Thursday, April 23, 2009
Aaaaaaww... sniff, give me a hanky
"The Internet has an amazing capacity to allow people to self-sort—to find and engage with like-minded others. That will have impacts for courtship and dating that go beyond anything we've ever seen."
That’s not me that said it, but Harvard Law professor Cass Sunstein in an article in Newsweek. (Actually, I’ve said it before but no one was listening).
While there rest of the media world is doing a bit of a collective public circle jerk about Lindens decision to add a new “Adult” category to its previous PG and Mature, Newsweek has gone off to examine love in the virtual world. And not this usual type of reporting.
Instead, Newsweek seems to come to the conclusion that love in a virtual world isn’t all that bad. “(…) getting to know someone gradually, with patience and attention, seems a whole lot healthier than a drunken proposition in a bar.” It is, especially if the boyfriend’s just coming back from the toilet. Not that I’m speaking out of any previous experience.
Anyway, it’s nice to see that some magazines do report on the brighter sides of SL and its opportunities. If you do need a feel good moment when you’re considering that you spend too much time online, just give the article a read.
I'm shocked!
And yes, even after a few years wandering around SL and discovering Goths, Furries, BSDM places, Escort Islands and that Sunday morning Bible hour.
I’m shocked because Taser is suing SL as Bloomberg reports here: “Taser, the world’s biggest maker of stun guns, claims San Francisco-based Linden Research Inc. is damaging the company’s reputation and hurting its sales by allowing virtual weapons to be sold online under the Taser brand name, according to a 102- page complaint filed April 17 in federal court in Phoenix.”
Damaging the company’s reputation? Wouldn’t that be a bit like Heckler and Koch suing some amok shooter? What reputation?
Hurting its sales? Because people who buy a Taser in SL decide they don’t want one in real life? If that were the case a lot of people on SL wouldn’t be having sex in real life. Errr…. well, that may be the case, but anyway!
The Taser complaint goes on to wine ““All of the defendants that sell virtual weaponry like plaintiff’s real ones, under the mark Taser for use in the Second Life programs and grids, also sell adult-only explicit images and scenes”. They also sell drugs, the complaint adds. I don’t know, but maybe you’ll tell me, dear reader.
Does Taser just possible advertise in “Girls and Guns” and “Boobs ‘n’ Bang” or whatever those magazines are called? Sounds like Taser is just sounding shocked to drum up a bit of advertising. Well, it got them mentioned here at least.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Monday, April 6, 2009
Let me through, I'm a doctor, lol :)
I’m worried. Not unduly because I don’t plan to have to use the services of the NHS (that’s the British national health service for those of you who might live elsewhere), but maybe some time I will – and I just read this in the Times of India (my favourite source of Indian news beyond hearing about them chat up my girlfriend at Sweethearts): „A British medical institute has given e-learning a whole new dimension. Med students at Imperial College London navigate a full-service hospital where they see patients, order X-rays, consult with colleagues and make diagnoses. But none of it is real.“
The “full-service” hospital, something which I believe might not be available in England for that matter, is of course in SL. And there the doctors in spe can cut, slice and examine to their hearts delight. Sounds a bit like other places in SL I’ve visited, but anyway. „If students forget to wash their hands before visiting a patient, their investigation is halted,“ the article reports. Which makes me really happy that I don’t have to use the NHS – these are in fact medical students in their third year.
I haven’t, of course, visited the hospital in World – having that male thing about those places that no number of nurses in latex uniforms can cure – but I do wonder if the creators have gone all out and provided for real patients as well. You could just sit them down for seven hours in the waiting room. And no, it wouldn’t be camping. It would be unrealistic to pay patients to wait.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
The Playsure of Helping Out
The palm trees sway gently in the breeze, the waves lap languidly at the shoreline, the sun chuckles happily overhead at its private joke – and you stretch a lazy hand out to your loved one and say:“Why didn’t we think of renting at Playsure Rentals long ago?”
Okay, there are those among you who think I’m being paid loads and loads of cash to give an indecent plug for Playsure Rentals, a new sim with all the delights that SL can offer. Some might think that Tilly has slipped me a wad of cash to mention Playsure Rentals in a post.
That’s nonsense.Playsure Rentals can stand on its own and doesn’t need my assistance to get people to rent there, enjoying the amenities of a tropical island bathed in 24/7 sunshine – or slipping delicately into the soft hues of a romantic evening.
“I don’t even want to go anywhere else tonight,” you murmur sensually, “Let’s just stay here and cuddle at our Playsure Rentals home.”
“But”, your loved one might ask, “what about – well, ehm, you know…..”
Your pearly laugh ripples across Playsure Rentals – but only to the borders of your rented space.
“Silly,” you whisper, “don’t you know that Playsure Rentals comes with the newest, state of the art security system? That ensures all of our voice and chat remains completely private!”
“Oh, Playsure Rentals think of everything!”
Adult Content Warning!
I’m merely guessing, but I think on the 12th of March someone left the doors to the cages at Linden Labs open and the Communication department escaped for a while. Then, before they were all caught and returned to the cages, given their daily ration of decaf skinny latte and musli, or whatever PR people survive on, they managed to get this posted on the SL community blog.
If you work through the blandness of the first paragraph you eventually find out that LL is planning to introduce a third category to the two existing of PG and Mature. We will now, or eventually, have places tagged as Adult as well. I might have ignored this all had I not had a conversation In World with an escorting friend of mine – and then a little later get a note card passed to me by yet another, this time non-escorting friend.
If you think you’ve already guessed what their attitudes are, you’re wrong.
My escort friend was all for it. The other friend had entitled his card something along the lines of “Fascist takeover of SL by moralizing Lindens”. My escorting friend’s argument was basically that it was a god thing because there was a lot out there in SL that would make people quince and squirm. (I’d point out that in many cases that is just what people are looking for there, but whatever!) And she continued that restricting access to them would be better than making things like that Verboten.
The note card basically said that the decision, undemocratic as it was, just further curbed Residents’ rights to do what they pleased.
What surprises me is that this is a topic at all – and hence my suspicion that the Communications guys had escaped for a day. Sure, I’ve been surprised and sometimes aghast at things I’ve found in SL. But let’s take a place like Neva – a free sex sim – which will certainly fall under that category. Sure, it’s a boring place for boring people doing boring things – but if it astounded me and shocked me would I hang around to let that feeling sink in?
No, I’d TP away.
But that’s not the point. What was I doing there in the first place if I was so worried about my moral cleanliness? Had I typed “Church meetings” into search? Did I find it while looking for “Bible Studies”?
I think not.
It could be that certain sims of this sort do try to lure me in with descriptions of “Visit our wonderful beachside resort and talk to enticing other people about current affairs” – only to have me greeted by images of male avatars with erections reaching up to their shoulders.
Could be, but it hasn’t happened yet.
I do a bit of writing on the side and have some stories posted on the web. Now, two of them are tagged for 18 and older, the rest are PG (and the two first mentioned I would like to emphatically point out are tagged just because the characters use rough language at times). Now, guess which stories are most read?
Right.
Now, I think this will be what happens in SL as well. As soon as the Lindens install the Adult category landowners and merchants will be demanding to be tagged as that. Sex, as any public relations person knows, sells.
But, some would argue, if they do use age verification to allow residents access to those places, wouldn’t it reduce the overall number of potential visitors? Yes, it would. I’d like to suggest a different approach: Simply tell people that they are entering an Adult area and can turn back or cancel there tp. Certainly, it’s a pain to click away the window – but we’ve had to do that for years in thousands of stores and clubs.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Having Sax on a Sunday Morning
Some would say that I write too often about the Hot Sax Jazz Club and venture that this blog is just a case of non-too-clever product placement. It isn’t. Were I to be advertising for the Hot Sax Jazz Club I’d probably be getting money from hem (which I am not – though happy to negotiate something) or actually in their employment (which, again, I am not ).
And I’m not going to spend much time exalting all the nice things about Hot Sax, nor try to convince you to go there and donate Lindens extensively. I could, probably, do that for other fine clubs in SL – if I ever got around to discovering them.
Actually, what I’d like to blog about today is less Hot Sax as I know it : full of delightful and usually interesting people, offering – yet again usually - good music. Nor will I go into the fine choice of hostesses there (Twink, Cara, Fifi, Lindsay and “Just call me Sky, all my friends do”-Skyangel) who can be funny, cheeky and entertaining and deserve to be tipped a lot more then I remember to.
No, today I want to talk about the Sax I don’t know, but just discovered. The Sax of a (Greenwich Meantime) Sunday morning.
Have you ever, in RL walked into a bar hours after you should have been home in bed? Along the counter you’ll find maybe two or three… forms… one will undoubtedly be resting his forehead on the bar, another will be talking, quite energetically if not without an occasional slurring or words about something. It’s usually politics, football or why everone in the bar should migrate to Australia and start a new life. (I’ve never been to Australia so I have no idea what the third topic might be there at times like this).
Off to one side you’ll discover a couple who, most likely, four hours earlier hadn’t know each other existed and are now sharing secrets of their childhood. The bartender rolls his eyes as you enter – yet another night owl to contend with. He, or she, knows you’ll advance to the bar and pretend to be sober while you politely ask if it’s okay to order a drink.
Now, except for the facts that a) there isn’t usually a bartender at Sax on a Sunday morning and b) there aren’t three guys hugging the bar. Oh – and c) I’m not drunk - I couldn’t help but be reminded of that RL image just now when I logged on.
Two couples sway their slow dance in intoxicated passion. Over at the edge of the dance floor some avatar is slumped over with “Away” above their head – and yet once again I wonder why the Lindens have made the animation for being “away” look like you’ve had a bit too much to drink and are now trying to study your shoes.
In short: Sax is, at 230 AM PDT, a sad and sorry looking place.
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