John Nova

My Second Life experiences have no impact whatsoever upon real life because one is virtual and the other is real.

When SL hit the headlines a lot of Corporate suits jumped in thinking that they could make a killing - they were wrong. Unless you have marketable skills that are in demand it is nigh on impossible to make money in SL. However SL is not about making money - it's about entertainment and having fun.

You cant turn them off, if you enter such an area then anything you say will be included in the chat extender. You can mute it but that will only stop you hearing the increased spam.

People get confused. Personal data is data directly linked to or identifiable of a living human being. Second life avatars are not living human beings so data on them is not personal.

I do sink some items into the ground slightly in order to avoid the baked in shadows on a nice set of outside seating that is not modifiable. This actually makes it look nicer as for some reason the "shadow" is several pixels away from the actual chair legs so unless it is sunk into the ground it appears to be floating.

I used to use Firestorm but I found it slowed down a heck of a lot in busy places and I was having to sort out a broken web search almost twice a week. I switched back to the official LL viewer and granted the communications interface is not all that great but I got used to it. What else I noticed was how much better things looked in world. I'd love for the official LL viewer to be able to use more than 512 Mb VRAM in order for textures not to have to load in and out so often.

I think you may have caused more interest in your avatar for feeding by actually getting the HUD thus making another connection between yourself and the database which you are updating and refreshing each time you put the darn thing on. Do yourself a favour and delete that HUD.

I get it that you want your items to look their best and that is why you add on "fake" shadows. However with the advanced lighting system and real shadows it makes your items look less than ideal when the fake shadow is in the wrong direction to the real shadow. Please consider either totally stopping the use of fake shadows or at the minimum please add in an option for people to hide the fake shadows via a script if you do not allow modifications of your designs. Many thanks

I doubt I will ever use the mobile app as why would I want to use a tiny screen for Second Life? However if it is marketed well and signups via the mobile app take new residents to an orientation place geared for the mobile app and not the desktop then it just may bring in new blood. If the mobile app is just dropped without any serious marketing and people are thrown into the desktop app tutorial areas then it is destined to burn.

SL is am American thing and they use the word credit card because debit cards being a big thing are really more of a non US thing. Providing that it is a proper debit card (and not one that just allows you to withdraw cash and make purchases in person) then you will have no problems.

I am guessing that some of this media may be attached to avatars themselves - you know the sort that like to let the rest of the world hear their taste of music no matter where they are? Disable media autoplay - not sure it can be done in the LL viewer. I disable media anyway and only switch it on if it is needed for a presentation so I get to avoid these annoyances.