Donations

This is a kind of continuation post from my last blog post entitled The Greenies Problem. This entry is going to be about Donations.

If you ask me, it is entirely reasonable for any place in Second Life that offers an event to the public to have a donation / tip jar area for offering events or resources. When we look at something like the Greenies, they would likely make a lot more money from donations than charging an admission fee.

One example of an area in Second Life that offers free entertainment but gets donations is the Music scene. Every musician makes a good sum of money for doing the music and also the venues make money from it as well. The venues could easily say “You can’t get in without paying L$1000″ and in some cases they do when it is a big musician like Louis Volare.

Another place in Second Life that offers a service to residents is the Destination Station. Itazura recently added a tipjar for people to donate to. Again entirely acceptable because they make no money for promoting these places free of charge and is a hell of a lot better than any standard telehub.

Soon enough SLPN will be getting a donation jar as well and we have some cool stuff coming down the pipeline.

Harper Berseford made an interesting comment on my last blog post on the Greenies that I completely understand the point of view of.

“They have to insure the survival of their business so they can provide MORE content and pay the electric bill to keep the server running.”

Again, my argument has always been, If they people like it, they will be more than happy to donate. If I ever see a donation jar at a sim that is fun, helpful, informative, entertaining etc. then people will donate. Combine that with Merchandise (Greenies sells merchandise already!) then THEY will surely make money.

Not long now…

… I hope …

In case you aren’t aware, for about 10 weeks my main machine which could handle Windlight well went out of action. At first we thought it was the Motherboard that was bricked so we sent it off with the warranty and then found out that it was not the case. So then we discovered it was really the graphics card that was to blame for the problems. Assuming that everything else is fine I should have the machine back very soon and enjoying Second Life like I should have. It’s annoyed me to no end because I wanted to fully experience things like SL5B and the Relay for Life.

So while I was in the downtime I managed to get my old computer up and running again. During the downtime some things went wrong with the machine. But it gave me a chance to experience Second Life from the older hardwares perspective. It intrested me because I always hear people with low end machines complaining that their machines are unbearably slow and get 1fps. It makes me think, what exactly are they putting the Settings at with the viewer. Case and Point this screen capture of my settings, hardware and frames per second.

This machine right here is about 4 or 5 years old now. Yet I seem to be getting 17fps on this low hardware. The only problems I get sometimes is that the machine will hang for a few seconds. But that is down to the machine having 512 MB of memory. Now I understand that some people having laptops and they really do suck for Second Life if they are cheap laptops but the fact is if you buy one of those cheap laptops you are shooting yourself in the foot for any 3D application. I know because I got one for the laptop and yes it sucks big time. I wonder what other people with older hardware get when they are on Second Life. If you read this blog let me know in the comments.