Jennifer Boyle

I am always open to making new friends. Please IM me in world.

If you find it please tell me. I would like to buy one, too,

Unchanged for me.

I am tempted to say that I am premium just because I want to be like Irene, but, actually, the real reasons are in my earlier post.

I have long wondered how IP banning could be useful, though circumventing them is not always as easy as it was for you. I used to could change my (dynamic) IP address by changing the MAC address of my router. Now I have a different kind of DSL. It is supposed to have a dynamic IP address, but mine has not changed in over a year during which the modem was disconnected once for over three weeks. What I would think would be a bigger problem than ineffectiveness in keeping the target out is keeping a lot of non-targets out. I have accessed SL from several hospitals, many hotels, and several airports. If I did something to get IP banned while connected from one of those places, the ban would hardly affect me, but it would inconvenience a lot of other people, and maybe lose some customers for LL. It seems to me that it would be better to try to identify the computer. Microsoft is said to be able to tell if a user is trying to install Windows on a computer other than the one it is licensed for; if Microsoft can identify a computer, so can LL. Sure, a griefer can get a new computer, but most of them can't do it too often. They could also try to identify the user. There is a field called behavioral biometrics that is concerned with authentication based on behavior, such as typing pattern and pattern of mouse movement. Each of us has their own way of doing these things that can help identify us. It is not to the point of being able to be sure a user is a particular person or not, but it can compute the probability accurately enough to be a useful component of an authentication system. There is a product on the market that uses a combination of network information, information about the computer, keystroke dynamics, and logon credentials to authenticate people. One would think that LL would use something like that and would add the pattern of inworld behavior to the mix, which would make the combination even more specific.

I just cannot restrain myself from commenting on this. What were they thinking when they did not publicize that rendering of invisiprims was broken and did not publicize the decision not to fix it? This kind of behavior is inexcusable. When I first noticed the problem with my shoes, I thought it was a problem with my viewer, cache, etc. I spent considerable time troubleshooting, posting a question here about it, and reading the jira. If LL had just told me that it was expected that invisiprims would not look right, then I could have saved that time. I imagine that thousands of others wasted similar amounts of time. It could have been avoided if a Linden had been willing to spend a few minutes writing a blog post. It is almost as if they go out of their way to be inconsiderate of customers.

I use the 512 sq m land allowance, but it would not be a reason by itself to be premium. I originally got a premium account in 2008 so that I could have a house on the mainland. I was, and am, a little leary of "owning" parcels on islands, because if the landlord didn't pay LL, I would lose it. Since then I learned that I can rent tier, so I rent all of what I need except for the 512 sq m. I have two main reasons: One is that I have found the chat support to be very valuable. I don't need it often, but when I do it is very helpful. For example, when the sim I live on needs restarting, I can ask, and they will usually do it. The other reason is that when I pay by the year, as I do, it is practically free net of the stipend.

As was already pointed out, an annual premium membership is almost free when the stipend is taken into account. I think access to chat support is invaluable. I rarely need it, but when I do, I REALLY need it. For example, I can get the region where I live restarted when it needs it.

Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant by "outfit." Did you mean the kind of outfit that you can make that creates links to everything you're wearing when you create it in current viewers, so that it's quick and convenient to assemble the same combination again, or combination of multiple clothing items that were sold together?

Amethyst Jetaime wrote: It makes sense. Consider someone totally disabled in RL who is unable to do much of anything in RL. They can't go out, they can't meet with people outside their home, they can't dance, they can't shop they can't play sports or create artistically. They have a difficult time forming intimate relationships with another person because of this. Basically they are stuck in bed or have very limited mobility. There world consists of taking medical treatments and performing basic bodily functions, maybe having to be helped to even do that.. Other than an occasional visitor, a book TV or radio they don't have much to occupy themselves with other than surviving. Now imagine those people coming into SL. Suddenly the world is open to them and they are a whole person. They can do everything in SL they can't in RL and more. They are no different from any other resident and you would never guess they are severely disabled in RL unless they told you. They can have a home of their dreams, swim, sun. walk on the beach, play sports go out on the town The above is not just an theoretical example, it is the reality for a lot of SL residents. If that were you how would you react to SL. Which reality would you prefer, the RL one or one where you are a whole person without limits and maybe even found someone to love who loves you back? Over time which would become your 'reality'? Thank you so much, Amethyst. I could not have put it so eloquently. The avatar has nothing to do with what the RL person is.

I dunno if it can be or not, but I think the answer, in your case, is very easy. I heave HUNDREDS of outfits. Your have TWO. How hard would it be to reconstruct ONE outfit?

Coby Foden wrote: I think that in SL it is very important that the names, by which avatars are known, will be unique. In SL one could change the appearance to a totally different one in a blink of an eye. How could we recognize the person if the name was not unique? In RL the situation is different. Even if the names are not unique we have no difficulty in recognizing one John Smith from another John Smith. Yes, but in RL the stakes are much higher, like who fathers your child, who you are confident is free of STDs, and who you share really significant, not trivial, amounts of money with. Surely, when it gets to things that are significant in SL, you can, at the least, be suspicious that you are dealing with an impersonator.

Lyyli Vaher wrote: ... many people want to be a different person than they are in RL. You bet your sweet @$$ we do!

You are correct: $24.95 per month. There are some ways to save. The easiest is to pay annual, at $72 per year, for the premium membership. You can also make a group with an alt to own the land, which gives you a 10% increase in the amount of land that can be owned, so you can own 10% more for the same price. You can also rent tier for L$0.25 per square meter per week. Using your example, you would need to rent 1372 square meters, which would cost you L$343 per week, or about L$1600 per month, which is equivalent to about $6 per month, a considerable saving. So if you had an annual membership, owned the land through a group, and rented the tier you need, it would cost you about half what it would otherwise.

I have a house that originally had a lot of full bright prims as part of the interior structure. When it was dark, the view from outside showed brightly lit windows and looked very warm and attractive. However it was constant. I wanted more realistic lighting. I wanted the house to be dark inside when it was dark outside except when lights were on. I turned off full bright in every prim I could fine, and now most of the house is dark at night. The first problem I need help with is that there are a couple of areas that are illuminated and I cannot find the source of the light. I have gone so far as to temporarily move prims to make sure they were not hiding other prims. Can anyone suggest anything that would help me find out where the light is coming from. The second problem that I've encountered is that the light fixtures that I have found so far are not very bright, so that it appears to be impossible to light a room really adequately with a realistic number of lights. Can anyone make a suggestion about how to deal with this? Would it be possible to hacve the ceiling become full bright when a light is swithed on? Thanks for any help.

I would delete C:\Users\Username\Appdata\Local\Secondlife and rename or move C:\Users\Username\Appdata\Roaming\Secondlife. The former is the cache, and the latter is the SL data files. It is possible that the problem is in the settings; by doing this, you will cause all settings that are kept on the local machine to revert to the defaults.

Something that really helps me when I make alpha masks is wearing a tattoo layer with the clothing template textures. You could also make a skin with them if you didn't want to make a tattoo layer. Paint.net is a nice image manipulation program that you can download for free from http://www.getpaint.net. It is fairly easy to use and has layers and transparency. You just erase the part of the template that you want to be transparent. I am not very talented, so it usually takes me 20 to 40 attempts to get an alpha mask just right. It is a real money saver to use a viewer that has temporary upload of textures, like Firestorm, though I guess you could also use the beta grid or Opensim.

Ziggy21 Slade wrote: Filing of the DMCA absolutely requires the content to be taken down, thats the purpose of the legislation, if someone acts against me in this way, I have the right to file a counter claim and then the content is replaced, unless or until a legal action is started in support of the original DMCA. You point out that this appears to be a bluff, it may well be, there is certainly something very fishy going on with this whole story, people have posted on blogs with images of the ripped skins compared to the originals, all of these images had to have been ripped, so people speaking if defence of the apparent offended party are themsleves using copy bot techniques to make their case. First, I said nothing to the effect that filing a DMCA notification doesn't require content to be taken down. I said that I thought filing a lawsuit didn't. In fact, my understanding is that the normal course, if the case was taken to a legal conclusion, would be for the DMCA notification to be filed, the content taken down, a counter-notification to be filed, the content to be put back up, the original filer to file suit, the content to remain up (unless taken down voluntarily) until a court made a decision or the parties reached a settlement that included taking it down. Is your understanding different? However, there is no requirement that content be taken down in response to a DMCA notification. I get really tired of people saying there is. If an ISP does take the disputed content down upon receipt of the notification, it has a safe harbor, so that if a court later determines that there was infringement, it is not liable. They are perfectly free to leave it up if they wish.

For the record, I am not the person who said that.

Seems pretty obvious to me that it's 20s. Why would it be anything else?

Pussycat Catnap wrote: Yep. And I'd wager a good number of folks do just that, though I don't know how many hit the 'start again' part... The sad thing about the name thing is that there is a very simple solution that LL refuses to adopt: Allow people to change usernames (Once would be enough.) and allow spaces in usernames. It wouldn't hurt if they prohibited numerals in usernames. Better yet, to avoid frustration at signup, they could have the initial username be system-assigned and say on the page that the user could change it later. It is terribly frustration to try one username after another, only to find that all that one thinks are even remotely desirable are unavailable. I've said this before, and many disagree: there is no reason that the name people are known by inworld need be unique or be their sign-in credential, or be unchangeable. Our RL names are not unique---just look here. They can be changed, just not instantly or for free.

Something that I find helpful with storage prims is to have the prim's name displayed in hovertext when it is rezzed. This simple script will do that if it is placed in the prim: // This simple script displays the name of the prim it is in // in hovering text above the prim. // by Jennifer Boyle 1/15/2010 // Placed in the public domain by the creator 1/15/2010 default { state_entry() { llSetText(llGetLinkName(0), <1.0,1.0,0.0>, 1); llResetScript(); } }

I'm not a professional in SL, but I think I can contribute some useful information. First, registering your business in your state will do absolutely nothing to help you with copyright, establishing that you are the rightful owner of the rights to your IP, or protecting you from allegations of infringement. There may be some reason, though I can't think of one, to to register a SL business with a state, but this isn't it. If anything, it makes it easier to sue you because you have to make public the RL contact information for someone to accept service of legal process. You could consider forming a Limited Liability Company, which is easier than incorporating, to shield yourself from personal liability, but it's doubtful it would be effective because you, as an individual, would still be the alleged copyright infringer. Also, doesn't the TOS require that the owner of the account be a person? Of course, according to Romney, corporations are people, so I guess LLCs must be, too. I didn't take the time to do extensive research now, but very seriously doubt that DMCA requires content to be taken down when a suit is filed alleging that it is infringing. Filing suit does not establish a thing. It's just someone making an accusation, which may be baseless. I could file suit against a theater for infringing my rights to Shakepeare's plays. I think that what required it to be taken down was LL's own policy, which I think goes further than the legal requirements. LL has gone further than the law requires in other instances, probably because their number one priority is avoiding liability and litigation expense for themselves. Theoretically, you could register your work with the US Copyright Office, but that would be prohibitively expensive in your context; you can see the fees here. Registration doesn't give you any rights that you don't already have, but it can make it easier to establish that you are the owner. It also doesn't keep anyone from suing you; it just makes it easier to defend. FWIW, I think in the instance described on the page you linked to that the suit was a bluff because it would have been no more economically feasible for the plaintiff to litigate it than the defendant. It seems very likely that the plaintiff's intent was to get a default judgment or, if a response was filed, drop the suit. It seems to me that the smartest countermove would have been to turn the tables by filing an infringement suit against her in a US court. And send a copy of the suit to LL, of course, LOL. You probably are supposed to be paying income tax on you SL income anyway. However, since dollars you take out of SL are not reported to a government agency by LL, I doubt many do, and it's unlikely that you'll get caught if you don't. If your tax return was thoroughly audited, it might be caught, but it's not likely it will be, especially if you have no red flags and do not have a high income. Let me ask you a question that I, not being a designer, have wondered about. How does a designer know a skin or a clothing item is copied without having access to the textures themselves, which one normally can't have with doing something illegal? I can understand how one could be sure if one had the textures to compare, but I would think it would seldom be possible to be sure just by looking in a viewer. Finally, considering that your SL business is a hobby, you could just not worry about these issues and enjoy SL. If a DMCA takedown notice is ever filed against you, you are almost certain to avoid litigation by just rolling over and not filing a counter-notification. In addition, if it's a hobby and not a business, personal liability insurance should protect you. You could take steps to make it look more like a hobby and less like a business. If you do decide to pay income tax, you could, perhaps, minimze the amount owed by withdrawing the dollars during a year when you other incomes was lower.

Tamara Artis wrote: In Inventory folder, at the top is one called !!!fast grab - there are huds, animations, and all stuff I need daily. I find it very convenient to have several outfits that are nude avatars with various combinations of attachments that I can wear or add to clothing outfits. Their names all begin with "!" so they sort at the top.

There's nothing bad you can say about the current situation with user names that hasn't already been said dozens of times. How smart people could come up with something this bad is a mystery to me. People are still regularly adding comments to the jira about bringing back last names. I have never heard of a resident who liked user names. That said, I agree with the other poster about display names. I usually keep display names on and usernames off, and it works fine. Whiles some display names are unpronounceable, so are, as you pointed out, some user names.