Prokofy Neva

I noticed the Lindens' marketing post and I thought it was interesting but didn't see any discussion of it right away and didn't have much to add. I'm glad that luca in fact started this discussion earlier, not that the Lab copied him, because they would have to be preparing for weeks/months before publicizing a thing like this. Many people who have these debates and opinions on this subject don't have customers. Some don't even log in but prefer to chat on the forums. But I do have customers. And the only marketing that has increased their number, or added longer log-ins to their number is the Linden Homes. I find that many people get the Premium for the Linden home, decorate it, then get tired of lag and boredom and limitations and come to my rentals where they can contribute tier, then go back to Linden Homes when there is a new shiny or they feel like it. So it hasn't cut into my business really, and I personally can only welcome anything that increases the number of premium accounts and aids the concurrency and the market. The pitch for a long time has been to "creators" and "designers" and frankly, I think this leaves most people cold. The front page that says "Start a home" with an adoring couple is probably reaching more people at least in the user base. Does it reach people outside? I actually doubt it. The user base is made up of creatives, sure, but also mainly older women with some disposable income and time and younger men with same, who often end up as partners in SL where they wouldn't in SL. Just watch all the LL videos about couples that met in SL and RL and you will understand that this is the demographic. The people who have the most time for SL are those that are retired or disabled and on a fixed income, unemployed or unemployable, or able to make a living in SL. Nobody likes to think of the SL demographic as the Island of Misfit Toys or Massive RP for Shut-ins, but there's something to that -- and that's actually a good thing. In Europe the population is aging; there are a lot of people under-employed and sick and now forced to stay home due to coronavirus. So rather than seeing this as a negative, embrace it. Sure, there are plenty of ordinary people on SL with jobs and families. In fact, if you see a very successful store with good customer service, you might find it's owned by a woman with a supportive partner and multiple kids that have given her the real experience of management most men never get! Still, if you have a RL partner, if you have a job or run a business, like some of my long-time friends in SL or even my own children, you have little or no time for SL. You spend your time on Instagram, of all places. Why? Because you have an audience of your peers there. This is a vicious circle, of course. Like Baron von Munchhausen, SL has to hoist itself up by its pigtail to the skies to launch itself, i.e. you can't find the audience until the audience is there because it believes there *is* an audience. Whew! Basically, there are three things people want to do online in general, or in SL in particular: 1) play war 2) play house 3) play store. "Play" is the operative here, as it is not real life, even if you are posting a RL kitty on Facebook, it's an idealized kitty already. People who want "play war" are in the wrong pew in SL because it doesn't have the graphics and speed for it, and it annoys most of the user base. "Play house" can extend from chatting and posing and blogging and finding a sex partner and setting up a house together. "Play store" is either making and selling or shopping. I find really most people in the demographics I see, which are people who want to rent so admittedly are self-selected from sandboxers and casual dancers, want to "play store", i.e. shop and then "play house" -- decorate and socialize in that house. FairreLilette is right that we should really include the decorators of houses as "creatives" in SL although that is not acceptable in the industry. I have seen people make a prim table and pull stuff out of the library they are happy arranging and rearranging even when I offer to give them mesh furniture. The point is that it is "mine" -- people want to control their environment. Long ago Philip said the attraction of SL -- the lure, the charm -- is that unlike the real world based on atoms, you can manipulate a digital world made of pixels. You can't endlessly buy furniture and re-decorate in RL or dress crazily or fill your house with unicorns but in SL you can, and that's a draw. So in that sense what lucar said about "being what you want" as the ad basis could be used more -- but I think the manipulation of the environment, creator or not, is the draw. Showing avatars reaching out their hand with those white power lines coming out and either moving something around or making something move with a script. BUT I'll be the first to note that the "power decorators" are a minority even among my renters, which is why I have furnished homes. For a lot of people, getting things out of inventory and placing them, especially with the pernicious "mesh bounce" problem, is just too hard. Even just moving around is too hard! I see too many people leave out of frustration, although I still have the impression that the main reason people leave is from a relationship gone wrong. That isn't really LL's job to fix, but they could offer a RL verification service for those who want it. I don't think you need to insist the Lab develop other separate worlds, as FairreLilette seems to urge with a "Tinyville". For one, not everybody wants to be in that world in the way you imagine. I recently got some Dinkie avatars and decorated a Dinkie house in the RFL decorating contest, and I enjoyed it and am planning to do more, but I don't want to be "cute". I don't want to talk baby talk -- and as I discover more tenants who also happen to be Dinkies which I hadn't noticed before, I hear they also don't want this saccharine "cuteness" with the "yusss" and the "purkle" stuff. I think Dinkies should be dignified. Certainly there should be room for anyone to take a given sub-genre in any direction they like. And I think with any separate community, whether furries or Goreans, LL doesn't need to be involved unless they violate the TOS. There is nothing to stop you from making your own separate Tinyville with any laws or features you like, on an island or even on the Mainland. It might actually be more successful if people have the freedom to come and go. Luca made a very good video about cyberpunk. But I have to say this simply doesn't rent. People rent all kinds of things but they don't rent that. I even put it out because I like some of it myself. It's dead. Post-apocalypse also doesn't rent. I put that out -- zero interest. I so loved those JP "Submerged Towers" that I cleared several lots and offered people to rent just the floors or even the whole thing for half a Linden per prim. For months, I watched as I drove away my other tenants, even those with Firestorm and "de-render" (it shows you the limits of de-render when each new guest has to do it). Finally, reluctantly, I took it down, and immediately rented the lots. Then months later, a tenant asked if he could put up one, and I had to scour the areas to find something on the edge of the world that wouldn't drive others away. I am devoted to the Mainland and I won't use Firestorm and will not de-render, for lots of reasons. It's a challenge but I think you have to figure out how to get along with these different views and motivations. LL has enough freedom with islands and huge swathes of abandoned land on the Mainland that you can make any world you like. So make it, and see who shows up. PS I found with a "Container Community" offered for cheap with everything from vardos to old trucking containers barely rented and I kept it for years. Finally I got sick of the overprimming and complaining that always comes from the cheapest seats, plus most of it wouldn't rent. I merged the parcels, raised the price slightly, took away the "Container" theme and instantly the whole area was rented by people who wanted more "normal" houses. Boy, do I feel like a chump. I should have done this years ago. Long ago an older man who ran a successful real estate business in SL and was in the aerospace industry in RL was horrified at my cheap newbie areas. "You gotta get out of that," he kept warning me. And he was right. The idea that there are these masses who need cheap tiny living space is -- limited. Yes, some do. But frankly, they are often alts of people with entire islands. It doesn't pay to pitch to the lowest common denominator, I've found. People complain there isn't cheap land; but frankly, even the dirt cheap land available now for less than what they spend on lattes isn't what they buy. They are in a minority. SL is made up of people who spend, first of all on their own avatar, then on homes and vehicles. So accept it. People want picket fences, even though some Lindens and forums regs sneer at this Trumanville. Guess what the Lindens finally made, however....Bellissaria. And that's just it. SL is a harsh task mistress on the market. The market doesn't want cyberpunk, apocalypse, even containers. They want suburban lots and Linden Homes. So the Lindens have a winner with that, and they should build on that by reducing the lag and providing structured events because people want them -- they don't games where things are hard to find or giant rocks eat them -- see above re: "play war". They want somebody to organize a picnic and a hoe-down. Truly they do. Bellissaria and the Mole fandom illustrate that. I think LL should be unabashed about advertising SL as a place to both socialize and hold business meetings during the coronavirus epidemic. Lots of RL things I'm involved in have been cancelled. The pitch to businesses failed earlier because the businesses either wanted to secure their data in SL which is impossible and they shouldn't try (it led to making "Nebraska" and unacceptable things like special stores with select creators to sell only to businesses). Businesses don't expect to secure their data on Twitter or Facebook; it's a marketing tool. So they should see SL as just one more thing. To the extent that this process of going and having a meeting with avatars can be streamlined and packaged as a "try me" cheap package, it should be. But it shouldn't be segregated from the rest of SL or displace the rest of the market. Another reason businesses failed is they didn't make things for avatars. I wept when I lost my precious Microsft-made marshmallows in a big inventory loss -- they were unique. Sears wanted you to buy a washer and dryer in RL, when we had no where to put them. They should have sold them for SL homes. LL should round up those educators and businesses they didn't scare away and get them to tout the immersiveness and effectiveness of meeting online. And why not?

I can't believe you're saying this. It's completely solopsistic, as if the external world doesn't exist. An illusory dollar that buys you more Lindens becomes a "more valuable" dollar subjectively only to you -- whoever heard of such a thing! The dollar isn't worth *more* because I can buy MORE of a currency; it's worth more when I can buy LESS of a currency. A simple example is the Russian ruble, as can be seen on charts like this. It's often analyzed as tied to the price of oil as you can see here. Ask a Russian who has to take 66 units of his currency to get one dollar, when 20 years ago he could take 20 units of his currency -- he has less of his paycheck. When he has to spend more rubles to buy a dollar, he has less rubles and his currency is worth less. You're confusing the value of the currencies themselves with your subjective need to have the experience of getting more Lindens per dollar. That may be a more valuable state of affairs for you, but it's not making the currency intrinsically more valuable, that's absurd. In fact, now merchants who work hard and make things and try to cash out their Lindens get less dollars for their trouble; their paycheck is less. Generally people analyzing this have pointed to the flood of Premium Account stipends of $300 per account. This is like printing money. The Lindens control the Linden value and could adjust this and do adjust this. But at times when they want people buying more content, like all the add-ons and things for the Linden homes, they want users to feel flush with cash so they haven't bothered to straighten this out. Merchants will continue to complain, especially about higher fees, and eventually the Lindens will have to adjust this. But again, no way in RL does it work that you value the dollar more that requires more units to buy, say, a euro.

I heard that the Lindens were moving up from a limit of 9.5 seconds on sound files to 30 seconds. But I can't seem to find an official notice of this. Did they? Meanwhile when I was trying to upload some poetry and a tune (wav files) in recent weeks, I got an error file that says the files cannot be longer than 30 seconds in length -- as if that is indeed their new maximum size. Since the file in question was exactly 30 seconds, I couldn't figure out why this didn't work, when it was in the proper format. So I tried 29 seconds -- that didn't work, either. So it's still on 9.5 is it? I have gone through many hours struggling with Audacity that work, and I will tell you the steps I have learned to take in part from Whirly and in part from trial and error, in case you know anything different: 1. Change the file from m4 to wav files using online converters (if from a YouTube video, for example). 2. Make sure you set your project in Audacity to 44100 Hz or SL can't accept it. 3. Go to the top left of the screen on the file and push the arrow down to "Split Stereo to Mono" 4. Delete the second copy of the file. 5. Select the whole file and go to "Effect" and select "Amplify" -- I do this because many files I have uploaded, especially of people reading poetry or literature, are just too low volume, even pushed to "1" on the player script. I select in the range 11-13 because beyond that, it gets so loud it is distorted. You can then go back on the player script and adjust down from "1" to ".9" or something but I was informed that loudness or too-softness has to be fixed in Audacity before the upload. This is not ideal. Maybe someone has some more refined suggestions. 6. Now you can go in several directions: a. the arduous (and I find painful and error-ridden) of hand-cutting the files into 9 or 9.5 segments using "Edit" and "Clip Boundaries" and "Split". At least in doing this, you can get rid of noise if you took something from a noisy RL room or something, and do other things. It's pretty hard for me, however. b. the also error-prone method of using "File" and "Import" and "Labels". Here you need to first make a notepad file with the time stamps listed in it then import that file and that will make the job chop up automatically according to the time stamps you set. You have to check and double check that the list you make doesn't have any math errors in it that mess up the whole project -- so it's 9.5, 18, 27.5 etc. in a table form (and for some reason online I found examples of this showing the tables doubled up, i.e. in two rows on the notepad file). If you have made an error, you get a message that Audacity can't read some of the labels; it will still work but when you try to listen to it, it will stop and skip at some file, then return to the first file, causing you to have to re-do everything and pay the upload fees again. It amazes me how you can make mistakes on this again and again even using a calculator because you get weary typing. c. a much, much easier way I just stumbled on (I am a slow learner) where you go to "Tools" and "Select Regular Intervals" which makes the "labels" or cut-up files for you automatically, obviously with no math errors. The one pitfall here for dummies, as I can tell you from experience, is that you have to roughly figure out how many labels you will need, then listen to then, and possibly have to go back and re-do it, and then make sure that whatever last file you have isn't 'the rest' of the file, i.e. more than 30 seconds, but only 9.5 seconds. SL won't upload files chopped up with no sound on them, or, as noted, files that are too long. On some scripts, if it is under 9.5, you would have to note that it is, say, "4" or it messes up again in terms of skipping and starting over. This is a pretty beastly business -- and costly, with those $10 uploads. You have to really want to do the thing, like add poetry being read aloud to a scene or something. You can also just put a URL linker into a prim and it will take someone who clicks online to a YouTube or a literary page. Of course, that isn't as "immersive", but ask yourself: how many people are going to click on a prim in SL to listen to Wallace Stevens reading "Idea of Order at Key West" or the Ultimate Spinach's "Mindflowers," a song lost in time for sure. Answer, as I can tell you from making these builds: not many. Do not expect to make back your upload cost in tips or sales. One issue is that if there is a media stream already running a sim, it drowns out other things making sounds like this. You have to make sure your parcel doesn't have media, and/or if does, instruct the visitor to turn off the option "steaming media' in preferences. How many will do that? Again, I have answers for you from running these sites for years: not many LOL. I mean, if you have a burning desire to listen to Otava Yo (which I do) while sitting on your SL sim, why can't you just...go to YouTube and turn it on and listen to it on your headphones. You can then even leave your sim and fly around the ocean and continue to listen to this tune stolen from Caucasians by Russians who can't dance (although the video is pretty cool). Why sit for HOURS chopping it up, even if to 30 seconds if the Lindens have that now, listening to it inevitably skip or short out due to lag or whatever, when you can...just go to YouTube. Soon you will wonder: why sit in SL when I can sit in my RL living room with my RL friends lol? Of course, there's the issue of copyright, too. It's one thing to upload these files to make a reference inworld, which is no different than a link on a web page, really. It's another to make up a box of it and sell it, unless it is in the public domain. The reality is that the cost of uploads are high, the work painstaking and poor quality, so I think few people bother with this. And really, the era of listening to a discrete song as some kind of discrete entity that you like and learn and play over and over is past, no? At least, I find that with my kids. Most young people have "playlists" these days and streams from some device or another that...streams. They think in terms of "my wake-up energy playlist" of 10 songs, not "this one song I like". You can play a song again by clicking on it on YouTube or Spotify -- but since you have access to zillions of songs, why not listen to another one? I don't think people listen to a song as a separate thing the way they used to. So, you say, there is media on a prim! Put the YouTube into media on a prim or a YouTube player. Answer: these players often don't work because of issues between SL and YouTube of the type that are between Twitter and Flickr which caused the Lindens to stop offering this option of posting to social media from SL. Media on a prim is ok, but clunky. It has a way of jerking your view to itself. Also, you can't keep it running. Even if you have autoplay turned off on your own YouTube account on your computer, in SL, it will autoplay. You can't get it to play and stop or just play on a loop. No, the URLs people have devised to make things loop just don't work (any more). So in that sense, if you task is to create an ambiance on a build for an expo (as I'm doing for RFL Home & Garden now or as I have done at the SL birthdays in the past), and you put up video on a good YouTube player (there are some conscientious makers who keep up with the frustrations) or "media on a prim," chances are it will stop playing or some other completely different song will be on when you come back hours later. So in that sense a prim box with the audio files in them chopped up, that play with a loop script or on/off script is just that much better. How many visitors will care? Answer: not many.

Exactly. I hadn't seen that mind-boggling one before. Yeesh! There's a stretch of the river in Keuka that is now impassable because of no-access lines and the Lindens have refused to terraform down their land there in this narrow passage to make it navigable again. I understand that they have to take a "what was done for one might have to be done for all" on these cases. But actually, are there really so many -- so many that people will file a ticket about? -- that they couldn't act to fix some of these really awful situations?

If only this were entirely true. But it isn't. The Lindens did not carve out public waterways with an eye to preventing conflict in the future. There are far too many areas that were sold out that are in odd places -- the middle of lakes, parts of rivers, etc. So there might be Linden water -- but then it might be interrupted by resident land because of this poor demarcation. Also some people have security orbs with distances set high so that they nab you just for passing on Linden water.

Awful. Not only does he have the orbs, but he blights the view with this ugly sign. You wonder why he doesn't just get a private island if this is his attitude toward the world. I really wish people who insist on ban lines, which of course are "within their rights," would create an easement of 16 or 32 m on their waterside properties. They could cut out a parcel that has no ban lines or orbs. That way you could pass more easily. If they put out a tip jar for doing this, I would donate to it in gratitude. Then they could ban the rest of their lot. Yes, I realize, that a lot of orbs might not be set so precisely as to *not* cover a 16 or 32 m easement. But the worst offenders are those with no-access or list-only sort of ban lines which don't even allow the 10 or 15 seconds that an orb might allow. So it's especially for those people that I think the easement idea would be a good neighbourly solution.

I have storefronts for rent on the plaza in Refugio. I also have a great office skybox I can put out for you on many lots where management prims don't count. IM me for details. Or visit the office and see the latest listings.

I often see people on road trips driving around the Moth Continent (Heterocera). Sometimes alone, sometimes in packs. There aren't that many of them; there are a million more of those unpiloted pods cluttering up the roads. But there are some, and sometimes they stop and talk to me. Some of them are tenants in my camps. I think there is actually a fair-sized population of people in SL who do road trips, either solo and sporadically or more organized in groups. I think if you just set out on the highway, you will find them!

This used to be a favourite place of mine in the Grote and Hector Lakes region and I always featured it in my "Area Attractions". The artist with a roadside gallery had a variety of innovative and whimsical items which I purchased over the years. One was a sort of live captain's table with the ocean pouring over it. Other things were sort of like Marcel Duchamp, a bicycle or a paper clip that was actually a fly -- although that doesn't quite capture it. There were sort of wiry things and wooden things (I'm not describing this very well but they were cool). Now, all of a sudden I discover this parcel has been abandoned, I can't remember the artist's first name (maybe it wasn't even Harry) and I can't find the things in my inventory, where I suffer losses often. So if any of this rings a bell, let me know. This was the old SLURL

It depends on the way in which you were conned. If you were promised a good or service or land at a certain price, Linden Lab will not get involved as per their TOS, it's a user-to-user dispute that you will have to deal with on your own. If they gave you some object that started debiting your Lindens, well, that's why they have a warning saying that objects do that and don't say "yes" to them. If, for example, they said they work for Linden Lab and for $1000 they will do something for them, that might get their attention. You can always try abuse-reporting them but it's awfully hard to get attention to such reports especially if they are a business dispute rather than an actual theft. If you gave your password to someone, that's on you, and itself is a violation I believe. So you lost $3.75, less than the cost of a latte, it's not worth being upset for long. The advantage of an abuse report is merely that it builds up a record in case there's a lot of people being scammed by this person.

So again, because this "tool tip" seems to have eluded you: It's also obvious that when you have that compressed of a graph over 15 years that you can't tell how long the peaks and troughs are, really.

I'm glad to see that you admit now that your claim "The exchange rate has been a few Lindens either side of 250 for most of Second Life's history" is wrong. The graph illustrates this. It doesn't matter if 325 is a "freak spike" because there are other bad patches that last along time and have a terrible effect. It's also obvious that when you have that compressed of a graph over 15 years that you can't tell how long the peaks and troughs are, really. But don't let the facts get in the way of your usual desire to say something to counter me, even if the sky is blue. I'm going to try to figure out the "block" on here again.

In ancient times, a Linden named I believed "TJ Linden" who was a RL economist and monitored the LindEx would explain policy to us. I assume that the Lindens have someone at least part-time like that thinking about what it means to have Premium account dollars flooding the market and lowering the value of THEIR currency, after all. Or do they? I can understand why they'd be mostly preoccupied with fraud and perhaps not thinking of the macro issues?

That's not true whatsoever. I have InfoNut issues and blogs going back for years and I just ran across one from 2008 lamenting how the Linden stood at 325.

Yes, that's evidently a sign that there are more and more Premium accounts being purchased and their stipends and sign-up bonuses then flooding the market -- it's like Yeltsin printing rubles. Evidently the Lindens are not intervening (of course they intervene all the time with Supply Linden) because the want the new Bellissarians to feel like they have a lot of cheap, ready cash to buy all those house add-ons and furnis from the Lindens' friends. Eventually I think even they will tire of this, however, as the house add-on manufacturers realize more and more than cashing out their Lindens is worth less and less, especially with the new fee, double the old.

You seem to have difficulty grasping that you can't "just know" that something that will get rid of the beacon is hiding there because you have NO REASON to refresh the map UNLESS you know. You don't "just know". There is nothing to tell you that UNLESS you hear about it and go try it. If ever there was a case of circular reasoning, you've illustrated it! You could have learned about it when I told you about it twice in this thread. After the second time you said it didn't work. Apparently after not even seeing it. As I mentioned, the beam isn't even showing up AT ALL at this point. When I teleport to a location using a pinpoint on the map, there aren't even any beams most of the time. Something is obviously wrong. If it isn't wrong for you, great, but it is wrong for me.

Once again, Cody, it's not about "common knowledge about hovering". If you didn't know that from the Internet in general, you'd know it in SL after 16 years, you know? But it's about KNOWING TO LOOK THERE. I don't see why this is so hard for you to admit. You would have to "just know" to look THERE -- and you'd have to be MOTIVATED as I keep saying to refresh the map. Again, WHY would you be refreshing a map when you just pulled it up to go somewhere??? There's no use case for that. The map doesn't change within minutes or even days. It makes no sense. You have no reason, no objective motivation to go look there and click that arrow after seeing its hover text. It is not common knowledge; I've never heard of it in all this time despite being intimately familiar with the aspects of the UI of the viewer. So give it up. It's not accessible, it's not available, it doesn't count. What should happen is that when you walk through a beam or click on the red arrow, it should go away. Walking through it to make it go away was the obvious thing I did for years. It's not working now, like other things.

Well, that's nice, I'm happy for you. But right now that very activity of left-clicking once on a region does not produce anything at all. No circle. No beam. No nothing, and the words "none". So it is what it is. Just yesterday, I at least got the red beam, even if clicking on the arrow did nothing. I don't see how this is about "my own set-up" when "my own set-up" did not change. Meanwhile, their software changed. As for the mini-map, it's not about activating. It's about STOPPING. And the mini-map has a list of options one of which is STOP TRACK which gets rid of the beam. As I explained elsewhere, if you can't see the text about clearing the beacon in the legend of the map - -it's not visible until you hover of it or click it! -- how would you "just know"? Please DO tell me the use case for needing to refresh a map you just clicked on to go somewhere a second ago. And yeah, I know how to left-click on a mouse, and a fat arrow head. What you don't know how to do is to entertain the thought that there could be something wrong with the Linden's viewer when these effects go away.

Yeah, I know about the fat arrow and clicking exactly on the arrow head. It doesn't work, more's the pity. Yes, that's great that the map itself has a "clear tracking lines and re-set" map button. Except, that text you're showing is not visible on the map "as is". See? You have to "just know" that IF you hover over it and look there, THEN you will see "Clear tracking lines and re-set map" in quite faint type -- see how faint it is? So you have two obstacles here -- one, you can't "just know" it is there by looking -- it's not visible. Why would you refresh the map when you just pulled it up and clicked it to go somewhere? You'd have no reason to refresh the map. Yes, that sort of arrow with a turn-up is a universal symbol of "refresh page" -- but I ask you, who needs to refresh a page they just pulled up a second ago?! So sorry, that just doesn't cut it. It's great it's there and now I've learned about -- but how was I supposed to learn about it before? It's not visible unless you click it. I have no reason to click it. If I *did* click it in some fit of needing to refresh the map, the typeface is very faint. Please tell me how I could learn about that text hidden under that arrow. Truly, there isn't any way. You don't endlessly read tips on the user interface -- you might read patch notes (I always do), but who knows when this text appeared and where in the notes it was buried? Try to understand that this little trick you discovered, as great as it is, is basically non-existent because you can't see it, or know about it, and it is poorly visible when you *do* click on it. And there's this: it's primary purpose is to REFRESH THE MAP, not remove the beacon, and it even says that first. Why would you need a map refreshed? Well, if you thought some new land might be going on sale? I don't know what other reason. The map updates not even every 24 hours if you're ever noticed. Land can show for sale even 2 days after it was sold. A big circular build on your land won't show the next day but a few days later. So what is this REFRESH THE MAP of which you speak?! What is the use case for going to a sim and clicking on "refresh" and learning "Oh, wow, I can get rid of the beam now." When people find tricks like this on the viewer -- things like putting transparency at 2% to get rid of those white lines that persist even in the most meticulously made cut-out in Photoshop -- it's no good saying they're stupid if they didn't know it. How can you "just know", again, please? BTW, just now, as I open up the map, click to go to a pinpoint on a sim, and go there -- a function that usually produces a beacon -- now I see No beacons and get "none" on the World Map. Oh, well. I'm sure it will be back any minute. I tried 10 times -- no beacon.

Since most land has a different landing point set than the point on the map I pinpointed (hence the beacon), then most of the time you CANNOT walk through the beacon or click on anything to get rid of it. And no, clicking on the world map button etc doesn't work.

Walking through the beacons most certainly DOES NOT WORK. I remember years ago it did. It doesn't now. Clicking on the World Map DOES NOT WORK. You get beacons by...um....TPing to a place from the World Map. It gives you a beacon when you arrive. Clicking on the Mini Map DOES NOT WORK. Clicking on the arrow DOES NOT WORK. Only "stop track" works, and only for that log-in session. Oz Linden made a remark to me that my troubles, which he glanced at in this thread, were caused by packets not reaching the viewer. Yes, I'm aware of the packet loss issue. Verizon has had this issue. I've had long convos over the years with snarky Verizon people who swear it isn't on their side. But more to the point, the performance bars are all green, the packet loss is not showing any large percent, there's nothing to indicate packet loss. So yes, if you're on wireless Internet, sure, it can be spotty. But...it wasn't two weeks ago or two months ago. It's really bad NOW. Oz also mentioned your AV and security settings. Sure, I'm aware they can fight SL. But you make SL an exception. Windows Defender is turned off with AVG. There isn't anything to indicate AVG is blocking SL and wasn't in the past. So what changed? Their software. Their software. Their software. I imagine a patch or three from now, the problem of the forced log-ins to view profiles (apparently that's a packet or connection issue or security issue, too), and perhaps even the beam and who knows what else will go away. And perhaps it will be fixed and there may be a nice surprise, as there was with "unable to delete from Marketplace inworld," which people scorned as an issue, who said it wasn't an issue for them (they weren't selling gatcha with high turnover and need to constantly delete and replace). Or they hadn't noticed it. Or they thought the Lindens had a good reason for it. What would such a good reason be that slowed down sales from which the Lab gets a percentage??? I can't imagine! Yes, the workaround is you drag to inventory. But for that, you have to have not "recent" but regular inventory right, and you have to first drag and delete THEN search for the copy to replace it. SO glad this is fixed in Yorsh!

So a new patch has just been pushed, aptly called Ёрш ("a Russian mixed drink consisting of beer thoroughly mixed with an ample quantity of vodka.) What's funny is that while People Search is now working again (I tested on a variety of names), that isn't mentioned as a fix. And the Grid Status page never had this outage as an issue, although it was more than 24 hours. Odd, that. How many things like that disappear into the memory hole? It was never put on the JIRA, as neither Lindens nor their geek fan base really find it a necessity to have to look up people inworld (like customers who paid you) in search. Perhaps there is an oblique reference to these events in the reference to Tale of Woe and Misfortune, a 17th century Russian poem that might be applied to any century: He begins to live wisely and acquires even greater wealth than before. At a feast he has organized himself, he begins to boast about his success. Woe (a personification-"spirit") overhears him and threatens the youth not to boast anymore, appears in two of the youth's dreams, and convinces him to spend all his money on drink. Ending up yet again with nothing, he is again ashamed and moves on to the next town. He comes across a river, and despite Woe's taunting, manages by virtue of a song he sings to have the ferrymen take him across. When the youth decides to return home, Woe gets in his way. The youth then transforms into several different life forms and ends up being able to protect himself from Woe only by entering a monastery, which he does, leaving Woe at the holy gates. Interestingly, it looks like the reason I couldn't get the workaround for the People Search to work (a script sending IMs using the avatar key) is this: BUG-227763 Preferences -> Chat -> Object IMs doesn't react to an instant message from an object. Best of all, this daily annoyance -- which some didn't think was a thing and didn't think was important (because they don't sell gatchas) -- was fixed, hooray! SL-12121 Unable to delete folders from 'Marketplace listings' Give those Lindens a gift card AND a long lunch, I say!

Oh, well, that's because Firestorm has access to the Legacy Search. The SL viewer does not. I went to a Linden office hour where it was confirmed by Whirly that yes, People Search is hosed. And so they need to fix it. As always, because there wasn't a JIRA for it, no one was acting. So I hope someone will make that JIRA. I'm banned from the JIRA so I can't do that. But I did my part by sending screenshots and a full write up to the Concierge people and they escalated the ticket and took it seriously. This is not "just my problem" as multiple people now on the SL viewer can see it. The forced log in is what the search box does to you when you try to search on things -- it returns only "G," and it forces you to re-check "M" and "A" in order to search for places, for example. But on "People" it forces a log on by having a "Log in" text highlighted, as often happens with profiles when you try to send IMs. So you log in, say "remember me" and...you still can't search. I was thinking all Linden names would show up, but for some reason, only "Jagix Linden" shows up in this broken state, with a list of avatars who mentioned Lindens in their profiles. Otherwise, you get "whoops"...

Oh, thank you. This is exactly the sort of response I look for when I post in the forums, even though I will have to bat away all sorts of nonsense and bad actors and people of bad faith. This might well be the issue. I have a GeForce card, not AMD, and the driver is up to date, but maybe there's something to it. As I noted, turning off Advanced Lighting got rid of that "extra highlighting" stuff in edit. But the whole point of getting the more expensive graphics card was to be able to see this Advanced Lighting stuff. oh, well.

The grandfathered homesteads are $95 a month. So in order to get that tier paid, you would have to charge $25,333 for the month or $6,333 per week. So $7,000 is not much more than the cost, but still enough to make a little profit, and if you have bunches of them, it ads up.