As I have previously stated, I went to grocery bagger school in the Philadelphia area.  (I must be a grocery bagger, I read it on the Internet.)  And one of the funny things about Philadelphia, besides that the best cheese steaks are neither Pat’s nor Geno’s, is that the rest of Pennsylvania is pretty damn rural while Philly is like the sixth borough of New York City.  So when it comes to gun control, its always the people dying in Philly who are exposed to the constant threat of gun violence versus the rest of the commonwealth (look it up) who want to be able to take their guns to their kid’s soccer games. 

So why the hell am I bringing it up here?  Because of what some other SL commentators have mentioned and this article over at Slate, regarding a couple that neglected their baby in favor of the one they had on Prius Online.

Now the baby was born premature and the parents might not have known how to deal with it.  But guess what, the parents were still at fault.  The parents were neglectful of their child.  They deserve whatever punishment comes their way for letting their baby die from not being fed so that they can escape into whatever virtual world that they found.

But of course, there comes the other side, saying video games or the Internets are not addicting.  And there is reasonable argument whether or not the Internet is addicting.  However, things *on* the Internet can be addicting even if *the INTERNET* is not addicting, like oh say naughty gambling or dirty pornography. 

Now here comes the online games, which in many instances can be….*drum roll*…..*extra drum roll*……MORE COWBELL……addicting.   And sometimes that is done by design.  One of my big peeves about World of Warcraft is that it obscures your computer clock and it has no internal game clock.  So you can be playing for hours, getting that rush of leveling or completing quests and suddenly its the next morning. 

Which leads us back to Second Life and the supposedly addicting game that the Lindens made.  After all, nothing is more addicting than sitting in a big grassy field looking moderately attractive while you lag while putting out boxes.  Because essentially, that’s what the Lindens made.   Sure, there are games in SL that involve staying on and leveling, Dark Life comes to mind, but the Lindens didn’t create it.  Is that SL’s fault?

Now there is a voice in my head that is yelling at me; "Of course, SL is addicting you dumb slut, what about all these Goreans and BDSM’er deathstylers you glorify in your obscene writings?  What about the woman who stopped taking her medication because of her evil gorean relationship?   What about articles that you have written dealing with the woman who became morbidly obese and then dying because she didn’t take care of herself in RL and immersed herself in SL?  Which of course I never read because this rag will be destroyed soon enough and never see the longevity of something like the Avastar." 

The thing is SL is like the Internet, and if you are addicted to SL then really you are addicted to some aspect of the Internet and any treatment should be focused on the underlying roots.  Pornography and gambling are obvious…no wait, there can’t be any porn or gambling on SL…nope, not now, not ever.

But that relationship obsession, the need to just be on and explore because nothing else is going on in your life, that isn’t a fault of the platform, its the fault of the person.  And some of those things need to be controlled by the User and not some nanny state, or company. 

Hamlet raised the question of what can we, as residents of SL or other virtual worlds, do for the person.  I didn’t read the results but the thing to consider is that sometimes, you can’t do something for someone when you are separated by space.  Sometimes tragedies happen.  You might notice people spending more time on than they should, but that’s a really subjective statement.  What is "more than they should?" 

I believe that the best thing a resident can do is watch out, offer help and referrals when they can but realize that they might not make their feelings or situation known.

Pathfinder Linden announced today that his game god position has gone missing, leading the longtime Linden Lab staff member to consider other opportunities. The unfortunate news was made public in a post to the Second Life Educators mailing list, continuing a pattern staff turnover as game emperor M Linden’s cadre  consolidates their positions of power in the wake of the departure of Second Life founders Philip and Cory Linden. 

Pathfinder is apparently a victim of an internal game god reorganization – his announcement said in part,  "Due to recent reorganizations at Linden Lab, my current position (Evangelist, Market Development) has ceased to exist. There are no alternative positions available to me, so as of March 12th I will be leaving the company".

As for the future, Pathfinder is keeping his options open saying "I am not sure what the future holds for me, but it will probably involve something at the intersection of online communities, virtual worlds and neuroscience. I will be remaining open to new opportunities."

Speculation about the Lab’s next move was the order of the day in-world, as members of the performing arts world were concerned at the loss of a patron. Other residents questioned the net present value of Torley Linden’s contributions to the Lab’s bottom line and asked if continuously parroting "friendly greetings" counts for more than Pathfinder’s contributions.

best friends Prokofy Neva and Pathfinder Linden party down (file photo)

Meanwhile, both Prokofy Neva – a close personal friend of Pathfinder,and Plexus Linden were unavailable for comment.

[Corsi Mousehold has been awarded  the “commie” or comment-of-the-week award for her explanation of why the Justice League Unlimited superheros are not welcome in Furnation. The award winning comment is reproduced below. ]

Here’s a bit of a story. IN years past the JLU were a welcomed member of the FurNation community. They didn’t bother anyone and no one really bothered them. That was until we were under a griefer attack and the JLU came over to ‘assist’ and the first thing they did was report ME to the lab for griefing. They approached me and yelled at me for causing the issue. I asked them why they reported me of all people. By this time I had already deleted all the offensive material. They told me that I was the one putting it all out and they had seen me doing it. Basically they had watched me selecting objects to return them. They were extremely rude to me at the time and informed me that they would have reports go up on me. I contacted Kalel and he too said I was being reported and then for harassment as well. I was not rude to these people at all. It was several days later that I was contacted by Kalel informing me that the ‘charges’ had been dropped because they did not realize I was the sim owner. My response of course was to point to the info hub I had in the center of the sandbox that had my name clearly displayed as the sim owner and if his comrades had taken a moment to look they would have seen I was in the admin team.

He called me ungrateful and abuse reported me again. I was informed of this by him as well as he had several of his friends make the same report. All reports were dismissed by the GOV team as illegitimate. Soon I had JLU members ‘patrolling’ the sandboxes and abuse reporting anyone that they felt was disobeying my rules. They started to get several members of my community banned. I was forced to add a new sim rule that the JLU were not allowed in the sim for any reason. When they had seen this, I was reported again for griefing. Again the report was dismissed.

In the end I was approached months later by Green Lantern Corps asking if it was okay for them to be there. They apologized for the treatment the JLU had given me and asked if they would be allowed to just come and build.

Green Lantern Corps are allowed to visit and act if they wish. But they are not allowed to be in tag or act as a part of the Corps while visiting. If they are the subject of a griefing they are to come to me and I would take care of it. They can then file all the reports they like.

In the end the JLU are a bunch of power hungry crazed nutjobs that think being an SL Police force gives them the right to get away with whatever they want. The GLC on the other hand have always been very respectful to me and my residents.

[With Post 6 as popular as it is, it is rare that I have to go searching for models these days. I certainly do that, but most of the models you see here from week to week have approached me and patiently waited until I had a chance to meet with them. This week’s model, Terra Price, is an exception. I spotted her one day and immediately begged her to pose for us. That was months ago, and my persistence has finally paid off. To make life even better for me, it turns out that in real life she is talented in the digital graphic arts and wanted to do her own pictures. I step out of the way and present the beautiful and talented Terra Price. –Timothy Morpork]

I guess i should say hi to everyone even though I never knew, well not until now, about this blog and its people reading it, so hello! Don’t know where or with what to start but I guess I should probably tell something little about myself. I’m 28 and honestly I still don’t know much about myself, which is why SL is a good get away place for me to explore my mind in ways I can’t in the evil world of RL.

Terra Price

I don’t really do much in SL compared to some really interesting people I’ve met like fashion designers, builders, scripters or business people, some of them are really amazing individuals and I just admire people that create with passion. But I do really like to play with my avi and its looks, and I love to keep adding things, and then tweaking and changing them to make it look pleasant. That requires a lot of shopping which I also love to do, even though it’s really damn addictive, time consuming and it costs! I tried to build but didn’t stick with it for too long, I’m just probably lacking patience for such things but don’t let that make you think I have a short temper, I’m really friendly to people. Over all I just like to hang out with friends and meet new people, I’m pretty easy going.

And I also like to dance, and yes, I’m a TG and love it with no shame, I’m an exotic dancer in one of the best clubs which is also female/male friendly, I’m not sure if I’m allowed to advertise it here but if you take another good look at the pictures, you might find out, or you can feel free to IM me in-world if you wish to know about it or about me. I’m probably just writing a lot of uninteresting stuff but thanks to Timothy and a lot of his patience with me- I finally managed to write this little article and provide three pics of my avatar which I hope you’ll all like.

Terra Price3

This last pic was taken by someone I met just recently but I didn’t want to post her name since I dont know if she’d like it.

Onyx project goes public with copybot client reviews

by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk

The Emerald developers have gone public with Onyx – a previously secret project to catalog and potentially fix exploits in various unofficial Second Life viewers.

In a blog post at the ModularSystems web site, Mr. Fractured Crystal states  "These
viewers generally remain private, closely guarded and shared either with
close friends or for a significant fee, the reason being that exploits
are quickly identified and neutralized when released in a public manner.
The
result of this is that nobody can be sure of the capabilities of these
viewers, information posted on blogs and forums is woefully inaccurate
at the best of times, and even more often misinformation spread by those
who want the public to remain in the dark."

Will naming and shaming rouge viewers developers cut down on content theft and sim crashes in Second Life – or will Onyx act as a consumer guide to unofficial viewers with certain capabilities that Linden Lab does not sanction? Expect to see some controversy over what is likely to become a counterpoint to Linden Lab's official third party viewer list.

by Jessica Holyoke

Second Life is like the Internet in many respects; its on the computer, no one knows that you are a fairy tale blind mouse and there is a heavy text and graphical basis for our interactions.  And it looks like a video game; you can fly, you can be in space, you can be underwater without SCUBA gear,  and you can have sex with strange creatures that shouldn't be reproducing with humans.  But combine the video game looks with the Internet aspects and suddenly people take it as an excuse for being a dick or bitch. 

"Oh, I stole all your spacebucks?  Too bad its a game!" 

"Oh I said I would be your boyfriend and I'm having fake sex with aliens?  Its in my game rules." 

"I want to spend time with you, sure, right after  I am done spending time in Zindra gambling your spacebucks away." 

These are typical things that are said to me.  Especially by my dick ex-boyfriend Steve*. Jerk.

Now granted, there are aspects of SL that are games, role playing sims and actual video games like Dark Life.  And on role playing sims, you are expected to play a character.  But on those sims, if you 'role play a dick or bitch,' then you are treated like a dick or bitch AND they understand that you are playing a character.  People present know the difference between In-Character or Out Of Character. 

On the rest of the grid, if you are a dick or bitch, then expect to be treated like a dick or bitch because you are being a dick or a bitch.  Residents sometimes just use SL as a communications tool, a heavy resource using, laggy, picking up a phone would be quicker, communication tool.  And don't try to cop out by saying "its only a game! bawwwwww."  Man or Woman up and say "too fucking bad, bawwwww."  Just because you are on the Internet doesn't give you an excuse to be a dick or a bitch.  People are dicks and bitches in Real Life too, like my dick ex-boyfriend Darryl*.  Jerk. 

If you are going to do it, do it with respect and dignity and not hide behind "its only a game." 

*names changed to protect the Herald from DMCA wielding losers who couldn't litigate their way out of an open phone booth.