Rick Nightingale

Oh well, at least it's not just me then. Nothing I do about it myself... time to go for a coffee fix

I suddenly can't log in to SL with any account, from two different PCs with different public IP addresses so I don't think it's local. Firefox Firestorm even clears the password field as if I've typed it wrong. Anyone else? Edit: not even through a VPN into the USA.

I've just noticed that the wiki page for llGetAgentInfo now has Agent_Automated as a parameter. It's in red... not sure what that means and I don't have a bot handy to point the function at to see if it works. Even if it's not active yet, it clearly is going to be now.

... As to the article, not bad for The Guardian. Some of the reader comments though... always worth a read for a laugh!

An alternative I've used (for chairs at tables or similar) is to have the chair under the table normally, like it would tend to be in RL, and move out from the table when sat on. When 'unsat', it goes phantom, moves back under the table, then turns phantom off again. That usually does the trick, with maybe a delay between going phantom and moving it back so the avatar doesn't get carried along. I have a similar way with a linkset of chairs/table - in fact this one has the entire room linked and is triggered by AVSit's sit/unsit link messages in the individually AVSit-scripted (and linked) chairs: link_message(integer sender, integer num, string msg, key id){ if (sender==llGetLinkNumber()) { // Message is from the AVSit in this prim if (num==90060) { // New sitter llSetLinkPrimitiveParamsFast(LINK_THIS,[PRIM_POS_LOCAL,gSitPos,PRIM_ROT_LOCAL,gSitRot]); // Move chair out } else if (num==90065) { // Lost sitter llSetLinkPrimitiveParamsFast(LINK_THIS,[PRIM_PHYSICS_SHAPE_TYPE,PRIM_PHYSICS_SHAPE_NONE]); // Remove physics from chair llSleep(0.5); // Wait while above happens before moving chair gSitPos=llGetLocalPos(); gSitRot=llGetLocalRot(); llSetObjectDesc((string)gSitPos+","+(string)gSitRot); // Record our 'out' position in case user has moved us while seated llSetLinkPrimitiveParamsFast(LINK_THIS,[PRIM_POS_LOCAL,gInitPos,PRIM_ROT_LOCAL,gInitRot]); // Move back llSleep(0.2); // Wait for move before restoring physics llSetLinkPrimitiveParamsFast(LINK_THIS,[PRIM_PHYSICS_SHAPE_TYPE,PRIM_PHYSICS_SHAPE_PRIM]); // Physics on } } } I use it on a stool that's under a built-in dressing table against a wall. Without it, the avatar invariably ends up stood on the table headbutting the wall. With it, worst case is the avatar momentarily stands on the stool as it begins to move, then falls to the floor where the stool was (in the out position). Sometimes it works perfectly and the avatar just stands on the floor. Either way, better than standing on the table.

Just to add to the fun... as to one's IP address potentially informing others where you are in the world, that's not as simple as some might think and can go very wrong. The term is "geolocation" and there are companies that keep databases of where every IP address 'belongs' in the world so that they can sell the information. They are not always correct. You can look up which company owns your public IP address (your or anyone's ISP) and where they are, but that does not mean that the IP address itself is used in that region of the world. Hence the databases - that go wrong. For example: A few years ago I noticed a lot of websites I visited were blocking me. I would either get a blank page, or it would never load at all, or some of them gave an actual error page of a few lines of text saying I had been blocked because I was a threat. Some were very big companies that I was trying to make purchases from. It took over a month of investigation to find out why. The company responsible for actually blocking me in their firewall product (used by all the sites that were therefore blocking me) was Cloudflare. Despite numerous attempts to contact Cloudflare and get the problem solved, I got nowhere. Totally useless company and outrageous that they can, at their whim, arbitrarily block someone from a large part of the internet. Further digging (and feeding the webservers some error reporting code to get them to regurgitate more informative error messages themselves) revealed that I was being blocked due to my location: Russia! I was not in Russia. I was in England. My public IP subnet was assigned from a server in London. The company that owned the IP address block was in the USA. They had no connection to Russia whatsoever, but some stupid geolocation company used by Cloudflare had got the location wrong in their database. Not just for me, but for a block of 262,000 IP addresses! Even when informed of that repeatedly in every way I could find to do so, Cloudflare's only response was the standard, automated "we got your message - it is important to us - blah blah blah". Nothing else. Finally I found which geolocation company was involved, contacted them directly, had to provide proof of what I was saying (no way would they actually check themselves), and two weeks later I could finally access the whole internet again. At least they bothered to answer me and do something, eventually. I wonder what would have happened had I not been so network-savvy? ... Wow - that turned into an essay, didn't it? It all really annoyed me, lol. Can you tell? /rant

Akeruka Heads [AK] are giving a free (well, L$1 it seems) unisex head away for the next 15 days... need to be in their group.

Shush, you're giving away my grooming secrets!

I'm pretty sure Billy Bones (Tom Hopper) in Black Sails modelled himself on me... (or was it the other way around)

Blimey, I see what you mean. I just read it! :looks down to check what colour his belt is and if it matches his hooves...

Don't know... don't care

I'd better do something about that then...

Yarrr me Hearties!

Been there, done that

I change my name (and my wife changed hers) a few months back... there were no problems with friends lists, group memberships, store redelivery systems or anything else like that. Not so far anyway. Everything worked as before, just showing our new names instead. The only minor issue we had was having to request access to the beta grid* again for the new accounts. If you don't use the beta grid, that doesn't matter to you anyway. (It's another 'world' where we can log in for testing things we build, stuff like that, but we have to ask for access to it.)

Fair point. Personally I always took the Scotty approach when quoting people a time.

You're optimistic. This is LL we're talking about.

The difference is of course that this place is owned and operated by "the company", so they get to censor anything they don't like. Also, to be fair, they do have some legal liability for what is posted although it's more about limiting negativity about the company. I would not expect anything else to be honest. Free speech doesn't apply even to those who live in places that have such laws. This isn't the only place I've experienced such; a popular electronics magazine was known for simply deleting any post that was negative to them on their company-owned forum. We had a fun race once with the mods, when they decided to start charging extra for essential diagrams that accompanied the magazine to be downloaded. Made them play whack-a-mole until they brought the ban hammer out but we were all cancelling our magazine subs anyway. Most forums are run by some random person who decided to start a forum, so you get to do whatever (or not) at their whim. We're all free to discuss stuff elsewhere. My favourite forum (an informal outdoors/hiking type place) has just one rule: "Don't be a d*ck".

No way I'm using anything tied to google (or apple, or microsoft more than I absolutely have to), and I'm resisting being forced to 'need' a mobile phone by companies with very vested interests in selling them and the tracking and personal data they glean from them all. Edit: It should be said though that there are passkey solutions not tied to google, although I've not had chance to check them out yet.

My wife likes the mesh Alpha Panties from Belzebubble, they fit under things quite well and have a lot of 'alpha' cuts in them (hence the name) so you can hide bits that poke through. Edit: she just said she has the "Lace II" version.

The only times I've used a 'privacy' screen (really a forest screen simply to continue the look of my landscaping), it's been transparent from the outside. What we really need, is a way to restrict the viewer to rendering only objects in our own parcel or the parcel we are currently in, other than the terrain itself. That would obviate the need for lowering camera distance (which is useless if you stand nearer the issue), needing privacy screens, seeing other people's privacy screens, visual griefing, seeing all the mainland crap and just make our viewers work much less hard and only need to render what we want to see. I can dream.

Spoilsport! That takes all the fun out of hanging around TP points at events.

Why not? Black powder is a self-contained mixture of fuel (carbon, sulphur) and oxidiser (nitrate). It doesn't rely on atmospheric O2.

Hmm... old fashioned black powder (often incorrectly referred to as 'gunpowder' which really means the more modern nitrocellulose based propellants) should also work in the absence of air. In fact I don't know of any useful propellant or low or high explosive that needs atmospheric oxygen (apart from FAE/Atomised Fuel/accidents in custard mills which are special cases). The lack of gravity might make loading/keeping the black powder in the flash pan or barrel of my flintlock problematic, but a nipple/cap gun with preloaded powder cartridges would be fine. Oh oh... you found one of my 'areas of interest', lol. 'Energetic materials', a.k.a. stuff that goes bang. Much more interesting than sitting in a casino making the owners rich.