Stupid group tags

Ever wonder around SL and see people with “Member” as their group tag? Member of what? Even worse when the owner of some group, it just says “Owner” over their heads. Just shows how stupid people tend to be, but it gets worse.

The worst I’ve seen so far are clubs who freely give out VIP group tags. Do these people even know what VIP means? Do they even understand it’s meant to be for SELECT PEOPLE to have. It’s not a group tag designation that any noob sould get, but these are probably from the same fucktard group owners who still have “Owner” over thier heads. It certainly dumbs down the value of what a VIP is. So next time you see a noobtard with a VIP group tag over their head, avoid that group if at all possible.

Halo 3 done, new GH2 songs

Halo 3 campaign was okay, nothing mind blowing when it came to the plot. Still more story than Doom nor Quake ever had.  And it is short, which can be done in single setting if you don’t need to pee too often.  Easily start in the morning, and finnish by evening, quicker if you already played it though on an easier setting.

In fact if you play it on a harder level, if the Arbiter is near, let HIM do all the work, especially on the very last level where it’s all snowy.  Let the Arbiter slowly do most of the kills since the flood don’t react to him as they to do you when you attack. It takes longer but you’ll die less often, and save ammo.

Also it SEEMS you don’t earn any achievements when doing co-op campaign.  Which is how Gear of War works and what makes it achievable on harder difficulties.

Now that I’ve played though campaign, it reminds me of the final book of Harry Potter; half the characters die off! Oh be sure to NOT skip the ending credits, and let the credit text go on, there’s one more cut scene right after that!  If you press “A” you’ll skip it!

Acctually I thought it ended premature, and I expected to play as the arbiter After they left earth to goto home. Bit anti-climatic for me. Ending of Halo 2 was way more exciting (as most cliffhangers tend to be).

Halo 3 is about multiplayer, and I never realized how much RPG elements are in this. I really didn’t care for multiplayer on Halo 2, same reason I didn’t realy get into Counter Strike on the PC. Overwhelming numbers of players who are far too advanced for me to even compete, so I just don’t bother. Otherwise I would be in a world of frustration. Now that I’m starting out new to Halo 3 like everyone else is, it should be more enjoyable. Plus they have nice “training camp” type deal where only noobs play against each other, at least until they earned 5 experience points. But it’s always the same snow map, but it’s still fun!

I mainly played campaign just to follow the story line, since I had played the first Halo on my PC, so many moons ago. I’ll probably go pick up a used copy of Halo, it’s like $5 or so. Most old Xbox games are dirt cheap now.

New DLC was finally released today (Friday 9/28) when last week it was announced to be out on the 19th, and all kina weirdness hit the fan. Scorehearo.com was the first to annouce this, and when the DLC wasn’t online XBL, people created accounts on Scorehero.com just to bitch and complain as if they were to blame. Don’t kill the messengers you assholes! They were told this by Microsoft/RedOctane and it didn’t pan out, don’t blame Scorehero. Ten days later the DLC was avalible, but turns out one song was wrong or changed.

I just played them, and “Bury the Hatchet” sucked ass. “Detonation” was okay, but my favorate was “EX’s and OH’s” (the one that was changed) out of the bunch. I have to say this was probably the worst DLC for GH2 so far. This is an “Indie” music bundle, as it’s called on XBL. And none of these sounds nor groups sounded familiar to me.

Played them on hard and passed all of the songs on the first try. I can pass any song on Hard, but I can’t get 5 stars on all songs on Hard to get that Guitarmaggedon Award achievement. From Madhouse, to Hangar 18 I have mostly 4 star songs. Free Bird I already got 5 stars on (Cuz I rock Woot!!).

I’m expecting there to be at least one more DLC for GH2, before GH3 is released. I’m also planning on getting a used PS2, so I can play the original Guitar Hero, as well as GH Rocks the 80’s. Which will cost at least $200, for the PS2, used guitar, and both games. That will be more than what GH3 and GH2 will cost combined. Heck I think Rock Band will only be $199, but I’m not including the cost of the 360 it self, since I didn’t buy the 360 with Guitar Hero in mind, since I bought it over a year ago (and after two red lights of death!)

Halo 3 is here

I didn’t bother camping overnight to be one of the first player to get Halo 3. Microsoft didn’t announce a shortage of copies of Halo 3, unlike the launch of the Xbox 360 it self, so there was no point in doing so.

So I got it the next day and a local Target, and I’m already into the campaign story line. My only gripe so far is I’m not able to dual-wield two weapons that I want to use, rather than what the game allows I can dual-wield. And why do I drop my 2nd weapon when I melee attack?

So, I’ll probably not get onto second life a whole lot with Halo 3, and giving Guitar Hero 2 a rest for now. At least until Guitar Hero 3 comes out next month!! woot!

Age verification won’t work

I predicted this oh so well a few weeks ago. Yet I love how they spin the words to make it sound like it’s all okay. Let me quote:

If Residents and businesses choose not to do this, land containing adult content that is not clearly marked will be easily identifiable by the community. Resident can raise concerns directly with the landowner or with Linden Lab via the Abuse channel.

This means they are going to rely on “tattle tails.” This will cause two problems; one being that their abuse team’s workload will grow and considering they do next to nothing about abuse reports this might not even really matter in the long run. Second problem I see is people abusing this, using alts, and friends with alts to file large number of false abuse reports towards user they just want to abuse.

Now since this new “feature” is relying on 99% of abuse reports from users, and considering perhaps 99% of users don’t LIKE this age verification bullshit, as well as it’s possible that only 1% of users will bother getting age verified and/or flag their land as such; it’s likely no one will bother to file an abuse report about these incidences.

Consider the fact that the majoirty of users are basic members, they don’t want to spend a DIME in SL, getting age verified will cost them more money than it will a “premium” member. Also users don’t want to risk not being able to make a return visit to their favorite sex zone. Do you really think all the noobs who hang out in Sumos, let alone the people who help run this will bother filing an abuse report to Linden Labs saying Sumo’s isn’t properly “secure” from minors?

Another thing that I’m wondering about, speaking of Sumos, is most people use skypads to have their adult encounters, just like Sumos does. Now keep in mind that there is a limit on how high up those bans will actually block your avatar. They did this so people who are just exploring can fly around and not bump into so many restricted parcels “walls” if they fly at high enough altitude. Though if a user is specifically banned that “wall” goes up higher. But if a minor can still get into my skypad even if my land IS marked for adult content, i bet they can still see me with my clients, or BE one of my clients.

Plus if the “adult content” is at ground level (or even 600m up), what’s stopping a user from simply turning off camera restrictions, and setting their draw distance to 512m? They can see right inside all those “adult mature” content areas from hundreds of meters way!

Also what if a land owners does flag his content as “adult” but isn’t able to get age verified him/herself?  What if the land owner IS indeed a minor?  Why aren’t they using this same sort of thing on the Teen Grid to keep the pedophiles away?  In fact why are they still BOTHERING with the Teen Grid if we are all going to be age verified now and we all become happily segregated from one another.

Yes we are protecting our children though loss of freedom, trust, and privacy. And no one wants to take care of their own children anymore… lazy bastards!

Net Neutrality what?

I’m getting rather sick of hearing about Net Neutrality.  Mostly because everyone seems to have thier own idea as to what Net Neutrality is.  As well as the notion of what a “Tiered Internet” is, and often mixes these two together, among other issues that are in reguards to how people use the internet, and what sites they want to use.

First to make it clear, a “Tiered Internet” is simply how much you pay a month to your ISP to how much services you get (i.e. faster bandwidth).  If you wanna pay $10 a month, then you’ll get dialup access.  If you want home broadband you’re going to pay more for that. Cable and DSL providers often have several levels (or tiers) of service depending on how much you’re willing to pay, and you’ll have more bandwidth.  Many services offer “tiers” of servies and this notion of different service levels isn’t limimted to just ISPs.

What is NOT a “Tiered Internet” is when your ISP is restricting your access to sites, or services on the internet.  If this was a “Tiered Internet” then that would imply that if you paid your ISP more money then they would allow you to use those site and/or services that they would otherwise ban you from accessing.  For people living in the free world (i.e. not China) ISPs do NOT restrict you on what sites you vist, or what applications you run.

About a month ago there had been stories about Comcast slowing down Bit Torrent seeding.  I had local friends saying he noticed his downloads were slowing down.  And I had just recently switched BACK to Comcast (from AT&T DSL that kept craping out on me at least once a day if not hourly).  This one guy posted on his blog, and after reading the stories about comcast blocking Bit Torrennt, it went on an idiotic rampage claiming how this was the “Tiered Internet.” Like I said before, if Comcast was creating a “Tiered Internet” when it came to how you USE it, then that means Comcast would allow you to use Bit Torret if you paid them more money.  But that can’t POSSIBLY happen since piracy is so heavily associated with Bit Torrent, then that would imply that Comcast supports bit torrent, as long as you paid them extra money.

Real  “Net Neutrality” is about how freely you’re able to use the internet, as we currently do now.  And I don’t just mean your ISP having the ability to block certain websites like China already does.  ISPs are able to “packet shape” data flowing though their network.  They can see what type of data is flowing though their network and give priority to some data packets over others.

Actually ALL ISPs are already doing this, but not necessarily in a covert “screw you” way.  If they can tell the diffrence from a data packet(s) that’s from a spam e-mail to another one that for your online gaming session, they will likely “packet shape” the data so the e-mail spam will have less of a priority.  They could do this to all “email” data packets since it’s not latency/time sensitive like multiplayer gaming is, or for that matter streaming video or audio.

Another issue about net nutrality that I belive is the root of it becoming an evil, is ISPs making deals with companies and bussiness.  For example, Comcast has it’s own VOIP telephone service, exactly like Vontage.  Comcast could easily make it so that the performance of Vontage is poor.  they don’t have to cut service to Vontage, or that would be considerd “anti-compeditive” and would get Comcast into serious legal problems.  All they have to do is set a low priority to “vontage data packets”, while at the same time making thier own VOIP service run perfect.  This could cause the customer to think Vontage sucks and then switch to Comcast VOIP service instead.  Sneaky eh?

This could also work if say your ISP made a deal with Google, and your ISP made using iTunes a pain in the ass, while Googles Music and Video marketplace ran smooth.

The best analogy I can think of is say that your local power company had a deal (or perhaps was bought) by a well known Electronics appliance company, lets say G.E . (General Electric) for this example.  What if your local power company made it so you can only use GE house hold products to work on your power?  If you wanted to watch TV on your new Sony widescreen HDTV it wouldn’t work, or you’d have to pay your power company more money to make it work.  Or you’d be foreced to buy a G.E. made widescreen HDTV to see your shows.  It could get worse too, since G.E. ownes NBC, you could only watch shows and cable networks owned by NBC.

Sure this sounds way out there but it is possible.

Net Neutrality covers a lot of bases here.  It’s about who controls what, by it government influences, corporate business influences, and where the money flows.

It would be nice if they just left it alone and kept it “naturally neutral” which is how the Internet started out. Rather than FORCED to be neutral by legislation or end up twisted by corprate greed, and their (lack of) sense of fair play.

Age verify

Last week the Linden Blog stirred up this controversial issue again. This time they actually named the company that will be doing this so-called age verification. The ironic thing about this the blog post starts out by saying how important trust is, but nobody trusts this idea at all. Aristotle is the company in question that will do these age verifications. It’s been rumored this company has leaked personal info in the past. No word if it was intentional (sold to spammers) or they were hacked, or whatever. Assuming this rumor is true, it can lead to spam (including junk snail-mail, or phone solicitation) or identity theft.

In an age where your identity is treated as a commodity for others to make money from, people are in a high state of paranoia about this. While this is a well founded fear to have, at the same time I think nothing is going to happen. The same information you use in your everyday life (where it is far more likely to be “stolen” from) is the same information that Aristotle will us to “age verify” you. Linden Labs won’t get any of this information a (for which LL already has your info if they wished to “steal” it from you, but noting to prove your age), and apparently Aristotle will discard this information after it’s been used.

The Lindens keep stating that this is entirely voluntary. You have the choice to get age verified or not, and you’ll STILL be able to visit Mature sims. As a land owner you also have the choice to flag your land as “adult content” or not. They imply this is NOT going to be mandatory, but is it going to be enforced at all?

The real reason Linden Labs is doing this isn’t to “protect the children” but too legally move the culpability of “exposing adult content to a minor” from Linden Labs to the landowner. Linden Labs and wash their hands from this from now on.

This is my theory on how this will work out.

There’s only going to be a select few people who will bother to get age verified. With that barely any land owners will flag thier land as “adult” unless they think they need too, or perhaps are forced too. But exactly how will they be forced to do so? It’s not like LL knows everything that goes on, with eyes watching everything. Someone will have to be a tattle-tale.

Someone will have to file some sort of report about it like an abuse report. And we all know how well Lindens respond to those. Lindens don’t do JACK SHIT as it is about abuse reports as it is. The only time time they step in is if a large number of people report it, often days after the incident. I’ve seen people texture script bomb the welcome area with obscene images, and nothing really happens. But when you read the Police blog, you’d think there’s a constant crime wave (Recent article in PC Magazine talks about this, but they are idiots). A good number of those Police blots are about people flaming in the Forums.

If you own land with adult content it’s up to YOU to keep the kids away from your so-called “adult content,” but Linden Labs can’t really enforce you to do so, afterall LL keeps claiming you DON’T have to do this. They will likely let it fall to a law attorney (local DA perhaps) who will file suit against the land owner.

This age verification is just a ploy to make YOU believe that no minor will see adult content on Second Life, but that can only work when EVERYONE USES IT, but not everyone will, and the majority will not.

AS a whole I don’t think anything will really come of this. If it’s toitally vollentary, no one will bother until there seems to be a NEED to it. As to what this need will be isn’t exactly clear, and no one is sure how this will be played out, if at all. Everyone else is taking this to an extreme on all sorts of angles about this. The paranoia of ID theft, the notion that you’ll suddenly be no longer be able to access your own land, and more separation between the “haves” and “have-nots.” Others are screaming foul play, and threaten to leave SL, as well as soothsayers claiming this will shut down SL for good.

Same kina bullshit that’s been said for years every time a big change like this happens. Be it $10 life time memberships that was done back in 2004, FREE lifetime memberships that happened in 2005, then the banning of casino games a couple months ago, and now with age verification.