Ishtara Rothschild

Randall Ahren wrote: It's not really your first day is it? On your first day, you would be on help island or someplace, following the path that teaches you to how sit and so forth. You wouldn't know where a sandbox is or how to build. I tried to create my first own skin on my first day, before I even left the newbie island. I didn't want to be seen with the default clay skin, so I downloaded the avatar templates, made my own textures, tried to upload them, found out that this wasn't free, added payment info to my account and bought L$. It was all pretty self-explanatory, and I was used to working with texture templates from making my own skins in Poser. Alas, the skin didn't turn out the way I hoped, so I left the noob island after I found out that I could use classified ads to teleport right into a store and went on a shopping spree. After my avatar looked presentable, I bought several texture packs (walls, carpets etc.), purchased a 2048 sqm plot, and started to build my own mansion. The building tools were quite self-explanatory too. I didn't know about prim limits though. When my parcel was full I had barely finished the ground floor, so I went and bought a prefab mansion instead. Which didn't fit onto the parcel, so I bought another 2048 plot next to mine. That was all on day one On my third day I started to script, and little more than a week later I finished the "violator", my first piece of selfmade BDSM furniture and my first sales object. Some people learn pretty fast I guess Too bad that my neural plasticity is no longer what it used to be in those days. (Which probably has something to do with the fact that I smoked 40 cigarettes a day back then. Since I gave up smoking, my learning capacity and ability to focus appear to have greatly diminished. The same could be said about my interest in SL).

Deltango Vale wrote: "For example my doctor has such an accent I can barely understand him sometimes and his penmanship is horrid and his spelling and grammar isn't all that great all the time either. That being said he is an outstanding doctor and I am glad to have him. I don't know, maybe he has better things to worry about?" ------------------------------------------------------------------------- I hope you don't wake up missing a leg because he left a note with his nurse to boil an egg. Hehe My general practitioner offers things like acupuncture, reflexology and autohemotherapy, because there is more money in privately paid "medical" services than in conventional (read: actual) medicine paid by insurances. What's worse, she really seems to believe in this nonsense. One time she had to write up a medical report for my pension insurance, and I wasn't surprised at all when it turned out to be riddled with typos and grammatical errors. Needless to say that whenever I have serious health problems, I either go and see a specialist or diagnose myself with the help of the www and ask her to prescribe the meds that I think I need. She's the exact opposite of an outstanding doctor, but I'm still glad to have this walking prescription pad.

Randall Ahren wrote: Concerning sales, some people sell what others have developed, and others develop the product that they sell. Content creators in SL do the latter. And like the article says, Linden Lab is in the business of doing the former: "But Second Life does have the advantage of having experience in charging virtual world creators for renting server space and taking a cut of virtual transactions and may find a way to apply it to game creators." LL is not a religious cult. They are quite sane and make their revenue by profiting of our ideas and our work. While the original vision behind SL was certainly grander, this is what it comes down to nowadays. It's all about money (at least in that regard SL has something in common with religion). Rod Humble has realized that this is LL's are of expertise and decided to create yet another development platform for the same purpose. 

Randall Ahren wrote: Ishtara Rothschild wrote: How about entertainment business? I think LL's problem is that they always used to think of SL as serious business, not as entertainment without a deeper meaning or a world-changing purpose. What about this statement attributed to Philip Rosedale: I'm not building a game. I'm building a new country. That sounds like a world-changing purpose. Perhaps the thinking now is that it was too visionary, sort of like when Apple Computer brought in John Sculley to commoditize its computers like soft drinks and fired Steve Jobs. Philip is a salesman Just like Steve Jobs, who called the iPhone "a magical product". It's still just a piece of technology. PS: If anybody builds a country, it is us, the residents. Look around SL and ask yourself how much of what you see was built by Philip Rosedale. Anyway, no matter how much we build, virtual worlds are still just entertaining computer simulations at this point.

Randall Ahren wrote: Ishtara Rothschild wrote: While it's good to see that LL have realized that they are in the gaming business, I wish they would apply this insight here in SL. Are they really in the gaming business? When automobiles hit the market, most buggy whip manufacturers went bankrupt. A few didn't. They realized they weren't in the buggy whip manufacturing business, they were actually in the transportation business. @Jenni, floundering about is also known as lack of vision. How about entertainment business? I think LL's problem is that they always used to think of SL as serious business, not as entertainment without a deeper meaning or a world-changing purpose.

While it's good to see that LL have realized that they are in the gaming business, I wish they would apply this insight here in SL. Or maybe start over with a Second Life 2.0 that uses a contemporary 3D engine and avoids all past mistakes before a competitor fills this niche. Make it easier to create gaming environments within SL, emphasize the fun fun aspect of SL instead of trying to turn it into some sort of 3D Facebook, advertise aggressively, stop neglecting adult content (even IMVU advertises on porn sites these days), and find a way to make a portion of SL accessible for the smartphone and tablet market. This new product gives the impression that LL is looking for alternative sources of revenue as the SL concurrency declines and the revenue slowly dries up. It's also not very reassuring that LL haven't hired any major talent after M's massive layoffs as far as I know (aside from Kim and Rodvik Linden, that is).

Being defamed could be seen as a form of fame. It's the closest that most residents will ever be to having celebrity status in SL.

Celestiall Nightfire wrote: Uh, you wrote four paragraphs on social interactions in your previous comment. It started like this: "Ishtara Rothschild wrote: The prisoner's dilemma is not really a game ( only insofar that all social interactions are games of strategy in which we can either gain or lose something)......A practical example would be the social grooming behavior of various bird species...." Since you seemed to think that it was necessary to explain to me how social interactions work, I thought I'd let you know, that between the two of us, I have more experience in that field. But, next time I see you mention birds and such, I'll just say, "Anyway, I don't see what this has to do with the topic at hand. " So because I'm not good at the practice, I should drop the theory? An anorexic vegan nutritional biologist probably knows more about food than an obese gourmet who simply enjoys eating. People who are good at something and enjoy doing it often fly by instinct and have no idea what exactly it is that they're doing. Besides, self-perception is a funny thing. RL skills don't necessarily translate into a forum environment, and the people who think the highest of themselves might be devastated if they knew how others perceive them. Where are you getting "hypothetical" from? That person clearly states that the incident happened. I didn't read the entire thread, because the witch hunts over at SLU are not a pretty sight. So she was really deceived by a minor. Big deal. Something similar happened to me once. LL's age verification has never been foolproof, some 17 year olds act very mature, and no judge would convict a person for having what amounts to an erotic chat with a near-adult person who could legally have sex in 31 U.S. states. That person has written that they are in "child" groups. They have created an avatar that looks underage. That picture shows that the avatar is being sexualized. Are you incapable of seeing how that and courts trouble? Sexualized activity from avatars that appear underage and are in “child” groups is the very activity that can bring down SL. I disagree that her avatar looks underage. It clearly has a sexually mature look, and beyond that, it is pretty much impossible and nonsensical to try and assign an age to a cartoon polygon figure. The RL laws that are the reason for this overblown paranoia, a paranoia that sensationalists like P. are only too eager to perpepuate, are only concerned with virtual depictions of pre-pubescent children, and Immy's blogger avatar is clearly not a child avatar. As for child avatar groups, it is entirely possible to have more than one avatar and participate in a wide range of activities in SL, always with an avatar that is appropriate for such an activity. Anyway, you should really leave these nasty witch hunts to P. That's her speciality. She is not some poor and pathetic little girl (to paraphrase your previous post) who needs your help. Instead, she is an adult person who is perfectly capable of fighting her own battles in the most vicious way, and she picks a great many of them. Often with people who haven't done anything to her, as well as with the communists under her bed and the shadows on her walls.

Celestiall Nightfire wrote: You know Ishy, it so happens that most people are cordial until their buttons are pushed. In your previous comment you used several paragraphs to layout social interaction dynamics. Yet, you yourself have written that you do not have a history of successful social interaction with people in RL. Well, I do. [...] True, I'm not exaxtly an expert when it comes to social interaction, and I never claimed to be. My social life is limited to SL and a few online forums. I could make up an elaborate RL backstory to hide this fact, but I don't. Anyway, I don't see what this has to do with the topic at hand. I've never heard of the term "mangians" before. So I Googled it. Urban dictionary says is' "gay slang". So it appears that the gay community coined that term. : ) It does not appear to be a derogatory term per se, so other than her injecting the adjective "nasty", I think she is just insulting that one person, not all people who are cross-overs. Here are links to sites all over the web, including YouTube, Facebook, and Myspace pages where the word "mangina" is used. None seem derogatory: [...] Yes, and black people sometimes refer to each other with the n-word. You might want to look that word up on the Urban Dictionary too, that might give you an idea how accurate, trustworthy and politically correct this website really is. The term mangina is a portmanteau of man and va**bleep**, and P. clearly uses this word as an insult for SL residents with female avatars who happen to disagree with her. By calling alleged gender benders manginas, P. disrespects their chosen SL gender, attempts to out them as RL men, and basically calls them fakes who are less than real women. You can't possibly tell me that you can't see how derogatory and insulting this is, especially if the abuse victim happens to be transgender in RL. Here's the first quote that comes upon that page from the blogger, and it's quoted by the person in question: "XXXX, are you a male originally in real life, either cross-dressing in that rather ambiguous photo you put up here on your website under “about me,” or perhaps in the process of transgendering? Nothing wrong with that, but I find ambivalence about such a status often does often explain the particular obsessiveness and viciousness with which some SL types like yourself begin hysterically hating me, putting up hate pages about me, whiting out my comments like Orwell’s 1984, etc. etc. So, you know, just sayin’. Say, has anybody actually seen the real XXXX XXXXX in RL, and can they comment on his/her real or presented gender?  The blogger clearly states that "there is nothing wrong with that", and also mentions that the other person had started "putting up hate pages" about her. The comment you quoted in way down in the blog comments, and only appears after multiple people insulted the blogger saying she's crazy, etc. Again, you cannot tell me that you don't see the insults here. P. questions the RL gender of a female blogger (that alone is insulting). In response, this woman posts a photo of her very feminine self on her blog. P. again calls her a male and asks her if she's crossdressing or transgendered. And that is supposed to be just peachy because P. also states that there is nothing wrong with that? Please. Aside from that, P. feels bullied and persecuted by pretty much everyone. She rabidly attacks others and then paints herself as the victim who was only defending herself against the evil trolls and haters. I know that she really has been targeted by some groups in the past and I'm not trying to defend the griefers. But this doesn't make her derogatory remarks any less insulting, nor does it change the fact that she constantly attacks others who previously had no beef with her and persistently picks the most unpopular and close-minded points of view, as if she was trying to maximize the number of her enemies. I don't know "Immy" at all, but if you're suggesting that the person who posts as "Immy" is indeed a "middle-aged man", then it would be disingenuous of me to not mention that I too find that creepy. A middle-aged man creating an avatar that looks like a teen-age girl, and clearly uses that in a sexual manner in SL, uh..yeah...not good. Is this the same "Immy" who posted this? http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/general-sl-discussion/50043-too-little-too-late.html#post1040005 Clearly someone who, if they are an adult man, and is having cyber-sex with minors, is engaging in behavior that is not only illegal, but violates LL's TOS. I think that someone who deliberately dresses themselves as a teen-age-looking female, and deliberately makes their avatar "small"...and deliberately goes to great lengths to point that out to other people (as that person has done in countless thread even here on the SL forms) how small and "cute" they are...is courting trouble. It does not take much to realize that. See the picture that person posts? http://www.blogger.com/profile/12296216339322995752 It is P. who called Immy a middle-aged man (which again shoes how she goes out of her way to try and insult people). I have no idea who Immy is in RL, but I doubt that she's middle-aged. Anyway, I'm quite shocked by your post, and not for the reason you might think. This attempt to dig up dirt on Immy is... well, it's prok-esque for the lack of a better adjective. Not that I see any dirt in the above quote, mind you. The thread that you linked to is about a hypothetical case in which an adult had no idea that s/he was being tricked by a minor. What you are trying to make out of this comes dangerously close to libel. And what is wrong with the picture on Immy's blogger profile? I always thought you were a libertarian. I also thought you were better than this.

clive Mortenwold wrote: ... 3GB GT555M ... Just to clarify, that is the graphics card, right? I mean, it's not 3 GB system RAM, but video RAM. There is a cheaper 1 GB variant of the GT 555M, which would be totally sufficient for SL. Other than that, it looks good to me. Throw in 4-8 GB system RAM and SL should run like a charm.

So you have never built anything, you lack the incentive to try and teach yourself with the help of the abundant tutorials out there, and you don't even know what it is that you want to create yet. But you want to earn money here, and you expect somebody to teach you for free? :matte-motes-bored:

Judging by your old single core processor, your PC is probably 5-10 years old. All contemporary graphics cards are made for the PCIe (PCI Express) bus, and I doubt that your board has a slot for those. You'll also run into problems when trying to upgrade your CPU, because socket A is no longer being used. Which means that upgrading is not really an option, unless you buy an entirely new mainboard and new RAM, a new graphics card, and a new power supply unit to go with it. You might as well buy a complete new PC.

Celestiall Nightfire wrote: That's just it Ishy. I've never had a negative interaction with that blogger. I've exchanged IMs inworld and posted on her blog, and have never had anything but a cordial interaction. So, why would I want to insult someone who has not done that to me? I didn't know that she was capable of having something like a cordial interaction :matte-motes-bored: I've found myself in agreement with her in a few forum dicussions (scary, I know), but even then she seems to disagree on principle. Ishy, can you provide an example of this: "consistently bash M2F transgender people and SL gender-benders"?  She used to refer to people whom she suspected to be gender-benders as "manginas". Here is one of many examples: "More and more, I'm leaning to the opinion that [name omitted] must be another one of those nasty little manginas -- males crossing to females in SL but without telling anyone." Or take a look at her delightful post in the comments under this blog post, where she even bashes the author's RL appearance: "... you don’t get to behave like a f****** mangina [...] Grow the f*** up. Your boobs look like fakes. I think I’m on to something here." She does the same in forum discussions, where she never gets tired of pointing out that known, self-admitted gender-benders are "middle-aged men". You should see some of the verbal abuse that she hauls in Immy's direction, for example. As of yet, she has not targeted me personally in this way (only with accusations of me being a pedophile, which is another frequently used tool in her toolbox of insults and libel), but neither has Fred Phelps personally bashed every gay person on the planet. If she targets individuals for being members of a minority group, she insults the entire minority group by proxy. One last thing Ishy, I highlighted the words that I wish to discuss. I personally do not think that others have the power to "inflict negative and hurtful emotional states onto me". Feeling emotionally hurt is not something that is "inflicted" upon one, it's something that arises from within and is our own mental "reaction". If I do suffer from a negative and hurtful emotional state, it's brought about by my reaction to either the other person or their words. So, it is within my control to decide whether I suffer an emotional hurt or not. Now, that's not to say it's easy to control one's own emotions, but it is within one's control.  Yeah, that's what I always try to tell myself too. Because otherwise, I'd have to hate a great number of people in RL and hold them responsible for my reclusive lifestyle and social phobia, and I don't like hating people. But as you say yourself, it's not that easy to control one's emotions and not let anything get to oneself. And the bullies know that. They know full well what they are able to inflict onto others, which is why they so enjoy the power that it gives them over other people's emotions. Just yesterday, I read that yet another gay teenager has committed suicide. The poor boy previously gained some youTube fame with a video titled "It gets better, I promise", so he evidently did try to cope with the massive peer abuse and keep a positive attitude. It wasn't enough though. In the end, his bullies won. After reading something like this, I can't tell myself that it was merely his own choice to feel harrassed and bullied. And it's certainly not something that I would tell the kid's grieving parents. I think it's about time that society bullies back. Freedom of speech and opinion is all nice and well, but neither bullies nor the people who publicly target minority groups and incite this kind of hatred that causes others to harrass people to death or make their lives a living hell should get away with it scot-free. I mean, we might as well say that sexual harrassment of women in the workplace is no big deal, because it is the victims' choice to feel harrassed or to be hurt by sexist remarks. Certain things simply shouldn't be tolerated.

The prisoner's dilemma is not really a game (only insofar that all social interactions are games of strategy in which we can either gain or lose something). It is a model to understand cooperative versus selfish behavior, the reason that cooperation can be beneficial for individuals even though it seems that they have more to gain by being selfish, and ultimately the selective mechanisms behind the origin and evolution of cooperation. A practical example would be the social grooming behavior of various bird species. It has lots of health benefits for a bird to keep its plumage clean and free from parasites. But birds can't groom their own heads, which makes the head area a breeding ground for mites, ticks and skin diseases. They depend on the help of their conspecifics to deal with this problem, and invest time and energy into the seemingly selfless grooming of others in the hope that the favor will be returned. The problem is that due to phenotypic variation, not all birds employ the same strategy when playing the social grooming game. Some birds wait to get serviced and never return the favor (an "always defect" strategy). Combine those with the poor suckers who play "always cooperate", and you can sit back and watch the latter exhaust themselves cleaning others while being riddled with mites and skin conditions themselves. Which makes it quite hard to see how this altruistic social behavior could have evolved in the first place, because the selfish phenotypes would have a huge selective advantage and ruin it for everybody else. Ethologists and evolutionary biologists / psychologists had to find a strategy that makes altruistic behavior beneficial when paired with another altruistic player, but without being disadvantageous when paired with selfish types. That's where "games" like the prisoner's dilemma come in. In simulations that ran different strategies against one another in endless iterations, altruistic strategies did indeed come out as winners, but not the always altruistic strategies without an option for retaliation against uncooperative players. Those were extremely disadvantageous. Of course this particular case (I'm referring to the thread topic, not the above example) is not a life and death scenario. You have nothing to gain but the basic respect and courtesy of another person. Still, the same principles apply here. If you are consistently nice and respectful to somebody who does not extend the same courtesy to you, you are emotionally rewarding them with your behavior while they will only emotionally hurt you. In other words, when I treat another person with respect and courtesy, I expect the same in return. But if they consistently bash M2F transgender people and SL gender-benders, thereby inflicting negative and hurtful emotional states onto me, I stand nothing to gain anymore by being polite and respectful. I can either stop interacting with this person altogether or retaliate in order to show them that this behavior has consequences. Continuing to be friendly while suffering their insults would be irrational self-abuse. (Not to mention that it has negative consequences for all of society if abusive types get away with their behavior).

Deltango Vale wrote in part: ... Afterwards, in a bar across the street, we wondered what on Earth the first jury was thinking when the prosecution case was so weak. We could only conclude (since the prosecution had an opportunity to improve its case in the second trial) that the first jury was deadlocked over an opinion. Some of them thought the man was innocent; others thought he was guilty. For some reason, that first jury did not understand the concept of "innocent until proven guilty." That is why I never really understood the American jury system. As far as I know, the jurors don't need any legal training, or training in deductive reasoning for that matter. If I stood to trial, I'd be very afraid if people without a legal background got to decide over my guilt or innocence.

Celestiall Nightfire wrote: So, tit for tat..and so on? I strongly disagree. A verbal or metaphorical "eye for an eye" accomplishes nothing, except producing even more people that are not allowing other's to define themselves. One, does not affect change, by emulating the very behavior that one wishes to change. Tit for tat? That reminds me of biological game theory So why not try to assess the problem from this angle. You are correct that "tit for tat" is not an ideal strategy, although it used to be the undefeated champion in the iterated prisoner's dilemma competition for a while. Until "forgiving tit for tat" a.k.a. "tit for two tat" came along, that is. Forgiving TFT is probably the strategy that humans most commonly employ in their often dead-serious games of social interaction. Just like TFT players, FTFT players are nice and cooperative in their opening move, but they are also willing to forgive one single offense if the other person turns out to be a tat. The rationale behind the FTFT strategy is not so much setting a better example or giving the other a second chance, it's rather allowing room for error and doubt. The offense could always have been a misunderstanding, or the other person might just have had a bad day. As soon as the the other party repeats the same uncooperative behavior (or "defects" as it's called in b. game theory), they remove all doubt that they are not a particularly nice person and it is time to retaliate until the other starts cooperating again or stops playing altogether. Anything else has been mathematically proven to be an inferior strategy. "Always cooperate", a.k.a. the golden rule, only lasted for a few iterations before being b!tchslapped into oblivion by players using "always defect", i.e. liars, cheats and con artists who were uncooperative by default. Only TFT and FTFT players are equipped to deal with those types. (The golden rule has other flaws too. For example, you wouldn't want a masochist to do unto you as he wishes to be done by One should rather treat others the way they want to be treated instead of self-projecting onto others. And only until they kick you in the kneecap two times, then it's time to do unto them as they most definitely not want to be done by. But I digress). The blogger in question is such a person who plays "always defect", meaning that she's abrasive and offensive no matter what. If you're going to play social games with her, you'll have to retaliate at some point, otherwise you'll only get slapped in the face time and time again. But I think it's best to simply don't play with her at all, because she has also proven to have no learning capability in the social department. She even seems to enjoy making enemies, and if you get close to her, you will inevitably become one in her perception.

Deltango Vale wrote in part: ... like yin and yang, there must be a dot of the other in each. A hairy-chested alpha-male who is wise and graceful is a huge turn on. Equally, an attractive and elegant woman with brains and spirit is a delicious conquest. Let's see if I understand this right: The little black dot in the image below would be gracefulness in your example, and the little white dot would be brains? :matte-motes-big-grin: ETA: Personally, I prefer men more like this: I squeezed so much gracefulness and spirit into the upper half that there wasn't enough white space for chest hair and alpha male qualities anymore. No big loss imho, especially where the chest hair is concerned. Keep in mind that chest hair is kind of a package deal. It rarely ever comes without back hair, hairy shoulders, a hairy butt & crack, toe hair, and hide & seek pubic hair that grows down to mid-thigh level. I'd rather go for the type of male that is pretty much hairless below the neck At least if you don't want your daughters to have a moustache.

Drama skills might be useful in an acting career.

I really don't understand that Linden Lab continue to do business as usual and add new features all the time without ever fixing the most glaring problems and bugs that make this platform appear so utterly unprofessional, unfinished, and risky in terms of investment. I mean, people losing their inventory and asset servers randomly deleting assets (the dreaded "not found in database" message) are major bugs and critical showstoppers. This needed to be fixed back in 2004. I know that "fix bugs first, add new shinies later" is a tired old rant and I'm aware that the Lindens can simultaneously work on different tasks, but if severe bugs like this never get fixed, it might be about time to take a break from adding new code and make stability fixes the no.1 priority. Everything related to inventory and financial transactions needs to be 100% reliable.

Rita Munro wrote: 99% of them are free copies of the internet. Where do you get this number from? You can't just make such a claim without any proof.

Medhue Simoni wrote: As popular as Pheonix is, it has never been more than 30% of the SL population. Non loqueris falsum testimonium.

Ceera Murakami wrote: I'm using the Firestorm Mesh Beta or Viewer 3 from LL, but NOT because of Mesh! I'm using them to be able to make up to 64 Meter prims, which is FAR more important to me than Mesh, which many people still can't see properly. I can do that in Phoenix 1.5.2. I was really surprised when I accidentally stretched a cube beyond 10 meters It seems that this is server side, not client side.

Phil Deakins wrote: These days, we don't tend to think of technology as being things like fire, sticks, etc., regardless of older descriptions that remain in dictionaries. Who is this "we" that you're talking of? Technology has a clearly defined meaning, and that meaning does not change when old technology replaces new technology. Archaeologists, historians and anthropologists are not going to stop using this word in a historical context. You might as well try to redefine clothing as a word that only refers to modern day fashion.  The problem is not that people use the word differently nowadays, it is that they are not concise enough when expressing themselves. "Modern technology" is still a pretty vague term, but it already helps to narrow things down a bit. "Information technology" would be even more concise. In this case, I am sure that the OP meant technical things and not things like fire and clothes. "Technical thing" is equally vague. Was Gutenberg's printing press not something technical? So stop being picky. Sorry, no can do But I can agree to disagree and leave it at that.

But that is the common and current definition of the word technology. You won't find a different definition of this term in any dictionary or book. Have you never heard people speak of bronze age technology, medieval technology, or the technology of the pyramid builders? If the OP only meant information technology, electric technology or automobile technology, he should have said so. ETA: If you define technology as something more recent, when did it begin and what was the first piece of tech? The printing press? The first industrial loom? The steam engine, the first automobile, the electric light bulb, or the first computer chip? It's impossible to draw a line there, imho. If you make electricity a precondition, a handgun is no longer a piece of weapon technology.

Phil Deakins wrote: Let's not get picky, shall we? I'm just pointing out that the word technology is often misused nowadays. It's not just electric tools and machinery. Technology is everything that is somehow manufactured and doesn't naturally occur.