Peggy Paperdoll

The short answer is "no". If you don't see a button or option placed anywhere on the interface, then it doesn't exist...that should be obvious to most people. I, too, wish there was such a feature........it would cut down on the threads with almost the identical title (I would love to block such silly threads myself). All that said, I did say the short answer is "no". There is an add on for Firefox that I understand does a pretty good job. Head on over the the General Discussions forum. Someone there will be happy to point you to where you can find that script. I believe either Cerise Sorbet or Void Singer wrote it and both are regulars over there. Until you install it do as most people do.......scroll past the stuff you don't want to read. It's much easier to install and configure for your system. And every bit as effective.

I think we're talking semantics. The reason I say the upper limit of a sim (or the grid) is not at 4096 meters was your equating it to going off grid. You can't leave the grid unless you log out or crash. You can "appear" to go off grid if you lose your connection to the servers......that endless walking or flying trip to la-la land (that's just the viewer continuing to display you're surroundings using the last bit of information received from the servers and calculating the next scene). You are not in-world because you have no connection to the servers..........you're, for all practical purposes, crashed but not technically crashed. If you run up to the edge of the grid you just stop, bounce off or whatever, but you do not go off grid. If the grid ended at 4096 or a little above you'd just stop going up..........you don't do that. Further you can chat, IM, change clothes, sort inventory, run animations, even edit your appearance (I've done all those things before). That indicates that you are, indeed, still on the grid. The one thing I did try that didn't work so well was to edit a prim skirt I was wearing..........it basically exploded when I went to "edit linked parts". I found the skirt in pieces at 4096 when I fell back to my platform which is at 4001 meters. That's my experience with prims above 4096. The end result is that you cannot build above the 4096 meter limit with any reliability. I think you can run scripts but I would not swear to that. It appears the upper build limit is something that LL has put in place but it's just a software thing and they probably could raise that limit to most anything they wanted.........server resources would seem to be the real limiting factor (but that's just a guess on my part).

I don't think that height of 4096 meters is correct for the height of a sim. I've been above 50,000 meters with my flight feather. Worn objects or prims stay worn, the scripts (such as animations) work at that height............though editing prims is very wonky (so I assume edit doesn't work). But as for rezzing prims or objects (even with a script) above 4096 meters just isn't going to work.....not in any reliable fashion anyway. As far as I know, there is no uppper limit to a sim or parcel. It's defined by the software.......4096 meters is a cap LL placed on the build height for whatever reason (most likely related to resources of the servers). But, I've heard rumors of people going 1,000,000 meters high.....how true that is I don't know. I know you can go above 50,000 since I've done it.

You're upload is unimportant for any bandwidth setting. The viewer sends only your avatar's location and direction of focus.......very small requests to the servers. 1 mbps upload is probably 100 times what is needed. You're download is what determines the bandwidth needed for best performance. I have a 30 mbps download and my preference bandwidth setting is 1500 kbps (1.5 mbps) and I get about 30 frames per second (smooth video) in moderately populated areas......draw distance is 256 meters. No packet loss at all. I've tried higher bandwidth settings and saw no improvement and I could not produce packet loss unless I went crazy with settings. In my opinion, 1500 kbps should be fine for almost anything in SL I did find, however, too low of settings produced lower frame rates. It's up to you to decide what is best for you........most people cannot see a difference between 30 fps and 90 fps anyway (your graphics is simply drawing each frame 3 times for the same frame as far as the human eye can see). It doesn't hurt anything but I don't see the sense in it........bragging rights aside.

Setting the bandwidth in the viewer tells the servers how much to send to your computer in kilo bits per sec (or mega bits per sec). If you set that above what your ISP or your computer can handle then that will cause you to suffer packet loss.......which slows you down instead of speeding you up. That's assuming the servers actually are able to send as much as you say to send. The servers will only send as much as they have the resources to send....without too many concurrent users they can send more, with many concurrents they can send less. Setting your bandwidth to anything above what your tested download speed is will almost definitely cause you to experience packet loss.......if you only have 1 mbps dowload and you set your bandwidth to 1500 kbps (1.5 mbps) you will probably have quite a bit of packet loss. If you have a connection speed of, say, 30,000 kbps (30 mbps) then you're probably safe for any setting you set since I don't believe the servers can deliver even 10,000 kbps (10 mbps). You can also swamp your computer too, which will cause the same problem........a router with a speed of 100 mbps you are safe there but if your processor can only handle 2 mbps then you're going to have problems if you exceed that. There are many things that determine just how much data your computer and connection can handle. The test your download speed go to: http://www.speedtest.net/ and run a couple tests each to San Francisco, CA and Dallas, TX.......take an average for the tests and set your bandwidth to about 10% below that. If SL runs smoothly and you have no packet loss then try upping your bandwidth by about 500 kbps and see if SL still runs smooth with no packet loss. Keep upping your setting until you reach a point of packet loss then back off to the last setting that gave you no packet loss and deduct about 10%. That setting should work in almost all occassions for SL (high concurrency, internet traffic, and background programs will cause occassional times of packet loss which is normal). If you see anything over about 2% packet loss it's getting excessive and you'll see a noticable drop in performance.........packet loss should always be 1% or less.

Strange how nearly every Internet/network security expert disagrees with that. Yes, a router also serves as a hardware firewall and offers a lot of protection from intrusions. And the addition of a software firewall puts one more layer between your computer and any outside intrusions. I would never tell someone to forget about installing a software firewall just because a router acts as a firewall.........that's irresponsible.

Get a decent firewall is the best workaround. http://www.comodo.com/home/internet-security/free-internet-security.php It's free. It's a complete security suite. It has documentation. It's good.

Believe me..........it will enhance your Second Life. And, a big bonus..............it will enhance so much more in your Real Life!!! I always love to lead people astray like that. Enjoy.

No, sorry that 1680 by 998 is a 16 : 9 aspect ratio. That ratio will never be a power of two on both sides. Let me try something that may help. Open an imaging editing program with your snapshot (image). It will probably be very close to the 1680 by 998 in size (slightly smaller since the UI of your viewer will be not shown..........actually it will be cropped out by the snapshot). There should be a crop feature in your editing program.......choose that and define the size of the crop 1024 by 1024 pixels. Then crop the portion you want to save for your upload. Save that cropped portion with another name so you don't over write your original image. Save as PNG (or if you have to save as JPG). Next, open that saved image (not the original but the cropped one). Your imaging software should have a resize feature.........select or click it. Then resize your image to 512 by 512 pixels........save again with a name you have not used for either of the images you have saved already. Then all you have to do it upload that 512 by 512 image to SL. The SL software will not resize or distort your image........it will be as clean as your saved image format allows (JPG will dirty up the image a little due to the compressional loss that the format uses). If you are looking for a very good basic imaging program that is free, Google Paint.NET. It's quite a bit beyond most free imaging programs....it's quite powerful for what it's designed to do. I'm afraid to point you to GIMP yet..............it's arguably as powerful as Photoshop (the recognized standard for graphic editing). To do a really nice job you will have to learn some basic stuff about editing images..........layers, sizes, channels, and image formats. It's not complicated but if you are as green as you appear to be it's going to take a little effort on your part. But, I think you will find it fun........it certainly is for me.

You will get your first stipend that you are entitled to each week next Tuesday. Your sign up bonus will be given to you after 45 days of continuous premium membership. On the access to adult areas you need to go to your preferrences on on the "General" tab check all the little boxes saying you want ot access them......apply and okay out of preferrences. That will allow you to access all areas except the few that are restricted to "age verified" If you want access to those areas you must go through the third party age verification process found on your dashboard.

The reason is that the SL software requires any texture or picture to be at a power of two on each deminsion (horizontal and vertical) The powers of two are 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, and 1024. That's the pixels per inch. The powers of 2 go to infinity but 1024 is the largest SL accepts (which is why I stopped there). What that means is that your picture or texture must be at one of those powers of two both vertically and horizontally.........they do not have to be equal to each other. I believe the smallest you can successfully upload is 8 on one or both sides but I might be wrong.......that's a pretty small image and probably not useful anyway. If your image is a snapshop or screen capture it is probably at your computer monitor's resolution and aspect ratio. The "standard" aspect ratio (which is fast becoming obsolete) is a 4 : 3 ratio (4 pixels wide to every 3 pixels high). That will never be a power of two. If your monitor is HD (or widescreen) the aspect ratio is 16 : 9.........again that will never be a power of two. When you upload a picture and it is not at some power of two SL's software will resize it to the next lowest power of two for any side that is not already that size. Let's take a common "standard" monitor resolution (a 4 : 3 aspect ratio) of 1280 by 1024.......SL will resize that image to 1024 by 1024 on upload. The image will be "squished" horizontally. Do the same with a HD screenshot of, say, 1600 by 900 (my monitors' resolution). SL will resize that image to 1024 by 512.........which squishes the image even more. SL always resizes down to the next power of two. There are a couple ways to "fix" the distortion. The easiest is to simly crop your image to powers of two with and external image editing program. Another way is to resize your image to powers of two before you upload..........the image will be distorted but it's distorted according to your terms and not the SL software. Using the 1600 by 900 resolution example you could resize to 1024 by 1024 to avoid the bigger distortion induced by SL resizing. To over come the distortion if you let SL resize or you resize externally you need to place your image on a prim and size the prim to the same aspect ratio as your screenshot. To avoid any need for putting the image a prim and have no distortion you have to crop your image to one of the powers of two on each side. As a note............SL does a really crappy job of resizing. Do it yourself with an external image editing program for best results. Hope I didn't thoroughly confuse.

One of the most common devices used for a hardware hash ban is the network interface device. Those are cheap (like about 15 bucks brand new at Best Buy). I have a couple laying around somewhere in my past computer junk room myself. Change it......quick, easy, and most of the time it gets the job done. There are other devices too, but most hardware bans ban that device only. Routers and modems are used too.........change location such as the local Library or maybe Starbucks.

At what point are you crashing? Do you crash before you reach the log in screen? Or does that crash occur after clicking the "Log in" button? It's not enough to just say your video card is an nVidia card with plenty of space........what video card and what do you mean "plenty of space"? If your talking of video RAM then that may be important for someone to know specifically in order to help (more than "plenty of space"). If you can get to the log in screen click the "Help" menu. From the drop down you'll see "About SL"......click it. On the dialog that opens you'll see your basic system specs. Copy those and paste back here.........no one can do anything except guess with what little information you've provided so far.

It sounds like you are actually renting from another resident. Who did you pay for the land to and who do you pay tier to? If either of those is not Linden Lab then you are renting. The sim owner will have to give your rights. Mainland does not have covenants unless it's land that a Linden Home is on. Some who owns the sim (yes, people can own mainland sims) can set conditions for land usage.......a covenant. But Linden Lab does not have covenants.

I'm using IE 8 also and have not had the problems you are having. The only problem I do have is that once I click the "quote" icon to quote the post I'm referring to in my response, the spell checker and formatting tools (such as bold or italics) don't always work. However, that may be the time I've spent typing my response because that only seems to happen when I've paused from posting to do some real life stuff and come back a while later to finish what I was typing. I sort of written that off to the secure website these forums are on (which brings up a real question in my mind for the "why is it secure in the first place?"). What version of Internet Explorer are you using?

What's fair is fair, Nyll. And I knew you were too kind to say anything.

The first message is telling you that you are apparently having a network issue. It's something in your network that is causing your problem. It could be your bandwidth is not enough..........you need at least 500 kbps to have even a laggy connection. The second message I don't believe will prevent you from logging in. It's one of those informational messages and if you okay out of it you might be able to log in. Your computer just barely meets the minimum. 512 megs of RAM is very low for a computer to run SL. If I remember correctly (it's been at least 4 years since I ran an XP system) XP requires about 300 megs of RAM just to staying running. That does not count any programs running in the background such as anti-virus, firewall, email checkers, instant messaging programs, or desktop wallpaper changers. SL requires right at 500 megs. You'll get a little help from your video card's onboard video RAM (128 megs) on the graphics rendering, but it's really not enough...........you're short about 256 megs to cover everything at a minimum. Running SL in Win 95 mode will not help...........SL won't run on a 95 system (very few programs that were created in the last 10 years will). I don't think it's a compatibility issue............XP will run SL just fine. You're problem is either your home network, ISP, or your computer is just too weak to run SL. You should be able to find more RAM for your computer.............put in, at least, 512 more megs (or as much as your system will handle up to about 3 gigs since XP 32 bit will not recognize more that than anyway. The driver you are running for your video card is not current either. I looked up the newest driver for that card........it might help if you updated to a current driver: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp-258.96-whql-driver.html I'm editing to say something. Your response to Nyll: "With all due respect, I think you are deviating from the innitial post. If anyone has issues other than those I have specified, please be so kind as to start a new question, as it just makes things confusing." It's quite common for people to "piggyback" on someone else's thread if they are experiencing a similar problem as you (it may not even be similar, but a problem that sort of fits). A question was asked and Nyll answered. She is one of the most helpful and most polite posters in SLA..........she's certainly much nicer than me. Calling her out for helping someone else on "your thread" was more than just a little rude. Sorry, I just had to come back to say that after thinking about it for a few minutes.

It makes no difference if you pay monthly, quarterly, or annually. You get the same benefit as long as your premium membership is maintained in good standing. Miss a payment and you loose the benefits. One word about the sign-up bonus. It's paid only after 45 days of continuous premium membership.........which is 2 monthly billing cycles. There are no partial payments and all billing for your premium membership is in advance.

I actually have not had to try to use Live Chat for a ghosting problem in a few months. But, what I did find over the times I've used that feature to get me unghosted is that it's a good idea to state you have a ghosting problem in the initial request for Live Chat assistance. I did find one time that the person who answered my chat was not in a position to get a sim restarted........she/he had to relay my request to someone else with that ability. She/he is the one who suggested that I put that information in the request so that time would not be wasted by someone without the powers would answer the chat..........leaving it to someone who can help. I don't know if a Linden is present at all the hours that Live Chat is available since the reduction in staffing but I bet there is at least one "on call" at all times. Try your Live Chat request again.......state in the request that you are ghosted, where you are ghosted and what you've done so far to try to get unghosted. You might have to wait a while for your request to answered but you should get someone who can help you. LL does not like ghosted avatars on the sims...............probably because it's a needless load on the servers.

Uninstall every viewer you have on your computer. Then do a thorough search fo your computer for anything related to any viewer you have ever had installed on your computer and manually delete all files found. Once you have removed all remnants of all viewers then download a fresh copy of the viewer you want to use and install from the saved file (do not choose "run"........"save" to your hard drive). I appears that you have some left over files from one or more of the viewers you've had before and the viewer(s) you are installing are seeing those files as already existing and not installing clean, fresh ones (probably the cache file but could be some of the configuration files too). Viewer developers seem to have a habit of naming the cache files the same and locating them at the same location on the computer so they tend to get mixed up on some systems. As a general rule it's best to have one viewer installed at a time on your computer and when changing do a search for left over files before you install a new one. Most people have more than one viewer (I have 3) so if you are going to do that then it's best to manually set the cache files for each viewer to a different location.........you can do that in preferences.

Reset your modem and router. You might also clear your cache while you're at it.

Chances are very good that your school's network is blocking access to SL. The high bandwidth usage that SL requires is the most likely reason for blocking any program that eats up that much bandwidth. Not only is it costly but it slows other users down substantially.........someone having to wait 30 minutes for a document download for a thesis research while someone else is trying to win an event in SL is a pretty legitimate reason to prevent programs like SL on the network. I don't know about Starbucks...........but it may be a similar situation. You're best bet would be to find someone who is off campus and has broadband...........see if they will let you try SL from their connection. If it works then you know. It might be possible for you to get a broadband connection in your dorm.........don't be surprised if that is not an option though.

I understand. In the future it would be wise to create an alt and on the main accout choose your alt as a friend and allow the alt to see your location (known as "track" you). Then when you suspect you are ghosted you can log your alt on and see where you are and get the request to restart the sim going. Sorry for such little useful information on this particular problem........but for future it might be helpful. Maybe Marigold Devin will see this thread ........she has some magic I'm not aware of for locating and helping ghosted avis.

I just checked by searching your name....you are shown as logged in. That means you are "ghosted". The LL servers are showing you as logged on but you are not. That normally happens when your viewer crashed or your connection to the servers stops of some reason. The solution is to contact who ever is the owner of the sim you are ghosted on and request a sim restart. If on mainland submit a support ticket stating where you are ghosted and that you want the sim restarted. If you are premium you can use Live Chat to get a quicker response. If you are ghosted on a private or Estate sim you need to contact the sim owner or manager with estate rights to request a sim restart. Or, you can wait it out.........but sometimes that can be days.

With what little real information about the error messages you gave it appears you are losing the connection to Linden Lab's servers. I'm guessing because those "blah blah blah's" mean absolutely nothing. The biggest hint is when you said you "fell through the ground" after TPing. So here's a few things can commonly cause loss of connection to the servers. Wireless connection to your network. Your modem and router (if one is present in your network) need resetting. Your firewall (and possibly your anti-virus) are blocking your connection. And, of course, your connection speed may be too slow. To fix the problem if you are on a wireless network get some Cat 5 Ethernet cable and hardwire your computer to your network. To fix your problem if your modem/router needs resetting just unplug those devices from the electrical source and wait for 3 to 5 mins then plug them back in.......reboot your computer and try SL again. If you firewall (or anti-virus) are blocking then you need to configure them to allow SL to connect to your computer and run (you'll need to check your software's documentation on how to do that.........you can check to see if that's the problem by temporarily disabling them and try SL). The connection speed is dependant on your ISP. You need at least about 750 kbps for a stable connection.......more is better, of course. Check your ISP for what you are paying for then compare what you are actually getting by doing some tests at a couple speed test sites. I use http://www.speedtest.net/ and http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/. Do at least one test on each site to San Francisco, CA and Dallas, TX............and even Phoenix, AZ (those are the areas that LL's servers are housed for SL). You should be getting something in the neighborhood of 75% of what the ISP tells you you should be getting (you probably will never get what any ISP tells you but it should be close). You're more interested in the download speed.........the upload is really relatively unimportant unless it's really slow (like a dial-up). If none of this works then let us know. This time don't give the "blah blah blah" stuff. You may not think it's important but it is. Without good descriptions of the problem, including any error messages most suggestions given will be nothing more than a wild guess. You're computer specs look decent enough to run SL.