Prokofy Neva

I find that it won't show that availability but persists in showing the home I own. But when I saw on another account that 8 Mediterraneans were available last night, I decided to risk dumping the one I have where I wasn't too thrilled with the location OR the sim name. I have to like a region's name before I will buy it, and for one, I want to make sure it's not too hard for people to spell. At least once a week, I have a tenant who IMs me and asks me where the land they rented is! And they can't remember the name of the location. So I have to look up their payment which shows that information (they don't always know or think to do that). So I got into that habit of being mindful of sim names. To be sure, you can't rent out Bellisseria parcels and I use them as public venues in the Land Preserve that people can visit and do activities like quests and pick up free gifts. I still have to be happy with the name! The first one I got had "Marina" in the name but I was totally landlocked! So I rolled several times and got a fairly decent one with a flowery name near some ponds and was even able to fish in one with the 7S barrel put at the very corner of my lot. There are probably good waterfronts to be had, but right now they are still rolling out sims so you might find yourself in "waterbehind". I think the parcels and easements are large enough that you don't feel cramped.

For Lindens, and even more, Netflix or Apple, it makes sense on a large scale to rent and then re-rent AWS. That's because Amazon engineers then take on the headache of dealing with server performance, and in the case of SL, this means deliberate griefing and sim-crashing and overuse with intensive scripts and avatar traffic. So naturally they want Amazon's robust capabilities to take care of DDoSing etc so they don't have to. But it certainly doesn't make sense given the costs on the scale of land business that the average rental company -- even large dealers -- is doing within SL. Because of the cost of tier and *tax or VAT* plus your own labour costs and content purchase costs, if you estimate them, and most people don't. I've been in RL jobs where -- imagine! -- I had to handle the Amazon servers. Have you? I find if you start with the premise -- as you do -- of assuming that everyone but you is stupid, you don't learn anything. Nothing in SL or LL itself is remotely like the scale of an Apple or Google obviously, much less their prosumer business.

This is not the only factor for Linden decisions of what goes on the auction. There is a human determination regarding what abandoned land goes to auction -- if you've ever requested prime waterfront, you know that the Lindens can go either way on granting your request because they weigh whether they could make more on the auction. The biggest factor for them is likely the rating, G, M or A. As Lee Linden inimitably and bluntly put it, sims perform at their best when their are no avatars on them. But LL does not run a system like Kitely where regions are "asleep" and only spin up if an avatar comes on them. They have to be "always on" in this configuration. So the "awake" concept isn't accurate. Also mitigating this factor -- if it is true -- would be the tendency of people to look for land on a region that is NOT full of avatars making it laggy, i.e. a sim with a club on it. I'll find an opportunity to ask a Linden directly if this is how they do it because they have never stated it, and it makes no sense. Maybe you have your inside Linden dope but again, there are human factors to these decisions. Yes, the Lindens have their own land bots for this purpose and others (like Destinations).But they must have a staff person go inworld and physically prep the land, often by terraforming it and taking an advantageous photo - sometimes to block the view of the ugliness on 16m ad farms which their policies or lack of enforcement helped spawn.

The factual basis is that a 4096 ON THE MAINLAND costs me only US $12.28 -- and others even less if they have less state tax than I do in New York State. I use the figure of 0.0030 to include tax on tier payments. I also have a grandfathered island, so that tier is $194 (with tax) which means a 4096 costs me $12.12, slightly less than mainland. Why would I pay an island dealer $15.96 per 4096 and attempt to re-rent that parcel for the same or more??? To break even, I'd have to charge about $1025 per week in rent, so that means I'd have to charge more. I'm not in the island business, with only one island where I charge $1300/1300 prims to stay competitive against those who apparently have large bulk island discounts. The idea that "you can rent a 4096 for 900ish" overlooks the fact that this won't be a *good* 4096 -- if in fact you do find this theoretical parcel. It will be a flat, sandy pancake on a neglected server with ugly builds all around it as no one is policing the view and enforcing rules. In this market with high competition among islands because so many of them and vacancy is high. Look at the number of premium accounts out of the concurrency (if this is to be believed). There are only so many people willing to spend, say, US $25 per month on SL (the purchase of premiums is an indicator of this -- it's only 20% of the concurrency!). Long ago, the Lindens provided precise statistics on spending inworld which showed that the number willing to spend even a dollar, let along $25 or $100, was a significantly small proportion of the concurrency and registrations. Sure, there are people without premium or premium plus accounts who have money to burn on SL. But by and large they don't, especially the non-US contingent. Islands enable the owners to create "estate managers" and leave SL on automatic and sublet their islands to those who in turn may sublet further (if allowed under the lease). That means you can troubleshoot by re-setting the sim, mainly, and file tickets. Even so, it's not the same level of confidence and service you could have by outright ownership when something goes wrong. Even if I were in the new island business, I don't see that it makes sense to pay ACS or another large dealer for an island and then attempt to re-rent it, competing with that dealer. And I don't see that payment of tiers in Lindens is an advantage.

It makes absolutely no sense to rent land from somebody else to then run as a rentals business. There is no way that this is cheaper in the long run. In fact, I forbid it in my rentals, because I don't see why I need to absorb all the business costs of purchase and tier for somebody else's business. It's always best to own your own land.

Nope, I'm a very small landlord, I have a total now of about 13 sims' worth of land, spread across about 55 sims.

https://3dblogger.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2024/01/this-is-what-midjourney-and-chatgpt-are-like-every-single-day.html

The AFK avatars *are* the newbies.

Tenants who send me a friendship request merely to see if I'm online, in order to make a request. They haven't figured out that they can look in the group to see if I'm online, it's small enough. I used to just accept them, but that spawns ANOTHER aggressive, obnoxious behaviour -- sending force-ports to their DJ session or event. So now I reject them routinely. And they also don't realize that contrary to what many evasive merchants say, my messages don't cap because I have tied them to an email, which I read.

Yes! And...Give them another few minutes to find those keys they set down...some place...and put them back in their bag because they need them to unlock so many things in SL...

Yes, I'm glad you reminded me about your back-ups. I rue the day when I used to post SL photos on a service that died, leaving lots of holes in my blog. So now I save them on my hard drive when I do a post to my blog.

I post mine on Twitter/X much of the time -- very rarely on Facebook. I like to snap and post photos of my travels and purchases in SL and I miss the old system where you could easily do this with an inworld app, long since retired. I let my paid account on Flickr go when I saw a lot of people file out of Flickr last year, when they began to enforce their rule that if you have adult content, you must have a paid account. I could see where they were going with this and it's their platform of course, but they also very vaguely defined it as "global norms" which can include...Iran. I personally don't enjoy NSFW type SL photos in my face but for a lot of people, taking and displaying photos is central to their SL experience. I've been amazed to find what seems to me self-evident -- that a lot of people left Flickr a year ago -- is challenged now. But maybe they crept back? Or maybe it's like this forums, a few vocal types get the mindshare? I personally don't get that much out of Flickr and rarely go there except at times like Fantasy Faire. Some stores seem to have left but I still see some top SL merchants, only not with paid accounts. Google Photos works fine to store a lot of SL photos if you are worried about losing them. But I guess I treat everything on the Internet as ephemeral. I will say this: whenever I see a merchants' event that doesn't have the photos displayed on seraphimsl.com itself, but link you to their web page or to Facebook, their items automatically seem lower quality to me. Something about it...

Note that not a single major land baron -- particularly the really big dogs with hundreds of islands -- ever post on the forums. A few lesser breeds do read them as I have discovered, but they don't post. Some have sworn never to post because the Lindens used to have this mantra that if you were permabanned on the forums, you should be stripped of your land inworld and ejected from SL. But then they dropped that in later years, although one can never be entirely sure. The forums do have an impact, but it is not always measurable. It's not true that the rest of Belli would be abandoned if they made an adult Belli. For one, if you are up in a skybox, in mature, and you don't display yourself, the Lindens basically declare you as "safe" and won't prosecute you. It's more the public adult activity like clubs that they want in Zindra. Some of the extra cautious with enemies who spuriously AR them will also go to Zindra. Again, as I know from my tenants, there is a sizeable contingent of SL users who do not engage in any form of adult activity. This may due to the fact that they "have lives" and RL partners who, at the end of the day, with all their human failings, may be "more fun" and more stable than the virtual types that can and do disappear at any minute -- and the beauty part is, they can't make alts in RL, at least not without a lot of trouble and expense. More people prefer shopping and socializing -- which can consist of IMing people while they sit in their house alone -- than sex. True story. If the Lindens saw Belli empty out into an adult Belli, all they'd have to do is allow commerce in the original Belli and they would stop that outflow. And by "commerce," I mean even tip jars in art galleries or at parties with DJs, which are not currently allowed.

The point isn't that they're "one source". Obviously there are far less parcels on the auction than inworld. But they are a good indicator and an important one, and most of all, an easily visible one, because the map is sprawling, and you can be distracted by $50,000 1024 m2 lots that aren't reflective of the norm. Sailing is overstated, and sailors have gotten a lot of Linden love that other groups have not. I find most people even on waterfront DO NOT sail. It is expensive, difficult, and boring. They'd rather fly or drive, if they have to have some kind of transportation. I have no idea what this gobblede***** is supposed to mean: "but auction inventory appears to be scripted-process-selected, based largely on region avatar count. Supposedly land barons have scripts to determine which parcels on the auction come from sims with low avatar count? By what definition and time slice? The reality is, there are few enough auctions that a land baron can tell at a glance using his own experience and common sense what is worth it, based on rating, waterfront and protected status, etc. The end users and sometimes even the barons will go in real time to look at a lot and see claim dates, FPS etc. I don't see evidence that this is done by bots, or that it would be easy to script and interpret if it were.

They're selling it for lower prices AND abandoning it, duh. They're not selling it for higher prices. Don't be fooled by the outliers of $50,000 for a 1024 m2 sailing lot not even in the Blake Sea. Look around what even good land is going for. I'm beginning to think this thread is a troll to drive prices up to the benefit of the few...or something.

There are dozens of those, it's like space prog banjo rock Muzak. Subscribe to 666MrDoom and you will get a ton of similar types of bands, usually prog rock or space rock.

I don't think you're admitting my point, which is that in a very finite world like Second Life, serial processing in a line, with first available coming up, then next available etc. is more productive and fair than any form of randomizing whatsoever. The 5 pulls are not in isolation. For one, people use 5 pulls per account, and they may have dozens of alts. For two, lots of people are pulling, so it's not in isolation. That's why there are scarcities. But the Lindens can't afford to add more sims that will be empty when the fad dies out.

I've never had any neighbour ask me to take any art work involving nudes down in Mature -- only in General. As for welcome areas, they are filled with working girls holding up signs, not "superprudes". I don't know where you got that crazy idea. You must be in the wrong line of work. The Lindens will dilute what little value Zindra has left with "adult" by adding Bellisseria adult regions, but I can see why that is in their interest.

No, auctions are a Linden's judgement that what was abandoned will likely sell on the auction, and not be left to sit there and be requested for only $1/m. So indeed they are a reflection of the market, a very powerful one, since this is a CONTROLLED market. AND they reflect the willingness -- or not -- of land barons to use their trading tier to pick up land they can flip or sell long term if they pay a lot. So of course it's a reflection of the land market. It IS the land market.

"Crash" was never the word to use -- "Crash" was Ryan Linden opening the old auctions at ridiculously low prices years ago, THAT was crash. But downturn? Steady decline? Signs that virtual worlds tend towards entropy (my theory)? Indeed. I feel it picked up a little bit latelyy, that's only because I sold a few parcels after lowering their price a bit -- they had long been sitting out there and baking in the sun. Fortunately, one is to an end user, I'd prefer them as neighbours. I just saw another neighbour who bought land I had sold to some flipper ABANDON rare 40+/- waterfront on deep sea. I thought of asking for it, but you know what? I am steadily tiering down and that's the right thing to do. The other parcels sold went to flippers, and they've put these so-so Sansara waterfronts at ridiculously high prices, so now they can tier New England, which they've covered with sea-sand-fun junk which I think will actually harm their sales potential.

No, that blue is the exact blue of Titania so I think I'll keep it.

These are dreadful, I love them : ) Managed to snag one, abandoned it, got it again, checked on another account whether there were any left and they weren't. Not too happy with the location but it will do now for... THE HONORARY CONSULATE OF TITANIA ...which is on the run again after that unfortunate incident after the New Year's Eve party. I think we managed to ditch M. Carter Blanc back at the fishing grounds of the last place but one, in any event he's ON HOLD FOR NON-PAYMENT and that's where we like him. Carry on!

I'm starting a new thread as the "Mediterranean Theme" thread is more about house furnishings and landscaping. As of 2:06 PM EST on January 8, 2024, there were NO AVAILABLE Mediterranean Theme homes randomly from the website. I don't know if it makes sense to go inworld and look around for one to request via ticket. I realize when they are first rolled out, new themes are in big demand, then people tire of them. PS There were no available ranch homes or stilts on water, either, according to my view of the page. So I will come back later.

The Lindens put "randomizing" in various things -- not just Linden Homes. They used to randomize the infohubs on the Mainland to which newbies would be set. There is a techie fascination with randomizing in the belief that it is "more fair" and "more democratic." But the obvious problem with it as I'm sure you know is that if you have a very finite set of elements to randomize -- and everything about Second Life is very finite -- it is not the Internet at large, it is not Google -- then you will randomly get the same items again and again, sometimes many times in a row, because it's random. That's what random does. It can randomly give you the same things again and again. That's why I believe serial selection would be better for SL than random selection when it comes to these kinds of offering of available choices.