The Naughty Nine

Ok, appears I've been counted.

As you all know, I don't do slex, (and lately I've not been much in SL whatsoever), so the below will be from the purely theoretical perspective.

So, name the avatar that I would most like to have sl sex with *if* was doing sl sex…..

1. Their av.

I've seen quite a few female SL avs whose looks I liked. Probably a few hundred. Also, if they ever implemented a proper SLpregnancy, etc. etc. (Just imagine if any new played would not pop up out of the blue, but could optionally select themselves an avatar produced as an average of settings of the male and female avs. I think it might be fun and would save some time on tweaking the settings for a lot of folks :) So, the answer for this one goes "A few hundred of those that I fail to remember now". So any female av who feels they have nice looks, consider yourself tagged :)

2. Their mind

Here I'd put Tiessa. Her mind is one of the most interesting constructs in SL I've found to date. (well, and just to prevent the formal complaints about "only the mind" from her - I'm fairly positive the body is within the set of answers for the (1) as well.

3. Their poetic/mystical/creative spirit.

Here the obvious winner is Vint - I can't stop being amazed by the amount of creativity and passion she is putting into everything she does - from the SLelections to the art gallery. And the magic she can make out of a function called "snapshot". You have to see it. (of course, the same comment about (1) applies.

4. Their social success/success in sl.

I'd probably put Helena here. What she did in PL was quite an achievement. Quite a cute av too (see (1))

5. Their libido, that is the thing they seem to want to do from how they talk and act.

Veyron. She was quite persistently trying to get me to explore the more unorthodox areas of SL, which definitely deserves a credit. :-) [*(1)]

6. Want to go against type for you. That is, if they are normally a top, you would want them to be your bottom, if they are straight and your same sl gender…

I don't like the forced sacrifices - it smells too much drama. So, any volunteer from the pool in (1) is welcome to pick up this place.

7. You would go against type for.

Partially for the same reason as (6), this space is blank. Another problem - I think I don't really have a stable type, so depending on where one puts the beginning of coordinates, every other answer might apply.

8. You would most want to do a nothing-but-sex week with, who you are not currently having sl sex with.

Heck, that's a *lot* of typing. I'm getting too old for this :-)

9. Threesome, which two. They don’t have to be from the above list, but can be.

Gather with Nicholaz Beresford and Barney Boomslang and go for a few beers and some geek talk somewhere in a good pub. What ? you asked about sex ? nah, I don't think so. Again, too much typing and distractions.

The tenth question:

“The forbidden,” the one that, you’d like to publicly confess to, but the consequences would be toooooo awful. Examples would be your best friend’s partner, a professional contact, someone you know rl who is here… Someone who you want, but have never been able to confess it too. Don’t post… Just answer with whether they are online right at the moment that you post your answer.

Not on SL despite of my fervent attempts to drag in. And given the chronic lack of time lately - probably irrelevant anyway.

How much is your blog worth ?

Geez. I did not expect it to be worth so much :-)

My blog is worth $22,581.60.
How much is your blog worth?

Behold: a nice image search tool

Via Around the corner.

Quite an impressive image search for Flickr...

About unreadable programs...

+++++++++++
>+>>>>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++<<<<<<[>[>>>>>>+>
+<<<<<<<-]>>>>>>>[<<<<<<<+>>>>>>>-]<[>++++++++++[-
<-[>>+>+<<<-]>>>[<<<+>>>-]+<[>[-]<[-]]>[<<[>>>+<<<
-]>>[-]]<<]>>>[>>+>+<<<-]>>>[<<<+>>>-]+<[>[-]<[-]]
>[<<+>>[-]]<<<<<<<]>>>>>[+++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++.[-]]++++++++++<[->-<]>++++
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.[-]<<
<<<<<<<<<<[>>>+>+<<<<-]>>>>[<<<<+>>>>-]<-[>>.>.<<<
[-]]<<[>>+>+<<<-]>>>[<<<+>>>-]<<[<+>-]>[<+>-]<<<-]


No, I did not break the keyboard. The above is actually a program, in a language called Brainfuck. Well, looking at the program's readability , I can not disagree with the choice of the name for the language.

Free hugs: free as in beer or free as in speech ?

Stumbled across the Free hugs post from Tymmerie.

The first reaction - "argh. the bloody consumerism. 'come and get yours for free! the next batch is at a discount!'" type of thing, or "Genuine! as shown on TV!" - which is probably convincing to some - but to me is more a sort of badmouthing. They won't show anything all too good on TV these days, imho.

But then, thinking of it - a hug from a total stranger that you would not see anymore is indeed truly "free". Just let them hang around bit more - and you will get entangled into the web of obligations and promises. If you stay longer - you might get even deeper - it would be called "family" then. Totally trapped.

So - since these offered hugs do not have any binding properties (although, take a careful look at the back of the sign - they might have written something in small letters there!), indeed they're free, not in the TV-ad-sense, rather in the true sense.

But for some reason the value of these feels much less.

For some things you'd rather forfeit your freedom...

Miscreants Live! tonight on SL

Ok, after reading this post, I figure I would write something up about Celine Ballinger and those other criminals that follow their paths.

It's amusing how fast-paced SL is. It took the RL more than 2005 years to get to the file encryption extortion worms, and it took SL - how much ? 5 years ? To get to the human-powered land grabbing extortion worms with a slightly cynical flavour. Criminals you can talk to.

All this junk about "Not a lot of people give land back where they can make easy $450"... There are even easier ways to make even bigger money. Put a web server, make it look like a bank website, let people stumble on it and ask for their credit card information. This easy avenue of getting money is called "Phishing". Luckily, at least sometimes those creative individuals go to jail. Although I think they should be put onto the life-long community work of fixing the PCs damaged by the malware. And no cheating - the reinstalls are not allowed!

The usability drawbacks of the SL interface should not be an excuse to "teach" the others in such an ugly way.

Of course, there are a few very easy ways to fix this:

1) if the land is set on sale to anyone at significantly below the market value, to put a captcha.

2) by default, ask if the land is being sold to someone specific - and make the targeted sale the default modus operandi.


Indeed, technically (disclaimer: IANAL), this might be "within the bounds". But if you went into a shop owned by a mom and pop, and noticed that a very expensive thing had its pricing sticker mis-placed such that it reads 1/10th of the price, and the college kid just went ahead and charged you that 1/10th of the price - would you be happy with your new buy, knowing that mom, pop and the college kid will have to repay what you "saved" ?

And for the victims of such an event - after hearing the suggestions about ransom, I would suggest to send all the logs to LL immediately, and request the suspension/termination of the said account. And when the miscreants will suggest to tone it down with LL - indeed you can do it. *After* they return the land *and* pay *you* for their behaviour. Don't be greedy, L$1000 will be enough of an amount. Afterwards you can donate the money to some good cause - and those guys maybe can go and buy a laptop to some child in a poorer country.

If anyone with a professional lawyer background happens to read this - would be very interesting to know whether this kind of activity can indeed be classified legally as a computer crime.

If yes - this can be a very effective way to control this mess.

The start of the newer religion...

Everyone is gossiping the hell about Cory Ondrejka no longer keeping the CTO position (the question "has he left or was he fired" is quite irrelevant - first, it's strictly personal matter, second, I do not think the end result differs a whole lot).

For a change, I'm gonna crosslink the Prok. The post on the subject is pretty much without venom (thank you!) and reading the comparison
of differences of Philip and Cory, and a mention of Tao close to each other, I can not help but wonder - are we left with Yin or Yang now ? :-)

And in the end even that does not matter - you can have a position of something only relative to something else; and once there's no "something else" - the question becomes moot.

My guessing is that as Philip mentioned that the "rocket is already lit", and they were planning to focus on stability (so no new fancy features) - this means a lot of boring stuff. Trying to fly the first airplane is by far cooler than getting the airline passengers hot meal and target timelines of luggage unload.

And it's the hot meals that LL might want to take care about now - the exotic dishes look interesting, but don't get the hunger away.

So - it's not the end of the world. It's just LL entering a new stage of being a "more mature company", in my opinion.

What does it mean for the residents ? I think the changes will be for the better. If LL themselves internally does not get into panic mode, that is (meaning, that there are still those left who actually do the day-to-day stuff).

There will be some shakeups and maybe some more of "disruptive" folks would decide to pursue other opportunities.

Which hopefully should allow for a more consistent behaviour on the LL side.

So - I hope to welcome you all to the beginning of the mainstream new 'more boring' SL. The one that flies on time and gets the hot meals. No adventures whatsoever.

Eight things that you wanted to ask about me...

Ok, better late than never (and I still will have to tell you what I've been doing the week when I was completely offline), but I've been tagged.

So, eight things about myself. Let's fire up with a few thing about the meatball. err. About the engine that sits behind this avatar.

1) E (very expressed extravert)
2) N (moderately expressed intuitive personality)
3) F / T (depending on circumstance, various tests actually conflict) - the latest one supposedly says "moderately expressed feeling personality" another said I'm "T".
4) P - moderately expressed perceiving personality

For those unaware - that's Myers-Briggs. You can check yourself, it may be a bit revealing.

Now given those, I think it makes sense to a bit cheat and score a couple of points in getting the reader towards some less cryptic stuff than the above.

5) Like I said, the F/T duality lends itself to both ENFP and ENTP. (I still have to decide whether Sandra Bullock or Alexander the Great is closer to my heart. Hey, wrap both please, I think :)


6) "Career indicator" based off all this fancy pseudoscientific stuff - here.

Journalist/Reporter - well, you kinda are reading the meek attempts at it.
Psychology - mostly curiosity/hobby, although some tricks I do tend to use.
Counseling - hmmm no thank you... but with a good beer... I guess I've been one more than once.
Fitness & Nutrition - oops. this part is still ahead of me (quietly hiding a cigarette while stretching on the coach with the laptop)
Recreation Specialist - oh. interesting and viable career choice. Need to think about it.
Social Work - helping others... well, maybe, to an extent.
Musician - check. we do that. from time to time :)
Acting and Performances - that's what the life is about, to an extent.
Literature/Writer - something to work on, once I perfect myself in the Journalist instantiation.
Film Producer - oh, that's a cool thing to jump in. I still have to try a pick up line that I invented "hey I'm a porn movie producer" in a club, just for kicks - do you think it might work ?
Public Relations Specialist - for this one there's still a lot of work ahead.
Marketing - errr... is it "when you have the stuff and they have the cash, you exchange", or ?
Fashion Merchandising - bumm. If I was a girl, I'd certainly enjoy it. And a skirt slightly below my shoulders might be fun, again just for the sake of increasing the attendance of the male ostheopaths patients.

7) "The Champion Idealists are abstract in thought and speech, cooperative in accomplishing their aims, and informative and expressive when relating with others. For Champions, nothing occurs which does not have some deep ethical significance, and this, coupled with their uncanny sense of the motivations of others, gives them a talent for seeing life as an exciting drama, pregnant with possibilities for both good and evil. This type is found in only about 3 percent of the general population, but they have great influence because of their extraordinary impact on others. Champions are inclined to go everywhere and look into everything that has to do with the advance of good and the retreat of evil in the world. They can't bear to miss out on what is going on around them; they must experience, first hand, all the significant social events that affect our lives. And then they are eager to relate the stories they've uncovered, hoping to disclose the "truth" of people and issues, and to advocate causes. This strong drive to unveil current events can make them tireless in conversing with others, like fountains that bubble and splash, spilling over their own words to get it all out."

8) All of the above is somewhat true in certain contexts.

As for tagging the others... hmm. Well, as I'm lazy and since I'm all against the force, let's do it this way - if you're reading this, and the number of answers on this article is below 8, you can feel free to leave a mark there, which at the same time is your acknowledgement of being tagged for this little exercise.

Yeah I know it's not straightforward, but did you expect that ?

p.s. here is some questionaire in case you have some time to spend.

"It's all just a fantasy".. not.

"First and second life are separate", etc. Yes. Everywhere except your brain. As this article on slashdot refers to a scientific study from columbia university, which show that a brain network responsible for suppressing inappropriate or unwarranted aggressive behaviors became less active after study subjects watched several short clips from popular movies depicting acts of violence.

So - you might probably separate the first life from the second, but not the reverse.

Scary, huh ?

microfinancing in SL: a loan to you on *your* conditions.

I've been thinking about the power of trust, and about how Grameen bank functions without any tough measures and has quite high return rate (i.e. people do not run with the money). Looking at my SL balance, which thanks to your tips has risen to around L$3800 (which is a bit too small to throw to the friends at the charity), I got an interesting idea.

I can lend up to 3xL$1000 to those three who come up with the compelling business ideas and whose business plans are convincing enough.

How do we arrange the community pressure ? very simple. I will write the names, the business plans and the terms of the loan (amount and the suggested interest) on this blog.

So, if you are determined enough to rather loan L$1000 than to buy it for three RL bucks, feel free to drop an IM or leave the comment here.

The only restriction is that the time interval is bound by 4 weeks and the returned amount must not be less than the one borrowed :-)

How much you return (i.e. the %% - it's up to you to determine).

Let's see if anything comes up out of this crazy idea...

p.s. and obviously - by sending me an IM, you allow it to be published here.

Kiva

Inspiring.

Inspired.

The the order of the links is inverse chronological.