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Ceera Murakami

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Blog Comments posted by Ceera Murakami

  1. 
    

    I think no matter how much we complain, Linden Labs is going to do this..So here is how I as an adult is going to react

     

    1) Teen who offers me sex - AR

    2) Teen showing genitals - AR

    3) Teen in Adult area - AR

    4) Teen in Mature area - AR

    5) Teen seen engaging in sexual activity - AR

    6) Teen on a dance pole or any adult object - AR

    Flood the support team with legitimate ARs and maybe, just MAYBE LL will understand why it is a bad idea to have these individuals outside of their Teen Grid. Start costing them money to have to deal with this issue because thats the only way they will give a $%^&.

    And how will you identify them, unless they openly admit they are under 18?

    LL is not giving us ANY way to know who is a minor and who is not. How can we keep teens out of Mature groups? How can we prevent inappropriate situations from occurring when we can not identify who is a minor?

  2. The problem here is that you won't HAVE to be standing in a PG sim to "accidentally hook up with" a 16 or 17 year old.

    Look at the map of the mainland. Look at how the PG sims are intermixed with Mature sims. They are side by side, and unless you keep your view set to show parcel edges, you have no way of visually knowing that the person 3 feet in front of you is actually standing in another sim, with a lower rating.

    You could be comfortably seated in a Mature club in a Mature sim, and unknowingly be well within chat range of a minor. They could start a sexually charged conversation with you, and you would not know that they were just across the sim border in the PG sim next door. Or they could cam into the club from much further away, and IM you, claiming to be one of the burlesque dancers or customers in the crowded club. How will you know they are not one of the 30+ avatars you see jumbled in front of you in the Mature club? Unless you refuse to talk to anyone you can't see right in front of you, you could be in a world of hurt for accepting what has, until now, been a legal and normal communication in a Mature sim.

    Or you could meet some 16 or 17 year old and add them as a friend while in a PG sim, doing only G-rated stuff at the time and not being aware that they were not an adult. 3 months later, they IM you, say they are bored, and they want to do sexy stuff in chat with you. Or you're bored, you see one of your friends is on-line, check her profile and see she's cute, and decide to chat her up. I know a number of people who will have sexy RP sessions via IM with their Friends, without bothering to TP to where the other person is. Are you certain you are going to remember that this one individual on your friend list was someone you met in a PG sim, and didn't grill about their age? Your only safe course will be to refuse to say anything sexy with anyone via IM, even people on your Friends list, unless they TP to the mature or Adult sim you're in, and stand in front of you.

    Oh, but if you request the person to come to where you are for virtual sex, and they turn out to be 16, isn't that called "Soliciting a minor?" Oops! You're legally screwed over anyway!

    Look at your Friends list. Can you, right now, tell me when and where you met every person on that list, and what the rating was in the sim they were in at the time? Can you even tell which ones were in front of you, and which ones offered friendship remotely? I'll bet you can't.

    We desperately need a way to identify that an account is owned by a minor! We also desperately need a way to exclude minors from membership in groups.

  3. 
    

    Something that no one at the Lab has considered, what about open groups who's clientele is on mature land? They're asking group owners to be responsible for their incompetent half-baked approach to this.

    1) Don't those groups normally have a large "YOU MUST BE 18 YEARS OR OLDER" banner in their charter?

    Move PG to it's own continent, just like Zindra had to.

    I will never understand why millions of adults have to make so much sacrifice for just a few hundred kids. It's asinine and has zero justification.

    The "100 kids" will probably turn into thousands over the next year or two. Maybe even millions, provided SL doesn't spiral into disaster should something happen. A new Zindra for PG regions would be a good idea though. I'm not sure how good the reaction would be. From what I've read about it, it was a very tiring an messy process to move every adult sim to the continent.

    Why should any group created while the grid legally required all residents to be 18+ have a disclaimer that to join the group, you have to be 18+? Until LL decided to let the 16 and 17 year old minors onto the adult grid, it was a given fact that legally, everyone that could join the group had ALREADY asserted that they were 18+.

    The 16 and 17 year old population in SL will probably grow to many times the population of the current teen grid.

    How many parents would have prevented their kids from joining a 18+ service before they turned 18? I prohibited my own daughter from joining SL when she turned 13. How many of those same parents will just say "That's fine dear, go ahead." when their 16 or 17 year old child asks of they can join a service that is legal for 16 year olds to join?

    How many 16 and 17 year olds would not have dreamed of signing up for a service that sequestered their age group into a tiny corner of the service, but happily would join a service that they know nothing about, other than it being wide-open to their age range?

  4. 
    

    As for the worries about camming into mature areas, I feel they may be exaggerated a little bit. I would honestly like to meet the 16 or 17 year old who has yet to see any of this. I'm assuming that being blocked off from mature or adult regions works sort of like a percel ban. Meaning, we can't interact with the items on that piece of land. Plus, I doubt an individual needs a "mature" skin or any other "specific" attatchments to take on the appearance of an adult. Some teen grid designers actually sell products that make you look several years older already.

    You are assuming incorrectly. Parcel bans to NOT prevent someone from camming into a parcel and buying content from vendors. They do NOT prevent anyone who is banned from interacting with content in the parcel they are banned from. The only "safe" thing to do with the arrival of the teens is to remove 100% of the content that is not G-rated from the mainland. Period. The vast majority of the Mature sims on the Mainland are within camming distance of one or more G-rated sims.

    Also, it is trivial to make an attachment that will offset the apparent position of your avatar by a full sim or more in any direction. There are combat huds and 'defense systems' readily available in SL that would in no way be restricted from purchase by a 16 or 17 year old, but which would allow them to appear to be standing in a mature sim, while in fact they are 256 Meters South, in the G-rated sim next door. So again, if the mature sim is within camming range of a G-rated sim, you are not safe in assuming that someone standing right next to you in that Mature sim is even there.

    Personally, I don't care if all these incoming 16 and 17 year olds already own their own basement porno studios and have thriving careers as under-age XXX porn stars. This isn't, and can never be, about protecting "innocent eyes" from seeing naughty images. Those same children can see far worse on the Internet, and probably already have. I know I had seen things by the time I was 13 that would have given my parents and grandparents a heart attack, if they knew I had seen that porn.

    The concern here is about some child's mommy or daddy who mistakenly believes their 'little angel' is pure as the driven show, and who will go ballistic when they walk in on their son or daughter while they are perv-camming into the house next door and watching two Lesbians getting it on with a she-male werewolf. What is 'rational' or 'reasonable to assume', won't matter at all when that parent sues Linden Lab and the owner of the avatars on that screen for providing porn to their little darling.

    The label of a convicted sex offender is one I never want to risk wearing. Do you?

  5. This plan is still massively unsafe for teens and adults both.

    What safeguards will prevent the 16 and 17 year old minors from engaging in Adult conversations in Text Chat, Voice Chat or IM's, with Adults who have no idea that they are talking to a minor? How will any adult know that the person they are talking to is under-age, and that adult topics are illegal?

    What safeguards will prevent the 16 and 17 year old minors from camming into neighboring Mature-rated sims, and interacting with Adult-rated content that is LEGAL in people's homes in Mature sims?

    What safeguards will prevent the 16 and 17 year old minors from joining groups that are in no way age-appropriate for minors? How can the owner of any group prevent minors from joining it? I just had to kick out the officers of all my groups, so only I can add any new members. And I won't add anyone unless I have first met them, face to face, in an adult-rated sim or in a Mature sim that is not in any way within camming range of a G-rated sim. I can't accept the legal liability that a minor might be added to my groups and become involved in inappropriate group chats or IM's,

    What safeguards will prevent the 16 and 17 year old minors from purchasing content on SL Marketplace that isn't strictly G-rated?

    What safeguards will prevent the 16 and 17 year old minors from camming across sim borders into Mature areas and purchasing Adult skins and Adult clothes and making themselves look like adults?

    What safeguards will prevent the 16 and 17 year old minors from obtaining inventory items that are not age-appropriate, from groups or individuals that have no way whatsoever to identify them as minors?

    There are SO many unanswered questions that have been raised by your paying customers, and that are being IGNORED by Linden Lab...

  6. As it stands right now, a 16 or 17 year old who is allowed on the grid according to this plan will be very frustrated when trying to drive, fly or use a boat. The G-rated sims are not in contiguous lumps or continents. They are scattered randomly across the Mainland, like raisins in raisin bread. Any attempt to fly, drive or use a boat will end rapidly in smashing into a sim barrier that they are not legally allowed to cross. Seeing gaping empty holes would be a blessing. At least you'll know where you can safely and legally go.

    There is no way to visually know the rating of sims ahead of you. The only way to know the rating of a sim is to attempt to go there, or to look it up in a rating-limited search, or to open the Map and mouse over each sim, to read what it's rating is.

  7. What does LL have against eloquent written communication?

    Text Chat is still limited to 254 characters. Why do they insist on repeatedly nerfing text chat? It isn't going to force people who despise Voice Chat to suddenly embrace voice.

    There's a known bug in the release notes, that admits this Viewer drastically truncates the text in classified ads to just 64 characters, and yet they still let this out the door?

  8. Tried yesterday evening, with Firefox, IE 7 and Safari, from a Win XP system that has the highest possible bandwidth and the latest versions of all the plugins and support files like Flash and Java... I have a quad-core CPU and a video card that can get 30-40 fps on the main grid at fully maxxed graphics settings and draw distances. And I am in a state capitol in the USA.

    I never got a shot at the web-based demo at all, after trying all three browsers several times. I always got the "Join Now" link that is for the normal account creation process.

    Yet other testers, all over the world, with any of the browsers and OS combinations, reported they were getting in, if they tried logging in enough times.

    So from what I can see, "qualifying" is merely a matter of being randomly selected after persistent and repeated login attempts. Not where you are, not system specs. Maybe it has something to do with how many accounts are logged in at that moment via the Guest system?

    Just get your facts straight, and then tell them the truth, Wallace. Like in the breakfast cereal promotions:

    "Millions will enter - few will win."

    Want to participate? Keep refreshing your browser session until you see a choice on that screen to enter an e-mail address and start exploring, instead of the "join now" button. It's totally random.

  9. 
    

    I mean, to impersonate someone, you not only have to have the same name floating above your head (although that would still not prove you are who your display name says you are, especially if LL implement my suggestion of the different colours), but you'd also have to look like that person, sound like them too, talk in the same way as them, and behave in the way they normally behave. Not easy to do.

    Quick - What does the owner of Virtual Kennel Club look like? If you walk into their in-world store, and have never met them, have only heard their name from a friend, and someone walks up to you with a display name that matches the name you expect, and the tag "VKC Owner" above their head, why would you have any reason to expect it to be an impostor? How would you know, off hand, what that person's avatar normally looks or acts like? How would you know what their real Username is?

    Yes, you could pause, check their profile, check the profile of the store owner by clicking on store prims, and make sure they match. But why would you bother, if the situation seemed normal, and they were offering you a deal? Or if you were angry because they were being a real A**hole and being abusive?

    
    

    Let's ask, who is worth impersonating for would-be impersonators? Well, someone is worth impersonating if they can benefit the impersonator financially. So the person being impersonated would have some land or some kind of establishment in-world, or they may have objects of value, or even scripts. Well, if I was wanting to pay someone for something of value, if they are on my friends' list, I'm sure I'd easily be able to spot a faker, but even if I couldn't, I could always make sure I don't pay the person in front of me but rather paying the friend in the friends' list.

    Now, if it's not a friend, but a total stranger. Well, what are the chances that I bring up the profile of a stranger who is a content creator/landowner and send a message enquiring about their services and for that message to be intercepted by an impersonator who could quickly change display name, voice, attitude, appearance to match?! Not likely, especially if they just changed their display name within the last week in order to con someone else.

    But what if I didn't contact the right person to begin with? What if I contacted an impersonator in the first place? Well.. since it is a stranger that is being contacted either way, and not a friend, I always ask them to show me their work in front of me to verify that their reputation does not precede them. Even a scripter who sells no-mod scripts can have his identity verified by asking him to do a live demo of his script running in front of you. You can be pretty sure an impersonator would be hesistant at that. However, if the impersonator could rustle up a script to do the job... it isn't likely that talented people would be impersonating in the first place.

    Most merchants, if you encounter them in their store, would demo items by taking you to the display of that item in their store, not by cluttering their showroom with additional copies. You're right that it's unlikely an impostor could fake being someone you know well. It's the people you only vaguely know, or don't know at all, that they could fool you as.

    
    

    So could there be impersonation for non-materialistic reasons, e.g. due to a long standing feud with someone. Yes. However, in such circumstances, display names aren't really that significant. Those two people would probably do anything to damage each other, and wouldn't care who else they hurt in the process, and I can think of a few ways they could do that right now, even without display names, so display names won't really make any difference.

    Griefer has a feud with a store owner, landlord, or anyone else who has an in-world presence and a reputation that they value. They impersonate that person and ruin their reputation simply by being spotted by hundreds or thousands of people who don't know the victim of the impersonation as anything other than a name or a reputation. Even if the griefer only fools a small percentage of those bystanders into believing that the victim is a griefer and a real jerk, the damage to that victim's reputation could be enormous. It's the damage caused by making the general population think the victim is a bad person that is to be worried about here. The victim's close friends won't be fooled, but it doesn't take many people telling their friends "don't do stuff with avatar X, they are a real jerk" to cause damage.

    
    

    The display name lasting a week is also a great idea. Impersonators can't impersonate and then change the name and pretend nothing happened. Their deviousness will be visible for a whole week for all to see.

    In short, don't panic people. Just use common sense, and

    LL, just make them two names different colours in the name tag.

    They can reset their name instantly, no matter how much time has elapsed.

    Griefer changes their display name, and teleports to several locations around the grid, causing trouble while impersonating the victim. Then they teleport away and hit reset. Their name is instantly reverted to their real name, and the only person the bystanders will find in Search is the victim.

    I absolutely agree that the display name should be a different color. But it appears they have rejected that simple precaution. And there's valid arguments against that, as well. If someone uses a display name solely to match their Partner's surname, should they have a big caution flag over their head? Should all new users under the upcoming single username registration process be treated with suspicion, because they will have to use a Display Name to get a normal-looking and readable name?

    I do think that LL has taken some steps to make impersonation less likely, and that is good:

    It is now the default behavior that both names display, if the display name and real name differ. That was a major positive change.

    The chat logs and IM logs do now show both names in a readable format. The initial behavior only showed a UUID for the real name, and the Display Name in clear text.

    But there's SO much more that needs to be done to make this both safe and usable. Many valid suggestions have been made, It remains for LL to actually listen and implement more of them.

  10. It would, yes. The case for banning display names containing specific substrings (like the land owner's own name), and not having a matching username, is stronger. Merely banning any Display Name is silly.

    I would strongly suggest that a land owner should have the right to turn Display Name functionality off on their land, just as we can do with Voice Chat. So someone with a mismatching Display name could still walk into your store, but while on your land could not impersonate the owner, because that name would not display on that parcel.

    I'm not a cheerleader in favor of Display Names myself. I think they did a very bad job in implementing them, and I've got several JIRA's that I either created or voted on to make the concept safer and more usable. But I will admit that they have at least tried to eliminate the worst problems, such as by making it the default behavior that both names will get displayed.

  11. A script that tried to look for a nul length Display Name would fail, because even if you don't explicitly set a Display Name, or if you "reset" your Display Name, you have a Display Name assigned to you based on your "Full Name". You would get a 100% match on the condition "If they have a Display Name defined".

    If your current Full Name is "Jean Horton", then to any display names capable Viewer you will display as Display Name = "Jean Horton", User Name = "jean.horton" in your profile and in any scripted checks for Diaplay Name or User Name. A third check for Full Name would result in "Jean Horton" as well.

    So your script would have to check for "Full Name not equal to Display Name".

    I'll agree with others though that a script to boot ALL people whose Full Name and Display Name don't match would be silly. What if I set my Display name to "Ceera Murakami the Kitsune"? I'm still Ceera Murakami, and not trying to be anyone else. Just clarifying what my avatar is, so I can stop using a group title of "Kitsune" and can use my "Sim Architect" group title instead.

    What about someone who is only using the Display Name to correct the capitalization of their given name? Or to take on the surname of their Partner?

    There's lots of cases where a Display Name can be used legitimately.

    Now one case I could see being made for an auto-eject script would be one that checks for anyone using YOUR name as THEIR display name. For example, if you owned a store, and wanted to prevent anyone from impersonating you at the store, a script that checks "If Display Name contains substring 'Jean Horton' AND Username is not equal to 'jean.horton' THEN Ban and Eject". That would keep anyone off your property who was trying to impersonate you.

    Or check to see if the Full name, converted to all lower case, is a substring of the Display Name, converted to all lower case, and if not, then maybe eject? That would at least allow people who only changed case or who added words to their actual name.

  12. 
    

    I really do understand some of your comments and concerns on this new display name features. I have also sat down and thought about the many reasons that people can use this feature to grief, but the thing is there is nothing on the post LL sent stating that you "had" to use it. There are ways that you can turn off the feature and see user names as you have always been able to. If someone uses your name and you have the feature off, you will never know that person is using your name and even if someone you know has the feature on, they can have it set up to see the user name and the display name.

    However, if you leave the display names feature off, that does nothing to prevent griefers and impersonators from using the feature to cause trouble that will still be seen by your friends, and customers, and by potential future friends and customers, who will most likely have the feature on.

    Imagine you are a store owner, and you are in your store, with display names off. Somewhere else in your store is a griefer using your name as a Display name, and pissing off your users with abusive comments, causing them to leave the store. All YOU will see is some individual making an A** of themselves. You won't know that many of your customers think it is YOU making those foul-mouthed comments, and that they will never return to your store, and will tell their friends to avoid your store.

    The latest implementation does mitigate this scene a little, in that the default behavior now will be to show both the display name and the username. But tell me this... How is a customer, who doesn't know you personally, going to know that your username matches your display name? Why would they have any reason not to believe, once display names are common, that "Kaylee Romano" is just a display name, and that their username could be anything at all, and quite different?

    Right now, an experienced resident can guess that the owner of an established business has a Display Name and Username that match. But when "sarah1820475" opens a new "Kathleen's Couture" dress shop, with the display name "Kathleen Preston", there will be no such assurance possible. You'll have to stop, inspect several of the prims in the store display, and carefully compare both the owner and creator of those prims to the ID information in the profile of the person you are encountering, carefully comparing each character, before you can have any assurance that this is, in fact, the store owner you are talking to. How many people will bother to do that, instead of just leaving with a bad impression, when they see someone who they think is the store owner, berating and insulting them? How easy will it be for an impersonator to create a new account as "sarah182O475", and then set their display name to "Kathleen Preston"? It will be a field day for troublemakers, and will only get worse for honest merchants.

  13. "When display usernames is enabled, usernames ALSO show in local chat, in green, assuming that you're using the "Viewer 2" style chat with the icon bars. If you're using plain text chat, I don't think it shows."

    I tested this one, and yes, in the plain text chat format, it does show both names there as well, if you choose to display both on your Viewer. In green, even.

    "If you choose to use a display name, but think it's stupid, you can click a button to reset back to your "default name". I'm not really sure how this works as I didn't test this myself, whether it goes back to your previous display name, or to a name based off your username.. but you're not STUCK with a bad name for a week. You won't be able to CHANGE it again until your week is up."

    What it reverts to is your real First name / Last name pair, just like before you tried Display Names. I tested this with my testing alt, Ceera Monitor. I changed my display name to "torley Iinden" for a while, checked how it looked with each option, and how it looked in the chat log file, and then did a Revert. My displayed name returned at once to "Ceera Monitor", and it didn't display ceera.monitor under my name, since they matched and there was no actual assigned Display Name.

  14. I'd love to know who is being "successful" in this economy. It sure isn't me, or any merchant I personally know who is willing to talk about their sales figures. My in-world sales are at an all time low, and heading steadily downhill. The only thing keeping me "in the black" are occasional large-scale projects, which are not reflected in your L$ earnings figures, since those are paid for in real Dollars, direct to my Player.

  15. Yes, I have seen the posts about Lamorna Proctor's scripted device to ban people who use Display Names that are usernames registered with her service's database. It isn't a solution for me, for several reasons:

    1. I shouldn't have to pay some resident a recurring fee to protect what is already legally my own identity.
    2. If I want to ban and eject anyone on my own parcels of land who uses my avatar's names as their display names, I can write that script myself, for free. But that will only ban them to 768 Meters, and leaves 3/4 of the airspace over my land vulnerable. And it does nothing to prohibit those who use unicode characters that visually look like normal characters, but have different values in a text string comparison.
    3. Lamona's device is only usable on land that you own. I am a custom builder. I create whole-sim and multi-sim projects for clients. So my name is plastered all over those sims as the creator of the area, but I don't own a single square meter of that land. And in most cases, I am not an estate manager there and I have no rights to place scripted security devices of my own on their sims that would ban anyone.

    For me, the worst vulnerability is that someone may pose as me at one of my client's sites, doing things like telling my client that I won't do further work for them, or making trouble so my client and/or the guests of their sims wouldn't wish to associate with me or hire me in the future.

    I will admit that I think the Lab has addressed a lot of the concerns we had, by making the default behavior be to display both names. But I still think this is very poorly implemented. If they had really listened to their customers, there are several different ways they could have approached this, which would have been far less likely to be abused, and would be far more useful to roleplayers and others seeking to temporarily change their names.

  16. Content Creators still need a way to protect their unique names. If a movie star or TV star can have their name protected, then any individual with a legally registered DBA (a "doing business as" name), should get the same protections. Because that is ALL that a movie star does to "change their name" to their "professional name" that they are known to the public as. They just register a DBA for the stage name, so they can cash checks made out to that name, and sign contracts with that name.

    "Ceera Murakami" is my legally registered DBA. So how do I get the same protection as any "celebrity",  to prevent my legally registered DBA from being abused?

  17. When I cared most about being able to belong to lots of groups was when I was very active as a content creator and merchant, with stores in lots of different malls. Each mall had a group that I HAD to be a member of, to place and maintain my vendors on their parcel of land. The number of locations I could sell my products at was directly limited by the number of groups I could join. How many groups you can belong to is a huge thing for content creators.

    As a custom builder and terraformer, I have to belong to my client's land groups in order to build for them and terraform their land. Having more group slots means that I can work for more repeat customers, without having to quit their groups after each project, and then ask to be re-admitted when they hire me again for a new project.

    There are also merchants that use their store groups to let customers know about special sales and promotions, or who send "thank you gifts" to regular customers who are members of their groups. That fills about 1/2 of my group slots now.

  18. Regarding your second post, on database griefing, that is indeed a potential problem. Even more so with legitimate and popular content creators, who might choose to change their display name while roleplaying.

    Can you imagine the server load if Stroker Serpentine changed his Display name, and every SexGen bed on the grid had to update that information in the asset database?

  19. The big difference between MOAP and Mesh with regard to users choosing to ignore it or adopt a viewer capable of using the feature is that with MOAP, ignoring it or choosing not to use it does not massively disrupt your use of the virtual world.

    Turn MOAP off, or use a non-MOAP enabled Viewer, and the MOAP-enabled prims remain normal-looking prims, which could still have scripted functionality that works for people without MOAP enabled Viewers. MOAP is a choice, like turning sound on or off. Choosing not to use it doesn't necessarily harm your enjoyment of the rest of SL.

    Refuse to use a Mesh-enabled viewer, and very soon you'll encounter friends and places that use mesh attachments or parts in buildings, and that look like a bad abstract painting, and/or are completely inaccessible or unusable, since the mesh won't render for you into anything that makes visual or interactive sense on a non-mesh viewer. It won't be a 'choice', soon. Choosing not to use a Mesh-enabled viewer will absolutely harm your enjoyment of the rest of SL.

    I recently got a preview of just how bad that could be. I installed a TPV that unfortunately had a bug which made it intermittently refuse to display sculpted prims properly. Suddenly my shoes, my picnic table, my gazebo, and my furry avatar's head all looked like exploding masses of badly-textured triangles! I had to dump that TPV entirely, because it couldn't render sculpties. A viewer incapable of displaying Mesh will soon be just as unusable.

  20. "After completing some internal analysis,  we now feel comfortable enough to extend group limits up to 40. I’ll  put a qualifier on the group limits increase, however, and state that if  we see a decrease in performance (i.e., more lag), then we may decide  to roll back to the 25 limit again."

    I'm glad to see some of these improvements, but the above statement has me very worried about the risk involved in using those extra 15 group slots.

    If you arbitrarily decide to 'roll back to the 25 limit again', how will you determine WHICH 25 groups out of the 40 that someone has will remain? What if one of the groups that you decide to delete from their list, to get them back to 25, is a critical land group? Or one that they need to belong to in order to work for a client or employer? Or a group that they are sole owner/officer of? Suddenly you get ousted from your own groups? That could destroy businesses and cause people to lose land and possessions.

    There is no way that you could just "roll back" and trim that to 25 again, by any automated process. There is no safe way that anyone but the affected individual can determine which groups they need to keep, and which ones they are willing to be removed from, to get back down to 25 groups.

    Implementing more group slots, with the threat that you might at some time in the future remove those slots, is as inviting as adding 15 more chairs in the room, and telling people to ignore the dynamite charges that are now wired under all 40 of them, while saying you might arbitrarily decide to detonate the dynamite under a random choice of 15 chairs!

    Or as ethical as when you doubled the prim limit on Homesteads, and then whacked people for actually USING the extra prims that you allowed them to use!

  21. I recall in one of the earlier threads on Mesh, one of the NDA test participants was kind enough to create and offer to everyone a normal looking Human avatar as a rigged mesh, UV-mapped to match the normal avatar UV mapping, and with materials zones that matched the normal avatar. Where can that be downloaded?

  22. How can you get the experience of flying above the clouds, with Windlight clouds? You can't. It's impossible to even approach them properly.

    Windlight clouds may look beautiful while you are standing firmly on the ground, and taking 2D pictures.

    But they are not at all 3D, and they look worse the higher you fly. The only 3D cloud effect in SL is the Classic Clouds. They may be funky, but they do have a 3D aspect to them that Windlight's clouds can't touch.

    I will agree however that some of the scripted particle-based "weather generators" make far better low-level clouds. Unfortunately, add to the script load in a sim, and the "rain" from them still falls through roof prims.

  23. The only time I turn classic clouds off is when I am building a large-scale project, and I need to look at it from within or above the cloud layer's normal altitude.

    I like the classic clouds. They are actually 3D. You can fly through them, or above them.

    The Windlight clouds are only on the skydome, are only 2D, and you can't fly through or above them.

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