I know I could break you down but what good would it do?

Here's a tip: if you have to say "Extremely Sexy" on any outfit--on the Marketplace or not--it isn't, and it won't ever be. And repeating that it is (three times, including the title of the outfit)...Well, trust me, it just makes you look desperate, or deluded.

On the other hand, this looks lovely. You can't argue with two prims, and the sound randomizing feature is a plus for me at (virtually) any price. I'll let you know when it goes live.

For your perusal: the five most insane ARGs. (For those not in the know, ARGs are a combination of viral marketing, interactive website discovering, sleuthing, letterboxing, and forum bombing. It stands for Alternate Reality Game, and some of them get really odd. Even among the natural oddity that is the ARG, however, those five really stand out.

There's a new, more mobile version of the Giant Walking Child. And she now walks with her father. And her dog.

I give the entire troupe a year before they start wondering how she'd look with death-ray eyes.

Back to the insanely dramatic world of JIRA posting, to find another entry, thought dead these many moons ago, has woken up with a vengeance. On July 26th, Kelley Boyd said this in response to this JIRA post on web profiles:

Situation not fixed; either an option needs to be added to allow people to disable their web profiles, or else web profiles need to be scrapped. I'm willing to sue over this issue.

Now, that's not the insane and dramatic part. This is:

@Kelley: just set every section of your web profile to "Nobody" and shut up.

That was said by Lance Corrimal, who is certainly old enough to know better, not even half an hour after Kelley sent in his comment. And for several posts after, people were stunned by the rudeness. But it went on, and it escalated from there.

Andromeda Quonset:

@Lance: don't you think that's just a bit rude and uncalled for?

Lance again:

about as rude as complaining about something without actually checking it is. she can totally hide her web profile from anyone, so where is the privacy violation?

Kelley in retort:

1) I'm a he
2) I did check; I cannot prevent everyone from accessing my profile from the web at all.
3) Stop being ignorant and insulting, Lance.
4) There is absolutely no need for web profiles; there was no call for them at all; and no, there isn't more privacy if anyone can access my profile without being logged into Second Life.

Solar Legion:

@Kelley: There are indeed settings which allow you to hide your profile information from everyone. Look again and quit being belligerent.

At that point, it became a grudge match between Kelley and Solar (who is also old enough to know better).

Kelley:

It doesn't matter if that's the way LL is going, it's a violation of privacy, and that is a law suit I'd win. Web profiles are not necessary, and NO, there is no way to disable them for everyone. I did look into it, and you can only disable web feeds completely; nothing else. So kindly stop trying to rationalize what LL is doing and stop being such a jerk.

Web Profiles are not needed, and not wanted, and a class action suit will definitely stop them if they aren't willing to stop being morons and disable them now before they lose a law suit.

Just because you don't value your privacy, Solar Legion, it doesn't mean that other people don't.

Solar:

Look again Kelly, as there ARE options in the current setup to shut down sections so no one can view them. No, there isn't a "violation of privacy" - your profile is easily accessed by anyone near you and cannot be shut off. Thus, it is a public profile.

Do NOT presume to tell me otherwise in ANY of the above. I DO know what I am talking about.

Kelley:

No, you don't know what you're talking about, Solar Legion. I have checked, repeatedly, and there is no way to disable your web profile; no way to make it so that your profile can only be accessed from within the game client. What you are talking about does not protect my privacy because it means that anyone who can hack a webpage (there's no shortage of people who can do that) can access my profile information.

My profile is /ONLY/ for use within the Second Life grid, and no one who isn't on the grid has any business knowing what it says. I agreed /ONLY/ to allow users of Second Life, within the Second Life setting to access my profile. You have no idea what you're talking about; stop presuming that you do. You simply do not get it.

Just because you don't value your privacy, it doesn't mean that other people don't.

The fact that the Lindens don't want to listen to their users is just par for the course, and constantly increases the appeal of OpenLife.

Solar:

Kelly, I do indeed know what I am talking about. Kindly stop speaking as if you know one whit concerning privacy: You do not.

Linden Lab made the profile system for Second Life - not you, not me. THEY get to decide the base line/defaults concerning system access. Indeed, they already have. YOU get to decide what their baseline system shows others. That is ALL you get to choose. You either operate within the system - or you move on.

I will only state this ONCE: DO NOT EVER ATTEMPT TO TELL ME WHAT I VALUE.

You agreed to no such thing when you created your account - no one did. There was NEVER a clause within the ToS or CS which held ever the slightest resemblance to what you claim. Your Second Life profile is open to whemever views it (unless otherwise set within the "privacy" settings) - That is how it is. End of story.

No "privacy" violation has taken place: Your profile was and is public data. It can be accessed by anyone who gets close to you within Second Life, it can be accessed through any groups you are in, it can be accessed through object owner/creator information ...... and now Linden Lab has decided to use the same system as everyone else.

You never had a guarantee from Linden Lab that they would keep their system closed to SL. You never had a say in it either. You gave them the right to any data on their servers when you hit "agree" on your initial log in.

Be glad they are giving you the option to hide anything at all.

Kelley:

So, you're deluding yourself as well as everyone else. Sorry, but you know nothing about the privacy laws of America, let alone other nations. Second Life is a Global community. The Lindens are very much violating privacy laws in as many as a dozen nations. The fact that they are a for-profit company with an international market means that those laws are very much relevant to them.

Provisions to share my information on the Internet was never in any terms of service I agreed to.

If they didn't give me the option to hide anything at all, then there would be no question of their guilt in court.

The fact that the Lindens are ignoring their users, and the law, is most certainly not a close to this issue; kindly stop being their misinformed cheerleader, because you don't know what you're talking about. You should really stop posting to this JIRA at all, because your misinformation is just clouding the issue.

And Solar responding:

If what you say held a single grain of truth, ISPs and social networks the world over would not have searchable, public profiles. These profiles would not be visible to Google (or any other search engines).

In short, I am not deluded.

I am also quite sick and tired of people who think they can control what others say through any means they can think of (no, not directed wholly at you Kelly). I will continue to point out the way other services operate. I will continue to post until directly told by a Linden to tone it down.

And I will report anyone who willfully misinterprets my words or decides to put words in my mouth.

Now, this can--and likely will--go on, and there's not a lot of way to stop it unless the Lindens delete that JIRA entry or mark it non-searchable on their own. Acrimony clashed with bile and outrage and no good generally comes of that (I should know). But it is an issue that resonates not only with Mr. Boyd, but many of us. While I hold (still) that we have always had some form of accessible profile on the web, there are those who insist quite vehemently that they were never this openly public, nor linked to other social networks, and that I will agree with.

More to the point, this is another perfect example of the disconnect between the Labs and the users. The users--or, at least, the users in Boyd's camp--believe that Second Life is a community, with rights, responsibilities, and reasonable expectations of privacy.

The Labs, meanwhile, believe that Second Life is a web platform, and any and all software (and hardware) decisions are their direct purview, and we don't get a say.

Sadly, in this at least, they're right. As much as Second Life feels like a community of like-minded souls, moving towards some amorphous shared virtual ideal...we're really not. We're just bits of data that move around on their servers.

More on changes, and changes coming fast, let's talk about mesh for a bit. When the news came down that Curious Kitties had two new mesh outfits available, for free, I of course went down and got both. Can I see mesh? Of course not. Was I on a mesh-enabled sim? (Well, as I went home nearly immediately afterwards, no.)

But a friend I was with put on the dress, and their results were the same as Miss Dexter's--a giant, vaguely smoky prism enveloping the body, with three different textures depending on which side one was facing at the time. Rather unattractive, and rather a sharp heads' up on what's coming. And the reinforcement I didn't need: when mesh arrives, if I'm not fully up to speed on a mesh-enabled viewer-2 based client, I'm toast.

And so is everyone else who's on non-viewer-2 based clients.