31 January, 2009

a fortune in feelings, but some day you'll pay

Miss Kirstenlee Cinquetti is getting lauds for her S16 viewer over on New World Notes. Here's the problem: her blog is missing. Which means all the rave reviews of "SL's best viewer"? Don't mean a thing, at this point.

Thanks to a friend who captured it before it went away, I'll be playing with it over the next week or so, but still...if it doesn't come back, it's pretty pointless.

Pursuant to this entry, I've had a lot of interest and comment behind the scenes. And I feel--now having been provided with a transcript of the event as it occurred--I must retract earlier statements.

I quote:

"To wit, the recent banning from Steelhead of a woman who described sexual acts in graphic detail on the public chat, and then demanded residents lick her feet."

Again, without using names--though the guilty party, and those who observed her actions, will clearly know to whom I refer--the woman in question did not, actually, describe sexual acts in public chat. While this had been what was described from sources, according to the transcript I've now been given, this is not what happened.

What happened, in my opinion, is far more tacky, and quite possibly worse. Follow:

1. For some reason known only to the gods, this particular individual tries to entice several people to smell her feet. Fetish? Playful behavior of some kind? We do not know. But this proceeded towards:

2. Offers by at least one person to coat her foot in other (food-based, not what you might be thinking!) substances; her acceptance of such, and the first hints of a reaction from members of the chat (nausea and confusion, mainly).

3. Offers to a married man to lick her feet; refusal by said married man; married man's spouse telling her to back off; her ignoring said offer completely.

That last bit, to me, is the most important thing that happened. Whether you weigh in on the side of chat confusion (the wife's retort was lost in cross-chatter, this individual missed it by sheer mischance, not deliberate malice) or not, to me, at least, certain things are sacrosanct. And the rules are simple and inviolable.

If one wishes to play with someone, and they are partnered with someone else, and that person objects--game over. This goes for everything from close personal intimacies all the way up to flirting: if the spouse is present, one must, must take one's cues from that spouse, as much as from the object of interest. And when the spouse steps up and says all right, that's enough, back off--and one does not listen--well, then, you get what you get and you've earned it.

I do realize there is a perceived disconnect where the world is concerned. Because we are not creatures purely of the grid, we make alliances in and out of world. In world, if our partners also play, they may play as wife or husband to us, as close friend, as brother in at least one case I know, as cousin in one other case--the possibilities are endless, and on occasion, endlessly disturbing.

The one thing, however, that I do know is--if someone is partnered in world, that partner has some say over their partner's actions. And that is doubly true if the partner in world is also the partner out of it.

Play with those ties at your peril, always; as the woman under discussion found out.

Are you feeling tired? Run down? Strogg LeStrogg can help...sort of.

And if you can ignore the spelling errors, and the bafflingly long "Leeroy Jenkins" segment...the rest of it is hysterical. Fully one hundred ways to die--many of them surreal and insane--using Garry's Mod.

Finally, How Not to Be Seen--Halo style.

4 comments:

Rhianon Jameson said...

The explanation for the lack of the blog is here: http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2009/01/kirsten-quits-citing-gpl-enforcementrelated-stress-groundbreaking-open-source-developer-quits-viewer.html#more .

In short, she was producing something of value in her own time, for no remuneration, but the Open Source fanatics were insisting that she make the code available for three years, "and other requests [she] could not accommodate." One might think it's a case of the perfect becoming the enemy of the good.

Emilly Orr said...

It's good to find out what happened to her blog, but the answer to your statement is both yes and no.

Open source code is tricky--the provisions are clear, crystal clear, but also finicky and precise. Essentially, what she would have to do is make all her coding transparent, and post it on its own server (or otherwise available for download) for three years. This is not an undue hardship for most people who are already coding exclusively with open sourcing.

It appears she was not, and moreover, didn't keep chain copies of her code as she went.

This doesn't mean she's evil, far from it--but it does mean that, good viewers or not, she didn't comply with the open source restrictions of the code she used.

And yes, it's a shame any way one looks at it. Because I have friends who can't stop talking about how great the S16 viewer is. I know if I could code up a viewer, I likely would forget something along the way...which is all she did, she's not deliberately intending to defraud GPL licensing.

Seraph Nephilim said...

Regarding the request to "smell [my] feet", I believe it is only appropriate when preceded by "Trick or Treat" and followed by "Give me something good to eat!"

Regarding the s16 viewer, it's one I'm using now. However it does seem to eat up as much virtual memory on my Macintosh as the standard LL viewer. Nicholaz didn't have that much of an issue and I may fall back to it. Fortunately, I can have any number of viewers installed at the same time, and frequently due.

It's unfortunate she didn't understand how some open source licenses work. However, I do believe her viewer was being used as the basis for one of the "Open" grids -- and required for access. As such it is more than just a personal project -- it is a commercial project and paying attention to licensing is especially appropriate.

Emilly Orr said...

You know, that's something I hadn't thought of. Yes, if her viewer was made the official viewer of some alternate grid, she would have to be in very strict compliance with the GPL standards...and by her own admission, Kirsten was not.

The memory issue is worrisome--friend of mine was saying the reason she uses it (on a newer PC) is that the memory leak issue goes way down. Pity it doesn't on Macs.

hide away, they say, 'cos we don't want your broken parts

Yeah, so...remember that thing I was recovering from? You know, last year ? Yeah. I did it again. So this is Em Faw Down Go Boom part ...