Prokofy Neva

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.

And the response is -- that's great, but not everybody likes that look. It's a look that works great for 1920s Berlin. It's not a look that works great for everything. Photorealism often just looks terrible in SL because it doesn't fit with the rest of the world which is Linden-made (like roads and trees) from drawings or a "fantasy" look for a virtual world. Photorealistic textures substitute the photo for the prims -- but then that means the feeling of heft or depth or weight disappears and you feel as if you are moving among postcards. It doesn't matter if those postcards are hugely convincing and competently done. They still have a feel that doesn't fit in many places. Prims give you more of a feeling of immersion because each individual object has dimensions on the grid; the sculpty is often something you can't place another object on and ditto the mesh because it has no solidity. This is something that no one ever talks about and for some people spending a lot of time chatting in IMs or just dressing their avatar, the look and heft of the world doesn't matter. But it does to others, especially those who grew up thinking in terms of "prim craftsmenship". Constantly affirming that photorealism "looks better" and shows off 3D tools better just doesn't matter, because these are questions of feeling and taste and custom, and people either like it or they don't.

This is interesting, but sad (for an old-timer like me) that the Game God will not descend into the World this year and do one of his walkabouts. In the past, whether it was Philip Linden or M Linden, they would actually come inworld for the birthday and give a speech. Now, to be sure, you couldn't get near the sim unless you knew somebody who knew somebody who knew a Linden, but you could at least press your nose to the glass on the next sim over, and if they put 4 sims together, that meant at least 160 lucky people would get to be present for the event. In the old days, they used to have relay radios put on sims where you could hear the Great Leader speak as in a Fireside Chat. It was fun. But now he's only viewable not in real-time, on a machinima prepared by Draxtor. So it's like a canned televised message from the president, not live. It would be one thing if the world was so big that it no longer made sense to appear for 160 or 16,000 spread out on many sims with radios. But the world is smaller and has shrunk. Then as for his "state of the union" address -- well, half a billion dollars in user-to-user transactions is a great story and a great secret in Silicon Valley that should get more attention. But this "creativity" fetishizing loses sight of the fact that 10 percent of the population are making most of the content for the other 90%, and that it is really far more about consumers and amateur creativity of decoration, lifestyle, RP, etc. than about the physical act of creation on Blender or whatever. It's also true as others have said that the new tools of mesh and materials and such are elitist and are no longer doable inworld. If somebody has jimmied up some inworld facsimile, that doesn't count and probably only works for certain photorealistic textured buildings or something, not complex stuff.

I see the advertisement for the 10th Anniversary of Second Life shows people in a jacket with "10th anniversary" and the logo. Are they going to have these available on the Marketplace or are they available somewhere already?

Come to the SL Public Land Preserve, which was founded in 2004 to help keep some mainland areas open and free for recreational use. Start in Carlisle next to the Ravenglass tower where you will find a big tree house with a list of landmarks of all the locations, about 30 or so. Just type "Carlisle" into the World Map and you will land near the docks. Most of them are old-school Old World in prim with not too much sculpty and mesh, but some here and there. Mainly prim though, which I prefer myself.

Yes, it's very realistic, yet still exotic, real and virtual somehow. I'd love to know what the different materials used are in the objects. Mesh? Sculpty? Does anyone use prims anymore?

Eyesorce? Yeesh, wait until you see Google Glass, speaking of Eyesorce!

I'm happy for Linden Lab to do anything they need to do to make money and stay in business. I'd like them to sell the ad space to resident businesses both on their website and in the welcome and infohub areas. I've been saying this for eight years and it gets boring to repeat, but the Lindens have to figure out how to make money for themselves and resident businesses together, that way both succeed. Why let have Google make money, and LL make only a bit of click revenue from gold sellers and engineering programs that will lead to few conversions when they could sell ads for stuff that people want and will buy and will pay for.

I try not to leave things that can be edited by tenants because I have an open group and that means then editable by griefers. I guess we are being driven to buy mesh products then.

Oh, I totally get it about the box-dragging. Especially because this was done by someone else, not me, with Phoenix viewer, which I refuse to use, so they couldn't do "select only my objects" and they may indeed have missed some. But it was off by like 400, so that seemed odd. What I object to is others speaking as if they have "the absolute truth" about mesh and its readings. I don't claim the truth. I don't speak as if it were an absolute truth. I say that in fact there are questions to have, you have to keep an open mind, and the last place to get an accurate and unbiased answer will be Lindens, who have a stake in this not being true, and certain builders/merchants, who also have a stake in this. I don't see in fact that all the 2000 prims on the 4096 *are* accounted for. Since the *other* now empty parcel turned up 145 prims that just didn't exist inworld but seemed to return, I think it's possible on the other one. These two lots never showed overrages. They never overaged into a third parcel that was supposed to be kept empty for the river and boats to pass. This build has hardly changed, especially in recent months. So for this to be happening *now* means some even occurred, or the software changed. I will go on looking at each object and the build and figure it out eventually. Odd duplicates are always an issue, I've seen that before. That happens when you rez a lot on a build tho, and this hasn't had hardly any changes. The only thing I found underneath the ground before on the other lot was an invisible copy of something that had once been rezed and deleted. That was odd. It didn't rez invisible, so it made a second invisible copy. You can't look at lists of names of objects on the mainland. That's the frustration.

No one changed it. But if a torus now reads as 37 and not 1, although the set of circumstances that make that happen do not appear to have occured, that might be an explanation. There is one object that enables insertion of other objects into it. SO that might have been griefed.

There is no mesh in this build. There is no linked mesh in this build. It's an old build of 7 years, and the objects inside the building are all prims based, with a few sculpties, and no mesh objects. There are no mesh objects even on this sim to my knowledge, although there could be in the stores in a separate land group. Viewer1 is still supported, but being phased out. But I'm on v3 so that is not the issue. Nothing was changed in the physics. The builds were all unlinked in fact. I started to link up some of them merely to copy and save them for fear that the build would all return due to this issue. Yeah, I get it that this "shouldn't" happen. That the reading "should" book prims in the same way if mesh/physics/scripts blah blah are not involved. But it did. And when that happens, instead of rushing to justify LL or justify furniture and prefab makes who don't want any customer to get the idea that suddenly all their objects "weigh more" or "take up more land," you have to keep an open and curious mind, which is what I do. I don't "need" the readings to be different. But...they are. There is the mystery of the 145 prims that returned but yet don't realy seem to be there. There is the mystery of the Phoenix viewer photo that Jadeclaw made that captured every prim, and showed right on the viewer in the highlight what the land impact should be -- 1800 something -- and then the reality of what it shows actually on the land menu inworld: 2200 something. Each and every prim in the build will have to be examined. In each every object inside the buildings will have to be taken back to inventory and also looked at to see how it is impacting. Given that the build itself doesn't have so many prims, and the objects with the high prim counts were already removed, it seems a mystery at this point. But those who need fervently for the new Land Impact never, ever to read wrong because then it would mean there were bugs in their software or impacts on their business are not the people to get the story from on this. In needs an independent and objective investigation. I don't have the time to undo the entire build now, as I'm busy and traveling, but in about 3-4 weeks, I will get to it and take it all apart. At this point, my working hypothesis is that there is a bug in the software as played on that channel and that it is giving the overrages suddenly in the reading and that when I remove everything, and the land will appear empty, and it will not have a build in the sky, then it will show 200 or 400 or whatever non existence prims, just as the other parcel did. Now, this might "go away" if some other channel was put on it (which is why I asked for but didn't get that); it might resolve for other reasons. Meanwhile, I see the exact same thing happening on another sim now. Fortunately that sim has a big buffer. No one is required to believe me about this but the minute it impacts one of you directly, then you'll get it. I suspect if it *is* a bug, that you will see many, many more people experience it and we will start to hear more cries. But given that the oldbies and their legacy builds don't log on, something like the return of the Ivory Tower of Prims could occur and the tree could fall in the forest without anyone hearing it...

Thanks for this public service, Jenni. It seems to me, however, that what *politically* is really happening here -- once you get through all the technicalities -- is that readings of "how much prim space remains" on a leased server, i.e. "what the land impact is" -- can very likely change for the *higher* or the *lower* -- but quite often *the higher*. Phil thinks that if an object goes from 2 prims to 4 LI while remaining the same object, or 16 prims or 18 LI while remaining the same object, merely "opted-in" or "linked differently," that "it doesn't matter". He likely doesn't want any one to stop buying primmy furniture for fear it will use up land. But it is using up more land. The Lindens have basically just raised tier by making the existing offer of server space in fact less. They obviously want to work very hard at hiding that news And so does the creator/scripter class -- they want to book it to FUD and "misinformation" if people see the new LI as basically halving the product and keeping the same price. But that *is* the news. And it's bad news -- a torus isn't 1 prim; it's a whopping *37* LI; 2 prims become 4, etc. This isn't trivial; it's not anecdotal; it's system wide; it has repercussions. This explains while an old legacy build from 2005, which has been obviously there mainly unchanged in its main components since then -- for more than 7 years -- and which had never been over its parcel limits could suddenly show nearly twice the number of prims and thereby use up a buffer and make it impossible for boats to pass. A chair that was 22 prims was now showing as 28; overall, a viewer that highlighted and showed the number of objects as 400 plus and 1800 something LI on the viewer, in fact inworld was showing 2200 on the actual land viewer, using the latest v3. If you suddenly have to get rid of half your prims or 1000 prims, you end up having to cut the build in half, and figuring out how to fake-link prims to get them to force the "favourable reading" and all the rest described here. What a racket! What a pain! How awful! This is exactly what I'm going through now. http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2013/01/not-our-world-even-if-our-imagination.html Most people on a smaller parcel in a rental somewhere aren't going to notice much. Perhaps they'll not be able to put out as much stuff. Or maybe some stuff will actually book as lower now, so they cancel each other out. I've already had some tenants on the mainland get exasperated at "new readings" of their formerly prim-compliant lots. I come, and I'm perplexed, too. You count the prims in the objects by looking at edit -- but the land impact is higher, sometimes by hundreds, forcing prim overrage in a group that wrecks havocs on group rentals on mainland. The Lindens and their chief apologists keep telling people the Party line: that the new reading system only affects mesh; that old legacy prims are essentially grandfathered; but wait, scripts might cause some different readings...and then they begin to mumble (which is why Jeremy Linden's article is so unclear -- it's deliberate -- ANYTHING but tell the customer that the product is now diminished but sold at the same price). Everyone knows what happened to cereal boxes in the recession. The price of cereal went way up, especially after some droughts. So instead of putting higher and higher prices on the boxes of cereal so that they would become ridiculous, like US $8.00 or $10.00, to keep them at $5.82 or $6.89 or something that looked plausible, they just reduced the size of the box, and also put less cereal in it but fluffed it up with air. When you get home and put your "new-sized" cereal box to a "legacy cereal box" in the cupboard, you see how you've been robbed -- when you open up the box and find half of it is air and there's about two bowls of cereal inside, you realize just how badly. The same thing has happened to Second Life.