RC Questions

Part I: K.I.S.S. method
1. Require Verification for all Residents
2. Allow alts to be linked to primary avi's.
2a. Allow enough alts for roleplayers 25 for each Premium account
3. Use an international A/V service with a solid Privacy Record and Policy.
4. Enforce existing PG and Mature rules and community standards.

Pros:
1. Simple
2. Rules don't need to change
3. Resources can be applied to fixing more important issues
4. Much less resident uproar over changes than current ambiguous plan
5. Griefer alts and bots easier tracked and user banned

Cons:
1. Number of total accounts will drop without 'throw-away' bot and griefer alts.
2. Unique logon numbers will drop if alts can be tied together with a primary account
3. Finding a better solution than Aristotle
4. "Predictable Experience" relies on G-team enforcement of current search and parcel maturity levels.
5. LL doesn't make make a profit off of "must have" Adult land.


If you come up with anything to go along with this let me know I'll edit them in.

2a. Allow enough alts for roleplayers like Ceera. Five is derisory. Maybe 20?

I really wish you hadn't written this..

point 2 of the cons was the main reason I've been pushing to link the accounts.. I was banking on them being too unaware of their own systems to recognise this until it was too late..

I was 90% certain it would have too

big sigh

Honestly, I think so.

I just applied for a Blue Mars SDK.

I dreamed the hippie dream of Second Life being “the great equalizer”, where people came together, and formed communities around what they liked and wanted.

Given the developments I have seen over the time here, it seems to me that Linden Lab wants to drive the platform in a different direction, catering to fewer, bigger companies and the public image they want to project.

If my virtual world is to become corporate-controlled islands with approved content, I might as well get that with better tools and graphics.

(ETA: This is not an "I'm leaving". Just that I am losing faith in SL as anything special, and starting to actively look for alternatives).

Sorry hun, I don't think LL is so incompetent and blind that they haven't realized that.
Stats they present to stakeholders and owners are I'm sure gone over with a fine tooth comb, I doubt they make any change without looking first at those stats...It's the corporate way

btw... who moved my cheese?

I met some people along the weeks which have problems to verify because they are living in the European Union.

European Union means (to explain it for the Lindens) that we have so far 27 nations or states (or however it is called in english) in the EU and as member of the EU everyone can live and work everywhere inside of the EU-zone, to say it simple.

Much EU-people are trying now to verify themself. (Aristotle)

More and more the following problem appears:

*One* example wich is exemplaric:

One has, let's say, an italian passport and driver licence, but lives and works in Germany.

So if he/she types in the passport number or driver licence datas and marks the actual country (Germany) where he/she lives now, the verification fails because the Aristotle database expects her former italian location which is associated to her passport.

If he/she types in her old italian datas, means Italy as country, it fits not to the her new localization in Germany.

Same happens to spanish or whatever nationalities which living now in Germany.

It happens in any possible combination for any EU-member which lives not in the country of birth, but in a new one.

Other phenomens are: *sometimes* the verification works! if one marks the field driver licence but without typing any data in - just if the person let the field empty and click and he/she is verified.

This works for some people. In opposite to that it works not if one types the correct datas in or the empty field trick works not too.

In case of passport numbers it works sometimes with a shortened version of the numbers, but in these are not the dates of birth embedded.

Sometimes it works with the long version of passport numbers with date of birth embedded.

Sometimes it works with both numbers *not* and even *not* with any way to type or to type not the driver licence datas in.

Sometimes it works if one lies about his/her actual location in the EU, sometimes it works not because of the above said reasons.

Additional there are problems with actual changed second names (by marriage for example).

Sometimes it works, sometimes not.

Often I heard also, that the verifcation fails with a brandnew passport or driver licence, or if one changed not the country but only has a new adress in the city where one lives, or changed the city inside one country.

This seems to be a totaly random lottery...

Same problems exisiting logical for people which changed their location for work and living into countries outside of the EU and vice versa from outside of the EU into the EU, or for people which are living now on other continents, for example if a French moved to Australia, Africa or to South-America.

Conclusion: people are locked out, no matter what they try or they are forced to lie or they have (sometimes) just luck or they have the luck that some of the webformular-fields working (sometimes) without typing anything in or just hitting the space key a few times, or with typing in complete fantasy datas.

Some minutes before I visited a large german forum which grows enormous now.

As far as I have seen the verfication process via Aristotle fails in 80% there.

Ok, they can send scanned papers or they can do other ways to get a payment info status.

But some can't for reasons.

I would say: LL should think to increase service-personal for the incoming data-material via ticket, fax, mails from all over the world, because this will happen as soon the change starts official.

Aristotle is in any case a pure lottery and a whole mess and as we know it is not trustworthy.

possibly, but then I've never seen any demonstrable evidence of competence at any level of the organsiation that I've dealt with. The openspace debacle which stemmed from them not even doing basic analysis is a case in point.

What you have done of course is give them the perfect reasons for them not to look at your idea. From a customer perspective they're fine but from a business perspective they're the deal breakers.

Good try though

I have in mind that we are told the actual situation will be only the first step of some...

We can expect more trouble in near future...

But I do not leave also. I decided to give myself this show until the bitter end (in case LL has a permanent resistance against learning) and then: other world(s).

I have. They may make a lot of mistakes but they're still the only shared virtual reality environment that's even vaguely on the ball.

That faith is fading for me, too. Unfortunately, what I've seen of the alternatives I find discouraging on multiple levels, so if SL gets unbearable I think I'll probably just leave this "virtual worlds" thing behind altogether.

But not yet. In fact, I'm just a little bit excited about Ursula as a chance to join in as an interesting "community of sinners" forms. I'm really expecting that the quality of builds on Ursula will be a draw, too. Admittedly, there are all sorts of ways it could and probably will suck, but I very much doubt it can be any more frustrating than years spent fighting adfarmer scum, and--call me crazy--I think it could be pretty interesting for a while.

Maybe for a bit Ursula can be a Bohemian refuge from the rest of the grid and its white bread soccer mom minivan two kids and a golden retriever institutions.

More in spite of than because of, in my opinion. They can be credited with creating SL and getting it out of the gate, and I'll even say the general running and maintaining, which is no doubt a massive task. But as far as the governing/managing/business aspects, they get a big F from me. They are where they are based on their head start, and more importantly because of their customers who have put so much of themselves into it. The same customers who they are now trying to marginalize and disavow.

Thank you. And I see Kira added that point with a 25 suggestion per paid account. I could live with that, IF and ONLY IF it really meant that ALL accounts would have to be tied somehow to a verified and/or member account.

Such as, a roleplayer could link their 15 to 20 RP alts to their one main account, which is verified. Hence all those are verified. A coding tester could have their main and verified alts, and could still have a properly registered testing account, linked to their ID information, but that didn't share the same verification options (So they can test sim access controls, for example).

I have no problem at all with LL requiring 100% of all accounts to be lnked to a real-world identity known to LL,as long as among residents we still have anonimnity.

And definitely, LL needs to fire Aristotle and find an age verification service that isn't full of more holes than a Swiss Cheese.

That is why it is the drug of my choice!

Since I have no clue about code, beside minimalistic poor scripting wich means cut and paste from the script library (I could make notecard-givers all day long, ever the same 2 lines, looool) anyway - no clue about code is established in me - and I wonder: hmm? what is the english word?

Fortune.

Can it be possible that SL is unique by not only Phillips idea, a plan, and skilled programmers, but even by a large portion simple luck, fortune, or kind of "mistakes" accidents while programming at a specific status of the process of programming, which were on the other hand reasons for that we have now a working SL like it is?

What I want to say is: much other people trying now to make something like SL (beside the open sim thing) and I saw much hmmm concepts of "worlds" while google-ing around, but:

It seems it is not too easy to create such an environment with other methods than LL.

For me it looks like, if one time some kind of AlbertEinstein Linden hacked deadly tired but passionate or like under influence of drugs one night like the devil into his keyboard and suddenly an unexpected functionality appeared which was the base of SL as we play it.

Or was it a very neat exact plan and everyone who worked on it from hour zero on knowed exact what to do, to have this result with no fortune involved?

Agreed. I am also holding a faint hope that Ursula will succeed, and if it does it will again be in spite of LL rather than because of. If it does, the rest of SL can become Corporate Whitelandia all it wants, I'll never set foot in it.

If Ursula fails, that will be my exit as far as Virtual Worlds go. None of the others interest me. SL's attraction for me is it's relative ease of use, download and turn it on. I'm not about to do any "setting up" which seems necessary for the Open Life places. I'm not a creator, I want to buy and use your stuff, not make my own. So it's SL or bust for me.

With all these changes, Adult Continents, Age Verification, Sensored Search, will it be possible for a male avatar to be anatomically correct without being age verified, accessing adult search and travelling to Ursula?

Or are LL seperating the men from the eunuchs?

I'm not exactly blown away yet, either. Blue Mars seems to set out to be pretty much what I do *not* want SL turning into, but at least they do it dedicated and focused. And the OpenSims... are just not there when it comes to scripting, which is my main playground.

As for the Bohemian refuge... one thing making me a little doubtful of that is the track record of Nautilus and Bay City. I expect some to get a swap (based on whatever nebulous criteria), and the rest of the continent to be a speculator wasteland.

I think the one thing which made SL a success is the relative ease of creating things. Everybody can start hacking prims together, and from there, all sorts of things grow. It's the main problem with things like Blue Mars and Home; you need to be registered developer with a full, dedicated development suite. (That is, incidentally one of the things which make me a little on the fence about sculpts; you pretty much need to master outworld Blender-Fu and export tricks, running somewhat counter to the "everybody can at least get started" attitude, introducing a quite steep entry barrier).

But it's obviously a balance; better tools requiring more skill also yields better end results. Whether those "better" results are worth the lesser diversity is a question, though.

Sure, but so's Photoshop, Gimp, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, UNIX, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Google.

Chance and design are always fighting it out in every successful product.

I don't see anyone trying to make anything even vaguely like SL. Most of them are trying to make something they can call a virtual world and leaving the actual "world" part out, because worlds are messy and untidy and scary and out of control, and they're scared whacko of losing control.

And...

It's not just their head start. ActiveWorlds and There.COM had a head start, but who cares about them now? Not even their citizens. And the putative competition seem to be trying to do a better There or ActiveWorlds, not a better Second Life.

No, read "Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can't Get a Date" by Robert X Cringely.

Which is exactly why I worry that LL is in turn trying to turn SL into a competitor to one of those. I have said it before: LL seems hellbent on turning the platform into Mark Kingdon's next teleconferencing killer app, at the detriment of what it's already good for.

Thank you for that Argent Stonecutter, but the link and subsequent thread seems to refer to skins being classified as Mature, "Skin Vendours will not be considered Adult".

I was thinking more about the bits that get attached to the skins, so I looked further:

Meade Paravane:
So if the Xcite store showed all its add-on products just as simple screenshots of them being worn but not used, that would be mature?

Blondin Linden:
Those screen shots would still be sexualized depictions would they not?

/352/11/314444/166.html#post2399554

This suggests that in order to be anatomically correct, any male avatar will need to be age verified so as to use the adult search and travel to Ursula in order to shop, before he can hang out at the Mature nudist beach.

It does seem that LL are seperating the men from the eunuchs...

Fortunately I found a german translated edition of the book Funny title, even in my language I make it my weekend-reading. It's sure interesting. Thank you for the hint

I doubt very much whether XCite would be displaying exclusively "non-erect" bits. There's no reason the nudist beach couldn't include a vendor for non-sexual sexual organs on the property, so long as they weren't rampant.

Thing is, there are plenty of teleconference and videoconference systems out there. That's not what SL is good for. Second Life is good as a cheap simulation tool. There is a stage between reading a manual, and doing it for real, where practice and training in a simulation makes sense if it's "good enough":

- Disaster preparedness

- Operating room procedures

- Auto repair (low cost individually, but lots of repair technicians)

- Commercial real estate planning and walkthroughs

The harder and more expensive it is to do in real life, the better SL looks

(Airplane flight simulators are expensive, but flying real airplanes is even more expensive, and dangerous if you are practicing emergencies. Eventually you need to get in a real cockpit, but if the simulator is "good enough" it can replace a lot of the real flying time... thats the kind of things to look to do in SL)

Doesn't being an adult also include civility and respect for others? Looking for compromise rather than saying 'this is my way and even though we are both in a public place, you should be comfortable with anything you are presented with?



Obeying the letter of the law but not the spirit only fuels the factions calling for tougher laws. Again, isn't compromising and taking reasonable precautions the 'adult' thing to do?