AyelaNewLife

I delete very little (although I trim out landmarks, notecards, extra sizes etc), and the stuff I do delete is usually freebies that I have and will have zero use for. What I do instead is put a folder called ".Unused" inside each bottom-level sorting folder (for example "Tops, Sweaters"). Anything I don't think I'll wear on a semi-regular basis goes in there. The thing about Second Life inventories is that the space we have is effectively unlimited, but the space we can effectively process is not. There is no mechanical reason why I can't have 100 pairs of jeans, 80 of which I'll never wear; but putting all 100 into one folder is unmanageable to the point where most of your 20 good pairs will be swamped, and you'll end up using that one pair you like that sits on the top of the pile. I can declutter those 80 by deleting them... or just throwing them into a subfolder where they are out of sight. For me it achieves the same thing, without the finality of deletion. (I don't actually have 100 pairs of jeans, don't worry. Although I do have 19, of which 8 are in the .Unused folder.)

I think this is the key point here. When you called it SL2, that came with the implication that it would be a replacement for Second Life, that the worlds we know and love would cease to be in order to make room for the new creation. Hence why there's so much frothing at the mouth at the suggestion. As an independent, entirely new virtual world? Yeah, I definitely think there's room for something like that, and I don't think that place exists right now. I also don't think that LL are the people to create that new world, but that's another discussion entirely.

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Hunters XIX/148/164/21 Six months ago I would have recommended Surfer's Bay; but it's a bit hit-and-miss now. The owners bought a second sim for rentals (that doesn't cover the extra tier) which ruined both the view and the experience of the main beach, and they fell into the old trap of trying to turn a beach into a nightclub and then wondering why their traffic vanished; but there are still echoes of the old Bay, from the time when that place was possibly the best hangout spot on the grid. Probably still worth checking out though.

Modelling colleges are either roleplay or borderline-scams, so I'd save your lindens. There's two main problems with going into modelling as a career. The first is that there's very little money in modelling; in order for a photographer to pay you for your time, they'd need to be making more money to cover that cost. So where would that come from, creators looking for vendor ads? They'd want consistency, so are more likely to just use their own alts routinely. Fashion bloggers? Again they'd most likely use themselves, and the few that do get 'paid' are paid in the form of free clothing. In-store models? Either customer support reps doubling up as a model, or an alt/bot of the creator that they can idle in the shop 24/7. The second is that there's a pretty massive community of photographers in SL. At times, it seems like every third person I meet takes photos, there's thousands and thousands of us. Not only are most photographers perfectly willing to model for others (it's fun to be on the other side of the camera for a change!), but they also make better models than your average resident - as we've got hours of practice at adjusting ourselves to fit photos. So if any photographer does need models for a shoot - of any kind, at almost any skill level - the vast majority can just open their contacts list and find someone suitable, with no payment needed or expected. So if you're interested in modelling out of pure enjoyment, because it's something you enjoy, then that's perfect. That's awesome. But if you're looking to make this a career that will pay the rent... it almost certainly won't.

This also infuriates me, as a photographer rather than a land-owner. Do you know how hard it is to find beautiful, rez-friendly sims for photos?! There are people out there that will credit Maitreya and Catwa for the body and head they always wear, yet won't even mention the name of the sim they're at. It's incredibly frustrating.

What else does he expect me to say? Is there some fantasy universe where these knuckledraggers get a response of "playing with myself while waiting for your arrival, oh God of Sexual Pleasure"?

I did a mini-project shoot as part of my own development as a photographer, and eventually posted the results to Flickr; so here's the five pics, in one post so I don't spam the thread too much

Aha, but how can you lock a thread for politics derailing when the OP was about politics? Checkmate atheists/libruhls (delete as appropriate)

Two side observations/moans: Malls with shopping events built into them are a terrible idea. Looking at you, event that shares a name with a fashion magazine. Shopping events are lag heavy at the best of times, even if you derender the two dozen + avatars also shopping. Adding another 5-10k objects onto the sim so you can scoop up some more rent money is just obnoxious. If you want people to go to your event, at least pretend to care about user experience. Pseudo-malls - ie a collection of main stores on the same sim - only work for smaller creators. If you're that fruit-based creator or that creator mired in scandalous copyright theft allegations then you can afford your own sim, stop being so stingy and think about your customers, god knows you can afford it. Or at the very least, stop running hunts on a sim that rarely drops below 40 people.

I reply in kind. If someone says "hi", they get a "hi" back, nothing more. They say "how are you?", they get a "fine thanks, how are you?". If a total stranger wants to start a conversation with me, that's fine. It's when that stranger wants me to start the conversation for them that we get into "how about no?" territory.

A friend of mine who owns both the Maitreya Lara and Belleza Freya bodies, but normally wears Lara, swapped over the Freya for the duration of her pregnancy as she said it was easier to get a natural belly with that body; but that she still got Lara looking good when playing around with shapes. So make of that what you will. What I will say though is that your mesh body purchase will last you long after your pregnancy, so you have to consider "normal" use too. And the sad fact is that Lara is utterly dominant, almost everything made these days will fit that body. Freya and Slink's Hourglass have really good support, and will be fine with most clothing, while the rest of the "big 6" (Slink Physique and Belleza Isis and Venus) have good but not support. Anything else and you will struggle to find clothing. How important this factor is will be up to you. My advice? Try making the shapes you want from Lara and Freya/Isis demos, and use the clothing availability as a "tie breaker" if you're having trouble deciding between the options.

My one problem with that freeze tool is that it doesn't freeze particles and scripted animals (no idea why about the last one). So blunt smoke, wave spray emitters, and those chickens that alternate between two poses still move. It also freezes HUDs, rendering them unusable while the world is frozen. Even so, this one feature alone is enough to stop me from ever going back to Firestorm for photo work.

This, pretty much I can't remember the last major event I missed. On the other hand, more often than not I'll buy nothing from an event, and almost never more than a single colour pack or two. So yeah, I'm a shopaholic but not a spendaholic... not toooo much anyway, undeniable room for improvement there!

This is a politics thread, so no rules against derailing with politics! Neither one of the examples you gave is a truly free society. Nowhere is. Neither is there an example of a truly "unfree", totalitarian society anywhere on earth. Everywhere is a compromise between personal freedom, and the promise of safety and security for the population as a whole. Neither extreme is practical, so the question facing every society on the planet is "what level of compromise is acceptable? What freedoms are we willing to sacrifice for the Greater Good?" That question is at the heart of every vote a democratic country has ever faced. Do you vote for the mainstream right-wing (of the economic variety, rather than they "they don't like gay people" variety) party; who promises lower taxes and therefore more financial freedom, but at the cost of giving you the "freedom" to suffer the effects of redundancy, poor health, etc? Or do you vote for the mainstream left-wing party, that promises higher taxes and more restrictions on businesses, but in return will provide a safety net of safety such as unemployment benefits, free healthcare, etc? Freedom vs Security. Of course party politics is more nuanced than that; but every issue can be broken down into that core choice, and you can very easily see a pattern emerge across non single-issue parties. Second Life is pretty damn free, as far as "societies" go. Part of that is because the consequences of anything you do here are so insignificant compared to the real world. If I get punched in the face in the real world, that hurts. If I get punched in the face in SL, I say "lol" and TP elsewhere. Hence why you can punch someone in the face here, but not in the real world. Or on the more extreme end, you can own a rape dungeon here and shamelessly advertise it. Or own a business and charge whatever you want for whatever you want without some competition watchdog or union or local council getting in your way. Are any of those things actually good? Your answer to that will tell you what the disadvantages to you to living in this mostly-free society are. To others, these things might be what makes SL great. The freedoms that allow people to explore their "non-vanilla" sexuality in a safe, controlled environment also allows the sexual harassment of men and women that don't want or consent to that kind of behaviour. The entrepreneurial freedom that has allowed the appearance of our avatars to keep pace (ish) with 15 years of technological development despite very little help from the Lab also allow some borderline-scam dog turds to be sold at a premium. However we also have the 'freedom' to deal with those situations ourselves. The mute button allows us to self-police harassment a thousand times more effective than anything the Lab could come up with. We have no 'needs', we are not forced to buy food or power from monopolistic pseudo-cartels, we can just "opt out" of terrible creators and refuse to buy at no further loss to ourselves. So yeah, the disadvantage to freedom has always been that other people have that same freedom too. In a world like Second Life, where the consequences are so minimal and we have the tools to censor what we see without curtailing the freedoms of others, that disadvantage is pretty insignificant. Certainly more so than an equivalently-free real life society. Aaaaand.... that's my lunch break done, have fun with this, for once it's the non-political derailers putting this thread in danger of being locked.

For normal use sure, but I've found Black Dragon in "photo mode" to be a massive step up from Firestorm in terms of performance and reliability, and saving a snap at triple my monitor's resolution takes a fraction of the time. But even so, it has it's problems in "every day" situations, so I swap between the two.

My last post crossed over with this so repeating myself slightly; but it seems like we have the same approach, but just an inverted process. I prefer to start with everything in a premade folder and cull from there though, as that's fewer steps than creating the shell from scratch. Of course if it's a demo then I don't bother with all that - I'll take their obnoxiously named demo full of sizes I'll never wear, it doesn't matter, the entire thing will be deleted in a few minutes anyway. How's this as a compromise: if all boxes/box huds (I much prefer huds, for ease of use) were to come with a "click to unpack" script, rather than an auto-unpack script, would that be okay with you? Seems like that's the compromise that keeps everyone happy, and doesn't create any unnecessary work for anyone.

I have the reverse process. I only really use the premade folders (Animations, Body Parts, Clothing etc) as top-level folders, so the custom folder space below trash is more of a 'workspace' for me. The new folder is always dumped there, always exceptionally easy to find. From there I'll rename the folder to fit my naming conventions, create the subfolders needed (eg for the box), cull the stuff I don't need, and then move the 'finished product' into place.

Okay, I'm having a serious "what if I'm the crazy one?!" moment here, what am I missing? What's the difference between being delivered a folder, and having a box (for backup purposes) that when clicked, delivers a folder... in exactly the same place as the first folder? Seems like the end product is exactly the same. And either way, does it actually affect you? If the box has an unpacker script, then I can just click and I get my folder for me saving me the 'pain in the ass step', and you both can manually rez the box and manually unpack the contents. Everyone wins! Unless there's "anti-rez" scripts or something that stops you doing that. That would indeed be dumb.

Having spent the afternoon sorting through most of the free group gifts given out over Christmas, along with a large pile of free poses from the Pose Fair, I have this to say: When the revolution comes, creators that don't include unpack scripts in their boxes will be the first to the gulag.

The Signature heads aren't exactly mainstream, finding skins specifically for those heads is going to be tough. He'll almost certainly need to find an omega facial skin applier instead, which isn't exactly common, and rules out some of the major brands like Straydog. "Just search on the MP lol" is near useless advice in these situations, you have to wade through mountains of garbage, outdated skins and niche looks to find something actually appropriate. It's a habit many of you have that needs to stop; if someone asks for recommendations, is it really so hard to just answer the god damn question rather than just noiseposting like this? @Tasar Ochs I'm not sure if these places offer omega head skins or not, but you could try L'Etre, Swallow, Birth or The Skinnery. I'm pretty sure they all offer omega body skins, but it's the head part of the skin that needs to be omega for you. So demo, demo, demo, and don't buy a thing until you've got a demo look (including tweaked shape) that you're happy with.

This week in "pics I forgot to post here when I first took them":

Selling sexuality has always been a thing, of course; what's relatively new (or newly widespread) is the idea that the only way a woman will tolerate a relationship (however brief) with a man is in return for cash. I've no idea about SL, as I've been here less than a year, but in RL this is definitely on the rise - or at the very least, the public awareness of this attitude has risen dramatically. There has been an explosion of premium snapchats, streamers that aren't overtly camgirls, all the way to the de-tabooification of sugar relationships among students over the last few years. Social attitudes will bleed over into SL; but I have no idea if SL is responding to the RL phenomenon or got there first. I'd draw a pretty big distinction between a couple that pools their resources together, even if said contributions are not equal, and a less formalised relationship in which the foundation is a transfer of money in one direction in return for affection and intimacy. While they might seem superficially similar, that difference in foundation is crucial. I'm not sure there is a clear distinction between a 'trophy wife' and a sugarbaby, or a sugarbaby and an escort. People respond much more strongly to feedback than simply what they see. If a man goes looking for a partner, and gets a string of rejections and "sure, but it will cost you" 's, what do you think will happen? Will he go back to the gym, try and make himself a more attractive prospect? Or will he just get out the wallet? What if that man then asks out a girl, and just assumes that he will have to pay up and so offers a sweetener? And so you get this positive reinforcement feedback loop, incentivising the monetisation of sexuality. I agree that the primary evil is when women have no choice but to sell their sexuality. However, I think a secondary evil is when men (as a whole) are compelled by social necessity to buy sexuality. That's extremely unhealthy for all involved, men and women, and would have a massive amount of collateral damage. There are many that would say that women should be free to do what they want with their bodies, including sell them; and I agree. But here's the thing about living in a free society - I get to say that the decisions of others are stupid and harmful, and that the people making those decisions are (intentionally or otherwise) seeking to turn back the clock on every inch of progress made in the 100 years since women gained that basic democratic right to vote in the UK. Just to provide some context for anyone that cares; I came from a family in which both parents had a career for well over a decade, before my father chose to step down and become the full time parent while my mother pursued her career. I think (and mountains of research backs me up on this) that the breadwinner + housekeeper married couple model is the best way to raise a family, by a massive margin. Please note, that entire sentence was gender blind.

Okay, pet peeve that's going to piss some people off - so please don't take this personally if it affects you. I despise the depressingly prevalent attitude that many women have towards relationships with men. Namely, those that seem to reject the possibility of a male/female romantic or sexual relationship happening without an exchange of money. This isn't just an SL thing, it happens all too often in real life too. Disclaimer: if a man and a woman both want that kind of a relationship, then that's great. That's honestly fantastic, when people with compatible desires and expectations find happiness together. But what I see far too often, both here and inworld, is that men will be looking for a 'conventional' relationship, and be told by many women that such a thing comes with a pricetag attached. It doesn't have to. (And no one deserves to be swarmed by a horde of hungry vultures that caught the scent of a few dollars.) I'm struggling to phrase this without contradicting myself. I don't have a problem with sugar relationships or escorting (the difference is semantics) between two people that want that kind of thing. What I have a problem with is the large vocal minority of women that make it seem like that's the default setting. It's not. It teaches men that women are walking sex objects that you insert coins into, and it teaches other women that men are walking wallets that you insert sex coins into. It's become a vicious self-reinforcing cycle. Our actions do not exist in a vacuum, and if the actions of a few women determined to roll back the clock on progress negatively affect the way men treat me and the respect I'm given then yeah, I'm going to call that out. And yes, as a woman from a STEM background I definitely do have a justified chip on my shoulder about this.

By these definitions, Minecraft is not a game. While I do still think SL is a game, I do think it's obvious to all that it falls into the grey area between conventional video games and a chat program such as Skype. When you can come up with a reasonable (even if not perfect) justification for either classification... it kinda gets into "does it really make a difference?" territory.

Bumping this thread because I had a relevant observation. I've been helping a new friend make the plunge to mesh recently. I grabbed copies of the same demos as him, as he's using different brands to me and I might actually be able to help troubleshoot if I know how stuff works. Walking him through the process, I noticed one thing: All the shapes that come with his mesh body/head and skin are 7' 4" - 7' 6". These giant guys aren't making themselves tall. They're tall by default, and see tall as the average. And all of those shapes had biceps so big they almost perma-clip into his ribs. I didn't make myself 6' 2", that's (roughly) the height of the base shape I used to create mine; so I just assumed that the male sample shapes would be only slightly taller than mine. Nope! Over a foot taller. Certainly explains the trend in height.