Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Deep Thoughts

I've mentioned before that I have formed my own personal beliefs from many sources, religion, philosophy, wise words from my elders, even pop media.  I twist them all to own ends of course, and what went into my head, is not always quite what comes out.  But I have a couple of deep philosophical things I just have to vent on, so I'm going to start out with a pretty picture and a quote from Bablylon 5.  I use one quote frequently in my profile shots.  "I am gray.  I stand between the candle and the star."  Because I think it says a lot about me, and it's pretty.  As it happens, the day I found this sim, I was wearing gray.  But that's not the quote that I mean.  You'll have to keep reading.


This is a shot of me in a Bablylon 5 Role Playing sim I bumped into recently.  And if you've never seen the show, I strongly recommend it, and even go so far as to say that FX, which were ground breaking CGI at the time, hold up surprisingly well all these years later.  The show was mostly a single story over five seasons, much of it written by creator J. Michael Straczynski .  Who is probably known to some Marvel fans as well for his work in that cannon.  It's a five year long story of people doing things that they were not supposed to do, some for the good of others, some for the good of themselves, some for complex reasons.  The fact those who first seemed the bad guys turned out to be "the good guys," and those that seemed harmless did great harm, was an interesting twist on the cardboard cut outs of most TV series characters.  One character said something I have taken to heart.

"You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe."
Marcus Cole to Franklin in the episode 'A Late Delivery from Avalon'
There is another old saw that I have had trouble learning, and but one that seems truer and truer the older I get it is, "No good deed goes unpunished."

Which brings me to my next deep thought.  You may not have heard about it, but a member of the hacker group Anonymous recently released information that assisted police in arresting, charging and convicting a pair of rapists.

You can read about it here.

Ones first thought is "Go KYanonymous!"   As is my 2nd and many that follow.  But among them are the thought, he did break the rules to get that information.  The same skills he has for doing good, are very easily used for doing not so good.  I think of it much like carrying a pistol.  One typically needs some authorization to do that, because, pistols are frankly much better at doing bad things than good things.  So society wants some assurance that your motivation for carrying the gun is for the good.   It's hard to do that with a set of skills.

As a general rule, I disapprove of hacking into secure systems much as I do peeping in windows, running stop signs, and other such activity.  I do not look on it nearly as bad as malicious activity such as using various types of malware for personal gain, to vandalize or misappropriate data or a system, or simply for the "fun" of it.  But the skill set is essentially identical.  So, since legislating on "motive" is nearly impossible, I am generally OK with laws against hacking.  But I think the penalty when you are caught should be strongly influenced by what you did with the information you accessed.

Coming down hard on KYanonymous sends the wrong message to him, and to everyone.  Hackers and Joe Bob on the street.  For one thing, what he did is not fundamentally different than what law enforcement is starting to do.  I saw a thing about the NYPD using social media to catch gang members.  Then there's all the furor over various government agencies mining data off the Internet in other ways.  So, obviously, society, or at least the government, seems OK with what he did, as long as they do it.  So, what he did was do good, using a dangerous skill, without authorization.

Do we really want to send a message to everyone that you have to stop and ask the authorities before you do good?  OK, grabbing a gun and going all vigilante', not saying that's good.  That's bad.  The police will shoot you and you might shoot the wrong person.  Don't do it.

But let's say you are walking down the street and you see someone laying unconscious just on the other side of a glass door in a building.  You see fire in the back far behind them.  Do you call the fire department, or break in the door and drag them out then call the fire department?  OK, take the fire out of the equation.  Do you call an ambulance?  Or break down the door first?  That makes it a harder choice doesn't it?  What if the person laying there would die without CPR till the medics arrived?  What if you happen to be a lock smith and have a set of picks in your pocket, so you don't even have to break in the door.  What if a burglar broke into the building and found them unconscious, but if he helps them out of the building he knows he'll be caught...

In a lot of the options I've given above, you may have just committed a crime by breaking into the building.  Very gray stuff.  But after much thought, and for no good reason since I have no pull in the big bad world, here's my take on it.  He should be applauded for doing good.  Then charged, given a suspended sentence and put on parole for a number of years.  That number should in no case be longer than the sentence received by the rapists.

I think that clearly says, you did good.  But you broke the rules.  Everyone should want to do good.  But know that breaking the rules to do it has consequences.  If you don't really hurt anyone in the process, then you will not be punished this time.  But we encourage you to get authorization from someone appropriate next time before doing good.

Why do I think we should do it this way?  Because the universe is unfair.  But humans need not be.  The legal system is not about justice, it is about the law.  But it is unjust to punish a "good" act beyond what it merits.  And given, as far as I know, no harm was done to anyone but the rapists, and the information was made available to authorities to utilize.  How is this different than an anonymous phone in tip?  If you do not know how they got the tip.  How is it different from cutting a deal with a law breaker to dismiss a lesser offense in exchange for evidence about a greater crime?  Yes, there are specific differences, but I do not see any differences in how this helped "society."  What harm did he do beyond the act of breaking a law?  If that is not a true assessment of the happenings, perhaps I would change my thoughts on it.  But until I know more, that's my take on it.


Dancing the digital tush off.

As usual, been exploring, shopping and dancing in SL.  Not mention chatting with friends.  Here's me in an outfit from Happy Undead, with boots from *Slave Dressing Room* dancing at Ladyboy beach.  The one next to it is me dancing with a friend at Touch of Pleasure.  That's Lacey in white.  You have to admire her style.  I'm in a number from *Slave* and leggings from Grumble.

Grooving at Ladyboy Beach.
Lacey dances with me at TOP.
























And yay, this is my 100th post!  Queue the band!

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Happy Accident

I finally decided to make a new profile shot using my new Kumi skin from Pink Fuel.  However, I wanted it to be more of a "head shot."  For one thing, my avatar now changes shape between waist and chest quite a bit depending on the Pink Fuel "chest" tattoo and matching shape.  It goes from male, to very modest breasts to more typical, though still not exactly bountiful, breasts.  To that end, I set up a back drop, played with the winlight settings and put on a simple white mesh shirt.  Then I started trying out poses, going for head and shoulders mostly, or a bit further down since the shirt really turned out to hide the shape changing parts of my avatar.

While taking snapshots, I got one with my avatar's head sharply turned to the side.  This was completely accidental.  It turned out that pose's animation did not lock the position of the head.  So when I moved my mouse to click and take a shot, my head turned to follow the mouse movement.  I grumbled at the time.  But then I started going through the dozen or so shots and found I really liked the "feeling" of that accidental shot.

So I cropped it a bit, added my now customary quote and there it was, my newest profile snapshot.


Randomness

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been exploring and shopping quite a bit.  Why?  I've been sick with a cold that just wont quit.  So, haven't been feeling terribly social or naughty.  As a result, I've ended up with some random shots I'm just going to dump all together into this one post.  Hope you enjoy!

Brown Leather
The new Grumble Metro Station





















The brown jacket and the shoes are Grumble, the skirt Happy Undead.  The outfit I'm wearing at Grumble station consists of capris and sneakers from Grumble, socks from SF Design and a top from Baby Monkey.  I have that same top, or one nearly identical, in white from Grumble.  I want to mention here that Happy Undead provides far more sizes for each of their mesh products than any other vendor I've yet dealt with.  This is very different from most vendors who only provide between 3 and 5 sizes.



On the exploration front, I found a new spot called the "Elven Glen" at Elfwood.  Here's a shot of it.  Along with a couple of shots of a Pandora (As in the planet from Avatar full of Na'vi".) role playing sim.  I toured it with a friend of mine named Pixie.  I'm wearing various jungly bits from here and there.  If you must know what any of them are IM me in world.  The mask I'm wearing the the scrubs looking outfit Pixie is wearing are available to everyone at the hub where you enter the sim.
The Glen at the Elven Forrest.  (Skybox)

The Jungle of Pandora, just outside the Human Base.

In one of the control rooms of the base looking at the hologram table with Pixie.

Beach Bunneh

I'm always talking about mesh clothes.  But another of the good things coming as a result of mesh are some of the cutest furry avatars.  There was a limit to what they could do reshaping the body with traditional prims, sculpties and the base human avatar shapes.  Now, the base avatar can be covered with an alpha layer making it invisible, and you can make just about anything you want out of mesh, then attach it to the avatar making a rigged avatar of any shape and size.  Obviously all the kinks are not worked out of everything yet, and some shapes rig better than others.  One of the best of such creations that I've seen is by Blue Galaxy.  But they only make a cat, at least as far as I know.  Now, furries are nothing if not creative, so there are many modifications.  To illustrate, here is a positively adorable bunneh dancing on the beach at Touch of Pleasure that started out one of the Blue Galaxy creations, but has been significantly modified.  This is not me btw, just a creative furry I happened to meet.