Rats, Croydon SysAdmin, The Great Delete, Gaming

[tcpip]

Firstly, thank you most sincerely for all the kind comments concerning the dearly departed Vagabond. It is appreciated enormously; we've started looking around for a new companion for Rogue and have a couple of very good leads.

First solid week of sysadmin working in Croydon was exhausting but useful. Managed to narrow down the public transport to journey to 1.5h each way, which means I'm getting a lot of reading done. Building an OpenLDAP server is proving to be interesting. Getting up to speed on Asterisk has also been a challenge; finally understand why it is considered such a revolution in telecommunications. Apart from that it's pretty standard stuff, but a great work environment.

Everyone is now undoubtably aware of the botched actions of Six Apart to delete journals suspected of promoting pedophilia etc., on livejournal. The errors are, to my mind, mainly structural; Six Apart consider livejournal their property, and in a sense it is. But in another sense what they don't understand it is the people here that build the communities; the less they listen to us, the more likely they are to fail. Excellent summary of events by stewardess, a weak, almost pathetic apology by Six Apart's Barak Berkowitz.

Recently reviewed the classic AD&D module, Steading of the Hill Giant Chief. Unbelievably we're still stuck there mainly because our DM loves combat so much. On alternate Sundays I've been running the Stormbringer campaign pack Rogue Mistress which is proving much more interesting. Have also managed to get through a couple of scenes in HeroQuest Glorantha.

Comments

[zhenzhi.livejournal.com]

oh geeze.
you know.... i do not comment very much here... because i feel underqualified to do so....

but have to say. i am very sorry to hear of your dear beloved's passing on.
ye.... love is love is love *is what i say*

with geniuine commiseraton. xoxoxoxox

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the words.... no qualifications are required to offer such kind support, except a sense of humanity.

[zey.livejournal.com]

The errors are, to my mind, mainly structural; Six Apart consider livejournal their property, and in a sense it is.

Looking at it from the other side, from a legal POV and considering they'd received complaints, they were probably better off erring on the side of caution (and reinstating some journals and communities suspended in error) than appearing to drag their feet.

I dunno, maybe I'm getting old and conservative or something, but, it seems very 'storm in a teacup' to me.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Their standard actions in the past was only to suspend journals where there was clear attempts to promote a crime. In this instance they started to suspend journals on the basis of the journal's interests.

This is...

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

...the first I'd heard of any of this. It does seem to dovetail with Second Life worries of online paedophilia.

Re: This is...

[seriouspaul.livejournal.com]

Yeah I had no idea any of this was going on either. Bu tthen I rarely read anything posted by the LJ people, or any not on my friends list when it comes to LJ.

[fwuffydragon.livejournal.com]

I presume you mean Croydon in Oz, not in UK ...

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

There would be a certain appeal to commuting from Melbourne to the UK each day.... I'd rather not think of the energy consumption, tho'

[fwuffydragon.livejournal.com]

Given the commute time, you'd probably meet yourself coming AND going!

[denied.livejournal.com]

I'm a very liberal person, and very big on freedom of speech and the like, however I was not offended or put off by Six Apart's actions in the least. There was a very valid problem and they set out to correct it. Whilst their actions were very knee-jerkish in nature, they did set out to correct the problem straightaway!

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

There was a very valid problem and they set out to correct it.

What was the valid problem?

[denied.livejournal.com]

The journals that were indeed supporting the pedophilia, child abuse and the like were the problem. Six Apart simply screwed up in their approach to the situation.

I don't know, I've not really paid that much attention to this whole situation. In this case, I don't know for what reason, but i'm finding it all that hard to care. It's too much of a non-issue to me. I'm sure there are some people with valid reasons to be upset, but hell, at least Six Apart isn't taking 5 years to avoid cleaning up their mistake. *grin*

It must be serious though, there's been all sorts of LJ Witch Hunt 2007 icons lately. *grins*

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

If there are such journals and it is claimed that are in breach of the law then Six Apart should contact the authorities on the matter; they shouldn't be attempting to "play cop" in an area in which they have no expertise.

The people who are mostly upset are those in various forms of genre fiction, who were heavily targetted in the hunt.

[cluebyfour.livejournal.com]

This is just LJ reaping what it sowed. I heard from other people who've been here longer than me that this isn't the first time it's happened; at one point they attempted to purge skinheads and fascists to comply with German and French laws.

The problem is that by doing so LJ lost any semblance of a "common carrier" and opened themselves up to all sorts of liability, in a country where litigation has become something of a national sport. So they got called out for not enforcing their own TOS, attempted to correct it, botched it badly, attempted to correct it, etc. etc.

Expect more debacles like this in the future.

[purrdence.livejournal.com]

Second Life is experiencing something very similar too.

[cluebyfour.livejournal.com]

Heh, I can only imagine what kind of protests would occur in Second Life should they attempt a similar action. Not to mention that in a world with lifelike avatars, their sudden disappearance would take on a rather unsettling Stalinist overtone.

SL weirdness

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

I had heard that they were intending to do just that (maybe).

[purrdence.livejournal.com]

From what I am hearing, this purge is going to happen because the Linden company is planning on putting SL servers in overseas countries and they don't want to get in trouble with the foreign authourities.

For instance, one of the groups rumoured to be getting the chop are the ageplayers - users that deliberatly make their AV look child-like. Of course, some ageplayers will also use these AVs for sex. I'm not sure if the whole 'adult dressing as a child for sex' thing is illegal in the US, but it is in Australia - and the Lindens would be very silly indeed if they didn't -put a server down here, so they need to start complying to local laws too.

[cluebyfour.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if the whole 'adult dressing as a child for sex' thing is illegal in the US, but it is in Australia

I'm pretty sure it's not in the U. S., at least in an online milieu--but it's always been a concern of course, since sexual predators misrepresent their age. That, usually, is against the TOS of most social networks and grounds for account termination, but in role-playing games it seems silly to make it illegal. The thing is (and I haven't tried Second Life so I could be speculating wildly here), SL kind of represents a hybrid--it's a social network with some role-playing aspects.

That Australian law is interesting though. Is virtual child porn illegal as well? "Virtual" in this case typically means animated porn with child-like characters. It's nominally legal in the U. S., although it took a Supreme Court ruling to make it so.

[purrdence.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure it is. One can't buy porn here with an adult dressed as a child, so I would assume animated porn would come under this as well.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

One can't buy porn here with an adult dressed as a child

True, but I haven't heard of any prosecutions (not that I've been looking). How does one define "dressed a child" anyway? Don't adults play dress-ups or something?

[purrdence.livejournal.com]

the most common example of this that I have heard of is 'schoolgirl' porn.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Gee, Angus Young better look out!

[purrdence.livejournal.com]

He will, if he ever gives up the music industry and goes into Porn.

[amphigori.livejournal.com]

I am so sorry to hear about your wee friend. Your post brought tears to my eyes - a little awkward as I was at work and not supposed to be reading LJ! May your wee friend rest easy. The next bare-tailed friend you find will soon realize they've been lucky to be adopted by you two.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The next bare-tailed friend you find will soon realize they've been lucky to be adopted by you two.

Oh, they always do!

Thanks for the kind regards concerning our dear ol' rodent...

Howdy.

[imajica-lj.livejournal.com]

Sorry about not catching up with you on Sat ... just wanted to say YAY to new job.

Hope to see you soon, yes?

Re: Howdy.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I know mornings aren't the best for you, least of all Saturday mornings, so that's OK...

If you're not doing anything tonight I'll be trying to get home by 7.30..

New job is looking good.

!!!!!!!!!!

[tempusfrangit.livejournal.com]

Was nadyenka. Now this. Please take me with you!!!!@ <D

Re: !!!!!!!!!!

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Always a pleasure