Odaks

Ever since I used Firestorm's camera settings to save my preferred view angles, I've found some very funny angles result when sitting on furniture. Wherever I have moddable items of my own, I've used Auto-cam for Furniture to set the default camera angle for that particular piece of furniture, and that fixes the problem nicely. Non-moddable stuff remains the usual PIA. I can't be sure that it was using FS's settings that caused the problem, but I have a feeling that that was when I noticed the camera angles of furniture going astray.

Exactly the point!

From a purely sensible point of view, you are absolutely correct. However, I think that the desire to fit in, to look the part and not to stand out as a newbie, can be a very powerful draw. That is when all sensibilities get chucked in the bin.

If you mean a "disbanded" group, as far as I understand all the info from LL, it is gone forever. This happens automatically after 24 hours of a group having less than two members. Tha " abandoned" group you refer to will only be revivable if it has at least two members (one of which will be the owner). As pointed out above, for you to become the owner, the existing owner needs to make you a co-owner to start with. I have a feeling that the matter of a group's single owner mysteriously disappearing without trace has been discussed in the past in these forums. I'm sorry, I can't quickly find anything on that; Maybe somebody else can remember.

Me too. I don't go back far enough to know, but was "content" ever put client-side?

Just a small, but very important technoicality, the Republic of Ireland is in the EU. Northern Island is a separate country and a member of the United Kindom.

The knowledgeable amonst us would be able to make informed choices to great benefit, no doubt. Other users (the vast majority, 90+%?) will surley just think, "I want it to look good, I'd better get the big one." The choice would need to take account of the client's system, too, making it impossible for the creator to even suggest a recommendation? Chic alluded to the creator's likely perspective of this. Add in the likely user's perspective as well and I strongly recommend keeping well away from walls suitable for banging your head on! If things like this don't happen automatically, they're unlikely to happen at all. Never lose sight of the audience you're playing to!

This is exactly the point that far too many aspiring dumbinants do not understand!

I have an old Toshiba Kira touch-screen laptop (currently out of action) with Intel HD integrated graphics 5500 (which do surprisingly well). I found the touch screen to be awkward to use for SL and often difficult to be precise when selecting things. Maybe my fingers are too fat! Fingernails aren't helpful, either. As a result, I always used the trusted cursor of my mouse instead. That's my perspective of touch-screen operation; you may well find otherwise but, as @MarissaOrloff points out, it is an expensive experiment! Intel generally seems to be the preferred option for SL, mainly due to better OpenGL support.

I couldn't help being reminded of this:- “We trained hard—but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we were reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while actually producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.” ― Petronius Arbiter

On a similar vein, when asked how EU finances worked, an accountant said, "Let me explain it like this.... A salesman walks into an hotel and asks if there is a room available for that night. The proprieter says that there is indeed a room, the best in the hotel and, due to it being the town's patron saint day, it is on special offer at merely €50. "May I see the room?". asks the salesman. "Yes sir, of course; but may I see your €50?" The salesman lays a €50 note on the counter and the proprietor cries out, "Pierre, Pierre!! Show this gentleman our finest penthouse room!". The boy, Pierre, and the salesman disappear up the stairs. The moment they are out of sight, the proprietor grabs the €50 note and runs out of the door and down the road to the butcher's shop. "René, my friend, here is the €50 that I owe you for meat that you sold to me last week." Recovering from the shock of having been paid early (an unknown event in this neck of the woods), the butcher grabs the €50 note, jumps onto his bicycle and pedals furiously to the farm, just outside the town. The butcher says, "Charles. here is the €50 that I owe you for beef, from last week!". The farmer duly hops onto his tractor, clutching the €50 note. Arriving at the Feed Merchant's premises, the farmer calls out, "Bernard, you old swindler, here is the €50 I owe you for animal feed!" ...and the Feed Merchant jumps into his car and drives at breakneck speed, back into town, to a narrow backstreet. "Lil, my sweetest, here is the €50 I owe you for, um.... er... you know...remedial services". Lil, smiling at her good fortune, walks around the corner to the hotel. "Jaques, here is the €50 I owe to you for last week's room hire", she declares to the proprietor, and slaps the €50 note down onto the counter. Meanwhile, Pierre and the salesman finish descending the stairs. "I'm sorry", says the salesman. "I do not like the room at all. I shall seek elsewhere." He picks up the €50 note and walks out of the hotel. And everyone has been paid.

Im real life, the majority of us probably come into our houses, close and lock the doors and windows, and eventually drop into bed, secure in the knowledge that the place is reasonably secure fron intruders. In Second Life, we might seek to reproduce the same feelings of security. It doesn't quite work the same, unfortunately, and that can be a bit of a shock to find out. Firstly, unless you are incredibly stupid, nothing can be stolen. Secondly, unless you are there at the time, you really can't be upset by an intruder; maybe just a little annoyed, if you ever get to find out. So what? How can that possibly affect you? I am, however, very sensitive to the psychological effects that RL burglariies cause. The sense of personal invasion is very real - even when the financial loss is small, or even nothing. There is no reason to suspect that the same injury does not occur in the pixel world, especially to people who regard SL as a an extension to their RL, and not just "a game".

The thing about Bots is they can be quite un-nerving. When an avatar (and that's all that it appears to be) keeps showing up, it's creepy. Particularly when the profile is totally blank, as they always are, it gives rise to feelings of uncomfortableness. I really would like any Bot to have a clearly described purpose and owner in its profile. That would dispel a lot of of doubt. I don't think LL understand the effect that unidentified Bots have, particularly on people that do not know about the Bot system, or they would have firmed up the Bot policy a long time ago.

But, as someone once said (forget who, sorry), "all the cool kids are doing it"!

Easy. "Hello and welcome, whoeverthehellyouare". If people use unintelligable characters for their display name, they really mustn't be upset about unintelligible replies.

There's nothing quite like a secret.

The entire matter of redundant landmarks is a huge frustration in all areas. It would be wonderful if an auto-update system could identify these and publish updates or deletions. I dream too much sometimes, I think.

Thanks, @IttyBittyKitty Littlepaws, but unfortunaltely that did not work for me. Following a similar route, I got rid of all rhe cookies assciated with marketplace.secondlife.com. That solved the problem but my cookies are gone now and there's no telling what will happen on subsequent logins. Presumably, the cookies will build up again. We'll see! Update: I've now logged out and back in again, no problems. This is on a Windows 10 laptop that is refusing (or someone is) to update to the new Windows 10 20H2 (stuck at 61%). Maybe that's infuential?

I think that auto-greeters are fine for un-occupied places such as Visitor Centres (from where you have a choice of places to go to), but when entering an occupied area like a dance floor, club lounge etc., the (virtual) human touch is really called for. Knowing that a mindless bit of technology is pleased to see me counts for absolutely nothing in my opinion. There are a lot of clubs and hangout type places that don't have a host(ess) on duty 24/7, and probably only arrange for one to be present for specific events. During "general" hours, these places will heavily rely on people just being nice. When that is not the case, the situation raised by the OP inevitably occurs. @Schatzi Timmerman herself said, "Automated greetings don't count", so she must think the same way. @Polenth Yue makes a good point though. A simple, "Hi everyone" as you arrive will often provoke some responses.

I've tried just about every other load of balls.

@Aishagain, you can be sure. It is the active group.

I have noticed that things seem to be taking longer than usual to load in. I have no technical data to back this up, but it does seem worse than it has been in recent times.

Thank you, too, @Rowan Amore. You were pointing out my error right at the start. Hopefully, the Intel fixes will work for them.

I stand corrected. The odd thing is that that message no longer show on my system, with Firestorm. I see "detecting hardware", then "initialising texture cache", and the log-in screen screen opens straight after. I got an older laptop out and tried it on that, and lo! "Initialising VFS" did indeed appear. Thanks for the correction.

They'll be fine! The Help menu is available at the Log-in screen, and the About [viewer name] is accessable before any attempt is made to log in. The only downside to getting those stats before logging in is that packet loss won't be registered.