AyelaNewLife

I can't remember or find the exact statistic; but aren't there only ~1000-2000 people who withdraw more than $10,000 per year across the entirety of Second Life, including landlords and gaming region owners? Even if there are somehow 3000 signatories on this letter, for most of them these changes represent losing a lunch out or two a month, this is not some existential threat to real livelihoods.

It could be worse. At least they've realised that it's no longer 2008 and do actually include an unpacker script.

It's very easy to completely misrepresent the actual science behind gender/sex differences. Psychological differences between men and women almost always follows a "60:40" rule; eg, if you pick two random people and find out which one is more aggressive, it's the man only 60% of the time. That means that 2 out of 5 times that you run a little experiment like this, your result runs against the overall trend. In essence, most people are pretty average, and it's only at the extremes that any major difference between the sexes becomes extremely obvious.

There's also a vocal minority who claim that any kind of theft-prevention advice is victim-blaming, and no different to blaming the victim of a sexual assault. I don't know which one is the chicken and which one is the egg. Equating the two is nonsense, of course. And frankly, it's highly offensive to claim that "don't leave your front door open when you leave the house" is even remotely equivalent to "she was asking for it because she wore that dress".

Thank you; but in this particular case I wouldn't say "extreme anger issues" is necessarily fair. Trauma like this is horrific, and causes extreme long-term emotional damage, capable of turning the otherwise-reasonable into the utterly-unreasonable. I might not agree with her anger, but I sure as hell understand it.

I'm English. Being flippant when talking about serious issues is practically a national trait. For the avoidance of doubt: When I say this, what I actually mean is "clothing does not imply consent". And then I reinforced that with an absurd exception of skiing in a bikini; which arguably does imply consent to getting frostbite, but which implies nothing else. Nowhere do I (intentionally) imply anything to the contrary. If I've not made that sufficiently clear, then I can only apologise.

Walk away from the PC, get a glass of water, and take a few minutes to let the adrenaline subside. Then come back. I agree. I agree with what you've said. The only thing which we appear to disagree on is what you think that I've said - and that may be my fault, for using poor wording.

This might be my fault for not making myself clear, but to clarify: I only meant that if you're at a club or bar, it is not unreasonable to expect to have complete strangers introduce themselves to you, some of whom will try to use pickup lines on you. That's it. Do not read anything else into my words.

This is the problem I have with the blanket statement of "the victim is never at fault". Because while it is usually true, it also covers acts of extreme stupidity. It's why I, personally, always throw in a common sense test of "were the actions of the victim reasonable?" Is it reasonable to leave your front door and windows unlocked and wide open while you go on vacation for two weeks? Absolutely not, and no one sane would try and defend that. Is it reasonable to leave your phone and purse at an empty cafe table while you nip to the loo? No, put it in your pocket if you're alone; but if you're with a friend/date/whatever then it would be reasonable, as they'd be able to watch your valuables. Is it reasonable to wear revealing/attractive clothing and go to a club or bar? Of course, 100%. Sure, you are essentially consenting to having the occasional pickup line thrown your way; but nothing more than that. And if the actions of the victim were reasonable by any generous standard, then the victim is utterly blameless. (Hint: clothing choices are almost always reasonable. And the exceptions tend to involve bikinis and skiing.)

Expectation: Reality: All three (five, including those offscreen) of your models using colour combos not possible without buying the fatpack? That's a paddlin'.

This has happened to me another three times since I posted this. It's a plague. When the revolution comes, these people will be the first to the gulag.

There's only minor pricing differences between the major brands, for both bodies and heads (and skins). So your choice is pretty much between major brands and their ~8-9k price tag (for a body+head+skin), or to go for a free/cheaper brand and lose out on the clothing support. It's not ideal, but it is what it is. I'm just gonna lazily copy my post from another thread: Your head + skin + shape + body combo is what will give you your look. My advice would be to avoid buying a head until you have demo'd out a skin + head + shape + body combo that you like. Straydog is the place I recommend for male skins, but there are other places. Each skin will be designed with one specific head in mind (the skin creators usually have generic body skins for all of the major brands). Find a vendor ad there that you like, take the demo of that skin (plus a demo of the body skin on the wall), and take the demo of the relevant head and body. The skin (both demo and the real thing) should come with a shape; wear the shape, and you should look like the vendor ad (or close enough, anyway). Use that as a base, tweak the shape to your liking, and once you have something that you're happy with, only then should you buy anything.

Your head + skin + shape (+ body) combo is what will give you your look. While Catwa's David is the most common choice, there's plenty of other options for the other Catwa heads and some other brands (eg Lelutka). My advice would be to avoid buying a head until you have demo'd out a skin + head + shape combo that you like. Straydog is the place I recommend for male skins, but there are other places. Each skin will be designed with one specific head in mind. Find a vendor ad there that you like, take the demo of that skin (plus a demo of the body skin on the wall), and take the demo of the relevant head. The skin (demo and the real thing) should come with a shape; wear the shape, and you should look like the vendor ad (or close enough, anyway). Use that as a base, tweak the shape to your liking, and once you have something that you're happy with, only then should you buy anything.

Generic "a few days old but I forgot this thread exists" disclaimer.

I agree. I worked hard on my appearance, and it is not some cookie-cutter out-of-the-box default look. Each photo on my Flickr page is the result of several hours of work, from the staging, wardrobe, posing, framing and lighting to the out-of-world editing I do. The end result is artwork, no different to a painting. Calling it "vanity" comes across as an attempt to invalidate the effort and creativity I've poured into the visual side of SL - and I reject that utterly.

Nah, that's the inevitable "mesh = style over substance" Luddite-posters. They're inevitable.

If your hands look huge and out of proportion to the rest of your body... make them smaller. With mesh bodies, you can't assume that a slider setting of 50 is "average". It varies from body creator to body part, so playing around with the settings is the best way to go. For example, for my Maitreya Lara body, I set my hand size at 20 and my arm size at 80, and that's about average and in proportion for my 6ft 2 shape.

Creators who throw in unnecessary no-copy permissions into their copy no-transfer product. Examples that I've suffered lately: The product itself is copy, but the vendor ad/notecard is no-copy, so the box as a whole becomes no-copy The product is copy/mod but with next owner permissions set to no-copy/no-mod The main product is fine but one of the linked objects is set to next owner no-copy/no-mod, so you can't actually fix the problem This gets under my skin pretty badly; there's just no reason to do it, and it's just pure annoyance for me (with an added dose of false advertising).

As it happened to me yet again; people who open an IM by saying "hi" or the suchlike, and then go offline within 2-3 minutes. I'm not talking about freak coincidental disconnects, I'm talking about people who start a conversation and then immediately go offline for the day. That rustles me.

This is why I posted the dictionary definition of a pet peeve. You've made it clear that you don't actually understand what the phrase means, and so you're complaining about a straw man. Because getting visibly upset over something (or otherwise) is utterly irrelevant to whether something is a pet peeve or not. Ask yourself this simple question: "does this thing noticeably annoy me?" If the answer is yes, it is a pet peeve. That's it. Don't read anything else into the question. How you react to that annoyance is another matter entirely, as is whether that annoyance is even justified. It doesn't matter if you froth at the mouth in response to the pet peeve, or decide that it doesn't really matter and move on with life; all it has to do is cause that little spark of irritation and it's a pet peeve. The answer to this is simple: it doesn't have to. Thoughts don't require justification; actions do. And a pet peeve is about thoughts, nothing more. Does that clear things up?

Because I had to read the profile etc, therefore it affects me. Now, it doesn't affect me enough to justify demanding that the other person change their ways to suit my whims. I think we can all agree on that. But it still affects me because I've come into contact with it. It's a simple concept really. A pet peeve is no more than "I find this thing particularly annoying". The (Oxford Dictionary) definition is literally "something that a particular person finds especially annoying". That annoyance doesn't have to be justified, nor does it need to be the common consensus. This is another simple concept. For example, a pet peeve of mine is the monthly edge poster that tries to show off how big their brains are by trying to restrict what other people are and are not allowed to be annoyed by. That is something I find especially annoying. Of course, those higher forms of intelligence are perfectly entitled to continue demonstrating their galaxy-sized brains... and I'm perfectly entitled to continue finding it particularly annoying; ie, a pet peeve of mine.

500L/wk for a calendar year comes out at $103/yr. Billed annually, this means that LL are paying these grandfathered premium members $30/yr for the privilege of going premium. (Billed quarterly halves that, and 400L/wk 'only' results in a $10/yr net loss.) This is why grandfathering benefits is ridiculously stupid and shortsighted. If you ever decrease the benefits of a premium account or service, you honour everything that's already been paid for, and any renewals fall under the new scheme. This is Paid Service 101, and LL have got it wrong. Somehow.

The counter argument to that is that LL are already raising the cost of premium, so we're already giving them more money. The counter counter argument to that is that LL are raising the price for a reason, and raising the stipend by the same amount or more defeats the point of the price hike. In another thread I suggested a raise to 350L per week. It might not seem like much, but it amounts to a single-colour item of clothing every month or so. More importantly, it ensures that both parties benefit from the price hike; LL get more money from each subscription, and we get a noticeable benefit to accompany the price hike. Any larger increase than that however, and the Lab is lowering their per-account income while putting up the price. Which makes the opposite of sense. (Unpopular opinion time: LL shouldn't have grandfathered in the old, higher stipend amounts. Sure, they should have honoured any already-paid-for time at the older rate, but once the subscription is renewed the stipend should have dropped to the new level. Those higher stipend premium accounts barely make LL any money, and in some cases are probably operating at a net loss.)

(I struggle with this too, don't worry, I know how hard it can be sometimes to just walk away)

In order: Why remove quarterly payment plans? They're a staple of almost every subscription-based game out there, I just can't understand why or what you gain from this. Perhaps there's a real reason somewhere... but without it, this looks like a pointless spite decision. Have you considered raising the weekly stipend in line with the price increase? As it currently stands, the monthly fee pays can be split up into $5 of Lindens and $4.50 of other features. Under the new prices, that changes to $7 of other features - £2.50 per month for 10 more group slots. Such value. A relatively small increase to 350L per week comes out at $6 of Lindens and $6 of other features per month, which keeps the ratio roughly the same, and means we're getting something material for pretty large price hike. Is fixing this on your medium-term roadmap? I imagine the problem is 95% untangling the current group system from the existing backend, since chat systems that can handle tens of thousands of concurrent users have been around for years and years.