Prokofy Neva

Don't you wish Linden Lab would offer a friend-reaching service? i.e. when someone doesn't log on for awhile, that you could file a ticket, and LL would contact them using the email they supplied when signing up (which you might not know -- and rightly so, people shouldn't give out their real emails to strangers on the Internet). Sometimes I get tenants who tell me they are dying in real life -- I'm never sure if it's true, but I think possibly it is in some cases. I sometimes have tenants with partners, they live with them for years, and all of a sudden one will dump the other and not explain and just disappear, and that person left behind suffers terribly -- they wish they could at least get an email confirmation the person is OK, but just not wishing contact. Once I had this couple who rented from me for years, they led a robust and creative life with creations, stores, events, lovely interior decorating, and one day suddenly both of them disappeared at the same time, never to be heard of again. I think of them as somehow, perhaps they drove off into the sunset and fell off a cliff, like the tragic RL couple that formed the basis for the song "The Way" by Fastball. Of course, this should be an opt-in. For example, it could be a service you pay for "add friend-reaching". The Lindens could automate it so that they didn't have to fuss with it. Of course, some people set IMs to go to email, and if you do that, IMs really shouldn't cap (and they don't, despite what many say). And that should be good enough, but some people might supply a different email for the "friend notification service".

That's odd, I've never heard of this. Are you using the standard SL viewer? Which version? Version 2 has an annoyance many have complained about which is the search window closes after you teleport. But what you're describing is that you can't even click on the link and get to teleport with the search result. That shouldn't happen. I'm trying to think what this could be about. Packet loss?

You only have to use the prefab that Linden binds to the land in the Linden Homes program if you opt to move into one of those sims. But there are many other sims on the Mainland that have plots available of 512 m2 that you can purchase from other residents -- some very low priced, some more high priced, depending on location. Give yourself time to shop and study the market and the surroundings before spending because you cannot get a refund. If the lot is only 512 m2, you will then have your tier, or maintenance fee covered, as part of your premium subscription. Another thing you can do is use the 512 to contribute to a group, and get a rental discount or cash-free for tier only -- I have this plan in my rental groups and you will find other Mainland groups with the same option. Yet another thing you can do is rent or buy on an island, but then your tier of 512 m2 can't be used, and it wouldn't make sense to keep your premium account. I would encourage you to shop on the Mainland because it's a buyer's market now, you can find very nice deals, and with the premium you get the stipend of $300 a week, plus access to customer service.

This is the sort of complex case you really do need a lawyer for. Getting a lot of uneducated and unprofessional advice from a wildly different set of random people from all over the world is not really going to help you. Lawyers are expensive. They cost $400 a hour in New York where I live. You can find some websites by Googling that help you define your rights better and help you file the DMCA, but you have to be prepared to dig in and do it right, and use your real life name and address. In the SL situation, not everyone wants that. It's not really a matter for SL, even if related, it's not on their servers.

I'm seeing some people start 7-8-10 threads all at once in the top view forum headings and it's really obnoxious and annoying. This is being done by a small coterie of people to try to keep their old forums mindshare/marketshare on top, in the view, and constantly in your face. But we're not all friends with this group, nor do we want to be. There should be a limit on how many threads you can start -- per day, month, whatever. If people had a limit, they might be less inclined to fill up the forums with their own persona but listen to others more.

Second Life is a shared, collaborative space. That's how its framers (Philip Rosedale et. al) devised it. You have plenty of privacy tools on your islands or parcel to block out the physical presence of people without having to obliterate their appearance. I think it sets up a really awful society when people can obliterate others like that for any reason or no reason. While it always seems as if your own choice in this is justified, once you see tens of thousands of people doing this, it becomes a world where you cannot have basic fundamental human values that enable people to have a civil society. I don't believe that all view of content or appearance even of people I ban from my land should be a feature in the world. And it falls into the "do unto others" category.

Short answer: no.

When LL says the video card isn't supported, they're not kidding. This is the list that everyone needs to check BEFORE they buy a new graphics card or computer with a certain card in it: https://secondlife.com/my/support/system-requirements/?lang=en-US It's harsh, but there it is, your card is not on there. The series 4000 is, but not that one you h ave. So you should simply take it back and try to get another one on this list. Good luck, because you may find, even if you live in the media capital of the world like I do (New York City) that not a single one of the consumer-oriented computer stores like Best Buy will have these cards, or have computers with these cards in them. You can try to order a custom Dell computer. But don't be surprised to discover that oh, these cards don't seem to go with the cheaper PCs there either and just don't seem to be available in the configurations you want online, or even after you call the live help. Keep in mind that if you do buy one of these higher-end graphic cards, be prepared for it to overheat your computer and blow out UNLESS you also buy the bigger fan needed to cool it and install that. By the time this expedition costs you $350, you start to think maybe you should get a new computer, not a new card. It's really a shame that Linden Lab will not make their software to fit what is mass produced for the consumer, rather than make the consumer run around like a chicken trying to find the right card, but it's the reality of our virtuality. What happens is that the Lindens and the close circle of techs around them custom-build their computers and they don't really have empathy for the situation of the average non-technical consumer. They aren't motivated (yet) to have this empathy because they don't need/want the world to scale quickly into the millions (yet).

If you moved from 76 listings to 3, I can only respect you more. One thing I find really clutters up the Marketplace needlessly is when a merchant lists separate entry for each and every colour/texture change of one product. I believe they should simply put this in text, or put in pictures on one entry, and not burden the system with all the needless colour changes. In fact, I wish that were in the TOS because I think some people game search by putting in 100 colour changes to a product as a separate product in each instance. I'm never quite sure how it works with the product replacements myself and find the instructions not clear and easily accessed on the store itself which is where it is needed, not buried in a knowledge base. Through trial and error and asking around, I've discovered that if you have a product that you've updated by improving or adding something to it, but you don't want to call it now Product 2.0 because that would be silly and misleading. you can just delete the product out of the magic box and then put in a new one with the same name, and it will override the file online and the previous description will stay in place. If you delist the item first because you think that seems intuitive, then try to reload the item with the same name, you will wind up with a new listing that you then have to repeat the description, photos, etc. for all over again, which is a chore. And it turns out, even against the TOS on fraud grounds. The reviews are still not working. I see numbers for them, but when I click on them, nothing is there.

Translation: "Some days I ran the clubhouse, other days I didn't". @Nany Yes, that's the problem with clubhouses. Sometimes you run them; other days people get fed up with your posts and AR you or even go further because you've done that to them. That's why I avioded the forums and only posted when there seemed a critical issue. Yes, the forums have been lobotomized now and are under ridiculously tight management. But that's what happens when users themselves cannot arrange self-governance fairly, and only end up encouraging vigilantism or worse. These forums can still be useful in a limited sort of way if the mods really work hard to get in early and often now and move or delete all those topics that certain cliques are posting merely as a means to mindshare and then of course marketshare. They've always done this with impunity; it's good to see that they can't now. Unless, of course, they continue to pester mods and bully other residents and the mods give up, as they have before, or unless these customers are so important to the Lindens because of the revenue their businesses bring in that they become arbitrary and selective in how they moderate (a problem in the past). I believe strongly in not having conversations about a virtual world moderated in this way because I think the only way to address the bad phenomena in any "country" is to have a free press that can cover crime, corruption, unfair privileging, incompetence, etc. But because that's not possible here, I run my own blog. And others have their own forums to go to and should use them for that purpose until such time as the system here changes. In the meantime, if the Lindens want to make the forums a bulletin board, in a sense, for very narrowly-defined topics and a very strict culture of presentation, that's fine for what it is, then I want them to police it fairly.

"Twee" -- I love that word. So apt. I need to remember that word. Meanwhile, Phil Collins is sick and going off the road -- Su-su-su...

No. Read the requirements here: https://secondlife.com/my/support/system-requirements/?lang=en-US 3450 is not on there any more. Even when it was in the list awhile ago, SL didn't work very well with it, I used to have it. Of course, you're always welcome to try to get SL to play on anything you can, it may be surprise you. Just put all the graphics settings as far down as they will go and eliminate all the stuff like atmospheric shadings, etc. & it may run.

You should explain what your university or company affiliation is if you want to build trust. Strangers on the Internet have no special need to fill out your survey -- they're a dime a dozen in SL. There isn't any public area or board that all of SL sees. You could take out an ad on some of the infohubs but it won't be effective. Many academics and marketers before you have been frustrated by the fact that there isn't massmedia in SL and there is no way to reach the entire population or even a significant portion of it, just like you can't reach "the Internet". In Facebook, you can take out an ad and pay for that ad and attach it to Survey Monkey. In SL, you can put a notice here likely in off-topic, and then possibly go around to welcome hubs and infohubs and blogs and such and ask them to post your notice. It's work. Hard work as there isn't some instant board and instant device that will do this for you. It's like real life in that respect. Example: you can go to two public bulletin boards I maintain on the infohub sims of Ross and Iris where newbies are landing all the time and oldbies returning. You can post a notice "Fill out my survey for money!" and place a URL to Survey Monkey. You might be seen by several thousands of people over the week, maybe 10,000. Of these probably 20 might answer. Most people conducting surveys in SL use SL only as a connection and staging area, and use Survey Monkey or other survey sites offworld on the Internet to post questions and collect data. Otherwise, you have to fumble with notecards, notecard givers, and notecard takers. These are not optimal. I have seen some marketers set up survey bots with pop-up menus or put NPC-like bots on islands to ask questions. That gets costly. But you can probably find an SL service provider to set that up for you if you have a budget.

You can try using "discussion" and "culture" on the events list on the viewer, but that can be laggy and cluttery. One thing I've been doing is typing "university" and "college" into the search/places list. Then I find various universities that have interesting builds, sometimes public lectures etc. One thing I've been a bit disappointed with in SL is that for all the talk of open university this and free university that, in fact, they are not open to avatars in the general public, they are only open to their RL students matriculated in real life --, with very few exceptions. I can count on one hand the number of free and open university lectures I've actually attended in SL even trying to follow this. SLED is one thing to watch, but that's a mailing list where a lot of the time the members are just complaining about how they can't copy everything full perms in Second Life due to the permissions system and copy it free to Open Sim. So I'm sorry, I can't suppor that perspective. That's actually only a few very radical and persistent educators with an agenda, but it tends to fil up the room. If you would like to go an intelligent lecture and discussion organized by a university professor, although not exactly "a course," look up the group Metanomics inworld and go to their events, they have good speakers.

I do wish I could have "contacts" like a business card and "friends" who are really true friends. The lists are out of control. I look down the list sometimes and note the ones that have my build perms. Those are true friends.

I find Ray Kurzweil's ideas and the concept of the Singularity to be quite totalitarian in nature. http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2009/07/why-singularism-is-fascism.html Jay Lanier is a genius and a breath of fresh air among all these tekkie collectivists. I heard him speak in real life last year, wonderfully inspiring.

The General Discussion forum acted as a focal point for the community, like a clubhouse. Bingo. THAT is the problem. There isn't one community. There are many. *edited for possible harassment* Yes, it was EXACTLY like a clubhouse. And it shouldn't be -- because SL is not just for a handful of people who have time to bond with each other over their shared perspective and harangue others. It has to be an open platform for a huge variety of users. Cliquishness drives people away from the forums. *edited for possible harassment* P.S. I haven't gotten any rares in ages. Why do you think that is?

I find that the way to make friends in SL is to have common interests and attend events together inworld and visit each others parcels in world and share shopping, decorating, etc. tips or some common interest (pets). Attempting to reinforce friendships in one's posse through various "friend" labelled threads in the high-visibility "Make Friends" slot in fact likely makes more enemies than it makes friends.

I often find newbies instantly friending me as soon as they land in the welcome area or infohub. Most of the time I click "yes" if I'm not AFK because I figure they need help building a friends' list when getting started. If they IM me to chat or ask questions later from another sim because they have my card still, that's fine. I don't mind them staying my "friend" until they begin to send out mass messages to me to join them at a club because they are either now owners trying to build traffic or they are hired to produce traffic by owners. That ends my little friendship with the newbie sometimes, but I try to err on the side of friendliness. Another thing that happens is when tenants friend me who aren't really my friend but just want to friend me so they can find me online for service. I assure them they can reach me offline in email and I answer all IMs promptly but they like that little reassure so I'm happy to be friends. This does somewhat devalue the notion of friends but that's ok : )

I think people who have their established posse in SL already should use offworld forums for reinforcing their posse, and not try to exploit the SL forums for this purpose, especially when their posses aren't open to recruit new members.

In addition to rebaking you can go in the debug menu and try "test characters" -- that often works. It's changing back and forth between 2 viewers that causes this I find.

I don't know what RIC means. What I do know is that my usual posture on the forums for years, even when harassed and persecuted mercilessly, was never, ever to flag or abuse report anyone. I thought it bad form. I don't like the notion of a police state where people inform on one another secretly to the secret police, i.e. you cannot face your accuser, there is no due process, and you don't see what reports were made on you. But on this new forum, I am going to abuse report whenever I am badgered, heckled, harassed, chastised; when ill will and evil intentions are impugned to me; when people tell me to "get out," when I am told to "stop being destructive' etc. etc. -- all of those things that constitute *harassment* indeed under the guidelines. I can and will report them as abuse. One of the reasons why the playing field has always been so hopelessly tilted on the forums is that people like me have always considered it really poor form (and also just not worth the bother) to file abuse reports. That's changing. I think Mitch Wagner was absolutely right when he said that banning from forums is not caused by excessive moderation; it's actually caused by a failure to moderate *enough*. It's about them not intervening early and fairly so that a person doesn't feel goaded and doesn't feel they have to fight back. In the overwhelming majority of cases, it's about moderators not intervening very early on and very clearly and repetively to make the environment fair for all. When moderators don't do their jobs, people fight back. It's when they fight back, and try to create fair conditions through persistent fighting, that others with ill will can then AR them and then the mods ban people for fighting back. It's because the mods respond to those fanboyz with their pudgy little fingers permanently pressing on the "abuse report" button, and don't come in and see the Lord of the Flies atmosphere themselves against those who *don't* AR. That's changing. I'm not for moderating forums in this fashion as a principle. But if they *will* be very strictly moderated, then I will definitely be part of what calls for them to be moderated fairly and impartially *in just this fashion*. Claiming that people are "abuse reporting as a form of abuse" is itself abusive, and a form of intimidation. It implies that everyone is supposed to sit in silence and be bullied and harassed and have evil impugned to them. They won't be doing that. That's changing.

DQ Darwin, you and your gang are the ones that suffer from that problem. You keep imagining that your group's threads deserve to be on top, and serve as "the community threads" that give you mindshare and marketshare and the ability to remain superior over others. Evidently they don't. They belong in off-topic. Er, I've never, even in my life suggested that "others that disagree with my concept" should "leave the forums". What I've suggested is that if you have your own offworld forums where it's very comfy for your group, and your in-crowd, why come here? What purpose does it serve for you? It's not like you're even recruiting new people for your club? This notion that you can sit in judgement on people and describe them as "destructive to the community as a whole" is again, what's all wrong with your approach. It implies that "you" are "the community"; that you "determine what the community is" and that you can decide "'what strengthens it" or "what destroys it". This is just not appropriate. So once again, stop trying to speak for the entire community, stop bossing people around, and stop impugning malice to them. Group reinforcing threads need to be offworld in their clubs, or in off-topic. That's clear. Seems like a perfectly fine policy.

Check out all the line of sights so that you don't suffer a bad view inadvertently. Never assume that you will be able to convince your neighbour to change something about what he's doing. Never assume that land for sale or abandoned will "never" sell. Check the FPS (ctr-shift-1), i.e. see if it says .99 for the time dilation and 45 for the FPS, that is the optimal. Also check out "spare time" under scripts -- if at 0, don't move in. See how many scripts are operating on the sim, i.e. more than 3,000, you have to worry. Right-click and look at the these things in each of your neighbours: o date of their land purchase -- a long time ago? Good, they may be stable o date of avatar age -- old? Good, they may be stable o name of club or store even if no building? Bad, they may build a lag monster at any moment, and have shouting objects o war groups/war games/mafias, etc. --Bad, they may shoot you even if you are on safe A good neighbour is worth 1,000 pretty sunsets in Second Life. Fly around and see if you run into any red ban lines for group-only or any security orbs. This is the biggest buzz kill of any area, if you have that around you. Never assume it will change.

It almost never happens. You can try, but it usually doesn't work. You couldn't have a free land market unless people were allowed to set their sale price at any sale. One man's extortion build which we all know is extortion will be said to be another man's art build, especially by that man, and the Lindens may agree.