Shockwave Yareach

Actually no, I'm not backpedalling at all. And I didn't use your link to FB, though that certainly would have saved me a lot of time had I noticed it (note to self: observe) I pointedly made an effort to get your attention without revealing anything. I didn't use one name, age, address, phone number, nothing. All I did was show you how EASY the linkup between Second Life and other social forums makes it to FIND such information, whether YOU wish to be "outed" or not. The only way to keep your SL and your RL data seperate is... to keep them seperated. That means giving us all the option to not have these silly Like buttons and what not if we don't want FB to intrude on our Second lives. While I made a concious effort to point out what data you yourself reveal and how easy this Like button makes it to steal without actually exposing your private data, that's because I really am one of the nice guys. You know exactly what I found, so don't go crying that I exposed you when it is you and the like button that exposed you. I just followed the datatrail, and not very hard might I add. I'm not trying to expose you are damage your RL or SL in any way, shape or form -- why should I care to? But the griefers in SL and the stalkers and the blackmailers? Well, they aren't as courteous as I am... I maintain that while I skirted the intent of the TOS, I did not violate its letter. It's hair splitting yes, but somebody had to demonstrate to one and all just what the dangers of this are. That being said, I bear you no ill will and my involvement with you is now done with. My apologies for your wounded pride and I hope we can part ways pleasantly.

Ah, but I never once used a name, or address, or name of kids... not even a zip code. I did not even include the interesting picks in his SL profile, which anyone outside SL looking at him for a job opening will have zero difficulty getting to. I never even said that he was X Y or Z... just that if he wanted to tell the world that he was, then that was his business. I could have said anything in that sentence and it would have been equally TOS acceptable as the sentence merely suggests a POSSIBLE action that he MAY wish to undertake. I have followed the rules. To the width of a hair, certainly. But I didn't not identify him, anyone to do with him, or even any details about his SL or RL selves.

Again, Maddog, the issue is choice. If you wish to reveal to the world that you are a "self employed" gerbil farmer who is asexual and has 33 kids, that's YOUR choice. And more power to you. Me, I don't want people to be able to find leads to my Barko page and my Hulahoop page, simply because someone out-of-the-blue pressed a button on the SL website. That choice SHOULD be mine. If you want the like button, keep it. Others don't want the button -- where do you or anyone else get off telling them that they have to have said link up whether they wish it or not? It harms you not at all to let people have the ability to reject anything to do with Facebook. You can have your preference -- don't deny us ours. (Data deliberately modded to make innaccurate as an individual courtesy, though the TOS isn't relevant to what he himself posted outside of LL properties. )

Only two problems. One, I never said you were such things - had you not confirmed it to everyone, it would have been just whistling in the wind. Two, the data you yourself put out on the other websites are easily located OUTSIDE of SL and thus the TOS is a) not applicable and b) pointless because even if I posted URLs (which I didn't, might I point out) it's not to anything SL controls. Do you begin to see the hazard of your little Like button yet? Wonder who facebook will sell your market data to? I did you the courtesy of not posting how I chased the data down, nor the actual URLs. But that's as far as I intend to go. But I will, for mere civility, munge some stuff... now that I finally have your attention to the hazards that that silly button represents. And if anyone off the street can do that, what can HR folks and private investigators be able to dig up on you?

Well, consider me impressed, then. A CEO who actually learns what his product is used for and chats with customers? A noob in SL who learns how to do everything the same way the rest of us do? Soy Impressar. My only regret is that you have not gotten to experience SL when it was still lively and fun, and "your world your Imagination" was still the guiding principle behind everything. SL can be many things to many people simultaneously. That was the biggest problem of your predecessor; an inability to grasp that the grid isn't just one thing, but many different things all at once. It has recreational applications, and yes, it has one BIG business application that ironically it's almost ready for but no-one bothered to pursue. But whether it's play or work, the biggest thing LL needs to fix is TRUST. People don't spend money and businesses don't sign contracts with companies that unilaterally change contracts and take people's property (see: own your own virtual land) whenever the mood strikes. I wish you the best of luck. SL has fallen on some hard times due to some terrible direction the past few years. I hope that you are the competent leader who will get this company on the right course once again and return us to the virtual world we loved so much.

How about this -- stop telling your elders what they should or shouldn't do. What I do and why I do them is not any concern of yours. I'm not telling you that you shouldn't link your sl account with your FB account. I don't give a hoot. But stop trying to ram your "you have no privacy" mantra down my throat. My security protocols are my own and I don't give a dang if you agree with them or not. I don't want MY profile in SL combined with FB and that's that. I never agreed to that and I don't pay LL money for that. My joining a BDSM group in SL because I've been hired to build something is not license for Facebook to sell my name to Yeehaws Gigantic Adult Novelty Shop (in Burbank Ca.), and getting unsolicited adverts in the mail that the wife demands explanations for (and rightly so.)

I joined SL because I liked building with the glowing bricks. At no time did I say to SL "Hey, sign me up for every other service you can get money from. And give away my picks and my group data to anyone who wants it while you are at it!" I join groups so I can access their territories to work or to play. I do not join them so every bored HR person in Lockheed can go digging through them, call me on my desk phone and insist that I come up to their offices and explain my membership in the "Prim Liberation Army". With an armed security escort...

@Cisop As per the TOS of Facebook, all accounts have to be for real people. Fictional characters or role playing characters are strictly forbidden in Facebook, as many account deletions at the end of last year have shown. You are suggesting something that Facebook pointedly spells out as Verbotten with a double order of Nyet on the side.

As an experiment, I liked my own profile to see what would happen. What happened is that FaceBook now knows of someone called Shockwave.Yareach on SL. And doing a search for that name in FB turns up my profile picture. But clicking on it takes you out of Facebook and back to the Second Life webpage, where you must have an account to see things. Not that it's difficult to create a one-day account and see things. But it appears searchs for a couple of groups I'm in or my "Squid on a stick" don't turn up anything in Facebook. So it appears that Liking another person in Facebook doesn't send anything but your SL name and profile pictures. ADDENDUM: it took some time to percolate through, but the LIKE appeared on my users' FB -- apparently a cookie from Facebook connects your Liking to an account. I'm not sure if logging out of FB is enough to avoid that. @Randi -- if you want to tell the world that you aren't home so burgalers can rob you, or let your stuck up religious whacko boss know you play a Lesbian dominatrix in SL, that's your business. Go right on ahead and learn your lessons the hard way. Those of us who have already learned the dangers and wish to keep our private lives to ourselves want to be able to disable the connections between SL (who we are paying to use) and FB (who we aren't paying and don't want any relationships with). I won't say that people who want to be part of the Fakebook crowd shouldn't. But I detest the notion that we all have to, or else. I don't force you into Furaffinity.com and you don't force me into Facebook.com. Then we will all get along just peachy. M'kay?

I would really like to stay positive on this. But really, sticking the LIKE buttons on MY profile without even giving me a way to Opt Out? Or better yet, making it Opt In? I will be very blunt here. If I wanted to be in Facebook, I'd be in Facebook. Capish? I come to SL to escape RL and all its petty problems for just a little while. Your taking my profile and all the likes, groups I'm a member of and other details, and handing it over to Facebook makes me very leery of your company. It is nobody's business BUT MINE what groups I'm a member of and why. And it sure as hades isn't something I want Facebook or the hiring/firing squads which frequent Facebook to be able to dig through. Politely, I ask this. Please, please give us a way to not share our groups or have the silly Like and Tweet buttons on the webpage. Give us a few buttons to engage so our group data isn't visible and we cannot be pulled unwillingly into Facebook's never-forgets databases. I came to SL to be in SL. I didn't come to SL to join Fakebook and I don't want to have anything to do with them. I didn't say anything when the profiles came to the webpages because one had to be a member of SL to see them. But a single person pressing LIKE gives Facebook every group I belong to, and I don't want that. I didn't agree to give Facebook my group data. I don't agree to give Facebook my group data. I respectfully ask that you give me an optout button to eliminate the "Like and send intelligence to the collective" button. Thank you.

Snowglobe has been replaced with Snowstorm. http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Project_Snowstorm

the problem with Blue Mars was that you had to download a DVD sized dataset before you could do anything. They should have sold a DVD to Blue Mars alongside WoW in stores, and the basic data for the basic cities was right there on your hard drive. Changes to the cities, like shop ownership and links out to other cities, would be a small dataset that would supercede the one on the DVD. But 95% of the data would never change and you'd be in Blue Mars instantly rather than waiting hours for a download (if you are lucky). Individual cities should have been accessible from main cities via travel tube. You then ride the tube while the data for the private city loads. It would again be much less than the huge datasets required. The tube ride would also be part of the flavor of the experience then rather than boring teleports. Blue Mars was almost empty because even people like me with fat pipes couldn't get in. I even had a Developer bit -- fat lot of good that did me. Tried it several times and sadly concluded that as bad as LL was making SL, at least SL could still be accessed and used.

I don't have an issue with SL being Optionally linked with facebook or whatever. So long as I can choose to have nothing to do with FB or it's ilk, I'm fine. The reason a good number of us don't want anything to do with a hookup between Facebook and SL is that this is called SECOND life. It's not called FIRST life with lousy graphics. I don't want to give Facebook any data on my life whatsoever, be it what I enjoy or what movies I go to. And I certainly don't want them selling my marketing data to Thoroughbred Adult Novelties Corp (of burbank Ca.) because I happen to have a BDSM outfit in my groups (because I was hired to build something on their sim). If I want Facebook to have my comings and goings in RL or SL, I'll give it to them. If not, that doesn't mean I'm a philandering child pervert who has something to hide from the world. It means that I didn't come to SL to be on Facebook -- I came to SL to get away from RL garbage like Facebook. If I wanted to be in Facebook, guess where I would be?

I detested 2.0 with passions normally reserved for crooked insurance companies. I like 2.4 and it is my viewer of choice. This doesn't mean it's perfect; but neither was 1.23. Do not think that the current viewer is no different than the ****-on-a-shingle V2.0. It is a lot better and has been very reliable on my new computer. Saying all V2 viewers are garbage because the first one was is no different than saying all Fords are garbage because the Model T couldn't drive up a hill forwards -- you had to back up over it (gravity feed tank). For me, a perfect Viewer would have all the under the hood fixes in 2, but the UI of 1.23. I keep hoping Phoenix will do that, and someday they might. I'll move to that TPV as soon as they do so.

Fantastic news. I'm glad to see some improvements in the grid. We've been struggling with these problems for a long time. And those of you complaining that new improvements aren't being reflected in 1.23 viewers -- deal with it and move to a 2.4 or newer viewer if you want the new tech. 1.23 is obsolete and slowly disappearing, just like the Pontiac Fiero. And while you may insist upon driving the Fiero, as time moves on you'll have more and more trouble with it. At some point you have no choice but to retire the old vehicle and get a new one if you want the improvements of a new vehicle. If you insist on using old stuff then you resign yourself to that level of tech and no better. And that's nobody's fault but yours. Just take a day and get used to the new 2.4. It's not the piece of bovine excrement that 2.0 was, and if you have 22" or bigger monitors the sidebar isn't even an issue.

@Herbert I stay because it USED to be a virtual world and a way of life. You used to be able to come to your little place and do whatever you pleased. But more and more as time went on, rules and restrictions forbade this and that, turning the fun wild west into a dull powerpoint presentation. Now we have no money, just limited function tokens. Now we have no ownership, just revokable limited licenses. In short, what was a vibrant and exciting new digital world has been hammered and deformed by LL into what they have always insisted it wasn't -- a game. If LL treats this place like a game with its play money and fake papers, nobody can say a word when the rest of us treat it like a game as well. I stay because I have a lot of friends inworld and I love to play with the glowing Legos. But more and more of my friends are leaving SL because the one thing Linden Labs cannot stand to see is a happy customer. And all communities can only take so much stress before they break apart. If the new CEO does not quickly repair the ignorant decisions made by his predecessors, I fear the whole argument about game or not game will be fought out in the technology history pages. It will be all that is left of the once beautiful and exciting new world (before LL paved it over).

HOW TO SAVE SL 1, eliminate the weasel legal wording in the TOS and make it very very clear: What you own is yours. You buy the land, you own that land. You buy a sofa, you own that sofa. Simply add in that in the event of banning, that the person may elect to continue paying for said land, sell it to another, or abandon it. Also add that LL tries to prevent inventory loss but does not guarantee it does not occur. The raw, harsh fact is... nobody is going to "invest" in SL if they don't get to own the property in SL. Period. 2, setup SL with Three continents. These continents are entirely PG, entirely M, and entire A. This eliminates the legal minefield LL created for us all when it invited children to come in and be able to cam across sim borders and witness perfectly legal M behavior on M parcels. If the M areas aren't fit for the underaged to walk on then they aren't fit for them to see into either. Only having seperate continents will address this. 3, Give us the ability to BLOCK IMs from teens. 4, Begin a policy of requiring a monthly payment of 2$ from everyone. It can be via paypal or by credit card. No other VW or game on the internet is free for everybody -- why should SL be? Make a basic account 2$ a month and premium remains at 7$ a month. For the additional cost, the premiums get to make 2 free phone calls to a LindenLite member who IMMEDIATELY fixes what the person needs fixed. Too many people have quit because nobody could be bothered to spend 60 seconds at a keyboard and resolve an issue; people who (were) paying thousands and thousands of dollars a month in tier. This poor customer service should be more intolerable to you than it is to us. And spending 1000$ a month and not being able to get a sim restarted is quite intolerable, I tell you. 5, After everyone has to pay to enter SL, make is so everyone can own land. Today, you have it so that people have to pay 7$ a month before they can begin to buy land. Name one other business in the world where you are charged a fee before you can purchase more? You need more land sales -- requiring Premium accounts along with denying ownership is preventing that. 6, once people have credit card numbers or paypal numbers in your files, stop the revolving doors into SL. Greifers, disposable one day accounts and troublemakers only get to create mischief because nobody knows it is them coming back in after a ban. Noting that the credit card number has been used for the 5th time today and all for banned accounts should make you prevent that troublemaker from logging in with that card number anymore. 7, I cannot say this with enough emphasis. GET SOME SMART PEOPLE TO FIX THE GRID! 40 person limits on islands? teleports borked? Inability to do something like a Group Message, something IRC could do back in 1990?! Simcrossing destroying vehicles? Lag? Things are not appreciably better than 2005, a fact I would be utterly ashamed of if I were programming there. 8, make a V3 viewer that lets the user select between the V2 UI and the V1 UI. The Viewer2, while improved, is still illogical and has not improved retention. 9, Improve retention by returning "Your World, Your Imagination" to the core principle direction of the company. LL has been rudderless for years, blindly crashing from one stupid idea to the next. You won't get new customers by throwing the old customers under a bus, because the new customers will know that at some point in the future, they themselves will be treated the same way. 10, Add a simple slogan to company policy -- "Let the customer enjoy his purchase." Too many times and for too many silly reasons have LL's execs changed the entire SL world, just because. Ban on gambling (could have easily been made so gambling was with a different currency that could be used for tier; perfectly legal). Bait and switch pricing. Forcing people off their land and into Zindra because LL wanted to clean up its image. Seems LL cannot stand to see a customer smiling and pleased to be here. That has to stop. 11, and finally, actively address copying within the confines of SL. If someone proves that person X is copybotting their merchandise, then person X is given his ONE warning not to do it again, or face payment permabanning. And engage builders around the grid to help you with "honeypot" designs - display units which have a special texture that triggers an alarm that the item is pirated when that texture gets imported into SL again. It has been done before and it can be done again. No, you will never completely eliminate copybotting in SL. We cannot eliminate murder in RL either -- that doesn't mean we let the murderers do whatever they want however.

@Galileo: I used to have a premium account. I believed, like you, that I should have a stake in the company. For that dedication, LL took away gambling (instead of fixing it to make it legal), bait and switched me out of my island, and forced people out of their land and onto Zindra. All while the grid barely worked, crashed 3 times a day, and lost countless millions of dollars in people's inventories. So I quit my premium membership. I will not pay money for junk, and after 5 years, I expect far better performance than LL has provided. Even so, I'm still paying 100$ a month for land, purchases, and my own server for music and video streaming. So if you think I'm not invested and not spending money here just because I'm not a premium member anymore, you are VERY much incorrect. My thinking is that membership needs to be made two-tier and that everyone has to have a credit card or paypal on file to be here. No other game (or VW) is free -- why should SL be? Have it so everyone pays something, and everyone can buy land instead of just the premiums. Why any company would make it cost extra to spend more money is beyond me. Have Basic cost 2$ a month and you can buy land. Have premium cost 5$ a month and let that have additional phone support. Most of the problems are solved and everyone can then buy land. I quit my premium account because I got nothing for my money. That problem still stands. And while I agree some fee needs to be charged at the door, you need to actually give people something for their money, or they won't pay. Me, I'd pay the premium 5$ bit IF I could make my prims 100m instead of being limited to 10. That's an additional feature I'd pay additional money for in an instant. But today, I get the same garbage system and the same care-not support and the same abyssmal experience whether I spend money or not. So I don't spend money. Make it so I have to to enter, and I'll pay something, yes. But if you think everybody is going to hand over 7$ a month for sim crossing glitches, lost inventory and inability to do something as simple as message a group of people, you are fooling yourself. I expect something for my money, and LL has consistently failed to deliver on its promises.

SL WAS a virtual world. We used money and we owned our property, both IP and virtual land. But then LL said we didn't have money, we had tokens. And we didn't own our virtual land anymore either. This was the stupidest move I have seen LL make -- who in their right mind is going to spend a few K$ for virtual land that they don't even own and can have taken away by LL for no reason whatsoever? Invest? Here? I'd get more for my money going to Vegas. SL is now a game. And before you get huffy about it, note that it's LL which turned it into a game. If LL cannot take it seriously, then they cannot expect the rest of us to take it seriously, either. It used to be a virtual world -- that has now been ruined by the lab itself. And even if the lab reverts back to us having "money" and "ownership" again, the potential for the lab to change its mind in the future will always be in the back of every customer's mind. Smart move LL; killing the goose which laid your golden eggs.

Welcome Rod, to our little virtual world. With the wreckage LL has made of SL the past 2 years, with the bait and switch tactics, loss of confidence in the platform and people deciding that "investing" here is pointless without ownership, you truly have your work cut out for you. I wish you the best of luck once you have gotten your feet wet. I truly do.

Are we going to be required to move to 2.4 if we are on the 2x viewers? I had such problems with the 2.4beta that I swore it off and went back to 2.3 viewer. I don't see anything in here about the crashing problems or the sound getting messed up which are problems that vexed me with the beta. Is the 2.4 upgrade mandatory or optional?

995$! Count me out. Never heard of that one, and at that price point I can see why not.

I'm not lobbying for mesh nor against it. Simply pointing out that the offworld creation requirements are hardly new and aren't even remotely cost prohibitive. If you do not wish to create with meshes, then nobody is forcing you to. If I want to make something in Sketchup for free and put it on my land, that's my business. If I become a big name in SL (like I'd care...) and was making money hand over fist with my creations, then spending part of that money on better tools would be a good investment to simplify my workload and improve my products. (I often face that in RL in business -- upgrading to Altium or buying an automated pick and place machine.) But nothing requires that -- I can start with free software and end with free software. Or I can spend money and expand my capabilities and speed. Nothing forces you to go to mesh. You don't wanna do it? Then don't do it. But don't think you're going to have much luck telling everyone else that they cannot work with meshes though.

The standard prim tools are still there and are unlikely to be deleted - you need them even if you make a mesh so you can rotate and scale the mesh. The fears that all existing prims and tools will vanish is unfounded and provably false since the same tools have to remain to work inworld with sculpts and meshes too. You cannot make your textures inworld. That's never bothered you. You cannot make the sounds inworld. That's never bothered you. You cannot make animations inworld. That's never bothered you. So why do the sculpts and meshes being created with external tools just like textures and sounds and animations are created vex you so much? Is it the costs? There are a number of FREE mesh creation and sculpt creation programs like Blender, SculptyPaint and Google Sketchup. You don't have to spend a penny to work with them unless you want to. Just like I can make textures for free (GIMP, MSPAINT) and audio files for free (AUDACITY). I cannot speak for free animations as I'm not an animator and not involved with that aspect of creation in SL. Maya is a bit of code I would not expect any but the most hard-core builder in SL to be able to afford. But creation of sculpts and meshes are hardly limited to those who have Maya - anyone who does 5 minutes of research can be running google's Sketchup and creating Collada files for SL's mesh import without spending so much as a dime. And unlike most LL software, Google's software actually works.

MUCH BROKEN UNDER THE HOOD I ran the 2.3 Beta because I want to help the lab get the bugs out. However, the 2.4 Beta seems to have broken many things that were previously fine. * Sound gets garbled and scrambled up after a couple of parcel crossings. Not just the Music as I previously reported, but ALL sounds from SL. * Rezzing textures downloads completely, but only shows a low resolution fuzzy image until the viewer is restarted. * Movement is very laggy at times, and others in the same room report their lag is fine. * Stability is poor. Where I could run 2.3 for half a day just fine, random crashes are now the norm with this beta. * After a crash once, the beta didn't simply start, but reinstalled itself a second time - something I still cannot explain. Tonight I plan to clear the cache and return to 2.3. I do not know what changed under the hood, but it's quite glitchy now. Hopefully this will somehow reach a dev ear and the faults explored. CPU - Q9650 OS - XPpro32 Sp3 ram- 4G drive - dual 250G in Raid1 Gpu - GTX260 driving dual 24" monitors AntiVirus- Zonealarm (Kapersky)