Phil Deakins

Thanks for that. I read it and some of the comments. I won't be upgrading to Win8.

There are a couple of threads asking if Windows 8 is ok for running SL but this question is different. Apart from the 'touch screen' feature, which is only useful in conjunction with a screen that's capable of it, has anyone found any compelling reasons to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8? I know that the start screen is radically different to look at, but seeing a different arrangement there is no big deal in itself.

We are not dwarfs, y'know. Dwarfs mine gold but not us.

I've never pictured Susan as looking anything like that. I don't actually remember how I pictured her, but I do know it wasn't anything like that

Ignore the other replies. It's something that's unique to Martians. We Earth people don't suffer from it.

lol. That's the one I mean. He might have been Chinese

And now we are back to a recent thread in which creation was discussed. It was a thoroughly enjoyable thread for me (one of the few these days) - mainly because I have some views about it, and it's a very discussable topic because it's such a specific topic. But I won't put my views about that forward here, at least not unless it becomes the main topic of this thread, or we could end up changing the thrust of the thread from aliens and other life to creation. Incidentally, Porky, I'm halfway through that excellent 3 hour video you linked to. I'll finish it today. It provided the information that caused me to change my first post in this thread form "Christmas Island" to "Easter Island" (My old grey cells are renowned for their laziness in remembering some things.) I'll watch the other video you linked to too. The first 2 vids in the thread were/are very interesting and I'm sure the 3rd one (your 2nd one) will be just as interesting.

Dillon Levenque wrote: Yes, PLEASE, a picture! Death was far and away my favorite Discworld character until I met his grand-daughter. Hopefully you have a picture of her enjoying some music with rocks in :-). Death is one of my favourite characters too - even when he only has a bit part. I also like the vampire who keeps shouting "sh.t!" when he takes a flash photograph (Pratchett readers know why he shouts that every time). But my outright favourite is the little guy in 'Thief Of Time' - Lu Tze - the one who keeps referring to wise old sayings like, "For is it not written, 'I'll go to the foot of my stairs'?". I always pictured him as the little Chinese guy in the original 'Karate Kid'. And of course there's Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibler, who seems to have unknown relatives all over the world. Thare are so many excellent characters. And "bugrit", of course (Foul Ol' Ron). Around 1990, someone suggested that I read a Terry Pratchett book. I didn't because I only read non-fiction. But a couple of years ago I borrowed one ('Mort') to give it a go. I'm lucky because, since then, a local second hand book shop phones me when they get any in - and they keep a list of what I've read so they don't phone me unnecessarily. I've read a couple of dozen of them so far. I'm reading 'Lords And Ladies' at the moment - just coming to the climax. But apart from Terry Pratchett books, I'm still a non-fiction reader.

Porky Gorky wrote: There’s estimated to be up to 400 billion stars in our galaxy alone Our galaxy is an ever-changing one. Back in the 80s it contained an estimated 100 million stars. More recently, I've seen that it contains an estimated 200 million stars, and now it contains an estimated 400 billion stars. I wish it would settle down a bit

I just want to add one thing to my earlier post. It's about my assertion that any extra-terrestrial visitors would not turn on their lights so we can see them - the lights, that it. I should have added that they don't need lights to see where they're going. Headlights aren't much good way up in the sky, even at night, and internal lights wouldn't be anywhere near as bright as the UFO lights that are photographed and videoed. I did see an orange light go across the sky a while back. It was a chinese lantern, of course, but some peoiple believe they have seen a UFO when they've seen a chinese lantern float across the sky. Well... they have seen a UFO as far they are concerned because, to them, it is unidentified.

I'm going to watch all 3 hours of that video. Probably not in one sitting, but I'll get through it.

Look at it another way... LL started a forum (the RA forum) many years ago. Many years later they decided to buy the XSL shopping system, which didn't even exist in the early years of the RA forum. The shopping system happened to have a forum attached so they let the extra forum run. Some time later, they realised that they'd modified the main forum's software so much that it had become unmanageable and they decided to replace it with the blog system's forum facility, which is what they did. But they didn't want to still have the extra forum to maintain so they closed it down. You only ever used the XSL forum, and then you had to use the blog forum. So, for you, it seems like that's the current forum's history - but it isn't. It's only your forum history.

I never used the word "official". It's interesting to note that you've changed your tune a bit since the post of yours that I corrected. In that post, the history line went from the xstreet forum to the blog forum. Now you say it goes from both the xstreet forum and the RA forum to the blog forum. It's good to see that you are now snuggling up to the old RA forum My thinking is this. The RA forum goes back forever. The xstreet forum had only 1 year of LL ownership, and it only had that because it happened to be attached to a system that LL bought. It was the system they bought, not the forum. The RA forum naturally closed when they updated (in their minds) the forum with the blog forum. I don't know exactly when the xstreet forum closed in relation to the blog forum opening, but I don't think it matters whether or not it closed at the same time or later. The original forum was replaced by the blog forum, and the original forum was the RA one. So, imo, that's the history line and your "first change" was changing from the RA software to the blog software. The "first change" you described was only the first change for you but not for SL users in general. If they could have ported the RA people and post counts into the new software, they would have. But the best they could do, without spending a stupidly long time on it, was archive the RA forum.

You can argue it whichever way you like, Cel, but the predecessor of this forum is the old RA forum. It was the orginal forum and this one replaced it. Of course the RA forum closed when this one opened. The RA forum was on software (much better than any software we've been on since) that had been so heavily modified that it had become too difficult to deal any more and so LL decided to do away with that software and use a rubbish blog system instead. That was the continuation of the RA forum, and this one we have now is the continuation of the blog forum. I'm sorry, but your description of what "the first change" was was wrong. It wasn't changing from the Xstreet forum to the blog forum, as you described. It was changing from the RA forum to the blog forum.

That was a very fascinating video.

Does life exist outside of our solar system? Probably. If so, has that life developed intelligence that rivals and surpasses our own? No idea. Do you believe aliens have visited Earth in the recent past i.e. Roswell etc.? No. One big reason why I don't believe that most of the UFO sightings are extra-terrestrial is that they are bright lights in the sky. If I were an extra-terrestrial visiting another world, I certainly wouldn't turn the headlights on, or any other very bright lights, so that the population below could see me. I'd definitely want to be very stealthy about it. So I don't believe that the lights are anything to do with extra-terrestrial aliens. Those sightings that are not lights are either not backed up with photographic evidence, or the photographic evidence is so unclear that there's no way to see if it's an actual vehicle or not. The 'strange' material (that sprang back to its original shape after being crumpled) that witnesses found at Roswell turned out to be a sort of plastic that was in use at the time but wasn't familiar to the general population so it would be a very 'strange' material to the witnesses, or so a documentary I saw concluded. It probably was a weather balloon or a military project. A couple of years ago, I was looking out of my dining room window when a very strange darkish object moved slowly across the sky. It was taller than it was wide and it was narrower at the top that at the bottom. It didn't have wings, and it was sort of lumpy - not straight-sided - like an object with boxes attached. The overall shape was that of a Dalek except that it was lumpy. It wasn't at a great altitude and my first thought was an autogyro, but as it came over, I could clearly see that it had no tail assembly and no rotor above it - or anywhere on it. So it wasn't an autogyro. I have absolutely no idea what it was - I can't even imagine what it might have been. What I'm sure of (in my belief) is that it wasn't of an extra-terrestrial nature. So I don't put it down to aliens. I really do wish I knew what it was though. Do you believe the Ancient Astronaut theories that suggest that Aliens have shaped all of Human History? Definitely not. One piece of 'evidence' for ancient astronauts is ancient drawings of human-shaped beings with space helmets on; i.e. a sort of circle round the head. They can't be differentiated from pictures of human beings with halos, so the space helmet idea is nonsense. Another so-called piece of evidence was, how could men from so long ago have erected the statues on Easter Island. Nobody knew until someone actually asked the islanders to do it - and they did. Those two pieces of so-called evidence are created by a Dutchman (I forget his name), along with other nonsence pieces that he cites as evidence for ancient astrnauts. Do you think governments are covering up the existence of Alien UFO’s or using the phenomena to mask their own secrets projects? No, but I do think that governments/military don't get involved with the alien UFO idea of a sighting when they know the things was theirs. So, rather than use the alien idea to cover up their secret projects, they don't come out admit it was one of their secret projects - they leave the people and media to speculate that it was of alien origin. Although I suppose that, if one of their secret projects was sighted and reached the media, they may engineer the idea that is could have been an alien UFO without it being known that it was them getting the idea out there. Will we ever be able to communicate with an Alien civilisation if we find one or if they find us? Probably.. What do you think an alien life form might look like? No idea. Is it a good idea for us to be searching for ET’s and broadcasting our position in the galaxy or should we be trying to hide? We don't have a choice about broadcasting our existance. We've been doing it since radio was invented. And the content of some of our TV programmes will give our position, anyway. However, our very first radio signals haven't yet gone very far in terms of the size of the galaxy. Comment: Most of us would like aliens to be visiting us, and we'd like to see them - just like we'd like Nessy, Bigfoot, the abominable snowman, etc. to exist. But, if extra-terrestrials actually did land here, I for one would shout "SH.T!" in my head and wonder what massive dangers we're in for. I really don't want aliens to land here

But you wrote your post as though your experience (xstreet forum followed by this forum) was the forum history when it wasn't. You wrote about "the first change" as though the change from the xstreet forum to this forum was the first change. That's what I was correcting because it was wrong as far as this forum's history is concerned. It was only right as far as your personal SL-related forum history is concerned.. This forum started as what we now call the RA forum. Then the software was changed and the RA forum was archived. And then the software was changed again. Along the way, the forum that started life as the SLX forum joined this forum. So this forum's history is, first the RA forum, then then first software change, and then the second softare change. Somewhere along the way, another forum that LL acquired was closed, and its users came to use this one. That's the forum's history in a nutshell, and it's a bit different to what you described in your post. This forum didn't start as an outside forum (SLX) as you suggested in your post. It started as an LL forum, before the outside one, and it's never changed from being that. What you described as the forum's history was your own personal SL-related forum history but not this forum's history.

The short answers to your questions are:- Yes, you can post your survey here. No, you don't need to ask anyone's permission.

But it is just your own personal forum experience. And I do know that the XStreet people became LL employees when LL bought Xstreet, but that was for the Xtreeet system rather than the forum. Your (Xstreet) forum came to to us. We didn't join you. Your "first change" is not part of this forum's history - not in the way you wrote it, anyway. You said it yourself - "LL has archived the old SLX/ X-Street forum and it was merged into a LL run forum". I.e. you joined us (the LL forum) and not the other way round

Yes I know all the history - I was here But referring to the "old" forum, does not refer to anything other than an LL forum, and there was only one - which wasn't the SLX/Xstreet forum. The old forum was what is now usually referred to as the RA forum which, as we agree, was always owned by LL. I think you used your personal forum history as the history of this forum, but it's not. This forum's history started with what is now referred to as the RA forum, which was always owned by LL. Then they changed the software. That was the "first change". It was nothing to do with the SLX forum. There was no merging of forums. They simply closed the old forum and set up a new forum with different software. They also closed the Xstreet forum. From your point of view, having never used the old forum, the "first change" (for you) was the closing of the other forum and a new one being set up. In other words, you followed a path from the outside that joined the inside. But the inside path is the actual history. You joined us - we didn't join you

Ciaran Laval wrote: Sky 1 have done The Color Of Magic, The Hogfather and Going Postal, they're currently on Virgin Media on demand too. They are nowhere near as good as the books mind you. I've read those 3 books but I've only seen 'Going Postal' as a film. It was nowhere near as good as the book, and it stopped halfway through. Maybe it was made in 2 parts. I did know 'The Hogfather' had been made into a film but I haven't come across it. I have Virgin TV but I don't think I'll be looking for those films. I haven't read all the Discworld books but so far, my favourite is 'Thief Of Time'.

No.

If I've understood your post correctly, your memory is a bit astray, Cel. The "old" forum was going for years before LL bought SLX - and LL owned it all along. The old forum is usually referred to as the RA (Resident Answers) forum these days because the RA sub-forum was the liveliest and most used part of it. LL didn't exactly "merge" the SLX forum and the SL forum. They simply closed the SLX forum and redid the SL forum with different software. So the SLX forum is not part of the history of this forum. It's only part of the history of your personal SL-related forum experience.

Perrie Juran wrote: Do we sometimes drive new people off when we snipe at what we consider their naive or sometimes dumb points of views or questions? Well a dumb question like that would certainly drive me off! (j/k of course )

Nyll Bergbahn wrote: Sorry Innula, my reply was for Phil rather than your post in the context that you can photograph light emitting sources, they don't need to have light falling on them. I clicked the wrong post. In that case, we aren't in disagreement. Of course we can photograph light sources. Melita had written to the effect that light falls on the screen and so we can photograph it. I corrected the idea that it can be photographed only because light falls on it. I could have added that light falling on something does not allow us to either see it of photograph it. It's light refelecting off something that does that - except light sources, of course Overall, I've posted that, imo, a photographer in SL can be called a photographer. I think you're saying the same thing.