Thank You SL

This is because the whole thing is cocked up in the usual Linden Lab fashion.

There are TWO SEPARATE things going on here. To access regions and search results with an Adult Maturity Rating, you have to be "account verified". This means EITHER have payment information on file (a credit card or PayPal account), OR use the age verification process.

Some landowners have set their parcels to "allow access by age verified avatars only". This is usually because they don't understand the system. Setting this parcel flag does NOT allow you to have Adult Content on your land! Only an Adult Maturity rating will allow this. You should speak to the landowner and discuss this with them. If they decide to leave this restriction in place, you MUST use the Age Verification process to access that parcel.

The purveyors of porn are no fools. They know when they see something useful.

During the days when people were illiterate and only approved individuals (usually monks) could actually produce documents, there was an underground the church hated, who illustrated manuscripts with artwork around the borders, including (God forbid) bare-breasted mermaids. Those visionaries knew the human desires and motivation, and knew porn was a pretty good motivator.

With the invention of movable type, another thing the church hated by the way because it eroded their control, it made porn even easier to produce and disseminate, and produced it was, with a vengeance.

When the VCR was released to the public, the movie industry was at best reluctant to adopt the technology. It was a non-issue to them. The porn industry, on the other hand, loved it, and embraced it, whole-heartedly.

The DVD, likewise, was embraced much more readily by the porn industry than the movie industry.

With the mass appeal of the World-Wide Web's advent, again the porn industry jumped on the bandwagon without any reservations whatsoever, and committed to staying along for the ride, come what may. Again they saw the potential of the technology and committed a much larger share of their future to it than other vested commercial interests did.

Then along came streaming video on the Internet. Guess who? That's right, the porn industry was all over it.

Now we have virtual worlds such as Second Life. The adult entertainment industries are here in full-force. They love its potential. Granted now there's a push to segment, segregate, and isolate them, but we still cannot overlook the fact that here again they embraced the technology and put it to work for them.

Given the past history of pornography, we should view the presence of such content in Second Life as a fantastic thing for the future of Linden Lab and this new world that we have chosen to populate. Even if we don't like what they're offering. History has shown that they are quite adept at recognizing a good thing much faster and much more accurately than the rest of the business world.

God bless pornography!

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-4489

Sure. But my point was that it's pretty boilerplate stuff for any internet transaction and, at least in my case, all they're confirming is my name and email (which LL have anyway) plus that I'm a PayPal customer in good standing with a bank account.

Certainly, if you're concerned that Linden Labs shouldn't have any RL info about you at all, to the extent you signed up under an alias, then PayPal won't be much help. But if you're concerned, rather, about telling Linden Labs more than they need to know in case Linden Labs might be able then to misuse this information, then I don't see it's much of a problem.

To get people to put payment information on file and put them a step closer to using it.

Linden Lab does not require age verification for access to anything in Second Life.

You do not have to give Linden Lab any personal information whatsoever to use Second Life.

If you do not have payment information on file, you cannot access 5% of the regions in Second Life.

Age verification is entirely voluntary on the part of the parcel owner, and is needed to access an extremely small percentage of Second Life.

If Age Verification is some kind of covert method to get all your private data, it's epic fail because it's virtually completely unnecessary.

/me whips off her pants and waves them in salute.

It's an interesting take on the history of commerce I'll grant you.

Given the same "logic" why not be pleased to see evidence of "the world's oldest profession" coming to a street near you soon?

The bubonic plague, also an excellent indicator of progress since somewhere around the 6th century.

It makes you wonder why the great pornographers of the ages aren't up there, mentioned in the same breath as Aristotle, Socrates, Newton, Einstein, Michelangelo.. no wait, he did like to paint a naked breast or two.. and that David, man have you seen the c*ck on that guy.

Michelangelo did in fact originally intend for him to be fully erect, and notice the positioning of his right hand?

Yep, if it wasn't for the town elders getting down on him with the "moral majority" that arm was actually going to be rotated by about 10 degrees and we'd have had a true work of art, David giving himself a happy ending!

As for the Venus de Milo, don't get me started. Guess where her hands were playing before they were "lost" by the powers that be?

Well I guess I just dreamt that Massachusetts made it mandatory. That New York made it mandatory for all their health workers. That all the military will have to take it. Etc. I guess it was all a dream.

No, that was someone at Fox News who dreamt that up. There isn't enough H1N1 vaccine available: Massachusetts, like every other state, is rationing it.

What gets me is the fact that anyone thinks they even need to know anything.

That's not the point and you know it. You forgot New York and the military by the way.

That is the point. that's the only situation where people's rights are even potentially in jeopardy.

Even if this is true it's irrelevant.

I'm not sure why requiring health workers that are more likely to be exposed to H1N1, and more likely to come in contact with vulnerable individuals, to be vaccinated against H1N1 as a condition of their employment is an issue. Not even a radical libertarian would argue with that one.

The military are not subject to civilian law, they voluntarily give up a boatload of rights when they join.

As many of us pay Linden Lab directly for services I think it's fine that they know something about me. How do you suggest e-commerce should work?

I'm not a fan of the Aristotle verification because they ask for information that is not fit for purpose, but everything Linden Lab ask of me for payment is relevant.

There are so many things wrong with that, I don't even know where to start. You're a right nutter, you are.

Well, if Linden Labs (or anyone else) receives a payment from me, I certainly think they need to know who it's from.

And, while you may not like it, there have long been -- and they've been considerably tightened up in the last decade -- legal requirements about record-keeping where international money transfers are concerned.

This!

Hey, Atticus! Since you're so up on your Internet history, can you tell us what the Internet was originally called, and why it was created?

There was an awful lot of Internet long before the term "clicks" was used in computer reference. Hell, there was an awful lot of Internet before there was even a mouse - or a home PC, for that matter!

Post #21, Para. 2. Quoted below for your convenience:

You know, there are some conspiracy theories that are funny, and there are others that are just downright disturbing. Yours kinda falls in the middle.

First of all, what "license number" are you talking about? My driver's license number was sequentially assigned - as in, had I have applied about an hour later than I did, I'd have a different, slightly higher number. There's no "information" embedded in the number.

Second of all, when you use said license numbers for Aristotle's age verification system, you're accessing a server not owned or maintained by Linden Labs, and LL does not get the information you're giving to Aristotle. Yes, you're growing someone's database by doing so, but it's not LL's. By providing LL with your payment information, you've provided them with far more identifying information than they could possibly get from Aristotle.

And besides, you are not required to give them *anything*. You do not need to age-verify with Aristotle, and you do not need to provide any kind of payment information to LL. Just don't expect to be able to access the same level of service us "naive customers" are getting.

ding ding ding ding deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee KRAAAAWWWW

God I am getting old. I do not remember any switches for archie searches anymore. You had to know a little of the Unix command line back then.

Once gopher came out (late 80's? early 90's? somewhere in there) it all became much more mainstream and thus comercialized. Phone Phreaks gave way to script kiddies and Al Gore is to blam for it all

Okay, In Debra's defense, it is perfectly possible to earn a good, comfortable living in SL without having ever spent a dime of real money into it. I've been doing it for the last 17 months and, while I'm no millionaire in SL, I'm still living pretty comfortably.

See's a new niche market in SL to exploit. Rushes off to make tinfoil hats with a special anti age verification layer to "BlocK teH LibrulZ RayZ"


ps: Whoo hoo! Only took me 5+ years but i'm finally there! 125!

Crawls back into her hole.

Oh, come on, you mean you didn't know that the Internet is for porn?
http://www.spike.com/video/internet-is-for-porn/2762980

*runs away giggling*

You do not have to use Aristotle. Use payment information here at the site, or on Xstreet and install the latest viewer. If a sim has properly flagged their land adult as opposed to using the land settings to make their sim "age verify only," you will be fine.

Dear SL,

Thanks for the recent Linden Bonus received in my account. I finally upgraded to Premium after over a year of game-play, and was not expecting to see any bonus or stipend for some time. It came fast, faster than a newbie at a pixelbar.

Sincerely,

Little Bit Richer Resident

The military will have to take it as a matter of national defense and mission readiness. The Armed Forces aren't going to be of much use if half our troops are laid out sick when they're needed. And besides, we (yes, I said "we" agreed to that sort of thing when we signed up. Voluntarily, I might add.