AnnMarie Otoole

I heard a rumor that there will be no mainland, that would be a sad omission. Any confirmation?

Yes you can, depending on your computer, communication, graphics etc. I often run up to 4 live avatars plus 2 bots simultaneously.

Its the "Be popular and get rich quick" business that budding entrepreneurs can start with minimal skills, not realizing that to be successful requires a dedicated team working 24/7 and lots of L$ to support it for a year or two until they establish a reputation and hope to break even on advertising and donations. The big get rich business is supplying the equipment they think is necessary.

My main SL account was hacked and nearly $2,000 extracted from my credit card. I am the only person in RL or SL who knew the password so it had to be hacked by someone with data file access internally in LL. LL were very cooperative and prompt in restoring my accounts but never gave any feedback on how it happened. I would hope the had sufficient internal logging to figure out who did it. It is not impossible that hacking software could be built into the viewer but with extensive testing on all releases it would be a monumental task to hide embedded hacking programs.

My account was hacked about 9 months ago. I'm the only person in the RL and SL that knew my password so I believe it has to be an employee in Linden Labs who did it or gave the password to someone else to do it. It was not a password you would find accidentally. Linden Labs were very cooperative and thorough in restoring my financial status.

The best way is an off-world database using http access. You can automate the process with an off-world database that recoreds all the owner UUIDs and object model numbers then use an in-world script to distribute the latest version to all customers with expired version numbers. Scripts in the object can access the database periodically to get your latest advertising information. Doing it entirely in-world is not so easy.

I've made good money in SL by doing scrpting. BUT if your aim is to make money instead of having fun, SL becomes a chore you would be better off distributing newspaers in RL and buying L$ with the proceeds. Some years ago I calculated the US$ income I was making per hour of scripting time and figured I was earning less than 10 cents per hour.

Its the "Gold Rush" mentality that explains the population graph. I was a monitor in the early days when there were 30,000 people a DAY joining SL, the two main questions hatchlings asked were Where do I go for Sex and How do I make Money in SL. There were news stories back then of residents making enough money to quit their day job and get rich in SL Although very few made that kind of money it triggered the gold rush. Despite the LL puritanical objection to the sex business it is probably the biggest remaining attraction.

I've been using off-world database systems extensively for over 7 years. They can allow very powerful marketing tools like allowing COPY and TRANSFER on a L$1,000+ object so existing customers can give free trials to other people. New customers can try them free for a month and pay a fee if they want to license it to their avatar. You can also put them on sale in Marketplace for L$25 (to discourage nuisance downloads) and avoid LL commissions on the final sale. The database costs me nothing, it is using a small portion of capability in a commercial website. Many of my products would be impossible to do without the external data base. I guess the best security is to check the age of the vendor and take the risk if the product is effective.

I've made good money in SL by doing scrpting. BUT if your aim is to make money instead of having fun, SL becomes a chore you would be better off distributing newspaers in RL and buying L$ with the proceeds. Some years ago I calculated the US$ income I was making per hour of scripting time and figured I was earning less than 10 cents per hour.

Not sure if this is the right place for progress reports? My vehicles and some customer purchased items are 95% shut down by BUG-5530, now MAINT-3897. Is there any way to check progress on this and perhaps ETA for fix?

In the past, the viewer would maintain the last direction and velocity of avatars or objects exiting a sim until the receiving sim took posession and project them into the destination sim using the local client surrounding data. This creates the familiar "rubberbanding" effect where the object would jump back to its correct location when the receiver took posession, which would be minimal for a fast transfer but quite dramatic on a delayed hand-off. Recently I noticed a change. On a percentage of sim crossings my avatar would hit an invisible brick wall at the sim crossing and bounce back about 5m. Flying or walking across the boundary was impossible but eventually it succeeded. It "appears" as though crossing is being prevented in the client until the new server is ready to accept the avatar or object. Does anyone know if this is an upcomimg change or in beta testing? It is causing me some serious related problems. EDIT. It appears my suspicions were correct, I notice a notification message popping up "Unable to create pending connection".

I reported a parcel with 2 griefing objects. I discovered the problem when my computer started to freeze, including the clock and mouse. I turned on the temperature reporting on the graphics card and sure enough, the closer I got to the objects the faster the temperature rose until the computer would freeze. Having burned out 2 previous graphics cards on SL (running 3840 x 1080 resolution with 70+ fps) I got the hell out of there and reported it to the Lindens. They responded rapidly and removed the objects and the resident account. By studying the object a bit at a time from a distance I analyzed its construction. There was nothing magical about it, it had no scripts and nothing in the anti-griefing controlos that would prevent it being re-created however I'm not about to reveal its construction. The responding Linden was apparently able to analyze it safely by de-rendering, or somehting equivalent, so the graphics card was not struggling to resolve it. I have no doubt that a gaphics card with marginal cooling problems could be physically damaged by this object.

If you "can't" use PayPal and a wire transfer is not practical I'm sure I've seen advertisements for in-world brokers who will accept your Lindens and convert them to some form of cash, check, or direct deposit. Obviously this is going to cost you some percentage and fees and you run serious risks regarding their integrity and your security.

Caleb, can you give an update on BUG-5530, now MAINT-3897, objects disappearing after sim crossings. I heard you were going to discuss it at a meeting last week? I have a big project on hold and some broken projects with paying customers (who don't yet realize it is broken). Another resident has similar problems, added as a comment in BUG-5530. Thanks, AnnMarie Otoole