Marcus Hancroft
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Posts posted by Marcus Hancroft
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Ann Otoole wrote:Contests are dead. Too many vote alt bots. So what we need is to get back to entertainment basics and get rid of costume contests. I hate to say that because that is what got my business going. But the bots are crap and the privacy invasion required to prevent them is not worth it. So we are back at host/DJ personalities/shows. I doubt we will see many stars again. Not for a few more months anyway.
Yeah, that's the truth. It's all just costume contests now. I bet if a club DID start doing things the old way again they would be a huge success!
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Ann Otoole wrote:Back when I was a host(ess) the job was clear. keep the party atmosphere going and take votes (sometimes a tad more than that lol). In addition it was a "tag team" act with the DJ which required knowing the DJ closely. In addition the entire 2 hour show was planned in advance and it was, in effect, a stage show. And I made L$15k or more per day on average. The DJ made twice that or more. Those were the good days of SL.Today voting is done by click on a board and the "DJ"'s do whatever they choose. There are not many coordinated scripted shows anymore.Basically, if you don't like the entertainment, why do you go? Nobody forces you.
Howdy, Miss Ann! Yes, I remember those days also and I admit that I enjoyed them a lot! And you're right...everything is all different now. I wish there were more events like those again.
It's not that I don't like the entertainment. I always say Howdy back and am gracious, but, I just don't feel like I need to have a hostess to make my time at the club more enjoyable.
Now...bring back the way events USED to be handled and that'd be a whole different story!
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Josh Susanto wrote:Sorry I didn't come up with anything for Halloween.Did you?
No, I really didn't either. So it's OK, Josh Man.
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I never understood the whole "Host & Hostess" business at clubs in SL. One I like going to has no less than FOUR hosts every time and they dance up on their little pedestals and say "Hello!" to me when I get within chat range. And I'm supposed to tip them for this? The other thing the Host & Hostesses do is offer group tags to get in on the contest boards. LOL!
Personally, I think it's a silly thing. I don't need to be greeted every time I go someplace to dance. I don't need to add any more groups just to get in on the contest boards and I certainly don't need to pay somebody for suggesting that I do!
Don't get me wrong. It's nice to hear someone welcome you to the club. However, to have someone there specifically to greet people and expect money for doing it is ridiculous.
I know, I know...some of you will say that the Host or Hostess is there to make the experience at the club more enjoyable.
When I go to a club, it's to listen to the music, dance and listen to the DJ. The conversations between the other people there is another reason as they can be hilarious and is sometimes fun to join in! In other words, camaraderie.
There is only one person at the club who deserves tips from the visitors. And that's the DJ, so long as he/she is entertaining, plays requests promptly and has a good show.
But...if you get to an event early (before everybody is ready), the first thing the host or hostess does is plop out that tip jar. /me laughs! Like clockwork, I say!
Anyway, I think the host/hostess thing just needs to go away. It doesn't help us have more fun and is just another way to filter money out of our balances ('cept for mine cause I'm not about to pay someone for saying hello to me).
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Toysoldier Thor wrote:Pamela Galli wrote:Does anyone understand how one would go about updating something that you intend to keep the same name? Will I have to go into some page in my MP store like inventory and delete something before I can add a new one with the same name?
Been asked by me a few times in two threads. Been asked by others in this thread. Apparently LL did not see this repeatedly asked question and as they said, we now have to wait another week for a forum posting from them and hope they will see the question and answer it.What is another scary answer fro LL's posting of answers....Q: What’s the migration process for moving my items from Magic Boxes to Direct Delivery listings?A: The process is not completed yet. Once a process is working in test, we will communicate the details. We are working on a method that will not require each listing to be edited to replace the Magic Box inventory item with a Direct Delivery inventory item.They have been developing this DD all spring. They have been in Closed Beta all summer and into late fall.... and they say today that they have not even figured out yet how this new DD will handle transitioning of content from old to new? Yup... here we go again... migration and transition will be a last minute idea that LL will think of - which will be likely so half baked that it will fail and likely we will all feel the pain. Even those of us that will stay on Magicbox until we are forced off it.(why am I staying on magicbox till LL retires it? Because unlike most of you that seem to have tons of delivery failures, I rarely get them. Maybe a couple a month. Plus I want as many of my fellow Merchants to be the open beta and then the LL Production Beta risk takers. Let you all find the bugs to LL's not yet known transition and what ever other bugs the production deployment will find. Hopefully the DD deployment wont impact those in MP that do not use it. Once all the bugs have been ironed out - I will transition my items to DD.)This was exactly MY thought too, Toy Dude. If they have been "closed beta-ing" for a year or so, wouldn't this have already been figured out? I mean...migrating items from magic boxes to direct delivery is the single most important part of the whole equation, right? I find it hard to believe that THAT part hasn't been figured out yet. Something smells fishy about that. So I say; "Yup..here we go again" as well.
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Chelsea Malibu wrote:A year ago they asked merchant to apply to beta this. I was not accepted nor was anyone I know. They claim that beta as been going on since the end of last year. I don't know anyone who was accepted to the beta but if there are, it would be good to hear their experience.
^ This
I thought the same thing, Miss Chelsea! Hasn't Direct Delivery been in "beta" for a year or something? Why do we need to beta test some more? Same thing is going on with the Firestorm Viewer. It's been in beta for how long? I'm starting to wonder if it will EVER be a viable RC viewer!
Come on beta testers! Chime in here! What have been your experiences?
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Josh Susanto wrote:They're not only underutilizing people who know how to say something.They're also underutilizing people who know what really needs to be said.
Hahahahahaha! Josh..hahahaha! ^ instant classic!
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Toysoldier Thor wrote:I see that the LL Defending White Knight Forum Trolls have come in to save LL's reputation again. Their arrivals are not surprising. Their "Forum Poster" personal attacking bashing posts were fully expected. Their value of post is still at ZERO as is expected.At least these two dont fail to dissapoint. Cheers to you two! Now please go save LL's reputation at another thread and let us on this thread that were talking about the OP topic get back to serious adult Big Girl / Big Boy talkNow I do hope that when LL Commerce Team wakes up this morning on the west coast of USA that they start answering our questions and clarifying the horrendously confusing DD FAQ communications that LL is good for.Clearly there is a ton of confusion on how this DD delivery and OUTBOX folder actually works thanks to poor explanation. We also posted several questions LL Commerce. Do us a favor and actually try to spend a couple hours of your day today to being more clear in this thread and answering our questions.
I have read and then re-read the entire wiki FAQ about DD, read every post in this thread and I too am confused about the same things, Toy. I am NOT trying to make up things to be confused about. I WANT to understand everything. What I don't need (and indeed don't want) is a Linden Lab "white knight" coming in here and telling me that I'm making it more complicated than it really is and that I must be stupid for not understanding it all (reading between the lines here).
To the two white knights: What you posted did nothing to help people understand things about DD but instead, made some people (me at least) feel like we are ignorant or stupid or "doing it wrong." Need I remind you two that "if you can't say something nice..."?
I'm glad to hear that this mess won't be forced upon us until after the new year! I have enough to worry about this holiday season!
I don't do "betas." I don't use beta versions of viewers (Firestorm and Firestorm Mesh) and I won't be participating in the beta testing on Aditi. I don't have time to help Linden Lab get their system working properly and all the bugs worked out, nor do I have the technical knowledge to do so. I will be relying on those merchants who DO have time and the technical knowledge to work out the problems that will come with Direct Delivery.
I just hope that all the answers we dumb*bleep*es seek in this thread are answered by someone who knows how to talk to people like people and not six year I.T. professionals.
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I saw that too, Josh. It looks intentional to me, though WHY someone would wear that collar like that is a mystery. When I first saw it, I just blinked for a sec and then thought; "OK...that's weird. NEXT!" and moved on. :smileyvery-happy:
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Deltango Vale wrote:@ everyoneI have turned off display names because it is simply too messy to havetwosets of names displayed (in addition to group titles). Nor can I be bothered to remember the 25 million pet names people choose on a weekly basis. So, sadly, if someone accidentally chose R27jklhwrhkf7 as an account name (not realizing it would become an avatar name because of the semantic confusion on the signup page), that's what I see inworld.
I turned off those ridiculous display names also, Del. Two names and the group tag was just TOO much. I haven't and will never use a display name. I even cleared the title from the group I created and always have active, so the only thing above MY head is my name along with my viewer (in parenthesis).
I really really wish LL would bring back the last names option also. I don't have any hope that they will, but I wish they would. I get tired of seeing the crazy names with numbers too. Some I don't even know what to call them if I wished to say hello in local chat. Even before though, some chose very strange first names that weren't first names at all. An example I'll give you is "Lthr." I know that stands for leather, but, really?? I've never met anybody out in the real world named Lthr.
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Chelsea Malibu wrote:It sounds almost like they messed with the Keyword indexing again which somehow flagged your content in the wrong category. My MP is ok.
Yes, that's a possibility. Who knows though since I got no messages from the system saying that those postings have been flagged. I'm glad yours is OK, Miss Chelsea!
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Maybe it had something to do with the sim my magic boxes are placed on. I don't know, but they have all reposted themselves now. So problem solved...for now.
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I don't know what's going on but, suddenly, my listed items are going "Unavailable" and disappearing from my store listings. So far, these items are things that have been listed for a long time. I received no messages from MP indicating any of them have been flagged for wrong category, so I don't understand why they would go unavailable. I logged in to check my magic boxes and both are still there, all items are present in them. I reset the boxes and went into edit on a couple of the items and then checked again and they STILL show unavailable.
Resyncing didn't help either.
Maybe some of you should check your unavailable items in your inventory and see if you too have some that have changed for no reason.
I'm at a loss on this one. :matte-motes-angry:
On EDIT: First there was 5 unavailable, then 9, then 10 and now 12, but the count at the top shows 71! If I really do have 71 items removed SOMEHOW...I'm gonna be one upset individual!
On EDIT again: Now they have all reposted by themselves! That was frustrating, okay? Let's not do that again.
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Toysoldier Thor wrote:Ralph,I do agree that a major factor of what is eroding inworld Grid activity and inspiring several SL Grid customers to strongly consider and actually execute on a strategy of moving more or all of their activities to other open grids like IW is the high cost of SL Teir for sims.If land costs were much lower and prim counts per sim much higher (i.e. look at the monthly costs and prim counts on IW vs SL), then this would likely stimulate a significant resurance of inworld activity. I am very comfortable is saying that if LL has lost teirs for 655 sims in the past year (due to customers closing or abandoning sims) its mostly due to the cost of maintaining them not being worth it anymore AND/OR because they could get an equivelent sim on a competing grid for a fraction the month costs with double the prim count.The potential problem is (and I do not know this figure - only LL does) is that LL must charge a minimum fee per sim that is tied directly to the RL costs of operating the physical server it runs on as well as all the associated costs to operate that server in their DC. If they could lower this cost and pass the savings to the customers by way of reduced teir costs then LL could do a lot to stem the flow of their customers migrating their activities to lower cost open grids.If LL is reducing these per sim costs (i.e. more virtual sims per physical server, faster cheaper servers, etc) and not at least passing down a portion of these savings to the customer (i.e. LL is being blindly greedy) then they are consciously ignoring their competition and causing their own demise as the SL Grid erodes in use.If LL has done everything possible to reduce per sim costs and their teirs reflect a near break-even pricing, then LL is in deep trouble since that means they are not running a competitive product to their growing competition that can operate their sims at much lower costs and in turn offer sims to us customers at much lower teir pricing.I think its more option #1... LL is ignoring that they have competition and does not want to pass on any of their cost savings to their customers and basically they are Fiddling as Rome burns.
I have been looking at InWorldz the past few days myself, Toy. Imagine my surprise when I saw: $75 USD per month tier for a full sim with 45,000 prims (with a $75 USD set-up fee), prims to 128 x 128 x 128, free uploads! Now THAT is something that people could afford! $295 tier ($1,000 set up fee), 15,000 prims, 64 x 64 x 64 max size and $10L for each item you upload...yeah...there is no way I could afford all that.
My problem with IW comes in when I look at their total number of people logged in at any one time. Yesterday, the max number I saw online was 183. Right this moment, there are 105 online. I would love to have my own sim and build a great experience on it! I could do a LOT with 45,000 prims! But would I just have this wonderful sim all to myself?
I am in complete agreement that the Lab seriously needs to re-evaluate their tier structure. Get things in line with their competition. I just hope they get a clue sooner than later.
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Sy Beck wrote:Assest Hogster - Have an Inventory of 20KWardrobe Meister - Have an inventory of 40KFetch me a Kitchen Sink! - Have an inventory of 80KEdward Boxhands - Wear a shopping bag instead of opening itDual personaility - Create an altPersonality Disorder - Forget the password of at least 2 altsTwo Faced - Texture everything else as well as the face you meantGrab Your Balls - Have your first danceProphet - Predict the impending demise of SL
This one just about cracked me up! And you know we've ALL won THAT award! /me laughs his head off! :smileyvery-happy:
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Josh Susanto wrote:Sort of.They will NOT be gone from your sales data screen.EVER.
You are absolutely correct, Josh Dude. Miss Fae...if you were talking about removing the items from the sales reports, unfortunately, this is not possible. They will always remain in those reports.
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Fae,
Once you've resynced your magic box, go to your Manage Inventory screen and then click on "Unavailable" at the top of the inventory screen. Any item not in the magic box will be listed there. On the right you will see "Delete" next to each item. Click it and they will be gone. :-)
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Sassy Romano wrote:I have a great idea to guarantee 100% shop inworld... don't list on Marketplace!(i'm so smart at times)
The only problem with this, Miss Sassy, is that inworld shopping is almost dead. People have gotten away from going to malls and inworld stores to get the things they want. Now, they just go to the Marketplace, look at a couple of photos and buy from there. I have a strong suspicion that in the near future, inworld shopping will be cut down to texture and sculpt stores and just a few prolific clothing stores.
All of my sales come from my Marketplace store. I have very little traffic in my inworld store. If it weren't for the hunts I'm currently a part of, I wouldn't have any traffic at all. And yet, I still have a quarter sim with a big store and a lot of displays.
This is why I was considering trying Toy's rebate program. Heck, I even made a rebate coupon in Gimp that looks nice to post on my Marketplace store. In truth though...I'm having second thoughts about it. I'm not sure it would do any danged good.
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Mickey Vandeverre wrote:I don't care if they do it in RL or not.I think here....that it will piss people off by offering two different prices. People pay attention to that stuff. Even if they did not pay attention....I am not comfortable with it.And again....you are herding them to what is convenient for you.And not on what is convenient for them.If your figure is 90% (I think that mine might be 75%)...That's a very loud message on what is convenient for your customer.I should probably compute that figure better for myself, rather than eyeball it...but in my explanation to Ann...I wish that I could accomodate that 25% or 10% to a glorious inworld shopping experience with cutesy props and atmosphere. But I'm not rich enough to do that.I also wish that 50% or more would continue to shop inworld, so that I could justify the above, or that they would adjust tier fees to the economy....But they aren't going to do that. And it ain't gonna happen.Seems that you are bucking a trend that may not reverse itself....and may turn into 95% or 100%.
I have seen SO many shopping malls and stores close in my 3 years of SL. Inworld shopping is definitely suffering now because of the Marketplace. Store owners can't afford to keep paying tier fees (or rent) on a parcel (or sim) that isn't generating traffic and sales and so the store (or mall) shuts down. I MUCH prefer to shop inworld so I can see the products first hand before I buy. I might use the marketplace to find exactly what I'm looking for, but if there's an inworld store, I go there to purchase.
I see nothing wrong with offering an inworld shopping rebate to customers. They can either take advantage of the offer or not as they decide and I am currently considering implementing Toy's idea myself to see if I can get more traffic into my store.
I just hate to see all the inworld stores closing. I hate it, hate it, hate it. It's like a Wal-Mart Supercenter opened next to a bunch of Mom and Pop stores and took away their business. (Speaking of the Marketplace here)
I know, I know...people complain...waiting for things to rez, lag, on and on. But we complain when we go shopping in RL also. No parking spaces, rude employees, on and on. And yet we still go to the grocery stores, malls and stuff to get our needs. I, too, see special offers for web only or store only sales.
I guess I just need to shut up now. I'm rambling.
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Ann Otoole wrote:Can't tell becauseI am not stupid and therefore never enter my SL password into a TPV. But the haters that despise LL keep swearing the search in TPV password stealer viewers use traffic as the main sort.Whatever.
Howdy, Miss Ann
This sentence makes it sound as if you consider any and all users who use Phoenix, Firestorm, CoolVL or any of the other approved third party viewers, stupid. Let me ASSURE of this...I am NOT stupid. The Phoenix team did a fantastic job with their viewer and I have used it for a long time. The build tools in Phoenix are fantastic. If you are a builder and you haven't ever seen what Phoenix can offer you, you don't know what you are missing!
You may not want to use a third party viewer, but that does NOT mean the rest of us that do are stupid.
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Nalates Urriah wrote:<snip>As best I can tell there is no way to follow developement in the Commerce and Market Place Projects. For instance,Direct Delivery was rolled out to the Le Tigre release channels today. One would only know that if they follow the Server Developement projects. Not a peep from the commerce team.
/me sighs
Wonderful. Just wonderful.
In another thread, several of us expressed concern about the DirectDelivery code and asked that the commerce team please hold off deploying that code until after the busy holiday shopping season that's forthcoming. In other words...wait until the beginning of the new year. I should have known they would go right on with what they wanted to do. That absolutely nothing has been said about the roll out to Le Tigre doesn't surprise me at all. The commerce team seems to like to roll out major changes and only post that they have done so AFTER it is deployed leaving the Merchants to find the bugs and other problems with the code that the team missed.
My Marketplace sales have also dropped. This week, I have had not one sale on any item. My last sale was on the 8th. I don't know what's going on, but I'm tempted to keyword stuff as well. I have to try SOMETHING.
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Sassy Romano wrote:Toysoldier Thor wrote:As for your example of why consistency on viewers is needed by describing the MESH clothing worn by a LL viewer avatar and being banned by a Phoenix using Sim club owner... that is also technically not true since anyone that wears MESH clothing is seen by non-mesh complient viewers as being transparent / invisible. No nude parts would be seen that would ban that avatar.Not true at all. As long as the avatar mesh and the clothing fits the mesh then there's no specific requirement to wear an alpha layer that hides the avatar. I have several dresses precisely like this. They fit me, precisely me because they are modelled to my avatar and I raised exactly this question.If I go to a PG region wearing such clothing, to others I will appear nude. There is nothing in the ToS that says that mesh MUST be worn with an alpha layer so why should I be penalised because someone else's viewer doesn't support a feature?So while mesh often may require an alpha layer because at the moment there's no parametric deform function, it is certainly not a requirement that mesh items must be combined with an alpha layer.
As of this date, I have only one piece of mesh clothing. It is a leather jacket that is beautifully done, made by one of the best clothing makers in SL. He provides the alpha layer to wear with it that I use every time I put it on. I copied my custom shape into that jacket's folder and made a small adjustment to my shape so my shoulders didn't poke through. Whenever I want to wear that jacket, I also wear that shape. When I take it off, I put the original shape back on.
For those not being able to render mesh because of their viewer, my arms and sides look invisible and I appear to be wearing a black flattened sphere.
I would hesitate to purchase any mesh clothing if the alpha layer wasn't provided just for the very reason that I would appear naked to those using Phoenix and other V1.X viewers that can't render mesh. I don't go out in public with no shirt on and I CERTAINLY wouldn't go out naked and I'm not gonna appear to others that way just because of their viewer. It's completely not my style.
So, if you have mesh dresses or other clothing that doesn't have this alpha layer, you should ask the creator if they have it available, or try to make it yourself. Otherwise, you will be seen as naked by all those people.
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Howdy, Toysoldier!
Ah, OK. I see what you mean now. Thanks for all the great information! I use the word "Boxed" in my product listings also (my product boxes have that word at the end) but I remove the word "boxed" in the "display name" of the item when I list them. So, when a customer looks at my listings, they don't SEE the word "boxed" but when they receive the item it DOES have the word "boxed" so they will know they have to rez the box and unpack it. I completely agree...if that needs changed, I need to start doing it now as well.
I didn't see the SLCC video where Brooke said that boxed items will be handled as before, so I'm glad to know THAT piece of info. As to the rest of what you said about this, yes indeed, that shows that the commerce team is completely out of touch with we merchants need. That's the sad part, you know it?
Toysoldier Thor wrote:<snip>Finally, I still hope LL Commerce has a little brain power and designed the new DD so that I can simply go to my main Marketplace Store Management page and click a checkmark if I want my content delivered via Magicbox or DD.PLEASEEE tell me that LL at least had this concept in mind.
/me raises his hand
Add my name to the list of people that hope this is how it will work.
*on edit: to correct a horribly badly written sentence.
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Ann Otoole wrote:Well...One day LL accidently enabled some stuff in the viewer for a few minutes. Since they have not formally released the info on what the thing looks like I will simply respect their privacy and not discuss those details.However I expect we will either copy the delivery boxes to the special delivery folder (probably does not look like you think) or we will create folders in the delivery folder. Since it is possible people will need to remove the "BOXED" warning in the title then it will be necessary to manually associate the products to ads. Sure some attempt at automation could be reasonably expected but you, I, and a lot of people have been through transformations before and we all know it will be necessary to validate each ad. I am still finding ads that I had rewritten but got trashed by the endless ETL process that continued to run despite opting out of it. So when this system goes live I will be visiting every ad and redoing it using my current knowledge of how the SLM search works and making certain the correct product is selected for delivery and I have tested said delivery. LL will make some extra commissions since I still do not see any test delivery feature.BTW as I type this I cannot see any product images on SLM at all.
Just from what I have gleaned from these forums, there has been a lot of speculation about how the DirectDelivery folder(s) will be set up. From just having one folder with all our products in it, to individual product folders inside the DirectDelivery folder with the product itself and any notecards and landmarks included in that folder as well. I've heard that we will not be able to use boxes to put everything in, I've heard that yes we will.
Having a lot of knowledge of the RLV and inventory, I would assume that the DirectDelivery folder would be similar to the RLV folder that allows a Dom to access his/her sub's inventory. That folder is titled "#RLV" and anything inside that folder is accessible by the Dom allowing him/her to dress the sub in the clothing or attach/detach items to the sub as he or she pleases.
ALL of this is speculation, though. In truth NONE of us (except the beta merchants) knows how this will work. LindenLab has refused (up to this point) to respond to any of our concerns or questions about DirectDelivery, but ask a question about Halloween Banners and KA-WHAM! there's an immediate answer.
As I said to ToySoldier, I'm just going to pull up my shorts, hold tight and watch the entire mess happen when it will. Judging by the Commerce Team's past performances, I'm sure it will be AFTER the code is deployed and we will get a message that says; "Direct Delivery is now live! Please create a folder in your inventory called :#directdelivery"..." with further instructions on how to set it up.
Until then, the rest is just guesses and speculation.
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PROBLEM IN PERFORMANCE!
in Second Life Viewer
Posted
Hello, Deni. That looks to me like an internal video card. If your laptop is Windows XP, the card is probably very old and not able to render SL properly. You desperately need a new computer with at LEAST a 1GB onboard memory graphics card.
You can try turning every slider in the graphics preferences down to low but I doubt that would even help. SL is very graphics intensive and you need a good computer with a lot of memory to run it well. Sorry.