Shockwave Yareach

I second Caitlin's advice. Start smaller. If you were starting off as a painter, you wouldn't just jump up and do the Sistine Chapel. If you were a writer, you wouldn't start off with the great american novel. The same is true in building and scripting in second life -- learn to walk before you run. First make a boring square home with four walls, and four prims for the roof. Learn how to texture each side individually. Learn how to make a triangle out of a square using the Cutout in Edit/Object. Learn how to make a window hole in a wall using Hollow. Spend a week getting some basics down. Then and only then will you be ready to attack bigger projects with the skills necessary to attempt them.

And folks wonder why I'm such a curmudgeon about joining groups or accepting anything from stores. One ad a week from you? That's okay with me. A daily ad? Getting a bit too much there. Multiplied by the hundred or so businesses and all the clubs telling me hourly how much fun I'm missing while I'm offline? Caps my messages in under an hour, that does. If your business has a promise of no more than weekly messages, I'll probably accept. That hasn't been the case though, so I nowdays just want to do my business and then run away. Just because I'm shopping at your store doesn't mean I want to be your BBF and have long steamy showers with you.

If you have 7 listens running, you are adding a good bit of load to the sim. Better is to create a datagram structure that all your items follow and has all the data within it. And all your items talk on a single comm channel as much as possible. For example, suppose I have 12 welcome mats with Volume detect on them and I want to signal the hud to switch to a different mode when you walk into a certain place. I would then have all the welcome mats talk on the same channel and preface the user's UUID as the first part of the string that's broadcast. Then I send the objects name and what has happened with that object. "XXX-XXX-XXX;MAT1;TRIGGER" When the HUD sees a message, it checks that the UUID is for its owner. If so, it looks at the next string in the delimited set and acts appropriately. And the next bit of string, and so on and on. You get the UUID of the avatar when the collision start or touch events occur, so this is simple to implement. And since every welcome mat and hud is the same with the exception of its name, building elaborate and massive builds is also simple to implement. Doing this means your item only has to listen to a single channel, a considerable saving for the sim.

mm, not quite. Singularity is the point in the future where something -- could be many things from tech to alien invasion -- it becomes impossible to even play the What If game that keeps all fiction writers fed. I personally don't agree with the premise though. While it may be impossible to accurately calculate what would happen, nothing stops anyone from imaginng the most far out scenarios past singularity. Worrying about Singularity is a concern only for people who see themselves as walking in the shoes of Wells. People writing for entertainment breeze right past it with their imaginations like it's not there, just as they have to do with the speed of light, distances between suns, ability to communicate with alien species the first minute you discover them, etc. A favorite topic of Singularity proponents is Grey Goo. Create a machine that can replicate itself as often as it wants and consumes all matter around it, and watch it devour the planet. Overlooking the problems in such a scenario and playing along, what you CAN see past the singularity of an entire world made of grey goo is that the machines will start devouring each other for as long as they have power to do so. Eventually that power will be exhausted and you'll have a mass of cold grey machines the size of a planet. At which point aliens looking for minerals will find a planet's worth in easy to retrieve form. Tada, I just looked past the singularity...

Reality Influenced Characters -- avatars of people who work very hard to make them look exactly like they do in RL.

Whoa, these fly by night outfits are buying L with stolen credit cards? Ah, now it makes sense. I've been trying to figure out how any business can stay afloat when they sell L for less than it costs them to get them in the first place. That they were using stolen cards never occurred to me. Thanks!!

No, I do not have a premium membership anymore. I used to have one. And for all the money I spent SL ran worse and worse and went from "your world your imagination" to "stand on the dotted line 6655321!" And LL cost me my home and my sim with their criminal bait and switch tactics, which they still employ today (re: Ownership). Not to mention that phone support for the premiums is now nonexistant. I won't pay premium to be treated like #2. When LL wakes up and a) fixes the grid, b) gives us back OWNERSHIP that they sold to us, c) remembers that all they have to sell is a fantasyland and let us enjoy our fantasylands, then and only then will I consider getting a premium account once more. But the past 3 years have seen SL turn from a fun place to a powerpoint presentation. I'm not interested in paying for a powerpoint presentations as they are not entertaining. I continue to rent on an island, but that's as much money as they'll get from me after shafting me repeatedly like they've done. If LL thinks newbies coming in are going to save them, they are in for a rude awakening.

*waves* Course, 2.5 is MUCH better than 2.0 was.

I can halfway understand the difference. Suppose I put in 1/2 a year developing a sim. It's cost me a fortune. Then someone comes along and makes a short film in the sim while I'm logged out. Suddenly THAT person is famous and people are congratulating HIM for the wonderful set he created. Then people visiting MY sim start calling me names and telling me that I'm just copying that guy who did the woooonderful mechanima film... It's a matter of a) permission and b) proper credit where credit is due. You see a guy on the street and take a picture. It's no different than if I photograph people out in public in the city -- don't have to have anyone's permission. But going into a private building and shooting a movie in it? That I would have to have permission for. And I think the TOS is simply trying to follow that model. A better solution is to say that if you are standing in a public area, own the area, or have permission of the owner, you can photograph and videograph under all conditions. But if you are on someone elses property (there's that word again -- maybe LL should review what it means) then you need the permission of the owner for any still or moving pictures that are going to be publically shown. This way a guy running fraps on his computer and capturing an awesome vista for his own enjoyment isn't a problem, just as a guy snapping photos isn't a problem. But if the filmmaker is going to show it to anyone else, then permission is required to film on that land. And that what is visible from public roads is filmable under all conditions.

Melissa Yeuxdoux wrote: How representative is that sample? People tend to be a lot more motivated to kvetch than to compliment, so looking at comments in blogs and forums is liable to not be representative. Ditto for surveys with self-selected respondents. (Hey, there's a poll on that !#%!@ 2.0 SL client! I'll take it, and I'll tell ALL my friends to take it, too!) In storytelling and writing, we have what we call the "Rule of Ten". If anyone anywhere doesn't like what you did, boy howdy, will they let you know. You'll get barraged with nastygrams and vicious emails. People who are angry act on that anger. But a reader who is pleased with what you do and enjoyed it? Only 1 out of 10 will bother to tell you so. Thus we have the rule -- treat every compliment like it was 10 people complimenting you instead of one. Because happy people are quiet whereas angry people are noisy.

For mesh to be widely adopted, the V2.5 codebase must also be widely adopted. You cannot just say "Here's a Yougus!" to every viewer on the planet and expect them to draw it when they have no idea how to handle a Yougus object. To have mesh, you have to have viewers out there that can display mesh. And with the round rejection of LL's Viewer (although it's far better now than the original 2.0) and customer's utter refusal to move off the 1.23 codebase, the mesh integration project has been stalled. What I would do in this case is create a 2.6 viewer that goes back to the 1.23 UI for certain things. The Communicate window was fine - my screen covered in 12 seperate windows in an average night is not fine. Being able to click on a profile and drag something onto it to give them something was fine. Web profiles which I cannot drop items on is not fine. Keep the improvements under the hood but give back some of the UI we loved in 1.23 and which made SL usable. Make the 2.6 viewer and slap the code out there for all the TPV folks to work with. And then say that between 3 and 6 months from now, only V2 viewers will be able to work in SL. Give the TPV folks a chance to create V2.6 viewers and make it clear that the days of 1.23 are numbered. Then you will get more viewer 2 acceptance than you have now and will be able to have mesh. People are creatures of habit and won't move off of 1.23 until a) the UI returns to at least similar functionality to 1.23 that they use now, and b) it is made clear that they won't be able to login with the 1.23 in a few months. I absolutely detested viewer 2 when it first came out. Now, however, I like most of it. not everything, but most of it -- I get great FPS and crashing is nonexistant. Roll back the IM's to a single Communicate window again and permit folks to resize how big the sidebar is, and you'll be able to tell the stalward refuseniks to "Try it -- you'll like it." Viewer 2.5 is to 2.0 what a modern Ford Focus is to a Model T. 2.0 was junk -- 2.5 rocks. But until the TPV is putting stuff out on the 2.5 codebase and a deadline for modernization isn't made public, most people won't bother to try it because the vile taste of 2.0 still lingers in their mouths. My personal perfect viewer would have only the inventory as a sidebar item. All IMs, landmarks, Friends lists, they would all be in a SECOND daughter window. That way people with big computers can have the two on two monitors, thus not cluttering up the world picture. And folks with laptops would have the two one on top of the other and just toggle back and forth as needed (tabs would light up on the second window to show a message; having the world window just a little lower than the communication window would let me see the tabs at all times.) But this is my personal view based on how I use SL both on my main computer and on my laptop.

Wow. That was certainly fast -- thank you Amanda. There are bolts of sunshine breaking through the dark clouds, at long last. Oh, stabby rays of light, how I have missed thee...

I'm afraid that without the General Discussions area, your new communication system doesn't permit me to communicate with my fellow netizens very well. Instead the only real use I will have for it is once every 3 months popping my muzzle in to see what the next disruptive change coming down the pipe happens to be. Without the GD area, customers aren't really going to be keen on visiting the forums and perhaps answering a newbie's question in the Help areas for you. Why should we bother to come -- no chit chat allowed. While this move to eliminate general talk and banter permits LL's messages to better stand out, you can't really call it an improvement in communications. You CAN call it an improvement in Broadcasting if you like... Once again, LL shows that it doesn't grasp even the simplest concept about why their customers are on SL in the first place. We aren't here to make your lives easier or to make LL richer. We are here to enjoy ourselves, and we pay money for the privilege. And action after action by LL shows that they don't care if we are enjoying ourselves or not. This is as fatal a condition as a restaurant owner not caring if the food tastes good or not.

http://www.furryfiesta.org/ We are building it quickly -- already over 1100 attendees and it was only the third year. Guess people are having fun.

My Viewer 2.5 walks into a bar. Over and over and over again. ... how do I turn on the banlines again so I don't walk into it anymore?

Make a robotic pet that goes mad and attacks a crowd at a dance. You will get to meet lots of new and interesting people with interesting weapons and interesting ideas on how to sell your avatar's parts when they are done with you. More seriously, dances are one way. For builders, do a search for the Show and Tell held every Sunday. Find a group that's into the same things you are and start from there. Then you'll have a common interest to begin from.

I absolutely have zero use for any communication medium where I'm limited to 140 cha

Helped run a furry con in Dallas.

There are many ways for dataminers to add 2+2 and figure out what you are doing on your free time. And HR departments are routinely looking at websites like Facebook or hiring dataminers to go digging through people's activities, either for hiring or for firing information. Any teacher who is in SL and has picks for "Debbie's Bondage House" and "Lenny's whip and chain emporium" is certain to called up to the admin building and brought up on Moral Turpitude charges, leading to their dismissal. A cop playing as a thug in SL and having picks for "Mary Jane 4ever" is in grave jeopardy when his HR gets hold of that data. And any serviceman/woman in SL and part of some "Liberation Army" is going to get a less than careful reaming by the IG -- I know this for a fact because the NAVY IG once had a cow over the Society for Creative Anachronism, not understanding the difference between Anachronism and Anarchy. And you don't wanna know what people with security clearances put up with already even without investigators finding out you are "into" crossdressing in SL. And while yes, any investigator can enter SL and look at picks, they won't know which account to look at... unless other datamining groups like Facebook reveal to all the world that Barbara Cullens is also Dripping Galactickitty. At that point this SL experience has the potential to exact a very high price on poor Barbara's Real world.

As we have 3 continents already, the PG areas would have to move to the PG continent and the M areas on that one would have to move to the M continent. Yes, it's a royal mess. That's why so many of us wanted to get it done and over with at the same time as LL was already doing it for the Zindra disaster. We could have pretended it was like WoW's Cataclysm and made something good and long lasting out of a one-time hassle. But no, LL knows best. So now to make things safe and functional we have to go through that entire mess yet again (because those who knew best didn't have the foresight of a mole).

@clever In your case you could Edit the notecard and see who the owner is. Double clicking that should bring up that person's profile and IM button.

something more? My suspicion is that Group messaging and Private Messaging are going to be moved to the web. Making a web-based group chat is child's play -- hundreds of them are out in the field today. Rather than continue to beat on making one work inworld (and listen to everyone complain about all the open windows blocking the view) they will sometime in the spring move the Messaging system over to a browser based system. The pluses for this is that small screens and laptops get the multiple window solution I've long been calling for. And having a friends list and profiles on the webpage makes it easy to implement and use. The negatives are: How do you handle having multiple chat windows open at once, and how do you IM someone you search for inworld? Not to mention how do I know I have an IM waiting -- will the tab light up or something? I sense a big change in communications is on the horizon. If they use tabs and make the tabs change color when there's something to read, it'll be much like 1.23's Communicate window. But doing something like this AND maintaining compatibility with non2.6 current viewers? That will be a feat indeed.

Thank you Argus for telling us where the web changable profile setting is. And thank you Q for giving us the ability to better control what data of ours goes out to the great unerasable memory system in the clouds. I appreciate being able to block non-SL folks from peering in. Now if you can add checkboxes and an option to integrate with Facebook and Twitter or not, I'll be overcome with joy. Seriously, I might even bake you guys cookies...

Assuming you are correct and they are changing business models, the following question has to be asked. LL was certain of X$ keeping things the way they were a couple of years ago. If the business model is going to change, what guarantee of >X$ does the lab have? If you have a bird in the hand, you don't drop it and grab for the two in the bush. Much like LL was so certain that businesses would flock to SL if they hid all us paying creeps, and that families would flock to SL if they hid all us paying creeps, what makes LL so sure they've found a way to make more money instead of driving out well-heeled and paying customers? They certainly haven't had a good batting average thus far -- we've sunk from 80,000+ concurrency to the low 50s, on a good day. And that's with refugees from There and Blue Mars added into the mix, too. Again LL, you don't have to get rid of current customers to have more customers in a different field. SL is not a cable channel -- it is a cable SYSTEM. If you had a seperate PG, M, and A continent (like we asked for) then you could offer SL to anybody under the sun for any reason under the sun. I still don't see what's so difficult about doing this and making every customer and potential customer happy. Burger King has made trillions of dollars with the slogan "Have it your way". Something to think about, yes?

Personally Yoz, as a programmer, if it's a bug, it's a bug. Whether I get 100 friends to vote on it or not, it is still a bug. Consider the Monthly Bug approach where One Major Bug is picked off the top of the stack and that bug MUST be fixed by the end of the month. Attach a bonus to its repair like the Execs buying everyone a nice lunch. Attach a penalty for failing to fix it like buy the execs a nice lunch. There are more than enough problems you can attack. I've worked in a place where we used the "Folder Vote" model, which is that every request for an improvement went into the appropriate folder. Once more than 10 people wanted the same improvement, it got added. But very quickly the method collapsed because we quickly ran out of space for folder cabinets, and every folder was stuffed full. And my crew couldn't figure out what to do first. This was made worse by the dozen execs each giving contrary orders about what to do first. The Monthly approach cut through the mess (as did a lock on the hall to the programmer area - no execs allowed) and we started getting actual work done again. Within 3 months we'd fixed so much that the execs awarded themselves accomodations for their superior leadership... but that's another story.