Mircea Lobo

News: I received an email from a newsletter I'm subscribed to. A new voting date has been established for the senate version of SOPA, and it will be on January 24 (in 18 days from now). We need to convince more senators to destroy this bill, and show them the true consequences it would have. Currently there are only 2 out of 41 needed! The best way at this point seems to be an in-person meeting with our senators (if possible with friends joining up), and spreading the news so others can do it too. Here is the link. If you live in the US, please consider doing this... it's a chance to destroy the bill permanently!

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/29/1049815/-Internet-giants-seriously-considering-nuclear-option-to-stop-SOPA?via=siderec It seems Google and other major websites are at last planning a huge protest against SOPA. I dearly hope they will do it if need be. This would disrupt the internet for several days, and blackout most activities in a way that hasn't happened in decades. But at this point there's no choice, and we need to do everything in our power to stop this and signal the people. Go Google!

I don't really think so at this point. Been thinking more about the government theory, as scary as it's getting for me. It could be mutual at "best"... such as Hollywood working with the government here, so one gets their anti-piracy law and the other their Great Firewall of China, Hollywood playing the pretext part. But I'm convinced it's all about government censorship, which can be sensed if one looks deeper into everything that's happening. Think of the search engine blacklists for example, proposed by SOPA. Would any country adopt such a horrid measure only to fight piracy? That's hilarious. Or would have SOPA gotten this far only with Hollywood's support, regardless of how rich they are? SOPA is too extreme, too desperate, and too sudden. No company has done this in decades, and none could afford it without getting a green light! It could only be done with higher support which goes beyond a bribe, and if it reaches interests of a higher level. Not to mention SOPA resembles the tools China uses on their internet... how could it be just for piracy and a coincidence? Not to mention the media silence and more. It all makes sense to me now... and if people don't stop this, America and the world are screwed beyond reasoning. And yes, the government can already spy on websites and know what everyone does online. But they don't have any way to censor uneasy websites without admitting totalitarianism. This would give them the perfect means to close any site spreading political messages they don't like, or posting information they want hidden. The real war is not on piracy here... it is on free information, and directed against sites like Wikileaks and news bulletins. America is becoming the second China unless we stop it, and the first step in stopping it is for everyone to know this and see beyond the "Hollywood show" they're using as a smoke screen.

After seeing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASnQqBBmGcQ]this video, I suddenly realized I might have been very blind. Guys... are you sure they're doing this because some movie companies feel like they're losing a few millions from the billions they make every year? Because I'm willing to bet they're doing it to implement something like the Great Firewall of China... and for the same purposes too. China does it so people won't badmouth their government and turn their citizens against them, and because some leaders are fanatics who believe watching porn is evil and must be censored. The US is a big and important country, and has a government willing to take some very dark decisions at times. They control most of the media, so the internet is the only way people find out about any junk they do. This probably disturbs them a lot. Would they really want millions of people talking to each other openly and knowing everything, without some law they can abuse to censor what crosses the line? Sorry for unleashing more conspiracy theories everyone. But if this is true, it's the first move in switching to a totalitarian government. And the only thing that can stop it is people reacting and NOT letting it happen! They might want to shut people up so they can do what any evil leadership does, without people being able to inform each other about it and to keep them in the dark! This is something worth considering and informing people about... because America CANNOT be allowed to become the new world's dictatorship like this!

Worth seeing and spreading.

BTW. An alternative answer to "Why aren't Second Lifers supporting SOPA?" - Because if SOPA passed, there would BE no Second Lifers.

Randall Ahren: Seconded. That's clearly not a way someone on the team should be acting, and they should at least reassign people like that. I suggest someone brings this issue to them, and more people request re-opening that jira so it can be voted for. He probably closed it specifically so people won't vote for it, so LL can do their own way simply because they're hard headed. The best way to make ourselves heard if for people to keep requesting it and voting for the feature, since they can't shut everybody up this way. I suggest someone else brings that poorly-closed jira to higher Lindens, or makes new ones.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJIuYgIvKsc

Never mind guys, the jira got rejected a few minutes after I opened it. The only statement the Linden who closed it was able to make is "We have no plans to revert these features", which for him is a reason to completely reject the idea. So it seems they will completely ignore everything we ask them, so they can go their own way and not listen to anyone else. It's things like these that make me wonder why LL doesn't run a communist party instead of a 3D virtual world, because their attitude toward the user has been perfectly suited for that ever since they existed Anyway, someone else can feel free to make another jira if they wish. Maybe they won't put their fist in every resident's mouth...

I just made a jira entry, where I also described in detail what I think on this matter. If you want the old profiles back, please vote for that ticket and show it to other residents! https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-27942

One thing I forgot to mention: I'm not suggesting the complete destruction of web profiles either. I agree that in some cases, they might have their uses (eg: Displaying your profile in your home using media on a prim). I'm only suggesting that they're separated from viewer profiles entirely, and don't contain settings that are not available in the viewer. That way, people who like the web profiles cand still use them, just that they manually have to type in the URL. Or, the menu profiles could contain an optional link to the web ones. This would be fair in my opinion... and if anyone prefers the web profiles (like Imnotgoing) they can use them too, without condeming everyone else to this slow and badly implemented method. There could even be a debug setting specifying what happens when you right click an avatar and select "View Profile" (viewer menu or web page), but defaulted to viewer please.

Thank you Perrie for mentioning this here! I would also like to link a topic I made yesterday, in which I'm suggesting LL again to go back to the old system (viewer profiles and search). My thread is located here. Basically, the web profiles and search are not only slow, but sometimes don't work at all. It happened several times for someone's profile to not load on my end, although I have no connection problems in-world. I had to give up seeing their profile until later on when it worked. Also, please think of us OpenSim users! How are we going to have search and profiles in places like OSGrid if we need to hack the viewer settings and also code and host web pages for each grid? I'm not even suggesting destroying the web profiles. Not at all... they can be useful. But keeping them separate from the viewer profiles entirely, and optional / not part of the client. People could keep using them in a similar fashion to how they are now, by accessing them from the embedded SL browser. You'd just have to type the URL in manually of course. Or the normal (old) profiles could have a link leading to the web profile of that user, which people can click optionally (but without the web page containing any feature not in the viewer). Given I use OpenSim a lot, but also because the web profiles are very slow and feel wrong to me, I really wish to convince LL to consider this. I miss the old profiles that worked so nicely and smoothly. Almost every other user agrees with this as well, and you would make a lot of us happy if you could do this.

Nice to see that in only 3 days, that petition got the necessary number of votes. People should keep voting though, to further show the gov how much people want this bill removed.

Had the issue of web profiles not loading two more times today. Sometimes they don't load at all. At other times, they don't load at all and also print this message in red (example from someone's profile): <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"> <style type="text/css"> html, body, iframe { margin: 0; padding: 0; height: 100%; } iframe { display: block; width: 100%; border: none; } </style> <title>Application Error</title></head> </head> <body> <iframe src="http://my-secondlife.s3.amazonaws.com/heroku/500.html"> <p>Application Error</p> </iframe> </body> </html> I guess I'll make a jira later, if no one with more views can do it instead. At this point, I'd even pay to see these reverted

That's very good news! As for creating a jira, I'm a bad candidate for that. All the jira tickets I make (some about things that should be interesting) barely get seen a few times in years. So I'd leave that to a more popular user who knows how to report them better than me.

I adore the new post-processing effects added to viewer 2/3, especially the new lightning. I like modern games with effects such as HDR, so I was thinking of another feature that could be added. I'll post it here since at least for me, these topics get many more views than jira tickets. What do you think of adding a 'glow' setting for the sky, just like the one used on objects? So we can have a HDR skybox like in many modern games. I think that would look awesome. The setting would be located in the Sky / Environment Editor, together with all other sky properties. When enabled, the sky will be bloomed by the specified amount, and the glow can be seen at the edges between primitives / terrain and the skybox.

I know this has been discussed before and is getting old. But the problem gets to me whenever I use Second Life, and I really wish to still see it debated. Especially given that from what I know, most users are feeling the same way and agree with me here. I'm talking about the web profiles being horrible... and with viewer 3, the new web search too. There are many reasons why I want the old ones back. One of them (heavily discussed) is how slow web profiles are, whenever clicking anything. Last night, I tried looking at the profiles of two residents, and due to lag the web pages wouldn't load at all. Eventually I had to give up until later to see their profiles (although I wasn't getting any lag in-world). That is one thing that determined me to make this topic last night. Another is that web pages in SL's embedded browser look ugly, and the text is blurred. Can be fixed if you resize the window a little, but it still looks rather wrong as a page. Another issue is the implementation itself, and putting part of the SL viewer on a website, pretty much dissecting functionality. In OpenSim / OSGrid, I no longer have profiles and search at all, nor can use actual features of the viewer (such as friend permissions) because they're set from pages now. From what I know, SL aims at being flexible and portable, and I always encourage an optimal implementation too. Also, if the web page fails for any reason, you're stuck with using half of Second Life (like me last night). This isn't to complain, and I understand there were reasons to try going this way. But it's causing a lot of trouble for me at least, and I can't help but remember how easy it was before parts of the viewer were turned into websites. I don't plan to use a custom viewer either, since I love just about everything in viewer 3 except this. Since many residents said the same things in the past and I'm not the only one, I was wondering if there's really no chance to convince LL to go back to the old system. Maybe make a vote somewhere, and if most residents agree, LL could put the old implementation back in the next update. I'd really like to see something done about this, and not leaving profiles and search as they are and condemning residents to this change. Can't we find a good alternative at least... or offer the old way optionally? Or even make the web pages and layouts local HTML pages (inside the viewer), while taking the data remotely from the grid.

FYI. Someone made a petition on the government's website, where people can sign against SOPA. Not sure how much they'll care, but anything is worth trying. Registering there just to sign it. http://wh.gov/DfY

I don't aim to be an ass, but this is the last thing I have to say on this thread: Both those who sue a 3D space (or people on it) for silly copyright reasons, as well as those who get so paranoid about them and do what LL did, need to get a life and need to get laid during a romantic month of spring. Overall, that is my conclusion and that is all *resumes my first and second lives*

I wanna play with mesh avatars, but don't feel like looking into making one myself (although I'm good with Blender and might look into it sometime). So I was wondering if anyone made any free mesh avvies, that I can download from a website (in dae format) with texture included and upload freely. Not looking to buy one in-world, since I also wanna use it in OpenSim so I need to upload manually. Don't care about quality, just to download some reasonable avatars I can upload and possibly modify. If anyone knows any, please link them here. Thanks :)

Forgive me if I consider some of those posts ignorant. Because again, in some places it's either very hard or impossible to get a SL compatible card. PayPal in my country was enabled about 4 years ago... till then Romania was blacklisted. Google it if you don't believe me. Thanks to that, I looked into getting a debit card about 3 years back. I was lucky I asked, because I didn't even know you could own one if you don't have a job (I don't work IRL yet). Then I had to look at many offers, and could hardly find one bank in my country that offered PayPal compatibility, and that I could figure how to setup. The one my parents used and I initially applied to had no idea about online usage. But it's obvious to me that everyone here (including the Lindens) care about playing police and doing justice than the well-being of SL users, which isn't a new thing either. Just like ImNotGoing stated, nobody here has any rights or is given a damn about. I think I'm done with this, so feel free to close the topic. I'm going to use this grid however possible in the meantime, while waiting for a grid administered by more considerate people to become sufficiently popular, when the time will come

Pretty tired now, so I'll only comment on the billing issue since I found it most important. It is a minimal request, but some people don't own online debit cards at all. Like I said, I was lucky to get one due to other circumstances in the past. I don't know how many SL-ers own cards overall, but I'm pretty sure many don't. In some countries (I think mine was like that a few years back) you can't even find credit / debit cards usable with Second Life. Or at least I heard that from other users. Over here, Paypal was only allowed about 4 years ago. So I would be thoughtful about this personally, since not everyone uses money online or lives in mighty America

@ImNotGoing: Good for you, having fun is healthy Don't mind us who are getting in the way with discussion of possible importance.

If they really care for this, I would at least suggest a compromise; Keeping those restrictions for a few months (3-4) so enough people see them and take their precious test, then removing them. Or I dunno, something close to this. Or, since that dumb test is easy, another option is making it necessary for everyone. So when you login after the next update, you are required to take it once (and once once) then be done and resume your SL life. Personally, I don't believe this can last forever as it is. SL has many builders, most of them likely without payment information. I probably won't be the only one saying "I don't wanna be left behind and forced to build with prims (and make lower quality content) while others around me can build with meshes (and create better content) because they're lucky and have a SL compatible credit card". In time, meshes will become an important part of building. And although they are new and it's not the case yet, keeping them back like this cannot work forever IMHO.

Wow... LL wanted to make meshes a paid feature at first? And I was thinking it couldn't have been worse... thank goodness it's not Other than that, I understand this point of view, but cannot share it. Most users start from the idea that "someone is gonna rip a whole game into SL and all hell will break lose", while I say it's just a harmless feature that should be let free and everyone is over-reacting. None of this even came to mind when I heard meshes are coming to SL... I just thought the feature will be added, people will enjoy it, and that's it. That's why I'm both pissed and surprised at suddenly coming across this. Anyway, the fun is pretty much ruined, so I'll just see how things go and keep suggesting Linden Lab to chill down in the meantime. Maybe after meshes get more stable and we see how they're being used, they will remove this stuff in a couple of weeks (at least the payment thing so everyone can build the same way). First the age verification disaster, now this... I wonder when the next wave of over-reactions on a moral / legal matter will limit a feature in SL and ruin the fun for everyone, which is becoming a common story