Prokofy Neva
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Posts posted by Prokofy Neva
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10 hours ago, Lewis Luminos said:
Some MMOs give every character a "home" so some people like that may be coming to SL from one of those games, and expecting it to work the same way.
Yes, I totally get that. When I tried to play EVE Online, I could never figure out how to get out of that home. I had the same problem frankly even on Philip's game Hi Fidelity. There was also some newbie helper guy that kept appearing and I actually wanted him to go away because I can't "learn by watching" a youtube or a person in a virtual world, but only by reading and hacking at it myself until I get it. But still, an entire 4096 elaborately built up parcel, with another 4096 extension, that's your home? Really? No game gives you that.
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Thank you. This is why one comes to the forums. For validation. And it means battling through of thicket of skepticism and scoffing but if one persists, there it is, that validation.
But I notice you are saying "web search, web profiles". I'm talking about inworld profiles and inworld search in the viewer. That's making me log in again. Marketplace outside of the viewer -- which is the only way I access it -- doesn't make me log in again.
"Web search" isn't something I would do from inside the viewer. I just prefer to do most things, even Marketplace editing and such outside of the viewer, because inside the viewer is kind of a cramped, loggy place.
But that prompts a question. You know under preferences/setup/web, there are radio buttons to click saying:
o use the default system browser for all links
o use the built-in browser for Second Life links only
o use the built-in browser for all links
I don't really know the use cases for all this but I only have the second one checked which is the default. Could that be relevant?
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Well, do all the things said with the sliders, but also:
o turn off streaming music
o turn off voice
o if at an event, using the advanced menu, turn off "avatars" so you can't see them.
o don't have breedables, doors that listen, security orbs, weapons, rocking chairs, etc. around you - get Xoph's HUD on the MP and measure scripts and take out the things that are high usage
o use only 512 textures
o sit on your porch and chat to friends in IMs - why are you trying to fly around? Your arms will only get tired.
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So this question may have been answered and yes, I did reach this wiki but I am still wondering -- can you somehow set Windlight on a given sim or parcel and other people coming to that parcel will also see it automatically -- on the MAINLAND?
Or do you have to write a description of the setting, or make available that "object" of EEP to them (and how do you do that).
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50 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:
Well, you can rest easy. Even the worst connection in the world won't log you out of websites on its own.
Your "login session" is typically saved into the browser's cookies (or just "cache" if that's more familiar). Lose the cookie, lose the login.
I'm having trouble understanding what the main issue is though.
So if the search breaking is not the main issue, what is?
Well, like it says on the can, the *FORCED LOG-ON* IS THE ISSUE.
I haven't done anything to "lose the cookie". I've logged on with the regular SL browser which presumably adds a cookie or whatever; I've stayed on for a few hours; I've not logged off or crashed. I haven't done anything. Yet as soon as I go back to search or go to a profile, it is forcing me to log in again.
If at one time I could blame Verizon for this, nope, no more, now I'm on Spectrum.
BTW, a recent patch made it possible for me to click on those red beacon arrows and make them disappear again. For a long time, it wouldn't let me do this.
So I point out that this forced log-on is co-morbid with search borking because it is. I see a grid notice that search isn't working, or someone tells me search isn't working, or I discover it isn't, and whoops, that forced log-on is also present. But it's not always.
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If at one time someone could blame this on "wireless," I now have a new Internet provider with the router plugged directly into the computer, so that's not the issue. It meets all the specs and more.
This is a chronic problem that goes away for whole months -- then whoops, comes back again, often in tandem with search borking.
I filed a ticket with the Lindens to see what they would say.
After a very long time, and several "hold" messages, I finally was told...to log on to secondlife.com from inside the viewer and click "remember me".
Oh, I thought, sounds great, maybe that will work, although I recalled it not working before, but maybe I missed something.
Yesterday, during a session of less than two hours, it asked me to re-log in order to use search FOUR TIMES.
Yes, I have "general-mature-adult" checked off in preferences.
Yes, I log in from inside the SL viewer and check "remember me".
And it STILL makes me re-log AGAIN just to use search and find something other than "General" results.
Or to see someone's profile -- this is very chronic.
This is a bug, people. It is not normal. Once I have longed on to THE VIEWER ITSELF, that should be ENOUGH.
I am on the regular SL viewer.
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On 5/14/2020 at 3:30 PM, animats said:
It's called "Fortnite Party Royale", and it opened a few weeks ago.
Yes. The place to start is the clothing system. That needs to be simplified. A "How to look good in SL" area and class would help. (Caledon Oxbridge, surprisingly, doesn't have one.) New users are often sent to the Free Dove or Freebie Galaxy, which are designer bargain bins. If you don't know what you're doing before you get there, you'll get horribly confused, get items that don't work for your avatar, and may end up with some off-brand avatar for which little clothing is available.
A new user should leave the entry area with one look as good as the ones shown on the Second Life home page. Anything less leaves new users feeling they've been had. One really good look. From there, they can discover the joys of shopping and dressing.
(Attention Marketing: LL, please stop sticking new users with "70s Disco Guy".)
I've never understood why people equate the success of a virtual world with how many people you can crowd on to a sim to listen to a rock concert.
Most people don't go to rock concerts; even those that do might prefer a more quiet club where performers like Frogg & Jaycatt are playing who know you and talk to you instead of a mass experience where you are merely in a shard watching the same thing as zillions of other people but not actually interacting with those masses and still limited to chat with the same room or the same friends' list. What is the value in this?
Most people enjoy exploring solo or with friends of places that are NOT crowded. They socialize just with a partner or a small group of friends. The mass-ness of the "party royale" is NOT what they seek. So why are we putting that as a gold standard? I used to call these debates when I heard them 15 years ago "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin".
I will say that one proof that Fantasy Faire is actually magical is this: you would click on a sim and try to teleport to say, a rave party or a tour or something, and it would say "Sim Full" and the managers would have set that setting very high. I would see even like 70, not the 40 or a shopping event. But if you TP'd to the sim *next* to the pile of green dots, you could always walk into the "full" sim. Maybe it's because I was on a petite or Dinkie avatar and took up less space, but I always sneaked in that way..
I should also point out that many people use the system avatars without complaint until they are oriented. I noticed that people coming to BillionsofUs, which has resumed in Second Life, were selecting the old guy in the tux with the rose -- which I have put on my permless alt to test things. There's plenty of nice clothes.
And somehow people manage to spend even the $5,000 on Catwa heads or whatever. Not like it's a RL mink coat. I started the survey as promised about what is the hardest thing in SL. Naturally it's a small sample (32 people in a sim with a lot of newbies) and now the OP can come and skew it, but that's ok, it will remain here for years and eventually be more useful. Here are the answers:
Lag/Poor Graphics
17
53%Rent/Land Too Costly
4 votes
13%Clothes/Avatars too Costly
4 votes
13%Nothing to do/can't find
3 votes
9%Too hard to make friends
1 vote
3%Griefing/Poor Governance
3 votes
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On 5/14/2020 at 11:57 AM, Beth Macbain said:
I still think LL ought to hire you, Luca.
I believe LL is being way too reserved when it comes to on-boarding new residents. In the past year, I've created several new alts to upgrade so I can have more Linden Homes. I love LL, and I am an unabashed fan-girl, but the experience from the second you log in for that first time is just awful. I don't know how to make it better. I've but a lot of thought into it and I have a lot of suggestions, but I really think the entire thing needs to be torn down and rebuilt from the beginning.
People see the slick ads and photos showing beautiful avatars in extraordinary areas doing fabulous things, then they log in and see none of that, and there is nothing in the new user experience that shows how to go from looking like an idiot to looking like, and seeing, the things they saw before they logged in.
While I wouldn't say that it's misleading, because all of those things are possible in SL, I would feel frustrated and disappointed and, perhaps most of all, lost.
I know SL pretty well. I know how to move and get around and find things and do stuff. I've still not created an alt that has actually figured out how to get off the new user island and move to the social island or welcome area or whatever they are. The experience has somehow managed to be both overwhelming and underwhelming. It goes through all the basics of how to move, which is fine and needed, but it automatically attaches a HUD without explaining what the hell it is or how often residents are going to be encountering HUDs. Right there could be one of the first steps to change. Give the new resident the HUD and then walk them through how to attach it and what its function is.
@Strawberry Linden makes really awesome tutorials. Why not have those available inworld right there for people to watch? Teach people the things they're really going to need to know - teleporting, how to put on and take off clothing, hair, skins, shapes, etc. Notecards and their function. We all have these default folders - gestures, objects, scripts, textures, photographs, etc. - what are those? How do I use search and what are some good things to search for? What are the the access ratings and how do I change those? What is my profile? How to I update it? Walk me through my preferences and where to find them. What are Linden dollars? How do I get them? Give me a way to easily ask questions and get fast answers.
Walking, running, and jumping is all good and fine, but there is so much more that people desperately need to at least have the opportunity to learn before they're let loose.
As I've said a billion times, there is an easy, workable, inexpensive way to achieve this: put ad boards in the welcome areas that businesses pay for, that advertise everything from shopping malls to boutiques to dance clubs to reading circles to art shows to meditation -- and let newbies click on them and go to the places of interest, and the business owners will be motivated to teach them the basics for how to enjoy poetry or art or fashion or whatever the topic is -- because they will become paying customers.
This is how real life works, and it's how online virtual life should work.
In fact, the telehubs used to have resident ads that had fireworks at Riverwalk or art shows or my rentals or clubs or what have you. There were rules (PG) and they turned over every 2 weeks, there was a limit to how long you could have them. Make them paying for a reasonable but not too-low price, and you will have another source of sinks. You don't have to struggle through mass-teaching of how to build, or finding "what to do" for people who need some spoon feeding especially at the beginning -- you put market forces to work. You don't have to have an elaborate welcome infrastructure that only a few big businesses can pay for and who are the beneficiaries of A/B tests -- anyone can pay $500 or $1000 like a classified (which are too crowded to be effective) and achieve onboarding with motivation.
It's only the aversion to commerce of the few forums regs and Lindens who are socialists that prevents this. But someday when Facebook or some other big company makes something like this, they won't have these allergies and we will get to see how it works.
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On 5/14/2020 at 8:06 AM, lucagrabacr said:
So sometimes ago in a video, Philip Rosedale mentioned how looking back, Second Life could use a bit of gamification. On principle I disagreed, and still do. But thinking of it now, what makes the physical world interesting is the "gamified" nature of it - where people are not gods (think of it, if you have complete control of, can conjure and do anything you want in the physical world like a god, it would get boring pretty fast).
Of course the fundamental appeal of "gamification" is a sense of objectives, things to look forward to and achieve. And we as humans in part measure our sense of fulfillment through comparative reasoning, either towards nature or other people - for example, the way most of us live today are many folds better than people who live in the bronze age, but we're probably not that much happier, because we measure our success and sense of fulfillment by comparing the relative state of others and the world through comparative reasoning, while if people who lived in the bronze age see how we live today, they would probably be clueless to how we can be unhappy with everything we have.
Think of Minecraft, people who play it feel fulfilled and happy for surviving and building things. In part it's because the base state of the game is "it's the wilderness, if you don't do anything you die of starvation or killed by monsters" - so when they manage to survive and build things that help them survive, it gives them a sense of fulfillment because it's way better than the base or default state, surviving is better than dying and civilization is better than the wilderness.
Now, one might think that it's impossible to create such a sense in Second Life that is innate or inherent to Second Life itself (not a game within it), because everyone already can do, become and create anything right? But there are things outside those things, meta elements that people can achieve or excel in and be better at compared to others who might not specialize in those things, in Second Life. Things that are not simply given or granted to you the moment you enter Second Life, that you can do, work towards and be better at.
To many Residents these things might simply be things that they can buy - lands, homes, bodies, heads, etc. To creators and business owners these things might be the quality of their creations, the success of their businesses. To people who run a community or an organization these things might be how many people are active in, or join their community, or follow their cause. There are so many of these (which LL themselves have promoted through their videos) so maybe that's why LL probably haven't emphasize these too much in the new user experience, but these are the meat and bread of Second Life so why not put more of them in new user areas so new people can be less confused and "don't know what to do"?
So what if new user areas, an element of the UI, or the onboarding welcome experience emphasize these meta aspects with curated examples? Or if not examples (so that there won't appear to be any favoritism), maybe promotional posters or banners?
Without gamifying Second Life, we can create or cultivate a first impression environment where people are imbued with the idea and understanding that these things exist, happened, can be achieved and can be done in Second Life. To communicate the sense (and truth) that, "Hey, if you dedicate yourself and put your heart to it, you can achieve or do great things here" - which a lot of Residents know, but most new people don't.
As of now, as far as I know, the only thing that does this in new user areas is the "get your own home / land / friends / relationship / things" billboards which are usually coupled with the "click here to buy L$" stand - which are fine and are certainly doing SL a lot of good, otherwise LL would have not put them in those places. I understand that LL probably don't want to overwhelm new users with too much information and I'm sure their reasoning is scientific and solid, but I just think there isn't enough of these.
What do you guys think? Is LL too reserved or holding back too much in this regard?
I think LL has to be careful how they advertise the huge capacity for sexual expression and even sex work in SL because in some jurisdictions, it might lead to the banning of SL. And I think it's good that they have a separate continent for explicit, public adult behaviour.
As for the other things, like a DJ career or creating fashion or a breedable pet -- LL does advertise those things.
Advertising does in fact illustrate these things. And with their romance stories of people meeting in SL and marrying in real life, LL does subtly play up the social/sexual aspect of SL for many -- and that's a good thing.
I have never found a better explanation than the one Philip Rosedale (creator of SL gave) back in the day: that in the real world, you have atoms, and you are limited in how much you can manipulate them -- you might place a chair or start a fire but there are limits everywhere imposed by gravity and government and many other things. But the virtual world is made of pixels, not atoms, or bytes or whatever, and these you can manipulate at will in all kinds of ways, change the ground, change the sky (even before Windlight you could at least turn off the sun), change your clothes with thousands of options, change your house with a click, etc. And that's very compelling.
The average person, however, never learns a tenth of what is needed to manipulate pixels because it's hard.
I have several customers who had put a real-life religious community or other type of non-profit community inside SL and I'll be interested to see if those people learn SL well enough to enjoy it. In the past, during the big business boom, I had RL businesses and even a RL tourist agency from RL Ravenglass, but they all gave up, too expensive, too hard, too insecure.
I once complained to Philip that while it was historic that there was now a Cory Doctorow book created in SL, the books were too hard to make (and still are) and distribute. And other things didn't exist. "Someone will make everything," he said impatiently. I have often reflected on that idea. "Someone will make everything". Because mainly they have.
I once had a very rare 5 minutes to talk to Marissa Meyer who was then at Google. This was when I covered Techcrunch like 7 years ago or something. I noticed that some of the new apps for music or videos had their own self-contained search systems -- they weren't Google. Google could not capture what was happening inside of them. Did this pose a challenge to Google, I asked. I could literally see the gears working -- I truly think she hadn't thought of those new apps (which now don't even exist any more as Spotify or YouTube killed all the competition) in that way. And like Philip, she said impatiently, "Some will make them all searchable." And of course that someone was Google, and only to a much lesser extent, Bing.
(BTW, Sergei Brin once told a funny story about how early Google used to search games online and turned up enormous amounts of junk about people getting magic swords or stepping along paths to castles or whatever and how they eventually learned to bypass those things. I don't *think* Google can search the chat or voice or actions inside SL. But maybe it can, in some way. There is robots.txt of course but does that really keep Google even from compiling a list of what it can't search, which is still something.
There's always someone who will make a thing, and LL can't exactly advertise Bento moveable bits, can they? I think they do what they can. But someone is going to make a virtual world where things are easier. Maybe Facebook (I don't think it will be Google as they can't overcome their terrible engineering culture enough to make social media that isn't brutal). Or maybe Zoom or some company you might not think is in this space.
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11 hours ago, Mollymews said:
agree
this happens quite often with brand new people
with parcel boundaries being turned off by default in the viewer then new people often just wander all over where ever their curiosity takes them
the concept of private vs public spaces in virtual environments is a learned behaviour. When there is no apparent obstacle to being in a space (like banlines, sec orb warnings or a sign) then the perceived permission (the expectation) is that it is ok for them to be there. The concept of private in a virtual space is not a perception that new people intuitively have, the perception is that it is public unless specified or informed otherwise
I'd have to disagree with this. Most people port their behaviours, innate or learned, from real life and replicate them. The whole reason that people have houses in Second Life instead of giant trees (Foolish Frost made one for the land preserve) or giant cactuses (someone made me one once) and don't behave like the avian creatures they in fact are is because they behave like humans. It's not like something magical happens because they go online, far from it.
Locked doors don't keep out anyone who knows the sit hack, which is usually most people over 90 days old. But most people in fact accept that you can't walk into a house and in fact don't. It's a minority of people doing this who are just generally clueless, oblivious, rude, and grabby. That describes the younger millennial generation in part but not even all of them.
I encourage people to use visitor trackers if they believe they have a regular invader, then they can ban them. And then the list shows not hundreds and not ten but one former disgruntled ex or something like that. Most people do not invade homes. They have manners. They were not brought up in a barn -- or on the Internet.
Once I landed at the infohub in Ross which is a resident content Linden infohub I manage (there are about 10 of these from the old days). A newbie hissed at me, "Get out of my house! Get out of my house!" Unable to find or use any weapons she just kept hissing at me and pushing me. I explained to her that she had gone to an infohub after the welcome island -- they used to be randomly sent to them. And that it was a public place, not just "her house" which she assumed she got merely for making an account -- and not even a premium account. Entitlement attitudes are HUGE in some. But most people are decent.
I could point out a certain sim where a large establishment catering to the Linux cult is nearby. The Linux penguins wander all over and even build inside or around other people's houses because they think everything should be "free". There is a welcome and help island nearby so there are a fair number of newbies. Most stay on the road; some even ask if these are people's houses and how do you get them. If the default behaviour of hordes of people was to roam freely through everyone's houses, I could never manage to have rentals on those sims but I have for years.
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7 hours ago, Lewis Luminos said:
Eh. I'm on mainland but orbs don't have to be like that. Mine doesn't extend past the walls of my house (except above and below), all the outdoor parts of the parcel (which is significantly bigger than the house) are outside of the orb's range. My warning time is 30 seconds, that should be enough for a person on the slowest, laggiest computer to get themselves out of range. And it only ejects to the border of the parcel, not teleporting home.
So, sure, if you want to sit on my beach or rez your boat here, you can. And if you're just sailing through, you'd never even notice (until you crash into next-door's dock).
Yes, it is possible on many if not all orbs to set a range and a time and a type (eject or send home) yet few people bother and profess learned helplessness on this score.
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On 5/13/2020 at 4:31 PM, Sylvia Tamalyn said:
Not everyone who uses an orb is a crazed bunker-dweller. Some of us just expect basic respect, and since we can't count on others to offer it, deal with it accordingly by keeping the louts out with the method that is the least hassle to use. It is my right to use an orb, and I will continue doing so... and, I might add, the minute someone uses ban lines, then people complain about THAT.
Of course, I don't really like to rent anyway, as I prefer to make the rules for my own home.
I hope you're on your own homestead or island so that you don't annoy everyone around you.
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Axe of the Leviathan.
This was my first purchase, and I still have it, God bless it.
I bought it because when I got my First Land on Refugio, a little hard-scrabble 512 on a rocky mountain coast, there was another resident there, an oldbie by the name of "Leviathan" who ran a TV business, who was determined to push me off that sim and take over my 512, and who griefed me mercilessly. I had no clue how to deal with griefing at first, and I had some remote notion from some vague idea of war games that if I bought a weapon that had that name in it, that somehow it might come in handy....
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20 hours ago, Gopi Passiflora said:
Personally, I don't mind if strangers come to my home as long as they don't bother me with unwanted IMs or rez stuff that crash the sim or something like that. If they just stand there and don't say anything I don't mind.
The reason why I ask is because I've been viewing various "SL home invasion" trolling videos and commenters have said that people who get mad at strangers coming into their home are taking Second Life too seriously.
In 15 years of running Mainland rentals, I have come to see this behaviour as innate and hard-wired by God/evolution/culture over the millenia. People fear that someone might invade their space, take their mate, use their adult furniture especially with that mate, and then they won't be able to tell if the children are really theirs, given the lack of DNA test kits in previous centuries.
Even though there are no birthed children in SL as such and no paternity issues as such, this hard-wired behaviour persists and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. You can try to convince people they can't get AIDS in a virtual world. You can tell them to put their furniture on "owner" only or put it away. You can tell them to put a clear box around it or their house even which they click and change to "physics" when they log on, or remove. I don't allow orbs on the ground because they are super annoying to everyone else, including your fellow tenants who can't even fly to their own house because of your orb.
But none of it works. Most of the time, it takes only ONE incident -- ONE -- to make people get into a TOTAL FRENZY with this wired behaviour. They can't accept that ban powers in the group can take care of this; some of them seem to think they need to have a conversation first with an intruder and reason with them when a right-click/eject is all they need to do.
Instead, they rant and rage at me and get in my groups and rage about the inability to have a bunker with an orb. They might log on once a month but the rest of the time we're all supposed to be inconvenienced because of this wild, crazy, illogical innate behaviour involving fear of a stranger getting on your adult furniture. Or merely getting in your space at all, even if PG -- but generally I find it's a deep-seated animosity to the stranger on the furniture.
And to be sure, there is a segment of the SL population that refuses to rent even the cheapest rental, or refuses to go in the sky on a four-hour sandbox or some other slow or no autoreturn parcel, and insists on trespassing.
I think this is unreasonable -- you can put "avatars can't see me" as an option and be totally invisible from outside; you can have a skybox with an orb. But on the ground, in your house, you need to use ban. The overwhelming majority of tenants get this, accept it, and either simply don't care what happens in their house when they are gone OR they have a skybox with an orb OR they respond normally to the few incidents of trespassing that actually occur. That is why it is possible to even have Mainland rentals -- because most people can overcome the hard-wired behaviour of the centuries and live in peace -- and frankly, it's mainly women who can do this (as they don't suffer from the hardwired fear of not telling who the child's father is that the man has).
So in the end, I tell people that SL is a big place, they can surely find another rentals company where they can have the humper bunker they require, but it will probably cost more.
I myself have several houses in SL and I write on the description "all welcome" -- and since there is no adult furniture I rarely get visitors. If I log on and find someone in the garden, that's fine, why shouldn't they enjoy it? If they become annoying, I ban them. The end.
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24 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:
Oh, sorry no, not system trees, nor individual system plants like all the ones in your test plot: those stay as planted. It's the groundcovers that screw up. See this jira, "Linden grass changes type to single species 'grass tall 1'" (which I should have linked before but was too lazy to track it down).
It's a whole thing for me because I really like these groundcovers for their ability to automatically conform to terrain. So I have an elaborate ritual for rooting out the mutants after a sim restart (thank god for llReturnObjectsByID) and replanting them, but it's an elaborate ritual because scripted replanting only works on group-owned land if the planting script is owned by somebody with the right group Abilities, and only if that person is in the sim at the time. There's more, too; I wrote up the whole sordid tale for the Bay City Post a few years ago.
I didn't know all that. I started just removing all Linden grass by highlighting in the yellow box and returning because it's all that one type, which puzzled me. And I miss that ability to comform as well. I wish resident creators' grass did that.
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On 4/27/2020 at 11:56 PM, anonymousrailwaybingo said:
The first time I got to know Second Life was around the year 2012. I did'n't have time to use it much back then, but the thing I remember was this: Second Life used to be much more user friendly and simple. For example, it was a lot easier for a beginner to make your own avatar and find things from different categories (inventories and so on...).
Now Second Life seems to become an insiders venue where you need lots of "secret" knowledge how to run things smooth. Or you need to read complicated instructions that make sure you'll lose interest and focus within seconds. And you need to have a super computer to run the "game". I'm amazed how slow and lagging SL is comparing to what it was in 2012. And this can't be explained with better content and graphics, because what I remember - the graphics were actually better back then.
The inventory section is a complete mess. For example, you have to pick your clothes pretty much blindfolded from the category. It'd be nice to have a neat wardrobe closet where you could see what you have and choose easily. And most of the time the inventories you've purchased wont work/open.
I wish I had a magic wand and was able take this game back to where it used to be, in 2012...
I don't recall SL as being less laggy then at all, I was barely able to move in a sea of grey back then. And I don't really think it has a lot to do with the computer or ISP. They come and go and SL persists with issues.
People say "Outfits" is the way to make a wardrobe. Except the big problem with those is that you cannot save a folder in that section -- it resists doing that as it only makes the folders saved while in "appearance" mode. That's annoying when you buy a whole new avatar/outfit especially, or say a scripted avatar animal, and you can't put it in a folder in "Outfits" and then pop it on with "replace entirely" to get rid of the current outfit, which is the easiest way to deal with all the myriad issues of AOs and alphas and God knows what. Instead, first have to put it on -- but FIRST painstakingly trying to remove everything from the previous outfit. And only then save that new outfit -- persisting and waiting through the lag for "save as". I only get new outfits like once a quarter if that. And each time I do and encounter this annoyance, it deters me from getting something new. I hate picking off all the different alphas to make something work and trying this or that old alpha to make something work if you don't have a mesh body, which I do not want to spend on. I wish you could make alphas on the fly to fit whatever problem you faced at that moment.
If you have a large inventory as I do (138,000) much of the time you cannot search and get an item from search -- the cursor keeps slipping past it. No amount of double clicking gets it to stop. You have to struggle to find its folders by cursing down through a bunch of folders.
As for the secret knowledge, I just stumbled upon a conversation I had with a Linden years ago, in complete exasperation, about the camera angle. I was constantly plagued by camera angle problems that made building hard and exploring hard. Turned out there was a setting to fix this. I still get customers who face this issue. But it's not like "here's the top 10 things you need to know" on a card handed out when you first make an account. The Lindens still seem obsessed with building, which most people don't wish to do, and not just having avatar comfort levels.
My own son who was on the teen grid, and credits Second Life with teaching him how to run a business and giving him RL skills he couldn't get in college which he uses in his RL business today, who does all kinds of IT and photography and video work, gets frustrated easily with SL today. It's not as if it's that changed, and certain basic things like group roles haven't changed at all. But some things have changed enough to become frustrating. He helps me with my rentals and each time I seem to have to walk him through things. He'll start a project, put some things out, at first have fun with it and then reach some stall over something incomprehensible and then quit. When I have been sick or have had to travel I pay him to run my rentals and he complains to me about how hard it is. Some skills he seemingly he had learned but they either changed or he forgot. It's hard.
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23 hours ago, ChinRey said:
I don't think us creators have much infuence on this. What we make is a drop in the ocean compared to the big and mid sized landowners.
Oh, there are big-time creators who make mesh bodies, hair, skins, breedable pets etc and they move markets.
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On 5/7/2020 at 4:29 PM, Charlotte Bartlett said:
I suspect it's a blend - just my personal opinion:
(a) Merchants & land rental businesses are understanding more how to use the Lindex combined with buyer pressure. Generally there has been a reduction in selling one point above the market (except some of the larger land barons who tend to have no issue losing over 500 USD a year simply by selling at the wrong rate - I think this is why LINDEX education is important to help maximize returns). I have certainly seen a wider understanding about selling in advance, allowing sales to take a week to close, not filling up sale queues above the market and focusing sales at a rate below, parking money daily at the target rates versus one big sale each week etc.
(b) However, the main driver beyond the education that has been going on regarding the above, seems to be metrically driven by significant buyer growth levels. LL, I am sure, will release some information around returning users/growth (I have asked them for this to share some highlights if they can as it's been amazing to see).
Some key highlights on that "available number" to show you the trend.
16th Jan - 3.7M USD available in top 20 rates
18th Feb - 3.3M USD ditto
20th Apr - 668K USD ditto
29th Apr -505K USD ditto
Then we saw the intraday dip to 380K USD
1st May - 438K USD*
3rd May 491K USD
4th May - 250 Rate handbrake firmly on - 646K available reversing the trend.
Today - 519K - back to reduction so we'll wait to see what Supply Linden lets us do the next 3-5 days
The rate has been in a controlled change over this month (and since February). It's still creating an affordable experience for those purchasing Linden Dollars when you take into account the sales, demand etc. We haven't seen 249 sales in quite some time, so it's great to see that rate in reach again.
Things like if you were selling at 250 and had put in your sale on 28th April it would have be closed by now.
If you had also placed your sales at 249 up to 1st May - there is only 3M ahead of you in that queue once that rate starts selling.
249 sales have been delayed (in my opinion) by:
There has been concerted effort (intention or accidental) due to the size of the 250 queue since the start of May, to push the rate a little up and to not let 250 deplete. There was around 10M in large chunky sales in an hour for example yesterday that pushed more money into that queue and some above it, effectively creating a "hand break" on the rate depleting sufficiently to have people not "queue jump".
But as a comparison there was 56.6M stuck on the 257 queue on 21st April and the market managed to clear that by 24th April. The velocity seen then has slowed a bit now in comparison. But it's not buyer volume that has slowed, simply more for sale was pushed into that 250 rate.
In reality, my personal thoughts are this is all great news for small creators/rental businesses whom rely on SL to feed their families (particularly right now). Will the growth "stick" is another question, I suspect looking at when large businesses expect a lot of WFH workers to return (particularly in the US) we may see this continue through to August (and then who knows).
Supply Linden has been managing through a fine line of inflation and growth - I have my beady eye on them. I want them to continue to let the inflation move a little further, whilst the market can bear it. Now if we can before the Monday Sellers start get into a 248/9 rate - I will be happy.
You certainly watch the LindEx way more than I do, but I totally agree about the "education" aspect, to convince people to wait even 10 minutes instead of the instant cashout -- many people fear the LindEx and get into a learned helplessness of trying to understand it, a reflection of the poor math education in the US and the decline of practical education in general around the world.
I don't think the education could happen so fast as to explain the current spread, however; we're talking about 259 as the norm before COVID (correlation or no) and 252 today. That's a very big spread. So that's about the combination of things like more sales, big events, a slowing of premiums --whatever.
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L$251 / US$1.00 L$918,535 L$250 / US$1.00 L$64,975,467 L$249 / US$1.00 L$48,721,850 So, to what do we owe this beneficial turn of events -- beneficial at least for merchants and those selling Lindens?
Somebody said "COVID-19" and stay-at-homes buying stuff -- but it wasn't like this 4 weeks ago or 2 weeks ago, but only this week.
I think it has to do with the Fantasy Faire auction and all the sales at Fantasy Faire -- people have bought priceless eggs by Alia Baroque for $12,000 or $25,000 or even $70,000 I believe, they are rares sold once a week for charity (the Relay for Life). And there were other items like Contraption's drill on Auxentios Pass that went for a huge amount in the six figures, I don't recall, maybe someone has it. The Faire is up past the US $50,000 donations mark (actually to $54,500 at this point!) and that's for the *donated* items -- there are still all the zillions of sales made as people buy exclusives and other items that suddenly seem findable and buyable in less cluttered Faire stores in beautiful builds. Or because you feel like you need a centaur to wear to the centaur stampede. I mean...parade. That sort of thing.
There are also a lot of other events this week -- We ❤️ RP is one, and Liasion Collaborative was so crowded you couldn't get into the sim for several days.
But it also could be the slowing of premiums, which are like printing money, as each premium gets $300 a week.
Also did I see fly by some message about how stipends were delayed? Without stipends, the Linden dollar value goes way up.
And no, it has not been like this in 10 years or more -- many people think it "fluctiates" and is like "the normal supply and demand" of any market but of course it isn't. It is artificially controlled by Supply Linden, i.e. the Lindens need to keep the dollar cheap to encourage people to buy it, but not so cheap that people give up on their businesses because they cost too much to run.
As I think of it, the combination of the events plus the stipend error could explain it and we could see this change soon.
Thoughts?
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On 4/27/2020 at 9:48 PM, DYNASTY Clip said:
land to buy is not cheap sorry to tell you i priced it once just out of curiosity
Once? If you're serious you have to go back multiple times and look all over. You can get abandoned land from the Lindens for just $1/meter or even less on the auctions. You have to really want to do this, and it seems you are unsure. Land is not expensive. It's dirt cheap. Tier is more costly, but if you start small and make sales it is manageable.
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On 4/22/2020 at 11:37 AM, Luna Bliss said:
I haven't watched it yet, but looks like it could be good, and it's free on Youtube...
Michael Moore presents Planet of the Humans, a documentary that dares to say what no one else will this Earth Day — that we are losing the battle to stop climate change on planet earth because we are following leaders who have taken us down the wrong road — selling out the green movement to wealthy interests and corporate America. This film is the wake-up call to the reality we are afraid to face: that in the midst of a human-caused extinction event, the environmental movement’s answer is to push for techno-fixes and band-aids. It's too little, too late. Removed from the debate is the only thing that MIGHT save us: getting a grip on our out-of-control human presence and consumption. Why is this not THE issue? Because that would be bad for profits, bad for business. Have we environmentalists fallen for illusions, “green” illusions, that are anything but green, because we’re scared that this is the end—and we’ve pinned all our hopes on biomass, wind turbines, and electric cars? No amount of batteries are going to save us, warns director Jeff Gibbs (lifelong environmentalist and co-producer of “Fahrenheit 9/11” and “Bowling for Columbine"). This urgent, must-see movie, a full-frontal assault on our sacred cows, is guaranteed to generate anger, debate, and, hopefully, a willingness to see our survival in a new way—before it’s too late.
It's important to work to save the environment, to stop global warning, to clean air and water and do everything possible. This can be done without any reference to Michael Moore whatsoever, and he is only counterproductive for things like this and basically a joke even on the left. You don't have to have communism or socialism to cure the environment; the countries around the world that have done the most to regulate carbon emissions and clean up the environment are capitalist, and that's no accident, comrades.
But Earth Day was and is Lenin's birthday, and indeed that is what it has always been about. The first Earth Day was the 100th anniversary of Lenin's birth, so it was a feather in the propagandists' cap. It's not a conspiracy theory, it's not "reds under the bed," it's about how Kremlin propaganda has always worked and still worked, most recently in our elections in the US. Each time there is always a faction that loudly proclaims it is fake and a conspiracy, but that's just a distraction. All kinds of movements in the West have been infiltrated or hijacked by Kremlin forces, directly or indirectly, in their interests, which are all about selling their own oil and gas.
Wikipedia and others claim that the original founder of Earth Day didn't know anything about Lenin's birthday. But he doesn't have to, and it's even better if he remains oblivious -- there are others around him to put the bug in his ear in student movements and liberal movements around him.
In the end, it doesn't matter if you can't prove Earth Day isn't deliberately placed on Lenin's birthday and you spout that it's John Muir's birthday, too. The point is, Russia, China, and India not to mention many other countries -- and most of the communist and authoritarian ones -- have far worse pollution problems than the US and Europe, yet the West always blames itself first. If you care about the environment, you can't just worry about fracking in New York State as I do, you have to worry about oil extraction in Yamal where there is far less possibility of protest and action.-
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1 hour ago, AStormieDay said:
I’m not very familiar with how these things work, and while I do understand they suggest the recommended rate and also people say to go with the best top 3 I was curious of this was at all possible and if so how long exactly would it take (as it states 22 hours in the photo then later said 5 days) this is out of curiosity and the desire to maybe even attempt it (if I haven’t already <_<‘) I apologize for my ignorance, please try to be as “dumb” as possible when you explain to me as I’m not that great at understanding things to begin with ( probably cause I’m stubborn ) also apologize in advance of this is the wrong forum to place this in and would be grateful for it to be placed in the proper one 🙂 thank you! ❤️
I think it might fill, just a bit before the heat-death of the sun...
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"Avatar hair is lit by the Sun on both sides of head" is described as a "known issue" in the long list of such things in the new patch which now brings us EEP. Or rather, takes the wraps of EEP since, as Rider Linden has explained, it was "already there," unlike the world for Bishop Berkeley.
I'm bracing myself for there to be two moons, tidal waves that completely overwash my sims, a sky that looks like the Last Days and -- yes, I saw what you did there, the sun now *jumps* if you switch from "midnight" to "midday".
Even on the old viewer, I never understood why, if you select a preset thing like "Sailor's Delight" and click "save" it tells you that you can't do that. Yet it doesn't "stay there," either. So I'm hardly likely to figure this new thing out and my fervent hope is, as the kids say, that it won't "mess up my game".
How about you?
I did send Rider Linden, who I gather was in charge of this project, a halo for getting it done. And just in time for Fantasy Faire, imagine. But never forget that the Light emanates from heaven...
As for the light on not just one but BOTH sides of my avatar head, I can't turn my head to see it -- even if it could turn 360 degrees. So I will bask in the knowledge that it is now lit on both sides, even as my little avatar feet cast shadows...
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You can look at my latest listings at the main office, and if you don't find a place that has exactly 400 prims, in a lot of areas you can ask to add prims.
Ravenglass Rentals Main Office
Generally I'll charge at least 0.66/prim for parcels, some skyboxes are furnished if you want that or you can place your own in most places.
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How do you feel if strangers come into your SL home unexpectedly?
in General Discussion Forum
Posted · Edited by Prokofy Neva
Possibly that might help, it's a good idea. Currently group land is aqua; your own personal land is green; other people's land is red -- but then so is Linden Land. So they might want to make theirs blue or something.
The problem is that this hurdle is one that even older residents do not cross easily. Every day I have to explain even to five-year-old people who happen to be in group rentals for the first time that they have to turn on world/show/property owners or world/show/property lines in order to see the boundaries of their parcel and our group land in general on that sim. It's news to many. They don't habitually know this. How would they "just know". If they aren't land owners, they a have no reason to do this. If they haven't shopped for land, they have no reason to turn on land ownership so they can fly around and see the yellow parcels for sale sticking out. So they don't know.
And that's why you see several really bad behaviours I'm constantly battling against:
o People who put up [can't mention company name] yellow boundary markers that look like police tape at a scene or a crime or accident that obliterate the view for many sims. It would be one thing if they did that just temporarily while building, but some of them keep that on forever as some kind of comforting "fence". They have the view of you and your sim which you spent years making beautiful to the outside; but now they are in YOUR view with ugly yellow tape. I IM such people and explain how to turn on property lines. Some of them are surprised to learn this. Some say they know, but they can't see those lines. I tell them to turn on "Midnight" then they show up better. Some don't know that trick. Then the really stubborn ones will say, but in the dark, I can't see my build". That's when I say their build is already placed -- why are the tapes still up? Then they commence to cursing at me and I'm not surprised to see a "Vote for Trump" sign on the line not long after.
But many people respond to this news about lines and midnight positively, or at least they suddenly "see themselves as others see them" and get rid of the blight.
o People who don't even know about the boundary tape, let alone the viewer's built-in lines in world/show, and put up giant red prim markers. These can last forever, because they don't log on to finish their build for weeks at a time. I suppose the Lindens could devise some kind of better marker, actual yellow tape that temporarily springs up and is viewable by owner-only but of course they aren't going to bother to do this. But it's incentive to me once again to finish my project of a tutorial for tenants because I am getting sick of this.
o People who place houses and furniture across 3 rental lots, not just a little bit over the edge, but taking up all their space and a good deal of the space around them. I don't instantly return these prims, although the fellow tenants can be pretty angry, I try to reach the culprits, I try to educate them, I try to give them a chance, and sometimes some of them refund because their big-a$$ house was never meant to fit on that 512; some of them rage at me for days because a lot is 768 m and not actually 1024 meters as the rental box says (because they were all originally set at standard levels, and over the years, precisely because some people's houses didn't fit or easements were needed, some lots got carved into. Here, I try to explain that even if that lot was 1024, it still wouldn't fit the 30 x 30 house because it's a lot that does not have those dimensions. Math is poor taught and poorly learnt in American schools and I'm a good example because I failed most higher math classes, suffer from discalcula, and still count on my fingers. But over the years, I did learn to visualize square metersl and to understand that 1024 can be made up of different dimensions, and be irregular. People seldom look at their house maker's own descriptions when they want to move in; I tell them to do so and also encourage them to test their house first without paying -- that's why the groups are open to join initially and place prims. And that helps many to find the right lot. But some never do, because they want the cheap $125 or $165 lot that is 768 or 1024 but doesn't fit their house; they don't want to pay the $250. Since the difference between US $0.67 and $1.37 really is trivial even for people in third-world countries if they are at the stage where they have Internet and can play on that Internet, I can't be sorry, especially as the lowest cost rentals are subsidized for alleged newbies, who don't really exist anyway with rare exceptions.
I find that generally, most people cannot understand what square meters are, and how they and their house fit in them. I'm not kidding. It's the case. It's why some people gratefully move into a house you already put out for them.
o People who, once having grasped their boundaries and the lines they must colour within, decide that they now have to put up giant photo-real boards to block the view of other people and create "privacy" or "a sense of comfort". That their photo-real beaches on a snow sim or their alpine scenes on a beach sim are stupid not to mention ugly in a virtual world where the photo-real doesn't work never dawns on them. That their sense of comfort equals blight for other people to look at never dawns on them. I have a neighbour who has made a curious build. It's a giant parking lot, level by level, up into the sky. Replete with steel beams and macadam. Blocking the sun for miles. Serving no purpose. There are no cars on each level or anything. But at the top is some kind of beachy hangout. It's like the only structure he could conceive that had levels and were open is the well-known urban sight of a tiered parking lot. So that's what he built. Photo-realism is the bane of SL. I totally get that he wants to be up to see the vast coastal beauty below that others including me and my tenants have made. I'd rather he go 500 m up in the sky and hang out there, but if he must have a perch, why all that steel and concrete holding it up? It's a virtual world. Buy a cloud on the MP, there are a variety of ones. Sit on the cloud, please.
So I don't allow photo-real boards and PS don't allow photo-real bushes or trees on boards in 2D as they look terrible as well. And in most places with no paths or roads or easements I don't allow fences, period, because seldom do they look good.
And for some people, this drives them into a fury. Some back out and refund and find a place where they can put up their photo-real boards. Or they move into one of those giant layered domes blighting the view for 16 sims. Others stay and keep arguing and arguing and trying to skirt the rules. It's not about prims, even. There are low-prim 3D good-looking bushes. It's about the principle of them wanting to enclose their space. They often don't understand that they cannot achieve privacy this way. That anyone can cam around their boards. They aren't comforted by unchecking "avatars can see me" so they are literally invisible to anyone looking in. It's never enough. Unless there is a big black box over their parcel (I get that a fair amount) or giant boards or 2D ugly trees, they cannot feel safe. And this part isn't about intrusions or the orbs -- it's a different psychology space that scientists could study and once again, I could point out that people port their behaviours from RL and you cannot undo them. They are not wrong. What DeepBlueJoy describes is very, very real. I have had tenants who have been attacked, raped, traumatized and it created lasting psychological damage. I do everything possible to mitigate this. I take out rental boxes that show names. I have "payment on file only" on one sim so that people can get rid of the annoying day-old exes who pursue them. But I am not going to close down the whole enterprise into a bunker because of the exceptions to the rule, which is most people are decent, and group living works.
A tenant just asked me to hide membership for the whole group because an ex was stalking her by seeing when she logged in -- he can join and unjoin the group to so so. That I won't do. Because it's a hindrance for members looking for other members, which they like to do. It's especially important for people in good relationships, especially nowadays, to see if somebody logged in recently if they live with them especially, or if they didn't and they should try to contact them in some other way. What I can do is simply ban that one individual so he can't join the group and peep on her log-ons. Of course, I can't get to his alts. But this is a good example of how stalkers make use of the fact that you and your friends still talk to them and know what they're doing. Block voice and text everywhere and they will go away eventually.
I believe strongly in open societies and I will not close my groups in any way. Imagine, rentals on the Mainland, where you can join at will, or pay just $1 which is put on to deter day-old griefers who won't bother to get cash, and place a prim. Some people recoil from that idea in horror. That's fine, rent elsewhere. Yet this works in most cases or I wouldn't have as many customers as I do. It works most of the time because most people are decent. The few exceptions of people joining to place grief prims or placing prims accidentally on someone's lawn they can't return are the minority of cases and not worth closing the group over inconveniencing everyone who wants to have a friend come over and be able to rez things to show them. The boons outweigh banes. Because you deal with them with bans and returns quickly, i
Yet there will always be people who strenuously argue in favour of security and closed societies and cite their own trauma or crime and griefing as the reason, in real life as in virtual life. And that's fine, as long as they don't lobby to have this *the norm for the whole society, the standard by which we all must live*. In SL there is CHOICE. You can get an island rental where you can have your own group and close it. Pay a little more and do that, please, and don't insist that cheaper Mainland rentals conform to your wishes.