Masami Kuramoto

Phil Deakins wrote: A website is a website by its very nature. A browser can display and render various things that are not documents; e.g. Flash, video, music, voice etc. The way it displays them is by embedding them into documents. So websites are document-based. But the browser can't actually display or render those things. It calls on extra programmes to do it. Nevertheless, a website needs a webpage to hold the embedded things - a document shell. Click this link: http://www.mozilla.org/media/img/home/firefox.png What do you see? A PNG image, embedded into nothing. The image _is_ the document. Click this link: ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/ What do you see? A folder on a FTP server, embedded into nothing. The folder _is_ the document. Click this link: http://www.youtube.com/embed/YE7VzlLtp-4 What do you see? A Flash applet, embedded into nothing. The applet _is_ the document. Browsers have been able to handle "foreign" formats and protocols since the beginning. Sometimes support is built in, sometimes it requires a plugin. However, it _never_ required a web page. A website is an entity that can be accessed with a browser. You open your browser and you go to the website - you fetch a single page of the website but you don't connect to the website. You simply fetch a single page and that's the end of it, unless the page has something embeded that needs a connection to be open. You can't do that with a grid. For a grid, you need to open a different programme (a viewer), and connect to the grid. You don't fetch a page from the grid, you fetch data that is understood by your local viewer programme. And you stay connected to the grid. Unless you are connected, you cannot use the grid at all. Persistent connections to web servers have been around at least since HTTP 1.1. In fact web servers using HTTP 1.1 do _not_ close a connection unless the client requests it or a timeout occurs. This has been used for pipelining (i.e. multiple requests over a single connection) as well as services that needed to push updates to clients. Since HTTP was not really intended for that kind of thing, its use has now been superseded by the WebSocket protocol, which is basically a fake HTTP handshake to establish a generic full-duplex TCP connection. Websites were able to host interactive content before WebSocket was around. WebSocket merely introduced a way to do it in line with W3C standards. A website that implements the same services with non-standard protocols is still a website. This is what the distinction between "technically" and "formally" is all about. And it's even narrower because you say that a grid is not a website but it is technically a website. You are putting words in my mouth, Mr. Deakins. Do you feel cornered?

Solar Legion wrote: Unless he went back and edited the post I originaly replied to (some pages back - and knowing this kid as I do, it's likely that he has done so) - You'll notice that he changed his claim halfway through this "debate". Hahaha! Good luck finding a post in this thread that I edited. Either way, it does not matter. Second Life and OSGrid are not web pages, they are not web sites. The distinction in this, for the general public, is semantic. You should consider yourself lucky that Mr. Deakins called your goof a "small mistake." If I had said similar nonsense, he would be all over it.

Phil Deakins wrote: I've decided that either you are really stupid or that you are someone who enjoys arguing the impossible, just for the sake of the enjoyment. [...] I don't recall seeing anyone call you stupid in this thread. I'm sure that many of us have thought it, but I haven't seen it written. Emphasis mine. I like your passive-agressive style and your frequent illusions of unanimity. Do you feel cornered, Mr. Deakins? You simply ignore the hard bits So far, there hasn't been anything "hard" coming from you. Most of the time you say things like "You're wrong" or "Do your own research." You shift the burden of proof on me because your hands are empty. When I argued that both the browser-centric and the standards-centric view fail to properly describe the web, you completely ignored that. Now you even dispute the authority of the very person who wrote the browser that gave the web its name: Tim Berners-Lee came up with the hyperlink which gave rise to the web. He doesn't get to decide anything about the web, and neither does W3C, but that's another discussion. I think that (the bit in red) says enough. A grid is formally not a website. On that we agree so I don't know why you keep arguing otherwise. I am not arguing otherwise. You keep arguing because you disagree that a grid is technically a website. I haven't changed my position at all. A grid and a website certainly have some elements in common but that doesn't make them both websites - not even technically. A motorbyke has an engine, seats for more than one person, a steering mechanism, wheels, needs fuel, etc. but it is not a car, and never will be a car - not even technically. Your logic is flawed. Your analogy is flawed. Here's an accurate one: A Skype call is technically a phone call. You could go on for hours telling me that Skype uses a proprietary VoIP protocol, requires special phones or no phone at all, can do video, text chat and file transfer as well, etc. blah blah blah... it's still a phone call, because it involves person A talking to person B over a network. And this is all that matters. Do you have an example of this region document? I agree that XML documents are in fact documents but I'd like to see either an example of a region document, because you said thayt's what a region is, or an explanation of it by either LL or OS. You can export region archives from OpenSim. They include the scene graph in XML as well as all the attached assets. Even if a region is intially described in a document, are all the live updates also described by documents? Would you consider a live update of a web page via AJAX a document? How about Cloud Party's use of WebSocket communication? I'd like more information, not written by you but pointed to by you, on all these documents. Do your own research! I don't believe that everything is transfered in the form of formal documents. I believe it is transfered in the form of data. Nevertheless, even if everything is transfered in the form of documents, it certainly wouldn't mean that a grid is a website. Even if I was right, I would still be wrong. Do you feel cornered, Mr. Deakins?

Phil Deakins wrote: Complete ditto to what Solar said to you. Solar misrepresented what I said. I never said "OSgrid is a web page." I said it's a website. Solar keeps confusing these things because he really has no clue what I am talking about. I've decided that either you are really stupid or that you are someone who enjoys arguing the impossible, just for the sake of the enjoyment. I can't deny that I am enjoying this. I've done this before, and there were people calling me stupid just like now. When I said the mesh deformer will take a long time to implement and still fail to work for a lot of meshes, some people probably thought I was stupid. When I said WebGL could be used to make truly web-based (rather than just browser-based, as with Unity) virtual worlds, some people probably thought I was stupid. I get the enjoyment out of being proven right later. I prefer to think it's the latter but I may be mistaken. So I'm going to leave you with your silly belief - that nobody has supported or agreed with. Since you failed to prove that my definition of the web is wrong, I'd rather say that only three people disagreed with it. I recommend looking at Tim Berners-Lee's original proposal to CERN, written in 1989. It contains a list of requirements that the proposed world wide web should meet. If you go through that list, you will find out that the hypergrid (which Second Life is _not_ part of) fulfills most of them. I wouldn't go as far as saying that the hypergrid protocol is good enough to become a W3C recommendation. A grid is formally not a website. But technically it is, because it is pretty much in line with what Tim Berners-Lee had in mind for his web: remotely accessible, platform-independent, decentralized (this is where Second Life fails), merging existing data and formats, hyperlinked, featuring bells and whistles, dynamic. Just one thing before I leave you though. Where is this OS or SL document that you speak of? You've held it up as proof of your argument so it's important to you. But where is it? Explain it please. Each region on a grid is an independent unit of information. Like any other 3D scene, a region is basically a scene graph, i.e. a tree-like hierarchy of objects. Scene graphs can be encoded as XML documents, using markup languages like VRML, X3D, or COLLADA. The process of loading a region is essentially a document retrieval process. It starts with the root node and then proceeds to download the leaves, in this case linksets, prims, mesh data, textures, all of them stored on local or remote asset servers (which happen to speak HTTP).

Phil Deakins wrote: The reason I mentioned the word 'resource' (as in URL) was to point out that, the fact that something is a resource (that is accessible on the internet), does not make it a website or even in a website. A resource on the internet may or may not be a web page/website. SL is a resource but it isn't a website. An OS grid is a resource but it isn't a website. Understand now? Probably not. From IETF RFC 1630 ("Universal Resource Identifiers in WWW") by Tim Berners-Lee, 1994: This document defines the syntax used by the World-Wide Webinitiative to encode the names and addresses of objects on theInternet. The web is considered to include objects accessed using anextendable number of protocols, existing, invented for the webitself, or to be invented in the future. Access instructions for anindividual object under a given protocol are encoded into forms ofaddress string. Other protocols allow the use of object names ofvarious forms. In order to abstract the idea of a generic object,the web needs the concepts of the universal set of objects, and ofthe universal set of names or addresses of objects. So here we have something that is a document is a resource with a URL scheme allows embedding audio-visual content supports hyperlinking but is not part of the web according to Mr. Deakins. The web, which calls itself "world wide" and was "considered to include objects accessed using an extendable number of protocols, existing, invented for the web itself, or to be invented in the future," turns out non-extendable after all. It remains flat, just like Mr. Deakins' world.

>> webgl is a rendering library >> Unity is a game development tool No. WebGL, despite the "L" in its name, is not a library but an API. It is a JavaScript API for OpenGL. OpenGL is the rendering library. WebGL makes it possible to implement game engines in pure JavaScript. Unity Web Player is not a development tool but a runtime environment. It is a game engine implemented in C/C++ and wrapped in a library. It uses OpenGL or Direct3D for rendering, depending on the target platform. Unity Web Player also contains a scripting engine. A comparison between apples and oranges is perfectly valid when both are used to make the same juice, e.g. browser-based viewers for virtual worlds. I could go on here and explain why I consider JavaScript + WebGL preferable over Unity, but that would make your eyes glaze over. Let's just say I have an agenda, OK?

You are missing the point. They were laughing because a WebGL-based viewer was beyond their imagination. They figured it would be either too slow or outright impossible to implement.

>> "If they were websites, then they would run in a web browser." Which web browser? Chrome, Firefox, MSIE, Opera, Safari? Here's a non-exhaustive list of web standards (approved by either W3C or the Web3D Consortium) that fail to "run" in at least one of those browsers: SVG, WebCGM, SMIL, WOFF, MathML, XForms, VRML, X3D. The more browsers you look at, the longer this list will get. By your definition above, any site serving content in these formats is not a website. Obviously the browser-centric definition of the web doesn't work. So let's look at the standards-centric definition, shall we? OpenSim viewers, I hear you say, are not browsers because they can display more than just web pages. Here's a non-exhaustive list of formats, extensions and APIs not approved by the W3C or the Web3D Consortium but supported by at least one of the above "real" browsers: Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, Oracle Java, Google NaCl, Unity, WebGL, WebM, WebP, Ogg-Vorbis, Ogg-Theora. From a standards-centric viewpoint, any site using these things is not a website, and any browser supporting these things is not a web browser. In fact all sites that fail HTML validation are formally not web sites. So if both the browser-centric and the standards-centric definition fail, what are we left with? Majority vote? The web is what most people think it is? How about looking at the web's principles and how they may apply to virtual worlds? You seem to agree that a 3D scene is a document, but you say it's not a resource. How can it be one but not the other? How can something that is viewable, downloadable, editable and locatable by URLs not be a resource? Why is a map of a 3D site's documents not a "site map?" There is no logic, no consistent line of thought in your argument. You remember the words but forgot their meaning.

>> "He's proven across most forums that he has an agenda." "Across most forums" is kind of a stretch since there is only one other SL-related forum where I had the opportunity to "prove my agenda." I remember once in that other forum there was a discussion about Unity-based virtual worlds, and I said that the future of browser-based virtual worlds is not Unity but WebGL. Yes, they were laughing about my open source "agenda" back then. Today they have an entire subforum dedicated to Cloud Party. You see, when people are proven wrong, they rarely give credit to those who knew better. They just stop talking about it. When will you stop talking?

Phil Deakins wrote: And also since you wits to be pedantic, what you said ("Technically, an OpenSim grid is a website") is absolutely wrong. It isn't a website "technically" or in any other way. I already told you that so you should know. You could call it an 'internet site' and be correct, although 'internet site' isn't a phrase that anyone uses. But it's not a website. Did you do the research I suggested, and find out what the web is and what the internet is? They are very different. You want me to be pedantic? OK, let's be pedantic. Here's my research: From Wikipedia: "The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used in everyday speech without much distinction. However, the Internet and the World Wide Web are not one and the same. The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks. In contrast, the Web is one of the services that runs on the Internet. It is a collection of text documents and other resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs, usually accessed by web browsers from web servers. In short, the Web can be thought of as an application "running" on the Internet." From opensimulator.org: "The hypergrid is an extension to opensim that allows you to link your opensim to other opensims on the internet, and that supports seamless agent transfers among those opensims. It can be used both in standalone mode and in grid mode. The hypergrid is effectively supporting the emergence of a Web of virtual worlds. The basic idea for the hypergrid is that region/grid administrations can place hyperlinks on their map to hypergrided regions run by others. Once those hyperlinks are established, users interact with those regions in exactly the same way as they interact with local regions. Specifically, users can choose to teleport there. Once the user reaches the region behind the hyperlink, she is automatically interacting with a different virtual world without having to logout from the world where she came from, and while still having access to her inventory." From Wikipedia: "Hypertext is text displayed on a computer display or other electronic device with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click, keypress sequence or by touching the screen. Apart from text, hypertext is sometimes used to describe tables, images and other presentational content forms with hyperlinks. Hypertext is the underlying concept defining the structure of the World Wide Web." The hypergrid, dear Mr. Deakins, is a hyperlinked web of virtual worlds. Its content comes in the form of 3D spaces ("regions"). Embedded in these spaces are objects, images, sounds, text, videos, HTML pages, plugins, and hyperlinks to other spaces. There is a browser ("viewer"), there is a site map ("world map"), each location has a URL. The region is a document, the grid is a web site, the hypergrid is the web. Quod erat demonstrandum. I think you are confused because you believe the web must be text. There is no such requirement. The web is all about hyperlinked presentation of content, regardless of form. It doesn't require HTTP, it doesn't require HTML. It doesn't have to be 2D. The web actually existed prior to the first web browser, and early web browsers would be unable to handle what we call "the web" today. The web is a moving target, and its evolution is the result of people's ability to think outside the box (or rather: outside the "page", in our case).

>> "A Second Life/ OS Grid server is not a web page - period. This forum? It's a web page. SL/OSG servers? No - they're far more like a WoW/MMO/Online Game/Content Distribution server." I am getting somewhat tired of people misquoting me and then refuting those misquotes as if they had anything to do with me. This is what I actually said: "Technically, an OpenSim grid is a website" I said "technically," not "pedantically." The fact that not all of its formats and protocols are W3C-approved doesn't matter. Otherwise most webcasts wouldn't be WEBcasts. You got that? Here's why OpenSim is not like a WoW/MMO/Online Game/Content Distribution server: 1. There is no game, no inherent purpose or goal. 2. There are no shards. Each place is unique and can be referenced by a globally unique URL (opensim://host:port/region/x/y/z/). 3. The content is persistent but not static. The world is streamed and cached, not downloaded in advance. 4. There are no technical barriers between grids. The same "browser" is used for all of them. Avatars can teleport from one grid to another. Items from one grid can be rezzed on another. Instant messages can be sent from one grid to another. 5. The grids are hyperlinked. Regions of one grid can appear on the map of another. It is possible to link from web pages to grid locations and back. 6. There is a sense of identity. I am the same avatar wherever I teleport. My hypergrid ID is unique like an email address. My inventory is persistent. Try traveling from WoW to SWTOR to see what I mean. 7. The platform is not proprietary. Its formats and protocols are open and "de facto" standardized. There is no limit to its scale. It can't be shut down. 8. The platform is decentralized. No one will ever know exactly how large the hypergrid is. You can run a grid behind a firewall and enjoy total privacy. 9. The software is cross-platform. Both the server and the client run on Linux. Turning a LAMP server into a LOM server is a matter of minutes.

>> "my own experience works as perfect evidence to prove that you are wrong." Wrong about what? The current downward trend of the SL economy? Its causes, symptoms and consequences? You must be kidding. You made a living two years ago, so we can't be in a recession right now. Yeah, that makes sense. I stand corrected, lol.

Phil Deakins wrote: You gave the impression that LL has not provided the means to make an RL living from SL. This is what you wrote:- "From the creator's point of view, this would be acceptable if LL's platform helped them make a living from the content they upload.". I said they have provided the help to do that, by provoding the means to do it, and I gave an example of someone actually doing it. You agreed that they have provided the means, so your agreement is the opposite of what you said earlier. Perhaps I misunderstood what you wrote and you really meant that LL should hold the creators' hands and lead them into making RL livings from SL by doing the selling for them, or by making users go to their stores in large numbers, or some idiotic thing like that. Providing the technical means alone doesn't help if there is no sufficiently large customer base to sell content to. SL's economy has many elements of a Ponzi scheme, where each participant is relying on even more people coming after him. As soon as the influx declines, the system becomes unsustainable. Let's look at the facts again: the number of private regions is decreasing, the size of occupied mainland is decreasing, the number of inworld shops is decreasing, many creators "tier down" and offer their products on the web marketplace only. If fewer and fewer creators can afford their own land, what does this tell about their ability to make a living? Your own example doesn't even work as anecdotal counter-evidence. "I could make a living in SL, but I choose not to." That's like the smoker who could quit at any time but "chooses" not to. The truth is, if you do decide to re-enter the market, someone else's sales will decline, because each customer dollar can be spent only once. We can't make a living merely by selling prims to one another; the money has to come from outside sources.

leliel Mirihi wrote: So after some quick googling it looks like there's an estimated 2.4B intenet users as of 2011, 65M downloads is ~2.7%. Sounds like a great plan, hope it works out for you. That comparison makes no sense. The total number of public blogs in 2011 was 156 million, not 2.4 billion. In fact it seems that the majority of WordPress blogs is hosted outside wordpress.com. Private hosting is far from dead.

leliel Mirihi wrote: Why wouldn't they, are you joking? Yes you're right, everybody secretly dreams of being a sysadmin. Of setting up their own server, installing all the software, keeping everything up to date, trouble shooting hardware problems. Yes everyone wants to do that, no really. Why would anybody use a third party site like facebook, youtube, gmail or twitter when they could just run their own site. That's totally what everybody does. Many people do run their own sites, but few of them are sysadmins. Does the term "managed hosting" ring a bell? Example: According to Wikipedia, the WordPress 3.0 content management system was downloaded 65 million times in 2011. Why didn't those people just get a hosted blog at wordpress.com, blogger.com or elsewhere?

leliel Mirihi wrote: The only way to work without that clause is if every single creator owned and operated their own asset server. Yes, of course. Why wouldn't they? Don't get confused by what Mr. Deakins said. OpenSim hosting is just like website hosting. Each running instance of OpenSim comes with its own asset server by default.

Phil Deakins wrote: So you now disagree with what you previously said No, I don't disagree with what I previously said. Feel free to quote what I previously said, then it might become obvious to you.

Phil Deakins wrote: I'm curious. Which part of LL's platform does not help [creators] make a living from the content they upload? The platform includes a system for selling stuff for L$, and it has a system for converting L$ to US$, and for cashing out US$. The system has everything for making a living. Technically, the platform is indeed well equipped. The only thing missing is the steady influx of new customers on a level comparable to 2007. That's why SL's land mass is shrinking dramatically and its mainland cheaper than ever before. I'm a creator and, for a long time, I made an RL living from SL, and that only stopped because I chose to stop it and not because it was forced on me in any way. So what part of the platform don't you understand? You don't seem to understand that different parts of the world have different standards of living. In my part of the world, you can make money faster and easier by flipping burgers. SL content creation is something you do when unemployed. In other parts of the world, where the cost of living is lower, a few bucks made in SL may indeed support a family. It's a globalized platform after all. I once heard that most of Anshe's staff is working from China.

>> "A web server isn't a website either" A web server accessible from a network and hosting at least one web page is a website. In this case, the web page is the OpenSim grid login page. The viewer displays it using its built-in WebKit renderer. Technically this makes the viewer a web browser, although its main purpose is obviously something else. Can we leave it at that, Mr. Deakins? Or would you like to bore us a little more?

Most of OpenSim's core services communicate via HTTP, and that makes it a web server in my book. I know that some parts of the protocol still use UDP. Anyway, thank you for paying attention.

>> "Please explain to me how SL could work without that clause." When you upload content to your own website, you don't cede rights or grant licenses to anyone. Even if the website operates on third-party hardware running third-party software. You own the content. All rights reserved, literally. Could SL work without that clause? I don't know. OpenSim certainly does. Technically, an OpenSim grid is a website, and the viewer is a browser. And just like a website, you can run your own grid with your own asset server. It may be just a few regions large, depending on your needs, but people can teleport to it from any other place, pretty much like they surf the web. The hypergrid is basically a world-wide web of independent grids. That's the whole idea, in a nutshell. A 3D world wide web with avatars. >> "The specific wording LL uses may be overly broad" That's an interesting admission from someone who previously accused me of "distorting the truth." >> "So now it's LL's responsibility to get people to buy your stuff." Not at all. Anyone submitting to LL's terms has no one to blame but themselves. I was just wondering why people keep doing it. Consider the hundreds of private regions that disappear every month because their "owners" can no longer afford to pay $300 per month to keep them up. It is happening as we speak. At the cost of a lunch or two, those works could be preserved indefinitely. A full OpenSim region can be had for $20 per month, without signing away your rights to the content.

>> "what Masami never get is that he in the camp that think that GPL style licensing is opensource. is like a religion for them" OpenSim uses the BSD license. So what exactly is your point? I don't even know which of my statements you are referring to. Or were you just looking for a straw man to go ad hominem? I care about my money and my rights. Most people would consider this the exact opposite of religion.

>> "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!" I recommend reading the TOS. Linden Lab, as the man in the middle, gets a sublicenseable and transferable license to the content for free. The consumer who actually pays for the content gets nothing. That is an indisputable fact. From the creator's point of view, this would be acceptable if LL's platform helped them make a living from the content they upload. For creators living in third-world countries it might actually work. But the only real winner in this game is Linden Lab by reselling server capacity ten times above market prices. $300 per region and month is absolutely ridiculous. It really is a stupid deal for creators and consumers alike. It seems the only smart people on the grid are the freeloaders.

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.

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