LL recently announced a drop in the price of new private island servers. This makes me very happy that I did not go out and buy one, even second-hand, last month. It will be interesting to see what the new market rate for second-hand sims will be.
At this moment, SL is currently closed for maintenance, and access is restricted to employees only. Fair enough. Stuff happens.
The login screens says there are currently 17,889 avatars currently logged in. LL must have an awful lot of employees. I had no idea they were so big.
So a bunch of us were discussing LL’s age verification, and we were speculating that it is being implemented to enable sex to be formally approved, as once a proper age verification (which the current design isn’t btw) is set up, there’s no legal impediment to sex in SL, as the risk of seducing a minor would in theory be removed.
Most of my friends, for various personal reasons, are strongly opposed to any form of identity verification.
So I shouted, “HAY EVERY1 STOP HAVING SEX ONLAIN NOW KPLZTHX”
Within minutes, the online population in SL dropped by 92%.
Sadly, this was because LL had to fix their asset server again, not because everyone heard me and logged out because they could no longer have sex.
As you may be aware, immediately after submitting the details found in that language study book and verifying “my” age that way, I contacted Linden Lab to let them know that their system was accepting bad data, giving rise to false positives entering the system. I dutifully entered a support ticket, expecting them to investigate, see me openly tell them I am age-verifeid with bad data, and cancel my status as age-verified.
Linden Lab has closed the support ticket, and I am still officially noted as age-verified.
So there you have it. LL is properly informed, through their formal channels for such information, that there is bad data in the age verification system. I raised a ticket to highlight this, and they closed the ticket, and did not remove my status as age-verified. This means they are either unable or unwilling to remove false positives from the age verification database, even when properly notified of such false positives.
Consider that the official reason for this system is to prevent minors from accessing adult content. In my opinion, this demonstrates that the system is not able to fulfil the stated mission.
In response to Linden Lab’s latest attempt to persuade the unimpressed masses to give away critical personal information verify their ages, they made another blog post. In response, I browsed over to my vast collection of language study books. One of them contains an image of an actual ID card, both sides. I have no idea whether the actual information on that card is fictitious or not, but for the sake of the guy illustrated, I would certainly hope so.
I used the name as presented in that language textbook, along with the ID number printed in it. Bear in mind, I broke no laws in obtaining this data, and indeed, students are encouraged to pretend to be this person when practising the language. I was simply being a good student. I did however, invent an address for him, one which quite possibly isn’t even a real address. It didn’t occur to me until afterwards that his address and date of birth are printed in the book too.
Surprisingly, Integrity accepted this data as wholly valid, and says I am now age- and identity-verified. Never mind that the person I verified as is at best entirely fictitious, and at worst entirely unaware of the impersonation. Fortunately for him (if he is real), I do not intend using the data maliciously, although doubtless someone already has by now, given the public location I obtained the data from.
Linden Lab has posted more details on their age verification. yet again, they are dropping the ball.
They want land owners to flag their parcels if they have mature content, and will shortly be imposing penalties against any land owner who doesn’t comply. That’d fine as far as it goes. Except… so far, only concierge-level landowners have been given the option to do so. there are an awful lot of land owners with adult content on this grid (which was sold to us as 18+ only) who do not have the option of verifying with LL’s chosen “trustworthy” (if you can believe that) 3rd party supplier, as LL has not yet rolled out verification to them. Even for land owners, this will make them very lonely in their palaces, as no one else 9except concierge users) can, at present, verify, and only verified users will be allowed into such flagged parcels.
yes, LL is being remarkably stupid in how they are presenting this. It’s remarkably stupid in core concept too, but the presentation is just as stupid.
So according to Forbes (video interview), we are all a bunch of losers who like nothing more than gambling and cybersex. Proof, if ever there was a need, that fact-finding and honest reporting are passè. our intrepid reporter even boasts of saying Sl will collapse, and has been saying that for over a year now. With all due respect, everything and everyone collapses, sooner or later. It is no great feat to predict that a new born baby will die one day, and is in fact almost idiotic in its obviousness. Just like people, companies eventually die, and its no great trick to say a particular company will die one day in the future, with no specifics. At least, none he mentioned in that interview that date back to his “over a year ago”.
So today I received a call for help from the SL mentors group. there was a new resident, a young lady from Japan, who was stuck on Orientation Island. Since her English was almost as good as my great-grandfather’s (ie. next to nothing), I was called in to help her in a language she was more accustomed to.
In the process of helping her, it transpired that she was most definitely a young lady, of no more than twelve summers. Much too young for the main SL grid, and even, as it happens, too young for the official Teen Grid (which is for ages 13 and up). Since I was wearing my official mentors’ hat at the time, I had no real choice but to follow the official rules, and report her as underage.
yesterday I received official confirmation that I have been approved as a mentor for Second Life. This comes complete with membership in a special SL group for those such as me who have volunteered. I can’t remember exactly when I applied to be a mentor, but I think it was about 18 months ago. Certainly, the last time I applied for any kind of official or semi-official position sponsored by Linden Lab was back in January or February. I’m not entirely sure why it took them so long to approve of me.
Nonetheless, it pleases me no end to know that LL approves of me.
So on saturday there was a pseudo-secret party for LL’s FIC, better known as anyone who puts down enough money each month to pay for a private island or half a mainland sim (assuming LL’s billing division can figure out how to charge your account of course). (more…)