Deej Kasshiki

Trying to run SL on a laptop is going to be a painful proposition. They just don't have strong enough graphics cards (due to size and power consumption issues) so don't expect much. This question gets asked at least 5 times a day and the snswer is always the same. Don't if you can help it. I really wish this would get stickied somewhere.

Full of sound and fury signifying little. In the end it's all just words until we see how this "policy" is implemented and enforced and whether LL is sincere (shown by deeds, not just words) in its expressed desire to collaborate.

Considering there are JIRAs on similar functional improvements that are still open and unimplemented after several years I'd say your chances would be better of winning the lottery, Seven.

ConvergentDynamicsReplicant wrote: Patience. It is getting better. Down isn't the new up. After almost 6 years I've run out of patience. It isn't getting better. (Please explain how the hell you came to this conclusion) LL is adding new chapters to the doublespeak book. Down is the new up.

mortalum wrote: I'm fairly sure LL just didn't anticipate it being SUCH a big deal. They should learn never to underestimate the **bleep** retention of SL residents, or that griping, moaning and trying to sound like an angry authority about every slightest detail is such a huge part of the gameplay for many people. If they didn't anticipate how important this issue was (which I sincerely doubt as a.) these aren't stupid people and b.) there were literally thousands of resident comments on their blog that warned them of many of these consequences), they damn well should have. That's what a game development company's management are paid for; strategic planning, anticipation of market trends, understanding their product and customers. As for your second point, you state in another thread how you're a new resident. I am not. I've been a paying customer and a member of the SL community for almost 6 years. I've seen the slow downward spiral, the continual screw ups on the part of LL management on the most important issues from open sims, maturity ratings, tier pricing, allowing free unlimited accounts, getting rid of last names, the Viewer 2 fiasco, etc. It's gotten very frustrating seeing the executives and managers run a phenomanal idea and a totally unique product slowly into the ground. You may call it angry griping and complaining, we call it caring. We want SL to suceed. We love the SL experience and know what it was and have some inkling of what it could've been if LL over the years hadn't consistently made poorly thought out and/or poorly executed decisions. Hang around a while and you'll very likely share our frustration, assuming that SL survives another few years.

After the events of the past month I'd advise everyone, creators, service providers and plain old residents like myself, to start working on an exit strategy. Seriously. If you had any doubts as to just how poor the management of LL was these events should remove all doubts. With every new announcement (poorly thought out TPV changes, killing of the last names once and for all, stopping the release of quarterly financial data, going from an open community roundtable to a secretive one on one format for discussion of ideas to improve SL, using limited resources to develop new, non-SL related products. etc.) the Lab looks more and more like an unpopular dictatorship heading to the bunker underneath the palace while the rebels advance on the capital. Very sad indeed.

Thanks for sharing this. I've passed on the link to several friends.

I believe Claire gave you the correct answer. LL have enabled keyword filtering for some of the TV shows the spambots have been pushing when they attack the forums. The good Doctor's show was being spammed but, as there are no current Trek shows on, the bots haven't been spamming them and so, no filters.

Deltango I think if the Board (whom, as far as I know, include venture capitalists who funded the Lab's creation as well as Philip Rosedale) could find a company that would pay them what they want so that they could cash out with a nice profit they would in a heartbeat. I just don't see any rational for-profit doing it. The short-term liabilities (a declining membership, niche product, massively lacking technical infrastructure, etc.) far outweigh any potential long-term profit. If you were CEO of say Electronic Arts how would you make the pitch to your Board of Directors to buy LL? How would you justify the massive up front capital investment to buy the company, not to mention the investment needed to handle the numerous technical issues we all know about? What about ongoing R&D, advertising and promotion, customer support costs? What's needed is a passionate visionary with extremely deep pockets who would defy conventional business wisdom and take on this basket case with a willingness to absorb some hefty short-term losses and an eye towards future (whatever he/she sees that future as) profits and intangibles.

Use the magic cheat code Alt + F4. :matte-motes-sunglasses-3:

Rod had a chance to make a powerful statement but, he opted out. Pity. I give him and the Lab's latest new direction ("SL; it's really a game creation platform") ten more months before the axe falls.

Coby Foden wrote: ...Maybe it was so that once again we banged our heads against the Linden Lab wall in vain? You listened to us, you commented, then you do exactly as you want to do it, dismissing all what we hoped for? Standard operating procedure for LL: Concoct silly, half-baked idea internally (by people who really don't use/understand the product) Announce said silly idea via Twitter, SLU or any medium other than LL official communication portal Silly idea finds its way back to SL forums Residents start a forum threadnaught debating the pros/cons of silly idea. A majority of residents produce logical and substantive reasons why silly idea is silly and should be canned. Someone at LL decides they'd best pretend to care about the residents' opinions and says, "Great feedback. We appreciate it, keep it coming, we're listening" LL proceeds to implement silly idea as originally presented anyway At least that's what I've observed since 2006. I guess you have to admire the Lab's consistency, huh?

To those who keep hammering on TPVs and copy botting; this problem existed LONG before LL open-sourced their code. There were a few unscrupulous programmers who made viewers that made the process much simpler via tools built-in to their viewers but, the fact of the matter is this: Any information displayed on your screen can be intercepted at a very low (hardware) level and copied. There are all manner of free hack programs out there that intercept the OpenGL data and copy it. Short of disabling your video card there is NO FOOLPROOF WAY to stop a determined copybotter. Period. LL could ban all TPVs tomorrow and the problem would still exist. Unless some of you guys know how to change the laws of physics, copy-botting is a problem that will be with us. Look at all the content ripped from other games out there. None of them are open sourced. And Baloo you seriously need to stop with the FUD. Emerald no longer exists, ok? That horse has been dead for over a year so please quit beating it. You don't help your arguments and just make yourself look silly and biased.

Inworld try Emery. They have a nice selection of 80s clothes.

Ceka Cianci wrote: i never really thought of this question until this very moment..but for some reason it just hit me..hehehe why would LL care if a user used a tpv or thier viewer? i would think getting the user on the grid would be the main concern..they can get pretty much any stats they need from the servers.. so what is the major reason they would want everyone on their viewer? i guess i just don't undertand it being more important than actual users making it to the grid.. money is money nomatter what viewer you are on.. They care because well... Follow the money. Case #1; Mesh. They spent years and God knows how much money bringing this "revolutionary new technology" to the grid. In order to justify the investment costs they needed mesh to explode. They needed creators busily designing new mesh stuff (that LL takes a sales commission from on Marketplace or gets tier through inworld storefronts) and they needed consumers hopped up and excited to buy. But, as we all know, that really hasn't happened. Hell, most people couldn't even see mesh objects until the main TPV devs were finally able to get that code worked into their viewers. By then though the damage had been done; people just weren't excited about it and weren't rushing out to either create it, or to buy it. (To be fair, the Lab's usual shoddy coding, poor documentation and arcane restrictions played a part as well) Case #2; Viewer 2. Estimates are that the Lab spent almost $2 million dollars on that steaming pile (as it was originally rolled out) and it was greeted by low double digit adoption rates. Again, the LL execs had to justify spending all that cash for a piece of software that the vast majority of users hated. V2 was so horrid to use and so badly recieved that the guy in charge of the project, Tom Hale, aka T Linden, got fired over it. How much extra's been spent since then trying to make v2 ready for prime time? I hope this (somewhat) cynical response helps.

Some in this discussion are longtime LL apologists and attack anything having to do with TPVs. Their usual lame tactic is to play the "ebil Emerald devs" card. Yawn. I'd just ignore them Toy. They don't want discussion or exchange of ideas.

It won't work and that's exactly what LL wants. It was pretty apparent from the first speech that Oz made at the SLCC a couple years ago that he could give less than a damn about our needs as users as evidenced by his myopic opinions on interface and feature design. This is nothing more than what Darrius said; a way to get third parties to fix their bugs for free and to stifle creativity. The Lab in its infinite wisdon is trying to cover up the fact that a majority of their users refuse to use their official viewer. They should be honset for once and just come out and say, "we no longer support the open source program and therefore no longer support TPVs and from now on you all have to use ours". Of course, that would cause a massive uprising so, they'll just try this sneaky end-around play.

Why the big hurry LL? I don't see how the display of which viewer someone is using would be considered a privacy issue and certainly don't understand why this is suddenly such an important matter that you're rolling out a change and bypassing the standard RC testing process. The cynical part of me sees this as just a hamfisted way for you to hide the embarassing fact that a majority of your customers are using TPVs.

Honestly if I was a creator there's no way in hell that I'd put up with the kind of slipshod service provided by the Lab with regards to the MP. You guys are all far and away more patient and tenacious than the vast majority of people would be. Thanks for making SL the unique experience it is in spite of the many roadblocks the Lab sets up in your path.

I view things in the same way as Kelli. My av is "hyper-me"; me but, in a more idealized way. I don't take on any sort of separate persona unless I'm in an RP setting.

Very well stated. I heartily agree with the various issues you've pointed out. It's a damned shame that after a decade LL isn't even able to get the most basic things, like text chat, working reliably. One day I think some business school will use LL as the prime example of how not to run a tech company or any company for that matter.

Triple Peccable wrote: Won't be funny if it turns out ot be true... Don't shoot the speculator!

I wondered why the Lab's CEO prefers to communicate via Twitter and ignores the company's official forums or blogs (although he does seem to like making occasional quick posts to his my.secondlife feed) but, I couldn't come up with an explanation. Thanks for providing your insight Amethyst. Your theory makes a ton of sense.

I agree with others that Live Chat is useless. I only keep a premium account because when I signed up the amount of weekly bribe money (stipend) paid by LL amounts to giving me enough L$ that it makes the account essentially free. Of course, they've dropped that amount significantly so that now it's really not worth it. I always laugh when I see them promote "expanded support, including Live Chat" as a premium benefit. P.S. Dartagan what the heck happened to make you change your attitude toward LL? I remember when you were one of the Merchant forums' most vocal and aggressive defenders.

More likely it has to do with a change that was made last week to the server code on how altitude reporting is handled. To quote the release notes: "Fixed data in CoarseLocationUpdate messages for avatars above 1020m. These are now sent with a value of 255, which was previously sent as 0 in error. This fixes numerous mini-map issues with avatar relative altitude indicators." As I recall there was a bit of concern expressed about this change and how it could break radars while this code was running on the Release Channel (test) sims.