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Unti Kamala

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  1. Also, Asus has been pretty consistently at the top of various reliability statistics (that is, the least number of problems in a couple of years of use) while Acer tends to be somewhere in the bottom half. The difference isn't necessarily big enough to matter though, at least to anyone besides my mum...
  2. Yes, most people seem to have a 'base' form they feel comfortable with. Some are pretty consistently human, others something very different. That's the way with me too, much to my surprise. Back when, I thought I'd use the opportunity to try different looks: male, female, human, furry, robot, swirling vortex of trash. In a way it was fun to teach a class simultaneously in both worlds, with the RL and SL versions dressed identically but different genders. Still, that experimental phase lasted only for a couple of months, and after that I've been almost exclusively a (human) woman roughly based on a high school picture of the RL me. Still, it's nice to have a bearded skin for the benefit of wannabe Romeos, or a tiny owl avi in case there's need to be a cute chick.
  3. Of course, this assumes that people would leave if given a choice and ignores (or at least downplays) the possibility that some may already be choosing other grids over SL because they know they cannot re-use elsewhere what they create here. IRL, free trade tends to benefit the established industrial countries over the smaller and less developed...
  4. Ah, yes, I see your point. It looks like I'm getting a bit too good at ignoring LL's promotion of 'special' days.
  5. Like the anti- (and some pro-) Mubarak protests in various Egyptian sims, or the Japan disaster relief drive, or various carneval events all over the world, or... Oops
  6. Quinn Morani wrote: In RL I'm 5'3" on a tall day, so in SL I wanted to be a bit on the taller side. I'm looking at it from the other direction, so to speak. At a bit over 6', the RL me could do a credible skyscraper impersonation but in SL the same height puts me around the average or perhaps even just below. No complaints here!
  7. Matty Luminos wrote: This is why pants with prim cuffs are so popular. Another reason is that the trouser legs only reach down to the ankles even at maximum length. That's fine with flats, but most of women's shoes have heels that would be absurd IRL...
  8. I thought they just said they wouldn't care about votes. That is, it's still possible to vote but they use their own criteria to make their decisions about which issues to tackle in which order, and the number of votes is no longer a concern at all.
  9. Vincent Nacon wrote: Sweetwater isn't even a word... add a space. It is, however, a place name, and – within certain limits – those can end up as family names. Then again, Sweetwater may just as well be a play on the existing RL surname Sweetland (which started as a place name too).
  10. Adromaw Lupindo wrote: But it is a social networking site, in 3D. In one sense it is, of course. However, looking at it from another angle, it is very different from other kinds of social networking. LL used to promote it as a virtual world – as the name Second Life suggests – but the current display name setup directs people towards viewing it less as a world and more as a service on the net. I'm not saying this is entirely a bad thing, just that it is one of the consequences of the change. And I'd still love to hear some explanation of what went on within LL when they made their decisions about whether and how to implement display names.
  11. I'd guess the TPV's may have something to do with this, too: some of the more popular ones show a reasonably accurate height on the edit appearance screen, not just the smaller-than-life number that LlGetAgentSize() reports.
  12. Yes, most Internet users are used to having a separate 'login' name and a 'full' name. That's actually one of the issues here. The old system of a personal and a family name was something most residents were used to having in the physical world. On the other hand, a single-name login plus a separate display name makes SL feel more like a social networking site, like a web forum or Twitter, than a (secondary) world. I have no idea of what went on inside LL when they planned this, what their reasons were and what kind of scenarios they saw as a result. However, I have a nagging feeling that they did not realise all the implications of the change. And that's a problem too: they changed a system that wasn't really broken into one that doesn't work any better, and didn't really explain why (or even give the impression that they had a reason beyond someone high enough wanting it badly enough).
  13. Yes, one of the problems with the age verification system is that there's no obvious way to check whether one has been verified (which is a fancy way of saying I haven't found a way ). It may not be desirable to show others that info, although even there I think the pros are bigger than the cons, but one should be able to check whether they are considered as age verified. That'd be useful in situations like the one described here, or for those of us who visit adult sims rarely enough to be unsure of their status.
  14. Whether the new single-name system is good or bad, it is a significant cultural change. As we know, in the past people were required to conform to a system where everyone has a personal name and a family name. This system is pretty widespread in the RL Western cultures, and for people familiar with those cultures it gives a mental nudge towards considering this simply another world, analogous to the physical one. For people from cultures with different naming systems it isn't that simple of course, so in addition to hinting that this is in a sense a 'real' world it also gives some feeling of being in a foreign land. Now, the display names reform could have addressed this last part. It does, at least in principle, make it possible to form names that don't conform to the personal+family name format. That might help making SL more attractive to people with non-Western avatars, but I haven't seen a notable increase in non-Western RL naming styles. In part I think this is because the new user creation setup does not direct new people to select full names, it just requires them to have an user name. This isn't the full extent of the issue, though: old residents are also selecting single-word display names, essentially just dropping their family name. I believe the core issue here is that the new setup of having an username and an optional full name gives people, especially newcomers, the impression that SL is another service on the net similar to one's Google account, or a web forum, or – dare I say it – a game. On a brighter side, it also seems that the more experienced residents are free to change to using a name they feel comfortable with, and the social circle of many people here is small enough that they feel they can get away with using only a single name. Still, it does make SL feel just a little bit less like the other world we consider 'real'.
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