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Lynda Baran

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Everything posted by Lynda Baran

  1. If I'm reading or watching a movie, I'm obviously not in SL. SL is just an alternative form or entertainment for me. But, with LL's recent attempts to steer the GD topics, I'm considering re-reading Orwell's "1984".
  2. for what it's worth, I routinely use Firefox and just got a blank page. Using IE I had no problem at all, even without signing in.
  3. I always thought the WNBA was evil. Your dream seems to lend a degree of credence to that belief.
  4. Unfortunately I find it very disheartening when, poll after poll shows that although people are repulsed by what the Congress is doing. They always say they think their Senators and Representatives are doing a good job. It appears they aren't willing to change things enough to make a difference. What we need, short of a viable Third Party to shake things up, is a complete house cleaning. Though I don't teach Poli-Sci, in dead time we have some pretty lively political discussions in my classes. The thing that disturbs me most is what seems to be a prevalent attitude that Government is the answer to everything. College kids have been brain washed for so long, their concept is that they are entitled to everything they want at someone elses expense. Dependence on Government has replaced self-reliance as the norm. The ideals of hard work and thrift to acheive ones goal replaced by an attitude of Why work and save for what I want if someone will provide it for me. They seem to beleive that there is an endless supply of funds for the Goverment to draw upon to provide everyone with their needs and wants. And they revile those who work hard, take risks, make their fortunes and then want to keep it as evil and greedy. I think maybe it is already too late.
  5. I've already written both of my Senators and My Congressman urging them to vote against SOPA. But if only seven Senators (unfortunately neither of mine) were willing to vote against giving Uncle Barry the ability to suspend Habeas Corpus in the name of the "War on Terrorism", what do you think the odds are of them voting against SOPA no matter what their employers want? I only hope the House has the guts to vote it down.
  6. I know this doesn't answer your original question, but consider portion of a proposed definition of Old or Elderly by the World Health Orgainzation which states: Most developed world countries have accepted the chronological age of 65 years as a definition of 'elderly' or older person, but like many westernized concepts, this does not adapt well to the situation in Africa. While this definition is somewhat arbitrary, it is many times associated with the age at which one can begin to receive pension benefits. At the moment, there is no United Nations standard numerical criterion, but the UN agreed cutoff is 60+ years to refer to the older population. But then you might redefine that with the old saw, "you're olny as old/young as you feel. I'm coming up on the big 4-0 shortly, but I'm still pretty spry. :matte-motes-big-grin-wink:
  7. I just read the bill. It is to broad in scope, over-reaching and too vaguely worded. I immediately wrote my Representative and Senators asking them NOT to support the bill as written. I use the internet to allow students to submit papers. In my field, plagiarism isn't a big problem, but neither is it non-existent. As written, this bill would shift undo responsibility to me to more closely monitor for plagiarism. It would also put me in danger of being civilly liable as well as shut down my website until the material in question was removed, thus depriving the honest students of a convenient venue for the submission of their work. If you'll notice, the technology to be used is the same website blocking protocols pioneered for censorship purposes by China and Iran. Those aren't two example the US. Government should be following. Especially China, the largest violators of Intellectual Property Rights in the world. In a related note, The US. DOJ is lobbying Congress to increase penalties for violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act originally passed in 1986. This law was already struck down by a US. Federal Appeals court as being too broad and over-reaching. It makes it a crime to say anything that is untrue on any internet site (for instance, something as simple as stating your age or weigh incorrectly on an internet dating site could find you in hot water with an over zealous prosecutor). The DOJ wants the penalties increased, but doesn't think the law should be revised to reflect a more modern understanding of the norms of today's internet activities. Honestly, I don't trust either the congress or the DOJ to get anything right these days. The least either of them do the better, and I will expand those feeling to include the government as a whole. Both of the above mentioned situations seem like another government power grab, which we've seem way too much of in the last decade or two.
  8. Your first mistake is believing anything you read in the New York Times. >goes back to my coffee and browsing my Wall Street Journal<
  9. So, if you work in a club are you going to be forced to join the union, even if you don't want to? That's the way it is in some areas of the US, no union membership, not work. Thankfully there are right to work states where you can't be forced to join a union in order to get a job. SL is a US corporation, should they then set up Right to Work sims where the unions hold no sway? For 3 consecutive years a union has tried to unionize the place where I work. They've tried every sort of intimidation you can imagine to force people to vote to unionize. Finally they succeeded this past year. It's pretty moronic and virtually useless since there is no collective bargaining allow for public service employees under our state constitution. So what was the use, other than union fat-cats getting a free ride on the dues paid by the union rank and file. Thankfully my state is a Right to work State, so they couldn't force me to join and waste part of my salary supporting a corrupt union hierarchy. Woud a union in SL be any better. I doubt it very much. They continued trying to intimidate me, forcing me to join their union against my will. But unfortunately for them, my state is also a Shall Issue Concealed Carry permit state. It's awfully hard to intimidate an armed citizen. :matte-motes-big-grin-wink:
  10. Like the responses in other replies, I have had occasional problems with purchases from market place merchants and even a few in-world shops. And, as others have stated, these problems were always resolved in a timely manner simply by providing the merchant with a friendly notecard containing the pertinent information. Any merchant worth their salt, either in SL or IRL, knows this type of basic customer service builds customer loyalty and generates repeat customers. I've found that SL merchants seem to understand this even more than many merchants IRL do. To blame merchants for LL/SL's failures are both unfair and demonstrates a lack of knowledge on where the line is reasonably drawn. The complaint that SL is a dictatorship is an extreme overstatement. Do they control what happens in world? Yes, but unlike a real dictatorship, you don't have to participate in SL if you don't want to. If you had a spine you'd quit SL, go join the Occupy crowd and vent your spleen there. It will be about as useful as what you are trying to do here, and I think you'd fit right in.
  11. Harlee, I read your blog out of curiousity the first time you posted about this whole thing a while back. When you egg them on I don't see how you can say you are the one being bullied. Your continuous back and forth is just making you a target. SL doesn't need to become stricter. The tools needed are already in your hands. Ignore them, mute them, or if you feel it's absolutely necessary, AR them. Then move on. But if you keep the battle going, there comes a point when you stop being the one who's being bullied and become the bully yourself.
  12. I recieved the following e-mail today: Dear valued PayPal Customer, Due to a policy update we need to verify your PayPal account. Please download the attached file , open it using your browser, fill in the required information and click update . Should you decide you do not wish to accept the verification process you can notify us before 07/10/2011 to close your account immediately without incurring any additional charges. We do hope, however, that you continue to use PayPal and enjoy the following benefits: It's safer When you pay with PayPal your financial details are never shared with sellers or retailers, so you?e more protected against fraud. It's faster You don? have to type in your card details each time you pay, so you can check out faster online. You can also get eBay items delivered more quickly, as you can pay the seller instantly. It?'s easier PayPal is the preferred web payment method in the world because it? a smarter, savvier way to pay online in just a few clicks. All you need is your email address and a password. Copyright © 1999-2011 PayPal. All rights reserved.The thing is, I don't have nor have I ever had a Pay Pal account. I know lots of folks in SL use Pay Pal, so I just thought I's pass it along FYI.
  13. Then you could even make a "Kid down the blocK" bot who would mow it for L$20. hehehe
  14. If your friend is the owner of the items try standing outside the boundary of the land, cam in and take the objects back. Problem solved.
  15. I'm not a merchant and just happened to stumble across your post while browsing the blogs and forums. I am a big shopper though and use the Market place for about 50% of my shopping, especially to keep up with new merchandise from merchants I shop with on a regular basis. And, like a lot of people, I have had delivery failure from Market Place purchases at times. I have never written a bad review for a merchant because of this type of problem. But I've also had delivery failures form in-world vendors almost as often. I usually just drop them a note card with all the pertinent information about the failed transaction. So far, in every case, I have received a courteous response within 24 hours and the item(s) in question are redelivered. That sort of response from the merchant places them firmly on my list of people I will do business with in the future. And I go out of my way to write a review that gives a honest opinion of their products and praises them for their excellent customer service. I can't see why anyone would write a bad review for a failed delivery if the merchant is responsive, unless there is some ulterior motive involved. A way to rate the performance of the market place may be a very good idea, but I seriously doubt SL will provide us with a vehicle for criticisms of them directly. But, since I do a lot of my browsing and shopping during slow periods at work, the demise of the market place would reduce the amount of shopping and purchasing I do in SL.
  16. On 11 September 2001, I was a Naval Aviator sitting in my squadron's ready room at the Oceana Master Jet Base in Virginia Beach being briefed for a training flight. My section was scheduled to fly four F-18Ds on a routine exercise, an over-water navigation and airborne refueling hop out over the Atlantic. We were halfway through our mission brief when, just after 0915, the Squadron AirOps Officer ran and in told us we'd been placed on15 minute alert status and it wasn't a drill. It was then that we learned what had happened so far and were re-briefed for a Combat Air Patrol mission. Our section was tasked to patrol an area covering the Mid-Atlantic section of the East Coast to protect Strategic targets. We would fly in pairs in a race track pattern between Cape Charles, Norfolk and Virginia Beach, VA. We arrived on the flight line and watched the ordinance crewmen loading our aircraft with live AIM-9 and AIM-120 air to air missiles, extra drop tanks and 20mm cannon rounds into the magazines as we performed our preflight walk-arounds. My section went wheels up at 1018 and our initial patrol that day lasted until early evening. It was just the first of several days and nights flying the same mission. Several times that day we performed intercepts on inbound civilian airliners making their approach to Norfolk International Air Port. With it's close proximity to both the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel and Norfolk Naval Base, the very real possibility of having to shoot down a commandeered airliner was always in the back of our minds. It wasn't until we got on the ground that evening and had finished our debriefing that I learned the full extent of what had occurred. During the following six and a half years I flew over Afghanistan off carriers in the Arabian Sea, and over Iraq off carriers in the Persian Gulf. I spent my time flying Close Air Support for ground troops, Iron Hand missions searching out and destroying possible enemy anti-air assets or strikes against tactical targets. I was medically retired from flying in 2008 just as I was starting work-ups for another deployment to Afghanistan. Since then I've started teaching college. And I'm still an Officer in the Naval Reserves, though now in a stateside staff job. But many of my freinds are still deployed and flying missions every day. My nephew and several of his friends, whom I watched grow up into young men, are currently serving in the military. Most of them have made more than one deployment to Afghanistan. And I've met and befriended a lot of the young Marines he serves with too. They're slated to re-deploy to Afghanistan in December, just before Christmas. It makes me feel guilty that I couldn't keep flying and stay on to do more. I'll always feel I've left something unfinished. I hope we'll never forget. And that we'll never rest and never give up. There I hope they'll find not the promised of 72 virgins, who would all probably be as ugly as a mud fence. Instead, I hope they're forced to spend eternity surrounded by 72 vengeful Virginians. What a pleasant thought.
  17. For me it's the low country along the coast of South Carolina and Georgia. Savannah is gorgeous, but my favorite has always been Charleston.
  18. Tocqueville, among other things, warned in Democracy in America against an increasingly larger central government populated by politicians who would eventually resort to bribing the citizens with their own money to increase and retain their own power. This came to pass a long time ago. Now we have over half the people in the country paying no taxes and demanding the other half pay more in order to support their mis-guided beliefs that government is supposed to provide for their needs. The mindless masses buy into government pronouncements that welfare, housing at government expense, free healthcare and every other want and need are rights due them at the expense of others. Now the statists are firmly entrenched. Their programs ensnared large swaths of the population in a defacto state of slavery, as larger and larger portions of the population become more dependent on the government largess for their existence. They enforce their will through promises of more and more programs to enrich the special interests. They promote class warfare as a means of further enraging those too lazy and feckless to take care of themselves. There is no hope of halting the downward slide until Americans take responsibility for their own lives and stop willingly trading their individual liberties for more government hand outs. Until we find the courage to return to a small central government, and elect politicians who will live within the boundaries established by the Constitution, we are destined to become just one more failed and bankrupt socialistic society.
  19. All hese replies already and I can't believe no one has add this one yet. Not only should it be in the gravetard, it should have a stake driven through it's heart!!
  20. I'll watch if Oprah gives me a car and an all expense paid trip to Italy for a month. First Class of course. Otherwise, not at all likely since I've never watch any of her shows or anything on her cable channel before.
  21. Oh yeah, and Snooki's music video. She should stick to the oompa Loompa song.
  22. Any RAP/Hip-hop "music" makes me cry. And if I can't find the volume control or change the station fast enough, it usually makes me gag and barf too.
  23. I've had a few problems with griefers on my little plot of land. I've banned them and solved the coming back as a newbie alt problem by simply checking the two little boxes in land access keeping out anyone without payment information on file and who hasn't adult verified. Since few actual copybotters or griefers are going to go to that trouble with thier alts, it seems a simple enough solution. And if LL comes up with something similar to what you suggest, someone else will come up with a way to defeat it. So what's the use?
  24. Guns, knives and swords are all useful, but personally I like weapons systems with a little more heft. :matte-motes-big-grin:
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