Having to be present at a family get-together at a restaurant, when you are half-asleep ffrom a late night the day before, the food is terrible, and al in hearing range are speaking a language that you do not understand.
As a former English teacher, one thing that bugs me is poor use of the English language. I realise that not everyone has perfect English. I realise there are different national varieties of English. I realise that there are times and communication methods in which misunderstandings can be double-checked. I even realise that almost any complaint about language use will invariably contain a mistake of its own. Skitt’s Law, some call that one.
So today I had the dubious honour of coming in contact with a government organ. Government organs are somewhat icky things, and have a tendency to screw you if you aren’t careful to protect yourself. I always use protection; I take care to read their rules and regulations whenever they are presented to me. But since this is not Playboy, but a mere blog, I will stop with the innuendo for now.
The administratum drone I was talking with said i hadn’t followed the rules properly, then pointed to a certain line in the paperwork. I read it over, then immediately explained to her that it was badly written and unclear, and as written, it implied the course of action I had undertaken was in line with their requirements.
Her response made me want to hug her out of pity. She said it had passed muster with all the spelling and grammar checkers on their word processors, and was therefore good English.
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.
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 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…)
As every cow and chicken in the land must know by now, BigPond has launched its presence in Second Life, in a set of 11 sims, the centre piece of which is called simply The Pond. And I am proud to say I had a part in building these sims. Most of the work was by Gary Hazlitt. To be sure, mine was just a small part compared to what Gary did. He did pretty much everything except my build and the Sydney Harbour Bridge (good job, Charlene Trudeau). But culturally, my bit was a very significant one.
I built the Sydney Opera House. You can see some decent pictures over at sloz.
Well, I suppose I should apologise for not keeping this properly up to date. I know my last post was scant days ago, but that was a long rant on coffee, and not related to my virtual life at all. To be sure, there are coffee houses in the grid, but they don’t serve the kind of coffee you can drink, let alone the kind of coffee you add spices to.
And my post before that was a poem. That was part of my new year resolution to get back into creative writing. I’m aiming for a poem a week. This week’s poem will be posted in a day or three, but so far I am keeping up handily. It’s not really all that tough a schedule though, unless you are a lame writer like me. I used to be good, at least in my own mind. But I stopped for a long time after I accidentally let teh blue smoke escape from an old computer of mine.
So, like, what’s been happening?
The build for BigPond is finished, except for a few finalisation details. I also won first prize in a building contest over in Elvenglen, with my trinity knot necklace. I think I said I was going to give a copy of it to each of the high guardians of the elf circle group, a kind of badge of office. But that’s still in the future.
That necklace is one of a series of jewellery pieces I am making. They are going to be part of my new store, when i finally get one set up. Right now I am developing a new range of products to sell. My old inventory I used to sell will still be there of course. But a lot of it needs repricing, thanks to the linden dollar being a lot stronger than it used to be back when I originally set those prices. So everything will get marked down. Buildings too - from what I’ve seen, I overpriced those badly.
Those buildings weren’t the only thing overpriced. Land prices are through the roof right now. Yes, I know I can easily afford to buy those 512 m2 parcels priced at 10 grand or more. But to be blunt, it’s way overpriced. I might possibly consider that on a managed sim where there was appropriate space laid out for access and a building code I was happy with. But most of the mainland is prim trash, filled with laggy “clubs”, blocked out by camper chairs which would prevent my customers getting in, crowded out with ban lines, bordered by 16 m2 advertising parcels, just plain bad neighbours, or worse. For that kind of neighbourhood, no way would I pay the current inflated prices.
I remember…
There was a mountain… way back when
and a fountain…
and bells…
All around lay motes of silver…
floating… falling…
and bells…
And the fountain gave birth to a river…
bubbling forth…
and bells…
The river was fresh, clear, and I drank deep.
And then I knew.
…
I can never return there again.
The soft chime of the bells -
I can never hear that again.
Water has made my life serene.
but no bells
W.K.