Check out my privates

One of the things I simply cannot understand or tolerate is double standards, they are hypocritical and have no logical base for existing -simply put, do as I say and not as I do principle-: it has come to my attention that this applies to governments, agencies and businesses worldwide when handling your information -which is yours and only yours to give- but please allow me to elaborate.

The other day I was sitting at home enjoying the peace and quiet of my day off when someone rang the bell, it was a friendly looking lady around her 50s who identified herself as coming on behalf of the council to gather information about residents for the registry of electors, I happen to live with two other people so naturally I explained that I was alone at home and the other people were not present at the time, what followed made me raise an eyebrow.

"Since I come from council" the woman continued and "it's only for the registry database, it would be fine for you to give me such information" to which I replied that what I was being asked to do was illegal and that she should come at a later time and speak to the people concerned in person. When meditating on this as the day progressed I was left wondering how many times Linden Labs has changed its TOS to ensure that our information is indeed private and ours to handle, but it is not in fact entirely private as the Labs itself has all of our tacit consent when we open an account and facilitate RL info to do with our precious privacy -our private parts as I like to call them- as they see fit -same goes to Facebook and many other social platforms out there-

Why is it then that some laws are more severely applied and safe guarded such as Piracy, Fraud -to name a few- because simply put, it involves money, so maybe we should start asking companies and governments out there money every time we are asked to give specific details about ourselves, then and maybe only then, our private parts would be treated with the respect they so deserve.

https://www.facebook.com/spikecls

Ignorance is Bliss...

Unless you are already ignorant, then the whole happy principle negates itself, you don't know you why you are happy, since you don't know to be living in ignorance, but sometimes information can truly rain on your parade and there are some things that -at least in my particular case- I am happy not knowing.

Both my sons are sexually active, I know this to be true and I rather not know the details, only thing that matters is the sound knowledge that they are being responsible while doing so; now when it comes to relationships there are things that are rather not shared with your other half -those that look best under a veil of mystery-, even if communication is THE KEY for any romantic relationship to work, some information is better not said or shared -this is where trust comes into play-.

But what happens to those who think they know -and are in fact under the wrong belief they hold the absolute truth-, when they truly don't know half the story? Is it your unspoken duty to ruin the mirage of truth they have built around themselves?, my take on this would be that if it doesn't directly affect you, it'd be best to let them live in that fantasy they enjoy so much, because unless you are frontally asked to reveal the truth to them, you'll come as the bad guy -he who destroyed that marvelous fantasy world it had taken them so long to build-

Second life is no different to life itself, even more so because no matter how real it may seem to some long term users and how intense your feelings for your lover, SL family and so on, it is based on a virtual reality we create ourselves and for ourselves.

So keep it real, and if you don't want to know the truth, don't ask.

https://www.facebook.com/spikecls

Forced entry

So you're out there in RL minding your own business and during one of those dead office hours you decide to google your SL partner's name just for the fun of it and you stumble with a profile which includes a picture of him and his ex cuddling.

Far for being disturbed I am rather amused (knowing him this was created ages ago and he probably forgot it was there), so I text him the link and he denies any recollection of having even created the profile in the first place.

As soon as I get home, we get to trying to gather information by all means necessary on how his information ended up in there to begin with, he fills in a "contact us" form on the page to get an auto-reply which gives us a landmark, so we proceed to visit the SIM we were sent to, hoping someone who works there will be able to unravel this mystery.

What did we find? a big pile of nothing. No contact boards, no info booths, nothing; we did see a wide range of products being offered, but as far as in-world assistance? apparently that's something they cleared were lacking or not considering when they got organised. I decided to do the expert thing, right click and choose edit to find the person behind all of this, which led me to Jan Maroon, the creator and programmer behind what we learned was "BLetaverse". We proceed to look him up and send him a notecard explaining the problem, to be faced with an email reply from Betsy Sapphire, who explained that by following a link, logging in and choosing to remove the profile would suffice.

These people seem not to be aware that there is no log in info to begin with, as the person involved has no clue how his info ended up in there, they did claim it had been caused by the use of any of their products, which he hasn't. At the time this article is posted and after two failed attempts to contact anyone from the company, who have flagrantly violated not only the internet Privacy Act but a few of SL TOS, the user involved has received no reply.

https://www.facebook.com/spikecls

Burning Bridges

Often used as an expression to refer to a job or a relationship in your life you have no desire to ever go back to, it seemed fitting to  be used as a reference to the many changes thousands of users are experiencing in impotence as the TPV policy has been updated by Linden Labs.

One of the first things that will poof before our very eyes in the next couple of days will be the client tags; personally, I won't miss those much as it had no relevance to me what viewer was each person on, but the color tags is indeed something I will miss and that the Lindens should seriously consider implementing ASAP -am I the only one that hates that default pink?-

There are though, a few updates on Third party viewers policy that I do agree upon being updated and that is the offline / online statuses -if you have set yourself to appear offline to people, I don't see why there should be a way for some users to see your real online status-, I am a bit obsessed with privacy, so this and the alt scanners -on the last TOS update- is something I welcome seeing depart from our virtual lives.

Then there's the Phoenix/Firestorm bridge, that wonderful wearable tool that allows your inventory and textures as well as many other essentials to load on your viewer which will must likely go too -this will reduce lag too!-, so myself as many users wonder how will this affect our overall user experience in the non so distant future? The move here seems strategic, Linden Labs while publicly expressing their concern regarding users' privacy is striving to make all of our viewer experience similar, so it won't matter if you are on the official V3 or any third party one that has managed to make a somewhat more decent job -no viewer is perfect, no matter what they tell you-

I guess we will wait and see how things are handled by all people involved in this Viewer tug-of-war, but do remember that the one with the muscle here, is Linden Labs itself.

https://www.facebook.com/spikecls

THE DATELESS CURTAINS

There is no such thing as real privacy in second life… true there are security orbs you can pretty much automatically eject anyone at any time, even when you are offline, but when it comes to curious neighbours next door or close to where you are, any means used for privacy are, like the picture says, a privacy symbol.

I recently -after pondering all of the pros and cons- decided to move permanently to my son’s ranch, you know wide open spaces, silence, a cosy little cabin. He offered space for a second residence and since I spend most of my dead in-world hours with him in there, it seemed simpler to just make the move.

It’s all been -so far- dreamy; we “wake up” (log in bright and early that is) talk about our things and when time comes we both move on to our RLs. He had a few ideas on changing and moving things around the ranch to make my stay more comfortable, but I refused; no extra efforts or changing of things because of me; I like things as they are and am -by definition- not a big fan of sudden change. Then, half jokingly he mentioned curtains for his house, which is across from where my cabin is now. My house has no windows so I saw this suggestion of his as either a joke or a pointless idea. I have no plan of sitting in the porch trying to make sense out of the blurs and shadows that are moving inside, so I just brushed it off.

Today, I log in at our usual time and, surprise, he’s setting up curtains. “You’re not seeing anyone, or planning to” I say, “it’s just for privacy” he replies. This got me thinking, in this simulator that Second life is, is there a real idea or concept of privacy? If you have neighbours, whether it’d be that you’re living in an apartment complex or on a quiet sim with neighbouring houses, all your neighbours have to do is zoom in on you or cam in, to get a very graphic idea of what you are doing. A pretty disturbing concept if the peeping is unwanted, unsolicited and the peeved party, unsuspecting.

With all of the advances being planned for our virtual world, whether we call it mesh or whatever it may come, I often ask myself if a mean to prevent zooming in on certain areas is planned or possible for the near future -a security orb of sorts, but preventing unsolicited camming-.

Whomever managed to work the script for such a thing would not only change how we guard privacy, and consequently change second life, but would surely make a fortune. Those are curtains I would not mind spending a few thousands linden on.

https://www.facebook.com/spikecls