Prokofy Neva

Um, well, look here, folks. First, it's not about what Whirly found, God bless her, that was helpful because that's not the issue, and the pictures posted 2 weeks ago even with that "help tip" so it's not "a thing". And...The problem is fixed now at Typepad. But not by Typepad. Because in our last episode, I had contacted the Typepad engineers and I had about 6 rounds with them on various facets of the problem. I gave them all the links to broken posts, the HTML, I explained what you were saying, and they couldn't make sense of it. Then there was the President's Day holiday so they said, sorry, we're on holiday (they're nice that way) but we'll return to this in a few days. They wondered if your system was blocking my "special unique post email" that Typepad generates for you as "spam". But I didn't think so as I have used it for years (it only generates a new one if you ask it to, not each time). And, no, Oz. It's not about "finger pointing and hostility". It's about having to shout above the din of all the fanboyz and fangirlz here to get any point made with any documentation made -- the record shows that, you're an adult and "above the fray," seemingly, read it, and get it. It is visible. In spades. Always the nasty put-downs of non-tech people as being stupid and using supposedly "obsolete platforms" blah blah blah. All the other nonsense of specious ideas about it, swipes at me (in other posts reporting bugs or issues) that I could ONLY be reporting this because I'm a greedy, rapacious land baron in SL trying to get out "ads for my properties". This is so patently ridiculous that one doesn't know where to start, as my little blog doesn't have enough traffic to ever somehow "produce a sale" -- and wait a minute, hey, what if it did? Because there are very large operations in SL with hundreds of islands, not small operations like mine, that have mammoth amounts of investment in your platform that hey, might like to use this feature as an advertising function and what could be wrong with that? Surely, despite whatever your own private pro-Sanders views or whatever kind of tech-left or libertarian views you hold (you're not required to "share") or hatred of capitalists and big companies that techs so often hold (except of the BIG IT companies of course), you can grasp that capitalism is okay, after all, Linden Lab, your employer practices is. But yes, you are steeped in these cultures and methods. You were snapping at me that there couldn't possibly be a problem because...um...the word I used "scanning" was "not one we use". You see that literalism of techs always hobbles understanding of problems that users find. Always. Because you should be enough of a conceptual thinker that you don't jam on "scan" versus "check" but that you accept that someone has found something with good will -- which is in fact proven to you only arduously as they struggle to capture it in the wild. It's like this: A programmer is going to the grocery store and his wife tells him, "Buy a gallon of milk, and if there are eggs, buy a dozen." So the programmer goes, buys everything, and drives back to his house. Upon arrival, his wife angrily asks him, "Why did you get 13 gallons of milk?" The programmer says, "There were eggs!" Every damn time here, Oz, it's "there were eggs" when what you were asked to do was buy a gallon of milk for the thirsty. So you write this thing: We've made a number of changes to how and when we send email, including changes to some of the software used for postcards. These changes are motivated primarily by the fact that email from SL has in the past often been filtered and discarded or rejected because it was sent incorrectly or to bad addresses. We are trying to make it as reliable as email ever is by upgrading nearly everything about how we do it (and by the way, our internal data shows that that is having a very positive effect). The changes will continue for some time. This might as well be an announcement from an airline telling us the flight is still delayed but never telling us why or when it will take off. That is, I'm sure it is a rich and meaningful paragraph for you that reflects your actual concern and hard labour but for the non-specialist just watching at home, it's just a corporate statement without meaning as when it was made, Typepad posts were still broken. Let me break this down so you understand better. First, we're snowed by the idea that all the changes are made are actually for our benefit and we must be grateful - as we "all know" how "badly email works from SL" Second, we're told that there was this terrible state of email -- that some might understand, some might not because not everyone uses SL in combination with email in the same way, for Postcards or anything for that matter. The average person, say, with a Premium Account might get a notice from LL about an offer, or maybe an IM from a friend that they sent to offline via email on preferences -- and that's it, so it works. Third, we're told that this internal data about a thing that we haven't been given to understand (perhaps it's a proprietary secret and that's fine) is now improved and the Lab's own reports show it's working fine -- but if Typepad wasn't, or somebody's own email wasn't working with Postcards, what does it mean? It means nothing. Works on My Machine isn't just a phenomenon for techs to wield against norms; it's a slogan that every single user can keep coming back with in reverse Doesn't Work On My Machine -- and the answer is too often "Well, your computer is old, it's ready for kindergarten (5 years)" -- the famous answer of Lindens years ago. No, Oz, I don't have a computer I built myself from parts off New Egg like you do. I have a Best Buy computer because even though I live in one of the largest media/tech cities in the world, that's actually all that is mainly available for the non-specialist to play your game. Your game doesn't work on a lot of computers at all, laptops, forget about it. So to continue on the substance here: Yes, I routinely find hundreds of messages from my customers, automated rental boxes, Linden Lab itself, etc. in the spam file, in fact I often find that the most urgent and valuable messages with real things in them are in that spam file, but no matter, I'm a grown-up and I can look there. Oh, but stop right there, Prokofy. You mentioned automated rental boxes. Yes, well see that's just it -- there are an ENORMOUS NUMBER OF THINGS in Second Life that "talk" and send messages and if you set your preferences for them to go into email -- which is the best way to avoid this claim so many make that there were "too many" and they "didn't get them" you'll see that the average email program, Yahoo for example or even older ones like Juno or even Gmail -- can't figure them out. Cannot handle the load. Those talking SL things -- vendors, objects, avatars sending messages, you name it -- have enormous numbers of letters and numbers in their names showing an avatar key, a SLURL, a you-name-it. The virtual world with all its talking things let alone people just really overwhelms email. So I'm glad you're on it. But it's bigger than your platform. Yahoo's problem, aside from being massively hacked by Russians and poorly working in general is that often things don't even go to the spam file at all. They just withhold them, period. If they are weird long things from SL. Or even from Russia itself which they automatically ban now, so that even independent journalists or opposition people can't send email to me any more. And frankly, Gmail, which is something techs prefer and they all scorn you for having Yahoo which they view as hackable is really no better (funny, it's Google that sends me the MOST messages every month that an authorized STATE is attempting to get at my email or docs and funny, it's Gmail that led to the DNC hack! Hello! You can say PICNIC, I can say flies at PICNIC from Cosy Bear and Fancy Bear) What I'm trying to suggest here is that "Linden Lab's problem with email" isn't just a problem of all these voices chattering out of SL, actual communications from actual things like Linden Lab itself but all these chattering automated objects, vendors, notifiers, groups, ads, etc. etc. -- but a problem vastly of email systems themselves. Email itself has not reformed as a system. For 20 years, we have had the same interfaces, the same idiocies in being unable to save our own email except with complicated mbx files that can't always be opened later, the same lag, crashing, and idiocy - and Google's Wave, enabling the *removal of other people's text* was not the answer. The same hacking, the same spam the same everything. While you're tinkering with just making "legacy email work with Second Life" why not invent an entire new online email system for virtual worlds (which will be everything some day) and make it work so much better? You know, from scratch, like you did Sansar? Because without a communications system alongside/embedded/compatible with the virtual world, there really is no virtual world as I think I could prove and you might yourself understand. That is, you need to think about this problem in a totally more Zen and Burning Man-like way, Oz. Have I reached you yet with this point? So, to come to the point just for today, in the here-and-now: I know for a fact Typepad did nothing. So you, Oz or other Lindens "did something" and we "don't know what" because now Postcards from Second Life work on Typepad and I can resume my happy little shopping blogging as a happy little avatar. Maybe it was some simple thing like putting Typepad in a whitelist, and putting other sites or emails from people complaining it wasn't getting through "in a white list". I know I could send "Postcards from SL" to my actual Yahoo account but my Verizon account which is really under a shell of a Yahoo account in their deal with Yahoo just never showed anything, not in spam not anywhere. See above -- Yahoo doesn't let some things through on some forms of their accounts because -- whatever. It just happens. Maybe you fixed this "two part file to keep in compliance with IETF" (hum). Who knows! You don't have to tell us. I know in a month or three months it might be broken again (as it has been in the past). I'm very patient, I've been in Second Life 13 years now.

Neither of you go inworld and experience these issues to any significant degree so your comments are low priority too as a reason to do nothing. The Lindens can a) fix this thing b) fix the message at least. They don't. But they should as it is a massive annoyance for everyone.

If it were such a simple matter of toggling from "surface" to "solid" we wouldn't have such a widespread problem, tho. We do. It's MOST mesh. I'm happy to demonstrate this for you on the last 100 objects in my inventory any time.

Yes, well, sure, fixing THE THING ITSELF would be best. And I wonder that too -- if the system can tell you a location with three coordinates, why can't rez mesh there?i.e. what makes mesh "bounced," when it does seem to have a place to go? I don't know anything about "raycaster" nor can I even see that JIRA (I'm banned) but I take your word for it -- it's funny, really, why mesh just can't be fixed to do this. Especially when SOME MESH -- a very rare amount, really, does work. My point is that since four years have gone by and nobody wants to fix it, they could at least fix that dumb message. That way no one would ever be confused on this point, they would then take the mesh and rez it on a prim block or the ground.

Everyone has seen it -- some of us literally see this dozens or even hundreds of times a day: Can't rez object at {coordinates } because the owner of this land does not allow This is a totally misleading and false claim, because it's not about any "owner" who is "not allowing" This message occurs EVEN WHEN the owner himself, or tenants in a rental group with the group tag on their head attempt TO PLACE MESH ON MESH. We all know that is the story, mesh cannot be placed on mesh, much of the time, with rare exceptions. Those who don't have to place mesh on mesh all day often don't believe this - they think it "only happens sometimes" or "there's only a few poor makers of mesh who have created this problem." NOPE, it happens with NEARLY ALL MESH MOST OF THE TIME. I literally put out mesh hundreds of times because I am putting furniture into rentals, or taking it out, or substituting it, or putting in new furniture, or arranging a landscape, or working on one of my land preserve parcels. So let's say if I have an average log-on of 2 or 4 hours, it very easily adds up to the hundreds. Those who don't have this experience don't believe it, can't understand it so they'll try to shoot this down in the usual way but it doesn't matter. Most people -- and not just landlords, but ordinary end users trying to USE their rentals or even purchased land have this message CONSTANTLY. SO WHY CAN'T THE LINDENS CHANGE THIS MISLEADING MESSAGE? It would literally cost them 30 seconds of time to edit their current message to something like "Rez mesh objects on a prim or on the ground to avoid rezzing problems". But the problem with getting this simple annoyance fixed is ideology. For one, the Lindens will be stuck on the "use case" of how sometimes -- in far fewer instances -- this message is about not having the group tag on. But since the system should be able to detect when you have a group tag on -- such as to generate that message -- hello??? -- the fact that it gives you this message EVEN WHEN you have the group tag on or are even THE OWNER of the land, then the mesh issue is what is jamming it. The system could of course still generate "Can't rez object at { } because the owner of this land does not allow" WHEN you don't have the group tag on. But when you do, then it should give this suggestion about mesh. Why can't it? What, it can't detect when you do or don't have the tag on? But surely it does.... So it's a question of a political decision about what to say about badly functioning mesh. That's an admission that mesh really doesn't work so well -- and honestly, I think the Lindens were only beta-testing mesh on Second Life, with an eye to having it go in Sansar or something, because if they were serious, they would have a) gotten rid of this message a long time ago b) enforced standards for making and uploading mesh that ends this problem. They haven't. What would be a better edited version of this message? I'm open to any suggestions and someone might make a Jira (not me) but it has to be a confession that mesh has to be put on a prim or land.

OK, once again Whirly, look up top at the original post and note that this worked FOR YEARS and right up until two weeks ago. AND it worked with this -- html, coming from the "Post Cards from Second Life" system: So on February 5, it was still working, sending postcards, with images, and with this HTML: <p class="asset asset-link"><a href="http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Thoughts%20of%20Love/238/113/21">http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Thoughts%20of%20Love/238/113/21</a></p> <!-- (DWIM) attachments start here --> <p><a class="asset-img-link" style="display: inline;" href="http://3dblogger.typepad.com/files/secondlifepostcard-10369.jpg"><img class="asset asset-image at-xid-6a00e54fce13cf883401b8d2d76d4d970c img-responsive" alt="secondlife-postcard.jpg" title="secondlife-postcard.jpg" src="http://3dblogger.typepad.com/.a/6a00e54fce13cf883401b8d2d76d4d970c-580wi" /></a></p> All of that posted, and that meant the picture posted, too. Now, all that posts is the SLURL and nothing else. Maybe the Typepad people literally just put that advice you've cited here in answer to my ticket about this LOL. I don't recall it before. But if it were always there, the fact is, Typepad had no problem taking HTML as recently as February 5, I can see it in all the weeks preceding that as well. Re: "we are now more IETF compliant and its probably sending the image as a multipart file, so this change may be making Typepad upset." Yes, that may be it. You know what I think about that, however, knowing what IETF standards are about -- they are not voted on democratically or rationally, the engineers...hum. Yes, they hum, and if the hum is loud enough, a proposition is passed. It's really dam weird. It always seems strange to me that engineers, who insist on mangling human reason to match their machines and engage in 0/1 binary thinking suddenly can't have a vote, up and down, with a majority ruling, but have to have this completely unscientific thing called "consensus" like a Soviet collective or a Central Asian kuraltai. Dictatorships are enabled by such methods. I'm really hard put to see why a simple HTML script to load some files such as I've pasted above here has to be sent in multiple parts. I'm sure not only is there a "very good reason" for this in the engineering mind, the fact that it just ruined postcards for people doesn't matter. And as other people are reporting that they can't even send the postcards to their own email address, it's not just my issue. I'll go a few more rounds with Typepad on this AND I will try to get "the same" answer or "some answer" from the SL ticket system but what an annoyance. It was previously -- for years -- easy to make one click and send a blog from Second Life to a popular blogging platform, Typepad, which is in fact not a "dead" or "backward" blogging platform -- and now it isn't. I don't know if WordPress has an email blog post function, surely it must but I don't want to fuss with WordPress I get enough of that frustration in RL jobs. So the work-around is to send the posts with the photos stripped out, then snap the picture, save to hard drive and then upload to the post after. Not the greatest but there it is. Another prospect is to only post to Twitter, not the blog. I'll test if that is working and maybe if Postcards are now also broken with Twitter, which the Lindens likely find more cool, they might change despite any slavish obedience to "IETF standards". PS Re: Snapzilla -- hey, now if THAT broke down you can be sure the surly regs there would get Ebbe's attention, he reads them! So really, there isn't an objective reason for it not to work, if it can work on Snapzilla. BTW I will never use that site for very good reason, but it doesn't matter. If it can work there it can work at Typepad unless Typepad is merely bagging it as spam

Well, that's interesting. I am still getting photos stripped out on Typepad, the full thing on one email, nothing on another. I should try to get out of the Yahoo domain and see what I get.

Typepad isn't "my" technology. It's a commercial blogging platform used by millions, dwarfing, I dare say, the usage of Second Life. So let me turn the arrow back to you "Love," you can't bear to hear that nasty swipes by your fellow nerd regs are in fact nasty. They are. They are arrogant, superior, disdaining, scornful, and much more. I marvel that the Lindens continue to tolerate this as nowadays, they are dominated by crypto anarchists themselves. At least I don't think so.

No, I'm banned from the JIRA so I don't do JIRA. And the JIRA is precisely sort of very restricted and oppressed place from which one can only be proud to be banned, as even regs here complain how they can't comment there, etc. I was banned simply for showing that the return of group-set objects when set in share is a bug, not a feature. I had the support of other Lindens, even tacitly the Linden who coded this (!), even IBM engineers. But it wasn't enough for the virulent ideologues who run the JIRA. If you persist in reporting something as a bug, finding new data on it, and other people persist in supporting you, if ideologues think it's a feature they like, you are banned. That's how Benevolent Dictatorship open source software works, comrade. It's not about me. It's about principles -- return of group-set objects on share undermines the group powers set in the group with collectivist "share" should not be doing in the hierarchy of powers there. That certain Lindens wanted the ability to return other people's builds in a group project -- to edit on demand and return other people's stuff -- is an ideological position undermining the rule of law even for "share," let alone groups. It would make sense not to have any object in "share" returnable UNLESS the power to manipulate/edit/return group-set objects was ALSO given to individuals in the group. These are really basic concepts for those who aren't in cults and think crypto-anarchism is the norm.

This is a good example of the blinders that the nasty forums regs always wear. Alyona herself NEEDLESSLY AND NASTILY bashes me as someone "stuck in 2006" who is using some supposed "outdated" blogging platform -- which guess what, isn't outdated, is used by numerous people, some with higher traffic than anything related to Second Life, and those slamming it are just in their own SL geek bubble. WORSE, she's accusing me of having some home-brew HUD some geek made in 2006 to send postcards (gosh, I remember those) but that isn't the case whatsoever. It's just pure, unadulterated nastiness of the kind that the other nasty forums regs chorus with and pretend they're being "scientific" instead of nasty, so I push back -- so few do. I tell her this: That's a ridiculous answer Alyona, who cares what you think and who you know uses a platform? Typepad has numerous users -- and with high traffic -- they're just outside your SL bubble. -- she gets an equal and opposite push back to her lousy statement to me which is an utterly duplicitious troll while pretending not to be a troll: Prok, you've been using Typepad since before 2006 and you're still the only person I've ever known to use it. Maybe it's time to update to something more modern? If you can't see that this is a nasty, vicious, superior statement, then you have blinders. Anyone else can. If you can't see that the following statement is also party of that viciousness, it's because you have blinders: No, I am NOT trying to troll you or anything, I'm serious. I was just reading a thread about how the old HippoVend system stopped working in 2016 - and people are still posting (even as of this morning) about "Wait, what?" So, you aren't clear about your workflow: Claims of not trolling while trolling are the hallmark of nasty forums regulars. Then we have a wonky "you aren't clear about your workflow" -- again, the superior know-it-all techie telling a norm that they are benighted when it's totally irrelevant (like the nature of the blogging platform is). It's not about my workflow, cupcake, it's about THE LINDEN'S SOFTWARE. HELLO. So yes, it is well documented what goes on here -- nastiness that forums regs can pretend isn't nastiness and stay under the radar of Linden mods, their friends -- and pushback to nastiness, which is no different in kind, but simply without trolling and subterfuge. That enables the forums regs to squeal that "Prokofy is nasty." It's hardly "nasty" to tell someone firmly that the platform of the blog DOES NOT MATTER. Phi's oh-so-sensitive radar that can pretend that Alyona is sincere when she's in fact made an actual nasty swipe about somebody using an "outdated blogging platform" (she's simply wrong about that) and then adding phony smileys and pretense and not trolling -- well, it's for the birds. Phil's lecturing about me "not being aggressive" should be rerouted to Alyona's fake "microaggressions," if you will. Honestly, your games are all so transparent, you guys, I wonder why you bother. Now for any scientists, as distinct from robots who might remain for this actual scientific discussion -- which is valid, and is not something one should "just put in a ticket" as it is a more global and repeated problem" or "just put in a JIRA" -- let's go over it. @Whirly Fizzle - of course I can email to myself. And it goes through to one email, and not another, but that's a function of the second email aggressively blocking spam so you don't even find it in the spam filter. It's not about determining whether "the Postcard works" -- it does, when sent to an ordinary email directly. This is about using the email blogging function of another platform, which is more complicated, and in order to get out of the endless rerouting of the Typepad engineers of me back to my email or SL I need to gather more data on this. Typepad keeps telling me to "use another email" i.e. they think the problem is that I am *using my outside email* to send this "postcard to Second Life". But I'm not. I am registered with the same email with Second Life as Typepad, and if I send an email directly on the SL template for postcards, it arrives. But this system of "Postcards from SL" is not using my email system as far as I can tell, it is launching from its own servers. (You tell me). So the "email" that is the sender for Typepad isn't my own personal outside email, but some coded email sending function off the secondlife.com site or servers, no? If not, then back to the drawing board. But I look at the actual code that USED to show up on Typepad blogs if you looked at the HTML view, and it looks to me it is sent from the SLURL and from secondlife.com, not my personal email. So then the question is: why did that stop? What happened that makes Typepad strip out photos now? This is a NEW phenomenon that only very sporadically happened in past years. It would happen on every 10th post, or if posts were made too quickly. Now it happens steadily, all the time, quick or not, whatever. Something changed in the Lindens' software because that's the thing that changes in this equation, not my email and not Typepad's software. And is this about the Opera browser (again, I always remain curious about every aspect of these issues). And the answer is, but it's SL's viewer that is sending it, not my browser? And the problem persists while using Google Chrome.

@Oz Linden @Whirly Fizzle So to the others, let's be scientists and not robots and note that this is definitely not about "media on a prim" as it was captured in an area where there is no "media on a prim" here. 1. The capture is only ONE of the cases of the appearance of this annoyance -- repeat ONE. So I have finally succeeded in capturing this phenomenon in the wild in one of its types of occurences -- and it's not about using Light or any other screen shot. 2. Obviously you can use "Print Screen" but print screen *does not work* on this capture. Also the inworld screenshotting function doesn't work to capture this EITHER. That is, you can see it on the screen, and not just not be quick enough to not get it, it simply does not show up. That's because it is visible inworld while logged on, but happening outside the SL browser? Yet if I tab down SL I don't see it on my desk top. This may be just a function of "not being quick enough" -- in years past, it was very fast AND had no green lettering visible so you couldn't tell what it was. Now it has green lettering which is indeed about CHECKING new versions. 3. "Being precise" about the wording of this message isn't the issue. It doesn't say SCANNING but it is still a nuisance. I have said multiple times the issue was that it was looking for new versions of the viewer and it shouldn't do that. 4. It appears NOT just at log-on but a half hour, an hour after log-on, while inworld. Why? ONE way it happens is if you have reached for a SLURL OUTSIDE the viewer -- which the entire SL set-up always implies you can do -- by drawing it from a blog or even the Destinations pages of the secondlife.com web page. In this case, we're going from one to another of the 50L Friday stores. So while standing in one 50L Friday store, from SeraphimSL an outside blog about SL events, we grab a SLURL from the ad for 50L for the next store. 5. When that "outside SLURL" is put into your outside browser (in my case Opera which I prefer to all others for various reasons), I get a screen like this, as anyone would on any browser -- the SL map with a "VISIT THIS LOCATION" on it (see first image below). 6. Next, I click on that link VISIT THIS LOCATION and THEN the annoyance occurs -- which I am forced to capture with an outside camera phone because it simply does not register when you SEE it on the screen yet it does not capture inside the SL viewer/inworld (second photo). In fact, you can even see the reflection of me in RL on the computer screen because I am forced to take this with a camera phone. 7. You can see in the next shot that the NEW SLURL from the NEXT store is now ready for teleportation -- THAT is what triggered the annoyance screen checking for versions of the viewer (third image below) 8. So the moral of the story is: if you use a SLURL from outside of SL and click VISIT THIS LOCATION on the SL map produced, that will force Second Life's software to check for the latest version of the viewer, even though you are already logged in and that shouldn't happen. It does that, BTW, WITHOUT giving you a new log-on screen. You get no new log-on screen, only the annoyance of the screen checking for the new version of the browser. Again, the third picture shows you the new location ready to be teleported from, obtained from the SLURL outside of SL and the VISIT THIS LOCATION map that results from clicking on a SLURL outside of SL. 9. What is the workaround for THIS PARTICULAR INSTANCE BUT NOT ONLY INSTANCE of this annoyance? Never use an outside SLURL. That's an annoyance, because you're supposed to be able to do that without annoyances like CHECKING...coming up in your face, lagging and freezing you, and sometimes crashing you. But whatever, the SLURL can be put in chat, and clicked on from inworld, and then there's no contraptions running and no annoyance. Again, inconvenient, it's much faster and useful to click on a blog or even the Destinations pages on the web page (not the frames inworld) to "go places" in SL but whatever, it's a virtual world, let's not pretend it's all hooked up seemlessly to the rest of the Internet. 10. Would that were the only occasion of this annoyance! It's not! This annoyance of CHECKING screens popping up -- which are very hard to capture because you can't use the inworld screenshot capacity OR the printscreen of your own computer to capture -- that simply doesn't register it. Perhaps Light or Nimbus which works with Opera can -- that's not material. The inability of inworld and Printscreen to even capture a thing you can see on your screen suggests that it is happening "outside the viewer" of course. But then you should be able to see it on your desktop as you do at log on, and I don't. Maybe it's just quicker than you can tab down your SL window? AND if the outside SLURL were the only trigger, you'd never see that screen executing while just flying around over water. And yet I do. 11. So this annoyance also pops up: 1. When crossing sims 2. When teleporting between sims (after you arrive) from a landmark or someone's sent TP 3. When you are just flying around inworld on one sim. So sure, I can spend hours trying to capture these other forms of the annoyance and try to figure out what may make this happen outside the viewer, in conjunction with my browser Opera, or anything else. BUT But one can also ask: why is this damn thing triggered all the time just from outside slurls or teleportation or crossing sims? If it is triggered, God bless it, but it can be kept out of the view of the customer as most things are happening in the underpinnings of SL. And...for extra credit -- why, if you aren't logging on, is it executing at all? It need not. It's feral checking needs to be shut off. Maybe there's a thing that can be set somewhere to undo that by the user, or maybe the Lindens can make it stop doing that. And yes, for even more extra credit, maybe this only happens with Opera, which isn't used as much as Google Chrome (used by Linden geeks) or Microsoft Edge (used by many average customers). Sure, I can test that but I'm not going to stop using Opera and shut that down just for the sake of this annoyance -- which, I hope I have established, should not be executing like this all the time. It should only execute on log on.

That's a ridiculous answer Alyona, who cares what you think and who you know uses a platform? Typepad has numerous users -- and with high traffic -- they're just outside your SL bubble. The idea that I have to force myself to use WordPress with all its annoyances or nerdy clunkers like Drupal -- why? Typepad is perfectly fine and worked for years with this -- hello something about THE LINDENS' SOFTWARE CHANGED HELLO and it's ok to question that and why. Um, no, I don't use HUDS, cupcake, I said in my original post that I used the email function within the VIewer, do read it. Why you would interpolate into this very clear discussion some nonsense about HUDs that people used back in the day is beyond me. This is about the Lindens' Viewer, and their email function - which is part of a panel whereby you also send to Facebook, etc. Maybe you never use that. Tickets aren't how things like this get fixed, it's more of a global problem -- and PS as I mentioned it has happened before.

It would have to be an option that a landlord would have as a form of rent, they would have to do it "manually" i.e. you would tier in a group that has Mainland in it, and that would be swapped out to apply to your private island rental I allow people to donate tier to any group, and use that on the private island towards paying their rent there. A few people might put in 4096 and rent that "as such" on an island but most have only 512 so they get $250 discount off rent in my system. Ordinarily you can't directly use Mainland tier from premium accounts to rent/buy on an island because the island tier is paid in full by one owner, and then they may opt to have you buy and pay tier but you can't put tier (land credits) into the group for an island. That is, you could but it "goes nowhere," it does not apply towards covering that island. But since I have both Mainland and a private island you could put tier in my land group (512) and get $250 toward rent on the island.

I've noticed perhaps the last two weeks that the "Postcards from Second Life" stopped working when I try to post to my Typepad blog using the e-mail function. There's an option to put an email into the viewer when you snap a picture and then send it via email somewhere -- and if your blog has a "post with email" function this use to work. I've had it work for years. To be sure, there have been times when Typepad just drops a few if they come to fast. Or Typepad stops posting. But this is different. The posts are showing up on Typepad, but with no picture. Now all of a sudden the picture is stripped out, i.e. the html code that goes with it, and all that arrives on the blog is the SLURL that I paste in separately (the postcards long ago stopped adding the SLURL automatically. Anybody?

Yes, Oz, that is what is happening, what is supposed to be running in the background is constantly appearing as visible inworld, and not just when you first launch but regularly, constantly. and yes, you have that message, it says "CHECKING" not "SCANNING" but that's not materially different, it doesn't matter what the literal search string of words is, what matters is that this damn thing is opening up all the time and is annoying and lagging -- I will screenshot it and maybe you will believe then.

Um, yeah, I realize. But again, the windows I am seeing ARE NOT MEDIA OPENING. This is not rocket science. They have a message saying they are SCANNING FOR NEW VERSIONS OF THE VIEWER. That's how I, um, can tell, among other reasons like "being where there are no prims over open water".

Gosh, now WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT! The answer is, in the years before when I saw this sporadically but not clearly, it went by too fast -- and now, when it happens more often and is visible, it goes by too fast but yeah, i've been trying. It is definitely not media on a prim opening or consoles opening because it has a message that says something like "scanning for new viewer."

No, no, no. I know what a media-on-a-prim window opening up looks like. This is NOT them. This is IN THE SKY. This is when you fly around with no prims or media on a prim or anything, just air/sky/water. And no, it is not the launch of the viewer or going from a SLURL outside. I've explained what it is and it's not those things. This is inworld, after log-on, in the sky or open air, it's not related to the regular launch of the browser. @Whirly I know about 64 bit but who cares? Not related to this annoyance. And NO once again. It's not console media when you are on a water sim, over a lake, on an empty sim etc Now that the green letter is showing, I can see what it is -- it is a window that opens and executes an operation to scan for a NEW version of the view. I don't want it to do that. So I try to shut this off in preferences; it doesn't.

I'm not the one who makes that contention? Although this position is constantly falsely ascribed to me. This thread is about why there are so few premiums. Another thread is about the problem of griefers -- very real -- and copyright theft -- very real. And you may not realize that the way "Linden turns a profit" is through ISLAND OWNERS WHO DO NOT REQUIRE A PREMIUM. But those people aren't "free". They pay the island tier! And they have "payment on file" and obviously "payment used" as accounts. Linden has a LOSS LEADER in free accounts like any store -- but their profits don't come from some fictitious "91 percent who are not premiums who are free" -- the frees are in the minority of the log-on population as most are island owners or their tenants. I realize there is an enormous drive for some to believe in a fiction of 10 years ago that SL is mainly free accounts, brave, bold, creative, techies in sandboxes and war sims flying around making mayhem cheerfully. But that is ancient history. Look at the map. Most of the green dots are on islands, homes, malls, clubs, wandering around -- and aren't the free accounts. They have "payment info on file" at the very least from buying Lindens to buy clothes with. This notional "free account" of the furry or elf with no dirty cash staining their pristine virtual experience and sheer anonymity on the World Wide Net belongs to a past that didn't even work that way either. If the Lindens can technically show X number of "more" free accounts than PIOF? That will ONLY be a function of paying customers getting 2 or 5 or 10 alts. That's all. Leave aside the inability to define what "contributes" means -- how it is measured? For some people they contribute to load testing. For others they contribute to the social world and even the economy -- free accounts get and spend cash. To others they are part of creativity, education, non-profit work or role play or any of a score of things of value. That is not how to ask the question. The Lindens find it valuable to encourage free accounts to build the population -- they have to with a niche product like this where usage has dwindled over the years. "Contribution" is not the debate. Griefing is. I've always supported free accounts because they make up a lot of my customers. Note that these free accounts have PIOF often because they buy Lindens. That's why this constant tendentious and annoying claim that I "oppose" free accounts or "hate them" or try to "end them" is silly. I've asked something else: can griefing that they facilitate be ended by changing any of their features? Would the cost be too great if that were changed or removed, so that you would lose many of the great features of SL -- that it can be free for people without cost to come in and create and even sell and buy, without having to have a credit card? That is a big boon, and I totally appreciate it. What I don't appreciate is the fraction of these accounts who use this boon to grief. So I ask questions about how this might be fixed. For example, given that every single person who accesses the Internet has to have to pay a phone/Internet bill with a credit/debit account, "payment information on file" might be one way to secure this that still maintains anonymity and enables people not to have to pay for premium. If someone has to present a name and a debit card to pay for their very Internet in their home, why should they object to doing this for Second Life, a world with real people and property in it, not a movie or a dream. The use case that Lindens or they fanboyz always cite is "the university where multiple students use one terminal". I don't know what year in the 1990s they are cherishing their dorm memories from. But in the real world today, even the poorest kids in school usually have their own laptop. They might log on at a row of computers near a classroom or library during the day, but they have their own PC/laptop/table in their dorm room. If they are "all on the same network" still, they'd still have a recognizable device that only they logged on with. Where is this collectivist single-computer network? Ulyanovsk? Honestly, it's a fiction. Fact-based, logical intellectual debates often prove too far over the heads of this forum, I totally appreciate it, especially given the free-floating hatred of the regs. That's why I don't often bother to try to have these discussions. Every once in awhile I do, and learn something .Tyche has done very, very important work for us all and enabling us even to understand the world and economy we are in. My God, that shouldn't be in such short supply, we used to have these statistics from the Lindens themselves!!!

You're extrapolating from your own experience living in a sandbox or tree or whatever; most of those logging on have houses of one kind or another. Look at where the green dots are. The end. This is a silly argument when there are green dots. Look at the Linden Homes area to start with. I don't know how many times I have to write it again, as I've written it a zillion times ago: I have NOT NOT NOT asked for FREE ad space. You cannot cite me ever saying that as I have NOT NOT NOT said it. I've poined out ANOTHER THING which you keep missing and keep refusing to accept. THE LINDENS THEMSELVES OFFERED FREE AD SPACE HELLO! IN THE FIRST TELEHUBS. Anyone could go and put an ad up and did. I suggested this system BE PAID. That way it would be impossible for just a few Linden friends to grab them (they used to expire after 2 weeks and the same people kept getting them who had time to hang around the hubs). They would be paid, like classified, and therefore a scarcer commodity. I realize it may come as a TERRIBLE shock to you but the Lindens don't have half as much squeamishness as you do about capitalism, they're capitalists themselves, whatever their techno-socialist dreams for the rest of humankind. They used to have newbie islands where they picked out their 10 friends to be on teleport boards -- and let the newbies go to those 10 friends for rentals, clubs, whatever. We objected, and protested, and gradually they developed the resident hubs system where at least there was a landmark giver with a rotating chance of a landmark in it being hit by a newbie -- let's say they had 30 or whatever. So perhaps then a newbie might come to our infohub and then shop at our plaza. I assure you no one ever made a dime off this, as the volunteer help, building, etc. way more offset it. The costs of business are elusive to socialists (which in the SL context are technolibertarians who may not be Marxists but share the hatred of small business that large corporations do.) Your notions of the telehub system merely conform to the long-held oldbie prejudices which are based on one thing, and one thing alone: THEIR boutiques, stores, clubs, venues were all on the earlier-built sims FAR AWAY from the telehubs. LOOK AT THE MAP. THEY HATED that people had to fly 1000 meters or more to their venues. When the Lindens built newer sims and put up these telehubs, Anshe Chung and Blue Burke, two huge landlords in SL (I'm a tiny one) bought all the land and re-rented the space at high cost. This started enormous arm-flapping from socialist oldbies with boutiques that were now not in the view. Newbies flocked to the hubs, not to oldbie boutiques -- they weren't part of the culture of the early adapters anyway and didn't think Gnu Licenses and weird primmy sci-fi or furry stuff was fun, they had different values. The oldbies protesting their displacement in the new economy tried to add a lag/aesthetic component to their protest, but it was based on a few hubs in THEIR area that in fact were like that because THEIR OWN OLDBIES ran those terrible avatar fly-traps. Anshe's malls were laid out with less lag, the newer hubs the Lindens built didn't have as elaborate lag buildings or head-bangers like the build at Waterhead, and they were popular. The Lindens even had grassy meadows with waterfalls and much smaller hubs or even beautiful builds like the Moth Temple that were natural gathering places even without malls (they had malls years ago; now they have our hub with tutorials and fun things to do) Newer and smaller merchants (like me) were GLAD to pay high rental prices to get into the view and sell our products. The oldbies couldn't let us into their Ren-Faire economy of cliquish craftsmenship. They also scorned mass culture like suburban home sales or furniture, as they were all RP or Victorian or Vintage of whatever and felt themselves superior. It was always about culture, and not really economy. The hubs came out of RL architectural concepts that ordinarily even socialists embrace, like mass transit with little stores and communities around them rather than giant malls outside the city. The telehubs were not on every sim so you could always opt to live away from them and put your store anywhere. Some teleport buses and systems were used even before p2p. Philip Linden said most of the sales from the economy came from the hubs. Because most normal people liked them, shopped at them, and didn't have the freaky aesthetics about them or the socialist view of them -- they liked commerce, unlike some of the forums regs. Under the clamor of oldbies who felt they were getting left out of the new economy, and because they had p2p themselves, the Lindens put it in.They also had their own self-interested reasons to destroy inworld hub commerce to force people on to the MP where they could then get taxes off the sales. That has always been their model for income to get away from land sales. One stupid thing that happened with the pulling of telehubs is that the Lindens no longer had sensible landing points. Now if you look on the map and teleport by the map you land in water or in a building or somewhere else stupid even if you try to pinpoint, on those sims. BTW there is nothing inherently evil about "telehubs". They are the exact same scripted object or routine that you can click on the panel to get on an island! It's just whether or not they have a build around them. Actually, I've worked for large corporations and small busineses, non-profits and media, so I have actually a very good range of business and non-profit experience. PS, I've run a business in SL for years. Have you? Lindens are the ones always trying to come up with schemes to sell their premiums and get retention and it doesn't work, in part due to their lifelong aversion to commerce that isn't their own. You're hardly in a position to pretend "most of SL" thinks anything -- they are not on the forums, and you have not accessed public opinion in any valid way. So stop that nonsense. New arrivals want homes more than you seem prepared to admit -- they go to the Linden Homes in droves. Green dot observation recommended here to get rid of ideological blinders. They buy islands -- look at how many of them there are, despite everything. They also *gasp* go in mainland rentals, which are a very small part of the overall rentals economy -- did you grasp it? I never cease to be amazed at the amount of harassment and hatred I get from people ilke you for renting out small rentals on the Mainland for US $1.50 a month or $2.50 a month. Incredible. Meanwhile people spend hundreds of real life dollars on island rentals or 'purchases' and you are completely unfazed at the way they achieved their wealth -- despoiling the Mainland with ad boards for five years driving people off the Mainland into their rentals. Both they and the Lindens profited. You and all your "Madlands" shtick really out to attend to that more.

For a long time it was a mystery to me -- this has gone on for years. These windows would open up in front of me as I flew around, teleported or just did nothing -- but usually when I moved -- and I couldn't quite see what they were. Why were they opening in the middle of the world? Like a browser within a browser. Or like a command prompt window. I thought they were command prompt windows, so I thought, oh, there must be a way to get rid of those. Maybe I hit the wrong F button. About 2-3 versions ago, all of a sudden I could see clearly what those windows were. All of a sudden, who knows why, these windows graphically display with green lettering and you can see what they say and are doing. Before it was a window, open, flash, black -- nothing. Now it is rendered in a better graphic way (or at least I can see it better but nothing in the graphics card changed). They were boxes informing me that SL was scanning for "the latest version of the viewer" and then presumably if it found one, it would give me the message to download it while still inworld. Now, I really, really don't need it to do that. Truly don't. Scans for new viewers are not required when I move to each sim. IT may have its own reasons for doing that? I don't need to know. And sure, there are settings where you decide whether to get the news of the new viewer or not -- and trust me, I put those settings on "no". But still I have those creepy windows opening all the time, executing, scanning, lagging me out, even crashing me, and then ceasing as they find no new viewer. HOW CAN I MAKE IT STOP!

I think they could increase the avatar load on a private island, but they may not want to due to lag. My suggestion instead of autoscripts and exasperation is just to wait until day 3 of the event. They all empty out by then. More and more, I see these merchant event are getting smarter: o They realize that they absolutely have to have a cam sim or even two. That the damage to their brands by people frustrated, not to mention their low sales o That they have to optimize their designs and layouts for actual avatars who have to move around in it instead of their dollhouse fantasies or the high-priced sim design sculpture made out of buildings while forgetting people have to move through them. I see them removing big confusing, sprawling sims, taking out avatar traps, changing textures to load faster. Of course, this makes the builds more boring... o This might not actually help. So now I see a new event where the pull prices on gatchas are $70-80-90 -- outrageous, when you think the Arcade began with $25 years ago, and most fairs are still $50 or nudge up to $59 to soak you a little more but $90? Not for special hair or vehicles that sometimes go up to $100, but for cups of coffee or junk. The merchants learn that they can soak so far, then the customer is lost and sales go down, so I am confident the pull prices will drop. But they put them in to start paying for cam sims I guess, I don't know. A sim has to be rented for a month and moved next to your sim -- I don't know if the Lindens let you do this only for two weeks. So two weeks of it you have to rotate another fair in -- and they do. But why go to these things then? So you can see the item in 3D, or at least close up in a picture on a gatcha machine, that's better than a thumbnail on a blog or even a picture on a blog. Also while it may be shocking, people socialize at these events or go out to show off their costumes or they come with their partners to pick things out together. That's all a good thing. I didn't realize or forget yes, there was a notice that premium gives you some kind of advantage - but I do find it odd that if you crash you can log back in. They should cut that out. Also, the mods should be ruthless about expelling asleep AFK avatars, I wouldn't mind, I'm sometimes one of them. But they can't eject someone from an island without having them end up in ome strange corner. They can teleport home surely.

Yes, I know. That's another question. They do that, it becomes hard, but PS, the Lindens can and do bans on these bases. What do you think of the question I actually asked, only the issue of proxy addresses or the use of anonymizing programs. Those are recognizable like any thing on the Internet. The question isn't "can griefers override what you're thinking of by IP spoofing". The question is: can a list of anonymizer or proxy addresses be blocked by sim.

It's true lag meters inworld *do* add to the lag. You could just measure the lag meter in the browser AND collect the sim stats to send them but they could see that too, the time dilation and all of that. Is it that they are putting more sims on more servers? Or is it the move to the cloud? Or what exactly? Sometimes you can get them to swap out sims they've put on servers, ie if they have 3 clubs out of 4 sims you get your sim moved away out of the clubs. Not sure they do that any more. I still think it's about fixing voice which made problems elsewhere breakout.

I don't know if the move "the the cloud" would make it easier or harder to accomplish this mission. I don't know if this mission is in the browser or server side or where. Currently, we have the option to check off on land -- in the browser essentially -- the option "No Payment on File" or "Payment Information of File" or "Age Verified." I personally don't use any of those myself or in rentals because it needlessly causes havoc -- most people have a mixture of these contacts and I see no reason to cut off good customers. People have individual preferences and needs for their club or business to have a different set of blocks -- that's fine. What I also wonder about technically is the blocking of log-ons by proxies and anonymizers. Whatever their value for some purposes that Linden Lab wants to enhance, let's say using SL from countries that censor the Internet or for protection of vulnerable populations of people such as transgender or refugee or victims of domestic violence, or for enterprises such as journalism or training that might require it, for some of us the brunt of the use-cases are griefers, day-old alts repeating, copyright violators, and so on. Not Iranian freedom fighters, people who need safety, and police training. Second Life is not Tor. Second Life is Amazon and Facebook in the round, with Tor use cases only tacked on. A check off box on land parcel or sim that you will not accept avatars with that status -- using rogue viewers, using log-ons to strip away their ID or enable the appearance "as new" so they can keep making new alts -- this would be a boon. And I can't see now why the principle would be any different -- log-on status should be a table or a function that in a program is no different than payment status or age. But perhaps not. Perhaps it's too dynamic. But every server knows how you logged on, and with what. It might require then having a table of known proxies and anonymizers to block as you would malware, and I realize that becomes an ideological issue for Lindens if not technical. So first I want to find out what the technical specifications are of this job -- too hard because dynamic, too political because of list needed to be devised, too hard and a strain on servers with too many calls on them to look this up -- just the facts there.