Porky Gorky

If people stopped moaning and complaining on the forums there won't be anything left to read. There internet is good for 3 things. 1) downloading stuff you havn't paid for. 2) looking at furry front bottoms. 3) moaning. enuff said. :matte-motes-wink:

Alicia Sautereau wrote: 8 years... now i`m starting to feel young again SL went into open Beta in April 2003 so there maybe a few Av's still around that will be 9 this year! Maybe a few that already are 9 if they were involved in closed beta. I have a couple of old grid maps on my HD, I'll paste them in below. AGNI Grid 2002 AGNI Grid 2003 The grid has definitely grown a tad more since then.

LillyBeth Filth wrote: My account (This one) was created in April 2004, so 7 years old this April. Hi LillyBeth, you will be 8 years old this April :matte-motes-big-grin: I remember buying my first ever set of textures from you, must have been the end of 2004, maybe start of 05. It has been interesting watching your business develop over the years and I i'm really happy to see that you have turned it into a career, especially now you have moved into working in the games industry. Kudos to you. The OP neglected to mention Dwell. We used to get paid L$ when people visited our land. The trick was to keep people on your land to take up as larger % of their inworld session as possible so they would generate more dwell for the land owner. Happy days!

This has kind of been done before, in 2006/7 there was the SLBB Second Life Business Bureau, although LL forced them to change their name, I think they chose the Virtual Business Bureau or something similar in the end.. I was a member, I think it cost L$1000 one off payment to join. I hoped it would offer some level of credibility to my business as a lot of merchants signed up and the group seemed to get some results. Their purpose was to try and keep businesses in check and offer consumers somewhere to turn when a business failed them... Mainly due to the fact that LL would generally not get involved in any disputes between residents. I got a sign to stick on the shop wall to show customers I was affiliated with a reputable group and they did help me with a few copyright issues when copybot was first becoming popular. I had no idea about DMCA;s then and I used the SLBB as an "official" front to contact the infringers and successfully persuade them to take the content down. In the end the group failed though. They had a founder and 7 or 8 board members and they controlled the whole group. Although members were able to submit proposals and supposedly vote on other peoples proposals, this never really happened and it was the few select board members that got to control the group, It felt a bit Clique like. I also remember there was a bit of nastiness at one point with board members posting private IM's in the public group channels and general arguing and bitching between members and the board. Some peoples feelings got hurt, some people left the group etc etc. Ultimately I think the group failed to uphold some of the ethics and principles that it was founded upon and ended up failing. Also I think they didn't have any real power as LL were never involved in any way. This group had effectively appointed themselves an authority within SL which is obliviously never going to end well. I realise this is different to the group you propossed, I just thought I would share a few of the fragmented memories my brain managed to retain from SL's first attempt at a BBB.

I closed all my rentals at the beginning of 2010 as they were no longer profitable enough so I can't comment on how much the going rate for space is nowadays. However, regarding "true traffic" I thought I would add to what Tari said. Allot of people who rent space commercially, do game their traffic as traffic is one of their key selling points. A good way to find out the true traffic and potential passing trade for a specific rental spot is to bring in an alt, put a radar on it and leave the alt floating above the rental spot. Set the radar for about 20 to 30 mtres or so, basically far enough to cover the rental spot you are interested in plus a few on either side. Make sure the radar reports the presence of other av's either via IM, email or just in the alts local chat window. Leave the alt to go idle then log into SL with your main AV and go about your business. When you check back on your alt you should have a list of everyone that's that's been within spitting distance of the rental spot during that period. Log in at a variety of times and days to get a better picture. I found this to be a really effective way of determining the true traffic for specific sections of a mall. I found some incredibly busy and profitable rental spots using this method in the past.

If we have a separate category for mesh, then the Mesh category would need all the same sub categories that exist on the current marketplace. We couldn't just have one category called 'Mesh' for all mesh products, a year from now there will be many thousands of mesh items, it would become a mess very quickly as more and more mesh content is added. LL would need to double the amount of categories they currently have or effectively create a new marketplace just for mesh. I can't see either of these things happening. I think a filter as others suggested is the only way to go.

HI Robert. I find it a bit disconcerting how many of our fellow prefab creators from "back in the day" have gone now. I bet there are less than a dozen prefab businesses left that started when we did. Some of those that are still here seem totally inactive, they have land and sell stuff but haven't added any new content for years. I stumbled upon one of my old favorites the other day, Modlife owned by Rem Koohaas, he built all those cool white modern builds that seem to spread across the grid in 2005/6. It was really cool seeing his stuff again, it all seems really retro now and bought back some fond memories. Anyway, glad to see some other old timers are still around and planning for 2012. Best of luck to you :matte-motes-big-grin:

Lasher Oh wrote: I get tired of having my legitimate 'Mesh' clothing items which were here way before 'Mesh Sculpties' were even thought of in SL, being flagged by trigger fingered snitches who have adopted a technology with a similar name. ^L^ I've had the same problem. I sell textures on another AV and for years have been selling a set of Scifi wall and floor tiles. They have a metallic frame with a mesh material in the centre. They have been flagged 3 times in recent months as they are not "mesh". Have given up selling them on the MP now, cant be bothered with it :matte-motes-big-grin:

Harm Xue wrote: I can relate to the MP search problem. I hate flagging items in the MP, but seems the use of the word "mesh" in keywords is getting totally out of hand with some people using it in all their items. Not even partial mesh used. It depends on your definition of Mesh. Mesh has been in SL for a long time, the ground you walk on is mesh, avatars are mesh, sculpties are technically a mesh too. Mesh is such an ambiguous word, especially in a place like SL where you have professional 3D designers working alongside amateurs and hobbyists. The term Mesh means different things to different people. I think it will lead to allot of confusion especially when it comes to people flagging items on the MP. For example, If you flagged an item claiming to be "mesh" and it consisted of 4 standard prims and one sculpted prim, I think the seller should appeal and try and get the item re-listed, as they are technically not in the wrong. The item does contain mesh. Maybe merchants need to use more specific terminology such as "polygon mesh" or "rigged mesh". This will make things allot more black and white.

Thanks for the explanations, I actually now understand this problem after all these years. Chosen Few wrote: Once again, people, there is no such thing as an "alpha layer". It's an alpha CHANNEL! Layers and channels are entirely different things. This forum is the only place in the known unviverse in which people, for reasons I simply cannot fathom, insist on using the two words interchangeably. Not only does this make it very difficult to have intelligent conversation on any number of related subjects, it makes things incredibly confusing for newbies who are trying to learn graphics concepts for the first time. This goes out to everyone: If you want your contributions here to be meaningful, use accurate terminology, each and every time you say anything. Thanks. Horay....I correctly made reference to the alpha channel in my opening post, I can officially declare myself no longer a noob :matte-motes-nerdy:

Thanks for the answer Immy. I have played around with 1-bit alphas in the past and they can work for shadows or lighting effects , but as you said, not really suitable for detailed textures. Oh well, we'll just have to keep on suffering. Happy new year and what-not :matte-motes-grin:

Hello. If you put a texture on a prim that is saved to the alpha channel, then layer multiple copies of that prim one in front of the other then you get a flicker as you move the camera. Is there a fix or work around or trick to avoid this? I asked this question about 7 years ago and didn't get a satisfactory answer. Since then I have muddled through and accepted it as just another SL quirk. Today it's really annoying me! So I thought I would ask again in the event I had missed something. :matte-motes-big-grin: Cheers

Pussycat Catnap wrote: Opinion. Not necessarily fact. And be careful with your tone there, this isn't [certain 3rd party forums] and you might notice certain argumentative names no longer posting here while others have been (or trying) toning themselves down... You probably don't mean to provoke, but starting out with 'wrong' as a sentence can end up baiting people. LIke Rene, I have been away from the forums allot of last year. Can you explain further what's been going on please?

Firestorm. I like tike viewer 3 allot but I can't live without free texture uploads and the other enhanced building tools that Firestorm offers.

Haha. You are right, I never walked around advertising the fact that I was a gamer, although i'm sure my post history would betray me as i relentlessly probed Darrius to find out his secrets. I always knew you were a gamer though, you're not exactly shy about sharing your opinons :matte-motes-big-grin: Just like you, I didn't see it as gaming. I deserved to be on page 1 for certain words, i'd earned that right, not necessarily at the top of page 1, but somewhere on page 1. If the search engine failed to recongnise that then I felt it was my job to 'fix' it. So in my opninion any gaming I did was purely motived by helping the search engine return a relevant set of results. I never lied about what I sold to trick people into visiting my stores. For the first time in years I am not gaming and still on page 1. No paying for picks, no paying to accommoadate hundreds of spam prims.... it's quite refreshing. I am assuming LL have moved away from GSA now? I dunno as I am only a part timer here nowadays, I don't keep up, but search seems to be ridiculously easy to understand.

I used to be a search obsessive and gamed myself onto page 1 for words like 'houses' and 'prefabs' for 7 years. In my epererience during testing of GSA gaming, traffic was pretty much negligable in determining rank. I'm not saying it wasn't a factor at all, but keyword spamming was so powerful I think it rendered traffic obsolete. I could double my traffic for a 24 hr period and it would not increase my rank at all That's not the case any more. I did a test just last week, my normal traffic is about 3k - 4k. I increased it to 8k for 24 hrs and jumped 10 places in the ranking to the top of page 1. I guess I could have gone higher but there was no where else to go with the keywords I was testing with. ETA - I don't game search anymore as there is no real need. I used to obsess over the being #1 on page one but nowadays I am happy to land where i land within reason. Just thought I would mention that to help avoid any anti gamer ranting.

Thanks for the replies. This pretty much sums up the current incarnation of Linden Lab in my opinion. They have had well over a year and they can't even fix a major bug on a simple commerce website. I miss Apotheus SIlverman :matte-motes-crying:

Thank you Rodvik for propping up this dying cash cow for just a few more years so we can suck every last drop from it's wrinkly weathered udders.

Phil Deakins wrote: What changes? Traffic bots are still banned so it's risky using them. I can't remember exactly when it happened, August, maybe Sept. It was the last major overhaul they did. Overnight, old gaming practices such as keyword spamming became detrimental and other factors were bought into play to determine rank. Through trial and error It became clear to me pretty quickly that traffic was once again a contributing factor. Nowhere near as much as it used to be before GSA, but it is still once again relevant. When I say bots, I mean people logging in inactive avatars to boost their traffic score, I dunno if they are using bot clients or not. I've just seen a few of my competitors start using bots/alts again in the last 6 months to boost their traffic scores and ultimately their inworld search ranking. This is why I assume that traffic gaming may have helped increase, or at least lessen the decline, of concurrent users.

About 2 months after they closed SLX and forced us all to the new MP, I remember an issue that I encountered. I went through and edited about 200 listings. Once I was done I discovered that all those edited listings had lost their ranking. They effectively went to the end of the search results for relevant keywords. So has this issue been fixed? I don't really follow MP development so thought it best to check before I start tinkering? Thanks.

I would guess that the use of traffic bots has increased over the last qtr due to the changes made to inworld search in the latter part of last year.

Pamela Galli wrote: Mesh. I''m finding it really hard to commit myself to developing mesh in 2012. So many people I've spoken to are experiencing performance issues with the V3 based viewers and are refusing to use them. With such a small percentage of the userbase actually able to properly view mesh (and I expect a good percentage of those people are creators themselves) it doesn't make good business sense to me to spend my production time producing content for such a small userbase. I've played around with mesh trees and landscaping items, but I am wary of investing hundreds of hours into creating large mesh builds. So I am completely undecided on how to develop my business in 2012. 6 to 12 months ago I was all ready to embrace mesh, unfortunately I don't believe the average prefab purchaser is ready. So at least for the next few months I guess I will continue to develop builds with standard and sculpted prims, taking advantage of the new scripting and LI features to make my prefabs more prim efficient and lag friendly.

jujmental wrote: Banks do things for free? Yes. I regulally transfer small amount directly through online banking to international bank accounts. I also recieve small payments without the payee being charged. jujmental wrote: fMaybe in your virtual world, but not in the real one. I don't own a virutal world and banking has been banned by LL in SL so i'm obviously reffering to the real world. Maybe you should consider changing banks if yours is charging you for small funds transfers. jujmental wrote: /Foreign transfers are EXPENSIVE! This is all dependant upon the bank you use. My bank applies charges based on the amount of money being transfered. Small transfers under £250 are free of charge. jujmental wrote: And then you get investigated for money laundering . . . The amount that Maddy wants to transfer will be less than US $150. Who exactly is going to launch an investigation into money laundering?

Can't you just get their bank details and do a direct bank transfer? This should be free even if the payment is international.

Yay I love Lemmings, I managed to find a version of the classic recently for PC, it was great playing it again. Allot of the old games I liked in the 80's and 90's often turn out to be better in my memory, when I actually play them again they are rubbish and it kind of spoils the memory. Lemmings i'm glad to say has stood up to the test of time and I have got my seven year old son playing it now. I still have the original up the loft along with my Amiga....in a box behind the Betamax video, on top of the Squariel :matte-motes-big-grin: