Please welcome Howard Linden!

This post gave me post envy

Great idea Eata!

While you're at it, add inventory Shortcuts, stand-ins for No Copy items. So we can put them into an Outfit folder and still keep them in their proper drawer.

They provide no mechanism for users NOT using voice to know who is. This makes it unnecessarily unpleasant to not use Voice in SL.

I don't expect them to remove Voice, but they definitely need to fix VWR-1317.

I endorse this product and/or service!

YES YES YES.. Break the windows.

Gimp/Photoshop style "floaters" using the operating system's windows, rather than virtual windows within the SL Client window.

I have 2 monitors. If the OpenGL window stretches beyond one monitor, I'll burn out my (fourth) video card within a week from overheating, and my Second Life will dissolve into a maelstrom of spastic, exploding triangles. What I need is a separate floating window for inventory, another for IMs, another for local chat, minimap, etc etc. Let me move all those edit floaters and tools, notecards, etc, all around on my screen.

For that matter, how about some inter-application drag and drop action? Copy a clip of text from MS Word, drop it into a chatwindow, or notecard. Drag an image file onto the SL window, and the upload dialog pops up. How bout being able to drag inventory items from SL to my OS windows. Textures (if fullty permissive) could just skip all that cornfirmation stuff and download where I pointed. Landmarks could become SLURL text or bookmarks, dragging a notecard would become a txt file, etc. Objects and such, would fail.

But on that note, fully permissive sounds, and animations, could download as BVH files and Wav files.

How many of us have wished we could take that full perm freebie animation, and save it, fix the shoulders, and reupload it?

here's a neat idea.

Maybe premium accounts can have a viewer that doesn't lock up a quad core with a a 512 videocard every 3 or 4 minutes for 20 -60 second hangs.

Ok, since you guys seem to have the forsight and vision of a deer crossing the highway and I don't have resources to do anything...I'm going to give you some ideas.

It's a little radical. Perhaps made very hard to do because of the very short sighted way you currently meter resources with "land" sales and game tokens (L$).

Anyway...

The L$ needs to be replaced with real money transactions that all filter through you. You become the ebay and paypal of the 3d Internet of the future by establishing yourself NOW.

You create a development team to make an IPG(Internet Payment Gateway) that allows users to create an account with your company and drop in real money in their local currency. You design into the program a simple way to transfer the money and methods of allowing it's use in or out of SL, confirm account levels and so on. Just like L, but it's their real money, transferred with service fee percentage of 3% (&conversion fees & local tax..so on). There's not enough banks on earth to put the profit in.

Yes, there are crazy laws and tax concerns. This is a huge start up and it can all be over come using existing resources and this user base.

Now it gets radical again.

The sim technology of SL becomes truly open source (the stuff not under contract). Let the kids put servers up on their colecovisions and take this stuff to the next level...beyond what any hired group can or what those opensim kids can. Screw the servers in the big picture. The idea is to get a slice of all transactions so you want the world bigger then you could ever make yourself.

The client becomes mostly closed source again. This is where you focus development on your end.

You also offer the current performance class of sims with stuff like havok4 physics that will be above most home run rigs. And the large collection of SL creations.

You reposition current simulator dev staff to create a team who's function it is to work with and stay cutting edge concerning the latest simulator projects while maintaining Hosted by LL servers keeping them viable and attractive in the short term.

Who cares where they play or on what. Let them use LL sub rented servers for now, but it's not the future. Let them play on xbox and iphone. Let the network code free and keep a reworked money transfer.

Do not allow SL creations to be taking out of SL (if possible). Any designer wishing to export an item can surly recreate it where needed. Let people hop their viewer into one world from another. They can take their money but not their content that they pay to have stored on LL database as a continuously available asset to the main grid.

SL already has the user base (if not the trust...) at this time. Roll with this plan for fame and fortune. Become the guy who truly invented the enterweb instead of going down as the rich guy who milked SL into a corner.

How do you sell this idea to the public? You tell them the truth. This money transfer interface allows you free up the grid to the world and the next stage of evolution.

Most of all you need to stop insulting and ripping us off before you fade to black. I know it's not too depressing for LL to crash and burn into a pile of money, but think a little bigger...

Les: I fail to see how hiding the L$ behind the pretense that it's transactions in your native currency, while keeping the transactions in unnamed virtual currency, will make a difference.

And they *can't* take the client closed-source. That's what the GPL means. They can release a new incompatible closed-source client but the open source servers WOULD still support the open source client.

You dont hide the L. You remove it. Paypal and ebay doesn't require you buy game tokens.

Think about the guy who invented ATM machines.

Is there really a future for LL as a hosting company? No, just a short term wheelbarrel of money, which is prolly enough to make them happy.

If you do it in native currency you kill the whole microtransaction thing that makes the SL economy actually work.

The L is cement shoes.

Real world earnings are down in every category Less then 1150 or so of these 16(?) million people make over 1000USD a month. What exactly is working?

Anyway, not to quarrel over this. All the little stuff can be sorted by bean counters, lawyers and engineers. I still see a gold mine and a future, but in fact i have to go spend time trying to figure out how to pay for my sim rent as my rates go up while my earnings per hour continue to fall here.

There aren't 16 million people in SL. There's 1150 real people and everyone else is an alt or a bot.

Actually Les has a good idea. If an outfit in SL costs 300 L$, just assign it a new cost of $1.13. That's still less than a Grande-Skinny-Half-Caf-Half Decaf-Fractagino-frappamocha at Starbucks. People can do the math.

If LL realizes that it can revamp the client to be non-open source, but the server to be open-source, if it controls the New LindeX (or IPG or whatever) then it doesn't matter who runs what, where, or when; it will control the entire SL economy, inside and out. Sure it means tax gobblydegook, but they were doing that anyway. This just means one extra CPA or something. They'll still make a killing.

Melikes.

If you're actually making paypal transactions to buy it, that L$300 outfit will end up costing you $1.36 ($1.19 * 1.029 + $0.30), and Paypal's transaction limits will add more overhead. If LL keeps track of the transactions internally and only cashes out your credit when you request it, then it's not doing anything but changing the name of the Linden.
They can't do that. The client is released under the GPL. Linden Labs can not change that. They can release a *new* client, but if the servers are open source the old client *will* be supported on the open-source servers.

You can already take inventory between grids using Second Inventory, Prim Composer or libopenmv(libsl). And thank goodness for this! You are saying that anyone can recreate something they have already created as if it is no big deal. With 4 years under your belt in SL you've never had a project that took 20, 40 or even 100 hours to complete? Why in the heck would someone then want to do it twice?

Good catch, Jesse, I missed that.

Les: the license granted to Linden Labs by creators is non-exclusive, Linden Labs can not prevent creators from taking their content out. If they change the license, it won't apply to existing content... and new content will simply not be created in SL initially... it will be created locally and only imported to SL as a complete object, so that the original will remain portable to other grids... which would put LL at a disadvantage. Why should they give away their content advantage like that?

I typo'd though:

"20, 40 or even 100 hours"

Should have read:

"20, 40 or even 100+ hours"

I am a content creator (toy maker), Jessie. 100 hours on a project is not uncommon. Look me up. It doesn't require a fraction of the time to port something already created.

Most content simply wont work cross grid as various grids will use various enhancements. Keeping content here is designed to slow the rate at which LL hosted sims lose value. This is already the state of things, right? You can't take stuff out. At least not in a simple way using the UI. The same idea with sculpts. Instead of giving us a proper model system they gave us something to lock the content in and keep the already created mass of models out.

They shouldn't care about content one way or the other really. In fact anyone who is successful here already knows they don't as stolen items continue to exist all over the grid. So why should they pretend to care? Let the police be the police. Just build the road (and toll booth) and let us drive. Let the grid grow into what it will be anyway. It's never gonna be a little locked box on one companies servers and it's surely not going to be isotopic, but have many states. There will be border lands where everything goes and themed, locked up grids with silly micro payment tokens and land sales like SL. Let them all use the labs IPG to pay each other.

This is all off track little things that can be sorted. (says the guy who hi-jacked the thread)

Create an IPG and make it part of the official LL viewer. I'm not a lawyer, I don't understand the limitations. Perhaps the IPG needs to run alone. This is why you have engineers and lawyers. It's not a show stopper.

The point is LL have a bunch of people lined up who know all about spending money for things made of pixels and sound. If they can get us using a new money system with them at the center and convince the rest of the world that their network code is worth continuing with then they will have resources beyond compare and maybe even live up to the so boldly worded mission statement of theirs.

Or they can keep milking SL, hawking volunteer made theme lands and distracting everyone with trite stuff about premium account benefits.

blah.

1150 users are using Linden Labs to cash out. That is what those statistics are based on.

A lot of people use SLX to cash out because:
1 ) it goes directly to your paypal with no wait.
2 ) the exchange rate is usually a little higher
3 ) they don't think it will be tracked by the government because they don't see virtuatrade as a real business.*

I thought those stats were weird too when I saw them, but then I remembered that half my friends use SLX and I know a couple more who used the Anshe Chung service to cash out.


*People think they don't have to file SL income on their taxes.


As for real world earnings, I've met people who make $200K USD a year in SL. O_o And I doubt they were bragging. Sometimes you just luck into the perfect niche market.



In other news:
Howard, could you make it so that the Permissions in the inventory show the perms of the object, not the contents of said object?
I sell scripted hair and people are like NO MOD HAIR OMGWTFBBQ. And I have to explain every time, noo the hair is mod the scripts inside aren't.

Not to mention that there ARE people being paid USD through Paypal, for large transactions.

I don't think it's reasonable to assume that Linden Labs could monopolize US$ payments in SL at this point. There's already competition for macropayments. Linden Labs doesn't even have a complete monopoly on micropayments... there's "virtual Lindens" changing hands back and forth on XStreetSL without Linden Labs seeing a penny of it... but they DO have enough of a monopoly on them that they could leverage them into a wider micropayment scheme on the Internet as a whole so you could buy digital goods outside LL with L$. Other people have tried to create virtual currencies... Linden Labs is in a position to do it.

Whether that's a good idea or not, I don't know, but it seems more credible than them pulling a 180 on their open source policy and turning THAT into some kind of virtual world banking monopoly in real world currencies.

No one ever said it was "credible" in that it would ever actually happen. I just thought it was a good idea. I admit that I'd be sad to see the L$ go the way of the Dodo, but it'd be more advantageous in the long run for LL to control just the SL economy, and not worry about the servers. Heh. Still just a suggestion.

Yes I would Love a stand alone version of Second Life as well. But since I am a building freak I would then love to have the ability to upload the stuff I made offline to in-world!

1 a way to filter out LMs from purchases (and dupe kill)

2 better texture/prim handling
the system should rez
1 all prims within 15 meters of the avatar
2 the textures for the prims within 20 meters in front of the avatar (+-48 degrees)
2 the rest of the prims within 100 meters
3 the rest of the textures within 20 meters
4 the rest of the textures within 100 meters


I am sick and tired of watching a 40 prim object 150 meters away get fully textured when the platform im standing on has not fully rezzed (oh and sometimes you get a "walk off the platform" problem when a rail (OR FLOORPLATE) was not rezzed and you are 1200 meters up because somebody thought a shop in LEO was "cool"

going to a shop should not require buying time on ILMs renderfarm just so you can see what you are doing

then you would flip to know that a miniserver (with no inventory) exists already

the trick if you ask a waterhorse is to connect to localhost instead of a remote setup

now if somebody would create the needed Item Package Files so you could save your creations and then upload them that would be Cool-On-A-Stick

psst im me inworld for details of Site Not To Be Named

I'm going to post again about MakeHuman (opensource parameterized human modeler), since plenty of people actually seem to care about the Mesh (thought I was rather alone).

So yeah, consider MakeHuman's help, consultation, whatever. I don't know what they'll say, but it's worth a shot. At least for guidance on how to make a good mesh, because seriously, the SL mesh is...so...bad.

Something I left out from the list in my previous post - the way aspect ratio is handled in SL is inadequate and can make the best images look lame, amateurish and ugly.

Snapshots and textures are stored as square bitmaps but frequently are not displayed at a square aspect ratio in the SL Viewer. Instead they are stretched into various different rectangular shapes. Look at the http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Limits page under Textures and you find the following:

Aspect ratios of profile, place, etc. pictures — all of these were measured at UI size = 1.000:
Search > All for "Classifieds", "People", and "Places" - 4:3 (256x192 pixels)
Search > Places and Classified tabs - ~7:5 (398x282 pixels)
Search > Land tab - ~7:5 (358x252 pixels)
Profile > 2nd Life tab - ~4:3 (178x133 pixels)
Profile > Picks tab - ~16:9 (288x162 pixels)
Profile > 1st Life tab - 1:1 (133x133 pixels)
Profile > Classifieds tab - ~3:2 (206x137 pixels)
Profile > Web tab - 1:1 (400x400 pixels) Note Scrollbars will eat 15 pixels
About Land > Options tab - ~3:2 (178x117 pixels)
Group Information > General tab's "Group Insignia" - 1:1 (126x126 pixels)
Some of these textures are shared (for example, Search > All place pages, Search > Places, and About Land > Options use the same image), so you should pick a well-balanced ratio and size.

So not only are there different aspect ratios, even if you manage find out from the wiki page, which aspect ratio to use to take a snapshot that looks RIGHT for one use, it will be WRONG when SL uses the same image in a part of the Viewer UI. What does "well balanced" mean in the above quote? It means choose between wrong for one, wrong for the other or wrong for both.

Apple solve this problem very elegantly in Mac OS X by allowing you to pan and zoom an image with one aspect ratio into a rectangular hole with a different aspect ratio, without stretching and ruining the image.

What is the justification for using so many different rectangular aspect ratios? Why not reduce the number and then when taking snapshots, add a selector for the use of the snapshot (profile, about land etc) so that people don't need to consult the wiki to do something that should Just Work without making a mockery of their face, their friends, their products or their favorite locations.