Phil Deakins

I have been trading in SL as Prim Savers for almost 4 years (since 2007), in the low prim furniture field. About a year ago, someone else decided to enter the low prim furniture field and he used the name PrimSavers. When asked about it, he claimed that PrimSavers is a different name to Prim Savers because it doesn't have a space in it. He thinks that CocaCola is so different to Coca-Cola that it can be legitimately used. :smileyvery-happy: Following a number of public discussions, he decided to apply for a trademark on PrimSavers and, for good measure, he included Prim Savers. As soon as he applied for the mark, he naively asked LL to stop me using my business name but, of course, LL wouldn't do that because he'd only applied for the mark - he didn't have it. I could have prevented him from getting it due to my proveable prior use, but for a long time I've been allowing the business to fade - my intention is to close it completely when it's no longer making worthwhile RL money (it's taking a very long time to fade to that extent) - so I chose not to spend the money it would have cost. The mark has now been granted and he again asked LL to stop me using the business name, "Prim Savers", that I've been using since 2007, and I have no choice but to comply. So, as of May 12th 2011, the widely known "Prim Savers" is trading in SL as "Prim Misers". An aside: when I started the store back in 2007, I would have much prefered the name "Prim Misers", but I'd mistakenly thought that U.S. people would spell it "mizers", so I decided on "Prim Savers" :)

I use the Lindex - time doesn't matter to me. Ziggy21 Slade wrote: Ai Velde wrote: Virwox because it's instant. Ditto Plus I just could not bring myself to reward LL with extra conversion commissions, when they 'improved' their service to us by increasing the cash out time from instant to 5 days, its so astoundingly pitiful, it's almost unbelievable. I bolded the bit that I'm responding to. It *is* believable because it seems to me that LL doesn't want to operate a cashout system at all, or they want to hang onto as much US$ as they can for as long as they can. Increasing the time from instant to 5 days isn't the first indication. Some time ago, they stopped sending cheques and they will only pay a minimum of US$10,000 into a bank account. The auto-creating and sending of cheques (minimum US$1000 or US$5000 if my memory is correct - I've forgotten) doesn't take many minutes once a week so there is no reason not to have continued doing it, but they stopped, claiming that the time it took was the problem. Every other company that sends cheques to users manage it just fine, and their minimum is usually a mere US$100. So, imo, LL didn't tell us the truth about why they stopped doing it, and for increasing the minimum for bank transfers to US$10,000. Changing from instant to a 5 day delay may well be for the same sort of reason and, to me, it's not "unbelievable".

Inworld stores are suffering due to a number of things, but not lucky chairs and things like that. Imo, the biggest cause is LL's unscrupulous activites with the marketplace. In spite of the fact that, technically, the marketplace continues to be a complete joke, LL push it everywherre they can - all over the website, people's account pages, bulk emails, etc., and they do it at the direct expense of inworld stores. The SL population continually turns over so a large chunk of the current population, perhaps most of them, don't know a time before the marketplace and, to them, it's the standard way of buying things - with inworld stores probably being something of a novelty or merely a secondary method.

Pussycat Catnap wrote: I've always been told you could only have the land put into the auction queue, and not request it specifically - unless it was a micro lot next to you. Most of these are full lots of the 512, 1024, and larger size. It's the opposite. You couldn't have land once it was in the auction queue but you could have abandoned land that hadn't yet made it to the queue, provided that it was 512 or less and you already owned the land adjoining 3 sides of it - unless it's a corner plot, of course. It looks like they have increased or abandoned the maximum size for acquiring via a ticket, which does make sense considering the amount of abandoned land these days, and the new system.

Tari. It seems to me that you are tilting at a windmill by finding fault with someone who chose to get some facts about the topic of this thread. Whether or not you would choose to get some facts doesn't matter. The fact is, it is *good*, and preferable, to have facts when discussing something, and Ai did a very good job in getting some which, as someone said, threw a completely different light on the matter. You said that you prefer to look at the problem than the person. That's exactly what Ai did.

Pussycat Catnap wrote: The LL process is automated, not manual. Did any of you think to file an AR and support ticket before calling LL's out here for not doing anything about something nobody told them about? Don't you think that they *should* have thought about these things before implementing the new system. They shouldn't need anyone to tell them, as possibilities like this one, and others that have been mentioned in this thread, would cross the mind of anyone with even a small degree of competence as they were creating the system. That being so, those who created this new system either lack competence (highly likely) or they realised the possibilities/probabilities and decided that they don't care.

Before tearing all of your hair out on it, you do need to know whether or not your parcel is being listed in the top 1000 - for each of your searchterms. I assume that you got the tool from Darrius, so ask him. If the tool doesn't search all the way down to 1000, then you need to do it by hand. If your parcel isn't in the top 1000, then you need to filter the searches until your parcel *is* in them. In other words, you need to do the tests that I described in my previous post so that you know whether or not there is actually anything you can do about the problem. If it turns out that there isn't anything you can do with that parcel, you can stop tearing your hair out and resign yourself to the situation. It's pointless keeping on trying if there really isn't anything you can do with that particular parcel. Reminder: If the limited-size results set gets filled before the whole of the index has been looked at, then the matching/relevant pages in the part of the index that hasn't been looked at are left out. If your parcel's page is in that part of the index, there is nothing you can do to change the situation for that parcel. In that circumstance, the obvious question is, how do I change my page's location in the index, so that it get looked at sooner rather than later? The answer is, you can't. LL feeds the pages to the search engine (the GSA) and that must be done is some order or other. That's the only place to make an effective change, but we have no ability to do it. What we can do is change the parcel; i.e. get a parcel that will be fed to the engine in a very different place in the order. Experimenting with different parcels, NOT in the same sim, ought to be worthwhile. ETA: I'll give an example of what I mean by filtering the search, etc. Some time ago, I had the situation where one of my parcels wasn't listed in the top 1000 for its main searchterm. But when I filtered the results, so that only Mature parcels were listed, my parcel's page ranked on page #1. The pages around it in the rankings also ranked on page #1 when the results were not filtered, but mine didn't even get into the top 1000. In other words, my page outranked those others when it was in the results set - when it had the opportunity to compete with them, but that only happened when the results were filtered. When I filtered the search, my page got into the results set, but when I didn't filter the search, my page did not get into the results set. The effect of filtering the results is to leave out many relevant pages because they don't match the filter; e.g. they are adult or PG, but the filter selects only Mature. It means that the engine goes much further into the index to fill the results set and, when that happened, *my* page was included. Without the filtering, the engine filled the fixed-size results set before it reached my page, and my page could never get into the results. That could be happening to your page and you could tear your hair out for a long time without any possibility of success. That's why you need to to find out if your page is in the top 1000 and, if not, you need to do the tests - so that you know what you are dealing with. NOTE: The fixed size of results set is almost certainly larger than 1000. When Google started, they used a 40,000 page results set, ranked them and returned only the top 1000. The engine that SL uses is a Google engine (the GSA) which definitely uses a fixed-size results set but, since it's only a mini-engine, it's like to be a *lot* less than 40,000. It could even be as low as 1000, but it's most likely to be a bit more than that.

hehe. Maybe they did. I just couldn't believe that they put most of their remaining money on that particular answer, but they did. They lost their remaining £25k on the next question and they ended up with nothing.

In that case he ought to have posted somthing along the lines of, "Come and see the parade and enjoy the music events" because there's no reason that I know of to "celebrate" the anniversay of when a piece of land was created. In fact, I know of no reason the "celebrate" anything that Linden Lab does.

This is an astonishing story. Linden Lab, as a company, is bottom drawer, but I would expect better than you got from them. They used to give us very good concierge support but they stopped doing that some time ago. Now the support is almost useless but you've found that out for yourself. --||-

Since this is the "Way Off Topic" thread, I'll add one of my own that I saw last night:- I'd just finished watching a recording and my tv reverted to the channel I'd been on. There was gameshow on called, "The One Million Pound Drop" in which a couple starts with £1,000,000 and is asked questions, each with a choice of answers. The couple have to place the money on the answer they think is correct. They can split the money over several answers if they are not sure. Money placed on a wrong answer is lost. Money placed on the right answer is kept. The objective is to have as much money left as they can after 8 questions. So... I started watching when a couple had only £75,000 left. The money is in £25k bundles so they only had 3 bundles to place on answers. The question was, "What was Roger Bannister the first man to do in 1954?" They were given 3 possible answers:- "Go into space", "Run a mile in under 4 minutes" and "Put the toilet seat down". Incredibly, they actually put £50k (2/3 of their money) on the 3rd answer - "Put the toilet seat down". I can understand many people not knowing that he was the first man to break the 4 minute mile barrier, but the first man to put the toilet seat down???

Blondin Linden wrote:- "Come celebrate Bay City's Third Anniversary" Why?

Venus Petrov wrote: While I can sometimes return to a dream after awakening for some moments [...] How on earth do you do that??? One pain in my life has been that I *always* wake up just when the sex dream is getting to be worth having - always! I'd love to go back to sleep and carry on but I've never managed it.

Thex Lecker wrote: That's simply cutting off your nose to spite your face. I suppose it is but I consider it worthwhile leaving LL without the income from the land. I decided to do it that way back when land prices hadn't slumped and it would have been easy for me to do it, but, since land prices are in the tiolet now, it was actually easier to abandon the land, and poke LL in the eye even though they wouldn't realise it, than to sell it. Having just read this thread again from start to finish, imo Lizard is just plain wrong - and out of order. What he seems to be saying is that people are greedy if they don't sell to people like him, so that the rich get richer. It's a greedy attitude, imo.

I'd understood that teens won't be able to see Mature sims even though they are adjacent to each other. Is that understanding wrong?

100m ads are against the rules which state that ads must be no more than 8m in any direction (and must be grounded). AR it daily, stating that it breaks the 8m "rule" by a very long way and is only there to extort a large amount of money out of a neighbour. If LL doesn't remove it soon, increase the AR requency to twice a day and continue increasing it until they remove it. And tell them every time that you will keep increasing the ARs until it is dealt with. Tell them that there is an 8m rule and you won't accept that sign being there. Shout at them and keep on shouting until they do their job. If they warn you for submitting too many ARs, tell them they can keep their warning and you won't stop until they get out of bed, do their job, and remove the thing that breaks the rule. That's what I'd do.

nikita Jefferson wrote: Wish i knew,i have been trying everything to improve mine,i have search bot and it always says the same,"parcel not found in search" it might find one of my keywords ( 1 of 7 i have for searchbot) but next search i'm out again,i would say i am out of search 90% of the time I get " crawled " ok but does'nt help me I don't know what your "search bot" is but you need to know whether or not it is searching the whole 1000 results. If it's searching the whole 1000 results and your page is not in them, then, unless something has changed, there's nothing you can do about it. That's assuming that you've done a reasonable job on optimising your page for the searchterm that you're not being listed for. I'll explain... When the search engine processes a query, it compiles a fixed size limit "results set" of relevant pages. If the size limit is reached before the whole index has been 'examined', it stops looking for any more relevant pages and a chunk of the index isn't even looked at for matches, which means that some very relevenat pages are simply left out. Then it ranks the pages in the results set and returns the top 1000. If your page doesn't get into the results set, then there's nothing you can do about it. If your page does get into the results set, but it's not in the top 1000 after they've been sorted into ranking order, you *can* do something about it. If your page is reasonably well optimised for the searchterm, and it's not getting into the top 1000, you can be reasonably sure that it's not getting into the results set and you are screwed. ETA: Whether or not a page is being left out of the results set can often be determined by tests. One test is to do the search in quotes (e.g. "wedding gowns" instead of wedding gowns), which will only return pages that contain the exact phrase. Then check the top 1000 for the page. That's a way of greatly reducing the possible matches. Another test is to reduce the possible matches by selecting only the relevant type, such as Moderate. And, of course, the two tests can be combined - only the type (e.g. Moderate) and the phrase in quotes. If the page is in the top 1000 for any of the tests, notice some of the pages that it outranks and then do the normal search and see where some of those pages are. You're trying to see if your page outranks one or two other pages when the results are reduced by quotes or types (in the tests), but doesn't get listed for the normal search. If that happens, then the page does not get into the results set for the normal search and there's nothing that can be done to change it. If, for the same searchterm, it outranks certain pages when the results are reduced in the tests, then it will outrank them, or be very close to them, in the normal search results for the same searchterm, IF it can get into the results set.

I've always assumed that those extremely high land prices are for two reasons. One is that the seller is paying for the tier and doesn't need it for anything else, and someone might eventually buy the land, so it doesn't hurt to set the price high and simply wait. The other is that a 0 (zero) might accidentally not be noticed and 50000, for instance, might be accidentally read as 5000 and the land bought. The numbers on the map are not particularly clear sometimes. Whatever the reason for them, the sellers must have enough unneeded tier for it so it's not costing anything to leave the land at such emormously high prices.

Persephone Emerald wrote: [...] Amanda was very helpful too when she was still here. I was going to post that I've had communication with Amanda since you posted that, but then I saw that she posted herself. I don't know if Harry is still around but he is/was excellent - he uses his head when those around him are failing to do so. Guy is also a favourite of mine. There are other good ones but I've only had one-off dealings with them so I don't remember their names.

Pauline Darkfury wrote: So, given that LindeX (and other exchanges) offer a legitimate way to convert that L$ into a larger amount of US$, just why does this person want to sell the L$ at a loss? Basic accounts can amass good amounts of L$ but they can't can't cash them out. At least that was the case a few years ago when I bought a large amount of L$ from someone I'd known a long time because she had no way of cashing them out. Perhaps 3rd party exchanges offer a way these days but maybe they don't. In this case, I think it's more likely that the L$ were "hot". In case they are, the OP's friend should return them or she may get caught in the outcome.

I can't say that I've noticed any improvements in the ticket system or deteriorations in it. Tickets do tend to get dealt with but it does take time. Also, I haven't noticed any improvements or deteriorations in the AR system, which I've always found to be incredibly bad - perhaps apart from griefing that's going on at the time, they still appear to rubber stamp ARs rather than look at any facts concerning them - very similar to the way that this forum's moderation works. I always found live chat to be excellent, right up until the time when they farmed it out to outsiders. Since then, it's been almost useless. "Almost" because they did restart this mainland sim for me when it was necessary to clear some ghosted prims.

Yes, you need to have a premium account before you can buy any mainland, whether it's owned by Governor Linden or by anyone else.

Phil Deakins wrote: If it does tend to encourage abandonment, then the new system could be seen as LL's cynical decision to get into the land market in a much bigger way, by encouraging abandonment so that, with reduced effort, they can rake in more money in both sales and tier. They can't be criticised for wanting the tier, of course, but controlling the land prices by this method, and being the seller themselves, could well be open to criticism. In recent times, Linden Lab have started to compete directly with their own paying customers. They entered into unfair competition with SL stores by opening their own website mall and raking in a commission on sales plus fees for listing items in their mall. The competition is unfair because they plug their mall everywhere they can, to the detriment and literal expense of their own paying customers. They also entered into the housing market with their Linden Homes - also at the literal expense of their own paying customers. And now they have entered into the land sales market at the literal expense of their own paying customers. I can see the non-financial logic of selling abandoned land "on the spot" rather than via the auction and, on the whole, I am not against it, although I am very much against bordering land-owners not having the first option to buy, and I am against the 1L/m pricing because, imo, it will tend to reduce the value of most of the mainland, to the cost of all those customers who bought land in more "realistic" times. Imo, the effect will be the same even if/when such land does not appear in search - if that ever happens. It's not long ago that Jack used to talk of keeping land prices at a reasonable level - something like 6L/m was the reasonable level. Now, apart from 'special' land, 1L/m is the target level. I can also see the logic in Linden Homes, because they are a carrot to encourage premium memberships. There is also logic in a web-based mall such as Xstreet and OnRez were before LL got their hands on them. But, in this case, LL's unfair advertising practises literally costs normal shop owners a lot of money, and that's abominable. In all of those cases, LL has shown no consideration whatsoever for their paying customers. They have shown no "loyalty" considerations towards them at all. As time goes by, it won't matter, because the population is ever turning over, and before too long, those things will be the norm for the population in general, who won't have known things to be any different. Even now, almost all that ever gets talked about in the Merchants' forum is the marketplace, which, through LL's unfair practises, is rapidly becoming the "normal" way of merchandising for SL - it's sad but true.

Qie Niangao wrote: [...] But I was pretty mystified that she gave up literally overnight, once I abandoned the surrounding land. [...] I had a not too dissimilar thing happen in the sim of which I owned 61.5k, the remaining 2.5k being owned in 512 pieces by several people. I always bought whatever became available in the sim as long as the price was reasonable, and I occasionally IMed the owners to ask if they fancied selling. In one 512 case, it looked for all the world that the owner had gone from SL - his 'home' building was there but people had put other things on it, including fire, and his 512m mega prim (32x16) seriously overhung my land, which surrounded his. I tried to contact him him a couple of times about the overhanging prim but got no response, and it did look like he'd gone. So I filed a ticked to ask if I could have land since it looked like the owner had gone from SL, but the Linden checked and found that the account was still active. The Linden removed everying, including the building which was linked to the overhanging prim. Later the building reappeared so the owner really was still active. Then I recently abandoned the land surrounding it and very soon afterwards, that area of the sim was put in the auction, including that 512m piece. The building never left the parcel right up until the parcel was joined to the surrounding land that I'd abandoned and put in the auction, and I wondered how they (LL) did that if the account was active. I'd waited years for that 512 and then it was suddenly joined to the surrounding land and in the auction, without there ever having been any indication of it being abandoned or for sale. There's no doubt a very good explanation but I still wonder how they did it. If it had been abandoned, I may even have bought it, even though I was then in abandon mode, because it was that little parcel that had always prevented me from having my very large castle on the highest ground where I would always have liked it to be. That area, as two parcels, sold in the auction, even though it's the worst kind of land there is - all rock - not a blade of grass anywhere. It's the sort of land that you said should have no value whatsoever. Two flippers bought it and put it up for sale. Astonishingly, one of them sold quite quickly and there's a very small, empty mall there now. The other is that price-reducing filpper, Best Land lol, who split his part into three parcels, but none have sold it yet. I'm not altogether in agreement with you about the new system not increasing the amount of abandoned land. I understand your point, but I can envisage that many people who want to get rid of land will abandon, knowing that they can't realistically ask more than 1L/m for it, and abandoning is better than holding out for such a tiny amount, or for a higher amount in the face of such low cost competition, when tier is coming due. For instance, at 1L/m, a 512 is worth US$2 but the monthly tier for it costs much more. Of course it depends on each person's tier level, available tier and the type of land, but I can see the new system encouraging some or many people to abandon rather than reach the next billing date. If it does tend to encourage abandonment, then the new system could be seen as LL's cynical decision to get into the land market in a much bigger way, by encouraging abandonment so that, with reduced effort, they can rake in more money in both sales and tier. They can't be criticised for wanting the tier, of course, but controlling the land prices by this method, and being the seller themselves, could well be open to criticism.

That's something that hadn't occured to me - lowering the value of land. Plenty of land is being abandoned these days and since it's being listed in search at 1L/m, in spite of the wiki saying that it won't be listed in search, people will find it harder to sell land for more than 1L/m and the overall land value will be reduced. Having said that, land had become near valueless anyway so it probably won't make much difference in the grand scheme of things. Not long before this new system, I'd abandoned almost 3/4 of a sim. The reason I abandoned it was because I'd rather that LL lost the tier from it and, since its value was so little these days, due to LL flooding the market some time ago, it was easy to abandon. If its value was anything like reasonable, I may have been tempted to sell it.