Blush Bravin

If they did it with 50% of the region they could then turn the remaining land into double prim lands. No doubt those lands would become as sought after as any of the prime coastal sailing lands today.

Yes, there's always an exception to the rule. I have done the same. I've always owned prime mainland. Typically I've gotten a fairly good deals on the land I've purchased because I'm smart about it having been partnered to a person in the SL land biz and watching how he managed his business. But I'm talking about the big picture and not the exceptions.

I kind of agree with your point in that I don't want to see mainland become densely populated. I want it to be beautified. Take the abandoned land that's there now and turn it into water or green spaces that are permanently protected lands owned by the Governor.

The biggest problem I see in your plan is that it does nothing to stop the monopolization of all the good lands by land flippers. They may not be able to buy all of mainland but they can certainly control all the good land unless a huge renovation is made to make all of mainland attractive. Just making the ugly mainland sell for 1L per parcel isn't enough to get people to buy those ugly lands. It's kind of like saying, "Hey I have a (insert the most undesirable thing you can imagine here) for sale, it used to sell for a dollar a piece but on special today you can have the whole thing for that dollar." Do you really think people are going to buy it just cause it's cheaper now? Unless those ugly lands are renovated with much more than just road access, they are going to stay unpopulated regardless of purchase price.

source: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Mainland_policies "We therefore may, in our sole discretion, move any parcel of land that is smaller than or equal to 128 sqm where such land is interfering with the enjoyment of a significantly larger parcel of land or region." Technically not banned but frowned on by Linden Lab. I saw Guy Linden come in and join parcels that had been cut into small pieces in a region adjacent to mine a few years back. But as I said earlier you can still find little "ad farm"ish parcels with ads on them if you travel along any roadway in SL for very long.

Yes, I am a she. And your description of a land bot is oh so much better than mine. The not talking was just the part that set off my bot radar, but I would always follow up because as you pointed out not talking in and of itself is not a true indicator.

The only reason I even began to explain was because of Lindal's comment which made it seem that she believed land bots didn't exist anymore. In my initial comment referring to land bots I didn't not qualify why I knew it was a bot. So regardless of how I knew, the fact is that they do still operate in SL and land flippers are the ones who use them.

I'd like to see them turn large parcels (or complete regions) that are unoccupied into water (properly terraformed) and made into protected Governor Linden owned land. As more land in the region becomes available permanent Governor Linden owned green spaces could be developed. Once enough land has been transferred to Governor Linden the remaining parcels could be made into double prim land. Doing this would revitalize the region and what once was barren unwanted land would become an oasis of sorts. I'm sure it would take an army of moles to accomplish this task. I have no idea if it's even feasible to try this. But it sounds like mainland heaven to me.

Now there's no reason to go insulting those poor baboons!

Perhaps you didn't read my full statement. "They don't talk to you even though you greet them as well as other indications. I wasn't going on silence alone. I have experience with bots from way back. You can recognize them. Parcels of less than 144m were banned as well (ad farms) but you still see them in world. Just saying that just because something goes against TOS does not mean they do not still exist.

I love my little corner of Mainland. I live in a very nice double prim parcel. I have two premium accounts, which I pay annually. With the sqm I get from those two accounts, I use the sqm for my store/home and a linden home that I use as a workshop. I pay no tier at all! If I saved the weekly stipend (yeah right, I'm a shopper as much as a creator, but if I did) I could cash in that stipend at the end of the year and pay for the next annual fee. My total out of pocket expense would then equal about $30 which I would add to the balance of my cash out. That's a bargain compared to what I would have to pay for renting the equivalent in a private region. I agree about the plague of land flipping in Second Life. It all starts with the auctions where land flippers are by far the largest group of people winning the bids. I have suggested possible measures to insure that flippers don't dominate the process in the past, but I don't see Linden Lab taking those kinds of measures because of their policy of hands off. One thing that could possibly help is if they made ALL mainland as attractive as the popular lands are now. Roads help to sell parcels but by far the biggest attraction is water. Water features need to be added to the landlocked central portions of the mainland. Flippers only gobble up the "good" lands, but if it was all good there would be no way they could buy all the good land. Something I'd like to see, but don't have any idea if it's even possible to implement is a no build zone between 100m and 500m in the sky. This would help with the abundance of sky junk that clutters the view. It would also put an end to those horrific towers that some construct in the hopes of getting their neighbors to sell their parcels for next to nothing just to escape the blight.

I Not sure if there's more than one type of land bot, but the type I'm referring to I've seen in action as recently as a year ago. I had obtained a nice collection of parcels in a region and when I decided to sell I set the main parcel since it was a nice 2048 and left the rest divided in case the buyer wanted the extra prims. When the buyer said they didn't have the extra sqm available I set the small parcel (512) for 1L per sqm. Within 20 minutes a bot arrived and purchased the parcel. It's easy to recognize them. They don't talk to you even though you greet them as well as other indications. I've not really been doing much with land in the past year so can't say I've personally had an encounter with one in that time. If this is type of bot is banned then I suppose they need to be reported.

I love my double prim land. I also love watching what my neighbors do with their additional allotment. I honestly don't have much trouble with lag though. Most of the lag I experience is when I go to private lands to shop or attend concerts.

Those areas (Bay City, Nautilus City, and the Zindra) were bought in auctions initially. I was around at the time and partnered to someone in the land biz. So I'm quite aware of how much those parcels went for, and yes, they were higher than normal auctions. The flippers who bought those parcels set prices by twice or even sometimes as much as four times the amount they paid in the auction. I addressed my comments specifically to the "prime mainlands". No one will argue that the glut of undesirable mainland parcels are very low priced. You can't give those away! Flippers don't buy those lands. Land bots might buy them for rentals, where you put boxes in the air, and that's about the only value they have. I really wish the Lab would turn their attention into renovating the bulk of the land locked mainland that is a vast wasteland. I'd volunteer to help do the work even! I agree that the recent actions of Linden Lab has been a good initial step in the right direction toward revitalizing the mainland. Though, I'm not seeing a huge difference in mainland pricing or availability when it comes to the prime mainland parcels. Prime has always been high priced and hard to find at a price your average resident can afford and still is. Perhaps there has been an increase in purchasing the less than desirable parcels that still have some type of connection to the water either directly or at least visually. All that said, I wouldn't live anywhere but on the mainland. I've rented private property and it was fun for a short time. I enjoyed playing with the estate manager tools, but that got boring, and then I quickly ran back to the mainland. So I am very interested in any work toward making the mainlands a vital, affordable, and beautiful place to live.

Someone asked when BoM would be ready in the animesh thread and this was Vir's response. Thought it would be good to have that info here as well.

You can see the same mindset here in SL. Just go take a look at Horizons or any of the so-called prime lands on the mainland. We can see the outcome here with many land flippers going belly up, but there are some with large enough pockets that sit on land for a long time waiting to get those exorbitant prices they're asking for the land. The reason land (prime mainland) is so bloody expensive in SL is because the flippers keep the prices artificially high.

I absolutely hated standard size mesh clothing. The difference between medium and large was ridiculous and the XS to smalls were all basically the same with very minimal differences, all of which were much too frail for my liking. The number one reason I jumped to a mesh body and rigged mesh clothing was so I could finally delete every last piece of standard size clothing I ever owned!!!! I'd leave SL before going back to such a standard. I feel that strongly about it.

I am a moderator in the Maitreya Lara Friends group on my main. I remember the screams of horror coming from those who make copies of the body to save an outfit during the last update. It was a rude awakening when they realized they'd have to loose all their outfits or painstakingly save each layer to the new hud and transfer it over to the new body. I can't think of worse torture. Thankfully I don't save many outfits. If I do need to save one, I find that saving the applier with a notecard about color choices in the folder is much easier to swap out the new body when an update comes around.

Honestly, when I'm out and about I don't notice a huge difference between mesh bodies in loading time. They all come in pretty quickly for me. Early on Belleza took forever to load but that was with the very first version of the body. Since then the mesh has been optimized and loads about the same as any of the rest. And since lag is dependent greatly on your own system and connection, while this is my experience, it certainly will be different for everyone because our circumstances vary greatly.

I'll speculate here. The old system skins were all 512x512. That resolution doesn't work well with mesh heads/bodies. Since the GA system skins were 512s I would think it a good decision to pull those especially with BoM coming. Perhaps, and again, I am only speculating, but perhaps it was a move looking toward the future and what it would take to update in line with BoM. I know if I were a skinner, I would certainly be thinking about what I need to do to prepare for it's inevitable release.

I'm hoping creators will release a new body that will have the base skin layer be BoM compatible with one onion layer (the clothing layer as it is not an exact copy of the body with allowances for butt and breast cleavage) that is applier compatible. But then sitting here writing this I'm reminded of the nightmare this is going to be if it's released without the ability to use appliers with BoM. How long will it take skinners to make all those system layers so that we can use our favorites skins with the new BoM bodies???

Ryan Schultz has done many really well written posts on the topic of Decentraland and blockchain. If your interested in learning more I recommend his blog. He is very good in linking his sources for all his facts as well. https://ryanschultz.com/tag/decentraland/

It is indeed true that you cannot find any system skins by Glam Affair in their in-world shops nor in their marketplace store. I don't know if any of her gacha skins have ever been for system heads, but that might be something to search the marketplace for as you can often get gacha skins very cheaply there. But as stated before you certainly are not limited to only using Glam Affair skins. You just need to find a skinner that makes system skins and also has body appliers in either Omega or Maitreya.

But you have to buy the land. It's not something that you can sign up for like a Linden Home. It's totally different. So what you can rez a sci-fi residence! Have you looked at them? lol

I tend to agree with you, but how is it really any different than the many horror movies that people frequent? I don't like horror movies and I would have ARd that resident the moment I viewed his residence. Mind you I would not AR anyone who does such things behind closed door and in accordance with TOS. But he clearly was not and was obviously doing it for a reaction from the neighbors. So AR it would have been!