Madelaine McMasters

Ima Rang wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: Aethelwine wrote: There is a distinction be made at whether it is at someone elses expense and also whether or not it is in some sense deserved. If it is not deserved and the person being laughed at is made uncomfortable by that then the situation is bullying and there is a wealth of information to suggest that is not good for the social group, the victim and also those doing the bullying or laughing along with them. If it is laughing at a bully then it is probably of benefit, as it would laughing along with the victim at a misfortune. And when you move this behavior to the Internet, where it may be more widely participated in (that's probably a shaky contention), more widely observed and more permanently recorded, I wonder what we'll discover. Nothing. Perhaps. It'll take some time to tell if the "Facebook cost me my job" anecdotes outweight the "Facebook got me a job" anecdotes.

Aethelwine wrote: There is a distinction be made at whether it is at someone elses expense and also whether or not it is in some sense deserved. If it is not deserved and the person being laughed at is made uncomfortable by that then the situation is bullying and there is a wealth of information to suggest that is not good for the social group, the victim and also those doing the bullying or laughing along with them. If it is laughing at a bully then it is probably of benefit, as it would laughing along with the victim at a misfortune. And when you move this behavior to the Internet, where it may be more widely participated in (that's probably a shaky contention), more widely observed and more permanently recorded, I wonder what we'll discover.

Carole Franizzi wrote: Maddy: The National Institutes of Health are funding research into the health effects of meditation. We already know that certain kinds of meditation affect dopamine production and blood flow in specific brain regious. We know we can teach patients to think in ways that reduce their need for pain medications. Functional MRI is helping locate specific regions of the brain which are responsible for specific kinds of cognition and thinking, and to better understand neurotransmitter production and modulation. You just know someone will eventually do schadenfreude tests on people with their heads stuck in MRI machines. Me: They've already done them. (see link below) Maddy: Yep, I hear about new studies all the time. Say wut? Wut? And that's why I try to stay away from feeling certainty. Just when I think I've got a grip on something, along comes a dolphin researcher who blows it out of the water, followed by a monkey researcher who throws it back into the water. So I just kinda watch the general drift of the things. ETA: yes, I just mentioned research on things other than humans! ETA2: I'm really not taking a stance on what effect schadenfreude has in the big or the small picture. I've read research into the differences between various levels of abstraction, specificity and moral assessment (laughing at cartoon slapstick, laughing at a group's failure, vs laughing at "good" person's failure, laughing at a "bad" person's failure, etc.). This discussion started with a claim that schadenfreude (or perhaps making it apparent by boasting) was unhealthy. I'm just saying that I believe it it has an effect on our feelings of well-being, our actual well being, and that we (individually, if not collectively) don't understand that fully. Of course there might be nobody better than me to demonstrate not understanding something fully. Mea culpa!

Czari Zenovka wrote: Perrie Juran wrote: Czari Zenovka wrote: Perrie Juran wrote: Czari Zenovka wrote: Oy! Now that's going to give me nightmares. :matte-motes-agape: There is an "Evil Talking Tummy" that I've seen for sale in SL. Very clever. ETA: Waidaminute!!!! Are male martians the ones who birth the babies? Mars is sounding like an interesting place. Pregnant Marvin. She got me drunk and in my stupour she took advantage of me and when I woke the following morning she was gone, her account deleted. It was a rough pregnacy. I was so ashamed and alone. Awwwwww...that's so sad. Has the Martian-ette been born yet?

Perrie Juran wrote: There have been some heated debates in this Forum over whether you gain a visual advantage with Frame Rates higher than this. But that would be a side topic. And on that side topic! Most PCs refresh their screens at 60Hz. Some hard core gamers may dink around in their control panels to select higher refresh rates, but most of us don't, or can't (I'm on a Mac and have no selections for refresh rate). So I think it's fair to argue that, for most of us, there's no benefit to having an SL FPS that's higher than 60. All that extra rendering (if it's even done) would never be seen.

Tex Monday wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: Carole Franizzi wrote: Maddy wrote:I didn't say, nor mean to imply that shadenfreude was hypothetical and I do expect it's been around a long time. I'm theorizing that if a person is perceived to be a "shadenfreudist", that might affect the dynamics of their social circle. Me: Sorry, but I took your ‘if’ and ‘might’ as the hypothetical voice. Anyway, yes, I think it’s safe to bet that a ‘hardcore schadenfreudist’ who openly reacts with glee over his/her friends’ misadventures wouldn’t have too many Christmas card on their mantelpiece. It could also be argued that in today’s society a moderate dose of real or apparent schadenfreud would actually get you lots of friends. I'm agreed. And this argues for the "appearance" of shadenfreude having an effect on well being. I don't know what that effect is, nor how it's related to the degree of visibility, but it seems reasonable to think it does have an effect. I don't know if we keep harping on the same points but... I will agree there is a definite effect on your well being with shadenfreude..it makes you feel better about yourself compared to another at that moment. Although, if you have no sympathy or empathy (IMO) you won't have the same benefits. If you're stuck up...thinking you're better than everyone else..you may view everyone with shadenfreude and not know any better. The happiness that you feel won't be based off this feeling, but based off your general attitude towards people. As I said, we may be laboring the point...but I just wanted to put it out there... EDITED TO CHANGE THE TEXT TO A NICER COLOR...... Tex, there is a difference between schadenfreude making you feel better and actually making you better off. That's the point I'm flailing to make! And from what you've written, I think we'd more or less agree. And I hope you notice that my reply is in an even nicer color! ;-)

Perrie Juran wrote: I wonder how much the SL Demogrphics affect this. If it isn't a part of the thinking of the vast majority of people who really get involved in SL to dislike big corporations. For me at least, the last thing I would want to wear in SL is a pair of Nike Sneakers. I guess you could say I have a bit of anti-establishment blood running in my veins and perhaps this is very true of many if not most of the people who really get involved in SL. I like this idea, Perrie. But, even within SL, merchants have found it beneficial to advertise outside on the marketplace. I think that's probably because, just like in RL, searching on the web is easier than searcing in-world, whether that world is virtual, or real. ETA: my rebuttal makes less sense as I think about it. It's not as if RL companies are advertising products in the SL marketplace. I really think the SL economy simply isn't worth the effort for RL companies, and that may well be due our creative and/or anti-establishment bent, which either makes us hard to sell to, or makes our population here too small to sell to.

Carole Franizzi wrote: Maddy wrote:I didn't say, nor mean to imply that shadenfreude was hypothetical and I do expect it's been around a long time. I'm theorizing that if a person is perceived to be a "shadenfreudist", that might affect the dynamics of their social circle. Me: Sorry, but I took your ‘if’ and ‘might’ as the hypothetical voice. Anyway, yes, I think it’s safe to bet that a ‘hardcore schadenfreudist’ who openly reacts with glee over his/her friends’ misadventures wouldn’t have too many Christmas card on their mantelpiece. It could also be argued that in today’s society a moderate dose of real or apparent schadenfreud would actually get you lots of friends. I'm agreed. And this argues for the "appearance" of shadenfreude having an effect on well being. I don't know what that effect is, nor how it's related to the degree of visibility, but it seems reasonable to think it does have an effect. Sharing a love of gutter press with the masses does not elevate your schadenfreude to the level of "apparent". You're just down here in the background noise with the rest of us. Not at all sure what you mean by this statement. It sounds like I claimed the superiority of gutter press readers over background noise people. I’m pretty sure I didn’t. I meant that "apparency" is just that, something which rises above the fray. The "you" wasn't a you you, it was an anyone you! ;-) Those of us who have an average level of schadenfreude won't elicit a reaction as we're not as easily detectable. But even at the macro level, are you sure that if it could be done, a direct survey or perhaps meta-analysis of proclivity towards schadenfreude along with general well being would show no correlation? No, I’m convinced it would show a correlation. Actually, I think you’ll find it’s been done many times over, though measuring “general well-being” isn’t usually the aim of psychological research. It’s a bit too vague. Replace “general well being” with any one of its components and I think you’ll find a lot of literature out there. Yep, I'm also sure it would show a correlation. And that's the argument I've been trying (clumsily?) to make... schadenfreude has an effect on our well-being. We do such soft studies all the time, and we often argue about the results, but they can be thought provoking. And now let's mix the macro and the micro. I prefer mine shaken, please. And with an olive. Actually, make that two olives. I hope that neither macro nor micro are sweet. Google wouldn't need proof of causality to target schadenfreudists if they had correlation with other behaviors they could exploit for gain. I could be persuaded that the profit-driven business Google isn’t overly curious about exactly which states of anxiety lie behind their clients’ need to seek out the juicy details of a Hollywood divorce. Supplying Google with data to make their profits even higher would be on awfully good reason not to spend one’s academic life on such research, should this be one’s field. Google is curious about everything. One of the fascinating aspects of "big data" is that our newfound ability to collect (or perhaps an inability to not collect) vast amounts of data across a wide swath of humanity makes it easy to look for all sorts of correlations. Google is famous for their "throw it against the wall and see if it sticks" method of innovating. They also have psychologists on staff. (Microsoft employes "game psychologists" to make MS Office more "addictive.) Academia may find itself outrun by business. You've already described some examples of schadenfreudic public content. If you can identify it, so can Google. Although we may not be highly aware of our schadenfreude (or any number of human behaviors), detecting it in an individual seems well within the wheelhouse of "big data". Yep. Modern society evolved a hell of a lot faster than our genes. How can we be sure that schadenfreude has the same benefit now as it did 50,000 years ago? I don’t think we can ever be 100% sure of anything ‘psychological’ which happened 50,000 years ago in order to make that comparison you’re asking about. However, the mere persistence of any self-defence mechanism is, I’m guessing, proof enough that human psyches are still in need of them. You know, there’s a lot of stuff in this world that can’t be abolished just because some people feel they’re ‘unhealthy’ or not useful. I for one would be delighted to see misogyny abolished. Most people would vote for ‘banning’ depression, anxiety, racism…but it just doesn’t work that way. The persistence of evolved mechanisms over the short span of recorded history is due to the glacial pace of evolution, not to continued "need". In ancient times, hearing a twig snap in the woods and thinking it was a predator was worth being wrong 99 out of 100 times because the one time you were right, the tiger didn't eat you. In modern times, not accepting a lift from a strange man just in case he’s a sex-predator is worth being wrong 99 times out of 100, because the one time in 100 that you turn out to be right, the consequences of being trapped in a car parked down a dark country lane with a knife at your throat are well worth all those long walks home, under the rain, along brightly lit, crowded, safe streets. You really think we’ve evolved out of our need for self-defence mechanisms? I think I've argued that we have NOT evolved out of our mechanisms, but that society may be evolving to make those mechanisms less optimal than they were (or maybe more optimal, who knows?) That same causal search mechanism is now credited with belief in fairies, ghosts, and shamans who preach the refusal of proven effective medicines and procedures. What same causal search mechanism? Weren’t we talking about protective mechanisms? What are causal search mechanisms anyway? And ghosts? Fairies? You really lost me here. Our brains are wired to search for cause->effect. When we see an effect, absent a rational cause, we're generally happy to invent an irrational one. Nobody would advocate for the elimination of this subconscious mechanism… Just as well. They’d be wasting their time. On the other hand, I firmly believe my campaign to make emotional detachment illegal will be very successful. …but many call for us to understand that it's error prone and strive to reduce its negative impact on us individually and collectively. Who are these ‘many’ calling for the acknowledgement that psychological self-defence mechanisms have outgrown their purpose? I didn't say anyone was arguing that they've outgrown their purpose, I said the opposite in "nobody would advocate for their elimination" (even if it were possible). Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, Sagan and others have been arguing that we've got to be aware that our intinctive need to find causes for the effects we see isn't necessarily rational. I wonder if schadenfreude isn't sorta the same way. It's a mechanism devised by trial and error that worked well enough to survive. That's not proof that it's the best mechanism, nor that we can't consciously work out better ways, which we might internalize alongside those instinctive mechanisms. Before you come back to argue that we might just as easily work out worse ways, I'm pretty sure we have, and will! If a mechanism is natural and instinctive, does that automatically make it healthy? Curling up into a ball to protect the vulnerable abdominal area when attacked is another natural defence mechanism. It’s neither healthy nor unhealthy. It’s necessary. It is not always necessary. Instinct sometimes gets it wrong, as in misfiring of that cause->effect pattern matcher that has you sell your house for a loss because you think it's become haunted. When we've got the time (and if we have the ability) to think about things rationally, we have the opportunity to improve on instinct. Have you contradicted yourself by saying that schadenfreude is a process which plays a part in preserving our psychological well-being, but is not a cause? If it causes nothing to happen, then it plays no part. No, I don’t think I have. Schadenfreude derives from a certain state of mind – I think I called it a barometer or something like that, because it reveals information about that state of mind. However, it occurs primarily to serve a self-defending purpose – the bolstering of the self-esteem, the attenuation of anxiety, etc. It also has its place in a chain of causal events, of course – as we said, ‘hardcore schadenfreude’ would negatively impact social relationships. In this secondary phase, it most definitely assumes the role of cause, though not the root one of the chain of cause-effect events. You're continuing your contradiction. If shadenfreude is only an effect, then it serves no purpose. It would be like saying that a runny nose is simply the effect of a cold, and serves no purpose. It actually does have a purpose, to ridd the sinus cavities of the infectious organisms. If schadenfreude can make us feel better about our selves, it is causing something. The question is whether that mechanism is always helpful. A runny nose may have been the best solution to improving well-being before the invention of medicines and the arrival of societies that thought a runny nose was uncouth. Too much schadenfreude (or not enough?) might also have a deletrious effect, particularly in light of our increasing ability to detect it. Evolution knows nothing about these recent developments. The strength of this mechanism may be correlated to self-esteem, and it may have been the effect of evolution, but it if it's playing a part in preserving psychological well-being, then it is a cause. Is emotional detachment in an adult, resulting from having a cold, unloving parent, a cause or an effect? Surely it’s the effect of the original trauma, and the subsequent cause of difficulty to form loving adult relationships? It’s first an effect, then a cause, however, it’s not the cause of the original trauma (see above). Yes, a cause can also be an effect. This is how you get feedback loops. And it's those feedback loops we sometimes need to break. The National Institutes of Health are funding research into the health effects of meditation. We already know that certain kinds of meditation affect dopamine production and blood flow in specific brain regious. We know we can teach patients to think in ways that reduce their need for pain medications. Functional MRI is helping locate specific regions of the brain which are responsible for specific kinds of cognition and thinking, and to better understand neurotransmitter production and modulation. You just know someone will eventually do schadenfreude tests on people with their heads stuck in MRI machines. They've already done them. (see link below) Yep, I hear about new studies all the time. Maddy ETA-ed: “While those "power of positive thinking" books might be mostly bunk, do we know they're all bunk?” Carole: They’re not bunk. They have exactly the same result as schadenfreude. Maddy: They do? Exactly? How do you know? Wouldn't all the books be interchangeable then? I think there's more complexity here than you're acknowledging. All those neurochemists and pyschologists will want something to do, Carole! They work when the person is ripe for being talked round. Be it a book they actively go out and purchase, a pal, a loving mother, a guru, themselves beyatchily enjoying the misfortunes of someone they dislike or resent, or even a string of clichéd, over-simplified, over-generalised, de-contextualised ‘philosophical’ gems collected from web sites and pasted on their Facebook page, when a person is of a frame of mind to jolly themselves along /let themselves be jollied along and be convinced that they’re doing good it’s because that’s exactly what they need in that moment of their lives, and then anything can potentially act as a supplier of mantras. And that’s good and healthy and one of the methods we humans use to survive the hardships of life. And, contrarily, if you’re not ‘ripe’, nothing in the world will alter self-perception. Proof? Let’s use extreme, negative examples of the power of persuasion and self-persuasion: consider cults which convince dozens of people to commit suicide simultaneously, and how about anorexia? - distorted body perception which cannot be altered even by loving family members and specialised health professionals, even when the sufferer is literally starving to death. Convincing someone that men being from Mars is the reason why their marriage didn’t work out is a much less ambitious task in comparison. They sell because they ‘work’, Maddy. Exactly how they work is complicated, though… All those psychologists are already familiar with the notion of the immense power of persuasion and self-persuasion without me introducing the concept to them, Maddy. And, yes, of course it’s much more complicated than this, but this is a forum for a VR after all. I think we're agreeing here, Carole. The "hows" of helping ourselves get through life are terribly complex. Schadenfreude is but one "how". The only argument I've been trying to make is that schadenfreude likely does have an effect on our health. Whether it has a positive or negative effect would depend on the degree and the circumstance, as such things do. The complexity might be such that it's ultimately a pointless argument, but I wonder if Big-Data and the law of inintended consequences might provide some insight into it in the future. Big-Data fascinates me. It's the largest sort of meta analysis we've yet undertaken, and most of us don't even know we're doing it (or being done in by it? ;-), including companies that might mine data for correlations without really understanding what they're looking at. Could implying that, unlike your friends, you don't litter Facebook with self comforting statements, be a self comforting statement? Don't we all comfort ourselves, Carole? I know I just did by stating that I'm not on Facebook. ;-) I have no problem with stating openly that I do not subscribe to the Meme School of Self Help. It could be argued that this is more an act of patronising boasting though, than self-comforting. However, I have absolutely nothing against self-comforting. We couldn’t survive without it. None of us. Me included. It’s just that my form of self-comforting is of a much more sophisticated nature. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s nearly bed-time and I need to go and look for my pacifier. Couldn't patronizing boasting be a form of self comfort, just like schadenfreude?! People say I'm intimidating. I don't think that's my intent, but if I appear that way, it could well be that I've honed mechanisms to protect my ego that appear itimidating to others. It's not schadenfreude, but could it have an effect on me that I don't understand? And when I say "I don't think that's my intent", I am acknowledging that I am the sum of both my conscious and subconscious selves, that I don't have a good understanding of how I really work and that I'm curious. Here’s some bedtime reading for you: http://www.goallab.nl/publications/documents/2011_Emotion_Van%20Dijk%20et%20al.pdf http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/01/26/0956797610397667.abstract Thanks for the links. I've not read those particular articles, but I've read many over the years that delve into the same things. Psychology (like the related field of economics) is a fairly soft science and I suppose a fairly young one too, given that it's only recently that we've got our hands on even the most primitive tools for studying the physical thing (the brain) that's responsible for all the odd things we do. ETA: my choice of the common cold was a poor one. Though we have medicines, none actually cure the cold. But hopefully you get the drift of that particular argument. Society and technology move on time scales far different from evolution.

Hippie Bowman wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: ...yawns. Hippieeeeeee! I'm stuck!!!!!... LOL Maddy! Hippie tugs and tugs until Maddy gets unstuck, and falls on the floor with a thud! Ouch! Morning! Peace! ...rubs her bum and growls "That's the last time I ask you for help".

They left because SL is a terrible place to market your goods and services. Texas Instruments was making a big marketing push for their DLP HDTV/Projector technology back in 2008. They advertised in print, on the web and probably on TV (I don't watch, so don't know) and they had an island in SL. I visited their island shortly after arriving here in 2008 and it became immediately clear that SL was no place to market a RL product. In the time it took me to read a typical DLP print ad, I was barely able to navigate to even one of the kiosks on the TI island, must less cam in to read the marketing literature or view imagery that was lower quality than the print version. I visited the island several times and was always the only one there. National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation: Science Friday" show also had a presence in SL back then. I routinely listened to the show on my radio, and heard mention of questions being fielded from SL. So, I went to visit a couple of the Friday afternoon shows in SL. It was a mess. The audience chatter was a sea of snark and childish humor like you'd expect from an infohub coupled with a few frustrated people attempting to carry on a discussion related to the show's topic. Ira Flatow and the TOTN-SF crew never let on that SL was an adolescent playground, but they did eventually pull the plug on the experiment. SL is of interest to only a small population of people and, within SL, advertising is even more problematic than in RL. If SL was such a wonderful place to market, advertise and sell, there would not be an SL Marketplace, which is really an RL marketplace.

...yawns. Hippieeeeeee! I'm stuck!!!!!...

Kelley Wonder wrote: So I take it FPS needs to be in the 20-25 range and bandwidth changes as you move about. Mine is usually about 120, is that bad? Sorry, I am trying to grasp this. FPS needs to be high enough to make you happy. FPS is the number of times per second that your computer is able to update its view of SL. For comparison, theatrical movies have historically been filmed and shown at 24FPS. Old television shows were recorded at 30FPS. Some newer theatrical movies are being shown at 48FPS and HDTV is shot at 60FPS. The higher the frame rate, the more realistic the experience. I lived for years in SL using a laptop computer that rarely got above 8-10FPS. I was happy enough. As you tell the viewer to do more complicated things (like make the water transparent, show local lights, show reflections in the water, show atmospheric effects (like fog), etc... it will take longer to draw each new frame and your FPS will drop. At low frame rates, motion is choppy and you lose the feeling you are navigating a 3D space. At some point it will be too low for you to enjoy the experience. Only you know that your minimum acceptable frame rate is. I expect you came to the forums to inquire about this because 3.7FPS is lower than you'd like. Bandwidth, as I explained elsewhere in this thread, is the measure of data moved between SL and your viewer. It's measured in thousands of bits/second (Kbps). When you first log in, teleport or walk/fly into previously unseen regions of SL, your viewer will need the textures and shapes of the objects coming into view, so it can draw them. It will ask the SL servers for the data, and the servers will send it. Textures can be large, and a region might contain hundreds of them, so when you first arrive, you'll see the bandwidth meter jump, possibly up to the limit you've set in the settings window. That will last a while, until all the requested textures have been loaded into your computer's local cache (the size of which you also specified in settings). After that, even if you stop moving, your viewer will continue to inform the server of your activities (moving, typing in chat, etc) and the servers will send down updates on changes in the scene (avatars and/or object that are moving, incoming text, etc). At that point, your bandwidth should drop considerably. I think my viewer generally idles in the 40Kbps range. It seems that your graphics adapter is the primary culprit here. It's a decade old and below the minimum recommended by LL for use with SL. That said, if that's what you have to work with, reducing your draw distance, so there's less to draw, and turning off all the bells and whistles, as I and others have recommended, may increase your framerate. Beyond that, at some point you'll have to consider, if possible, either upgrading your graphics adapter, or your entire PC. Again, good luck!

Kelley Wonder wrote: Also, I am wondering where max bandwidth and texture bandwidth should be set in preferences, graphics. I always run with max bandwidth as high as it goes, but I do recall reading that might result in packet loss if you have a slow connection. The "Statistics Bar" under the advanced menu will show you packet loss. I've never seen losses, but you might. If you do see packet loss, try reducing bandwidth. I run Firestorm and don't see a texture bandwidth setting, but wouldn't be surprised if the same thoughts apply there. Good luck, Kelley!

Kelley Wonder wrote: Thank you for your reply. Windows 7, Processor: AMD Sempron 2.30GHz, RAM 3 GB, 64 bit, Base Score 3.0, NVidia GE Force 6150SE nForce 430. I keep updates current. My settings in SL are on Low and sliders in graphics..low to mid...I am not sure what more I can do. I cannot use basic shaders or the lag is impossible. That's a pretty old system, Kelley. Your nVIDIA card is a step or two below SL's current minimum requirement of a GeForce 6600 or better. I'm afraid you may not get rip roaring speed from it. Lower your draw distance to 64 or less if you can. If your lag is intolerable when surrounded by avatars, lower your "Max # of non-imposter avatars" count. That will replace live animated avatars with posterboard proxies. It's not pretty, but it might keep you going in crowded areas. It you're just laggy in general, you may have to start dragging sliders towards the left and turning off more bells and whistles, like local lights, bump and shiny, and water transparency. Make sure "Allow multiple viewers" is unchecked in the Advanced Tab. That has slowed me down a tiny bit in the past.

Have your friend search for you in my.secondlife.com (top right), find your profile, then see if he can check the "Friend" button to add you to his people list. I'm gonna guess that some coupling between his in-word friend's list and the my.secondlife.com friend's list got goofed up, and I'll hope there's a way to fix it from my.secondlife.com. As Dillon says, the feeds are not terribly reliable, so if this doesn't work, it might just repair itself in a few days. Good luck!

Kelley Wonder wrote: Hello, I am hoping someone can explain to me, a person who knows next to nothing about these things, about FPS and Bandwidth and the best settings to achieve a good quality experience in SL. What do they mean and what should I hope to achieve? My FPS changes as I move around Sl, but mainly stays at around 3.7. MY bandwidth ranges between 120-165. Are these bad, good, etc? Thank you for your time and patience. Hi Kelley, 3.7 FPS is pretty slow. You might improve things by decreasing your draw distance. I rarely go higher than 128m and can be quite happy at 64 on many sims. Lowering your global drawing quality setting to Mid or Low may also help. SL is pretty demanding on graphics hardware, though not so much on bandwidth. There are more detailed settings available if you select "Advanced" in the graphics window. You'll see bandwidth spike whenever to teleport to a new a new region or move through one, as your computer must download the textures and geometries of all the new things within view. If you stay put, your bandwidth should eventually level off well below the 120-165Kbps you mentioned. Tell us more about your system and your settings. I don't think any of us want to see you suffering through SL at 3.7fps!

Frawmusl wrote: Is anyone else slightly disturbed by this? I mean.. I get the concept, but it just freaks me out so badly! I even had a nightmare about some I've seen o_O Why is this becoming a fad? You mean like this?... Or this?...

Hippie Bowman wrote: Good morning all! Monday againg already! Have a great day! Peace! Ooowwwwwww. Stop it! I'm trying to sleep off last night's dinner...

Tex Monday wrote: Thank you...this was my present... I love it, Tex!

D0RKiiiE wrote: So I'm looking for a name for my new avatar look. so far the choices I have are as listed: Meghan, Blake, Addison, Josie, Chelsea & Erin Which one do you guys think fits the picture the most? I don't think any of the names really fit, but Addison and Blake are probably the least misfitting for me.. You probably won't want to hear this, but I instantly thought of "Roz". I love that character and will probably become her over time. ;-)

Carole Franizzi wrote: Maddy wrote: “If that shadenfreude is apparent, might the social dynamics punish the holder?” I doubt it. You talk about it as if it is a hypothetical phenomenon, rather than one which actually exists, and, I’m guessing, has always existed. Much of the world’s gutter press is based on the minor and major downfalls of stars, starlettes, politicians and sportspeople. Prince William is losing his hair. Antonio Banderas is looking old. His wife was mistaken for a trout at an angling competition and got a fish hook through her swollen lip. President XYZ has a secret love child… And what about our day-to-day conversations? What percentage of them are hand-rubbing gossip? Let’s be honest… Societies don’t punish all that. They will actually encourage it. If a powerful/rich/leading nation takes a tumble, you’ll see schadenfreude on an institutionalised scale in other countries, including ‘friendly’ ones. I didn't say, nor mean to imply that shadenfreude was hypothetical and I do expect it's been around a long time. I'm theorizing that if a person is perceived to be a "shadenfreudist", that might affect the dynamics of their social circle. Sharing a love of gutter press with the masses does not elevate your schadenfreude to the level of "apparent". You're just down here in the background noise with the rest of us. But even at the macro level, are you sure that if it could be done, a direct survey or perhaps meta-analysis of proclivity towards schadenfreude along with general well being would show no correlation? We do such soft studies all the time, and we often argue about the results, but they can be thought provoking. And now let's mix the macro and the micro. Google wouldn't need proof of causality to target schadenfreudists if they had correlation with other behaviors they could exploit for gain. You've already described some examples of schadenfreudic public content. If you can identify it, so can Google. Although we may not be highly aware of our schadenfreude (or any number of human behaviors), detecting it in an individual seems well within the wheelhouse of "big data". Maddy wrote: “But I don't think I'd be surprised to discover that even when only known internally, that schadenfreude has an effect on health. What if it's discovered that people who engage in it frequently live longer than those who don't? I don't expect we'll see that study soon, and it'll be surrounded by critique, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to think that our natures affect our health.” Schadenfreude isn’t a bad habit like ciggy smoking. It’s a natural, instinctive, process which plays a part in preserving our psychological well-being. The more it’s present, the more the ‘holder’ evidently needs such a mechanism to deal with their own self-esteem issues. The healthier the self-esteem, I reckon, the fewer the episodes, internally and externally, manifested. But no-one will ever be totally schadenfreude-free. Maybe Mother Theresa. Or maybe not. It’s something we cannot know. However, as I said before, my belief is that it’s an effect, not a cause. Modern society evolved a hell of a lot faster than our genes. How can we be sure that schadenfreude has the same benefit now as it did 50,000 years ago? In ancient times, hearing a twig snap in the woods and thinking it was a predator was worth being wrong 99 out of 100 times because the one time you were right, the tiger didn't eat you. That same causal search mechanism is now credited with belief in fairies, ghosts, and shamans who preach the refusal of proven effective medicines and procedures. Nobody would advocate for the elimination of this subconscious mechanism, but many call for us to understand that it's error prone and strive to reduce its negative impact on us individually and collectively. If a mechanism is natural and instinctive, does that automatically make it healthy? Have you contradicted yourself by saying that schadenfreude is a process which plays a part in preserving our psychological well-being, but is not a cause? If it causes nothing to happen, then it plays no part. The strength of this mechanism may be correlated to self-esteem, and it may have been the effect of evolution, but it if it's playing a part in preserving psychological well-being, then it is a cause. The National Institutes of Health are funding research into the health effects of meditation. We already know that certain kinds of meditation affect dopamine production and blood flow in specific brain regious. We know we can teach patients to think in ways that reduce their need for pain medications. Functional MRI is helping locate specific regions of the brain which are responsible for specific kinds of cognition and thinking, and to better understand neurotransmitter production and modulation. You just know someone will eventually do schadenfreude tests on people with their heads stuck in MRI machines. Maddy ETA-ed: “While those "power of positive thinking" books might be mostly bunk, do we know they're all bunk?” They’re not bunk. They have exactly the same result as schadenfreude. They do? Exactly? How do you know? Wouldn't all the books be interchangeable then? I think there's more complexity here than you're acknowledging. All those neurochemists and pyschologists will want something to do, Carole! Instead of using specific others and their mishaps to make positive comparisons about ourselves – I’m not losing my hair, I still look young for my age, I don’t get mistaken for a trout – we let an author talk us into believing how great we are through sweeping generalisations. I don’t know about you, but I have a number of friends who litter Facebook with self-comforting little sayings on a regular basis: I'm not on Facebook. Could implying that, unlike your friends, you don't litter Facebook with self comforting statements, be a self comforting statement? Don't we all comfort ourselves, Carole? I know I just did by stating that I'm not on Facebook. ;-)

Monica Querrien wrote: I think there is a market for this sort of service, but the trick is to find quality people who are serious about revamping their business. I have helped merchants in the past, and a couple of the issues I had with some were 1. they didn't want to pay for the service 2. they were highly defensive and not wanting to make the changes for their business. I think in order for something like this to work, it would be good to have your own team of builders, photographers, marketers, etc. Using the team, show the merchant what could be done to their product to raise it to the next level, and then talk about costs. Even though you can tell someone what to do, it needs to actually be done in order for it to be a success. A lot of merchants simply don't have the talent or the connections to market their product successfully. I've always been fascinated by the economy of SL. Clearly there are some merchants and landlords that make a go here, but I've yet to see evidence of an economic vibrance that could support the sort of services the OP is contemplating. I tried my hand at business development consulting a decade ago and walked away from it for the two reasons you cited... 1) They didn't want to pay for the service. Many small businesses are hanging on by their fingernails. They're hardly in a position to spend good money on questionalble expertise. Although I believe I had insights to offer, nobody in their right mind should have blindly accepted that claim without some evidence. As I was new to the field, I had no proof I was competent. This will be the case for the OP. 2. they were highly defensive and not wanting to make the changes for their business. Good grief, this is true. I was surprised by one startup that brought me aboard to review their scattershot business model, and a mission statement that read like an advert for new age meditation. I was highly critical at our introductory meeting, but they seemed eager for my ideas. My modest fees were covered by a local government grant, and I should have suspected that made my services both easy to accept... and ignore. And ignore they did. At the end of my engagement, they were nearly angry that I still didn't like their business plan. They hadn't changed a bit! They foundered for another year before disbanding. For many entrepreneurs, their business is their baby. Nobody wants to hear that their baby is ugly!

Czari Zenovka wrote: Ceka Cianci wrote: Ban lines and good imagination = this some of you know what i am saying hehehehe Ooooo!!! I've done a bit of SL "trampolining" on banlined houses. Never thought of doing tricks, though. /starts looking through the MP for an AO...maybe my ice skating one will work. That brings back fond memories of bouncing off banlines in SL, but even fonder memories of jumping in RL. Thomas Edison said: "The chief function of the body is to carry the brain around." I love watching those young brains command those young bodies to so exquisitely carry them around... and around and around... ... sighs and pries herself out of the chair. I feel a jump coming on. If I'm not back in a few hours...

Wes Teebrook wrote: I'm new at making clothes, and I'm running into a problem. The shirt I made seems to hug every little bump on the avatar. It distorts the logo and text. I'm sure I'm overlooking something. How can I get it to not do this, so that images and texts will not be distorted? Hi Wes, Standard SL clothing is, in effect, a replacement skin or coat of paint, for your avatar. The clothing textures you design are combined with the skin texture you wear and are then "baked" into one texture that's applied to the shape of your avatar to make it visible. Your shirt hugs every little bump on the avatar because it becomes part of the avatar skin. As the avatar moves, the skin (and therefore your tee shirt) must stretch. There is no way to avoid this distortion, other than to avoid those places on the avatar that are most subject to it, such as the armpits and mid/lower torso. Put your avatar through some animations (dancing, etc) and carefully watch your tee-shirt distort to see where the worst regions are. Then try to move your text away from those areas. The central upper chest and back, away from the arm joint, are the best places to put logos and text. Good luck!

Hippie Bowman wrote: Morning all! Happy weekend to all of you! Peace! Good morning, Hippie. Today I shall cavort with Nature... Don't stick your head out the train window, Val! Enjoy your vacation!