Toysoldier Thor

So considering I have been creating and selling Full Perms Master Builder Sculpty Terrain packs to the SL (and other virtual worlds) community since 2009 and they have grown to be quite popular, I guess I am a bit surprised it has taken until this month for me to have my very first formal encounter with a violator of my Sculpty Packs Intellectual Property. Although I suspect that over the years under the cover and in the shadows (sadly its a cost of doing business) of SL my content has been occasionally distributed freely among some members of the SL community, until last night I have never run head on with a straight-out IP violator of my content by a so-called MP Merchant. Well thanks to one of my honest, loyal and vigilante customers in SL who quickly recognized the IP violation of my work and brought it up immediately to my attention, I now have to go through the process of dealing with this unscrupulous MP Merchant. Of course I cannot mention his name here in the forums but its not hard to find the violator yourself. My TornLands Volcano Sculty Maps pack (one of my all time most popular pack) is the content he has converted into their respective self standing prims (i.e. my 20 maps converted to his 20 prims of my maps). He even used one of my included textures to texture the prims he made from my maps. You can find my listing quite easy. So then go to the Marketplace and search for "SCULPTED CRATERS". Nuff said on finding the violator - his will be the one he is selling for $25L right by mine. I have checked my sales records back to 2009 and he has never bought this TornLands pack nor anything from me. So it looks like he received my content illegally (either it was handed to him by a past customer or he copybotted it). If you do find who I am talking about - another fellow SL merchant has already noticed some of his other listings in the pages of his near free listings is also a duplicate of another SL Creator - I have notified this creator of this Merchant's likely violation of his IP as well. I assume there are many others within his listings. Anyway, I have started the painful slow process of addressing this matter and getting this violation of my content by him addressed. It would be nicer if this Merchant himself were shut down or account even deactivated by LL if its proven that several of his listings are violating IP but I dont hold out hope that LL would be so progressive in dealing with IP Content theft / violations. My question to all of you that have gone through the DCMA process with LL is: Once its established that his listing is an IP violation by LL, can I ask LL to provide me a record of all sales this listing has made under this account? Further yet can I get LL to have him pay me a fair value for all sales he has made from my content? He sells my content for $25L - I sell my legit content for $850L. If its proven he made 100 sales from this listing, can I ask LL directly from his account a fair value of lets say $500L per sale? Or is this something that I would have to file a small claims court on against him directly? If so, I would guess that makes it not feasible. I just curious since the sad thing about this is that even when I go through all this work to shut this dude down, the only punishment he gets is that he has to remove the listing. He is rewarded to keep all the sales he has made in MP as I would guess LL would not even give me all his sales in the past. Thoughts?

So a few things Medhue on your beliefs and position that only Merchants that make a RL Living from SL Merchant sales have the smarts and therefore should be the only ones to have the RIGHTS to have input on the SL Commerce. You have made some poor assumptions that you base your beliefs on.... as such since your assumptions are incorrect then your beliefs they are based on are also invalid. Your first incorrect assumption your past post repeatedly made is that you believe that only those that make their primary REAL LIFE LIVING / INCOME from SL are large SL Creator/Merchant operations. Everyone else according to your posting and beliefs are SMALLER merchants. Well that is an incorrect assumption. If you go by size of SL Merchant operations, I know creator/merchants that are very large and complex but still do not consider their SL business to be their primary income. If you go by the more important factor of actual monthly PROFITS generated, I have been told my monthly profits from SL sales puts me into the top 7% of Merchants. And I can tell you that I do not consider SL income to be my primary RL income. Its nothing more than some nice extra HOT MONEY for me to buy some RL toys and tools I want. Your second incorrect assumption is that you believe that LL created a SL Economy to target and service only those of their customers with the intent to make a primary RL income from it. In fact, they could care less if you or me or any other Merchant makes any significant RL $ from the SL economy. The SL Creator / Merchant economy was created as part of the SL enterainment that a huge population of SL residents enjoy. It was created so that LL could provide a very strong incentive to create content for their grid. The SL MP and Commerce and eco-system must serve the interests of the greater population of creators and merchants. As such, since those Merchants that meet your criteria (i.e. those that make a RL income from SL) only make up a SMALLLLLLL fraction of the Merchant community, it would be completely wrong for only them to have a voice on behalf of the vast majority that use the SL Commerce system for many other reasons. Third, you make the assumption that only those merchants - like you stated yourself falls into - that have enough time to focus only on the SL economy and navel gaze about it have enough smarts and economics skills to understand how to run a business in SL. Sorry to burst your bubble but I can safely bet there are SL Creators and Merchants (most that dont fall into your category of full time rl income earners in SL) that know much more about business operations and economics than you or I. The fact that they dont make a RL income out of SL sales does not diminish their business smarts. So, if you are to even be able to identify which merchants that use their sales for RL income earning and let only them set direction on SL's commerce, it would often be in conflict with the majority of merchant that are Merchants for countless other reasons. As such, since these critical assumptions you made are false.... your beliefs are not legit IMHO.

Czari Zenovka wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: Personally, I feel that if a merchant is not making a major portion of their income from SL, they should have no say in how things should be changed to benefit every1. It is more likely that people who do earn their living in SL will have a much better grasp on what the real issues are. It is also more likely that the advice given by these merchants will have a more positive impact on all businesses. *Sighs* So only a select group of merchants (and it has been mentioned, shown, demonstrated, etc., etc. many times that the number of merchants who earn a RL income from SL is extremely small) are the only ones to have any say in policies that affect all SL merchants. It is not more likely that only these merchants have advice that will have a "positive impact on all businesses." I have said this so many times I am blue in the face but there are merchants with a wonderful grasp on business, great customer service, wonderful products, etc. who either don't have the time to devote to making their SL business their RL income or who prefer to maintain a smaller business and enjoy other aspects of SL as well - with a myriad of other situations falling in between. Please tell me you did not actually say that, Medhue. This hasn't been a great day and I really don't want to get into a debate with you...lol. Yeah Czari, I would agree its not one of Medhue's wisest post comments. So what Medhue is saying is that about 95% if not more of all the Merchant community should have any say on how LL's Commerce / Marketplace is run, operated, headed. And conversely, Medhue is stating that SL's commerce environment is only here for this VERY SMALL portion of the entire merchant community... all us other Merchants are only here for the ride and none of our time, money, effort, experience, or personal interests in being a Merchant has any value or rights?? WOW Medhue.... might you want to retract your "personal opinion" statement or do you really believe this?

OK I know I swore to everyone that from so many past experiences of LL MP Listing Enhancement Subscriptions being a proven waste of money (not to mention it being bug ridden - as Pamela can confirm) that I would never touch a Listing Enhancement ever again. Well... I guess I had a temporary lapse of common sense this morning and I decided to give it at try for only 7 days HOME PAGE of my latest mesh Hummingbird pack. I will tell you I was very nervous pressing the button to confirm its activition but I did it. When I did, after about 5 minutes it reported that it went into ACTIVE status with a renew on January 12th. I saw my $899L removed from my account so I know I was entitled now to 7 full days of this listing enhancement. NOW... to ensure that it did not renew, I edited the Listing Enhancement to to "DO NOT RENEW" - no I didnt click the cancel button. The Status changed from ACTIVE to EXPIRING. In fact I have attached the screen of what it looked like right after I told the listing to NOT RENEW.... I thought it was strange that even though I only told it to NOT RENEW, LL MP would report it as expiring but I figured it was just a poor play on words. I recorded my Sales & View count right before I started the enhancement (2 sales and 23 views of my listing). Well 5 hours later I looked at the stats and nothing changed. So I am suspecting that when I simply flagged the listing to NO AUTO RENEW, the MP system seems to think that the listing enhancement is now effectively cancelled and disabled. I Turned AUTO RENEW back on for now and the status is back to ACTIVE... so i am going to see if the view count goes up. What is anyone else's thoughts.

ForePlay, After reading this forum thread and even taking note that Rodvik made the ULTRA RARE move of actually posting in a Merchant thread (something I would safely recall is the only time Rodvik has posted in a Merchant thread during his entire term as CEO), might have noticed the following that us Merchant sure have: ALL questions directed to Rodvik - i.e. questions like asking him directly why he made the decision to gag the SL Resident JIRA - have gone unanswered by LL's CEO. The Commerce Team's slow to come initial response to the Merchant requests in this thread were almost completely ignored - as if we didnt even suggest them - yet they responded by promising to take action on items we did not even mention in this thread. Eventually the Commerce Team responded again whereby they completely rejected the Merchant's most asked for request, to re-engage the monthly / weekly inworld User Group meetings with the Merchants... a practice that is actively occuring by other development teams of LL every week. The Commerce Team is so muzzled and afraid to have open two-way dialog with its primary customers that they refused our #1 request. They also made no commitments or promises to devliver most of the other complaints the Merchants brought up for Rodvik and the Commerce Team to address. As such, Rodvik and the LL Commerce Team crystalized the Merchant's already strong beliefs with proven lack of follow-up or action regarding concerns brought up on this thread. It proves that Rodvik's word has no level of commitment. By posting in this thread - all he was doing was attempting to do was to pretent to show token concern / support for Merchant concerns in hopes that it will quell the boiling frustration in the SL Merchant community. But as Darrius mentioned in this thread - if Rodvik ends up not showing action behind his vague words of change it will only make the already poor relationship between LL Commerce Team and the Merchants 10x worse. Well.... you see the action Rodvik took..... NOTHING - it was only EMPTY WIORDS

Pamela Galli wrote: Firestorm creators and support personnel are not merchants, but volunteers. They have a very active inworld support group manned by volunteers. They have a JIRA to report bugs. So it looks to me like they have, as a gift and a courtesy, provided a superior product at no cost, and supported it extremely effectively. Glad you pointed that out. Unlike Rodvik's executive decision to GAG LL JIRA's and hide growing list of inworld serious bugs that are now festering (i.e. group notice attachments, sim instability, etc.), the PHOENIX Team has maintained their public open JIRA system (the way it should be). And yes, also unlike LL that staying in hiding and avoids any contact with its own customer base, the volunteer group of the Phoenix Team is very vocal and engaging with LL's SL customers/community. In fact only a few weeks ago they hosted a major public inworld and streamed and recorded 1.5 hour session where they announced their dropped support for the phoenix viewer, their reasons why, and also fielded countless questions from the huge audience on ANY other topics that were brought up. They also are often very open and honest with SL residents and their users - even if its not what some people want to hear. Finally I know for a fact they are alway speaking up for all SL residents and defending SL residents against a lot of LL's stupid moves. So almost all the complaints in this thread - which I want to point out that Rodvik and the Commerce Team have most not responded to - rest at the feet of Rodvik (CEO of LL) and his Commerce Team. They have proven once again with their lack of action to this thread that they truely do no care about Merchant concerns.

LunaDanez wrote: I seem to keep having trouble listing some of my work in marketplace nomatter how many times i click on edit and activate it wont let it be listed i got tired of those that cant be listed and deleted them then i tried it again and still wont list...any ideas how to fix this thing? You were not the only one complaining about this exact problem (unless it is you under another Alt name). Last night a fellow merchant asked me why she could not ACTIVATE a newly created listing... that she tried everything. I told her that normally when that happens its because a field was not completed - most likely she forgot to set a Category for her item. In fact she did set a Category to the most explicit she could Womens Clothing - Blouse and it was still not working. BUT, when she tried to move the category up to just the general category of Womens Clothes, the listing went active. Try moving up the category of your listing to the one higher. Seems there is a bug with selecting some explicit categories (maybe LL screwed something up when they did a major shuffle of the categories last month).

Kwakkelde Kwak wrote: Since we're picking at your posts, milli is a thousandth, not millionth True.... Ooopsss

Coby Foden wrote: Toysoldier Thor wrote: LL has already stated that setting the bandwidth any higher than 1mbps is of no value. I think you mean: 1 Mbps (Mega bits per second) not 1 mbps (milli bits per second) :matte-motes-nerdy: :smileywink: LOL Yes I better know what I meant since I have been a Network Architect for more years than I can count and in my career I have never used nor encountered the term "milli bit per second" - no such thing in any practical realistiic sense in my I.T. industry since a "bit" is the smallest unit of measure in I.T. and a millionth of a bit doesnt make sense. As such, in the real world if one does or does not capitalize the first letter in a bandwidth abrev., it generally still is understood to be the same thing. i.e. 1mbps or 1Mbps is 1 megabit per second. Technically speaking it would be proper to capitalize the "M" or "K" or "G" under general terms of defining Mega Kilo Giga, but since there is no confusion in our industry with a measure of a "milli bit" - its often not followed. Call some of us lazy. Where there is a big practical difference is if the "B" is or is not capitalized". A "B" = Byte and a "b" = bit. So, 1Mbps = 1 megabit per sec and 1MBps = 1 megaByte per second. But forgive me for being lazy.

Another long standing limit is at the viewers themselves which have been hard bandwidth limited to 1mbps. Even though the Network and Cache tab under the Parameter settings has a slider that allows a person to set his/her viewer's bandwidth to "unlimited", LL has already stated that setting the bandwidth any higher than 1mbps is of no value. I even brought this topic up with the Lindens at one of this Fall's now defuncted Friday Sim Usergroup meetings. I asked them if the viewer's bandwidth has no effective value above 1mbps, why does LL and Phoenix allow the parameter to be set any higher? Basically its only a JOY BUZZER setting. LL staff agreed that it doesnt make sense. I suggested they should simple hard set the network bandwidth setting to 1mbps so as not to trick people into thinking they can get more throughput. They thought it was an idea to consider. I doubt they did anything about it. BUT... basically it dont matter if you have a 5m, 10m, 100m, 1000m.... you are not getting more than 1mbps. Also, as stated, most of the content that users need from the LL servers is UNIQUE content (since the stuff that is not unique is cached is eventually cached in your viewer cache). There might be a little value in getting your cache filled by a proxied cache point but I would suspect that network throughput from LL is a critical factor to lag. In fact, if a Prox y Cache would be effective, LL themselves could put a farm of them in front of their entire sim server farm. Maybe they even do.

The survey questions are interesting in that if a lot of residents respond to it I would like to see the results. But, a good question was asked by Magnet and also a few more... Exactly "WHO" are you and the group you are representing? Has your group been hired by Linden Lab to perform this survey and also provide them with a strategy that Rodvik will actually follow to address the complete neglect and mismanagement that we Merchants have all been witnessing by the LL Commerce Team? Will you / your group be posting the results of this survey to the public? If so, where and when? You opened this thread in the SL Merchant Forum asking for our participation..... will your team be posting the results of the survey here in this forum? And to repeat what Magnet asked..... exactly HOW will you be able to help all us Merchants improve the SL economy and our ability to sell more and/or sell at higher price points? The questions seem fair if you want our participation and have made these claims of potential support.

On news year eve I was at an event where the sim instantly went dumb and crashed and myself and obviously the rest of the crowd got thrown off. The sim was laggy prior but since there was over 50 avatars and for some sims this is a lot of stress on them, i just thought it was normal lag. But the crash happened so quickly that I could not take note if the original symptoms were at play (i.e. increasing pending up and downloads and unusually low Up and Down traffic flows). Strangly. when I finally was allowed to log back into SL (took 10 minutes) and get back onto the sim that was still overly lagged - I opened up the Perf Stats screen and that froze my viewer instantly. I have to hard close FS. Over the past few weeks (i.e. over Xmas break) there has been a ton o live music events that I attended and I will say that I cannot recall a sim going dumb where I had evidence of it (as mentioned above - because I crashed too quick to tell). But it seems that since the release of the latest FS code and the release of the latest code that supposedly Simon released across the grid to resolve this problem (I suspect it was to resolve this problem), the sims are larger live events seems to have morphed into a new form of instability and the frequency of this form of instability has become much more frequent. I agree with you - I would like to know what is in the crash logs I keep sending the FS team. I even want to know if they even look at these crash reports. Also, the kind of crashes we are witnessing recently does not even generate crash logs for FS. When I crash, the viewer doesnt just shut down/quit. I get a friendly greyed out screen with two prompts asking if I want to QUIT firestorm or Read IMs and Quit. Since it was a friendly exit of the viewer, when I start up again, FS doesnt think a crash report is needed. This could be a completely different NEW problem, or, a new problem that cropped up with Simon tried to fix the old problem, OR, a new problem that cropped up because of new FS & LL sim code, OR, its the old sim instant lag hang that has morphed. OR... a new Griefer attack that FS and LL know about but dont want to talk about.

I have received a couple Private messages from watchers of this thread that are too nervous to post their thoughts publicly but have had similar scenarios recently at their clubs / venues. One of them said it has been real bad for their club and they suspected it was a new form of griefer attack. They have brought this up with LL and as suspected, LL has provided no response on the issue. The thought is that LL might be aware there is a new form of security breach on the grid causing this and LL doesnt want to talk about it. The club owners have recently implemented a group only restriction access and supposedly the problems have stopped completely. Seems there might be some merit to the theory. Might explain why LL has not been engaging in the instant sim hangs and the crashing of many avatars are venues. I read a blog from someone that reports on all the LL Weekly User group meetings and she mentioned that Maestro reported that the sim's stability has been good over the past couple week. WHAT EVER ! Clearly the Lindens are wanting to ignore this problem.

well when it comes to this bug (and the hanging crashing sims * several avatars at events at the same time) it seems that we would have more hope if we get Herman Munster to look at / fix the problem. LL seems determined to completely ignore this long standing an very frustrating bug they created.

For Maestro.... Here is my posted Firestorm JIRA on the issue with images to prove the problem: http://jira.phoenixviewer.com/browse/FIRE-7252 Here is another related Firestorm Jira reporting the same problem: http://jira.phoenixviewer.com/browse/FIRE-1248 From this jira you can follow links to related Jira's as well as a comment from the Phoenix team on the likely root cause: Whirly Fizzle added a comment - 24/Sep/11, 11:57 AM +0200 This is actually a LL server issue plus a V2/3 flaw. See https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-7129 Clicking the group info link from the toast wont ever work either if the attatchment is dead, because the window isnt refreshed. Opening the group info from the convo floater is the only workaround for now. And as Snickers already mentioned, I am sure there are several individual Resident JIRAs in the new Rodvik Gagged Jira system that you can search for and gather information.

So as bad as these instant sim lag crashes have been over the past 6 months, over the past few week either this problem has morphed into a new symptom or we now got a new type of serious sim stability bug on our hands. It is being noticed at a lot of busy events and the venue owners, artists, and SL resident attendees are becoming even more frustrated. At times during many of the larger events, a large number of the attendees at the event instantly crash (often including the singing artist themselves). It does not happen that ONE person crashes... it will be like 5 or 10 attendees just crash off the sim at the very same time. On Jan 1 I went to a new sim venue where they are having grand opening music events. About 40-50 ppl were at the event including me. During that time - 3 times I instantly crashed along with the singing artist and several others. The funny thing is that it is not all the attendees and the sim does not crash either. This has also been happening on several other sim / venue / events so its not just one isolated event. This new serious stability symptom is being noticed by the community and is often part of the discussion the artists mention while on stage (i.e. how bad the SL grid sim stability has gotten and their apologies to all those that have attended the event). I suspect this might moreso be a bug with the latest Firestorm release (which we already know it has a major bug with the music streaming). But since the LL Instant Sim Hang root cause has not been figured out - there is a chance its a combination of the sim code instability and the latest Firestorm code.

If Maestro Linden needs more information, NOTE TO MAESTRO.... The information around this bug is WELL KNOWN. Go sit down and have a talk with Andrew / Simon Linden. Go look at all the JIRAS on this bug. Go have a chat with the Phoenix Development Team and look at their JIRAs on this bug. The information you need has been handed to you on a silver platter from many sources. But stop playing the "we need more information" game and start figuring out how LL broken it in the summer and how they will fix it. This bug has been documented to death and if there is still a Linden that does not know about this bug - it says a lot of just how out of touch LL staff are with their customers OR how far they are going to play the "we didn't know about this bug" game.

Snickers, This horridly annoying bug of Notice Attachments hanging and not being able to be opened and freezing functionality in the Group Notices as well has been around not for almost 1/2 a year. ITS EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING... it reduces the ability for Event / Artist coordinators to effective send Landmarks to events to their group members and it reduces the attendance of audience members to events. This bug has been reported countless times. It has been fully documented in the LL and Phoenix JIRAs with tons of evidence and illustrations of how it fails. It happens ALL THE TIME.... and even LL and Phoenix development staff suspect they know the root cause (a problem with cached sessions). This problem was even brought up a couple times during the fall at the Friday Sim User group meetings - so I know 100% that Andrew and Simon are fully aware of this problem and its impact as we discussed this serious bug during the meetings. Yet LL is spending NO TIME focusing on this high visibility issue. They are so busy working on new features that annoying problems like this are supposedly just not fun for them to work on. With Rodvik forcing the closing of public Resident JIRA's, there is now no avenue for SL Residents to express their frustration that this problem is still not being fixed. There is no place now for SL Residents to check to see if LL has made any progress on this. And so now LL staff can continually play the "dumb role" on this issue whenever asked. The GAGGING of the RESIDENT JIRA has been a godsend for LL Support as they now can more effectively hide from serious SL bugs and pretend that problems like this dont exist. I do not know how long it will take for LL to fix this bug they created in the summer. I know that every night this bug is a major annoyance as I get a lot of Live Music Notifications coming to me with Landmarks attached that I cannot click. The only thing that works are SLURLs but a lot of venue owners have not stopped sending attachements to the screwed up NOTICES system. SO ATTENTION VENUE / CLUB / LIVE ACT / EVENT CORDINATORS: Until LL ever takes time to fix this 1/2 year old bug.... Consider the SL NOTICE ATTACHMENT FEATURE A BROKEN FUNCTIONS. DO NOT USE IT. DO NOT SEND ATTACHEMENTS WITH YOUR NOTICES. Many of your intended recipients cannot open your attached Landmark and are either focred to contact others to find out where the event is or simply delete the notice and not attend. (I know I have missed a lot events simply because I couldnt open the attachement).

Trinity Yazimoto wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: It's more likely that both you and Toy don't have answers, hence discount the value of debating it. i told you Medhue, its whenever you want, but not here. politic is one of my favorite topic. really, id say even im really passionated. :smileywink: And at some point that im not afraid to do it in another language than mine lol but there is a place for everything. and i agree with Toysoldier, this is not the place to display our politic opinion, neither for propaganda or proselytism. 1000% agree Trinity. Fear of debate with Medhue on this issue is the least of my concerns. I would have his head spinning and crying on this topic. BUT, this is not the forum to discuss the realities of Economic Models as well as their pros and cons and which countries have been more successful using which blend of these systems. But you wont engage with me here on this debate.

Medhue Simoni wrote: Toy, have you done any research into Austrian theory? Have you read any books by Mises, or Rothbard, or Hayek? These are the most respected economists the world has ever seen. Do some research buddy. If you have, then specifically explain to me why I'm wrong. Tho, I am a pretty silly boy, as I love doing research and learning about ecomonic theory. I especially love it when those theories don't involve coersion. Medhue, this is not the thread to discuss Economic models and systems, nor would I engage in a frank discussion with an admitted card carrying American republican with extreme beliefs in only one system and ZERO actual experience in any other system. This would be a fruitless discussions. Trust me that from your statements earlier - you clearly do not have a strong understanding in anthing but 1 system. I also strongly believe this is not the forum nor thread for you or anyone else to be posting your own RL political beliefs or promote your political agenda. SL's economic system / model cannot be directly compared to any RL economic system except for a very high level finger that points it to more of a capitalistic or a socialistic model. That being said, SL CLEARLY points to the Capitalistic model and has little resemblance to the other. Many of the factors that impact the VIRTUAL WORLD SL economic model are those that do not even exist in RL. One of the biggest is a near zero / greatly under-costed cost of manufacturing of goods. Also, as was said before, the best description of SL is that it strongly fits into the mindset and respective economy of an ARTIST ECONOMY where value propositions by many creators are not based on generating REVENUE! So lets get back on topic Medhue and keep RL politics out of this thread.

Completely agree with this and earlier posts that dismissed the silly statement that sl is evolving into a socialist economy. Any one saying this hss a complete misunderstanding of both sl and the principsls of economic models.

Czari Zenovka wrote: Toysoldier Thor wrote: Now, if you are a SL resident with a desktop that is too old to use the newer Viewers, sadly for you its time to upgrade your system. I know in this economy, for many every $ spent on non-essentials counts. At least for PCs your cost to upgrade MIGHT be very low cost since unless your motherboard is REALLL OLD, you can simply buy a reasonable Graphics card for as low as $20 (I just saw a sale on an ATI Radion 5450 for $19.97). If you have a motherboard that is too old to even support these graphic cards... well sorry but really is time to use your PC as a doorstop and get a good new system (there are systems for the $250 that will even do the trick). Yes, Toy, my MB is REALLLY OLD and cannot be upgraded. As Couldbe said, it does not have the SEE2 technology. ... S." When I stated in the past that some people were unable to buy new PCs I kept it generic and figured the ignorant comments were just that...ignorance based on one's own little world and/or lackeof life experiences. But when I bite the bullet and open myself wide open in hopes of bringing some understanding that not everyone is being "stubborn" about upgrading and still get the comments from some of you...you're past ignorant...you are cruel. Toy, I honestly didn't expect this of you. I will be in touch with those of you who have made positive suggestions, but this is the last I am going to say on this issue in the forums. Edit to correct spelling and grammar and to say further comments are in direct response to posters I had not yet read. I am a bit confused Czari why you are disappointed in my posting. I was in no way attacking you . I was just making a general posting to the thread about the up-coming changes. I am not advocating anything. LL has made technology business decisions that they MUST move forward or hold back the vast majority of their customer base. The old customer technology cannot be supported forever unless LL wants to risk losing their entire grid / cash cow SL to competition by dying a slow fragmented death trying to support a minority of their user base. There are options for those that have issues with their technology not being supported by LL's decision. Upgrade is one. The other is to move to another competing grid like IW that still supports the old V1 viewers - for now. But I am sorry if you somehow took my posting as a personal attack on you. Again - it was a general non-pointed posting about the situation,

As has been said in the thread a couple times and even several blog links to validate what is happening in the next few months, the Phoenix team is ONLY dropping support for Phoenix - not Firestorm. If you are one that hates FS and or your PC/Laptop is not capable of running FS then there are other competing V1 viewers that will be around for a couple more months before LL will break ALL current and older versions of viewers (including the current LL V3). In fact, just because Phoenix is not officially supporting Phoenix, you can still continue to use the current Phoenix viewer until this big manditory viewer code upgrade for the grid is required. Just dont go asking the phoenix team "why does this not work with Phoenix - they will no longer be helping you on these questions". In a couple months, ALL viewers - including the current LL V3 viewer will need to be updated with the new server side coding in order for you to exist feasibly on the grid - or you wont be seeing any rezzed avatars. LL has warned all 3PV makers about this deadline and LL, Phoenix's FS, and I am sure most other 3PV makers will release an updated version of their viewer that will support it. But you can be assured that Phoenix viewer will NOT be one of those updates. Now, if you are a SL resident with a desktop that is too old to use the newer Viewers, sadly for you its time to upgrade your system. I know in this economy, for many every $ spent on non-essentials counts. At least for PCs your cost to upgrade MIGHT be very low cost since unless your motherboard is REALLL OLD, you can simply buy a reasonable Graphics card for as low as $20 (I just saw a sale on an ATI Radion 5450 for $19.97). If you have a motherboard that is too old to even support these graphic cards... well sorry but really is time to use your PC as a doorstop and get a good new system (there are systems for the $250 that will even do the trick). If you have an old laptop with technology that doesnt support the V3+ code, your options are more limited since you cannot upgrade a graphics card on a laptop - its integrated. You need a new laptop. Yes Change of this magnitude can be painful for some of the userbase but there comes a time for a company, system, user population, etc. where old legacy technology, practices, beliefs, practices have to be abandoned to benefit the vast majority. This is one of those times and I 100% agree with both Phoenix's decision as well as LL's decision. The benefit is that this forced change in a few months will ensure that ALL users will once again be back on a common viewer code base where we all see have very similar fundamental features (i.e. MESH as a big example). How will this impact the Merchant community? Overall I think its a POSITIVE since at least for the MESH Creator community, a major hurdle will have been removed. Right now about 20-30% of SL residents still cannot see mesh. This factor impacts the popularity and buying decision of customers that want to use mesh for public spaces or wear mesh in public but are nervous about it not being seen by that large a population. Also, having all the population on a new and common code base in theory should improve viewer trouble support handling since anyone that is working on fixing code can focus on only one codebase. A more stable and better operating experience on the grid is a happier customer means higher commitment to invest in using the grid. That being said, there are still long standing V3 only bugs that LL has not addressed - the most notable is the Frozen attachments on notifications bug. With non-resolved bugs like this, there is no escaping it by going to the older V1. Those are my thoughts.

Spica Inventor wrote: Thanx Toy. But I couldnt find the 'batch listing update function' :-( After you log in and go to your MERCHANT HOME main page... Click "MANAGE LISTINGS" You will see your 1st page of all your listings and on the left side a checkmark box in front of each of your listing. Above all these listing checkmark boxes you will see one more... this top one will check ALL the listings on the page for you. Its immediately to the left of the "DATE" label. Do yourself a big favor before checking this "select all" checkmark, change your "ITEMS PER PAGE" to as large a setting as you can so that you can make bulk changes to as many listings at one time as possible. I set mine to 100 as I only have under 50 listings. NOW... click that "Select All" checkmark. All your listings on that page will be automatically checked. At the bottom of this page of listings you will see an option window called "MODIFY SELECTED ITEMS". By default it has already selected "LIST". Change it to "EDIT" and press "GO" A new Listings Edit Window will show up now... On this page you can select which field you wish to change for ALL SELECTED LISTINGS. We want to change the "SLURL" field .... so checkmark only this field. Now Insert the new SLURL location for this field to the new location. Go to the bottom of the screen and press UPDATE. This will change all the selected listings to this new SLURL but not change any other global field listing. If you have 100's of listings, you will need to repeat the above steps for each page of listings until you get to the end. As you can see, you are able to change many of the listing fields globally - not just SL URL. Hope that helps.

Ciaran Laval wrote: The advantage of a merchant classified forum is exemplified in the Land forums, where land owners basically do have a classifieds section and in the Help Wanted forum, people browse and see the information. There's nothing wrong with using your profile as an advertising tool. I don't really see why we should stop asking LL to do the right thing here in terms of supporting merchants. They did it for Land owners and they did it for events. Exactly my thoughts. If a merchant wants to use the unpopular SL Profiles to spam his/her friends with product information, that is his or her choice. Again, I dont think that vast majority of SL residents even know about their SL profiles or even go into them after they find out they had a profile. So I think putting any effort into using this as a marketing tool is pretty much a waste of time. It would be advisable that you use your time to promote your products on social media that is followed by a lot more ppl - SL populations on facebook, twitter, blogs, etc. But, LL treating is Merchants with the same level of respect and priority that they do the LandLoads, Land Managers, etc. by allowing us to have a CALSSIFIEDS SECTION would not only be a good thing, but FAIR ! This inequity in the SL Forums between how LL treats LAND Merchants with a 1st Class level respect and CONTENT CREATOR MERCHANTS with a 2nd Class Citizen level of respect is not new but it should change. As for Free product listing promotions taking $L from LL's paid classifieds - I do not agree with this statement. First of all, the paid classified are much higher profile (in theory) than a posting on an SL Fourm. The ads are seen on the actual MP site and they exist on the site for a long period of time AND they can be renewed and repeated as long as the Merchant wishes to pay for the ad. Second, if a Merchant (like me) does not use the useless MP ads, having LL provide me a free place to post a new listing is not going to improve / reduce their chance of getting ad revenue from me. Lastly, the NEW MP PRODUCT LISTING Classifieds on the SL Forums would only allow a NEW listing to be posted. As such, as I remember in the good ol days, this forum section was so popularly used that a new posting quickly slid back into oblivion of the forum within a couple days (out of sight out of mind) - similar to a Tweet slides away. As such, one cannot compare the two and LL should not feel that a free classified section for MP listings would be ANY threat to their revenue stream - in fact they would likely see a positive as they would be getting 5% commissions on Merchant sales that may not have happened without the free classified.