Once upon a time, in the Land of Zendra, there lived three blind mice. The mice lived in the pantry of the royal palace. they lived very well there, for the royal chef was careless, and often left crumbs of food where they could eat them. In time, the three mice grew quite comfortable from all this food. Indeed, one could almost call them the nobility of the mouse population within the kingdom. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
So I had a weird dream last night. It was a dream of a magical school. No, not like Harry Potter. This was both more mundane and more magical at the same time.
It started off with a scene next to an abandoned minibus. The really small kind from the 60s. Opening the door at the rear revealed a portal to some strange primary (that’s elementary, my dear Watson) school, where all the kids seemed to be having fun. Significantly, the minibus had a space for a bus number, which was blanked over with white paper inside. Normally, this make of minibus has no such space in the waking world. Cue scene two. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
“To be, or not to be, that is the question.”
Said Hamlet. And, to continue in more modern English…
“…is it better to carry on suffering quietly, or to bravely enter a useless and suicidal battle which you know is already lost?”
But, I might ask,
“…is it better to carry on suffering quietly, or to enter a dangerous battle whose outcome you can’t possibly know at this time?”
“Unbending”. “Opposite of her ancestors”. The name probably has a few other meanings and literary implications, some flattering, some not. I won’t compare myself to her too closely.
But certainly, I am unbending. I have, at least twice in my life, pursued some goal that, on the face of it, seems pre-destined to failure due to insurmountable odds. But each time, I persevered, and succeeded. ironically, I seem to have more success at these bigger goals than I do at the mundane day-to-day living.
And in many ways, I guess I am the opposite of my ancestors. I have invented my own religion (which I don’t plan on proselytising much. Don’t follow me - start your own godamn religion). I suppose each time a religion started, someone must have started it, but they are by far the exception from the norm. I also regard myself as a card-carrying member of the Internet age (despite an allergy to remembering my PIN numbers). Both my parents were born before computers were much more than military secrets, and, if they had their druthers, would keep it that way.
Me? Antigone? For sure I am. I am here to stay. I shall never be gone.
So I’m contemplating a move to the US of A to study, and possibly work. And it occurred to me that, should I decide to apply for citizenship, I might, nay, will, be asked to swear some silly pledge of allegiance.
One of my hobbies is collecting passports. I have no problem with swearing any silly pledge in order to further that hobby. But any pledge of allegiance won’t mean a thing. Not because I don’t believe in such pledges, but because my allegiance is not mine to give.
I owe my allegiance to a higher power than any mere nation. And no, I’m not getting all religiousy on y’all.
So I was cleaning out my mother’s fridge, and what do I find?
Sometimes, she scares me.
“How do we know the dead long for life? Perhaps death is to awake from a dream, and we cannot remember why we lived at all?”
So what is death? Certainly, it ends all social contact with the living, barring a few incidents with psychic mediums and the like. But what else is there? Shakespear wrote “to sleep, perchance to dream”. He was talking of the idea of giving up on the great struggle that is life, to willing stop living. Whether he meant death by your own hand, assisted death, or simply giving up, is unclear, but with those words it seems to me the character was contemplating death as a peaceful end to the struggles and trauma that face us in our daily lives. And certainly we do face such slings and arrows.
This is kind of opposite to what Zhuang Zi said. Zhuang was of the opinion that death is like waking up, which is the complete opposite of what the Bard of Avon said. Who is right? There’s only one way to find out.