Usernames - all real names have been taken - free up old ones?

[zantsuken]

Almost every combination of keys pressed has been taken. Many old names have not logged in for more than 5+ years. Will LL ever release old usernames? I imagine not if they haven't done so yet. If not, would it be possible to allow us to create usernames with spaces?

[Amethyst Jetaime]

I highly doubt that every combination of keys has been taken.  Also, how do you know many old names haven't logged in for five or more years, or any length of time?  The only way for you to know that is to join a group they belong to so you can see the last date they logged in.  You have to join SL to join groups.  To do that for every name is next to impossible since not everyone joins groups.  

LL does not recycle names.  The user name is associated with their inventory and everything they may have created.  Even if a person hasn't logged into SL for 5+ years their account is still there for them if they wish to return.  If they canceled it they can still have it revived for a fee.

User names with spaces are First and Last names and LL has stated they will not go back to that.

[SirLeighBastard]

Even if you restricted yourself to ten character names there are 10**36 combinations.

That is 1000000000000000000000000000000000000 different potential names with the surname Resident.

Even with bots and alts and Linden Lab hyperbolic mendacity, there are not that many SL participants.

***Yes, I am THE SirLeighBastard

[irihapeti]

is a interesting question/problem this

+

if apply Shannon Entropy Theorem to the issue of real names, meaning A-Z and no digits (0-9) then

for names of length 2 to length 10 that make some kinda readable/understandable word(s) as a name in some human language then is approx. 174 million million names to choose from, given that the shannon entropy is estimated to be 0.6bpc for all human languages

higher for english (upto 1.1bpc shannon) and lower for other languages. Like for example Mandarin that when anglicized (26 char alphabet) then is approx. 0.3bpc shannon. So fewer understandable anglicised words/names than in English

is approx. bc human languages change. words added and dropped as they evolve

+

when go beyond 10 chars then the number of one word names drops off quite sharply and we into readable/understandable sentences (combinations of names). The 0.6bpc shannon holds for them as well tho pretty much

[zantsuken]

Since we do have Display Names, I wonder if LL is moving towards a DisplayName@AccountName model in the future, the way other MMO's have gone. Where the username is not quite so prominent and more people can have the in-world name they want. It would also open the door for multiple Avatars or Profiles. I don't mind being Slade@zantsuken if that is the way they are going.

 

[SirLeighBastard]

---

irihapeti wrote: if apply Shannon Entropy Theorem to the issue of real names, meaning A-Z and

no digits (0-9)

 then

---

That discriminates against h4ck3r5!

***Call me 51r if you must.

[Qwalyphi Korpov]

I can't believe you've all been drawn into another trollish 'what about the names' thread.

Crap.

(me too)

[zantsuken]

I should have said all the good names have been taken. I didn't mean to sound like a troll  However, as time goes on, some people will die in first life and not have any use for their Second Life account (although is is pretty cool that your creations can live on forever in cyberspace). Eventually, even all the less desirable usernames could get taken too. But now I don't see a good solution to reusing names since objects are tied to them. Other than something like:DisplayName@AccountName

[irihapeti]

jejejejej (:

[Alwin Alcott]

---

zantsuken wrote:

However, a

s time goes on, some people will die in first life and not have any use for their Second Life account (although is is pretty cool that your creations can live on forever in cyberspace).

---

... even when a person dies in rl ........  the accountownership will go to the family, it will not be terminated unless the rightfull owner ends it.

[PIGWOOD]

I joined a couple of days ago with the name PIGWOOD which is appropriate as my avatar is a wooden pig.  So it's still possible to choose a meaningful name.  

Oh . . .  yes, I'm an alt . . . .  PIGWOOD was previously an occasional username for another account that sometimes wore the wooden pig avatar, but now PIGWOOD has spun off as a proper account in its own right.

[Dresden]

But what would a pig wood if a pig could wood?

...Dres

[irihapeti]

---

zantsuken wrote:

Since we do have Display Names, I wonder if LL is moving towards a

DisplayName@AccountName

model in the future, the way other MMO's have gone. Where the username is not quite so prominent and more people can have the in-world name they want. It would also open the door for multiple Avatars or Profiles. I don't mind being

Slade@zantsuken

if that is the way they are going.

 

---

i think we are pretty much stuck with the way is now done in SL

for Sansar then the discussion about @name is worth having. Altho I think LL have already pretty much decided on how they are going to do it. Going off what Ebbe said already about it

[zantsuken]

Is Sansar planned to make SL obsolete?

[Canoro Philipp]

it seems Sansar will be a separate project from Second Life, some time ago Linden Lab decided that as a company they should have more than 1 product, so they decided to make different styles of games, probably Second Life will co exist with Sansar.

many people have left Second Life without noticing Linden Lab, they may return some day and their account will be there, with all the things they collected at that time, Linden Lab don't close those accounts in favor for them, so they can continue from where they left.

its true that it will be more useful if the names were divided in two strings of characters, we used to have them that way but Linden Lab decided that a single string would be better, I dont know why they decide that, I can see the inconvenience that you see, that potentially at some point in time, all usernames will be taken, and in short term, all possible word combinations can be taken.

I was in favor of having two strings as a name, first name, last name, it allowed people to use the same name with the difference of last name, just like microsoft did when hotmail usernames got saturated, they created outlook so many usernames can be used again. hopefully, project Sansar will have 2 strings, and users would have the ability to have the same name as the first string, or last.

[SirLeighBastard]

---

zantsuken wrote:

Is Sansar planned to make SL obsolete?

---

SL is already obsolete

***Don't call me SL

[irihapeti]

---

zantsuken wrote:

Is Sansar planned to make SL obsolete?

---

am not sure that obsolete is the right word

SL is a commercial venture and LL have said this is so. And that SL will remain online/available to us while it remains profitable for LL to do so

+

from what Ebbe has said previous

LLs view is that somebody one day is going to make a better world than SL. like SL but better as Ebbe put it at the time

so he (Ebbe) thought why would that not be us (LL) who does that

by better, LL more mean the architecture of the platform itself mostly. More able to be scaled size-wise backend-wise, frontend wise - bigger regions, better graphics, better physics, better scripted and non-script movement, etc

+

from the tiny little pre-alpha 14 sec vid that we seen so far of Sansar then is better. How better in total dunno yet but is better, meaning that is better than what we can do in SL 

vid here: https://twitter.com/jannejunt/status/661877819354521600/video/1

the vehicles in the vid run really good compared to SL vehicles. Is volumetric lighting as well. So at least better in those two things

 

 

[zantsuken]

That's a sweet looking video. Where can I find a link to what Ebbe has said about Sansar?

[irihapeti]

theres a massive thread here from the early times when Sansar was  announced

https://community.secondlife.com/t5/General-Discussion-Forum/Ask-the-CEO/td-p/2948995

have to work thru it tho to find what Ebbe actual says as opposed to what we thought he said as the posts from us indicate sometimes

+

some summaries/articles of what he (Ebbe) has said about it both here and on other media can be found on Inara Pey's blog:

http://modemworld.me/tag/next-generation-platform/

 

[zantsuken]

Wow thank you for the links! I hope they do an @username solution for our names. It looks like a beautiful new world to play in.

[MaggieSoftpaw]

All possible names are taken?  I must have been lucky.  I got my name first try.  I'm sorry if I took the last available character combination from you.

[irihapeti]

if we take off your name and my name then with only 26 letters (given no digits bc englishy) to choose from for a name of length 2 to length 31 and we want a name which is englishy looking then by Shannon measurement is only about

 8,963,090,534,496,190,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

names left for everyone else. Minus the 50 or so something million used already

so probably run out by about lunchtime I think

q; (:

+

more serious tho

some more thoughts

when most people say that all names are taken then what they usually mean is all common english firstnames

Sophia, Jack, Sam, Hannah, Mary, Thomas, etc

even when we had lastnames the common firstnames (in all human languages) were snapped up pretty quickly each time new lastnames were added to the list

+

 

also I just add on some tldr about what if

 

i still dont get why a single space char cant be included in a new SL name. Is no technical reason that I can see. A space is just a char

is pretty trivial to make a signup validation rule for this. like for example:

1) there can only be 1 space (to be consistent with the old naming rule)
2) the space cant be in the first or last position (to avoid display confusion. leading/trailing spaces can be hard to spot)
3) there must be at least 2 contiguous non-space chars before and after a space (to be consistent with the old naming rule)
4) therefore a space when included must be in the 1s-based range [3..length(name)-2]
5) that names minus the space must be unique when case is applied (to avoid display confusion. eg. "mr smith" "mrs mith")
6) therefore examples: (case applied)
" maryjean", "m aryjean", "maryjea n", "maryjean " = invalid 
"ma ryjean", "mar yjean", "mary jean", "maryj ean", "maryje an" = maryjean (resolve to)

typically a person would choose "Mary Jean" or maybe "Mr Smith" or maybe even "Witch Evah" "like yanno" (:

the inclusion of the space dont actual change the number of available names with this kinda resolution/validation rule applied. And it avoids display confusion

+

also as well. if/when have this kinda rule then it can be applied retrospective to all .Resident names for those who want it

a "Space My Name One Time" app can be written for inclusion on the account page for existing names. We get one go at it and thats it. The app disappears off our account page for existing .resident accounts once used. And never appears for old style names (bc they already got a lastname not resident). Or for new accounts bc they already had a choice on signup

would make lots of existing people pretty happy this I think

basically what this rule does is that if I am already "MaryJean Resident" then nobody can snaffle "Mary Jean" off me in any changeover

+

is a issue with some of the older scripted inworld objects that might be impacted adversely by this. Which could mean breakage of existing content

however I think this could be resolved by changing the way the names are served up to the inworld script. example:

pos = (space in firstname);
if (pos && lastname == "resident")
{ 
   return to script ( (firstname = (firstname, 1, pos-1); lastname = (firstname, pos+1, length(firstname)) );
};

a alternative to this (and the way I would do it for efficiency) is to add datafields to the account record, and just return those

a flag field [0] to denote a no space name (which also flag the old style names)
a [1] to denote a space name. With the spacenames added to the record

so something like

[0] [Mary] [smith]
[0] [MaryJean] [Resident]
[1] [MaryBrown] [Resident] [Mary] [brown]
 

if (flag)
  { return to script [Mary] [brown] };
else
  { return to script [MaryJean] [Resident]; [Mary] [smith] };

+

ok next

this might break existing scripts tho where a name like "MaryBrown Resident" is hardcoded in the script itself
 
so if this is a issue (and given LL aversion to breaking existing content which relies on existing documentation which the name.resident does rely on) then

a alternative for new scripts is a new LSL function: llGetNewName(). which dont break the older scripts

llGetName = "Mary Smith"
llGetNewName = "Mary Smith"

llGetName = "MaryJean Resident"
llGetNewName = "MaryJean Resident"

llGetName = "MaryBrown Resident"
llGetNewName = "Mary Brown"

in the LL viewer then:

Mary Smith
MaryJean
Mary Brown

[zantsuken]

Yeah I get it that there are still more names left than atoms in all the stars in the sky. But they all sound weird to me even mine does. I have accepted the fact that it doesn't really matter since we can have a display name.

[irihapeti]

has been done to death the name thing on this forums. Is why Qual said what he said

is ok tho. You are new so I dont mind chat about it

+

and it give me another chance to think about how it might work in SL

never know SomeBody Linden might go: hmm! I got nothing better to do other than eat my lunch right now, so I have a go at that space name thingy and see if cant make it work

(:

[SirLeighBastard]

---

irihapeti wrote:

if we take off your name and my name then with only 26 letters (given no digits bc englishy) to choose from for a name of length 2 to length 31 and we want a name which is englishy looking then by Shannon measurement is only about

 8,963,090,534,496,190,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

names left for everyone else. Minus the 50 or so something million used already

so probably run out by about lunchtime I think

q; (:

+

more serious tho

some more thoughts

when most people say that all names are taken then what they usually mean is all common english firstnames

Sophia, Jack, Sam, Hannah, Mary, Thomas, etc

even when we had lastnames the common firstnames (in all human languages) were snapped up pretty quickly each time new lastnames were added to the list

+

 

also I just add on some tldr about what if

 

i still dont get why a single space char cant be included in a new SL name. Is no technical reason that I can see. A space is just a char

is pretty trivial to make a signup validation rule for this. like for example:

1) there can only be 1 space (to be consistent with the old naming rule)

2) the space cant be in the first or last position (to avoid display confusion. leading/trailing spaces can be hard to spot)

3) there must be at least 2 contiguous non-space chars before and after a space (to be consistent with the old naming rule)

4) therefore a space when included must be in the 1s-based range [3..length(name)-2]

5) that names minus the space must be unique when case is applied (to avoid display confusion. eg. "mr smith" "mrs mith")

6) therefore examples: (case applied)

" maryjean", "m aryjean", "maryjea n", "maryjean " = invalid 

"ma ryjean", "mar yjean", "mary jean", "maryj ean", "maryje an" = maryjean (resolve to)

typically a person would choose "Mary Jean" or maybe "Mr Smith" or maybe even "Witch Evah" "like yanno" (:

the inclusion of the space dont actual change the number of available names with this kinda resolution/validation rule applied. And it avoids display confusion

+

also as well. if/when have this kinda rule then it can be applied retrospective to all .Resident names for those who want it

a "Space My Name One Time" app can be written for inclusion on the account page for existing names. We get one go at it and thats it. The app disappears off our account page for existing .resident accounts once used. And never appears for old style names (bc they already got a lastname not resident). Or for new accounts bc they already had a choice on signup

would make lots of existing people pretty happy this I think

basically what this rule does is that if I am already "MaryJean Resident" then nobody can snaffle "Mary Jean" off me in any changeover

+

is a issue with some of the older scripted inworld objects that might be impacted adversely by this. Which could mean breakage of existing content

however I think this could be resolved by changing the way the names are served up to the inworld script. example:

pos = (space in firstname);

if (pos && lastname == "resident")

{ 

   return to script ( (firstname = (firstname, 1, pos-1); lastname = (firstname, pos+1, length(firstname)) );

};

a alternative to this (and the way I would do it for efficiency) is to add datafields to the account record, and just return those

a flag field [0] to denote a no space name (which also flag the old style names)

a [1] to denote a space name. With the spacenames added to the record

so something like

[0] [Mary] [smith]

[0] [MaryJean] [Resident]

[1] [MaryBrown] [Resident] [Mary] [brown]

 

if (flag)

  { return to script [Mary] [brown] };

else

  { return to script [MaryJean] [Resident]; [Mary] [smith] };

+

ok next

this might break existing scripts tho where a name like "MaryBrown Resident" is hardcoded in the script itself

 

so if this is a issue (and given LL aversion to breaking existing content which relies on existing documentation which the name.resident does rely on) then

a alternative for new scripts is a new LSL function: llGetNewName(). which dont break the older scripts

llGetName = "Mary Smith"

llGetNewName = "Mary Smith"

llGetName = "MaryJean Resident"

llGetNewName = "MaryJean Resident"

llGetName = "MaryBrown Resident"

llGetNewName = "Mary Brown"

 

in the LL viewer then:

Mary Smith

MaryJean

Mary Brown

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Congratulations! You win November's prize for wasting the most of your own time and that of everyone who read your post.

***Call me Sir Endipitous