Pussycat Catnap

Innula Zenovka wrote: LL's problem, as I understand it, is that people tend to create an account, log in once (maybe twice) and then never come back. To my mind, if LL knew what was causing that, they'd take steps to remedy it, if they could. I don't know, but I'm sure it can't be to do with not being able to TP to other grids and take your inventory with you. Maybe it's just people take a look and decide that a virtual world like SL isn't for them, and they'd rather be playing Minecraft. Which is where Patterns comes in. How many of those ever even rez inworld though? Spam-bots are trained to roam all over the internet and create accounts anywhere they can land that has a forum or what 'sniffs out' like a community. 10000 such accounts per day is -low- on a busy site that has no captcha and use meta-data that looks communal. Putting captcha in place at my work, and simply removing some keywords,cut our false registrations on the customer forum from about that number to the more expected 1 to 5 per day... The difference was that shocking. If they were to aggressively weed out the spam-bots, it would be very interesting to see how the data changed. I suspect on the order of real accounts, SL gets under a few hundred a day - given its age and lack of presence on popular media. It might very well be that SL -has- good retention...

Qie Niangao wrote: It's a Mexican stand-off: everyone is waiting for the next guy to move. However, as you can tell from SL's shrinking land mass, the whole thing is coming apart at the seams. But this standoff is not worth winning. Not only OpenSim but SL itself--this whole Virtual World schtick--it just ain't takin' off. Maybe somebody farting around with OpenSim could turn that around; we have years of evidence that the Lindens can't. But that somebody, if ever s/he's to exist, will not chase LL's tail, nor fret about SL inventories. The more that OpenSim fusses over manoeuvring legacy stuff across all these doomed grids, the less prospect it has of ever breaking out to something with interesting growth prospects. Well Open Sim isn't another kind of virtual world. Its just SL without the brand name. Another virtual world would not use the same basic architecture. The other virtual worlds are IMVU, Cloud Party, and Blue Mars... Open Sim is to SL and Virtual Worlds what Linux is to Unix. Mostly the same thing, but with the serial numbers filed off. Open Sim is the 'Proda' handbag you buy from the guy on the street corner outside of the Prada factory. Its the same bag... but it didn't get the label sewn on... The virtual world that will make it won't be a 'Proda Bag', nor a Gucci or even Guchi ( )... Papa's gonna need a whole new bag...

Masami Kuramoto wrote: The crowd that OpenSim will be drawing is currently stuck in a walled garden. It is often said that OpenSim isn't popular because it doesn't have an economy. It is said that content creators have no incentive to go there. However, there is no evidence to support this claim. On the contrary, OpenSim is currently populated almost exclusively by content creators; in other words: its creators-per-consumer ratio is much higher than SL's. Those who go there do so for few other reasons than to create. Consumers cling to SL not because of the stuff they can buy but because of the stuff they have bought (and can't take elsewhere). And yet I've still been unable to find myself a mesh sometimes cat furry, sometimes African Neko avatar with dreadlocks, a mesh wardrobe for a Rastafarian, solid good animations, and a high quality African skin. Look at my gallery, in my sig - and recreate that in an Open Sim. That's how'd you'd get my attention. Open Sim may have a lot of creators, but I don't think Open Sim has that many content creators. It seems to have a lot of Sandboxers - people who make 'stuff' and experiment. But don't make the kinds of stuff that can tool out a whole 'alt-community'. Open Sim has the people LLs wishes were its customers, and SL has the people Open Sims like Inworldz wishes were their customers... Maybe you think I'm "out there" on the far end of the spectrum. But I just have an easy list of catch-identifiers to me. How many other communities are also lacking the kinds of content they would need to jump?

Perrie Juran wrote: One of the things the Linden Home's SIMs have by their nature is zoning, They are strictly residentail. That does increase their desireability. A limited amount of zoning on the Mainland could really be good in the long run for the Lab. Been saying this for a while. Take or make an experimental 30 sims. Split them into 3 groups: strict, medium, and light zoning. Split thos again into some themes for what they will be zoned by. The strict themes would have a full list of LL enforced rules for what you can build / do. No commercial, commerical only, builds in a given theme, etc. Medium would have either some thematic general rules, or resident made rules - and be enforced by the residents themselves (voting or electing an enforcer) using various powers created for the experiment. Light would just have very basic rules about blight (open sky below 1000m, no giant prims, reduced glow/fullbright, clean up the lawn of boxes and clutter) - enforced through ARs, or the residents picking one of their number on a regular basis to be the enforcer / manager. - Run that for 3-6 months, letting the people who live and work there on this test continent get the land free like linden homes (but still pay tier, and able to buy/sell the land) based on a lottery of volunteers, and answering regular surveys. Make the results public after the fact, and if any of the ideas are popular, roll them out on ONE of the existing continents... There's enough land in SL that's unclaimed that you could run this on existing mainland, but finding that much land in a contiguous state would not be possible... unless you force moved some folks (like the one where I mentioned Bay City)... - And that's the real rub... We do need -some kind- of zoning. We need to find out what kind would work. Its not really sure what would go over well, so we need to run experiments... But people have a lot of $$$, time, and emotion invested in their SL land... so how do you set up the experiments without causing trouble?

That's how fetchback works. It gets -EVERYWHERE-... My company ran it until we noticed it was getting a little -too- everywhere. Makes people feel like they're being stalked. Its one thing to realize intellectually how well Google tracks where people go online. Its a whole other to have it in your face 'Facebook style'. Its still all anonymous, unlike Facebook - but seeing it can get a little uncomfortable. - And we've seen it lock onto somebody like a pink poodle on a mailman's leg after only one triggering event. You could be in the 'system' from as little as the online version of a press release if they're think the rest of your demographics is "ideal."

It only shows for some items. Free stuff Offering free or almost free items is a fantastic way to get your name out there. It not only makes you more visible; it makes people like you! Tip: If you charge L$1 for an item, that item can be purchased as a gift. This is not an option if you charge L$0. Warning: Taking free merchandise created by someone else and trying to sell it for a profit will turn potential buyers against you. Always behave respectfully towards other sellers — your own success depends upon it. - So you can't gift a freebie to someone, which is how demo items are usually priced (and what caught me moments ago before editing this post.)

Porky Gorky wrote: Pamela Galli wrote: What's that a graph of? This graph show the average age of IMVU users. Oh whew. For a second I thought that was supposed to be a claim of SL users - and was thinking "Oh that explains all the free-XXX clubs..." My nephew needs to make his Facebook page more private... =^^=

Porky Gorky wrote: [...] One assumption is that her hands were tied by upper management. So I have to wonder, no matter how impressive our new VP of Marketing looks on paper, will she actually have the freedom and resources to do her job effectively or is it just going to be Kim Salzer all over again? LL and marketers... I think they gag them, hogtie them, and throw them in an iron maiden... They seem to absolutely hate the idea of actually trying to sell their own products... EDIT. Or maybe not: WADE1 Jya wrote: As I surf the web, I've definitely been targeted with all together way too many ads from Linden Lab for their new products "Creatorverse" and "Patterns". Needless to say I have zero interest so that is money wasted. That's Fetchback most likely. Small potatoes. Its an automated service that spams ads at people of places they've been to in the past to try and get them to come back. If they're small 'standard sized' little images on certain typical spots of a page layout - that's fetchback. The same adverts can be cycled into google as well, and served up on sites that display google ads. Which try to display based on a combination of your search history, browser history, and current viewing to predict likely interests. This is more passive marketing. You put up those ads, and then behind the scenes tweak variables all day long like how much to pay for bidding to show an ad here or there... You don't actually ever engage with your consumer or likely consumer. Kind of makes sense that a pack of "tech geeks" would go in for this rather than a more vocal and engaged system... - But they really should be running it for SL too...

Whenever I get new land, I sit at ground and build a platform to the exact boundaries of my land, and then move that platform into the sky way up above 2500m - whever I can find a spot where no neighbors are using the sky within 100m (so I don't mess up anyone's view), unless one of them has a similar platform, then I go nearish that. From NCI, you can get a texture that's a grid: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Kuula/54/133/28 Click on "Tools" Put this on any prim and set the texture to planar with a 0.1 repeats per meter, and it becomes a perfect measurement tool. - That platform can now be moved up and down through your land to instantly know if somebody else is building on your land, or you're building on somebody else's. When at ground, you can use World -> Show -> Land Owners to find out where you land is, when building that platform to begin with. The boundaries are ALWAYS whole numbers divisible by 4. Your land is green, land of a group you are in is blue. Red is somebody else, yellow is for sale.

One of my alts just got this: [17:53] A*******: you pushed me!!! [17:53] A*******: I'm just kidding but we can be bumper car avatars! [17:54] A*******: don't be upset with me ok? I'm a prankster [17:54] A*******: wow your avatar looks so cool, what skin are you wearing? [17:55] A*******: I am art retarded, I never make good avatars! Did you make yours? [17:55] A*******: I logged in for like the first time in a year yesterday, can't believe how it has changed here [17:56] A*******: being back here after so long I don't remember anything about the sliders at all, I keep making a chubby round face lol [17:57] A*******: .. mesh is so crazy! and the new skins, I don't even know many of the creators anymore. Who makes the best skins now? [17:58] A*******: I quit because this guy I was seeing from SL asked me to stop playing ( and I listened because I am stupid [17:58] A*******: he said there were too many guys in here and he got jealous.I should have thought it was weird that he was so insecure... [17:59] A*******: meanwhile, he would come on here and give girls his phone number, which I didn't find out until one of them messaged me and I got the offline in my email. [17:59] A*******: I was seeing him IRL and everything like once a month, usually I paid for the plane tickets - meanwhile he was calling girls from SL telling them he loved them. [18:00] A*******: have you ever dated anyone in SL? [18:01] A*******: sorry to treat you like you are my therapist or something guess I just needed to talk about it [18:01] A*******: then right after that because I was so angry, I wanted to message the girls and tell them how I felt, but I couldn't bring myself to do it [18:02] A*******: but here I am back again, starting over as a newb. Everything that I had in my inventory was so out of date anyway [18:02] A*******: your avatar is really nice though truly, one of the best ones I have seen since I have been back, you should be proud of it, you did an amazing job [18:03] A*******: mind if I ask a favor [18:03] A*******: mind if I ask a favor [18:04] A*******: Would there be any way possible that you would consider letting me borrow 200l so I can make my avatar a little like yours? [18:04] A*******: I want to reinvent myself in SL, no dating unless the guy is just like so amazing that I can't resist him ;D [18:05] A*******: thank you so much!!! At a very popular dance animations shop. IM'd the owner - but they're offline and likely IM capped. But I AR'd the flatterbot also, under Fraud -> L$ No idea if LLs will see it as ARable. Probably not at first, but if enough of us complain they might start noticing it.

Teddy Wahwah wrote: For the most part, I will not wear mesh due to my husky kid avatar shape (which I made). Unless mesh some day form fits to shapes without the use of alphas, I will never wear mesh except for hats. Since almost all of of SL uses skinny avatars, there's no real push or need from the masses to have mesh that can form fit to any shape. The larger mesh 'Standard sizes' are pretty wide / chubby. And mesh sizes don't care about height. Adult mesh clothing should fit a shorter avatar if these dials still match up: http://catnapkitty.wordpress.com/2012/07/01/mesh-clothes-dont-care-if-youre-tall-or-short-thick-or-thin-they-care-about-stretch/ Women: Body Fat Torso Muscle Breast Size Love Handles Belly Size Leg Muscle Butt Size Saddle Bags Men: Body Fat Belly Size Torso Muscle Love Handles Leg Muscle Butt Size Saddle Bags Package Pectorals - If you can match those dials on ANY shape to the ones used for a mesh outfit, the rest of your dials can be anything and it will work (exceptions for breast gravity and cleavage, but these change in RL too when you wear clothes...).

OP should be glad they weren't banned. It doesn't matter what the estate owner says - they can't override the ToS, especially the maturity ratings policy. LLs spends a -lot- of time ignoring that, but when one of them wakes up and dials in a response to it, they can hit hard. Breath a sigh of relief that you still have your account - and find somewhere on A land to start over. There are people all the time in SL who claim that "by this or that notice or agreement, we agree to ignore the TOS together." But it doesn't work like that. NO ONE has the right or privelage to suspend the maturity policy. Not even individual lindens can - though the company is free to alter it (and has, first expanding 2 categories into 3, and again to calrify something and obscure others). - Read the TOS, and get busy rebuilding. It may suck... but I'm kind of glad people not following get hit hard. Even though I suspect its just a technical glitch and your stuff will be returned - they need to crack down on this more.

Phil Deakins wrote: Pussycat Catnap wrote: Until it mainstreams, new art forms tend to get treated as just 'junk'. Only if it actually is junk in terms of art, which some of it really is - a gent's urinal, for instance, or a pile of bricks, or half a sheep, or an unmade bed, etc. But note Qie's post right below yours - about that Guardian article. That article is a short little rant by some fuddy-duddy who's locked into the old norm that anything with pixels or cartoons is for people -UNDER- 18 only - and so cannot be called art... (His entire argument seems to be "why was the professor who called this art even playing games to begin with, is the guy some kind of geeked out freak living in his mother's basement watching hentai videos and drooling?" ) - OK, I embellish... but only because his editor probably forced him to dial down the dismissive scorn... He makes my point: Mainstreamers are not yet ready to call this stuff art. Nevermind that there is more money in this than in movies... stuff with pixels on a screen is still for kids and freaks with mental problems... according to that writer... - And I don't think he's been fired for that opinion yet... so somebody agrees with him... By contrast, MoMa NY at least is pushing forward and recognizing a new art form. So we're in a period of transition. Give it a few years... that Guardian writer himself will likely be praising the "art" in some future game once somebody hip enough is involved... Oh, in your examples, the toilet is the kick off of the DaDa movement - which was more political and 'design' than art themed. They were arguing about breaking free of past norms... Really fitting for the situation we're all in. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp) - He did it for no reason other than to provoke the establishment. But it kicked off a movement. The entire modern graphic design, advertising, and modern art industries can all trace themselves to that moment in 1917 when Duchamp made his protest. Pop cultures and 60s boomers like Warhol as their champion, but without Duchamp Warhol would have just been some freak working in a comic book shop scaring the kids... if comic books had even managed to come about...

billy Xavier wrote: Hmm yea maybe I should have phrased that better. I know art can be created in SL but would it be considered art by others. Ok, now you've got something I can relate to, and I think the answer would not be what a lot of SL artists want to hear. Until it mainstreams, new art forms tend to get treated as just 'junk'. People will look at the stuff made in SL as just 'video game junk and screenshots thereof' - completely dismissing BOTH the imagination and the work that goes into it. It'll probably be another decade before the first virtual world to get mainstream appreciation. And chances are people will call it a first of its kind, and ignore everything that came before... Does that mean its not art though? Hardly. Maybe eventually it will get that recognition outside of the 'video game freaks playing this' (and in some gamer forums, the general comments seem to think SL is junk and -less- creative than the video games they're on... /facepaw... Others just think we're weird). - The core of the rub is we may not think this is a game, but the people not -playing- SL do... and they're going to label us with so-fitting labels. Until we can make a game be seen as art... and what the "players" of that game do be seen as art when it is original, we don't stand a chance... Because the label of game is not going to wear off any time soon... If Andy Warhol tried to use SL to get famous, he'd have failed. But if after famous he'd shown up, it would have given this place a short burst of interest, which would fade the moment he did something else.

Solaria Goldshark wrote: I wonder.......if the masks we wear in here reveal our true prejudices. I started with that assumption. But I've moved on to another one: How peple react to the masks -others- wear reveal their prejudices. The masks we wear just reveal our ideals, curiosities, and comfort spots. If the masks we wore revealed our prejudices, then I could get away with saying the absurd statement: "everyone on a caucasian avatar is racist against non-caucasians" - which is patently false. But it was easy to assume at one point... (*) Thank goodness its false though. But, I -CAN- say that the way some folks react when an African avatar shows up, OR even how they act when they wear one... reveals racial bias (*). AND I can say that how they react when a furry shows up reveals that hey are inclined to be biased against "things not like their own experience / worldview." But what they themselves are "wearing" as an avatar is not revealing in an of itself of bias - unless they bring certain conduct with that. Like making an avatar that is a negative stereotype of another race in look and conduct. (*) This is why it was easy for me to make a wrong assumption at one point - until I looked deeper and separated out individuals who were showing bias - because its very easy to have bad experiences with other types of people and draw generalizations out of it, while with bad experiences among one's own kind it is easier to see it as individual

Billy's been here since 2004: https://my.secondlife.com/billy.Xavier Surely you know the answer to your question by now.

http://kzkflame.tumblr.com/private/37354599394/tumblr_mempmdh1Me1rdl2cw Scroll to where she begins about a serious situation... Phishing of the marketplace URL. Probably -not- at fault here, but you might want to look through things and be sure.

I happen to know one of the land flippers who 'bought up most of the former TG', and also a lot of Zindra. That person -will- price very high, and also hold a lot of lots in reserve without selling, and rent some. And bids very agressively. But I would not say they don't care about the community. My conversations and long friendship have revealed to me that while they have a different perspective on it than I do, they care a lot. Part of why they do what they do is out of concern for the look of SL. I'm come to learn that a number of these flippers hold large amounts of land in reserve for no other reason than to prevent the 'fugly' builds with spammy junk from taking over in areas they are concerned about. I've also seen two flippers "go at it" against each other trying to destroy the other's idea of what land should be like in an area - what will happen if you get a 'slice and dice flipper' colliding against a 'preserve for high aesthetic value' flipper.

16 wrote: Jadeclaw Denfu wrote: That's one purpose of pathfinding: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Jelloab/125/82/52 Collision avoidance. Watch the cubes avoiding the pillars, each other and you. Yes, try to walk into their way, the cubes will go around you or turn away. (If the cubes don't move when you visit, click them once to get them moving.) ^^ that ^^ one thing that brings sims to their knees the most is collisions. the next most is running detectors to avoid collisons if we can have an easy way to not have to do either then is better in the long run If pathfinding had been around when scion chickens launched - nobody would ever have developed a negative bias against breedables (I used to AR the things... now I have a lot of them)... - They used to be severly laggy, due to the original versions having to deal with all kinds of collision issues. The general solution now is that most of them are phantom, and walk on flat plains; making them awkward on hills or in houses with rises or depressions. Pathfinding would have been ideal - and will probably feature into breedables once everything's ready / the next generation of breedables comes along. And yeah on Havok. Any old Open Sim could I imagine go out and buy its own Havok license. Its not LL's job to pay their bills. EDIT: JobsFox wrote: Pathfinding is FAR from useless. In fact it solves some HUGE problems for product developers and estate managers in SL. Snuffles is the first breedable that uses the pathfinding system. They generate hardly any lag because they do not use old collision based movement systems. http://www.goldtokens.net/index.php?title=Snuffles Guess I need to read farther before I post. I will have to go check these out. Can't afford to maintain another breedable at the moment, but I might play around with them if interesting.

Well, as long as we're demanding that club owners do it as a passion project, why do I have to pay for anything in SL? Clothing creators, shape makers, AO makers - how dare they charge me!!! As long as you two are going to make the "anti-capitalism" argument, why stop with the people who pay the bill for all of us? The people who provide all of the venues we enjoy in SL make the least money out of everyone in all of this, and end up having to spend a massive amount of money just to entertain the rest of us. Why should those who are providing the -most- to SL get the least from it? If we pay toy makers to fairly compensate them for the work of making our digital toys, why is it so wrong to even consider helping those who give us a place to use those toys a single dime to help pay the bill? And I thought I was the radical leftest around here...

All of the various pets I've got in SL are fun little scripted things to have wandering around my land, or to waste more money than I should on... Except this one. This one is dedicated to someone who was with me in the formative years of my life, very dear to me, but passed away before her time due to the hardships we endured.

Qie Niangao wrote: As others have said, Mainland is the only place you'll find landmasses so large that they really qualify as continents, with enough water and road to keep you occupied for a while. Also, as others have said, Mainland has no zoning, so you have a choice: either relax your aversion to floating, lot-sized pigs, or get used to puttering around a few sims and calling it a continent. There are Mainland rentals that stretch between a road on one side and large patches of water on the other. I know, because I rent one to a very long-time tenant. In general, you'll pay a lot for that, even in this market -- more (much more) than a private island parcel of comparable size. And there's absolutely no assurance that a neighbor won't float an enormous pig over their house the very next day. Part of the thrill of mainland is that there's a new theme around every corner. Exploring becomes very... exploratory... ...when you have absolutely no idea what's just beyond the limit of your camera settings... I've found a lot of nice places to remember and come back to by driving past them, or getting lagged and finding myself in them, or opening the map and accidentally (and sometimes purposefully) picking a spot to double click. - Yeah there's a giant floating pig now and then (well, sometimes you -wish- it was just a pig floating there... =^^= ), but most of the time, it can be very entertaining. On and yeah, there's nothing like owning that lot that goes from water to road. I've owned some of those. Don't have one at the moment (got some double protected spots though) - but yes, they are valuable, and often attract neighbors who care about having nice builds (though the last time I owned one, the couple on the other side of the road floated a 40m tall house 3m off the ground because they couldn't be bothered to rez a foundation prim and make it look nice from the outside... - that's much worse than a floating pig IMO. )

Amethyst Jetaime wrote: FIrst, I wouldn't work anyplace where they take a percentage of your tips. There are plenty of places that don't do that. Why on earth would you pay the employer to work there? So um... how do you expect the venue to make its money? Sell drinks? Any place not taking some of the tips, is a place on the path to closing - because the only other source: malls, are obsolete and on borrowed time.

Generally speaking - its not worth it to have -any- job in SL. Divide the lindens you were making by about 280. You now have your dollars per hour wages. Is it even above 1? Come into Sl to play, socialize, build, explore, sell / trade your creations, and buy toys to do these things... But to work? A foolish endevour. Even if you're in the "business" of live music or otherwise performing... you'd better be doing it for the joy of doing it, because I don't think it's going to pay the bills. - Some people who sell creations they make do manage to pay the bills... But that's a bit different from 'having an SL job.'

This is apparently happening all over the grid. To OP: Please remove the shop name so the lindens don't delete this thread. Its too valuable - people should know about it. And since its happening grid wide, we don't need to name any one shop, just make sure the method of how the scam operates is well known.