Had a great text-based Town Hall with Cory Linden today. Also, be sure to check out Cory’s Pre-Town Hall answers for even more technical answer goodness.
Jeska Linden: We will be posting a full transcript to the blog after the event, you may also want to read Cory’s Pre Town Hall blog post here: http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/01/09/pre-town-hall-answers/
Jeska Linden: Ok, Cory, take it away.
Cory Linden: OK, here we go . . . since I posted the answers to the blog, I think we can jump right into questions
Cory Linden: Kudos and thank yous to everyone who has already downloaded the code and who submitted questions
Jeska Linden: Ok, I’ve got the first question
Jeska Linden: Hannah Shenley: What network connectivity does Linden labs have to the outside world, and in particular to continents other than the US? Hannah Shenley: What network connectivity does Linden labs have to the outside world, and in particular to continents other than the US?
Cory Linden: We use Internap, who connects generally via Sprint and Level 3’s backbones
Jeska Linden: RacerX Gullwing: Why do islands disappear when you look at the big map and zoom out, and don’t stay visible like mainland sims?
Cory Linden: I just noticed that 20 minutes ago while doing a demo . . . seems like a bug so will submit it.
Jeska Linden: Curtis Gardiner: i became a premium member in order to buy first land and have not seen any first land for sale for several weeks?
Cory Linden: Sadly, that does fit into the technical town hall . . . we have had such a run on land purchases that we are behind on putting new land up .
Cory Linden: we are working as fast as we can to correct the situation and get more machines shipped into our colos
Jeska Linden: Stephane Zugzwang: Are there plans by LL to deal with the eventuality of people using the source code to write robots – this could bring a see of changes, not to mention overload some servers or features or enable DOS attacks ?
Cory Linden: People will write bots whether or not we open source. The questions become what they use them for and how we want to get in that arms race …
Cory Linden: THe goal will be to give folks ways to identify and deal with bots if they become a problem
Jeska Linden: Broccoli Curry: will there be measures in place so that ONLY the official viewer can connect to the main grid, and homemade viewers have their own grid where no damage can be done
Cory Linden: There is no technical means to perfectly ensure that only official viewers can connect to the grid
Jeska Linden: Kamilion Schnook: What is involved in the boot process of an individual grid node?
Cory Linden: Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t want to be anyone’s friend during the town hall :-)!
Cory Linden: The boot process of a server machine? well, they are debian boxes that get imaged every night. Do you mean sim startup or machine startup?
Jeska Linden: Drake Stonewall: What’s the timeframe on getting the OS viewer into a source control mechanism we can access? The pre-blog just says “the future”
Cory Linden: I can definitely confirm that it will be the future
Cory Linden: I’ll defer to robla on that timing (Robla = Rob Linden)
Jeska Linden: Shoq Venkman: WHAT ISTHE PRIORITY for Mozilla Libraries, ubrowser. When can we render pages in-world, like the F1 Help window. Will this be a priority so the OSI people have something hot to work on early?
Cory Linden: We have a contract group working on zilla. It is a very high priority but has proved to be “tricky”
Jeska Linden: Aster Lardner: How will the average user experience the advantages of an open-source client? Do you think that open sourcing the client will bring about things like plug-ins, or would the average user have to wait until code is implimented into various independnt builds or the standard client to see any benefits from third parties playing with the code? And does this mean that SL is on a heterogenous grid system now that ppl can connect to it with thier own clients? :3
Cory Linden: We’ve already had our first bug fix. For the average user, I expect a better viewer as a result of this. I think that larger features are further out but I wouldn’t bet completely against them
Jeska Linden: David Frantisek: When should we expect to be able to use web pages (maybe including flash movies) as textures for objects?
Cory Linden: Sometime after we integrate flash into the in-SL browser. Flash is actually the hardest part of the embedding process.
Jeska Linden: Jeremy Duport: Considering the current Open Sourcing of the viewer has made the protocols used to stream simulator data (that is, primitives, textures, avatars and so on) widely available in order to allow third-party midified clients to function properly, what measures are being put in place to directly protect the products and other intellectual property of residents involved in content creation?
Cory Linden: The protocols were figured out before we open sourced. There is an extensive security and IP discussion on my blog post and the FAQ page.
Jeska Linden: Bato Brendel: Does Linden Labs have any plans to implement PhysX PPU support for a massive boost in physics calculations and object handling?
Cory Linden: No
Jeska Linden: Draco Flaman: 12-months of inactivity to recycle non-premium accounts, and 18 months to deactivate premium accounts.. and then how about putting the SL second names up for Use again if enough of them become inactive?
Cory Linden: That’s an interesting idea, actually, will pass along
Jeska Linden: Alenzia Epsilon: There has been an immense problem with lag in several reigons, and we have seen a handfull of reigons hit especially hard. For instance, 2 days ago Tethys was down for 12 hours. Is there anything being done to improve the stability of old, mainland sims?
Cory Linden: We continue to find and fix issues in the simulator code. We also have been learning a lot of lessons about opening a second colo facility. We believe that we are getting ahead of most of these issues
Jeska Linden: Marbles Tokyo: is there any plan for allowing a user to alter the direction or force of the wind?
Cory Linden: Well, you can kind of fake that with enough scripts, but more control over physics in estates is an idea that has bounced around. Not inthe dev pipeline yet, though
Jeska Linden: Sanford Foulon: What sort of test regime does LL plan to use when accepting enhancements into the baseline Viewer code?
Cory Linden: We have both an external security auditor and our normal dev/qa team. The simpler bug fixes will be easier to evaluate, larger patches will be taken more carefully or not at all
Jeska Linden: Leviathan Akami: Wouldnt it hurt SL to release the server code? like hinder their ability to profit from SL?
Cory Linden: No
Jeska Linden: Akumu Akula: Will user updated veiwers have to be re-made everytime a new veiwer is released by LL?
Cory Linden: For right now, yes, but per the blog post about capabilities and rapid deploy we are making changes to support heterogeneous viewers
Jeska Linden: Marbles Tokyo: Will there be a way to allow users to restrict/refine searches based on covenant?
Cory Linden: eventually, that makes sense. we are just starting the search redesign this quarter. There is a lot of room for improvement in search.
Cory Linden: Will probably do a townhall just about search sometime soon
Jeska Linden: Kage Seraph: Cory, if the open source client was a celebrity, which one would it be?
Cory Linden: Alf
Jeska Linden: Prokofy Neva: Hi, Question: “If your long-term plan is to open source all of Second Life, not just this viewer, how does land retain its value, and does your own business plan involving selling land have to change then, too? What’s the timetable?”
Cory Linden: Timetable is “the future” Will the business model have to change? Of course. Web sites have value today despite running on open source underpinnings and many different…
Cory Linden: business models are supported on the web, so I suspect that several of them will apply to an open sourced SL
Jeska Linden: Something Something: Is there any plan to integrate a bounty program directly into the Report Bug functionality? In other words, set a L$ amount as reward when you report a bug. SL is unique among open source projects in having a micropayment scheme built right in to the client. Are there any technical reasons why this could not be offered? You would not only get your bugs fixed for free, but you’d get other people paying developers to fix your bugs for free. 🙂
Cory Linden: I think that there is a real opportunity for bounties, both for bugs and for open source. Robla is going to help refine that but it is too early to know exactly how it will work
Jeska Linden: Kamilion Schnook: Now that we have external programs accessing SL, when will popular places go away? 1Q/2Q 07 when the search code is updated?
Cory Linden: Go away? I think it is better to think of it being upgraded and made more useful as we take the current search out behind the shed and shoot it.
Jeska Linden: Leviathan Akami: oh hey, opening the source, does that mean somebody can finally modify search so you dont have to get private island listings in with the public mainland listings under land sales?
Cory Linden: It may be possible to do that on the client. I’m not sure.
Jeska Linden: Zi Ree: can we get a picture of an actual colo SL uses? 🙂 I’d love to see the hardware involved.
Cory Linden: they don’t like camera being inside the colos
Jeska Linden: David Frantisek: Will any sort of plugin environment be developed for SL in a future release?
Cory Linden: Almost certainly, for sufficiently large definitions of future
Jeska Linden: Antonius Misfit: Now that the viewer is open sourced, is it possible to create a viewer that can stream open source media formats?
Cory Linden: Yes
Jeska Linden: Avil Creeggan: Right now, with the client open sourcing, there are a load of questions about the protection of intellectual property. I’m not so worried about the technical issues, which I already know are going to be mostly moot considering LibSL exists, but on a social level; Right now, there is next to zero help for persons having intellectual property issues from the Linden crew unless it involves submitting a DMCA takedown notice. As an example antecdote, my group, the Alliance Navy, has been attempting to stop persons involved in copying our proprietary equipment for a good deal of time, almost two months now, and we have been generally ignored and “handled” on asking liaisons. Does Linden Labs have any plans to start improving Intellectual Property protection on a SOCIAL level /soon/, ideally /now/?
Cory Linden: The IP issues are the same as we discussed previously. Meta data is being worked on. I’m actually a little surprised that nobody has started an asset registration business…
Jeska Linden: Joel Savard: Are there any plans to provide an inventory snapshot/backup/archiving function to provide some protection against the recurring “lost inventory” problem? Several friends have lost absolutely everything, years of work with apparently no recourse, and this seems an implausible situation for a growing and more commercial user base to tolerate.
Cory Linden: in SL where you could register your stuff. Linden Lab is not in the position of being police, nor can we. DMCA is the right tool for us to respond to.
Cory Linden: We were just talking about this today. Yes, that will get into the dev schedule soon
Jeska Linden: David Frantisek: Should we expect a fix in the near future to the memory leak problems?
Cory Linden: Fixes, yes. Will that get all of them? Unfortunately that will probably be an ongoing problem.
Jeska Linden: Dale Glass: Will there be a place in the grid suitable for testing modified versions of the client? In case modifications turn out to have unexpected effects, and so that LL knows that it’s a modified client being tested and not a bug in the official one
Cory Linden: The FAQ talks about this. There will always be a separate grid up that is in sync with the open source release.
Jeska Linden: David Frantisek: Where can those who are having technical problems developing using the source code provided get help?
Cory Linden: FAQ, wiki, irc, each other.
Jeska Linden: Kamilion Schnook: What is the current status of the MONO Scripting engine, And when can we start testing on the beta grid?
Cory Linden: Mono is coming along but isn’t quite ready for prime time yet. We want to get some of the rapid deploy/het grid stuff working first.
Jeska Linden: Draco Flaman: Does LL plan on releasing a version of SL for other PC types, such as Windows 98? Some of my friends w/ slightly older computers wanted to know this.
Cory Linden: Windows 98? No.
Jeska Linden: Bato Brendel: Will SL be finally or in the planning of supporting PPU technology like Aegis PhysX cards?
Cory Linden: Nothing planned right now.
Jeska Linden: Henry Kirshner: Are there any improvements planned to the building tools?
Cory Linden: We’re still continuing to clean up the focus and internationalization issues first. I suspect that modified build tools may be a fruitful area of open source exploration.
Jeska Linden: Aston Hildyard: Is there any plan to implement some of the other operators available in most computational solid geometry packages into the SL prim system? That is, is there any plan to permit all boolean operations on primitives, and not just unions?
Cory Linden: Yeah, I want a “not” operation as well. When we get through the current round of architectural and scaling issues, I expect we’ll take a long look at the building tools. Some people, oddly…
Cory Linden: seem to want something called polygons for their modeling needs. Not sure why.
Jeska Linden: Shaun Altman: In what ways do you see your business model changing when SL is fully open sourced? Also, when the server is out, can everyone make their own little SL, or will all the servers have to connect to your grid?
Cory Linden: We’ve only open sourced the client, so fully OS discussions are premature. We all have a lot to learn about working as an open source community, and the viewer is a great opportunity for that.
Jeska Linden: David Frantisek: Are there plans to improve the jpeg library released with the SL source code?
Cory Linden: Hopefully you will. libjpeg needs optimization work for j2c.
Jeska Linden: Judge Hocho: My question is in two parts; first what effect do you think the open-sourcing will have upon intellectual property rights? And related, Why have LL employees failed to perform even the slightest due diligence with regard to theft of said intellectual property even faced with a preponderance of data to support such claims? Second, what are you doing to protect your corporate customers and more importantly, their customers for whom they represent?
Cory Linden: Per previous discussions on this topic, the DMCA is pretty clear for how we can respond to IP issues. We do not have discretion in either direction. Thus, we abide by the DMCA safe harbor provisions.
Jeska Linden: Shoq Venkman: Why can’t SLURLS teleport directly to a landing spot. Why must web users go through the map page first. Integration with the web will never be smooth that way.
Cory Linden: An excellent point. I agree that the map stage is annoying.
Jeska Linden: Eduardo Falken: Will be possible to create our own client-sided LSL functions in SL Client Viewer?
Cory Linden: Clearly, if SL is to feel more responsive, we need client side scripting. There are a lot of competing ideas right now on how best to do that.
Jeska Linden: Marbles Tokyo: Is there a way to create top level folders in addition to “my inventory” and “Library” if not, is there plans to allow this in the future?
Cory Linden: No
Jeska Linden: David Frantisek: Are there plans to add distributed computing/peer-to-peer functionality to SL?
Cory Linden: We’ll be publishing a roadmap for SL’s future later this quarter which will talk about that a bit.
Jeska Linden: Kamilion Schnook: Will you accept patches to the input subsystem of SL to use alternative interface devices, such as braile teletype machines, P5 datagloves and wiimotes via something like GlovePIE, and head mounted displays like http://www.3dvisor.com/ ?
Cory Linden: It depends on the patch. Enabling more input devices would be very cool, though.
Jeska Linden: Taft Worsley: What will LL SOP be when a rogue viewer is release and what will they do for preventing its use?
Cory Linden: This is no different from what can be done with libsl right now. If you are worried about a viewer, you should be downloading from secondlife.com
Jeska Linden: Sundog Sakai: In the licensing terms listed@ /developers/opensource/licenses what is meant by “commercial terms”?; Can we still use the GPL with the FLOSS exception even if we are building a proprietary offering, as long as we release the source code under the GPL?
Cory Linden: Not sure, I’ll pass that one to Robla and Ginsu
Jeska Linden: Ting Yue: What would be the prerequisites to open sourcing the server? tech hurdles or more a business decision?
Cory Linden: tech
Jeska Linden: Temptor Redgrave: Has any thought been given to adding semantic information to objects, especially in the form of an ontology, so a object would have not just a form, but a consistant funciton?
Cory Linden: that is a great question and goes to the heart of a search redesign. Of course, semantic data like that is complicated, because you can’t assume correct assignment of meta data. Come to the search town hall when we do it!
Jeska Linden: Marcus Reisman: I would love an update on the sim-caps and backbone projects in the next year? 🙂
Cory Linden: The last blog post on it is still pretty correct. We keep rolling pieces out with each update, slowly. We want to be very careful with these changes.
Jeska Linden: Joel Savard: Has the concept of land-based “state snapshot and restore” been considered – allowing a land-owner to “snapshot” the current configuration of objects on their land? This would allow “what-if” construction work where you could restore the land to a previous state without having to rebuild it…
[Torley Linden: The blog post on sim-caps and backbone etc. is here — http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/12/21/a-big-change-youll-barely-notice/ ]
Cory Linden: Yes, we are actively talking about the right way to do that.
Jeska Linden: Henry Kirshner: Are there any plans to integrate voice chat into sl?
Cory Linden: Folks are already using voice. Such as the language lab project.
Cory Linden: Blender would have to buy me coffee first, maybe a few dates, before I would consider it.
Jeska Linden: David Frantisek: Within the next year, will releases be made to be more integrated with the platform they are running on, so that for instance inventory windows can be dragged outside the main window?
Cory Linden: We hadn’t planned to move in that direction as it make cross platform maintenance more of a pain in the posterior.
Jeska Linden: Marbles Tokyo: Are flexible prims going to stay client side? or are there plans to move them to Server side so that everyone sees the same flexibility?
Cory Linden: Client side for now.
Jeska Linden: Anna Zwiers: Can we have a way to backup inventory? Haven’t been able to edit clothes/character for a week now.
Cory Linden: As previously mentioned, we are talking about how to do that. Also, we have made some pretty substantial equipment purchases to buff out our back end storage.
Jeska Linden: Raven Welesa: Will LL make a way for specific groups to be banned from parcels and estates instead of just having to make everyone a certain group for you to ban them?
Cory Linden: I know that community is planning the next round of group work right now, so that is worth mentioning to them. Will pass along.
Jeska Linden: Draco Flaman: Are there any plans of LL releasing a text-based communication system for mobile phones, so that people can talk/text w/ their friends online?
Cory Linden: Haven’t a few folks done those already?
Cory Linden: OK, last question?
Jeska Linden: Peekay Semyorka: Aside from JIRA, may we have some visibility into the “Bug Report” tool’s database, so OSS developers have a better sense of which bugs are impacting a lot of people, and should receive fix priority?
Cory Linden: Jira exposes voting and other methods for doing that. Take my word, you don’t want to look at Jira’s database.
Cory Linden: OK, that’s all!
Cory Linden: Thank you very much for all the great questions and I look forward to seeing what you do with the open source client. Till next time!
Jeska Linden: Thanks for coming out today everyone, we’ll be posting this transcript to the blog!
Official Second Life Blog 
Cory, Robla,
That was one of the most incredible town hall meetings I’ve ever had the chance to read about. I was there for part of the time but my viewer crashed for some reason (I had it running as -multiple and was building elsewhere with another avi, I think this might be why–some one mentioned memory leaks?). I would have liked to have been there (perhaps we could meet on the boundaries of four different regions next time, instead of Pooley Stage–that way town hall can meet more laglessly?) persona via avatar.
Are all the town hall meetings hence going to be technical? From a programmer’s perspective this would be interesting news–but I’m wondering about the old town halls where there was audio and questions from skype about features and some interesting points about companies in sl. What about radio linden, does that still happen anymore?
I got done reading Eric S. Raymond’s “The Cathedral and The Bazaar” and I am feeling like I’m seeing something familiar here with the an approach to open source second life (the viewer *is* an excellent place to start). I have yet to build my first hack but I am working with an orphaned project. I just could not find any perticularly neat application to work with that I had user or programmer any experience with. Perhaps OSSecondLife will give me a chance to be a part of the open source model.
Thanks for OSSecondLife,
Dominick.
It would be interesting to know what percentage of people in Second Life would understand even 1/20th of the topics covered in this Town Hall transcript… I suspect less than 2 percent; certainly less than 5 percent. It’s increasingly obvious that Second Life is a VERY stratified society, with no clear road for the 98 percent to ever learn what all the technical stuff means to their everyday online life (without a four-year RL education in a variety of computer science subspecialties). Someday, it would be interesting to have a meeting in which the ‘masses’ could be involved: a feature/benefit forum perhaps? Perhaps a complete glossary of terms used in transcripts such as these would also be useful!
I’ll agree that SL is a stratified society, however I believe that the bulk of SL residents choose to remain ignorant about all the “technical stuff” of their own volition. Higher education is not required, let alone a focus in computer science (I, myself, was an English major).
All that’s needed to understand what’s going on behind the scenes in SL, and how things on the Internet work in general, is some time spent doing a little research. There is a wide variety of resources available that explain, in non-technical terms, what all this “technical stuff” is, what it does, and how it works.
The sad fact of the matter is, many people DON’T WANT to learn, choose to remain ignorant, reject any explanation you try to give them as “too technical,” and then wear their ignorance as a badge as though it were something about which they can be proud. I.e.: “Look at me! I don’t know anything about this technical stuff, and I can’t be bothered to learn because I don’t want to know! I just want to use it!”
This mentality is often infuriating to those of us who took the time to learn about this “technical stuff,” whether as a self-taught hobbyist (such as myself), or someone who pursued a degree through higher education.
Knowledge is power.
Take care.
– SDW ^..^
Heh! I think you nailed it right on the head, Shadow. 😉
I always have to read the transcript since I can’t attend Town Halls during the day. Seems like each time there is some part of the transcript missing. Answers to questions not listed…
Is there a technical reason we are not getting the whole transcript posted?
Hi everyone – sorry I didn’t make it to Pooley during the town hall…I was listening, but it was pretty crowded there. However, let me answer some of the questions which Cory deferred to me
Regarding version control, there’s a wiki page here:
https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Version_control_repository
Be sure to click on the “discussion” tab to see some of the discussion, and log in to add your 2c. As soon as the specification gels, I’ll try to get it built.
Regarding bounties, there’s info about that here:
https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Categories:Bounties
The reason for not coming out the gate with such a thing is that we first need to kinks knocked out of the process for accepting contributions. Only then will we be in a good position to do things that accelerate contribution such as bounty programs.
Finally, these questions regarding licensing, in reverse order:
Sundog Sakai: Can we still use the GPL with the FLOSS exception even if we are building a proprietary offering, as long as we release the source code under the GPL?
Answer: No, the FLOSS exception is purely in place to provide GPL compatibility with licenses that would otherwise be incompatible. We specifically put it there because we use some code licensed under the Apache License 2.0, which is not compatible with GPL 2.0, and we wanted to make sure that people still can legally redistribute all of the open source viewer code as a complete work.
Sundog Sakai: In the licensing terms listed@ /developers/opensource/licenses what is meant by “commercial terms”?
Commercial terms are the terms you would need to agree to to provide a proprietary derivative of the Second Life viewer. We haven’t yet published them, but please contact us if you are interested.
While I agree with Shadow, I think we shouldn’t underestimate the level of technical savvy in the community. Isn’t all building activity really just a very high-level form of programming? It seems that there is an logical educational progressing from building to cut-and-paste scripting to detailed scripting, potentially on to non-LSL programming or genuine interest in this OS project. This is way less polarising than, say, the producer-consumer divide in typical application programming.
In the SL environment there is a high level of motivation for people to get to grips with these progressively more technical issues, since it has a clear impact on one’s life in SL. Compare that with the current state of the web, where the end-user tools are so slick that few people would feel compelled to get deeply technical, even though some status accrues to those who do.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that SL supports a smooth continuum of “tech-headedness”, where people aren’t as polarised into geeks/non-geeks as in other technologies or real life. It’s not necessarily a simple leap from choosing hairstyles to choosing Haskell, but the culture does encourage those baby steps.
Linden, you rock!
“Jeska Linden: Draco Flaman: 12-months of inactivity to recycle non-premium accounts, and 18 months to deactivate premium accounts.. and then how about putting the SL second names up for Use again if enough of them become inactive?
NOWAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! once the name dies LET IT STAY DEAD! Your forgetting something very important. What about those that had that name and the people that befriended etc………….ANd or the problem that avie name occured! NONONONO this idea has been up for chat countless times and I DON`T want to see thise type of careless thinking start being a trend on sl! NO NO to this VOTE! Your asking for all sort of problems Personal real life side and sl as well…………
Usagi, you must have an evil “dead” avatar :)).
But I agree… there’s millions of last names that could be used so why revive the dead ones… pointless.
I’m rather concerned by the reply to my question, essentially saying there is ‘no way’ to prevent homegrown clients from connecting to the main grid, rather than the intended test grid.
Surely this must be a priority requirement for the safety and security of the grid? Will you really accept “sorry I was just trying out a feature of my own SL viewer that went wrong” when the asset server spontaneously combusts?
If people want to play with their SL clients, in a separate area, then there isn’t much that can be done about it – however, when that ‘ability to play’ has a good chance to affect my Second Life, then it becomes of concern to me – and 20,000 others who happen to be online at the time.
It’s clear that you are going ahead with the ‘open source’ project, however a simple change like stopping experiments affecting the main grid would quell a lot of the very legitimate concerns that people have.
We’ve already seen the damage of ‘hacked clients’ with big prims and copybot – are you really prepared for even worse to happen?
Broccoli
MarmelaGramela………………
Its just not me thinking this. But that of a few others. The issue of bring past names back to life is nothing but a *******nightmare is the making! Let the retired names STAY RETIRED!!!!!!!!!! PERIOD. Leave a little what left what whats desent that made this great games history! Don`t sell this part of this game as well! GESH LLABS Use some common SENCE!!!!!!!!!!
Problem is too many things are not thought about, The are just being thrown into the fire thinking, the past where common sence once was is nolong. Beside MarmelaGramela what good is there bring back old names? they are better off letting people just choose their own last name…..
Personally I have no trouble with the tekkie stuff, but I’d agree that this discussion would not mean a whole lot to the majority of SL residents. Nor should it. The ideal remains total transparency to the customer.
I’m looking at this platform as one of those that have potential to grow into Web 2.5-3.0, eventually as a universal front-end, no less. In that context, there is one item that betrays a certain selective attitude which (despite these recent and very worthy open-source moves) could be a blocker, and that is – currently, the demanding and quite specific nature of the system requirements. I think I’ll buy shares in nVidia.
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Shadow may have hit it on the head. Because everything here is created from nothing instantly and we don’t even pretend to eat reguarly, there are no jobs for waitresses, chefs, miners/farmers etc.
We need raw materials as not everyone coming into second life wants to become sctipters or builders. We can’t all do the same thing.We need roads so people can bus drive others on tours etc.
The average process worker might come here to socialise & explore but not want to learn to program the game, but what then does he do for money to explore things like DCS & related area’s. We don’t want to turn it into a money slog like real life but a 4 hour shift a couple of times aweek perhaps would supplement many’s income. Girls seem to have a lot more entertainment industry jobs available of course. For guys it seems rough to get work.
Problem is too many things are not thought about, The are just being thrown into the fire thinking, the past where common sence once was is nolong. Beside MarmelaGramela what good is there bring back old names? they are better off letting people just choose their own last name…..
Hmm and should we store the inventories of the fallen till the year 3000 too, what if you could chose your last name and were told your favorite pick was unavailable because some griefer used it 26 years earlier.
What about your respect for the guy who took a name you like, played SL for a week then logged out forever 5 years ago, think of how people who haven’t used the AV’s for such long times really feel. They really don’t care. Delete them all from the servers, They don’t count as residents anymore and are only hogging server space. Who know’s how much space used in storage of unused opened freebie packs alone….
.
Jeska Linden: Aston Hildyard: Is there any plan to implement some of the other operators available in most computational solid geometry packages into the SL prim system? That is, is there any plan to permit all boolean operations on primitives, and not just unions?
Cory Linden: Yeah, I want a “not” operation as well. When we get through the current round of architectural and scaling issues, I expect we’ll take a long look at the building tools. Some people, oddly…
Cory Linden: seem to want something called polygons for their modeling needs. Not sure why.
Oh no, they are going to put me out of business.
I am selling a polygon creator in my shop and on SLX:
http://www.slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=161476
DisQ Hern
kath sorry makes no sence………..
“””””””””Jeska Linden: Broccoli Curry: will there be measures in place so that ONLY the official viewer can connect to the main grid, and homemade viewers have their own grid where no damage can be done
Cory Linden: There is no technical means to perfectly ensure that only official viewers can connect to the grid”””””””””
Guess that means that since it’s not perfect, they aren’t going to try and do anything about it. Nice approach.
As for naming… the first name should stay dead, but last names brought back. I *think* that was the original intention. Just like Sassoon… Seola could never be used but Yoyobobo Sassoon could be created.
If they opened up full names however, usually there’s a few year waiting period in games, then everything associated with that is removed from the database. All items, friends links, stored data, etc… so if someone came with Seola in 5 years, all the friends on my list wouldn’t have an idea it’s me simply because the links to each would be destroyed when clearing it out.
But I still don’t like opening first names, just the last ones every once in a while.
Like some sort of fun ‘throwback to 2004’ kinda thing.
Guess that means that since it’s not perfect, they aren’t going to try and do anything about it. Nice approach.
It is for me. This way I don’t have to worry about my homebrew client I’m slowly starting to put together connecting or not.
“But I still don’t like opening first names, just the last ones every once in a while.
Like some sort of fun ‘throwback to 2004′ kinda thing.”
Yes but then again everyone likes retro……:/ NOT…..
But let the dead alone………Move one with better last names and you can make and tell periods of sl history by the names. If they start this bozo retro reborn idea, sl is just going to kill off the last decent part of waht left of the wonderful beginning to this now ad drive,PR joke of a game. Mind you i love sl and i rather not see such ideas be used for the historical value.
I am somewhat concerned about the security aspects involved, and the approach that Linden Labs are taking towards it. It certainly seems that they avoid answering the questions posed on that subject directly, instead referring to a document that still does not give a solid, straight answer.
To be honest, I was all for keeping the client code locked up. I do believe that Open-Sourcing it is going to create more harm than good.
To demonstrate my point, I will use a real-life example:
The USA and the UK are two very similar countries, despite those who would disagree. One of the staple differences are the laws, especially the ‘Right to Bear Arms’. In a slightly wide shot, I would reference the US as ‘Open Source’, and the UK as ‘Private Code’.
Now, in America the attitude seems to be “Every human has a right to bear arms. We do realise that these weapons fall into the wrong hands, but are equipped and trained to cope with it when it happens.”
Whereas in the UK, they say “No guns. At all. The less people can get hold of them, the less gun crime we will have. The benefits of the public having guns do not outweigh the flaws.”
Which country has the most gun crime? (taken as an average per head)
So take this and replace the guns with Open Source code. While it cannot kill people (I hope those facecious people among you do not take this too literally) it does cause major harm to people, most likely their bank balance. Think about it this way, while those that do copybot or have nothing worth copybotting will have mostly favourable views over the code release, think about those people who build houses for a living, or primmed avatars (or really, any product that sells based on aesthetics rather than script performance). Their entire business can be taken out from under their nose. Is this acceptable?
I do apologise for those of you that are to use this code for honest means, I do not wish to see this taken away from you. Maybe Linden Labs should incorporate a system whereby they register all users using the source code. Clients can be tested on the test grid, but only after a look-over by the Lindens can it be used on the main Grid. Surely this can’t be too hard to incorporate?
Cory Linden: The IP issues are the same as we discussed previously. Meta data is being worked on. I’m actually a little surprised that nobody has started an asset registration business…
I just wanted to comment on this – such a business would not be viable due to lack of a way to enforce violations. Any such registry system a’la copyright registry, trademarks, or patents outside of government and government-approved agencies hold no authority either in court or with LL.
Or maybe I misunderstood Cory’s comment about asset registration? If so I’d like to hear more.
Lewis Nerd says:
We’ve already seen the damage of ‘hacked clients’ with big prims and copybot – are you really prepared for even worse to happen?
The ‘hacked clients’ pros have far outweighed the cons.
“”””But let the dead alone………Move one with better last names and you can make and tell periods of sl history by the names. If they start this bozo retro reborn idea, sl is just going to kill off the last decent part of waht left of the wonderful beginning to this now ad drive,PR joke of a game. Mind you i love sl and i rather not see such ideas be used for the historical value.””””
Care Usagi… you might come off as elitest!!! /sarcasm
“Care Usagi… you might come off as elitest!!! /sarcasm”
Want alitte jello with that mudpie your eating……laughs at the nut…..:/
Chronic, that was me not Lewis, but anyway… please do share the ‘positives’ of hacked clients, because all I am aware of are:
a) God Mode hack, overriding peoples right to privacy.
b) Copybot, overriding people’s rights to ownership.
c) Huge Prims, which if they weren’t potentially damaging, would be included in the regular client.
I also find the dismissive answer about not being able to prevent home-grown clients logging on and potentially damaging the grid – perhaps irreparably – very worrying.
Broccoli
Could it possible to incorporate a digital certificate into the official client when it’s built by the Linden team, and then require that certificate for connection to the main grid? Surely that would be an effective means by which to restrict access to the main grid to the official client?
I’m a bi tdismayed at the town hall meeting. Sl have been down more then up the last few days, and lagg has become so bad, that some objests can’t even rez and load properly. I was hoping they would address what theyare doing to resolve these issues. Being only able to serve 20,000 people of 2 MILLION is a HUGE disservice.
Also, more inmportantly, a system should be put in place to allow connectivity for paying members, but once server population hits 15,000 or so ONLY allow paying members to connect.
Sl MUST serve it’s paying members before non paying players, otherewise with the current situation many people might just not resubscribe.
Maybe giving people a 60 day free trial, and then give them the boot if they do not subscribe would be the best workable solution?
Something MUST be done pretty soon now. All the popular places have had massive lag the last 2 weeks, and transactions now have also now been affected, yet more new members are added daily.
I could care less about future open source plans, and tech jargon.. I care MUCH more if I can log on, and actually use SL, and I suspect that is MUCH more important to ALL users.
What good are all these technical “advancements” if not one can log on, tp, and the lag and packet loss are so bad we cannot use SL at all?
WOW does not have these issues, but then it IS an all paying subscriber base.
I am so tired of the scheduled maintenance always happening in the mornings and on Wednesday. One, I only can be online in the mornings and then only monday through fridays at the most……. why always wednesday mornings…. why not another day, or afternoon?
I had been warned about this before coming to this community, I should have known better that maintenance would eat up one day a week. and then one to two days to “fix” all that was broken on that update. all is a bit much sometimes!
Garee taov: “Sl have been down more then up the last few days”
Really? Cause I’ve been online the last few days and SL has always been there. You mean “a few weeks ago?”
This has actually been a nicely stable period of late.
this is bogis
Cory, you didn’t answer my question from the original questions post:
“Cory, can you please respond to those who feel that this is just an attempt by a for-profit company to get free development work? How does having an open source client substantially benefit anyone other than Linden Lab?”
Unfortunatley I didn’t get to make it to the town hall 😦
However there was one thing of interest I was going to ask, which was regarding inventory backup/save/restore/download – basically something to safeguard your stuff in case of further database issues.
I know quite a lot of people that lost things recently.
Anyway, as i didn’t manage to get there I’ve created a proposal. So if you’d like to see this as a feature, take a look at
http://secondlife.com/vote/vote.php?get_id=2677
Or via the “feature voting” from the main menu, enter proposal id 2677.
I thought this would be worth mentioning and something nice to have. It would give people a little more reassurance and confidence.
who cares about updates?
not me!
As an ex programmer i shouldn’t really say this but
I agree with Gareee Taov.
SL serve your paying customers 1st.
Give them what they pay for, connectivity, less lag, asset servers that work all the time (lots 1000’s over the last few weeks).
1st Land for the prenium accounts that sign up under the belief that they could get some.
Get rid of the dead wood, clear the servers and this will generally speed things up.
If SL was a company in the UK, they would be procesuted under the trade descriptions act for failing to provide the service as advertised.
Just to say it again. Forget the upgrades for now, get things working for those paid members, clear out the dead wood (old dead characters over 12 months is a start) and serve your paying customers before they vote with thier feet. (if they can and haven’t invested too much in SL).
If you do this, U WILL PLEASE 90% of the paying customers instead of 10% of the techies.
and breath…..
i hate second life! and this is why!
Thank you LIEA for your skilled impersonation of a clueless troll. Rarely have I seen someone pull it off to better effect.
@Broocoli
Broccoli, every incident you’ve pointed out has happened before the client was open sourced. This means that even if the code was never released, the threat of cracked clients won’t go away. We were no safer before than now, nor are we any less safer either. The benefits of open sourcing the client that Chronic alluded to are open peer code review, active inclusion of residents in the development process, and the ability for residents to create and submit new features.
For example, I would like to create a client that can stream open source media formats such as Ogg Vorbis and Theora. Currently only Quicktime and mp3 are used, which limits options for users of open source(Linux users) to use inelegant and inefficient wrapper scripts which may or may not work(particularly for Quicktime). By opening up the source code to the client, I can pinpoint the client functions pertaining to streaming media and streaming media playback, and with a little effort add new functionality to handle Ogg and Theora streams. Then I submit it to LL for code review and possible inclusion into the official client. After submission, my code is reviewed not only by LL, but also looked at by other techie-inclined residents. A tiny typo bug is found in the code and corrected by an eagle-eyed reviewer(or several reviewers, as is usually the case in open source development). After the code review is done, LL can either approve or reject the contribution. If accepted, then Macintosh and Windows-using clients gain a new format for streaming multimedia in SL, and Linux-using residents gain the ability to stream their preferred media format. If not, then at least there’s a client that does have a feature the official one doesn’t have. That creates choice and cooperative competition, and that’s always good for everyone.
Gosh I tried reading this blog and got soo lost and just wandered down it but all of a sudden I think I saw that we can’t save our inventories of like clothing and my clothing sets that I spend day working on sometimes. I mean I got most of my stuff for free except my hair and shoes and jewelry and ponygirl stuff that I paid my lindens for too like my lost blue eyes was 20L and now I’m wondering will I lose all of my stuff *somehow* if like lighting struck you there or like don’t you have earthquakes a lot ? please tell me that can’t happen ….. Ever.
El Rob Said:
“So take this and replace the guns with Open Source code. While it cannot kill people (I hope those facecious people among you do not take this too literally) it does cause major harm to people, most likely their bank balance. Think about it this way, while those that do copybot or have nothing worth copybotting will have mostly favourable views over the code release, think about those people who build houses for a living, or primmed avatars (or really, any product that sells based on aesthetics rather than script performance). Their entire business can be taken out from under their nose. Is this acceptable?”
There is a real world parallel here that people seem to continue to ignore. Take a stroll through downtown Los Angeles, or downtown _your major metropolis here_. Notice all the little warehouse shops that sell knockoffs of real, major commercial products – Your Nike, your Rolex, etc. There is no magic potion in the real world that can prevent this. It is fought on two primary levels –
1 – Brand Recognition, and thus the ability to recognize when the brand is being counterfeited. I will guarantee you that if somebody lifts a house or other building made by an established, recognized builder, who has established clear brand recognition in-world, and tries to pass it off as their own creation, they’ll get smacked down inside of a day.
2 – Enforcement – See #1.
It is simply not practical, reasonable, or fair to place the burden squarely on Linden Lab to provide a technical environment which secures content to the extent that seems to be expected by a relatively small group of folks here – notwithstanding the viewer going open source, it simply is not possible, without “to-the-glass” encryption on each and every end user computer system in the world. What is passed to your computer monitor in the form of an image that you view with your eyes is copyable. Period. As has been demonstrated quite handily by libSL, software can and will be reverse engineered. There is NOTHING Linden Lab can do to stop it. The burden is on the content creator to establish their brand and loss prevention strategy soas to minimize their losses. This is the way it works in the real world, this is the only way it will work in the metaverse.
Broccoli Curry Said:
Chronic, that was me not Lewis, but anyway… please do share the ‘positives’ of hacked clients, because all I am aware of are:
“a) God Mode hack, overriding peoples right to privacy.
b) Copybot, overriding people’s rights to ownership.
c) Huge Prims, which if they weren’t potentially damaging, would be included in the regular client.”
I’m starting to get the feeling that those are all you are aware of, simply because those are all you are willing to be aware of. God mode had the net positive effect of having the vulnerability patched. Copybot has been discussed to death, and the net positives from the libSL project are discussed in abundance throughout the forums and blogs. Not even sure how Huge Prims is even a component of this discussion. It has the potential to be used maliciously, and Linden Lab has stated that they will deal with it case by case. By the way, LSL can also be used maliciously – to effectively crash a sim, grief residents, etc. So maybe we should eliminate that?
“I also find the dismissive answer about not being able to prevent home-grown clients logging on and potentially damaging the grid – perhaps irreparably – very worrying.”
The answer was not at all dismissive. It was short, candid, and truthful. And it remains so whether or not the client goes open source. I actually appreciate cory when he says “No. Next question.” when nothing more needs to be said in response to a given question. It is not dismissive at all, it is simply all that is necessary to answer the question.
On what, exactly, do you base your presumption that these “home grown” clients can potentially cause irreparable damage to the grid? A small few of you seem to keep beating your breasts and insisting that the end of the world is nigh, yet in the face of all of the actual facts and details that are right before your eyes in the form of numerous responses to your oft repeated rounds of baseless cries of armageddon, you yourselves have yet to provide a single fiber of evidence on which to base your contentions. I say it is your turn now, to bring forward your evidence to support the concerns you seem so very passionate about. Others have gone out of their way to answer your concerns, yet this horse never seems to die.
I agree with you Garee on the aspect of repairing what problems we have now instead of adding more…as for “only paying customers being allowed on” i do NOT agree there, although i do pay, i know of many people who do not have credit cards to play (smart people, they arent slaves to CC companies) but still enjoy it tremendously…leave them alone, they have all the rights being on SL as paying.
Ugh, as paying customers do….
Broccoli – with your sense of paranoia i am surprised that you use the net at all.
Ricky,
I’m not Cory (obviously), but the benefits of OS to the community are potentially staggaring.
There are thousands of people that develop and use SL.
Most of these people won’t do anything with the SL source code – leaving us in exactly the same position we were in anyhow with respect to them.
Some will look for malicious acts to perform – but the security of a system is Server side, not client side. evicting people from your land will always be possible, and no custom client will permit connection to a server that the user is prohibited from.
Many, however, will look on this as an opportunity to assist LL in tracking down some of the bugs in the code – there is a vested interest, both in usability terms, and in reputation terms for people to contribute to the stability and development of the codebase.
SL going to an open source client means that the “good guys” on the outside now have all the resources and permission they need to help improve the client – the “bad guys” were in any case pretty good at working out what was being sent and received, and reverse engineering the client.
In time, this will, I hope, see a marked improvement in the client and permit LL to devote more resources to sorting out the meaty problems on the server end.
As for people using home-grown clients. I really don’t see a reason to worry about it. We already have server based tools for handling disruptive people in our SIMs and most people with home-grown clients are likely to be disinterested in crating havoc for others.
A few bad apples are no reason to thrown most of the barrel away and keep just one or 2 bad ones.
Glad I had something to read while the grid was down for maint. I would like to know why av’s cant select their own last name?Also I would like to know why we have an island with 1200 scripts running and its constantly lagging like a pig?And why is it so difficult for people to purcahse Lindts?Its so frustrating when people wanna spend money and they cant buy it because they cant immediately access it, and then they tp out. Other than the lag we thought we were buying our way out of, I find my Sl experience to be very exciting. Lately, with so many people online the profits have been up, hope you resolve these lag issues so it stays that way.Good job on the TH, found it very interesting, hopefully I dont miss the next one, as I wouldnt mind particpating
@Broccoli Curry: I’m rather concerned by the reply to my question, essentially saying there is ‘no way’ to prevent homegrown clients from connecting to the main grid, rather than the intended test grid.
I’m confused how this applies to OSS, considering LibSL happened before the viewer was opened. The danger already was there. At least now, you won’t have people guessing about how to connect — they’ll have the code.
@Broccoli Curry: Surely this must be a priority requirement for the safety and security of the grid? Will you really accept “sorry I was just trying out a feature of my own SL viewer that went wrong” when the asset server spontaneously combusts?
I think you’re over-estimating how much damage a viewer can do. Before changes take place, the commands to implement those changes still have to be verified through the server. Even if this worst-case scenario comes true, LL is prioritizing better inventory backup/recovery.
@Broccoli Curry: We’ve already seen the damage of ‘hacked clients’ with big prims and copybot – are you really prepared for even worse to happen?
What long-term damage have they caused again, other than FUD?
@Antonius Misfit:
Thank you for explaining how so succinctly how a non-technical person might benefit from the SL decision to open source the viewer. Most of the posts here only made me fearlful that I will lose the many items I have purchased, as a “free” user, from my inventory. Your post makes me a little less fearful.
@Gareee taov and Everyone that Disses “Free” Account Holders:
Not all “free” users are deadbeats. I wouldn’t have tried SL unless it was free to join. Once I tried it I liked it. I don’t have a lot of money so I had a choice to make. I could have joined as a subscriber and saved my weekly stipends from SL to buy things, or I could remain a “free” user and buy Lindens on the market and buy the girlie things I need from the paid subscribers that have all those wonderful stores I like.
I chose to put the equivilent of my SL membership fees in the pockets of the shop owners, not in SL’s pockets.
So it would be nice to see a distinction between free users with no account records on file, and those of us “free” users that did register payment information and that do spend money at the shops and stores of registered users.
To the register users that have put your time and money into making SL a really fun place, THANK YOU.
Def
When’s the test grid gonna open?
There seems to be a great deal of fear, ignorance, and a general stigma surrounding the decision to go open source with the client.
Anyone who doesn’t think this move is the greatest thing since sliced bread, Read on.
Fact is, an open source SL was inevitable. Several people, myself included, have been developing their own SL clients for some time now, and for entirely legitimate purposes. A great deal of serious bugs and potential exploits have been found, and dealt with, because of this.
In the short term, open sourcing the client will aid in spotting and repairing further serious bugs before they can become an issue. Temporary grid instability will undoubtably occur, but the long term result will yield an increase in server-side and client-side stability. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Long-term, users will be able to utilize the source to create additions to SL, such as object import-export, offline modeling and scripting, UI customization, client-side scripting, etc etc.
Albeit conjecture on my part, I see SecondLife as the birth of a new generation of the world wide web. Right now, just about every company, and a lot of individuals, have websites. Little places on the web to call their own. Despite over a decade of existance, websites are more or less the same. SecondLife, on the other hand, offers a far more interactive and personal experience.
More and more individuals and companies are going to want an SL presence.
Unfortunately, it requires a great deal of resources and work to maintain this virtual community. By opening the server, the stress is shifted from LL to those hosting the servers.
So could you host your own private sim for free? Most likely.
Wouldn’t LL lost money? No.
You can host your own webserver for free.. But you aren’t going to see much traffic without a domain name registration. I imagine LL will release the server and client, but there will be a fee for your server to integrate with the grid. Brilliant.
Conjecture for the most part, but a very real posibility.
– Chief Executive Manager
– Metaverse Solutions, LLC.
Well, everyone says “The Pros outweigh the Cons” for the sex offender registries, too. But then, most people just ignore the facts on Sex Offenders. Thing like:
-Most minors who are victims of such sex offenses are victimized by a relative or an acquaintance.
-Most registered sex offenders with accurate registration information are now law abiding citizens. If they were not, they would not be registered, so the truly dangerous sex offenders are not tracked by this.
-The Sex Offender Registry is to protect Children, but blatantly ignores the threat other criminals and behaviors pose to children’s safety. For example, in 2005, less than seventy people were known to have been murdered for sexual reasons. That’s of over seven thousand murders that occurred where they could ascertain the purpose the murder was committed. Alcoholics, on the other hand, kill almost seventy people each day, INCLUDING CHILDREN!!! You do the math.
-The Sex Offender Registry is being used for vigilante style crimes. It is being used to find sex offenders and kill them, which also puts their families at risk.
-Sex Offenders are the second LEAST likely group of criminals to reoffend. Who is the LEAST likely group? Murderers.
Open Sourcing may be a “good idea,” but show me some FACTS that will prove it’s a great idea. Please refrain from giving opinions or spreading false or misleading information.
An example of false or misleading information? “Firefox is more secure than Internet Explorer.” FireFox has a 30% browser share. Almost 70% is owned by Internet Explorer. If you’re going to hit a target, and only one target, which would you choose? The one that hurts 70% of people, or the one that hurts 30%? The answer’s pretty clear to me.
Yes, these problems were caused before the OS announcement – but by a group working on the code for the client.
What you had before was one group, given special permission (why, nobody knows) to break a part of the ToS that prohibits derivative products – ie personalised clients.
What you have now is the whole thing made much easier for anyone with programming skills, and the ability to get hold of the code and do their own thing – either positively (which is the hope of Linden Lab) or negatively (which will be the most likely reality).
Remember back to when the accounts database got hacked. Why was Second Life hacked, and not some other game? Because the big economy is advertised, and it’s known that some people have a lot of money in this game. Now, all that needs to happen is someone to download a third party client promising extra features – with a keylogger embedded – and goodbye account. It happened with Sims Online for bot programs, it’s happened in World of Warcraft with third party addons, and it’ll happen here.
There are only two ‘mostly safe’ situations:
1) Only using the official client from the SL website.
2) Only using your own modified version of the client, that you know what you have done to.
Any other client is a risk that I, and many others, will be unwilling to take. However, you can’t really factor into this the unknown dangers of another person modifying their client some way to intercept data streams and … hmmm … copy other people’s details? Spoof their account? The list is endless.
I want the best for SL and its community. I just have concerns about OS.
Broccoli
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“”””Want alitte jello with that mudpie your eating……laughs at the nut…..:/””””
Laughs at the nut who doesn’t understand what /sarcasm means….
Aside from that, your opinion isn’t fact, so just because you don’t like the idea of bringing back last names, doesn’t mean others wouldn’t love it! I personally don’t care, I’m me and I have one creating alt, and that’s how it will always be.
Maybe someone’s just threatened by someone else getting the same last name! O.o /sarcasm
@Broccoli
Broccoli, take a look at the license LL chose to open source the client: the GNU GPL. If anyone wants to release a modified client to the public, they MUST release the source to it as well. That means if I release a modified client as binary only, then not only would I be violating the license, it’s automatically suspect. So someone who would try to release a malicious client has only two choices: violate the GPL and not release the source(that’s what non-techies should be wary of), or release the code too and risk being easily outed, as it’s pretty hard to conceal a keylogger or other malicious stuff in source code.
And do note that the GPL is enforceable, as shown at http://www.gpl-violations.org, so there are legal teeth other than the ToS to stop malicious hackers.
And the average user who wants more features and buys this client with the modified code will be able to understand the source very well while they’re still searching for the “Any” key?
“-Most minors who are victims of such sex offenses are victimized by a relative or an acquaintance.
-Most registered sex offenders with accurate registration information are now law abiding citizens. If they were not, they would not be registered, so the truly dangerous sex offenders are not tracked by this.”
I think someone is posting to the wrong message board again.
For one, I’m a free account. I’ve been here for almost 2 years now. The person I live with pays for an island, and I have to administer it.
Anyway, on the subject of old accounts and names…
Why don’t we just back up unused avatars older than 180 days to disk, and on the off chance the person logs back on, just restore it from a backup server. Honestly, I wouldn’t have a problem if I left SL for 2-3 years (say, for instance, I was drafted into a war.) and then logged back on one day and got the message:
We’re sorry, but we must recover your account from long term storage.
Your Account will not be available until 2007-01-10 20:17:26 Pacific Time.
This, in my opinion, would be a good move, and satisfy both sides of the arguements.
On the one hand, the people that are complaining due to the ‘resource use’ are sated,
and on the other hand, we don’t lose our account after not logging in for a while.
Another good idea would be scanning the database for objects that havn’t been accessed in over 12 months, and slapping them into long term storage as well. When/If they’re needed, a message can be given to the user,
“This object is in long term storage due to non-use. Please wait while it is retrived.”
This keeps the working database size to a managable level, while transparently cleaning out the clutter. Plus I’m sure the asset cluster would be much happier.
Also — any 3rd party viewer modifications can be posted on the SLLabs forums, at http://www.sllabs.com — or you can click my name!
Do you really expect people to follow that GNU GPL license?
Does everyone know that such a thing exists, and will check for compliance?
Given the fact that accounts can be anonymous, how will Linden Lab check compliance, and more importantly enforce takedown action if they can’t get hold of anyone responsible?
You have to remember that not everyone is “tech savvy” in such matters, and many of us are here just because we want to play a game and have fun. Just because someone isn’t a coder doesn’t mean they’re any less valuable to the SL community than if they don’t know how to play Tringo or can’t speak Spanish. It’s just the coders appear to have been elevated to a lofty position above the rest of us.
Thinking of the problems we have with the official Linden client, which is programmed only by Linden Lab employees with full knowledge, and how that causes problems when moving from the test grid to main grid (as we found out again today), how can one user running the client only for themselves possibly predict or know what is going on for anyone else? Someone could easily (unwittingly or otherwise) introduce a memory leak that eventually crashes the sim within half an hour of them visiting it, so they could leave a trail of destruction behind them, they haven’t got a clue about it, Linden Lab don’t know what’s causing it, and hundreds of pissed off users find themselves either lagged to death or logged out.
Apart from disrupting camping, I can’t think of one good point in the above situation
Broccoli
For one, I’m a free account. I’ve been here for almost 2 years now. The person I live with pays for an island, and I have to administer it.
Anyway, on the subject of old accounts and names…
Why don’t we just back up unused avatars older than 180 days to disk, and on the off chance the person logs back on, just restore it from a backup server. Honestly, I wouldn’t have a problem if I left SL for 2-3 years (say, for instance, I was drafted into a war.) and then logged back on one day and got the message:
We’re sorry, but we must recover your account from long term storage.
Your Account will not be available until 2007-01-10 20:17:26 Pacific Time.
This, in my opinion, would be a good move, and satisfy both sides of the arguements.
On the one hand, the people that are complaining due to the ‘resource use’ are sated,
and on the other hand, we don’t lose our account after not logging in for a while.
Another good idea would be scanning the database for objects that havn’t been accessed in over 12 months, and slapping them into long term storage as well. When/If they’re needed, a message can be given to the user,
“This object is in long term storage due to non-use. Please wait while it is retrived.”
This keeps the working database size to a managable level, while transparently cleaning out the clutter. Plus I’m sure the asset cluster would be much happier.
Also — any 3rd party viewer .diff modifications can be posted on the SLLabs forums, at http://www.sllabs.com — or you can click my name!
“And my mouse balls get so dirty I have to jerk them to get anything out of them!”
Everything that can happen in SL, will happen. That is why every concern brought up here and elsewhere, no matter how minor, is a big issue. If there’s a way to exploit SL, it’ll be exploited. So I really hope LL knows what they’re getting in to with this open source stuff…
@Lynn
Lynn, you missed the part where I pointed out what non-techies should look out for. Putting up the source code basically says, “here’s what I’ve done, I have nothing to hide”. A malicious hacker by nature does have something to hide, so even if you’re not able to read the source code, someone who can will spot the malicious code and out them. Remember, if you can’t get the source, it may be suspect.
P.S.- I still haven’t found the “Any” key 😉
Azreal –
I’m just asking for facts. Not the usual flimflam rubbish that seems to fly freely.
As with the facts on sex offenders, I’m asking for facts in support of “Open Source Software” really is truly secure and safe.
If you wish not to provide any facts, and instead to debunk the facts that I have shown without any facts of your own, then by all means. Go ahead.
But the sex offender thing demonstrates something: Repeat a lie often enough, and people will believe it’s true, as clearly nobody believes what I’ve stated about sex offenders and their registries because of all the lies being propogated about them.
Well, I don’t believe those lies, nor do I believe the lies about Open Sourcing being a *GOOD* thing. You must give me FACTS, and back up your FACTS in order to PROVE you’re telling the truth about Open Source.
Oh! The FACTS on Sex Offenders I present? They’re from WikiPedia and *GASPS* the FBI websites. If you can find better sources that contradict those two, please do.
Kamillion: any interesting mods made yet?
Alright, Lynn, tell me what sort of facts you’re looking for. Give me an example, with respect to open source code. What kind of “fact” would you like to see?
Antonius Misfit Says:
January 10th, 2007 at 10:07 AM PST
@Lynn
Lynn, you missed the part where I pointed out what non-techies should look out for. Putting up the source code basically says, “here’s what I’ve done, I have nothing to hide”. A malicious hacker by nature does have something to hide, so even if you’re not able to read the source code, someone who can will spot the malicious code and out them. Remember, if you can’t get the source, it may be suspect.
P.S.- I still haven’t found the “Any” key
Sorry … I was typing mine when you’re appeared. ^.^
This is one thing that can be said *FOR* Open Sourcing. ^.^
@Lynn
If I’m not mistaking, Wikipedia, one of the sources you cited for your “facts,” is an open source project that anyone can edit. And God knows, that a government agency under our present administration would never “repeat a lie often enough” to make people believe it’s a true “fact.”
Interesting isn’t it? You haven’t shown me anything to believe your facts any more reliable than the “opinions” of others.
The one key thing I see in the open source policy is that it reflects the same issues faced by other large companies opening up the source code. Yes you will get the odd rotten egg trying to spoil things but so far Mozilla hasn’t imploded and the Blender guys have managed to keep things running smoothly and to be honest in a way they couldn’t have done with the standard closed business model. This will position the company to become a standard and I think from last nights presentation it’s well thought out and will only benefit the company and the users in the long term.
Heh, here’s proof that open source works:
Back in 1995, I caught the CIH95 virus. AKA, chernobyl.
now, chernobyl was a VERY nasty virus. It would wipe the flash chip on your motherboard containing your BIOS, and turning your PC into a lump of metal.
So, yeah, my PC was totaled. Replaced the motherboard, and bashed together a 386DX/33 machine with 8MB of ram and a 80MB drive, from old spare parts. Threw in two 3COM 3C509B-Combo cards, as we were using thickwire ethernet back then.
Installed linux on it. Configured ipmasqurading.
Since then, I’ve never caught a virus, never had a trojan that was ‘net accessable…
The only thing I’ve gotten was malware from internet explorer. That was around the time I switched to Opera 2.12… No more malware.
Did you know that the most popular consumer routers run linux? Like the ASUS WL500G, and Linksys WRT54G(L)… And they’re more secure and stable than vxworks based routers (look at the WRT54G v5, for instance… XD
Open source breeds long term stability, and if you actually do some research on the subject,
open source projects tend to fix bugs within hours of their discovery, and patches are usually availble the same day.
Now, propritary: Why is it that when internet explorer asks me if I want to install Comet Cursor, and I say “NO” then it still installs? Because it’s a bug that’s existed for years. And has been sucessfully exploited millions of times.
Code red? Blaster? Ring any bells?
When was the last time you heard of a linux box with a self-replicating worm?
(other than Second Life’s grey goo attacks, which I guess qualify, since the grid runs Debian Linux…)
I sure havn’t, and I’ve been using linux since ’95…
Sure, we have rootkits, and other problems — but they require real work and skill to exploit.
Propritary solutions are easier to exploit because you can almost count on a lazy or sloppy programmer to screw up somewhere, and all it takes is one of for instance, 30 coders in the company.
Open source solutions are harder to exploit because you don’t have just 30 coders looking at it, you have 3,000,000. The odds are, if there’s a bug, someone will find it. But even if they don’t fix it themselves, someone else more experianced can. And open source basically lets you take a chunk of code and say “Hey bob, I think there’s a bug somewhere around here, can you take a look at it?”. Bob says “Hm, I can’t see anything, but I’ll forward it on to Larry, he might know.”. Larry says “wel gee d00d, ur pointers not set rite, u shud delcare ti frst”. Even a newbie with near 0 coding experiance can make a difference.
Plus, relying on an open archatecture means you have more respectful knowledgeable coders looking at the code.
Linux was written by a kid in ’91.
Much later in it’s life, it’s changed the world. Big companys like Google, IBM, Novell, AMD, Intel, Hewlett Packard, SGI, Sun, ATI, Nvidia, and many others have made contributions. Noone paid them to do it, they saw a problem somewhere and fixed or improved it.
Now, keeping the source closed means that only malicious people and true hackers (not crackers) are going to the the ones looking at it.
Opening it means we may well see patches from large companys coming in, with professional programming staff, that just loves to code for the hell of it.
If it were closed, these kind folks would never have chance to help.
(also, a footnote to my last post — who here has worked with animations in .bvh format, and had to upload 5-10 .bvhs before you got it right? What happens to the animations that you uploaded but didn’t end up using? They sit there. I’ve done the same with textures — especally skins! This is a perfect example of why the dregs of the DB should be dragged out to long term storage.)
Whoa Kamilion, that’s sexy! 😉 I’ll buy it as a valid fact.
@Lynn,
Come on end your *rant*
Geez, I’d love to stay and blog longer, but I just got an urgent message from Microsoft.
Seems there is another Security Update for Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack and a Windows Malicious Software Update Tool – January 2007 to install because, “A [another] security issue has been identified in the way Vector Markup Language (VML) is handled that could allow an attacker to compromise a computer running [proprietary software] Microsoft Windows and gain control over it.
Brocolli said:
“Now, all that needs to happen is someone to download a third party client promising extra features – with a keylogger embedded – and goodbye account. It happened with Sims Online for bot programs, it’s happened in World of Warcraft with third party addons, and it’ll happen here.”
That’s why it has been repeatedly stressed that, as you say in the same post, there will be only two sure ways to know you’re using a “safe” client: Download it from Linden Lab, or build your own. It’s great that you, and many others are unwilling to take the risk of downloading and using a client of questionable integrity. That’s what Cory has stated from the beginning, and again has been repeated numerous times now. So what’s the issue?
“What you have now is the whole thing made much easier for anyone with programming skills, and the ability to get hold of the code and do their own thing – either positively (which is the hope of Linden Lab) or negatively (which will be the most likely reality).”
And what do you use as the basis for assuming that the reality will most likely be malicious, or “negative” as you put it?
“What you had before was one group, given special permission (why, nobody knows) to break a part of the ToS that prohibits derivative products – ie personalised clients.”
Cory has explained quite sufficiently already the answer to “Why, nobody knows”. It would behoove you to go back and read his various comments on that, which are all public, instead of rehashing things that have already been more than sufficiently addressed. If his reasoning isn’t sufficient for you, well then I’d suggest that’s just too damned bad. Get over it. You are in an exceedingly miniscule minority on this issue.
“However, you can’t really factor into this the unknown dangers of another person modifying their client some way to intercept data streams and … hmmm … copy other people’s details? Spoof their account? The list is endless.”
And you have reason to believe this is even remotely possible? Can you demonstrate for us unitiated types some of the underlying SL client/server architecture that you’re familiar with which would enable such a breach of personal account information?
“It’s just the coders appear to have been elevated to a lofty position above the rest of us.”
This is simply an outrageous statement, and demonstrates that you truly have a very twisted understanding of what is actually happening here.
I realize this is just fingertips banging on the keyboard and it will go on until the blog comments are closed.. perhaps though, we could put together one, central FAQ that takes all of these concerns that have been raised in all of the blog comments and forum threads, and repeatedly responded to with good, useful information, and puts all the information into a single categorized document. I’d take it upon myself to do it, but I doubt it would be worth the effort.
I do think that re-using avatar names which have remained unused for some time may result in distress to possible previous partners and /or friends and acquaintances of avatar owners who may have died in RL………
*LAUGHS*
See what I mean, folks?
@Lynn Kukulcan: Open Sourcing may be a “good idea,” but show me some FACTS that will prove it’s a great idea.
Please look over the SL OSS FAQ (http://secondlife.com/developers/opensource/faq). There is a wealth of information there instead of throwing that registry up as a strawman for us to knock down. A nice example is how quickly flaws are corrected in Windows as opposed to how quickly they are corrected in Linux or the Mac OS. In open or partially-open code, the turnaround time is hours or days instead of days or weeks. Even Microsoft indirectly acknowledges this by opening up their source on a limited basis.
@Broccoli Curry: Yes, these problems were caused before the OS announcement – but by a group working on the code for the client.
@Broccoli Curry: What you had before was one group, given special permission (why, nobody knows) to break a part of the ToS that prohibits derivative products – ie personalised clients.
Why would that matter?
Just because positive benefits have not yet been able to take place does not mean that they won’t. They have, until now, been against the ToS, had a massive stigma, and a huge FUD against them. No one is forcing people to download personalised clients. In fact, LL will probably run an education campaign. If they don’t, someone else surely will. The risk is the same as downloading any software, and common sense must be used.
Also, you forgot to mention the other “mostly safe” situation: unofficial but trustworthy clients by reputation.
I admire your desire to help, but I think your efforts would be better spent on an “trustworthy client” education campaign that highlights the safer/better clients.
@Brocolli Curry: Someone could easily (unwittingly or otherwise) introduce a memory leak that eventually crashes the sim within half an hour of them visiting it, so they could leave a trail of destruction behind them, they haven’t got a clue about it, Linden Lab don’t know what’s causing it, and hundreds of pissed off users find themselves either lagged to death or logged out.
Only if hundreds of users download an untrustworthy client. The code that gets submitted to the tree undergoes extensive analysis, and a browse through the OSS FAQ (http://secondlife.com/developers/opensource/faq) confirms this.
Does anyone at Linden Labs know much these days…funny we all get screwed constantly but yet…you guys always seem to get your moneys worth from us…hummm?..
Did Cory Linden say “when” alt bots become a problem?
DefBiggieC Wrote:
“Not all “free” users are deadbeats. I wouldn’t have tried SL unless it was free to join. Once I tried it I liked it. I don’t have a lot of money so I had a choice to make. I could have joined as a subscriber and saved my weekly stipends from SL to buy things, or I could remain a “free” user and buy Lindens on the market and buy the girlie things I need from the paid subscribers that have all those wonderful stores I like.
I chose to put the equivilent of my SL membership fees in the pockets of the shop owners, not in SL’s pockets.
So it would be nice to see a distinction between free users with no account records on file, and those of us “free” users that did register payment information and that do spend money at the shops and stores of registered users.”
^^Exactly… I’m not a “paying” member, but I do spend a lot of $$ here. More, in fact, than a subscription cost. Why should I be left off the grid so someone who pays the subscription fees can be there to spend no $$, or just to check how much $$ someone else has spent at their shop..?
DefBiggieC Gagliano Says:
January 10th, 2007 at 10:56 AM PST
Geez, I’d love to stay and blog longer, but I just got an urgent message from Microsoft.
Seems there is another Security Update for Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack and a Windows Malicious Software Update Tool – January 2007 to install because, “A [another] security issue has been identified in the way Vector Markup Language (VML) is handled that could allow an attacker to compromise a computer running [proprietary software] Microsoft Windows and gain control over it.
As opposed to LINUX sending you- There are no updates required because not enough maliscious software coders are interested in it yet because of it’s smaller market share.
If you wrote your own system MLINUX that only had .01% market share you’d be safer again a faster system again that nothing works on, you could then keep asking when’s the MLINUX version coming out.
“Oh no, they are going to put me out of business.
I am selling a polygon creator in my shop and on SLX:
http://www.slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=161476
DisQ Hern”
You’re selling that? There’s a freebie object called ShapeGen (or previously Shape Maker) that’s been going around for years that does that and more. We like to use it to build sim-size tori and spheres.
I know that there are strongly held prejudices here on both sides of the Open Source argument, but perhaps one more metaphor, loosely drawing on the Wikipedia/FBI reference, could be useful…
Consider the communication specification (API) between the server and client as a body of law. The client side is the citizen and Linden is the combined legislature, judiciary and enforcers of *secret* laws. Now in a closed system, you are effectively told “Only use our client and you won’t be breaking the law.” All well and good for well-intentioned citizens, but without having access to these laws, how can the citizens be certain that the laws are protecting them from less scrupulous ones who are secretly building rogue clients? After all, it completely boils down to blind trust in Linden’s benevolence as dictator.
Open-sourcing means that these laws become publicly known and there is now room for informed debate and legislative evolution. Yes, existing loopholes might be discovered and exploited by a handful of people, but for any given latent loophole, the chance is extremely high that it will be discovered and plugged by the civil majority first.
I know this thread has become very general and non-SL-specific, and I apologise for continuing in that direction, but it seems the SL community can benefit from more debate on what open source really means.
Pingback: tecosystems » Second Take on the Second Life Announcement: The Q&A
I’ll address some of the questions here from a technical standpoint which is unofficial.
Some concerns were:
> God Mode hack, overriding peoples right to privacy.
This is not an issue because the permission to do this is server-side. Long answer would be that once someone has explored an area, it can all be cached client-side and then they could fly around in it and look at even if you ban them later — but it would only be on that person’s computer. They couldn’t get back into the area on the sim anymore.
> Copybot, overriding people’s rights to ownership.
There is no technical way to stop this if users can upload their own content. In order to display it to someone you must send them a copy. Long answer: You could stop it to a large degree if clients were completely dumb and only displayed the 2D graphics sent to them from a server. I.e. all the rendering would be done remotely and you’d just essentially get a streaming video as you moved around. This is technically possible but not practical as you’d need a box with 3D card for every single person connecting, instead of just sending them a small amount of data and letting THEM render it.
> Huge Prims, which if they weren’t potentially damaging, would be included in the regular client.
Actually open-sourcing is a huge win here. First off, huge prims should be disallowed server-side, but let’s assume it’s a bug that hasn’t been fixed. You can just edit the client (viewer) to either shrink the prim when displaying it or not displaying it at all! This is the kind of mod that would make it to most people’s viewers.
Don’t like your beachfront view to be obstructed? You can modify the viewer to make the neighboring parcel’s objects be invisible. You can make people become invisible to you. You can’t stop an area from being crowded, but you can make it so you don’t see anyone there.
> I also find the dismissive answer about not being able to prevent home-grown clients logging on and
> potentially damaging the grid – perhaps irreparably – very worrying.
There’s nothing irreparable there. There is also no way to stop home-grown clients because they can send the exact same info that the “real” one would send. It’s all bits. You can send them what they expect. The server just needs to do what it always did and filter all information coming from the client.
Someone else wrote:
> Cory, can you please respond to those who feel that this is just an attempt by a for-profit company to get free development work?
So what if it is? You don’t need to work for free. Nobody does. If someone happens to, and releases an improved viewer, you still win. If not, you are no worse off.
> How does having an open source client substantially benefit anyone other than Linden Lab?
It benefits everyone who gets an improved viewer as a result, and bugfixes that will also happen on the server end. Linden is stretched pretty thin because there are so many issues piled up on their plates. This allows technically competent people to work on it without having to make a full-time job of it, AND the result will be owned by EVERYONE because it’s GNU GPLed.
It also means people can start their own Second Life sims with the client already done. Given how buggy the server seems to be, starting from scratch seems like a good idea anyway. In another year or less you should see a non-Linden Labs company running their own server farm. It’ll be separate from the LL world. It might even be more fantasy-roleplay-ish with actual stories and goals in the game rather than just being social; in that case the client would likely be incompatible.
The net effect is that things are going to go from one Second Life universe to multiple ones that are mostly not connected. You’ll be able to run your own if you want like a Mom and Pop ISP and compete on service. Linden is betting on their customer base sticking around and expanding, because they are confident that can offer a valuable service, and have a lot of experience at it.
This really empowers the individual more. If you think you can do better you’ll be able to show it by running your own sim farm once a server (not necessarily the official one!) is released.
It will fragment the user base but grow it at the same time. 20,000 on at once is pretty small compared to most big MMOs, and keep in mind it was not long ago that it was only 5,000 at once. We’re going to have a bunch of 5,000-user worlds and some much bigger ones too.
Broccoli Curry, you need to stop proclaiming your technical ignorance as a virtue in this discussion. It’s not, it just adds noise and FUD.
Not knowing about something like open source is fine. Not knowing about it but loudly proclaiming how dangerous it is is not fine — it’s simply dumb.
Morgaine: “Broccoli Curry, you need to stop proclaiming your technical ignorance as a virtue in this discussion. It’s not, it just adds noise and FUD.”
That’s clearly his intent.
—–
Morgaine: “Not knowing about something like open source is fine. Not knowing about it but loudly proclaiming how dangerous it is is not fine — it’s simply dumb.”
It is interesting to note that the people behind the anti-OS voices here make some of the most confusing and irrelevant arguments. Take the bad-anaology of the day – Comparing gun control laws in Britain and Europe between closed and open source. It was just completely irrelevant and a horrible analogy.
A better one, on every level that matters, is comparing the former Soviet Union to the US. The former Soviet Union was a tightly closed society, with central planning and tight controls from the top down on every aspect of society. The people at the bottom did their will or things happened to them.They were the “closed source” model. The US, OTOH, was a relatively open society. The ones at the top had very little control over the economy, and no direct control. The people on the bottom generally were allowed to pursue their own interests.
When the social upheavel came to the US, the open model proved resilient and the US survived, in tact. Not only that, but technological innovation was rampantly occuring, at high speeds. When social upheavel it hit the Soviet Union, it collapsed, the closed model was not rigid and flexible enough for the needs of the people, tech innovation rested in the hands of a very few talented people blessed by the central authority and as such, many talented people who did not recieve such blessing were not allowed to take part in the advancement of their societies tech. They got left way behind.
The closed source model says Linden Labs knows what is best for us and should solely trusted with the fate of our virtual community. The open source model says that We the People are a good source of ideas on what is best for us, and that we should have more than just the right to complain about the tools used to access our virtual society, we should have the right to take part in the evolution of those tools and by extension, our virtual society.
The people complaining most about Open Source exhibit the Homer Simpson philosophy of “Can’t somebody else do it”. If you’re concerned about IP protection, rather than being nothing but scared little whiners(the descicion has been made, the code released, there is no going back now), why don’t you look into ways available to safeguard IP yourselves, since you clearly think yourselves authortities on these issues, then you can influence the community of developers to implement what you find.
If you can’t be bothered to do that, then what you have to say really don’t matter at all, because what you’re saying means nothing more than “I’m scared, I don’t like this, I want my security blanket back.”
Gringo Star said:
“If you’re concerned about IP protection, rather than being nothing but scared little whiners(the descicion has been made, the code released, there is no going back now), why don’t you look into ways available to safeguard IP yourselves, since you clearly think yourselves authortities on these issues, then you can influence the community of developers to implement what you find.”
That speaks squarely to the fact that there is no technological “fixall” to safeguard IP in this particular digital world, and that a great deal of the burden must be upon the content creators (or those perhaps speaking unofficially on their behalf) to come up with some workable loss prevention solutions. I think it has been established now that the “problem” existed long before .. ugh .. I’m so sick of this word .. Copybot.
Look at it this way: Before release to OS, you had a finite number of developers at your service, and given their workload, they weren’t really at your service, they were just keeping the ship afloat. Okay that isn’t fair either, they have done amazing things in the short time I have been here.. but you get the idea.
NOW, you have a virtually unlimited number of developers all eyeballing the viewer product in all its nakedness, all participating in an extremely transparent peer review process, ready to take your practical ideas and turn them into code wherever and whenever it makes sense. How in the world could you complain about this?
If you don’t understand the technical side of this, and Brocolli, with all due respect, you’ve admitted that you do not, then how about focusing on the practical side of things, and developing solutions there?
As of the end of Cory’s TH yesterday, more than 1500 people had downloaded the source code. That’s incredible, and indicates just how much of a desire there is within the community to help make Second Life better. Your time would be better spent devising practical solutions to the problems as you see them, rather than continue to rant and rave about how bad this is. This isn’t bad, this isn’t unexpected, this is destiny for Second Life. You’re going to need to get behind it or you’re going to eventually find yourself in a void. It is here to stay, so be a part of the movement, or be the sand that gets displaced by the wave above it.
Tim/aka Zaphod Kotobide
Reply to K.Schnook:
I love this idea. If I am sent on assignment for a year or three, then my avatar automatically goes into ‘hibernation’ until I can get back to a location having fast broadband.
180 days is not enough, though. I’d make it a full year. Goodness knows there must be a mountain of data right now, that has not been accessed for over a year. Tape it off. Or burn it off. Or flash it off. Leave a stub in 2L that points to the appropriate ‘hibernation chamber’.
VN
“Kamilion Schnook Says:”
“[…Why don’t we just back up unused avatars older than 180 days to disk, and on the off chance the person logs back on, just restore it from a backup server…]”
Make sure Al Queda gets their copy of the source code.
And what ever you do keep saying, “it can’t be secure. We can’t do it.” I am just shocked by LL these days.
“And what ever you do keep saying, “it can’t be secure. We can’t do it.” I am just shocked by LL these days.”
This is what a few people aren’t grasping yet.. hopefully Linden Lab can at some point provide more technical details about this – perhaps a “Security Town Hall”. There are limits to what can be done to “secure” a network like this. Nothing is bullet proof. It’s been stressed over and again, that you _cannot_ prevent unauthorized clients from connecting to the grid. When they say they can’t do it, they mean they can’t. Not they “won’t” or “don’t feel like it”. Any measure in that direction would be reverse engineered and gotten around in a matter of a day or two. It’s the nature of the beast. Securing content itself is similarly limited. In order for the client to interact with content, it must be delivered to the viewer. Once delivered to the viewer, it is beyond the reach of Linden Lab to control. It COULD be encrypted, however with the current hardware infrastructure, it’s only encrypted UNTIL it reaches the video drivers/hardware. At that point it’s fair game to anyone inclined to roll up their sleeves and dig in.
“> How does having an open source client substantially benefit anyone other than Linden Lab?
>It benefits everyone who gets an improved viewer as a result, and bugfixes that will also happen on the server end. Linden is stretched pretty thin because there are so many issues piled up on their plates. This allows technically competent people to work on it without having to make a full-time job of it, AND the result will be owned by EVERYONE because it’s GNU GPLed.”
All of you loving this open source idea simply because you think having coders working on ten thousand “improved” different viewers is good.
One viewer happens to work really well with many other MMORPG’s on the market. IE., WoW, Everquest, CoH etc etc.
How is your desire to have everyone experimenting with a gazillion different viewers more important than content creator’s desire to protect their content?
Get off your high horse already.
“There are limits to what can be done to “secure” a network like this. Nothing is bullet proof. It’s been stressed over and again, that you _cannot_ prevent unauthorized clients from connecting to the grid. When they say they can’t do it, they mean they can’t. Not they “won’t” or “don’t feel like it”. Any measure in that direction would be reverse engineered and gotten around in a matter of a day or two.”
And this is the problem you”won’t” solve when you decide what you “can’t do.” If you taut yourselves as visionaries you should never say “it can;t be done.”
Of course its a challenge and of course it’s going to take effort, but when you say you “can’t do it,” you have already lost.
Best example is Blizzard. They DO do it. They are number one (65% of all MMO population in the world) for a reason. Whatever is thrown at them, they beat. Much to the consternation of hackers and open sourcers, to check for botting and hacker software on a client machine they have “Warden.” They prohibit any and all attempts for people to run their own servers, They never stop busting hackers and botters. They keep making it more bulletproof. They would NEVER use Open source code for anything beyond a BitTorrent downloader. Linux cultists are essentially banned–but in general they make up only a 1/2 of a percent of users (wearing it on their sleeve). Oh too bad.
An old business adage is “copy success” Who is most successful in MMO’s–Blizzard. Who in computing is most successful?–Microsoft.
SL needs to be Fort Knox. So it is beyond ignorant to be handing out the code.
@Wake UP: How is your desire to have everyone experimenting with a gazillion different viewers more important than content creator’s desire to protect their content?
Hi Prokofy! As you well know with the LibSL situation, open-sourcing the client is irrevelant to copying textures and objects. Open-sourcing is LL’s way to try and enable users to help with the task of protection through bug fixes and security features. Please read the OSS FAQ when you get the chance.
@Rebecca Proudhon: An old business adage is “copy success” Who is most successful in MMO’s–Blizzard. Who in computing is most successful?–Microsoft. SL needs to be Fort Knox. So it is beyond ignorant to be handing out the code.
Rebecca, I can crack any version of Windows except for Vista, and that’s only because I haven’t gotten a copy of it yet. Blizzard’s Battle.net has also been duplicated.
There are limits to how much you can secure SecondLife with it still being as open and vibrant as it is. If scripting (LSL) and uploads were stripped (like most Blizzard games), then I have no doubt LL could more tightly secure things. If SL had an annoying and intrusive registration process like Microsoft did, I’m sure it could be more Fort Knox-like. However, would people still play it?
The old business adage you cite isn’t necessarily a successful one, and I can think of many “open” companies and products that are very successful. Apache, Linux, Mozilla, php, and perl come to mind. In fact, most of the socket code for Windows through 2000 was ported code from BSD UNIX. If no one handed out code, there would literally be no internet.
@Rebecca Proudhon: And this is the problem you”won’t” solve when you decide what you “can’t do.” If you taut yourselves as visionaries you should never say “it can;t be done.”
Of course its a challenge and of course it’s going to take effort, but when you say you “can’t do it,” you have already lost.
Rebecca, when Zaphod said that LL “can’t” and when the Lindens said they “can’t”, that is litterally because it CAN’T be done. It’s even impossible for your beloved blizzard to prevent unauthorized clients from connecting to their server. Any attempts otherwise can and will be reverse engineered and worked around. “Warden” is no exception. If it is written, you can crack it. ’nuff said.
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“Rebecca, I can crack any version of Windows except for Vista, and that’s only because I haven’t gotten a copy of it yet. Blizzard’s Battle.net has also been duplicated.”
And Battle Net, became ALL-GOD-MODE-ALL-THE-TIME turning Daiblo 2 etc. into a joke. So Blizzard learned THAT lesson. Thus World of Warcraft is far different and far more secure.
“Rebecca, I can crack any version of Windows except for Vista, and that’s only because I haven’t gotten a copy of it yet.”
All Hackers brag about all they can do. Thus Microsoft knows they must always be on top of it. Their success speaks volumes about the right approach. The truth is, if Microsoft vanished from the earth tomorrow, and all that was left was Linux, then Linux would be the target. Another example: Mac users have for years said “Mac’s hardly ever get viruses. But, if Microsoft vanished from the earth tomorrow, leaving Macs to reighn supreme, then Macs would be the target of the Virus Writers. This is just commonsense. This because the mentality of hackers and virus writers is to attack what is the most popular. Another example: If IE was to vanish off the face of the earth tomorrow, leaving only firefox, then Firefox would become the biggest target. This is not brain surgery.
“Rebecca, when Zaphod said that LL “can’t” and when the Lindens said they “can’t”, that is litterally because it CAN’T be done. It’s even impossible for your beloved blizzard to prevent unauthorized clients from connecting to their server. Any attempts otherwise can and will be reverse engineered and worked around. “Warden” is no exception. If it is written, you can crack it. ’nuff said.”
No, not “nuff said’ the point is if you crack it today you won’t be cracking it tomorrow. You will be banned and if you persist, you will be caught, you will not only be banned but you will not pass go and will not collect $200 dollars– you WILL go to Jail. Hacking is a crime.
Another example: A Bank Robber can brag about how they can break into any bank. They may succeed a bit at first, but they will get caught and will go to Jail.
SL has to be Fort Knox for it to become as advertised…..if not, then it is just a toy and a sandbox for the anarchic, childish mentality.
No I’m not opposed to a little anarchy–but SL is a business not a Sandbox for hackers. If it is to be a viable platform for Business and essentially a Fort Knox, and a place where people creating virtual products, and Real Life products and services and Real Money can be exchanged, and not just a place for kids to play with free code in the sandbox, then it will have to change—and you can’t do that by sending Al Qaeda the Source Code. This is not brain surgery. The tiny and noisy little hacker cults are always going to be out there to virtually grief–and in the Real World there are people, not so noisy, who do and will do much more then just grief the virtual worlds. This is not brain surgery.
@Rebecca Proudhon: And Battle Net, became ALL-GOD-MODE-ALL-THE-TIME turning Daiblo 2 etc. into a joke. So Blizzard learned THAT lesson. Thus World of Warcraft is far different and far more secure.
Until someone figures out how to reverse-engineer that, too — it’s not illegal everywhere.
@Rebecca Proudhon: All Hackers brag about all they can do. Thus Microsoft knows they must always be on top of it. Their success speaks volumes about the right approach.
Yes, it does. Because any of their previous versions are easy to break, their approach is an obvious failure.
@Rebecca Proudhon: The truth is, if Microsoft vanished from the earth tomorrow, and all that was left was Linux, then Linux would be the target.
Of course, Linux (and the other OSS “little guys” you mentioned) can already be freely copied. It already is an attack target, but there is no reverse-engineering. The difference is that attacks become fixes on Linux almost immediately.
I’m not a good open-source advocate, but you should really do some research about how security through obscurity is a logical fallacy. Bruce Scheiner and Alan Cox have both written good, informed articles on the matter.
@Rebecca Proudhon: No, not “nuff said’ the point is if you crack it today you won’t be cracking it tomorrow. You will be banned and if you persist, you will be caught, you will not only be banned but you will not pass go and will not collect $200 dollars– you WILL go to Jail. Hacking is a crime.
@Rebecca Proudhon: Another example: A Bank Robber can brag about how they can break into any bank. They may succeed a bit at first, but they will get caught and will go to Jail.
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of hackers, and your attempt to label all their activity as criminal is absurd. I suggest if you hate hackers so that you refrain from using the web servers and browsers we created. 😛
@Rebecca Proudhon: SL has to be Fort Knox for it to become as advertised…..if not, then it is just a toy and a sandbox for the anarchic, childish mentality… No I’m not opposed to a little anarchy–but SL is a business not a Sandbox for hackers…
I reject this SL box that you’re trying to fit me into. SL has something for everyone and if you can’t accept that and think more long-term, then perhaps this is not the metaverse for you. Maybe the Sims Online would provide a warmer security blanket?
I’d also like to point out that Blizzard would have learned the Battle.net/bnet lesson quicker if their server code was OSS. 😛
Leam Cunningham says
“Hi Prokofy! As you well know with the LibSL situation, open-sourcing the client is irrevelant to copying textures and objects.”
You ooze with disdain toward the talented texture and prim creators of SL don’t you? I can almost sense your glee as you matter-of-factly” typed the above.
Sorry kids, but your fundamental understanding of the word “Success,” seems to allude you,
“I reject this SL box that you’re trying to fit me into. SL has something for everyone ”
I am all for a SL that porvides this, within the confines of a secure environment for business. If SL dies because of missing the point of their once visionary goal, then another company with SMARTER business sense will create the Virtual Fort knox.
“You have a fundamental misunderstanding of hackers”
Hardly.
“I suggest if you hate hackers so that you refrain from using the web servers and browsers we created.”
Without a strong central business, implementing technology in a highly controlled atmosphere, then those coders and “hackers” do not have jobs. All compatibility is lost behind the individualist created chaos.
This is the real world not a place for hacker cults to run the world-much to the dismay of those who have no sense of business and no sense of reality because they are so wrapped up in code that they think that is all it is about.
If you are so excellent in your coding skills then instead of unrealistically pushing for Open Source, you should put that talent to use properly and somehow develop some business savvy and some realism to go along with it.
If SL doesn’t accomplish it, then a smarter business will. Instead of saying what cannot be done, because it is “inevitable” that all software will be cracked, start working on what cannot be cracked and do it for real world pay. This is not brain surgery.
@Rebecca
Rebecca, if you don’t like open source as much as you’ve said in your previous comments and preferred World of Warcraft, then I suggest you simply stop playing SL, period. Even before the client was open sourced, the servers that run SL are in fact Debian Linux servers, so in a sense you were already playing in an open source world. And for SL to become the “virtual Fort Knox” as you envision, a lot of the things you can already do, such as LSL scripting, uploading, and even weapons would have to be banned(as Leam has stated), as well as be subject to other measures(think digital rights management to the extreme). That would seriously harm the economy of SL. How much freedom does WoW provide, much other than static hack-and-slash RPG content? In fact, in WoW you don’t own any intellectual property, as their terms of use state explicitly that everything in WoW is owned by Blizzard. If I were an enterprising person and wanted to create an in-game business, which world would I choose: One that engenders ownership, profit and inclusion to help evolve a dynamic world, or one that denies it and restricts you to simply spend for stuff you’ll only use “to get to the next level”?
This is just getting dumb. 🙂
“Rebecca, if you don’t like open source as much as you’ve said in your previous comments and preferred World of Warcraft, then I suggest you simply stop playing SL, period.”
I did not say I preferred Warcraft. I prefer what SL was trying to do,—what it could do–were it to apply the same kind of business realism and security as Warcaft has and much more.
What I and I’m sure other people who saw SL as having a future as a viable platform for more then just fooling around, will do, is simply not dish out money to support it. Cut the losses. Once it is obvious there is nothing serious here, and it is just a toy, then no one is going to waste real money. People and their real money will just go elsewhere.
While this blog is full of coders who love the Open Source as though this is the answer to their prayers, are simply incredibly naive–they are a tiny minority in SL and certainly not the ones who provided it money to get as far as it did.
If SL is going to get to the “next level,” as a business it has to reaffirm it’s committment to security more then ever before and absolutely reverse this Open Source decision immediatly and then get busy fixing the disaster it has become in the past few months instead of wasting their time in fantasy land, catering to the people they claim can help them, but cannot afford to hire.
As I said some other Business, who gets it, will simply do it right and all of this will go to naught.
@Wake UP: You ooze with disdain toward the talented texture and prim creators of SL don’t you? I can almost sense your glee as you matter-of-factly” typed the above.
I am one of them — it wouldn’t make much logical sense to hate myself, now would it? The difference between us is that I’m a /rational/ person with critical thinking skills who won’t buy into the FUD that’s been going around.
Rebecca, I would like to request that you define what you think a “hacker” is and does. Also, referring to me as a kid does nothing to help your point — it merely demonstrates your own character flaws.
@Rebecca Proudhon: If you are so excellent in your coding skills then instead of unrealistically pushing for Open Source, you should put that talent to use properly and somehow develop some business savvy and some realism to go along with it.
How do you know I haven’t? You assume an awful, awful lot.
@Rebecca Proudhon: Instead of saying what cannot be done, because it is “inevitable” that all software will be cracked, start working on what cannot be cracked and do it for real world pay. This is not brain surgery.
I reject your implied assertion that hobby code is inherently inferior to career code without supporting evidence.
Antonius states my earlier point much more elegantly, and Rebecca should address this before again demanding SL become the next Wow:
>>One that engenders ownership, profit and inclusion to help evolve a dynamic world, or one that denies it and restricts you to simply spend for stuff you’ll only use “to get to the next level”?
What is SL without user-created content? Would said content be able to exist in the tightly-controlled reality Rebecca describes?
“This is just getting dumb”
Yes it is entirely dumb to Open Source a Business that was said to be a viable place to conduct real business in a virtual reality.
Giving the source code to Al Qaeda is beyond dumb. What business person could possible take this seriously as a secure environment now?
But since the dream of a working, fully secure, 3D virtual reality platform adequate for actual business, is not going away, it will just need real business people to run it and if that has turned out not to be SL, then so be it.
@Rebecca Proudhon: What business person could possible take this seriously as a secure environment now?
Oddly enough, Netgear and Linksys are still taken seriously as networking hardware vendors, despite the fact that they run on a stripped-down version of Linux. Oddly enough, the World Wide Web consortium is taken seriously as a standards, despite the fact that they release HTML/XML/CSS/et cetera for the world to see.
How many times in this thread will you ignore the fact that Open Source is a valid, proven method of developing software? Why do you think SL is any different?
“What is SL without user-created content? Would said content be able to exist in the tightly-controlled reality Rebecca describes?”
I am fully aware that Warcraft is a retrictive environment in terms of content creation. Content creation and a real world economy, is the cornerstone of SL. I did not say it would be easy to accomplish this either. What I did say and am saying, is that for SL to become what it is advertised to be and what it should become, is not only a place where content creation can occur and real money can be exchanged, but one that is secure. Blizzard would never dream of going Open Source. That is because they know what they are doing and have already proven that. They are a business and they are number one in the field.
What I am hearing over and over is this “we can’t” and “it’s impossible,” attitude. That is precisely why it is not currently viable and heading in a direction which makes it far less viable.
Leam Cunnigham>”The difference between us is that I’m a /rational/ person with critical thinking skills who won’t buy into the FUD that’s been going around.”
Another difference between us is that I’m not a self-righteous, know-it-all, elitist coder that believes that no one else can have a point of view that can also be correct and that differs from mine.
In other words, content creators are not the ones discounting your point of view, you are the one discounting theirs.
Learn to understand that because others points of view may differ from yours does not mean that their concerns are not real and valid.
“Oddly enough, Netgear and Linksys are still taken seriously as networking hardware vendors, despite the fact that they run on a stripped-down version of Linux. Oddly enough, the World Wide Web consortium is taken seriously as a standards, despite the fact that they release HTML/XML/CSS/et cetera for the world to see.”
Netgear and Linksys are not creating a 3D Virtual Reality with a real world economy. The Web is certainly not a secure environment. Legitimate businesses or online banking, etc. use only the highest level of security possible. People are defrauded everyday on the web. Now add to this the new value of Virtual Content in a Virtual World and the challenge now, is far greater. You do not release the source code for such an endeavor unless you are determined to self-destruct, anymore then a bank will give out the combination of the safe or even the key to the front door. This is not brain surgery.
A Bank is not going to Open Source their encryption. For SL to be real they have to be even more secure then a bank.
@Rebecca Proudhon: I am fully aware that Warcraft is a retrictive environment in terms of content creation.
So then, just to get this straight, you’re comparing apples and oranges? :3
People are saying it’s impossible to completely secure Second Life because SL is a dynamic and ever-changing codebase. New points of attack open and close all the time — this is the nature of connected software. What people are NOT saying is that it’s impossible to mostly secure Second Life. The Open Source effort is a step in that exact direction, and you’d realize this if you’d stop stubbornly ignoring this mountain of supporting evidence that contradicts your belief that OSS = BAD.
@Rebecca Proudhon: Netgear and Linksys are not creating a 3D Virtual Reality with a real world economy. The Web is certainly not a secure environment. Legitimate businesses or online banking, etc. use only the highest level of security possible.
Ah, but those examples still undercut your point. And if you knew anything about banking, you’d also know that in general, their security is also pretty weak. Us hacker types work for financial institutions, too. ;-p
@Rebecca Proudhon: People are defrauded everyday on the web. Now add to this the new value of Virtual Content in a Virtual World and the challenge now, is far greater. You do not release the source code for such an endeavor unless you are determined to self-destruct, anymore then a bank will give out the combination of the safe or even the key to the front door. This is not brain surgery.
Like the W3[.org]? Protocols and source code are not the same as keys and passwords. This is not brain surgery.
@Prokofy Neva: Another difference between us is that I’m not a self-righteous, know-it-all, elitist coder that believes that no one else can have a point of view that can also be correct and that differs from mine.
Sound familiar? These insults were what you’ve been banned for in several venues. Keep it up. 😛 But I am flattered that you think I’m a coder. I’m more of a tinkerer.
@Prokofy Neva: In other words, content creators are not the ones discounting your point of view, you are the one discounting theirs.
Not all content creators think like /you/, either. Just because someone isn’t paranoid and trying to enlighten people doesn’t make them an elitist, a bad person, or a member of the SL al queada
@Prokofy Neva: Learn to understand that because others points of view may differ from yours does not mean that their concerns are not real and valid.
Just because you say the sky is falling doesn’t mean the rest of us have to agree, especially if some of us have cursory meteorologic knowledge. 😛
I dont even know who Prokofy Neva is.
Please address me by my proper call name as I do you lest I resort to call you out of your chosen name and instead beging using several other inapropriate names that would describe you a bit more accurately.
BTW, I find it quite ironic that others describe you similarly.
There must be some truth to it.
Take heed my friend.
Feel free to call me any name you like. My significant other has taken to the nickname “Rainbows.”
But your posts are too similar to Prokofy’s, in my opinion, to be discounted by a mere denial.
@Rebecca
“What I did say and am saying, is that for SL to become what it is advertised to be and what it should become, is not only a place where content creation can occur and real money can be exchanged, but one that is secure”
You do know that monetary and content exchanges, while requested via the client, are actually performed and stored on the server side?
I’d love to stay and chat some more, but I’m learning the client source code now and I’d like to contribute something to it(see my first comment on the blog for what it is 🙂 )
“People are saying it’s impossible to completely secure Second Life because SL is a dynamic and ever-changing codebase. New points of attack open and close all the time — this is the nature of connected software. What people are NOT saying is that it’s impossible to mostly secure Second Life. The Open Source effort is a step in that exact direction, and you’d realize this if you’d stop stubbornly ignoring this mountain of supporting evidence that contradicts your belief that OSS = BAD.”
Regardless of all your attempts to state your case, you cannot and will not and never will, be able to contradict the reality. The most successful computing business on the planet and the most successful MMO on the planet would never allow their code to be Open. The only exceptions as I have said would be the Blizzard Bittorrent
downloader, or certain specific used by Microsoft. Unless it was a perfect world with no Al Qaeda or Al Qaeda like mentality.
You don’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg, you don’t give away the cow and since this is not a perfect world, with all good people, you don’t leave a bar of gold on a street corner, the codes to launch a nuclear missle laying about, or give away the front door key or safe key PROTECTING other people’s money. Nor would you allow the counterfeiting of the US or other National Currency, a Rembrandt, or a Motion Picture, a Musician’s creation or Pirated Software—-unless you have a fundamental disregard and disdain for people, their rights and their money.
And for SL, you don’t flagrantly destroy the faith the business people had in it by releasing the source code, giving up on the most important security tasks and then create a army iof irreverent hackers who ridicule your investors creations and demean the whole project by saying “we can’t do it” “security is impossible,” “We can’t afford to hire people so we need free labor”
That is not the way for Sl to become what is could be.
That is no way to run a Fort Knox. This is not Brain Surgery and I am done with this thread.
Antonious – make sure you roll in a few super secret keylogging password stealing $L transferring content stealing functions while you’re at it. Apparently the guys at Linden Lab are too careless to notice!
@Zaphod
LOL! As I’m pretty sure you’ve read my other comments, I’ll take that as a light joke. The guys at LL are pretty top notch from what I’m seeing, so “super secret keylogging password stealing $L transferring content stealing functions” are out of the question. Open source people aren’t Al Qaeda, as some people may think.
eh, I have yet to “get” the Al Qaeda reference. But given the “arguments” surrounding them, I don’t think it’s worth trying.
And yes, the tags were omitted.
Anyway I’m finished here. You just can’t fight FUD slingers with common sense. Goes straight over their head.
edit to previous:
the *sarcasm* tags were omitted.
Rebecca, I already pulled the rug out from under your examples. You even list convenient exceptions to your argument as though they somehow don’t count. There is a distinct difference between source code and credentials, and you would do well to learn this.
@Zaphod
The Al Qaeda ref was alluding to Rebecca’s saying that opening the source was basically giving it to Al Qaeda. It wasn’t a rip on you. No worries 🙂
Oh no I realize that Antonius.. just saying I don’t understand her reference to it, but her surrounding remarks make me not wanna try.
Regarding the question about LL ever using the PhysX physics accelerator…. that is not possible because LL chose to use the Havok physics engine to drive SL.
PhysX is more or less a competitor to Havok, and as such Havok has been making bold claims that “there’s no need for a dedicated physics processor” and “there’s plenty spare power in nVideo/ATI GPU’s for handling physics”.
This is great for the home user, who may not need to buy another device for their gaming, but it also alas means that LL is effectively going to be unable to offer physics engine acceleration, because it is almost universal for datacenter-grade servers to not support high-end 3D graphics cards.
You can go out and buy a hot new quad-CPU $12,000 server from Dell…. and not find a single PCI-E x16 slot anywhere in that server. The best you’ll find is maybe an x8 slot that can at least fit an x16 card, though it’ll only run at x8 speeds.
And what with LL running a sim per core in these quad-core servers, that would require four PCI-E x16 slots, for four different nVidia/ATI GPUs as physics processors, one supporting each sim. I don’t think four PCI-E x16 is possible, for even the highest-end insane-gamer systems.
So while PhysX is easily server compatible, plugging four cards into the totally standard PCI bus that every server on the planet offers, it simply will not work here unless LL drops the Havok engine.
SL is so deeply married to Havok they might have to practically start this whole project from scratch if they were to attempt to rip out their Havok core and switch to the PhysX-capable engine.
.
quote:
Jeska Linden: Stephane Zugzwang: Are there plans by LL to deal with the eventuality of people using the source code to write robots – this could bring a see of changes, not to mention overload some servers or features or enable DOS attacks ?
Cory Linden: People will write bots whether or not we open source. The questions become what they use them for and how we want to get in that arms race …
Cory Linden: THe goal will be to give folks ways to identify and deal with bots if they become a problem
Isn’t a problem for Linden Lab?
basic free account, any other accounts = 9.95 set up fee. So in other words, shouldn’t the person controlling the hundreds of *alts* out there be charged that amount per alt per your own website?
They are creating profiles, joining open enrollment groups…they should be required to follow the rules the same as the rest of us..
Get in the arms race baffles me, do you mean control the creation of massive amount of alts, or way to use them to your own advantage, such as camp pay outs? Whats next Money Trees?