WADE1 Jya

Here we are again, the forum is full of spam. It usually is full of spam now. If I was granted moderator permissions, I would delete it myself. I hereby volunteer for this task, and I am sure several others would be happy to step forward & help as well. Watch this TV show. Watch that TV show. Please Linden Lab, can you stop the spammers? The volume of daily spam here is getting insane. Aside from adding more moderators, does anyone have some technical know-how to put forward a sensible proposal Lindens could enact? There are all kinds of experts in various things on this forum, perhaps we can use the power of the crowd to solve this problem.

I had thoughts today realizing how much Steve Jobs has changed my life. I honestly have no idea what I'd be doing today, or where I would be, without his vision. Probably working some dreary non-creative job, staring at a screen like this: Much of the design software I use today probably wouldn't exist, or if it existed at all, it probably wouldn't be accessible in a user friendly format which I could understand! As a digital artist & designer, I see that his devices allow me to express myself in ways I just would not be capable of without. It is amazing, this one man, he changed my world.

*hugs Pamela* Aw it sucks when they do that.... I remember back when Lindens broke all my firebreathing dragons. They wouldn't stop... breathing... fire... ever @_______@ until i fixed them all that is

I think a few people in this thread might be misunderstanding the type of AI mentioned here. There is AI as in a game character that can easily go from point A to B (and perhaps C, D, E, etc) avoiding obstacles. Currently moving an object from point to point can be done in SL, but the code is tough to execute... and if you want to also avoid obstacles along the way, it becomes laggy as ****, so you'll rarely see this implemented currently. In video game design this kind of movement is called character AI. The second type is the stuff of movies mostly, strong AI (not invented yet) but something akin to Blade Runner, Replicants. Rodvik is talking about the former. If you expect the latter, a population of all singing, all dancing entities with nearly human intelligence which you can even have sensible conversations with & much more, you will be highly disappointed. This will allow great new things, but it will have limits. It is a solution to pathfinding problems.

The supply of L$ from the official site here comes (at least partially) from other residents. As example, say you sell some L$ on the Lindex today to cash out into USD, that might be the same L$ I buy on the Lindex today to pay for something inworld. Most L$ will be endlessly recycled through the Lindex this way.

They used to sell L$ but I am not sure if they even do that any more. It is the residents now that do at least majority of selling, and the residents do all the buying. No real governance that I know of, there is just automated circuit breakers in place for if things go way out of whack. That is interesting since any moderate size trader or fund manager could seize control of the Lindex and reset the rate to whatever they like. Pump & dump it for their own profits, or whatever, & likely destroy the entire SL economy in the process. The total world supply of money on the Lindex is small in real world investment terms. Probably the risks outweigh the potential benefits, which is why you haven't seen this done yet.

Melita said: The Linden exchange rate is set by the Lindens. Actually this is incorrect, the Lindex value moves in accordance with supply and demand. However, I agree with your premise here... a little land rules would be good for all.

Thanks again for the updates, Rodvik. Can't wait to implement the new NPC stuff! I'm sure I can make use of something here to make my animals much smarter & hopefully more fun too! It's neat to see there is two parallel systems coming in alongside. Way more advanced stuff will be possible with the new LSL functions, and also this new NPC stuff... these two things sound like they will compliment each other nicely... or give alternate methods to do the same thing. I'm not sure which stream will be more useful to advance my work here yet, perhaps I will end up implementing a hybrid mixture of the two. Exciting times in the world of pets :matte-motes-sunglasses-3:

Something it took me almost 5 years here to learn (& I'm still sometimes fooled): Realize that most SL "big news" is usually just a bunch of meaningless nonsense -- mostly its stories began by trolls, scaremongers, crazies, & people with their own agendas -- so there is quite often little/no bearing to reality. Wild rumors & hearsay propagate like crazy here for some reason! While seeing crowds of people freaking out, running this way & that, see that there is rarely any real reason to worry about things here. Most of all, relax & enjoy your little corner of Second Life :matte-motes-sunglasses-3:

:matte-motes-inlove: Charles Stross My favorite of his is "Accelerando", its a great read & so densely full of ideas that you can read it more than once & catch new things you missed the first time. I could see that book actually being a fairly realistic depiction of the future... if we don't just run out of essential resources followed by technology/economy/population crash.

Hi Erika, Except for post signatures, there is absolutely no space given to promote your new creations here... quite unlike the old Xstreet site. Any mention a creator dares to make of their new product for sale will be more aggressively moderated out then the endless daily spam we receive to watch random TV shows. Its a shame, as both merchants and customers enjoyed having this live product feed. Strangely enough, it is not just a simple oversight by Lindens. A "New Products" forum has been requested to Lindens again & again, yet remains a denied function -- intentionally & noticably absent. One has to wonder why this is left out? Anyways, if you look around the web for SL related sites (I can't link them here, its against site rules), there is plenty of places around where you have complete freedom to talk about your new products... or you can blog about it.

Word of advice there.... for another scripter to help you, they'll probably need to see neatly organized code. Just like a story written without any punctuation, paragraphing, or indentation is very hard to read... so is this. For example, you can edit your post to appear more like this: integer have_permissions = FALSE; fire(){ rotation rot = llGetRot(); vector vel = llRot2Fwd(rot); vector pos = llGetPos(); pos = pos + vel; Once you lay it all out tidy like that you might actually immediately see what is wrong yourself! As it appears in your post, it is far too jumbled for anyone to sort out most likely.

Ouch. Too bad that is happening... this confusion & frustration is Lindens fault I think for providing no way of searching just for the mesh items yet. Although a merchant can flag their item as "100% mesh" or "partial mesh" there is still no search function to take advantage of this datafield's existence! Seems kinda silly really. I've tried myself to search for mesh on marketplace (all you can do is type "mesh" as a search term), but the true mesh items are just strewn amongst a jumble of non-relevant non-mesh results. Not any merchant's fault really as this isn't intentional miscategorization at all, just poor site implementation in this respect. I'd be certain Lindens will improve this soon, but it's definitely an annoying facet of marketplace at the moment.

This happened to a friend of mine. They ask me for advice, but I am not sure what they can do as this never happened to me! Their stuff is now struck on the land of a former friend (I guess something made this friendship between them go very bad), and now they don't know how to get their stuff back from them! What can they do? Myself, I have no idea... never been in that situation! I'd love to give them some great advice to help get their stuff back & will pass on any great tips of recovery from this thread to them. Thanks in advance guys! :matte-motes-sunglasses-3:

Yep its all a big silly mess, that's why i thought comments from "Lawyer Cat" (not myself) were highly appropriate This kind of thing does vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and lots of disagreement & bickering on all sides. Its a legal quagmire best avoided altogether if possible. In this case, i was only stating my understanding as to the legalities of Amarock's particular actions (for whatever that's worth).... Legal stuff aside, what is probably the most ethical alternative is the merchant should have stated something about this EULA upfront. Regardless, Amarock shouldn't go & intentionally do anything against their wishes, that isn't smart either! Two wrongs don't make a right. Best is just to delete the item, carry on, and don't shop there again. Leaving a negative review of the item, detailing that an unwanted EULA is included, would also be highly appropriate for Amarock to respond with. Lastly, a refund would have been highly appropriate for the merchant to give... but its understandable the merchant don't... as with non-SL software sales there isn't really a genuine way to return such an item (unless transfer-no copy). If only LL allowed a purge from inventory function, mutually verifiable, this would allow refunds to be easily accomplished and many more friendly outcomes i think! Less drama round the grid... Once again, yes full perms leads one into all kinds of confusing (and potentially antagonistic) situations which is why i avoid that whole market sector. Although it might not be where the riches are, i like my little corner of SL... all this fullperms stuff seems to end with super serious e-lawyer battles & nastiness.

Funny thing is although there is some great ones, i've already seen some awful "builder's kits" out there: exceptionally high PE, obvious extraneous triangles where far less would have provided the same appearance... and laughably inefficient & badly done UV maps... all in all just horribly put together. Unlike sculpty kits, I think mesh kits run more of a chance of becoming a swampland of horridly poor "resources"... just because there is more ways to make a poor mesh, whereas every sculpty has a predictable vertice count & basically just less ways to screw it up royally. If one has been relying on kits, one might have to choose very carefully, or might be much better off just learning how to do it themselves! You are correct however, despite the bad... the good mesh kits will all be so much better than the best of sculpty kits... anybody in that business should be frantically upgrading everything if they don't want to lose their place in the market.

"True....but if its false advertising, on the full perm or the TOU for the item. If it was sold as full perm, does that not mean that their rights are clearly spoken on the item they are selling * which i screen shot for my own protection * Therefore it is their slip up to pay for not mine?" Okay Amarock, you've brought up some interesting yet misconceived points here. It does kind of suck, and it sure ain't great customer service on this merchant's behalf! However, unfortunately this doesn't fall under "false advertising" & you may not do whatever you like with any full perm item. Let me try to explain. The advertisement said the item will arrive to you full-perms... & it did arrive to you full perms. It would have been nice & upfront if the merchant fully detailed their EULA before purchase, but they are by no means legally required to do so. These kind of confusing (and potentially antagonistic) situations is a big part of why I do not sell any full perm goods. Also I hate to play internet lawyer games. Funny enough.... what you did here legally is kind of backwards to what you imagine [Lawyer Cat] Full perm simply means an item arrives to you with all permissions checked open. Its a common misunderstanding in SL that full perm gives the end user carte blanche powers. Quite simply, by RL law, and even by LL ToS, it doesn't give you any special rights. Any sort of EULA the seller wishes can be applied, and some sort of EULA should be generally expected. The general "forgetting" of SL merchants to apply any sort of EULA, and the general absence in SL of EULAs, does nothing to diminish the validity of any standing EULA, should any merchant choose to apply one. Firstly, you screen shot the permissions granted on the item "for your own protection". This would only verify the merchant fulfilled their duty in the bargain... to supply you with a full perm item. Secondly, you've now also posted publicly (which google will archive forever, even if you delete it here) that you read their EULA so you are aware of the terms & thus legally obligated by them. Your public statements here only provide rock-solid evidence that you read & understood the EULA, so it has become indisputably legally binding for you now. To be clear, this EULA was binding anyways, but without your public statements here it might have been harder to prove that you read & understood it. In SL, a EULA is typically not clickwrapped, making it harder to verify acceptance of terms so potentially there is some wiggle room if you had some high-paid lawyer willing to help you attempt to fight your way out of it. Regardless, once you have purchased the item & received the EULA it is legally binding. Even if you took it to court, its unlikely to come out in your favor. [/Lawyer Cat]

My advise, just keep trying (maybe give them a shout once a day)... most merchants are nice & helpful (this is my impression) Although there is a few very rotten apples out there, most merchants realize that providing terrible customer service (or none at all) is a good way to put yourself out of business in less than a year. Natural market forces serve to eliminate the remainder eventually. So give them a bit of time... remember behind most "business" in SL it is usually just one person -- maybe two -- you never know when someone is off on a little holiday to see family, or perhaps laying in hospital recovering from illness. Try to be patient and give them the same chance you might give a long distance friend time to respond when you don't know their situation... Creating positive word of mouth is the most effective (and cheapest) form of advertising. Providing negative experience for customers is the most effective way for any merchant to give themselves negative press. I hope this merchant thinks the same way! Best of luck

Deltango: "Do our feelings/outlook of such things (online exposure, privacy) have anything to do with our politics?" Perhaps, I just see facebook links to many dangers... a looming police state, rise of identity theft, stalker enablement... A few generations ago, people would never dream to throw away the privacy rights many people willingly do today, facebooking every personal minutae. Facial recognition & yet unseen technologies will only compound the layers of threat. For me, it is also just an extra task, I am too lazy for things like facebook. Last thing I want to do after doing something fun or cool is get on the internet & waste my time shouting it out into the echo chambers of social media. I'd much rather get onto doing some other cool thing, without the interruptions & hassle social media offers. BTW: When I do a political test, it labels me an "anarchist", a misnomer in my eyes since I don't want chaos! I just feel local communities can govern themselves without so much formalization & centralization of political power. Furthermore, in context of 21st century, our old world style of "Big Government" is repeatedly shown to be costly, inefficient & often quite redundant.

I've read that facebook has recently lost 30% of its users, probably because of exactly these kind of issues.

Just curious... what private information of yours do you think is exposed by somebody "following" you? If you use twitter, it is similar to someone following you on twitter. Rather harmless... It doesn't mean they are actually following you around like this guy: No private data (such as IMs, RL info, payment data, etc) would ever be exposed to this person (unless you purposefully disclosed it). "Following" just aggregates for easier viewing whatever you post publicly to your profile feed. If they could not follow you, it would mean they would have to visit your profile page over & over again to check your feed there. Nothing new is exposed through following, its more of a convenience factor.

Yeah its a small hindrance, it just would mean the baddies will put a bunch of alts on reserve & age 'em. There is valid reasons to have an alt begin selling without delay. Better idea would be apply the mesh IP standards to all selling. Each criminal, once banned, will then need a new credit card with a new payment ID to try selling again & they will quite possibly be facing real life charges. Forget alt-looping then, they probably won't even try it twice. That is the way to go.

Oh automated greeters are the worst... I find them super annoying too. The whole idea of a greeting is to be friendly & connect with another human -- make that person feel welcome. Spammy tinned recordings and automations definitely do not do it. In regard to formal language, I think it is best to quickly adjust to the cadence of the person you are talking with... if they are behaving very business-like & serious, I can follow suit... if they act casual & human I'll naturally do the same, if they're talking like a lolcat well hai i can speek dat wai 2 =^-^= I prefer to be fun & maybe even a bit silly in SL. Formal can sometimes be very appropriate here, say if you are contacted by an educator for a development contract or something, but for general purpose? Why carry a workplace atmosphere into a game environment where people are here to have some fun? Gotta learn to be appropriate to the situation.

Yay that looks cool! not sure yet what its good for.... but i'll have to play around with this soon

hehe thanks Suella LOL it did cross my mind this article could be based on quite speculative sources. I mean, come on now... 2D.... textbased... ??? I should have known this article was BS.