Aluminum Foil

Rigged mesh is amazing, if you have a stock avatar and shape. But of course, I don't come to secondlife to look like everybody else, I -love- modding stuff, making my own stuff, but right now making mesh/sculps is outside of my ability sphere, so, that means I'm excluded from a lot of the new content that's coming out. And of course, I'll always be excluded from rigged mesh hair, due to having a non-human avatar. I'm also highly skeptical of how well the deformer system will work. I hope I'm wrong of course, but, I'd much rather see something that allows me to go in and edit things my self. As far as mesh objects, I still like sculpts better. It's harder to do annoying things like link completely abitary parts together in a sculpt. ~ Take a shoe for example, I've seen some really annoying builds where like... the shoe laces and heel are one mesh.

Still working on sprouting that tail... Anyday now, I'm sure of it. Ha, well not really. My experences in SL, have actually encouraged me to be a little more out going in person. ~ It's not that I'm a Xenophobe, but, meeting strangers can bring on some anxiety, sometimes.

2) Content creators. Why continue to allow rampant theft of intellectual property and make preventing such theft almost impossible for merchants to stop. A system can and should be in place to make it EASIER to report copying and quicker to get copies pulled. The lab should aggressively pursue and shut down rogue programs that make copying easy and make it clear to those stealing the property of merchants that they are not welcome in Second Life. Instead, the opposite is true. Merchants feel Linden Labs makes it as hard as possible to file DMCAs, offers no assistance, and does the bare minimum required by law and only when pushed into doing so. Good content creators continue to leave Second Life, reducing the amount of good content here and making the grid less and less interesting to new arrivals. ~~~ Exactly! SL has Intellectual Property (IP) theft like crazy! Plenty of legitimate builders copy branded, copyrighted concepts and objects from RL, to sell for profit in SL with no permission =D Firearms. Cars. Clothing designs (especially from anime and video games). Sound bites (paid gestures). Audio streams (RIAA would not be happy about this). (And many more!) ~ I'd be really curious to see how many photoshoppers actually have paid copies of photoshop. Now, I apologize for sounding like a **bleep**. That's not my intent. I'm playing devils advocate, because the whole "content theft" issue is really a double edged sword. In trying to protect one aspect of SL, you really could end up hurting another aspect. "The lab should aggressively pursue and shut down rogue programs that make copying easy" As far as I know, your client is just getting info from the server, and re-drawing it locally on your computer... That means, all a copy-bot has to do, is take the information that's being drawn locally on your computer (IE, what you see, prim sizes and textures especially), and save it out to a file that the client can read, then re-upload, as if you had made it your self. And other programs, are actually legit tools used by real game devlopers, that just so happen to also work with SL, they cannot be detected by the server at all. ~ Don't get me wrong, I'm 100% for people being rewarded for their work. I understand the spirit of your post =) I agree, that blatant IP infringements -should- be perused. However, ultimately it -is- up to the content creator to be aware of copyright infringements. It works this way in real life, too. "but, sadly I'm sure it's only going to attract those who will point out I'm not helping or understanding of the Labs issues. " Anyway, again not trying to sound harsh, your intents are good, but, I think you have to balance what's possible (both via man power, and hardware), and what can be expected. ~ There's always a risk that any program you make, any drawing, any design, will be stolen. The only sure fire way to prevent piracy, is to never make it in the first place. ~ Larger companies than LL struggle with piracy, such as Adobe, microsoft, and Electronic Arts... The question is, do you want your SL experience to feel exactly like "you're guilty until proven innocent" ? Anyway, I'm getting off on a tangent here, I'm not telling you that you're not helping, or trying to discourage. I fully agree that theft is wrong, everyone will say that =) ~ What worries me is that, as a whole, some times content creators get so incredibly insane about "someone might steal my stuff", that they'll unethically burden everyone else around them in hopes of protecting their private interest. To further elaborate on some things: I think LL should offer info in one way or another. General SL expctations. (For example, your comment about sex addicts... That's so very true. You can't police IM's, but, people need to know 1, how to mute someone. And 2, that SL isn't just a big sexhole, it's a wide verity of things) To their credit, LL has made the "destinations" features, much more prominant and easy to use. AND, Copyrights and content creation. (Again, for example, you cannot make an exact copy of a "ford mustang", and call it a "frog mustong", I see lots of content creators doing stuff like that, taking someone elses idea/property, and selling it for personal profit)

I'm extremely picky, about anything I buy in world or on the market. Having an unusual avatar shape has made me spend my lindens extremely carefully. More over, there's just a lot of garbage items on the market. I refuse to reward lazy no-effort content creators, especially if they're just trying to cash in on a fad by making a horrible knock-off creation. I'll build it n' texture it my self before handing money over to builders like that. =D I know it might seem a little childish to let things like politics decide my purchases, but honestly.. The more a crappy-minded business grows, the more businesses adopt that crappy mindset =D

"People don't like it because they are too lazy to get used to it, it's just the fact that V2 has the most horrible, cumbersome, screen-cluttering and patronizing user interface ever invented!" I completely agree! V2.0 has made my second life much, much harder than it needs to be, and why exactly? Don't get me wrong; I'm not one of these people that instantly just hates on "the system" when ever I don't get my way about something =) ... But honestly, 2.0 is actually ..... really ... really ... really annoying for me to use because, 2.0 acts NOTHING like any of my other games, programs, or web services that I use.. I get that they want to make it "less scary" for new users, but your'e right, it seems awfully patronizing to me too.