Prokofy Neva

Yes this is the most helpful information in this thread and note it comes from Employee No. 2, Andrew Linden.

For years, Hamlet ne Linden Au has been crabbing on New World Notes that the Lindens didn't load the world, and as a result, it had to redraw.

So what? The difference between "automatically clearing" or "being clearable because it is temporary" is not so important. The point is, it was temporary. The point is, people often clear their SL caches to fix all kinds of problem, particularly inventory not showing up. So it was not put on the hard drive. That's the important aspect of what is different. SL has not always loaded on the hard drive, like other games that didn't have dynamic user-generated content. Now it seems to. Except, some people are saying it always did. Would like to hear this from a Linden, and not the know-it-all user base.

It's true that some people have grandfathered islands for $195. But there is a big market for homesteads and people who were able to buy up a lot of those when the initial cost of them were cheaper some years ago seem to benefit still. Its very hard to get islands to pay for themselves because there is such a glut on the market and a slowing of new customers coming in. I think to make it in the real estate business you have to have multiple kinds of land, islands, homestead, and mainland, and also sell content. You also need special themes that attract long-term customers.

Well, wait. If something is held "temporarily," that suggests then that it is "thrown out". That may not be a technical term or term of art, but it does describe it for laymen. Indeed it does sound from the Lindens' description that they now have cache held longer, on the hard drive, where before they didn't.

I'm puzzled why you'd support the Sony hack, which cost them millions -- and when they suffered the tsunami, too! -- but not hacking of SL merchants. I think long ago Linden Lab decided they would not go the route of trying to encrypt or DRM their entire world, but just put the permissions on objects to signal "intent" more than anything, even with imperfect engineered deterrence of theft, and then tell people to use the DMCA system. IOW, the California Business Model.

Well then does it pay to keep Object Occlusion on or off, especially with this new Interest viewer?

Nonsense. BTW, I know how the browsers work, and knew about them before you were born in SL, and have gone to many, many Linden office hours discussing this. Lexbot confirmed what I had thought -- that this data used to be held temporarily, and is now held more permanently. The end. That was helpful. Thank you. 95% or more of the people logging on to Second Life do not know how the browser works, and it's enough even to get them to use "search" inside Second Life, let alone Google outside it. I know because I have actual customers. Quite a few of you don't and life in a bubble with your fellow geeks. And frankly, it's okay if Linden Lab's customers don't know a browser from third base. They don't need to. In fact, the less they "have" to know, the better. Indeed it is creator-fascism or technocommunism or whatever you want to call it to insist that people be forced to "learn" things like this. It's like that idiot former Facebook developer who insists that the entire world has to learn to code. Nonsense. Society doesn't work that way. As for Solar Legion's banning from my blog, his alibis get more colourful each time he tells it. Now it's "someone using my IP address." Mkay.

So then you're confirming what I said at the outset: that the data for the items in SL is no longer thrown out of the browser after each session, but is now stored on the hard drive.

You must come from a garage then. Most people in the United States are not required to "learn the chemistry of internal combustion" to get a driver's license and drive a car. You aren't required to understand computer technology to operate your person computer. And so on. All of life is constructed this way. You don't have to be a garage mechanic because their exists the profession "garage mechanic" so that not everyone has to become one. That's how a complex modern society works. This shouldn't have to be explained.

No, Google isn't irrelevant because this gets back to Bruce Schneier and the claims of Snowden re: NSA, that NSA was able to break through SSL and get into Google's cloud to clear text. Claims of absolute encryption always seem fake to me and I also don't believe absolute encryption is advisable. But I want to tackle the argument that DRM is "impossible" but chat isn't, and it seems you are saying it's because of key exchange that wouldn't ordinarily take place with a DRM'd object like a CD sold to a customer. Except his jewel box code is his key, is it not? Read this discussion if you are interested. http://3dblogger.typepad.com/wired_state/2013/11/in-the-cloud-in-the-cloud-where-the-sun-never-shines.html Isn't SL in the cloud? Or will be?

"Must"? But what if there were a massive exchange of keys of all SL users?

But did it download only textures before, and now it is downloading prims, scupties mesh data? And if it did all that, is the difference now (see above) that it is downloading scripted objects?

So Rex are you saying that the stuff that SL has always downloaded to the hard drive is just textures, but now it wil add prim, sculpties, mesh, scripts? I thought dimensions of prims were downloaded but what do I know.

Well, yes, that's the point I mean. The TOS *catching up to*. I think most people when told "we have to have a copy of your stuff in order to stream it to other people so they can see it" can accept that. It's the functioning of the service. But then if they say "We have to let *everybody else in the service* have copies of your stuff so they can see it and load the world faster," that's a different order of copying/giving. It may be inevitable, and that's maybe why the TOS legalities had to catch up to the streaming realities. And then there's this: although we know that copybot and such have all these years been able to work on the principle of the "see it, steal it" functions of the browser, and just grab stuff, the "storing the world on your hard drive so it loads faster for you" really does seem to be a new 'feature" that Linden Lab is offering. I never recall them saying that before.

Hi, guess what! I *knew* that SL stores data on our hard drives. Why? Because a) I look at files on my hard drive when I try to get SL to work -- i.e. using that trick of deleting settings.xml which often works b) I look at the files installing, and I see the vast array of them c) I look at that F button inworld, I'm forgetting which one now, which shows the huge stream of stuff coming into you that is going on your hard drive. But, some stuff is only held in the browser then tossed, is it not? And other stuff is downloaded but not as much of that used to be done, is that not the case? So the question isn't to establish that"yes, this was how it always worked" but to determine a) if there is anything significally new and b) if this was the rationale for the TOS change, ie the need to stream other people's content right into your possession permanently.

Hi, I really don't care about the form the communications take, and I can defend myself and don't need any help here : ) Don't be a net nanny, don't do the Lindens' work for them. I don't worry about corporate things like "A better SL forum, better communications" because they aren't sincere, not done in good will, and not done democratically with the stake-holders -- that story was long ago told and ended here at Second Life. So stick to the topic. Is this or is this not a new vista of vulnerability? Yes or no or maybe. That's all. If not, then life goes on. If yes, then few will care anyway until it affects them. But what about the scripts?

Once again, I point out the inherent contradiction (and inherent intellectual dishonesty) of people like Bruce Schneier (who I just heard speak and questioned in person) who believe that chat and communications can be "absolutely encrypted" from prying NSA eyes (he makes these claims for Tor, which are false, but that's another story), and the claim that DRM can't be absolutely encrypted. Because obviously, the same issues of key location, MITM attacks, spoofing of ID to the server, etc. all exist in either case. Recently I had this debate about data in the cloud, could Google double encrypt, while data is at rest, in motion, and at rest again in the cloud? And the answer is different depending on the ideology of the cryptologist flogging his agenda. Some say absolutely not because you can't then have the data manipulated, moved, sorted, mined etc without provider key ownership. And others say, no, you can do some things. Why is this relevant? Because keys can be stored locally. They don't have to be stored with the provider. but then the quesiton becomes: but can you do anything with the data then? Let's say this is streamed to you -- you can't click on it, copy it if it has permissions, or manipulate it if it has partial permissions (I'm thinking). So it's the old story, that unless you had an actual piece of hardware like an X-box (and we know how the script kiddies love to hack and jailbreak those), you would not likely be able to have DRM. BUT, I still wonder if this is achieved some other way. Merely by making it hard. For example, y ou can't just easily find and get into those OAR filesor whatever they are coming from sims.

Creator fascism. No one should be *required* to learn the mechanics of how browsers work to log in, that's ridiculous. That would be like requiring everyone who drives a car to learn the mechanics of internal combustion. That's not how normal life works, where there is division of labour and division of knowledge and expertise. I continue to ask questions about this because I'm getting different answers and different emphases. As I've heard in the past of things being held temporarily in the browser and then thrown out, I want to determine exactly It's been an axiom of Second Life that scripts are different -- they're special! Scripters don't have to worry about their content being stolen, it executes server side. Rips of scripts in SL have been far, far less common. So now if the new feature of Project Interesting is that now scripted objects are downloaded to the hard drive, that may drive more ripping because it's a new vista opening up that was previously locked down. I wonder if it is impossible to encrypt these files or have them on DRM. And before I hear the usual knowier-than-thou response that DRM "doesn't work," let me point out that the inherent contradiction of the encryptionists these days is that they hold out the prospect that communications can be absolutely encrypted (i.e. Bruce Schneier on Tor) but they oppose DRM for intellectual property. I have no idea what files contain these downloads or how you access them now or whether it's still OpenGL. I'm not a ripper. But the problem of copybotting in SL isn't just the problem of imported items that people rip from various Renderosity type sites, but inworld stealing. And if the cache is larger now and can hold things it didn't before -- scripted objects, which are arguably the most expensive things in SL (pets, vehicles, guns), then is there more vulnerability to theft now? And back to the main point: was this the reason for the change in the TOS? The change could even be catching up to the reality that has always been in the browser.

But as I noted, I'm not talking about the viewer cache. I'm talking about downloading to the hard drive. Unless the mechanics of viewer-caching in fact involve downloading files to the hard drive. Even so, making the file cache significantly larger opens up larger issues.

I have to wonder... The new project viewer -- which means the beta which will eventually become *the* viewer -- is called Project Interesting. It "just knows" what is "interesting" to you and loads it first. I wondered how it "just knew" until I watched Torley's video: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Featured-News/Speedy-Delivery-Introducing-the-Project-Interesting-Viewer/ba-p/2328615 ...which explains that "interesting"would have been better translated as "relevant". Because it's not about the prettiest floweror prettiest avatar or best build (to you), but about what is *relevant* to your avatar simply trying to move and explore. So it renders walls, stairs, etc. that might block your physical movement on a sim *first*, so you can wend around them. Meanwhile in the background, the flowers are rendering. All well and good. Except another aspect of this "speedy delivery" system is that it loads regions *on your computer* so that the next time you visit that sim, it loads faster. OK, so you see where this is going. In order to load other people's content on your own computer, it has to download people's content to your computer as if you downloaded it, owning the permissions. But you don'. So is this hackable? Most "see it, copy it" features of the Internet are. But this isn't just print-screen or using one of those ctr-whatever commands inworld to get the dimensions of textures and grab them regardless of rights, this is actually putting somebody else's content on your computer. Is this encrypted in any way or obscured by obfuscation? I don't know where to look, and it may be in the form of some kind of raw file or something that you can't open except in world or on an Open Sim. Oh, but that's just it. Are hackers or reverse engineers going to be able to easily visit sims now, let them load, then transfer them "abroad"? I'd like to hear a technical and philosophical discussion of this. Yes, I get it that in order to see something, Linden Lab has to stream it to you and it has to be visible in your browser and be cached. But that's in the browser, and that drops out after each session. Of course it's that browser caching that makes rogue viewers able to copybot stuff in world. But this goes further. It downloads files to your hard drive. Now, that may be a realty that "streaming" encompasses that is not meant as infringing, but is only meant "to provide the service". Even so, I want to hear more of the specifics of this, both the theory underlying it, the technicalities, and the ramifications for intellectual property.

I have both "always set home to here" and "set landing points" in group roles for tenants. When tenants pull down World/set home to here, even with the role allowing for that ability, they get the message "you can only set home on land you own or at mainland infohubs." Yes, it's the correct group. Yes, the group tag is activated. Yes the group has been refreshed. Yes, members have relogged multiple times. This always used to work. What's up?

$150/150 prims, have your own name, music, and search/places ad included, all in this price. No waiting for the group, just join on site. Teleport to Burns Mall Breedables welcome. PG. IM Prokofy Neva to get your name and ad inserted in the land menu.

This is why all these "information wants to be free" sort of "licenses" are all so fake, annoying and ultimately destructive. They come out of the fanaticism of Richard Stallman and Lawrence Lessig who ultimately want to destroy copyright as an institution, and decouple content from commerce, not ensure that rights are acknowledged or that there is "innovation". That's all a shill. As you can see, they contradict each other, and aren't required, in fact, to claim copyright. It's a convention in SL to put the name of the person who wrote the script even if you copy it and it comes out as "your" item then in inventory. If you want to be acknowledged as a creator, then put perms on your item and sell it, even for $1. Then you will not face all this vexation. These "licenses" are not really "about" law. They are about lawfaring, or misuse of law to try to create socialist paradises. You don't need them to accomplish even the magnificence you wish of giving everything away. You can always price it at $0 or $1.

The people who are in the privileged creator class always find it hard to admit it and admit that SL is increasingly becoming a world of creator haves and have-nots, they always try to downplay it and minimize the difficulties and learning curves of the tools because they are uncomfortable with the idea that they are in some tiny guild of craftsmen and everybody else isn't. But that is most definitely the case in SL and those outside of the guild get it completely. It doesn't matter if there are 3 million items for sale -- hundreds of them might be pieces of junk that I make, for example, that no one will ever buy except as a joke. And there are millions of freebies that people don't value and just don't purchase. It's completely misleading to cite a figure like 3 million and pretend that means we are all little Michaelangelos. We aren't. Each person who purchases content and makes a house, whether it rezzes out with all its furniture in place or whether they place it after shopping trips (more often) is in fact an example of the "amateur creativity of decoration" that is not understood and promoted enough in this world and therefore the "differently abled creativity" of the consumer versus the prosumer is not supported enough and retention fails. It's ridiculous to go on affirming that ordinary people -- let alone very savvy power users like myself who run sims and put out content and even make content -- are going to become guild masters. They're not. Some people are good in art; some aren't. Some have good eye-hand coordination, a sense of depth and 3D imagination -- others don't. Just as you said, you don't make every piece of furniture or picture on your wall in your home, you buy it from those who can make them and put them out -- but that's my point, that secondary act of decorative creation is not supported as much as it could be. To be sure, LL does much more than it used to in that regard by having "Picture of the Day" and supporting some of the shopping hunts and such. But by and large, Rod Humble is a perfect example of the creator fetishism that has plagued Linden Lab from the start and harmed retention. There's been a reluctance by the Lab to admit that the content they themselves make is in fact often the most compelling and increases "real estate value". Once again, solving the problem of usage and retention in SL is not about guild-masters endlessly affirming and even hectoring others and claiming that the skills are easy, and that people are just stupid or lazy if they won't devote their attention to mastering them. The problem is conceding that the guild-mentality is an obstacle for other users, and the gulf is only widening. When the CEO can only fly around warbling how wonderful it is that other masters in his guild craftsmen make stuff, he hasn't figured out that most of his customers are consuming stuff, not making it, and he therefore hasn't structured the user experience accordingly.