Prokofy Neva

I didn't realize they moved "everything" to Arizona. I thought some were in Texas, some in the Netherlands, or whatever. I did a geolocation on some of their agni servers and yes, it seems they all came up "Arizona". But I don't really have a representative sample. I could see where they would not want to reveal this information casually so that competitors, disgruntled ex-employees, or angry customers couldn't try to DDoS them. I did tracert and it was odd to see that agni is reached from my provider in one hop. Can that be? I seem to recall years ago when we were always researching this to try to find out why some servers lagged so badly that there's be dozens of hops.

I think it's important to point out (because the post only has about 1,000 views) that the Lindens did explain what happened the other day when the grid was down -- by my count -- for eight hours. And I think it's important to note that they did provide this explanation, and that the outage wasn't due to "my land" or "your computer" and not even "their software" but "their vendors". I find that puzzling, as just a norm not versed in Internet network technology, but someone can fill in the blanks for me. Their server farm had problems? They have several of them in different states and countries. Their phone service had problems? Do they have Comcast? Techies in California always complain bitterly about Comcast, which I find exaggerated, but then I have Verizon, which is complained about as much or more. The Internet people hate telecoms, and here we all are. A "vendor" is a person who sells a service. So it was either servers, or telephone or...hmm...cloud providers? But I still haven't gotten a very clear read-out as to whether SL in fact "moved to the cloud" which everyone thinks is a wonderful thing, but as I always point out in both work meetings and public meetings on this issue: the cloud is other people's computers. So, rely on them if you like -- it's cheaper -- but you know, back up your files. And keep those cell phones and flashlights at the ready. This outage was NOT caused by the forest fire. So heroically, if I understood this message correctly (and someone can translate it into norm-speak for me), the Lindens didn't get a good and robust response from their vendor, so they "routed around" which is what "the Internet does". They changed numbers on a config window or took out wrenches and unscrewed plates with bolts in them or did whatever they did. But this thing -- this "re-routing" seems to me "still not to work so great". SL, on many sims, is still having these problems: o can't delete objects o can't rez from inventory o can't TP into the sim o KittyCats can't be born and can't eat properly! It's this last thing that I hope will really reach and touch the hearts of Lindens, the thought of all those hungry kitties, and kitties waiting to be born who can't be! Sob! Hey, let me tell you, not being able to delete objects becomes a real problem when you have features on your installations that involve temp-rez prims. Yes, asking the Lindens to re-set individual sims helps but you know, they can't do that with all 28,000 of them.

A reminder especially to the oldbies in this thread that a group of us appealed to Philip Linden at the dawn of time and asked him to DEPRECATE the teleport home orb script. After hearing how aggressive orbs ruined exploration, travel on waterways, travel even near Linden Land he eventually said he would do so. The Lindens come from gamerz' culture, and therefore the early ones delighted in the idea of teleporting people home when they "died" or were "wounded in battle," i.e. had the temerity to try to sail past somebody's house on Linden water. But Philip actually wasn't a gamer; he was an engineer and a visionary, and he saw the point. So he said he would deprecate -- i.e. retire from, and not allow in Second Life, the bounce script. Next, several die-hard gamer and open-source Lindens came forward and screamed about Philip's pledge. They said this "couldn't" happen. Because...because...it would harm the possibility of having...elevators in Second Life. (They didn't try to tackle the issue on libertarian grounds then, because they knew public sentiment was really against this constant bouncing and TPing home stuff). At that time there were....eight elevators in SL. None of them were used. OK maybe there was that one guy who came on a sim with a gigantic tower and took that slow creaking thing to experience elevator-ness. But it really was not used. Then another thing happen. The company that had the biggest market share and made the most money from orbs and which sponsored a very vocal third party forum site of oldbies said this could not stand, they had to be allowed to have the creativity of elevators in SL (although we can fly, of course) and that PS people should have their privacy. That you could use ban lines to have privacy wasn't enough of a solution because ban lines tap out after X meters and a skybox then can't make use of them. That was actually merciful because then even if you were banned, or there was access only, you could at least fly over the problem to...for example...get back to YOUR OWN LAND on a sim where all your neighbours had these infernal devices. Over time, there was a concept that developed of "OK, have orbs, but don't have them TP you home". Just have them bounce away -- gently. Or better yet, require that they must have a 10 second warning. So the more civic-minded orb manufacturers, seeing how public sentiment was going, even if not Linden law, began to add these features: choose how many seconds of warning to give, starting at 10; choose whether to bounce or TP home. And then owners and rentals agents could have a policy: you can't TP home. You have to give warning. (As I and others do). Fast forward in time, and the Lindens, who finally have a world they can put their governance philosophies to test in, because they've a) overcome the wild sectarian and hedonistic impulses of their early technocommunist/technolibertarians; b) need to sell more premium accounts and c) made zoned sims in Bellisseria that people actually wanted to live in have developed the Linden-approved orb, which doesn't TP home, and which gives warning. They could have also made this a TOS law or even just a strongly-advised norm -- which they are capable of doing. They do have the "any reason or no reason" clause they can always fall back on. But they haven't chosen to do so. It's not about paying your tier to have the freedom to enter. That's extreme libertarianism that only creates oppression for others even if hedonistic freedom for you. It's not a recipe for a liberal democratic society but the set-up of fascism or communism or terrorism. It's possible to be a good neighbour, set your orb to 10 seconds, not TP home. it's also possible to put "access only" but leave easements on the edge of your land if you are near a road or water -- or anywhere, for that matter.

And? So what? For the 7th time, it doesn't matter if this hub is on an entirely different region or "entirely different branch of the line," both of which are IRRELEVANT to the LARGER ISSUE (I know it's flying over your head) of THEIR AFFILIATION. THEY ARE AFFILIATED. THEY ARE BOTH GTFO THEY BOTH HAVE GIANT GTFO BILLBOARDS ON THEIR PARCELS. That has always been the point, and remains the opint despite the numerous distractions here. To refresh your memory, Firelyte (your main? Your friend?) that this microparcel owner was "unrelated". But it's not. It has a GTFO sign on it, for Christ's sake. And if that were not enough (one could explain it as a "random purchased ad" ROFL), you can look up the owner, go to their headquarters, and find they are a GTFO hub selling GTFO kits. That this is on another sim is BESIDE THE POINT. The POINT is that they are AFFILIATED which suggestions collusion, and if not collusion, simply violation of the ad farm policy, and if not violation of the ad farm policy, the encroachment of a grid-wide project on other people's land, both literally and figuratively by their overbearing presence and their lack of good neighbourliness and even inability to tell simple truths about what they are. I don't name specific companies, but the information is easily obtained. This company bought land that became available because an abandoned land parcel purchased by GTFO was cut off and sold to them. I notice we never got an answer to Qie's simple question. Did you or did you not cut off a small parcel and put it to sale either directly, or on the open market, where it was purchased by a GTFO affiliate? That act is wrong, and is also illegal. If this is "accidental" or "random" we all find it hard to believe when BOTH owners are related to GTFO; one a manager, the other an affiliate. The harp on and on that this "affiliate" is "on another sim" is to constantly distract from the very relevant point that they are RELATED. What is this about again? A company whose practices I criticized bought land right next to me, cut off part of their parcel and sold it to an ad farm, and proceded to put up too giant billboards in my face, and the face of my tenants. Was this planned and deliberate? I suggest it was, and I suggest that denials of this don't hold water because other denials here -- that this group is "unrelated" (clearly it is); that this group is "on another sim" (it doesn't matter, it's ad farm is on THIS sim in question) etc just don't bear scrutiny. If it is NOT deliberate and somehow "random," hmmm, how is it that GTFO, who recognized this was my rental, and even wanted to return a boardwalk they said encroached, but didn't, came to put up two giant billboards in a middle of a sim where nobody but me and my tenants can see them? Not roadside. In the middle of a sim. If GTFO didn't cut off the parcel for the ad farm, who did? Jesus? Mary? Joseph? The purchaser of the abandoned land did this, and that's a record that the Lindens can confirm, even if the rest of us are subjected to a barrage of contradictory statements. If GTFO never cut off this ad parcel (really, guys?) and it was merely "sold on the open market" how is it that a GTFO affiliate was instantly able to buy it and come and put up ANOTHER GTFO billboard? These things don't happen in Nature. In any event, you don't need to hear it from me. You can go inworld and observe this situation. And while you think it merely is my problem or my fault, when it comes to your sim, remember this conversation. Because it will.

No, you can't return prims unless they are encroaching. I invite you to one of your rare log-ins to SL so you can test and be convinced of this fact. Try it 100 times on any billboard, this one, or any one. Perhaps one out of those 100 times you'll return it. The rest of the time, you get this: "The system...."

Therese is a big girl and she can do what she likes. She hasn't "hitched any wagons" here at all as she is surely an independent force, but merely suggested a group which I made and made her a co-owner of and bought a 1024 parcel of land to put the group on. I trust her enough to give her the right to sell land out from under me because she's clearly a good person, has accomplished many good things, and is a positive and light presence. If she doesn't feel like working with me for any reason or no reason, there's no tears, she just does her thing and I do my thing -- she has good sites and groups and I feel I do, and I'm happy to cooperate with anyone who loves the Mainland as I do. But so far I have found her a most congenial and helpful person on the cause of the Mainland. I don't have to agree with a group's politics or plans or aesthetics to have cooperation. I might draw the line on things like a group charter that calls for male castration (ouch!) or groups that ban me for reasons they never explain (but may have to do with my objection of their deployment of "good neighbour" obelisks blotting the view on hundreds of sims). But whatever, if they do good work, they don't need me and visa versa. I don't agree with Therese on certain aesthetic issues or issues of tactics on some things but it doesn't matter. I think what's important is not that everybody join in one united group that has rigid party discipline like the Comintern, but that "a thousand flowers bloom, a thousand schools of thought contend," as Mao said, who didn't really mean it at all as he killed people who thought differently. Fortunately in a virtual world, you can't kill people, and even if you steal their land, you haven't deprived them of actual shelter or food. I don't say SL is a game, because it isn't, it's a prototype of the Metaverse, and therefore the laws, rules, norms, cultural traditions etc that are established in it do matter, and matter greatly, as the virtual increasingly affects the real. Who would have dreamed even 15 years ago that something called the Internet would be exploited by the Kremlin to interfere in our elections? But those of us paying attention not only to Russia, and not only to the Internet, but Second Life, could have foreseen the ways and means by which such things come about. A big problem with the forums is that people like you use avatars with no picture, no picks, and only two generic groups on an account only about a year old, so it's impossible to tell if you are someone who has been in SL for a long time, or someone who owns property on the Mainland, or someone who has really thought and lived these issues. If you are, then you don't have the courage to come on your main to a discussion like this and state your authentic thoughts tied to your reputation. I do.

Um, because they aren't unrelated. That group is entirely related because not only are they just some random affiliate; they are closely linked. They are a hub. They are everywhere GTFO is. They advertise GTFO. AND most relevant, they advertise this on a microparcel right next to my rentals in the sim in question. Hello! So let's go over it again -- I know it's so complicated! -- Their group is the owner of the microparcel in the sim next to my rentals. On that microparcel -- clearly cut off and sold to them by the owner of the larger parcel, GTFO -- is -- guess what -- a GTFO billboard. That is a billboard with a GTFO ad on it, in case that's not clear. Here's what links these two parcels: GTFO. The claim was made that the ad parcel next to Vega Firelyte's parcel was "unrelated". She then admitted this was an "affiliate" which are people who can "do what they want" and over which she has "no control". Mkay, so what this company did was...put up a giant billboard with GTFO advertised on it lol. Why that would be necessary right smack next to a warehouse that ALSO had a GTFO board on it is hard to understand, but you know empire-builders, they like duplication. Let me show you the picture again so you can study how these two parcels are related -- and -- I know it's a stretch -- you can then grasp that on an entirely different sim, where this group has its headquarters, we can learn the additional fact that they are a GTFO hub. So study the purple and white sign. What do you see? You see the letters GTFO.

Just to keep setting the record straight here: the giant billboard on the small parcel was indeed encroaching on my land and that was how I was able to return it. As I explained above, generally you CANNOT return other people's prims. I could because it encroached. If you experience a bug now and then that doesn't undermine the point: you can't return billboards you don't like unless they are on your land. The end. Ask the Lindens. Also test it inworld on anything you like, and you'll get the error message. Once again -- for the fifth time? -- the hub in question is on the other sim on the headquarters of the owner of the microparcel next to you on THAT sim and that perhaps too-complex concept that flew over your head is involved because....it shows your affiliation. A group that owns land on one sim, next to you, with no hub, but a giant ad board (it's only 112 m), is proven to have affiliation with you not only by the stark fact that they have a GTFO billboard but because on another sim, they have a hub. They do have a hub. You are related. Therefore it beggars belief that they appeared, right next to your warehouse, on the same day you did, right next to you, sporting a GTFO ad board. This is no accident, comrade. Dates are not reliable. I have seen abandoned land that I myself claimed on a certain day that I know I claimed because I have the purchase record in "my accounts" show a different date later. I have seen other land bought by other people that I know was purchased recently show a date even of another month or year. It's very common. So generally I accept claim date records. But they are not fully reliable. And in this case, since I come to that sim pretty much every day to take care of tenants, I know what I saw last week: abandoned land. And what I see now: two parcels with GTFO on them. If their dates don't match, that is irrelevant because YOU ARE RELATED. It isn't mere coincidence that they showed up there next to you, and indeed even with an ad FOR YOUR GROUP. People who cut land and sell to ad farmers; who violate the ad policy; who encroach on others' land can and should be AR'd, and you are properly notified of that, and repeatedly, and you are banned, and if this constitutes "a threat," I can only point out that it is legal activity that is in response to illegal activity. Indeed I will do mass petitions on people that deliberately not only violate the regular TOS rules, but connive to lie and disinform about their shenanigans deliberately buying land next to me to get in my fact. If no one can prove that, that's fine, because there is ample evidence of other harassment, like nasty, vulgar IMs with swear words which are also ARable. Once again, I don't de-render. I use the SL viewer. It has no de-render feature. I'm not required to use third-party viewers with histories of abuse (including the ability to return other people's prims in defiance of the permissions system) and I don't. I see now that you are impermeable to facts and reason, patiently documented for you, including with photos. So I can only head on to the rest of my list, bans, ARs, and petitions.

I'm on the path to joy, dear. And giant billboards don't "upset" me -- I take action on them, I AR them, I return them when they encroach but I have 100 other things to do, including many other creative projects that give me more joy than surely the neighbours of steel and concrete warehouses experience in SL. I don't remove myself from land I paid real money for, and which is rented to my tenants. That giant rainbow particle bridge is quite a scourge on the view. I totally appreciate people like to experiment with builds and particles -- I do myself. I think the Lindens should have created zoned sims for this purpose from the get-go. The number of people who want giant particle rainbows and giant monsters and other giant uglies in the sky and on the ground is actually far, far smaller than people who just want ordinary nice homes on well-manicured sims. The popularity of Bellisseria proves that. The people have not demanded rainbow particle bridges; they demanded quaint little wooden bridges built by loving Moles over burbling brooks. That some of us still got left behind on the legacy mainland with the giant particle rainbows and spectacularly stupid and ugly plywood messes that remain as long as 12 years on some sims is the tragedy of the commons, but it is not one I intend to suffer lightly.

Let's go over it again. It doesn't matter that the headquarters of the owner of the microparcel is on another sim. You claimed (before editing your text) that they were "unrelated" so I demonstrated that in fact they are a GTFO hub and have your vendors. More to the point, on the sim with my rentals, they have a large billboard with an ad for GTFO on it. Once again, I refer you to the repeatedly published photos above. Look at them. The group owner of the microparcel next to your warehouse has a billboard with a GTFO ad. It's not there now (or wasn';t an hour ago) because I returned it; it encroached. Like the ad billboard you also deployed. No glasses are needed to see on this same sim, on land you own, and on a microparcel of a group affiliated to you, are large ugly billboards. This is the fact, and your constant reference to how they can "do what they want on their land" or "anyone can have a vendor" or "they are on another sim" are all beside the point because we can all see with unarmed eyes that GTFO is the logo in our faces and in our view. To claim that "anyone" who can get these vendors "just happened" to buy a microparcel RIGHT at the EXACT same time as you bought your current warehouse parcel -- which was carved off a larger abandoned land, and split, and sold to that group for an ad parcel -- simply staggers the imagination. But as I said, keep talking, it self discredits. I'm done here. Go right ahead and chat with your Lindens all you wish. Responding to someone who harasses you with bans, return of encroaching articles, and launching mass petitions to the leadership and the Lindens to take action on bad behaviour are all LEGAL in SL. They themselves aren't harassment; they are responses to harassment.

Welcome to my world! Indeed, there ought to be a policy like this, and even better, there ought to be sims zoned for clubs, and the rest of the sims not allowed to have clubs on them. After long and hard experience over the years I simply never accept clubs as tenants, even very cute ones, even ones that promise only little old lady furries will visit only on Sundays. That's because any and all of them have the capacity to put 44 avatars on a 512 or less -- and do. Most often I find this abuse involves bots being wrangled to deploy to a store or for "traffic enhancement" or some other purpose. Sometimes they are real people. For years, I had an apartment building and townhouses as well as parcels on most of a sim. Not all of that sim, because as a newbie landlord, I discovered that snow didn't rent so well, and then I'd still have to pay tier on it, so I sold it to Anshe. First, I rented one of my parcels to a club. I even used to have a club myself. There comes a time in the life of ever avatar when he wants to have a club. But that was when I was a naive youth, in virtual terms, and took down my club which became a magnet for griefing, harassment, scams, and tears. So then the club I had rented to bought one of the empty parcels. And the rest was history. On this mere 4096 lot, a certain club built an establishment on the ground and in the air for the clients, and proceeded to fill that bar and "entertainment" rooms with anywhere from 25 to the 44 real, active, script-using and bling-covered avatars, every day and night. Given the "services" they offered (it was in "mature," but this was before the adult sims became mandatory), it was very popular. You might think 25 avatars would then leave breathing space for my tenants who led more prosaic lives to back to their homes. 44 definitely meant none of my tenants could go home. But 25 meant that they could go home -- but not move, and when the Lindens changed the sims to the different sim-time execution, it meant all their scripts executed at half-speed. So they moved out, and for a very long time, I had no tenants. I then decided to make lemonade out of lemons and rent to the working girls. That worked for a time, but then they weren't home much, and I still often had the 44-fill-up problem. Absolutely nothing -- and I mean really, nothing -- could be done about this because the Lindens had zero policy about this and zero intention of changing that and still do today. Like other new people, you can try banging your head on this -- good luck! I was stubborn, and didn't want to give up my first SL investment. So I made a mall, rented to stores, who don't mind lag as much as they are not living on the sim. It's even possible, if the sim is full, to buy from vendors while perched on the next sim, which I owned, so it was all good. I waited YEARS before that club uprooted itself and went to an island and I could restore normal apartments. Because I frequently AR'd their griefing, harassment etc and publicized this problem of them constantly taking up all the avatar space on a sim on their mere 4096, they retaliated by putting a large, ugly, purple store across from my nice rentals on another sim. They kept that store there more than 10 years, but I waited for them to get bored and not pay the tier and eventually they were gone. SL is not a young man's game.

It's a frequent fallacy of forums-dwellers that if someone expresses an opinion they don't like, that they have "forced" it on others. I marvel at this disingenuous slight of hand since no one can in fact do that in SL. If someone wants to put up a giant ugly industrial build and billboard on their land, you can't do a thing about it except return it if it encroaches on their land, and hope that decency and common sense might prevail. I don't need to buy more expensive private islands without sailing around them when in fact I am a peasant who has farmed the Mainland since long before you were born and have absolutely no intention of leaving. That's why I speak up when I see groups literally and spiritually encroaching on the grid. That such groups can martial their fanboyz and whistle for their Lindens on the forums matter not to me -- I've lived too long and realize that most things in SL don't last even 30 days, and that those things that do, can change within five years, and that is our hope.

Oh, what's you're confirming is one of the abuses of the popular Firestorm viewer which indeed does sometimes enable return of prims, usually of the same group but not always. On some rare days, I can reach over half way across a parcel in one of my sims, and return a giant billboard of an aggressive neighbour with ad boards; on most other days I can't, and that's even on the regular SL viewer. On the Firestorm viewer this is more frequent. It may depend on the channel the software is deployed on; or who knows what. BTW this bug -- and it's a bug, not a feature -- stems from the reluctance of certain Lindens to fix the code that enables this to happen especially in group-set prims even by members of that group not entitled under the group permissions to return group-set prims IF they are in share. Often when you can return an item it is because the individual has foolishly left it in "share". But the overwhelming use case is you CANNOT return a prim NOT on your land. Anyone can prove this by going inworld, standing on your property, and trying to return prims of your neighbours. You get a standard message: "Removal of the object [x] is disallowed by the permissions system". Because it's...disallowed. That is the norm. Ad farms are universally understood to be microparcels on which ad boards are contained which are part of a system, i.e. one can find the exact same ad board on the same or other sims. In your case, there are two GTFO ads on two parcels, one a microparcel, the other not, but this does constitute a violation of the ad policy. If an ad board doesn't have a link or script, that doesn't mean anything. It's irrelevant. The Lindens have never said anything of the sort verbally or in written policy -- that only scripted boards or boards with Internet links are violatory. The policy is about ad boards, period, on microparcels, period BECAUSE THEY BLIGHT THE VIEW AND DEVALUE ADJACENT PROPERTY. I'm chuckling that you have gone, within the space of the hour, from saying the microparcel next to you had "nothing" to do with your group and was "unrelated" to having your gal pals here post that they "aren't a hub," to saying that yes, they are a hub, and yes they have an affiliate vendor. Good work Vega Firelyte! But what you are doing is confirming your relationship. Why your "affiliate" needs to plant an ad for GTFO RIGHT SMACK NEXT to your "Farm Fresh" where you ALSO have an ad board is BEYOND ME. It makes no financial sense and is not lawful. Once again, as I've already clearly stated at least 3 times, the GTFO hub *is owned by the same owner of the ad farm parcel*. You can skirt the technicality of claiming "Farm Fresh" is "not" a hub, or the VRC railroad is "not a hub" by pointing out that they are not hubs but merely locations in the glorious network of GTFO on the grid, replete with the sky-blighting logo visible on the map. But that's ridiculous. It's not the point. It's not about "wholly-owned subsidiaries" and offshore paper corporations you hide in Cyprus. It's about visible signs with your logo and your initials on the grid that blight the view. You are distracting from that salient fact with all this other nonsense. But keep talking, you self-discredit in this way. "Communities" that achieve their "unity" by inflicting large billboards all over the grid, interfering with other actual communities' Second Life, cannot morally bear claim to that term. And there's basic disconnect here. On the one hand, you claim the people that buy the kit from the vendors and put up warehouses or lovely little fairy glens on their land to play the game are people you have no control of, who "do what they want". You say that people who put up a giant GTFO billboard on a microparcel are "unrelated" to you or at best now (you admit) "an affiliate" and you don't coordinate their actions. But then you insist it's all Kumbayah and apple pie and a "community" of people heartily enjoying glass, steel, and concrete who can tell me, who has actually real communities for thousands of people for 15 years, that I understand nothing about community. As I said, keep talking, you self-discredit.

I only use the official SL viewer, and I refuse to use other popular viewers with histories of abuse that many have long forgotten, even if they have the ability to "de-render". I don't believe in de-rendering the world; I believe in good behaviour. I have visited literally hundreds of sims, constantly, for 15 years, because I have rentals on 50 sims and I explore a great deal to make lists of sites. And I assure you that the overwhelming majority of GTFO locations are WAREHOUSES. They might have a technical name like "Farm Fresh," as we can see from the pictures in this thread, they are still A WAREHOUSE. Diners, strip malls, airports, marinas may not be "warehouses" but they are still made of CONCRETE AND STEEL. These are not unicorns and fairies cavorting in the druids' glen. They are industrial parks, and look like what they are. It doesn't matter what my personal preferences are in aesthetics. I like the industrial look too, in its place. What we have now is a situation now of literal encroachment -- on my land -- from this group -- and also encroachment in general not literal terms on the view of the map, the roads, and the waterways. One can only respond eventually with: GTFO.

It's hardly "rage" that requires "a woman to calm down" (!) if I point out that your claim that this land owned by the owner of the microparcel is "not a hub". Review the picture again. The sign says "hub". The issue is that the OWNER of the microparcel IS RELATED to GTFO. It is, in fact a hub, selling the vendor. If Vega Firelyte's parcel -- which you keep deliberately confusing with the main point here about the OWNER of the MICROPARCEL AD FARM -- is "not a hub", so what? It's GTFO. AND it has a giant GTFO billboard on it. Review the photos again. I realize it's more fun to heckle and ridicule and deliberately confuse issues, but the signs speak for themselves.

Then don't? The only groups I've had "year-long feuds" with is Woodbury, which is banned from SL. Hello? Could there be a lesson here? Griefers harass you when you AR them for bad behaviour; eventually, sometimes years later, even the Lindens ban them for cause, and that has nothing to do with me, but the thousands of other people they harassed and affected with theft, sim crashing, etc. I'm merely the visible example of a person who ARs such things. As for GTFO, as memory is short and attention spans shorter, I never heard of Vega Firelyte, nor did I have any "years-long feud" with her or her group, until literally this thread, i.e. a few weeks ago. And objecting to blatant bad behaviour on several sims isn't a "year-long feud" in which I or "both sides" are to blame, but a clear marker delineating bad behaviour that shouldn't stand, and which if ended, would make for better Mainland living. Deliberately seeking out an abandoned land next to someone you disagree with as a method of harassing me is not good behaviour. I wouldn't practice it myself. GTFO claims they didn't practice it deliberately, but their word isn't credible given the outrageous whoppers they are telling on every other front, i.e. claiming that an ad parcel next to them with their billboard on it is "unrelated" to them. Even if you can somehow establish actual "lack of foreknowledge" and "good will" in the purchase of this parcel right smack next to my rentals in the middle of the sim, and not roadside (where the overwhelming majority of GTFO parcels can be found), the presence of two giant billboards which I've had to repeatedly return testifies not only to a general lack of good will, but to harassment of me and my tenants personally. Let me suggest that the foul and abusive language I got from this buyer, which began with saying I "deserve a spanking" (BDSM culture prevails everywhere it seems) and goes downhill from there -- and was AR'd -- also testifies to the lack of faith and good will here. Once again, for the record, I RENT TO GTFO PLAYERS. For years, I never complained about GTFO not merely because they are my TENANTS -- HELLO! -- but because they weren't as aggressive as they are now. They have reached a new stage of their development where they have decided to combine aggressive expansionism with a truly Kremlin-like manifestion of propaganda and denial of facts we have before our own eyes. Let me suggest neither the one nor the other, even if it produces customers in the short run, is a good long-term business strategy. ARing people who have encroached on your land with giant billboards, blighted the view, and ensured you are unlikely to rent that land, is not a "feud" but what you do in a democratic society under the rule of law -- not quite what we have in SL, but we have a faint proximity and so I avail myself of it. Mainland can be appreciated when people who own Mainland stop behaving badly. Bad behaviour includes encroachment, putting up ad boards on ad farm microparcels (an offense even the Lindens will act on at times and about which they do indeed have policies), putting "access only" on land, particularly by public thoroughfares on land or water, and in general, building ugly structures that blight the view, then lying about all of the above. Aesthetics differ, and people wildly disagree about beauty and ugliness in SL. But when the ratio of ugly cement and steel warehouses on the map, land, and sea begin to tilt in favour of overwhelming the other fragile efforts of civilization on the Mainland, I speak up. That's what Mainland Appreciation is all about. Vega Firelyte belives that even advocating with the Lindens -- advocating! expressing your opinion -- is somehow "forcing your ideas on other people". That's truly nuts. What's forcing your ideas on other people is when you have grid-wide projects that spread and spread and overwhelm sims. In real life, there are land permits, city councils, zoning laws -- we have little of that in SL *by programmed design* imposed by California-ideology technocommunists and technolibertarians (what a combo! But that is what we have). Even so, I like to think that civil society, with the rule of law and the concept of "my right to swing my arm ends at your face" could prevail.

Um, dear? You can't return someone else's prims just because you feel like it or they are "not locked down," whatever that means. You can ONLY return them when they ENCROACH ON YOUR LAND, HELLO! Which it is easy to do when they are big, ungainly, unwieldy billboards of the type that we used to have in America out west decades ago, you know, like WALL DRUGS 100 MILES...WALL DRUGS 50 MILES....WALL DRUGS 25 MILES... Ever go to Wall drugs? I didn't slide anything. I went into edit mode, and slightly RESIZED THE PRIM. I didn't have to move a thing. And it was unnecessary as you can see from the "before" picture that shows the red line to the right of my boardwalk, even if close. Since even mathematically straight prims in SL can drift over time and actually also create optical illusions regarding their relationship to the border, there's an easy test for this: right click/return. Since it wasn't returned these last few days, I'll assume it wasn't encroaching. Meanwhile, not only were those two giant billboards encroaching, so were your plants, which I just returned again...and again. It's not possible to return things that are not on your land, and items from BOTH your land and the microparcel of this soi-disant "unaffiliated" group encroached, and were returned. As to "totally different region" and "not even close to where the group parcel is," this is a propagandistic literalism that even the Soviet communists would blush at. Let's break this down again for you. THE OWNER OF THE MICROPARCEL WITH THE BILLBOARD ON IT IMMEDIATELY ADJACENT TO YOUR 'FARMFRESH' IS A GROUP WHOSE HEADQUARTERS IN ANOTHER SIM HAS A GTFO HUB SIGN ON IT AND VENDOR FOR SALE THAT THEY ARE IN ANOTHER SIM MAKES NO DIFFERENCE, SINCE YOU CLAIMED THEY HAVE 'NOTHING' TO DO WITH YOUR GROUP YET THEY HAVE GTFO INFO HUB ON THEIR HQ, SELL YOUR VENDOR, AND WHAT'S MOST SALIENT, HAVE A GIANT BILLBOARD ADVERTISING GTFO ON THE MICROPARCEL. LOOK AT THE PICTURE ABOVE, PROVIDED HERE AGAIN

LOL you DO realize that when you put up a picture of a sign that clearly has the letters "GTFO" on it, and then claim it is about "community" and not "hub," you merely sound ridiculous. And look about at my updated post. The owner of the microparcel in question is a group which INDEED DOES have a GTFO hub and the GTFO vendor inside their building. That's what the discussion is about. But honestly, you guys HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME when you pretend that GTFO this or that is somehow "unrelated" and "not the same" and if the sign is "not scripted" that means that somehow it is like fairies and unicorns and doesn't blight the view. I marvel at this.

I can merely Laugh Out Loud at this land of your supposedly "not actual hub" that has a sign that says GTFO Hub out in front of it. Pretending that a "compliment to the train and travellers" which has an ad for GTFO on it, from a group with a GTFO hub sign out in front of it, selling the GTFO kit from its vendor is truly a stretch. If technically that group owner is "not your group" it sure is hell affililated with, and making cash with, your group. See below, the GTFO sign, in front of a GTFO warehouse in a sim, which I might add, is spectacularly blighted with all kinds of junk in the air and on the ground, but of course, that's their God-given right to do WTF they want on their land because we must champion "creativity" uber alles. I just now went to my land, saw that I was WELL WITHIN the red line so it could not be returned, but merely shrunk it slightly to make extra sure. See the "before" picture below and the after I will have to post on my blog as I am out of bytes now. Once again, I could point out that no one returned my boardwalk in the last few days. That's because it's not encroaching. If there is some microscopic encroachment of this boardwalk on the border of what was abandoned land for years, hey, sue me. Oh, and return the boardwalk. But you can't. Because it's not encroaching. Anyone trying to maneuver a truck out of your FarmFresh warehouse (neither a farm nor fresh) will have to be quite the skillful driver and turn themselves into a pretzel to drive under and out of the train station. It's insanity. When a group (and another group which both pretend are not affiliated) put up giant billboards in the face of my tenants, I push back. That's not on. I return the signs -- twice now! -- because they ENCROACH, hello! I notice that instead of admitting the facts of the case, visible to all, you're distracting with efforts to comment on whether I am important or not, or you are important, and making a false claim that ARing and returning giant billboards and calling out bad behaviour is "stalking". The stalking is what is done by your giant, overbearing corporation. That's visible to the naked eye.

Qie, you have merely to look at the owner of the microparcel, and go to their group and their headquarters, to realize that it is all related to GTFO, a GTFO hub, selling the kit from GTFO vendor. Let's not be children here. This land was abandoned in full, in one parcel, as you well know, for years. First it was abandoned a very long time ago -- 12 or even 14 years ago wnen the first-land flipper who was banned -- and then later purchased and abandoned by your group. Indeed it sat there for years. Why? Because land in the middle of the sim next to a railroad and the boardwalk in my rentals isn't ideal except for your group or mine. I left it merely because I didn't need the prims and figured you had more need of them. I didn't think I needed to make a defensive purchase -- of the type I've done so many times!!! -- for an 878 m parcel in the middle of a sim. There is half of the sim abandoned there with roadside and my rentals, which many view as "protected land" by now since they haven't changed in 15 years! So if someone really needed land in that sim, they could ask the Lindens to carve off a 512 or 1024 roadside. If they had a felt need to create an ad farm, they could also do that roadside. Having two different groups -- one directly GTFO management and the other a RR fans' group that is in fact a GTFO hub and vendor -- may technically satisfy the notion that you can't have more than one ad farm in a sim, but there are TWO BILLBOARDS on TWO VERY MUCH RELATED GROUPS HERE so they definitely should be AR'd and not get away with this sleight of hand. That Lindens may connive with GTFO to do all this or not take action against all this wouldn't surprise me WHATSOEVER given the vast amount of tier that GTFO and its affiliates may pay, but I actually don't think they are to blame here, as nowadays they basically satisfy any request to obtain abandoned land by anybody for any reason or no reason.

Note the whole scene: 1. GTFO is far from the road -- why is a spot in the middle of a sim an "ideal spot" for a warehouse in a game where you are trying to move freight quickly??? 2. GTFO will have a hard time even driving out of the warehouse in the middle of the sim, given the VRC railroad in the way. 3. The ad farm is definitely related to GTFO. And the only people who will see it are my tenants -- did I mention it is not near the road at all. Look at the map. 4. My boardwalk is not encroaching -- look at the red lines.

Er, I'm not the one who is hounding and harassing when in fact it is your group that has purchased abandoned land next to my rentals deliberately, despite its awkward location for your purposes. You have put up two giant billboards to get in the face of anyone next door, one of them on ad farm to which your group sold to an ad farmer in fact related to you as I discovered when I visited his headquarters and found your GTFO vendor for sale for $699 in his warehouse. While it may be true that players of this game do not make real money, you do. I don't know why you take us all for naive children given the facts in front of us on the grid. I don't believe you whatsoever, because every other statement you have made about GTFO has been demonstratively false. And these statements are demonstratively proven as false when you claim "someone else" bought it" and it was "never mine, the groups, or my friend's land" when it demonstratively has a GTFO sign on it. Or did, until I returned them, but I have no doubt they will be back. It's particularly a stretch of the imagination to say that your group has "literally" nothing to do with the microparcel when your GTFO billboard is on it, and when the group which owns that parcel is a GTFO hub with your vendor on sale in the building. Hello! No one could believe that you thought this was a "great spot" next to the railroad because it literally is not in the view due to the railroad on one side, nearly underneath the overpass, and would be seen only by my tenants on the other, not the general public. It is far from the road. It's also not at all true that this landscaping is "done tastefully" and "not guady" [sic] and "does not encroach on anyone's land" since....I was able to return these billboards because they encroached on my land. If my boardwalk encroaches on land that was abandoned for the last 12 years, you'll be able to return it. Yet it hasn't been returned. Please don't claim this is about your "good will". There is nothing false about an AR for encroachment when I am able to return both of your billboards and when abandoned land has been purchased for the purpose of creating an ad farm on a microparcel. So again, it is of course overly done because....I was able to return it. Hello! The rental property -- mine -- is right smack next to the billboards (the wooden boardwalk), improbably placed facing them in the middle of the sim and not roadside, where they would get more views. (You've amended your text to say you now realize its mine but this beggars belief). Every response I have listed here is legal and indeed encouraged when people in SL face the kind of overbearing over-building and literal encroachment that your group represents to the map, the grid, and the neighbourhood. Everyone should be banning such neighbours so they feel what it is like to live with such domination. They should certainly AR encroachment and ad farms which are certainly related to your group. This isn't about me being important or you being important but about the basic norms of society.

Yes, the beta began in 1999. It ran until 2008 when they first tried to introduce user content, then shut it down, with a big GAME OVER that some of us stayed to watch before having our virtual lives deleted forever. Then a group of programmer fans made a re-engineered version called Free Sims Online (FreeSO) which is really quite good, and keeps introducing new content. There are also some offshoots on private servers here and there. It really was great. In some ways, better than Second Life in its ability to have people build communities and interact and have goals. But in content and style it was of course far inferior which is why it went out of business, I guess.

UPDATE: It wasn't the Linden Roads Group that has those obelisks, or that expelled me, but another one who mysteriously indicates that I should "just know" why I'm expelled. I think it's because I criticized their aggressive attempts to put a Linden-sponsored railroad through my land on the partially abandoned WARR project, to which in fact I had sold land and gave right of way. Or who knows, it could also be due to criticism of the misuse of the FLW legacy in SL for businesses around an effort to have an FLW museum, which ultimately was cancelled by the RL FLW. I'm a critic. I criticize things that need criticism. This is normal. This is how RL is run. Unless you are in Singapore or Russia or Iran, you can criticize the authorities and other groups in society, it's more than fine.

@Vega Firelyte Oh, hey, I see you're my new neighbour in Tuliptree. And that what you decided to do was to find some abandoned land near one of my areas, buy it, and put up one of your delightful GTFO outlets and get in my face, ensuring that those parcels near it will be unlikely to rent (as is usually the case with GTFO pops up, something I tolerate in my own rentals even when I rent to GTFO at the expense of other parcels, it's a balancing act). I researched this, and I realize you're going to claim you didn't do this, but that's what you did. This one is called "FarmFresh" although it has neither a farm or fresh food, but perhaps those are to come? More to the point it has two gigantic, unnecessary billboards. One is on your land, and the other is on a 112 m microparcel you sold to an ad-farmer who put your GTFO ad on his board. Ugly, unnecessary, and not viewed by anyone, except put deliberately in my face because I dared to criticize your blighting of the Mainland. It's not enough that you entirely blight the map with GTFO every few squares; you have to put up these big billboards which hardly anybody sees except my tenants in small residences who aren't going to do GTFO -- those who want to already rent large parcels. You bought land which has literally been abandoned for something like 12 years, since the Lindens cracked down on first-land flippers (they don't have the first-land program any more) and banned some of them and their land was abandoned. The nearby railroad apparently bought it and then abandoned it much later when they needed to tier down. So you requested it, with a mission in mind, I saw what you did there. It's ludicrous, because if speed and efficiency are a function of your game, trying to worm your way out of that tiny entrance and through the railroad works to get out to the highway -- it's NOT roadside - is a ridiculous time loss. So when people deliberately try to harass me over my opinions on the forums -- which are valid, and my experience, and my right -- I abuse report them , although it goes "nowhere". But I do think the Lindens need a policy not to sell abandoned land to people who then cut up microparcels for ads or to sell to ad-farmers. They may feel secondary purchases are impossible to police but that's what ARs are for. Abandoned land, which the Lindens now are unloading in large numbers, contrary to their past much slower and more miserly policy. Remember, those tuning in, my VALID criticism of GTFO's blighting of the map (it's everywhere) and warehouses taking up the view in most of their views, is not my personal opinion, and not driven merely by me having residential lots for rent, but a feeling shared by many, including even in this thread. And our expression of this criticism doesn't harm the increasingly monopolistic and oppressive GTFO, which hasn't lost any business because a few of their neighbours complained on the forums, read by 5% of the user population. If anything, it's GTFO that hurts the business of other businesses next to them, or hurts the pretty view that someone thought they had when they bought, say, lakeside property. It wouldn't occur to me to someone try to sabotage or boycott GTFO merely because I don't like their builds -- that's wrong. And as I've said numerous times, I have tenants doing GTFO! But when people attempt to harm me or my business in SL, I fight back. I AR them. I ban them -- that's the minimum, let them taste banlines. I wait 30 days. Most things go away in 30 days, for all kinds of reasons. Since escalating action often leads to the opposite effect -- you complain about an encroaching build and sim crashing, and you get a giant refrigerator on your cost for four or more years -- I wait. Then I go to the next steps. o Brick walls on all sides of the billboard. I have the prims to go up to 4096 if need be. The Lindens have a rule that you cannot totally block another's property on all 4 sides -- this method of fighting the ad farms was something they used to punish users for, as they sat idly by letting their fellow computer programmers sell 16m parcels for $10,000 and remove giant IMPEACH BUSH or MR. LEE'S HONG KONG ad boards. But you can block on 2-3 sides, and with cooperative neighbours, that's often enough. o Constant publication of bad behavior o Continued ARS, urging all those affected to AR. o Mass petitions -- I have a tenant on one sim who got so tired of ONE PERSON blocking the sailing on an entire lake because the Lindens were foolhardy enough to sell water inside lakes and not create Linden protected land inside them that he got dozens of people who lived there to petition the person doing this. She hasn't taken of "access only" yet but he will keep at it. People who put "access only" have the right to do so, and they believe it is necessary for privacy. But there are several ways you can do this and mitigate it: -- Only put your land to access only when you are actually logged in. If you are mainly not logging on to SL, there's no reason to block boating around your land for everyone. If you're afraid they might fly up to your skybox and go on your sex furniture, understood, but you can either put that away or put up an orb just for the perimeter of that skybox. To block your entire parcel of 4096 plus, when you have no builds on the ground, is insanity. -- Cut a 32m strip around your land -- leave that open. Put the rest of your land on "access only" but for the love of God, at least let people pass by on water or roadside without being bashed by banlines or orbs. The Lindens have gotten lax about policing ad farms, and I see them back again with the same insanity, ugly builds and ridiculous prices to "buy back the view". Their rule is that you can't have more than one per sim, I think it is. So that's a basis for ARs, but sometimes just an AR for the extortionist price, if there are multiple instances, can be enough. When you deal with me, you'll find that I can wait forever. I can wait years for situations to be righted. You can try to harass and bully me off my land or discourage me from expressing my views, but it can't stand. So give it up. Mind your own business. You have enough of the grid under your control without deliberately coming to harass me and my tenants.