Les White

If I am allowed to ask - who approached who? What is the reason and ambition behind this acquisition? You state something about "insuring service into the future". Was Casper about to fold? Is this a rescue mission?

I'm not a biologist. I just want a clear answer.

Questions. Does this acquisition mean LL will force a monopoly with vending systems as you did with linden exchange back in the day? Will 3rd parties be allowed to directly compete with Casper Vend system? Hint : you better say yes.

Of course you wouldn't. Incompetence has grown to be the norm. Enjoy your life.

I retract my request for competence. I'll just go ahead and cancel myself and save you the time. Carry on.

Totally understandable. You can charge whatever you want as the user base isn't growing and it isn't going anywhere. Ring them dry. Why stop at 5% at cash out? Take 20! After all it's for the good of the economy like magic rainbows. Maybe you can try to squeeze another 10 sims onto a server box for the good of the economy.

I want to make an alpha applier to help fit mesh clothing to mesh avatars. Currently we use a bunch of faces that toggle alpha. Soon we wont be - if this bakemesh stuff works. Now imagine you have all these old mesh clothings and you want to wear them. Do you fish around in your inventory for a bunch of alpha textures (you KNOW people are going to have huge collections of these) you can bake until you get a decent mask? How can you even look at these textures in your inv. Total nightmare. Instead you use my new alpha slice applier hud that previews a seemingly endless array of alpha slices that you can apply to your skin bake in a UI that allows you to see them on a model and browse them by category. I need to insert textures into the bake via script. This whole thing is kind of a non-starter without it. While I'm demanding practical things let me also ask for a new standard and optional body_upper2 bake region that has 2 (two) whole arms that we people who make these mesh bodies can use as a standard as we move forward with this.

I script a few mesh bodies and I like this. I have a few thoughts and questions if anyone is interested. For materials - I would be happy with just combining the maps as some suggested (if such a thing is possible), but you are still going to lose all the unique gloss, environ and spec rgb values. I want to make an alpha applier thing. Applies slices of alpha to help a user fit older clothing (all of the alphas none of the calories!). Can I do this with script? I can't figure out how. I will cry many tears if I can not add textures to the bake stack via script. Ideally I would like to be able to add and remove via script and not deal with actual system clothing objects at all. Perhaps you can. I'm new at this! Where can I find the system UUIDs so that I do not have to set faces manually and this set up should be explained on line one of the wiki and introduction. The thing that scares me the most is the talk of using skirts for arms and all this goldberg machine type structure already building up on this. For the love of god give these people another arm (hands! feet!) so we don't have convolution right out of the gate. Mesh bodies are already 3 degree beyond insane. Sorry if my questions are silly. I'm getting up to speed. I'll try to make some meetings.

Looks like old school is the winner! Active database with 8 million+ names, easy hooks and CSV dumps to allow me to make a back up DB should they fail. Thank Innula. I hope I can return the favor some day.

Does anyone have any information or clues about the current state of name2key hacks? What are people using these days? I need something that works to use for gifting items. Same old story. No need to point me to the wiki or other sources unless you KNOW it works. I'm a long time scripter and I've been testing a bunch of methods today with poor results. Any tips or hints from people who use something that works would be very appreciated.

Thaks for the insights. I think in the end that I will just leave it delisted and anything else they choose to delist for mysterious reasons. They must have enough customers that my contributions are not important. I got tired ot the way LL does business years ago and it would break my heart to start caring again. Again, thanks for the answers.

I can't figure out how to contact the right admin. I was selling some crappy shotgun I made in the market for almost 10 years then today I got a notice that it has been delisted due to 'item not as advertised'. I don't even know what that means. It was exactly as advertised and I made everything myself, the prims, textures, animations.. it was one of my first items here and has been on the market almost since the day slexchange opened 100 years ago. Blah blah. I can hardly be bothered to even write this post, but I hate being pushed around by annoymous admins and moronic systems that do not tell you anything. Is this a common problem? Anything I need to know? Where do they hide the actual contact an admin button?

It's like 2008 all over again. SL is what it is. It's not going to change now. It's just something they will milk until the last sucker stops giving them money for nothing. Any hope you put on SL growing up into something decent is a wasted hope. I've been here almost 10 years and it's pretty obvious that the best days are long past. Like 4 , maybe 5 years at least. If you want to see the future then you have to stop living in the past. "it is stressful not knowing if the person I am YIFFING is an adult or a kid under the age of 18" - Yes, I can see how sucking on a animals dong and wondering if it's just a pup can be stressful.

Is this really such a mystery? The reason they stopped is because the numbers were going down hill and continue to do so. It's that simple.

So, who's idea was it to give a plane away? Explore the annoying bugs of sim crossing in your new poorly made SL plane! erm, lol?

In fact I'm surprised that the only news of the last 2 months didn't turn things completely around for SL econ. I mean who wouldn't pay more for some untextured, badly proportioned dune buggy? The SL marketing team exceeds expectations!

LL have always been greasy. They would show the data when it was in a growth stage as a kind of marketing. They hoped to attract companies like McDonalds and Coke to SL. Some came, they saw, they laughed, they left. In fact this is the story for most of SL users. LL hired Rod Humble to make them appear stable. Yes, the same guy that drove EA stocks and the SIMs francise into the ground at a record pace. Rod has done NOTHING AT ALL since he's been here. SL has been in a slow death for years now. To the lab it's just a cash cow to milk until its bloody udders give only dust. Removing the quartly reports slows down the rate of death by hiding the info from those who are making decisions about how to invest their time and money. There are still some people who think of starting a biz in SL. LOL.

So, LL place this announcement in the forums instead of the blog and with no reply option. Stay classy LL. Anyone who contributes free IP (in the form of viewer advancement or otherwise) to this private commerical company is a fool who deserves to be bent over by the lab. I'm looking at you firestorm. Make the suckers pay.

This wont bring anyone new to SL. It will just divert people from resident content creators. You know, the ones who pay for sims and such. It's simple LL. Make the platform, we'll make the games. Well, someone other then me since i sold all my sims in disgust at your complete lack of vision a while ago.

"These are all part of Linden Lab’s ongoing focus in 2011 on improving service, performance and usability." This is the exact same line of drivel that the lab has been serving up since 2004. So, how's that working out for you linden lab? I'm sure 2012 will see endless performance and usability enhancements like each of the preceding years. My only regret is that I don't have any more sims to delete.

Here's an option i require : a button that makes this damn cloud form i've assumed after logging in turn into a solid avatar some time before i log out. I hope that option is not considered too complex to present. I recall the good old days when I used to wait days for my pants to rez. Do clouds wear pants?

Oh, linden lab is giving UI lessons. Is this some kind of sick joke? LOL

I've read most, if not all of Stephensons books. He's a fun writer. Here's some of my random thoughts on the 'metaverse'. 3d worlds will never replace the current protocols. It's like saying movies will replace books, that images will replace words. There is nothing efficient about 3d grids. There is no need for your self to be represented in a 3d space when most interaction with information does not require you to be 'there'. There is only the social aspect and the role play aspect, the entertainment value. None of which is vital for information transfer. There will just be many shards of virtual experience going off in countless directions and none of the interesting ones will have anything to do with this backwards doll house or any of the short sighted, reversed engineered clone grids. When i was a kid growing up (long ago) i imagined a little black box we would be able to carry in our back pocket that could supply the answer to any question we could ask. It's here now. We call them smart phones and google. The future will be awesome, but it has nothing to do with second life. SL peaked about 4 years ago. It's just a slowly dying money machine now. I think the future will be more about augmented reality then virtual reality.

Mayalily, Don't be such a victim (or troll). If there is not a club/sim/DJ that suits you, then feel free to create one and show the world how it's done. I'd say SL became unfun for me back in 06 when all my endeavors hit the wall of performance and capacity. My potential for fun and growth suffered from the weak link that is the 'platform' itself. Oddly enough this wall is still in about the same place as it was then, regardless of endless 'we are improving!' post. I remember when this community used to be interesting. Back before the (pointless) corporate cleansing. Now it's about as exciting as a glass of milk. I recall one blunder after another from the lab. Most of them started by Jack. It was like a bizarro world of stupidity that never ended. They have spent so much energy on such stupid and pointless things that it ate away my resolve to work around the treestump on the lawn that is linden lab. The final nail in my coffin was the hiring of Rod Humble. Why would they hire the guy who failed with the sims online to run this virtual world? He will tell you that 30% more people complete registration! In small print they tell you user hours are down and lindex volume is up. It's pretty easy to figure out what that means. I deleted my last sim and took up other endeavors. Oh, and the lack of stripping jokes kind of upsets me too. This is my opinion and view point. I'm sure it's offensive, totally non-helpful and in need of moderation for the good of all involved.

Hey, welcome to the 1990s linden lab. See you in another 20 years