AnthonyJoanne

I got wildly excited there for a minute, in your original post mentioning the grid list. I was hoping that you meant we could sort the login list by grid ... i.e. having all the toons on a given grid grouped together rather than just sorting it alphabetically. It serves me right for having multiple avatars with the same name on multiple grids. 😛

Within a minute of starting to read that article I encountered perjorative word choices and indications of an attitude which hinted at ignorance and arrogance. A quick search for the authors profile did not disabuse me of that notion. I'll cut it short ... SL is not a single entity. It is quite possibly the most diverse (in the REAL meaning of the word and not the current day distortion of it) example of human creativity currently on the 'net under a single banner. If someone hasn't seen the incredible variation of what's on (or has been on) the grid in SL that's because they haven't looked, or haven't had their eyes open to what was around them. In response to small minded arrogance like the author, I find myself channeling Roy Batty in Bladerunner ... "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe ... builds of everything humanity has ever made or dreamed of ... sentients exploring every possible mode of existence ... worlds that came into existence and then were lost in time like tears in the rain" It's a fitting fate that people like Bucknell can't see what is, only what their bias and preconceived notions permit them to see. It's also their punishment, and I find that fitting. But I never claimed to be a nice person.

Sorry about responding to this a few days later, RL has been intrusive. I would question your assertion which I bolded. I'll work up to it incrementally My name in RL is not my email address. It is, however, entirely unique to me. Nobody else in the world can have that same email address. When I receive email to that address, I respond to it as the RL me even though that address is not my 'real name'. So we're already seeing a disconnect between a net 'identity' and reality which has no bearing on how I react 'as' that identity. So naming an SL avatar with my exact RL name is not necessary for it to be representative of the 'real me'. If we extend that ... how necessary is it that my avatar LOOK like me to represent the 'real me'? I offer a genuine in-world encounter to support that: Years ago I made the acquaintance of an avatar. We got along really well for a several months ... we would hang out for 3 to 4 hour visits about twice a week. During that period she 'wore' a huge variety of avatars. Furries. Humans. Fairies. Curvy. Slim. Tall. Short. Tomboyish. Ultra-glam. Logging in to meet up with her I never knew WHAT she would look like. Unfortunately our RLs intruded and we found it harder to get our schedules to sync and we drifted apart. A year or two later her account was closed, I have no idea why. I like to think that she just moved on from SL and is alive and well and happy out there in RL. Anyway - the point was no matter what my friend looked like, she was always just 'her'. No matter how shocking the deviation in appearance from one login to another, I recognised her within moments because she wasn't role playing ... she was just wearing different outfits. So I suggest that appearance isn't necessarily a factor in whether or not you are roleplaying. And now we turn it on it's head. I once read an article/interview about a british actor from the post WW2 era. Annoyingly I can't remember the actors name. The interviewer reported that he had asked the actor about his acting 'method' and in the space of five minutes the actor had gone through five roles ... just sitting there in the same clothes and with no makeup, and had presented as five radically different 'people'. Granted that it's unlikely that there are many people in SL that skilled (let's admit it, there are very very few in Hollywood these days who could do it), but I submit that appearance is equally not a limitation on whether or not someone can roleplay different roles. So I could, conceivably, make an exact duplicate (or as close as SL permits) of my RL appearance, name it with my RL name, and STILL not be being the 'real me'. That's why people don't know, or can't tell. Because many people are doing one or the other, or very often some intermediate thing between roleplaying and presenting the real them.

As I said ... I really want to avoid the specific topic. I'll IM you to avoid messing up the thread. No - the point I was making is that sometimes someone can and does cross a line and after having crossed that line they (for me at least) don't get to go back. I don't draw my lines in the sand lightly, nor do I decide that someone has crossed that line quickly ... I'm well aware that people can and do often express themselves poorly, or say things which are subject to interpretation. Nuance is vital and all too often it's ignored. For some people, like myself, once someone has clearly and definitively crossed one of those lines ... the best thing is to write them off and leave them to it.

I'm going to have to be extremely careful how I respond to this ... but I'll do it with an RL example which, hopefully, won't trigger any moderation. Consider, if you will, Piers Morgan. In 2021 Piers Morgan tweeted that "Those who refuse to be vaccinated, with no medical reason not to, should be refused NHS care ..." He reiterated that view a number of times, and made it very clear what he meant. It wasn't a single tweet which might be misinterpreted ... it was clear and unambiguous what he was saying. I am aware that (to some extent) Morgan has reversed himself. TOO LATE. Some damage is unforgivable and a man with his audience making that statement and reinforcing it multiple times means there is NO forgiveness. I am NOT a Christian and no part of my moral code says that I need to cut him any slack whatsoever. (As an aside ... I'm picking Morgan as an example because he's pretty well known across the west, but there are plenty of local 'celebrities' I could have used ... it's just that many of you wouldn't know who I was talking about) That 'no jab, no treatment' attitude was echoed in many forums on the 'net ... including this one. There were actually people who called for the use of force to make people be vaccinated. I was present in-world when one such individual expressed that very opinion. Said person was immediately blocked and derezzed and no longer exists in my world. Why do I have such strong opinions on this? Consider my RL partner, who has a number of medical conditions. My partner's three specialists (all among the best in their fields) recommended strenuously against vaccination. The pencil necked politically motivated 'medical authorities' here in Australia denied my partner a vaccination exemption in the face of the written opinions of those three specialists. By every official metric my partner refused to be vaccinated without a medical reason. There were public release announcement by so called medical professionals here in Australia saying that my partner should be lowest on the priority list for treatment because my partner didn't have that magic piece of paper that the bureaucrats refused to issue. For anyone who is curious ... the evidence is in now and it is evident that my partner was very wise in refusing to be vaccinated. My partner's specialists were entirely correct and the bureaucrats were absolutely wrong. As a result ... I ignore Piers Morgan and anything and everything he says. I have blocked anyone who echoed that opinion on every forum I participate on. For everyone there is a line, and once someone crosses it, blocking/ignoring is not only justified, it is actually the kindest thing I can do ... the alternatives are unpleasant. Because of the contentious nature of my example I will not engage in conversation about covid, vaccination, etc. I simply used it as an example because it was one of the clearest cut examples I had available of a 'line in the sand' that justifies blocking and ignoring, and it's one of the reasons my ignore list is as long as it is. Whether or not this post survives moderation is up to someone else ... I've got some RL to attend to so later all.

There is literally no winning this. Let's boil it down to the absolute nitty gritty shall we? Let's say that LL come out with a cut and dried definition of what constitutes a child avatar. Let's hypothesise that it is SO detailed that there can be zero debate if any given avatar is or is not a child. The next thing we'd see is a 200 page thread of people complaining about that definition. We'd see page after page about edge cases. And we'd see an endless litany of people saying that they felt <sad/mad/attacked/betrayed/etc> because <insert reasons>. Let's also note that by any sane metric, it's literally impossible to write such a definition because there is ALWAYS going to be someone on the borderline. No matter what LL come up with, someone is going to swear black and blue that it's the start of the next purge. At this point the only way to satisfy the people who are currently complaining is to roll back the TOS change, and that will make a whole bunch (a MUCH LARGER bunch) complain that LL are encouraging something that is universally condemned across the civilised world. To the poor mole(s) who are having to deal with this ... be brave, be strong, and I'd demand a raise if I were you! 😛

There are currently ~8 billion people on the planet. Just for the sake of argument, let's assume that half of them are adult ... so ~4 billion adults. With a roughly 50/50 split that means 2 billion males, 2 billion females. Given those numbers, it's clear that during any given day there are TRILLIONS of 'interactions' between men and women. An interaction being where an adult male and adult female are aware of each other and take action due to that awareness. So walking down the street, and a man and woman adjust their paths to avoid colliding ... that's a valid interaction. A man or woman buying something in a shop from someone of the opposite sex is a valid interaction. A man or woman receiving a service from someone of the opposite sex (for example I had an MRI yesterday and the technicians who did the imaging were of the opposite sex) is a valid interaction. We're talking about face to face interactions btw ... virtual/phone/etc don't count. So we can leave out the myriad unsupported and unproven claims of email death threats that seem to be all the rage these days. I put it to you that encountering a bear is significantly more dangerous than encountering a man that you don't know, because statistically an 'interaction' between a bear and a human is MORE likely to result in danger to the human ... as evidenced by the trillions of interactions between men and women which do NOT result in any danger whatsoever. As for here in SL ... I'd rather encounter a woman because she might be wearing a pair of heels that I think are hot, and then I can go see if they make them for my slink feet.

Irrelevant. I took 2 minutes to edit a shape to child-like proportions. What do you think the child avatars did before mesh bodies were around? And you can be sure that the Daily Mail, or any other tabloid you care to name, would be able to find that out in very short order. And I'm quite certain that, if they were in the mood to attack LL, they'd take great delight in pointing out the fact that you can make a child avatar which CANNOT be protected by the modest-whatever in 2 minutes. Unless LL cares to add to the TOS that child avtars CANNOT use the system body, they are screwed. Because you can't get RID of the system body ... it's always there under the mesh.

The base avatar can be whatever the user makes it. With tools available in-world you can make an avatar which is 4.5 feet tall. That is easily small enough to be a child. I just did it in less than 2 minutes without using deformation.

Part of the problem would be the clothes, accessories, etc that they've bought which fit the 'obsolete' body. I use the Slink Hourglass, for example. It cost me (whatever it cost) and I'm quite sure that I've spent several times that much on clothing which only fits the Hourglass. Theoretically I could try to get that clothing to work on another body using alphas and all that ... but the results would not, I'm sure, be felicitous. The other problem is that the base avatar, the system avatar, lacks the ability that the TOS appears to be demanding. Until that is clarified the last 239 pages have been marking time until we actually KNOW what LL are going to require.

I hate to be pedantic (I'm lying, I love it) ... but I'm pretty sure he was a pre-teen slumlord. Just sayin'

Nope. If a person, we'll call him George, decides to buy SL tomorrow and then George decides that it's not economically feasible to continue offering the service ... George will be well within his rights to shut it down. There are cities in the US currently discovering that even if you pass laws, you can't make a business keep doing business when it's not profitable. And NOTHING in the TOS that YOU agreed to says that LL (or anyone who buys LL) is legally obligated to keep the servers running.

Given that you somehow didn't manage to quote whoever you are responding to, I'll assume it was my post. You stated that agreeing to the TOS when you initially created your account was done under duress. I pointed out that there was no duress whatsoever ... you were entirely free to walk away. You say your money is ... I assume you're saying that the money you have invested in SL is a 'right'. Two points: If you hadn't agreed to the TOS you wouldn't have any money invested in SL in the first place. So no duress. I keep reminding people that ALL of this is transient. Your avatar. Your 'property'. Your inventory. There may be legal issues pertaining to cashing our your $L balance, but besides that it can ALL go away with no legal recourse whatsoever.

There is NO duress. You agree, or you go away. SL is neither a necessity or a human right.

Having them in your inventory and not wearing them shouldn't be an issue. If you want to be extra careful ... rez a prim, put them in the prim, and take that into your inventory. (Obviously that assumes that they are copy) Then delete the skin, as a skin, from your inventory. You still have it, but it's not accessible and if LL penalise you for archiving something that way then I'd be pretty surprised. Remember that there are places like Freebie Galaxy which have (or had, I hope they are still around) a massive number of boxes of old stuff. LL can't really think that someone is going to go through every one of those boxes to check to see if there's a TOS breaking skin in them. If they have a shred of sanity they'll only care IF that skin is being worn to violate TOS, and only in the individual case where it IS being worn to do so.

Very true. I'd wager that the moles would rather be writing a script to grow grass than have to wade through another 200 page thread like this one. As I've noted elsewhere ... don't borrow trouble from the future. Yes, it's possible that you may have to retire old content, but don't throw it away, you never know if things might change. I kept all my system clothes and the advent of BOM brought them back with a vengeance! It's still early days in this whole thing, and stressing about what MIGHT happen is just going to make you unhappy. Raise your concerns, reiterate them when necessary, and try to stay positive.

Because it's got to go through a bunch of different levels and that takes time: Someone reads the thread ... they separate the wheat from the chaff ... they pass it on upwards in the chain of command ... the person(s) who are making the decisions think about it (and that takes time, with something this complex) ... they make a decision ... they then have to run it past a bunch of other people (lawyers, possibly the tech specialists to find out if it's even feasible, etc) ... then they reevaluate based on the feedback from that process, then they pass it down to be implemented. And that's a SIMPLIFIED process. It's probably more complex that that.

Fair enough. I'll let it slide and not dispute your claim then.

I'll bite. What demographic do you fall in? How do you justify your claim that your demographic pioneered the technology if you aren't a Baby Boomer? (You may already have answered this question ... I'm five pages behind, but if I wait until I get to the end I'll forget to ask)

I honestly can't say ... I don't go to clubs much, and other than my Death of Rats and Nac Mac Feegle, none of my avatars are short enough to trigger such a mechanism. That's why I ran the experiment. It was totally for science and for no other reason whatsoever. I also learned that it's hard for a Rat Skeleton to wink winningly Mostly I was interested in how much impact it's likely to have. IF (and I have to stress the capitals in that) it's only 1% of the locations it's probably not that big a deal given that I've encountered about that percent of places that (foolishly in my opinion) block a person from TPing in if they don't have payment info on their avatar. Back in the days when I was spending money in SL I used to buy them in bulk on one avatar and spread them around to my alts as the desire to buy something came up. The first time I tried to TP into a shop and was refused, and asked the owner why, I laughed when I got the explanation given that I had about eleven thousand $L on my toon at the time. We'll have to wait and see how the situation evolves ... getting stressed this early in the day (so to speak) is just going to make people needlessly unhappy, I think.

Ok - I keep seeing these posts insisting that people are being ejected solely based on their height. To test this, I put on my Death of Rats avatar (PTerry lives!). My shape comes in to 1.33 meters according to firestorm, and 0.9 meters by prim measurement. Avatar deformation for the win I then went into search, unticked G and M (leaving only A) and typed in SEX, and started teleporting to sims. I teleported to the top 10 of the list. Then I searched for SHOPPING, and started teleporting. I went to the top 10 of the list. Then I searched for NO KIDS ... but because no is too short and was eliminated the search ended up being KIDS and I got a whole bunch of locations that I wouldn't go to just in case, but I did look at their descriptions and most of them were there because they had "NO KIDS" in their keywords. Then I searched for ADULTS ONLY, and again hit the top 10 of the list. I won't continue with all the searches I did ... but the results were ONE. A single location which specified very clearly that you had to be 1.52 meters (apparently that's 5 feet tall). It gave me a minute to change to a taller avatar. Out of 100 hundred teleports. I encountered three which I had to leave because their rules stated "Human Avatars only". If these height ejection mechanisms are as prevalent as people would like us to believe ... I would have expected to hit more than one. I'm not saying that they aren't out there, because finding one means that they exist ... but I think one percent is a pretty low average when you consider that I purposely selected high traffic regions which were MORE likely to employ such devices. Just for the sake of completeness I'll note that several of the dancers who greeted me on arrival at some of the regions were rather amused at the 3 foot tall rat that had just arrived in their midst!

Ah - Mea Culpa then. Credit to Persephone for spotting the flaw. I must have either missed it, or the 70 pages I have managed to wade through have turned my brain into mush. I might head to bed

This has been fascinating for a number of reasons. Here's a few thoughts just to muddy the waters a bit more. Firstly: I don't think I've seen anyone who's noticed the major flaw in the TOS yet, but I haven't managed to wade through all of this thread, so if it's already been said ... mea culpa. Try to remember that the default avatar is still the system avatar. And there is NO WAY to make a system avatar where you CANNOT remove the 'modesty panel'. It's going to be pretty hard to enforce "cannot be removed" when the basic avatar underneath all our mesh doesn't comply with that rule and CANNOT be made to short of adding some kind of flag that prohibits you from changing your skin. So instead of indulging in panic, try to relax and wait to see how it unfolds. There is plenty time to panic later on. Secondly: It's been less than three days since the TOS was published. And in typical LL fashion it has left significant questions unanswered. Why are you freaking out that LL haven't addressed it over a weekend when you've got TWO months to get it sorted? For your own health, try to learn some patience ... because freaking out isn't doing you any good. It's too soon to be soiling your diapers. I'm translating into American, but I'm pretty sure I got that idiom right. Thirdly: Brace yourselves, because there's a chance that you'll lose all of the stuff you spent money on some day. Hundred or thousands of dollars just gone. Friends just gone. The places you cherish just gone. If you can't face that, then I'd advise you to reconsider spending time in a virtual environment ... because if the wrong people were to buy the rights to all of this, they'd have no qualms in shutting it all down, and the odds are that you'd have no legal recourse whatsoever.

I wrote an absolute wall of text ... and decided to reduce it: When I first arrived in SL (a few years before this avatar was created) I was blown away by the potential. During the years that followed I watched that potential flower. I shall illustrate with a single example: Once, if you wanted a pair of black patent shoes ... the only way to make them look shiny was to bake a fake-reflection into the texture. And to be honest it never looked that good. Actually if I'm being really honest ... it looked AWFUL from the wrong angle. But then we got ... materials! And you could actually make your shoes shiny! There were (still are) limitations to it ... but it was a vast improvement. Recently I saw an advert for pair of shoes that I thought were something a bit different ... so I went looking for them. Only to find that they are no-mod and use that hideous old-school pseudo-reflection. I was more than a little shocked ... so I did some exploring. A lot of creators are doing that now. I can't imagine why ... it still looks terrible, in my opinion. People are buying them though ... and if they like them, fair enough. In truth, it seems to me that SL achieved as much of it's potential as it was going to and is now backsliding in some ways. Experiences are mostly a dead mechanism. Animesh never did fulfill it's promise, sadly. Some people did really impressive things with EEP ... but most haven't bothered. "Back in the day" the potential was yet to be explored ... now it has been, and in some ways, it's been wasted. At least that's how I see it.

This is where ... the conversation turns surreal if we're not careful :D It also may offend some people who don't pay attention to what I'm saying. Before anyone react I implore them to read what I've said closely, and ALL of what I've said. The thing is, in terms of SL ... LL represent something that didn't exist in the cultural and societal matrix of the period which coined the term Intelligentsia. LL is, in the narrow and specific perspective of SL, God. Specifically LL represents a living and responsive God that you can literally point at. Had Nietzche said "God is dead" in SL someone could have taken him to a LL meeting and said "No - he's right over there". If not God, least one of his angels would be at the meeting. :D NOTE: Anyone who believes in God may, at this point, say that I'm being blasphemous. Not the case. I'm saying two things: 1. In terms of SL, LL fills the role of God. LL creates. LL sets the rules. LL punishes. LL literally keeps the world running. 2. LL's existence is not subject to debate or faith ... we have regular, ongoing, concrete evidence that LL exists. If you believe that God exists, and it's verifiable, then I envy you your faith. But let us remember that for a long time now there have been people who have not believed in God and see no evidence to support the existence of God. I am not saying that God does not exist ... I am saying that there is NO way to argue that LL does not exist. And that's all I'm saying. To my mind, and I fully acknowledge that this is purely my own perception, an Intelligentsia needs to address issues which might best be described as 'profound'. Meaning of life stuff. Issues with major ethical implications. That sort of thing. And Intelligentsia may also concern themselves with more trivial issues, but while we HAVE profound issues extent IN Second Life ... they are RL issues which have come in 'from outside' so to speak. About the only profound issue that comes to mind that truly belongs to SL is "Do LL overstep because they are biased?" Even THAT particular issue requires consideration of SL and RL. Now that's an interesting question and one which is fit for an Intelligentsia: Are we in the hands of a just God? Or is God a committee of fools? But the reality is that LL is NOT God ... for all that they fill the role in terms of SL. So how profound is the question really? Creating Miepon and Nextup in response to market forces and the demand of the customers doesn't really strike me as something that qualifies as an act of the Intelligentsia. Mind you ... this conversation might qualify