Vegro Solari

Firestorm team are working on a fix for that in the next release (hopefully official viewer will follow suit too). As a temporary fix until we get that new viewer, you can uncheck "Basic Shaders" in gfx options, that makes it go away.

Harmony, gawd no, you don't need to remove anything from the PC - it's just the software. You go to "Add/Remove Programs" in your control panel, look for the "Intel Graphics Driver", and tell it you want it uninstalled. You can do this with no issues since you have your ATI videocard. The Intel driver is for the crappy Intel graphics that come with PCs for people who don't have a real separate videocard. In case you ever want it back, you can always install it again. Good luck! Back in Oct. I got in touch with the Firestorm team and they are going to have a fix for this flashing in their next release (supposedly soon), but the current one still has it. I just use it with the box unchecked for now!

You have the same problem as me, that's how I knew which box you need to uncheck. The problem comes from the Intel driver (intel graphics). If you have a separate graphics card by ATI, maybe you can get rid of the intel graphics driver and then things will work properly. As far as I know Intel still hasn't fixed this flashing stuff in their driver. It started in like October last year! Things do look nicer in SL if that box is checked, so good luck!

If you press Ctrl-P to get into your options, then under graphics, try to turn off the checkbox "Basic shaders". Push apply and see if the annoying flashes go away for you.

OK! Then we could go like this: default{ state_entry() { llPreloadSound("Sound1"); llPreloadSound("Sound2"); llPreloadSound("Sound3"); llPreloadSound("Sound4"); } touch_start(integer detected) { llSetSoundQueueing(TRUE); llPlaySound("Sound1", 1.0); llPlaySound("Sound2", 1.0); // By the time it gets here, S1 is playing and S2 is queued waiting to start. // Let's put a pause in here before the last two sounds get queued // If Sound1 and Sound2 are both 10sec, then we need a pause of about 20 secs, whilst they're playing llSleep(19.0); //Waiting done, queue the last two sounds... // S2 is just finishing playing, so we can queue up the next one llPlaySound("Sound3", 1.0); llSleep(9.0); llPlaySound("Sound4", 1.0); }}

Try going like this: default{ state_entry() { llPreloadSound("Sound1"); llPreloadSound("Sound2"); llPreloadSound("Sound3"); llPreloadSound("Sound4"); } touch_start(integer detected) { llSetSoundQueueing(TRUE); llPlaySound("Sound1", 1.0); llPlaySound("Sound2", 1.0); llPlaySound("Sound3", 1.0); llPlaySound("Sound4", 1.0); }} This way of doing it can have some glitches or hiccups, but hopefully for your situation it'll work out!

It's great how you already have a specific "subculture" in mind that you're creating things for. Without that it would've been a question with too many answers. The main idea of building a following inworld goes like this: - Find out where your subculture likes to hang out - Fit your shops or banners in there and try to become an organic part of each place Meaning, take care to select which products are sold where. Keep the total number of products at each place low, around 5 or so, but so nicely picked that people stop and gawk. Think about how you're presenting it: shouldn't just be "here's what I have for sale" (what most people do), but instead try a "check this curiousity out" approach. Of course, teleport links or landmark givers for your main store should be there in case people want them. It's obviously unrealistic to have a main store everywhere you want, but with this strategy you're not only building sales little by little, but more importantly, you're constantly in the field of view of your people. Over time, that builds you a name and a following. Another advice is to find Sassy Romano and beg to become a shop-fu disciple.

Just an idea, if you need the old avatar back, maybe a friend or someone here can look up your old avatar by name, and then tell you how many days old it says you are, or what the date of "birth" is. If you used to own a land parcel when you originally left, it expired due to lack of tier payment, and now that avatar owes a small bit of money to LindenLab, which is why I'm guessing it's suspended. Your new avatar is going to be treated as if it was a different account/person altogether, so in case you can't or don't want to get the old one back, no worries.

No. Can't do it.

This is for Ailya Babii, hopefully to help with fears of gifts. Just having a gift in inventory does not run any of the scripts that could be inside of it (good ones or bad). Spying scripts can do something only if you wear the gift or you rez it on your land. (Just keep in mind that if you rez something then delete it, it could have silently created an invisible prim somewhere, that could be the spy device. So just deleting a thing after rez might not be enough.) To avoid the problem, just rez suspicious gifts at a public sandbox, where they can't do anything to spy on your home. To defeat the second kind which works by you wearing it, unwear absolutely everything (or reset your avatarto the default), then again wear your normal outfit/avatar which you know is clean. That way if you were wearing any gifts to try them out, and they tried something fishy like sticking around and spying on you after you unwear it, the reset would have removed them. Don't worry about inspecting objects for scripts too much, it's a waste of energy because that only shows you if there's "a" script in it. But without reading the code there's no way to tell if it's legitimate or spyware, or (rare but possible) a combo of both.

You will have a hard time selling text products (no matter the star quality of them) in SL. You could arrange to sell them as notecards or picture-based flipbooks, but the problem you'll face is that SL is a visually-dominant medium, people simply do not want to read, they want to wander, click stuff, and be part of shared experiences. But if you can minimize text and emphasize illustrations (which can even be made within SL themselves, enacted by avatars for example) - basically think "comic book" rather than regular story, then there'll be much better chances for success. The technical part is the least difficult, you use the "For sale" checkbox on the object (say a box) that contains your comic inside it, and set it out for sale. Those "automated" sale things you see in shops are done with a simple payment script. There are many for free on marketplace but if you have trouble, I made one for my own usage and you are welcome to have it by IMing me if desired. Good luck!

Unfortunately, that kind of thing is usually very low priority, so I wouldn't hold my breath to see a codec update. I remember seeing some screenshots that showed captures of outside streaming vs. SL ogg streaming, and there was visible quality-munching happening in the latter, why it's there is anyone's guess! I think what happens is, various audiostreams on input are probably force-converted to OGG at a certain bitrate, in a lazy way that "gets it done", even if it's not getting it done right as far as pristine quality preservation. If we found out what this certain OGG bitrate is and use that for your program material, it might be possible to avoid the double conversion and quality loss. Just a theory, though. The upside is that as a DJ or performer it's no use worrying about things like this anyway, as we live in the day and age of quality-munched audio. It's expected by listeners, their ears are used to it thanks to ipods etc., and if it wasn't there (if you provided pristine quality audio) they might even feel something was "off" with your stream!

I wanted to ask those more experienced for advice about using ZBrush tools to paint directly on the SL mesh. I'd found the default avatar OBJs (male and female) on a very old forum post, but along with those were some warnings that the UVs on those meshes don't really match the UVs that SL itself uses too, too precisely, resulting in upload woes as awful seams between areas emerge and have to be fixed manual-style in Gimp. It wasn't elaborated if that's a problem with the OBJs given out by LindenLab or with how ZBrush reads them in, or both. Just wondering if people know a better modern OBJ mesh to use, or what the best workflow for this type of thing would be?

The second one's right - you can carry on using/selling old mesh clothes, they just won't have the deformer features available on them.

Czari, I noticed the same thing as you, only I think it isn't connected to using boxes. It happens whenever you update any of your listings to change descriptions or keywords or prices. Somehow, the act of changing anything causes the item's position on the marketplace to reset, or something. This can make your unpopular item more visible but equally it can also make your popular item invisible. A total gamble! I'm very discouraged to update anything on the marketplace unless absolutely needed because of this strange behaviour.

If making buildings, towers and so on, don't shelf your normal prim-building skills.. You may find that the best results (more prim efficient and less expensive) will be gotten by using a combo of ordinary prims or sculpts to block in your general structure, plus using carefully placed mesh details. That's important because when you start with meshes, you'll be horrified how much everything takes prim-wise, which used to be just one simple prim before! Then you start trying to figure out how to out-trick the tricky mesh uploading system to do efficient meshes. But most of the time it's pretty tough to make things that can be as efficient as normal prims or sculpts. That's why the "combo approach" can be the best for fast/efficient builds. A tricky thing to keep in mind when you work with mesh/sculpt/prim combos is that if you link any mesh to something that was only prims/sculpts before, that makes SL consider the entire linkset as a mesh, for primmage calculation. In some rare cases it actually helps, but it most, you end up with many times more prim cost than you could have if you just didn't link them!

That's a great question Innula. I really take it seriously and think about that too. The wise used to say, you should give whatever you can, and give generously of it. So if you have only little, then give generously of your little bit. Without trying to match or outdo others who may have more than you to give, and without giving everything so that you yourself run into the food trouble you wanted to save your artist from. And if you really miss that feeling of a bloodsucking parasite entity forcing you to give, then taking the lion's share of what you give for itself, (not likely right?) - you can ask the artist if they want you to pay their recording company too or not.

16, I admire you, you talk like a human. More than me, for example. When you were a toddler growing up, did your parents shield you from people that shout "Don't touch! Not yours!!!" and let you explore ? It's not up to you and me to decide how things should be, but that feeling, when you're lost and are grasping on your own for a difficult ethical solution, is important for a person to eventually grow the big balls and become a "decider".

16, maybe you're unaware that in the aftermath of the WikiLeaks scandal, the data they published was pulled from Amazon and other data hosting providers using, essentially, a copyright-based legal argument. The government said that they did not give their permission to publish those copyrighted incriminating documents revealing their corruption, to WikiLeaks or their sources. They were able to DMCA them off the internet in most cases. It happened, but - don't forget, those laws will really need to be much tougher going forward, to help protect the artists you love and the children.

Innula! Please! The eventual reduction of everything to some semblance of capitalist absurdity is truly the last thing that ought to be on our minds today, when we're called to become the unwitting witness of that ugly giant's slow, agonizing death. In order to pay an artist, you just give them some money. That has never been the problem. Your question should read: "How would the record industry continue to force us to give it more money so that it would be able to pay minimal wages to the so-called artists it hired if no one is buying the overpriced records they produce together?" Someone can come right back at you and inquire just why would anyone care about the record industry's problems. Poor darlings, the extortion scheme they run on you and me isn't working out so good any more? Call in the "moral duty" people, we have to build awareness for this tragic situation.

A technology that allows easy access to and the infinite replication of desirable things, including the means of production, is a revolutionary technology. Not in the buzzword sense, but in the sense of the old order being completely overthrown, for better or for worse. Modern "copyright" can be understood and seen as a desperate, spastic attempt to stop, curtail that revolutionary effect, and retain the old order in some adapted form. The bread factory must remain! How can we kings continue to run the world without it? When the entire society is built around scarcity, competition for resources, you cannot handle a technology that allows magical superabundance to flourish on the internet. When it was only music, OK that's sad for the record industry, but not a big deal. But now it's government secrets! Information is actually getting to be free, and this cannot be allowed to continue, if the old order is to stand. One reason that the government is for the most part allied with the recording industry and other such lobbies, is that government interests are similar to those of the industry, and at odds with the interests of the people at large when it comes to the internet. My favourite part in all of this are the wonderful people that argue that doing only what you're told in this complex situation (with many opportunities and pitfalls) is everyone's moral duty!

That distinction you mentioned may be very relevant to the copyright lawmakers, who struggle to make sense of just how the law should wrestle with this newfound "ability" of people to easily find and infinitely reproduce anything they want. But we're not the lawmakers here, so what's it to us? A reproduction is a reproduction is a reproduction. It's as if, in your travel example, I offered you a practical and convenient way to instantly teleport wherever you want by merely clicking a button. Should the law then sternly step in, and PROTECT the rights of the cabbies? Now that you don't have to walk, you don't need their outdated middle-man services for your travel. Should there be a forced legal distinction between "travel" and "teleporting"? Think about all the hard workers in China, in the automotive industry and many others, whose cute chinese families will have nothing to eat if you stop paying your cab fare... But let's be realists, the question with lawmakers usually isn't "should we", but rather "how much are the cabbies paying". They're paying pretty good these days, it turns out. And many people are buying it.

Innula, to sing a song is to reproduce it, by means of the vocal tract. Correct? You know how dolphins and parrots are able to reproduce exactly the sounds they've heard? If you wanted to consider the issue philosophically, you'd agree that It's just a pure coincidence that this feat is a little more difficult for a modern human, and so is the fact that digital technology makes it as easy as clicking a button. This is how we may argue that Copy-right (you have no right to make copies), royalty (you have no right to free enterprise in the cultural sphere without paying your King a fee) etc. - are all a return to the Dark Ages, because obviously this "new technology" is here, the ability of humans to reproduce whatever they want in infinite quantities is here, yet commercial lobbyists seek to put an end to it globally, declaring it illegal and furthermore immoral to question their kingly/royalty rights to own and commercially exploit entire swaths of people's shared culture.

In many traditional societies, when a boy is born to a family, they go out of their way to establish that until he is about 5 years old or so, no one and no force on the earth has the right to stop little Johnny from reaching and grabbing what he wants; and trying what he wants. Even when it puts Johnny in some danger of actual physical harm! The reason that more and more of these tried-and-true traditions have been systematically eroded in our own society is that they produce un-governable, independent, fierce individuals. Whereas we seem to be aiming to produce primarily worker drones, for whom of course everything they're not specifically allowed (licensed) to do, is forbidden and immoral. Few may realize that, for example, only a hundred or so years ago, no free person needed any sort of "driving license" to move around in the country as they please. Licenses and registrations were at first introduced for the public good; with provision that they only apply to "commercial performance" - driving was by definition, a commercial activity. At first, only this required formal license. Gradually, it turned out that actually everyone requires a license for everything, it's for the greater good. When the nice policeman stops you, you are to obey, show your papers. It's the right thing to do. But who has ever demonstrated, to convincing effect, that songs are written to be SOLD, rather than sung? By the way, ripping an mp3 of a song is merely another way of reproducing it; it is in no way different from what is called "public performance". Same with using it, maybe it's your favourite song, in a video you are making. Those who support the copyright lobby effort often have a vague feeling in the back of their mind that eventually we too stand to possibly make a buck off this, one way or another, yet this is very shortsighted - don't you see, if this continues, entire cultural strata will be stripped bare and impoverished, because quite simply no one will be able to afford the license fees to do anything or be willing to navigate the legal minefield to try anything. As another poster puts it -- "It's not yours! Don't touch!" With this, we've conveniently swept the elephant in the room under the table: what specific thing we are no longer "allowed to touch"! It's our own shared modern culture that now becomes, to us, off-limits. This is distressing and very, very sad.

Innula, those are the exact business relationships that the original copyright laws of the land were put in place to govern. It was an attempt at justice. it was a decent attempt, and no one in their right mind ever imagined those business laws would one day be applied on the level of "cookies". Talk about shooting flies with a howitzer! Modern copyright laws are much trickier beasts, instead of being mere amendments of the original law, they are an attempt at totalitarian capitalism in the intellectual sphere + unlimited censorship capacities introduced to curtail the "winds of freedom" that roam on that pesky internet these days. ** Think about it. They are ACTUALLY saying, actually with a straight face, that it is illegal and furthermore IMMORAL for you to SING A SONG that you don't have the permission to sing! You will be ostracized as a "pirate" amongst your peers if you do not comply with this new world view, where everything, every expression of inner human experience has a price tag and a rightful owner.***