Theresa Tennyson

Just like the hawribble, hawribble crisis of them not being taught how to read and write cursive... Now here's the thing - just because somebody doesn't know how to do something, that doesn't mean that they can't learn how to do it. I'm in the process of teaching myself Japanese (at the age, apparently, when "I find new things confusing" according to some people here.) Looking at Japanese, you might think it's "very complicated." That's not fair - it'd be more accurate to say that its complication is off the scale of what the speaker of a Western language could conceive. For instance - you might know that it has thousands of different characters, but did you realize that most of those characters are pronounced at least two completely different ways depending on the context, and even native Japanese speakers aren't always sure which to use? On the other hand, the young lady whose videos inspired me to start this process said one thing in one of the very first videos - "Japan has one of the highest literacy rates in the world. It's possible to learn this." And I' m making real progress, and if I wasn't enjoying it I wouldn't be doing it. If somebody doesn't know how to do something they need to do, it would be more productive to teach them how to do it rather than click your tongue at whoever you were expecting to do it before you. It's unfair to assume that people are carrying around the mental load of knowing something that you already know but which may be unnecessary in their lives. After starting to learn Japanese, I don't assume Americans of Japanese ancestry would automatically have learned it because it requires a huge amount of brain space that would be wasted if you don't use it every day. One of my jobs at work is teaching college students basic sewing skills so they can be useful in a costume shop. Many of them come in knowing nothing at all about sewing but I can generally get them going after a few sessions. This is not because I personally am the best stitcher in the world, but because I've been doing this long enough to see possible problems and explain things that might be a problem, and I learned sewing fairly late in life and have a handle on the process of learning.

Reading the forums, it's interesting how Second Life is supposed to be both unusably archaic for the younger set and also flooded with teenagers.

I hear the sun rose in the east this morning too.

By the same reasoning, it's impossible to have a completely reliable way of asserting legal age at all. Even with medical examination, the examiner can be bribed or have examined a proxy. Q. E. D.

Aaaand there you go.

A little (though most assuredly eighteen-year-old) bird told me that most of the pick-up places aren't adult rated and are strict about behavior on-site.

Explain to us how that will allow things to be automated.

A child avatar, like every avatar, is a few "orange cubes" and a handful of composited texture files. "Childness" does not exist in Second Life as a detectable status.

For a large percentage of the Marketplace, that's only going to put a picture on a folder that contains a single boxed item that will create a different folder in the buyer's inventory when it's unpacked.

Thank you for the demonstration.

You sweet summer child cub...

Mmm hmmm...

Theresa Tennyson mutters to herself, "Might as well extend the criteria to 'childish' and then shut down the grid."

You'd probably need to remove non-human animal avatars altogether if we're worried about them "inspiring behavior."

I've created a town in Second Life. I created a history for it that goes back decades and can be roleplayed at a number of different "years." That means that some of the characters may be kids one year, teens a few years later, and then adults. So, is that messed up? You seem to be caught up with "things" and thinking that if you control those "things" you can control the problem. That can't work in Second Life because anything that can be made in Second Life can be re-made at any time without being connected to the old version. It would be like banning profanity by striking every existing instance of "bad words". As long as you've got an alphabet you can make new ones, and if you start taking "bad letters" out of the alphabet you've broken your language.

Okay, tough love time - are you sure you should be the person trying to explain things like this? Mesh bodies have been the de-facto standard for ten years; new people are automatically given them now too. I'm not sure it would be a good idea for a drivers' training teacher to be saying, "You know? Cars are weird. They're like mechanical horses."

Theresa Tennyson attaches her space helmet (nose attachment point) and travels through a wormhole to the parallel universe where Linden Lab didn't set default attachment points to see this quote:

I just had a thought - the attachment point is determined by the root prim, which may not have been uploaded at all. In fact, if you're selling things based on full-perm meshes you're supposed to attach your own prim so you'll show up as the owner. Meaning that "setting attachment points on upload" would be a complete waste of time.

And the ones who sell clothing are using their "free time and leisure" to make things that other people pay them for.

What's the difference between having the creator needing to set the attachment upon initial upload and needing to change it before they sell it? If they're in a hurry they'll just pick the default either way.

Anyone who calls Firestorm "Phoenix." (I know, some might call it "Emerald", but for some reason that doesn't seem common.)

That's on the creator/seller. If the seller sets another attachment point when you buy the item it will attach there. Let's go back - wayyy back - back into time. When mesh clothing was introduced for the system body it couldn't/didn't follow as many bones as current mesh clothing does, and a lot of fitting relied on having the body at certain shape settings. That could have meant that every piece of mesh clothing would have required a different shape, and mesh clothing started out as a complete FTS situation. Then a few users set up a system of "standard shape" settings that could be used as a benchmark and allowed a comparative amount of both variety and consistency. The current de facto mesh head UV map is also user-generated rather than LL-generated.

At least in The Sims, it's impossible to stack clothing because the slots are locked in. You set up outfits in a separate environment and when you're running real-time you change them instantly with a Wonder Woman spin. The other side of simplicity is being limited. To have a truly intuitive and universal UI system for wearing SL mesh clothing and bodies, the UI and necessary data would have needed to be in place before the clothing/bodies were introduced. And there's no guarantee the system would have been the best or most future-proof way of doing things. Right now The Sims is on their fourth non-compatible generation and even the fourth generation is getting long in the tooth. As far as time goes, Second Life would be the equivalent of The Sims 1 Expansion Pack 35 or so - it's remarkable that it still works at all.

"I remember that it was a bottle-blond style and the picture was taken at a Dutch angle..." And it's interesting how, in an environment that is set up to use this organization, several of those pictures are useless as teats on a boar hog for knowing how the entire hairstyle will look.

If you're changing the UI, don't remove "wear." If there's a coherent use of attachment points it's useful to detach the old pants and attach the new ones in a single action. So - with "wear," set options for things like "Wear as Shirt [attaches to 'right pec']," "Wear as Pants/Skirt [attaches to 'right hip']," etc. Works just fine for no-mod items too, and items remember the last place they were attached. If the viewer can read attachment points for a not-currently-worn item you could even give them new icons.