Prokofy Neva

Nothing beats the soundtrack of The Sims Online for artistic quality and ability to listen on repeat for many times. The Map 4 music is especially excellent. Yes, The Sims Online displayed its "Game Over" sign for the last time on August 1, 2008, I was there! But Map 4 music lives on in our hearts. Also there is an indy version now called FreeSO to play but sadly they don't have any music.

Often these people begging for money claim they need to pay rent. To this, I ask them for the name of their landlord so I can speak to them. That usually shuts them up. Or I offer to help them with a dirt-cheap rental of my own. They disappear. It's not for any actual need or any actual poverty, it's just a method of extracting money from gullible people.

I totally agree, it's a misuse of the movement, which I support, to use it to extort land sales -- and there's a history here in fact of long-time attempts to get me to sell my land adjacent to this land -- which I won't do as there are tenants on it. And those tenants have been harassed for years. Yes, we have abuse reported the latest antics of this person to no avail, multiple times, despite clear violations of ad guidelines. But Lindens may have decided that this is not an ad but a political expression. If so, the land should not be put to sale. It's all fake.

All summer long, we were looking at this sad dog. I guess we were supposed to think of "the dog days of summer," although they come at the end of summer, and this picture was early on. I always feel as if these web site avatars -- especially on the Marketplace -- are nothing like the actual avatars in world. It's as if the designers are trying to stage an abstraction based on what they think virtuality is -- or should be -- without having observed it. When you think of it, there are very, very few dog avatars. Sure, there are plenty of furries. Wolves and foxes of all kinds. But not dogs. Avatars have dogs they walk, but generally, they aren't dogs. This dog lady is sad -- and it just puts you in a reverse frame of mine. I bet it hurts sales. I find I miss that dog now, because it can and does get worse. Now once again the Lindens are using a child to sell their product, and one that looks beaten. Oh, please, don't start in with the usual alibi -- common on the forums, especially -- that this is an elf or a neko or some other non-human that gets to look like a child but not be one, for whatever purposes. This avatar indeed looks like a child, and worse, one that is crying and seems abused. No, this isn't just a picturesque tear over some furry woodland creature dispute - it's a very realistic upset face. It's wrong. It should be taken down. This has to be said. So I do say it.

The first question to ask is whether this is group land. If it is grouped, they can use any and all prims on any or all parcels. So the 400 prims of landscaping may not count on your count. You would still get to put out the 1250 because you are not limited to that parcel's limit. The landlord may be dismissive because he is tired of people not understanding this (I know I get tired of explaining it again and again a zillion times, and I especially get tired of people accusing me of false advertising when in fact the lease says clearly that management prims don't count.) OR he may think he has you over a barrel especially if he has no refund capacity. If the parcel is stand-alone or put in your own group (unlikely if the landscaping remains there likely set to group) then it could be a problem. There is only one solution. Put out the 1250 prims and see what happens. If it is grouped land, nothing will happen if the prim limit for that sim still has a buffer. If some return or the landlord complains, ask for the landscaping to be removed or cite the ad again.

Yes, I would, too! BTW I just discovered Wulf Linden's "bear". Superior!

Thanks a lot! Do you know if a) these rules I have cited are true and b) they are permanent?

They used to have an eye-hand necklace that was like you were in a secret cult or something, fun times. I have it somewhere. There was a company associated with an SL resident who would print out your avatar -- this was ages ago at the dawn of 3D printing. But they went out of business. So looking over the merch, I realize it's quite a step to put the cult logo on things and step out in RL. I can assure you that if I go to the library with that bag (assuming it will open up more than just reserve pick-ups) someone will be sure to eye it and ask if I am in QAnon or something. Meanwhile, I do plan to buy the mask cover as a collector's item, along with my Biden/Harris mask cover (well I view them as covers over the real K95 masks I would have to actually wear). The thing I'm puzzled by are all those "bear collector" items. Why wouldn't they then have the bears themselves? Imagine if you could get little Linden bears in RL!

It's hard to believe, but long ago and far away in this *same* galaxy, when I and others hugely annoyed at security scripts ruining the Mainland experience kept petitioning Philip Linden about them, he actually agreed that they should be deprecated. That is, the ability to bounce *period* -- not just "away" or "home" but *at all*. We were heartened, but then various other Lindens and Linden groupies began to lobby him furiously not to do that. They claimed that push was "vital" to have for...elevators. At that time, as I often pointed out, there weren't more than a half dozen elevators in SL and they weren't "vital" such as to have that function annoying everybody especially on waterways and roads making travel impossible. Nobody hardly used those clunky, jerky elevators -- and still don't -- and it was no reason to warp the entire experience around that edge case. So because the Lindens of those years never met a script they didn't like, the bounce script remained. I could note that one prominent maker of security orbs funded the forums of some very well connected residents and Linden alts and they lobbied heavily to keep it as it was this merchant's bread and butter. So this was an impossible cartel to get around. We would periodically bring up the point that orbs could be made not to teleport home, like a game in which you are killed and sent back home (the archetype from which this action is taken), but just bounced lightly away with a message. What is the use case for teleporting home, besides making it more like a game in which you "die," which was the ardent wish of the early nerds? Well, on the Mainland, griefers would usually hang around and continue to grief you from a neighbouring parcel. So you ban them from one parcel, they hop to another, and you chase them around, trying to keep up with them, unable to click on them, and not able to put their names in the ban list fast enough before they fire-prim the sim, which (at that time) started sending back some items to inventory (a bug of sorts). They would also hang around on nearby Linden land which was like a "safe" area for them because no one could ban them there, least of all Lindens, who never ban from Linden land, ever. (A shame, given the havoc at some info hubs and welcome areas). So the theory was that if the miscreant was teleported all the way home, he would get distracted and not bother to come back. At least that would give you time to put his name in the other parcels. Often, the TP home would make him crash (which is why people on boats especially HATED this). Fast forward, here we all are, and the furthest we have come is that Patch has recently posted that if people don't stop teleporting home with their orbs in Belli (if I understood correctly, that's what he means by "configured properly"), then only the Linden orbs that don't do that at all and default to bouncing only will be legal, and other third-party orbs will be outlawed and sent back to inventory when found. Not ideal -- frankly, it would be better -- if I could return to this subject -- if the *bounce script could be deprecated completely from SL as Philip once promised*. You encounter ban lines and cannot walk further. No bouncing, not teleporting home.

No, that's only one of the purposes. That's why you are not allowed more than one micro-parcel for sim regardless of anything else. Yes, $100 is $6.25/m for a useless parcel -- and PS I'm glad you're admitting you are trying to force people to buy back the view by saying "Is that too much to protect their view"? Yes, anything other than $1 for land like that is unconscionable. Since you don't say how large the parcels are that you own it's worthless information. You're also admitting it's a game, thank you. Other land flippers are more scrupulous, belief it or not, and some of them make a RL living. You sound like Mr. Hong Kong. I caught up with once at a RL conference. I asked him why he extorted land sales - he had 16 and 32 m parcels near my land selling for $10,000 and giant "Mr. Lee's Hong Kong" signs which were merely a reference to Snowcrash, the novel, and not really a business. This is a man who had a computer programming job in RL that paid him handsomely so his answer was: "Because I can. It's fun." You can only have contempt for people like that, and so I do. Each answer to you only legitimizes you and your little pathetic game, so I'm done now.

Perhaps only because it undercuts your land empire? Is that the issue? I don't see how it's a grey market. Obviously the Lindens can track it, so how "grey" can it be? Is it that you just haven't figured out a source for yourself? I'm not getting this. They are often advertised. What's driving this, really? Why wouldn't it transfer? It's a status of that sim. It used to be the class of the server was less/slower; maybe that's no longer the case but the status should be retained. I personally only have one I got directly from the Lindens and I have no plans to get anymore so this isn't about "me and my land empire" -- which I don't have, unlike you. So, minds need to keep inquiring here.

Well, this is going off-topic but I think the point to focus on is that the Lindens got 60,000 people to log into their game. Some of them may have been stoned or only bent on griefing, but still, it's something. And the more operative point is that it's up to 37,000, which is respectable and more than the 30,000 I thought it was. I have an old Linden script that counts concurrency but it may be inaccurate, I have no idea.

Actually, we're not in that sort of legal regimen which you imagine, such as to postulate "that what is not forbidden is allowed". That's the regimen of the United States of America, and God bless it, but you couldn't cut land and put billboards up on it with the ease with which you do here, due to cost and regulations which are a good thing. In fact, you are in a highly authoritarian setting where you can be banned 'for any reason or no reason', at the discretion of the company, which can be subjective and is even the subject of RL lawsuits, all of which have failed or were possibly settled out of court (although they did yield a useful ruling from a judge that the TOS is a "contract of adhesion," which indeed it is. Yes, in a free market, a price is where a willing buyer and a willing seller meet. But the people buying your land in many cases are not willing; they've been extorted. They've been pushed into spending a lot of money not worth that because they don't want their view blighted. In some cases, their land is devalued, and they even abandon it, which is a terrible thing for the economy and caused by you and other unscrupulous land dealers. It's not about "making money my way" in some kind of free economy with a legal regimen of this or that type because we're in an artificial situation entirely at the Lindens' whims, although they do try to be consistent and rational or they wouldn't keep customers. Yes, it's good to petition the Lindens for redress. I personally have seen this work a number of times over the years as I've posted about frequently. So some people may do this and may get some traction. The Lindens are slow to put in new policies that require more work for them and sometimes scripting. They like to solve things by programming and not by policy because there are always people like you who say mischievously, "But what about this? But what about that?" and edge-case them to death -- and it's fitting, because they love edge cases themselves, all computer nerds do, and they build entire policies around edge-cases which is of course the bane of the Internet where we have to live, increasingly. They don't have a really solid land cutting policy though they have certainly made progress since the days when they foolishly let land fall into 16m squares to be pecked at by any passing vulture. They want to have some capacity for ads, given their reluctance to run ad networking themselves, which is truly a shame for all of us. They don't want to overly police content so that they don't suppress creativity. For one person, an art deco tower is a monstrosity; for someone else, it's a vampire tower. People can more or less agree about misogynist grief towers, but not always, so they waver -- but hey, look, they didn't in a recent case I wrote about. We don't have a common-law system built on precedent with things like the law of discovery and adversarial defense and a jury system and all the rest. We have a civil-law system based on precise laws and a magistrate who adjudicates them as a Russian or Chinese judge would. Some people love such authoritarianism when it works in their favour. In your case, you have exploited a vulnerability in a system, taken advantage of people, and you are trying to prettify it by calling it "free enterprise". If anyone objects, why, they must not support capitalism or free enterprise, even though in RL these systems have regulations that are right and just in a liberal democratic society. It doesn't work, because you are enriching yourself (and I bet, not by much) at the expense of others -- whose losses, taken as a whole, likely dwarf your personal "riches". That's the sad part of it. It's not capitalism or anything like it. It's a game.

It's not sought after when it has a grief tower next to it and people compensating with photo real boards. Even before that, it wasn't sought after because its texture looks like the sort of hard gravel driveway we used to have in Penn Yan, NY in the 1960s, before significant advances in road surfacing. And that's the *land* not the roads. Even sims that have the names of the Finger Lakes (some of which are by Penn Yan, NY, leaving aside the fact that they are rivers, not lakes) have textures that all look like a range from gravel to a sort of slate that is the sort of approximation that someone who had never been there might make but looks more like the slate around my Dad's chemical plant in Dundee, and some sort of beat-up grass that doesn't look like anything except the land around a chained dog next to us in Penn Yan, NY who ran around in circles all day who once bit me as a child. Well, you get the idea. I feel right at home here but I'm not sure most people do. That's on the Sansara sims that are supposed to be sort of "North West" or perhaps "North East" if you squint. Then there's the textures on the Moth Continent, the one called Hetero-etcetera or something I never remember exactly. I was showing a newer person, by which I mean somebody who is maybe 12 (I'm 16) what I meant by "chemical wasteland" there and she conceded that yes, it was kind of motley and blue in colour. It was supposed to be "coral". The best grass lands there still look like a particularly overgrazed mountain, like the painting "The Scapegoat". I don't think you can really say today, given everything, that there is a *good* Mainland texture. I personally like the pink mountain. But not everyone does. The single most often question I get from new tenants, after "can I put this land in my group" is "can you change the texture". They are used to islands. And no, and no again. Some of these sims were made by people who actually could see, say, California or the Yukon, or the Lake Country in the UK and mountains in Wales and such. But the texturing possibilities of 17 years ago for making targa files perhaps were not what they are today. Yes, you can buy all kinds of things to add and textures to put even just on a board, but that adds to your prims. So that's one point. The other point is that Mainland is not generally "sought after". I think you mean Blake Sea land, which is hugely expensive, and then sort of by analogy, Sea of Fables land, which people have tried to make hugely expensive even though the sailing is nothing like Blake Sea.

No, because here's what's wrong with Belli: o Some lucky people get really good waterfront parcels or parcels with mountains and pristine ponds back of them or easements in terms of Linden land next to them with camp fires or some fixed content. o Most other people are in at rather close quarters with other people smack upon them, to be sure, with easements like roads and Linden border land but still, they aren't the most prized lost. o There is a hard stop in terms of prims -- you can't add more -- even if you were lucky enough to land two LHs on the same sim, you can't combine their prims, you can't put them in group land. o You can't put your land in search. o You cannot sell anything on the land, even if it is just a painting inside your home or a tip jar. o You cannot consciously turn your parcel over to another person, they'd have to try their luck refreshing the page and trying to sync with you abandoning your land, which can work but which isn't guaranteed because of the huge number of people refreshing the pages. o It can be laggy - lots of houses on one sim. o While you can be on what seems like waterfront, it's not a rez zone necessarily so to put in a boat you have to try to edit it into place and it rubber bands a lot. o The trees, while nice, and better than old trees, are flat planar trees and not mesh with a more robust look o There is some fixed Linden content that gets annoying. I personally hate the butterflies. Somebody else might find intolerable the random inner tubs with watermelon design spaced around oddly (given that my area has no rez zones, I appreciate it, but wish it wasn't so brightly coloured. But I suppose they wanted it to be findable. o There are rules, like you have to have Christmas go away by a certain time, you can't be "out of season," etc. I'm glad they have an orb they supply that doesn't bounce home, but so many people use their own orbs and there are so many of them that you can't expect the Lindens to chase everybody, even with an AR -- even with their threat to return all non-Linden orbs. o There's that Trumansville effect. I once thought I was clever putting out some content in front of my house so I could find it again. But imagine, someone made the exact same house colour and put out the exact same content out to find it again so I remained lost. Yes, you can go up to "my land holdings" but if you are sole owner of other parcels or have parcels for sale, it's a scroll. So I appreciate Belli. But it has its limitations. I am personally enjoying my LH now, but I let go others that had too many of these problems. I don't mind a prim limitation on a camper or boat. But once it gets to a multi-story house, it becomes a challenge.

No, because it's not there on my view of the page, see below, it's just a blank space at the bottom. I remember it used to be in the view when we had the old forums and people put those tags on; then the forums were changed and it went out of the view. Perhaps it's only out of the view for *me*, and others see it, and that's fine, but I don't see anywhere on my account where it can be changed. I also don't see tags for anyone else, BTW. I'm on Chrome. When I go to look at my account settings, nothing in the "about me" or "photo" or anything has the text of a tagline in it; nor do I see where I could put in new text that might override that old text. It's just blank. That old tag goes to my office which was changed something like 2 years ago.

Also, note that your planning is contingent on the LindEx value remaining at 241 or thereabouts and not sinking in value to 250 or worse. It is extremely rare for 7 individual real people to so agree on something in SL that they all freely and fairly put in 1024 or 512 into a group and live happily ever after. There are just too many variables. It almost never occurs. If it does, it would be in the context of a dedicated group with a purpose of people at least some of whom know each other in RL like Chilbo, or in the context of a rentals agent who accepts tier donations with a fixed value applied as a rental discount, like mine and others. So if you mean, let me take 6 of my alts and do this, I suppose the math is relatively ok, but there's another point to make, which is each premium account costs you at the least US $8.25 per account at current rates, or $57.75 for 7 accounts . So yes, you can sell your Lindens to cover just some of that, depending on the rate. Currently at 241 each month, you'd get only $33.60 from your LindEx sales IF the rate stays at 241 (1000L - US $4.00) and IF you are not tempted to buy anything or play gatchas. Remember to calculate 100 for the group founding fee and if any land is in search/places, 30L per week. Butt meanwhile, you could just take two accounts, at $16.50 per month (you need 2 to hold a group together), and have just one of them, go up to the 8120 tier level, which is US $35 per month on top of your account fee. That means you'd pay $51.50 ($35 plus $16,50), and would hope to reduce that by sale of Lindens you don't use to feed the mouths of all those alts in hair and mesh bodies and such. $51.50 only. I'm for looking at the flat costs soberly: $51.50 with 2 accounts and one at 8192 tier level, and the other at $57.75 for premiums with the "free" 1024. The option with the two accounts gets you 10,240 in tier -- 8192 for the tier level and 2 x 1024 for the "free" tier, and in a group, you will have a bonus of 1024, imagine that, like a whole free premium account, for a total of 11,264 in tier to cover land. The option with the seven accounts get you 7,168 in tier, with a bonus of 716 m = 7884. So the two accounts with a tier level is cheaper by US $6.25 and more to the point, gets you more land. You could even go down to the $22 level for 4096 and you'd still have 6758 in meters which is pretty good and then way more cheaper than these other options. The seven accounts with the "free" tier might seem like a great deal at first but it is less land for somewhat more money -- it's not free, you have to count the cost of the premium, and no, your Lindens do not cover its cost and make that "free" even at the very good rate on the LindEx we have now. That will not hold. When it goes down to $3.75/1000, which it was for a long time, you'd make $31.50 per month, much less to cover your cost which is fixed at the annualized level at $57.75 per month for 7 accounts. The Lindens long ago gamed this out when they limited accounts to 5. Extra accounts become worth it, in my view, only when you don't want to make a steep tier jump. Qie can correct my math. But even if my calculation is off, I don't think you are really at an advantage. I personally would find it a chore constantly checking on all those alts, to make sure their bills are paid, to make sure they haven't defaulted, etc. You could dress them in system clothing and do nothing with them, but then you start to feel they are kind of worthless. Whereas with just 2 accounts, you have only one account with tier to worry about; the other account could be dressed up and have fun.

Because it's a nasty, unscrupulous, and unsocial practice, that's why. I can't have any sympathy whatsoever for a land baron that cuts land that is "easier to sell" -- he has plenty of tier, can shift the tier around and do a variety of things: o offer the 16 m for anyone who is on the sim who needs prims, i.e. not put it on open sale o not abandon it but put his own tasteful sign on it o not abandon it and do nothing, since it's hardly a big deal, even if he has 100 of them - that makes up 1600 in tier which is nothing to him. If the person selling it is an end user, you wonder why how they paid tier if they only had the $25 tier level. So all the same applies. If it is someone completely exiting SL and trying to just sell their land as an end-user (not a common use case as the first two use-cases I've cited are far, far more prevalent) So I get it that you want to come in and make a buck with this really unscrupulous practice, which you want to blame other people for and which you endlessly want to aggressively justify (perhaps you have a guilty conscience). But what you make from this business can't be that much as to justify doing it, when you could be a nicer person, pick up abandoned land and sell it or buy cheap and sell expensive, and be more respected and likely make more cash. But then, that would take more of a trading tier than apparently you have, and perhaps a personality change. Cutting land is always evil and unscrupulous. Even when some people who think of themselves as good citizens put "Good Neighbour" obelisks on it which are just annoying and lower the value of the land around them. If you "sell it for a lower price" than extortion, that isn't commendable because you are still selling it for more than $1/m which is costs to someone requesting it from the Lindens who has adjacent land or land on that sim. You're still selling it for more than it is worth and just trying to extort from people who want to "buy back the view" and are stuck with tolerating if not your sign, the sign of the ad farmers who but it and put up ugly signs. You don't get credit for having nothing on your land when you sell it to people who put up ugly signs. I agree with Qie that land under 128 should only be distributed by Lindens. I would even make it 256 frankly, as GTFO and others will buy it at 128 and despoil the view as well. Just as you cannot put a search/places ad on a parcel that is under 128, so I don't think you should be able to put it to sale. That will end the problem pretty much although of course we'll find a new generation of edge-casers who will still blight from 128s. Your need to keep trying to justify this behaviour on the forums lets me know that perhaps your conscience is bothering you, or people inworld are raging at you over your bad behaviour, so I suggest you listen to it and them.

What I say on my blog is a documented truth which I interpret, like it or not -- and it's on a third-party blog, not the official forums which have more attention. What you say on the forums is always gratuitously nasty, drives people away, especially new people, but I guess either you walk the edge or have a Linden connex, which accounts for your continued presence here.

Yes, so do I. This is one reason I have not sent a group invite since 2007. They can join the group on their own with 3 clicks. I don't think stoned people celebrating "4/20" accounts for the surge given the more probable surge from Hitler's birthday and the rash of griefing that occurs.

I don't know what you're looking at but I don't have any signature or maplink that I can see. I seem to recall having one ages ago on the old forums.

You're speaking about games, yes. SL is not a game. So you're in the wrong place.

This is an extraordinary story that I have never seen in 16 years, and it gives me hope, but like a lot of things in SL, it's shrouded in mystery (there's no public police blotter any more) so I can't really be sure what happened, but I hasten to tell you: The other night I was flying around a few sims away from my own, wondering why a guy with some nice Mainland islands had lowered the price, and why someone else put up giant picture boards, which I personally hate and discourage wherever I can unless there is a real emergency, but I didn't think anything of it -- that's the Mainland. So as I was puttering around doing tickets for tenants, I had an urgent IM from a nearby merchant to whom I have sold land for her to extend her business, after having the usual struggles with her putting ban lines on her land upsetting the experience for everyone around (on the residential part of her holdings) and after she completely surrounded me and pressured me to sell my land (which she eventually bought but due to other circumstances on another sim). She asked me what Mainland Rules are. Well, there aren't any, that's the point. Other than the basic TOS ones. She pointed out an ENORMOUS grief tower that had a huge, misogynist image on it, with flickering plywood boards as well, and a medley of fire balls, annoying sounds, grief pictures, and other junk below. In short, the typical grief-tower bouquet. I said there was likely no violation of the TOS here, technically, as we all know, you can build WTF you want on your land. Still, the Lindens have trended more toward sanity and pragmatism in the 16 years I've observed them, so you never know. I said we should get an AR group going and find as many people affected by this monstrosity as we could to AR it under the rubric: "targeted behaviour so as to annoy". Sometimes "spam" works or something else, but "targeted behaviour" fits best as it is definitely the point to get in your face, be obnoxious, make you uncomfortable and angry -- all by people who are not even on the sim but are likely on a griefer island somewhere or possibly even banned by now. So I contacted the club, the rentals, the single owners all in the view of that tower. I also contacted the parcel owner, since the land was on 0 autoreturn. Studying his profile and groups and comments, I realized he was a griefing gentleman himself, but you never know. Sometimes if you let someone know that everyone around is furious and assume that he is in fact oblivious but now will do the right thing, he takes the occasion to have some remorse and clear his lot. Came back a few days -- still there. One big panel had been removed next to the club -- but probably because it encroached and the club owner flicked it back to lost & found of the absentee owner. The thing was big and ugly and depressing. Well, lower your draw distance, and move on. A former tenant returned to a spot that had it in the view -- she was unfazed. Yes, you can use de-render, although that's a mixed bag because each new guest has to de-render, too, and sometimes griefers deliberately change up their prims to defeat derender. In any event, I bother with this because I want to live in a shared world with at least minimal rules, not de-render. I think the Linden's old Community Rule 2C (since retired) about refraining from the "interference of the enjoyment of Second Life by another person" was really as good as it gets and I've always regretted that it is gone. Flew by again last night -- and noticed the land dealer had lowered his prices further and wrote "best offer". I considered buying and holding and waiting for the grief tower to go away. Since I waited for the insanely gigantic Refrigerator of Ravenglass to go away for some four or five years, I could do it again, but I really didn't want to take on that much tier. Then all of a sudden...I realized the giant picture boards had nothing behind them. The grief tower was gone! Just a few flames and junk items remained but the worst was taken. The land was abandoned. My neighbour them joyously told me that two Governance Lindens had appeared on the scene. (Perhaps they have to go out to the Mainland under Moscow Rules). They grimly set about removing the tower, but left a few pieces. My neighbour IM'd them to pick them up -- they didn't answer. They never do. So, another ticket. What does this mean? The Lindens have finally realized that grief towers are not about freedom of expression (they take it away from others and the expression is like a hammer over the head) and not art (no redeeming qualities) and about anything else but criminality? It breeds abandonment of land, and people stop coming not just to one sim, but 16. The misogyny in this one maybe was persuasive enough? HOWEVER I'll be the first to note that the grief tower may have been the least of the issues here. The Lindens don't seize land idly. Either you have to have not paid your bill for 2 months, or committed some egregious offense. For example, on other sims, these same griefers could have crashed sims, copybotted, passed around malicious scripts, spied on people, outed RL, who knows. Any number of things in the griefer menu. I notice the owner is still in the people list. Perhaps it was a simple overdue bill. I would love to think that the cumulative effect of lessons learned from SL (ad farms, Bush Guy); #MeToo movement; and all the platforms being hauled before Congress with possibly the removal or redaction of Section 230 (something I heartily support), maybe the Lindens now remove grief towers. I wouldn't take it to the bank, but it does mean if you have one you're suffering from, AR it, get those in the view to AR it, maybe you will get some relief.

So I got a Bellissaria camping spot and saw a raildroad track and at first I was excited, I thought I would get out some trains and ride them. Contrary to what some people imagine, I actually like railroads, bought lots of land on the Moth Continent near them, once had a building contest related to them (which the Lindens then pre-empted by making a railroad station building contest), and I like to ride them now and again. In fact, in Grote and nearby sims, I had either given right of way or sold at a cheap price land that was needed for a resident-run RR, which I supported. For my trouble, I was rewarded with a giant concrete overpass that blighted the view for everyone on two sims. It was fun to ride along that rail and look down fleetingly as you went by on the nice pond and builds people had made, but it was not fun looking up at that concrete overpass all the time. And that is the essence of Mainland. My land next to this concrete monster did not rent or sell and got abandoned, as did other people's land. Finally, that person went away and took their RR with them. Then some gadflies who don't own very much land began to lobby the Moles to re-build this RR along this Linden "Right of Way". In the ensuing years, the Lindens had sold part of their "right of way" on the auction. A land baron bought some of it; I bought it from him; I got my abandoned land back; I made a nicer area. These lobbiest began to concoct a fable about how I had somehow "forced myself" on to Linden land (which they themselves had sold, whether intentionally or not is not my problem). Michael Linden began building along this right of way and some of us complained -- why should we a) have to give up our land possibly again b) more to the point, have an ugly high-rise? The Lindens had abandoned land all over hell's half acre -- they could re-route their SLRR in a different area even with overpasses and not destroy a pond, already suffering from Linden parceling that enabled a person who owned the middle of it to block everybody. Anyway, I decided to read up on the new SLRR in Bellissaria and it's a good thing I did because I found that it had these rules: o You can't jump on it anywhere, this would upset its switching. Since I only found out this rule accidentally by reading the forums, and there were no signs or anything, I do wonder how the Lindens can enforce this as they build out Bellissaria. o You had to wait at any red traffic lot, even if it was 10 minutes, or there would be derailments. Again, no signs telling you to do this, at least not yet. Well, that was a disappointment and a mystery. On the old SLRR, you could jump on anywhere. In fact the green spam buses/train cars go on there all the time, as do various enthusiasts in rail clubs and single people using freebies or trains they bought. (Sadly my Hellraiser engine is lost in an inventory loss). I wonder if this is a temporary thing, but it's annoying if permanent. I realize the old SLRR had its problems, I would ride up in the air and turn around or crash accidentally but it worked for years. In any event, I went dutifully to one of the two rez stations given, which was kind of scrappy, but that's ok, I realize it's still under construction. I had a nice ride and then had to stop. I waited probably 10 minutes then I abandoned ship. Well, if there is only one rail that's what you have to do I guess. I wonder if it is possible to lay track right next to the Linden roads. That would be on easements that people have come to take for granted so many not. In any event, I look forward to learning whether these rules are eternal and what comes next. I was inspired to investigate this by Daniel Voyager's post about a new tunnel which I did not find yet but will.