Scylla Rhiadra

Thanks Luv, this is sweet. For a great many of us in Canada, this is a rather sombre and muted Canada Day. Many of us are in shock over the "discovery" over the past few months (as a nation, we actually always kind of knew they were there) of three sites of shallow unmarked graves of First Nations schoolchildren who died of abuse and neglect in "residential schools" run, mostly, by the Catholic church on behalf of the Canadian government. Over the course of about a century, young indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families, and brought up -- if that's the right word for the combination of abuse and indoctrination they suffered -- in these institutions as part of a deliberate and entirely open policy of genocidal cultural eradication. In the words of Sir John A. MacDonald, Canada's first Prime Minister, in 1879: About 4,100 young First Nations children from this period are unaccounted for. They are the occupants of the shallow unmarked graves now being uncovered. A great many more of these will be uncovered: governments at all levels are allocating money to searches for them. So many dead children. The last residential school closed 25 years ago. This isn't ancient history. Canada is in many ways a wonderful nation. I count myself extremely fortunate to have been born here, and to live here. But it is also a nation built on broken promises, lies, and quiet violence. Residential schools are just the most horrifying instance of it -- starvation was routinely used in the west by the North West Mounted Police as a means of forcing First Nations groups to comply with the government's wishes. Canada is a nation build on genocide. I don't know what else to call the deliberate policy of annihilating the culture of an entire people. The one positive is that Canadians, on the whole, are beginning to come to terms with this, and recognizing the fact that our indigenous peoples still suffer under our system -- from a lack of safe drinking water, from rates of poverty and disease and suicide and police violence that far exceed the national average. Many cities and communities have literally cancelled Canada Day this year, and instead urged that the day be used for reflection and mourning. This morning my partner and I walked to a nearby baseball diamond to add orange ribbons -- orange ribbons on playgrounds and baseball diamonds have become a symbol of mourning for the lost children -- to the hundreds that already festooned the fencing there. The flags there -- Canadian, Ontario, and Toronto -- are being kept at half mast by the city for 4,100 days, in memory of each child. So, sincerely, thank you. But I'm not much in the mood for "celebrating" Canada right now.

What Nova says. You can get indoor shadows from sunlight coming through a window, but you won't see it otherwise from EEP. That's because you'll get indoor lighting from ambient light, but the direct light from the sun is stopped by the walls of the room. The answer is definitely to use projectors to cast the shadows where you want. And, of course, you can colour that light a tinge of orange (or red, or whatever) if you want to replicate sunlight at a particular time of day. You can do what Hunter says -- I have on occasion created my own shadow prims for objects when I was having problems with EEP and projectors. But you'll want to blur the mask a little, probably. Another tip: if this is just for a single shot, you can import the shadow mask as a "local" texture, which means that it will disappear when you log off, but you don't need to pay the upload fee.

Archbishop Ussher, presumably. One hopes that rushing all of those fossil fuels into existence doesn't mean that they didn't test it properly for safety. It would be awful to discover that the oil we've been using had serious and detrimental side effects . . .

Um, no. That's how experiments, used to prove or disprove a hypothesis work. That is NOT how most scientific inquiry operates. We've never had a "control subject" earth, or moon, or sun, or universe . . . and yet we've learned a fantastic amount about these things nonetheless. By your logic, we wouldn't understand tidal forces, as we don't have any large bodies of water not influenced by the moon as "controls," to cite one simple instance. As it happens, however, scientists DO have a model: our understanding of past climates and climate changes. We know how quickly glaciers have advanced or receded in the past, for instance -- and can use that data to measure current rates of melting. Who is being blacklisted? I hear ignorant misinformation and conspiracy theories about climate change all the time. Including, it would seem, here. Science, like most scholarly endeavours, functions through debate, a back-and-forth dialogue between different views, theories, and data sets. The way it is supposed to work, and the way it generally does work, is that this process eventually produces a consensus. It's fair to say that there is still a great deal of debate about the exact causes and effects of ongoing climate change, but a very clear consensus has arisen among scientists -- we're talking overwhelming here, as in well over 90% of experts in the field -- that human intervention is a major, if not the primary cause of global warming. Of course, that's just these scientist's "opinions," right? And you are entitled to your own! Absolutely! But as some wise woman or another (Marilyn Monroe? Cleopatra? I can't recall at the moment) once said, you are entitled to your own opinions. You are not entitled to your own facts. Which, given that you've produced none here to back up your opinion, is just as well.

Not sure about calling cards, but you can use subfolders in Outfits. I have about 3 levels (and occasionally more) of subfolder in my Outfits. It's sooooo much easier to find things.

Setting up my photo exhibition that begins this week at the ArtCare Gallery. (On the theme of "light," if that isn't perhaps evident enough from the pic.)

It is for SL: there is a huge presence by merchants, photographers, artists, and just people who like taking snaps on Flickr. (Which maybe says more about SL than it does about Flickr.) Join some groups and post. Follow people and fave; engage with them in comments. Some people use their Flickr handle as an advertisement too.

Wow. You're really getting the hang of this! Magnificent!

Kinda! Certainly pretty cool.

Gorgeous pic. See? I told you! Light is FUN! (Just keep away from Maddy, or it will be firelight.)

Always works on me.

Thanks Charalyne! Lighting is FUN!

I'm going to agree that this is NOT as bad as Red Zone, which didn't even bother to hide its central intent, and which leveraged paranoia to an unprecedented degree to advance sales. And I'm willing to accept that the way this has been setup (I'm intrigued by the issue of the use of Experiences) may have entirely innocent intent. But we can't know that. And right now, it's a loaded weapon that is certainly capable of being abused. LL can shrug this off, of course, for the reasons you suggest -- it's stated purpose is, I suppose, at worst marginally against the ToS. But waiting to see if this is abused -- and who knows how evident such abuse might be? -- is too much like LL's attitude towards Red Zone. If you see a vulnerability, you should deal with it . . . not wait until it blows up in your face.

Ok, so this is essentially a way to get around the "you need to be streaming media" thing. And it seems to make more sense to ask a visitor to open a web site than to start streaming media? I think I get it now, but it's still enormously intrusive, and potentially dangerous.

Assuming that they are being genuine about not collecting and storing other kinds of data. And it still seems overly-elaborate to me. I wouldn't trust an unknown web link sent to me by someone I didn't already know well. Why on earth would anyone choose to trust this device?

Technological Solutionism strikes again. I suppose it'll be up to LL to decide if this "extra feature" poses a sufficient potential threat to shut down the device, but I'd no more allow this device access to my cookies, etc., than I would click on an unknown link sent by a random person in an email or IM. It may well be nothing more than a case of "We can do this, so let's do it!" (which is a crappy and unethical way of thinking about these things anyway), but this device seems to me to violate an central tenet of online safety and privacy.

But this is my point. IF the sole point is as listed, it makes no sense to ask the visitor to open a web page. That's overkill. The fact that it does seems to me suspicious?

Understood. So, this doesn't require media streaming -- just that you open the web page. Which you'd have to be pretty stupid to do, surely. But if there is no ulterior motive for collecting data, why go that route?

The device clearly is trying to find a workaround that avoids the obvious pitfalls that eventually (after a loooong time) got Red Zone banned, but the intent, it seems to me, is still pretty clearly to identify alts, even if it isn't packaging that up in a neat little database somewhere. As I understand how this works . . . Avatar A shows up, accepts the Experience, and all is well. Avatar B, who shares the same IP as Avatar A (which may or may not mean it's an alt of "A") shows up, accepts the Experience, and both Avatar A and Avatar B are immediately booted. Pretty clear conclusion to be gleaned by anyone present? Avatar B is an alt of Avatar A. Also, I'm not clear . . . does the device store the IPs of avatars, or just the names of those who have been booted. This is certainly against the spirit if not the letter of the ToS (and I think a case could be made for the latter too). But yes, you're right: if I show up at a place that demands as the price of entry that I submit to this kind of check . . . yeah, I'm out the door on my own steam right away, alts or no alts. And I'd happily share my feelings about the place with, well, anyone I know.

You'd think there'd just be a simple "In violation of ToS and CS," wouldn't you? Good catch, Tarina, in any case.

Flagged on MP. The available categories aren't terribly clear. I chose "Disallowed Listing Practices" >> "Harmful or disruptive content."

It does sound rather Red Zone-ish, but without the high pressure fear elements (own one and your own alts will go undetected!), and without the all-important network and database. I don't see how this could work effectively except in a very limited way. What made Red Zone a powerful tool (albeit extremely questionably for the purposes for which it was putatively designed) was 1) that there were hundreds if not (at one point) thousands of the devices out there harvesting IPs, and 2) generating a database that all users could access. It also fails to note that it's only effective if one has media enabled -- which I think is still needed to detect and IP? On the whole, a bit of a scam, but one that should be ARed because its intent is clearly in violation of the ToS, just as Red Zone's was.

Inside My Sweater

I love the expression and pose here. You look very approachable. (Which, to me, is an important thing.)