Verena Vuckovic

"This whole rediculous issue could be resolved with no coding at all, just a change to the EULA stating that SL is a social enviornment and to not expect to be able to creep around invisibly. The busy flag is enough to tell friends that someone is not able to chat at the moment, there is no need for angst-causing skulduggery like masking logins." Couldn't agree more. We have this skulduggery masquerading as 'privacy'. As you say, there is Busy mode........and people can mute and so on......so I cannot see a single legitimate ( non-skulduggery ) reason for a person logging into a social environment and effectively preteding they are not there at all. A person's reasons for wanting to do so strike me as rather more dubious than mere 'privacy'. Not to mention that it is utterly absurd that a person can pretend they are not online......yet anyone in their groups or on the same sim can see that they are. And that includes 'friends' from whom they think they are hiding their status. The net result being that such people get booted out of friends list. After all.....what kind of friends pretend they are not even in the country ?

I stand by my comment. What is the point of going on a social network.....and pretending you are not on it ? Especially when people on any public sim.....including 'friends' for whom one has unchecked the online status flag, can see that you are on it. And especially when anyone in the same groups ( which might include a stalker ) can see you are online. This is not, as some like to pretend, the equivalent of putting the phone on answerphone and pretending you are not in. This is the equivalent of pretending you are not on planet Earth ! Whilst I've heard many film stars, etc, complain that people have invaded their privacy by phoning, climbing the security wall, photographing, etc............I can't recall anyone complaining that the fact that they were even in the country was a 'violation of privacy'. SL is a 'world'. In the real world you can hide your location, ability to comunicate, and so on....just as in SL. But the one thing you can't do in RL is be in the world and pretend you are not even in it. Unless your name is Lord Lucan and you've murdered the nanny.

Never mind the new world order...........a person would simply have no way of knowing if their SL partner ( who can simply switch the show online status flag off.....even though on friends list ) is online right now with someone else. Or any similar such situation. So one has a charter for people to lie all they want.....all under the guise of 'privacy'. That is effectively all the so-called 'right to privacy' actually is and has ever been.........the right to lie to people. It looks like we will now be denied the ability to find out if people are lying. Well done Linden Lab.....yet another step towards the perfect online society !

Actually its worth pointing out an entire group of people who would be affected.....and whom nobody has mentioned either in the JIRA or here. And it is a group of considerable size. I refer, of course, to the many people in SL who have alts. And of course, SL being SL, those alts may not necessarily be friends of ( or even know under the alt avatar ) the same friends the main account has. In my experience of SL, this is a sizeable portion of the people online at any time ! And of course, one of the things people in an alt account invariably want to know is whether their partner, friends, etc from their main account are online. Of course, by definition, not being on the friends list of the friends of their main account......they *don't* know that. Not without an online tracker of some sort. This *could* be solved by allowing alts to see the online status of friends from a main account. It would mean all alts that want to use this would have to be registered as alts.

Once again Linden Lab is fixing a 'problem' that doesn't actually exist. Par for the course. The fact that someone knows one is online is irrelevant if there is nothing they can do. There are already functions ( certainly in Phoenix ) to block IMs, notecards, etc, from all non-friends. And of course there is mute. So the only situation in which a person can actually DO anything ( griefing, nuisance chat, scripts, etc ) as a result of knowing you are online is when they are on the same sim as you. But hold on.......if a person is on the same sim as you they will know you are online anyway as you'll be on radar ! What's more....I would find it preposterous that anyone appearing on a public sim, where any member of SL may see they are online, protest about their online 'privacy' status being invaded. The concept doesn't really make a great deal of sense in the first place. Not that that ever swayed anyone at Linden Lab.

I've yet to come across a case of begging in SL that I did not either know or suspect was a scam. My advice is to immediately mute any stranger IMing to beg for money......whether in personal or group IM. Don't respond at all, just mute them.

Well......I received a 'reminder' yesterday to enter 'new' payment details by January 9th or........well, I really don't know what the 'or' is or why. My payment details.....the only ones LInden Lab are getting off me......are already in my account. Am I supposed to re-enter them or what ? Nothing in the stupid email from LL makes this clear. If the system cannot cope with the same payment details......that is not and should not be my problem. Any hassle from this and I will simply change to a basic account.

Maybe I'm just thick or something....but I don't understand WHY I'm expected to enter 'new' payment details. There's nothing wrong with my credit card, which is actually ( unlike most people....lol ) the only one I have. How am I supposed to enter 'another' credit card when I DON'T HAVE 'another' credit card. And why the blazes am I being expected to do so in the first place ?

" if they couldn't figure the sliders out there are plenty of shape creators out there that have the shape they want..hehehe" I have to say....my experience of shape creators is that of wondering what planet most of them come from. I've seen shapes labelled as 'sexy female shape' that were anything but sexy or female. One wonders whether most of the female shape creators have ever actually SEEN a woman ! I have about 10 of these shapes that I've collected over the years, and without exception every single one of them is hideous. The shape creators have no idea of correct proportion or anatomy......and half of them should be had up under any relevant trade descriptions act for mis-selling a 'female shape'. And no....what a woman actually looks like is not a matter of 'personal opinion' when the anatomy is SO incorrect that in RL the person would require severe corrective surgery and woud not be standing around thinking how 'sexy' they look.

"People get onto such erroneous choices, and then by human nature feel a need to defend the wrongful choice they have made. But that doesn't make them right." I suspect choice had little to do with it. Here is what I think happens.... 1) Person joins SL 2) They go to a club and are surrounded by people several feet taller. 3) They don't want to appear the odd one out so they adjust the first thing that comes to mind....leg length. 4) They then look like a ridiculous stick insect......but who cares as so does everyone else. 5) All the stick insects tell each other how cool and sexy they now look.....a sort of mass denial of reality. In time they come to believe they made a 'choice'.

"Reread.. i said the NUMBERS are not related to real world measurements, as in they are not a 1 to 1 ratio. NOwhere did I say a flippin thing about anything not having specific sizes in SL. In fact, I even validated that by specifically saying they're an internal game reference..which means I can NOT have said they don't exist. So what's the real reason you called nonsense on 3 consecutive opinions on the subject? They are, after all, opinions.. and not yours to correct tyvm." This is self-contradictory nonsense. Things do have specific sizes in SL.....every content creator knows that.....so measurements in SL quite clearly do have a 1 to1 correlation to real world measurements, as is the case in any 'scale model'. You can't create a 1/200 scale model of Titanic and then claim that it's just a matter of 'personal opinion' and an 'internal model reference' if you make the Captain taller than the masts and the iceberg the size of a cocktail ice cube !

"Most people who have shorter avatars that come to the forums and claim to have been accused of age play due to their height also don't lead off talking about taller avatars looking like "barely human... monstrous stick insects." Do they? " What's wrong with stating it like it actually is ? Those avatars DO look barely human and like monstrous stick insects. They remind me of that thing that came out of the mother ship in Close Encounters.

"And Verena's not exagerating either." Indeed. I have a 5 foot 10 version of my avatar........and on visiting a 'female only' club the other night I was by a long way the shortest person there. I have a HUD device that can measure the height of other avatars, and many were over 7 foot and some getting on to 8 foot. Nearly all the ridiculously tall avatars have ludicrous leg lengths. They really look quite comical, with hips 2/3 of the way up their bodies. This has nothing to do with people WANTING to be like that........and everything to do with people feeling peer pressure to be the same lunatic height as others and not knowing how to adjust all the proportions. That's the real issue here. It's nothing to do with people 'chosing' to be 8 foot tall.

"I don't think it's ludicrous for a privately owned business to set rules and expect you to adhere to them." Yes it IS ludicrous for anyone to be banned from a sim, ARd or whatever.....merely for being a NORMAL human height !! Stop making excuses for the insanity. As for 'adjusting to socially acceptable norms'.....what kind of of a CRAZY 'norm' is it where people feel they have to be 8 foot tall to avoid being accused of ageplay ? No way is that sort of McCarthyist thinking socially acceptable.

"Yes, there are places you cannot go if you are shorter than the SL average. Places where shorter people will be removed as child avis. Most people who wish to visit adult places have adjusted to this fact - they either create a taller version of their avatar, or avoid places that remove people based solely on height." And you don't find this totally uttery ludicrous ???

"SL is for everyone to be as they want to be. If I want to be 8 feet tall with 6 foot long legs, I can. My choice." It's nonsense to suggest all those 8 foot women are 8 foot because they WANT to be. They are 8 foot because their friends are 8 foot......and their friends are 8 foot because the men are 9 foot, and also because avatar shops sell ludicrous sized avatars in the first place. And the avatar shops sell ludicrous sized avatars because they think that is the average size in SL. If...on the other hand....a woman joining SL for the first time was asked ' Would you like your avatar to be 8 foot tall ?'.....99.999% would say NO.

"Part of the problem is that many are hung up about the numbers of their height, and still think they have some relation to real world measurements.. they do not. They are for game use only, and only as an internal reference. The true measurement of ones height is in relation, and proportion to the averages found in SL." This is nonsense. Things DO actually have specific sizes in SL There are no relative sizes.....a sim is specifically 256 meters by 256 meters. Rez a block and it will specifically say 1 meter. If your height says 8 fot 2 inches...it is because you ARE 8 foot 2 inches !

Yes....it's that perenial issue again. Why is the average avatar height in SL 7 foot 9 inches ? Fact is, even at 5 foot 11, my avatar is one of the shorter female avatars in SL. To go any lower.....to actually be a realistic female height, is to end up being accused of 'ageplay'. How utterly ludicrous. I've even seen one site that automatically BANS anyone under 5 foot 6 inches ! To visit some female clubs in SL is to see hordes of monstrous stick insects...totally oblivious to the fact that real people don't have legs 2/3 the length of their body. And these people think they look sexy ! They barely look human. It really is high time that the avatar 'Appearance' function in SL came with a height indicator. Change your height, and it will say ' YOU ARE NOW 8 Foot 2 INCHES....IS THIS OK ?'. I suspsect the 'HELL...NO' responses to that might just get average height in SL down to a sane level.

Those impromptu crazy moments are what SL is all about. Like the time I was standing in some beautiful, quiet, romantic, scenic setting......all on my own enjoying the sunset.........and out of nowhere a Lancaster bomber crashed into the sea 20 meters away. It all happened too fast to get a pic. Probably the funniest thing I can recall, was when ( just for a laugh ) myself and some friends showed up on a Gorean sim as daleks.

The issue is now finally resolved. Following my AR, it turns out that the parcel next door had been abandoned....and the owner left it so anyone could rez anything. The offending object is now gone.

" Only 9 days?? I have been fighting an encroachment issue since November with the same results...nothing. " Yeah I saw your post and replied there. Truth is....almost every parcel I own on Mainland has some item ( or more ) 'encroaching' a bit. Normally it's just trees.......and I'm not too bothered, in fact often pleased to have someone else use their own prims to border my land. But then there's those objects like the searchlights, and the 2001 obelisk. Objects which encroach a considerable way onto one's parcel........which is mainly possible only with large prims. Last I saw...large prims were technically not allowed in SL.....so you'd think that an AR about a large prim encroaching would be totally cut and dry and not something one would have to wait days, weeks, or even months to have resolved !

Well.......so far...I have :- 1) Reported the item via a support ticket 2) Abuse reported the item as 'litter' 3) Abuse reported the item as 'encroaching' on my land And......in 9 days.......LL has done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Jesus wept ! You wouldn't think I was PAYING for this land !

" I have heard that it is possible for someone to follow you around Sl, as you travel from sim to sim. Also, that is possible for them to be not only invisable,but to not show on the mini-map or radar. Is this true? And is it something anyone can do, or only special powers granted to Linden avis?I know there is no real privacy in SL, and that even your chat and IMs are accesible to the Lindens, except those encrypted by the Emerald viewer, but can anyone spy on somebody this way? The question arises from a conversation I had with someone who was being followed around and harrassed, and did not know what to do about it." No. despite some of the claims made here......it is not possible to 'follow a person from sim to sim'. Lindens specifically removed the ability to do this quite some time ago. I have heard claims that it 'can' be done if one operates a certain tool within a very short time ( seconds ) of a person teleporting, but I have never seen this substantiated. Yes..it is possible to be 'invisible'. One can even change one's avatar name as it appears in other people's radar. But, a green dot will still appear on the map. Lindens appear to have the ability to rez without a green dot appearing.......as I have myself observed on one ocassion when a sim issue was fixed. Also, such following about and harassing of a person as you describe would constitute a violation of TOS, though probably quite hard to prove. If a person is simply at the regular sims one goes to......one can't really report them for having the same interests.

" There is a way you can tell if someone logs in even if your offline. There are several different scripts you can purchase on xstreetsl that monitor the online/offline status of people you define and notify you each time they log on/off. " They are considerably unreliable and inaccurate. With someone on friends list......you will normally be told within seconds if they are online or offline. The scripts you refer to may take up to 15 minutes to register the status....and frequently fail to do so at all. Also, not many people realise this much simpler method :- If a friend has allowed you to see their status when online....you CAN also see their status when offline. You simply go to the Second Life web site, log in as your account, and right there on your user page on the left hand side will be a list of friends, showing who is online. If the friend has also allowed you inworld to see where they are......you can also see that via the web page. Of course.....if the person was truly a friend.....you would not need to spy on them

" 1. Did you bother asking the owner to move it first? 2. ARing is the second step, not knowing how the AR ticket system works yet, I would still suggest being patience and waiting for some kind of outcome. " It's a bit hard to ask someone who's name appears as 'Owner'......but who's account seems to have disappeared. I joined several of his groups to see when he was last online, and though the groups are listed in his profile....he does not appear as a group member. Which suggests to me the account has been deleted. So one would then have to go through the process of waiting for the land to be officially regarded as abandoned...which could be weeks/months.