Lucretia Brandenburg

"but just to be sure I checked a group that we are both in and according to that she has still not logged on since August of 2011" That isn't someone hiding her online status, that's someone who wasn't online.

Czari, I didn't say SL is solely a vastly expanded chat room, I said at its core. And I agree that virtual worlds are many things to many people. I don't know of any statistics about how many people do what in SL, but I do know that I have met a fair number of people in SL who are over a year old and do not know how to create a plain prim or snap a photo, let alone build anything. People who come to SL to shop, go clubbing, find romance, go to live music venues, enter contests, join inworld groups of like minded shoppers, clubbers, romantics, music fans, etc. to me, are using it as what I termed a chat room. I don't think, at its core it is a game, there are no goals, no rules regarding how to play (just what not tot to do to keep out of trouble), no stated prizes, no one against whom to compete (unless we're talking user generated content a.k.a. drama). Without content creators, people wouldn't have houses to live in, dance balls to animate them, pets, hair, clothes, vehicles or anything else, and then there'd be nothing to chat about ... content creation would be the "vastly expanded" part of my statement. Games like Eve Online, Everquest, Guild Wars, etc have a world view that is limited. Eve Online is science fiction, the others are fantasy. If science fiction doesn't appeal to someone, and Elven/Medieval/Sword and Sorcery based fantasy worlds don't appeal to someone, if they don't want to meet goals/rack up points, or compete, if they don't want to create content in those games, then they won't play them, they're very limiting despite better, professional graphics. Despite shrinkage, and some really awesome sims closing, there is still a lot more variety and room for imagination and exploring diverse interests in SL than in a MMORPG. If you look at the destination guide and events listings, you can see that. Oh, and I LOVE sorting inventory too! We should compare notes sometime, everyone has their own method of doing it, its always interesting to me to hear how other people do it.

Apparently its a loophole LL doesn't mention too often. But I think if the founder of the group complains loudly enough ...

Its funny, those big pouty down turned mouths don't look sad to me at all, they look witchy and disgruntled, what we used to call a sour puss when I was a kid.

I think a virtual world that is, at its core, a vastly expanded chat room such as SL and a virtual world that is a science fiction MMORPG set in outer space are so different that they really can't be compared next to each other. They don't seem even remotely similar to one another.

Hair 150-250 Eyes 30-150 Shape Do It Yourself Outfit 300 - 600 Nice Feet 200-600 Skin 400-1200 1080 to 2800 Lindens for that look, any more than that and someone doesn't know how to shop well :matte-motes-wink:

If the founder of a group is an owner, yes, the founder can have LL remove someone else as an owner, but a ticket has to be filed and I'm pretty sure they would only do that for premium members. My SL employer was forcibly removed from a group by the founder and we were quite surprised that it could be done.

I found myself thinking the same thing, I've seen people in bikinis less covered up. I don't think there's anything inappropriate about the picture, and the idea is not to sell sex, she isn't exactly va va voom appealing, it's to sell the idea that you can be whatever you want in SL, and as an example, they have what looks like a pixie or fairy to illustrate that.

I do the same that Amethyst does, try on the barest version of a demo. That's usually the one I buy, ever since tattoo cosmetic layers, I can't tell you how much I've saved on buying skins because I change my look a few times a week. My current favorite skins are by Pulse (I have several Pulse skins in different tones), DrLife, Skin Within, Tuty's, and Al Vulo. Very rarely I'll wear Chaisuki and Redgrave. Another poster is spot on when she says shape plays a role in how a skin looks, though I do have a friend of 5 years here who manages to look almost the same regardless of how she changes her shape and skin. As to best, meh, much is made of "realistic" skins and for those, I think Redgrave is good with details like hair follicles and veins but nowadays the trend in "realistic" tends to be for visible pores and a lot of shine. SL is a cartoon, I find that hyper realism in SL tends to stand out like a sore thumb, but other people love it. Its funny, looking over some of the brands others have mentioned, I think UGH I wouldn't be caught dead in that skin, LOL and I'm sure others look at mine and think EWWWW you have GOT to be kidding. That's the funny thing about shopping for skins, one person's gold is another's dross and vice versa.

If four private sims poof, LL can retire that server. Not a break even situation but overhead is cut down and it's not clear whether that is a serious loss in revenue or not, or whether the revenue is being made up in other ways. I think if LL were seriusly concerned about private regions poofing and the lost revenue, they would lower the tiers on them a bit.

There is no hard and fast definition for griefing, it is a very subjective thing. By the definition you gave, deliberately annoys and harasses other players in the game and deriving pleasure primarily or exclusively from the act of annoying other users ... the example you gave of some jerk going around virtually peeing on people is not griefing until the first person complains and tells him he is being annoying and he refuses to stop. Up until that moment, he is not a griefer, he is just someone with a childish sense of humor. The resident who inadvertantly "ruins" another resident's nice view by rezzing some hideously ugly structure because he genuinely likes it (tastes differ and his idea of beautiful is his neighbor's idea of ugliness) is not a griefer unless the the neighbor complains and the one with the "awful" taste does not remove a building he likes? Or is the complaining neighbor a griefer for insulting the one with "no taste?" I have never had any issue with child avatars. People who play child avatars who insist on "cute baby talk" with lisping and mispronounced consonants well past the age when that is an issue for most RL young children annoy the Hell out of me. I avoid them when possible. Now, most of those child avatars with speech and spelling issues, so to speak, know darned well it irritates a good many other people. Are they griefers because they don't stop doing it? So if everyone who rezzes something ugly and refuses to take it down because it annoys a neighbor is a griefer, what do you call someone who goes around crashing sims or ruining them? A Super Griefer? If you toss a word around indiscriminately like that, it loses impact. Oh, he's a griefer ... what did he do? He had this annoying gesture he wouldn't stop playing. Oh, that one there, he's a griefer too. What did that one do? He crashed an entire estate of over 30 sims and cost the sim owner a fortune when tenants left, and the tenants had to find new homes because the incessant attacks wouldn't stop. Rather than rethinking MY definition of griefing, I'd suggest you rethink yours and perhaps consider lightening up a bit. Is SL fun for you? If things like that bother you so badly, it doesn't seem like it would be all that much fun.

freenis that look like nanners? I always thought they looked like lollipops but a lot LESS lickable :matte-motes-wink-tongue:

Exodus viewer's derender is temporary - right click, manage, derender. I like that its temporary actually. TP to another sim and back and the derendered stuff is back, which is great since I mostly use it to get rid of sky domes when helping to decorate an area for an event. As for people, there's the option of derendering or muting, and when they are muted, I'm pretty sure they're derendered, I don't know since I've never run into anyone I've muted.

There is plenty of content in SL people don't want to see, and much of it is G rated :matte-motes-wink-tongue: so really, it comes down to people derendering what they don't want to see, or reducing their draw distance. Personally, I think it's a hoot to see some guy who thinks he's "all that" walking around with privates the size of a cricket bat and expecting people to take him seriously or swoon at his feet, and I would rather see that absurdity for a laugh than have to stare out the window at some awful tacky house a neighbor has put up or some weird looking too cute breedable animal flying across my yard. The most innocuous thing one person might find charming is anathema to someone else, so really, I think it would be great if people just went about their own Second Lives as they like (assuming they don't violate TOS or community standards) and relax about what others do. We can't have a special SL grid for each thing people find objectionable. Derender, AR when appropriate, lighten up, take SL as it is or leave, no one forces anyone to be in SL.

No, Elvis portraiture on black velvet is an art form all by itself, motor cycles and clowns on black velvet too, as long as they're not naked and squishing

I thought the rule was that if it was blurry or on canvas (as long as its not on black velvet) it was art, and if it looks you know, wet and squishy, it was porn.

If someone is whipping out their junk and playing with it at a G rated sim, or in public at a M rated sim, that is against community standards and should be reported to the sim owner and LL. My impression regarding why the teen grid was done away with and teens integrated into SL with adult content being shunted to Zindra is that it was too costly to maintain. I very very rarely see adult content when I am out and about in SL. Even at a nude event at the M rated gay sim I help to manage I don't see adult content - yes, the guys have their stuff hanging out (the event is clothing optional, a good many of the guys keep it in their swim trunks) but no one plays with it, its not even erect, its just there, more like a pair of earrings or shoes, just for decoration. There was a female avatar hitting on a resident last week, making lewd comments and sexual gestures, she was estate banned. That sort of thing happens rarely. More annoying than appalling, no big deal to be rid of someone like that. So when you say an adult grid, you are suggesting SL without any private parts allowed, no sex beds, no sex animations, none of that? So that if I wanted to attend a concert, I would have to log into one grid and say I met a guy there and we wanted to get frisky (not that that would ever happen, I don't bump pixels, haven't for years) we would have to log out of the G rated grid and log into an adult grid just to go back to his place to fool around? That doesn't seem very practical. It is also asking a great deal of LL to set up an entire grid merely because some people take sex in SL far too seriously. LL does what it can, there will always be teens sneaking into places they shouldn't go, it isn't going to scar a teen for life to see cartoon private parts on some jerk who thinks he or she is being cute, and most likely the jerk whipping it out and doing that IS a teen. When people talk about teens and adult content in SL, I get a sense that some people find it appalling that the innocent lambs could be exposed to such filth, but lets be realistic, a good many teens are doing very adult things in RL, if they come here looking for adult content, they are not babes in the woods. Personally, I have never seen adult content on a G rated sim, yes I've seen guys whipping it out (and women without clothes playing with themselves) at M rated sims, but that's to be expected. If someone does get his or her jollies doing that stuff at G rated locations, either the novelty will wear off or they will be ARd or the school holiday will be over and said account holder will leave SL to go back to class until the next time there's a break.

Reading this post may have answered a question I've had for some time. I see griefing incidents way down over the last couple of years and often wonder what and who all the griefers complained about here in the forums are. Peeing on strangers is not griefing. I think the term griefing is used very broadly nowadays. Does it crash a sim? Does it ruin the terraforming on a sim? Does it trap and toss people around against their will? THAT is griefing. Obnoxious behavior is just that, obnoxious behavior. As an estate manager, I receive messages from residents, can you ban this or that griefer? What exactly was the nature of the griefing? Standing on someone's front porch and not going away is not griefing. Peeing on someone, masturbating, making rude gestures ... not griefing. It's obnoxious yes. Griefing, no. As for automatic bans without investigating, that's an awful, draconian idea. Unless someone is crashing a sim on purpose with the intent to cause harm, if someone ruins your SL experience, it's because you let them ruin it. To me, going around peeing on someone is obnoxious and gross, to someone else it is obviously a grand time. So if your idea of a grand time doesn't match his, mute him, derender him, and forget about him.

I haven't heard any word about script limits from LL in AGES. Who knows, maybe they figure all those obnoxious OMFG YOU HAVE TO LEAVE YOUR SCRIPTS ARE TOO HIGH devices will do the job. The idea that a person can't look good without running scripts is absurd unless you're talking about a male nudist event, then the scripts in their naughty parts and the huds that control them are a bit much. But really, who needs any scripts to "look good" other than those in an AO? And they are way more efficient than they used to be back in the day.

Something a friend of mine said about those random smilers just popped into my head. he said the only people who smile randomly tend to be babies with gas or psychotics, and when he sees someone with a random smiler, he never knows whether someone is going to pass gas or stab him with a prim knife.

I don't go out much, so don't encounter too many vamps other than friends or relatives. But when I did get out more and got asked for bites, I considered it just like I consider a newbie guy telling me I love you baby, want to do the sex? I would just laugh it off and decline. As for people getting suckered (another pun?) into the game, I know for some, they get awful upset about their SL soul being taken or destroyed or whatever. And while yes, the lines between SL and RL blur, my soul is my own, and some moneymaking gimic in a cartoon world is not going to endanger the real thing. I know the BL people tend to take the soul business VERY seriously but thats like taking a SL pregnancy test VERY seriously. Yes, my avatar is an extension of my RL self but no, being knocked up in SL does not make me pregnamt in RL.

A photographer friend of mine suggested Exodus viewer (though he imports additional windlight settings, there aren't many in Exodus) and I haven't looked back. Low graphics on Exodus resemble medium to high graphics when using other viewers. I never go somewhere and have to wait for it to rez. People using FS viewer always say "let me know when you've rezzed" and before they send that message, all is rezzed. I never experience that perceived lag due to graphics issues either. Even on a 3 year old notebook PC used with a wireless network, Exodus is great. There's an article here from back in January 2012 comparing viewer frame rates; http://modemworld.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/comparative-viewer-frame-rates/ and there's further analysis here http://blog.nalates.net/2012/01/05/sl-viewer-performance/#more-6162 I've heard people say that Exodus is a resource hog. Resource hog or not, SL runs beautifully with it and crashes are extremely rare. I know people say FS is the most stable viewer but I can go a minimum of a month without ever crashing, I've never known anyone who uses FS who can do that. The only viewers that have ever worked for me have been the SL viewer (which I find to be fine if I'm not doing any building or photography, two activies I do very rarely), Kirsten's which is now extinct, Imprudence (which I stopped using because that V1 based interface annoys the hell out of me), and Exodus. I often wonder why more people don't use it.

Back in the day when I was a newbie and wore my first naughty bit (rhymes with bit by the way) I didn't realize it would show through clothing. It was one of those boy is my face red moments. Then again, back in the day, it really looked more like a pencil eraser so it wasn't obvious WHAT was showing, just "something"

Hi Alicia, It's an adult gay male venue, and pretty raunchy, the guys tend to let it all hang out and play with each others' junk so the air is full of that chat spam from private parts. The owner and hosts are always respectful about it, there are signs everywhere, they're never nasty or give attitude, so I'm fine with it. I have a retail shop in another area of the estate, they've told me since I rent there, I don't need to dress as a guy, but its no big deal to change. Before I rented there, the DJ would clear it with the owner, and once I went as my usual self, but Its more that it makes a lot of the patrons uncomfortable to have female avatars around when they (the male patrons) have their naughty bits flopping around. Oddly enough, it makes a few uncomfortable to know I'm a woman dressed as a male avatar. Most get a kick out of it. The ones that don't, they could lighten up some I think. But since I don't mind, and since I manage an estate where I've had to ask people to obey the rules or leave and been greeted with all sorts of rude responses (Hi, I'm sorry, you're on someone's private property and he'd prefer not to have naked strangers on his lawn, and we do have a policy regarding public nudity ... now if you don't stop playing with yourself and humping my leg, I am going to have to ask you to leave ... ok, well I tried, have a nice day, I'm banning you now) I have no issue with following rules, unlike during my wilder younger days in SL ; )

Solaria, I remember whenever there was a school holiday, being all but accosted by someone dressed all in freebies without an AO and one of those lollipop freebie naughty bits. Children behind avatars in SL tend to be easy to spot if its a school holiday and someone fitting the above description says he's madly in love with you baby, and wants to have sex, OR better yet takes the "Come with me, B**ch, you are Mine to use" approach. And yes, that line was actually used on me once LOL ; )