Hello, Vint Falken.

We have identified that you reside in a European country. Accordingly, your next bill will reflect Value Added Tax (VAT) charged at the rate specified by your country. Please note that VAT applies to all payments to Linden Lab such as land sales, monthly maintenance fees and Premium subscription fees.
If you are eligible for a VAT exemption, you may submit proof of your exemption status, such as your VAT number, here:
https://secondlife.com/account/vat_enter_id.php

If you have other questions, please read the VAT FAQ:
http://secondlife.com/corporate/vat.php

You can also contact us via the support portal:
http://secondlife.com/support

Best regards, and thank you for your continuing support.

Linden Lab
Creators of Second Life

I don’t pay bills to Linden Labs, but I assume some are going to serious dislike this:

1. VAT (or BTW, omzetbelasting, Belasting op Toegevoegde Waarde in Dutch, TVA in French) rates in Belgium are at 21%. Sweden is even at 25%. So everybody who does not own a company or at least has a VAT number, will see the monthly sum they pay LL rise steeply. Poor European landowners. :(
2. American law, american PG rules, USA or UK phone support number, … but Belgian taxes? *cheers* (not)

And of course, nothing on the Official Linden Blog.

Another fun thing is that if you go to Linden Lab’s - corporate - VAT information page, you find only Europeans are to pay VAT. What about the rest of the world, huh?

Who should be charged VAT?

Currently, only Residents who live in the European Union are charged VAT. The EU allows people and companies to register for VAT exemption, which we abide by.

And the warning that you better don’t lie about your whereabouts:

When you registered your account, you told us what country you live in. If that country is in the EU, then VAT is applied.

If you say that you come from a different country that doesn’t charge VAT, it’s very likely that discrepancies between your IP address and your declared country would get caught in our risk detection system and may cause your account to be flagged for review or even suspended

What are the items for which Linden Lab charges VAT?

Anything that you pay Linden Lab for will have VAT applied. This includes:

• Premium account registration
• Purchases from the Land Store
• Land use fees (tier)
• Private Region fees
• Land auctions

What are the items for which Linden Lab doesn’t charge VAT?

Transactions in L$ between individual Residents are not subject to VAT.

Tags: billing, linden lab, second life, tax, VAT
Categories: SL/RL crossings, Second Life
96 Comments »

Now, as I do think the ‘IBM strike in Second Life’ is a neat example of gathering people over real life country and even continent boundaries , I was curious at how an organized* Second Life strike would be executed.

So after reading this post on the IBM protest blog, I couldn’t help myself and TP’d to the Commonwealth Island to start my journey.

From there I left for the IBM Business Center where I saw… a lot of noobs. Really. Despite rather clear instructions from the organising UNI Global Union, a lot of the protesters did not know how to put on their shirts, hold their protesting boards and do basic communications and travelling.

My favourite noobs were the ones with their ‘holding strike sign’ pose activated without holding a protest placard. I stopped counting at eleven. :p

I wonder: did the IBM staff not get any avatars with last name ‘IBM’? As I did not see anybody with a last name hinting at being employed by IBM. Or did all prefer to generate alts for this protest? Either way, what is the actual credibility of the protest if it are ‘just avatars’ without a known owner to back up the avatar’s voice?

UNI Global Union writes on their blog: ‘Confirmed the participation of 900 avatars from more than 18 countries, representing IBM employees worldwide, concerned citizens, solidarity groups, unionists, workers from other IT companies, employees representatives from many European and international metalworker federations!!!‘ But it was nearly impossible to find out who were all present, as profiles were left empty and IMs mostly unanswered.

To my surprise, there were at least 4 avatar representatives with first name ‘abvvBelgium’ walking around, which means they are from the belgian socialistic union ABVV.

I said ‘Hi’ in three languages to all four of them, but none replied. I’m tempted to blame the ‘not enough awareness about how IM/main chat works’ and consolidate myself with the fact that they didn’t talk in main chat either.

As far as I know, IBM is just ignoring the strike / protest and Eightbar stays silent about it too. As it’s always nice to give people good advice they absolutely do not need, I wonder, how would you react when you were IBM? As - I think - Nobody Fugazi said: ‘This is probably a virtual worlds first IBM did not want.’

The strike took place in a virtual still experimental world, which makes I’m heavily doubting between the following two options, but both come down to ‘play along’:

1. Give them their 1k back. Why - looking at IBM’s yearly profits - make such a hassle out of that? 1000 Linden Dollars / Italian employee isn’t all that much?
2. Gather your still loyal avatars, outsource - just to annoy the unions even more - the creation of security staff combat uniforms - you know: helmets, stunguns, baseball bats or the like,… -, armoured trucks and water canons. Outlaw street meetings and give those avatars the virtual goods mentioned above, a griefing for dummies course, full building and script rights to the sims - which should be damage enabled - and allow them to do whatever necessary to end the protest.

Vint, a communist? ;)

And you, what would you do when being head PR or whatever equivalent department of IBM faced with this type of protest? Ignoring it just seems such a silly and boring solution. :p

More pictures in the IBM strike / protest in virtual world Second Life Flickr set.

*Daily log in behaviour into SL during the real life payed job time isn’t considered striking by Vint.

Tags: IBM, second life, social protest
Categories: SL/RL crossings, Second Life
6 Comments »

For all those who care about Paradise Lost and the Scheherazade sim: hear hear! Helena has communicated! ;)

Loki Clifton received this by e-mail:

am trying!!! LL has given me some probs (too long story to explain, but I will be back!!) kiss kiss hele

It is genuine Helena Kirkorian style: no interpunction, strange English grammer and a ‘kiss kiss’. So I guess I was right*, and she did not willingly leave us without saying goodbyes?

She is coming back, and in the mean time we can just continue to kick ass on our own. Paradise Lost is not lost! ;)

* I was guessing at Second Life account troubles, ‘put on hold’ because of suspicious money transfers after the gambling act, because of Linden random f*ck up or because she’s just to hot looking for Second Life.

Update:

Got this from avatar Helena Kirkorian as an in-world IM:

Helena Kirkorian: (Saved Sat Sep 29 07:47:13 2007) hi baby!!!

Woot!!! :d

Tags: helena kirkorian, paradise lost, scheherazade
Categories: Paradise Lost
8 Comments »

1. mappa novus - second life maps & search - They say: ‘… a single click shows you the historical ownership and pricing data from our database for the parcel. Now you can see how long the land has been on the market with the current owner, and how the pricing has changed.’
2. Thoughts on Second Life’s Profky Neva Second Thoughts - LMAO. Prokoly blog: the study on why it’s such a annoying pain in the virtual ass. ;)
3. InformIT - Exploiting Online Games - Cheating Massively Distributed Systems - I’m not planning to rob an SL bank, still it does make me curious. For my SL rezzday? Anybody? *presses the ‘cute’ mode on the ear’s HUD* :p
4. Second Stindberg - Bittersweet Symphony - ‘The message I received from my Human was unmistakable: stay clear of such follies! But who is He to demand such things? I owe Him nothing. I have not asked to get placed into this world in the first place.’
5. Catwalk Kitties on Flickr - The owner pointed this one out to me. Kitties + fashion avatars in RL. Competition for our Neko’s? ;)

Categories: Links
5 Comments »

The nature of our - brave new virtual world imagined and created but not owned by it’s residents - makes that poseballs are almost indispensable. Only to often unused pose balls are lingering around when you want to snapshot. When all - typing ‘/1 hide‘ - fails those evil ones force you to either live with the ugly red dots in your snapshot, spend a lot of time photoshopping them out or to choose another - less good - composition for your photograph.

Hiding Pose Balls

But there is a solution (which Smiley Barry pointed out to me when I was complaining about those round balls of SL-photography-doom) that never fails:

1. Activate your ‘Client menu’. (Ctrl-Alt-D)
2. Go to ‘Rendering’ and toggle ‘Hide selected’.
3. Select those obnoxious poseballs, advertisements, … by holding shift and then clicking them. Did you select a wrong item? Just click it again whilst still holding shift.*
4. Open your snapshot menu and start shooting Second Life photographs.

Note: I’ve tried this on avatars and prim clothing and it does not work on those. Bummer. :p**

And some other good advice from Smiley Barry: For selecting linked poseballs, use “Edit Linked Parts”, dummies! Lol.

** Hiding Avatars

Jacek found out how to hide a complete avatar *grins* or to hide it’s prim clothing / attachments *grins even more*:

Well, glorious day and jubilations, because I’ve found a way that it will work! Just toggle on `Client > Character > Character Tests > Allow Select Avatar’, and you’re ready to go! You can now select avatars and their attachments — and so, in combination with the `Client > Rendering > Hide Selected’ (*Vint points to part one ‘Hiding poseballs’ from this blogpost*) option, you can hide them!

Another fine she points out is that you can also client-side move them that way:

Fortunately, with the `Allow Select Avatar’ option turned on, you can just select the offending avatar and move it (along with all its attachments) somewhere else where it won’t be in your way! The movement is client-side only, so if the avatar moves (walks, turns, jumps… animation movement doesn’t count), the server will send an update to your client and the avatar will pop back into its old position. But, it should be enough to get your shot in!

* Unhiding Prims

HUD objects are shift-click unselectable, but that’s because the HUD is special, and it absorbs clicks even when the prim you click on is invisible. Objects in the world won’t do that, so instead the object behind it gets clicked on.

But you can use the deselect cordon tool to surround the object you want to deselect! Here’s how you do it:

1. Hold Shift key
2. Click+drag the cordon around the object, as if you were selecting it.
3. With the mouse button still pressed, release the Shift key, and press and hold the Ctrl key instead. The cordon will turn red, indicating that any objects it surrounds will be _de_selected.
4. Release the mouse button.

Tags: client menu, photography, poseball, snapshotting, tips and tricks
Categories: Photography, Tutorial
27 Comments »

I wonder when exactly it happened but secondlife.com does no longer show the ‘promises graphic’. Promises graphic? I figured it was as it said:

• Second Life is a 3D online digital world imaged, created, & owned by it’s residents.
• Own virtual land.

I’ve looked all over the site for a replacement. Something that says I’m still able to own land. To create. To imagine. Though luck. The best replacement graphics I could find say:

• Buy/sell Linden Dollars.
• Second Life is a 3D online digital world imaged and created by it’s residents. <-Where did ‘owned’ go?!!
• Get virtual land.
• And the famous tagline ‘your world, your imagination’.

If people now ask me what is Second Life about, do I now tell them ‘well, it used to be a 3D online virtual world imaged, created, and owned by it’s residents’? Although ‘your world’ still implies some ownership of it I assume it’s a mistake and they forgot to take that one down. But I do am curious. If you signed up to Second Life before the change of the site, with the promises graphic still there, do you still own your land? They said you did. And all those residents, that ‘imagined, created, & owned’ before Linden Labs took away ‘owned’ from it’s Second Life promotion sentence, do those still own their inventories? The rights to the content they have created? The stories and sims they have imagined? Or were those - just as the graphic - all replaced by the rights to buy/sell Linden Dollars and to ‘get’ land? Did with changing their front page, Linden Labs confiscate all we ever owned in this crazy virtual world called Second Life?

I know I should have read the updated ToS more carefully before clicking ‘ok’. Although, if I did not click OK, I could not play. *sobs* I know what I’ll be hugging today… It’s hard to let it go. :(

Tags: linden lab, ownership, second life, virtual land
Categories: Rant, Second Life
25 Comments »

Just to make sure Google knows where to point to if someone searches for Benjamin Duranske / Benjamin Noble and/or Prokofy Neva / Catherine Fitzpatrick.

… Her modes of attack include deliberately misquoting people she wants to discredit, personally belittling anyone who disagrees with her, making up horrible lies about interlocutors, and ultimately, taking what appears to be an immense amount of joy in being one of the most wantonly disagreeable people in the virtual world.

She is the worst sort of tabloid gossip writer, yet casts her ideas as literal truth spoken from on-high. She eschews civil debate, and instead employs personal attacks, sly falsehoods, emotional temper tantrums, and multiple alter egos (or, I suppose, alter alter egos) to lend apparent support to the often bizarre, highly personal, accusations published on her blog.

She has managed to poison her relationship with hundreds, if not thousands, of virtual world writers, business people, professionals, designers, and other residents by being completely intolerant of any idea — indeed even any expression of an idea — that does not originate from her. …

Want to help? Spread the word! Link to this article using the words ‘benjamin duranske’ and ‘prokofy neva’. Not only would you help in getting Benjamin Duranske’s reply to Prokofy Neva known, you would also contribute to getting less garbage (eg. Prok’s mud throwing) ranking good in Google search.

My attribution to this? I have a lot of Prok comments on the blog. I shall not censor Prokofy’s comments, but for each and every one of them, the author’s link will point to Benjamin Duranske’s post on Prokofy Neva. Which does not help much for ranking the article (comment links are no-follow) but it will make sure that people curious about what Prokofy Neva is about - not much, if you are wondering - will read ‘Benjamin Duranske on Prokofy Neva’ first.

Update:

As I’m not the only Second Life resident totally fed up with Prokofy Neva, I’ve received the following text in my inbox, which I _should_ adapt as vintfalken.com’s official disclaimer on Prokofy Neva. Sometimes it is hard to do - especially when for that one second up to her next comments you think Prokofy wants to engage in an actual discussion - and sometimes I can’t resists replying to Prokofy either, but doing that _is_ waisted time and keyboard strokes. Both this reader’s and Benjamin Duranske’s analysis are correct, I should just ignore the ‘twat’. And I hope you will help me with that: reprimand me when I reply to it, and pretty please, set the good example. I’m hoping Prokofy might give up when it notices that, despite how much insults it put in it’s comments - nobody cares about what it has to say, let alone wants to waste the time to comment upon that. *tries even harder* *is going to stop mentioning Prokofy Neva in the blogposts too* (this time definitive! ;))

*** Some recommendations for the readers of this blog ***
(based on experience gained after mistakes by yours truly)

Since this is a blog merely about fashion and Vints little adventures, and does not have any importance at all, chances are that when commenting on this blog, you will be confronted with the phenomenon Prokofy Neva, the well know critic of futilities. (or what other reason she has for being here?)

You may be tempted to enter into a discussion with her.

*DONT*, because you are not. Discussion means interaction, eventually mutual enrichment, gaining new insights. But you will not find it. You are entering a one-way street. Not only is she not willing to really read your words, she even isnt trying
to convince you of her being right. Her reaction comments will merely be a deplorable attempt to make you look like a moron, and put an emphasis on her supposed experience and wisdom, while at best, she is just a wisehead. The only goal is: putting Prodigy Névrosé(e) in the spotlight.

You feel an urge to expose her or her scribblings?

*DO NOT*, do not waste your valuable time on it.. go in-world and enjoy yourself. It has been done before. She has been characterised so many times by now. Profiles ranging from a drunk troll to an age-frustrated egocentric narrow minded reactionair sociopathic tart. All descriptions validated by her own behaviour in multiple occasions. No need to add up something else. Everybody already has drawn his conclusions. And everybody with more then 1 braincell, who has been reading blogs for more then 2 days now, knows that she mostly sells baked air, wrapped into some fancy but hollow un-matterful vocabulary.

Maybe you want to react because you feel she is personally attacking you with her words?

*DONT*, because she is not. And it is not personal. She treats allmost everybody, who has an opinion, this way. It isnt just you. If you make a point she cant refute with sound arguments, which happens most of the time, she allways turns to name calling. Its just the desperate reaction of the schoolyard bully who found his intellectual master. Nothing else.

So, if you see her name popping up after you commented here, just ignore it. *DONT* react on the insults, *DONT* accept the invitation for the mudslingingfest that will put her in the centre of attention again.

If she offended you, wear the tag proudly, it means you made a good point, you are not longer a nobody in SL or the blogosphere..

or, paraphrasing René Descartes : ” Prok m’ insulte, donc je suis “

And an other ‘typical’ example of prokism can be found on Peter Stindberg’s blog: he finds we should look at clashing with Prokofy as some sort of ‘Second Life graduation’. I’ve seen better initiation rituals. :d

Tags: benjamin duranske, prokofy neva
Categories: Second Life
58 Comments »

So, I was to silent for y’all? Hmm. *ends silence* This time not to rant about Second Life’s society, though. :p

I’ve gotten a lot of ‘what do you think of my clothing design’ questions recently. And quite often I had to answer: ‘I love the shading on the butt & breasts, but euhm… what about shading ‘in’ the texture?’ It’s neat to see people get the shading of the human/avatar correct, but only to often that leads to neglecting the textures itself:

Mistakes in light source / bad photo-sourcing. Not having any sense of depth/play of light withing the clothing item itself, etc. Now I know, wrinkles are fashionable at the moment, but believe me, a well shaded button or collar works too. So, I decided that besides only complaining, I should give people a clue about what I do want to see. And the ‘adding depth to SL clothing textures using photoshop’s layer styles’ tutorial was born.

I hope it will be of use to some avies, and decided to be a good neko girl for once and to not link to some so called ‘top notch’ Second Life designers that could really benefit from taking a look at this shading tutorial. *grins*

Tags: clothing, fashion, photoshop, texture, tutorial
Categories: Fashion, Photoshop, Tutorial
6 Comments »

1. An Engine Fit For My Proceeding - Abandon Voice entirely with Flags! - Best machinima since 1 AV. (After Voice)
2. IE pwns SecondLife - GNUCITIZEN - ‘Attackers can steal the victim’s login credentials, therefore hijacking their virtual persona, by simply tricking them into visiting a malicious Web page. Here is an example…’ FF was vulnerable too, but they patched it already? (via Nobody Fugazi)
   Official Linden Blog statement on this security issue: SL URL Handler Exploit.
3. 2nd Sex - Join or Die - Once upon a time SL could be a town. Everyone knew everyone else, and everyone could more or less get along with everyone else. But that was long before me.

Categories: Links
1 Comment »

Vint Falken: Eileen is also not my style. :/
Veyron Supercharge: Let’s not discuss your style dear.

Somehow I talked myself into playing ‘dress vint’ with Veyron. I know, not a smart thing to do. :p But hey, I’ll probably have to become a grown-up mature human avie someday? Not! If you are wondering, despite Veyron’s evil intentions to get me all sexy, most conversations during this two-day shopping spree went like this:

‘Lookie V., that’s neat!’
‘No.’
‘And this one?’
‘No!’
‘But surely you’ll like this one?!’
‘No, Vint!’
‘And I have this in my inventory. Nice, no?’
*frustrated Veyron*

So each time Veyron said ‘no’, Vint saw it was good, and bought the item. *grins* I got a neat new uniform - slash end speculations of Vint being fulltime Neko of the Reich and on a very dubious part of the political spectrum -, white-black-red hair from Calisto cut in a way the owner would never have the guts for and a cute white fluffy winter hat - no furries were harmed for making it, I think. Looks good, no?

But I must admit, actually, I’m loosing the battle with Veyron. In Veyron dresses Vint Falken she promised I could keep my shape. Nope. She made me buy earrings and thus change my elven ears so there was actually a spot to put that stange metal humans call jewelery. She promised I could keep my ‘monochromaticly pale skin‘ too. But then urged me to add some color. I showed her pink spots, magenta spots, blue spots, … but nothing was good enough. In total despair, I clicked my - once - favorite human skin from tête-a-pied and chose ‘wear’. Veryon: 2, Vint: 0.

And then her maybe most important promise: I got to keep my ears! Problems soon arrised when I tried one of the ‘this looks like half a day in the bathroom’ hairdo’s she says matches the dress. Suddenly, my elven ears showed and I had two pair of ears. ‘No problem’, she said. ‘We’ll address that later.’ Hell! Did I know instead of making the elven ears disappear Veyron would force me to take off my neko ears!!! I had even colored them to brown/blackish so they would melt in with the hair, hoping she would not notice what was my last link to ‘being a neko’. But she said we should still go for a necklace, and mentioned something about lingery too. Maybe I can sneak in the tail?

Moral of the story? I am a vewwy vewwy vewwy sexy human now. But I don’t want to be that. Really! The owner might want to be a bit more sexy, or at least she feels the ‘public pressure’ to dress more ‘general female’ and less.. well.. Vintish, but Vint does not want to. So I’m not sure you’ll see me in public often like this.

Final thingie would be a (vewwy, vewwy small, one photograph will do) fashion shoot with an SL photographer. I’m doubting between Nephie Eerie - because she brings out the beauty in every person/scene/story/… - and Collin Savon, for as there is one person that can shoot ’sexy’, it’s Collin. Should I ask both? :/

PS. We did agree on the dress and she did let me pick the color of my shoes, after she decided on the - aargh! pointy! - form.

And ah yes, there’s Veyron’s side of the ‘dress Vint’ story too. Will you believe she used the word ‘wailing’ twice?!!

Tags: fashion, shopping, sl identity, veyron supercharge, vint falken
Categories: Fashion, Vint Falken
34 Comments »