Exchange Herald , too

I"m considering using Virwox as a Linden cashing service. It has some history, and is transparent.

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VirWoX is a service designed, developed, and operated by Virtual World Services GmbH. The following company information is provided in accordance with the E-commerce Directive of the European Union:
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Exchange Herald

Okay, Linden Labs is buying XStreetSL and OnRez. Linden Labs will close OnRez soon, which is no big deal as not much happened there and the services are very similar.

So the only marketing for Second Life content will soon be SL itself and
XStreet, as the Lab announced. It no big deal for most users, not much will change right away. For those in the less than 1% of SL players who maintain a positive cash flow in SL, and the even smaller fraction that do so with a free account only,like me, it creates a bit of a problem, per the Acquisition FAQ: (If that link is busted, it's Knowledge Base Article 5809.)

I currently have a US dollar balance on Xstreet, what will happen to that balance?

For the time being, your US dollar balance will remain in Xstreet and you can manage it as part of your Xstreet account. Eventually, your US dollar balance will be combined directly with your Second Life account. At that time, you will be able to view and manage those funds when you sign into your Second Life account.

Thus, eventually, extracting Linden Dollars thru XStreet will be impossible unless one pays L Labs for a premium account. Free accounts cannot sell Linden Dollars. One can try a ticket:

Ticket Description
Summary: Requesting permission to sell Linden Dollars
Basic or Guest Access - only a few ticket types allowed: LindeX Tier Review
Contact Email address: arth.karas@gmail.com
Details: As a free account, I cannot sell Linden Dollars in LindeX. I was able to do so through XStreetSL, but that ability will disappear eventually, per the Acquisition FAQ.

I have been creating and selling virtual and real goods and services in SL to other residents. I have been making purchases in SL, but my SL income now far surpasses my SL needs. I would like the right to sell $300 USD per month.

Thank you, Arth.

We'll see how that goes. Since my personal quest is to do everything that can be done in SL WITHOUT buying a premium account, it poses an interesting challenge.

Love, Arth.

Heralding a Financial Thorem

Salary Theorem...

Dilbert's "Salary Theorem" states that "Engineers and scientists can never earn as much as business executives and sales people."

This theorem can now be supported by a mathematical equation based on the following two postulates:

As every engineer knows: Power = Work / Time

Since:
Knowledge = Power
Time = Money
Knowledge = Work / Money.

Solving for Money, we get:

Money = Work / Knowledge.

Thus, as Knowledge approaches zero, Money approaches infinity, regardless of the amount of work done.

Conclusion:

The less you know, the more you make.

Herald Terraforming

E-mail to arth.karas@gmail.com from the clear blue sky:

Arth,

I’m looking into buying a private island for my company and trying to see how much it costs to get a custom terraforming. I saw Neko has RAW files for 1000L but I think I need more land than the biggest has. Any information would be helpful.

Thanks, h

Greetings, h!

Thank you for writing to me. I'm not sure how you know of me, but I'll be happy to answer.

For custom terraforming rates, I googled "Second Life custom terraform" and found several vendors, technique patterns, prices and bids. xstreet lists several who are selling custom work search for terraforming from $32 USD to $106 USD. I do no know any of the work personally. MY SL Project was active for many months, and I saw similar bids for that work there.

You did not ask about the following, but consider these:

You can make your own RAW files. One tool is a freebie rawfile editor for Mac. More generally, Second Life itself is the simplest RAW file editor I know.

When you order your sim, the generic "flat 30m" on the order page fills the sim and works well if you plan no dramatic heights. A 100m flat might still be avaialable free from the Linden Labs concierge without a RAW file. It is the most versatile template, allowing dramatic island depressions to 0 (well below the standard water depth of 20 m) and heights of 200m without any special skill or outside technologies for terraforming.

To fulfill my SL Mentor duties, I direct you to the terrafroming tutorials here, here, and here, and the Second Life Knowledge Base articles #4060 and #4115

Personally, it takes me about 3 hours (I'd ask about $50 USD) to take design parameters and do a complex terraform by hand in SL. Simple ones take and cost much less time and money. (One simple full sim form took me 8 minutes from arrival to completion.) I normally teach the land manager or owner how to use the terraform tools with SL voice while doing so. Installing integrated water works, trails, walks, and such are separate projects, but I make placeholders for those projects while I am terraforming so that other builders and users can see the build progress and can coordinate efforts.

The sim owner can and should save any successful terraforms to his computer regularly via the land edit menu. Then the owner can easily revert the sim by uploading the saved file when accidents happen.

Yours,

--
Peace! Shalom! Namaste! Paix! Sére! Aloha!