Ceera Murakami

December 25, 2011

@Tavish: The status of your progress in Linden Realms is maintained server-side. The HUD only displays it. If you leave LR and return, you get a fresh HUD, which updates with your prior status information, and you resume where you left off.

The down side of this approach is there is no "starting over". You can't reset the status and start from the beginning again, except by playing with an alt that has never been there before.

December 19, 2011

You can earn between L$80 and L$100 playing the Linden Realms game. Not enough ta all to be worth doing it just for the money, though I am sure some individuals are finding ways to cheat the system and milk it for L$ rapidly.

If you're stuck at a point that doesn't seem to work, try leaving Linden Realms, finding another portal park, and resuming from there. Many of the functions, like firing the cannons, seem to be glitchy, and don't always work in all LR sim instances. The good news is that have multiple instances set up, and if you go from one to another, your game status goes with you.

December 13, 2011

By the way, Linden Realms looks outrageously bad and is completely unusable on any viewer that isn't mesh capable. I just took a look with the 1.23.5 Viewer, and it was hilarious. Tons of badly textured cylinders and cones and spheres - signs unreadable... Gives you a great preview of how unusable SL in general will be for non-mesh viewers, once Mesh gets more widely in use.

December 4, 2011

Well, now that it's open to those of us in the "great unwashed masses", I sent one of my alts in to have a look. She finished every quest in a few hours, and earned a whopping L$ 83 for her efforts. (Linden Lab : "Hey kid, thanks for play-testing it for a few hours for us, have a shiny new quarter for your efforts. Now scram.")

I quickly found that the three keys to survival were "Timing is everything", "Always Run" and "Remember to jump!". You'll never evade the rock monsters if you don't run, and if you time jumps right, you can jump right over the rock monsters, or use the jump to get away faster. It's also almost impossible to get through the cave or past the fireballs unless you carefully time your short dashes from point to point.

I had to switch to the Castle Valeria portal to get a functioning HUD. The first portal, I tried three times, and it never attached a HUD for me.

The "verbal cues" and quest assignments that show up as chat toasts were pretty easy to miss. I had to check the HUD or the chat history to see that my mission had actually been accomplished, and what the next mission was.

The data for the HUD is apparently stored server-side, by avatar ID, so if you leave, detach the HUD, and get a new HUD later, it's supposed to remember where you were when you left off. But there's also apparently no way to reset the HUD status, so for a given avatar you can only play each quest once.

I want to know when they will tell us the LSL functions to do the forced teleports and the forced HUD attach/detach trick, as well as how they linked the forced HUD to a database for status.

As far as the game itself goes, it would have fascinated my daughter when she was about ten years old. She watched me play over my shoulder, and at 15, she didn't find it particularly interesting.

Personally, it was okay, but I doubt I would bother playing it a second time.

September 2, 2011

Actually, I rather imagine the free access to "Premium" sandbox space, which presumably will be less crowded and less prone to assault by griefers than the many public sandboxes, is likely to have an overall negative effect on land sales.

Looking at this from my own perspective: I'm Basic, and am renting about 1/4 sim from a private sim owner. About lalf my land I own solely to allow me to have enough prims free to build things at will. At one point, I was renting over 1/3 of that sim, but I had to cut back because my in-world and SLM sales were no longer covering my land costs. If I got a Premium membership because of this set of new 'perks', you know what I'd most likely end up doing? Drop my Private land, use only the free 512 M2 parcel, or at most a 1024 M2 parcel paying the absolute minimum montyhly tier, and do all my building in the Premium sandbox, instead of on my own land. So yeah, they get my dues, which they mostly pay back to me as my stipend; my current landlord loses a 1/4 sim tenant (possibly causing them to abandon the whole sim); while LL gains a free-tier or maybe minimal-tier resident. Net loss of roughly 1/8 sim of land that someone had been paying the full tier for, because I no longer need to keep 400+ prims free on my home parcel to do my building. I'd need to pay for 1750 M2 less land if I was going to do all my building in their 'Premium-Only' sandboxes.

I won't go Premium, though, because my private sim landlord gives me one thing LL refuses to give to anyone who isn't a private sim owner - My home sim is not public access. I NEVER have random griefers in my home, because those griefers can't even access my home sim.

If LL wanted to really give Premium members a benefit, how about letting any Premium member purchase a stand-alone homestead sim, at the Atlas tier and set-up rates? (The price breaks they give the mega-landlords). Then every Premuum member could have the one thing I have heard most Residents clamoring for since well before I joined almost 6 years ago - real privacy.

August 24, 2011

@Darren

I was also having severely low frame rates with 2.8 and 3.0, until someone asked me to check the anti-aliasing setting in the Hardware options. It had defaulted to 8x, which is extreme overkill. I dropped it to 4X, and my frame rate jumped from 5 to 7 FPS to a much more reasonable 30 FPS or so.

Adding the Starlight/Stardust skins to eliminate the sidebar completely and fix numerous glitches makes Viewer 3.0 almost bearable. But Firestorm still performs better and has a better, more efficient user interface, so as soon as they get Mesh capability it's unlikely I'll ever try LL's Viewer 3.0 again.

March 8, 2011

RE: swedishfox

In the Blogs, only Lindens can create new threads. You should be able to make new threads in the Answers and Forums areas.

March 6, 2011

Well, I just eliminated the image of me in my black cheongsam from my uploaded images, and that also killed it here. This is a VERY serious problem. How can we display images useful only to a single post entry, if we then have to permanently keep those images in our account's "Uploaded images" queue? Three months from now, will I remember that that image of a badge background or some other odd illustration was a necessary part of an Answers forum accepted solution, or will I cull it as unneeded trash?

Is there any way to see ALL Blog threads, regardless of what category they are in, with the newest ones at the top, like we can do now for the Forums and for Answers?

Is there any way to see a combined listing of all Forum and Answers threads, regardless of what category they are in? In the old forums, we could do that, and when I am looking for active threads to read and reply to, I couldn't care less if it is categorized as "Forums" or "Answers". I just want to read the most current changes, and possibly reply as appropriate.

With the current formatting, I have to check out Forums-All, Answers-All, and each Blogs category separately? Why?

March 6, 2011

Why is there no ability to reply to a specific poster in the Blogs? If, for example, Lexie or Torley makes a comment, and I have a reply specific to them, but their post is 50 posts back in the blog thread, there seems to no longer be any way to link my comment in the blog to their post.

With 'uploaded images' in our individual avatar accounts as the only way to include an image in a blog, Forum or Answers post, what happens if we later delete the image to make room in our images area? Does the image cease to be hosted and visible in the Blog, Answers or Forums? Many of those images are useful only for that specific post, and we would never have a reason to re-use them. If they vanish from the post because we 'weed' our unused images, that cripples the usefulness of images in Blog, Forum or Answers posts.

A test image should appear above this line. I am going to delete it from my uploaded images after making this post. We'll see if that eliminates it here or not.

Posted February 19, 2011 · February 19, 2011

Personally, the thing I want most to get out of web profiles... is to get out of them entirely. I don't need or want spyware from Facebook and Twitter on my profile page, nor do I want ads on my profile page. I don't see any value whatsoever in allowing people who are not logged in to Second Life and in-world to have access to my profile information. I don't see any value in a format that takes up more screen real-estate and is slower to load.

Dump the web profiles.

February 10, 2011

I would like to give you an honest, thoughtful, courteous and respectful reply, Amanda. But every time I try, your blog software prohibits posting my response. I will write you a nice, long, e-mail, and reply that way. You do still accept and read e-mails, I hope?

By the way, like quite a few residents, I do not and will not ever use Facebook or Twitter. Where can I go to get the same information that you post to those data mining services, without exposing my systems to either one's servers? What Blog or website other than those two disreputable companies can I also get this current-event information about SL from?

February 1, 2011

The Real Life section is indeed back, and fully exposed.

Hey Yoz? How much are Facebook and Google paying LL for selling us out? Hope it was worth the tier you'll lose as people leave SL over this breech of privacy.

February 1, 2011

OK, here's another great one on this Profile exposure mess:

Under the 1.2x Viewers, and the 1.2x version of Search, the behavior if you uncheck "Show in search" for your profile is that the earlier web-based profile search tools didn't show you AT ALL, but in-world people could still do an "All" or "People" search and find you. That is a desirable configuration for personal privacy.

With the 2.x viewers and 2.x version of Search, the behavior if you uncheck "Show in search" for your profile (now a checkbox hidden deep in Preferences, and badly marked as "Show me in Search", and no longer anywhere near the profile you're trying to protect), is that a web-based search still shows your name, and offers everything if you log in, but in-world people attempting to do an "All" or "People" search and find you will not find you AT ALL. That is NOT a desirable situation, because you have to completely sacrifice being able to be found in-world to gain even a marginal level of personal privacy from Internet searches.

And the new my.secondlife.com profiles will STILL show you, regardless of that setting! The behavior at that site if you uncheck "Show in search" for your profile is that the my.secondlife.com profile still shows your name, if you're not logged in, and requires an SL login to get the entire remainder of your profile, including your First Life tab info.

Vote to get this inconsistent behavior fixed, and restore our ability to protect our privacy:
WEB-3603

February 1, 2011

Ceera there is so a check for show in search in the 2.x viewers. its under privacy. its always been there.

OK, I stand corrected. They removed it entirely from Profiles, and hid it in a seldom-used tab in Preferences, with no explanation that it is your profile that you're showing or hiding...

Who designed that? The Vogon Fleet Construction Crew?

January 31, 2011

If you un-checked 'show in search' in your profile using the OLD Viewer, then all they can see if not logged in is your name, and it appears Google doesn't index you either. I looked through all the pages that come up in Google when I search on "site:my.secondlife.com resident", and it only appeared to list people who had checked 'show in search'.

But that option is unavailable to users of the 2.x based Viewers. There is no option in the 2.x Viewers to check or uncheck 'show in search'.

Anyone who had left 'show in search'; checked, which was the default behavior for all new accounts, was fully exposed by this action, with no recourse.

And for many people, un-checking 'show in search' isn't an option. A busy content creator or merchant needs to be able to be found in search by potential customers.

Allowing our profiles to be searchable by the entire Internet should be opt-in, not a forced fiat accompli decided by Linden Lab, with no way to fully opt out.

January 30, 2011

And here's how to block the Facebook Like and Twitter Tweet buttons on Mac OSX:

Open the Terminal application, in Applications > Utilities

type "sudo nano /private/etc/hosts", without the quotes, and hit return.

enter your login password, since this requires root access.

add the following at the end of the file:

127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com

127.0.0.1 twitter.com

Then type option o to write the change, and option x to exit the nano text editor.

this has been tested on my Macs, and it definitely blocks both websites. The Facebook 'like' button won't even appear, and the 'tweet' button won't be able to link back to Twitter, and you can't browse to their websites.

January 27, 2011

Well, until they do provide better privacy settings, I have hidden all groups in all my profiles, and have unchecked 'Show in search' for my profiles, using the 1.23.5 Viewer. I am not releasing anything more than I have to, for access to people that don't even have Second Life accounts.

January 25, 2011

(I apologize in advance for the use of all-caps here. If your Blog's text formatting wasn't so screwed up I would have used italics.)

So fine... If we sell via the Marketplace, we will, with some effort, be able to flag our products so they can be access controlled by the purchaser's maturity rating, and the 16 and 17 year olds will only be able to buy goods tagged as G-rated. Eventually, other content can be flagged so only those with payment info on file or Aristotle age verification can see and buy Adult items. And Linden Lab insists this is necessary, and a good idea. Right?

Then WHY will in-world merchants not have the same protection from their goods being sellable to the minors that you have insisted on allowing into our virtual world full of non-G-Rated content?

If this is necessary for the Marketplace, then it's necessary in-world, too. Give us the ability, by script, to allow or prohibit sales or scripted activity based on the maturity rating cap allowed by the purchasing account. GIVE THAT TO US NOW!

If the Marketplace needs to be able to check a buyer's ID, and prohibit transactions for those whose maturity rating isn't adult enough, then the rest of the transactions in-world deserve the same protection. Period. You say we need to restrict access to Mature and Adult content, so the minors can't buy it? I agree. But that must apply equally to ALL BUSINESS TRANSACTIONS in SL, and not just to the marketplace. Why is an on-line purchase of a XXX pose ball set any different than buying that same pose ball set from a scripted vendor in-world? Why is it different for buying a Mature-rated, detailed Human skin? We have told you and proven to you that the teens will easily be able to cam from G-rated into Mature regions and make purchases that are in no way suitable for use in G-rated sims. We merchants have BEGGED you for the ability to detect the minors by script, and ban them from making purchases. LL refused. No more. You admit now that it is necessary. Well, it is necessary IN-WORLD, even more than on-line.

January 24, 2011

Why wasn't this started when the commitment to the teen grid merge was announced? We told you that this would be an issue. Why wait until AFTER you let the minors in the door, before allowing us to lock the door to the mature/adult content and keep them out?

January 23, 2011

Perhaps Rodvik or someone else on the LL staff could simply explain one thing about these web profiles: "Why is it necessary, AT ALL, for ANYONE to be able to access these web profiles without first providing a valid SL account and password?"

Why does any of this need to be open to the whole Internet? Can someone explain that? Why does anyone who does NOT have at least one valid SL account have any reason to access this information, AT ALL?

January 21, 2011

Welcome to our reality, Rod. Sounds like you're off to a fairly good start, or at least a well-intentioned one.

Please, don't be like most of the LL staffers who think that if they post their Twitter link, everyone can and will be able to use Twitter to communicate with you. There are many of us among your customers who wouldn't use Twitter or Facebook - and their inherent exposure to privacy loss - even if someone in the real world was holding a gun to our head. Post your e-mail address as well, and actually read and respond to that too. Make blog posts, and actually read the replies and respond to them. Most importantly, realize that a large segment of your customers utterly detest linking real-world social networking sites to our fantasy lives.

Some challenges for you:

Instead of trying your building on an isolated sim (that most likely cost you nothing and is restricted access - Lindens only), go to a sandbox area, and try to build and script there, with the griefers dropping LOL cubes on your head, and stealing what you build as fast as you can create it, and blasting you into orbit with weapons. Then ask yourself is this is a neighborhood you want to be the landlord for, and what you can do to improve the public's use of sandbox sims.

Do the same for several welcome areas, including the infamous "Bear Infohub". See what it is like, as an unidentified noob alt, to be exposed to the rough crowd that gets its jollies off ruining your day, or scamming you out of every L$ you have. Then, once again, ask yourself is this is a neighborhood you want to be the landlord for, and what you can do to improve the public's use of Linden welcome areas and infohubs.

Pick up a randomly-assigned Linden home, and see how well you can decorate it, using just 117 prims. Experience the lag, and the broken Voice Chat. See what it is like to try to have a civil conversation with a friend when a couple in the cabin next to yours is chat-spamming the area with the text posts for their lovemaking. Try moving several times, to see what different Linden Homes sims are like, and how the lag and the use of those sims differs.

Buy a small parcel of land, and try selling it to an alt at a fairly low price, slowly reducing the price to lower levels, and watch as a land bot steals it from you, marks the price up tenfold, and refuses to give you back your land.

Try shopping in a busy mall, where there's 40 avatars or close to it already there, and experience the lag.

Try going to a busy social area, like a dance club, and try to make sense of it all when posts scroll by too fast for the Human eye to read them.

Turn off Voice, and go to an area that uses Voice a lot. See what it is like to be ostracized for your refusal (or simulated inability) to let everyone hear your real-life voice.

Go somewhere that a griefer attack is in progress, and see what it is like to be assaulted by those vermin.

Go to a well-managed set of sims, like Caledon. Enjoy the people and the resident-created goodness. Then consider that many of the people who created those areas have left SL, or are leaving, because of various problems in-world.

Go to a PG mainland sim, with a test alt that has been created as one of the 'restricted' accounts given to the 16 and 17 year olds. Stand at the sim edge, and see how many XXX adult things and activities are within easy camming range. Try to have a conversation with people, when you have no idea if they are a minor or an adult.

Purchase a full-use sim, try to set it up as rental parcels, and try to run it as a landlord, with your own money on the line, and the very real risk of losing money if your business plan fails. Consider how you fare, and whether or not there's a level playing field between your small-time rental business, and Linden Lab's free Linden Homes, that can undercut a low-end landlord in more ways than I can list here. Compare also how well you fare compared to mega-landlords, who are permitted to obtain sims more cheaply than the rank and file, and to operate them at a lower price.

Second Life can be a wonderful, engaging place. But there is a lot that is 'broken', because most of the Lindens only see what life on the grid is like on their isolated, secure, Linden-owned sims. You can't see what the grid is like on your own free Linden-provided sim or parcel. Put on your most shabby cloak, oh King, and walk among the people as a common peon, and see what life is like outside the gilded palace walls.

January 20, 2011

From what I can see, if someone un-checks 'show in search" at the profile level, with the 1.23.x Viewer, then you have to be logged in to see much more than that person's name. If they own groups and uncheck 'show in search' for that group, then you won't see those 'hidden' groups.

At least, I get that result on my Win XP system.

As a test, look up ceera.murakami :

https://my.secondlife.com/ceera.murakami

I hid my "Fox and Ground Properties" land group, so you shouldn't be able to see that in my groups.

In the 1.23.5 Viewer, I unchecked "Show in Search" for my entire profile. That seems impossible to check or uncheck in this new web-based Profile. The option does not exist!

The groups that I own, I can check or uncheck a 'show in search' option. But NOT groups that belong to anyone else. Got a racy group that you belong to, and the owner has 'show in search' checked? Tough. You can not hide it in your own Profile! Example of this, the "Foxes in Corsets" group that I am in, which is actually just an innocent land access group for a friend's home parcel, that has a sexy name. But I can't hide it. I would have to leave the group to get it not to show.

January 20, 2011

The new web-based profiles look nice, but I agree I don't want anyone else linking my web-profile to their FaceBook or Twitter networking. I don't want anything to do with either of those 'services'.

Added to my Profile info:

"I do NOT do Facebook or Twitter, and anything about Ceera on those services is unauthorized."

As for the 2.5 viewer itself, I am in absolutely no hurry to check it out. Eliminate the sidebar entirely, restore the text entry field to the text chat floater, and eliminate the unnecessary extra mouse clicks in the cumbersome 2.x UI, and maybe I'll consider it worth looking at. Sticking with 1.23.5, until you force me to abandon the better, more functional UI of the former Viewer.

December 24, 2010

Welcome to the virtual world called Second Life, Rod Humble. I sincerely hope that you will be the decisive leader that Linden Lab needs at the helm, and not just a puppet and yes-man for the venture capital people and managers here. In spite of investing money in SL or working in SL management for many years, the venture capital people and the managers that are pulling the strings and making the major decisions that affect the course of the future of Second Life seem completely detached from what this virtual world is, and don't have a clue how their customers use this product.

Can you imagine what it would have been like at EA, if the people making the decisions didn't know, or even care, how any of the games were actually played, or what they were capable of? If, for example, they tried to make The Sims Online into a banking application, or into a business conferencing system? If they ignored what users of the game could do and did do with the product, and made all their decisions based on some marketing person's fantasy of what future users might use the product for, if only they signed up for accounts, and if only the product was changed into something completely different, to accommodate that radically different use? If they made these decisions regardless of harmful impact on how the current user base used the product, and regardless of overwhelmingly negative customer reactions to those plans and decisions?

Sadly, that is what the past several years of Linden Lab management have been like. The Lab's management has consistently ignored the majority of the feedback that they get from their current customers, and has made their most critical strategic decisions in a vacuum, without seeking customer feedback or investigating how customers use the aspects of the product that a new plan will change. Then they launch the changes without being at all prepared for the pitfalls that are blatantly obvious to active users of the product, even though we tell them, quite loudly, where those pitfalls are, and what can be done to resolve them. They stumble along and halfway fix what they broke, and call it 'good enough', and move on to the next shiny new plan that some manager dangles before them. The only reason they get away with it at all is that this virtual world is unique. There is no other alternative that offers similar capabilities, and also has anything remotely close to the volume of customers and resources that are here right now.

There is a major policy shift in the works right now that is misguided and being implemented without due precautions being taken for the consequences. I am talking about the merger of the 16 and 17 year old teen grid members with the main grid. As long as there are G-rated sims side by side with Mature and even Adult rated sims, there is no way that the G-rated sims are suitable for 16 and 17 year olds to access. This needs to be halted in its tracks until the problems with the merger have actually been addressed, and before LL gets sued for contributing to the delinquency of a minor, or worse.

Would you have allowed an "18+ adults only" area to exist in The Sims Online, with simulated sex acts and almost any kink and perversion imaginable being allowed in those areas, and then permit those areas to exists side by side with the rest of TSO, viewable by all the under-18 users? Can you even imagine what it would be like if the TSO grid had been 18+ adult content from its inception, and you were introducing a "teen friendly" set of regions side-by side with all that porn? The current LL management seems to have no problem with that. They are going to allow 16 and 17 years old minors to access G-rated regions that are side by side with regions that permit XXX Adult sex acts to be depicted in them. And they are changing the access the teen accounts have without informing the parents of these minors, or getting their permission to allow the minors access to adult content.

If the minors must be allowed on the main grid, they need a special region maturity rating, called "Teen", that is what the G-rated sims are supposed to offer, but which is not permitted if there are any contiguous regions attached that are of Mature or Adult ratings. The G/PG rated Mainland areas need to all be re-rated as Mature, because it is nonsense to have a G/PG region located side by side with a Mature region where the people in the G-rated area can look across the border and view any imaginable sex act.

Please, take the time to really explore the Grid, and talk to Residents. Use both the 1.23.5 Viewer and the 2.4 Viewer, as well as the major third party Viewers, and see for yourself what the difference is in the experience as you try to shop, socialize, build, interact with large groups, or do other common activities. Explore the Zindra continent, with the worst of its depravity, and understand that any inventory item sold there can be taken to any Mature sim and freely be used by any 18+ resident, in full view (or at least by camming through a wall, which is trivial) of the neighboring G/PG sims. Learn how to build a house and make clothes. Go to the Livingtree sim, and see the sweet innocence of 18+ residents like Marianne McCann, who use G-Rated child avatars to roleplay a second childhood, with fireworks shows, and playgrounds, and fishing off a pier, and camp-outs where you toast marshmallows. Try your hand at scripting and making animations. See what the differences are when trying to do those things with different Viewers. Learn, first hand, what SL is and what it can do. But please, don't just sit on a small parcel in Linden Village, surrounded only by LL employees, walk around and attend LL meetings, and think you understand what SL is and what it can be. It is SO much more than just that limited experience!

Read the forums. Not just these blogs, but also the archived earlier forum system. Read the user feedback threads where the maturity ratings changes for Zindra were discussed. Read about the changes in Homestead and OpenSpace sim policies. Read about the current decisions to merge the teen and adult grids. Read about SL Marketplace, and the issues merchants have there, and the fact that most of the team that is managing that product seem to have been fired or left the company.

Above all, get to know and listen to your current Residents. They are your customers, and a surprisingly large number of them are very experienced in content creation and in how SL actually works, and would be very willing to give you the benefit of their experience, FOR FREE, if only you would seek their input and listen to them.

LL is not a game. It is a virtual world with almost unlimited potential for growth and creativity, if only it had the leadership and vision to acknowledge what it is, and help it to grow. You need to be the President of a country, to run SL, not a banker or a lawyer or a finance manager. This is a community, with residents world-wide. Remember that, and you could thrive here, and turn SL back into something wonderful. Try to turn it into a G-rated game, and you'll kill it.

December 19, 2010

Is it really too much to ask for LL to fix the uninstall/install process in 2.x, so if we tell it to install SL on a completely different drive than our other installs of other SL Viewers, it won't keep going back to the default C: drive location and uninstalling critical parts of other viewers when you try to uninstall 2.x? Every time I try to uninstall an earler version of 2.x, which I ONLY install on my D: drive, it insists on changing things on my C: drive too, screwing up my 1.23.5 install, unless I take precautions in advance and re-name the default SL prefs folder on C: just prior to the uninstall of 2.x, and then restore its name before using 1.23.5 again.

If I tell it to install a program on my D: drive, that is where I want ALL of that program's files to go. Not back to default C: drive locations. And there are some files for 2.x that it will not LET you change where it sends those files to. They go to C: no matter what you want, unless you hack the source code!

Forums

Blogs

Knowledge Base

Blog Comments posted by Ceera Murakami

Linden Lab

Tilia

Second Life

Connect With Us

Partner With Us