Prokofy Neva

I have no idea what this percentage is that you've invoked, but a store in my rentals, for example, if they paid, say, $700 for 850 prims and got 10% discount for 4 weeks in advance, they would have to sell past the $2520 for the rent -- and they do, often by just selling a few of their more expensive products. They can also be in a $25/50 stall and do it that way and have less of a cost.

Yeah, Alyona must be a fan of Ayn Rand. How much putting up and shutting up does she do? I see nothing wrong with bitching about the change of the exchange rate and asking pointedly if this is a function of Linden Homes and trying to get people to feel like their Lindens are cheap so they can buy all the add-ons for the Lindens homes made by the Lindens' friends. Oh, and as Qie pointed out, the cheap currency flooding in from all those stipends attached to the premium accounts. So thanks! Linden Homes has been swell for the economy -- the Lindens' economy, not just those in the inworld economy.

No, I'm not "way off" on the cost of events, dear. I am describing the lower end of merchant events that *I myself take part in*. Imagine, there is such a thing! I make stuff, and take part in events, even some "famous" ones. So I'm reporting what *I pay*. I write about *what I know*. And I don't think these are "third tier" because one of them is on Seraphim. The price is $1000 as ordinary merchant and $1500 as sponsor on one, for example. But another one is only $400 and yet another is $500. I guess they're beneath you. We could have a debate about what "first tier" and "second tier" is. But it doesn't matter. $500 or $1000 is the minimum, and it goes up. Sure, the very top events probably pay more like $5000. But we don't know because they don't openly tell you their price and it seems a closely-guarded secret. I wouldn't be surprised if that is the fee for the most crowded, popular events, however. And I don't doubt that after only two people play the round of 20+ at Epiphany, say, to get the prize, that the merchant makes back what she put into it and the rest is gravy. I don't doubt the top tier make money but then they get fatigue. There are too many events. They come too frequently. All along the way, they harangue the merchants with all kinds of rules and reprimands and intrigue and it gets really tiresome. I am near to done with it myself, with most of it. My feeling about the Lindens isn't one of gratitude because I pay them. I am not grateful to my phone company or electric company. I appreciate them. I appreciate that they function better than their counterparts in Russia.

But isn't what he is saying that *per sim* it will count as 512, i.e. they can't spread their microparcels all around with the one 512.

Well, no. Plenty of things don't happen "as they shouldn't"; this one thing happened which you are describing, not many. That's not just nit-picking, it's merely pointing out that you can't extrapolate, even if you have "this impression" that there are "lots of other cases". I could note, for example, that a number of times I simply didn't get the auction to work. I thought I had bid, and even had the highest bid, and in fact it wasn't registering. So yeah, stuff doesn't work. But the reason I am objecting to your portrayal of this is because you are modifying your behavior and waiting a month to do something when ALL YOU KNOW is that: one person didn't get the auction to work. That's it. That's really all you have the facts about. And yes, I've found the auction doesn't work. But it does work in general because you see all this land selling. But taking tier out and having it immediately available -- that is something that generally works. Abuse reports "go nowhere". But I have never known a ticket about land or your avatar to go "unanswered". It might take 3 weeks to answer. You might have to add a comment and try to nudge them. But they do answer.

What are these policies you protested?

Well, it isn't just "theory" that doesn't work; it *doesn't* work that way. I have alts that sometimes put in 1024 when they need to because a tenant has pulled out; when they pull it out it is available and they can put it in another group, or take land as an individual and sell it; or cancel the premium (and there, once you *cancel the premium* even though your account isn't over yet, you can't use the 1024). I have literally done all those things recently; got a Linden home and abandoned it; immediately applied that tier to a group; taken that tier out of a group and put it on land as an individual to sell as an individual etc. So the question is *whether you canceled the premium account*; if you didn't, that 1024 is available immediately to be used elsewhere. If somehow it isn't, you shouldn't be waiting months; you should contact support because something isn't working right. So it's expected behavior that canceling the premium, you immediately lose the use of the tier. But merely withdrawing from a group doesn't mean there is some "waiting period". I have never seen that. So you need to get support to fix that. Occasionally I will see an account of mine that says I have 512 free. But I know I don't have it free; it's taken, in a group. So why is it saying that? I've even asked Lindens, and they don't know, but assure me that no, it's not available if it is in a group. Yes, you have to refresh the page and re-log. You will not see it available without those two actions. But there isn't any mandatory month-long period, truly there isn't. Yes, there are glitches as I just explained. But this is not normal and not required.

Charging to list events like you charge for ads in land or making a group or whatever is really a brilliant and overdue feature and I do hope it will get rid of the gadzillion of spam events at which the event "planner" isn't even present as they are merely glorified ads to sell stuff. I'm all for ads to sell stuff, and we don't have enough capacity for this in SL. But because we don't, it bleeds into other venues like events or 16 m parcels. The Lindens tried to wrangle events in the past at oldbies' behest who hated commerce and hated new people doing commerce, and they took a very punitive approach. They revised this with a notion that yes, you can advertise a new product you made or a new condo development as an "event". That is now abused, of course. $10 is not really enough to restore sanity. I think $100 might so clean up the events list that it might finally become usable again.

What's the major problem? You aren't saying what it is, and proving that it is major. You can search for things and buy them easily on the MP. You can sell things on the MP which can be hard if you aren't big and important and have a big ad budget.

She didn't have a premium account? That 1024 should stay with her as long as her account is paid, and if she withdraws it from a group, as soon as she refreshes the web site page she will see it as available again. But tier is always billed in advance. So in a month, you are billed for all the tier you used that month, it's highest level, regardless of whether on day 2 of that month, you withdrew tier from a project and didn't use it again.

Well, you mean coastal properties. Inland, you find prices as low as half a Linden or even .02/Linden as people want to unload the bleakest, flattest, landlocked parcels.

I've been studying this quite a bit and I'm not sure what you are saying is true. No one has a computerized ability to fetch all the prices of land on the Mainland and analyze them over time. That is, perhaps Tyche does but she's never put out any report like that. The reality is, there is a small group of land barons who bought up the best coastal properties and either rent them out at a high price or re-sell them at astronomical prices. And they themselves ensure that those prices stay very high, disregarding even market signals that might tell them otherwise. It's not a market in any real sense, but it's more like a black market, when a good is artificially made scarce due to government control of resources or lack of a free press to understand prices and economic information. So what can break such a cartel? Only when the government dilutes the supply, as Linden does by creating Linden Homes with house boats. But the Linden house boats aren't really sailing areas. That is, they are and they aren't. Some people in them just want the water ambience and have parties or sit on their deck. Others might actually sail from them, but they face in the other direction the problem the legacy mainland faces with no Linden void sims, so they have to hug the coast and it gets laggy and crowded. I think you also have to ask if a $10/m parcel is actually sailable. So often they aren't. They are land-locked, or near other parcels with aggressive orbs, or near ugly builds. So you really have to inspect them and see if you can really sail from them. There are some even for $2/m but they are totally landlocked, i.e. the water is owned by other tenants who can block it at will with "no access" and "group-only" or bans. Coasts on the original continents like Sansara have never been as expensive as the Nautilus etc ones around Blake. There is sort of a hype and a mystique around Blake which comes from tony yacht clubs making it seem like high society and keeping out the riff-raff. Also, I think the original Mainland has the problems of more ugly builds than the later continents. A land baron can afford to leave a parcel out at a high price unsold for months and months and MONTHS. Years, even. Because he can sell a few, and still make a profit. Or because what he paid will be more than covered with the sale price, which will also cover his months of tier, likely at a group discount and bulk discount. Nothing can break high prices except Linden supply; if people decide they will cease renting or buying, they never get enough company, they are always divided, sometimes artificially so.

I think likely it's the fact that your sign says VOTE TRUMP that people object to it. You could make it as pretty as you like, but it can't fix that basic ugliness. Just sayin'

That's quite punitive and LL doesn't like punitive. But it's an interesting idea. I could note it's not just signs, but various surveillance devices that track avatars passing, vehicles passing, land going for sale, or whatever they track. Some trackers are still there even tho their owners don't maintain the site that used to have the tracking info on it any more. If they used their Charter Account for their microparcel empire, we are SOL as far as getting rid of their signs and trackers. Again, the solution to the ugliness and intrusiveness and idiocy of signs and trackers and billboards is to have the Lindens run a networked ad board service roadside. It will drive most others out of business. The objection to billboards is that they are ugly and therefore people think the Lindens shouldn't run an ad agency. I would submit that we have ugly billboards ANYWAY and Linden designs are usually tolerable if not great.

I used to think that was true, and generally it *is* true as I have found to my newbie sorrow. But to my surprise, I stumbled on a community the other day - Therese showed it to me - run by an Italian gentleman which had plots openly for sale. And for a cheap price. And roadside. They must be mad!

Well, you could start by having a greater ability to determine which of the females are actually female. For starters.

Oh, I disagree. I don't want the Lindens to "clean up" the MP because they don't know what is gold. One of my favourite things is to search on the term "Soviet" to find absolute gems. Things that no one knows exist. I have sometimes spent entire evenings with SL friends discussing our "finds" of obscure items on the MP. Really, someone could make a blog on the weird things they found on the MP and they could fill it every day and keep people constantly riveted.

Well, what is exactly wrong with the MP? It generally works. Oh, except for those times when LL accidentally unlists ALL of your products. ALL. Which for me is like hundreds, given not only the gatchas but all these little tschotchkes I make. Hey, what's up with that! And then you yourself have to list them all again. There's no "going back in time" as there is on a sim. The re-delivery page is great because so many merchants either don't offer it or hide it so well in their stores that you buy 10 things before you find it. Oh, I guess that's the reason they hide it, then. The only problem is that it is SO SLOW. I don't understand why. I do realize that searching for an item I got in 2016 is something I have to "leave and go cook dinner" to execute. The Lindens listened to all the forums agitation, which isn't representative of anything, really, and now they're going to enable the blocking of limited quantities which are mainly gatchas. Who is going to use it except a few forums' harridans? I'd much rather they block the textures of certain farm game crates so that you can look for actual textures and items, for that matter. What's not to like? The MP is great!

I have to laugh that this has been put in, given the history of what I consider a bug, but Soft Linden considers a feature. You can set up group permissions so that an ordinary member, or a member with more permissions (like visitor versus resident) can return non-group-set items. You don't want tenants to return group-set items because then they can return the rental box and other tenants' builds they don't like even within the rules. Yes, you can devote little 16m parcels to a rental box in another group like Desmond does, but some of us need every prim on the Mainland and don't have that luxury. You can then have only officers of the group return group-set items, i.e. a tenant whose rent has lapsed. But if any item is put in share, anybody who joins the open group can then return that item, regardless of whether that group has assigned you the role to be able to return group-set items. "Share" overrides group rules which it shouldn't unless you believe in forced sharing under communism. Especially when the Library items used to all come in "share" (now they don't, but old versions still have that default). Some people don't understand "set" versus "group" and set themselves up for griefing and theft by their "share". In reality, few people who aren't in a circa-2003 furry collective use "share". I could be wrong about that. But "share" is almost always used by mistake, not design. If you want to "share," you have another thing you can do, which is give perms to a trusted friend. In any event, regardless of your beliefs about "share," it shouldn't override a group-set role and group-set power.

I only allow orbs up in the sky because they are so annoying. The viewer-based eject and ban really should be sufficient, especially in combination with unchecking "avatars can see me" so you are invisible. I favour LazyGuy because it is very easy to configure and works on group land after deeding. It also defaults to a low range of meters in case the user didn't set the range. My only beef with them is they force you to keep buying single copies for the deedable version insteady of making a higher-priced copyable version that can still be deeded and work. That *is* possible. I don't care for Thomas Connover because something about it seems to make tenants unable to set it properly. It evidently defaults to 96 or possibly even 4096 because people in the sky end up banning everyone from the lot below, even the owner.

The Lindens are right that other online services take a terrible chunk out of your income. I just sold a rare book for $350 and ouch, after Amazon fees and tax, I have only $298. That's a big chunk. Amazon has gotten worse and worse with its fees to the point where it almost doesn't make sense to sell books on there anymore. So 10% doesn't seem like much, but even here in the Vampire State, the sales tax is only $0.0825, and that's why people go to New Jersey to shop. If you think of the MP fee as a tax, it's kinda high. The buyer does not feel this pinch. He pays a price, that has been raised or not, and doesn't see where it "goes". The merchant feels the pinch when he earns $90 from a $100 item. Lowering the price of those featured ads, which make no sense and I personally have stopped using, can't make up for that. Especially with the cashout now at 257, hello! Which it "shouldn't be", given that people buy more around holidays, but yet it is. And it used to be 253 for a long time, before Linden Homes surges. So I wonder if the net effect of this will be more inworld stores. Yay! That means more rentals. And just more life and activity in general. Except, the era of the big malls is way over. I don't think there are any, any more, except the laggy monstrosities that the Lindens run at holidays. There are now merchant events, which are different than malls. They are only a month in duration and people therefore feel a kind of frenzy. You have to pay anywhere from $500 to $1000 or more for a stall in one of these events, and hope you make at least that back. Which, you are sure to do if you have a gatcha machine! Small malls actually do ok. I know, because I run a few where I literally have had tenants for years. I sometimes fly around the Mainland and see very well-manicured, well-managed little malls. Sometimes they are just groups of friends who sell to each other. But that's ok. Merchants tend to want their own sim, with their own store at the high end of the ranking, and at least a mainland parcel up in the air, at the lower end. But a lot of merchants ditched their stores in recent years because of tier -- even going down, even with more prims per meter. It's not just the cost; it's the maintenance, the chore of constantly cleaning up, fronting the merchandise and changing the store windows and policing griefers and copyright thieves. I think there's a perception that there is less theft if your item is on the MP. I don't really know if that theory bears out because theft is possibly even from the MP given the propensity for alts. Anyway, I still think there might be more stores inworld now.

Sure. Except in real life, there are license plates on cars, and people have ID. If someone loiters for hours or days in the lobby of my building, sooner or later security may call police and police may ask to check their ID. Somebody on my lawn in real life will get the same treatment. In real life, people have ID and authorities can request it if they have probably cause in a democratic society. If it were possible to sit up in the sky for long periods above my house in RL, I'd like to be able to know who is doing that, and why.

People lurking/squatting on my land or stalking/policing my tenants are people whose names I would like to have from the mini-map, thank you. They're on my land, and that seems very basic. I would err on the side of assuming people are decent, since most actually are, but if I see someone persistently hanging out, they often can be a squatter or stalker. I can at least IM them and say "Do you need any help in finding a rental?" I don't want to maintain expensive, laggy surveillance scripts to determine these simple facts; the mini map should be sufficient. If you feel your privacy as an avatar -- an avatar, that is, a creature with a fake name in a virtual world -- is not sufficient when you: o have "avatars can seem me" turned OFF so that you are invisible on land o have "access only" -- legal, if annoying to those around you who merely live nearby or fly by o have a security orb -- legal, if annoying to those around you who merely live nearby or fly by then...maybe you shouldn't log on to the Internet.

I like last names. They add character and substance to the world. Everyone remembers the great era of the Psalterys. It's a certain era in SL. Like "Neva" is a certain era. There are the Fairchangs, a name created because Garth Fairlight and Pituca Chang got married in SL and RL. The Lindens then created "Fairchang". Those were the days! Here are some last names I think the Lindens should add to the list: Mueller Volker Sondland Vindman Yovanovich Taylor Holmes

There is a simple reason why I personally don't log out my avatar: I can select "log-out" and it simply doesn't work. SL really, really, doesn't like to let you go. It just stalls often. You have to force log out by Xing it out and creating an error in Windows. It's truly annoying. Then there's this: logging *in* can be so difficult! Especially if you have large inventories. Sometimes you can't get logged in. You try and try. Yes, it's better after Lindens sort your large inventory for you. But it's still hard. So I tend to just leave my avatar on because...who cares? why does it matter? If someone IMs me and doesn't get a reply, they'll figure it out. No, I don't put an "Away" message on because...I sometimes find that then I don't actually get messages even though I am supposed to. In fact, a trick I use to force messages in that seem missing when I am forced to re-log is to click on something and "block it" -- then unblock it. Who knows why that works, but it does. Messages come flooding in, along with objects and notecards. I don't understand the relationship. So surely if my computer restarts and updates in the middle of the night, I should be logged off? It seems so. But not if it's in "sleep" mode.