The start of the newer religion...

Everyone is gossiping the hell about Cory Ondrejka no longer keeping the CTO position (the question "has he left or was he fired" is quite irrelevant - first, it's strictly personal matter, second, I do not think the end result differs a whole lot).

For a change, I'm gonna crosslink the Prok. The post on the subject is pretty much without venom (thank you!) and reading the comparison
of differences of Philip and Cory, and a mention of Tao close to each other, I can not help but wonder - are we left with Yin or Yang now ? :-)

And in the end even that does not matter - you can have a position of something only relative to something else; and once there's no "something else" - the question becomes moot.

My guessing is that as Philip mentioned that the "rocket is already lit", and they were planning to focus on stability (so no new fancy features) - this means a lot of boring stuff. Trying to fly the first airplane is by far cooler than getting the airline passengers hot meal and target timelines of luggage unload.

And it's the hot meals that LL might want to take care about now - the exotic dishes look interesting, but don't get the hunger away.

So - it's not the end of the world. It's just LL entering a new stage of being a "more mature company", in my opinion.

What does it mean for the residents ? I think the changes will be for the better. If LL themselves internally does not get into panic mode, that is (meaning, that there are still those left who actually do the day-to-day stuff).

There will be some shakeups and maybe some more of "disruptive" folks would decide to pursue other opportunities.

Which hopefully should allow for a more consistent behaviour on the LL side.

So - I hope to welcome you all to the beginning of the mainstream new 'more boring' SL. The one that flies on time and gets the hot meals. No adventures whatsoever.

Friday non-tekkie reading

No, I did not go dead. Just an injection of RL for my owner. :)

Meantime, Vint mentions an interesting article by Benjamin Duranske about certain types of individuals that exist within the SL environment.

Entertaining.

Much more than the soap operas of the opponent, which I stopped reading a while ago - there are some thoughts in there, but SNR is below the audible threshold.

Some Nipplz!!!

The reports of the nekkid folks self-photoshooting are coming.


And, appears Vint is ok with me publishing the nipples, and even committed to help. However, since i practically was not inworld for the past couple of days - mostly being either on irc or on Zion/Ruth..

However, since I still would like to ensure i can show my nipples, here's an interim version - from the opensim world. You can see my av, and a few other buddies who are joining the activity.

Sorry, there is not much diversity of skins - any content providers that would like to come and donate their skins for use in opensim and to be used for nipplz shooting - welcome.




p.s. Will get you my SL male nipplz as I get inworld :)

update: till we can make a good photoshooting session with Vint, you will have to bear this one:

Is popularity a good thing ?

Today one of my old SL friends, Dinova Yanyean, who saw the primskirtbuilder some time ago, and has been always telling me I should market it (which I hate to do, since it is a boring activity for me), decided to help me out with this, and notified a folks in a few groups about it.

The effect was incredible :) Well, see yourself.



Tons of people arriving, trying the stuff out, chatting - so, having a lot of fun.



After a while the wave started to decline, when I got an IM from Jerry Martin, whom I invited to the area to continue the discussion. In a nutshell the proposal is that I should close-source the primskirtbuilder and start selling it at L$2000. While the idea is interesting, it does not go very well with my principles, so the primskirtbuilder will remain free and GPL-licensed. (this does prohibit the close-sourcing of the derivatives of it and blunt reselling of them too, btw).

I will enclose the discussion for your information - according to what I know, the pasting of the public chat does not classify as going against ToS, so I presume it is OK.

I will enclose the start of the discussion for your information.

---

[17:55] You: hi Jerry
[17:55] Jerry Martin: hi there
[17:56] Dinova Yanyean: hey fashion officer
[17:56] Jerry Martin: pleasure you meet you all
[17:56] You: indeed.
[17:56] You: so wanna give it a whirl ?
[17:56] Jerry Martin: sure
[17:56] You: grab a copy and rez it on the floor
[17:57] Jerry Martin: holy cow , lock that thing up and put it in a vendor , charge 2000L for it
[17:57] Dinova Yanyean: looll
[17:57] Jerry Martin: not kidding
[17:57] Dinova Yanyean: i told him too
[17:57] Dinova Yanyean: lol
[17:57] Dinova Yanyean: but its now free
[17:57] Dinova Yanyean: and copiable
[17:58] You: well, its been free for a few months
[17:58] Dinova Yanyean: lol
[17:58] Dinova Yanyean: please test it i want to see what you think about it
[17:58] You: that's one of the reasons opensource is good..
[17:58] Dinova Yanyean: its command free
[17:58] Dinova Yanyean: a really new idea
[17:58] Jerry Martin: Dinova , i'm the original inventor of the PrecisionWear Dress Maker , it's been around for a year and a hlf
[17:58] Dinova Yanyean: ohh ups
[17:58] Dinova Yanyean: lol
[17:59] Dinova Yanyean: i didn't know
[17:59] Jerry Martin: it's currently in the patent pending stage
[17:59] You: i did not know about precisionwear either - i just saw a looprez freeb script and wanted to improve the user experience :)

---

Since Vint was quite an integral part of the creation of the primskirtbuilder (I did create it for her, as it quite obviously says in the script :), I did invite her - so the remaining part of the chat is to be continued on her blog.

Apparently, Ged Larsen (the creator of the LoopRez, from free version of which I did borrow the base logic - even though it was modified - Thanks Ged, btw! While the formulae are not difficult, rewriting them from scratch would have been very boring) did receive even some patent claims about the same matter.

What I have said to Mr. Martin, and what I will repeat here - I would like to continue as before (especially since now that the primskirtbuilder has been out there for some time and I can not control the distribution of the full-mod object - and especially since the only time I did hear about the prim skirt building was Ged Larsen's LoopRez script that I got from Vint). And while the conversation was interesting and entertaining, this is my decision.

Today I saw myself quite a few happy people - even those that did not have L$2000 probably. And this is something I am not willing to lose.

So - feel free to grab a copy and tell your friends :-)

p.s. I do have a couple of interesting ideas for all the users of the primskirtbuilder, should post them sometime within a month (if the RL does not interfere) - so check the news every now and then...

UPDATE: I did get a reply from Ged Larsen, where he mentioned that although my free script did pretty much kill the interested for him in pursuing a new version, but that I am all right to use the script that he has released into public domain.

So - thanks a lot to Ged! And folks - Ged does make other stuff, so go and check out his blog at http://slged.blogspot.com/. He has a very nice LinkRez generator which will help you save some time if you are building the necklaces.

Financial regulations in SL - good, bad, or inevitable ?

With the unfolding of the WSE-gate, and the Ginko fighting bank run (presumably the second is caused by the rough moves of the LL to smash down the casinos in SL), it is interesting how the future would develop.

Financial institutions are to a huge extent based on trust in the good will of the establishment - none of the real world banks holds the cash reserves equal to 100% of the deposits - otherwise they would simply have no instrument to work with to pay the interest. So, the situation with Ginko is just a typical consumer rush - reading the interview with Nicholas Portocarrero, he seems to be a reasonable person, so hopefully this is a temporary - assuming that the latest news do not shake the economy hard enough to eliminate the high-return opportunities.

But the WSE story does set quite a few interesting examples and questions.. Will the investors just eat the pill and continue as is, or will they form any kind of controlling entity ?

IRL the financial establishments are regulated by the government, does this mean we need to re-run the SLelections with real voting, and all the boring stuff that comes with it ?

SL has been always touted as "a new society", and what I am observing is that the humans behind the screens drive it more and more to be just a replica of what we have already in the first life. So, then, what's the point ? I do think that the interface in firstlife is still way better than in secondlife, and is free to join :)

I've been thinking about this and more and more come to a conclusion that the only way to achieve anything cardinally different is to apply cardinally different rules to build it.

Here goes my pick, just for a mental experiment :-)

1. The privacy is eliminated. Anyone has the right to know anything about anyone, and the target should be made aware of the activity of obtaining such a knowledge. No animal is more equal than the other.


2. The ground rule would be "do not do to others that you would not like to be done to you".


3. A dispute is resolved by a random selection of N members of the society, in a sufficient quantity to avoid the possibility of bribing/biased opinion - who judge the action based on the previous rule, by applying it to themselves.


4. The only measure of punishment is a temporary of permanent full expulsion from the society.

While the first one does sound scary and orwellian - it is not. The scariness of the lack of privacy comes from the fact of the unequal lack of privacy, and of the imperfection of the ones that have more privacy than yourself. There is only one drawback in this system which I see - it would be vulnerable to privilege escalation by the ones "in the know" of the system of enforcement/informing - which obviously has to be fully automatic and distributed. This needs further thought. However, assuming the "cybergod" could have been made perfect, I think these rules would might form an interesting society. Best ? Probably not. Coherent ? I think so. Definitely more coherent than we have today - the rules will take care that only the "similar" will remain. And, since according to Bruce Schneier, the majority of the people are good - it should lead to the good society.

But until there is a platform to try those things out and experiment - we'll need to wait, and meanwhile we return to our regularly scheduled programming...

UPD: Nice coverage by Wrath here. The "last lottery" winner does make me think I was a bit too naive in the above post, and everything is a bit more fun :)

There's no such thing as bad publicity

Seeing the article from Torley about the Time being unhappy, I could not help but google a bit :)

The first article dates as long ago as 2003, where they just mentioned it without much details.

The following article end of last year did publish a heartbreaking story of a guy trying out the virtual world (btw - was this violation of ToS in that article ever pursued by Linden :) ?)

But the best part is indeed is the so-called review. The biggest laugh I had when they did call secondlife a website. Hey, folks at Time - could someone enlighten the authors (anonymous authors ?) of this review, please, on what exactly constitutes a website, and what exactly constitutes secondlife ? They're making your venue look quite amusing.

Oh, well, I think I will summarize the quality of the review just by referencing to their own words (since their pages do mention that reproduction of whole or in part is prohibited, dare I provide the direct links - or I need to go through the top of the site with all the zillions of ads on there ?) - go here and search for the word "congratulations".

Maybe spending those $5 would have made the things look different, eh ? Who knows...

Too much noise out of nothing...or: "protect our streams!"

I've seen this in the IM spam in live musicians group, and Vint also pointed me to this entry, where the author in total panic suggests that the world is collapsing.

Uh-oh. The visitor can view the parcel media URL without a problem. Now, let me tell you - it is a bad idea anyway to base your security on the fact that your stream URL is "not visible".

First, we go over the reasons why the world is indeed not collapsing - we'll consider three of the possibilities to get the URL of the sound stream (one of them is absolutely impossible to circumvent without the drastic change of the client architecture). Then, I will present a couple of solutions to the panicking folks for their consideration.

So....

How to find out the URL for the parcel sound stream

In these examples, I've used the stream URL of Digitally Imported - the radio that is frequently heard in SL. So here goes the credit to them - take a look, and maybe get the membership with them for listening outside the SL.

Terminal output in the linux client

Start secondlife. Start music. Look at the terminal. Done.

This scenario can be "fixed" by having LLs remove the printing of the URL. But please, do not submit a jira on this, please. It is ridiculous. Why ? keep reading.

Debug console in any client (linux, windows, mac)

Basically the same thing as above, but requires turning on the debug console. Here we go.



Again, this is "fixable" by removing the printing of the URL by LLs. However, consider that these are useful for debugging. Those of you who would rush to file a jira right now, will be the first to shout be worried when the streams do not work at all, no ? So, keep reading.

Capturing the requests for the stream itself

This one is a bit more involved and multistep.

1. Go to wireshark website and download the Wireshark - a tool for capturing and analysing the network traffic.


2. Install wireshark on your secondlife PC, start secondlife, start the stream


3. (optional) Launch command prompt ("cmd" on windows), and issue command "netstat" - one of the connections will tell you the streaming server address. Now we need to know the URL


4. Stop the stream, launch wireshark for capturing TCP traffic ("tcp" in the filter)


5. Start the stream, once you hear the music stop the stream and stop capturing via wireshark


6. Find the addresses that do not belong to LLs machines - or the address you found previously from "netstat" if you did that step.Select one packet out of that conversation, right-click, and select "Follow TCP Stream". You will see the output similar to the one below, where first goes the request to the server, and then the reply. The interesting parts are: "GET /stream/1024 HTTP/1.1 ; Host: 64.236.98.50".
   

This gives us the stream URL of http://64.236.98.50/stream/1024.





This "problem" is not fixable. In principle. Unless LLs will start using skype or some other encrypted way to transfer the sound. Which, my friends, will drastically limit your ability to select the streams, and I would not wonder if this would become a "paid service" then, with LLs being the streamhosters themselves. So - Do not rush to submit jira.

This is why I think that while MISC-378 is a bug, it is at most a minor bug, in my opinion.

Now, we go to the second part of the post...

The solutions for the panicking masses

To find the solution it is always best to first define the problem. And the problem is not others being able to view the URL. The problem, as I see it from the words of those who are worried, is that they would like limit the listener audience only to those who are present on the parcel, as much as possible.

The first "weak" solution was presented in the bug report - simply check the user-agent of the client that requests the stream. While it is also by far not fool-proof, it would limit the impact.

The second solution is something I've just come up with. You would want to turn on the stream *only* when there is someone on your parcel. Assuming that your streamhoster does allow some kind of control over scripts via HTTP(S), this is quite trivial to script with the LSL - ask your nearest friendly scripter on how to do it.

All in all, I think that for legitimate music this should not be a problem at all - but I can imagine those streaming the kazaa-ed mp3's to be worried.

Oh, by the way, and before anyone labels me a code junkie who does not get anything in the fine arts, I do write the music myself and from time to time perform in SL, so... :-)

Simple thing which improve your security, that frequently get overlooked...

While the others are promising the blue skies, free cookies (free browser cookies, I mean), here's some basic practical advice for you on behalf of the Grid Democracy Party, that you can put to use regardless of your SLpolitical SLpreferences. While being a *very* basic thing, I've seen it overlooked quite a few times. If you know all this - then I am glad for you :-)

This short note will talk about your "private" land mostly - not necessarily the clubs or other public places - there the settings might be slightly different to ensure the maximum comfort of the visitors, and these settings do not fit well.

1) Have a "visitor group", with which you set the land:



2) Minimize the potential dangerous activities on the land by "strangers":



What this does ?

First, about the options that should be unchecked:

• Edit Terrain. You do not want others to tweak your carefully made landscaping.
  
• Create objects: All residents. You do not really want random object creation on your private land ?
  
• Object entry: All residents. Same goes about the objects from non-group entering from other parcels.
  
• Run scripts: All residents. While this setting only works on small heights, it at least covers that area, if you want to be safe.
  

Now, about those that we have checked

• Safe (no damage). Unless you are planning to turn your land into a battlespace, you most probably would not need this :-)
  
• Restrict pushing. This will help against some very basic forms of griefing (again, why would you want to push someone except if it is a boxing ring ?)
  
  
• Create objects: group. You trust your friends to create the objects and clean up later, right ? If no - why would they be in your guest group ?
  
• Object Entry: group. Even though your friends did not necessarily rez the objects on the other plots, no harm in turning this on if you did turn the other one on.
  
• Run scripts: group. Same remark as in previous scripts (that was disabled) - useful for the areas just above ground to allow your friends' AO and other gadgets to work.
  

Then, the teleport point. If you would like to have people that teleport to your land, to land on a certain point - set this point, so they do not get into the middle of your kitchen or some more private place (yeah I would consider my kitchen private, if only I had it! :)

I guess that's it for this simple post - hope it helps someone to avoid some troubles.

I do have some more creative (and a *bit* more complex :) ideas in mind, stay tuned...

Poly ticks

Eccentrically centric (ad)venture capitalist, and all in all exclusively positive av (the negative traits are printed in tiny letters on the backside of this browser window (grab the viewer here if you are so inclined to see) is looking for a political figure to represent his interests.

The candidate has to be:

1) female (reason: obvious)
2) smart (as a prerequisite to get the better results in (1)
3) cute and fun and enjoy the life (a decent politician has to enjoy the own life before making others' life better - otherwise the things will only get worse)

any takers ?

hmm I think I've just found precisely the candidate - Vint.

The platform looks good. The prerequisites are perfectly met. So - I VV!