Millennium Sands

What's so strange about it? All humans move on four legs before they learn to walk.

Hi LaGataLoca, Linden Lab eliminated several ways to make money and even ruined the land market, so earning L$ has become significantly harder over the years. That doesn't look to me like the Lab focuses on people who want to earn money for their 1st Life. People who earned a significant amount of money in SL were always a very small minority anyway, and LL never made a secret out of this fact. Most creators, club or shop owners etc. don't run their business to make money. They do what they do for fun. It's their way to play the game. Their earnings are often only a way to compensate a part of their expenses, and a small mark of recognition. But basically they are players like you and me.

Well, I'm not really hooked. I depend on SL because it's the only place where a SL avatar like me can live. The one who is actually hooked is my 1st Life avatar who created me - and got hooked on me. I was born when my 1st Life avatar got a new high speed internet connection and wanted to try it before moving to Guild Wars and create an account there. Joining Guild Wars wasn't free, but SL was, so it looked like the perfect platform for a test. My 1st Life avatar wasn't sure what I would be in the long run, if there would be a long run at all. So it made up a name for me that could fit to both genders or even to a goldfish - Millennium - and decided my initial gender with a dice. When I rezzed for the very first time, I was a blue haired girl who didn't look impressing at all, and I moved like I was made of wood. But my 1st Life avatar was curious enough to ignore the terrible lag, let me explore the surroundings a little bit, and learn a few basic lessons. And I even met a guy who was just as puzzled like me and we became friends. All in all I kept my 1st Life avatar entertained enough to earn my ticket for a second log in. Next day I discovered a bunch of people who had gathered not far away and were building a lot of stuff. Creating all sorts of things out of thin air, they looked like mages to me. This world was apparently full of miracles! And then it happened: Among these people a woman appeared who looked very different than the rest of the crowd around her. It was a fairy, and she was a creature of unimaginable delicacy, grace and beauty. For the first time, I realized how amazing and outstanding a female avatar can look in SL, and it was enough to inspire me. I wanted to be like her, and I wanted it with all my heart and soul. But I had really no idea how this goal could be achieved. Without actually realizing it, I had discovered something essential about me: I was not a goldfish and not a guy. I was definitely a woman with the desire to be admired! And my 1st Life avatar became aware that it couldn't change this basic fact anymore. With the help of some friendly old rezidents, I began to evolve and develope a basic look. People gave me things like hair and clothes, and by trying these things on me I could feel if they matched my personality or not. It turned out very soon that I was obviously a blonde with a lighthearted nature. While I grew and revealed myself more and more to my 1st Life avatar with every step I got to know myself better, I could feel the growing attachment and passion it felt for me. The creator had started not only to cherish but also to respect it's creation, and now we have a bond. Isn't that the way it should be - in all Lifes and dimensions?

I think you're right, Pussycat. Before LL reorganized the market for land, everybody could try to buy land for a good price and sell it with a decent profit. As a result we had lots of people who dealt with land and that was of course rezident owned land. But that kind of business is much harder now, because you have to compete with the constant flow of cheap land povided by LL, who throws abandoned land on the market for 1 L/sqm after a week, instead of leaving it abandoned and empty for a year, like they did before. LL's new approach also encourages people to abandon land instead of trying to sell it, because it's difficult and unlikely to make a profit with a sale. And since more and more people already bought their land for 1 L/sqm, they have less to loose when they abandon it than someone who bought land in the old days for several L/sqm. As a result, we have more and more land that is abandoned and then sold by LL for 1 L/sqm after a week than land that is sold from rezident to rezident. I suppose LL makes a nice extra profit with this land that is given back to them. Much more than they made in the old days. All in all this change didn't effect the proportion of land for sale. In my neighborhood there's rarely land for sale. Most of my neighbors have been there for years, and the few who left were replaced by new ones after a very short while. No need to save the mainland here in Jinx and surrounding regions for sure. Quite the opposite: In the old days I had a good amount of abandoned parcels right next to my home. Some of them were empty for more than a year. Now everything in sight is occupied.

Hey KatKaif, can't you use your world in First Life, please? I tell you, if everything is free in your world and you load it up to 1st Life, my 1st Life avatar will move in at the spot!

Ok, it's not the whole continent, but one third of it. That's still a big landmass. At least far more than what I would call "just a small part of it all", unless you refer to the complete landmass of all continents counted together. I still find it pretty common to see so many parcels for sale at a mapscale like this. The initial price for land was much higher in the past, but what really counts is the tier and nothing has changed about that. All in all the proportion of land for sale looks not much different to me than back in 2009, for example.

Looks like Satori to me. Well, when you look at a whole continent, a view like that with lots of parcels for sale isn't that surprising. I think it was always like that.

Hi Bratty, since you call it Showcase, I suppose you're on Phoenix or maybe Firestorm. I used Showcase every day to find new interesting places, but LL's changes made Showcase quite pointless. The spinning circles are no problem for me. The list is loaded in a second. But all you get is a small selection of destinations that belong to a particular category, not the complete list. If you compare the list you get with a category of the website for destinations, you'll see that the website lists far more destinations. In my opinion, LL made a terrible change to the worse when they redesigned search, and the offical viewer is of no help in this matter. Here's a quick overview of issues from my point of view: 1.) Long loading times. If you make it through the barrier of spinning circles, you can call it a lucky day. 2.) The pictures you get are much too small to give you an idea of the kind of visual design you could expect from a place. This might be different on lower resolutions, but on a 1920*1080 screen the pictures look like small stamps and it's hard to recognise anything at all on them. 3.) The old Showcase listed new added places on top. That made it easy to make a daily check for new destinations. Now you have to look at every single category to see if there's anything you don't already know. For me, the small pictures are a particular nuisance, so I don't use the client's search anymore at all when I look for new destinations. The only solution seems to be the website. It features larger pictures and the list is complete, but you still have to look into every category. And when you found something, you have to make it send a LM to your client (Two more clicks). So all in all the process is still somewhat cumbersome. As a result, my daily checks for new destinations are a matter of the past and I have to admit that without the constant flow of new places to explore, my SL has become (at least slightly) less exciting.

Well, that was a bad explanation... the percentage of other parameters is not changed, but their effect. Example: Head size has an effect on all subcategorys of the head. If you make the head smaller, the eyes become smaller too, even if you don't make a change at slider for them. They stay the same in proportion to the head, but become smaller.

Each slider has a range from 1 to 100. What else could it be than percent? If you work on shapes, you'll notice that changing one parameter affects other parameters as well. They are all linked to each other, because you don't change total values, but proportions.

So LL has a permanent record of everything I've seen in more than 4 years, huh? In other words: They've always monitored my client settings, like Draw Distance, Focus Offset, Camera Offset, Camera Angle, Camera Offset Scale, etc. along with my camera focus. And they will never ever forget that on March 23, 2008, at 04:31 PM, I looked.... ehm... at a wall. Well, I finally get an idea where all that server power goes in SL! I only wonder how many employees they need to review all the data I'm constantly producing, even when I do nothing. Oh, and I also wonder if you actually believe what you wrote.

Hi Medhue, first let me thank you for trying to make the public aware of this serious threat. Well, I suppose you used a sound sample for your video, and the corporation had the copyrights for that sample, so it owned the sound of this particular wind. That's ok. A sample is a sample, and if they had the copyright, well... But I wonder if they actually had to prove their claim. Only YouTube could clarify this question. It's still easy to tell how crazy it can get in relation to SL: As we all know well enough, SL is full of content that possibly or de facto violates copyrights, and at any given second even more content can be added that infringes copyright laws. Following Proks logic, you could say that SL is at least partially a huge piracy site. (And no - I'm not claiming that Prok would actually say this! I only pursue the line of logic.) If you look at it like that, SL deserves the ban hammer for being a piracy site. There must be at least thousands out there who could make a claim against at least a tiny part of content in SL. It can be a texture, a sound sample, or whatever. And I'm only talking about just claims that could be proved. LL handles these cases more or less efficient. If you have proof for a claim, the Lab removes the content. With SOPA, you don't even need proof. You simply have to claim that your or someone elses copyright is violated, and BANG - Before the Lab even has a chance to react, Second Life is offline! SOPA is an invitation for every SL hater, griefer, or ex-employee who bears a grudge against the lab to shut SL down smart and easy. Maybe it will go online again after a few days, or months, or... well, only until someone else appears with a similar claim! I remember the days when SL was offline once a day, and we got that message "We're banging on Things" from the Lab at the login screen and had to wait until the tech team had sorted one of the many troubles SL had at that time. Fortunately those days are remote history by now, but once SOPA has become a reality, we'll have to get used to another daily message: "Sorry, We're banging on lawyers. Please remain patient until the judge returns from fishing!"

By now I've somehow recovered from the initial shock and found time to read more about this issue... It was your blog, Prok, that made me aware of the term "SOPA" for the first time. But to be honest, I had no idea what it was. I only understood that it was an acronym for... a party?... or a hacker group?... or a website?... or what? I read some paragraphs without getting a clue about the nature of the topic, so I went on to read something else and forgot about it, until I discovered this thread and read it merely to get to know what the acronym means. Now I'm alarmed, and that's an understatement! I'm sure I've not read all about it, but I've read everything you wrote about it on your different blogs and some more. You focus on what SOPA is SUPPOSED to be and how it is SUPPOSED to be used. But here in Germany we often get reports depicting how the law in the USA is (ab)used by people who pursue their own agendas and purposes. Ridiculous compensation demands are a frequent example for related lawsuits. While I agree with you in your general fight for copyright protection, your perspective on SOPA looks kind of blue eyed to me. The question here is not what SOPA might be intended to achieve, the question is how it COULD be used! From my viewpoint it looks like SOPA will make every server located in the USA unreliable and therefore unusable as a platform for business, because an investor can never be sure if it won't be shut down thanks to a ridiculous copyright claim. In other words: For safe business, you basically have to outsource all internet related technology to locations that are not in the USA. I wonder if Linden Lab is aware of what SOPA might mean for Second Life. To me it looks like SL is particularly vulnerable to copyright issues. If the sheer possibility of copyright infringement is enough to shut down a site, it's just a matter of time until someone will launch a claim that leads to the shutdown of SL. Looks like SOPA might be the ultimate griefer tool.

I'm.... stunned! This is probably the most serious and vicious assault on worldwide freedom I've witnessed in my lifetime! You could expect something like that from regimes like China, Iran, or North Korea. But it's the US Government who's about to launch this?!? I don't know what to say... if nobody stops this... I'm too shocked right now to think any further..

@ Decro Maybe you should be glad that the rest of the "dinosaurs" had patience, and didn't leave SL right away when the pest... ehmm... I mean Viewer 2.0 was introduced! Yeah, you are really "Avant Garde", aren't you? But how would you feel if you look around and find only TEN other rezidents online who are "gratefull" and "state of the art" like you are? I'm more than 4 years old by now and I've been online almost every day since I was created, and I'm a premium member for more than 3 years. But ever since LL came up with that dreaded V2 interface, I've been fighting for my survival! I've tried it again and again, but never felt comfortable with it, even after months and years! If it wouldn't be for 3rd party clients, I would have dropped SL more than a year ago. Currently I'm practicing SL on Firestorm with an Alt an hour per day, and I still feel not comfortable enough to play my premium account on it! And more and more it looks to me like LL should be gratefull that the Firestorm team keeps people like me still around, people who hope that SL might still be accessable with an interface that's halfway acceptable and useable! I don't give a damn about mesh. I've come to a point where I'm glad enough when the Lab does nothing at all! I'm tired and sick of a their messed up search, that displays "fancy" looking self scrolling classifieds, no matter what I'm REALLY looking for! And that's just a hint. I'm still not sure if I'll still be here in a year from now. Since they introduced Windlight, which was great, the Lab hardly comes up with anything that REALLY enhances my experience. More likely than not, they deminish my experience. I've come to a point where I not even consider to use their client anymore! I hope I gave you an idea how SL looks from a "dinosaurs" point of view. Look at the data that tells you how many new users stay in SL, and you might appreciate that some dinos still fight for their survival. If we turn our backs to SL, "your imagination" might find not many rezidents whose company might enhance your vision. And by the way: Some of those dinos are still paying the bills for your imagination... With kind greetings - Your Dino - Millennium Sands