Porky Gorky

Medhue Simoni wrote: How can a company sell the same dang thing and throw a different number on it? I could pay a coder to make those changes. It's change for the sake of change driven by the need for employees to constantly "improve" their products in order to justify their ongoing employment. As the rate of technological development and product development increases across the board we are coerced motivated into keeping pace with these sometimes unnecessary "improvements" in order to stay up to date and current. It seems to becoming ever more prevalent in my life it's really getting on my nerves now! mini rant over

Lucretia Brandenburg wrote: There are content thieves who take great pride in what they do and don't hide it; they speak about it openly (albeit through an alt). They're very arrogant about it and contemptous enough of others that they have no problem with coming forward and saying what they do. You are referring to a very small minority....and they are idiots. Certain well known content thieves have been baited and retaliated against quite effectively by a group of SL users in the past. Using alts and masking their IP's did nothing to protect them. I spent over a year sat in a closed channel on IRC frequented by some of SL's most notorious copybotters, and believe me, they don't publicly boast about their exploits any more. In closed circles they spend the majority of their time discussing ways of staying hidden and anonymous.

Lucretia Brandenburg wrote: From copybotters I've known, there are different reasons they do it. Some to rip off items and resell them as their own, some to use the items for themselves, others because they think it gives them power and boosts their egoes, some do it to "prove" they're smarter than others to get round safe guards against it, others because they think everything in SL be free and they will go on about the virtual economy and how offensive it is to pay for pixels. I don't think this question is stupid. Finding out the core reasons why thieves choose to steal content is not a stupid question, and it was not the reason for my comment. Inviting copybotters to incriminate themselves in the public domain and possibly expose themselves to a trap was the reason for my comment.

Sita Writer wrote: If you are a copybotter -- would just love to know why you do it I think this question is worthy of a Darwin Award.

I've used a program called The Logo Creator which is pretty cool, although there is nothing I can do in there that I can't do in Photoshop so I don't really bother with it any more. http://www.thelogocreator.com/

ImaTest wrote: I visited a friend's store earlier today that was absolutely stunning. It was made entirely of mesh. I mean it was really breathtaking. But the land impact of it was massive. Not only does all that rendering have a cost for customers visiting, but also the landowner/renter in "land impact". The store has been around since at least 2005, that i know of. It was once a store built from prims. I know the owner well. The prim count of the original build was something along the lines of 35-ish. When she moved to sculpts it jumped down to about 25. Now, as mesh, it's 360 something land impact. That's absolutely nuts, considering it's just a basic building and uses no more than 20 prims! Beautiful or not, that building is NOT effective. It's gorgeous and people are of course free to use however many prims they want to for their builds. But store owners, and sim owners need to, or should, take into account their customers as well. That store takes ages to load now, because of the high rendering cost. She's getting ready to strip it down to a sculpt store again, because she's received many complaints about the lag and slow rez times. There are things that can be done to reduce the LI of larger mesh buildings such as not including lower LOD's and using separate small interior spaces with limited camera view distances to reduce the need for lower LOD's, but this is not practical when building large and open plan as most stores tend to be. From personal experience of building large mesh structures, I am really not satisfied with the LI's I am getting. I am now moving away from 100% mesh and trying to find a balance between using prims/sculpts for large structural sections and relying on mesh for the finer details that will set the build apart from regular prim and sculpt builds. I think there is a more ideal balance to be found between prims, mesh, render times and LI for larger structures. Mesh is awesome in the creative freedom it offers, but that comes at a price for some types of content, big open builds being top of that list unfortunately.

Medhue Simoni wrote: Making a mesh in 3ds Max, or any other mesh creation program, is almost exactly the same as making an item in SL. There is little to no difference, essentially. The same way that you would make a bicycle in SL, is how you would make a bicycle in 3ds Max, even down to holding shift and moving the item to create a copy of it. Creating a UV map for the mesh, that is different, and LL's convoluted Land Impact system makes mesh different in reguards to creation. It's not that complicated. It's actually pretty basic. It all just looks intimidating. Like I said earlier in this thread, making a mesh in 3ds Max is 1 small step up from making a prim object in SL. So many focus on mesh not being created in SL, which to me is kind of goofy to focus on, as everything, besides prims, is created outside of SL and brought in. I don't see the difference. I agree with this. I found the transition from building with prims in SL to 3D modeling in 3DS Max almost seamless. Within a few days I could create anything in Max that I could with standard prims in SL. This gave me a great foundation to build upon as I learned the numerous more advanced creation tools. I think there is a double learning curve to mesh which allot of wannabe and current mesh creators tend to ignore. Learning 3D modeling is only half the battle, learning how to optimize your mesh for best performance in SL is a whole other ball game and it is an area in which a lot of current mesh creators are failing badly. So even though 3D modeling is essentially easy to learn, especially if you have experience of the toolset in SL, creating a fully optimized mesh end product in SL is not so easy.

I purchased 3DS max in 2010. Cost me £2300. Not sure what that is in Mickey Mouse money. It has already paid for itself through SL sales, but more importantly it has given me the opportunity to learn industry standard 3D modeling software which in turn has allowed me to facilitate a permanent career change in real life from a pen pushing desk monkey to a full time designer. So although I initially purchased Max to create content in SL, I also saw it as a long term investment in my future and my ongoing quest to become a better and more relevant designer in RL.

Landowners pay through the nose for land in SL, they have purchased the right to do whatever they want within the bounds of the TOS and that includes banning whoever they want. Don't like it then just get your own land and never leave. This thread is a non issue.

Glad to see you are finally upgrading your computer Czari! I have been reading about your hardware inadequacies for far too many years now :matte-motes-big-grin: What are planning on buying? Regarding buying online, my advice is to find as much customer feedback online as you can relating to the company's repair process and turn around times etc. If a company performes poorly in this area you can guarantee people will be complaining about it on the interwebs. These forums being a perfect example of that.

ChicByTrinity wrote: I noticed that I'm losing 20-30 L$ in a few hours or so, and it happened at least 3 times now. I noticed a loss of a few hundred L$. What could be causing this? :matte-motes-agape: Log in to your account on secondlife.com, there you can view your transaction history, that will tell you where the L$ went. I think the most common cause for this sort of issue is group liability. Someone joins a group without realising there are associated charges.

Dillon Levenque wrote: To the best of my knowledge the i7 isn't all that important; the people whose opinions I respect consider the i5 to be completely adequate for SL. Tho OP indicated a desire to use the box for advanced things other than SL; given that an i7 would seem to be a good choice. edited for spelling I agree with that. I went from using a i5 3570K to a i7 3770K recently and only saw a minor improvement in performance for SL and gaming in general. Certainly not an improvement that warranted the price difference. However I really started to see the benefits of hyper-threading when rendering in 3DS Max and I am happy with the change I made to i7 now. So if the op is rendering 3D, or encoding/decoding video then they should consider an i7. If not then go with the i5 or AMD equivalent.

Mikki Miles wrote: Rya Nitely wrote: My main tip to anyone starting out would be to try and steer clear of over-saturated markets, like clothing. THIS! But i think even in clothing market there are still some niches, like ethnic clothing. I am still looking for some nice mesh bavarian Lederhosen ;-) I think a couple of years ago there was a big problem with market over-saturation. But since mesh rolled out that is not the case at all. In some regards the markets have been leveled and we have entered a new phase where every market has the potential to be exploited again through the sale of mesh products. Take prefab buildings for example, there were/are many thousands of awesome buildings out there before mesh went mainstream. Competition was extremely tight. Nowadays if you are building in mesh then that is not the case at all, there are less than a hundred "top quality" mesh prefab buildings out there right now and the whole market is very much there for the taking. This is true for nearly all mesh markets in SL right now apart from maybe clothing which is and always has been the most actively developed market. When I started selling content in 2005 it was easy due to the lack of competition. It feels like we have gone full circle and reached that situation again with mesh to some extent.

I miss the days of getting a brown envelope filled with notes at the end of the week as apposed the electronic payments we get nowadays. Getting to hold all the money you had earned that week made it feel more tangible and it was a nice feeling walking around with loads of money in my wallet for a few hours before I spent most of it on necessities and the rest of it in the pub. Happy days.

There was once such a group/project back in 2005 that I was a part of. The group leader owned a few mainland regions next to each other. A large part of the land was devoted to a huge ongoing build that had many contrbutors. The general concept was an abstract virtual environment which allowed for some varied and interesting work from a diverse selection of builders, scripters and designers. The project culminated in 2006 when lots of small sections of the build were copied and displayed at Burning Life where we provided a landmark to the finished piece that was too big to display at the exhibition in it's entirety. Am really annoyed I can't find any pictures....but that was 4 computers ago,so not holding out much hope There also used to be a cool speed building group where we would compete one on one or in small teams to meet a design brief in a restricted amount of time. That was allot of fun!

I was suggesting you sell them for a significant amount in an effort to stop people buying them in bulk to resell at a profit. If you charge say L$500 for it and make it clear in your sales material that all proceeds go to charity then hopefully that will solve the problem of potential bulk resellers as outlined in your OP.

You should sell them instead and gift all the proceeds to a charity supporting the victims.

I liked it. I have certainly had many a night out in London that were just as psychedelic and *bleeped* up as this vid. So a nice representation I felt. Good work.

Pamela Galli wrote: Does Paypal only demand a CC from non US countries? I did several searches and looked on the Paypal site and all they mention is linking to a bank account. I don't have any CC link. With regards to the UK and France I know you don't need a credit card to have a Paypal account. Paypal just needs to be linked and verified to an active bank account and that is it.

I got into the show in the early eighties as a kid. It was my introduction into science fiction and it scared the bejezus out of me as well as fuelling my imagination as to what might be "out there". Generally what I imagined to be out there were very low budget aliens and wobbly sets but I did not know any better at the time. Dr. Who led me onto shows like Star Trek, Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica and I have been a massive scifi fan ever since. Regarding the Dr. Who reboot, I liked the first two Doctors. Eclesson is a fantastic actor and is destined to excel in any role given to him and Tenant really grew his version of the doctor into a great character over his run. The series changed for me though when Russel T Watson stepped down from running the show and Steven Moffat took over along with the introduction of Matt Smith as the new doctor. There now seems to be allot less focus in good science fiction and allot more focus on drama and suspense, continually building up the music for that scary reveal, it's gotten a tad dull and repetitive for me. Also I think the Matt Smith Dr has almost become a caricature of himself and is far too over the top now. And don't get me started on how annoying Amy Pond was, I'm glad she is gone now. My, fav scifi show of the last decade: Battelstar reboot Caprica Falling Skies Stargate Universe Fringe Lost Torchwood

Watership Down. In my defense I was very baked. Those poor bunnies :smileysad:

Sylvio Runo wrote: Now, by a minute, imagine all the other residents not usa residents, what do they do with the money? English, australians, italians, all the rest of the world, what do they do with the money? I am from the UK and LL have been cashing out to my Paypal account for 8 years. I know other Europeans that also cash out regularly so I think you are wrong. You should double check your information.

Sylvio Runo wrote: I am really thinking to leave SecondLife. Only us residents can cashout to Paypal. If i can not cashout, there is no reason to stay here. And i am sure, i am not only one. The economy will brake. You don't need a premium account to cash out, as far as I know you don't even need PIOF. So why exactly can't you cash out?

I love Weeds and agree with you whole heartedly about the voice of the woman singing the theme tune, it's like nails down a blackboard. Series 2, 3 and 8 had a different artist each episode performing a different version of Little Boxes, that was much cooler!

The cash out TAT has never bothered me personally, I just plan ahead and cash out a week before I want the money to hit Paypal. I agree that the whole process could easily be carried out more efficiently if the right resources were thrown at it, but this is Linden Lab we are talking about, that's not the way they roll. I think it is a good thing they are taking a firmer control over their currency, it should give them more room to manipulate the market so the L$ can remain stable for longer as usership declines as well as reducing fraud.