Banging the Grid
Every now and then, that is, usually on Wednesdays, the grid… The Grid… the substratum of all the metaverse… the holy ground we walk on… well, you know, the grid… is closed for maintenance. All that we can see of our beloved land that we are temporarily expelled from, is a small image on the Second Life's site. And every time, there is some monkeys with the bones attached to their right hands, and nobody else. Banging over the grid. Hopefully, there is a black monolith somewhere around. Read more…
Open Letter to Linden Lab
Here is the final draft of letter to be posted on SL related websites and inworld (a single copy will also be sent to LL) beginning on Monday, April 30th. You can sign the letter at Project Open Letter's site. Read more…
Flow My Tears…
…the policeman said. If you don’t know what I am talking about from those three words in the title you are officially obliged to leave this page, go to the library or book shop and get all the Philip K. Dick’s books this very instant! Otherwise you are allowed to continue your business as normal….
Hey! Real life cops are strolling the streets of Second Life! First Linden Labs invited FBI to check the in-world casinos. Now we hear that Belgium police patrols the sims in search for virtual sex criminals. Read more…
Why Every Camping Casino Has to Be Ugly?
One of ways to get some change of blogging is to put your ass near camp master (camping chairs and dance pads were never an option for me) and stay there while typing in other window. So I headed to the place that pays 3$ for 15min, small furniture shop, simple but nice built with no crowd. Couple of days ago, I had nice conversation with tigress about weather and government. As soon as I got out of teleport and my dreadlocks got back to their place, gray prims still loading textures… Hey! Something is wrong here! Read more…
These Are the Good Old Days
There is something fun in this early stages of virtual worlds. Half an hour ago I needed to send something like e-mail to the friend of mine who was off-line at the moment. So, as usual, I made new notecard, wrote what I had to, saved the notecard in my inventory, renamed it, searched for friend's profile, and dropped the notecard. Pretty complicated process for one e-mail. Not to mention that writing a notecard is not much of high technology experience. It is not the first time I was about to go to the Second Life's features poll and to yell for something more convenient. Read more…
Who Is on the Other Side?
It is not only question whether we are in action or just watching, it is also question whether we realize that there are real humans behind all those avatars we meet. First life tab on profile is rarely populated. And most often it is go away don't ask message. Maybe another picture from second life. Very few times I was presented to the face that could respond to the person on the other side of the grid. Read more…
Where Is My Bedroom?
Recent buzz about Electric Sheep’s new search engine and bot that feeds it rose some questions we used to neglect. Sure, privacy questions was there from the day one. There was a problem with taking upskirt photos of other residents. Publishing your chat logs is ToS violation. There are some practical ways to keep your privacy. Banning some (groups) of residents from the parcels you control, red lines around your property, getting all the security items that can be bought in-world, putting skyboxes out of the reach of camera zoom…
By the development of bots and other technologies privacy becomes harder to achieve. And now, it is not just some bored newbie peeking through your walls watching for the first time avatars having sex. Now we have companies unleashing bots all over the grid massively scraping data for nobody-knows-which purpose. Read more…
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