Baloo Uriza

This makes a pretty compelling argument to block any Facebook apps that your friends use that you don't.

of course if someone else likes you your accounts will be linked anyways. but then you still don't understand that do you? How do you figure? Seems like that would associate that Facebook profile A likes Second Life Profile You, without associating it with Facebook Profile You.

Now for a reality check: if Second Life itself vanished tomorrow, I'd have to believe it would quickly be forgotten and people would just move on. And frankly at this point, there would be many people who wouldn't miss it either. A very large number would probably applaud its failure (LL has made a whole lot of enemies in their mismanagement of the system). Oddly enough, it seems like an awful lot of those who would applaud that post on these blogs rather than doing anything about it like going to another world. In fact, if SL self-destructed, it just might open up the entire market to other companies doing the job far better, far cheaper, and on a more competitive / cooperative basis. Yeah, OSgrid's population would explode like Oregon's did during the Californian Invasion.

Not quite, they weren't talking to Ontynes when they checked whether usage was suitable, When was the last time outsourced anything was right even anywhere near as often as a broken digital clock?

Hey Baloo. With all respect, I have to pretty much disagree with every point in that post. "Given how expensive any version of Windows is, I'm pretty sure this was more of a case of "The customer is always right, even when they're wrong." I mean, if you were Microsoft, wouldn't you cave into idiots begging to buy what is effectively a service pack?" I'd have to consider that pretty much a far stretch of imagination rather than presentation of reality. How so? Windows 7 doesn't really bring anything to the table that most people would consider a bugfix over Vista. "Though if that ad campaign were actually true, it'd be open source. Like the SL viewers." What does open source have to do with customer feedback and wishes? Listening to customers doesn't mean the company has to be total business idiots and throw their proprietary software out to the wolves. Mind you, I don't think much of Micro$oft marketing and pricing. There are better ways to do it. We saw what happened when LL open-sourced their viewers. It allowed TPVs to take over and jump-started OpenSim. I mean, duh, doesn't anyone learn from history? That one was predictable, even. Businesses go for changes that have a real high profit margin, which is why changes to Microsoft products have consistently been either things that are easy to implement but look flashy (like UI changes) or that which break protocols or formats to force an upgrade without any real benefit (like the ever-moving target of NetBIOS and MS Office formats compared to NFS and OpenDocument). When developers are also the users, and users are the developers, free of cost analysis forces that have a 40-year history of making poor development decisions in software, users get a better cost-benefit ratio out of the result, since they had a direct input in how the software was designed and put together. All in all the new v2 GUI brings a lot to the table, and brings it more inline with the GUI design standards for two of the three supported operating systems (with Windows, as usual, being gratuitously different from the rest of the world) Sorry, would you please show me where Apple, Linux or Windows has a "Me" menu? You completely ignored the part where I said that it should have hit the development community for a longer period of time before going into the stable tree. The overall arrangement of the UI, language used in some of the menus not withstanding, is a big step closer to being inline with MacOS and GNOME's UIs.

They were asked by people if they could use them in those circumstances, Linden Research did not say people couldn't use them for those things, they said they on the wiki page they may not support you if you used them in that way but people were phoning and engaging LL by Live Chat and asking if they could use them that way and were told yes they could. The wiki page and sales information alone were enough to tell you how those lots were zoned. I can't say I have any sympathy for people who read the limitations and interpret them as "Do whatever." That's right up there with people who park in bicycle lanes and then complain that their car was impounded, "But there wasn't a 'no parking' sign!" People applying reasonable intelligence to either situation understand why building up an OpenSpace or parking in a bicycle lane is a bad idea. It's pretty hard to argue otherwise, given the Lindens have already agreed through action. Linden Lab hired a clueless firm who absolutely encouraged that usage improperly. Fixed that for you. If you're going to fault them for anything in that, outsourcing support would be it.

Ansariel, Sadly the way the sidebar is coded makes it at the heart of Viewer 2. Really I think it is bettereasier to find a workaround as the TPVs are doing rather than planning it's total replacement. Fixed that for you. While it certainly is easier, it is equally certainly not better. The whole "cruft around old code we don't need" concept is one of the reasons why you still have early 1990s Windows NT infancy-days code floating around in Windows 7 that never gets called and doesn't serve to do anything except make binary modules larger than necessary and possibly slow execution. A better solution would be to make the sidebar a code module separate from the rest of the framework, thus allowing developers to include it or exclude it at will. This would necessitate porting code from 1.x for profiles, groups and other features that ended up in the sidebar as modules to be able to replace that similar functionality. Is it the same degree of difficulty as just leaving the sidebar in there and crufting around it? No. Is it better? Clearly.

However, some other things they weren't so lucky... and what bugs me on most of them is that we tried our best to warn them. The OpenSpace fiasco was of course the most glaring of these. Countless people warned Linden Lab, over a period of two months, that if they stayed with their plans we would close down sims. I did projections warning them of exactly what was going to happen. They didn't give a flying fig. So sims started closing down, and even then they didn't care. I told them exactly how many sims could shut down before they would hit the point of no return-- but they ignored us. This honestly surprised me. Not for what Linden Research did, they were only enforcing the usage scenarios they advertised for those regions; but what people buying into OpenSpace did. Heck, even the name is indicative of what it was intended for: Sparse regions with little, light weight development. Not malls. Not apartment allotments. Just space where acreage mattered more than object count or scripts. But one thing I know for absolute certain: the "whiners" here are absolutely right... and have been right for quite some time now. The SL population is one of the most passionate and outspoken I've ever seen. No, Linden Lab won't be able to say they weren't told. There's a difference between "being told" and "had a screed screamed at them." The latter is likely to get ignored (and rightfully so). I think if more people considered the corporate culture at Linden Research, and took some of the non-question-specific hints from this into account, their input might actually be considered valid and valuable instead of just another malcontent venting steam.

does microsoft do what their customers tell them? it's LL's product and they make it look like they want to, then you "buy" it or you don't. You're not from around here are ya. If you were, you'd know the Microsoft user testing operation is enormous, continuous, and directly impacts the next day's work the programmers are doing. The opinion of Microsoft's capability to thoroughly test their software is considerably less than complimentary at companies outside of Microsoft who have access to Microsoft's source code. There's a reason why Intel is equally active in the Linux and MacOS communities these days.

Actually, yes, Microsoft does. Or at the very least they listen. That's why we have Windows 7 right on the tail of Vista-- which was a miserable, customer-rejected failure. Given how expensive any version of Windows is, I'm pretty sure this was more of a case of "The customer is always right, even when they're wrong." I mean, if you were Microsoft, wouldn't you cave into idiots begging to buy what is effectively a service pack? Said idiots probably would have been better off switching operating systems considering the Vista backlash. They've done it before, and they'll probably continue to do this tactic until the end of time. See also: DOS 4, Windows 3.0, Windows 95, Windows ME, Windows CE 1.0... (Do you remember the Msoft advertising campaign that was focused on "You spoke, we listend-- youdesigned Windows 7"). So yes, Microsoft does what its customers want --at least to an extent. Though if that ad campaign were actually true, it'd be open source. Like the SL viewers. On the other hand, if Microsoft went down, a lot of people would majorly panic and chances are the computer world as we know it would change drastically... if not collapse. No telling what effect such would have on business... or even the world economy. Likely our government would take them over before they allowed that to happen. Actually, Microsoft did the same thing: The "Ribbon" UI and largely eliminating "Classic" views. The Microsoft user community just said, "Thank you, sir, may I have another?" while hating it all the way. You know, I'm probably actually one of the exceptions there, because I don't mind the sidebar. I mean, ordinarily it sits there out of sight (like a HUD) and it provides easy access to a ton of stuff. Now, I will admit that it was implemented pretty poorly (no surprise there), but the concept of a sidebar never has bothered me, and I've never really understood why so many people don't like it (of course, poor implementation might be the very reason). But I try not to be goofy enough to believe my opinion is the only opinion. Obviously a whole bunch of people don't like it... so if I were making the decisions at Linden Lab (hey, we can all dream), that would be one of the issues I'd be looking at right now... and I'd see if there was a way to reach a valid compromise that the customers would not only live with... but find useful. All in all the new v2 GUI brings a lot to the table, and brings it more inline with the GUI design standards for two of the three supported operating systems (with Windows, as usual, being gratuitously different from the rest of the world). Unfortunately, I think the Lindens jumped the gun by committing it to the mainline viewer without adequate time in the development branch for the community to work out user expectation issues with first. As for the 1.x GUI? We all just got used to it's gratuitously different for the sake of being different UI, the fact that it worked like no other software on any platform, yet fits a niche more akin to massively multiuser CAD or virtual reality than a game, very likely was a contributing factor to uptake and retention.

First, poor form for removing the content, especially when you made some good points. does microsoft do what their customers tell them? it's LL's product and they make it look like they want to, then you "buy" it or you don't. Apples and oranges. People buy Microsoft's operating systems and software largely out of ignorance that there are viable alternatives for what they do with a computer. You need an operating system, you don't necessarily need a virtual reality. i like the facebook thing. always thought SL itself should be more like a facebook 3d. And that's largely what most people use it for, the building aspect is almost secondary to the social experience. why not look at a ultra successfull concept like facebook and copy some of the ideas that made it that succssfull to improve your own product. Not only that, but these days, you pretty much need Facebook to be visible in the marketplace. i guess LL can afford to lose a few constant forum whiners while making their pruduct more appealing to casual users. although the complainers just keep complaining without leaving. If we could get the complainers to just leave, that would be an improvement for all involved.

OpenID: A clever ID which allows various datamining corporations (Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and many more) to IDENTIFY us and COMBINE our data so that it's more complete and more marketable. OpenID does not work that way! Goodnight!!

What about the ones without any amount of legitimacy? We have computer trespass laws in this country. Just ask Kevin Mitnick. Do you have any idea how many programmers are out of work in the USA? As someone who was born and raised there and who has moved to Tulsa to get work, I am painfully aware of the unemployment rate in Portland.

Last night when I checked your profile I wasn't logged in to SL nor to secondlife.com. This morning I need to log in to secondlife.com to see your profile ....maybe I hit it just at the moment you were twiddling with settings or something? (Or maybe my browser still had a "log on cookie" .... but I was reading the e-mail copy of your post, wasn't reading it here.) In any case, the "you have to be logged in to see this" affords about as much protection as a toilet paper hat in a rainstorm since pretty much anyone with an e-mail address can get an SL user name and password. It doesn't even require a log in for each profile you want to see ....log in once, spider at will! Google won't do that, but if I was a marginally legitimate (or worse) data farmer, I sure would. No data farmer with any amount of legitimacy whatsoever would do that.

I'm not on Twitter, and I don't intend to ever do so until I learn a language that can actually capture an intelligent thought in so few characters. You have a Facebook, you have your own website. Use those.

It's just the way cards work. If you ever have to give a credit card to be on file, then it must be able to accept recurring payments. This isn't Second Life specific or an LL policy, it's just how credit cards work.

In general, it comes down to "Can you use this card to do recurring payments?" If the answer is no, then you can't, end of story. If the answer is yes, then the answer is probably. See your cardholder documentation for details.

And as I said above, LL will be dropping support for your CPU in a few months. Cite source?

The problem with VBO on ATI seems to be Windows-specific.

I submitted a ticket, and am going to call my cable provider to see if the connection is the problem... but I saw this post and had to add my two cents in case anyone can help fix this problem or has suggestions. It's not your connection. Your drivers or OpenGL implementation is buggy or configured wrong.

This sounds like avatar impostors are enabled. This is generally a good thing: Avatars not in your immediate camera vicinity are rendered at a lower quality to increase performance.

Can you post the complete contents of the top pane of "About (your viewer's name)" and a screenshot of your graphics preferences? That would go a long way in troubleshooting this.

Peggy.Paperdoll wrote: 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. If your router is properly configured, or for that matter, is an off-the-shelf Linksys or other router that does NAT out of the box, your machine is unreachable from the outside world to start with. The vast majority of security experts that aren't Steve Gibson (ie, aren't trying to take your money and run) recognize that if it's running on the machine that's to be protected, it's not actually another layer of security. Having an indepentant machine dedicated to the task of handling and filtering packets is a firewall. Installing some software on the machine to be protected isn't a firewall, just snake oil providing false sense of security. What's your credentials, anyway? Anybody who hasn't had to think about this on the job for a living or who has no formal education in computer information systems isn't qualified to provide advice on the subject.

You already got the answer: The SL installer did everything you need to Windows Firewall to make SL work properly. The instructions about opening outbound ports only applies to people using a real firewall.

...and about as useless as Windows Firewall. Packet filtering and network security in general isn't software you can download so much as a network design methodology, you're still better off picking up a Linksys (or any other router capable of NAT and packet filtering, ie, any of them) at the store (even if you have only one computer) and using that. It will be easier to maintain, won't waste system resources, and gives you the added bonus of having a connection handy when a friend visits with their machine or if you buy a TiVo, Roku, Wii, Android phone, or pretty much any other device made in the last three years...