Madelaine McMasters

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!

Hi Jane, Posting in-world snapshots to the profile feeds has been a problem for many since the feed was introduced. No solution has been found, other than to give up and post your images to Flickr. :-(

Dillon Levenque wrote: I've tried really hard to see all this in a positive light, but I'm done. I haven't been actually following it much but I do lake a look every day in which there are matches to see who is going ahead and who is not. I was astonished to learn that in Group play the first tie-breaker was goal differential. I would normally expect the first tie-breaker to be based on head-to-head competition between the teams involved, and in Group play everyone plays each other. That is always the number one decider when two teams in the US wind up with matching records (except baseball, where if two teams wind up with matching records they play against each other until their records damned well don't match). I was not happy about goal differential being a decider in Group play but I let it go. Then I looked at the standings today. There were two draws: Chile v Brazil and Costa Rica v Greece. In both cases the team with the highest goal differential moves on, the other team is out. That is so incredibly wrong that I can't get my head around it. A team scored more goals against some other team that wasn't even on the schedule of the team to which they're being compared, and they ADVANCE? Sorry, soccer fans. Your sport bites. Never mind that it's really boring to watch. Never mind that most of the time a small plane could land on the playing field without seriously disturbing play. I am fully aware that if I actually understood the skills and strategies needed to win at soccer I'd probably enjoy watching it. I've talked to people unfamiliar with baseball who found it incredibly boring because all they watched was the ball. I assume the same thing holds true for soccer. HOWEVER: I will never pay the slightest attention to any sport in which tournament play does not require contests to be played to victory, however many extra periods it takes. Moon Over Miami (a little hint, for those who have, like the BBC, been quick to point out that some American sports allow tie games). FIFA lose. Maybe it's time for Bill Maher to do "Sportulous". I don't much enjoy watching sports. I'd rather play. But I did like sitting in the center field bleachers at Milwaukee Country Stadium when I was young, watching pitches from behind the pitcher, where it was pretty clear that they weren't nearly as varied or extreme as the radio announcer declared. Like religion, I've learned that sports is full of delusion, deception and just plain wierdness. Mom visits the Unitarian Church for their killer potlucks. I go to local softball games for the chili-dogs. And I still think Golf should have a defense.

LaskyaClaren wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: I presume Facebook and Google are doing PHd and cringe worthy research internally, 24/7. I wonder how much the academics were bringing to the table. Just because you've not seen this degree of social engineering before doesn't mean it hasn't been happening. Regarding your ETA: The privatization of research has been happening for a long time. Once the world went online and data could be gathered remotely, the corporate world leaped well ahead of the academic world in research capability. There are those who want the government to keep it's fingers out of our stuff, and given the stereotype of government ineptitude, you can't brush off their argument. But there are times I'm not sure I want things in the hands of the efficient and focused. ;-). Even the Editor of Facebook's Mood Study Thought It Was Creepy Indeed, I'm sure this kind of thing isn't new. But that just makes it all the more alarming. What makes the corporate involvement in this particularly sinister is that the Facebook ToS was taken, for all intents and purposes, to supercede the normal research ethics requirements. In other words, where research ethics would normally require informed consent, that was deemed unnecessary because the FB terms of service don't require it. So, corporate "morality" replaces academic ethics. That's just plain wrong. I'd say this was more a case of academic involvement in something corporations have been doing forever. Microsoft employs game psychologists to help tune Windows and Office to ping our pleasure centers to encourage increased use of their products, not increase our desire or ability to get work done. I think that's pretty creepy. What might be making these things seem so sinister is the involvement of computer intelligence and the distancing of human involvement. When persuasion and deception were the handiwork of nefarious individuals, we could always tell ourselves that good people outnumbered bad, and there were only so many places to hide. But when nefarious algorithms can propagate like invisible gremlins? Research was once part of the product/service development workflow. Now, it's the product/service.

Parhelion Palou wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: Parhelion Palou wrote: If the real world had only 2 years to go, would you kill yourself immediately so you don't have to wait till the end? I'd probably start killing other people, knowing that the worst they could throw at me is a two year sentence. ;-). And after a year, when they figure out how to keep the world from ending? Oops. Wait, you think it'll take LL three years to deploy SL2, but that they might be able to turn the current one around in one? What a dreamer you are! ... I'm coming after you with fireballs, Par! ;-).

Hi rainsom, You should be able to block public chat messages from the playlist chatter by blocking its owner. Of course that also removes the owner (probably the DJ) from the chat as well. Right click over the name of the object that's sending the playlist text and select "Block Text" from the drop down menu. (This works in Firestorm, not sure about SLV). Good luck!

LaskyaClaren wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: LaskyaClaren wrote: The point, though, has less to do with the research outcome, which is probably fairly useless, and more to do with the ethics of this kind of research. This one involved not merely deception, but also outright manipulation of its subjects -- all without so much as a notification or request for consent. Google has been doing this to your search results for ages. We've discussed it. They know what you like, so they return results you'll like. This is how they keep you using Google. So your world view gets colored by glasses you don't even know you're wearing. But I suppose this has always been the case. Maddy wears slightly rose-tinted glasses in SL and their metaphorical equivalent in RL. I'm sure I don't know how much of that tint is of my own choosing, and how much is an unwitting response to manipulations by the world around me. What's changing is that those external manipulations are increasingly being narrowcast. In the past they were largely broadcast. I might chose a favorite news network, religion, political party, etc, which broadcasts messages I like. But they're not particularly aware of me, and so I receive the "average" message. Now, algorithms can watch my online (and increasingly offlne) behavior and taylor the messages specifically to me. This allows such sophisticated and covert manipulation. When the Democratic party twists the truth in a campaign ad, someone will call them out. If Google decides to give my search results a liberal spin, who's going to catch that? I can (when I'm in a particularly nefarious mood) imagine a world in which the algorithms herd us like border collies. (Have you ever attended a party at the home of a border collie owner? It's an amusing experience.) Yeah, the filter bubble is pretty old news, I guess. What makes this a bit different, though, is that this is no longer just about analyzing and responding to what we write by feeding us filtered information that we will supposedly "like." It's about actually changing what we write.4/7. Now, it's probably true that the underlying, unspoken point of filtering algorithms is to impact upon our state of mind and emotion, but I've never seen an experiment involving quite this degree of social engineering before. The other aspect that really bothers me about this is the uncritical participation of academics. Academics working hand-in-hand with the corporate world, governments, or the military is also not new news, but we have research ethics guidelines for a reason, and this study completely flouts their spirit, if not the letter. I really want to see these researchers nailed for this one -- and maybe the REB that okayed the study in the first place as well. ETA: Is this participation of these academic researchers a sign of the increasing corporatization of the academy? Insofar as research funding is increasingly coming from corporations, and not from arms-length government agencies, yes, I think it is. I presume Facebook and Google are doing PHd and cringe worthy research internally, 24/7. I wonder how much the academics were bringing to the table. Just because you've not seen this degree of social engineering before doesn't mean it hasn't been happening. Regarding your ETA: The privatization of research has been happening for a long time. Once the world went online and data could be gathered remotely, the corporate world leaped well ahead of the academic world in research capability. There are those who want the government to keep it's fingers out of our stuff, and given the stereotype of government ineptitude, you can't brush off their argument. But there are times I'm not sure I want things in the hands of the efficient and focused. ;-).