like Jonah, will be swallowed whole, and spat back teeth and bones

New JIRA going around, and this one is plainly...crackheaded. Here's the text of the complaint (because I can't honestly call this a requested feature):

With the rash of accounts being hacked lately, it still surprises me how easy it is to purchase Lindens through the viewer if you happen to have PIOF. You only need to click in the upper right hand corner and fill in any amount, and as long as it's approved, the transaction will be processed. First off, I no longer see the point of having PIOF in the profile, but can make people more of a target.

Second, what I propose is that when you click on purchase Lindens, a second window will pop up asking you to enter ANOTHER password [separate] from your Second Life password to confirm the order. While it is an extra step, it still doesn't make purchasing Lindens difficult, making your personal info a tad bit more secure.

I realize how frustrating getting our accounts hacked--in any world--can be. It feels invasive, it feels as if we've lost our safe havens, and it is genuinely hurtful and angering. I get that. I've been hacked, so believe me, I get that.

But this won't help. Let me say that again because it sounds vaguely important: THIS. WILL NOT. HELP ANYONE.

In fact, it's only going to make the program worse. Say Ms. Paine actually pushes this through, via some incomprehensible act of Linden. What happens? Everyone gets a second password to choose.

In the interests of public disclosure, the worst password of all time--that's remained on the worst passwords lists for at least two years running, if not longer: password. I'm not even kidding. Past that, the next five worst passwords? 123456, 12345678, abc123 (or its "hipper" variant, abcd1234), querty, monkey, and letmein.

That's not even bringing up the other standards, lower on the list--the ones that start with god and move to sexy and make us all glad we live in a culture where eight-letter passwords are the norm, not three-letter ones.

I'm not saying this to be funny in the least. Some folks on the internet order the extra bushel of dumb to go with their dumb; it happens because not everyone is bright (which includes bright people). In general, people just don't think these things through, and that's not even just an idiot factor--everyone has moments where they react blindly, and rarely in good ways.

To make this personal, I consider myself fairly internet-savvy--but when the Gawker family of blogs was hacked, I had to scramble to protect the rest of my data. Why? Because I used the same damn passwords for about 75% of my accounts.

Even now, years after the incident, I still have my password-protection program of choice yell at me when I choose a password for one site that I've used for something else. Which means yes, I'm still making those bonehead mistakes.

But let's go back to the JIRA--how would having a second password save most people? With programs like Secondlife Money Hack distressingly easy to find, plus people using simplistic--and easily guessed--passwords, how would a second password save anyone? Average Jill or Joe on the grid--or, in the grid's case, average BIGTEXANSTEVE or sexiigirlii9518 on the grid--is going to be told they need two passwords. I guarantee you that at least eighty percent of everyone given this boon will wrack their brains for a solid week before having the a-ha moment--they'll supplement their perfect password--"sexmoneygod111"--with their new protect-everything super-sekrit password--"1234512345"--and everything will be fine!

Tell me again how this solves the problem.

Tell me again how this even addresses the basic problem, which I guarantee you, is not payment info on file. (And if you read that even halfway seriously, from her JIRA description, you realize she's also sidewise saying that payment info on file should be dropped from the SL bio anyway, because of "targeting".)

I fully grant, I don't get a lot of the people out in the world, any world, and I certainly don't always understand the things they view as extreme problems. But this? Even just restricting things to Second Life, alone, this isn't even in the top five problems SL has! It's not even in the top fifty!

You want to know how to stop the rash of hacked accounts? Make the accounts harder to access for the criminals, not the account holders. If you really want to protect account information, attach everything to an individually-generated keyfob account number which rotates every eight days and can only be accessed by the account holder answering three security questions every time they want to make a transaction.

Because that would work. (Though again, I guarantee you people would bitch about it, because most people want things simple. Point; click; access; move on with our lives. But that's the trade-off, innit? We can either have ultimate security systems which are arcane to use, difficult to hack, and impenetrable for non-accountholders...Or we can have the point-and-click world. We seem to want the point-and-click world, and that's fine--we just have to accept that that comes with certain security flaws.)

Come back and talk to me when you figure out a way to protect SL info that doesn't make it harder for people to buy things on the grid, and I'll likely tell you you may have come up with something that will work. Because ultimately, too many of us want the convenience of buying Lindens on a whim, whether that's what we should want or not. And no amount of secondary passwording is going to make it any less easy for criminal types to do criminal things on the net.

and bitter cold goes side by side

News of NiranV's trouble with this JIRA is both daunting and depressing to read; while I no longer use Niran's viewer, I will say I found it easy to use, easy to build in, and photography was phenomenal while using it. Overall, I really thought it was the best of the V3 coding out there.

But it seems he's intent on hanging up his hat. If true, he will be sorely missed as a creator of an actual USABLE V3 viewer, but more than that, this kind of battle with the Lindens (and the rest of the TPV community) burns people to cinders, and that's the really sad thing. He shouldn't have had to fight this hard to fix things.

But then, in reading through the JIRA comments, my jaw hit the desk more than once:

"Real bodies are not perfectly symmetric, and neither is our avatar model; changing this now would be more disruptive than symmetry justifies."
(Widely Linden)

Seriously? Plus, that statement is so dense as to be nearly impenetrable for most people. "Real bodies" aren't perfectly symmetrical, no, but virtual bodies are. Plus, this seems to be a simple change so that prim clothing, armor, prim attachments, wings, et cetera, would fit better and be positioned more accurately, right? So why would that small fix be "more disruptive" in any way?

There are more interesting comments on that JIRA, but I'm quoting the last one in brief:

"If Linden Labs really wants to get their customers to drop them like a rock, feel free to close it again. I'll know to stop getting on Second Life and go do something productive then."
(Maki Guyot)

This is exactly where a great number of us are. And I know I say this a lot, but this time I think it has some merit, because I've pretty much given up on updating this blog at present. (Granted, that does not mean I'm not blogging, but really, the only blogs I'm updating at all right now are my Tumblr feed and Topping Out.)

Without serious work on their communications with the community, without severe and sudden deconstruction of the ivory tower elitism that seems to solidly permeate Linden Lab, they're going to lose Second Life as a viable world. Which--also as I've said before--would be a really bad thing, because so many different applications (everything from training midwives to practicing military tactics to rehabilitating the disabled to encouraging socializing and personal contact) keep surfacing as to why SL is a good thing to have around.

Meet the fastest robot in the world--at least, so far, that is.

I don't normally get political on this blog, but I have to laud Nancy Pelosi's recent statement that violent video games have no impact on school shootings, and on violence in general. She's getting dunned, especially on Fox News, for this stance, but I have to applaud her for this. Because if violence in games were the sole determining cause, then there would be huge upswings for violent acts in Japan, for instance, which allows far more brutal depictions of violence in games than even we do.

We need to address the culture, not the media created by the culture. Because it's still the truth: guns don't shoot people by themselves, and violent games don't kill on their own, either. Find the root causes, not the symptoms, and we can begin to heal the cultural rift. Taking away the weapons and the games, by themselves, won't work.
Finding out why so many of our teens feel disenfranchized, why so many of our teens snap after years of constant bullying and abuse, will do us far more good than banning a few games that the bulk of young adults don't even play.

To distract from the political, have thirteen minutes of bizarre news bloopers.

And after that, here's a twenty-five minutes on why those of us in the US are paying more and getting less (in terms of download and upload speeds) than comparable developed nations. Just taking the case of Hong Kong, where even the poorest households have faster data transfer rates than people who have the fastest speeds over here, it does cause us to wonder why. I'd be very interested in finding out what Time-Warner and Comcast (to name only two) think about Ms. Crawford's assertions.

Moving on to art, let me introduce you to the work of Augusto Esquivel. He's using simple buttons strung on nylon line to create ephemeral, moving hanging sculptures. Personally, I remain enamored of the piano, but some of the other set pieces are just as stunning.

For art closer to home, buying one of the clock pegs from Yanko Design will let you use any random object (of the correct dimensions) as clock hands. Want to mark the hours of your day with pencils or pens? Done. Want to insert harvest twigs? Done. Slim throwing knives, tatted bookmarks stiffened with cornstarch, wire ribbon? Whatever. It'll work. Insert things into peg; set correct time; insert peg into wall; done.

The next dangerous drink has emerged: in this case, a vodka rated at 250,000 Scoville units. (To put that into perspective, poblano peppers rate, on average, between 1,000 and 2,000 Scovilles, jalapeño peppers around 5,000 Scovilles, straight cayenne about 30,000, and pure habañero pepper about 200,000.) The terms in which this vodka is described make it sound less like a drink, and more like an assault; however, I know people who would buy that--and drink it--with great relish.

At least until the burn hit. Then there might be tears and lamentations.

Let me also introduce you to Tsuyoshi Ozawa, who in 2012 did a series featuring women holding vegetable weapons. I...really have no place in my brain for that, so I'm sending it out to you. Maybe someone will make sense of it for me.

And there's a very inspiration video featuring women in Second Life participating in One Billion Rising. It's an important cause, and it's a touching video, both. (Plus, here and there you might recognize a few faces you know.)

I can't do well when I think you're gonna leave, but I know I try

[Zone #1] Nevalith@reaperxi: *brofists his homie*..WOOOOO
[Zone #1] Glaive@MrHurin: Ey,bro! Whatcha doin',bro? How are ya,bro? Okay,bro! Bye,bro!
[Zone #1] Nevalith@reaperxi: BTdub
[Zone #1] Glaive@MrHurin: a conversation of modern people.
[Zone #1] Glaive@MrHurin: a.k.a idiots.

To be fair...

[Zone #1] Nevalith@reaperxi: In my my culture they replace bro with the N word..
[Zone #1] Nevalith@reaperxi: *sigh*
[Zone #5] Knightly Grave@Grave-Family: Noob? D=
[Zone #1] Glaive@MrHurin: Not not nothing?
[Zone #2] Skyfire@JonSills: Neville? Neighbor? Nitwit?

But the idiot factor dropped for this part, so okay, people are not completely without redeeming merit.

I'm not in the best space right now, I'll openly admit. I'll take my points of humor where I find them.

The giant hand avatar from 2010 is up again on Marketplace. If you want it, get it now, because it vanishes when October ends.

Here's a list of catgirls in various media from a wide variety of nations. You're welcome?

Fans of Dr. Steel have been dealing with a strange, sidewise loss--I was never a fan, but a friend passed this on to me, which sounds strangely conspiratorial and bizarre. If anyone knows more, leave a comment in, well, the comments, and I'll update. I'll also do my best to run down what actually happened in the meantime.

Here's Sheldon the Tiny Dinosaur in Minecraft, some hysterical Wor'ds Best Father pictures, the 'Ecce Homo' restorer now wants royalties (the hell??), and for anyone interested in quilting, this is the best tutorial I've found so far on the new "quilt as you go" method.

And I found this completely randomly--it's a stupidly charming paean to the joys of the Nether in Minecraft. Well worth the watching.

Also, if you have recently experienced anything with the new "BUG" reporting system (over the actual JIRA system)--good or bad--consider going here and telling the Lindens why.

I can't be the thing I was before

So, before all the drama regarding City of Heroes, remember the Marketplace JIRA? Yep. Still not fixed.

From Amadeus Beattie:

i have now had this issue for over 4 months and i think been very patient... my sales have decreased by over 60% since the bug started and the amount of customer support messages i get from clients is taking too much time to answer... i still have over 30 products with wrong images or products getting unlisted by itself

This issue was first entered into the JIRA at the end of March. It's now the beginning of September. It's been over six months that the merchants of Second Life have been struggling with this issue.

Let me repeat that, because it sounds vaguely important: For over six months, Second Life merchants have been affected by a Marketplace coding issue that has resulted in, at least, a 40% loss of total sales (for those merchants who haven't noticed a 60% drop in total sales).

You'd think that Linden Lab would care a bit more about these sales, because it's not just folks creating little art projects and sending them off, gratis, into the wide cold world. These are the people who own sims (that are now selling them or giving them back to the Lindens because they can't afford sim rentals while losing so much in sales). These are the people who widely advertise in in-world Search and on the Marketplace itself (activities which, in some cases, also stop cold when the merchant realizes just how much they're losing). These are the people who buy items from other merchants to decorate those stores (which they're now closing when they add up the numbers), or buy props and poses for product pictures (which they won't need once the businesses close).

When we toss a pebble into a pond, there's a ripple effect. We see where the pebble landed in the pond, and we can watch the rings expand and subside. The problem is, this isn't a pebble. This is a goddamn meteorite from space landing on fire in the Pacific ocean and causing tsunami devastation when the water reaches shore. Or, to switch metaphors, this is not a papercut, it's a sucking chest wound.

Speaking of the ripple effect...a couple days back, UStream struck a deal with WorldCon to broadcast the Hugo speeches live. In the middle of Neil Gaiman's acceptance speech for his episode of Doctor Who--"The Doctor's Wife"--the feed went dead. Why? Because the animated copyright service Vobile had detected copyrighted material being used in the broadcast.

What's so shocking about this is not that the feed went down--technical glitches happen, things go buggy, it's sad, but it's a fact of net life now and again. No, the true tragedy here is that it wasn't a glitch. During an awards speech by a very famous author, regarding a very famous property, wherein clips from Doctor Who and other shows were shown--which WorldCon had specific rights to broadcast granted by the companies who actually own those copyrights...automated infringement detectors went off and removed the feed.

And UStream, at that point (and in my mind, even more shockingly), never restored the feed.

Let me say that again, because it's key to why this is such an outrage:

UStream had crippled their own internal broadcast service by using Vobile in such a way that they--who also had full legal rights to broadcast this stream live--could not restore it.

Does that scare anyone? UStream paid Vobile to do their work for them, in a sense, but because they'd struck that deal, they abrogated their own rights to clear the killcode and then go on with the broadcast.

Brave new world, people. It only gets worse from here.

you feel the temperature dive, and all your demons inside come crashing through

Whatever's going on with the wrong profile pictures, it's growing. In somewhat related news (if we think the Marketplace debacle, the current my.secondlife.com problem, and sim ownership in general are linked), three hundred and ninety-six sims have gone away in the past two weeks alone.

That's terrifying. In any other game, that would mean the game's going away fairly soon. What does it mean for SL? Got me, but I'm worried.

Speaking of Marketplace issues, there are still new folks coming in to the thread and asking the same questions we've all been asking. This from MALiBU Karu (yes, that's apparently the accurate spelling of the avatar name):

I have a underwear picture showing for my product...
and I can't do anything about it : (
I tried deleting all my item from my list to start it over but this underwear picture won't be taken off my list and it looks so bad.
I'd like to AT LEAST hide it from my item listing to the public please.
If not, I think that it is a common sense to at least announce the reason why this problem is going on and why it's taking long to resolve. Not knowing what is going on and what to do is the worst thing.

"MALiBU" means this:

(from the shopping album)

That's a screencap from her current listings. And of course, when one clicks on that image, one is taken back to the main Marketplace page. Which means nothing that a maker can do--including product deletion--will work.

(from the shopping album)

Oh, and Harper Beresford's "Masquerade" picture--in a stolen skin--is still splashed all over the Marketplace. Why? Because at this point, it seems like blatant Linden endorsement of Hush Darkrose.

If you like the music of Steam-Powered Giraffe...and you like desk pets...why not combine the two into a handmade printable paper collection of brightly colored cubist bots? It's like steampunk Minecraft.

From the Motherboard blog comes tales of the Superbus, which--from everything I've been able to track down--seems like a way to pay for luxury public transit. Which, to be fair, has never been the point of public transit. I don't know if the folks designing the Superbus have really thought this through, but part of why many buses look so run-down is because they're designed to be durable over pretty. They need to take hard daily use and keep on going. They need to have materials that can be simply repaired or replaced completely. They need to be able to put 200,000 miles on each vehicle--if not more--before decommissioning that particular transit vehicle.

I'm not saying it doesn't sound cool--it does. But it's just not viable in the long run.

[7:13] Yxxxx Dxxx: SLW wishes your avatar a very happy birthday. from SLW staff http://www.slwinners.com (Providing free visitor analytics services to hundreds of SL business locations since 2007)

I have a couple problems with this. First, my rez day was the sixth, not the tenth. Second, I've never been to SLwinners.com that I can remember, so why are they sending me happy birthday wishes? Third, it's a rez day, not a birthday, and my birthday was last month.

What gives?

just how deep do you believe?

Hide the children--Hasbro's bringing Furbys back. Alas, I won't be able to get one--it's one of two absolute prohibitions my lady wife holds (it's actually the second, for those curious; the first is I'm no longer allowed to shave off my eyebrows). To be honest, if they all have the dye-drenched neon fur look, I don't want them anywhere near me.

Casper Warden wants a new "permissions tree" system to be incorporated into the SL viewer (and subsequently, third-party viewers after that). It's not the worst idea, reading through it, though I'm not entirely convinced it wouldn't just make which object has which permissions set more complicated for new players just starting out.

Warden's also proposing a server-side change to support this, which--if it works on the ground as it seems to in theory--would free up both client-side and server-side assets to improve processing times. We'll see what the Lindens have to say later on; in the meantime, the usual codicils apply (WATCH, don't vote; voting does nothing, nothing at all, don't even look at the vote button, just hit WATCH instead).

[Broadcast] Zena Warrior PRINCE: ZENA WANT TO KNOW WHY YOU ALL PRETEND FAKE LIFE

Okay. Putting aside the name, which is ridiculous beyond all reason, here's what you need to know if you've never played City of Heroes: conversations marked [Local] are taking place right around you; they're like local chat in SL.

Then come the various chat groups separated by circumstance--like the team you're on, the supergroup you're in (or the coalition of supergroups your group belongs to), or the big channels nearly everyone's subscribed to, like the [Looking for Group] channel, or the [Help] channel.

[Broadcast], on the other hand, is both smaller and wider. While it doesn't have as many people reading along as something like the [Help] channel, say, it's also the equivalent of shouting in SL, or talking on voice in voice-enabled sims--it goes out to everyone in that zone. It's not just those folks immediately around you; someone could be over a mile away and still be heard by talking on the [Broadcast] channel.

[Broadcast] Zena Warrior PRINCE: ZENA SMELL BAD FAKE LIVES
[Broadcast] Zena Warrior PRINCE: ZENA KILL YOU ALL
[Broadcast] Zena Warrior PRINCE: STABSTABSTAB
[Broadcast] Zena Warrior PRINCE: LA LA LA LALALA LALALALALALALALA
[Broadcast] Zena Warrior PRINCE: GO LIVE IN REAL LIFE LIFE
[Broadcast] Zena Warrior PRINCE: NOW THAT YOU ALL DIE
[Broadcast] Zena Warrior PRINCE: HERE

It's notable that no one responded to this; I think people were silently encouraging "Zena Warrior PRINCE" to move on by not interacting. It must have worked, because this was the last I heard from him. I left half an hour past this, so he might have commented afterwards; but at that point, I was gone.

Here's the thing, though, and why I'm bringing this up: while there's been a great upswing in free accounts, there's been a lot of people making the transition to subscribing out of it. And for all that free-to-play gaming is an offered option, the developers want paying subscribers, and, moreover, the subscribers that currently exist still carry the game.

So why would any player come in and essentially say "Why are you being so dumb? Don't play this game! Go outside!" That's like walking into a theatre and yelling "Fire!" just because you wanted a seat in the front row.

There's a really weird issue happening since the last patch of Second Life. It's been mentioned over on the Modem World blog, and while I'm not experiencing it personally, that doesn't mean I won't in future, or that it won't become more widespread. There's a JIRA for it (there's a JIRA for everything, isn't there?), and if you want to see it fixed, then WATCH, don't vote. It's currently listed as a showstopper, though it hasn't been assigned a Linden to fix things yet.

Before anyone chimes in that this is not a big deal, I'd point out a few things:

• First, if this is related to the Marketplace debacle in any way, this shows a much wider section of database corruption than previously thought. This would indicate there are some very basic, very vicious flaws in the base code itself.
• Scond, when most people see their history attached to a different name, or to a different picture, they don't think "Huh, what a weird bug", they think "OMG, LL's been hacked!"
• Since Linden Lab has been hacked in the past--at least twice that we know of, both times involving credit card numbers and/or personally identifying details--it's a valid concern.

Finally, though I know this is morbid irony on parade, finding this made me cackle madly for a few moments. It seems one notable blogger of Hush Skins has suddenly seen the light and vowed to stop supporting Hush. Good, because the One Voice fundraiser starts today. (And I'll get you a proper SLUrl to the event when I get in next.)

do I know your face? does my mind wish to forget?

This is odd, and passing it on for the oddity--I haven't received one, but then, I haven't made a new account since the store girl, lo these many years ago.

Fascinating profile I came across while wandering through Pocket D in City of Heroes:

Zarah Neman
Level 50

Description: ((RP))

It is called Zarah, or Narah. By the way that men reckon time, it's ancient beyond imagining, having witnessed the earliest sunrises and sunsets of existence, though turned its gaze from them, preferring its native lands of Faerie. It wasn't until humanity first dreamed that this attention returned, transfixed by these new beings. And so it became real, forsaking Faerie, a story told to the waking world on rose-red flame, and has lived here ever since. It is to Modern Fae what Cavemen are to modern man - primitive, brutal, and disturbingly clever.

• Scores an 11/10 on the Fae Chart.
• Aura is not hard to read, though it's wise not to observe deeply, lest curiousity work [its] proverbial murder.
• When surrounded by tongues of flame, they are cast by dozens of tiny fae in orbit

Everyone gets one chance. Be polite.

Vaguely demonic in appearance, in a precisely tailored suit. Fun.(I did change his "it's" to "its" in the description; it's a long-standing pet peeve. Otherwise that's exactly the bio I saw.)

In more JIRA news...this one's really, really odd. A comment on the script throttling the Lindens initially enacted pretty much doused the comments in kerosene while on fire:

You are really some cry babies. That's typical, when they do a change which benefits the players, all of you spam sending scum cry around.

They throttle it even more to 100 per hour. I fucking hate it when I get in a sim just to get 10 item accept request. Fuck spammers, rot in hell

In all honesty, when I was going through my emails this morning, I didn't even realize this was a JIRA comment until I'd mentally backed up and looked at the header.

So, I looked her up while I was closing down other research windows. I kind of wish I hadn't now, but...yeah. There she is. Decanted in 2008, no bio, very few groups, so back to being severely puzzled about the whole thing. (Oh, and that pic? NSFW. For just about ANY work.)

There's been one comment so far taking her to task for saying that, but seriously--that particular JIRA was doing fairly well as being more useful for the Lindens than your run of the mill complaint-go-rounds most JIRA posts turn into after a while. In fact, the last comment posted was near the end of March. Then Odessa comes along and explodes for no reason. What the hell?

Plus, again, how exactly is the original drastic script throttling "a change which benefits the players"? It seemed to be hurting more players than it ever helped, and just from my perspective, I've never--in six years of playing SL--gone to a sim which tossed me ten items to accept at the same time.

I'm sure I don't go to the sims Odessa goes to, but the max I've ever been tossed is three--and usually, those are heavy roleplay sims, so it's generally a rules of conduct notecard, the landmark to the sim, and a landmark or notecard for the shopping area. Period.

Say hello to Mild Insanity--it's a customized map for Trials: Evolution, which I believe is an XBox game. This is two of the Achievement Hunter crew discussing the then-new game, that works as a pretty good introduction to the game, and mentions the absolutely insane amount of customization options available in the in-game Map Editor. So why is that so amazing?

Well, because you can make your Trials game look like Portal. Or look like op art (that video gets full cuteness points, too, for Geoff's take-your-daughter-to-work-day episode). How about putting dragons on your map? Or riding your dirtbike through medieval ruins? If you're a fan of the "Wipeout" show, there's a map for that. Or if you really liked Missile Command on the Atari system? There's a map for that. If you really liked Mario Kart? There's a map for that.

Really, if you like inventive games with a mind-boggling amount of diversity and creativity--and, more importantly, you have an XBox 360--checking out Trials: Evolution wouldn't be a bad thing. If you only play it for the custom maps, you're still getting your money's worth.

of all these pieces of broken dreams, this one that scares and confuses me

Continuing on from the last mention of the state of the Marketplace JIRA, comes this (which is very relevant to me) from Angus Mesmer:

A comment from the other end here... I have been trying to use the Marketplace to find items. Using its already extremely limited search function. And the results are apallingly bad.
Searching for "sculpt", in Building Components, 96 items a page, sorted by Lower Price first, the first HALF of the page is made of broken results, images having nothing to do with the names. In that configuration, we're talking about more than 40 items.

Now, I've mentioned how borked search on the Marketplace is a few times; the most recent was back on my birthday, which is now nineteen days past. The time isn't important, because this has been an ongoing problem. What's happening is, but again--CommerceTeam's commerce team doesn't seem to care.

If you haven't seen this end of the catastrophe, it's pretty easy to reproduce, but even getting that to work is tricky:

1. Pick a search term. (Literally. ANYTHING will work; you'll end up hitting this about 40% of the time with most search terms.)
2. Put in your search term; hit search.
3. When the results come in, set your Items per page to 96 and your sort to Price: Low to High.
4. Count how many missing items you have.

Just to ensure that they haven't fixed this yet, I did a quick search for "tank" just to see what would turn up. I'm rated for G/M/A access; if you're not rated for all three, you might see something different when you click that link.

(from the bizarre album; screen cap on search from the Marketplace on July 6, 2012)

By my count, forty-one inaccessible items turned up. Including one of my personal favorites, the lower-right "shirt and gloves" listing featuring the very intense cleavage of the lady in the sombrero.

Similar images to that one were attached to the Marketplace JIRA on March 31st, by the way. So it's been at least that long since that particular listing was wrecked.

There's another down side to all of this. What if I decide I really like one of the photos attached to a corrupted entry? Like this one, f'rinstance:

(from the bizarre album; screen cap of one of the corrupted entries on the Marketplace on July 6, 2012)

So...what information can I go on? I certainly can't search for Phoney Malaprop; that won't lead to anything that actually features this listing. I can't search the business name, either, because that will also trace back to Phoney.

Clicking on the listing, of course, brings me directly to the main Marketplace page, so that's no help, obviously.

Searching stores and merchants under "fashion by Marlene", the name listed at the bottom of the picture, turns up nothing; and searches for "Dark Lady" under all products turns up way too many listings to go through.

Searching simply under "Marlene" for stores and makers, how'ver, turned up six names, and going through each of those led me finally to Marlene Gabe's store, which--over one hundred and fifty-six items in--led me to the listing in question.

So let's talk about that. I had a reason to run this down, because I wanted to prove how difficult it was to do so. I was willing to take the time to use various search terms, refine the search with new ideas, go back to the original image to look for additional clues, and check out blind names on the Marketplace. I'm fairly good with searching, so all of this took me maybe ten minutes, because I knew when to discard inaccurate entries and move on. Plus, I still type insanely fast, so that also shortens the time I spend searching.

But in a sense, this was a very targeted search. I knew the first name of the maker; the look of her vending pictures; a general concept of fonts she uses (which, as it proves out, is not used in all of her product pictures anyway); and a general style of items.

What if we have an image that doesn't have a product name on it? Or worse, doesn't have a maker name on it? What if we're not willing to search through over one hundred and fifty items just to get to things that might be what we're looking for? How many potential customers are not optimizing their searches by correct sorting and number of images? (My guess: a lot.)

Ultimately, how many customers have gotten so frustrated with trying to find the things they want, they give up? While that's not money that can be claimed as existing--because the purchases were never made--it is money lost, which tends to have the habit of making otherwise talented, interesting designers fold up and leave.

How many businesses have we lost in the TWO YEARS the problems with the Marketplace code has been escalating? Everyone's seen it, right? At this point, there's not a single week that goes by without six businesses closing down, and that's assuming the makers even bother to hold a closeout sale, or announce to their groups. Some of them just quietly close and leave SL--sometimes for good.

Yet again, we have Linden Lab playing Russian Roulette with a fully loaded gun. How many times are they going to spin the cartridge and get shot?

And this is a brilliant, single-page, typographic analysis of why Marvel NOW! seems a hackneyed, outdated relaunch--I mean, extension of the line.

life is cold here, empty hallowed ground

Jean Grey is coming back, apparently. I'm just baffled. Marvel, seriously, just let the poor woman die. She's done enough. You're just bringing her back for dramadramadrama anyway. Leave her alone.

And I may have found the worst anime ever made. Or at least the most baffling: in twenty minutes, one character is named, and we're only quasi-sure that the guy we're seeing is that character. And that's not even the largest question of this piece. There are other, bigger questions, like:

• why are all the police girls? And twelve?
• why are all the twelve-year-old girls in form-fitting plugsuits?
• do they have names?
• why was one of them--after being beheaded--brought to the hospital where resuscitation was performed?
• actually, let's go back to that question again--how was resuscitation performed?!?

And that's without going into the scary bondage (and internal-organ-removing) process required to get into the big alien suit in the first place by the one named character.

We move on...to SCIENCE! Seriously, that's one of the greatest explanation of the Higgs-Bosun particle--and the CERN scientists' work in general--that I've ever found. (Though I'm going to be amused for a long while that the biggest protests around the announcement of finding the particle were over the Comic Sans font used in the official presentation.)

There's a really odd JIRA involving Microsoft SkyDrive and SL crashes; I don't entirely understand all of it, because I don't use SkyDrive, but it sounds serious. Nalates Urriah goes into it a little bit more here, along with some other concerns that are SkyDrive-specific, and nothing to do with SL in general.

I would tend to agree that Agnes Richter's embroidered straightjacket should be considered a repurposed diary, not a textile art object. While there is textile art in the world, she wasn't trying to make art as much as she was trying to explain her experience, using the tools she had on hand. Nevertheless, it remains an amazing testament to the power of creativity in captivity, and there's a new book on the subject, too.

Remember the breedable Twisted hunt cubes, the last hunt back? They now exist RL. BE AFRAID.

Finally, this is weird, surreal, suitably bizarre and a whole lot of fun. It's a ska version of "Still Alive", the Coulton song from the end of the first Portal game. Starts off slow, then starts jumping off the walls. If you like ska, you need to hear it at least once.

so keep your head up, keep your love

What did I just watch? Creeper stalkers? Endermen that fight back and steal chests? Air kraken?

Wait, air kraken? So it's not just a CaleCraft phenomenon!

Somehow that relates to this, which is the opening of an anime that's very nearly too weird to describe, but I'll make the attempt: it envisions a world where the elder gods are aliens, and one of them--Nyarlathotep, to be specific--decides to transform into a silver-haired high-school student to protect a high school boy.

I'm not kidding, that seems to be what it is. It's been a small but pervasive part of Japanese culture, in that it's appeared in manga, anime, and light novel formats, and is at least partially based on the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game.

Ooookay. Moving on...It seems glaringly apparent, now, that Marvel has decided to make the X-Men villains. Now, sure, they're supposedly possessed--en masse--by the Phoenix Force (the same sort of nebulous world-destroying entity that turned Jean Grey into Dark Phoenix), but that doesn't explain the weird changes in costume.

For instance, the Sub-Mariner--Prince Namor--went from this:

(from the media album, a cover of the Sub-Mariner comic)

(which made sense for a mostly sea-dwelling superhero) to this:

(from the media album; the so-called "Phoenix Five")

which...makes no sense for the character.

From left to right on the above (Prince Namor is on the far left) picture: the Sub-Mariner, Husk, Cyclops, Emma Frost, and Colossus. So, we have Namor in red and black scaled tights, black winged boots that belt around the thighs, opera-length latex gloves (and bwuh, Marvel? Why fetish gloves?!?), and gold spaulders (bet those would be hell to swim in). We have Husk, one of the more disturbing of the new crop of X-Men due to her ability to tear off her surface skin to reveal metal, stone, or differently-organized skin underneath, wearing smoking red, riveted spaulders, seemingly studded black opera-length gloves, black studded thigh-high boots, and a kicky little miniskirt in red--plus carrying a flaming sword. We have Scott Summers in pretty much Nightwing's costume, but in red and black--and with added, wholly ridiculous-looking, red thong (who's also carrying Captain America's impossibly damaged shield, and Thor's hammer, which also makes no sense). We've got Emma Frost in gold and white, when gold has never been one of her colors, either (though weirdly, she's actually wearing more in her new outfit than she does usually). And finally, we have Colossus with gold touches over his metallic form, but wearing red and black boots and gauntlets, and what can only be described as a loosely belted red toga. What the hell, Marvel?

[Late insert from the Editrix: I'm wrong! While Marvel.com has nothing on this, Scans Daily had it incorrect, and the one I identified as Husk is actually Majik, the younger sister of Colossus.]

So what's happening now with the Marketplace JIRA? Glad you asked. I have a picture:

(from the bizarre album)

For anyone following along at home, in mid-June I noticed the description had changed:

(from the bizarre album)

And now it seems to have changed again. Here's what I want to know:

• First and foremost, why are people changing the description? 
• Second, how are they changing the description? 
• Third, is this expected behavior or a recent change? 
• Fourth, is this part of the bug also affecting the Marketplace itself? 
• And finally, fifth, how does someone change the description back to the original for this particular bug? Does anyone know? 

Because people updating their comments on that JIRA, and changing the official filing description of that JIRA, should not be the same thing.

stay wilder than the wind

First up, an occasionally NSFW Tumblr paying tribute to a lot of really, really bad art called Boobs Don't Work That Way. Taken mostly from game and anime sources, it's a hysterical defense of anatomy and female attributes, and the artists who get both wrong. Well worth the occasional perusal, if not actually choosing to follow them.

Also, if you have a pool, and you like coffins (this seems a very niche market, but hey), these people make pool floats with you in mind. You're welcome.

I've never been drawn to the EVE Online experience; I know people that are, but seriously, if I'm going to spend a long time playing a game about cargo deliveries between worlds, I'll set up Starfarers of Catan. Still, that being said, they seem to have one of the best character creators currently available.

There's a bit of good and bad in the next two bits. First the bad: for whatever reasons occur to Hollywood producers, a remake of the Killer Shrews movie has been made. I'm deeply scared by this.

Thankfully, a friend of mine found the Quintek Group's homage to Star Trek for me. Part typography, part stylized alternate credits sequence, all fantastic to watch.

Also, have some carnivorous cakes. You're welcome.

There's a new JIRA on scripted object permissions that I, personally, think sets a bad precedent--namely, and at least in my opinion, the Lindens have gone overboard on what a good "caution" against giving objects account permissions should be:

The text reads:

"The object ****** wants total access to your Linden Dollars account. If you allow access, it can remove funds from your account at any time, or empty your account completely, on an ongoing basis with no additional warnings. It is rare that such a request is legitimate. Do not allow access if you do not fully understand why it wants access".

Users are being frightened by this new message, and many percieve it as a "different thing" to the regular debit permissions dialog.

In addition, the text "It is rare that such a request is legitimate" is completely inaccurate - it's not at all rare, many of us deal with many objects every day which require this permission.

I completely understand the need for transparency regarding debit permissions - it's a dangerous point of access for malicious scripts. However, the dialog should be reworded so it is informative and accurate, rather than trying to frighten users into paying attention.

Now, to me, that particular language is just designed to scare people and make them fearful of rezzing out any object that requires account permissions to use. How'ver, as a friend pointed out, it is extremely difficult in the new official viewer to revoke account permissions once given.

For me personally, that's a) yet another reason not to use the official viewer, and b) perhaps something that the Lindens should also look into--making account permissions easier to revoke.

Finally, Soul Caliber V has released a new DLC, and--it's wedding outfits. Wait, what? An arena fighting game with a higher-than-average percentage of male players of the game in the first place, can now have...wedding attire.

To fight in.

What?

I've found some better-quality pictures, and overwhelmingly I think it's a severely odd design choice for the game, but keep in mind, this is what some of the characters look like normally, so weirdly, the new DLC will give them more clothes to wear. I...guess that's a good thing?

beams of light he's working under

I'm certainly not going to say that any crafter who chooses a price for their wares is wrong; heart, soul and effort went into every handcrafted item, all handcrafted items. I'm just saying that, price aside, this is the cutest Creeper I've ever seen.

So, going back to the Marketplace JIRA again, I find a comment from Sassy Romano:

Status: Fix Pending

•WEB-4587 (Listings with the wrong images): This is currently under test. (from http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Merchants/Marketplace-and-Direct-Delivery-Update/m-p/1562745#M24277 )

And yes, that's the complete text of her message, but the reply to which she refers hasn't been updated since the seventh of June.

Still, for what it's worth--even though I'm fairly sure I linked this earlier in the month--here's the latest reply to that comment on a sub-thread of a forum no one reads, so it's confusing why CommerceTeam Linden still insists on hitting "reply" to that one, buried comment, over, you know, actually COMMUNICATING WITH CUSTOMERS...

Overall Marketplace

There are also several issues that occurred around the time of the Direct Delivery launch that we are still working to address, but are not issues with Direct Delivery.

• WEB-4587 (Listings with the wrong images): This is currently under test.
• WEB-4441 (Orders stuck in "Being Delivered" state): We have been able decrease the number of orders getting stuck and continue to work on preventing all orders from getting stuck.
• WEB-4567 (Bulk delete fails for some merchants): We will evaluate the priority of this once we have completed the above Direct Delivery fixes and features.
• WEB-4592 (Orders marked as "Delivery Partially Failed" on success): This is currently under investigation.
• WEB-4696 (Deleted listings appearing in search results): We continue to investigate this issue.
• WEB-2974 (Listing enhancement stuck in "Charging, cannot edit right now" state): We are investigating this issue.
• WEB-4138 (Confirmation emails failing to deliver): We are currently investigating this issue.

In addition to the above issues, there have been reports of Direct Delivery purchases silently being delivered and the Merchant not getting paid (the order is marked as "Failed"). We have not been able to confirm this report and would like to investigate further, so please file a support ticket with details if you see this.

So basically, that's where we...likely still...stand: more than three months (for the Direct Delivery/corrupted database issue), possibly up to two years (for the original corruption when moving from XStreet to SL Marketplace)...is it any wonder people are reaching their breaking points?

And seriously, people, how many sim-owners, merchants, institutions, corporate accounts, and even average consumer customers have to leave Second Life before the Lindens take this seriously? Because right now, all we're seeing is "hey, thanks for your patience, we're working on it"--which is being sent into a sub-thread instead of any of the other avenues of communication the Lindens have.

For completion's sake, those are:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Tumblr
• Pinterest
• MySpace
• the official SL blog
• the official SL forums
• the actual main SL website

Is it sinking in yet?

If the Lindens wanted to be excessively arcane about it, they could even choose one of these:

• SL Universe (while not owned by the Lindens, messages could be left and reach a more diverse section of the population, including merchants and sim owners who are more directly impacted by Marketplace dysfunction)
• the SL Universe Twitter feed (again, not owned by the Lindens, but they could easily hashtag a response to the feed, which again, would reach more people than CommerceTeam Linden making eternal replies to a buried forum thread)
• the Second Life Wikipedia page (again not a main avenue of communication, but hey, for fun and profit they could create a page here, then link it on their Twitter feed)
• the New World Notes blog (which has a large readership, and being run by a former Linden, has a certain trust cachet built-in)
• Tateru Nino's blog (which isn't operated by a former Linden, as far as I know, but is also a generally trusted resource for actual journalistic details)

What they seem to fail to realize, any time this comes up, is how many diverse sources for spreading information they actually have. Do they ever use any of these? Beyond the forums, and scattered personal letters (some of which, in the past, have been radically wrong and drama-laden themselves), I'd have to say the answer is no, more often than it's anything else.

So why doesn't a company who wants to reach its customers persist in avoiding 98% of all forms of direct communication with those customers? Got me. I've never been able to figure that one out.

some people call it a one night stand, but we can call it paradise

From Mysticarose Olinger on the Marketplace JIRA:

I am angry that some of my items show images from other sellers. How are the buyers supposed to know what they are buying? This is not cool.
I am ready to shut down my store if this is not resolved soon.

Here's what I know, for a fact, about customer complaints: if a company (any company) received a letter (we're talking the days before email was a big deal) of complaint, that one, sole letter represented eight people who did not complain formally, but were just as upset.

When email arrived and became popular, the overall average of customer comments and complaints went up because it was easier to dash off a reply in a format that didn't require envelopes, stamps and a postal box. How'ver, that didn't change the equation by that much; in fact, for many PR departments, the advent of email tilted the equation in very unfavorable ways. In essence, receiving an email complaint meant there were, on average, thirty people who did not complain via email, but were just as upset. Further, those thirty people had other venues of complaint open to them, from telling their friends to posting on product review sites.

While, granted, I haven't pored over this particular JIRA lately, but when last I did, there was one individual who's had no problem with switching over to Direct Delivery from the (usually not renamed) XStreet boxes.

One. Versus everyone else in the thread who's complaining.

Multiply that by potentially hundreds of individuals who don't read the Marketplace forums, post to the Second Life, forums, comment on the JIRAs, or directly interact with the Lindens to try to reach a resolution both sides can feel happy about.

At one point, I said something akin to there being about half a million corrupted items on the Marketplace right now--products which cannot be edited or deleted, because they are not actual physical listings, just corrupted data points--which I still feel is a fraction of the true depth of the ongoing problem. But let's say, just for argument, that each maker affected lists one hundred items. (Obviously, individual makers will have less or more, but this is just to pose the argument.)

That works out to about five thousand affected accounts, give or take. (And I think that's a radically low figure.) Now, admittedly, operating from this mythical five thousand accounts, when the figures for SL are much, much higher, makes this seem a low and insignificant number indeed. In 2007, Beta News reported that there were 6.16 million user accounts for Second Life. In 2009, WebProNews reported a figure of fifteen million user accounts--with the additional metric of having 70,000 users online at any given time.

In 2012, Tateru Nino posted a reply to a similar question on the community forums:

There's between 800,000 and 1.1 million Second Life users logged in per month - but there's very little data on how many per day. Based on concurrency data and a few not-too-unreasonable assumptions, I'd say that there's roughly 150,000 to 175,000 users on any given day. Only a small number of those, however, would be people who log in seven-days-per-week, though.

Okay, so just going from there--taking the higher figure of 175,000 players in world, each day, then 5,000 of those are having Marketplace issues. Big Marketplace issues. And that's not even three percent of the total, but...multiply that figure by the total occupancy of Second Life?

How many of those are having problems? And how much higher is that number, then? How high, in fact, does the percentage of users with issues have to get before the Lindens pay attention?

There's a lovely article on objectification in Lollipop Chainsaw which I think is well worth reading; of course, for those of you who've never heard of the game, here's the official trailer, the special Hallowe'en trailer, the trailer for the Japanese edition, and the official Nick and Juliet trailer. Do I even need to describe the game after those?

I'm not saying it's a sign of progress in gaming, but hey--at least in this one, the main gender of the objectified person is male. At the very least, as the article points out, it just might get through to some brains that if they're uncomfortable watching this level of objectification in another male, well, hey--it might just be wrong to objectify women the same way.

Just a thought.

only you have seen such storming in my life

Back on the 14th, I covered the now-with-added-rapey-content Lara Croft reboot. Two things have come up which I think are worth mentioning since then.

First, Extra Credits did a feature on the "hard-boiling" of franchises--their main game for explaining this is Max Payne 3, which was pretty much a complete departure from the first two games. As they explain:

"The old Max Payne had something he was fighting for. He didn't spend the entire game wanting to die, or talking about how nothing mattered. Sure, he was a little cynical, but his perserverence and underlying faith in what he was doing belied his cynicism, and gave him some character. He was interesting because he was a fundamentally good guy trying to do the right thing, under that veneer of wry cynicism.

"But with the new Max Payne, you are going to spend the first two hours of the game saying to yourself, All right, I get it--he drinks."

And this is never the realization that game designers want, or even should create, for their players. Essentially, even survival horror games are supposed to be just that--games. They're supposed to be what-if explorations of some pretty basic themes, and this is a core truth of any game, from Angry Birds to Skyrim.

The Lara Croft reboot falls squarely into this debate. Making games "mature", that can tackle important philosophical/emotional points, that's not the bad thing. Making games that can tell us new and interesting things about our own lives through the media of those games, that's not a bad thing. Those are actually really good things, and we've got games that are doing that. The problem comes in when we equate addictive behavior with maturity, when we equate sexual content (because, even though I profoundly agree that rape is NOT sex, it adds back the sexual component when programming characters for game display) with maturity, when we equate gore and violence with maturity. These, separated out, are not mature concepts on their own if the story being told in the game doesn't support them as part of that tale, not the tale in and of themselves.

Let's be honest, here--there's just as much violence in Team Fortress 2 at times as there is in something like Dead Space. The difference is in the emotional tone. In Team Fortress 2, while everyone dies--and usually in terrible ways--we understand that's just what happens. It's not desensitizing--we still get upset when whichever character we're playing expires--but we are told through the art style that some will win, and some will lose, and all that matters at the end of the day is helping our teams the best ways we can.

Conversely, with something like Dead Space--or a hundred other games in similar genres--we're told explicitly to care for our character, and try to keep him (nearly always a him) from dying in terrible ways. The game itself feeds us horror and gore in heaping portions, and we learn as we go that that's just how this world works. This, conversely, is desensitizing, because there's just so much blood, pain, damage, and terror that we become overwhelmed. Add to this a young, attractive woman who's forced to crawl through hell--with hell occasionally being other people--just to survive...that's really stacking the deck. Moreover, it's an artificial choice--"forcing" us as players both to be complicit in her abuse, and conversely to care about her and want to protect her. These are two profoundly dissimilar emotional states.

Continuing in this vein, on the Dork Tower blog, John Kovalic is taking on the concept of adding "maturity" and depth from another direction:

"Rule of Thumb: If your plot point seems arbitrary, awful, lazy and/or just plain dumb as fuck when applied to a male character, just assume it'll be kinda the same with a female one."

Exactly. Which, to be honest, is a position any game designer should memorize. If you wouldn't do it to a man, don't do it to a woman. Ever.

And in other news, the Marketplace JIRA still has the wrong description. Has no one noticed? Seriously? Because I'd be questioning why the JIRA itself is corrupting.

Guess I'm not a Linden. Obviously they have bigger problems...

there's nothing wrong with just a taste of what you paid for

So, just what are knee pasties?

Also, Voyager I is now beyond the solar system--or at least, on the very outer edge of the heliosphere. Scientists say that its batteries may well last for another eight years, and even now, it's still able to send signals back by radio waves--even though they arrive sixteen hours after having been sent.

The Brainpickings blog has been around for several years now, but having recently discovered the curator behind that site has a Twitter account, I've been getting more than my daily dose. I don't mind in the least, because she's insightful, witty, and discovers an amazingly diverse array of daily links to toss out to us in various forms.

Things like the history of neophilia, the quotes of Charles Eames, an unquiet history of libraries, and the science of creativity are just a brief sojourn through her vast array of links and commentary. It's definitely a site to bookmark.

In the meantime, remember the Marketplace JIRA? No, things still aren't solved, but they've taken a very amusing turn:

(from the bizarre album, because this is just bizarre)

Now, I grant, tossing up a screenshot of the file 400 pixels wide, things are going to be a little difficult to make out. I'll help:

(from the bizarre album, because it's still bizarre)

This? This is not the description of the JIRA file. This has never been the description of the JIRA file. So how did it change, and why?

Just to add to the surreality, I ran across a mention of a L$10 pose pack on Twitter; while I decided I didn't want it, it did give me a chance (I thought) to explore what was on the Marketplace for poses.
Set on 96 items per page, and priced low to high (pretty much my standard defaults), I found the first thirty-one items are borked--wrong product picture, no price, clicking on any of them brings up the main Marketplace log-in page. How many months has the Marketplace been borked now?

Oh, right, it's been borked for over two years.

There's an interesting project ongoing for SL architecture: structure-based "ruin porn". I'll let Ms. Hall describe the concept further:

When an MMO loses its subscriber base, the servers get turned off pretty quickly. But not in Second Life - even as the user base for this open landscape, open format virtual world dwindles, things just keep going - sans people.

There's no 'going to seed' in the world of Second Life. No grass grows up through concrete, no plastic bags flutter against [the] fences, walls don't crumble.

And yet, these places are abandoned...or at least, largely untenanted, which brings to mind another question: how many people simply pay the fees for their sims in SL, and no longer bother logging in? To my way of thinking, that's baffling--if I'm not using it (even occasionally), why would I pay for it?

But people do this. Sometimes out of nostalgia, sometimes out of habit, or out of the need to support the estates of friends--there are more than a few sims on the grid who are maintained (roughly) but never interacted with.

Snickers Snook, meanwhile, has a great article about mesh advantages and drawbacks, including something few other blogs have touched on: the Uncanny Valley aspects of mesh. While I still haven't managed completely to get into a Petite without major problems, it's notable that the only other full-mesh avatar I wear is a ball-jointed doll. The doll has few problems with seeming unreal, because we know, as a doll, she isn't. But what about full-mesh avatars that are trying to imitate people--even if only pixie-sized people? I won't lie, the fact that many makers make their mesh avatars off the same templates, with only a few tweaks, means they all look roughly similar. This can be jarring, especially when we factor in that the bodies move, but the expressions really don't.

Now, granted, most faces in SL aren't that animated to begin with, but with proper use of mouth and eye sliders, expressions can be approximated. With facial animation HUDs, reactions can be seen. Even with animations that only move the body, our brains extrapolate what the face in those poses would be likely to do, and we react as if that expression is visible.

The things that bridge the gap scare us. Looking too much like us, but too immobile--or even worse, if we categorize something as clearly "not alive", which then moves and speaks--it's an instinctive rejection, a primal identification.

Miss Snook thinks that full-mesh avatars (at least, the ones designed to approximate people) hit that Uncanny Valley point. And she may not be wrong. The problem--at least to me--from that realization is--if we ever do develop facial animations specifically for mesh avatars, will that make the Uncanny Valley aspects disappear...or make them worse?

Finally, for anyone interested in the skin game, this is a wonderful video. It condenses to around four minutes what took the designer four hours to do--namely, texture a digital model (for which she had full, paid licensing rights to reuse) to match the parameters of the SL avatar. And that's just the face alone--turning out a full avatar runs her between forty and sixty hours, and that's per skin.

(By the way, if you want to find her in world, you can, because Ms. Wunderlich now has a skin store separate from her main branch.

take your baby by the ears, and play upon her darkest fears

A mention on Tateru Nino's blog brought me to this New world Notes entry, that's mostly about yet another Linden departure (seriously, how many Lindens are left? Anyone?). But the bulk of that article really wasn't talking about Gez Linden leaving at all:

However, even with Gez gone, I believe there's many other top Lindens who are big supporters of integrating game mechanics (such as achievement awards) into SL, and several plans to do so, and even as Gez goes on to bigger things, I bet we'll still see them.

...Yeah. So...my mind immediately leapt to achievement awards, and thought at that point briefly ground to a halt.

What would count for achievements in SL? Some would be obvious: You made your first prim! seems a given; You have a Lindenhome! seems another obvious one. The first object you link, the first thing you buy, the first time you teleport...in this sense, sure, these all make sense.

But what else would be on the list? I'm cynic enough to see You've been ignored by a Linden! as a possible one. Or one measuring emotional touchstones--from You've spent ten minutes cuddling to You've been divorced! I'd also likely toss in You're pregnant! and You have an AO! and You've successfully changed your avatar! as potential achievements.

Here's the problem, though. A lot of games have achievement awards. Halo has achievements for killing people on your team, killing two people at once, and blowing yourself up. Minecraft has achievements for cutting down your first tree section, making a forge, making a portal to the Nether. City of Heroes has a ton of achievement possibilities--everything from logging off in a specific area to taking a million points of damage to participating in special events. Team Fortress II has so many achievements, they're character-specific. And some servers exist just to get those achievements, if we have trouble getting them any other way.

Both versions of Portal featured achievement unlocks, some of which involved playing through the game multiple times.

What puzzles me, though, is not what type of achievements could be gained in Second Life, but why. Walk a sim crossing--Achievement unlocked! Make an outfit--Achievement unlocked! Sell something on the Marketplace--Achievement unlocked! Change your hair--Achievement unlocked! It's not the concept of deploying an achievement system in Second Life that makes me headtilt, it's the concept of them at all. Why does Second Life need achievements?

"I believe deeply in this vision of building serendipity to connect people." Shervin Pishevar said that, and it's an intriguing concept--of fostering online friendships (or at least connections and networking) between people who otherwise wouldn't socialize. It seems heavily weighted towards Facebook, and I'm not sure at this point if it will grow large enough to trump existing social media sites, but it's a fascinating experiment, nonetheless.

On the face of it, Worlds Inc. claiming that its patent rights have been violated by Activision and Blizzard seems specious at best, and a wrongful suit at worst. But if they really do have a patent for " any system that allows for multiple gamers to interact in a virtual environment that doesn’t restrict the number of players at any one time"...well, that's pretty much all MMOs, isn't it? Including Second Life, InWorldz, and every other SL-based virtual world.

"Patent trolls", indeed.

And there's a new JIRA to watch for folks on the official SL viewer; no word on whether it's also hitting TPVs with viewer 3 aspects, but essentially--there's a wave of pink washing through the world, whenever Basic Shaders are turned on. Not only are avatars dip-dyed pink, but their alpha layers break, which would be hell for anyone who likes to wear shoes--or mesh.

in exploitation's name

There's another update on the Marketplace issues, yet again in a stupidly inaccessible place. Here's the full text from CommerceTeam Linden:

06-07-2012 02:53 PM

Below is the updated set of outstanding issues with Direct Delivery and the Marketplace.

Direct Delivery

The following Direct Delivery issues have been verified, but have not yet been addressed:

• WEB-4600 (Merchant Outbox failures): We have been working on this issue and will not shut down Magic Boxes until this is addressed. In some cases, logging out and in from the Marketplace and then the viewer may resolve this problem.
• WEB-4554 (Test delivery permissions incorrect): This is currently under investigation. Limited Quantity Support (Merchant does not have rights to copy the items for sale): This is currently being worked on. Magic Box migration will not be required until this is supported. (Note that Merchants can sell items that have next owner rights set to “No Copy”. Please see the Knowledge Base article on Object permissions for more details on how permissions work.)

Overall Marketplace

There are also several issues that occurred around the time of the Direct Delivery launch that we are still working to address, but are not issues with Direct Delivery.

• WEB-4587 (Listings with the wrong images): This is currently under test. 
• WEB-4441 (Orders stuck in “Being Delivered” state): We have been able decrease the number of orders getting stuck and continue to work on preventing all orders from getting stuck.
• WEB-4567 (Bulk delete fails for some merchants): We will evaluate the priority of this once we have completed the above Direct Delivery fixes and features.
• WEB-4592 (Orders marked as “Delivery Partially Failed” on success): This is currently under investigation.
• WEB-4696 (Deleted listings appearing in search results): We continue to investigate this issue.
• WEB-2974 (Listing enhancement stuck in “Charging, cannot edit right now” state): We are investigating this issue.
• WEB-4138 (Confirmation emails failing to deliver): We are currently investigating this issue. In addition to the above issues, there have been reports of Direct Delivery purchases silently being delivered and the Merchant not getting paid (the order is marked as “Failed”). We have not been able to confirm this report and would like to investigate further, so please file a support ticket with details if you see this.

Still not reserved, and several of the problems that are making people leave the Marketplace or tear their hair out trying to fix said issues are currently being "investigated"...which will take the time it takes, so don't expect a fix anytime soon, unfortunately.

Yeah.

In other JIRA news, permissions are behaving...well...not correctly, obviously, but also oddly. It's notable because the behavior is persistent across at least two viewers, the current release of the SL viewer, and whichever TPV the original reporter used in the first place. (That TPV is, unfortunately, not named.) Remember the rules--watch, don't vote--and hope for a fix.

(A helpful commenter below has given me the viewer name: Firestorm 3.3.0 (24882). So, it's persistent across at least V3 and Firestorm, if not others, and it's notable that with only five watchers to date, WorkingOnIt Linden has already been assigned to start the fix process.)

In the meantime, I leave you with Tom Hiddleston talking about Steven Spielberg. And making velociraptor noises. You're welcome.

her words are swimming through his ears again

Inadvertent poetry from the Merchant Outbox JIRA:

Somebody help me.......

Thank you all the answers.
But I am still "Initializing" mode.
Tells you how they all tried that.
But do not fix it.

How I've ever done.
1. change the language from settings to connect.
2. MO folder and drop in the correct place.

I tried both can not be repaired.

I am so sad.
Magic box to disappear in this state, I could die!

worusaai, 8 June, 2012

And there's now a 2D mod for Minecraft. ...So, that exists, now.

not a soul to take your hand in theirs

In JIRA news, this issue--which has been an ongoing problem for many, including Miss Neome locally (and it's been a persistent issue whether one is using the Phoenix/Firestorm viewer or not)--was sent to me with the tentative concept that it's been fixed. But if one reads through the comments, one is given the entirely opposing idea, so...no clue, really. If you're having that problem, test out some of the solutions given by Maestro Linden, and see if they work for you; that's the best I can offer.

And I'm also tossing this JIRA out there, because it's a woefully under-noticed issue that I think needs more attention. While I have a problem with getting notifications at all in that corner, merchants have an entirely separate concern--that of notices, sent items, and sales events capping out and refusing to load past that point. If you merchant on SL, or if you're an estate owner, this proposed modification could be very helpful. Watch the issue in the hopes that the Lindens will--at some point--remember it exists and work to fix it.

(from the bizarre album)

Seen at American Bazaar: Just hanging around shopping nude. No big deal.

Also, the little pot-leaf mouthie kills me on this one. Why make one? Why buy one? I guess I just don't get the desire for it as an accessory thing.

(from the bizarre album)

I'm reasonably sure that she was wearing mesh clothing and mesh hair, and that the lower clothing--cut-off jean shorts, spandex leggings, baggy cargo pants, whatever it actually was--required am alpha layer under the mesh object. Right now, that's what Singularity seems to do--it doesn't show skewed toruses, spikes, or round untextured grey spheres piled haphazardly around the avatar...it just doesn't show anything, at all.

Also, more explanation behind today's rolling restart of the entire grid:

[16:24] Dxxxxx Cxxxxxxx: so the rolling restarts are because LL opened a TP exploit. seems griefers have been mass TPing people around the grid all day.
[16:25] Dxxxxx Cxxxxxxx: even doing it at Linden Office Hours, to lindens. The cheeky bastards.
[16:26] Dxxxxx Cxxxxxxx: has to do with llTeleportAgent() a new function being tested on some sims.

Here's what I want to know: why did the Lindens open this TP exploit? That bit's not well explained. How'ver, this is followed by conversational diversions. First, a question:

[16:46] Txxxxx Hxxxxxxxxx: how do you make a tiny prim?
[16:47] lxxxxxx Gxxxxx: Feed it very small numbers?
[16:47] Txxxxx Hxxxxxxxxx: Hee :)

That might have to make the profile. But this is what I meant to bring up:

[16:50] Axxxxxxx Lxxxxxx: hello caledonians :-) anyone here good with setting perms, please?
[16:51] Axxxxxxx Lxxxxxx: LL has apparently changed something, and i missed it
[16:52] Axxxxxxx Lxxxxxx: now when you rezz a box it defaults to no copy, no mod, trans
[16:53] Axxxxxxx Lxxxxxx: and the option to make it no trans is greyed out?

So, I admit, it's been a while since I built anything with an eye to initial details. Usually, I just rez a box (or more usually a sphere), and then muck about with it until it's the general size I need--then I get into details. I don't really fret about permissions until the object is done, and then I'll ponder what permissions to assign.

So I checked it to be sure, and yes, she's right. It rezzes out no copy/no mod/trans for the next owner. Which isn't my preference--I prefer copy/mod/no trans--but is still an acceptable default. And, as I recall, it's been the default for several years now.

[16:53] Txxx Rxxxx: You cannot have it "no everything". You need to enable one of the others.
[16:54] Axxxxxxx Lxxxxxx: if i set it to mod ok the checkbox for trans is still greyed out
[16:54] Sxxxx Sxxxxxxxx: it has to be copy OR trans. it cannot be neither.

Which is true. And as far as I can remember, it's been that way. It is possible, if one is modding existing prims--like the eternal Linden freebie whatevers that will likely circulate until the end of time--to get something that's copy/mod/trans as a true freebie, but...that's not usual, and it's hardly done anymore.

[16:55] Sxxxx Sxxxxxxxx: if you want to restrict people passing it on after selling, No Trans is what you want, if you want people to be able to gift it, make it NO copy and Trans.
[16:55] Txxxxx Hxxxxxxxxx: so it won't let you change it to transfer is what you are saying, right Miss Axxxxxxx?
[16:56] Axxxxxxx Lxxxxxx: why the hell did they do that????

Here's where I started getting confused. Granted, yes, this was a behavioral change from the former way prims were assigned permissions, but this was a behavioral change that's been on the ground for several years now...like, at least four, here. If not more. Where the hell has she been for four entire years?!?

[16:56] Sxxxx Sxxxxxxxx: to prevent people losing items.

Pretty much.

[16:56] Sxxxx Sxxxxxxxx: if you want it no transfer, make it copy.
[16:57] Sxxxx Sxxxxxxxx: all it means is that they will be able to have multiple copies themselves.
[16:57] Axxxxxxx Lxxxxxx: if they keep dumbing things down so much we are going to have to hire 4 year olds to do tech support

Ah, but you're assuming the Lindens are actually hiring people. Tch. Biiiig assumption, there.

But also, why is changing that behavior "dumbing things down"? I don't get it. People to this day set permissions wrong and send things out, but this was actually one of the bigger innovations to prevent that. And guess what? It worked. Far fewer people send things out wrong, and it's not like it's hard in any way to check the boxes and make something trans and no copy, instead of copy and no trans.

[16:57] Sxxxx Sxxxxxxxx: I'm reasonably certain that the perms system has always worked like this.

Yeah, *bzzzzzt!*, no, you'd be wrong there. But, as previously stated, it has been a while since the permissions set was changed. As I recall, this particular gentle entered the grid in either 2008 or 2009, which would have been after the permissions changed in the first place--so I'll toss partial credit (aka, if you've never experienced the system as it was before, then it's "always worked" like that).

[16:57] Txxxxx Hxxxxxxxxx: I think she is trying to make it transferable, and it just won't let her.
[16:57] Axxxxxxx Lxxxxxx: what i want is no copy
[16:58] Sxxxx Sxxxxxxxx: well if you want it no copy, make it trans first. then the copy box will stop being greyed out.
[16:58] Axxxxxxx Lxxxxxx: i have been here 3+ years and it has not always been this way
[16:58] Txxxxx Hxxxxxxxxx: she says it still is gray
[16:59] Txxxxx Hxxxxxxxxx: funny I understand this..lol
[16:59] Axxxxxxx Lxxxxxx: and if it's not something i'm going to sell or give away i should be able to set the perms any way i like

Again, *bzzzzzt!*, wrong. If it's not an existing full-perm free prim that's being modified? It's not going to be settable "any way you like". You have to pick which permissions you want. It's not a hard concept.

[17:00] Axxxxxxx Lxxxxxx: it's my creation after all
[17:00] Sxxxx Sxxxxxxxx: well if you're not going to sell it or give away, the perms don't matter - permissions only apply to the next owner.

Precisely. Hells, if you made the thing, you can set it however you want (within existing limitations); because none of those permissions will matter as long as it's in your inventory. You can even make it completely free, or pretty completely locked, if it's just going to sit in your inventory and gather pixelated dust. Setting permissions only matter to the next owner of the prim--the avatar you sell it to, or give it to, or whatever.

[17:00] Txxx Rxxxx: If you're not giving it to others, permissions don't matter anyway.
[17:00] Txxxxx Hxxxxxxxxx: Maybe I understand it because of all the mistakes I make :)
[17:00] Axxxxxxx Lxxxxxx: yes they dom i don't want it copying, i don't want a copy left in inventory when i rezz it
[17:01] Axxxxxxx Lxxxxxx: *do matter

So...what stops her from deleting the copy in inventory? It's what I do. One click, two at best, you're done. This is not rocket science.

[17:01] Txxx Rxxxx: No way you can do that with your own object. You can pass it to an alt to kick in "Next owner", and then back.
[17:01] Sxxxx Sxxxxxxxx: Permissions are *next* owner permissions. they do not affect objects you've created in any way.
[17:02] Sxxxx Sxxxxxxxx: (if you own them)
[17:02] Axxxxxxx Lxxxxxx: yes they do, if they are set to copy a copy is left in your inventory when you rezz it
[17:02] Axxxxxxx Lxxxxxx: and that's what i don't want
[17:02] Txxx Rxxxx: That is because you always have full perm on your own objects, no matter what permissions you set for "next owner".

Yeah. Because that's how the system works. Suck it up, sweetheart, it's not going to change.

[17:02] Sxxxx Sxxxxxxxx: if they're set to no copy, the same thing applies, Miss Lxxxxx.
[17:03] Axxxxxxx Lxxxxxx: no no no you don't understand
[17:03] Cxxxxx Wxxxxx: I've developed a habit of 'rezz and delete' with stuff I've made.
[17:03] Axxxxxxx Lxxxxxx: nevermind
[17:03] Sxxxx Sxxxxxxxx: no copy items only become properly "no copy" when they get sent to a new owner.

Exactly. Also, "never mind" is two words. But I digress; she seemed to be getting cranky:

[17:03] Axxxxxxx Lxxxxxx: nevermind
[17:03] Axxxxxxx Lxxxxxx: you don't get it
[17:03] Sxxxx Sxxxxxxxx: I do. You don't.
[17:04] Axxxxxxx Lxxxxxx: *mutes* Sxxxx and closes window
[17:04] Cxxxxx Wxxxxx: I wish I had arrived earlier in the conversation.

I doubt it would have created anything easier to comprehend.

[17:04] Sxxxx Sxxxxxxxx: Happy to help.
[17:05] Sxxxx Sxxxxxxxx: I don't think many people mute me, this is quite the achievement.
[17:06] Cxxxxxxxx Hxxxxxxx: You have arrived
[17:06] Sxxxx Sxxxxxxxx grins
[17:06] Cxxxxx Wxxxxx: *chuckles* I refuse to let the classic permissions conversation be a drama. I came in too late to know the original item-need, or would have helped.

See, here's the problem. I was there, and I think most of us would be willing to help--but [Sxxxx] seemed to be doing so well. And then the inexplicable rage-quit moment. Or at least the mute-flounce moment. It's bizarre.

[17:06] Txxx Rxxxx: Axxxxxx wanted to make an object no-copy for herself so it wouldn't leave a copy in inventory when she rezzed it, and Sxxxx tried to explain that any permissions you change are for the *next* owner, not yourself.
[17:07] Txxx Rxxxx: Which resulted in a "LL changed it! I've been here 3 years. You are muted".
[17:07] Sxxxx Sxxxxxxxx: Miss Lxxxxxx' profile states that she "Mutes first, asks questions later."

So, I admit I got curious. The bio of the argumentative lass in question:

ZEN

# I mute first and ask questions later.

# A photograph, as we all know is not real at all. It's an illusion of reality. Hint: You are not a camera.

# DO NOT PRESENT YOURSELF AS AN EXPERT WHEN ALL YOU REALLY HAVE TO OFFER IS YOUR OPINION

# I'm only responsible for what I say, not for what you believe.

# All that being said, i'm friendly and pleasant if i am treated respectfully and courteously :-)

So...I'm basically taking from this that she thinks she knows everything; she thinks other people don't know anything; she thinks she's friendly and pleasant; and she mutes on a whim. (Which is neither friendly, nor pleasant.)

Oh, and inexplicably, she's "ZEN". What does that even mean? Especially with the trigger-happy muting.

Later, this happened:

[17:15] Axxxxxxx Lxxxxxx: and there is a work-around by the way, simply drop something that's no mod no copy no trans into the contents *wink*

Okay, now she's just starting to irk me. Yes, sure, if you want to make something with zero permissions, for whatever crack-head idea you have in your wee brain--find that bizarre item hanging out in your inventory for no discernible reason, then yes--drop that in, and you now have a no-permissions item. Congratulations. Tomorrow, you can try drawing with crayons, it'll be fun!

[17:16] Sxxxx Sxxxxxxxx: If it's created by someone else, yes.
[17:16] Cxxxxx Wxxxxx: Miss Lxxxxxx would do well to listen to various points of view - and that's a VERY good workaround.
[17:17] Cxxxxx Wxxxxx: for a Builder, it's good to have a builder-alt handy, for various creation testing and kicking back and forth.

Or friends. Either work.

[17:17] Axxxxxxx Lxxxxxx: there is ALWAYS a work around *wink*

Dear sweet suffering gods, stop with the winking. It just comes off as false and insincere and very, very superior. Right, you found a way around a problem no one else has, and you came back in to the conversation you'd flounced away from in high drama-mode, so you could show us all that we were so very very wrong! Yeah. Fine. We get it. Happy now?

[17:18] Cxxxxx Wxxxxx: Life in SL IS A WORKAROUND. Face it. Why do we have baldy wigs? Workaround. Why do we have masking alphas for outfits? Workaround? Glitchpants? Should I go on?
[17:18] Cxxxxx Wxxxxx: If we remain here past a year we are wise to the WorkAroundWorld.
[17:19] Axxxxxxx Lxxxxxx: Precisely :-)))

It's not your grand solution, just so you know. You fixed a problem that was immaterial. Again, good for you. Do you want some macaroni bits to glue to something?

[17:21] Cxxxxx Wxxxxx: Second Life! Not for wimps!
[17:22] Axxxxxxx Lxxxxxx: preeeeeeeeeeeeeecisley!
[17:22] Axxxxxxx Lxxxxxx: couldn't have said it better myself :-)

That's because you didn't say it. Honestly, I'm not saying she earned a mute for this, but in all seriousness, she's likely going to be ignored from now on out. What an idiotic waste of everyone's time.