Tolya Ugajin

How does "region owners could better monitor the junk" in any way, shape or form imply "single objects or people" cause all the problems? That's one heck of a leap. Are you Evel Knievel reincarnated? The OP asks a question, "why doesn’t the lab construct a way to limit and refine the way creators can upload creations so it doesn’t bog down the grid." and suggests restrictions on content creation would help. I am pointing out that "bog down" is caused by the "junk" on the sim - namely, every item therein. The OP wants LL to somehow force creators to optimize content? Sim owners select what content goes on their sims (or rent the space and allows tenants to do so on their individual parcels) - they surely can choose items with optimized textures, polys, etc. as well as lower scripts. As well as how they lay out their RP villages, vendor based events, etc. You start by saying "this is not the problem" and then set about listing two specific examples of exactly the problem I pointed out - sim owners not monitoring the junk on their land.

While what you say could indeed be true, it is the exception, not the norm, and laying off 10% or so of their staff makes it highly unlikely this is a mere elimination of a few people who no longer have needed skills. The underlying point (the part you did not quote) remains - LL is a privately held company, so it does not publicly release audited financial reports that would inform the person I was replying to as to SL's purported profitability - which they hold up as evidence of the supposed "great job" SL doing in marketing. So, since we're playing guessing games, the most recent guess (and again, it's a guess, since LL releases no financial reports) I can find is that LL revenue is currently in the $50MM range, with roughly 300 employees, mostly based in the SF area. Given it's a tech company and it's location, base salaries likely average in the $100K range (this is conservative, as it would include senior managers, and they likely don't have a lot of secretaries and janitors or other low skill/low paid staff). Given the location (CA has one of the highest burden rates on labor in the US), conservatively estimate another $30K per employee, average, for benefits, FICA, FUTA/SUTA, WC, and all the other lovely costs of employing people. That puts their labor costs at around $39MM, or 78% of revenue. Seems rather high - but some fo their other locations (Boston, for instance) aren't much cheaper for labor costs. And, we haven't covered rents, R&D costs, debt servicing costs, any payments required to their investors, let alone infrastructure costs, utilities (all those servers soak up a lot of bandwidth electricity).... There seems very little chance LL is actually turning a significant, if any, profit. If it were, the investors would almost certainly have taken it public by now. If I were a betting man, the layoffs are intended to minimize the bleeding to make LL an appealing acquisition target.

This thread is officially on my No List. Thanks

Or perhaps region owners could better monitor the junk on their land?

Profitable companies with known opportunities to improve their product generally do not announce layoffs. Not sure where you are getting your financial data from, as LL is privately held.

For clarity sake, the McDonald's number was not the number of customers, but number of burgers sold. It's over 300,000,000,000 today

Great, now every time I put my butt on a lawn chair I'm going to hear George Burns telling me not to sit on him. Thanks a lot.

Of those 40 million, 39,998,393 are alts of active accounts :p

Ху бол манай улсаас хамгийн том экспорт юм, гэвч харамсалтай нь Google Translate нь уйгур бичгийг ашигладаггүй

Yes, Mr. Tracey, my middle-school English teacher, is likely spinning in his grave over that sentence.

So, the question is... How much will I be taxed, when I meet my death, from CoVid-19 infected avocados, and my estate has to bribe the Church to bury me in holy ground?

Also, Omega Library

As long as it doesn't make SL more tasking to the average computer to run, I agree, it would be terrific. Imagine being able to hook SL up to your RL sound system during a performance by one of the better live singers in SL. Or how much better vehicles would be with good, realistic, sound. You, Sir, are a visionary.

I'm not sure this is all quite accurate, although I'll admit in advance it's a distinction as fine as frog's hair. The thesis isn't that women are inherently inferior (beyond physical strength, which is after all basic biology) it's a bit more insidious, actually, especially from a feminist perspective. Free Women, in fact, are supposedly (stifles a laugh) held in high regard, even deferred to. The idea is that women WANT to be enslaved in this manner, and that submission is natural for them. Fighting against that nature is unhealthy for them and inevitably they relish being subjugated. On the other hand, I haven't seen much evidence of "the worst kind of abuse." In theory, Gorean men are not prone to cruelty for cruelty's sake (as opposed to, say, a sadist such as yours truly), and, due to the supposed (I'm trying not to laugh here) "scarcity" of slaves, they would, other than for disciplinary purposes, treat them as highly valued objects. Although, yeah, branding is a bit much by modern standards, and hamstringing your valuable property the second time it tries to escape seems rather counterproductive. Also, there ARE a small number of male slaves in Gor (including the books) - about ten times as rare as female slaves. And, as in BDSM, women also own slaves and. supposedly, Free Women treat female slaves worse than the men do. Anyone surprised by the stereotyping there? Anyone? Anyone at all? Getting back to that scarcity thing, possibly the silliest thing about Gor (other than the God awful dialog) is the economic nonsense a 1 to 50 slave to free population would be given the fantasy social and cultural structure. Any woman captured in battle would be a slave, all their descendants would be slaves, any woman convicted of a more than a minor legal violation would be a slave, random women would be enslaved on any number of pretexts, any daughter of a man who cannot pay his debts, or dies indebted, can be sold to pay those debts, let alone simple kidnapping...why would there be any free women at all? It simply doesn't make sense.

Yes, but you will not die standing when you starve to death. There is an old saying - starving people do not care about freedom of speech. Or, " A hungry man can’t see right or wrong. He just sees food. ~ Pearl S. Buck " Not sure if you've spent time in China, but I have and it's hardly a nightmare. North Korea, sure, but not China. Most of the people I have met and spoken to there understand that they are not as free as people in the West, but they also understand that 30 years ago, their parents were subsistence farmers in the countryside and today their children will go to college and have opportunity to join the middle class, or better. That is progress, and significant progress, to them. And, it hasn't come from Communism, and everyone there understands this. Recognizing truth should never be thought of as disgusting, and recognizing the accomplishments of your opponents is not defending them. If you wish to provide a source for your insistence you cannot access SL form China, feel free. The only things I can find on it suggest you can, or at least could, as this is dated.

Ummm ahhhhhh hmmmmm sorry, I cannot answer that. My johnson is screaming in pain - most distracting.

ROFL! I do have kids (in their 20's now) but I never would have gotten them such dreck to read. They started with the classics - "Where the Wild Things Are" and "There's a Monster at the End of this Book" before being fed a steady diet of Conservative propaganda. (I shall be sorely disappointed if people don't line up to hit that softball I just threw to you out of the park)

I don't know much about scientology, but knowing how popular it is with Hollywood stars leads me to believe it's not something to take seriously enough to learn about.

Goreans arguing over who is more "Truly Gor" is a bit like watching women argue over which of them has the largest phallus.

More than half of all people in China now live in cities, and those who have made it above factory drone level lead surprisingly Western lives, thanks largely to the reforms which make their economy far more capitalistic. I'm reasonably sure you can access SL from China, but I never tried when I visited myself. I'm no fan of communism, but say what you will, the communist government keeps the peasants fed, which is better than what they generally had before.

Wait, there are machine washable books? I never thought of this before I read your comment that included "largely religious" but now that I think about it, people adopting Gor as their personal lord and savior is a bit like how nazis adopted Aryanism - it was clearly made up BS, but nonetheless something about it resonated with them enough to set them on their goose-stepping path to horror. I guess when someone has a hole in their soul, they will fill it with whatever garbage comes along to fill it. (Note: I am in no way, shape or form calling Goreans nazis)

Entire cities are on lockdown - the sick and not sick, and often avoiding the hospital. They all need something to do, and it's been weeks. I think you're thinking more short term than the OP probably is. Millions of Chinese (and coming soon to a nation near you, no doubt) are stuck at home on the internet looking for something to do. If they find and decide they like SL now, then even if they don't have money to spend now, they may keep coming when they DO have money to spend. Maybe a good time to create some nice mesh Chinese bodies, hair, etc.

Kinda ghoulish thinking. Ergo, I like it! Never let a crisis go unexploited. I'm not sure about SL, but I HAVE noticed a LOT more Chinese players on Zynga poker over the last few weeks, and it did make we wonder if it was related to the outbreak. Stay healthy.

This is the lousiest sort of behavior in SL. My advice is, file an AR. At worst (and most likely) nothing will happen. But, if you don't, then certainly nothing will happen. I could argue either side of the ToS question, but to what point? Neither I, nor anyone here, can make the argument matter - but the Linden who handles your AR can, so do it. I've fought the "he's your alt!" battle - it's not winnable. You can't prove you're not. No matter WHAT you share with them, it won't be enough, because there is ALWAYS a way to respond with, "well you still could be because ______". If someone won't take your word for it, then they aren't willing to trust you enough to make them worth your time. And you can't stop the person who is saying what they are saying from continuing to say it. I'm sorry for your troubles.

Still there - not sure about hundreds of LM pins.