Madelaine McMasters

UncommonTruth wrote: I'm not overly analytical (I even had to copy/paste the word from your post to make sure I had it right ) but I think that yes plenty of people have to have their worlds turned upside down to be able to see something from another's view. I watched this video because it was forwarded to me by my niece, who got it from some classmates. It is apparently making the rounds via facebook and email through school kids, and sending them a powerful enough message to feel the need to pass it along. That can only be a good thing Also, the girl in the video had a brother. The sexes weren't totally segregated as some of the comments on the vid said, and some of the posts here seem to be stemming from. Just wanted to point that out since to me the message was clear and didn't have anything to do with gender segregation lol. edited: reskimming the thread, and I might have imagined the vibe that made me add the second paragraph I'm using it being almost 4 am as my excuse :matte-motes-asleep-2: The question I have is whether reversing the stereotypes is helpful. Yes, it's done all the time, but that doesn't mean it actually works. I've had some pretty intense discussions on other topics with people who would be adamantly opposed to same sex marriage based on fundamental religious beliefs. I've tried that reversal technique (again, on other topics) and found that got them to really dig in their heels, as they felt mocked. In the case of this video, they'd have a very valid counter to the reversal. Procreation requires a male and a female. It's hard to argue that society would accept that reality, yet find it an abomination. And once you've started from such a questionable premise, will you have any leverage? Did I find the video moving? Yes. But, as one who supports same sex marriage, I'm interested in framing the discussion to move the opposition, not me.

7-3-2013 One day after Bolivian President Evo Morales' plane was forced to land in Austria due to refusal of France, Portugal, and Spain to allow traversal of their airspace, at the request of the US over concerns that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was on board, President Morales allowed Austrian officials to inspect the plane, revealing that the only other passenger was Rick Astley. When queried by CNN about potentially violating international law, only to be Rick-rolled, CIA director John Brennan refused to comment.

Hippie Bowman wrote: VAL! So glad you checked in! Here is hoping you are having a fantastic time! Great big bear hug to ya! Cya Sunday! Peace! Go easy on my ears, Hippie! Val? You need a washcloth for yours?

Qwalyphi Korpov wrote: @ Madelaine & Perrie To be fair the LL is probably just taking a little short cut with the 'you can't have a contract with an avatar' FAQ item. Something like 'while we fully believe the contracts we have with avatars are valid it is considerably easier to deal with real life identities - so we require you to provide and sign with your real name.' The longer version may be more accurate but it doesn't flow as well or sumptin. There's generally no need for LL to have an avatar's RL identity. If you break the TOS and they boot you, it's up to you to decide whether you wish to out your RL self in order to challenge them. This is why I say the TOS can act like a big stick, even if it's legal swiss cheese. The TOS was written to protect LL. There might be a reason for LL to take legal action against the operator of an avatar, but I can't think of one off the top of my head. In that case, anonymity would be a practical protection, if not a legal one.

Tari Landar wrote: Awesome, congrats on the new pc!!! I'm so glad you finally got a really great pc. I know all too well what it can be like using onboard graphics, lol. The pc I used to use I had been using onboard graphics up until hubby got me a graphics card in 2009. I had no idea what I was missing before then. Out of all the things I could finally see, water was what amazed me the most. Before then it was blue, and relatively transparent to me. I saw no ripples, forget any type of reflection. It was just blue space. Couldn't even tell it was actually water, because it didn't look like it was moving at all. Funny how the little things can really make your day. Tari, for my first few months in SL in 2008, I was using a 2003 vintage HP laptop. I don't know what setting got messed up, but I had yellow skies with black clouds and pea green water with no detail, as you described. I thought that's what SL was supposed to look like until I got a snapshot from my partner. I switched over to my even slower and older Apple laptop and finally saw SL in some of it's glory. Czari, I'm so glad you've now got a viewport into SL that does it justice.

Porky Gorky wrote: I've got a 1000w PSU as I plan to stick a GTX 680 in there next month, so definitely enough juice. After sticking my head inside the tower I pinned the sound down to the GPU. I stuck my fingers into both GPU fans and stopped them for 2 seconds and that did not stop the sound so I guess the GPU fans are not the issue. In the last half hour I have tried running 4 simultaneous instances of Firestorm. To start with the squeal was loud/ but after about 10 mins the sound consistently lessened. Possibly it just needs to be worn in? Only had the card for 3 days I hope running 4 instances of FS is not my permanent fix :matte-motes-big-grin: There is no "wear in" for the GPU electronics, so that's not explaining the reduction in noise over 10 minutes. If launching an additional copy of FS were to immediately reduce the noise, I'd say that's because the second copy produces it's own whining, which is not correlated to that if the first instance. The more copies of FS you launch, the more the whining starts to sound like white noise, indistinguishable from the fan noise. But you said the noise level changed over time. I've no explanation for that. So there you go, an entire paragraph to say "dunno"!

Perrie Juran wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: . Whether your RL identity can ever be tied to that avatar is another story. But we know that it can be. In a DCMA (as well as other legal cases) a subpoena can be issued to obtain personally identifiable information, IP Address, Banking Info on file, etc. The only argument a defendant might have would be "someone else was using my computer." Yep, but LL can eject you from SL without ever needing to know your RL identity. If you want to fight them in court, you'll have to out yourself. And that's what makes the TOS an effective stick, even if it contains leaky legalese. Until the TOS appears in court, you don't know what's bluff and what isn't. (Nor does LL ;-) Ignorance of the law is no excuse, but it can be handy? The "someone else was using my computer" argument is coming under attack by technology. Google can identify you (to a limited extent) by your search behavior. There might come a day when to get away with that excuse, you'll actually have to behave like "someone else". ;-)

Perrie Juran wrote: How about a little bit of curling to go with that. A sport which I think any man who engages in should be shot for. It proves to you Ladies that us Men are capable of using a broom and hence have no excuse for not cleaning up after ourselves. Now that's a neat shot, Perrie. I curled for a few weeks one summer. As with every other throwing sport I've tried, my aim depends on the presence of a target. I never mastered hitting something else to make it hit the target, as in billiards, curling and bowling's 7-10 split. I was warned by a tennis coach that my aim seemed evil. I learned that beaning the other girl in the forehead seemed to improve my chances of winning. Curiously, beaning my doubles partner in the back of the head during a serve also helped. Apparently it doesn't matter whether you get your opponent to laugh or cry, either will distract them. As for cleaning up, my ex-hubby seemed unable to scrub the food off a dirty plate. He thought I'd get fed up and do the job right myself. I simply lowered my standards below his.

Perrie Juran wrote: Czari Zenovka wrote: WHOOO-HOOOOO!!!! My new PC arrived yesterday afternoon. :matte-motes-big-grin: Wooooot. Sounds like it's tim eto celebrate with a good old fahioned cheese rolling. Woooooot for you! Whether cheese rolling is an example of gender discrimination, or simply that one gender is a bit more discriminating, I'll leave to others to decide. I personally prefer the more gentile celebration of bed racing... There's nothing so alluring as flannel jammies.

Porky Gorky wrote: Nyll Bergbahn wrote: It's possible this high pitched whine is due to a vibrating inductor. I read one complaint where the person said it was only occurring when folding and the clock speed was way above the set boost clock. Normal gaming was fine. Can also happen at high FPS apparently. Perhaps SL is also causing this. Coil whine is another possible cause but I don't think this is what you describe. I suggest you contact the manufacturer (or supplier) as you may have to RMA it. This is possible, the card is overclocked. Would a vibrating inducter cause any damage long term? I agree that it's not a coil whine, i've experienced that issue before and this is quite different. I'm not sure how people are differentiating between inductor and coil whine, as inductors are generally coils. Sound can be made either by motion of wire in the coil or by "magnetostriction" of the inductor's core material as the magnetic field in the inductor changes over time. Good inductor design can minimize the amount of energy lost as sound and the power supply itself should be designed to minimize the shuttling of energy at audible frequencies (if you could hear like a bat, your PC would always be whining). It's possible that your GPU is varying its power consumption wildly at a rate that's audible, and the power supply has no choice but to supply that demand for power, resulting in audible whine. I'd expect that whine to be affected by your instantaneous use of SL, unlike the fan noise which ramps up and down slowly as you increase/decrease load on the GPU. While the whining itself won't cause damage, you may be hearing it because a power supply in your PC is at the edge of proper operation. If it's just a poorly constructed inductor, then no damage will result, other than perhaps to your sanity. It's very hard for me to tell at this distance (about either your PC or your sanity ;-). ETA: Heat is probably the greatest concern for the big chips in a PC. If you have a monitoring program, that should tell you what's going on. The OS should automatically run the fans and throttle the clocks to keep things safe. ETA2: if the power supply was on the verge of falling over, I'd think you'd see evidence of that in erratic operation. Since you didn't complain about that, I'm gonna guess everything is fine. Noisy, but fine. And you still might want to check for a driver update, just in case they messed up something with OpenGL.

Nyll Bergbahn wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: Oooh, this is interesting. I figured Porky was describing fan noise that was above and beyond what other games produce. So there are actually reports of GPU power supplies whining? That's just careless design. Maybe it is fan noise but the issues I mentioned occurred with a GTX 670 so a possibility too. I've sent Porky a couple of links to read..For those who don't know, folding is where you use spare time/capacity on your home computer(s) for medical research (some take it very seriously). A monitoring program such as OpenHardwareMonitor will soon tell him if the fans are screaming at high revs! I've run SETI@Home and Folding@Home. I believe both are worthwhile uses of your computer when you aren't using it, provided the energy costs are palatable to you. (It costs about USD$0.30/day to run Folding on my old iMac). Here's a list of other @Home style distributed computing projects... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distributed_computing_projects

Dillon Levenque wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: I'll guess this is an OpenGL driver issue. EVE runs on DirectX. Maybe there's a newer driver available? Oh yeah. I knew that, too. You're right: it's not really a direct comparison at all. SL seems to escape direct comparison with just about everything, doesn't it?! ;-)

Nyll Bergbahn wrote: It's possible this high pitched whine is due to a vibrating inductor. I read one complaint where the person said it was only occurring when folding and the clock speed was way above the set boost clock. Normal gaming was fine. Can also happen at high FPS apparently. Perhaps SL is also causing this. Coil whine is another possible cause but I don't think this is what you describe. I suggest you contact the manufacturer (or supplier) as you may have to RMA it. Oooh, this is interesting. I figured Porky was describing fan noise that was above and beyond what other games produce. So there are actually reports of GPU power supplies whining? That's just careless design.

I'll guess this is an OpenGL driver issue. EVE runs on DirectX. Maybe there's a newer driver available?

Fantastic, Czari. But until you've seen me, you ain't seen nothing!

Perrie, here's what I find the most interesting part of Bragg Vs. Linden Lab... "interaction with a person in a virtual world can satisfy a state’s "minimum contacts" requirement for personal jurisdiction." This works against the idea that avatars can't sign contracts, and I agree with it. It seems to me that, even if your RL identity is unknown, the avatar you drive can be considered a legal proxy for you. Whether your RL identity can ever be tied to that avatar is another story.

Trinity Yazimoto wrote: hum can u tell me how you remove the color fill ? if you do it from the cursor under opacity, it doesnt create transparency.. you keep the effects on the layer. So i dont think ull get the same effect than with a real transparency anyway. if its a simple square with the border. select all, then go in modify selection and select border, set the size of your border and inverse the selection and then cut ("delete" key). only the border will remain on your layer. and nothing in the center, so transparency will be ok I think you're on the right track, Trin.

XbabylonX wrote: Sorry to forget to mention that, I already saving the final file as png. When Im testing with the first layer (the one that has the transparency) everything is ok. The problem appears when Im adding the second layer (which hasnt transparency). Thank you for your replies! Okay, if I understand this correctly, what you want is a solid frame with a transparent center rectangle, like a window in a wall? Does your PSD image have the checkboard transparent background showing when you view it in Photoshop? As I recall, the background of a PSD file cannot have transparency. I usually convert the background into a layer, then delete all the pixels before starting my constructions. That gives me a transparent drawing board.

Trinity Yazimoto wrote: save your file as png or tga . Dont use jpg format otherwise you wont get the transparency And you must check the alpha channel box when you save as TGA, or it will be saved as 24-bit only with no transparency. ETA: I just checked. If the PSD file has an alpha channel, you must check the "Alpha Channels" box when saving as TGA. If the file has embedded transparency, you must select 32-bits/channel when saving.

Perrie Juran wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: Qwalyphi Korpov wrote: Perrie Juran wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: It's also the case that minors generally can't enter into contracts, which makes you wonder how the teen grid legalities worked. That said, many online services are used by anonymous individuals, so there is probably some real legal value in having a TOS. Qwal, you've probably put more effort into understanding all this legal prose than those who wrote it! That raises an interesting point. How does LL handle the Teen sign up? When I first got On Line, my kids wanted to do some things also and I registerred them for some things and had to provide a form of Parental (Adult) Verification saying I approved of their using the Web Sites in question. I'm not going to risk my account by trying a 'dummy' sign up to find out. I too have wondered if the teen registrants branched off to some guardian approval path. On the other hand perhaps the LL considers the TOS to be mere guidelines rather than a contract. Like posting the no pushing rule at a swimming pool. You don't need to go to court to throw a kid out for pushing. Of course the LL has a set of guidelines aside from the TOS. You have to follow the TOS but the guidelines... idk. Think of the guidelines as marking the center of the road and the TOS marking the shoulders. I the value of theTOS is in improving clarity when a resident is punished or ejected. I imagine there is some legal punch in the TOS as well. If a resident is ejected and protests, LL could probably hold up the TOS and say "You violated paragraph 9, we have the log files. Wanna go to court?". If the resident decided to go to court, do you think the judge would note that avatars can't sign contracts? I think the judge would side with LL, providing the violated element of the TOS withstood legal scrutiny. And as you've pointed out, Qwal, some parts of the TOS probably wouldn't withstand legal scrutiny. But how many people know that?! If LL came at them waving the TOS, with the paragraph they violated outlined in pink highlighter, I bet most people would back down. Is the TOS a legally binding contact? I think the answer is yes. Consider Bragg Vs. Linden Lab (pops). Yep, the TOS would be considered a legally binding document, and I'll bet some of it wouldn't withstand legal scrutiny. ETA: the patent I have will not withstand even the slightest legal/technical scrutiny. I knew this going in, but my client wanted the ability to wave it around, primarly for marketing reasons. "Hey, this thing is patented! You know it's gotta be good!"

Qwalyphi Korpov wrote: Thanks Madelaine. I have put in some hours puzzling over stuff. Though I'm sure I don't understand it. Cuz I'm not a lawyer. N even them & the judges appear to be puzzled too. Now the thing about you can't have a contract with some virtual world avatar. I'm thinking that's a qualification of convenience. Although I'm not a lawyer I am very familiar with qwalyphication. Cuz you know the LL has been involved in legal disputes in court with their virtual world avatars. Course the courts wanted to know the virtual world avatar real life identities. The LL doesn't get to show up as Commerce Team Linden either. So ipso facto n like that. I was tempted not to post anymore on this yesterday. But then I thought I could get some mileage out of sprinkling the word consideration around. Which could be useful. I've heard you can't have a valid contract without consideration. Although there are exceptions. Then I forgot. (sigh) Now I have to admit I took a short cut when I implied that all agreements are contracts. Turns out that's not true. How you tell when one is.... that's another puzzle. The TOS with it's 18 separate cross linking documents... it smells like a contract but I'm just a chipmunk. By the way - as part of the sign-up process there a place where it says that by proceeding you are confirming that you have read and agree to the TOS. So I take back the stuff I said in some other thread about being able to get into the feeds without ever accepting the TOS. The sign-up process is very easy and quick if you don't bother to read those 18 documents. I've read that some software/service license agreements are longer than the US Constitution. Modern computer tools allow you to count the words in a document without actually reading it, so it's possible that no modern American has ever read a software/service license agreement... or the US Constitution. Over my career, I've had several opportunities to file for a patent. I demured all but once, and I wish I could have walked away from that one as well. Sitting across the table from the patent lawyer, a nice fella who was looking after my best interests, I felt for perhaps the first time in my professional career... anger! Not so much anger at the lawyer as anger at the system, which is so broken as to be a potential drag on progress. If you think this TOS business is hard to fathom, wait 'till you see the mental gymnastics involved in patent claim construction. There is a non profit group that asks tech saavy people to search for "prior art" to challenge recently filed patents, particularly of the software kind. Their goal is to prevent issuance of patents that are overly broad (though some claim it's to prevent issuance of any patent ;-). I don't know how successful they've been, but I'm more than happy to think of them as a pack of wiley chipmunks, nibbling away at the base of the mighty oak of patents run amok. (Yes, I know the difference between chipmunks and beavers. I've never been afraid to torture a metaphor.)

7-2-2014 One year after China's introduction of a law requiring offspring of parents older than 60 to visit them frequently and and make sure their financial and spiritual needs are met, the number of adult Chinese children living in their parents basements continues to skyrocket. The problem is exacerbated by China's failure to anticipate that their "one child per family" policy, which is credited with accelerating the erosion of the traditional extended family, would require "one guest room or basement per family" a generation later.

Owww, not so loud! I'm still a li'l hung over from celebrating Monday with pizza and root-beer...

Qwalyphi Korpov wrote: Perrie Juran wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: It's also the case that minors generally can't enter into contracts, which makes you wonder how the teen grid legalities worked. That said, many online services are used by anonymous individuals, so there is probably some real legal value in having a TOS. Qwal, you've probably put more effort into understanding all this legal prose than those who wrote it! That raises an interesting point. How does LL handle the Teen sign up? When I first got On Line, my kids wanted to do some things also and I registerred them for some things and had to provide a form of Parental (Adult) Verification saying I approved of their using the Web Sites in question. I'm not going to risk my account by trying a 'dummy' sign up to find out. I too have wondered if the teen registrants branched off to some guardian approval path. On the other hand perhaps the LL considers the TOS to be mere guidelines rather than a contract. Like posting the no pushing rule at a swimming pool. You don't need to go to court to throw a kid out for pushing. Of course the LL has a set of guidelines aside from the TOS. You have to follow the TOS but the guidelines... idk. Think of the guidelines as marking the center of the road and the TOS marking the shoulders. I the value of theTOS is in improving clarity when a resident is punished or ejected. I imagine there is some legal punch in the TOS as well. If a resident is ejected and protests, LL could probably hold up the TOS and say "You violated paragraph 9, we have the log files. Wanna go to court?". If the resident decided to go to court, do you think the judge would note that avatars can't sign contracts? I think the judge would side with LL, providing the violated element of the TOS withstood legal scrutiny. And as you've pointed out, Qwal, some parts of the TOS probably wouldn't withstand legal scrutiny. But how many people know that?! If LL came at them waving the TOS, with the paragraph they violated outlined in pink highlighter, I bet most people would back down.

Czari Zenovka wrote: *very soon* (hint-hint) Well?