Second Rants

why so much fuss?

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a small thought as i’ve been reading though some crap spewed across our new CEO’s first (and as of yet, only) blog post.

there has been a lot of complaints about the new web profile that LL rolled out recently, and honestly i can’t understand the anger that some people are showing towards it. partly i figure its because people hate change, and yeah i hate it too but i honestly LIKE the web profile (i even hit the horrible facebook “like” button on my own :p). people keep mentioning its a privacy invasion, however no one can give me a straight answer as to HOW its invading your privacy…

first of all, your profile is not private, its public, anyone who sees you inworld can right click on you, and read your profile. if you don’t want anyone to read anything in your profile, LEAVE IT BLANK.

secondly, second life profile’s have been on the web for a while now. just not in the easy to find format that is out there now. see this link? http://world.secondlife.com/resident/cedc9be1-3dc9-4fc2-bdb4-db350803a851 that’s my second life profile. the url is not as easy to remember as my.secondlife.com/nimil.blackflag but it contains my information from my second life profile. which is the same as the web profile, minus handy buttons that i have linking to my twitter and sl facebook account. anyone can find theirs by going to search.secondlife.com and that’s been that way for some time now.

and look! there’s those “share” buttons that everyone is for some unknown reason getting upset about. so what if someone shares your sl profile? unless you have explicit info in your profile or picks stating “i am suzie smith from the real world!” no one is going to say, omg that nimil blackflag person is really my mom! (except i’m not a mom but that’s just an example)

and the share buttons do absolutely nothing to cause you to be impersonated, seriously all i have to do is type “i am lucas gerard, this is profile” and there, i’ve impersonated my partner. shock, horror… it didn’t even require a button click.

some of these comments they just make me raise my eyebrows and go “seriously? you are pissed about THIS??” because wtf.. are these people that ashamed that they are on second life? i can understand wanting your sl time to be your private time but like i said, unless you put your full name and address and what ever on your profile (and if you do you are seriously an idiot, get off the internet before you get yourself killed) you’re not going to end up with any privacy invasion.

one thing i saw that really made me go O_o was someone’s profile that says (and oh god i’m quoting your profile on the internet)

**DO NOT ‘LIKE’ OR ‘TWEET’ MY PROFILE.**

1) If you do you will have instantly "outed" yourself as an SL user to all your Facebook friends. You want that?? Really???

first of all.. outed?? that brings me back to the “are you ashamed of your second life” question… i’ve never hidden the fact that i am on second life. plenty of people know it. my parents knew when i joined, i still show my mom sl from time to time, my dad had an account but he only logged in once. my brother think’s its lame, my sister in law popped in a couple of times but her laptop sucks. so yeah… i’m not worried about being “outed” and really i think if you enjoy this place (which obviously this person does not since they said they were leaving due to this web profile BS) you aren’t going to be too worried if someone from the real world outside your computer knows that you enjoy running around dressed as a whatever you dress up as in second life.

maybe that makes me some kind of liberal anarchist griefer or something (insert your favourite word vomit here). WHO KNOWS!

i admit, LL has done some stupid things, yesterday they blew up most of the grid by eating a bunch of mega prims for breakfast, however, i have yet to see them do anything that would actually make me want to leave. kick them in the collective balls yes, leave, no. so if having your profile on a web page is going to ruin your sl that much that you have to moan about how you’re leaving in an un-related blog, just pack up and go already!

and i’m done rambling.

thank you linden lab!

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i know i have been bitchy about decisions LL has made in the past. but without them i would not have second life, so in the end, i will always respect their wishes.

when the blog post and email came though that emerald viewer would be blocked from second life i was so happy. thank you linden labs for not dropping the ball on this! thank you for protecting us from a malicious viewer even though there were so many people using it!

seriously, if you are dumb enough to keep clinging to the emerald client after all that has come out about their devs, then you deserve to have your information stolen. LL is not at fault for this, the people behind emerald who were making poor choices and stupid decisions were at fault. this is not a plot to make people use 2.0, if it was, they wouldn’t have mentioned that there are other clients to choose from, they would have just said, hey, use our viewer now!

as i mentioned in my last blog, lordgreggreg’s post sent me running to imprudence for fear of my privacy and i have no reason to look back. even with emergence and now phoenix, i refuse to trust any of these people, because too much has gone on involving them. i do think jessica seems a bit more level headed than the rest of the devs that appeared in interviews and blog posts. i know there were many behind the scenes that had nothing to do with what happened, however for those who did know, i have nothing but contempt for you.

i wish people would stop trying to ruin second life. it is my second home. it is my escape from the horrible first life i have to live with every day. adding stress to my second life just makes things worse for me and i’m sure others as well. why can’t people just have fun and stop making things harder for everyone else?

if you haven’t tried imprudence, i really suggest you do. its a great client and the devs are super nice. they are trying to do all they can to make the users happy and are very concerned with keeping our private information PRIVATE. they supply weekly experimental releases which contain new fixes and new features, and there’s nothing that i miss from emerald.

on top of all of it. IMPRUDENCE HAS WORKING HIGH RES SNAPSHOT!!! if you are a photographer you know the pain in the ass that comes from having to manually step up your image size to a larger size than your screen so you have better detail control. high res snapshot is supposed to do that for you but every other client i’ve used, this function did nothing. on imprudence it actually works! images are bigger than your screen and all you have to do is check a box 😀

i don’t really like the 2.0 ui otherwise i’d probably spend more time in kirstens viewer. the shadows in that viewer are spectacular, as you can see from these shots of the new [ LuNi ] store:

in with the new

in with the new

that strange shadow cast there is from the broken glass texture on the outside of our store’s orb

in with the new

an unexpected result but a cool one!

the only other major thing i dislike about the kirstens viewer is that anti-aliasing is broken 🙁 once she fixes that, it will be an amazing photo client. that, the ui, an the lack of features that i require as a creator (temp textures!!!) keep me on an old style viewer.

anyway, stfu about LL being bad because they blocked emerald. they might have just saved your bank account and other important information. you have tons of alternatives.

i hate change!

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though its pretty much inevitable i hate it all the same. so much is going on in second life and its really driving me batty. i’m not good adjusting and i try to find myself a safe little hole to stay in and when that gets disrupted, everything turns upside down on me for a while.

right now is a time of change in second life, in so many different ways. get ready for ramble.

meshes are still a go, but we’ve lost qarl. 16 and 17 year olds will soon be coming into our world and who knows what that will bring. it could be nothing or it could be a shit storm. i am relived to hear that they will be locked to general grid areas only but that doesn’t stop disgusting people from communicating with them in ims. and yes i know 16 and 17 year olds are not idiots, i know you kids know about sex,They may know about sex pills for men, how they work, when to use them, what are the benefits of using them, it is also  important for young men to focus on healthy habits such as exercising regularly, eating a balanced diet, and maintaining good hygiene.It is also important to have open and honest communication with sexual partners and to prioritize safety by using protection during sexual activity.

i know you kids know about a lot of things. i was a teenager once too. the main problem is, while you might not think its a big deal, the media does, and so we now have a responsibility to make sure that second life doesn’t come off as a pedo-haven. i mean seriously, the media went nuts over ADULTS pretending to be children, how fast do you think they are going to latch onto this new change and milk the non-positive side for all its worth?

yes i am paranoid, live with it.

i cant’ say i’m overjoyed to hear about kids being on the main grid. yeah i know there are some decent ones. some have already transitioned to the mg by turning 18 (arwyn quandry and katharine barry are two that i am really glad to see still kicking around on second life) and yeah there’s probably some that will be joining us who are under age who are cool (smiley barry of course, is the only actual teen grid person i know anymore lol) but even if we are getting some great teens who are innovative and intelligent and possibly more mature than our normal adult mg residents, we will most likely also be getting the brats, the assholes, the script kiddies of the future, the copy botters who ripped off our stuff and brought it to the teen grid to begin with, and who knows what else. so no i’m not exactly thrilled by this announcement.

i’m also not thrilled by the stance of Q linden at the SLCC. telling us that we need to step up and say what’s wrong. where the hell have you been? how many people have to stand up and say uh.. this viewer is shit, before you people actually acknowledge it? we aren’t just complaining because oh you moved a few things around, no you’ve completely upended all of us and even new people can’t get the hang of this thing. a new browser should take someone like me, who’s been in second life for 4 years now, a few minutes to get back into the swing of things. here we are months later and i’m still using torley’s tutorials if i want to even try to use that thing. we have stood up Q, where the hell were you?

and while i’m on the subject of viewers let me just say how completely disgusted i am at the recent emerald drama. i feel so completely lied to and betrayed by these people. i gave them my trust only to find out that i have been lied to, and possibly compromised! all the times i have brushed off people who’s opinion on emerald seemed so paranoid. i kept thinking that if LL had them on the list, then they must be compliant and nothing dangerous could possibly happen! but no, that was not the case. first i read lordgreggreg’s post about secretly encrypted stuff in my viewer of choice, and then find out that they also used that viewer to attack someone’s website. both of these are big fat NO’s in my book.

i refuse to use something that i cannot trust. even if what lordgregreg’s post was about was just a butt hurt dev trying to defame (which i don’t think it is, i honestly think he is concerned with security here.) i still do not want to be caught up in some kind of retarded viewer drama. i am very disappointed that they have somehow managed to sucker in not one but 2 ex-lindens to help them out, and i hope that those ex-lindens will take the time to research what they are getting into before they are too deep to get out of it. these people seem so very immature to me..

looking into things it does seem like one dev may be a scammer in other communities, and that furthers my opinion on why i need to switch clients.

i apologize to those who i have brushed off and called paranoid for their opinions on the emerald viewer and its devs. and i apologize to those who i have recommended this client to, because it is surely not safe to use.

for now i have switched to imprudence, which is a very good substitute for someone coming off of using emerald for pretty much an entire year now. one of the dev’s from emerald is someone i was friends with on plurk and i remember her talking about it in its beginnings and so i chose to check that out before any other client. its great so far and it seems like the team is mature and actually focused on making a viewer instead of making a fool out of themselves. and weekly builds really show you just how active they are at fixing problems and working on new ideas.

why i ignored your unite request

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i’ve had an avatars united account since it opened back 3 years ago. i am a profile joiner.. if there’s a place to put a profile… i join it. so its been sitting there taking up server space for a while now, and was pretty much dead because the site was dull and no one was on it. recently LL acquired AU and as soon as they blogged about it, the masses of second life poured in.

since this acquisition i have been flooded with unite requests from both people i know and people i do not know. now i’m a friendly person… usually.. but seeing 20 messages a day from people trying to unite with you who have never spoken to you inworld or anywhere else (like say.. on plurk) it gets kinda annoying. i’m not on that site to collect names. i’m not there for you to collect either. so after those messages really started to drive me insane, i decided to only accept unite invites from people i actually knew, or who bothered to speak to me before adding me (or at least sent me a message with the invite!)

so far only 1 person has done that. a linden lol. so i’ve been ignoring requests daily and its started to piss me off. i have it on my profile that i only accept requests from people i know or those who take the time to speak to me before hand, but no one seems to read it. i’m sure these people are nice but i can’t be arsed to pay attention to eight billion people on a social networking site and i would prefer to keep it narrowed down to just those who are friends with me. one girl added me a whopping 10 times.. i have no idea why. i guess she was sitting there watching me not add her but if she can’t read my profile well that’s not my problem. no offence to her of course, i assume she’s a nice person, and i think i own some of her poses. but i’ve never spoken to her before, and i don’t want to be collected!

so, if you’re on AU, think about this before you add people.. take a moment to read their profile. if you don’t know them, take a moment to speak to them before you blindly click the unite us! button. and ffs if someone hits the ignore button on your request don’t send it again.

ok rant over.. that was just getting on my nerves.

silence is not a scream

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this picture is from november 15, 2006, not long after the copybot was first introduced to second life. i was a noob when this crap started and at that time i was convinced it was the end of the world. this picture is even titled “death of a world”. everyone had started putting up these signs and closing up shops.  other places started adding those annoying spamming !quit boxes to their stores. designers threatened to quit making content until LL stopped the copybot threat. to my knowledge LL didn’t do anything about it back then.

that’s why today i’m blogging because i am against this silly “protest” people are doing where they are not uploading, not creating, not blogging, etc for 2 days… not doing anything is not going to get anything done. you are not shouting, you are being silent.

closing your doors shows the copybotters and texture thieves that you give up. instead i plan to go out shopping today and support creators! and of course, as a content creator myself, it is my right to say that LuNi Designs will not be closing at all during this 2 day boycott, so please do feel free to stop by and support us as well!

if you want to do something about theft, don’t shut your mouth, don’t stop supporting the content creators! instead, do something about it! report thieves! don’t accept ripped off content! make a stand by saying i will not be silent!

i’m feeling ranty

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is nimil really that hard to spell?

i always thought my name was pretty easy to spell, sure its a bitch to pronounce right but spelling? it can be done with one hand. n i m i l. all right hand keyboard keys! so… why do i get called namil? numal? nimal? nami? etc?? seriously… i’d love to know. and its not like you have to guess at the spelling, its floating over my head the entire time i’m wandering around in sl. its right next to everything i type. hell if you have that much of a problem figuring out the spelling, open my profile and copy paste it from the name box there.

another thing driving me nuts today. breaking and entering… today i logged into my home, started looking though my SoM messages, checking out the group notices i had, all that good log in stuff, when i see that familiar green text:

name withheld: is definitely aroused

in my chat window.

ok i live on a bdsm island, and sometimes people wander around with their clicky bits out, so i didn’t think much about it.. until i took a moment to look at the avatar list that the emerald client is so wonderful to provide and see two avatar names in very close proximity to where i am standing.

yes that’s right.. they were IN MY BEDROOM. two “women” fucking on my 3000L$ bed. so i did what any sane home owner would do. i screamed GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE, and then hit the bounce and ban button. oh how i love that button, it is so rare that i get to use it, but when i do i relish the moment.

so anyway one of them im’s me with “ok.. sorry” to which i replied “learn to read, enjoy your ban” yeah i know i’m a bitch, but seriously, this is MY house, and it even says PRIVATE RESIDENCE in the title bar. you have no excuse… not to mention my doors are locked and when you click them it tells you that they are locked. so these people cammed in and sat on something in my home to fuck on my bed.

ok and i know noobs do this.. yeah.. i have no idea why noobs break into people’s homes, i never did.. but they didn’t even have the excuse of that. both of these “ladies” were from 2006. NO EXCUSE. so i hope they enjoyed their trip to the edge of the sim.

*breathes* ok i feel better now.

answering some questions

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something lately that has been annoying me, people popping up randomly and asking me if i quit plurk. well just to set the record straight (again) i quit plurk back in uh.. june i think? or july? i can’t remember anymore. anyway, yes i am no longer on plurk. not its not a break from plurk, i have no want or need to go back to that time sink of a website. if you really REALLY need to have a nimil fix please feel free to friend me in world and watch me log in and out of sl because i am anti-social and will never start a conversation with you. otherwise you can always watch my blog for when i have something interesting to say (unlike this).

sorry not meaning to sound mean, just irritated by that question over and over again. don’t we have more important things to do in our second life than stare at plurk? is it really such a loss for me not to be there?

in other news, yes i’m sorry i haven’t written. i’ve been pretty frazzled by the twisted hunt. the wonderful lab of lindens decided to push the adult content rating thing on september first which just so happens to be the day the twisted hunt started. so my poor land lady miss aiko had to deal with me and lucas trying to figure out how to get our customers into our store without breaking LL’s rules. we finally got it straightened out but of course, people who are not age verified (by payment info or 3rd party) cannot enter our store at all. we’re looking into getting a branch store somewhere, if we can find something we can afford. all of the money we have in second life is made in sl. neither he nor i add money from rl into sl, so we need to make sure the place we find is affordable and also reliable.

if you by chance are a twisted hunter and you can’t get into our store, please do remember to im either me (nimil blackflag) or lucas gerard, and we will have the gift sent to you. if you have payment info though, please do take a look at our shop!

on the happier side of the coin, i am really starting to get good at making clothes! today i made a new dress that i plan to put out very soon. we still need to put up the jeans and stuff that i made way back in march *taps foot and looks at lucas* but i’m sure we’ll get that done soon. i’m really starting to feel more confident in the stuff that i am making, and i hope it continues to kick ass.

no clue what else to talk about. anyway, see you in world.

Something that’s pissing me off recently

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content thieves who are SL Mentors! seriously.. WHAT THE FUCK??!?

recently there was a post on shopping cart disco about someone stealing celestial studio skins. that thief’s profile stated that they were a mentor and yes they were in the official SL Mentor group! just the other day someone on my plurk feed mentioned someone had attempted to clone something of theirs but the script had alerted them that it was being cloned, that person doing the cloning was ALSO an SL mentor..

so what the hell is going on? why are thieves being made into mentors??? is this why theft is so rampant in sl these days? thieves teaching other thieves how to skirt the system… it’s so… depressing… pathetic really.

it’s taken me 2 years of hard work to get to the level i’m at now. i’m not a great designer, and my stuff definitely isn’t top quality, but at least i can say i made it myself.. without being a thief. at least i put some effort into it and didn’t just rip off someone else’s prims.

there. that’s my ranting for the day… it’s just really pissing me off to see people who are supposed to be teaching new sl residents being thieves and taking money away from people who actually do work in sl.

Does FedEx® hate art or is the FedEx® sim an imposter?

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as some know my friends Arahan Claveau and Nebulosus Severine are both working on art exibits inside second life™ both in Amsterdam and the Virtual Holland sims for a week. a couple of nights ago we were chatting with neb about her massive lightspeed tunnel which in my opinion is an amazing work of prims and textures. during this chat she mentioned that the “co owner” of the neighboring sim, which bares the name “FedEx®”, came by and demanded she remove her art! he stated that there was too much glow and that things were too shiny and if she did not comply and remove the art he would speak to a linden and have her banned! take into concideration that this artwork is on the virtual holland sim, and NOT his sim, which in it’s own self makes his demands worthless.

we started looking into the situation when he flew over and rudely commented “i hope this is gone in a week.” yes we were a little childish, neb rezzed a picture of her bending over in a mooning pose but she was clothed in the photo and again, this is NOT ON HIS LAND!

lets take a look at Kalvin Jefferson, this so called “co-ceo” of FedEx®, as his group title states. his credentials on the main profile, sure they look sharp… but do real marketing professionals, working for a major company, purchase second hand sims and NOT move them to their own grid location not connected to any other sim? the FedEx® sim is located bordering the virtual holland sim as well as a couple of other sims owned by the same group. that’s only the tip of the iceberg. when contacting nebulosus about her art he called her “darling”. i’m sorry that’s not professional at ALL. he then banned anyone who tried to speak with him rationally about the situation except for the owner of virtual holland. they began to construct a rather crude prim wall in the one area where her tunnel was located.

let us also take a moment to dig further and check out the “owner” of this FedEx® sim, xbrian Sands

xbrian’s profile made the inner grammar-nazi in me want to destroy small planets…

What can FedEx offer u in SL? FedEx will make it so u can ship your packages Right here in SL,Thats right no more Logging out to run to the post office.U will be able to ship any package from right here in SL.Plus We will offer shipping right here in SL. at a small fee.Thats right suprise your lady and have us take her Roses with a note card from or send gifts.Let us handle your Delivery.

what professional in their right mind types like that?!?! “u” is NOT an acceptable replacement for “you”!!! especially when you are supposed to be a professional in marketing. as well they did not use the ® symbol when writing out FedEx which most major corporate sims that i have seen always make sure to use the correct branding marks when writing out the names of companies.

UPDATE! xbrian Sands no longer has anything related to FedEx® in his profile… hrm.. curious isn’t it?

their group for the sim also includes the same horribly miswritten text along with the official FedEx® logo for their group image.

none of the group members look like they are really part of any real world corporation. their profiles look like normal second life™ people.

i am all but convinced that this is a sham. if i am wrong then my appologies go to FedEx® because you are working with a very immature team.

still waiting on word on if this is actually a fake company or if this is a real company, but it just looks a bit questionable in my opinion.

taking a serious moment

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i wanted to write a quick blog about this because its been happening to me alot recently and it’s driving me up the wall.

lately almost every day around the same time, i am getting spammed by bots sending links promising “free lindens”. these links are disguised with a “notlong.com” address.. which is kinda like tiny url but makes it look like the address is a subdomain of notlong.com. when you click on it, and yes i clicked on it which is probably not advisable but i wanted to see what it was… it will take you to h**p://cutiebutt.com/rot (broke the link so it doesn’t send any traffic from my site) first off, this site has stolen LL’s header image and photoshopped FREE $L! on it. there’s also some photos of second life people flying and those are probably stolen from someone i’m sure…

second life scammer site
click for the fullsized image

now, to some people just starting out on sl, who don’t know much about scam sites or phishing… they would probably put their name in that box and i have a good feeling that when you do that, it takes your uuid, which means it can do any number of crappy things to you, including more spam!

the avatars that are spamming me seem like bots, i always check their profiles and they always come out empty. which of course is the tell tale sign of a bot.

[2:14] Mersand Kostenbaum: ATTENTION GRID CITIZEN: I am the banker. I am the wealthiest
citizen in Second Life and I am giving away millions of dollars in Lindens. Goto
*******.com to claim up to L$25,000. That is all.

[11:04] Waite Goldlust: heya, would you like some free lindens? we can give you some
just check out ******.com you can earn up to $l5000 right now

those are the two that i got. the first one i was in world when it spammed me so that one is in my chatlogs somewhere. the second and third were sent while i was offline.

it reminds me alot of gaiaonline where people send you to scam sites claiming that they can get you tons of gold but you just have to give them your name and password. which of course would result in the takeover of your account.

aparently this is a widespread epidemic. massively.com wrote about it recently as well.

so if you are getting spammed by these people. first of all make sure NOT to do anything on the site. do not put your name in that box. secondly, make sure to report the spammers the moment they contact you. fill out an AR and a support ticket if you can.

as with any game, you must always remember, no one is every going to send you money for free (at least large sums anyway). there is always a catch.