sl key shown in emerald viewer

[reac Feden]

I was told today inworld by someone using the Emerald Viewer that part of the Key that identifies my avatar can be used to identify the approximate rl geograhic zone in which i log in.

"something in there relates to the zones you connect in
they know that you connect to say kent, so if you have someone who's pretending to be usa and they connect in kent"

Is this true ?   I know nothing of the Emerald Viewer.   I would appreciate any comments.

[Zena Zemlja]

http://blog.vrhacks.net/?p=192

last post there:

"Prokofy Neva was spamming concierge group with this URL today. So I read this article. And I read the much more interesting original Concierge chat log. What I found in that chat log was Prokofy being paranoid about people having his avatar's UUID. Note that SL will not function unless both scripts and viewers can get hold of an avatar's UUID. But prokofy was histerical anyway. Prokofy clearly has no programmer background, while I do, so I found the whole fear of someone having your key to be silly. It's like being afraid the post office knows your address! I also read this article and was worried about the lack of technical data provided. There are no data logs to show this encripted data, and no source code presented as the source of the data. I decided to go digging and was unable to reproduce the so called mystery data, and was unable to locate any code transmitting somthing that it shouldn't. I suspect the author of this article got carried away with Prokofy Neva's paranoia and saw somthing that wasnt there. Perhaps data from a movie they were downloading, or part of a MS update. I'm not associated with emerald, and I dont use it. But I just had to poke around after Prokofy Neva was so amazingly rude today in the Concierge group. I wont be back to this forum, so if you want to reply to me, do so inworld. Darling Brody"

[Saikiki Moriguchi]

idk but i have wondered the same thing about blog alts ...one account on the blogs please at least don't use an alt to post in the same thread ur main does...i think everyone knows the ones that are doing it...it doesn't take a sherlock holmes to figure it out who the alts rlly are...my modified emerald viewer shows that u have the same id key as "ur name here"....lol

[reac Feden]

A final thought from me in this post.

Isn't it odd how much shorter this would be if only the people who wanted to be helpful had replied, and not those who apparently are elitist/dismissive/vitriolic/self important/self promoting/unsupportive/(add your own thoughts here).  Perhaps they should have started their own thread rather than clutter this one.

Personally, if I have a question I will ask it.  If that offends or upsets anyone ... so be it.

A final thank you to those who helped.

[Eternus Soulstar]

reac.Feden wrote:

 

A final thought from me in this post.

Isn't it odd how much shorter this would be if only the people who wanted to be helpful had replied, and not those who apparently are elitist/dismissive/vitriolic/self important/self promoting/unsupportive/(add your own thoughts here).  Perhaps they should have started their own thread rather than clutter this one.

Personally, if I have a question I will ask it.  If that offends or upsets anyone ... so be it.

A final thank you to those who helped.

 

lol

throw enough shoes on the pile and one will fit everybody?

dude just because not all of the help was sugarcoated doesn't mean it wasn't help. besides you are not the only one that will ever read the answers and even if the style isn't to your liking or suits your purpose it might be the best match for someone else later.  you have no monopoly on the replies just because it was you that asked this time.

[Larryk Dagger]

*laughs* You beat me to it, Eternus! I was getting ready to make my own comment about reac.Feden's last post when your's popped up.

I've noticed that about 95% of the time a question is asked several times in different threads, it's worded almost word for word to the other threads. reac.Feden, that's why some people seem to be elitist/dismissive/vitriolic/self important/self promoting/unsupportive/etc to you. They're tired of seeing the same question time after time after time after time...Get the idea? Not meaning to be sarcastic (much) but I'm going on 48 hours no sleep!

It never hurts to search the blogs, Google and other various search engines to see if the question has been asked before.

[Daria Afterthought]

Eternus.Soulstar wrote:

 

reac.Feden wrote:

 

A final thought from me in this post.

Isn't it odd how much shorter this would be if only the people who wanted to be helpful had replied, and not those who apparently are elitist/dismissive/vitriolic/self important/self promoting/unsupportive/(add your own thoughts here).  Perhaps they should have started their own thread rather than clutter this one.

Personally, if I have a question I will ask it.  If that offends or upsets anyone ... so be it.

A final thank you to those who helped.

 

lol

throw enough shoes on the pile and one will fit everybody?

dude just because not all of the help was sugarcoated doesn't mean it wasn't help. besides you are not the only one that will ever read the answers and even if the style isn't to your liking or suits your purpose it might be the best match for someone else later.  you have no monopoly on the replies just because it was you that asked this time.

This is Eternuspeak for "We don't care about your sensibilities. Cut more emo kid"

 

Isn't it odd how much shorter it was to say what the "nice" post really meant? Perhaps we should start a flagging system to people can indicate whether they need their hand held or not.

 

Personally, if I have an answer and an insult I will patronize you. If that offends or upsets anyone ... so be it.

A final thank you to those who aren't completely hapless

[Arishia Nishi]

"elitist/dismissive/vitriolic/self important/self promoting/unsupportive"

Elitist?       !   Now you've done it...grrrrrrr....  RTFM before you come here.  That's not too much to ask.  This isn't an entitlement program where the  intellectually lazy feed wantonly off the hard work of others. /snark

Can anyone tell I watched Sarah Palin's sarcastic blither last night?  I apologize in advance to any that I have offended with my displaced anger  I used to be a nice person.

[Eternus Soulstar]

and by the way i dont know why this simple thought didn't occur to me before but once your avatar is registered and has a key that is its key forever.  for it to have anything meaningful to do with geographical location or for that matter any other mutable data the key would have to change when the data changed.

anyway take your own key or anyone else's and plug it into search engines from time to time, who knows maybe you will discover someone's plot for world domination and save us all.

[Toy LaFollette]

Daria, never change, I find your posts among the most enjoyable at the blogorium!!!

[Daria Afterthought]

Arishia.Nishi wrote:

Can anyone tell I watched Sarah Palin's sarcastic blither last night?  I apologize in advance to any that I have offended with my displaced anger  I used to be a nice person.

Getting helps from flogs are socialist don' cha know. I can see OpenGrid from my house! The Second Life I know and love is not one in which my avatar or my kitten with mono scripting will have to stand in front of the Linden's 'death panel' so their jerkoffs on the G-Team can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of disturbance to the grid,' whether they are worthy of not being banned. Such a system is downright evil.

[Glimmering Sands]

Prokofy.Neva wrote:

 

Keep asking questions about the Emerald viewer, and do not be dissuaded by the propaganda.

The issue of scraping the avatar key needs a lot more debate than it gets from the cheerleaders here.

There may be good reasons to question the Emerald viewer, but this is not one of them.  Claiming the data is "scraped" is quite misleading.  It is not scraped.  It is easily public information that in no way can be hidden.  It is no more dangerous to know that than someones name in SL (since the two are essentially synonymous and trivial to convert between).  Scraping is gathering information programmatically from a source that is generally meant to be read by organic eyes.

I believe you probably do not script, Profoky.  Any vendor, information giver, anything you touch, pay, or interact with, any dance ball, chimera, door, teleport (the list goes on) is told your UUID by necessity.  Any belief that scripters will be ethical with that information is sadly misplaced as anyone can script.  This is why there are many efforts in LSL to protect important information.  The AV's UUID is not one of these things.  When such things need protecting, say the ability to play an animation, either the UUID is protected or the UUID has no benefit.  The later is the case with an animation, while the former is the case for textures, to an extent.

You would do yourself, and others, benefit if you were to limit your complaints to real issues.

Have a sunny day!

[Qie Niangao]

Prokofy.Neva wrote:

Keep asking questions about the Emerald viewer, and do not be dissuaded by the propaganda.

The issue of scraping the avatar key needs a lot more debate than it gets from the cheerleaders here.

There may be good reasons to question the Emerald viewer, but this is not one of them.  ...

Actually, this feature is one that really does make me question the Emerald viewer--but not for a reason with which Prok would likely agree.

Say I have somebody's UUID.  There are exactly two things I can do with it:

1. I can manually type those 32 hex digits punctuated by some hyphens as part of the URL for that account's world.secondlife.com webpage, if they have one.  This is only about a thousand times more difficult than just looking at it on Search/All or search.secondlife.com.
2. I can put it into a script to do nice or nasty stuff to that person.  But wait: It's a friggin' script.  It can get that UUID by a simple http-request to an external service.  So again, I have a feature that's only useful if I want to make my life more difficult.

So the question is, since this is an utterly useless "feature", how ever did it get into Emerald?

I think there are only two possibilities: Either they're just adding any random crap to Emerald without any regard for utility or UI design; or they did it to drive Prok crazy.

[Canis Hykova]

And the "I got bitten by a vampire and lost my soul" . . . . .

[Glimmering Sands]

Isn't it often the case that there is a kernel of truth in some of the most outlandish rumors.  The truth is passed from person to person and slowly evolves into something that is nearly unrecognizable.  Heh, that is sort of like the answers and discussions on these blogs!

Given an avatar's UUID you can make some determinations that sometimes provide geographical information.  In LSL (Linden Scripting Language) there is the function llGetAgentLanguage(key uuid)which returns the language the player selected when they registered for SL.  There is good reason to make this available -- it allows a script to potentially respond in the player native language.  A vast majority of players, no matter where the are located, are reported as "English" or "American English".  However, if the player's language is reported as, say Portugués, then there is a reasonable possibility that this person resides in one of the countries which speak this language as their native language.

I am sorry this did not occur to me sooner, I have a product, the Magic Compass (a hud) which can display this information about another avatar in the region (and gasp, where they are standing, the direction they are facing, and how fast they are moving.  OH NO!)

So the correct answer is not "No", it is, "A potential maybe with room for error and deception."

Have a wonderful day!

Edit: There is a user setting to turn off "Shares Language with Objects," but off hand I do not recall where that is.

[Irene Muni]

Glimmering.Sands escribió:

 

...

In LSL (Linden Scripting Language) there is the function llGetAgentLanguage(key uuid)which returns the language the player selected when they registered for SL

...

 

 

I'm not sure about "player selected when registred". The registration form ask your language or ask where do you live? What language is detected form countries as Finland (only a example hehe)?

[Glimmering Sands]

Irene.Muni wrote:

I'm not sure about "player selected when registred". The registration form ask your language or ask where do you live? What language is detected form countries as Finland (only a example hehe)?

It has been a while since I registered, so I will accept what you say.  It is also possible it is taken from the locale setting you use on a daily basis, which would be much more likely choice to use than what country you say you live in.  After all, if you have set the locale of your system to some language there is a very high probability that that is a language you speak :-)

The important thing is that this may be what prompted the entire rumor about UUID to geographic location.

[Ansariel Hiller]

That LSL function returns the value of the interface language of the viewer. I can change it anytime I want.

[Irene Muni]

That's what I figured, but I preferred to ask .

[Eternus Soulstar]

Qie.Niangao wrote:

 

Prokofy.Neva wrote:

Keep asking questions about the Emerald viewer, and do not be dissuaded by the propaganda.

The issue of scraping the avatar key needs a lot more debate than it gets from the cheerleaders here.

There may be good reasons to question the Emerald viewer, but this is not one of them.  ...

Actually, this feature is one that really does make me question the Emerald viewer--but not for a reason with which Prok would likely agree.

Say I have somebody's UUID.  There are exactly two things I can do with it:

1. I can manually type those 32 hex digits punctuated by some hyphens as part of the URL for that account's world.secondlife.com webpage, if they have one.  This is only about a thousand times more difficult than just looking at it on Search/All or search.secondlife.com.
2. I can put it into a script to do nice or nasty stuff to that person.  But wait: It's a friggin' script.  It can get that UUID by a simple http-request to an external service.  So again, I have a feature that's only useful if I want to make my life more difficult.

So the question is, since this is an utterly useless "feature", how ever did it get into Emerald?

I think there are only two possibilities: Either they're just adding any random crap to Emerald without any regard for utility or UI design; or they did it to drive Prok crazy.

 

i like the key being there.  i dont care if it has any general use, i like it, and it doesn't hurt anything in my use of the viewer.  almost any feature is useless to someone, but almost any feature is useful to someone sooner or later too.  i can't speak for the dev team but back in the day when i scripted for IRC clients i did sometimes put stuff in just because i could, and people sometimes found uses that never occurred to me.  but as far as the key goes i do have a use.  i have an online status HUD, a very unobtrusive little dot in the corner of my screen that float-texts the names of a few people close to me when they are online, and it can determine status by either name or key, but it reacts faster if a key is given it because it doesn't have to query a name2key database.  it is much more convenient for me to see that list at all times and not have to click at all, it's just there, as opposed to having to either open or tab to the contact list.  emerald saves me the trouble of a name2key lookup myself when i want to add a key to that HUD, and occasionally when one of my tiny circle of friends creates a new avatar emerald has the new key a long time before it ever makes its way into any of the online databases anyway.

[Ravin Draconia]

The UUID is also used in many transactions, such as tipjar payments. Used to be, you would have to get an AV to touch a certain object, which would say the AV's UUID. This UUID would then be entered into what ever objects/sytems used by whatever busuiness, whether to make tipjar payments, or to page an employee or whatever. Having it displayed in the viewer is a huge convenience to anyone who has dealt with such things before.

[Qie Niangao]

Well, only if the tipjar script is incredibly primitive.  Even if the tipjar has to be set up in the absence of the recipient of llGiveMoney(), it's a simple http call to your favorite name2key database (e.g., w-hat) for the script to convert the name to a key.  That way, instead of having to pull up the profile by name, copy the key out of it and enter that into a notecard (or chat, or whatever the tipjar is using as input), just type the name into that input directly and let the script figure it out.

The same holds for all the things for which a script may want to use a UUID of a resident it's never "met", including llGiveMoney(), llInstantMessage(), llGiveInventory(), llAddToLandBanList(), etc.  It's all much more easily done with a proper script.

[Eternus Soulstar]

lol i guess you could say, for me, little touches like that are the geek version of 'art', even if i didnt have that HUD to put keys into.  the radar has stuff i dont ever need to know too but i like it being there anyway.

[Zena Zemlja]

reac.Feden wrote:

Isn't it odd how much shorter this would be if only the people who wanted to be helpful had replied, and not those who apparently are elitist/dismissive/vitriolic/self important/self promoting/unsupportive/(add your own thoughts here).  Perhaps they should have started their own thread rather than clutter this one.

Isn't it odd, that some people think they start a thread and own the place and can decide for others what their respond should be. Maybe you should have started your own blog somewhere, cluttered with only your own answers to your question.

reac.Feden wrote:

Personally, if I have a question I will ask it.  If that offends or upsets anyone ... so be it.

Personally or not, if we have an answer, we will give it to ya, if that offends or upsets ya, so be it.

reac.Feden wrote:

A final thank you to those who helped.

 

Yeah, we're actually nice and helpfull people once you know us and don't tell us what to do.

[Zena Zemlja]

Did you just reply to your own post?

Ok, it's officially now: you blog too much

 

/me ducks

[Zena Zemlja]

Prokofy.Neva wrote:

 

The issue of scraping the avatar key needs a lot more debate than it gets from the cheerleaders here.

Can't blame us cheerleaders, we're working our asses off.

http://forum.tayyar.org/members/faithful-albums-my-album-picture2023-tx-cheerleaders.jpg