Madelaine McMasters

Medhue Simoni wrote: madjim wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: madjim wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: As far as MS not being part of the mobile market, I would beg to differ, as the Surface Pro is the only actually productive tablet on the market. It is the only tablet that is what tablets should have been from the start. Presently, I have yet to buy a tablet, as why would I buy a useless toy to read webpages. That's only worth about 50 cent to me. I might actually go get the Surface Pro 3 tho. Given your apparent propensity to back obvious losers, please don't offer me any racing tips. Father "heaping Pelion upon Ossa" Jim Using this same logic, Apple was a loser for the vast majority of their existence. Even today, if you look at the stats on any website, you'll see that it's not people with apple products visiting websites the most. I don't base things on HYPE, but the facts. Apple is STILL a loser. Check those stats of iPhones against Android. Just like Mac and PC all over again. Father "Losers buy Apple products because they want to be like other losers" Jim My point is, that if you can make a profit without using government money, then I would hardly call you a loser. I total agree with your Father. People that buy Apple products, are, for the most part, ignorant, and care more about being trending, than what is smart. Again Medhue, I'm going to ask you to back up your claim with evidence. I just Googled "apple owner demographics". Here's the first (for me) returned link... http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2013/10957/how-iphone-and-android-ownership-varies-by-demographic From which I cribbed this chart... The average Apple phone owner appears to have higher income and education than the average Android phone owner. If you are right about Apple owners being ignorant, might we then conclude that ignorance is the result of education, and results in greater financial success? I'm willing to entertain the former idea, but the latter would really bother me. I haven't digested all the information here, but it's interesting that Apple owners skew older. That might explain the higher income as people work their way up through their careers. But it doesn't explain your trendiness theory. It has been my experience that the young favor trends. Old timers are thought to be stuck in their ways, aren't they?

Medhue Simoni wrote: Gavin Hird wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: Using this same logic, Apple was a loser for the vast majority of their existence. Even today, if you look at the stats on any website, you'll see that it's not people with apple products visiting websites the most. I don't base things on HYPE, but the facts. Fact is that Apple has close to 150 billion USD in the bank, and can fit Google's entire quarterly turnover in the AppleTV department (slight exaggerationthere - but Android is currently a loss for Google). They are competing with Exxon to be the company with highest market evaluation in the world and have both the highest brand recognition in combination with the best customer service in the industry. They have shipped over 750 million devices running iOS. They rake in over 75% of all revenue in the tablet market, and for high end laptops it is closer to 80% Symptomatic the national broadcasting corporation here were criticized for not making a Windows Phone app for streaming of their live broadcasts. They said at between 0.6 and 1.1% visitors with the device on their website, it was not worth it at all. And how does Apple do this? They do this by hyping their products by spending ridiculous money on advertising, and by pricing that product 2 and a half times more than an equivalent pc. This is also why they immediately started to use government to get their products in people hands, as those people would never have gotten them without government money. So, basically, Apple created a system where by the public pays Apple for other people to own and use their products. You end all those programs, and Apple is bankrupt. Regarding ad spending, Apple's competitors vastly outspend it... http://qz.com/103266/google-is-about-to-spend-half-of-apples-annual-marketing-budget-promoting-a-single-phone/ http://bgr.com/2013/11/01/microsoft-marketing-budget-2-5-billion-dollars/ http://www.dailytech.com/Samsung+Breaks+the+Bank+w+14B+in+Advertising+But+is+it+Trying+Too+Hard/article33846.htm http://bgr.com/2013/04/11/samsung-advertising-spend-analysis-430831/ Regarding product pricing for Surface Pro 3 and MacBook Air... http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2458320,00.asp You can certainly find less expensive non Apple computers, but they're generally not similarly spec'd. Apple's "Tax" is more myth than reality, as shown above. And it can be difficult to find a direct comparison, as Apple's computers are more than just the collection of parts. They put significant effort and expense into the sort of industrial design you'd expect from aspirational brands. That is not valueless. I am sometimes vexed by the excessive value people place on aspirational brands, including Apple, but the recent test drive I took in a BMW convinced me that such brands are not all hype. I won't be buying a BMW anytime soon, but it was a truly lovely car. Regarding Apple's dependence on the education market... Apple's 2013 total revenue was $171 Billion. Of that, less than $4 Billion came from the education market (I don't have ed revenue for the full year, but if the best quarter topped $1Billion for the first time, the year total can't be much above $4Billion). I don't think Apple would go bankrupt on losing 2.4% of revenue. I'm an evidence based thinker, and look forward to evidence to support your claims.

I'm ready too!... Happy Thursday, Kids!!!

If I seem tardy in posting these days, it's because of my new wheels... Par has already asked if I drive around town with my top down. I do! Honk, Kids!!!

LaskyaClaren wrote: Phil Deakins wrote: LaskyaClaren wrote: Qie Niangao wrote: I think the communications on this have been very carefully managed. I also think it's quaintly charming, how folks imagine that the CEO just blurted something out accidentally, as if there weren't a detailed plan worked out in advance. This is an interesting perspective, and certainly at odds with the perception of most people here. In your view, is this strategy "working"? Or is it too early to tell yet? May I give an answer to that? Gonna do anyway Imo, it's working just fine. From what i've read in the threads, most people are actually looking forward to the new platform, and accept that all of their stuff won't go over. And this was achieved so much in advance that everyone, except a few die hards, will settle down to continuing with SL as normal. So SL will continue as normal and without any ongoing panic or similar. That seems like a success to me. You may be right, Phil. I hope you are right. At the moment, however, it may be too soon to really know, and most of the information we are working with is anecdotal. The SL forums, for instance, are hardly representative of the in-world population as a whole. I should think LL knows far more about what the in-world population is like than any of us. They know our spending habits, our total investments and divestitures, inventory size, visitation rates and durations, ad infinitum ad nauseum. They should also be easily able to discern if forumites are a different kind of creature. We can theorize. They know. By this stage in Rod Humble's tenure, I'd already written him off. I'm still enjoying the honeymoon with Ebbe. ;-).

Bree Giffen wrote: We need a virtual world that engages all of our senses. The Oculus Rift will give us sight and sound but we need taste, smell and touch! Think of it! It would be stupendous. Although this sounds good, the reality of it is more likely to be horrendous than stupendous. Oculus users are already dealing with "rift sickness". Add taste, smell and touch, each with their own delays, asynchronicities and palette limitations and you've got a recipe that'll need more than Pepto-Bismol to keep down.

I don't think the exact statistics are terribly important. The growth of a business depends on its ability to grow revenues. That usually means growing the customer population, sales per customer or both. We don't know LL revenues, so we can't compare those. But customer count is available, as people have been arguing (discussing?) here. From my days in the angel capital community (which may be the only investment community LL might reasonably attempt to tap if they need more money than they earn), I can say that detailed statistical analysis is beyond both the capability and interest of the average investor. They want to see a good growth story. They have no patience whatsoever for decline, either in revenue or customer base. This is particularly true in the tech sector, where we're accustomed to growth stories like Google, Facebook, and recently GoPro. We're also accustomed to the bloodbaths that follow reports of deceleration or, horror of horrors, decline. I've quickly overlaid the SL concurrency graph from Tateru Nino's website with those of Facebook's growth over the same period of time. Facebook is the blue line with red dots, SL is in lavender. They're aligned approximately in time, but are not to scale. They needn't be to see the difference in trajectory. There's been a lot of discussion about how Facebook will grow now that they've saturated many markets. You can see the tempering at the end of the chart. This comparison might be unfair, but is the kind of napkin analysis the investment community makes when vetting opportunities. And this explains why Ebbe and the Lindens are hard at work on something that'll produce a better looking graph. I could argue that if the concurrency chart had wild gyrations in it, there might be reason to believe that turning some knob could make it swing up. But the stability of the chart for the last five years would reasonably lead a casual observer to think that there's not much that can be done to turn the graph. It looks like a death march.

Hi Miuccia, It's possible your IMs have been capped. SL allows only 25 IMs to stack up. Anything after that is lost. If that's happening, the only solution is to log-in and clear the jam.

Hi Barb, People are able to run SL on mid settings using the integrated Intel graphics. But, in a tablet they may throttle the graphics processor speed to keep things cool and preserve battery life. For that reason, a Surface Pro 3 may not run SL as well as a laptop using exactly the same processor. I've not heard any reports from Surface Pro users, so can't say how they've actually fared.

Hi Paciens, You said that you had a wonderful experience with the viewer on the new laptop last night, but not today. That confuses me. If it was working last night, it should work today. You also didn't say that instructions you followed, so it's impossible for us to know what you've done. The most common cause of a new generation graphics card not being recognized is that the file "gputable.txt", which tells the viewer what various graphics cards are capable of, doesn't yet have an entry for the chip. Here's a thread in which a fellow with a GTX870M was able to get things working... http://208.74.205.111/t5/General-Second-Life-Tech/nVidia-GTX-870m-issues/m-p/2599576 I can't tell whether it was my suggestion or Nalates' that got him going, but if it was mine, then you'd want to follow the instructions I gave, but you'd replace 77 with 85. Good luck!

Hi Deborah, Yes, if you own your own region, you may place as many skyboxes as your prim limit will allow. Of course you'll want to leave some prim space for furnishing and decorating, and there's a practical limit to how many skyboxes you can make before everybody feels like they're living in a floating cloud of debris. ;-). Have fun!

Hippie Bowman wrote: Oh my! Ha! Let's keep hush hush! We certainly don't want a scandal in our respective families! Morning! Peace! Hey, I like being notorious!

This is how to dress for "football"... And if there's a place to be "busy, busy, busy", it's below the waist.

Ladysue will be wanting an explanation, Hippie... Happy Tuesday, Kids!!!

Dillon Levenque wrote: UW has hooks that go deep. The very well-known and successful British author Terry Pratchett has begun a collaborative effort with another less well-known but also successful British author: Stephen Baxter. The first novel in the series came out last year; a second has been published. The first one was titled, "The Long Earth". The story has to do with a suddenly acquired ability to step into parallel words. For most people, a device is required. For a very few, the ability is innate. A key figure in the first novel was the daughter of the fascinating man who developed the device that permits everyone else to move to the parallel worlds (he himself could move between them at will). He was a professor, she was a student. Both at the same school. University of Wisconsin, Madison. Coincidence? I don't think so. There was some hoopla when I was a kid, over a Sports Illustrated (I think) article ranking the Top 10 party schools in the US. UW Madison was not on the list. Instead, there was a highlight panel dedicated entirely to UW, noting that they were not included in the amateur rank because... ...they were professionals.

LaskyaClaren wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: Madison Wisconsin was infamous for University of Wisconsin Badger game after-parties (and partying in general). At away games, the UW Band would continue playing to fan cheers long after the game ended (the "Fifth Quarter"), forcing the home team radio announcers to deliver the post game wrap-up over a raucous rendition of " ". At home, fans built bonfires on State Street after the game. Those autumn post game parties inspired the Halloween " Freakfest" street party, which routinely drew over 100,000. Madison's population is 240,000. This sounds pretty delightful. Can one go to the party if one isn't going to the game? I don't think we have anything quite like this here. Varsity sports are not popular, even within the universities here, and, well, Toronto hasn't had a winning team of any sort in over 20 years anyway, so we don't get to celebrate much. Which is maybe one of the reasons why the World Cup is so exciting here. I've noticed over the last 3 World Cups that it has become an increasingly high profile event in Toronto, to the point that the McDonald's restaurants here are now festooning their packaging with World Cup stuff. Probably about 15% or so of the cars are flying national flags of one of the World Cup countries or another, and the bars are filled everywhere for all the games. The street parties aren't really "parties," as such. They are just spontaneous celebrations that overflow onto the streets when a team wins a game, and in the case of a really important victory, they can bring traffic to a standstill for a couple of hours in a sizable section of the downtown. Most often, though, you can tell when someone has won a game by the sound of car horns honking, as fans drive around downtown waving flags through the windows of their cars and shouting at passers-by. It's really very sweet. :-) It can be delightful, but it was generally not. In the last few years, Madison has laid down the law. Freakfest draws far fewer people, but there's also far less violence. Wisconsin is also home to the Milwaukee Brewers and Green Bay Packers. The Packers are an interesting story. They're the only non-profit, community owned professional team in the US. There are currently 86,000 names on the season ticket waiting list. If you put your name on the list today, you'll be eligible to purchase your first season in the year 2969. I've never been to a Packer Game. I've never worn a cheesebra. I've never decorated my body in green and gold. I do love to shop during Packer Games, because the stores are empty. Everybody is home rooting for the Pack, including my mother, who screams so loud and long when they score a touchdown that cars pull over on I-43 while frantically tossing their pot out the window. Packer fans don't do pot. They do brandy.

LaskyaClaren wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: Dillon Levenque wrote: LaskyaClaren wrote: According to some views, the "World Series" is so-called not because it pretends to be world-wide, but because it was initially sponsored by the New York World newspaper. (Baseball is the only sport about which I am in any way well-informed. Go on, ask me about the infield fly rule!) If the Infield Fly rule be invoked but the ball ends up carrying into the outfield, is the rule still in effect? I don't wanna be anywhere near a game in which flies are large enough to carry the ball. She has a point. Or would, were it not for the fact that baseball players are, to my mind, very well proportioned in all of the right places, and hardly look like flies at all. Yeah, but don't you worry a li'l about why they're always scratching those right places? If they have flies large enough to carry the ball, imagine what the cooties are like.

LaskyaClaren wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: LaskyaClaren wrote: Drake1 Nightfire wrote: You are, of course, absolutely right. My problem is that I associate football with exotic Europeans, and NASCAR with . . . not exotic Europeans. (PS. Stop playing with the troll.) Huh... Apparently only Europeans play football. Cancel the World Cup!!! Only a few countries will continue to play. England is back in. I did not realize they had NASCAR in other countries than the US. Silly me. I didn't say that only Europeans play football. I said that I associate the sport with exotic Europeans -- specifically, Italians, Portuguese, Spanish, and French, in more or less that order because they are the fans who are the noisiest where I live. And they do have NASCAR in other countries: mine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASCAR_Canada (PS. Stopping being so grouchy.) (PPS. Honourable mention goes to the Brazilians who, although not European, mostly live here in Little Portugal. The nice thing about being Portuguese, apparently, is that when your team gets eliminated, you can simply switch over to supporting Brazil.) I associate soccer with middle schoolers who's parents get thrown off the field for fighting with each other and the coaches. I associate NASCAR with bumper stickers placed by people who don't know where the bumpers are. I associate professional (and increasingly amateur) sports with professional (and increasingly amateur) religion. Well, all of this is why I don't really do sports. Except for the street parties that happen in my neighbourhood after a local favourite football team wins. Those are pretty cool, actually, mostly. Madison Wisconsin was infamous for University of Wisconsin Badger game after-parties (and partying in general). At away games, the UW Band would continue playing to fan cheers long after the game ended (the "Fifth Quarter"), forcing the home team radio announcers to deliver the post game wrap-up over a raucous rendition of " ". At home, fans built bonfires on State Street after the game. Those autumn post game parties inspired the Halloween "Freakfest" street party, which routinely drew over 100,000. Madison's population is 240,000.

LaskyaClaren wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: madjim wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: madjim wrote: Since soccer is easily the biggest spectator sport in the world - despite NASCAR's pathetic claims to supremacy - it is hardly surprising that occasionally there is a small disaster. In fact, it is astonishing that there are so few incidents, although the published figures would be considerably higher if the number of people who died of boredom watching, for example, Stoke City, was included. Father "I enjoy a game with a bit of bite to it" Jim Okay, let's do the numbers. From the page I screen-grabbed, there have been over 1200 soccer related fan deaths since 1964. From this page, I can find only one death over the same period for NASCAR. I doubt that either of the pages I linked tell the full story, but you'll have to come up with a better theory than relative popularity to explain the 1200:1 ratio. I think that globally soccer spectators probably outnumber NASCAR attendees by more than 1200 to 1. The difficulty in measuring NASCAR fan fatalities, as far as I can tell, is that they are medically brain-dead before they turn up. Father "they don't just go round and round in circles; they're ovals" Jim Football Hooliganism I can't seem to find as rich a history of such behavior for the brain dead NASCAR fans. Though you may feel the need to respond, remember that not all feelings are rational. You are, of course, absolutely right. My problem is that I associate football with exotic Europeans, and NASCAR with . . . not exotic Europeans. (PS. Stop playing with the troll.) I don't think I've ever been absolutely right. I'll settle for relatively right, particularly when it's effortless.

Dillon Levenque wrote: LaskyaClaren wrote: According to some views, the "World Series" is so-called not because it pretends to be world-wide, but because it was initially sponsored by the New York World newspaper. (Baseball is the only sport about which I am in any way well-informed. Go on, ask me about the infield fly rule!) If the Infield Fly rule be invoked but the ball ends up carrying into the outfield, is the rule still in effect? I don't wanna be anywhere near a game in which flies are large enough to carry the ball.

LaskyaClaren wrote: Drake1 Nightfire wrote: You are, of course, absolutely right. My problem is that I associate football with exotic Europeans, and NASCAR with . . . not exotic Europeans. (PS. Stop playing with the troll.) Huh... Apparently only Europeans play football. Cancel the World Cup!!! Only a few countries will continue to play. England is back in. I did not realize they had NASCAR in other countries than the US. Silly me. I didn't say that only Europeans play football. I said that I associate the sport with exotic Europeans -- specifically, Italians, Portuguese, Spanish, and French, in more or less that order because they are the fans who are the noisiest where I live. And they do have NASCAR in other countries: mine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASCAR_Canada (PS. Stopping being so grouchy.) (PPS. Honourable mention goes to the Brazilians who, although not European, mostly live here in Little Portugal. The nice thing about being Portuguese, apparently, is that when your team gets eliminated, you can simply switch over to supporting Brazil.) I associate soccer with middle schoolers who's parents get thrown off the field for fighting with each other and the coaches. I associate NASCAR with bumper stickers placed by people who don't know where the bumpers are. I associate professional (and increasingly amateur) sports with professional (and increasingly amateur) religion.

madjim wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: madjim wrote: Since soccer is easily the biggest spectator sport in the world - despite NASCAR's pathetic claims to supremacy - it is hardly surprising that occasionally there is a small disaster. In fact, it is astonishing that there are so few incidents, although the published figures would be considerably higher if the number of people who died of boredom watching, for example, Stoke City, was included. Father "I enjoy a game with a bit of bite to it" Jim Okay, let's do the numbers. From the page I screen-grabbed, there have been over 1200 soccer related fan deaths since 1964. From this page, I can find only one death over the same period for NASCAR. I doubt that either of the pages I linked tell the full story, but you'll have to come up with a better theory than relative popularity to explain the 1200:1 ratio. I think that globally soccer spectators probably outnumber NASCAR attendees by more than 1200 to 1. The difficulty in measuring NASCAR fan fatalities, as far as I can tell, is that they are medically brain-dead before they turn up. Father "they don't just go round and round in circles; they're ovals" Jim Football Hooliganism I can't seem to find as rich a history of such behavior for the brain dead NASCAR fans. Though you may feel the need to respond, remember that not all feelings are rational.

madjim wrote: Since soccer is easily the biggest spectator sport in the world - despite NASCAR's pathetic claims to supremacy - it is hardly surprising that occasionally there is a small disaster. In fact, it is astonishing that there are so few incidents, although the published figures would be considerably higher if the number of people who died of boredom watching, for example, Stoke City, was included. Father "I enjoy a game with a bit of bite to it" Jim Okay, let's do the numbers. From the page I screen-grabbed, there have been over 1200 soccer related fan deaths since 1964. From this page, I can find only one death over the same period for NASCAR. I doubt that either of the pages I linked tell the full story, but you'll have to come up with a better theory than relative popularity to explain the 1200:1 ratio.

Coby Foden wrote: Dillon Levenque wrote: I do get the 'penaly kick' thing. I don't like it, any more than I like it in hockey, the only somewhat major American sport that has such rules. Even with hockey I believe that tournament/playoff games must be decided by final score and if the game is tied at the end of regulation periods are added until one team is victorious. In football they play 45 minutes + 45 minutes, which is total of 90 minutes. If there is no winner then there is additional time of 15 minutes + 15 minutes. This makes total of 120 minutes (2 hours) of play. Some players have run very fast already some 13 kilometers (8 miles) during the play. At this time many players are totally exhausted, hardly able to run any more. If the playing was continued with additional time until a winner was found, the play would ultimately slow down into a crawl. Thus the penalty kick system is the best solution to end the game quickly - before the players die on the field. ETA: Note that the May 29 incident is also soccer related. Is soccer the deadliest sport on Earth? Given how many soccer fans are killed each year, you'd think they'd want to see a fight to the death...

Hi Tarinah, As Nalate's says, lots of people have had this problem for a long time. I don't expect LL will fix it. You can remove the stuck images from your feed by clicking on your name at the top of the left hand menu in the profile feed. That'll take you to a page where you'll see the stuck posts. Hover over a post and you'll see a little drop down box appear in the upper right corner. Click on that and select "Delete post". Many people who've got this problem now post their SL pictures on Flickr, and paste links to them in their profile feed. Good luck!