I stayed in the pines where the sun never shines , and I shiver when the wind blows cold

Dale Innis takes on viewer 2.0, and why Imprudence is better in the long run. Can't say I really disagree, though the landmark/picks hate in the comments seems--to me at least--to come out of nowhere. Picks unnecessary? To whom? Landmarks a power-user feature? Wha?

Adric Antfarm, in fact, has the single most baffling comment (to me, anyway) ever:

Landmarks are annoying and their auto offer by merchants should be punishable by castration. Once you get a good number of them they are near useless. The same places offer the same ones to me over and over. Do they overwrite? Of course not. They Tribble.

Putting aside the use of "Tribble" as a verb, though I get what he means...that seems ever so slightly harsh. Auto-offering landmarks simply means you can delete the ones you have. Why is this bad? There's a discard button for a reason; that goes double for the Trash feature in inventory. (Adric, try it, it's to die for--you move things to the Trash folder, and then...you can throw them away! It's amazing!)

End of Aprille, we'll have a new Nightmare in theatres. The down side? It's being produced by Michael Bay. Yeah. Michael Bay; that Michael Bay. The patron saint for overblown productions and reckless spendthrift producers everywhere. I have fear. But I'm still willing to give it a shot because of Jackie Earle Haley. He was a magnificent Rorschach in Watchmen; so yes, I'll go to the film for him alone.

At least, this is one film that Michael Bay can't ruin if the set explodes while two teens make out frantically on a car. Because really? That sort of thing happens in Freddy's world all the time...

You can nearly hear Russian gamers screaming from here about what happened to Allods Online, the country's latest free-to-play game. They may go down in history as the first game ever completely and totally killed by introducing an item shop. Moral of the story? Game companies, don't do it. Your players will desert you and two years from now, they'll write stories on how you went wrong, and by how much.

Meanwhile, over at Jezebel.com, they're talking on how female avatars are just asking for it, with their sexy clothing and their big boobs. Which--well, consider the source; isn't Jezebel.com the last blog to trumpet the she deserved it card? Aren't they supposed to be more female-positive, or something?

Also confusing, for the article: they mention Neelanjana Banerjee's foray into Second Life two years ago, and quote a passage from that article:

"[Wagner James] Au estimates that 40 percent of Second Life residents come in world looking for sexual activity, something that takes a lot more skill than I could even muster up—the sex on Second Life comes from users hacking into animations meant for other things entirely, like riding a motorcycle. Yet when I mention the over-sexuality of my dark skinned avatar, Au says that in a skin like that, I would be pretty much asking for it."

Um...I'm not entirely sure where she got her information from, but no sex animations in SL require the users to "hack into" anything. More to the point, there might be some low-end ones that look like someone is riding a motorcycle, if one takes away all context of what the avatar in question is actually riding, but...really, bring another avatar into the picture, I'm sure it will become clear.

More to the point, there are animations for everything in SL--dancing, being held, firing a chicken gun, cuddling, painting, sculpting, swimming, flying, plus every single page of the Kama Sutra and then some. Why is she stuck on this concept of "hacked" animations?

In fact, actually, now I am curious--where did she get that concept in the first place?

In other news, updated Snowglobe recently; not the 2.0 trunk, but the 1.3.1 version. It rezzes textures and sculpts faster than 1.2.4, but the down side--and it is a LARGE down side, for me--is it's highly unstable.

I move--and Snowglobe freezes. My AO shifts--and Snowglobe freezes. I port--and Snowglobe freezes. I do my typical 360-degree turn, automatic standing in place, to "look" at everything so I can rez things in--and Snowglobe freezes.

I won't go into 2.0 again on anything until the Labs make it mandatory, but so far, Emerald, Imprudence, Kirsten, and Snowglobe all bork since 2.0 went live. So it's either "use 2.0 or else"? Is that my option? "Or else"?

And another couple of JIRA files for those using 2.0. First one, inventory totals are not reading right; and the other one reveals problems in the places tab, for landmark sorting. Vote if you can.

Now, Fawkes and I have been discussing my off-and-on experiences with viewer 2.0. Having now talked to him, he reports that this:



is also what he saw. So...I guess alpha mesh works for 1.0 users as well?

Also, let me say this. What I said up there about not going back into 2.0 until the build gets better? I'll break it down for the Lindens, flat out: if they do not bring back translucent windows, I will not use 2.0. The last time the programmers pulled a bonehead stunt we had to literally attack the internal code of the browser itself to insert a line making windows revert to 70% opacity when not actively clicked.

This is my bottom line. It may seem like a frivolous bottom line, but there it is. Bring back 70% opacity on the chat windows, or I won't be in. It is not worth it to me and the browser is useless in all regards until that happens.

Flat. Out.