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CodeWarrior Carling

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Everything posted by CodeWarrior Carling

  1. Thanks for the update Falcon! It's good to know that mesh is still being actively developed.
  2. The new limit on prim sizes is expected to be 64 meters. This is the limit on the beta grid where this feature along with meshes is being tested. Good luck getting an answer on when it might appear, or even on how the beta is going. I have asked numerous times in numerous places and noone with any real information is talking about it. Actually, there is a fresh thread somewhere in which Falcon Linden discusses the main issues still left to deal with before it can be moved to the main grid. It's looking like 2 months at least.
  3. Dilbert Dilweg wrote: An Award Badge of some sort.. That can be attached to their current badge... eh who knows.... Someone has to say it... Badges? We don't need no steenkin badges!
  4. I would be willing to be a reasonable sum that whoever does the voice chat programming at LL has never gone to a reasonably large event to test things. Having worked with a few live performance groups in SL, one of the most difficult aspects of just attending one is juggling voice chat levels. There has got to be a better way to manage voice levels than to try clicking at the right moment on the list of names as they shift around. It's like a skill testing game the way it is now, and it seems to be worse in Viewer 2 than it used to be. Maybe the UI can detect that my mouse is in the voice control panel and stop shifting the names around? Better yet, how about something like a parcel public address system where anyone in the parcel group has their voice chat delivered at a consistent level, unaffected by distance? The spatialization of voice chat is a neat technical trick, but there are many occasions where it hinders more than helps. I know many live theater people in Second Life who would cut off a limb to be able to put the actors in a special group so that they could be heard uniformly as they move around the stage.
  5. You're assuming I want it to be one way or the other, and all I want it to be is the same for snapshots and machinima.
  6. In the settings page, under the social connect tab, there is a section dedicated to setting up your profile badge. There appear to be two panels to this section - "Badge Settings" and "Profile Badge" - however, clicking either of these selections shows exactly the same choices. I can't help but think that there is a missing panel that would let us choose the text size, colors, background alpha and such for the overlay on the background image. Is this shut off intentionally, or just a feature that they haven't gotten working yet?
  7. You really should go and read the policy yourself. Yes.. there is some degree of 'blanket' permission for Linden owned land, but you will still need permissions from any land owners whose builds can be seen. I have to applaud Linden Labs for stating clearly that we own the rights to anything we film using the tool (Viewer and Servers). They have also given us permission to use any of their copyrighted materials (the library avatars, objects, etc.) and permission to film anything on Gov. Linden owned land. I just happen to think they should have stopped there, and left us to work things out with other residents on our own.
  8. I invite you to view the policy here at http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Snapshot_and_machinima_policy and decide for yourself how far reaching the policy is. It sounds from your comment like you feel that the policy is overreaching, and personally I agree. There is the legal issue of what a court would do based on real law, and there is a different issue here involving a private contract between you and Linden Labs (their TOS). Personally, I don't think it's at all clear that the courts consider your avatar to be the same as your physical person. I highly doubt that laws that apply to your real person apply to a representation of you composed of pixels that appear on someone elses computer. But by agreeing to the TOS, you open yourself to the possibility that your account could be suspended for posting a machinima that was made in violation of them, even if you post it somewhere other than LL servers. It's their grid, and their rules. If you break their rules, they can deny you access to their grid.
  9. The problem with your example is that it is equally possible for someone to come along and merely take snapshots of your sim, publish them on the web or elsewhere, and still claim the credit. LL could have also chosen to state that if you take a snapshot of something or film it, you must credit the builder. They didn't do that, so what they have done is given anyone permission to take snapshots of anyones build and publish it on the web without giving credit - unless you take some action. Exactly the kind of negative option permission that Redzone isn't going to be able to get away with. So I don't even buy that the existing policy protects the rights that you think it's protecting. I am reading that you 'like' the defaults they have in place for machinima, and I can't help thinking that you have to 'dislike' the defaults they have in place for snapshots for exactly the same reasons. The root problem with the policy for me is that it doesn't treat snapshots and machinima the same, and I doubt that anyone can come up with any logical reasons that would convince me that they shouldn't be.
  10. I think that would work for me. As long as there is no way to get there without acknowledging you've read and agree to something.. like most click throughs. Maybe LL should have an optional 'parcel TOS' click through that can be used for that kind of thing. It is their TOS that require us to obtain these permissions, so having a prescribed means of doing so would be helpful. They can keep track of what the parcel TOS said on a particular day, and whether a given avatar agreed to them or not. That kind of mechanism would have wide applicability beyond just permissions for filming.
  11. It's always bothered me that Linden Labs lumps Snapshots and Machinima together when they refer to their TOS when in fact the policies for snapshots are substantially different from the policies for machinima. I have seen blog posts and press releases however that imply that the more permissive snapshot rules apply to machinima as well. Wording to the effect of 'our snapshot and machinima policy allows people to do X' when in fact it only allows certain things for snapshots while forbidding them for machinima. Specifically, Linden Labs has granted permission for anyone to take snapshots on your land, or of your avatar by default. Before they put anything into the TOS, permission to take snapshots on your land or of your avatar was between you and me. By accepting the TOS, we've both had to agree that they have a skin in the game when they really don't. They have given you a way to prevent snapshots of your land from being taken, but you have no way to prevent people from taking snapshots of your avatar - not if you've agreed to the TOS. The same is not true for machinima. Linden Labs has forbidden anyone from making machinima of your land, or of your avatar without getting your permission. This is really just the situation that existed before they had any TOS. Between you and me. Since it's not the real flesh and blood you I would be making a machinima of, I might have even been willing to go to court to argue that you have no right to stop me from making machinima from the pixels on my own computer, but I have agreed to the TOS now, so it's much more cut and dried. I agreed that I would get your permission, and that's that. Since the policies for snapshots and machinima are completely different, I think it's misleading to refer to them both as a 'Snapshot and Machinima Policy'. It is definitely misleading to do so when describing only what is allowed for snapshots. I think what bothers me the most about it is the opening paragraph in the policy ( Policy ): We are thrilled to support the amazing creativity of our community’s artists who are taking snapshots and making machinima in Second Life. This policy is important for artists because it gives them copyright permissions from Linden Lab and the Second Life community to make the incredible works that we all enjoy. In the case of machinima, the policy does not give any permissions. Permission is needed from any land owner whose land you film, and from any avatar who appears in it, so what the policy really does for machinima is deny permission. Permission is given for snapshots, but definitely not for machinima. When this policy was announced, I stopped doing machinima of live events in SL. It is not possible for me to film a live event, and at the same time IM each avatar (in the audience) who may appear on film to get their permission. I don't even know who that griefer was that walked right across the stage, or perhaps it was just someone suffering a bad sim crossing. I can't turn the user interface back on and track it down without wrecking my film of the event. So I just don't film live events in SL anymore. Phaylen Fairchild can tell you what kind of horrors can happen if permission is not obtained in writing so please don't post advice like 'just put up a sign that says if you enter here you give permission to film'. Negative options like that don't constitute permission as the recent Redzone debates have adequately shown. People can teleport in and not see the sign, or maybe they don't speak English. And I don't need anyone to point out that the TOS state I only need permission from "avatars whose appearance is sufficiently distinctive that they are recognizable by members of the Second Life community". Who am I to make that judgement? How am I to make it? As far as I'm concerned, this means every avatar. And how do I prove I got permission? Again.. the only REAL way to do that is in writing, and that means it's just not worth the hassle. So that's it. The SL TOS for machinima suck, but for those of you who do snapshots - I'm glad you have the TOS backing up your right to take and post those photos. Just be careful not to take too many snapshots per second or you may go over the line and violate the TOS.
  12. I will only ever use an 'official' LL viewer. I just don't trust anyone else with my login info, passwords, inventory, etc. etc. So I have been using Viewer 2.x exclusively since it was introduced, and while there are many things I do like about it, there are several things that I really, really don't like about it, to the point where I rarely go in world anymore, and when I do go in world, constantly get in the way of my SL experience. One thing that is always getting in the way is the undockable local chat window. Whenever I update the viewer, I go into the preferences and change the default settings so that all my chat windows dock into one chat window, and I turn off the 'waste whitespace' feature so that peoples names appear beside their text and not on seperate lines. The 'local chat' window however is considered 'special' for some reason that escapes me, and most other users. I can speak on behalf of most other users because I have seen the voting numbers from the Phoenix viewer and this was one of the most rabidly hated things about Viewer 2. I concur with that view. I hate it because it uneccessarily wastes a lot of 3D viewing area for 2D UI stuff. I have a great fear that we are stuck with it forever because there is a special 'docking' button for it down by the 'local chat' text area, but I don't even think there should be a special 'local chat' area. Local chat is just a scrolling text area where messages are printed and where you can enter messages to be sent into the same window. It ain't no different from a group chat window or other instant message window, and if some programmer or UI designer thinks it is, they need to step back from things and get some perspective. This is probably THE biggest reason my usage of SL has gone from probably five hours a day in world, to about one hour a week. Second Life to me when using Viewer 2 is pretty much a glorified chat program. So much space is devoted to 2D UI when the sidebar is open that I can only see maybe 30 % of the view 'out the window'. The same concerns over screen real estate existed with 1.2x, but I could move windows to wherever I wanted, iconify them, and the local chat window docked with all of the other chat windows. I could see probably 80% 'out the window'. Rodvik mentioned this in one of his interviews. He recognizes that anything that distracts from the 3D world lessens the experience. Well the entire Viewer 2 UI paradigm detracts from my 3D experience to the point where I get my 3D jollies elsewhere.
  13. I am also curious what the status of the beta is I'm not looking for a release date, but some info on how well the beta is going and what remains to be done before it comes to the main grid would be nice.
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