Persephone Emerald

Check all the groups you belong to & make sure you are not incurring group liabities. Unfortunately some group owners think it's fair to spread their costs out to their group members. Since you said you can't put lindens in, I'm assuming you have a free account & don't hold land yourself. If you hold land, you could be paying a fee to have your land set to Show in Search. The positive side is that if your account is free, Linden Labs won't close it just for being in debt by $L10.

I really don't understand the value of taking away a feature that most older residents really like. Linden Labs still has to support last names because so many users have them, so it can't be easier for them to disallow new residents from having 2 names. The new naming convention not only looks stupid, but is a huge headache for club hosts & merchants who have to try to figure out how to address new residents. It looks & sounds stupid to address someone by a long name with a bunch of numbers after it, so reasonable people try to shorten the name. If you can see a display name, that might be easier, but you have to know the real name to set permissions in groups, for pets (friends of the pet), or for evicting & banning people.

I'm trying to help my roommate create an alt with a proper last name. Does anyone know which outside registration sites that use both a first & last name still work? Also, I thought we could check for availablenames by using the Search function in world, but the name she wanted doesn't come up on search, & yet the outside registration site still says it's not available.

9) Never wear a freenis. This should be #1. 2) Don't live project to project, live adventure to adventure. A project can be an adventure too. I'd rather say try to do something new each time you log in. 3) Be completely unhibited in chat regarding grammarr, spelling and syntax. Nobody cares about korrect speling. Use a viewer with spell check. You don't have to have perfect spelling & grammer, but try to post readable, sensible chat. 4) Be in love with someone else's wife your life. Love & respect yourself, no matter which life you're in. I would also add #12. Never spend more than 12 hours a day in SL. There's a reason it's called *Second* Life.

I second the 1024 m of free land idea. It's not fair that Linden Homes get 117 prims as well as the house & landscaping. Give people 1024 m & then they can actually have a livable space.

That sounds like they are primarily being marketed to the Linden Home owners then.

Hey, how about giving Premium members a Real Life gift that also advertises Second Life for you? Some of us residents have been suggesting ideas here: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/General-Discussion-Forum/know-where-i-can-purchase-RL-second-life-items/m-p/1069567#M23134

As someone who's been premuim for over 2 years & paying tier on a 1/8 region, these little perks don't do much for me. Yet I'm still glad LL is providing an added incentive for others to go premium. The gifts look nice for a newbie who doesn't know how to hit Midnight Madness boards. The sandboxes sound like a better perk, as they're highly unlikely to have griefers in them. If you re a new Premie with a Linden Home or small mainland parcel, you should be happy about these new perks. (Edit to correct typo)

Good for you trying apartment rentals. I'm assuming these are low-prim, low-rent apartments, which I think SL can use more of. I like the Hippo rental system myself.

I like the idea of the plywood cube on T-shirtss & coffee mugs. Maybe have the slogan above "Second Life....It all starts with a cube." The picture could show a cube transforming into a scene in SL of hills & trees, a castle, avatars, water with sail boats, etc. People respond to visual messages more quickly than they do to text, so LL needs to *show* them what SL does, not just tell them what it does. The opening video on the webpage is a good example. They need to have short ads like that where people who aren't already on SL will see them.

Renaming your folders so you remember what's in them is a very good idea. You should also get used to making subfolders within the Folders you start with. How you use SL will determine how you label your subfolders. Whatever you do, don't just let all your stuff go into your Inventory without ever organizing it somehow.

I got my RL roommate hooked on SL while she was recovering from wrist surgey. Now she's retired & on SL most of the time. We don't hang out together much in SL, but we both talk about it in RL, speak the lingo, & understand the quirks of this world. We share a house in RL & group land in SL. In RL I rent from her & in SL I'm sort of her de facto landlady because I help her land use issues.

Someone even newer than you just posted a thread asking for beginner help too. I posted links to some helpful videos on YouTube. http://community.secondlife.com/t5/General-Discussion-Forum/Can-some-one-give-me-a-guide-to-SL/m-p/1069661 I've been saying for a while that LL needs to design the beginner areas so they teach newbies how to do all the essential stuff they need to do & reward them for doing these tasks with freebies. Teach them how to open a box & reward them with a piece of clothing or an outfit. Teach them how to walk & reward them with a decent walking AO. Teach them how to fly & reward them with a flight feather. If the initial experience were a little more game-like, maybe the people who expect a game will stay a bit longer.

Oooo, I want a plushy Torey too! And I want a bumpersticker that says "My other life is in Second Life" and a dog toy that looks like the noob manaquin. It would also be cool if we could put snapshots we took in SL on stuff like mugs, T-shirts, & calanders. Theme parks do that with the photos of people in their "virtual worlds", so why not do that for Second Life too? (Edit to add)

The best way to get started in SL is to have someone who's been around a while help you, Help from the forums & videos is good too, but eventually you just have to try doing things for yourself. Don't feel bad if you feel a bit lost & awkward at first. We're all been there. There are a few newbie help vidoes on YouTube, but my favorites aren't so much for the newbies as they are for the rest of us who have done stupid things or seen others do them. The Soda Lemondrop Vidoes basically show you what Not to do in SL. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qjO4VIlJEc You can go to YouTube & search on "Second Life Beginner Giude" for help vidoes, but try to pick vidoes that are less than 3 years old, as many thungs have changed since then. Here are some vidoes intended to help you: http://www.youtube.com/user/Secondlife#g/c/D237D0E11AC1F341

This is great post, Ganelon. I wish all the developers at Linden Labs would read it to understand why SL isn't holding onto it's new users. Please don't give up on SL yet. You sound like you could be a welcome addition here. There are so many beautiful sims to explore, but it takes some time to find them. Take a look at Da Vinci Gardens, Alpha Point & Omega Point, 1920's Berlin, or some others that people can suggest. There was one really beautiful underwater sim I saw too, but I can remember the name. After you see the amazing things other people have built, you might want to start building some of your own stuff too.

Warning: spoilers I was a first angry at the obvious stereotypes that the producers of this documentary chose to portray: 1.Two married people (who must be having other problems in their marriages) find a virtual romance, break up with their spouses, & then find out real life isn't the same as fantasy. 2.) People who look attractive & successful in SL may be overweight & messed-up in RL. 3.) Some of the people in SL are really weird & messed up. However, after watching the whole show, I decided it wasn't that bad. 1. The cheating couple were not unattractive or total losers. They were just regular people looking for an escape from their unhappy marriages. 2. The creator was bringing in a 3-digit income that was supporting her parents & she had the freedom to live her life as she wanted because she's talented & hard-working. (Funny how when a thin person says they spend 14+ hour days working on an online business, they're thought of as hard-working (i.e.. Stroker Serpentine in an earlier TV show), but when an overweight person does the same thing, they're thought of as a lazy slob.) 3.) The child avatar guy came to important psychological realizations about himself & his life. (It's not fair to blame SL for his break-up with his fiance, since she obviously couldn't accept his gender identity issues or try to understand what he was going through.) (End Spoiler) In each story told, the producers chose to show some things & leave out others, so we're left with only a partial explanation of what really happened. They didn't show the depth of relationship problems all the couples were probably having. They didn't show what kinds of health problems the creator had that may have made it difficult for her to have a regular job. They didn't show if the guy with the child avatar was seeing a therapist. With any real life story portrayed in print or on film, there are always some aspects played up & some aspects left out, which leaves the audience with a skewed perspective. This is especially true when the story is about a fringe subculture. Producers frequently look for angles that their audience will be able to relate to, and such angles for fringe subcultures tend to be very biased & unfair.

I understand that many people don't have the time or mental inclination to explore a virtual reality, but I can't help but suggest to Second Life to online friends or other obviously computer-savy people. I *LOVE* it, so I think other people would love it too...if their computer has good enough graphics. Here's why SL can't get more long-term users: 1. Most people don't like to think or act in ways they perceive as "not normal". They're comfortable doing what most other people do & thinking like most other people think. This is the same reason that the Science Fiction is not very popular. The idea of treating a virtual world like a real environment doesn't make sense to them. It's "weird", which translates to them as unsavory. Creative & unusual people love it, because it lets them express themelves in ways they usually can't in RL, but this isn't a very large cross-section of the general population. 2. Many people don't have the right combination of intelligence & patience to learn how to have fun in SL. Learing how to move around & do stuff in SL takes work. Figuring out what to do for fun also takes work. Most people either don't have the time to figure it out or don't have the patience to work at it. - I got hooked because a friend kept saying how great it was & he took the time to show me some of the ropes, but I didn't start playing in SL until after I lost my job, because I knew I wouldn't have time for it while I had a full time job. 3. Many people can't afford a new computer with a good graphics card or can't afford to spend hours & hours learning how to enjoy SL. Put simply, the RL econonmy sucks, so people don't have much money or time to play with. The RL world hasn't created a large number of educated, open-minded, creative people with plenty of free time & a good amount of disposable income, and this is the demographic that's most attracted to SL. (Edit to add): I'm a INT/FJ, btw.

Thanks. :smileyhappy:

If someone wants to live in a castle or in a house on castle grounds there is a beautiful one in Fourmile that has rent as low as $L 1/ prim/ week. http://slurl.com/secondlife/Fourmile/80/238/152

I have 3 avatars all on one email address.

I haven't used mesh myself. I've also read the posts, picked up some free mesh items at Curious Kitties to see how they look with my non-mesh enabled viewer, & watched a couple videos about it on YouTube. The way I see it, Mesh is like scupties, except much more detailed. It won't make other kinds of prims unusable. It won't make any viewers unusable. Over time it will replace alot of the sculpties people currently use & will make some things in SL look like odd boxes if you don't have a mesh-enabled viewer. Mesh clothing can look much nicer than system clothing, but since it's a prim, it won't look right on non-standard avatars unless parts of their bodies are hidden with alpha layers. Mesh can make really good looking items with fewer prims than regular prims & scultpties would use, but it's harder to learn to build with mesh, so initially at least not many builders will be making much with it. Try searching the forums for "Mesh" threads. That will show you some pictures & more about what it is. This picture shows how a mesh dress is supposed to look & how it looks on a non-mesh enabled viewer. This shows a mesh mermaid tail on a non-mesh enabled viewer. Notice how an alpha layer hides the legs of my avatar.

You may be able to add a flat block to your land to make it more usable. I added a "retaining wall" to a hill on my land so I could put a rental house on top of it. With the new larger prims & some careful texturing, you can still have a very good look.

Sometimes I wish my pants were on fire, 'cuz I'm so bored & I could use a good fireman with a fire extinguisher.

I agree with your original post, but I'll add a few qualifiers. Linden Homes compete directly with low rent, low prim rentals that newbies generally prefer. A newbie looks at the weekly cost of a rental, in which case most landlords can't compete with a "free" Linden home. What they don't see is the all the extra time & care a good landlord provides in creating a pleasing environment, helping a renter settle in, adding community spaces & generally being a good neighbor. Because Linden Labs basically took away the newbie market from land owners trying to be landlords, remaining landlords had to focus on providing benefits Linden Labs wouldn't. Generally this translates into larger parcels with more amenities at a greater cost. That's fine for people who want a fairly expensive rental unit, but most new players want a cheap place to change clothes, visit with friends & have virtual sex. Many older residents, on the other hand, want to own their own land, so they end buying land & paying tier to Linden Labs. Either way, Linden Labs is getting their money while the landlords lose it. Someone above said people are too "cheap" to pay for rentals, but I have to disagree with this assessment. What's going on with people wanting things free or cheap isn't so much stinginess as it is a reflection on a poor economy. Many people are using SL as a diversion from RL problems. It's a very economical leisure activity that makes them forget about their crabby boss or not being able to go on vacation in RL because they haven't had a decent raise in years. It's a social activity for people who are on disability, retired or unemployed that doesn't have to cut into their rent, groceries or medicine budget. Then there are the newbies who don't want to spend a bunch of money on another video game. They have to be sure this thing is worth it, before they start spending serious cash on it. These are all very sensible reasons for people to cut back on or be careful of how much they spend on SL. I don't think it's fair to paint people as being cheap just because they choose to not spend alot of money on SL. @ Perrie, If you appreciate all the work your landlady has done for you, then I think moving with her to a new location is the best thing to do. I've seen so many good landlords struggling to keep renters & pay tier. They may not all be able to keep providing rentals for users who want to rent, but I think we should support those who do an exceptional job of trying to do so.