Why I consider "path finding" useless in SL, and what do people use it for?

[161488303349]

ps

just to finish ok

the single biggest problem with brute force attack is knowing when to stop. no algo can automagically know this. it has to be told or learn it in some way from the preceding info it gathers. and for that 2nd approach it has to store that info somewhere

[Phil Deakins]

I was already clear about the difference between OS developers and OS grid owners. If the developers also have their own grids, fair enough, they can create to some extent and move their grids off on different paths, depending on their ability to change the whole thing. It's non-developers who are unable to create and move away from SL. I can have my own OS grid. It only takes a few minutes to set up. But I'd be just like the vast majority of OS grid owners and, just like them, I would not have the ability to move my grid off in a different direction to SL.

It's no good arguing about about it. Most of the OS grid owners are not OS developers and are unable to move their grids off in their own directions.

[Masami Kuramoto]

At least you can be an owner. As a Second Life resident, you own nothing. Not even your own creations.

[Mircea Lobo]

THIS. That's one of the first reasons I always liked OpenSim. Apart from being free to have your own region (since you're the one hosting it), you own your data and primitives / assets / etc... they're all in a database on your drive. On the LL grid, Linden owns everything. Just the system SL went for from the start, but it's bad to feel you own none of your data and creations in the complete sense.

[Phil Deakins]

---

Mircea Lobo wrote:

THIS. That's one of the first reasons I always liked OpenSim. Apart from being free to have your own region (since you're the one hosting it), you own your data and primitives / assets / etc... they're all in a database on your drive. On the LL grid, Linden owns everything. Just the system SL went for from the start, but it's bad to feel you own none of your data and creations in the complete sense.

---

Of course you can have your own region, or as many regions as you like, with the OS system, but you'll either be the only one there, or one of the handful (or less) of those there. It doesn't sound like much fun to me.

OS does have good uses though. One is that you can create stuff without any problems (to get it right), prior to recreating it in SL. I mentioned that earlier. Another is using it for an RL business; e.g. creating a replica of an RL holiday centre, so that potential visitors can have a look round before deciding whether or not to book. There are all sort of good, complete, uses for OS but hoping to get a major grid going with it is pie in the sky. Imo, a good alternative grid would be one that is very different to SL itself, and that would require creating it from the ground up, or at least having the ability to make radical changes to the OS system at the nuts and bolts level.

 

Incidentally, your signature is ridiculous. If you really want the privacy you speak of in it, don't give any personal information to LL. And if you don't want anyone to discover roughly where you are in RL, get off the internet and stay off. Simples.

[Innula Zenovka]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

Incidentally, your signature is ridiculous. If you really want the privacy you speak of in it, don't give any personal information the LL. And if you don't want anyone to discover roughly where you are in RL, get off the internet and stay off. Simples.

---

I'm wondering if Mircea realises that LL's age verification system is now simply to rely on the Date of Birth supplied when the account was created.   Or maybe Mircea means we should support LL's decision to abandon the old system with Aristotle.

[Phil Deakins]

Mircea's signature sounds (to me) like s/he's a privacy freak; i.e. someone who is extremely concerned that nobody at all should be able to know anything about him/her, without his/her actual permission. That's what it sounds like to me, anyway.

[161488303349]

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Pussycat Catnap wrote:

And yes to your answer...

This was a constant nightmare back in my Poser days when using deformers to fit an object made for one figure to another... Sometimes there was no solution and whole projects would have to be done over with different elements. Othertimes, you'd need heavy postwork, or to just export the whole thing as a 3D model into some unrigged format for Carrara / 3DSMax / etc and remodel portions...

- That last solution being too much to ask for hobby art.

 

I envision a future where people will want 'magnet zone deforming' like Poser, to correct what the deformer has deformed... but this only working to a limited degree... and the processing and bandwidth costs of it all will be insane for something streamed online.

 

 

---

yes is lots of difficulties in doing all this

+

like Masami say in long roundabout way. normal maps going to be great when we get them. we going to be able to create really rich fabrics. furries going to love normals. real looking fur

even prim and flex hair is  going to look abfab with normals applied

i think is going to total rejuvenate the whole designer/creator community are normals

+

but like i say to Masami. with only normals stand in front of a light. is the silhouette problem. which as they say in the literature remains an open and hard problem. so no bows ribbons buckles or stickyup ears that way

bc normals cant fix the silhouette problem then cant fix the deformer problem either for the same underlying reason. they just textures like any other. and they distort like any other when the surface they applied to deforms

but just for the richness of the fabric then i be really happy to get. even if still no deform

+

just some more thoughts on deformer. i like to chat about what ifs (:

one way that deform can be done perfectly and draw/render really really quickly is one-to-one vertice mapping to the avatar mesh

why it goes fast is that the clothes/ cut garments vertices are substituted for the shape surface vertices. (kinda same like how systems clothes are render now). so no render leaking or ripping

the stitching is a bit tricky tho. but is doable by automagically adding hems to each cut garment/article of clothing. which can them be folded under. the algo stitch the top of the hem back to the body. (is much better finish this way) not stitch from the edge of the garment which dont look very good. can see the not very good with system flare pants and bare feet

bc is one to one mapping then can easy deform the clothing mesh separately when you make it. like flare the bottom of a top out a bit. reduce the valley between breasts. can cuff sleeves, shorts, long pants, etc

the old system skirt as well. can cut and hem it. squish it in even in different places so its more form fitting. flare it for summer dresses and ball gowns etc

the key to all this is not being able to add or remove vertices yourself

this actual the problem we got now with the current mesh clothes. can have as many or as little vertices as you like. so is no way to automagically do a mapping for every case. so algo has to guess. and thats where it all falls to pieces

the other benefit of this approach is that you get avatar physics applied to the clothes by default

[Mircea Lobo]

Theoretically, even on the LL grid you own your personal creations and regions. But you don't have their data on your machine. If Linden ever feels like it (or they get a very unlikely database crash) your work might be gone.

In OpenSim, if something is rezzed on a simulator the data is stored in the opensim.db file of the machine hosting that sim. If it's in the inventoy, then it's stored on the grid server. Still, you can always rez something you wanna have a safe backup of somewhere on your sim, and take backups of your local simulator. On one of my OSGrid sims I even have a storage house for that.

Separately @ Phil Deakins: I'm not a privacy freak. Hell, I post videos of myself on Youtube often. But if I'm constrained against my will to take photos of my identity card and send them to strangers over the internet, that crosses the line of what I consider acceptable by far. If some consider this normal, they are free to even post their identity card on Facebook if they feel like it. But I don't want it done with my data thank you.

[Innula Zenovka]

---

Mircea Lobo wrote:

Separately @

Phil Deakins

: I'm not a privacy freak. Hell, I post videos of myself on Youtube often. But if I'm constrained against my will to take photos of my identity card and send them to strangers over the internet, that crosses the line of what I consider acceptable by far. If some consider this normal, they are free to even post their identity card on Facebook if they feel like it. But I don't want it done with my data thank you.

---

Under what circumstances do you say LL now require people to take photos of their ID cards and send them to strangers over the internet?

[Mircea Lobo]

NOW I don't know if they do any longer... that "age verification" crap seems optional and thankfully barely any sim uses it. Back then, I was notified by Linden Lab that if I don't send my card, my SL account will be deleted. I was lucky to have recently bought a scanner, and I had to send it via email to an address I didn't even know. If a bully asked for my identity card at a street corner, even that would have upset me less. But since then I'm opposed to the concept of requesting such data over the internet entirely... it's just my opinion that it's wrong.

Even worse, the verification expired multiple times on this account, so it's not even permanent. And I'm NEVER sending any more data to LL again, even if it means being restricted from some sims. Although I renewed my ID card with the police (due to expiration date) they still have my social number and stuff they should have never pushed me into giving them.

[EDIT] Small correction: I remember it's either a scan of your identity card, your bank account, or your drivers license. But I consider either of these private data which internet services shouldn't lure people into sending them.

[Masami Kuramoto]

It's not just about ownership of the database. When you upload or create something on Linden Lab's grid, you "automatically grant Linden Lab a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicenseable, and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the content." The license includes "the right to copy, analyze and use any of your content as Linden Lab may deem necessary or desirable."

Ironically, when you purchase items from another SL resident, you are granted no such license. You instead depend on Linden Lab's goodwill to exercise _their_ rights on your behalf. If they lock you out of their service, you lose what you bought. If they screw up their database, you lose what you bought. If they shut down their service or go out of business, you lose what you bought. You can't take backups, you can't take the content elsewhere. Second Life's "virtual property" is merely a means to firmly lock you into their service. The larger your inventory grows, the harder it will be to let go.

[Perrie Juran]

---

Mircea Lobo wrote:

NOW I don't know if they do any longer... that "age verification" crap seems optional and thankfully barely any sim uses it. Back then, I was notified by Linden Lab that if I don't send my card, my SL account will be deleted. I was lucky to have recently bought a scanner, and I had to send it via email to an address I didn't even know. If a bully asked for my identity card at a street corner, even that would have upset me less. But since then I'm opposed to the concept of requesting such data over the internet entirely... it's just my opinion that it's wrong.

Even worse, the verification expired multiple times on this account, so it's not even permanent. And I'm NEVER sending any more data to LL again, even if it means being restricted from some sims. Although I renewed my ID card with the police (due to expiration date) they still have my social number and stuff they should have never pushed me into giving them.

 

[EDIT] Small correction: I remember it's either a scan of your identity card, your bank account, or your drivers license. But I consider either of these private data which internet services shouldn't lure people into sending them.

---

As I recall from previous posts you have made, your account came under suspicion for being a minor where you did not belong.  What prompted that suspicion neither you nor anyone else outside of Linden Lab knows and most likely will ever know.  It could have been something that all of us here would agreee was ludicrous or we might look at it and say LL did the right thing.

Regardless of the above, it is absolutely LL's prerogative which age groups are allowed to access what content, up to and including terminating an account that provided false information.  In other words, they have every right to deny you access sans proof of age.

Simply put, that's the way life works.  There is no ID theft there.

Several years ago I signed my children up for some online children's content and services.  I had to send my identification to these services because there just happen to be a few laws regarding children under the age of 12 on the Internet.  (Which by the way, contrary to popular belief, proves that some of us in SL actually do have real sex and even raise our children)

 

[Mircea Lobo]

The suspicions were false, otherwise I would have been banned after they saw my ID back in those days. But my complaint here is on the means being used. I never heard of other such services in the past, and SL is the only one I've ever come across to ask real life ID over the internet. If other services do this online, they're places I'm fully staying away from... fraud websites are most likely to do this.

I'm not sure if anyone ever considered that behind the closed doors, Lindens might be using this information to identify and track people in real life based on their SL activity (despite silly claims they never store it). Don't be surprised if someone someday will have their mother receive a call (from someone mysteriously having her number) telling her what sim you've had sex on in Second Life, cuz one of the Lindens got drunk that night and felt like it. If the law lets them collect ID online, you can be sure it won't give a damn if this happens. And personally I hope something like that will, so others can realize how wrong their procedure is.

Anyway, thread's going way off topic. But most of my curiosities with path finding were clarified so it don't matter much I guess... but I think there were other threads discussing this system in the past.

[Phil Deakins]

---

Mircea Lobo wrote:

Separately @

Phil Deakins

: I'm not a privacy freak. Hell, I post videos of myself on Youtube often. But if I'm constrained against my will to take photos of my identity card and send them to strangers over the internet, that crosses the line of what I consider acceptable by far. If some consider this normal, they are free to even post their identity card on Facebook if they feel like it. But I don't want it done with my data thank you.

---

Fair enough. So don't do it. Your problem is solved and you can remove that ridiculous signature of yours 

[Mircea Lobo]

The signature stays cuz I'm against the whole thing. It's still a way of pushing you into giving them ID to get access to some sims... though it's a lot less bad than when this system was first implemented. Just sucks there might be sims I won't be able to visit although I'm way over 20, as a price for privacy. Anyway, this topic really isn't about my signature

[Phil Deakins]

---

Mircea Lobo wrote:

NOW I don't know if they do any longer... that "age verification" crap seems optional and thankfully barely any sim uses it. Back then, I was notified by Linden Lab that if I don't send my card, my SL account will be deleted. I was lucky to have recently bought a scanner, and I had to send it via email to an address I didn't even know. If a bully asked for my identity card at a street corner, even that would have upset me less. But since then I'm opposed to the concept of requesting such data over the internet entirely... it's just my opinion that it's wrong.

Even worse, the verification expired multiple times on this account, so it's not even permanent. And I'm NEVER sending any more data to LL again, even if it means being restricted from some sims. Although I renewed my ID card with the police (due to expiration date) they still have my social number and stuff they should have never pushed me into giving them.

 

[EDIT] Small correction: I remember it's either a scan of your identity card, your bank account, or your drivers license. But I consider either of these private data which internet services shouldn't lure people into sending them.

---

The only time I was ever asked to show scanned evidence of who I am was when I was having LL send thousands of US$ to my bank account. Doing that is a circumstance when I positively want LL to know my RL details, of course.

Whe LL started testing that 3rd party verification system that you mentioned (I forget its name) I volunteered to test it. I didn't have to do it but I volunteered. Nobody has ever had to do it.

From what Perrie said, and you confirmed, you had to prove your RL id for a very valid reason that nobody would find fault with. Of course, you didn't have to do it. You could have just walked away. It was entirely your choice.

Now you can remove that ridiculous signature

[Phil Deakins]

Yep. We've digressed somewhat. But you're the OP so it's your fault

One last word though. You can always choose not to provide RL information about yourself. It is always entirely your own choice, so you have no valid complaint about it whatsoever.

[leliel Mirihi]

---

Masami Kuramoto wrote:

It's not just about ownership of the database. When you upload or create something on Linden Lab's grid, you "

automatically grant Linden Lab a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicenseable, and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the content." The license includes "

the right to copy, analyze and use any of your content as Linden Lab may deem necessary or desirable."

Ironically, when you purchase items from another SL resident, you are granted no such license. You instead depend on Linden Lab's goodwill to exercise _their_ rights on your behalf. If they lock you out of their service, you lose what you bought. If they screw up their database, you lose what you bought. If they shut down their service or go out of business, you lose what you bought. You can't take backups, you can't take the content elsewhere. Second Life's "virtual property" is merely a means to firmly lock you into their service. The larger your inventory grows, the harder it will be to let go.

---

Jesus Christ, talk about distorting the truth to push an agenda. LL doesn't grant you a license because they don't have the authority to do so and you damn well know it! Only the original creator can grant you such a license, many of whom explicitly say you can't transfer the content out of SL, the rest you'd have to ask for permission to do so but 9 times out of 10 they'd say no as is their right under copyright law.

You're entire argument is nothing more than a thinly veiled attack against copyrights and has nothing to do with LL or how they run SL.

[Mircea Lobo]

Hypotetically keeping kids from writing fake account settings to see some 3D porn is a good reason to request scanned ID over the internet? It's a sad little world we live in Anyway my opinion stays and since my signature is not offensive I choose if to keep it.

Back on topic: I still had a question about Linden's decision with the path finding and OpenSim. We know the official SL viewer can't connect to OpenSim any more... but will OpenSim viewers without the Havoc libs still be allowed on the Linden grid? Obviously this means no client-side physics, but I don't care to use these so I don't mind if in consequence it works the old way. But will it still be allowed to connect at all?

[Mircea Lobo]

Well, I actually somewhat agree with his comment. In today's license-crazy world, when it comes to digital content you don't even know what belongs to who. After there's been talk that jailbreaking a device (which you own in your very own home) should be a crime, and selling your iPod should become illegal, wondering if you have any right over what you create on servers hosted by Linden is funny in a sad way. Knowing how things are, they can easily do whatever they want with your content and claim it's theirs, then throw the user out like a bad tooth *shrugs*

[Phil Deakins]

---

Mircea Lobo wrote:

Hypotetically keeping kids from writing fake account settings to see some 3D porn is a

good

reason to request scanned ID over the internet?

---

Yes.

[leliel Mirihi]

I understand where he's coming from too. But Masami makes it sound like LL is doing something other than obeying the law as it is currently written. It's not LL that's preventing you from making backups or transferring your purchases some where else, it's the creators that are restricting you by the rights given to them through copyright laws.

He is intentionally distorting the truth to make LL out to be "the bad guy" so as to push his open source agenda.

[161488303349]

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Masami Kuramoto wrote:

At least you can be an owner. As a Second Life resident, you own nothing. Not even your own creations.

---

that also apply to any resident you host on your own grid

[Mircea Lobo]

Ok. For me it's more important to know you're not an alien from outer space, so please email me your photo and all of your official documents (bank account too :) )