Ceera Murakami

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!

I think one area where there may be a bit of friction is wargaming. By the current standards, violence is not really permitted in a general rated parcel. I think it is a sure bet that there will be an issue there. Huh, so all damage enabled land is rated mature? That's something new to me. Well i suppose unless the current armies develop a new PG combat system using LSL. Ummm, no, you don't get it. Combat is prohibited on G-rated land, period. Doesn't matter if it's damage-enabled or via a scripted HUD - "Violence" is just as illegal in a G-rated sim on the main grid as hardcore sex is. Your teen 'armies' will have to wait until they are 18 to play war games again. If they do it on G-rated land, they will get abuse reported for violating the TOS and Community Standards, for violent activity inappropriate in a G-rated sim. From the Maturity Ratings WIKI: General There are some landowners and Residents who desire a Second Life experience distinct from the activity that occurs in Moderate and Adult Regions. Region owners who wish to host this sort of Second Life experience can (but need not) designate their Regions as General. A Region may be designated General if it does not advertise or make available content or activity that's sexually explicit, violent or depicts nudity. Likewise, sexually-oriented objects such as "sex beds" or poseballs may not be located or sold in General regions. === You can't tell me that shooting and killing each other isn't 'violent'. So if you make a war game or products for war games available in a G-rated sim, you are violating the maturity ratings for that sim. In fact, the standards for an Adult-rated sim include depictions of "violence and death" as something that can't be advertised or promoted anywhere but in an Adult sim - though they haven't moved the various combat-related activities from Mature to Adult... yet. The ONLY reason you get away with your war games on the Teen Grid is the same reason you get away with rampant copybot theft - because the Lindens do not bother to police the teen grid at all, and there isn't enough pressure from Teen members to get them to enforce the TOS and CS there. When you come to the main grid, there will be tens of thousands of adults who will be outraged at seeing 'armies' running rampant in G-rated sims, and they will almost certainly abuse report any of those army game participants.

A personal account is fine, as long as it is "Verified", IE: You've linked it to a bank account at PayPal's end. The "Premier" account at PayPal, as I recall, is aimed at merchants who want to be able to accept VIsa and Mastercard payments, and other stuff related to selling stuff to others and collecting profits via PayPal. But none of that is at all necessary for using PayPal to buy L$ or to cash out L$ in SL.

Switching to a different viewer is a bit like moving to a new house, or cooking in someone elses kitchen. In either case, at first you dont know where anything is or stored. ;/ But, after a few days, one learns where things are stored and new shortcuts are learned. I think that is suppose to make more brain connections when you have to relearn such things. Yes, but with 2.x, unlike almost any other viewer, there are some things that are impossible, and many things that require more steps. So it's like cooking in someone else's kitchen, and finding out that they have severe dietary restrictions, and so they don't have any salt or cooking oil, and they only buy whole spices, so you have to grind your own pepper, nutmeg, etc, taking an extra step to use each spice. Issues with 2.x go far beyond "where did they move that to", and learning to look in the left drawer rather than the right cabinet. Need to see multiple user profiles at once? Sorry, that is impossible. Need to change permissions on your Friends list for several people? That takes many more mouse clicks than before. Do you use text chat? The data entry field won't move with the nearby chat floater, and they intermittently impose arbitrary limits on chat post length in new release, lopping it from 1023 to 255 characters, then saying 'oops' and restoring it in the next release... (2.4 just moved the limit back to 1023, after 2.3 had cropped it to 255). I agree that the new code has some nice improvements. Look at the most recent release of Phoenix for a much better implementation of those features, giving us all the new functions, and none of the crippled UI code. And these UNPAID volunteer TPV coders can easily fix these UI limitations and constraints, while LL's PAID coders can't? Why?

"Replace Current Outfit" no longer works from Inventory, if the folder full of clothes, skins and avatar parts contains ANY no-copy items! (Edited: It has been found that the root cause is that Viewer 2.4 disables "Replace Outfit" if the folder does not contain all the 'required' body parts, such as hair, eyes, skin and shape. STORM-702 is the JIRA that is tracking this issue now.)

1. Second Life Viewer - VWR VWR-24066 "Replace Current Outfit" no longer works from Inventory, if the folder full of clothes, skins and avatar parts contains ANY no-copy items! (Edited: It has been found that the root cause is that Viewer 2.4 disables "Replace Outfit" if the folder does not contain all the 'required' body parts, such as hair, eyes, skin and shape. STORM-702 is the JIRA that is tracking this issue now.)

In the release notes, many of the referenced links for details about the bugs or fixes are inaccessible to us 'normal residents'. Please 'declassify' the JIRA entries that you are releasing to the public, so we can see the discussion on what was changed, and why.

Absolutely! There's less lag in a skybox because there are fewer prims and scripted objects in camera range. SL calculates the drawn position of every object in your draw distance that could possibly be rendered from your current angle of view and viewing position, even if those objects can't possibly be seen, because they are on the other side of an opaque wall or a hill of terrain. Lag is also affected by every scripted object or avatar within your draw distance. So, the fewer prims and scripted objects and avatars that you have near you, the less lag you'll have. This means that if you have a skybox at 3000 Meters up, and no nearby neighbors that also have skyboxes at that altitude, you'll have a lot less lag. Here's a simple experiment that proves this. Find a sim that has a lot of stuff on the ground, and has no adjacent sims on at least one edge. Turn on the statistics, so you can see your frame rate. Stand at the sim edge, and look inland, toward the center of the sim. Note your frame rate. Put a prim right in front of you, blocking everything you can see. Frame rate won't change for the better. Might even get ever so slightly worse, since you added one more prim to calculate. Turn around, and look out past the sim edge, into the endless void sea. Frame rate improves! This is because there are no objects to calculate in that direction. Sit on the prim rezzed earlier, and edit the prim to send it to 3000 Meters up. Note what happes to your frame rate while looking various directions. ========== Note that if you build a very primmy store or club, full of scripted vendors and avatars, and put it way up high, it may still be laggy, just from what you put up there and the avatars in the area. But it will be less laggy than on the ground amid lots more prims and people.

I applaud your position, but how will you even know that potential new stripper or adult worker is a real-life minor, unless the minor admits it to you in the first place? The minors who would lie to get an adult-access account and a job in Zindra wouldn't hesitate to also lie and insist that they are 19, instead of 16, or even 13! Likewise, the 'legal account' 16 and 17 year olds will be completely impossible to differentiate from 18+ customers. How will we know who it is safe to discuss mature subject matter with, short of going out of our way to 'demand proof', when that proof can so easily be faked? LL is forcing us to self-censor or to grill every potential client or social contact before we dare even discuss mature subject matter with anyone, let alone running any sort of adult-oriented business or activities.

Probably when Mesh goes live, since Mesh will make the non-Mesh viewers pretty much impossible to use, once it gets into common use. And they refuse to back-port Mesh or any other enhancements to 1.23.5. Personally, when they kill 1.23.5, I'll be evaluating any third party viewer before I even consider 2.x from LL. Still WAY too many issues with 2.x, as LL is shipping it, and there's a few TPV's that haven't crippled their UI by adopting the 2.x UI, and yet have backported the actual new features from 2.x. like avatar alpha layers, and soon, mesh. 2.x still takes more mouse clicks and time to do common tasks, and still makes things like looking at multiple profiles at once completely impossible. It's fine, I suppose, if you never multitask, and use Voice instead of Text chat. It's still inferior if you multitask or use text chat for more than one-liner responses.

I completely agree that there should be some way of tagging minors so that adults (whether we want to or not) will behave appropriately around minors. I would hope that you already behave appropriatly at the sims where you can expect minors to be around, they will only be in pg/g sims so nothing is changing in that regard I guess you haven't been actually reading this thread? Virtually all the Mature sims are also within sight and voice chat and text chat range of those G-rated sims the minors can be in, and they can see and hear everything that happens across that border. So if you're standing in a Mature sim, you have no way to be sure there isn't a minor close enough, but in another sim, to see and hear everything you do. Not unless we can tag them in some way. It's just as illegal to expose yourself to a minor across the street that isn't allowed to cross the street, as it is to do it with her in the same yard as you. Even if you didn't know she was there. So if she can see you and your Partner getting it on in Mature land, guess who is in trouble? This completely devalues Mature land, because Adults can't act in a non-G-Rated manner on MATURE land either, for fear of some minor being able to perv-cam them from a nearby G-rated sim. We'll constantly be walking on eggs, even in the Mature sims, because we will have no way of knowing if that stranger standing 15 Meters away is a Minor at the edge of a G-rated sim, without constantly checking the mini-map and map for the ratings of the sims around us to see if there is a G-rated sim nearby. And then we STILL won't know the age of that stranger, unless they volunteer that they are a minor.

i would like to know if there is a list of sponsoring estates....i have a 13 yo that adores her tsl, but is excited to get into the main grid just for the available options....if there is a list of groups she can join before the close the ensure she is affiliated with the correct sponsors to continue her sl experience I'd love to see it....also, it says the 13-15 yo's aren't allowed to search or purchase on marketplace....how will they know where they can go and what they can do or what they can buy?? Will I be able to friend my child and transfer items to her?? A sim or two for the younger crowd with apartments and shops and hang out places on the main grid would be better than what they have...TSL is basically crap with the exception of a few small parcels.....but they do enjoy it..... Unfortunately for your daughter, it isn't a matter of just "joining a sponsoring group". She would have to create a whole new account, and that account would ONLY have access to one Educational organization's Estate - the education sim or sims (usually only one) owned by the specific sponsoring school. Those school sims are classrooms, not teen hangouts. They have no shops, no apartments, nothing at all for a 13 to 15 year old to 'do' while there, except attend the classes and educational activities provided by that particular school. There will be no place for them to go, nothing for them to buy. If they think TSL today is restricted and 'crap', I am afraid they will like the educational sponsored sims for 13 to 15 year olds even less.

I wonder... Has the SL Marketplace's "Buy as gift" function been secured so that in addition to not allowing a 16 or 17 year old resident to directly purchase "Mature" content form the Marketplace, no one else can use the "Buy as Gift" function to SEND Mature-rated merchandise to the 16 and 17 year olds? If not, then the 16 and 17 year olds can 'shop' by browsing and searching while not logged in, then give the URL's to an over-18 friend or to an alt that is illegally registered as over 18, and send the Mature content to their accounts. Even no-transfer Adult items, like avatars, XXX skins, etc. . By the same token, what about Adult products vendors in Adult sims, that allow "Buy as gift"? It is IMPOSSIBLE to do a scripted status check of someone's status to determine if they are age 16 or 17, or to determine if they have successfully passed Aristotle Age Verified status. The only scripted check possible is to check for payment info on file. So how is an adult content merchant supposed to prevent an over 18 friend or an illegally registered alt of these 16 and 17 year olds minors from making "gift" purchases in Zindra and other adult sims, to send Adult content to the 16 and 17 year olds? They can't. For that matter, since we residents have no way to KNOW that another Resident is either 16 or 17, sending any sort of Adult-rated gifts to any avatar whose Player you don't know for certain is an Adult themselves will be a very risky thing to do. Seems to me like the ability to "Buy as gift" should be removed from all Adult and Mature content vendors and from the Mature products in the SL Marketplace, until LL relents and allows us some way to "card" the minors and deny transactions if they purchaser or the recipient is not 'proven' to be old enough to legally receive adult content.

Thank you to Blaze and the other teens for sharing what Terrence had to say in his meeting on the Teen Grid. I feel sorry for the 13-15 year olds that need to dump their land, tier down to basic, and sell off their L$ balances between now and the move in the first week in January. You're really getting shafted there. I hope your fellow teen grid members will be kind enough to pay you a good price for your land and your sims, rather than forcing you to abandon the land and waiting for Linden Lab to put the reclaimed land up for auction. As for Terrence Linden's comment that "80% of the G sims do not border on Mature sims", he is either intentionally lying, or grossly misinformed. His statements do not match reality, based on my own observations of the Main Grid. Yes, 20%, or about 1000, of the 5000 or so G/PG sims are LL-owned Mainland, and 100% of those sims DO share a border with Mature sims. - Either directly edge-to edge, or by being able to walk from one G/PG sim to another (rarely more than 2 sims walk) until you get to a Mature Border. After the move, the only LL-Owned sims that will NOT share a border with Mature sims will be the moved Teen Grid sims themselves. (Which incidentally will NOT be labeled "TG". They will become G/PG sims once on the Main Grid.) But the claim made by Terrence that the other 4000 privately-owned G/PG sims, or 80%, do not touch any Mature sims is laughable at best, and an outright lie at worst. This claim sounds just like LL's assurances that the Adult Content ratings changes and forced moves to Zindra would only affect "2% to 5% of the grid" - a claim that fell apart within 48 hours of the start of the forced moves to Zindra. It certainly isn't true in Caledon. They have Mature and G/PG sims mixed with each other. It wasn't true when I lived in FairChang Isles. They have Mature and G/PG sims mixed with each other. It wasn't true in any of the larger clusters of Dreamland sims that I have ever visited. In fact, I seriously doubt that ANY of the major land barons have 100%, or even a simple majority, of their G/PG sims completely isolated from any other ratings. The only places it probably IS true are the smallest landholdings, where someone only owns a single G-Rated sim, or the portion of a land baron's holdings that are isolated single Homestead or normal sims for full-sim rentals that offer more privacy. (And few of those would NEED to be isolated, if they are rated G/PG. Why do you need 'Privacy' at all if you're behaving in accordance with G/PG sim rules?) Oh, and many, but not all, of the main grid's Education sims may also be all G/PG - the Universities and Colleges that LL is doubling the tier on come January... The sims that are, in large numbers, going to be cutting their numbers of sims in half, or leaving entirely, when the rent increase hits, because the rate hike was announced after school budgets were cast in stone, and no new funding is available for paying the increased rate. I would be very curious to see what % of the 4000 privately owned G/PG sims get flipped to a Mature rating before the teens arrive. How many of the land barons will be willing to risk the liability, for themselves or their tenants, of having 16 and 17 year olds at a G/PG-Mature border on their land, and interacting across that border? How many of their tenants will be willing to have homes on Mature Land that can be cammed into by the minors?

Ditch 2.x and go back to 1.23.5, or use one of the third party Viewers.

Yes. LL abandoned the PayPal Mass Pay code that the old XStreet Exchange used, and which took only seconds, in favor of their more cumbersome manual method, that takes 3 to 10 business days to process a transaction.

Regarding adult-oriented groups -- of course it would be helpful for LL to allow an "adult-only" flag on a group, but I thought I'd mention how straightforward it will be to keep a group for adults only, in practice. Group-joiner bots are widely used already; for an adult-only group, just put the group-joiner bot on a mature or adult estate, make the group closed-enrollment, and require a visit to the mature estate as a condition of joining the group after the January changeover. It'll always be possible to worry, but adults-only groups are still quite feasible. Don't Panic! A good idea, but limit it to only Adult estates, or to Mature Private sims that are isolated and have no G/PG sims contiguous with their land mass. If you put that group joiner bot on Mature mainland, the 16 and 17 year olds can still cam over and touch it and register.

I just logged inworld got a notice from one of the major event groups on the Teen Grid. Apparently Terrence Linden is coming in to talk to us about the merge. I suppose it would be a good a time as any to ask him for some specifics on the safety measures (if any). Blaze? One thing you should ask Terrence. "What will happen to land owned by teens aged 13-15, when the grid merge happens? LL Says their accounts are getting suspended, but what happens to their land until they turn 16?"

For 13- to 15-year-olds: 13- to 15-year-old Residents will be restricted to the estates of a sponsoring institution. These Residents will not have access to inworld search or our Web-based Marketplace. "Sponsoring institution"...... Does this mean a certain group? Or if they have parents on MG, would that mean having the parents keep an eye on them? What that means is that a specific educational organization has bought a sim on the teen grid, and had all their staff background-checked by law enforcement. Then they can set up a registration interface on the Web, and teens age 13-17 can sign up for brand-new, dedicated accounts that ONLY can access that one educational sim. They are chained to that sim, and can't even TP to another approved education sim. So if your high school or middle school owned one of those sims, and there was also one for the local community college, doing an outreach to potential incoming students, you would need a completely unique account for each of these. The teachers have to do that too. If I wanted to build a school building for a teen grid education sim, I would have to create a new account specifically for that purpose, load it with my building textures, get background checked, and then have the sponsoring school request that my account that I made for their project be permanently transferred to their sim. A "normal" teen grid account, created via LL's website, and with access to the normal SL Teen Grid sims, CAN NOT be converted to allow it access to one of those "education sponsored sims". There is absolutely no transition between them. You can't "get sponsored" with an existing account. So what the new policy means is that if you have a normal teen grid account that can access more than one educational sim, and you're 13-15, then your account will get suspended when they close the teen grid, until you turn 16 and they force your account over to the adult grid's G/PG sims.

Hi Boaz, apologies for missing this earlier. For the purpose that you state, age-verification and identity-verification serve the same purpose. If you check that box, then you will be saying that only accounts that have registered as 18 or older, and have passed through the web identity verification system will be allowed. Depending on whether that sim is a Mainland sim or an isolated private island, your statement may or may not be true, Terrence. If the sim Boaz asked about is a private island, and not touching any other private island, then only residents who have passed the Aristotle age check will be able to teleport into the sim (except on the occasional glitches when that validation check makes a mistake, and admits an unverified person anyway..., or when it rejects someone who verified successfully, for no reason at all). So for a private island, you're correct. On the Mainland, it's an entirely different result. His parcel-ban (can't be a real sim ban, since LL won't allow Mainland owners of full sims Estate Controls access) will only be effective to 50 M above the terrain. Anyone who is age-verified via Aristotle will be able to land on the ground or to go places within 50 M of the surface. Above the 50 M ceiling, it will still be wide open, and no age restriction will be functional. Likewise, if he is on a private island sim, and has any edge-to edge sim neighbors that are NOT restricted, people from the sim next door would still be able to access the sim at heights greater than 50 Meters above the terrain.

I am absolutely certain that my behavior and spending habits will change radically when the teens are allowed on the grid. I have already eliminated the group role ability to add anyone to any of my groups, from any individuals other than myself or my alts, to reduce the probability of a teen gaining access to any of my groups without my consent. I have been going through my Friends list, making notes on what people I have either seen in person and know are an adult, or the individual in question has been vouched for by a trusted adult friend who has seen them in person and can verify that they are an adult. Anyone else, if they currently have SL access, are being asked to meet me in Zindra and prove they are an adult. Any un-validated Friends are either getting dropped, or flagged as possible minors. I have already dropped my SL spending to almost zero. Why spend a lot of money on a platform that seems intent on getting itself shut down for providing porn to minors? And even if they don't get shut down, I already own almost anything I could ever want, so why spend any more? I'll also be trying to sell off some of my excess Adult transferrable inventory, since I expect at this rate it won't be long before LL bans all adult activity. I will no longer accept or discuss any content creation tasks that are not G-rated with any potential client, until they have proven to me that they are an adult by meeting me at a designated location in Zindra. I will no longer accept or participate in any local chat or IM conversations that are not G-rated with any individual, unless they have been vouched for by someone who has seen them in person and can verify that they are an adult, or until they have proven to me that they are an adult by meeting me at a designated location in Zindra. I plan to spend as little time as possible in any G-Rated or Mature-rated Mainland sim, and while in those sims I will refuse to be involved in any activities or conversations that are not G-rated. I will only go into a G/PG or Mature mainland sim to make a purchase - teleporting in, buying, and teleporting back out as fast as I can. I won't bother to hang around and socialize. Anyone I meet in a G/PG sim who wants to Friend me will be refused, until they have proven to me that they are an adult by meeting me at a designated location in Zindra, or unless that have a clear G-rated business reason for establishing Friend status, in which case their Profile will be flagged in my profile notes as "SUSPECTED MINOR", until proven otherwise. Anyone I meet in a Mature Mainland sim who wants to Friend me will be asked to prove to me that they are an adult by meeting me at a designated location in Zindra, or else their Profile will be flagged in my profile notes as "SUSPECTED MINOR", until proven otherwise. And while I don't participate in a lot of 'Intimate behavior" in SL anyway, from here on out I won't be open to any new "intimate friendships" at all, until I have had the individual prove to me that they are an adult by meeting me at a designated location in Zindra, or unless they have been vouched for by a trusted adult friend who has seen them in person and can verify that they are an adult. Maybe not even then. I certainly won't be seeking any new partners in social venues.

There are plenty of cases that you are not considering. I am a pro builder. If someone wants me to build something for them, I have to discuss the particular details of what they want, so I can make it to their specifications. If someone IM's me and asks for me to design and build a skybox featuring a BDSM Dungeon, fully-equipped with pose balls and sex beds, I now would have to either refuse their business, or stop all negotiations and demand that they first appear in front of me in a Mature or Adult sim. I don't have to be the least bit interested in sex with them, to be on perilous legal ground because of not being able to know the age of my client. I own several groups. I am responsible for what goes on in those groups, including group chat. If I can not exclude minors from a group that might be discussing adult topics, how can I protect myself from legal problems? I am not looking at this as SL being a pure porn fest. I am looking at the very real legal issues that can come up when in an adult environment, and when minors can be legally present. If I owned a real-world restaurant with a liquor license, the law says I can not sell booze to minors, and I have a legal necessity and requirement to check the ID of anyone who requests alcohol. How is that any different from being in business in SL producing content that could include, but does not usually include, Adult content, and being approached by a stranger to provide adult-rated content?

Here's a question: The OP states "All of the land on Teen Second Life will be transferred to the Main Grid. This includes teen mainland, teen private islands, and teen organizations’ estates.". What will happen to land currently owned by 13-15 year olds currently on the Teen grid? Not the few that are confined to a single education sim, but the 13-15 year olds that signed up for a general-access teen grid account, and can access all of the teen grid except for the isolated few educational sims, and that are going to have their accounts suspended until they turn 16? What will happen to the prims those 13-15 year olds have rezzed in-world? Those children will be unable to pay for their land (or would be paying for something they are not allowed to access), and would be unable to clean other people's trash off their land, or evict squatters over the age of 15 from their land. What will that 13 year old's parcel look like when they eventually turn 16? A trash pile, maxxed out on prims? Or by then will it be someone else's property, having been forcibly-reclaimed by LL and all their prims bulk-returned in an unmanageable lump? It would seem to me that any 13-15 year olds that own Teen Grid land or have in-world assets rezzed should plan to take all their prims into inventory before this transition, and sell or abandon their land, or it could get very messy indeed.

Saying you'll allow 16 and 17 year olds into the adult grid, with the ability to search and IM and join any group, but NOT clearly labeling them as under-age is as irresponsible as allowing teens into the restaurant half of a bar and restaurant, and then not allowing the waitresses to card for legal age when someone orders booze. Without labels, HOW is the owner of an adult-oriented group in SL supposed to keep the minors out of their group? Yes, a small percentage of sexual predators may, possibly, use a "teen label" as a way to target their victims. But there is a far larger part of the population of SL that absolutely will need that identification factor present, to prevent very real legal problems from occurring, so we don't admit them to groups and group chats that are in no way suitable for minors. Without being able to tell which accounts are minors, the only safe course is to remove all rights of the adults to interact as adults. Because otherwise, we have no way to know who is safe to interact with in an adult manner. Those potentially inappropriate interactions are not limited to the physical presence of two people in the same sim. The 16 and 17 year old minors will be able to search and do IM's and accept inventory transfers with anyone on the grid.

And yet, this move doesn't even appear to consolidate server space for them, as the 16-17 year-old teens that have land on the teen grid have been assured their sims will get ported to the main grid! So the only cutback in terms of cost savings is that LL won't be supervising or regulating the teens and who has access to them as heavily, and the 13-15 year olds will mostly be suspended and without access until they turn 16. (The accounts for 13-15 year olds associated with a specific education sim, and only able to access that sim, are a tiny minority of the 13-15 year old residents on the teen grid.)