My thoughts as well. She's had this stuff free for years (including the Dermalicious skintones), and now that Sims 3 is the new kid on the block, she charges for formerly-free Sims 2 content? This just doesn't make sense.

And now I read that ws-jessica offered her free hosting. What the ...?

I'm shocked. I have a lot of her stuff in my files, including many of her skintones (even though some of them have done some freaky genetic-related things with my Sims babies. Not game-crashing things. Just odd things.) i've chatted with her, and she seemed very nice and helpful.

My respect for her just plunged dramatically. She would be one of the last people I would suspect would do this.

How silly. Many people already have the pay stuff. It shouldn't be too hard to get most of them on the Booty.

P. S. Just noticed this on the Dermalicious skintone description:

"The “dermalicious” skintone is based on the accent skintone which was based on my samantha pauline edit which of course was based and created after permission on stefan’s samantha pauline skintone."

Errrr .... that was originally a free skintone on MTS2. His TOS are pretty liberal and don't mention paysites, but if she did use his skintone in any way, he really is entitled to a cut of the profits, don't cha think ... as is ANY free creator whose body shop or buy or build items she's used in any way on her "premium downloads". I thought I saw a few other free creators' influence in her pay items, such as Ephemera, Nymphy, AKiea-Guinea and Louis. I see that she has not given any creator ANY credit in her full Sim descriptions, though if you look around, you can see whose stuff she used (such as the pearl-white hair on the dark elf).

I wonder how the free-site creators she's "borrowed" from feel about having their ideas used for her pay stuff?

Typical paysite behavior ... leech off a free creator and then charge for your "creations".

Y'know, I've been on sites with ads where the ad provider tossed in a couple of clunkers that had spyware/viruses/etc. Reputable sites contact the ad provider and rectify the situation. In 99% of the cases, the ad disappears within a few days or so.

Wait a minute ... we're talking about "reputable" sites.

Oh, never mind, then.

Also, some companies CLAIM they're hiring, but they play games. Lots of games. Some are looking for a "particular fit", which is often business-speak for "We want a particular profile, and you're not it." For instance, the company might be looking for a man or woman, or someone under 30, but they can't actually SAY that because they'll get their panties sued off, so they use the "perfect fit" bullcrap. Some companies are scouting out prospects "just in case". They're bidding on a job, and they want to see the talent out there. But they don't get the job, or someone wants that "perfect fit" for that job, and there you are at Square One again. Some companies ARE hiring, but with your luck, the hiring committee happens to dislike overweight men with red hair because they remind them of someone, and surprise! You're an overweight man with red hair. Too bad for you.

My husband was out of work for five years, and I can definitely say that NO one worked harder than he to get a sustainable job. We just about saw it all, including the hiring clowns mentioned above. Often. Way, way too often.

The only advice I can offer to anyone out of work is that unfortunately, you might have to be really flexible in this economy. You may have to work in another area far from your home, or in another country. Many of these countries, unfortunately, ain't exactly tourist attractions. And even if you're willing to do that, you might have a hard time finding something. I truly hope that anyone seeking sustainable employment finds something soon. To use an old expression, poverty sucks.

As for the retail/food service trade ... we both worked in that field to survive. Back in the olden days, you HAD more leeway in setting your hours. (I worked in retail back in the 90's and again, about 8 - 9 years later.) Now, these companies demand "flexibility". They want you available any time, any day, and schedules vary all over the place from week to week. You often can no longer say that you can work from 5PM to 10PM on any day but Monday and expect to be hired. When I worked for a particular company, I had informed them that I could work any day, almost any time, except between 8 and 9 AM and 2 and 3 PM on school days, and I got a lot of grief for that. And that was for a part-time job! I did get hired, and worked there for a while, though the company constantly "forgot" I listed those times and attempted to schedule me to work during them, no matter how often I mentioned them. But from what I'm seeing, some retail companies are even more picky about availability now.

It's not impossible to get a job, but it can be darn hard.

First of all, and this is in reference to something waaaaay back there already (?) ... I agree with Delphy, for the reasons Inge mentioned. 'Nuff with that for me. I'm starting to sound like a Sim site "dittohead".

Secondly, if one wants an e-mail still on the site to see what Walt will be up to, but doesn't want the spam, there are some good e-mail services that provide you with a truly disposable address. www.spammotel.com is one of them. In this one, you specify how many e-mails you'll tolerate from Walt, then the address is dead. Period. Walt can spam you with a hundred more e-mails. It won't matter.

There are other services like these that act a bit differently. Spamgourmet and sneakemail come to mind, but I know there are others. I've used both of these, too. I've done the disposable route with Yahoo, as well. You set up a proxy address, then get rid of the address when you have no more use of it.

This one looks pretty good. I haven't used it, but I DO like how your "disposable" address is in the reply line:

http://email.about.com/cs/dispaddrrevs/gr/emailias.htm

And of course, there is the older method of taking out a e-mail address unique to Insim only, and seeing if you DO get spammed. If you do, well, no great loss. Get rid of the account.

So it may not be necessary to kill your e-mail addies, if you are reluctant to do so. But changing them in case you get e-mail from "third parties" and "partners" isn't a bad idea.

Please. Option 3, of course!

C'mon ... Insimenator.org is actually still available, according to GoDaddy. It wouldn't be that hard to get THAT domain, if we really wanted the Insim name (which I know we don't ... this is just a hypothetical random thought!)

Just when I think that there is no way that Walt could be any more of an ass, he surprises me yet again.

I did check it some time back, but then again, that WAS a couple of days ago (two whole days!), and if the threads there are multiplying like the ones here, there is probably a whole lot of info and probably a whole lot more  posters! I'll check again. Thank you!

Ummm ...  you're not the only one. Many of us are concerned. But really, you're not helping things any.

It's a tough temptation, I know. Even those of us who aren't concerned, or those who are downright pissed off right now, want to look. It's probably a variant of "gape at the car wreck" syndrome. But like the results of that syndrome, it will just slow down things and hinder progress. Don't gape. Move on. Visit another Sims site. Talk to various family members. Do yoga. Bake bread. Read a book. Shoot beer cans in the backyard (your community permitting, of course). Learn the tuba. You know what various people have told you over the years: "The more you squirm and turn around, the longer this will take!"

In the meantime, I'm really liking the idea of someone doing a "Where are they now?" post somewhere, as another poster suggested somewhere around page 106 or so. (Actually ... it was page 104, and the poster was Aarron. Sorry, Aarron.) If one wants to gape, perhaps those places might be a bit better. I know that Pooklet is on GOS, and Synaptic Sim has a forum. A bunch of creators have simply removed their stuff, like Gothplague, and I can only hope that with a lot of "pretty pleases", they will re-upload on another site, such as ... well ... the newborn one that Pes is trying to create. I thought that Nouk, Quorneater, Delphy, etc. might have a few refugees by now. I admit, though, that since I was chief cook and bottle washer this weekend, I missed a lot of announcements. Could someone please, perhaps, submit their collections?

That might while away some time.

Well, I see that InsimAdult was on for a few moments, and I could read everything, and now, I can't.

I'd post one of my usual book-length posts, but there isn't much more to add here than what you fellow pirates have already added.

Geez, back when I worked retail as Christmas help for a commissioned salesperson, the salesperson at least got me a small token for the hours of work I put to help give her the best season's sales she had in years. A rather puny token, but she at least made the effort. This guy isn't probably even going to give the mods and creators a McDonald's gift certificate if he makes any money from this venture. So ... he expects faithful servants to mind the masses and produce beautiful creations for free while he rakes in the cash!? And the previous owners expected the same (and indeed, probably succeeded)?

Nice. Real nice.

I have a quick question, and I realize that it may not be easily resolved because in terms of creations to the Insim family, I have contributed but one item, and the creations of more prolific creators do, of course, come first. How do I remove said puny little download? (I backed it up a long time ago.)  Granted, it would probably fetch Walt about .001 cent, but ...

And if I asked an obvious question, I humbly await my macro-punishment.

What I would like to see ... what makes me truly curious ... would be to see EA's sales figures since 2001, which was the last time that the US economy was really terrible, before the alleged "recovery". (Yeah. Tell that to the people tossed on the street who spent months and even years looking for a job that MIGHT pay the rent. For some reason, some politicians don't seem to realize that a job is NOT a job is NOT a job. A Wally-world job usually doesn't pay anywhere near a good manufacturing job. But I digress.)

I do have sales figures from 2007/2008 from a Wall Street Journal article. If the projected income from late 2008 was/is even WORSE than they expected, many more employees should be afraid. Be very afraid. According to this article, EA was betting very heavily on Spore to bail their butts out. Guess Spore wasn't quite the saving grace they thought it would be.

And STILL, they won't listen to their customers and at least consider using Steam. They will happily blame pirates and the economy, but not their own stupid business practices.

Anyway ... found a chart on this page:

http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/index.php?t39684.html


According to the article I have, 2008, though, seems to be a year of steady losses, with losses of over 400 million forecasted in the last fiscal quarter of this year. But that was as of September 2, 2008. If EA is seeing even more losses, eek!

This was the best I could come up with:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122539935362185471.html

Hmmmmmm ........


P.S.
Off-topic, slightly, I was trying to find a copy of that article I have, since it has a huge grease spot on it, and reading the chart could be difficult, and came up with these articles:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/14/AR2008091400885.html
http://voices.allthingsd.com/20080909/gamers-fight-back-against-lackluster-spore-gameplay-bad-drm/

and:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/riccitiello-investors-don-t-give-a-sh-t-about-quality

Reading about EA IS entertaining!

If you're going to post a "firestarter" post on a board, what do you expect? (Scratches head, and now can't get that song out of my mind!)

I see no problem. I'd like to see her response herself. How would she like it if this happened to her? If her boyfriend/girlfriend/niece, nephew, etc. did this? When I think of it, an adult can to this to another adult as well. Perhaps a guy (hey ... I used a girl in the last example!) wanting to purchase the subscription can't get a Paypal account or a credit card, so he uses his girlfriend's account. Once again, the poor girl has no idea her boyfriend decides to give the download information to a bunch of his buddies. One of them shares it. The girl has her info posted for a bunch of people to see. Great.

One can argue that this is the exception, not the rule, but that's rationalization. And I'm not sure if Mom or the girlfriend would be placated by the excuses. Also, does TSR or any other site KNOW how many minors visit it, or and what percentage of subscribers use a parent's, guardian's, or other adult's credit card or Paypal? 10%? 20% More?

However, I'm not sure you'll get much of a chance or an answer if the admin is planning to lock the forum. Too bad.

As to why paysite owners are doing this, it seems pretty clear. Despite their protests, I think we ARE making an impact. Even if you lose ... once again ... 10% of your business to pirates, that's still a good chunk of money. And now, various world economies are having problems, and Sims 3 is looming on the horizon. This new game might mean fewer free artists to steal borrow from for a while; at least, not until the free artists can figure out equivalents to CEP and make meshes. There will be fewer Sims 2 players to even play the game, and still fewer who want to shell out money. Aye. Times might be tough ahead for our paysite owners. So they have to skirt Paypal's TOS and resort to these scare tactics.

It makes them look pretty pitiful, actually.

One can use other variations of Lyric's "pretzel logic" and truly toss her arguments right in the trash.

As I understand it, Paypal does NOT condone sharing names and e-mails during transactions. That is still the case, correct? Has anyone shown otherwise?

Well, then, the issue is not with the alleged filesharers. The issue is with Paypal. If she doesn't like Paypal's terms, she can use another form of processing payments.

As far as I know, Paypal does not state that it's OK to share names and e-mails in an open forum with just 200 or 50 or even 20 people. I don't recall reading anything in the TOS stating, "You are permitted to share this info on a private Internet forum." You're not supposed to be sharing this. Period.

It doesn't matter what EA states or doesn't state, or what PMBD, TSR, ABC123, MICKEYMOUSE etc. etc. states. These are Paypal's terms. I could be wrong, but Paypal probably couldn't care any less about The Sims or custom content. Nor should it. It has other problems that have little to do with pixel dollies and more to do with scam artists and phishers.

Also, in the case of passing bad checks, I'd seen those signs. I worked in retail myself for a long time. When we were given this info, we were given limited, general info ... usually, so and so's name. Perhaps a town if the surname is a common one. We were NEVER given specific-mail addresses or street addresses or phone numbers. Just "watch out if you get checks from Jane Doe of Jamaica, Queens". And that might not have been Jane Doe's home address. We weren't told this. It could relate to her business address, her organization's address or even a phony address.

And by the way, this all happened extremely rarely. The person would have had to be passing a whole LOT of bad checks over a period of time, not just one check. I never saw long lists of phony check-passers at my register! I had one, perhaps two names. Most of the stores where I worked never did this at all. I guess LyricLee never worked in retail, or has long forgotten about it.

Which brings me to another problem. Let's say the "perpetrator" is 12 years old. Really. She doesn't have a credit card or Paypal. She begs her Mom to get her a subscription. Mom does not know what our little pirate is up to, and gets her a subscription. The little pirate shares it.

TSR brings out its judge's robes and deems the little pirate guilty. However, when TSR shares the info, it doesn't share the little pirate's name and e-mail address. It shares Mom's. And Mom had no idea what was going on.

Nice.

 

I was looking at the partially-outside staircase as well. I confess to having done that myself, but by accident! If the creator wants a staircase that is flush against the wall, he or she would have to lose the railings. Try an open staircase. There are enough of them around!

Actually, some of my houses' layouts have looked a little like that (minus the partially-exposed staircase) if I move a Sim for the first time into a larger lot. (If I envision a family Sim having a big family, or if I want to put a large orchard or garden on that lot, I tend to skimp on the niceties of house decor at first.)  But I fix that baby up as soon as the Sim gets a little money. And I certainly wouldn't sell any of my houses that way, if this is a pay item. I don't even take PICTURES of the house that way!

And a dash of bright color here and there can be your friend. If I actually had to move in a house like that, I would get depressed by the dreary color palette really, really fast. Some of those colors remind me of the 70's. And even if one used those colors back then, one would at least have a dash of orange in there! Or lots of ivory or off-white.


And re the prom dresses ... whatsamatta with those dresses? They would be quite the rage ... if you were around in 1963/64! My Tammy doll (think Barbie wannabe) had lots of dresses like that! But even then, you would never use that material for prom dresses. You'd need chiffon or taffeta or sparkly stuff. And you'd have to get rid of the flowers!

Way back when, back in the prehistoric age, we had Colorforms and its various incarnations. You used to stick thin, flat, vinyl (?), barely detailed clothes on either a board or a plastic-coated "paper doll".

Those clothes looked like those flat, vinyl clothes. Great for trips down memory lane, but we ARE talking over 30 years ago! And I certainly wouldn't pay for them. I didn't like those vinyl  thingies back then!

Nope. No laughter here.

When my video card gave up the ghost, we decided to use a GE Force 9000-series card instead of the 6000 one we had in there. Now, the 6000-series one was good. But with the 9000-series, I noticed more detailed texturing on clothing, a marked difference in lighting, etc. It was ... fascinating! Good luck with the new card!