Painted Melody

A "tile" for WIndows 8 will be created automatically when you install the SL Viewer or a third party viewer onto the WIndows 8 computer. It should be placed on the Start screen when you install, but if it is not, you can find it by right clicking anywhere on the Start screen and then clicking the "all Apps" icon that appears don at the bottom right corner. A graphic table of all software installed on your computer will appear and the SL VIewer (or Firestorm, etc.) will be in that list. Just right click on the SL Viewer icon and select pin to Start screen or pin to Taskbar. You SL Viewer icon will then be available in either or both places. Linden Labs has nothing to do with creation of the Icon or tile, it is a automatic part of installing any WIndow 8 compatible software on the computer.

The problem is not with the SL Viewers. The problem is that the Windows 8 Preview OS overwrites the computers video driver with a generic WIndows compatible video driver. This overwrite causes SL VIewer to not recognize the generic video driver as being up to date and compatible with SL requirements. You can solve the problem by re-installing the newest video driver on your computer. Linden Lab (and the 3rd party viewer producers) can also solve this by adding the WIndows 8 generic viewer driver to the approved video drivers that the Viewers check for.

The answer to your question is "Yes." Linden can remove any texture found the inventory server. This is also a major violation of Terms of Service. You are not allowed to intrude on personal privacy or provide private RL information about another SL member that was not been supplied by the SL member in their profile. Submit a Trouble TIcket adn try to identify the ID # of the offending texture file.

It depends on how you go "offline." Sometimes if you simply end your Viewer program operation by closing a window or terminating via WIndows Task Manager, SL will look at it like a temporary fault/connection glitch and keep you logged in to the Sim server. If that happens you will have to try twice, at least, to get logged in again. You often recieve a message, "the region is currently rebooting" or somethign like that. Then second time through you will be able to log in again, In between the faulty log off and the new log in, your avatar will continue to rezz in the Sim server at the same location as you logged out, but will no move, talk, etc. This is literally an after-image of your avatar, stuck in the Sim server's cache.

My business partners and I had an incident last year in SL where we were being harassed and infringed upon by a neighbor who was clearly violating terms of service with encroachment and unethical conduct. We filed numerous,proper, complete ARs that never got action taken on. In frustration we went to an acquaintance, an old-time SL contract programmer, for advice. The oldltimer discovered that the Violator was actually a Beta Tester (and Alt) (one of the original beta testers who have an almost mythical standing in LInden labs, with perqs like 4000 square meters of perpetually free land). Because the AR response team couldn't give us information in response to the AR, they simply did nothing, rather than take punitive action against the vaunted original LL BetaTester. Although we have had other experiences were ARs were promptly dealt with, there are occasions when, for no apparent reason, there is never any action taken against obvious hooligans and ARs go unanswered. In the end we downsized our property (LL's loss) and moved Sims to avoid the creep.

Both Kirsten and Phoenix have put out Viewer 2 derived viewers that greatly improve many of the annoyances people have for viewer 2. I think it is but a matter of time until a major LL sourced viewer 2 improvement comes out. However, the question presented here is self-serving and ignores reality. Some peope do like Viewer 2, especially those without autonomic predilection to the user interface of old 1.23 viewers. If you haven't already gotten in a routine of the old user interface, Viewer 2 clearly has some advantages to ease of use. True, it has some quirks that make an old hand groan, but they are usually something that a reference to the instructions or the Help menu can cure. Bottom line, the tendency of long time SL users to whine incessantly about things they don't like is far more annoying than the flaws in Viewer 2. Remember how peopel complain whnever Microsoft came out with new interfaces for WIndows or Office, old pros always whined about the lack of ease of use for the new User Interface. I still cannot find the right paragraph controls in Word, but things change, Learn the new interface and please, stop whining.

Thanks Rene and Shockwave. As I read the links talking about the loss of third party ownership and increase in LL owned and abandoned land, I started wondering if my owning my half-Sim is like pre-paying rental on a deck chair on the Titanic. Unfortunately, my retail income from SL gives me nothing to dispell that feeling. Painted

The missing statistic I would most like to see is this: Of that flat-lined world size, what percentage of the total space is now owned by LInden Lab, i.e. "abandoned." Looking around various Sims, I see huge quantities of land now owned by LL with former structures carefully maintained to make the abandoned land look used. Painted