed, person auto-sat on the boat.  Next popup: Would you like to change your outfit? If Yes then pick one from the HUD.  When picked then the script changes the avatar's current outfit to the picked outfit

some of the LDPW Moles have quite extensive expertise in creating Experiences.  The Portal Park inworld, is a fairly comprehensive example of how Experiences work

[Silent Mistwalker]

12 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

Experiences are enabled by scripting.  Some quick examples

Bump sit.  When we walk into a couch (bump it with our avatar) then an experience script can sit our avatar on the couch

Touch wear.  We touch a drink on a tray of drinks. The script auto-attaches the drink to our hand.  We don't get the system dialog asking for permission to attach.  We already gave permission for the script to do this when we joined the Experience

a more complete example. The lady in the boat at Half Hitch

go to Half Hitch region thru the New Starter Destination Guide.  On arrival, a popup HUD of boat choices, pick one from the HUD. Boat is rezzed, person auto-sat on the boat.  Next popup: Would you like to change your outfit? If Yes then pick one from the HUD.  When picked then the script changes the avatar's current outfit to the picked outfit

some of the LDPW Moles have quite extensive expertise in creating Experiences.  The Portal Park inworld, is a fairly comprehensive example of how Experiences work

Thanks, only... I'm not interested in trying to learn something I can't use to create with. Basic accounts do not have access to the experience tools or whatever they are called so why bother? I can't afford premium.

I don't think you're quite following what I'm trying to convey. That's on me because I really don't know how to put it in words. I can visualize it, more or less, but trying to translate that into words... not so much.

I suppose it all would hinge on whether or not the Experience tools can be used to create a destination guide.

Well damn. I think I just put it into some words... sort of.

Edited March 30, 2022 by Silent Mistwalker

[Mollymews]

26 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

I suppose it all would hinge on whether or not the Experience tools can be used to create a destination guide.

Well damn. I think I just put it into some words... sort of.

this idea is potentially possible

recently Linden added a new function: llOpenFloater.  https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LlOpenFloater

is restricted to Linden/LDPW use. Is not available for residents to use

it can be used tho to make a more rich content HUD. Quartz Mole mentioned in another thread that they were using llOpenFloater in some of their work. But I dunno anymore than that

Edited March 31, 2022 by Mollymews
use

[Silent Mistwalker]

23 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

this idea is potentially possible

recently Linden added a new function: llOpenFloater.  https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LlOpenFloater

is restricted to Linden/LDPW use. Is not available for residents to use

it can be used tho to make a more rich content HUD. Quartz Mole mentioned in another thread that they were using llOpenFloater in some of their work. But I dunno anymore than that

I would prefer LL to do the work, but I also know there are times when it's better when a resident shows them what can be done. Sometimes they're just your average resident scripter, sometimes it's someone involved with one of the TPVs. I'd just like to see someone run with my the idea for once. 🙊

[Coffee Pancake]

2 hours ago, Mollymews said:

might be able to solve the glyph issue as well more easily.  In SL Inventory Explorer there could be a preview pane (a modest rendering of the inventory object). Press Make Glyph button and it takes a picture of the preview pane, which is then associated with the object

We do have a prototyped version of something that will show previews of attachment layer items on mouse over, it ended up on the scrap pile as there was no way to do the same for objects without actually rezzing the object in world (we might actually prototype the win explorer style inventory, so it might make it back for that).

Rezzing the object on the hud out of sight kinda worked for objects, but that stomped on the objects saved attachment point and scripts would fire .. so not really practical.

1 hour ago, Mollymews said:

this idea is potentially possible

recently Linden added a new function: llOpenFloater.  https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LlOpenFloater

That should really just be an experience thing.

Because I'm damn sure users could make an amazing onboarding system to teach the viewer.

I get that someone might be bad and script something evil .. so what, if someone does that, good for the idiot. There are lots of ways to get a suspension or a ban for scripted evil, just add it to the list.