From #SL Griefing to Extortion

This article got way longer than I intended. Even after I went back and did a trim pass to reduce the size. But, I did not want to write another piece on griefing that didn’t place a new perspective on the subject. Griefing is advancing and getting more sophisticated and dangerous. I’ve pointed out those dangers and possible defenses. Also, anti-griefers are starting to become self-righteous griefers abusing others in the name of fighting griefers. It is a mess.

Crying Leo by storyvillegirl on Flickr
Crying Leo by storyvillegirl on Flickr

In RL we see the same mess with Pro-Life and Pro-Choice people. The idiots on one side kill doctors that perform abortions. The idiots on the other side try to force people with religious objections to pay for abortions. Both are insane and display disregard for their ‘stated’ principals. Getting the rational people on both sides to work it out is the only solution.

In recent months griefing has progressed to include extortion. Extortion is a RL crime. Griefing in Second Life™, particularly in the SL fashion industry, has been a part of the drama of SL. Griefing via extortion is probably only a new-to-some-of-us thing. The old song the Lab does nothing continues and is lame now as it always has been.

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Metareality – Where are you?

It has been almost two months since we heard anything out of Metareality, Gianna Borgnine. No podcasts and no Plurks. So, what’s up?

Metareality Podcasts

Draxtor™ Despres just yesterday sent me a notice that Flufee episode 17 was out. If you have been reading you saw me post it here. Whatever, he is on the Metareality podcast shows. So, I asked him, what’s up?

He says Gianna is ‘splendid’ just busy. The broadcast team is working on lots of intense projects. I think that is going around. I’ve got two big tutorials in the works. Darrius just got his Virtual Land Marks our the door. Geenz is busy with the materials system. So, it figures Gianna and her Sand Castles studio would have things in the works. And we all know Karl has to do that Angry Frogs thing and Christmas is getting close.

No ETA for a return of the podcasts.

#SL Virtual Landmarks…

Landmark Tower – By: fakelvis – Flickr

We have movement on Virtual Landmarks. I’ve been writing about Virtual Landmarks since August 2012 when Toysoldier Thor proposed them (see SVC-8082). See: Virtual Landmarks. They are a feature that is on the Linden ‘would really like someday’ list. The last I’ve heard is they are not on the production schedule. This means there is a bunch of stuff ahead of them and no definitive priority has been set.

That no priority has been set means we have no idea when we may Virtual Landmarks (VLM) in Second Life™. But, Darrius Gothly has just written an article titled: Time To Push Second Life Forward – Virtual Landmarks. Obviously it is about VLM’s. It does a very good job of explaining the purpose of VLM’s. The best part is there is now a way to get VLM’s.

The Tech

Darrius and I have both compared VLM’s to URL’s that use a web site’s domain name, like blog.nalates.net. Somewhere there is a server that looks up that name and tells your computer where my web server is and how to connect. VLM’s in SL will need a server to provide a look up service too. It is setting up such a server that the Lab has yet to prioritize and start work on.

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A Strangeling in Second Life

Strawberry Singh  has a post about a new game, Strangelings, expected to be out the first quarter of 2013. She says the Ozimals team has joined up with two former Lindens and a financial expert to form Flying Monkey Interactive, Inc. The team is developing a product platform called Toto that will run on iPad, the web, iPhone, and Facebook.

Strawberry Singh as a Strangeling

The Magic of Oz region has been remade to create a promotional and information spot in Second Life. It is an all mesh area. Check it out. Also bounce over to Strawberry’s blog and see the video she made. It shows the Strangling in all is awesome cutness: Strangelings & Mesh Oz! 

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Second Life World Map Borked

You may or may not have noticed that the world map has some problems. Depending on what region you search for it may or may not show up and may not show a map tile (image). 

Missing Map Strips

The image shows Sunny Point failing to rez an image of the region. If you jump out of the viewer and try to find the region in http://maps.secondlife.com/, you will find it does not come up at all.

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Second Life Griefing

Griefing is an ongoing problem in Second Life™. I am seeing a new round of user complaints regarding griefing. Most of the recent complaints I’ve seen involve free sandboxes. The most recent notable example is VooDoo’s complaint that I mention in: #SL Adult Content Problems.

Bullies – Image by: Chesi – Fotos CC

About five days after my article posted a thread started on SLUniverse. See: LL looks like idiots when they can’t keep griefers out of thier own info hubs. The ‘colorful’ title pretty well says it all.

It is pointed out that Linden owned sandbox regions in the LEA Project are user moderated. Allowing users to moderate regions has possibilities. The use of user-moderators also has special problems. Darrius Gothy wrote a really good article on those problems back in 2011… (sounds like my grand dad). See: Griefing: User Sponsored Enforcement Groups.

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