A Misfit's Virtual Life

Kobo disses Linux

2011-11-30T22:15:00.001-08:00

The day before Thanksgiving, I had found a great deal on something I had been pining to get ever since my cousin got one: an ebook reader. Now, I had ebook reading apps on my Android phone and Linux desktop, but the phone's screen is too small for proper book reading compared to tablets and ereaders like the Kindle. So I was stoked to find that Dollar General was selling this ebook reader for a jaw-dropping $50 on Thanksgiving Day only(I should have waited a week as it's now $45 for Christmas). So I ordered it online on Thanksgiving and received it in the mail on Monday.

After fiddling around with it a bit, I figured out how to add ebooks to it via USB to my Linux desktop PC. An easy affair, but today I wanted to give the Kobo bookstore a try, since the ereader's maker claimed that it worked with Kobo.

Unfortunately, Kobo failed me here. It turns out that Kobo follows the "iTunes/iPod" model when syncing to ereaders that lack internet capability. The ereader I bought did come bundled with the Kobo Desktop app, but only for Windows and Mac. There's no Linux version at all(officially at least), and when I got an ebook via the Kobo webstore, it doesn't give the option to download the ebook for USB transfer to the reader. So I'm left with no way to put Kobo-bought books on my device.

But instead of slamming Kobo for this, I'd like to suggest a solution for this lack of Linux support(I'm aware there is an "unofficial" Debian-based port of Kobo Desktop, but it's 32-bit only and won't install on my 64-bit machine): Make an OS-agnostic web version of the Kobo Desktop app. Or at the very least enable USB syncing via the web bookstore. Until such a solution is made, my only options are getting non-DRM ebooks elsewhere or get a different ebook reader with better Linux support(meaning either way that Kobo loses my business).

Update: I have installed the Windows version of Kobo Desktop via Wine, and it works great except that the app won't recognize the ereader when I connect it via USB . So I've made some progress, but the main complaint still stands.

Ubuntu Natty Narwhal Alpha 3: State of Unity Review

2011-03-12T09:34:00.000-08:00

A while back I gave a pretty harsh review of Ubuntu Natty Alpha 1, to the point where I basically ran back screaming to Maverick Meerkat. Well, as I promised in the comments, I've given it another shot with the latest alpha release. The short review is this: Unity has progressed nicely, but still needs some polishing work, and be prepared for quite a few desktop workflow changes.

Unity: Almost there

Unity desktop on Alpha 3

Unity has definitely come a long way since Alpha 1 tortured me to death, but it still isn't quite polished enough for me to use as a decent desktop. But still, there's a lot improvements worth talking about. First, all the desktop launchers I had on my ~/Desktop directory no longer clutter up Unity's sidebar, although it's not immediately apparent how I can go about adding a launcher to it if I want to. When you launch an application like Firefox, you'll notice something quite jarring at first but makes sense given Canonical's recent design changes: the application menus are no longer shown in the application window(with a few exceptions), but rather on the top of the screen, like how it is on Mac OS X. After messing around with applications a bit, I quickly got used to it and don't consider it a bad change.

One other little improvement is that the sidebar hides itself whenever an active application window goes fullscreen or is moved over to left side of the screen.

There's one significant change that solves one of the major problems I had with Unity, but has it's own problems. When you click the Ubuntu logo on the top left of the screen, a big fat slab window appears with a search bar and some other stuff. While some folks may like it, I prefer it show menus similar to what you get when you click the Ubuntu logo in Gnome. I don't want to go around type-hunting for an application. Actually, this is pretty much the major thing keeping me from considering Unity as an actual desktop.

Gnome: Where "Classic" doesn't mean suckage

The "Classic" desktop: Gnome

Canonical's worked so much on making Unity so compatible with Gnome, that Gnome actually feels like Unity(just without the sidebar or search slab window). It's still the same old Gnome, which isn't bad at all. The only major change you'll notice is in the default applications. Rhythmbox is gone, having been replaced by Banshee. While Banshee is a Mono application(I view Mono as pretty much a "necessary evil" as I need it for OpenSim), Banshee does its' job pretty good, and earns a spot as a worthy application for me. Firefox has been updated to a 4.0 beta release, bringing a few UI changes and Sync feature allowing remote preference, bookmark and settings backup and restore. OpenOffice.org has been replaced with LibreOffice.

All in all, Alpha 3 has shown major improvements to the point where I have decided to keep it on my desktop machine. If you decide to install it, I have one protip for you: install it without choosing to download updates or proprietary packages during install. The installer bombed out when I tried that, and had to redo the installation. Hopefully that will be fixed in the next alpha. Nevertheless, good job, Canonical!

Puppy Linux: A distro well-suited for a portable Second Life®

2011-02-20T20:14:00.000-08:00

A couple of days ago I stumbled upon an old Lifehacker article about Linux distros that can be run from a USB stick. The author of the article wound up favoring Puppy Linux as the best of the bunch. While I've had a go-round with Slitaz Linux before, it still seems too svelte to be a decent USB distro.

So I downloaded the latest stable release, burned it to CD, booted it up and installed it to my flash drive. After a quick change to my desktop's boot sequence via BIOS, I booted my new Puppy flash drive for the first time, greeted by a desktop similar to the screenshot on the download page.

Once I answered a few simple questions(video resolution, date/time zone, etc.) I immediately went to the "browse" icon on the desktop. On first click, a window popped up giving me a choice of web browsers to download and install(Dillo is included by default, but is like ELinks wrangled into a GUI). I picked out the latest stable Firefox release, and restored all my bookmarks from a save file I had on my hard drive. When I was done, Puppy copied over the entire OS stored in RAM into a file on my flash drive, in effect making Puppy persistent.

Over the next day or so I played around with Puppy, particularly as I was getting fed up with weird graphical glitches coming from the Flash player on Ubuntu. Just over an hour ago I decided to try an experiment to answer this question: Could I run an SL client on Puppy?

The answer turns out to be "Yes, if you can do without music and video streaming(due to the lack of GStreamer PET packages; can be somewhat mitigated using "About Land" and copying the URL to MPlayer)". Provided your graphics card is made by Nvidia, all you need to do is launch quickpet, go to the Drivers tab, choose "Click here to test your graphics card", install the Nvidia driver recommended, choose "Probe" in the Xorg wizard and pick a good screen resolution. That's it! Then you can download any viewer for SL/OpenSim(the official viewer doesn't run so well, but Imprudence works much better).

I haven't yet tried running OpenSim on Puppy, but I suspect that will be a bit harder to set up since I haven't seen any mono-related packages in Puppy's software repositories. I might have some luck if I try the official binary packages from the Mono website. Stay tuned for a future post if I'm successful, or an update on this post if not.

Doing everyday tasks on a Linux CLI environment

2010-12-27T19:24:00.000-08:00

In my last post, I detailed the horrific digital aftermath of what happened after I had tested out the Ubuntu Natty Alpha 1 release. In short, I was left with a system that refused to boot into a graphical environment at all and was forced to use the command line to do several tasks that would normally be done in a GUI. I was so surprised at how remarkably easy it was to do these tasks(web browsing, torrent downloading, CD burning) on the command line, I announced my intention of going completely GUI-less for two days.

While the "recovery console" session option found in the GDM login screen would be the closest replication of my X-less ordeal, I found that the xterm window it had was too small to show in snapshots. I decided to log into Gnome, but work solely within a maximized xterm window(alternatively you can use gnome-terminal and toggle full-screen with the F11 button). Here are the following applications I've used so far, grouped together according to general tasks:

File Management:

Midnight Commander

There's a few options when it comes to file management on the console. There are, of course, the built-in shell commands(cd, ls, touch, mkdir, rm,rmdir, etc.) ready to be used with just a few keystrokes. But if you want to navigate your filesystem in a more visual way, you can either use the built-in file navigator in the vim text editor(type ":e ." at the vim command line to activate it), or use the Midnight Commander(mc) file manager to do so. Midnight Commander is a two-paned file manager, allowing you to perform file management tasks in two places at once. It can perform file (de)compression, and includes its' own command line when you need to do precise actions on a selection.

Window Management:

Yes, the Linux command line can have a "window manager" of sorts. That window manager is called screen. It allows you to have multiple terminal sessions, similar to managing tabs in GUI terminal emulators. It's a necessity when you want to run several command line tasks at once and backgrounding will not suffice, or when have logged onto a server via SSH and wish to run something after you've exited the session. It should be available in virtually any major distribution's repositories.

Multimedia:

While it's true the command line is non-graphical, it is certainly possible to do some multimedia tasks with no problems.

For sound recording, you can use arecord to record sound from your microphone, and then pipe the output to an encoder like so:

arecord -f cd -d numberofseconds -t raw | lame -x -r – out.mp3

arecord -f cd -d numberofseconds -t raw | oggenc – -r -o out.ogg

Music On Console

For listening to audio stored on your computer, there's several console-based music players(such as gst123, aplay and the awesome opencubicplayer), but I like Music-On-Console(moc), as it allows you to play music in the background while doing other tasks. It is invoked as "mocp" on the command line(to avoid clashing with the "meta object compiler" used when compiling Qt/KDE graphical applications). While playing music, press "q" to exit back to the command line, but all the music in mocp's current directory or playlist will continue to play. You can simply re-invoke mocp to get control again.

To rip audio from a CD, cdparanoia does the job well and the output can be sent to an audio encoder just like arecord.

You can also master and burn CDs/DVDs on the command line. As I mentioned in the last blog post, growisofs can be used to both create ISO images and burn them to disc.

You can also watch movies on the command line with mplayer by invoking it like this:

mplayer -vo caca movie.avi

Office:

Vim, editing a C header file

Yup, you can do some standard office tasks on the command line. For doing calculations, there's the bc command line calculator. And there's no dearth of command line text editors(nano, vim, emacs, etc.), but there's only two apps specifically geared towards word processing: antiword and wordgrinder.

Antiword allows you to view and convert MS Word files into plain text, PostScript or PDF files. An indispensable tool if working with Word files is unavoidable.

Wordgrinder word processor

Wordgrinder is perhaps the only thing on Linux that can be called a console-based word processor. While it writes in its' own native format, it can import from and export to plain text and HTML files. It supports basic styles and paragraphs, but don't expect anything fancy. Nevertheless, its' better than plain text or forcing yourself to do TeX formatting.

SC spreadsheet calculator

For spreadsheet processing, sc fits the bill perfectly(especially if you like vi/vim). Combined with wordgrinder and abook(console address book), you pretty much have a console office suite at this point.

Internet:

While Web browsing has evolved into a very multimedia affair(Flash, Youtube, Facebook/Twitter, etc.), there's a surprising amount of things you can do on the Internet without a GUI.

ELinks web browser, viewing Groklaw.net

For console web browsing, Ubuntu ships w3m by default. While w3m is okay for viewing individual pages, that's all it's really good for. It's basically like the "less" command for web pages. For a truly decent console web browser, elinks is the way to go. It has bookmarks, download management, color support, CSS support and yet it cuts through all the useless crap(Flash, ads and popups) to get you the content you really want.

For non-interactive web interaction, wget and curl are excellent tools. You can also download torrents with the rtorrent console client(mentioned in the previous blog post and highly recommended).

For email, there's several console email clients to use. There's pine/alpine, the traditional mail command, and mutt. If you're used to using the nano text editor, alpine is the easiest option. Mutt is way more powerful, but requires a bit of configuration to get it working specifically how you want it to.

Irssi, chatting with the Kokua/Imprudence devs

For instant messaging, you can use Finch, the console version of the Pidgin instant messenger. And I've found irssi to be a very capable console IRC chat application.

Google:

GoogleCL manpage

Yes, believe it or not, Google has a command line interface for some of its' services(Blogger, Youtube, Picasa, Docs, etc.). And because of that, it gets it's own section. On Ubuntu, you can install the "googlecl" package directly via apt-get. If your distribution's package manager doesn't have it available, you could download the tarball and compile it yourself.

Graphics:

Montage of previous screenshots

You would think that in a command-line only environment, there's not much you can do with graphics. But strangely enough, that's not the case with the ImageMagick suite of command line tools. With ImageMagick, you could create and manipulate pictures in ways that was once the sole domain of GUI image editors like GIMP. The above picture is a montage of all the other pictures I took while creating this blog post, made possible by the montage tool of the ImageMagick suite. You can make composites, animated GIFs, apply various effects, and a whole lot of other things.

Missed stuff:

I'm pretty sure I've missed a few things, so feel free to let me know in the comments.

Ubuntu Unity Desktop Review: The disasterous aftermath

2010-12-08T19:37:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I blogged about the current shortcomings of the Unity desktop environment. What happened afterwards, however, is a horror story with a valuable lesson learned, and also something of a testament as to why the *nix command-line still rocks hard.

The problem started when I noticed that Totem and MPlayer started acting weird. When playing a video, the colors were screwed up. But it was kinda funny how people in videos looked as blue as the Smurfs(I now regret not taking a screenshot when I had the chance). So I thought "Maybe I'll check the repositories to see if there's any updates that could fix this".

So I fired up update-manager, and sure enough there were a lot of updates. I proceeded to install them all, thinking it would fix the movie problems and maybe pull in some improvements to Unity too. After the slightly lengthy download and install process, I was instructed to reboot the machine.

On reboot, instead of seeing the familiar GDM login screen, I get greeted with a black screen with only a "ubuntu login:" text prompt. Apparently the X server failed to start up properly. So I logged in and tried to start it manually with "startx". No dice, and it mentioned something about the Nvidia modules. It was then I knew what had happened: the kernel image and/or the nvidia modules didn't jive together. I then tried installing the nvidia-current package and then rebooted. Still didn't work. So I was left with one option: back up my data and re-install the stable Ubuntu release.

But I didn't have a CD/DVD with Ubuntu already on it. I had to first go to the Ubuntu website, download the ISO, and then burn it to disc all from the command-line.

Luckily, I still had access to the Web, could install packages via apt-get, and I knew my way around getting help in a gui-less situation. First, I installed elinks(a text-mode web browser) and rtorrent(a command-line bittorrent client). I launched elinks and navigated to the torrent download link. I saved the torrent file to my home directory, then launched rtorrent to quickly download the ISO.

The real tricky part for me was figuring out how to burn the ISO image via the command-line. After doing a little Googling, I found that the command "growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/dvd=image.iso" fit the job perfectly. After the disc burn was complete, I rebooted and the live session started up without a hitch.

During the live session, I attempted to copy as much of my user data onto a pen drive as I could. Unfortunately, many of the files were somehow uncopiable(undoubtedly a permissions glitch). But whatever I couldn't backup wasn't anything irreplaceable, so it wasn't all too bad.

Then I launched the Ubuntu installer. The installer pretty much took me by surprise, as I recalled I never actually installed Maverick Meerkat fresh before(previously I had upgraded to it from the previous release, Lucid Lynx). The installer is now so polished I can confidently say it's idiot-proof.

Once the install was done, I rebooted and was greeted with an uber-fast bootup from manufacturer splash image to GDM in less than 15 seconds. I'm now still in the process of rebuilding all my lost user data, but I'm back in the game with a couple of golden nuggets of wisdom:

Always regularly backup your stuff, because shit really does happen when you least expect it.
When you're using early alpha software, shit happening is almost guaranteed. Be prepared for it.

However, this experience has compelled me to try a little experiment in the near future. I plan to dedicate at least 2 days of computer use solely within a command-line environment. No desktop environments, no window managers, and no GUI applications at all. Of course this means no SL or YouTube, but I'd like to see how far the command-line can be used to perform tasks usually reserved for a GUI environment. Look out for a future blog post on it.

Ubuntu Unity Desktop Review

2010-12-07T08:32:00.000-08:00

A few days ago I decided to upgrade my desktop Ubuntu OS from 10.10(Maverick Meerkat) to 11.04(Natty Narwal) Alpha 1. Previous experience upgrading to such an early alpha release told me that this would be very risky and likely I would have to re-install back to the stable release. But after the lengthy upgrade process was completed(took a few hours because I had Gnome, KDE, and LXDE desktop environments previously installed), I successfully rebooted and was greeted with the familiar GDM login screen.

I clicked on my username, entered my password and chose "Ubuntu Desktop Edition" for the desktop session. But instead of Gnome or Unity popping up, it appeared that what I got was a very unfinished and incomplete desktop session. There was no launcher, no panel or even an easy logout mechanism. I was ready to dismiss Alpha 1 as a starting point only for the developers. FAIL.

But it turned out the Unity launcher and panel was present, but required desktop effects to be turned on to use them. So I did just that and this is what appeared:

Ubuntu Unity "Desktop"

Looks like a cross between Gnome Shell and Ubuntu's Netbook UI. What initially annoyed me was that all the entries I created in my Desktop directory were being shown twice: in the launcher and on the desktop screen. And notice the launcher entries displaying a question mark as the icon? That's because it seems the launcher can't display icons that are not stored on the system icon directories. I'd have to hover my mouse over the icons to tell what they really are. FAIL.

But the worst current feature of this release is finding all the applications. You have to click on the Ubuntu logo on the top left of the screen, and Nautilus will appear showing you the /usr/share/applications directory. Ugh. No application menu grouping or sorting by task at all here, just a single directory being spit out in front of you. FAIL.

As far as I can see, the current incarnation of the Unity desktop isn't even a true desktop environment yet. It's still a major work-in-progress, much like when KDE 4 first appeared. No doubt we'll see much improvement in future alpha releases, but for now I'll be sticking with Gnome/KDE/LXDE for my real desktop needs. Unity still needs a lot of work to be easy enough for casual use.

Linden Lab to TPV developers: No KDU for you!(Updated)

2010-09-20T09:59:00.000-07:00

During the final months of the now-banned Emerald viewer, one of the major scandals that hastened its' demise was the emkdu library that Emerald used was hacked to send user info to Modular Systems without the knowledge or consent of the user. As a result of the discovery, Emerald was forced to remove emkdu.

In the aftermath of Emerald's demise, Linden Lab has made a few drastic changes. First and most important, they have changed the license of the official 2.x viewer from GPL to LGPL. Second, they are no longer going to release llkdu as a DLL. They will statically link llkdu into the viewer binaries. Third, they are playing copyright cops by threatening to delist, ban or block TPVs that use KDU code without obtaining a proper license(claiming it is a GPL violation).

Why is KDU important? Well, it's the code used to render textures in-world. The advantage KDU has is that it renders textures faster than the open source equivalent, openjpeg. However, KDU's speed advantage seems to be negligible on machines with modern graphics capabilities. So it makes a difference only on lower-end machines.

My personal opinion on it is this: There's only two proper solutions for TPV developers: either switch to a 2.x codebase and obtain a KDU license(not cheap, by the way), or obsolete KDU by modifying openjpeg to match or outperform KDU.

The former solution is apparently what LL is betting TPV developers will not do. They must think that they will simply fall back on stock openjpeg, and as a result virtually all TPVs will be "inferior" to their own viewer. It's clearly a power play by the Lab, once you look at the bigger picture.

However, Kakadu does not have a monopoly on JPEG decoding and rendering. TPV developers can either enhance openjpeg, or switch to another open source library such as JasPer(Google "open source jpeg2000 library" for more possibilities) and work with that. And as a form of protest against LL's power play, TPV developers should temporarily not contribute JPEG library changes back to LL. If LL wants the improvements, they'll have to go out and download them, just like TPV developers do to incorporate LL changes.

Update: It seems that KDU, if by what folks on SLU are saying is true about KDU vs. openjpeg speed, then ultimately KDU is merely a crutch for older and low-end machines. So ultimately, the KDU problem may solve itself when SL users upgrade their lower-end machines.

Fractured... OUT!!!(Updated 2x)

2010-08-21T23:20:00.000-07:00

It seems Fractured Crystal has finally bitten off more than he can chew, and the entire Emerald gang may soon fork their viewer or call it quits.

What happened? Well, as of a few days ago, Emerald users were unknowingly being co-opted into becoming a part of a botnet designed to perform a DDoS(distributed denial of service) attack on the website of Hazim Gazov, a known distributor of a copybot client who has taken it upon himself to expose the "shenanigans" of the Emerald gang. Hazim quickly discovered what was going on and wasted no time bringing the crime into the public light. The news caught on like wildfire, and given the recent departure of LordGregGreg Back(he quit on ethical principles, believe it or not), the backlash is finally making Linden Lab consider outright banning Emerald.

What happens next is anybody's guess. If LL decides to ban Emerald, it's game over for all of them, including the devs who aren't total douchebags. If Emerald isn't banned, then most likely Emerald will fracture(pun intended) in two.

Either way, it's natural justice against Fractured and Phox. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

"I've got shit to do. I'm TP'ing out." - Fractured Crystal

Update: Fractured has issued a mea culpa on the Modular Systems blog(jokingly titled "Off with his head"), where he announced he will be "voluntarily" leaving Emerald and hand over control of the project to Arabella Steadham. That still leaves Phox, Fractured's BFF in crime still hanging around, and who's to say Fractured won't simply rejoin the project under a new alt account? Even LordGregGreg has come out completely against using Emerald regardless of Fractured's departure, and started his own fork. Who do you trust?

Update 2: The Lindens' first official action on the matter... Emerald is no longer listed in the TPV directory.

Why gay marriage is NOT a moral wrong; it IS a civil right

2010-08-13T00:50:00.000-07:00

(Long rant ahead folks, please bear with me, it's just for this post)

Yesterday, Judge Walker had decided to lift the ban on gay marriage in California, effective on August 18. I was informed of the upcoming ruling on SLUniverse, where I also came upon a link to CNN's live streaming coverage of the ruling at the courthouse steps.

While watching the streaming video, I(as well as some others) noticed several signs held up, obviously from the Pro-Prop8 side. I will debunk these signs below.

All three signs show the bigotry of the Prop8 supporters in several ways. First, "Resist Judicial Tyranny" is just plain scared propaganda because there was no judicial tyranny whatsoever in Walker's over 130 page ruling. He painstakingly went over all the evidence and overwhelmingly found that, for example, that gay marriages cause no harm whatsoever to the institution of marriage, to children or even society. Even the defense's witnesses and experts agreed with that. What tyranny is it when you appear in a court of law, fail to bring enough significant evidence to support your claims, then lose the case due to that failure? It would be tyranny if Judge Walker ruled without going over the evidence in the ruling.

Then there's "Judge Mocks God". Do they really want to go there? Do they really want to stand up in a court of law and state Leviticus and Deuteronomy defines marriage? Even putting aside the obvious church/state separation blocker, gay activists can use Leviticus and Deuteronomy(and a dose of Mark too) against itself¹:

If it is discovered that a bride is not a virgin, the Bible demands that she be executed by stoning immediately. Deuteronomy 22:13-21
If a married person has sex with someone else’s husband or wife, the Bible commands that both adulterers be stoned to death. Deuteronomy 22:22
Divorce is strictly forbidden in both Testaments, as is remarriage of anyone who has been divorced. Mark 10:1-12
The Bible forbids a married couple from having sexual intercourse during a woman’s period. If they disobey, both shall be executed.Leviticus 18:19
If a man dies childless, his widow is ordered by biblical law to have intercourse with each of his brothers in turn until she bears her deceased husband a male heir. Mark 12:18-27
If a man gets into a fight with another man and his wife seeks to rescue her husband by grabbing the enemy’s genitals, her hand shall be cut off and no pity shall be shown her. Deuteronomy 25:11-12

While these verses deal with heterosexual marriages, it clearly shows the very bigoted, hateful and repressive attitude towards women(stoning, execution, cutting off of hands, forbidding of divorce and remarriage, etc). These are examples of why the separation of church and state has been such a demonstrable benefit to the United States and other countries that have adopted a similar policy. We've learned that such religious edicts are truly backwards.

And finally, there's "A moral wrong cannot be a civil right". The obvious question I can raise is "What makes the marriage of a gay couple immoral"? The answer, invariably and inevitably, always leads to Leviticus 18:22 - "Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable". As I shown above, the Bible and religion cannot claim moral authority, as it encourages misogyny, cruel and unjust punishment, and repression(of a sexual nature and of common sense).

So a fallback argument is procreation, but this fails splendidly because it is based on the false assumption that allowing gay marriage will halt procreation of the species. There's homosexuality in other species, yet homosexual members of a species has never(AFAIK) constituted a majority nor had anything beyond a negligible impact on species procreation. Additionally, homosexual couples wishing to raise children do have options such as adoption and surrogate mother-ship(or in-vitro fertilization in the case of lesbian couples).

So in conclusion, it's evident that opponents of gay marriage have no standing morally, legally, or even logically. The only provenance they can claim is solely within religious circles, not civil matters performed by the state. The evidence for gay marriage as a civil right is ever mounting and it may be the right time for the United States to finally embrace gay marriage as a civil right, just as it did interracial marriage.

Disclosure: I am not gay, but I do have a relative who is, and I have several friends in SL/OpenSim who are gay and I support their rights 100%.

Credits:
¹http://gayteens.about.com/od/glbtteenlifestyle/ss/the_bibile_4.htm

Update: I've found two YouTube videos(here and here) that goes over Judge Walker's ruling and they absolutely demolish the Pro-Prop8 side's claims and arguments. They are truly must-see videos.

MetaGridNet Revamp in progress

2010-08-08T20:49:00.000-07:00

As I've previously announced here, I have created a small public OpenSim sandbox called MetaGridNet. It was originally created alongside an Elgg social networking installation. Unfortunately due to persistent spam on the site, I decided to nuke the server and start anew. The MetaGridNet sandbox is still operational, although I did do a fresh install using the latest OpenSim "Diva" distribution(I may set up a basic web site later on). The Diva install has brought with it a couple of new features and one in particular that was sorely needed: a built-in web-based user account creation and management framework(called "Wifi").

The benefit of this is immediate: Metaverse travelers can now easily set up a MetaGridNet account by going to the account registration page and login any third-party viewer(except Emerald because it's not optimized for OpenSim use) with the login URI "http://metagridnet.com:9000/". Or if you're already on a grid that uses Hypergrid protocol 1.5, you can perform a Hypergrid jump.

Stay tuned for further updates.

Victoriana triumphantly returns!

2010-08-08T20:22:00.000-07:00

I had previously blogged about Victoriana and Tinytoriana, a Victorian-themed Second Life estate that had been forced to leave SL due to gigantic permissions screwups caused by Linden maintenance routines. The decision to leave and the resulting close-down caused a lot of sadness in SL residents.

However, I'm very happy to report that Victoriana is rising from the digital ashes over at InWorldz! I had found out about it this afternoon while in a group chat with fellow Raglanite tinies. After checking the map, I had teleported to Victoriana Square to take a brief look. Later on in the day after I got home from work, I had checked out Tinytoriana, a place made specifically for Victorian tinies. If there were any differences from when the estate was in SL, I couldn't notice them. So there's relatively little readjustments structurally, despite the fact that LittleBlackDuck Lindsay is still in the process of reconstructing the Victoriana estate.

Nevertheless, it's heartening to see this wonderful estate get a "second life" again, thanks to InWorldz and OpenSim.

P.S. - For a future post, I may try to get in touch with Mr. Lindsay to ask him some questions like why he decided to pick InWorldz, how he reconstructed his estate, what the future holds for his newly resurrected estate and more.

Guide to the Metaverse, Part 3: H-Town, A showcase grid

2010-07-05T20:19:00.000-07:00

Continuing my trips to OpenSim grids, this morning I heard that the residential architecture company Hometta has opened their OpenSim interactive showcase grid, H-Town, to the general public. I had heard a lot of buzz about it recently and felt it was worth a visit, so I promptly registered. After registration I hit upon a stumbling block as the viewer offered for H-Town(a slightly customized Hippo viewer) was only for Windows and Macintosh. However, after a failed attempt to use Wine to run the Windows version of Hippo, I had found the instructions necessary to login with the regular Hippo viewer(on Linux).

Upon login, I landed at the Welcome Area, where there were several display signs that would take you to the house shown on the display. The grid itself, while technically small(only 3 regions), is well designed and certainly looks like a modern suburban neighbourhood in development. The houses already up are wonderfully built and are scripted to give visitors an interactive, hands-on experience. My personal favourite was the Draft House, and given that there's more houses coming soon, I'll be sure to make subsequent visits.

The Hometta folks have put a lot of effort into developing H-Town, and it shows. In my opinion, H-Town is a great example of utilizing OpenSim to showcase RL architecture to potential customers, and as a tool for architecture protoyping.

If you're into architecture or are looking to find a dream house to build, checking out H-Town is definitely worth a shot.

If you want to check out the other places where I've been, all of my "Guide to the Metaverse" posts are now tagged "metaverseguide".

The Google vs. Viacom decision: How Virtual Worlds benefit from it

2010-06-23T22:15:00.000-07:00

The big news just came out: Google has beaten Viacom on summary judgement. The case was about Viacom claiming that Google/YouTube knew that copyright infringement was happening on their site and was therefore exempt from the DMCA "Safe Harbor" provisions.

These two snippets from the decision sum up the reasons for the judgement perfectly:

General knowledge that infringement is 'ubiquitous' does not impose a duty on the service provider to monitor or search its service for infringements ... the burden is on the owner to identify the infringement

What Viacom was trying to do, in layman's terms, was attempt to force Google/YouTube into taking the burden of enforcing copyright beyond traditional copyright law and the DMCA. If Viacom prevailed, it would mean YouTube would have to review each and every video uploaded to their site and determine if the video infringes someone's copyright.

This decision is good news, not only for website operators, but also for virtual worlds. As an example of how virtual worlds could have been negatively affected if Google lost, one only needs to look at the long dead virtual world There.com.

There.com residents were split into two classes: consumers and content developers. To become a developer, you had to enroll in the developer program. When you create content, you can't simply start selling it on the spot(like with SL/OpenSim). You must submit the content to There.com's review staff. If the content doesn't pass the review for reasons such as inappropriate content or perceived copyright infringement, you can't sell or use the content inworld.

The problem with this approach is that the review staff weren't copyright owners or authorized agents of copyright owners. Yet they actively played "copyright cops" even in the absence of proper DMCA procedure. This, despite the approach successfully enticing RL companies into creating presences in There, actually endangered their ability to invoke the DMCA Safe Harbor provisions in court.

It's not hard to see that this sort of "copyright police state" scenario is very possible in SL and OpenSim grids, because SL/OpenSim's situation is practically identical to YouTube. Copyright infringements happen quite often in virtual worlds, but it's practically impossible for the grid operators to police the entire grid for copyright infringements. They would wind up dedicating all of their time taking down content they think is infringing someone's copyright instead of properly operating, running and improving the grid. It's an undue legal burden.

That's why the decision states that the burden is(rightfully) on the copyright owner, not the service provider, to identify(via DMCA notices) infringements. The service provider isn't liable to legal action unless they do not follow DMCA procedures. That's Safe Harbor in a nutshell, folks. Be thankful for it.

Update: Via one of my favourite YouTubers, Thunderf00t, I have found a jaw-dropping 18 minute video of Mike Mozart of JeepersMedia catching Viacom doing the exact same thing they accused Google/YouTube of doing. Using Viacom's logic, the YouTubers whose videos got uploaded to Spike.com without their permission could sue Viacom(not the "uploaders"). And since Spike.com(formerly iFilm.com) claimed to "screen all videos uploaded", they may lose Safe Harbor protections under the DMCA. So Viacom, maybe you should rethink filing an appeal, and be happy the judge ruled in Google's favor. You actually benefit from it, believe it or not.

Emerald vs Other 3rd-Party Viewers: Who Can You Trust?

2010-06-04T15:09:00.000-07:00

Most of us know that the Emerald viewer is the most popular third-party viewer in Second Life today. Many of it's users will quickly tell you of its' dozens of features that put the official viewer to shame. But ask them this question and you will get some surprising answers: "Do you trust the Emerald developers?"

Those who quickly answer "Yes!" either haven't gotten enough information about them or are willfully ignorant of their shady histories. Those who answer "No" do know about the gang's griefing power plays, but think that there aren't any decent alternatives or "I can't live without Emerald feature X".

Whenever a person decides to switch away from the official viewer, trust in the developer(s) is a crucial factor. In this blog post, let's take a look at the Emerald developers and the Imprudence developers(the viewer that I use) and see how we can compare them in the context of trust.

Let's start off with the Imprudence developers(Jacek Antonelli, McCabe Maxsted and Armin Weatherwax). Okay, so they have a blog, a wiki, a forum, a source code repository, an issue tracker and a mailing list, for starters. So on the surface it's fairly professional. But wait, what do we see in the "Imprudence Links"? Ah, a privacy policy! Very nice. And also in the wiki we find out that the developers hold weekly public meetings(called ImpDev meetups) and publish full transcripts of the meetings. Bonus points on transparency. Another crucial factor is that all of the developers appear to have clean records in SL.

So it seems the Imprudence folks are on the up-and-up.

Now let's see how Emerald stacks up. Well, they seem to have the same basics as Imprudence(blog, wiki, source code repository, etc) and a privacy policy also, but let's dig deeper. Well, looks like the blog has completely disabled comments on all posts. They hold "office hours" but it appears the last thing even remotely resembling an office hour was posted Feb. 6th, 2010. Also, their latest "project" to be outed, Onyx, has gone from a public list of known malicious viewers to a page requiring a username and password to view. So that means they have chosen not to be transparent in the face of public scrutiny.

Then there's the illicit pasts of Fractured Crystal, and Phox/Lonely Bluebird. Fractured's history is that of a typical serial copybotter/griefer. Phox has been caught bragging about stealing stuff, loves to smoke weed, and claims to be able to have the ability to estate manage the entire SL grid. While the other Emerald members' pasts aren't entirely clear one way or the other, it's apparent they are complicit with Fractured and Phox's grid shenanigans.

So now I ask you folks: are all those blingy Emerald features really worth trusting a known copybotter, a kleptomaniac stoner, and a group who has the entire SL grid by the shorthairs(via Onyx)? Who can you really trust? how will you "weigh the scales"?

Update 6/20/2010: The Emerald gang has radically overhauled their ModularSystems site, restoring the comments feature. But all the old comments(and blog posts from April and earlier) are long since nuked, and now there is absolutely no mention of Onyx on the site(navigating to onyx.modularsystems.sl now yields a 404 error page). Oh, and the personal blogs of the gang on the site are gone as well.

Linden Prize Countdown: The Prokofy Factor

2010-05-31T07:30:00.000-07:00

In about 24 hours from now(give or take), the winner of the Linden Prize will be announced. I await the announcement with not a sense of excitement, but actually with a sense of fear because there is a very real possibility that the Lindens will choose a finalist that frankly shouldn't have even made it past the gate.

Another reason why I'm dreading the announcement is that as of this point, the biggest chicken booster of them all, Prokofy Neva, has been pretty silent on the matter since the Linden blog post on the sionChickens where she vowed to "fight with every fiber of my being against those worldviews that seek to obliterate the normal, the ordinary, the simple, even the tacky, the mass-taste, the quick buck". Ugh. I took this to mean that she'd come out swinging hard on her blog, doing everything she can to fight the good chicken fight and badmouth the actual deserving finalists more than she already has.

Her lack of commentary since the Linden blog post is unusual. It's just not like her to leave it alone when there's so much legitimate criticism of her beloved virtual fowl going even stronger now than before(over on SLUniverse, the Linden blog post on sionChickens got the most discussion of all the finalists).

So why the silence? Did she decide she's said all she needed to, and let things come as they may? Or has she somehow gotten the inside track on who will win the Prize? More likely the latter, but I suspect we won't find out until after the winner is announced tomorrow and Prok will inevitably make her own blog post either decrying or gushing over it.

Update: The winner has been announced, and it's not the chickens, thankfully. However as of yet there has been no reaction from Prok. Still, congrats to the Tech Virtual Museum Workshop. You guys deserved it.

More on why Sion Chickens should not win the Linden Prize

2010-05-30T11:46:00.000-07:00

As I had stated in my previous post on the fowlness surrounding the Linden Prize(pun intended), sion Chickens do not deserve to win the Linden Prize, much less be on the finalist shortlist simply because they do not meet the stated criteria.

But there's two more reasons why the inclusion of virtual fowl isn't kosher.

First, there's the humanitarian/charitable nature of the Prize itself. Over on Massively, Tateru Nino hits all the regular beats on the subject. In the comments, Maggie Darwin postulates that the Lab may claim the Prize as a charitable donation in their tax filings, and awarding the Prize to such an overtly successful for-profit, commercial operation may endanger that claim. However nobody beyond the Lab itself, its' partners and investors are privy to that sort of information and the Lab is under no obligation as a private company to divulge it to the public.

Then there's the very vicious actions of Sion himself. When one chicken farmer threatened legal action after Sion released a botched update that harmed many farmers' businesses, Sion actually made the thuggish threat of cutting off the food supply to all chicken farmers unless the criticising farmer backed off. Under pressure from fellow farmers, the critic sheepishly did so. Then to make sure no farmer would ever dare again speak out against the Fowl Empire, Sion crafted a new EULA which allowed him to cut off a farmer's chicken-use rights "for any reason or no reason at all" and even blacklist those who were seen as against Sion "for any reason or no reason at all".

Doesn't sound much like a humanitarian, charitable, or at least benevolent person, does it? Sounds more like the actions of a dictator, really.

So let me ask the folks at Linden Lab, if they happen to read this before June 1st: Why are you considering an entry that not only does not meet the criteria, but also whose proprietor has engaged in behaviour that is completely against the spirit of the Prize? Or do you simply not care about the legitimacy of what you publicly outline as a humanitarian prize?

Why Sion Chickens DO NOT deserve to win the Linden Prize

2010-05-25T19:03:00.000-07:00

I wasn't going to blog about this, as so many other bloggers have roundly covered it. But then Prokofy Neva wrote this bogus piece on her opinion on why SionChickens should win the Linden Prize and all other finalists are unworthy.

She believes that SionChickens make RL better because it's a "socializing, fun, and a money-making opportunity on line". If this is her reasoning why SionChickens deserve to be on the same list as Virtual Helping Hands, then I propose that every in-world creator/merchant should be eligible, from Stroker Serpentine down to the prankster selling a plain 0.5m plywood cube on XStreet.

This flies right in the face of the what the Linden Prize is supposed to recognize: "an innovative inworld project that improves the way people work, learn and communicate in their daily lives outside of the virtual world". SionChickens have as much positive impact on the real world as Tamagotchi babies do on parenting: none. Just because Prok believes they have an impact doesn't prove anything.

Chicken fans, ask yourselves these questions: 1) Has buying, raising and selling virtual chickens improved the way you work in RL? 2) Has it improved how you learn in RL? and 3) Has it improved how you communicate in RL? If you answered "No, it hasn't" to all three questions then kindly explain in the comments why it should still be considered worthy of the Linden Prize, because I just don't get it.

Note: As of this writing, Sion Chickens is due up next to be profiled on the Linden Blog. Perhaps then we'll find out exactly what the f*** the Lindens were thinking including such an inappropriate entry as a finalist.

Update: The Linden blog post has been made, and it utterly and completely fails to convince why sionChickens are Linden Prize-worthy. Here's my comment to that blog post, if the Lindens decide to censor it:

I'm sorry, but this blog post does not explain in any form how sionChickens can be representative of an inworld project that has improved the way people work, learn, or communicate outside of the virtual world, as the Linden Prize page so clearly tells us.

In fact, it actually confirms the objections of many who believe sionChickens are not worthy of the Linden Prize.

The technologies used in sionChickens and sionCorn are no doubt innovative, but the purpose of the chickens isn't to teach how to use these technologies(If it were then breeders would be able to scientifically figure out how to optimize breeding and such). "Virtual World Tamagotchis" would be fairly descriptive of the purpose of sionChickens.

Guide to the Metaverse, Part 2

2010-05-23T21:50:00.000-07:00

Continuing my travels to OpenSim-based virtual worlds, we come to two worlds that aren't for general use, but are very important nonetheless: Meta7 and ScienceSim.

Meta7 is a world showcasing an innovative technology called LightShare. LightShare allows region owners to share their WindLight environment settings with users via LSL script. Aside from LightShare, Meta 7 sadly doesn't offer much beyond most other OpenSim worlds. However LightShare alone makes it at least worth a look, especially if you're an OpenSim admin or a viewer developer looking to spice up your grid/viewer.

ScienceSim is for those who wish to use OpenSim for scientific and bleeding-edge research, simulation and education. The uber-geek's virtual world, if you will. If "Fern Lifecycle and Population Genetics Simulations" are your cup of tea, then ScienceSim is right up your alley. Just be sure to change your starter avatar's chin if you choose the male starter avatar(unless you're Jay Leno).

There may be a part 3 soon, but in the meantime I highly recommend taking a look at the grid list at Hyperica, as there's a heck of a lot more grids out there than I could realistically travel to.

The Axe Falls on Woodbury, thanks to... Emerald?!

2010-04-23T11:29:00.000-07:00

The news about the massive banfest against Woodbury members has been getting major discussion over at SLUniverse and on Prok's blog, and it turns out what did them in was that they decided to grief the wrong griefers. Allegedly, Tizzy Teardrop put a bounty on taking down Emerald's beloved CDS, which got the ball rolling. But what most likely pushed the Emerald devs into throwing WU under the bus was the recent video made by Cam Scientist, a Woodbury member who publicly outed the fact that Fractured Crystal should not be anywhere near SL according to the TOS, starting from the first time he got an account banned and also that Onyx is a griefer/copybot viewer.

This, of course, embarrassed the Emerald devs and even put a few holes in their perceived reputation. So they obviously decided to offer up Woodbury as a condition(or leverage) to get on the third-party viewer directory. It's definitely no coincidence both events happened nearly on the same day.

My personal opinion on this is, "I don't really care". I have no sympathy whatsoever for the banned Woodbury griefers, and this doesn't change my opinion of the Emerald devs one bit. It's just a classic case of no honor amongst thieves.

The Second TPV developer brown-bag meeting: Wow, what a difference!

2010-04-20T18:54:00.000-07:00

As noted in the previous blog post, the second brown-bag meeting between third-party viewer developers and Linden Lab has happened earlier today and from reading the transcripts, this time around it went way better. No griefing, sim crashing or voice problems, and the consensus is pretty much that the policy is much more agreeable as a whole.

What was discussed this time around is more "small stuff", like issues with the policy and content import and export. While Section 2(b) hasn't really changed at all, Joe Linden did recognize that there is a genuine need for extended metadata to help address legal uses of non-creator export, but the policy won't change until that happens. Fair enough, in my opinion. There are ways for creators of permissive content to get around it(host it outside of SL, collaborative builders can export their parts of builds and share it with their collaborators until the build is completed).

Also, Joe specifically wanted to address the Imprudence team about their plans to drop support for SL. This is a very positive sign for me personally, as I do prefer Imprudence not just for the viewer itself, but because I find the developer team to be very professional and upfront. It's also a positive sign for SL in general as well, as it shows the Lindens do not want to see a mass exodus of development support to OpenSim-based grids(although they have inadvertently strengthened OpenSim viewer support).

The only thing about the meeting that didn't change, sadly, was that again it seems no developers who are already listed in the TPV directory were in attendance. Maybe some of them didn't want to attend out of fear they would get the third degree, although it seems that given the policy changes it's just water under the bridge now and their input would be welcomed.

All in all, though, it's a 180% turnaround from last week's debacle and the first positive change I've seen from the Lab in a long while. I feel like doing a headbob:

The New Third-Party Viewer Policy: A Thing of Beauty and A Joy Forever

2010-04-20T09:37:00.000-07:00

As noted in the previous blog post, the Lindens have quietly changed their third-party viewer policy. The changes, unlike the previous revision which amounted to nothing, address the majority of the issues raised by TPV developers and results in a more clear and simpler read for those who it's intended for.

The single biggest change is in Section 7(d), which now reads: "You assume all risks, expenses, and defects of any Third-Party Viewers that you use. Linden Lab shall not be responsible or liable for any Third-Party Viewers" Previously, the first sentence had ", develop or distribute" tacked on at the end, which put the sort of legal liability that LL themselves disclaim onto third-party developers. The new wording now makes it clear that was not the actual intent of the clause.

So with this change, for most legit TPV developers, there's nothing to fear from this policy anymore and it may even be totally okay to go for self-certification into the viewer directory(IANAL, of course, but that's my personal opinion).

There may be a few nagging issues left, such as Section 2(b) which restricts content export capability to creator-only. However, that merely applies to when on the SL grid. So it's possible to either simply have creators host permissive content outside of SL, or just have full-perm content export disabled only when on the SL grid. However for non-SL content exporting, I'd strongly recommend some sort of mechanism to convey usage beyond SL's crude C/M/T checkboxes.

Of course, certain folks who are against third-party viewers as a whole will be decrying the changes as "LL caving in to TPV developers" and "they're giving the store away to the copybotters". Reading through the policy, it's clear that's not what happened. The policy now more clearly delineates the difference between a compliant viewer and a malicious viewer(see Sections 2 and 7) and the enforcement terms(Section 8) have not changed(not counting the addition of 8(f), which merely makes clear the policy isn't intended to screw with the GPL).

Given these changes, I may not have to close down my store in SL after all. But I will continue with my current plan of opening up on other grids. It's a happy day for me :)

Update: BTW, the second brown-bag meeting has happened today. The transcript of the meeting can be found here(big thanks to Latha Serevi for the transcripts!).

Updates on the Third-Party Viewer Policy debacle

2010-04-18T07:22:00.000-07:00

Joe Linden recently hosted a brown-bag meeting for third-party developers to discuss the TPV policy. Unfortunately the meeting accomplished very little in terms of reconciliation or possible policy revision. This was due to griefers at the meeting teleporting around and crashing the sim(those griefers sadly being some of the people attending the meeting), and expected major problems with voice.

What was interesting about this meeting is that as far as I can tell there were absolutely no third-party developers in attendance who were listed in the Lindens' third-party viewer directory. That left Joe with virtually no solid support on his side. Also there were a few people there who weren't developers at all: Wut Moorlord of Woodbury/w-hat(a known griefer) and Angela Talamasca, who basically represents anti-open source folks like Prok. Then there's the shady trio of "ex-griefer" Emerald developers Discrete Dreamscape, Fractured Crystal and Lonely Bluebird. So with that unique blend of folks there, it's no wonder it came out a disaster for both sides.

What I took away from the meeting transcripts, however, is that the Emerald devs are going to do exactly what I theorized to several friends: that the Emerald developers are going to secretly negotiate a deal with the Lindens to become the only allowed general use third-party viewer on the directory(KirstenLee's viewer doesn't count as it's meant as a specialist viewer for photographers and machinima creators), with a side deal that Onyx(the copybot/griefer client the Emerald devs use amongst themselves) will be exempt from the policy, making it a Linden-blessed copybot/griefer client under the veil of "penetration testing for the Lab". Meanwhile all of the honest devs of general use third-party viewers will get bullied out of SL to appease the Lindens and their Emerald buddies. I have very little hope that the next meeting will be anything different or produce anything positive.

So in a nutshell, for general SL use it's either the still-craptacular Viewer 2.0, Snowglobe or risk your data and privacy with the Emerald devs in exchange for jiggle boobs, fancy selection beams and lag-inducing extra attachment points. Ugh.

Update: Regarding Emerald, Prok has a new blog post up which connects almost all of the dots about these folks who, in all honesty, should have been perma-banned from the first TOS/CS violation they committed(feel free to skip her usual open source=evil BS, of course). What Prok misses, however, is the connection between Onyx and Gemini CDS. Yes, CDS will ban all copybot viewers detected, except Onyx since it's an Emerald "project". Combined with the TPV policy going into effect, the Emerald devs can run roughshod over SL with no one the wiser, with only the above choices left for SL residents.

Update 2: Surprisingly, the Lindens have quietly amended the TPV policy. From what I'm reading of it, the changes are precisely what the TPV developer community asked for. I guess that blows apart the piece of my theory of Emerald colluding with Lindens to run all the other legit TPVs out of town. However that doesn't change the likelihood of CDS and Onyx collusion.

Update on MetaGridNet

2010-04-10T20:16:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update on the status of the MetaGridNet OpenSim grid. First off, a few days ago I had begun subdividing a part of the megaregion into 1024 meter parcels. These parcels will become the start of a rental program that I will be launching soon to help lessen the costs of hosting the grid and website. Once I figure out how rent payments will be done(most likely via PayPal) and create a decent covenant, I'll officially launch the rental program.

To get a MetaGridNet OpenSim account, you must contact me as per the instructions of this blog post.

Also, I will soon set up some freebies to help new users get started with building and scripting. So stay tuned, more good stuff is yet to come!

Leaving Second Life and embracing OpenSim

2010-04-02T21:40:00.000-07:00

Today I announced that my shop, NixTech, will be closing down on April 30th, 2010. The reasons behind it are related to the Third-Party Viewer Policy that will take effect on that day.

It's no secret that I prefer certain third-party viewers(Imprudence and Hippo, specifically) over the official LL viewer for many reasons(OpenSim support, content backup and restore, better performance, etc). Since many of the developers of third-party viewers have rejected the policy for several good reasons, after April 30th if I use any third-party viewer I run the risk of being banned.

Now, I could simply use the official Viewer 2.0, but to be honest it is a disaster of a viewer in comparison. It suffers from major slowdown, rezzes everything at a snail's pace and still consistently sucks up over 100% CPU use. It is absolutely not good enough for normal use, unless the Lab fixes these problems by April 30th(highly unlikely).

So as it stands, that means I won't be able to stay in Second Life for a long session(greater than a 1/2 hour) without suffering severe performance problems. This in turn affects my ability to run a shop in SL and offer support to my customers. Even my ability to merely socialize in-world will be adversely affected. So I decided to close it down on the 30th and convert the plot into my own residential spot(as I had it before I opened up NixTech). I will continue to have a presence in SL, but due to Viewer 2.0's volatility it will be a greatly diminished one.

However, this doesn't mean NixTech will be dead. I will continue to offer support to customers who have bought my items in-world or via META-life. I have already exported a good selection of my creations to my hard drive, and I plan to re-open NixTech in an OpenSim-based grid(most likely InWorldz) where legitimate third-party viewers are welcomed.

This was a decision not taken lightly. I've been a Second Life resident since 2006 and I've hung on through many events that have sent other people packing: the Linux client's sub-par quality before Tofu Linden fixed it up(no sound, no media, no shiny, not even copy/paste back then!), the gambling ban, the Lab pushing voice chat against the community's input, the OpenSpaces fiasco, and the XStreetSL freebies tax. This third-party viewer policy was simply the last straw and I can't just lie down and take it anymore.

See you all on the other side of the metaverse :)

How to access MetaGridNet sandbox via Hypergrid

2010-03-29T11:55:00.000-07:00

As I noted in my previous announcement of the MetaGridNet social networking site and OpenSim sandbox, I had noted that it's possible to access the sandbox via Hypergrid teleporting. Here's how you can do it:

1. Download and install the Hippo OpenSim viewer. It's the only viewer that currently fully supports the Hypergrid technology(I did test with Imprudence, and it technically worked but it rendered the sandbox all botched up).

2. Log into OSGrid and teleport to a Hypergrid-enabled region such as Aesthetica.

3. When you get there, open up the map screen and enter this into the region box: "metagridnet.com:9000", then click Teleport.

Please note that for ReactionGrid users, to get to MetaGridNet you must first make a Hypergrid jump to a grid whose position coordinates are closer to MetaGridNet's(due to Hypergrid not being able to reach regions further than 4096 regions in a single jump on the map; thanks Maria!).

I do have a few rules for Hypergrid visits, though:

1. No griefing, harrassment or drama.

2. When you are done, please save your works, otherwise they may get deleted.

Otherwise, have fun!

MetaGridnet: A social ecommerce website and OpenSim sandbox

2010-03-28T20:24:00.000-07:00

If you recall, I had previously blogged about my successful, but laborious attempt at setting up an OpenSim installation on my hosted VPS server. Well, recently I redeployed my server and decided to do something bigger as a challenge: create an OpenSim installation, but with a social networking site to accompany it. The result is MetaGridNet.

MetaGridNet's social networking features include user blogs, Twitter-like microblogging, user pages, a forum, file uploading, and an online marketplace. And now as of this writing, MetaGridNet also has its' own 2x2 region OpenSim environment. Currently, you can set up an MetaGridNet account via the website, but there is no website page to create accounts for the sandbox(yet). To get a sandbox account, you must contact me via email and provide your avatar's name and password(Your data will be kept private). The login URI for the MetaGridNet sandbox is http://metagridnet.com:9000.

P.S - I do have Hypergrid enabled as the sandbox uses the Diva distribution of OpenSim. I'll provide details on how to Hypergrid to MetaGridNet in a later blog post.

Skills Hak files bogus DMCA takedowns on Youtube

2010-03-27T19:50:00.000-07:00

In the last post I made about Gemini CDS, I had linked to a video on Youtube that shown an instance of copybotting being done while the content that was ripped was supposedly "protected" by Gemini CDS(Before anyone accuses me of anything, no I was not the one who made the video). Shortly after I published the post, the video was taken down from Youtube "due to a copyright claim by Simone Phuc".

At first, I had merely thought that the takedown was because of the music track that was in the video. Later I remembered that in those sort of cases, Youtube merely removes the audio. So it wasn't the music track.

So then I started searching for similar videos. There were a number of videos, yet all were completely taken down by this same "Simone Phuc". Why? The videos themselves did not violate anyone's copyright(music tracks notwithstanding). And for certain, the person who made all these takedowns could not own all the products that were shown copybotted. But there was one obvious link in all the videos: These videos documented Gemini CDS failures.

So the only possibility is that Simone Phuc is Skills Hak, and she is attempting to stop embarrassing evidence that her product is failing from reaching enough of the public.

This is absolutely wrong, not only for Skills but also for her clients because those videos are clear, documented proof that copybotting had occurred, and the victims affected could use them to prosecute the thugs. Skills/Simone's takedowns then amount to obstruction of justice, and also abusing the DMCA(even if Skills tries to claim trade secrets, DMCA is *only*for copyright claims).

To Skills, I say this: Do the right thing and stop abusing the law to hide what are obvious product failures. What you should have done was inform the victims of the copybotting incidents and show them the videos as proof. This would actually help you and your product because it would show customers you actually care about them and their investments in SL.

To Gemini CDS users, I say this: Because Gemini CDS doesn't detect or prevent the actual act of copybotting, you may or may not have been the victim of copybotting in those videos. But since Skills has taken down the videos, you might never know unless you come across copybotted versions of your content in SL(which at that point is too late). There's no good reason to be victimized twice.

Imprudence Developers take a stand against the Third-Party Viewer Policy

2010-03-26T20:52:00.000-07:00

This past Tuesday I had the privilege of attending a "weekly ImpDev meetup", where Imprudence viewer developers and those(like me) interested in it's development would meet and discuss various issues, like bugs, feature ideas, and anything else related to Imprudence. The meeting, however, turned out to be the most important meeting not just for Imprudence, but for other third-party viewers as well.

The meeting was about how the Imprudence developers should respond to Linden Lab's final wording of their third-party viewer policy. Earlier today, Jacek Antonelli broke the news of their decided response. While it echoes the general response of the TPV developer community, it states it in a very professional and respectful manner towards users, developers and even Linden Lab. Jacek also announced that while Imprudence cannot agree to the TPV policy as a whole, they will honor the parts of the policy that are reasonable and do not legally endanger the project.

This response is already having a ripple effect, as it has seemed to inspire Luna Viewer developer, Fred Rookstown, to continue developing Luna but with similar changes as Imprudence. It would also seem other viewer developers will follow suit, with the possible exception of the Emerald developers as they may be secretly negotiating with the Lab to get some sort of exemption from the policy in exchange for some changes made to Emerald(most likely gutting import/export, grid manager functionalities and a few controversial features).

While this marks a very sad day for SL, conversely it's a red-letter day for OpenSim-based virtual worlds who will benefit from the increased viewer support and likely incoming users. The ball is now in Linden Lab's court, and how(or even if) they respond to this will set the status quo in SL open development possibly for years to come(if SL manages to last that long, though).

Victoriana & Tinytoriana: A case study of how SL is losing it's soul

2010-03-24T20:29:00.000-07:00

Very early this morning, the Alphaville Herald broke the news that the "mayor" of the Victoriana and Tinytoriana communities is to leave Second Life for OpenSim, as will the communities.

The reasons he gave for his departure read off as an indictment of the Lab's mismanagement on nearly every level. Here's the money quote:

This lacklustre response from Linden has brought to light a great deal of uncertainty in our little community about the future of Victoriana and the Linden grid itself. I’ve seen a number of people in the past few weeks re-evaluate their own personal investment in SecondLife, and sadly a number of them have chosen to leave the grid for fear of losing everything they’ve invested money in. It’s a very very sad thing to see good people go (especially long-termers who’ve been around for a while) for fear of "what will happen to them" come the next maintenance rollout/asset server failure/grid issue.

That pretty much says it all. This person had invested $30,000 over two years+ to acquire 13 sims and build a sizeable community on it. Common sense would dictate that the Lab should have given his problems some modicum of attention and care due to his very considerable investment towards Lab employees' paychecks. But he didn't, and this was the proverbial "straw that broke the camel's back".

I wish Mr. Lindsay and the Victoriana/Tinytoriana community the best of luck in relocating to a new home. While I've never had the pleasure of visiting your community, I hope to do so during my travels to other grids.

The Lab, on the other hand, should be very ashamed. Communities are the lifeblood and soul of the grid, and should be fostered with reasonable care and attention. This is a fact of the metaverse that seems to be ever lost to the Lab under Kingdon's reign.

I still hold out hope the Lab can stop it's looming downward spiral into financial ruin, but with all the recent bad decisions it's been making, it's becoming much harder to hold on to.

My comment on opensource-dev maiing list

2010-03-23T22:47:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post to show my first comments in the opensource-dev mailing list. It's a response to Joe Linden about his views on the current controversy surrounding the third-party viewer policy:

Tony Agudo to Joe, opensource-dev

(Delurking here just to throw in my $L2; standard IANAL disclaimer)

Joe, most of the TPV Policy *is* reasonable and nobody(except obviously malicious viewer creators) is disputing that requiring reasonable, common sense responsibilities to keep viewers honest is bad at all, it's simply that Section 7(d) can open a can of worms for third-party viewer devs by not clearly stating something along the lines of "You assume all risks, expenses, and defects of any Third-Party Viewers that you use, develop, or distribute in the context of the broader sections of this Policy. Linden Lab shall not be responsible or liable for any Third-Party Viewers". Without a clarification such as that, as an example, a third-party viewer user who believes the viewer is causing harm to his/her SL experience(supposing the "harm" is merely a glitch or bug that occurs in normal development, or even if it's not the viewer but the user thinks it is), that user can point to specifically that section of the TPV Policy and claim "By this, you *are* legally liable for my problems, I can actually sue you". The Lab's own ToS completely disclaims responsibility for the official viewer and has pretty much protected the Lab against such actions in a majority of cases. It's what has kept the development cycle in the Lab from becoming a legal minefield, I'm sure you agree. What the third-party devs are asking is that that legal threat shouldn't be thrust on them via the TPV Policy and it be made clear and unambiguous if they're to continue developing for the benefit of the SL grid without fear of nagging lawsuits. That's not an unreasonable request, is it?

(*going back to lurking*)

The Third-Party Viewer Policy: Take 2, but still as shoddy

2010-03-22T21:22:00.000-07:00

According to Tateru Nino at Massively, the Lab has made and released changes to the third-party viewer policy at the request of the opensource-dev community. Sadly, however, they still f*cked it up.

The only change I see, on a casual read is this sentence in the third paragraph of the preamble: "This Policy does not place any restriction on modification or use of our viewer source code that we make available under the GPL."

But still, that sentence directly conflicts with Section 7(d), "You assume all risks, expenses, and defects of any Third-Party Viewers that you use, develop, or distribute.", which violates the GPL's disclaimer of liability.

The best and shortest response I've heard from the open source community makes what they think of the "rewrite" crystal-clear: "You first", as in "If you want us to take responsibility for our viewers by violating the wording of the GPL, then change your ToS(Section 5.4, specifically) to do the same for your own viewer as well".

Now that the Lab has stated that they will not be planning any further modifications to the policy, the ball is now in the third-party devs' court to decide what to do in light of it. Boy Lane(developer of Rainbow viewer), and Fred Rookstown(developer of the Luna viewer) have already stated their intents(Both have simply called it quits on their viewers). Tomorrow the Imprudence developers will meet in-world to discuss what to do regarding the policy, but there's a strong possibility that most popular viewers may abandon SL altogether and throw their weight into OpenSim-based worlds in order to avoid being shackled down by LL.

As TigroSpottystripes Katsu put it: "It's own-foot season, and this time LL brought the big guns."

The hitchhiker's guide to the metaverse

2010-03-22T03:25:00.000-07:00

(Apologies to Douglas Adams, but the title fits what I've been doing)

Lately I've been hopping around various OpenSim-based grids to research which one(s) would be viable replacements given that Second Life may be irreversibly heading in the same direction that There went. So here's the rundown of the grids I've been to as of this writing:

OpenLife: OpenLife was the first OpenSim-based grid to have an in-world currency, and that alone set up OpenLife as the first possible competitor to Second Life. Unfortunately, the OpenLife folks had forked OpenSim and chose not to release their changes back to the OpenSim community. While this is technically allowed because of OpenSim's BSD license, this act had basically turned OpenLife into a non-OpenSim grid.
InWorldz: A currently small but growing OpenSim-derived grid similar to OpenLife. You're actually pretty likely to catch the founders and devs of this grid right from the first time you login to InWorldz, which is nice.
OSGrid: The first non-Linden Lab grid I've ever been to, and without a doubt the biggest OpenSim-based grid. While it currently lacks an in-world currency(intentional because it's a non-profit grid), it's more or less ground zero for OpenSim development.
ReactionGrid: And for something completely different, there's ReactionGrid. ReactionGrid is a lot like OSGrid, but with some very distinct differences: ReactionGrid has a solid revenue model by being an OpenSim grid hosting company, their OpenSim grids are hosted on Microsoft's Hyper-V technology, and grid operators are free to modify their grid server functionality if they wish. ReactionGrid is targeted at educators and businesses for collaboration, but there 's nothing stopping grid operators into purposing their grids for other uses.

While I'm not a big fan of Microsoft technology, I have to give it up to the ReactionGrid folks. Their business model is solid and professional, but they don't gouge the customer like how SL does with land(Same can be said of most other OpenSim-based grids that have region purchasing options, of course). OSGrid is where you want to be if you want to keep up with OpenSim development and testing, and freely experiment around. OpenLife and InWorldz basically aim at providing an economy experience similar to SL, minus the land gouging.

This is by no means an exhaustive list or review of virtual worlds, just my opinions of those I've checked out so far. There's several others I'm interested in checking out, so stay tuned for a "Part 2" blog post in the near future.

How Gemini CDS fails to stop copybotting

2010-03-21T10:31:00.000-07:00

Yet again, there's another cache of apparently copybotted content being sold on XStreetSL. And this has been discovered long after Gemini CDS was released into the wild to prey on the paranoia of content creators. Wasn't this "wonderful tool" supposed to be the "silver bullet" against copybotting?

No, it's not, because of it's biggest and intentional flaw: it does not stop or detect the act of copybotting at all. Yes, it's stated purpose is to merely detect "copybot viewers", but users are hyping it up beyond belief(see "silver bullet" reference above).

A copybotter can get around CDS via a few methods. The easiest (though costly) method makes use of online marketplaces that use "magic boxes" for delivery. All the copybotter has to do is go to a sandbox or other place where CDS is not used, purchase a copy of the content to be copybotted via website, then copybot the item once delivered and sell it to recoup the monies used to purchase the original copy. So if you're a merchant at XStreetSL or any of the other major online marketplaces, CDS won't protect your online listings, even if your "magic boxes" are within proximity of a CDS.

Another method of course is to play the cat-and-mouse game where copybotters continually update their ripper clients to avoid CDS detection, and Skills Hak has to update CDS in response. This will eventually end in one side "giving up" out of frustration or exhaustion, as all cat-and-mouse games do. My bet on this is that Skills will eventually give up, once people start to realize what a sham CDS is, given the other methods below.

Also CDS cannot prevent thieves from camming into a CDS-protected parcel and copybotting that way. Or stealing textures, animations and sounds by obtaining the UUID of the content via LSL or digging through the texture cache directories of any viewer.

Then there's using GLIntercept in conjunction with the official viewer. It's highly doubtful that CDS can detect GLIntercept, unless CDS does somehow force a user's viewer to peek around the filesystem and report to the CDS webservers what it finds. This would be in violation of the Second Life ToS if it were the case.

If you're still thinking CDS does work, take a look at this video I found after Googling "Gemini CDS Ban Relay":

I rest my case, folks.

Update: Apparently the main detection method of Gemini CDS has been discovered. It triggers the viewer to contact a specific URL, where the site weakly encrypts the details of the avatar and the user-agent HTTP request header details(which is how the viewers are detected), then sends the information off to Skills' secret database. This means defeating Gemini CDS detection(at least at this level) is now as trivial as blocking the URL at the router/firewall level(or by disabling Quicktime with the -noquicktime command-line option).

Update 2: The video I linked to has apparently been taken down due to a DMCA copyright claim. At first I thought it was simply because of the music track that accompanied the video, but normally that would just result in the audio of the video being disabled. But apparently Skills Hak and the Gemini staff are actively trying to suppress videos that demonstrate how ineffective CDS is at stopping copybotting. The videos themselves do not infringe *any* of Skills or Gemini's copyrights, so the takedowns amount to abuse of the DMCA and as suppression of free speech. <snarky sarcasm>I guess Skills has been taking DMCA lessons from Kalel Venkman</snarky>.

A Cross-Grid Content Store: An idea whose time has come?

2010-03-08T12:00:00.000-08:00

This morning my thoughts drifted into thinking about the inevitable screw-over XStreetSL merchants are going to get real soon. Then I took a second look at a comment Imprudence viewer developer Armin Weatherwax left on that blog post(emphasis mine):

lol, I admit my thought is a bit far fetched... having those archives gives of course the possibility to exchange content in "new" ways, like from torrents or git repos. So maybe XStreet would have become less interesting for open content anyway - well, we'll never know.

Given not only the coming XStreetSL changes but also in light of the controversial third-party viewer policies and ToS "content trap", I now think Armin's idea isn't as far-fetched anymore. A far better solution than "torrents and git repos" would be an online store like XStreetSL, MetaLIFE, or Metaverse Exchange(the goals of MVX match the cross-grid store concept, but it currently just supports Legend City and SL) but would deal in content archived in the HPA format. This would kill a couple of birds with one stone:

No need to deal with "magic boxes", which are prone to delivery failures whenever the region the box is hosted on fails for whatever reason, and potentially costs you sales.
Easily make content in one virtual world, and be able to sell(not just give away) it to residents of any world that can use HPA-capable viewers such as Meerkat or Imprudence.

While these are excellent points for this idea, I can also see one point against it: The nature of content import at the moment circumvents the in-world permissions system(on import, you are the creator of the content as far as the system knows), as there is no content metadata to properly address it, which can lead to copyright infringement if not used responsibly. So as it is, it's a trade-off: sacrifice reach for control(walled garden), or sacrifice some control for reach(public park).

So, would this concept be feasibly possible? Ideas, thoughts, criticisms?

P.S.- Also, take a quick look at OpenSimWorlds and MyOpenSim as a couple of prototypes as how such a store might look like.

Are CDS users planning to go social with their vigilantism?

2010-03-04T18:56:00.000-08:00

As I got home from work today and brought up my Twitter stream, I came across this tweet from Ann O'toole which made my heart sink like a rock:

we need one of them oauth thingies to tweet copybot network detections so everyone will see the rate of shoplifting in #Secondlife

So, it's not enough that they're perma-banned everywhere Gemini CDS is used, their info kept in a database forever labeled as "potentially dangerous"; now you want to add the internet equivalent of public stoning as a feature?

I do expect Ann to be a bit controversial, but this is beyond the pale. I could see this "feature" being implemented in one of two ways: on detection it either tweets to the user's Twitter account with a hashtag to enable CDS users to find all detections twittered, or detections get twittered to a specific account for the purposes of publicly browsing names. This idea throws the possibility of innocence or false detection even further out the window while extending the networked vigilantism beyond SL.

Here's a couple of questions that I would like to ask CDS users and Skills Hak if this idea were to get implemented:

If it were implemented as to tweet to the user's Twitter account, will there be a way to automatically delete the tweet if an accused avatar successfully appeals, or will they have to make their case with the CDS user or Twitter itself?(The question is similar regarding the second implementation, just replace "CDS user" with Skills Hak).
If you're so fed up with the Lab's "refusal to deal with the copybot anarchy", then why not involve the Department of Justice? Why turn to networked vigilantism when involving authorities higher than LL may get a better outcome(DOJ gets wind of rampant "copyright infringement" in SL, DOJ investigates and finds LL lacking in enforcement, DOJ threatens to sue on behalf of copybot victims, LL wakes up and gets strict on enforcement thanks to DOJ legal threat, everybody's happy)?
What will you do if a falsely accused avatar(or a group of falsely accused avatars) decides to sue the entire CDS system on grounds of defamation of character and vigilantism(The entire CDS system refers to the individual users all the way up to Skills Hak)?

Again, I'm not defending copybotters at all here, I'm pointing out the vigilantism and escalation being encouraged by this system and it's users, and it's clear potential to harm innocents and the falsely accused. If this idea were to make it into CDS, then it has the potential to make the JLU scandal look trivial in comparison.

Caveat emptor, folks.

The External Grid Selector script, version 0.3

2010-03-01T22:42:00.000-08:00

This new version of the grid selector script no longer detects any third-party viewers, because virtually all major third-party viewers now have a built-in grid manager. The only viewer that does not have it is the official one, including Viewer 2.0. So this version will only detect versions of the official one, including Snowglobe.

Without further ado, here's the script:

========================

#!/usr/bin/env bash

#Second Life Grid Selector and Client Launcher
#A simple grid manager for the official Second Life viewer
#(C) 2010 Jose A. Agudo aka Second Life resident Antonius Misfit
#Licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v3 or at your option any later version

viewer=$(zenity --list --title="Viewer Chooser" --text="Choose a viewer:" --column="Viewers" $(find SecondLife*/secondlife Snowglobe*/snowglobe))

#retrieve grid "database" which is simply a bash array variable sourced from a file
if [ -e $HOME/.grids.db ];then
source $HOME/.grids.db
else
cat > $HOME/.grids.db << EOF
#Feel free to add grids here
grids=("Second_Life" https://login.agni.lindenlab.com/cgi-bin/login.cgi "Localhost" http://127.0.0.1:9000 "3rdrock" http://grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002/ "OSGrid" http://osgrid.org:8002/ "InWorldz" http://71.6.142.199:8002/)
EOF
source $HOME/.grids.db
fi

main()
{
action=$(zenity --list --title="SL Grid Launcher" --text="Choose a grid:" --column="Grids" --column="Login URI" --print-column="2" ${grids[@]:0} "Exit" "Exit")
case $action in
Exit) exit;;
*) $viewer --loginuri=$action;;
esac
}
main

========================

How Third-Party Viewer Developers are going to feel the pain

2010-03-01T08:33:00.000-08:00

In my previous post, I described exactly how inter-grid content creators are going to become walled out of Second Life. But the Second Life® Terms of Service and third-party viewer policies will also bite third-party developers, hard.

In particular, the ToS and third-party policies place restrictions on GPL usage and distribution for viewers that connect to Second Life, as I've blogged about it before. Also, Section 2(b) of the third-party viewer policy will affect the major third-party viewers(Emerald, Meerkat, Imprudence etc) because they all have content export capability. If a third-party viewer developer wants their viewer to comply with the policies, then they will have to somewhat cripple that functionality(no full perm export, creator-only), despite legitimate use cases that warrant it.

A third-party viewer developer now has this hard choice to make: either cripple certain functionality and accept restrictions on usage and distribution, or rewrite their viewer as "not for Second Life use" and as a result lose much of their current user base in Second Life.

From the discussion going on in the opensource-dev mailing list, it seems virtually all third-party developers are going to take up the latter choice. But that may wind up to Linden Lab's disadvantage in the long run, because that means those viewers' innovations will be re-geared to benefit Second Life's biggest competitor: OpenSim-based grids.

Second Life about to wall up content

2010-02-28T21:02:00.000-08:00

Ann Otoole calls out Linden Lab in her latest blog post, spelling out how Second Life is about to become a completely walled-up garden starting on April 30, 2010. She frames the discussion in the context of textures, but her argument also applies to objects, clothing/body part items and scripts(to a much lesser extent).

From April 30th onward, the Lab will be vigorously enforcing Section 2(b) of the third-party viewer policy, which also happens to be a part of the Second Life® Terms of Service.

In the opensource-dev mailing list, Lindens are suggesting content creators who wish to allow inter-grid use of their content should host it outside of the Lab's grids and services. The implication of that is that Second Life is unsuitable as a host or distribution channel for such content. For LSL scripts, that's not much of a problem because if a script's code can be viewed in-world, it's simply a matter of copy/pasting text, the Lab can't really stop that. But for other types of content(especially prim and sculpty-based objects) made for inter-grid use, the policy and the ToS combine to form a content license trap.

For example, let's say I'm creating a prefab house that I wish to be used in both Second Life and other grids. I create and host the content on my own server, by using a third-party viewer to export it to a zipped archive. I create a specific license allowing inter-grid use(or use an open license). Someone who wants to use my content logs into Second Life and imports the content in-world. Now, here's the big question:

When my licensed content is imported into Second Life®, what happens to the license for that specific copy? According to the ToS and TPV policy as it is today, my license(parts of it at least) no longer applies to that copy and can only be used within SL and it's rules. In effect SL becomes a content trap and a walled garden, both for permissively-licensed content(Creative Commons, open source, public domain etc) and proprietary content with inter-grid use allowances. So to preserve the license and the rights to my content, I must have a clause in my license that prohibits import to grids whose policies or ToS conflict with my license, otherwise the importer loses the right to use my content.

That kinda sucks, right? Well, not all hope is lost and in my next post I'll detail the painful choices third-party viewer developers and their users may have to make in the wake of the third-party viewer policies, and how this ties to content creators.

The Third-Party Viewer Policy: The shoddiest policy from the Lindens

2010-02-27T12:08:00.000-08:00

As I noted in the previous post, coinciding with the release of Viewer 2.0 was the release of a third-party viewer policy created by Linden Lab. At the time I had read it, I did not think much that it was a bad policy nor think it would negatively impact third-party viewer developers.

I was wrong.

In fact, there's so much wording in the policy that not only negatively affected developers, but also violates terms of the GPv2.

For example, the GPL explicitly disclaims liability of a developer, yet the policy puts it on after the fact. Also, the GPL states that you may not impose further restrictions, conditions or terms of distribution beyond what the GPL specifies. The policy does exactly that.

But my biggest beef with the policy is Section 2(b), which flat out bans export of full permission content without the legal consideration when the creator of a piece of content grants exportability to the content's users. This effectively kills content licensed under Creative Commons, open source, public domain and other content whose license allows exportability.

There are other issues as well. In fact, as it stands no third-party viewer can be in compliance with the policy and be able to distribute. But thankfully, as Tateru Nino's Massively article points out, the Lab has brought the policy back to legal for a rewrite(this has been confirmed in the opensource-dev mailing list). Here's to hoping they get it right this time!

BTW, the only folks who are seriously lauding the policy as it is now, are those who are opposed to third-party viewers in general, so that should be a clue as to what's wrong with it if still in doubt.

My Impressions on SL Viewer 2.0: the good, the bad, and the ugly

2010-02-25T09:27:00.000-08:00

The other day I had gotten the word that Viewer 2.0 had finally been made available to the general SL community. I've had the chance to give it a test run and while I generally approve it as a major step forward, there are a few annoyances that I found. So here's my quick rundown of the good, the bad, and the ugly of Viewer 2.0:

The Good

I'll start with the new features introduced besides the new UI. The most welcome new feature is Shared Media. Ho..ly... crap! A truly functional web browser on a prim. It's per face, per prim, can have several media elements, and puts parcel media to shame. Flash content works(though I've yet to test on something HTML5-friendly like Theora). I've used it to do a tweet completely within a prim that has Shared Media enabled on a face. So we can expect some pretty crazy media mashups from machinima makers and artists soon.

There are two new clothing pieces introduced in Viewer 2.0: tattoos and alphas. Tattoos are pretty self-explanatory. Alphas are basically the replacement for invisi-prims on avatars to hide body parts, used for non-human avatars like tinies and dragons.

Now I'll get right down to the new "web browser" UI design. While residents who have become very used to the old viewer's design will no doubt find the redesign frustrating at first, once you start to find where all the menus have moved to, you'll find that virtually no feature sets have been actually removed. Landmarks are still in your inventory(as some like Prok feared they would get replaced with a "bookmark"-like feature), the build tools are practically unchanged(with the exception of adding Shared Media settings to the Texture tab), and chatting/IM has gotten a bit easier to keep track of: profile pics are shown before each line of chat and when an avatar says multiple lines of chat in an IM before anyone else, those lines are grouped under that avatar's name automatically instead of having the name repeated every single line.

There's more stuff about the viewer that I like, but I'll defer that to this blog post from Second Tense, as it is covered in pretty good detail.

The Bad and The Ugly

I have to lump the two categories as one because quite frankly, I don't see any serious UI or feature issues that would put me off using Viewer 2.0 when it becomes the mainline official viewer. That being said, there is one major thing that needs to be addressed: it's seems ~~pretty laggy~~ that it's consistently sucking up over 100% CPU usage. Granted, it will get worked on, but it has to be said now because it can be enough of a turn off for some folks.

And while I said that virtually no feature sets have been removed, there does seem to be one thing missing, though I'm not going to crumple up in despair about it nor ignore it either(Well, it's still there although not as clean as in 1.23 according to Prok).

Also, it appears they are changing their open source release strategy by attempting to label Snowglobe 2.0 as the source code for Viewer 2.0 and onwards. That may particularly irk third-party viewer devs a bit, especially in light of the new third-party policies and registry launched alongside Viewer 2.0. I'm irked simply because there are no Linux binaries of Snowglobe 2.0 available yet(this has happened before, and I'm not gonna slog through trying to compile it). Also, Linden Lab needs to be reminded that when you release any GPLed viewer to the general public, you must provide the exact sources used to make it, not the sources to a distinct derivative, as Snowglobe is(unless it is the exact sources with just the name and logo different, then it's okay).

Verdict

Viewer 2.0 is a big step forward, though there will be shock and adjustment pains. If you can get through the initial shock, then you'll find there's a lot of stuff in 2.0 you'll like.

More on the CDS controversy

2010-02-23T10:10:00.000-08:00

Thanks to a tip received in the previous post, I've found out that there potentially may be more to CDS' database than simply an avatar UUID/name and viewer info. In a very long thread over at SLUniverse, Skills Hak makes the claim that "pc info" gets stored(IP and MAC addresses*), as another method of detection once the copybot viewer makers figure out ways to get around CDS. If this is the case, then that's completely against the TOS, if not flat out illegal. The only way to conclusively find out for sure, is to have the whole CDS system(client, bots and database) submitted to Linden Lab for a full audit, as Skills' word is proving to be not enough.

Also, CDS users apparently have the ability to set up their system not to ban on detection, but observe and record into the CDS database. Although seemingly a much more benign option, this is still a sort of networked vigilantism, as while the detected avatar is not banned from that particular parcel or sim, he/she is wherever a CDS is set to automatically ban, and the avatar's info is still propagated throughout the CDS network.

If I find out more or new developments arise, I'll be sure to post it here.

*Update: It appears Skills put up a FAQ where she says that "The specifics of the data cannot be disclosed. However, no MAC or IP addresses are stored, nor any other sensitive data. The most personal data is the avatar key and which viewer was used." However, I'm not convinced unless she submits CDS for auditing, as I mentioned above.

How CDS is engendering vigilantism among paranoid content creators

2010-02-22T17:41:00.000-08:00

It didn't take long for it to start hitting the fan. Within days of releasing a scripted product that claims to 100% detect and ban users of copybot viewers, we're starting to see how this item can engender vigilantism in content creators who want a quick, zero tolerance "solution" over the lengthy legal procedures recommended by Linden Lab and copyright law itself.

What brings the point home are the comments by the sim owner whose CDS initially banned the blogger's avatar, and the very enlightened comment by a Mr. Peter Stindberg:

sabinagully said...

Hi everyone! I am Sabina, the owner of Magika. I wanted to clear this whole thing up. I hope many people get to read this post.

Arora Zanzibar have indeed been banned from Magika for the use of Neillife. Skills have taken the time to double check and it is true. Arora is just trying desperatly to clear her name, therefor this blogpost and all the fuzz that comes with it, fairly annoying if you ask me. It has come to her attention several times by other people on here to contact ME about it. She has not contacted me.
Arora might not be a frequent user of neillife, but she has been caught at some point using it. Anyone using Neillife, Cryolife, Fucklife etc is not ever welcome at Magika. There is no use blaming Skills for this. It is MY choise and my choise alone to use this system and keep her banned. Anyone who disagrees. well buhu lol.

Peter Stindberg said...

It gets even more bizarre when you see some strong advocates of shutting down 3rd party viewers in general now praising this system.

What this whole debate shows, however, is that content creators feel the pain, and feel the need to turn to take the law in their own hands out of frustration that LL does not do anything. THIS is the REAL issue here.

I do not trust a fully automated system. I work in software development and have quite a critical distance to fully automated systems. The question is not IF they screw up, but WHEN they screw up. But I can't blame a single content creator to buy and use such a system. However the deployers of such a system take on a HUGE responsibility. LL gets blamed a lot for the intransparent shoot-first-ask-questions-maybe-later process of Abuse Reports. The developers and deployers of this system seem to run into the same trap. An automated system without a clear, transparent appeal process is a loose weapon. This whole incident has made this very clear.

I am a marketing and PR specialist, and from my professional view this was a close call to a complete PR disaster. The developers of the system have a great chance to give the community an effective tool. But it needs transparency of procedures and clear communications.

Maybe this incident was a warning shot.

The plain truth here is, is that not only did Arora have to appeal to Skills, she may very well have to appeal to every parcel/estate owner who is currently using CDS, because it is designed to operate like BanLink, a previous product that engendered vigilantism among land owners. Also, it seems plausible that at no time did she actually engage in the act of copybotting. For the purposes of comparison, Linden Lab won't ban users for using copybot viewers, but they will ban a user if found to engage in copybotting or any other illegal activity. CDS, and its' growing network of users, may in effect interfere with the Lab's ability to properly mitigate copybot claims, particularly when automated AR functionality is implemented into CDS.

If CDS instead detected copybotting activity rather then copybot viewers, then there wouldn't be much controversy about it right now.

I should note, btw, that Arora was successful in clearing her name from the CDS database, after taking her case to Skills(Her name may still be in many banlists affected by CDS, though).

I should also say that I am in no way defending copybotters here, I am simply making the case that CDS poses the danger of networked vigilantism and escalation in SL. Think of a forming "JLU of content creators minus the spandex", and you get the picture.

Ubuntu Harshing on GIMP

2010-02-05T09:44:00.000-08:00

I had recently heard that Canonical is going to remove GIMP from the default install of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS("Lucid Lynx"). At first, many people thought it was being removed for space reasons(you can only put so much onto a 700MB CD), but it was revealed that they are removing it and replacing it with F-Spot, a horrid photo management app. Seriously, are they kidding?

The reasoning behind the move, at least what they publicly say, is that they believe "average users" don't create/edit images or graphics, they do touchups on Aunt Selma's vacation photos. Also another reason for removal is that the UI for GIMP is too intimidating for new users. While I agree pretty much with the latter reason, I believe the former is really just a false pretense to prop up an ill-fitted Mono application over a more logical replacement for GIMP: gpaint.

I'm not alone in this sentiment, either. In a poll thread posted on the Ubuntu Forums, 58.89%(712 votes) believe removing GIMP is a big step backwards for Ubuntu compared to 41.11%(497 votes) think removal from the default install is a good thing.

So that means there's a ballpark 60% majority in favor of either keeping GIMP or at least have a better replacement app than F-Spot. Yet Canonical isn't listening to their users. I'm even convinced that when the GIMP finally gets that UI overhaul at the end of the year, Canonical won't even take one glimpse at it, because they are practically in love with F-Spot.

So how do we push back against this bogus Mono power play? It's pretty simple: On first boot to the desktop after installation, head straight for the Synaptic Package Manager, remove F-Spot and install GIMP or gpaint. Then go to "Software Sources" and check off "Submit statistical information", as it will report back that F-Spot has been immediately purged and replaced with GIMP or gpaint. If enough of these reports are made, then the developers will have no choice but to change the installation packages to reflect the preferences of the users.

Avatars United: A safe haven from Facebook's "Avatar Hit Squads"

2010-01-30T00:06:00.000-08:00

A few hours ago I read the announcement that the Lab has acquired a social networking site that is specifically geared for MMO game avatars. While this could be seen as a distraction from the Lab's recent controversial policy changes, this can also be seen as something of a godsend for SL Residents who try to use social networking sites, but attempt to keep their RL information totally private.

In particular, there's been a recent rash of SL-related avatar account deletions on Facebook, as reported by the Alphaville Herald. This has caused many Facebook users to search for an avatar-friendly alternative, lest their accounts get silently zapped.

Cue Avatars United, which not only caters to SL Residents, but for players of a huge number of MMO worlds and games(even OpenSim surprisingly) who would like to keep their RL private. It's very Facebook-like, but without the insane jungle of apps that currently plague Facebook. It's still in Beta, but the Lab is planning some nifty things for it and hopefully a developer community will spring up to add more goodies to the mix(think apps that integrate AU with SL in various ways).

I've already set up my account and page, so feel free to friend me on AU. I don't bite... much. ;)

The axe falls, but when?

2010-01-14T12:38:00.000-08:00

I just came across this blogorum thread where a resident decided to take one last look at the freebies on XStreetSL, knowing that they may disappear within the next few days.

The OP of course seen "junk that needed to be cleaned up, but quite some jewels", but that became irrelevant when the first replier asked a poignant question: "So when does the axe fall?"

What makes this question good is that, according to the original announcement, the freebie listing tax should be in effect by January 18th, and in the FAQ accompanying the announcement they stated residents will be given 2 weeks notice before the changes go in effect. There are four days left in the expected delivery time span and so far there have been no notices at all from the Lab. In fact, the Lindens have kept very quiet on the matter since Colossus Linden got burned in the blogorums(in two threads) after the announcement.

This has caused a bit of confusion and speculation about what will actually happen. Some say they have quietly backed down after feeling the backlash resulting in the increased prominence of third-party marketplaces. Others say that it's merely been delayed because of implementation problems. While I would hope for the former theory, I'm more inclined to believe the latter.

Why? It's quite simple, really. If the Lab finally decided to back down, no doubt they would loudly announce it in an attempt to recoup the losses incurred from the previous backlash, and to blunt the newfound popularity of XStreetSL's competitors. Since that has not happened, it's clear that the Lab is still in the process of putting the listing taxes in place, it's just taking longer than planned.

Regardless if the Lindens roll out the taxes this month, May, or whenever this year, I still believe I made the right choice and I will continue to boycott XStreetSL until this policy of pure greed is eliminated.

Finally, an SL client for Android

2010-01-11T01:10:00.000-08:00

The other day I got a tweet from my Raglanite friend @chaffro about an Android chat client application for SL he's using. He told me the name of the application and I immediately downloaded it to my G1 phone.

Mobile Grid Client(MGC for short) is the Android-to-SL client I've been waiting for. Until now if I wanted to access SL from my phone, I'd have to put up with the lousy mobile version of ajaxlife.net where all I could do was chat and IM avatars. MGC puts ajaxlife.net to shame. You can teleport via landmarks and friend teleport requests*, look at avatar profiles, send and receive L$, see where you are via map, friend and de-friend avatars, and of course do chat and IMs with avatars and groups. Granted, it's not as polished as Touch Life for the iPhone, but it's way better than what I had before.

MGC is offered free in the Android Market, but there is a monthly fee of $L450(close to $2 USD) due to MGC being a hosted service and not just a client. It's well worth it, IMO, and you can try it out for ten days before the monthly fee kicks in, so feel free to give it a whirl.

To get it, just do a search for "Mobile Grid Client" in the Market app and it should show up at the top of the results. I think you'll like it as much as I am.

*Update: I just found out that the next release of MGC will include the ability to teleport via secondlife:// and SLurl links. So it's getting pretty close to being the perfect mobile client for me.

Blue Mars in Linux: I'd keep it, but...

2009-12-23T22:11:00.000-08:00

After reading a tweet my friend Zauber put up a few hours ago, I decided to download and attempt to play Blue Mars in Linux via a beta of Wine v1.2. After the quick registration and activation, I downloaded and ran the Blue Mars installer.

The install went without a hitch. I launched the desktop link to Blue Mars, halfway expecting it to bomb out, like when I tried to run the There.com client a while back. To my surprise, I got the login screen working great.

I login, choose to download Caledonia, restarted the client as instructed, clicked go and then...

It works pretty well, as you can see, but there's a big problem here: it's too damn glowy for me to use. It's like Windlight on crack.

To be sure, the glow is due to Wine's DirectX incompleteness, but it's enough of a turn-off to keep me away from Blue Mars unless they make a Linux client, or the Wine developers work to make Blue Mars visually comfortable for my eyes.

Note: Before anyone suggests it, let me state for the record that buying a copy of Windows 7 at $200 USD just to play a game is incredibly stupid, IMHO. Between SL, my XBox 360 and soon a PlayStation 3, I'm perfectly sorted in the gaming department.

Quite a shame. Blue Mars, you almost had me.

The XStreetSL Commerce Forums: A hotbed of creator/merchant elitism?

2009-12-20T19:37:00.000-08:00

<rant>
Yesterday I checked up on the Commerce Forums to see if anything hopefully interesting or positive was being discussed. What I found was something absolutely disgusting: A merchant championing the total abolishment of Basic accounts and "No Payment Info On File" account status under the paper-thin guise of content protection.

This is another example of the elitist attitude that has been boiling over in the Commerce Forums since the XStreetSL listing taxes announcement. While the OP of that thread got tremendous and firm pushback, it has emboldened some to suggest other economically destructive ideas such as requiring a premium account to be able to sell things, and even creating a separate grid for free accounts.

This elitist hate of Basic accounts has to stop. Now. It is ill-conceived, misguided and ultimately destructive.

What the elitists fail to see is that Basic(and NPIOF) membership is what gets people into SL, as it's the easiest point of entry to a virtual world compared to some competitors, and as a result Basic accounts are extremely vital contributors to the economy(Hint to elitists: In other words they are your customers). The Premium account status is a carrot-and-stick proposition for Basic residents who want some relatively small perks(not counting Linden Homes) in exchange for a recurring fee to the Lab. Lording premium status over the entire grid will result in an economic disaster that will see Second Life crumble faster than the current XStreetSL exodus, leaving only the few elitists left to wonder what went wrong.

Nobody who loves SL(including the elitists) would want that to happen, but that is the direction this movement is pushing the Lab. The only way to stop it is to vigilantly keep pushing back until the elitists give up. So keep on pushing back, folks. Stand up for your right to be Basic and proud!(Disclaimer: I've been a Premium account for over 3 years, but I stand with many of my friends and customers who are Basic accounts as I know they are the heart and soul of SL, as Prokofy eloquently put it.)
</rant>

LL goes begging for banner ads, again

2009-12-17T00:50:00.000-08:00

In an earlier post I talked about yet another piece of fallout from the XStreetSL listing taxes scandal: Banner ads on XStreetSL plummeted like a rock and the Lindens went begging to Solution Providers to fill in the gaps.

It seems that trick didn't work, since the Lindens are now extending a half-price ad offer to all merchants(well, those who still haven't jumped ship yet) for the holidays. Unfortunately, this will suffer the same problem that the SP offer had: What good is a half-off ad offer when the consumers are leaving the ad providers' site in droves? It doesn't matter if it's the holidays, the bottom line is what counts.

The Lindens are obviously trying to at slow the bleeding from XStreetSL, but they're applying relief to the wrong area, and they know it. Until Colossus and Pink publicly acknowledge that they royally screwed over customers and merchants, the result of this second round of begging will remain the same: FAIL.

Down to the old (e)Pub instead

2009-12-14T12:52:00.000-08:00

Lately I've been thinking about writing a book or two. Nothing serious or professional. Just for fun. And since digital distribution to mobile devices(smartphones, Kindle, Nook, etc) seems to be a good way to get out there without a dead tree publisher, I want to make ebooks in the open and mobile-friendly EPUB format.

The first step on my digital publishing journey was to find and grab a decent open source ePub creation program. Dredging through Synaptic on Ubuntu shows only the Calibre ebook management and conversion program. I'm not looking for a converter. So I hit up Google and I get hits for eCub, Sigil, Feedbooks and some others that I won't mention because they're not available for Linux.

First on the list was eCub. I had quickly downloaded and installed it, but then I noticed it isn't open source. So eCub gets the uninstall from me.

Next up is Sigil. I download and ran the .bin installer and get "You must be root to run this installer". My response: Why? I absolutely hate .bin installers that insist on getting root when the application it's meant to install doesn't need root access to run. A local install within the $HOME directory should be perfectly fine for .bin installers. So Sigil isn't getting installed unless they fix their installer or provide a proper .deb package.

Finally, there's Feedbooks. Feedbooks is primarily two things: a place to download public domain ebooks and a web-based epub creation and publishing tool. I've bookmarked it, but I'm looking for an offline creation program.

So, where does this leave me? Well, I said "screw it" and wrote up my own epub creator based on the Wikipedia entry on ePub. It's a menu-based shell script that can be used to create ePub books from start to finish.

The script(called "Skelepub.sh") is licensed under the terms of the GNU GPLv3 or later and can be downloaded here.

Update: I've also made a GUI-fied version of Skelepub for those who are averse to command lines. They're both functionally equivalent, but the console version is more portable across Linux distributions.

Now, what to write for my book... hmm, that's gonna take a lot longer than two days to figure out...

Note: If you read the title of this post and thought "Hey, isn't that the name of a song by singing comedian Stephen Lynch?", you are indeed correct, laddie:

More XStreetSL Fallout: LL goes begging to Solution Providers for banner ads

2009-12-07T10:10:00.000-08:00

In yet another telltale sign of XStreetSL's business losses due to their own greed, Prok dishes the dirt on a "limited time complimentary banner ads" program to Solution Providers. While I don't really care about banner ads on XStreet anyhow(I rarely, if ever, clicked on one anyway), in the comments it's revealed that non-LL banner ads have dropped faster than a rock.

I took a quick look at XStreetSL for old time's sake, and sure enough a LL ad shows up quite often each time I reload or navigate around the marketplace. Before the listing taxes announcement, I would rarely, if ever, see a LL banner ad on XStreetSL.

I'll let the commenter who blew the whistle on the XStreeSL ads sum it up for me:

I would suggest this is a combination of desperation at trying to get some fresh ads up there and the beginning of their push to make xsl work friendly - which is never will be.

Until the Lab comes clean and kills the listing taxes in favor of a more balanced solution, expect things to only get worse for the Commerce team.

Why the "Linden Homes" program is not a threat to mainland rental business

2009-12-05T08:36:00.000-08:00

In my previous post I mentioned the new "Linden Homes" program announced by Jack Linden as a Christmas present for new Premium account signups. I also noted that the expected outrage post from Prok claiming that this will demolish mainland rental businesses is pure BS.

Prok claims that the Lindens have been methodically destroying mainland in favor of private islands. She attempts to buttress her claim on numbers based on a thrid-party grid survey, as there are way more private islands than mainland sims. The numbers actually tell a surprising story about mainland rental business owners/landlords, rather than the Lab.

Of course the Lindens would like to grow more private islands. That is the biggest money-maker. So given the practically anaemic state of the mainland, despite all the recent moves to clean up the Mainland from ad farms and land extortionists, why haven't mainland rental business owners demanded more mainland sims be made? While mainland sims clearly don't make the kind of money for the Lab as private islands do, they are still quite profitable, especially in combination with mainland rental businesses coming along to hustle the land for them.

Yet Prok takes the familiar and tired "I'm a victim" tack here. She blames the Lab for her and her peers' lack of action in trying to grow their mainland investments. Instead of collectively pushing the Lab, they whine and complain that the un-terraformable, un-joinable, un-sellable 512 plots with an un-removable small home, only available to Premium residents will destroy mainland rental businesses.

No, they won't. They're not designed to compete with mainland rental businesses. Unlike mainland rentals, Linden Homes aren't available for Basic accounts. Unlike mainland rentals, you can't create events or classifieds for it. Also, the Lindens may consider a time limit for Linden Home residency(to reinforce the fact that a Linden Home is an introduction to land ownership), unlike with mainland rentals where people can remain as long as they remain tenants in good standing.

Would I get a Linden Home? Nah, I'm an oldbie Premium member who would rather be more content with a regular mainland 512 plot or higher. But as I mentioned in a response to an anonymous commenter, still I'd love to just see the themed Linden Homes and who made them. It would be a great way for me to discover other builders and businesses.

My predictions for 2010

2009-12-04T10:44:00.000-08:00

In less than a month from now, 2009 will officially be history and the New Year will be upon us. So let's look at Second Life in 2009 and see if we can divine where we will be going in the New Year:

Snowglobe and Third Party Viewers:

2009 seen a prominence in third-party viewers, even Linden Lab's Snowglobe viewer joining the mix. However, the newfound popularity of these viewers has also brought controversy. Where will this lead us in 2010?

I predict that the Viewer Registry will see the light of day, with the Hippo, Imprudence and Meerkat viewers easily making the cut. Emerald will be included in the registry, much to the anger of a "certain comrade", but only after certain controversial features are removed or changed. Put quite simply, I see a bright future ahead for third-party viewers.

OpenSim:

This year we've seen the introduction of OpenSim archives, inventory archives, megaregions, the Diva distribution, Hypergrid and a highly experimental in-world currency module using PayPal. This has been the year that OpenSim has finally become a halfway decent alternative to buying a sim in SL.

In the New Year expect to see the stabilisation and maturation of Hypergrid, megaregions and the possible inclusion of an in-world currency system to finally push OpenSim as a marketable alternative to SL.

XStreetSL:

Never have I seen something go from one of SL's greatest innovations to the biggest example of corporate greed and favoritism. It all started when the Lab bought out XStreetSL and OnRez. They shut down OnRez, horribly redesigned the XStreetSL site, and replaced the forums with a P.O.S. "blogorum". But the coup de grace came last month when the Lab announced higher commission fees and introduced unconscionable listing taxes on freebies. This prompted myself and many others to de-list our items from XStreetSL, trash our magic boxes, and sell our items on competing sites. This has caused a significant loss of business for XStreetSL, leaving merchants and customers alike to question the future of SL's once favourite online marketplace.

Where will XStreetSL go in 2010? Judging from this year's failures, unless the Lab realizes just how much damage they've caused themselves, XStreetSL may get shut down due to sheer lack of business. This, however, will be a boon for third-party e-commerce sites who stand to gain the most from it.

Second Life*:

We've seen overall greater grid stability and growth, Zindra, a bottoming out of land prices in line with the RL economy, Second Life Enterprise, Philip Rosedale leaving, and the forced disbandment of the Mentors group on the same day as the XStreetSL listing taxes announcement. It's been a mixed year for the grid.

Where will Second Life go next year? I predict there will be new features to the official viewer borrowed from third-party viewers, but that's where the good stuff ends. I am sadly predicting a return of the "prim tax"(or an in-world sales tax), caused by the failure of XStreetSL to extort more profit for the Lab. There will be revolts and protests like the last time, but the Lab will not buckle and this will force people to completely jump ship and set up on OpenSim or an OpenSim-based world. It will be a harsh year in SL, for both residents and the Lab. 2010 may be the year SL completely loses its' mojo.

*Update: Looks like the Lindens have given new Premium residents a nice Christmas present: Linden Homes. It's essentially a new incarnation of the previous "First Land" program. It won't change my predictions, though. It's all just to get more Premium memberships to offset the cancellations that resulted from the XStreet fiasco.

**Update 2: As quite a few people expected, Prok responds to the Linden Homes announcement with the kind of tl;dr outrage that screams BS. She thinks these un-terraformable, un-joinable, un-sellable plots with an un-removable small home, only available to Premium residents are a threat to her mainland rental business. I'll write up a post later on why she's really just shoveling manure on the subject.

The "unintended" consequences of XStreetSL's listing taxes

2009-12-03T10:08:00.000-08:00

As the first of the big changes to XStreetSL(L$99 freebie monthly tax) will be coming soon(sometime between Dec. 18 - Jan. 18), "unintended" consequences are already being clearly seen.

XStreetSL now has a big rash of active item listings that no longer have any items associated with it. This was due to merchants neglecting to de-list their items before trashing their XStreetSL magic boxes. This will force the Commerce team to eventually do a sweep and remove the "dead" listings, but until then these listings serve as a proof of lost income for the Lab: customers can't buy them, the Lab can't get a commission, and heaven help them if they try to extract listing taxes from those dead listings.

So many of the merchants who left now leave the Lab with a significant liability in terms of both monetary and reputational value. XStreetSL's primary strength was it's ability to buy items in a browser and not have to go through the trouble of finding them in-world. With these dead listings, the departed merchants have effectively undermined that strength and simultaneously made alternatives more appealing. And it may get worse when the listing taxes go in effect, causing more merchants to leave abruptly when they are truly faced with the Lab's greed.

Congratulations, Commerce team. You've fostered the creation of content black holes on your site.

Some proof of how XStreetSL's listing fees are anti-competitive

2009-11-21T11:20:00.000-08:00

I just stumbled onto Massively's latest article covering the XStreetSL listing tax announcement, and I found a revelation in the comments, courtesy of Imprudence developer Jacek Antonelli: By XStreetSL's own rules, they are engaging in anti-competitive practices. To wit:

Anti-Competitive or Abusive Behavior. Examples include, but are not limited to:

inflating prices on Xstreet SL compared to in-world or other e-commerce sites,
hostile reviews or comments on a competing merchant's items, and
item listings which are abusive against another merchant or their products.

Okay, let's apply these rules when the listing fees kick in, particularly for freebies. You list a freebie, and get hit with a $L99 fee. How do you compensate for that? Assuming it will actually remain a good seller, you adjust the price to, say $L4, which subsequently lowers the fee to L$10. You then decide to note in the listing "this item is free if purchased at my store in-world". Guess what? You just violated XStreetSL's rules and if caught the listing will be de-activated until you either change the XStreetSL price to match the in-world price of $L0(thereby incurring the $L99 tax again) or change the in-world price to match the XStreetSL price(effectively making the freebie "free no more").

So where is XStreetSL itself violating it's own rules? Look more closely at the above scenario, and extend it out by adding that the merchant has also listed the item on other marketplaces that do not have listing taxes. According to XStreetSL's rules now, the merchant must also bump up the price on the other sites to maintain the XStreetSL listing. So XStreetSL is, in effect, using the listing taxes in combination with it's own rules to extend it's reach beyond it's own marketplace to their competitors. That sounds pretty anti-competitive, yes? Monopolistic, even.

So now the merchant only has two choices: either grudgingly comply with XStreetSL and make the freebie a non-freebie everywhere, or de-list and remove the freebie item from the XStreetSL marketplace forever in order to preserve the merchants' freedom to price as he/she fits.

Oh, and lest you think this is all just bitching about "paying the equivalent of a nickel more", take a look at this breakdown of how the listing taxes build up for one merchant and tell me if it's still peanuts.

The New XStreetSL "listing taxes": WTF are the Lindens smoking today?

2009-11-18T19:19:00.000-08:00

Today the Lindens delivered a swift kick in the stones to both Second Life Mentors and XStreetSL merchants.

First, they are going to disband the Second Life Mentor Volunteer Program. Taking the long view on the move would seem it's not too bad as it won't affect the ability to create and run volunteer groups in-world, but from a PR standpoint it's a spit in the face to the volunteer community, no matter how much the announcement is sugar-coated.

But the really big Linden blunder announced today finally exposes the real reason behind the merchant survey Pink Linden recently sent out: They want to further tax residents for use of XStreet and pander to only high-volume merchants.

Don't let the "it's just to manage freebies" lie fool you. All listings will be charged a monthly tax(and it is a tax). This will effectively kill, not "manage" freebies on XStreet and lock out residents who previously used XStreet as a way to sell inexpensive products or give away creations as a gift to the Second Life community. It may also wind up screwing over shoppers too, as merchants who choose to live with the listing taxes may simply bump up prices to cover it.

For me, this means that I would wind up paying XStreet L$490/month for all my non-freebies and $L198/month for my two freebies. That comes out to $L688/month + the already existing 5% commissions. And let's factor in that my most expensive listing is only L$175 but rarely sells and I find out that a pretty big chunk of sales gets gobbled up by XStreetSL "listing taxes". So what will I do?

The Silver Lining

First, I will remove every single listing I have on XStreet, as doing business on it has now become untenable. Only the big business merchants can play on XStreet, I get that now.

After I remove my listings, I'll save my products in an inventory folder, trash my magic box and XStreet merchant vendor signs, and only list my products on meta-LIFE.They don't charge for listing freebies, and have a great vendor branding system to promote your business with(also free). I may look into others like SLapt.me and Apez(even though the site design of it is beyond ugly).

From the discussion thread, it seems that a majority of other merchants will follow suit, and hopefully shoppers as well.

Goodbye XStreetSL, it was a great run:

Update: I got word that there have been at least 3,000 de-listings from the Apparel section alone on XStreetSL in less than 24 hours. The income loss from these de-listings are most likely very significant. While other section de-listings haven't been quantified yet, it's safe to say that this is one of the biggest disasters the Lab has pulled on us.

The Spectrum of Open Source Viewers

2009-11-16T22:05:00.000-08:00

The other day, Dale Innis posted a piece about the leaked Viewer 2.0 testing comments and how it relates to third-party viewers. A good read for sure, but what got my brain neurons firing off was from a part of a comment in a humorous response post from Adric Antfarm, about third-party viewers and Prokofy Neva's views on them: "The truth is in the middle. They are neither the savior you claim or the devil she does."

I was going to put up a comment on Adric's blog responding to the statement, but it got too TL;DR-ish, so I'll put my thoughts down below(don't worry, I'll try to keep it concise and brief).

I think the answer isn't in the middle, but rather that the answer is all three due to the fact that there are viewers that fit in each category. A spectrum, if you will. For example, let's look at viewers like Hippo, Imprudence, Meerkat and Snowglobe. The first three have third-party grid login management far superior to the official viewer's clunky "--loginuri=" command-line method. Imprudence and Meerkat have legitimate object backup capability(creator or full-perm only). Snowglobe recently gained text chat translation, Open Grid Protocol login support, and LLMedia API support(my favorite feature). These viewers, as well as some special viewers like omviewer-light and ajaxife.net are clearly beneficial to the metaverse community as a whole and should be held up as excellent examples of open source community at work.

Then there's the undeniably malicious viewers. First it was Copybot, now we have an unholy trinity of Cryolife, Thuglyfe and Neillife. All three are at their core a continuation of CopyBot's malicious intent(copy objects with no regard for the Second Life permissions system). Thuglyfe goes a step further and includes features designed to avoid parcel and estate bans. These are the kinds of viewers, open source or not, that should be fought against vigilantly.

And currently straddling the middle of the spectrum is Emerald, the most popular but controversial third-party viewer(Disclaimer: I have used Emerald, but as of late I have been using Snowglobe and Imprudence instead). There are so many cool features of Emerald I can't list them without turning this paragraph into TL;DR, so I'll go straight to some of the controversial features. First there's de-friending notification. It's okay in SL to de-friend someone and letting it pass quietly. Getting a notification that you've been de-friended is a quick way to cause drama and grief. Showing real online status and avatar keys in profiles can also be griefing-enablers.

Also the past activities of some Emerald developers don't help their viewer. However, the Emerald developers seem to be willing to work with Linden Lab on viewer policy, and they are now keen on combating malicious Emerald derivatives such as Neillife, so the jury is still out on Emerald. It can go either way.

So to either wholly allow all viewers or condemn them as Prok does are completely irresponsible and one-sided views. It will lead to either rampant copyright infringement and crime or feature stagnation, greatly harming the value of SL. A balanced view of the spectrum, however, will ensure that Second Life and it's derivatives will continue to succeed for a very long time.

Ogg Vorbis Audio Streaming finally comes to Second Life!

2009-11-11T20:14:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, the latest release candidate build of the Snowglobe viewer was released with relatively little fanfare. But for Second Life residents who use Linux as their operating system of choice, yesterday marked the arrival of a feature long desired: the ability to stream an open source audio format(Ogg Vorbis) within the virtual world.

The crapiness of FMOD and the awesomeness of LLMedia

Ever since the Second Life viewer had the ability to stream music, it did so through an audio library known as FMOD. FMOD was great for streaming MP3 music, but wound up crashing the viewer when attempting to stream Ogg Vorbis. Yet according to FMOD's product description page, Ogg Vorbis is supposedly supported. This situation prompted a JIRA bug to be filed, where it never got fixed at all, despite Tofu's insistence that OpenAL fixed it. For over two years, nothing. Then hope came with the coming of the LLMedia API: a media-rendering plugin system for the viewer. Initially, LLMedia was built for Windows and Mac viewers, but as of yesterday it finally hit Linux, and it works pretty damn well.

Testing it out

Testing it out is pretty easy if you own a plot of land in-world(alternatively you could try it with your own local OpenSim installation): just grab the RC, set the audio stream in-world as you would normally do, but be aware that parcel audio settings now have their own tab in the "About Land" window. Then just hit the play button on your viewer HUD.

There is a spot of bad news, though. While Ogg Vorbis streams wonderfully without any extra plugins, Theora video does not(perhaps a Theora plugin may come out soon). Plus, rendering web pages on prims uses qtwebkit now instead of Mozilla, so depending on your Linux distribution you may need to install qtwebkit via package manager.

All in all, this is a greatly welcome development for Linux-using residents. Bravo, Linden Lab!

Update: Oh, I forgot to mention that Snowglobe also has built-in text chat translation(no more language HUDs!) and Open Grid Protocol login support.

The Biggest Spectacle of Bawling I've Ever Seen

2009-11-05T07:04:00.000-08:00

The Lindens just announced an open beta of their "behind the firewall" enterprise solution, and announced a "Work Marketplace" for enterprise customers to get content from third-party providers(such as Gold Service Providers and others who qualify;down the line they might open it up to non-GSPs).

Sounds like a reasonable next step to cater to enterprises.

Of course, almost anything the Lindens do will inspire a typical Linden/chicken killer/Woodbury/FIC/communist conspiracy rant from Prok, no surprise there. But this time she's gone way, waaay off the hinges. Not because of an in-world griefing/chicken-killing, but because she got caught violating Linden blog discussion rules by listing a bunch of in-world furniture companies(one she admits is owned by one of her tenants) and Blue Linden removed the offending post on grounds of advertising.

What resulted is, in my opinion, the biggest spectacle of bawling in Second Life over nothing. Prok declares self-exile from the Linden forums and blogs, claiming that her rabid posts are a benefit to the Lindens. Yes, she's that deluded. She's welcome to exile herself, however short it may be. Update: I just found out just how short that exile was: less than 24 hours. She made a post on the discussion thread about SLE here, trying to bait Blue Linden or Maggie Darwin. I guess Prok can't go a day without getting her forum fix, lol.

Next she says she'll boycott the Lindens by severing communication with them. No "dearie", you boycott the Lindens with your wallet. But she won't do that because then it means she has to give up her mainland rental business. So severing communication with the Lindens won't affect them one bit, but she's opening herself up and potentially her tenants to major griefing with impunity. I doubt that "boycott" will last long.

Speaking of her tenants, she's also attacking two of them who happen to be Gold Service Providers: Gwyneth Llewelyn and Kim Anubis. Discriminating against successful tenants? What message does *that* send to current and potential future tenants?

Prok, quit bawling and overreacting, grow up and accept that the Enterprise offering is, and should be, for enterprises and not for the majority of us. Whether or not it becomes a successful venture for the Lab isn't going to affect the main grid residents much. It may even open up a few new opportunities. Second Life will go on. The sky is not falling.

On the other hand, don't stop bawling. It's comedy gold.

Update: I just seen Kim's responses in Prok's post comments. She's got no problem knocking Prok down a peg. In fact, she does it better than I could. Way to go, Kim!

The 1st Brownbag Meeting: Looking Pretty Good so far

2009-10-31T11:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I stumbled onto this wiki page with a transcript and an MP3 recording of the first brownbag meeting between Linden Lab and third-party viewer developers. The third-party developers were well represented, with some people fairly well known(McCabe Maxsted of Imprudence, Fractured Crystal, Chalice Yao and Lonely Bluebird of Emerald) and several other developers who I'm not familiar with. The Lindens were equally represented, and the discussion in text chat and voice was pretty formal and informative.

The meeting opened up with "What 3rd party viewer features do you think are very useful to users?" and then a Q&A with the Lindens about how the registry process might work out.

From the tone of this first meeting, the Lab might cook up a registry that is fair to all parties involved, including users. The Lab might work closer with 3rd party devs, but not get heavy-handed like the devs feared. Users could get a detailed description of approved viewers along with user reviews and ratings. And perhaps most beneficial, the Lab may finally incorporate some 3rd party features into the official viewer.

So now I'm less cautious and more optimistic about the registry, but there are more brownbag meetings to come and nothing's finalized yet. I'll post when more details surface.

The External Grid Selector Script, Version 0.2

2009-10-24T20:40:00.000-07:00

Okay, I've managed to implement simple autodetection of Second Life, Emerald and Snowglobe viewers to the script thanks to the elegant find command. So here's the code so far:

=========


#!/usr/bin/env bash

#Second Life Grid Selector and Client Launcher
#A simple grid manager for the official Second Life viewer,Emerald and Snowglobe
#(C) 2009 Jose A. Agudo aka Second Life resident Antonius Misfit
#Licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v3 or at your option any later version

viewer=$(zenity --list --title="Viewer Chooser" --text="Choose a viewer:" --column="Viewers" $(find SecondLife*/secondlife GreenLife*/secondlife Snowglobe*/snowglobe))

#retrieve grid "database" which is simply a bash array variable sourced from a file
if [ -e $HOME/.grids.db ];then
source $HOME/.grids.db
else
cat > $HOME/.grids.db << EOF
#Feel free to add grids here

grids=("Second_Life" https://login.agni.lindenlab.com/cgi-bin/login.cgi "Localhost" http://127.0.0.1:9000 "3rdrock" http://grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002/ "OSGrid" http://osgrid.org:8002/ "NixTech_Forge" http://97.107.142.118:9300/)
EOF
source $HOME/.grids.db
fi

main()
{
action=$(zenity --list --title="SL Grid Launcher" --text="Choose a grid:" --column="Grids" --column="Login URI" --print-column="2" ${grids[@]:0} "Exit" "Exit")
case $action in
Exit) exit;;
*) $viewer --loginuri=$action;;
esac
}
main

=========

The External Grid Selector script for Second Life/Snowglobe and Emerald viewers

2009-10-22T08:52:00.000-07:00

I had promised to post this once I polished it up, but I think it's usable enough in it's present form to be considered as a 0.1 release. So here's the code:

==================

#!/usr/bin/env bash

#Second Life Grid Selector and Client Launcher
#A simple grid manager for the official Second Life viewer,Emerald and Snowglobe
#(C) 2009 Jose A. Agudo aka Second Life resident Antonius Misfit
#Licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v3 or at your option any later version

viewer=$(zenity --file-selection --title="Client viewer to run:" 2>&1)

#retrieve grid "database" which is simply a bash array variable sourced from a file
if [ -e $HOME/.grids.db ];then
 source $HOME/.grids.db
else
 cat > $HOME/.grids.db << EOF
#Feel free to add grids here
grids=("Second_Life" https://login.agni.lindenlab.com/cgi-bin/login.cgi "Localhost" http://127.0.0.1:9000 "3rdrock" http://grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002/ "OSGrid" http://osgrid.org:8002/ "NixTech_Forge" http://97.107.142.118:9300/)
EOF
 source $HOME/.grids.db
fi

main()
{
action=$(zenity --list --title="SL Grid Launcher" --text="Choose a grid:" --column="Grids" --column="Login URI" --print-column="2" ${grids[@]:0} "Exit" "Exit")
case $action in
 Exit) exit;;
 *) $viewer --loginuri=$action;;
esac
}

main

================

There's definitely room for improvement, such as the possibility of using an online database of grids and choosing from an autodetected list of clients instead of manually choosing a viewer via file selection. I'll be working on those features, but if you have any other ideas, let me know in the comments.

Linden Lab announces a policy for "approved" third-party viewers

2009-10-20T22:01:00.000-07:00

Linden Lab just announced the formation of a new policy regarding third-party viewers. Basically, the Lab will finally be putting their foot down on illegitimate viewers such as Cryolife, Thuglyfe and Neillife and work closely with approved third-party viewer developers via a "viewer registry".

I'm cautiously optimistic about this new development. I'm optimistic because it would mean that the Lab may finally get off their butts and perhaps incorporate some features of these other viewers, hence no longer relegating the official viewer as the "newbie" viewer in comparison. Plus working with third party devs the right way would help build trust with potential new users.

What I'm cautious about(and the Lab should be, too) is the possible negative effects it may have on third party viewer development if done with a heavy hand. Apple's condescending and abusive practices against third party iPhone/iPod Touch application developers come to mind here. And even worse, the possibility of the approval process being gamed by those with an agenda against third-party viewers(you guys know who you are) is present within the ongoing discussion with the Lindens.

I must admit here that before the policy announcement I was thinking about diving into the Snowglobe source code and try my hand at creating my own viewer(Not "the next Emerald", but rather a plain viewer with eventually one feature no other has: Ogg Vorbis/Theora streaming support). Now... I'll wait and see or go for it but develop the viewer for OpenSim exclusively.

This has the makings of a debacle, I'd say.

In development: an external grid selector for Second Life/Emerald

2009-10-17T10:33:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post announcing that I'm in the process of writing up a crude, but functional "external grid selector" for the official Second Life viewer, Emerald and Snowglobe. It will be a bash shell script using zenity to create a selectable GUI list of grids. It's written for the Gnome/XFCE desktops in Linux, but porting it to KDE, Macintosh or Windows is trivial. I'll post the code in a future post once it's polished up.

Free Speech and This Blog

2009-09-20T12:23:00.000-07:00

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for
people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
-- Noam Chomsky

The above quote is the view of free speech I've adopted ever since I first discovered the Internet many years ago. And a good dose of common sense and law also says that while freedom of expression is a right, there are acceptable limits. From my very first post here I've gone above and beyond what some blogs allow as far as comments go. Consider this post my commenting rules and rationales, as well as to demonstrate a contrast to another certain blog.

I allow:

Conversation: As long the language used isn't abusive, offensive or randomly off-topic, I encourage conversations in comments, even if it's just between commenters.
Criticism: Again, as long as the language isn't abusive or offensive, I allow criticism and dissenting opinions. This is core to free speech, and the source of Chomsky's opinion(as well as mine).
Anonymity: Anonymous criticism is also a part of free speech, as a defense against unlawful retaliation. While I'm certainly not the type to retaliate against anyone for practicing free speech, I am aware that there are some people who have dissenting opinions, but are afraid to voice them for fear of such retaliation. So anonymous commenting is allowed here for that reason, but not to be used to launch attacks.

So those are my commenting policies in a nutshell. The comments here are open for business :)

Section 3.3: A Virtual Copyright blocker?

2009-09-18T11:11:00.000-07:00

As a Second Life and OpenSim user, there's a natural desire for me to be bring over content I create in one virtual world to another(I'm not alone there, either). When I first got my local OpenSim up and running, I immediately proceeded to copy over a few pieces of my own tiny avatar. I had copied over the helmet, chest piece and my own Pet Rock in a pouch. In this instance it was totally legal since what I brought over had virtually no textures that I didn't create. When I thought about exporting some of my builds that had textures that weren't created by me, I hit upon an important legal question: Is bringing your own content(prims and/or textures) from Second Life legally allowed?
My gut was telling me "No", and it turns out I was right. Why? Because according to Section 3.3 of the Second Life Terms of Service, you don't own the account you use to access SL, and nor do you own any data on their servers that represent your content. Plus the license to the textures in question did not specifically address "inter-grid use", so the safest course of action was to assume it's not okay to export them.

What could be done about this? Is there a legal workaround? Yes and no. No, if the virtual world where the content(including textures) you made originates from is Second Life. Yes if the originating virtual world is OpenSim or any other virtual world that allows inter-grid use.

So I did an experiment to create a very simple house in my own OpenSim, export it with Meerkat, package the XML file and the textures used(from the OpenSim library) into a zip file, add a public domain notice, put the zip file up on a web site, import the build into Second Life, add metadata to the object description(such as "[Creator: Antonius Misfit] [Virtual World: OpenSim]"), then package it a box containing the public domain notice with the URL to the zip file sources. It all went pretty smoothly. I had successfully brought over a piece of content into Second Life that is not bound by Section 3.3!

This process easily applies for public domain, copyleft and Creative Commons-licensed content, but it also makes sense for commercial and even proprietary content creators who want to expand their content beyond Second Life and profit from it. You can follow the process I did, but instead of a public domain or Creative Commons license, you can use any license or EULA you want, provided inter-grid use is addressed. And of course source releasing isn't required, as long as you can prove that the content did not originate from Second Life(hence the metadata). So until Linden Lab properly addresses the "inter-grid use" in their Terms of Service, this may be the only feasible solution.

Thoughts?

Getting a Standalone OpenSim up and running on a Linode VPS: A tutorial

2009-09-12T08:24:00.000-07:00

Ok, I know there are several tutorials out there that detail how to do this in general, but there are none out there that are specific to Linode, and I have encountered enough speed bumps on the way to warrant a specific HOWTO. So here goes:

Go to Linode.com and get the "Linode 540" VPS solution. It's $15 more per month than the cheapie Tektonic VPS, but I found OpenSim runs very smoothly on it.
Deploy a Linux distro on your VPS. I prefer Ubuntu 9.04 "Jaunty", and for this tutorial that's what I'm going to assume you will use. Make sure your distro is at least over 10GB(I used almost the entire disk) and have a swap size of 512MB. Also set the root password on your deployed distro, as you will be using it to login to your VPS in the next step.
Remotely login to your newly created VPS. You can use PuTTY, as referenced in this old tutorial or use the ssh command-line client like I did: [ssh root@my.ip.address]. Enter the root password for your VPS, and you'll be logged in with a standard shell prompt.
Add the "universe" and "multiverse" repositories. First install the text editor nano so you can edit files: "apt-get install nano". Then do "nano /etc/apt/sources.list" to edit your APT sources. Here's what mine's looks like after editing:

## main & restricted repositories
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty main restricted
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty main restricted

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-security main restricted
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-security main restricted

## universe repositories
#deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty universe
#deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty universe
#deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty-updates universe
#deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty-updates universe

#deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-security universe
#deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-security universe

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty universe multiverse
Update your distro. Now do "apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade" to get the latest patches to keep secure.
Install the packages needed to build and run OpenSim. The packages required are listed in this old tutorial(You can replace "mono-gmcs" with "mono" as it now includes the gmcs*). Also do "apt-get install git-core" to install the git distributed source code manager. You'll need it to download the latest stable OpenSim source code.
Download the latest stable OpenSim source code. Follow the instructions on the OpenSim download page.
Within the OpenSim directory, do these commands: "./runprebuild.sh && nant". If there are no prebuild or nant build errors, then OpenSim has been properly compiled.
Follow the steps in this tutorial from Step 7 onwards, and then you can exit your ssh session and login to your shiny new OpenSim!

So now you ask, "What's next?". In the next few posts I'll show you how to administrate your OpenSim to do stuff like properly startup/shutdown your sim, add user accounts and even perform sim backups.

*Update: I just remembered about that nasty bug in Mono I blogged about earlier, where I described how I fixed it. Details about the bug and the patch for it are available here.

Struggling with Hypergrid

2009-09-07T22:51:00.000-07:00

Now that the process of getting my sim up, running and add accounts for my friends from SL is done, I've attempted to Hypergrid my sim. But so far it's been mostly fruitless. First it was a "Region too far" type of error, caused by a bug in the Hypergrid protocol that only allows a jump up to 4096 coordinates in both dimensions. But after editing the [Network] section of OpenSim.ini and the coordinates in /bin/Regions/Regions.ini, I can link to most regions listed, but then I get an error like this when attempting to go there: "Destination is not allowing teleports. Failed to authenticate user Antonius Misfit@xx.xxx.xxx.xxx:9300".

I have tried every available Hypergrid address listed on gridhop.net, but with no luck. Am I missing something? I've been going a little nuts trying to figure out the problem. Help!

The NixTech Forge: My Own OpenSim

2009-09-04T20:33:00.000-07:00

Less than an hour ago I was finally successful in compiling, configuring, running and logging into my own OpenSim hosted on a VPS. Currently it's just one small, empty sim and I'm the only avatar on it(I changed the terrain though; it's not a tiny bump of land over water). But creating avatar accounts is very easy, and I'm certain the sim can handle a few simultaneous avatars. So if you want an avatar on the Forge, contact my Second Life avatar "Antonius Misfit" in person or via IM with your desired avatar name and password, and I'll create it and send you the login URI.
P.S - I highly recommend using either the Meerkat or Hippo viewers to access the sim because they have a built-in grid manager to make logins to third-party grids very easy.

The headaches of running an OpenSim on a VPS

2009-09-04T09:25:00.000-07:00

I've decided to try and set up a single OpenSim on a VPS solution. After looking at several options, I went for a VPS on Linode.com(the "Linode 540" plan, to be specific). At $30/month it's not bad at all, and the dashboard makes booting, rebooting and shutdown as simple as one mouse click. And I discovered just how ungodly easy it is to actually use ssh("I am now a true geek").

That was the good news. When I actually ssh'ed into the server and tried to follow the normal instructions to build OpenSim, I ran into a few problems. First, apt-get couldn't find any mono packages. A quick look at the sources.list file showed that the universe and multiverse repositories weren't enabled. So a quick edit and "apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get dist-upgrade" fixed that. So then I go and install all the dependencies needed for OpenSim. I download the OpenSim sources and compile it right after a bit of trial-and-error. I set up the sim accordingly(being careful to input the server's external IP address when prompted by OpenSim), and it runs fine. I fire up Meerkat and add my sim's info to the grid manager. I hit login and then on the OpenSim console...

Got a bad hardware address length for an AF_PACKET 16 8
Got a bad hardware address length for an AF_PACKET 16 8
Got a bad hardware address length for an AF_PACKET 16 8
Got a bad hardware address length for an AF_PACKET 16 8...

An endless loop of that message. I Google the error 'OpenSim "Got a bad hardware address length for an AF_PACKET 16 8"' and I find out that the error is a bug in Mono. There is a patch for it, but it requires me to compile Mono. Sigh. Well, at least all I need to compile is the base Mono tarball.

If and when I finally manage to get my sim up and running, I'll let everyone know. This experience so far has given me a greater respect for the Linden Lab "grid monkeys" and in general anyone else whose jobs require to go through this kind of torture and still manage to keep their sanity.

Some Resources for OpenSim Users

2009-08-30T18:49:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post to list off some useful resources I've found for OpenSim users:

Free Terrains(useful for new SL private region owners too;RAW file downloads aren't working tho)
More Free Terrains
CC-licensed sounds
Meerkat viewer(A viewer with object import/export abilities and support for "grid-hopping")
Public Domain Pictures
A GIMP plugin for editing RAW terrain files
A repository of ready-to-use OpenSim archives: http://opensimworlds.com

I've yet to find any public domain or Creative Commons licensed prefabs for SL/OpenSim via Google or XStreetSL, sadly. I'll come back to this post and add to this list if I find anything.

Squatter communities and Virtual Worlds

2009-08-25T18:24:00.000-07:00

If you have followed my Twitter microblog for at least the past few days, you may have noticed that I have been traveling to certain places in SL that would seem "seedy" at first glance. Specifically I visited places that on some level or another, represent the favelas of Brazil and Portugal, such as Cidade De Deus(City of God) and Favela Do Capao Redondo.

I was inspired to do so after stumbling onto a video presentation by Robert Neuwirth, a journalist who has spent two years of his life living in squatter communities in four continents(quite an achievement, I'd say). He argues that these squatter communities are "the cities of tomorrow". To a surprising extent, he may be very right. In fact, Robert's argument is playing out right now in the context of virtual worlds.

When Second Life began as LindenWorld, everything was a blank slate to explore, build and develop on. The pioneers of LindenWorld began creating little communities, with merely a fraction of the creation abilities of today's Second Life. Yesterday's LindenWorld beared very little resemblance to Second Life. It was "the virtual world of tomorrow".

As Second Life became more and more mainstream, it simultaneously became more restrictive in certain ways. First it was the gambling ban. Then it was banking. Then ageplay became practically verboten. Most recently adult content is getting thrown into an age-verified only red light district called Zindra. At every point many communities complained it would strip a piece of their freedoms away, but they were ultimately silenced because Linden Lab "had to do this to stay legitimate".

As something of a response to the increasing restrictive complexity, other but less developed virtual worlds have emerged. Most notably is OpenSim, a clean-room reverse engineered implementation of a Second Life sim server. With this, you can host your own sim and hook it up to an existing online grid.

In this sense, OpenSim and it's derivatives can be seen in a similar light as the shantytowns and favelas Mr. Neuwirth talks of so fondly: it offers the kind of freedom Second Life does not. Everybody owns a sim, but property rights are either loose or non-existant. Everything that was once commonplace but now forbidden in SL can be seen on OSGrid or any number of smaller clusters of sims. They are the "virtual favelas" where those who have been disenfranchised by SL may wind up going. This is the competition to SL that it and its' residents must not shun, but rather engage with if SL and the virtual world community at large are to prosper in the long term.

Thankfully, we are seeing a bit or progress on that front, as LL's Content Management Roadmap blog post speaks of best practices for inter-virtual world content interoperability. It is a good first step, but much more engagement and debate must be made on all sides. Otherwise, SL may wind up like Vault 101 from the Fallout 3 video game: sealed off, isolated and left behind. On that, I hope I'm wrong actually, but that's what it seems to me.

So, what's your take? Does SL need these "virtual squatter communities", or am I simply being foolish praising "virtual slums"? Comments are open for discussion :)

My bad sionChicken experience

2009-08-25T12:26:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I had read of the plight of Second Life's most infamous resident, Prokofy Neva, in her quest to raise a group of sionChickens on a farm. I had read about sionChickens before, as they seem to be the latest craze in SL. As I was reading Prok's post, I started to get curious about getting into the chicken craziness. At the end of her post was a SLurl that went directly to her farm. I decided I would go there, observe the chickens in action, and perhaps even ask Prok why chicken farming in SL is worth it. In hindsight, that was the most stupid and naive decision I've ever made in SL.

What happened? Well, I got to the farm, and it had most of the staples of a chicken farm: a chicken coop, a hen house and a chicken range. I had even seen Prok's favorite chick "Hope". Adorable little things, for sure, as they moved around on their own, pecked around and did stuff just like RL chickens. I was careful to keep a distance though, because I had read that it's very easy to kill a sionChicken(too easy, IMO).

So I observed the chickens for about two minutes, and then guess who teleports in? Yup, it's Prok. What happened next?

[20:54] Antonius Misfit: Halllooooo
[20:54] Prokofy Neva ejected and banned you from this land.
[20:54] Antonius Misfit: figures

I simply say "Hi", and I get banned for it? Later on I figure that she believed I was going to kill her chickens, because in her eyes "open source=criminal griefer". A day or two later, she reveals that Hope had gotten killed by a griefer called "Soviet Admiral". I thought about her entire ordeal, and I realized that the griefings and chicken killings could have been avoided if she had made a few simple checkbox clicks in the land management tab. A parcel lockdown would have given her peace of mind. I posed that as a question both on Twitter and her blog comments.

What did I get as a response? A silent comment deletion on her blog(not entirely unexpected, but again... being naive struck me again), and these two little doozies on Twitter(she's protected her individual tweets, but still visible via her Twitter home page):

@antoniusmisfit oh, shut the fuck up. We aren't required to live in parcel lockdown just to keep you assholes away. Grow up.

@antoniusmisfit What a spectacle, violent griefing assholes philosophizing abt how victims didn't lock down. Seriously, go fuck yourself.

Wow. If there were anything such as a baptism by fire, I just received a taste of it. I'm a "philosophizing violent griefer asshole" now, according to her. Yet, she has the balls to harass a Linden with an alt account(ironically named "Dear Leader", Prok must have a crush on Kim Jeong Il), get that account banned, and actually post all the details of it on her blog? Compare that to what I did, and decide for yourself who is the griefer.

In a way I should thank her, though. Just after she had banned me from Belarus, I had read in the Herald that the EULA for sionChickens is actually illegal. So between that and Prok's ban-and-flame routine, I'm now of the opinion that sionChickens are cute but devious little scams. They induce lag, die too easily, upgrades are mandatory per EULA(and not free or discounted either), and if Sion or his employees believe you are criticizing their products(even if you aren't but think you are), you are irrevocably blacklisted.

So I decided to offer an alternative to sionChickens. It won't die, won't force you to buy expensive accessories or food, and can be totally modified to make it uniquely your own. It is technically a parody item, but just like the RL Pet Rock craze, it offers something that no other pet does - a stress-free experience, and for some people that makes all the difference :)

What's your opinion? Is Prok right, or has she gone off the deep end(yet again)? Am I right about sionChickens, or are they just misunderstood? Comments are open(unlike on Prok's blog).