Deej Kasshiki

Rhett Linden wrote: All affected users accounts have been restored to to the settings they had before the issue. Thanks for your patience and understanding. Oh really?

After reading about this latest "oops" I went into my page to check the settings. Thankfully, everything was fine. I did notice something else however and it's aggravating me; it appears that by default you're set to follow EVERYONE on your friends list! Now it makes sense why I'm seeing comments from so many people who I knew I'd never signed up to follow. If you want to check this for yourself go into your People tab on your web profile and check your list of friends. Be amazed that LL in its wisdom has signed you up to follow every single person on your friends list! (They're also following you back by default) Worse, there appears to be no way to do a bulk "un-follow"; you have to manually go to each person's listing and de-select follow. I've been in SL for over 5 years and have accumulated quite a few people on my friends list. Having to now go through and turn off this "feature" is going to be tedious and an unnecessary waste of my time.

"Your World, Your Imagination"* *Unless we create something half-baked that no one really wants in the form we present it and implement it badly which then backfires and goes unused as many predict but, we have to justify the development expense. In that case we'll force it on you via the back door and coerce you into using it via stealth tricks like posting UG meeting notes under display names only. (We quietly tried pulling this display names switcheroo with the Merchants' transaction records last week but, had to roll it back when people caught it and screamed bloody murder)

Qie Niangao wrote: What does "when I botted her" mean? It may be something perfectly innocent, but if it's the real life legal infraction that the name suggests then there may be some unpleasantness ahead. Typo. He was trying to type BOOTED.

If DirectX is cross platform why do popular PC games like Eve Online, that rely on DX rather than OpenGL, have to run on the Mac via Transgaming's Cider virtual Windows environment? Why can't I just pop down to Gamestop and pick up Battlefield 3 or Crysis and run it on my Mac? Might the reason be that DirectX is (and always has been) a Windows ONLY technology? Yes, DX support is built into the graphics hardware but you need software to talk to the hardware. That software (drivers) needs to have hooks into the OS (APIs) to make communication between the hardware and software possible. Microsoft has never allowed Apple or the opensource Linux community to have access to their DX APIs. Therefore, it is NOT POSSIBLE to run DX games on Macs or Linux. Period. Never has been and never will be unless Microsoft suddenly changes. Umm, yeah... I think you need to do a little research...:smileywink: ETA: Although I do agree with you that LL needs to rewrite the client to use multicore CPUs and get their OpenGL implementation up to date.

RoudyRaccoon Hand wrote: My big issue with their whole setup has been fixed in the FPS title ARMA 2, who's physics and object calculations are a dynamic streamed event for muliplayer, yet I can run it at about 65FPS even with it's horrible optimizations. LL's needs to start transitioning away from OpenGL markets and more towards DirectX for maximum resource utilization, and eventually a "cloud" grid run by the millions of users. Umm, no. DirectX is a pricy Windows only technology that MS will never port to other platforms. Going to the proprietary DX and away from open-source and transparently developed OpenGL would freeze out the many Mac and Linux users of SL, some of whom are the largest and most established content creators.

I got that notice also Joy. I haven't seen anything official from LL, however. One thing in the notecard mentioned that the initial fix was very likely to create problems with the physics engine so we should expect some major bumps if this is true. As a (former) very avid SL sailor and pilot I certainly hope that the Lab does something to smooth sim crossings soon. I pretty much parked all my boats and aircraft over a year ago because trying to use them was an exercise in frustration.

In SL, as in RL, there are many people running around wearing a tan skin tone that is somewhere between George Hamilton pre-skin cancer and Orange Julius. It looks pretty unnatural to me but it's very popular. When the OP mentioned this shade I thought of Nicole "Snooki" Pelozzi of MTV's reality show fame: P.S. Looks like the name of the show Snooki stars in is on the forum's naughty word list! Anyway, you probably know the one. :matte-motes-big-grin-wink:

I keep my premium account because of the stipend and on the small chance that I might need fast support access. I haven't owned mainland for years (doubt I'd ever go back to that chaotic mess) and donate my 512 to a group so, no big deal there. The recently introduced private sandboxes and "gifts" aren't very valuable to me. I'm hoping that LL makes good on the promise of further value added features because, as it is now, the incentive to keep a premium account really isn't there.

My question is why do you get so personally offended when people criticize LL's decisions Suella? What do you care if people express opinions that call the Lab out on their demonstrably poor decision making and implementation abilities? What do you care if I call someone "JoHNnysecksiDUDE2011" instead of their display name "Ford Prefect"? Sorry, but in my time in SL the Lab consistently demonstrated a knack for picking the very worst solution to a problem, even after being warned of the negative consequences by scores of their customers, particularly long-time customers who are very much invested in SL and very much want what's best for SL. I'm one of those people. But, I'm not going out of my way to help the Lab sweep their dumb mistakes under the rug. If enough people get fed up and make a little noise about them, there's at least a possibility they'll be corrected. If I had much faith in LL's commitment to open dialog, to truly considering customer feedback, to iterate on plans or features in a timely fashion, then I could see your point. However, that hasn't happened through 3 CEOs and 5+ years.

I agree with Void 100% and that's coming from a guy who owns a year old MacBook Pro with very similar specs to the one you're considering. I use a desktop as my primary method to access SL because there just aren't any portables (even the expensive so-called "gaming" models) that can handle SL well. They just flat out don't have enough physical space inside the case to support a very powerful graphics processor. They also have power limitations (they have to be power frugal so they can run on a battery and powerful graphics chips are very power hungry). These forums are full of people complaining about the poor performance of SL on portables. If you absolutely have your heart set on a portable at least step up to the higher end 15" MacBook Pro that has more video RAM and spring for the 7200-RPM hard drive too, if that's still offered as an upgrade. Get the best specs you can afford now because, like most portables, the MacBook Pro can't be upgraded later (with the exception of the hard drive and main memory). My MacBook Pro does a decent job but "decent" means getting 20 or so FPS rendering a moderately complex scene, like a store with lots of sculpted objects. My desktop under similar conditions gets upwards of 60 FPS.

Victoria wrote: While I think the option of a last name would be a good idea, it seems like the people who are the most vocal about bringing back last names are the people who already have one. Umm, no not really. I honestly don't give a damn (other than the fact that SL lost some of it's unique flavor and started looking like an AOL chatroom). I've been here a long time and have a great name that I thoughtfully picked out. It does however, make a difference to every one of the new single-named residents I've helped in the past year since display names came out. Every one has expressed frustration at being "different" and not truly fitting into the SL community, permanently marked as somehow being "noobs". LL's NOT going to force a surname on you Victoria. When they changed signups it didn't affect us older residents. We didn't have to lose our last names. Any change to the names system would only affect those who signed up AFTER the change.

Victoria wrote: My point is that my name means something to me, even if it isn't one of the classic firstname/lastname types, and that if last names do come back, I wouldn't want to lose what I have. What would happen to you would be exactly what what happened to us who have surnames when the Lab went to the display name system; nothing. As we didn't have to lose our last names you wouldn't have to gain one with a revised system. Also, if the Lab did it correctly, having a surname would be OPTIONAL. Those who, for whatever reason, want a single name would still be able to have one.

Qwal you make an excellent point (or two) about the Lab and their unwillingness/inability to document anything. Time and again they create some new shiny feature, post a brief blog about it describing it in very superficial terms and then leave us to figure out how to use it. If we're lucky, assuming it's a major feature, we may get a technical explanation buried somewhere in a wiki article or a Torley video some time later. Oh, and in the case of these new web features they seem to have a penchant for adding them with the default state set to 'on' so that if we want to opt out we have to: a.) know that they exist and b.) explicitly turn them 'off'. Not good in terms of privacy, IMO. Those of us who are more dedicated info gatherers usually learn about these new shinies via dedicated forum/blog/review site reading or poking around but, the average person probably has no clue that any of this stuff even exists. That's bad from a privacy standpoint in the case of these web based services but, on a more fundamental level, how much sense does it make for the Lab to devote resources to develop these features when no one knows about them and therefore, doesn't use them? Further, even if people find the features how are they supposed to learn how to use them when there's little, if any, documentation on them? Come on LL, this isn't rocket science. You've been around long enough to do a far better job than this. SL is not some fresh out of beta, free-to-play browser game. It's a mature, dynamic, and very sophisticated (complex) sandbox-style virtual world and as such demands proper documentation and proper communication with your customers.

Care to elaborate just what it is that makes this version awesome? What's fixed, what's new, etc.?

Dres I'm sure you're right about LL knowing about the numbers. I'm just painting this as how they'd like us to see their number spin doctoring. I think the whole "completed signups" metric is a farce. Who cares? The only number that matters is how many of the people who sign up actually log in and spend time in world? How many stick around after a week? After a month? Six months? I also subscribe to Eve Online. Their registration is pretty simple: you create a login name (only used to sign on to the game or account maintenance and never seen by other players), then you get to create your avatar name. Avatar names can be whatever you like including spaces and punctuation, up to a maximum number of characters. So long as you don't run afoul of the "naughty words filter" and the name's not already in use, you're good to go. Why the Lab didn't go with a flexible system like that for new users I have no idea.

Please, please for the love of all things decent enough with the wannabe gangsta rappers, shirtless tattooed up muscleheads, metal toed boot wearing bikers. Most SL males are walking cliches. More Redgrave, Hoorenbeck, L&B, SF Design, Blaze and Artilleri please. (Although, I've been going with more of a retro punk rock look myself, courtesy of Emery or Artilleri's rockabilly style)

If one cares to go back and look at the pages and pages of comments on the way the Lab chose to implement display names it's not as if many of us didn't warn them of the possible unintended consequences. They chose to ignore our feedback because, once again, the Lab knew best. After they implemented diaplay names (along with a revamp of the whole signup/new user experience) and the numbers of completed signups rose the Lindens were convinced that they were correct after all. Sadly, while the numbers of people finishing the signup process rose, the numbers of people who actually logged in again didn't. I don't blame display names for the fact that concurrency has remained flat (or dropped slightly) in the face of increasing completed signups. There are many reasons for that, IMO and those possible reasons have been raised and discussed on these forums for years. I do know that every single one of the new people I've helped since display names were introduced have at some point in their first weeks of joining have asked, "why can't I have a real last name?" Maybe the top Lindens should hang out more in world talking to their customers or reading various forums and blogs to get a feel for what we really want and need from SL. I won't even get into all the nonsense names brought about by the abuse of Unicode and ASCII characters. Grrr... :smileymad:

The official LL viewer 3 has several known issues with Lion. You might want to try an older (2.7) LL viewer or a third party viewer that's not based on v2/3 code (like Phoenix, Imprudence, Cool VL, etc). I'd recommend that before rolling back to Snow Leopard (if that's even possible depending on your hardware--if your MBP was built after July it has to run Lion). Good luck and let us know what works (or doesn't).

If you're not seeing these oddities in your other programs (or even just at the desktop) it's more than likely not your video card. Are you seeing odd video glitches in other software or just SL? Do you see it in other games or apps that stress the video card? What version of OS X are you running? Which viewer? MacBook or MacBook Pro?

Amen to that Linda. If I just want to log in and shoot NPCs there are far better (and FREE) games that allow me to do that, or I could just dust off my copy of The Sims. I really hope that the people at the top of LL don't lose sight of what makes SL unique.

Nice try I guess LL but, the big problem is that paying $300 a month for pixel "land" in this economy is utterly insane. Entertainment venues can't recoup the costs, all but the most successful well-known merchants have great difficulty doing so (because you've foolishly allowed MP sales to cannibalize inworld sales) and for someone who just has a little discretionary income to blow on entertainment? No way. $300 a month is a car payment or an insurance premium. Reduce your setup fees and drop monthly tier 40% or so permanently and people will consider buying land again.

Ralph I agree with you that high virtual land prices are a major factor holding back SL's growth, especially for the merchant, creative, artistic, roleplay and educational communities who provide the content that brings people into SL. I appreciate your campaign and truly hope that LL will listen before it's too late but, there are some other factors involved in the decline of SL as well: Failure of upper management to develop a strategic vision and direction for SL Failure to address long-standing technical issues that affect all customers' ability to fully utilize SL (i.e. sim crossings, group chat) Failure to understand how their customers use the platform and consistently implementing plans directly contrary to customer needs (i.e. adult region, open space sims, viewer 2) Alienating long-term loyal customers in the quest to gain new customers Lack of communication with their customers, many of whom are technically advanced and who have offered potential solutions to the many ongoing issues Disconnect from customers (due to lack of communication and the fact that management and employees don't actually spend time inworld) Failure to market and promote SL consistently Failure to leverage volunteers to mentor new users, thus increasing retention Terrible customer service/support All of these points, in addition to the problem of insanely high tier and setup fees, need to be addressed if SL is to reverse the slow decline of the last 2-3 years. (edit for grammar)

I'm no merchant, just another interested resident who enjoys reading the merchants' insights on the inworld economy. Thank you to all the regular contributors here for your thoughtful analysis and keen insights. Please keep asking the tough questions and don't be deterred by the apolo-shills. We can't count on the Lab to give us any straight answers so we must rely on each other. Let the truth be told though the heavens fall.

Sorry but, all the current JIRAs say otherwise. How do you explain a major screwup that knocks out most of the current generation Nvidia graphics cards, for example? That's no esoteric or limited case issue. At the very least it points to very poor QA.