I remember discovering the ASU Johnny Cash sims last spring. They are lovely, especially the exhibit about the town itself, even if you are not interested in country music.

This is NOT the way I wanted to start my morning. This news brings back memories of being mesh-blind all winter long. LL did fix the problem in early January, but I had given up after several weeks of agony, followed by several months of third party viewer exile. Still, the bright spot in all this is that Second Life's technical side worked for weeks to make sure low-end users (That's what they consider me though I have adequate RAM) were included in the mesh upgrade. I hope they will do the same for steam. I'll be content with anything but not seeing objects that are there even if I don't see them well. Monetization in SL is a sore spot, and having to do a three to four figure computer upgrade, just to enjoy the world may price Second Life out of my range.

I have heard somewhere that if your friends don't consider you important enough, you kind of drop off their walls. You can change that around by asking to see more of certain friends posts. I'm pretty egalitarian about my wall. Consequently, it is full of junk.

I don't know why you give so much publicity to Coffee and Power. Yes, it is Philip Rosedale's baby and I guess that counts for something, but there is no way it is ready for prime time. I've commented about this before, so I went back to check the site. It is now a smart phone app (Let's hope it works with Droid phones) so there is no way to check what is advertised, but when I could see what was on offer it did not offer babysitting, house cleaning, a place to sell gently used furniture or clothes, or even give away pets to good homes, all services and goods for which there is a high demand. Moreover, for those of us who don't live in San Francisco, Coffee and Power is worthless because it is just not there. Last but not least, that outdoor office is a great stunt, but it has no power when it rains, offers its workers no privacy, not even cubicles, and it can't run at night. When was business 9-5? Sorry, Coffee and Power still has a long way to go. PS I am hoping this blog does not eat this post. I wrote a similar post and it got pulled yesterday.

I guess I'm one of the thirty percent who uses the official LL viewer. I enjoyed Viewer 2. I think Viewer 3 makes better use of screen real estate, though I miss having the task bar on the right. That's where my task bar lives in Windows. What I find curious is that Phoenix (and Singularity which I used last winter. It felt like exile!) is based on Viewer 1.2x. That means a large proportion of the population (NOT Firestorm users), is not up to Viewer 2/3 yet, though they are not mesh blind as I was. I am actually quite impressed with Viewer 3 for another reason. In December I got locked out of the Linden Lab's viewer because the mesh compliant Linden Lab's viewer crashed my computer. I complained in a Jira (It was not my Jira. I just commented on it), and some time in January Linden Labs fixed the problem. I was too frustrated to try a Linden Labs viewer but in March I tried Viewer 3.3beta on a lark. What a surprise! Someone had not only listened to customers but also had done a tremendous amount of technical work for us so we did not have to upgrade our machines or use a second choice (for me) viewer.

I think some of my view is clouded by the fact that I maintain a list of educational, library, and museum sims: Explore SL. Among educational projects, sims either develop or die. The losses on the U Texas archipelago hardly effected the list because they were mostly undeveloped land. It's very rare for a well developed and maintained educational sim to go under. Mainly it takes a kind of financial discipline. My alma mater is very good at battening down the hatches in this way. Their computer club had a sim where I did a lot of building in their huge and very orderly (It would be no other way!) sandbox. Later the government department in the College of Arts and Sciences set up a sim called South Hill. I recognized the name of the Ithaca neighborhood immediately and feeling perpetually homesick, headed there and took wonderful photographs. It had been a year since the department taught any class there and the sim went poof accordingly. Elihu Island which has a pretty good paper mill simulation is on my personal sim deathwatch list. Its parent institution does not have the same battening down instincts as my alma mater.

I think the biggest and saddest sim Deathwatch story is what happened to the UT archipelago. Texas state budgets which fund higher education and which means the grant for this archipelago run on a two year cycle, so the effects are taking a while to manifest, but take a look at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/UTMB%20Island%20Alpha/135/120/33 and zoom out the maps. All those islands at used to have islands between them that touched at the corners. Most of what disappeared never got developed, but it's a big story.

Roger, I found my way on to a lot of Japanese sims by searching for either chat camping or else running Japanese place names into the map search engine and then zooming the map out. Where there is one Japanese sim there are others. Hamlet, actually this is a very old story. The recession has decimated Japanese sims. About half the MagSL archipleago has disappeared. Mirai is still there and worth a visit, but the north and west sides of what was once a ring of islands with Mirai and Halcha in the middle are gone. Big pieces of Utopia Portugal (an archipleago of 27 islands including two educational ones) vanished. I had land there so it was news to me. There were great builds there. Nothing written here. Actually, I'm curious, how do you pick sims for deathwatch? I could mourn any number of sims that have vanished. I either find others or people start others. Though the numbers don't bear this out, that is what it feels like on the ground.

OK, warning: None of this is scientific, but I've rented estate and I'm a premium member whose 512 of mainland comes in handy, and I've watched landlords abscond (In this case I had rented retail space) and nearly absconded myself (I did give notice). I've also seen landlords come and go and sims disappear. I do a lot of walking around. Venture off the road on mainland or go island hopping one afternoon, or just climb over that jungle wall or cross that moat, and it won't take you long to realize people will buy their fantasy on a 4096. On top of it all, I don't want to call Second Life additive, but on those who get hooked enough to consider putting money into it, it has a hold at a very deep level. What this means is that most tenants and most tenants of whole sims who in turn become landlords are not sane. Some like to "spec land" and gamble. Some "buy" a whole sim for a lady love. Every time I get bounced by a security orb, I think I feel the crunch of broken needles and old glass vials on the ground in those seconds before the stupid device ejects me. In short, most SL land buyers are not quite sane. Addicts just aren't. They overextend themselves and then when medical bill comes in, the car in real life needs fixing, they have trouble explaining their passion to their real life partner, the sim or the 4096 or the 2048 goes poof. The other side of this is that somehow there still is a glut of land on islands. Linden Labs hordes abandoned main land making plenty of nice green places for a walk, but on islands and in retail malls it just sits there. It seems there is still always more supply than exceeds demand. And yes it would be nice if prices came down across the board starting with tier for mainland and monthly rent to LL for islands. I'd also like to see Linden flood the market with horded mainland. Dropping the cost of entry might let people stay in the game after they come to their senses or take a risk in funding a small retail space.

I am mesh blind due to older video cards on two machines, but I was still able to get around in Linden Wilderness...well sort of. The sims do degrade gracefully. The animals were mostly what I could not see, and I saw enough of them that the brightly colored cubes made excellent trail markers. Trail markers turn out to be very useful and alas necessary. A bigger problem was that the foliage textures took forever to rez. As someone who builds plants (They're low prim and easy to make), this is a disappointment because it doesn't have to be that way. By the way, I liked the bromiliads and the wild ginger, and yes, they look phallic. That's realism for you! The biggest problem with Linden sims, however, was that they are very much like those old robot toys parents used to give their kids at Christmas. The kid would turn it on, watch it walk around, and when the batteries ran out...forget it, if they did not all ready break the toy trying to teach it something new. The wilderness sims, what I've seen of them, are a one use toy. If you don't believe me, just walk off the trail. Why shouldn't you walk off the trail? There are no ban lines. There is mud or maybe quicksand. My avie was up to her neck in it. In Piranha she ended up under the dock, not that she minded since she has a swimmer HUD. And yes, there is not much about these sims that I can tell is original. If you want an immersive experience, I can suggest four or five sims (many of them commercial and recreational) for swimming, waterslides, skiing, para-sailing, a noisy club, shopping, basketball...you get the idea. There are sims where you can cross the whole island without a ban line or security orb in sight. And you don't have to stay on the path! You won't fall into the muck up to your butt, chest, or shoulders. I'd like to thank Chestnut for posting her images. The mud is still there even though she can see mesh, and there is no warning that it is soft.

You've heard this all before but I have a RADEON 9200 Series DDR x86/SSE2 graphics card and can NOT run any viewer that is mesh capable. My seven year old computer will not run any newer SL-capable graphics card. I have sufficient RAM for SL and sufficient disk space. I've dumbed down the graphics settings tried one or two other tricks. The mesh crash is consistent across a variety of viewers. The good news is that I don't see that many invisible avatars yet. That's how I see mesh if you are curious. When I have used a mesh capable viewer on another machine, what I saw did not look so different from the nonmesh capable world. That was last fall and things might have changed as in developers coming out with newer and better ways to use mesh. I have yet to hit an invisible mesh wall. Megaprim jungle walls that are not phantom are a bigger menace. I don't know what I'd do if I was forced to use a mesh capable viewer or quit SL. I hope I'd have the good sense to end my SL career. I hope I'd consider it a case of dumping bad software. I hope I could see past my emotional investment in a virtual world. And I also know that quitting SL (being FORCED to quit, not leaving it alone for a day or restraining the time and money I spend there.) would be a real emotional blow. I hope nobody forces me off SL. The fact is computer capabilities have not really improved enough for me to want to upgrade my hardware. A series of dfrags, a hard drive clean up, and additional RAM and the Radeon video card have all helped keep my computer performing extremely well. And there is a recession out there if you don't have a job. I can talk sense until I'm blue in the face, but I'm not sure my emotions wouldn't rule at the end of the day. I hope Linden Labs does put people like me in a position where they will follow their emotions rather than the cautionary voice of reason.

As it looks right now, Coffee and Power is a dud. Some of this could just be because it is small and West Coast based, and I am three thousand miles away, but the service competes against: Craigslist eBay Amazon.com Freecycle And here in Atlanta, it competes against FrumAtlanta, an email list in Toco Hills whose members swap or sell goods and services all the time. One of the most common services in demand is babysitting. I could NOT find a babysitter (not even in California) on Coffee and Power. Another commonly requested service is house cleaning. No one will clean my basement at Coffee and Power, and that's no one period, not just no one in the Atlanta metro area. If a person wanted to do babysitting or housecleaning, I'm not sure where he or she would advertise his/her services. There is no category for childcare or personal services. Similarly if I have useful junk to sell/give away/swap, there is no category for such merchandise. There are Little Luxuries and Artists and Artisans, but no place for me to sell or give away an extra box of size 4 diapers (Something someone on FrumAtlanta is currently trying to sell for cost.) or an old book case. There is also no category for pets and livestock. I don't think Phil Rosedale understands the small time market for goods and services.

Steve Jobs immortal graduation speech at Stanford is copyrighted to his estate and heirs. News sources can quote him due to fair use. Using his words in a commercial venture requires getting permission from the estate's executor and paying him or her. Siri is a commercial venture. Apparently Mr. Jobs did not will the copyright on that speech to his company.

I just want to scream when I read this! I'm one of those people for whom the mesh compliant viewers don't work. Can't we just fix the bugs in the current versions before doing anything new.

As of this morning and probably for a while yet, Petable Turtles are still in business. I bought food a few days ago, and am sticking it out to the bitter end. In fact, I am doing more than that. Monday night, I hatched out seven eggs that I had been saving (I'm one of those people who can't put eggs in the trader. It just breaks my heart). I reboxed one extra male but kept the other six young. I now have thirteen turtles. Yes, you know what that does to my food bills. BUT FOOD IS WHAT KEEPS Petable alive. I urge any one who loves turtles, if you have space and eggs you've always wanted to see as little shell babies, please hatch them. If you can up your food consumption, you keep Petable in business. And yes the server can glitch, but I'm going to bet against a calamity and on the laws of supply and demand. If we want a supply of live turtles, we need to demand more food.

To me Second Life is very much a second life. It is another place. When I am there, I wear another face. It is a bit like this world, but better. I get to do interesting things with my hair, sew my own clothes, and go dancing any time I please. Around me I see many middle aged adults with avies in their late teens and early twenties. They are reliving the youth they never had as they often listen to 1970's and 1980's music. This is a role play that is a guilty and harmless pleasure. There is much to say for a clean well lighted space, until it disappears. Then I miss it just like the building that was torn down. Right now I am looking for good places for newbies to walk around and get a feel for the capitalistic hurly burly of Second Life, but which have a bit more to do than just spend money (ie a board walk, dance floor, benches, portable toilets) etc... My memory is full of such places, but they are gone and I feel sad about that. I think if Second Life wants to increase persistence/retention (which has a J curve anyway. They really need to change the J curve's shape) talking to successful users (even atypical users like me) and finding out what makes a successful user is probably the first step to making an improvement.

I remember reading in Tanya a long section about intrusive thoughts interrupting prayer. I thought: "Hey wait a minute!" If pleasureable thoughts interrupt prayer, would the person tell his/her rabbi. If the thoughts were there for a reason, hunger, worry, and they made sense, would he/she tell the rabbi. These thoughts clearly belonged to a category of senseless and unpleasant thoughts, called "ruminative thoughts," an OCD symptom. The author of Tanya said to just keep prayign and rely on God's mercy. There wasn't much any one could "do" for OCD until the 1980's. I remember thinking: "Wow, there must have been a lot of OCD in the Alte Rebbe's congregation." This is not a black stain on any one, and the Alte Rebbe's advice was pretty enlightened and humane.

I'm sorry about the name change, but I changed it for use with another TypePad blog. Thanks for recognizing me, Effie. Even without a constitution, doesn't Israel have civil rights laws on its books? Most of the civil rights law in the United States is in the statutes and regulations. The 13th and 14th amendment were added to the US Constitution nearly a hundred years before Congress passed meaningful civil rights legislation.

OK, this probably qualifies as dumb question of the month, but I've been dying to ask it anyway. First, telling grown women whom to date or marry is a private issue. Family members, friends, clergy etc... have every write to express their feelings on the matter and even do so publicly. The women can listen or not as they choose. If that was all that were going on in Israel, I would just shrug. Jews both male and female have heard such advice for generations. I think something more is at play though. When you tell young Jewish women not to work with, serve their country beside, or associate with Arab Israeli citizens, I think what you are really telling everyone is not to hire those citizens or serve them in public accomodations. Again, any one should be free to suggest this. It's political speech, repugnant though it is. In the United States, however, following such advice would be criminal. We have civil rights laws on the books. Now here is my question: Doesn't Israel have civil rights laws? Why is no one talking about enforcing them, should those who hear this rhetoric decide to turn it into action?

I'm not sure about the difference between "multi-lifting" and distraction. If there's a bus I need to catch, something on the stove, or a wall of feline fur between the screen and my eyeballs, even if that wall is purring, I'm can't be fully immersed. On the other hand, the fact that Second Life requires its own browser and presses my buttons way below the rational level, works against it being more than augmentation. Lately I've been making turtle necks and thigh highs (You can't have pantyhose or tights in Second Life unless your avie gives up her panties) because much of Second Life in December has snow on the ground. When my avie is improperly dressed for the cold, I freeze with her. If my avie crosses a swaying bridge, I feel motion sick. Though I do play Second Life casually (and instrumentally) to use it as a radio or to let the avie dance while I am in and out tending to other things, I get a lot less out of it when I do that. It doesn't augment anything except to add a sound track.

Ophelia, I respectfully disagree with you with regard to friend requests in Second Life. I currently have an unpruned, two plus year old, "friend list." Display names are wreacking havoc with it, but that is another story. While I always ask before friending a fellow avie, I NEARLY ALWAYS accept random friendship requests. I do this for two reasons. First, Second Life friendship is NOT THE SAME as real world friendship. It is often instrumental. I know that the person randomly friending me, isn't doing it because he/she likes my green hair or thinks short avies are worth knowing. I know he/she is probably a promoter. Guess what? That is just fine with me. Second Life is often empty, and while this is great when I feel anti-social, just want to take a walk, or need a quiet sand box, there are times when I want company in the worst way. I'm limited to twenty-five groups, but my friends list is unlimited and those "friends" send out notices to smaller clubs, mostly Brazilian ones at all hours. If I need a place to go where my avie can dance and I can hear some music, I have an endless barrange of teleport requests, access to some fairly good DJ's, and a variety of music and venues any time I need it. As for the friend with the exposed member, I've just never seen it happen. Most of my friends are "in business" and fairly professional. I have seen newbies show up with their Louisville sluggers. Usually I make these guys the butt of a joke: "Oh look he brought his bat and balls. Too bad the stadium is down in Fair Chang." or "Too bad we're not playing baseball today." I figure this is better than reporting.

I want to build a public library that actually serves the ones behind the avatarim. This is a doable dream though I'd have to shrink my garden nursery on my 2048 if I wanted to build this project on ground level. I could offer you your hometown paper, access to homework help for your kids, links that would help youfind your favorite best seller at your local library. My problem with the dream is time and also where my sim is located, I'd have to do "collection development" in both English and Portutguese.

Stop by QC-L Forever! A Second Life to read the misadventures of Iyoba, an avie who thinks her own thoughts but shares the memory of One Who Thinks She Knows. QC-L Forever! A Second Life is part of QC-L Forever! It's fun to divide your blog into sections.

I don't think I really care one way or another what goes on in Linden Labs front office as long as the platform functions and seems to be improving, and so far, I would say that is the case. I have fewer "force quits" and downages. I've been ghosted once in the past six months. The only reason all of care about the Lindens is that in the MU** tradition, they are the Gods and Gods make themselves visible. By contrast, the folks in Yahoo/Geocities and MSNGroups (Yes, both of those services are defunct.) executive suite stayed hidden. On a large platform the company running it is a monopoly landlord, and unlike a typical small apartment complex, you really don't know them and they also often have capitve tennants. In real life you can theoretically pull up stakes and find another apartment. With plain web space, you can also find another provider and put down virtual stakes fairly easily. This captive audience and monopoly makes for an adversarial relationship. We are powerless, and fortunately they are distant. As long as the lights are on and the walkway is not full of holes, the machinations among the super (manager in other parts of the country) and owner aren't really going to effect me.

I agree with Ann. More Lindens for the dollar is a good thing! Of course, I'm not a big shopper, but I have to pay the rent on my 2048 and I guess I better make some more clothes textures and start making more clothes.