Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Friday, May 9, 2008
Oh- P.S.
Let me clarify a bit about the last post.
I totally agree with removing SL access on public library computers, and in schools- elementary and middle for sure. High school isn't as big a deal- we start trusting our kids to be more responsible for themselves at that point, as we should.
Do I agree with Congressman CuckooBananas' assertion that Second Life is somehow more dangerous than the rest of the sex-saturated internet? Meeeeh- No. In fact, if my experiment in being unverified hadn't gone so badly, I would say Second Life is safer. It could be, and so easily- the tools are there already.
Turn those TOS screws, Linden Lab. Force the free sex orgies, rape roleplays, the Goreans, the sex furnishings peddlers- anyone who is running an adult sim (not necessarily a "mature" sim) to comply. Freeze access to their parcels/sims/estates.
Sneaky and shady people will break laws no matter what you do, and the answer is NOT to make more laws in some crazed attempt to show that you disapprove of bad folks- the answer is to enforce what rules and laws exist already, and to hold people responsible for breaking them!!!
I totally agree with removing SL access on public library computers, and in schools- elementary and middle for sure. High school isn't as big a deal- we start trusting our kids to be more responsible for themselves at that point, as we should.
Do I agree with Congressman CuckooBananas' assertion that Second Life is somehow more dangerous than the rest of the sex-saturated internet? Meeeeh- No. In fact, if my experiment in being unverified hadn't gone so badly, I would say Second Life is safer. It could be, and so easily- the tools are there already.
Turn those TOS screws, Linden Lab. Force the free sex orgies, rape roleplays, the Goreans, the sex furnishings peddlers- anyone who is running an adult sim (not necessarily a "mature" sim) to comply. Freeze access to their parcels/sims/estates.
Sneaky and shady people will break laws no matter what you do, and the answer is NOT to make more laws in some crazed attempt to show that you disapprove of bad folks- the answer is to enforce what rules and laws exist already, and to hold people responsible for breaking them!!!
The great unverified experiment.
Congressman says ban Second Life in schools and libraries.
Good idea. No need for it there anyway.
I seriously think kids should no more be allowed to wander the internet alone than to wander city streets alone. And a parent who allows that is negligent.
This made me think about something- an experiment I suddenly feel I should undertake.
I'm not age verified. No real interest in hitting up the sex spots in Second Life, and a certain issue with the layout of the age verification form (I can't put my address in it) prevented me from doing so. But that's good now, because I want to see how many of the Popular Places (many of which are sex-oriented) I can just hop into.
So... Here we go.
#6 popular place today is a "free sex & orgy room". I teleported in and immediately realized that the "uhhmm" and "rrrrgh" I was seeing in chat was supposed to be sex. O_O I get to have real sex so perhaps I just don't see the appeal. In any case, I am not verified by Linden Labs' "snoop service" (the paranoid make it sound that way) to be an adult- I shouldn't be able to see that!
Next up...
#12 on popular places. They put out a lot of warnings at this "free sex orgy room", stating it's for 18+ avatars- but there's no actual ban on unverified avatars. My avatar is an adult but a very short one by SL standards (I am made to look like my First Life avatar, a 5'4" adult human female who despite being over 30 still gets mistaken for a kid on occasion) and although they claim to disallow child/teen avs, I teleported to their "orgy room" and no one noticed. I am glad I look young in my first life, but this is one case where I should have been chased off for being such a youthful little wisp.
#18 was closed for remodeling, but sells sex furnishings. I'll try 'em tomorrow when they should be open, and see if I can teleport in.
#19 also sells sex furnishings. Teleported into a shockingly deserted store (considering the traffic level). They have a shouting object that touts their sexy furniture, but no obvious sex was going on upon my arrival. Still- this is an adult place, and someone like me, who is not a verified adult, shouldn't even be able to get there.
Age verification is useless if parcel owners won't flag their land.
Oh and I want to express my gladness that only a handful, and not many of the popular places are sex-oriented. I stand corrected on that score.
Good idea. No need for it there anyway.
I seriously think kids should no more be allowed to wander the internet alone than to wander city streets alone. And a parent who allows that is negligent.
This made me think about something- an experiment I suddenly feel I should undertake.
I'm not age verified. No real interest in hitting up the sex spots in Second Life, and a certain issue with the layout of the age verification form (I can't put my address in it) prevented me from doing so. But that's good now, because I want to see how many of the Popular Places (many of which are sex-oriented) I can just hop into.
So... Here we go.
#6 popular place today is a "free sex & orgy room". I teleported in and immediately realized that the "uhhmm" and "rrrrgh" I was seeing in chat was supposed to be sex. O_O I get to have real sex so perhaps I just don't see the appeal. In any case, I am not verified by Linden Labs' "snoop service" (the paranoid make it sound that way) to be an adult- I shouldn't be able to see that!
Next up...
#12 on popular places. They put out a lot of warnings at this "free sex orgy room", stating it's for 18+ avatars- but there's no actual ban on unverified avatars. My avatar is an adult but a very short one by SL standards (I am made to look like my First Life avatar, a 5'4" adult human female who despite being over 30 still gets mistaken for a kid on occasion) and although they claim to disallow child/teen avs, I teleported to their "orgy room" and no one noticed. I am glad I look young in my first life, but this is one case where I should have been chased off for being such a youthful little wisp.
#18 was closed for remodeling, but sells sex furnishings. I'll try 'em tomorrow when they should be open, and see if I can teleport in.
#19 also sells sex furnishings. Teleported into a shockingly deserted store (considering the traffic level). They have a shouting object that touts their sexy furniture, but no obvious sex was going on upon my arrival. Still- this is an adult place, and someone like me, who is not a verified adult, shouldn't even be able to get there.
Age verification is useless if parcel owners won't flag their land.
Oh and I want to express my gladness that only a handful, and not many of the popular places are sex-oriented. I stand corrected on that score.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
The HUDs and the Restless
The scary issue that has got quite a few of us buzzing- but now, for the wrong reason.
The root issue is really a doozy. Replace/detach/release keys on one of your HUD attachments, and *poof*- away it goes, disappearing into the dark unknown corner of a server someplace, and your inventory no longer can find it. Unfortunately for those who are experiencing this, it usually is a HUD containing no copy animations (dances, walks, begging slave poses, etc.) and those things can be pretty expensive.
Solution? Well, so far, nothing. For some of us, the problem cannot be reproduced. I've been irresponsibly detaching my HUD since it got returned, and the damn thing seems unable to be lost again. I don't have but perhaps 5k (L$) invested in my animations- unlike folks who are carrying around 25, 50, 100k or more sitting in one HUD- so I am not terribly concerned that I might lose anything more than what I'd spend taking my kid to Starbucks. I've been trying to get the problem to happen again. No luck. Some people are evidently able to reproduce the effect (see comments on JIRA page). I think this is a scary and bad bug and I hope there is a solution- but it might be one of those cases of "the internets barfed".
But about those JIRA comments- it's quickly turning into a bitchfest, and folks are getting tangled up in the wrong part of this problem now. Useful information is starting to get buried in complaints.
Basic account holders are griping that they don't get customer service like those of us who are forking over our cash for premium. I'd be mad as hell if these users started taking up customer service time that should be reserved for paying customers.
These folks are USING the product, and not supporting it. Fewer and fewer people are going premium- if there's no incentive anymore, who will do it? No new premiums are going to come in if they are getting everything for free.
A new yearly account comes out to $6 (US) a month. You get 1200L$ every month for that, which would cost you about $4.85-ish if you bought it outright in one 1200L$ lump.
So- you can afford a computer (and we know that it's not some old Macintosh running OS 7) and internet access (and that's not some podunk 56k dialup service, no sir) and you can't cough up a a buck-fifteen to make sure you aren't screwed when Second Life has a database issue and eats something "irreplaceable"? Even a month-to-month account is only going to end up costing around five bucks a month after you get your 300L$ a week.
The fact of it all is that shit happens. You don't notice the same issues when they happen on other systems because the rest of the internet is just not set up the same way. If your browser gags and pukes, you just try again. When SL does it, you pitch a fit over it, leave angry ALL CAPS comments on the Official Second Life Blog (or the JIRA, where that crap has even less business being), you throw a fucking pity party and say that you don't matter to LL. You poor poor thing. A wise commenter likened premium accounts to insurance, and that is precisely correct. You pay for the extended customer support that you might need in case of shit happening. I've been paying for a premium account for almost my entire Second Life- and this was my fist experience with inventory loss. I'm glad I could put in a support ticket not just for the simple fact that it got me my goodies back, but also because it puts another blip on the radar of those who are working to make Second Life run- and lets them know that there's trouble.
I wonder if the world is filled with people who were just horribly spoiled children- or if it's just that unpleasant internet phenomenon- be as rude and abusive as you like, no one can see your face- causing this outbreak of Me-me-meeeesles.
As for me, I am off to keep bug-hunting.
The root issue is really a doozy. Replace/detach/release keys on one of your HUD attachments, and *poof*- away it goes, disappearing into the dark unknown corner of a server someplace, and your inventory no longer can find it. Unfortunately for those who are experiencing this, it usually is a HUD containing no copy animations (dances, walks, begging slave poses, etc.) and those things can be pretty expensive.
Solution? Well, so far, nothing. For some of us, the problem cannot be reproduced. I've been irresponsibly detaching my HUD since it got returned, and the damn thing seems unable to be lost again. I don't have but perhaps 5k (L$) invested in my animations- unlike folks who are carrying around 25, 50, 100k or more sitting in one HUD- so I am not terribly concerned that I might lose anything more than what I'd spend taking my kid to Starbucks. I've been trying to get the problem to happen again. No luck. Some people are evidently able to reproduce the effect (see comments on JIRA page). I think this is a scary and bad bug and I hope there is a solution- but it might be one of those cases of "the internets barfed".
But about those JIRA comments- it's quickly turning into a bitchfest, and folks are getting tangled up in the wrong part of this problem now. Useful information is starting to get buried in complaints.
Basic account holders are griping that they don't get customer service like those of us who are forking over our cash for premium. I'd be mad as hell if these users started taking up customer service time that should be reserved for paying customers.
These folks are USING the product, and not supporting it. Fewer and fewer people are going premium- if there's no incentive anymore, who will do it? No new premiums are going to come in if they are getting everything for free.
A new yearly account comes out to $6 (US) a month. You get 1200L$ every month for that, which would cost you about $4.85-ish if you bought it outright in one 1200L$ lump.
So- you can afford a computer (and we know that it's not some old Macintosh running OS 7) and internet access (and that's not some podunk 56k dialup service, no sir) and you can't cough up a a buck-fifteen to make sure you aren't screwed when Second Life has a database issue and eats something "irreplaceable"? Even a month-to-month account is only going to end up costing around five bucks a month after you get your 300L$ a week.
The fact of it all is that shit happens. You don't notice the same issues when they happen on other systems because the rest of the internet is just not set up the same way. If your browser gags and pukes, you just try again. When SL does it, you pitch a fit over it, leave angry ALL CAPS comments on the Official Second Life Blog (or the JIRA, where that crap has even less business being), you throw a fucking pity party and say that you don't matter to LL. You poor poor thing. A wise commenter likened premium accounts to insurance, and that is precisely correct. You pay for the extended customer support that you might need in case of shit happening. I've been paying for a premium account for almost my entire Second Life- and this was my fist experience with inventory loss. I'm glad I could put in a support ticket not just for the simple fact that it got me my goodies back, but also because it puts another blip on the radar of those who are working to make Second Life run- and lets them know that there's trouble.
I wonder if the world is filled with people who were just horribly spoiled children- or if it's just that unpleasant internet phenomenon- be as rude and abusive as you like, no one can see your face- causing this outbreak of Me-me-meeeesles.
As for me, I am off to keep bug-hunting.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Nashvegas!
A new little accessory I whipped up for shits n' giggles.
They aren't scripted, but they look cool. Two sizes in the box, which is available at my main store, my little shop at TDU, and on SLExchange.
I'm just not a scripter, I've realized. I can screw with stuff that's already made (I kick ass at beating open source particle engine scripts into submission, I tell you what) but I just haven't got the patience for learning it from the ground up. I think I may hire some help if I can, because I feel there are a few things I have made that would really benefit from good script work.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Hi, my name is Daisy, and I'm a WindLight addict.
I admit it- I am hooked on WL. Like a lot of other features that I figured would be laggy and of no real interest to me, I have decided that now I just can't live without the glowing atmospheric gorgeousity that this viewer provides!
So I am waiting, ever-so-impatiently, for the servers to go WL.
To travel around in a world that even more accurately represents the imaginations of those creating it is the most exciting prospect of anything coming down the pipe from LL (to me). It will fuel my sick, twisted desire for a sim- which I positively cannot afford- and push me to explore again. It might mean that my dishes go undone more. So be it.
So I am waiting, ever-so-impatiently, for the servers to go WL.
To travel around in a world that even more accurately represents the imaginations of those creating it is the most exciting prospect of anything coming down the pipe from LL (to me). It will fuel my sick, twisted desire for a sim- which I positively cannot afford- and push me to explore again. It might mean that my dishes go undone more. So be it.
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