OPEN SOURCE=CLOSED SOCIETY

I went to Cory Linden's town hall today carrying a sign saying OPEN SOURCE=CLOSED SOCIETY OF CODERS.

And got booted from the game for an hour, missing most of the town hall. I had no idea that my sign would prove to be so correct so quickly.

I put up with the usual catcalls, hecklers, claims of my tinfoil hat status, screams, guffaws, etc. I have a rather nuanced view of the whole open-source hysteria, one that in fact I find certain tekkies and even open-source makers and users themselves discuss openly -- there are various schools of thought. No matter. A giant obnoxious dragon with hundreds of prims in an avatar knocking people over and lagging the server was allowed to stay -- he was affiliated with the militarized group Alliance Navy. Figures. Another dragon was there too -- it must be the dragon round-up.

People began to shout out questions to Cory, not going through Jeska. I patiently went a question through Jeska. I waited and people were still catcalling various things at me. There was a ton of cross-talk, no Linden said anything about there NOT being any cross-talk, and I figured that "the rules" (in the absence of anyone stating them) involved ignoring cross talk, but speaking in the groups -- the closed caption and question groups and not cluttering those. I figured with 4 sims overflowing, how can anyone even hear you on the next sim? I replied to people who goaded me, and made some rather cogent points.

Next thing I know, I am seeing the grey crime photo of the frozen log-out screen and a notice:

"You have been administratively logged out until 16:17 pm -- that is well after the town hall would be over. Not only logged out of the sim, but unable to go anywhere else in SL. Banned from a town hall where people were supposed to be able to ask about open source!!!!

Banned with a dissenting opinion about the coders!!! This is how it will be!!!

I'm grateful to Broccoli Curry of Stratics for providing me the unaltered transcript to this point in the meeting, which is still going on -- he had no problem with saying he would put it on Stratics, and that's the irony of the silly Lindens -- what they would ban, even Stratics nowadays would allow.

A mentor also told me she had heard I had "behaved like a jerk" -- that lets you know how our new resident government, with its own portal, is behaving -- talking behind people's backs about administrative decisions.

They can opensource the client. They cannot opensource their minds, opensource the forums, or opensource the town assemblies. Of these, they must keep strict, even hysterical proprietary control.

Notice that Torley, far from telling people they may not cross-talk, even indicates a Linden Town Hall Discussion Group for Chatting (!).

Then -- only in SL! -- AFTER I'm kicked and logged off, Jeska still asks my question, and Cory still answers it -- to far more rude and nasty commentary than anything remotely like what I said in my cross-talk. Those people all remain on the server.

Next, "Prokofy Novi" -- a W-Hat griefer -- arrives conveniently on the scene and begins spouting nonsense. This is evidently the prank threatened by King Frederick on this blog this morning.

{I'm protesting with this sign}
[14:43] Atlwolf Blabbermouth: Course you are Prokofy
[14:43] Prokofy Neva: Open Source=Closed Society of Coders
[14:43] You can't enter this region because
the server is full.
[14:44] Shaun Altman: wow this is lagtastic!
[14:44] Baba Yamamoto: Prokofy, too late
[14:44] Fumon Kubo: I will be in a few minutes... oop... make that a few
more minutes >.>
[14:44] Shaun Altman: oh please
[14:44] Shaun Altman: closed source = only LL coders
[14:44] You: full up already?
[14:44] Laser Pascal: figured being here with a self-built client would be
a good stress test, and it's working perfectly
[14:44] Torrid Luna: Yes
[14:44] You: and one sim already gone down
[14:44] Prokofy Neva: no closed society - elitist programmers who will
bypass the community
[14:44] Mikael Khalamov: It's too late to go back, they open-sourced, get
ready for copybots becoming the norm. \o/
[14:44] Prokofy Neva: like libsecondlife does already with their griefer
objects
[14:44] You can't enter this region because
the server is full.
[14:44] Shaun Altman: Prokofy: well hopefully they will bypass thge
community and improve the rendering! :D
[14:44] Fumon Kubo: Uh huh... sky is falling... right.
[14:44] Prokofy Neva: Learn international law, Laser : )
[14:45] Marbles Tokyo: that's the true answer Laser
[14:45] Shaun Altman: so events like this aren't a slideshow! :D
[14:45] Laser Pascal: Visual Studio .Net 2005 Express is free
[14:45] Laser Pascal: Prok, if you feel left out, learn to code.
[14:45] Sarah Elwro: Prokofy... I suggest a hunger strike. Seriously.
[14:45] Kamilion Schnook: ... Griefer objects?
[14:45] Prokofy Neva: Let's hope it falls on you Fumon, yeah
[14:45] You can't enter this region because
the server is full.
[14:45] Thornne Speculaas: If I had VCC, I'd compile my own client. :P
[14:45] Baba Yamamoto: prokfoy, i would love to learn international law
[14:45] Prokofy Neva: Yes like megaprims and copybot and godmode stalking?
[14:45] Baba Yamamoto: taht sounds fun
[14:45] Shaun Altman: im going to try to compile the mac version later
today
[14:45] You: hello prok... don't worry, not everyone is impressed with open
source
[14:45] Kamilion Schnook: Huh, I've used all of those. They're cool.
[14:45] Gannon Redgrave: 2005 Express is free
[14:45] Fumon Kubo: 2005 express will be working soon.
[14:45] hitmanWilly Welles: Dev C++ is free for win
[14:45] Torley Linden: OMG Cory's here!
[14:45] Fumon Kubo: Woo! Cory!
[14:45] Avil Creeggan is not impressed by open source. This has been a long
time for the coming.
[14:45] Baba Yamamoto: You know, I think i could go to a library and get
started learning all about international law
[14:45] Torley Linden: And not FSM!
[14:45] Fumon Kubo claps.
[14:46] Prokofy Neva: I'm become a follower of Bezroukov
[14:46] Baba Yamamoto: you know.. they have books on coding there too
[14:46] Prokofy Neva: It's not even real open source it's just a viewer
[14:46] Kamilion Schnook: Heya baba.
[14:46] Baba Yamamoto: it's an amazing place
[14:46] Prokofy Neva: cosmetics, distractions
[14:46] You can't enter this region because
the server is full.
[14:46] Shaun Altman: the viewer is where a lot of the problems are though
[14:46] Laser Pascal: Open source viewer :P do you hate firefox too?
[14:46] You can't enter this region because
the server is full.
[14:46] Shaun Altman: THIS lag, is mostly the viewer :P
[14:46] Prokofy Neva: yeah avatars like that are really the perfect thing
to come to a crowded sim with eh?
[14:46] Prokofy Neva: what an idiot
[14:46] You can't enter this region because
the server is full.
[14:46] Marbles Tokyo: jeez, who let the dragon in?
[14:46] Drakior Perun salutes
[14:47] You can't enter this region because
the server is full.
[14:47] Prokofy Neva: Why-are-we-not-surprised this is the Alliance Navy
hwere with the dragon
[14:47] Fumon Kubo watches the tumbleweeds.
[14:47] Thornne Speculaas: Now just to defuse the FUD some people think
about OSSL and get them out of chicken little mode
[14:47] Prokofy Neva: could you take that gcrap out of here you jerk?
[14:47] Prokofy Neva: Yes Thornne, I'dl ike to get the chicken littles of
libsl out of my life, that's for sure
[14:47] Baba Yamamoto: prokofy is that a new avatar shape?
[14:47] Alenzia Epsilon: I win the bet, prok verbally attacked us before
the event even started. Pay up.
[14:47] Laser Pascal: Open sourcing SL will have the same effects on SL
that Netscape starting the Mozilla foundation had on the internet.
[14:47] Mikael Khalamov: Prokofy, you have no right to demand people to
change their avatars.
[14:47] Avil Creeggan: Could you make a attempt to be slightly more civil,
and I'll give it a shot?
[14:47] Prokofy Neva: we need bigger chickens
[14:47] Fumon Kubo: Yay! Linden people!
[14:47] Mehdi Zemlja: a
[14:47] Mehdi Zemlja: a
[14:47] Mehdi Zemlja: a
[14:47] Mehdi Zemlja: a
[14:47] Mehdi Zemlja: a
[14:47] Mehdi Zemlja: a
[14:47] Mehdi Zemlja: a
[14:47] Mehdi Zemlja: a
[14:47] Mehdi Zemlja: a
[14:48] Mehdi Zemlja: a
[14:48] Mehdi Zemlja: a
[14:48] Mehdi Zemlja: a
[14:48] Mehdi Zemlja: a
[14:48] Mehdi Zemlja: a^^
[14:48] Dimitri Redgrave: stop spamming
[14:48] Zi Ree: w00t
[14:48] Mehdi Zemlja: sorry
[14:48] Prokofy Neva: um, maybe it's because you physically attacked the
sim in that idiotic avatar?
[14:48] Prokofy Neva: I mean is that inconsiderate or what??????
[14:48] LPFI Playground
Can't enter parcel, not on access list.
[14:48] Shoq Venkman: I feel we should be firing off lighters, or flash
bulbs
[14:48] Baba Yamamoto: that's what cameras are for
[14:48] Vicero Lambert: Hey there torley, cor, and jeska
[14:48] Argus Collingwood: hiya Lindens
[14:48] Shaun Altman: Sarah: yeah really :D
[14:48] Prokofy Neva: Yes Sarah, there are many viewpoints in an OPEN
SOCIETY
[14:48] Alenzia Epsilon: Prok: always cheerful and pleasant...
[14:48] Prokofy Neva: but not when it is CLOSED BY CODERS
[14:49] You can't enter this region because
the server is full.
[14:49] Thornne Speculaas: I just want to see one person's "SL is DIEING"
fear diffused. It's got me irritated. :X
[14:49] Mehdi Zemlja: YOU KNOW? STUPID AVATAR THA I AM THE FUTUR WINNER OF
THIS GAME!!!
[14:49] Jeremy Duport: Hey Prok. Guess what? I won Second Life. GG noob ^_^
[14:49] Fumon Kubo: Yay! It's the people with names of linden! */me dances*
[14:49] Dave Zeeman: Sup folks.
[14:50] Mehdi Zemlja: ZINEDINE ZIDANE ITS ME!
[14:50] Torley Linden: Sup.
[14:50] Vicero Lambert: I love open source :-D
[14:50] Fumon Kubo sighs.
[14:50] Jeska Linden shouts: Hello everyone - we'll be starting in about 10
minutes! Remember, if you've got a question, you'll need to join the group
Linden Town Hall Questions (you can find it in search, or click on my
profile!). We will be accepting questions in the Group IM after Cory has
done his introduction.
[14:50] Vicero Lambert: Hey there pathfinder :-D
[14:50] Vicero Lambert: and hey there claudia
[14:50] Jeska Linden shouts: This is a TEXT-ONLY event, but there are no
repeaters. Torley will be posting a live transcript to the group Linden Town
Hall Closed Captioning as we go. So if you're not following along here in
Pooley that's the way to listen in.
[14:50] Fumon Kubo: Nerd fight, fighting nerds, we don't use guns, we use
words.
[14:51] Jeska Linden shouts: Also, you can listen into the IRC repeater on
EFNet by going to #townhallrelay
[14:51] Zi Ree: Prokofy.. send bug report
[14:51] Thornne Speculaas: We're doomed. D:
[14:51] Vicero Lambert: the lindens look so lovely today :-D
[14:51] Aston Hildyard: ememeh, my hand is still stuck
[14:51] Gannon Redgrave: no this is not the WWW, this is a big video game
>:P
[14:52] Thornne Speculaas: And this is now WoW either. >_>
[14:52] Dave Zeeman: This is incomparable to anything.
[14:52] Thornne Speculaas: It's 3d IRC
[14:52] Thornne Speculaas: not*
[14:52] Fumon Kubo: Yay VLC!
[14:52] SignpostMarv Martin: http://www.pledgebank.com/sl-vlc-not-qt
[14:53] Seph Swain: This is like Google Earth - just in realtime.
[14:53] Gannon Redgrave: it's very similar to The Sims o_O
[14:53] Dave Zeeman: Baba, your mom. :)
[14:54] Mehdi Zemlja: hello french guy
[14:54] Mehdi Zemlja: are you here
[14:54] SignpostMarv Martin: Your Momma so lagged, she didn't finish
rezzing till SL 2.0
[14:54] Gannon Redgrave: I am just here to make a fortune a la Naughty
Designs and such
[14:54] Jeremy Duport: Chance, TSO came out after SL. :P
[14:54] Gannon Redgrave: it's just you
[14:54] Fumon Kubo: 's you.
[14:54] Subghoul Epsilon: i got knocked out as well
[14:55] Aster Lardner: Where's the iphone?
[14:55] Prokofy Neva: Um no Jeremy you're wrong
[14:55] Jeremy Duport: Oh?
[14:55] Prokofy Neva: I was in TSO beta in 2002
[14:55] Gannon Redgrave: Jeska is having a seizure :(
[14:55] Prokofy Neva: SL came after
[14:55] Prokofy Neva: opened in 2002
[14:55] Vicero Lambert shouts: Jeska Linden Your my heroooooooo!!! lol
[14:55] Vicero Lambert: lol
[14:55] Vicero Lambert: lol
[14:56] Vicero Lambert: thats a good line
[14:56] Mehdi Zemlja: /nbow
[14:56] Mehdi Zemlja: /fuck
[14:56] Mehdi Zemlja: /prout
[14:56] Aster Lardner: Will Open SL allow Secind life on iphones? LOL
[14:56] Vicero Lambert: I have the source open now
[14:56] Mehdi Zemlja: /smile
[14:56] Vicero Lambert: it looks clean
[14:56] Jeremy Duport: iSwallowed your iPhone
[14:56] Aston Hildyard: can't wait for the renderer to be in its own
thread, though
[14:56] Torley Linden: Good gosh, they really called it the iPhone. *makes
a note to check that after work*
[14:56] Zi Ree: me like.. coding guidelines
[14:56] Dave Zeeman: Aster considering iPhone will have MacOS it might. :o
[14:56] Mehdi Zemlja: azerty
[14:57] Aston Hildyard: these framerates are useless for anything beyond a
monitor
[14:57] Mehdi Zemlja: mn -3
[14:57] Jeska Linden shouts: We'll be starting in about 5 minutes everyone.
Don't forget to join the Closed Captioned group to read along or the Linden
Town Hall Questions group to ask a question!
[14:57] Gannon Redgrave: to improve framerates you can turn off rendering
of the sky and ground
[14:57] Fumon Kubo: 28 FPS :)
[14:57] Aston Hildyard: I'm talking more like 60fps on the renderer
[14:58] SignpostMarv Martin: I'm getting squiggle FPS.
[14:58] Thornne Speculaas: 2.0!
[14:58] Mehdi Zemlja: 95 FPS =)
[14:58] Aston Hildyard: even if the physics are slower, things like head
mounted displays require pretty high framerates to be usable
[14:58] SignpostMarv Martin: (seriously, the menues are all messed up, it
says squiggle)
[14:58] Mehdi Zemlja: 10.0 ++=)
[14:58] Fumon Kubo: Actually, nevermind, I'm getting
yong-tong-iddle-eei-poe FPS.
[14:58] Aston Hildyard: so if this is ever supposed to become the
metaverse... =P
[14:58] Fumon Kubo: IT'S over 9000!!!
[14:58] Jeremy Duport: I have -1 FPS. I see things BEFORE THEY HAPPEN O_O
[14:58] Thornne Speculaas: (It'll do that when you switch resolutions or go
fullscreen and back)
[14:58] Zi Ree: fps++;
[14:58] Mehdi Zemlja: two MILLION FPS =)=)=)
[14:59] HatHead Rickenbacker: my fps is pi
[14:59] Fumon Kubo: And for anyone who dosn't get the 9000 reference...
meh.
[14:59] Dave Zeeman: I can't see anyone else building a better metaverse...
if any metaverse at all. :o
[14:59] Thornne Speculaas: I have (integer divide by zero) FPS. :(
[14:59] Mehdi Zemlja: PAK MAN
[14:59] Zi Ree: while(!fast_enough) { fps++; }
[14:59] Mehdi Zemlja: 2:59!!!!!!!!!
[14:59] Kamilion Schnook: Works for me, Zi... Hehehehe
[14:59] Fumon Kubo: Yong tong iddle I poe and sixpence!
[14:59] Jeska Linden shouts: Thanks for coming out to the technical Town
Hall with Cory Linden everyone!
[14:59] Aston Hildyard: I agree, dave.
[14:59] Mehdi Zemlja: 10
[14:59] Jeska Linden shouts: We'll get started in just a few minutes, but
first I wanted to make sure everyone knew today's Town Hall will work.
[14:59] Mehdi Zemlja: 9
[14:59] Mehdi Zemlja: 8
[14:59] Zi Ree: *giggles*
[14:59] Jeremy Duport: I'll see your three million and raise you 0.001!
[14:59] Mehdi Zemlja: 7
[14:59] Mehdi Zemlja: 6
[14:59] Mehdi Zemlja: 5
[14:59] Mehdi Zemlja: 4
[14:59] Mehdi Zemlja: 3
[14:59] Mehdi Zemlja: 2
[14:59] Dave Zeeman: It takes time to make things better. With time, SL
will be what we want it to be.
[14:59] Mehdi Zemlja: 1
[14:59] Jeska Linden shouts: First, if you've got a question, you'll need
to join the group Linden Town Hall Questions (you can find it in search, or
click on my profile!). We will be accepting questions in the Group IM after
Cory has done his introduction.
[15:00] Aston Hildyard: ruh roh rorge
[15:00] Vivian Oddfellow is Online
[15:00] Dave Zeeman: 3 years of experience can tell me that. :)
[15:00] Aston Hildyard: indeed. =)
[15:00] Akumu Akula: Chocolate!
[15:00] Jeska Linden shouts: Remember, we take questions on a first come,
first served basis and due to time constraints will not be able to answer
every one. We'll try to get to as many as possible! Also, today's Town hall
is technically based, so try to keep your questions on the technical side.
[15:00] Zi Ree: llMute(!LINDEN);
[15:00] Jeska Linden shouts: This is a TEXT-ONLY event, but there are no
repeaters. Torley will be posting a live transcript to the group Linden Town
Hall Closed Captioning as we go. So if you're not following along here in
Pooley that's the way to listen in.
[15:00] Dave Zeeman realizes it's going to be 4 years in a couple weeks.
[15:00] Jeska Linden shouts: Also, you can listen into the IRC repeater on
EFNet by going to #townhallrelay
[15:00] Kamilion Schnook: llZipIt([stagegoers]);
[15:01] Jeska Linden shouts: 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/
[15:01] Aston Hildyard: llWakeUp(PATHFINDER_LINDEN);
[15:01] Jeska Linden shouts: Ok, Cory, take it away.
[15:01] Vicero Lambert: lol
[15:01] Cory Linden: OK, here we go . . . since I posted the answers to the
blog, I think we can jump right into questions
[15:01] Mehdi Zemlja: so what it is passing at 3 o clock?
[15:01] Cory Linden shouts: Kudos and thank yous to everyone who has
already downloaded the code and who submitted questions
[15:02] Mehdi Zemlja: wath is finish?
[15:02] Jeska Linden: Ok, I've got the first question
[15:02] 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?
[15:03] Cory Linden shouts: We use Internap, who connects generally via
Sprint and Level 3's backbones
[15:03] SignpostMarv Martin shouts: what does that mean in english
[15:03] Jeremy Toland: I cant sit
[15:03] Jeska Linden shouts: RacerX Gullwing: Why do islands disappear when
you look at the big map and zoom out, and don't stay visible like mainland
sims?
[15:03] Kamilion Schnook: mean they're on optical fibre.
[15:04] Cory Linden shouts: I just noticed that 20 minutes ago while doing
a demo . . . seems like a bug so will submit it.
[15:04] Kamilion Schnook shouts: JIRA TO THE RESCUE! YAY!
[15:04] Jeska Linden shouts: 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?
[15:04] Prokofy Neva: Isn't this supposed to be a technical town hall?
[15:04] 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 . . .
[15:04] Thornne Speculaas: "No land" is pretty tecnical
[15:05] Cory Linden shouts: we are working as fast as we can to correct the
situation and get more machines shipped into our colos
[15:05] Prokofy Neva: I think it's called "political, we'd rather sell the
servers as more expensive islands"
[15:05] Jeska Linden shouts: 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 ?
[15:05] Aston Hildyard: wonder what the rent at the colos is in L$
[15:05] Squeebee Wakawaka shouts: Why not revert some linden land to first
land?
[15:05] Kamilion Schnook: ... I thought we already had 'robots'....
[15:06] 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 ...
[15:06] Vicero Lambert: maby shoud moitor land barrons or add a resell time
limit....
[15:06] Prokofy Neva: Yeah I'd start with chopping up all those Help
Islands,t hat'd work
[15:06] Cory Linden: THe goal will be to give folks ways to identify and
deal with bots if they become a problem
[15:06] Aston Hildyard isn't a robot, but stayed at a Holiday Inn Express
last night.
[15:06] Jeska Linden shouts: 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
[15:06] Prokofy Neva: It's odd how they don't want to have an arms race
with reverse engineers, but they're happy not to have an arms race with
people exprssing themselves on the forums *cough*
[15:07] Prokofy Neva: well I mean Help Islands, they put out 50 of them now
was that *ncessary"?
[15:07] Prokofy Neva: that's a lot of first land
[15:07] Cory Linden: There is no technical means to perfectly ensure that
only official viewers can connect to the grid
[15:07] Thornne Speculaas: But would "homemade grids" be able to talk to
the main grid?
[15:07] Jeska Linden shouts: Kamilion Schnook: What is involved in the boot
process of an individual grid node?
[15:07] Cory Linden shouts: Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't want
to be anyone's friend during the town hall :-)!
[15:07] Thornne Speculaas: Or would the be their own seperate world, with
no way to travel between?
[15:08] 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?
[15:08] Squeebee Wakawaka shouts: But I thought we had something going
Cory!
[15:08] Akumu Akula: I'll check the transcript later
[15:08] Akumu Akula: See you at my place Thornne!
[15:08] Mehdi Zemlja: how can i win money
[15:08] Kamilion Schnook shouts: Both!
[15:08] Mehdi Zemlja: ?
[15:08] Jeska Linden shouts: RacerX Gullwing: Why do islands disappear when
you look at the big map and zoom out, and don't stay visible like mainland
sims?
[15:08] Thornne Speculaas: See you soon. o.o
[15:08] Thornne Speculaas: I'm still camping. o.o
[15:08] Torley Linden shouts: Please save your calling card and friendship
requests and IMs and inventory gives etc. for later, we're doing the Town
Hall right now -- thanks! =)
[15:09] Cory Linden shouts: that is still a bug and is being added to the
bug system
[15:09] Jeska Linden shouts: 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"
[15:09] Cory Linden shouts: I can definitely confirm that it will be the
future
[15:10] Cory Linden shouts: I'll defer to robla on that timing
[15:10] Jeska Linden shouts: 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?
[15:10] Thornne Speculaas: Pop it onto sourceforge. :P
[15:10] Zi Ree: lol
[15:10] Cory Linden shouts: We have a contract group working on zilla. It
is a very high priority but has proved to be "tricky"
[15:10] Mehdi Zemlja:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^?
[15:11] Jeska Linden shouts: 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
[15:11] Prokofy Neva: I do wonder how LL can do quality control on all the
these people who imagine they can code the game here but may not be
qualified -- and who is to know, eh?
[15:11] Mia Linden: To ask a question, you'll need to join the group Linden
Town Hall
Questions (you can find it in search, or click on Jeska's profile!). We will
be accepting
questions in the Group IM after Cory has done his introduction.
[15:11] 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
[15:12] Jeska Linden shouts: David Frantisek: When should we expect to be
able to use web pages (maybe including flash movies) as textures for
objects?
[15:12] Kamilion Schnook: hee hee, double free patch...
[15:12] Torley Linden shouts: (A reminder that re: Open Source, we have
further info, including a FAQ, right here --
http://secondlife.com/developers/opensource/ )
[15:12] Zaphod Kotobide: it's going to be a tall order, prokofy
[15:12] Torley Linden shouts: (That FAQ answers a number of noteworthy
questions which've already come up a lot. :) )
[15:12] Cory Linden shouts: Sometime after we integrate flash into the
in-SL browser. Flash is actually the hardest part of the embedding process.
[15:12] SignpostMarv Martin shouts: don't forget
https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Open_Source_Portal
[15:12] Prokofy Neva: well these are people who can't spend tim elooking at
simple abuse reports, how can they look at bunches of half-baked coding
projects from peeople's home brew?
[15:13] Jeska Linden shouts: 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?
[15:13] Kamilion Schnook: Because most abuse reports are pointless fights
between residents.
[15:13] Prokofy Neva: um not the kind I file
[15:13] Kamilion Schnook: it's Abuse report, not "verbal abuse report"
[15:13] Cory Linden shouts: 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.
[15:14] Jeska Linden shouts: Bato Brendel: Does Linden Labs have any plans
to implement PhysX PPU support for a massive boost in physics calculations
and object handling?
[15:14] Prokofy Neva: Uh, I file them on behalf of tenants bombarded by the
tub girls script by W-Hat members of libsl? stuff like that.
[15:14] Cory Linden shouts: No
[15:14] Thornne Speculaas: I hope not. Not everyone can afford happy fun
new PPU boards.
[15:14] Kamilion Schnook: Oh, good then.
[15:14] Gannon Redgrave: tub girls script? what's that? haha
[15:14] Jeska Linden shouts: 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?
[15:14] Thornne Speculaas: I'm stuck on five year old tech :X
[15:15] Prokofy Neva: It's a product of libsl, they bring good things to
life.
[15:15] Thornne Speculaas: Ahh.
[15:15] Thornne Speculaas: That would probably require rewriting the
physics engine from scratch
[15:15] Thornne Speculaas: Goodbye Havok 1
[15:15] Kamilion Schnook: yes, we libsl folk certainly do.
[15:15] Cory Linden shouts: That's an interesting idea, actually, will pass
along
[15:15] Prokofy Neva: It would be nice to get a dedicated Linden to solve
resident disputes too
[15:15] Jeska Linden shouts: 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?
[15:16] Prokofy Neva: No, I mean higher level serious disputes above the
pay grade of a Torley and the TOS, fraud and FBI investigatoins, that sort
of thing
[15:16] Subghoul Epsilon: technical town hall, remember? not
justice/dispute resolution
[15:16] 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
[15:16] Jeska Linden shouts: Marbles Tokyo: is there any plan for allowing
a user to alter the direction or force of the wind?
[15:16] Prokofy Neva: I'm not asking a question about justice, but then,
one could always ask about why we can't vote no on the Features Voting Tool
that now won't matter anyway.

YOU HAVE BEEN ADMINISTRATIVELY LOGGED OFF UNTIL 16:17 pm

[15:17] Kamilion Schnook: Dave: We'll get on that immediately.
[15:17] Zi Ree: or.. query direction of wind?
[15:17] 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
[15:17] Fumon Kubo: Zi, llWind...
[15:17] Zi Ree: nope.. only speed
[15:17] Jeska Linden shouts: Sanford Foulon: What sort of test regime does
LL plan to use when accepting enhancements into the baseline Viewer code?
[15:17] Gannon Redgrave: first I am going to see if you can improve the
search feature on the client :D
[15:17] Fumon Kubo: It's a vector.
[15:17] Zi Ree: o.o
[15:17] Fumon Kubo: 3 dimentional.
[15:18] Mia Linden: To ask a question, you'll need to join the group Linden
Town Hall
Questions (you can find it in search, or click on Jeska's profile!).
[15:18] Cory Linden shouts: 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
[15:18] Jeska Linden shouts: Leviathan Akami: Wouldnt it hurt SL to release
the server code? like hinder their ability to profit from SL?
[15:18] Cory Linden shouts: No
[15:18] Zi Ree: Fumon.. later.. it not :)
[15:19] Jeska Linden shouts: Akumu Akula: Will user updated veiwers have to
be re-made everytime a new veiwer is released by LL?
[15:19] SignpostMarv Martin: I'm liking these "No" answers :-)
[15:20] Kamilion Schnook: I agree.
[15:20] Cory Linden: For right now, yes, but per the blog post about
capabilities and rapid deploy we are making changes to support heterogeneous
viewers
[15:20] Zaphod Kotobide: when "no" is sufficient, why say more? :)
[15:20] Jeska Linden shouts: Marbles Tokyo: Will there be a way to allow
users to restrict/refine searches based on covenant?
[15:21] Squeebee Wakawaka shouts: Oh for the love of pete please make a
covenant filter so!
[15:21] Cory Linden shouts: eventually, that makes sense. we are just
starting the search redesign this quarter. There is a lot of room for
improvement in search.
[15:21] Cory Linden shouts: Will probably do a townhall just about search
sometime soon
[15:21] Jeska Linden shouts: Kage Seraph: Cory, if the open source client
was a celebrity, which one would it be?
[15:21] Gannon Redgrave: well yeah considering that search is a joke
[15:22] Cory Linden shouts: Alf
[15:22] Mia Linden: :o)
[15:22] Jeska Linden shouts: 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?"
[MY QUESTION ASKED EVEN WITH ME ADMINISTRATIVELY LOGGED OFF LOL--PN]

[15:22] Kamilion Schnook falls off his chair laughing
[15:22] Shoq Venkman: We hope it's not one of the TWGs (Train Wreck Girls)
Britney, Lindsay, Nichole :)
[15:22] Zaphod Kotobide: Alf? That's not encouraging :/
[15:23] Microsoft Asp shouts: hey Prokofy Neva shut the fuck up
[15:23] Kamilion Schnook: forgot christina
[15:23] Kamilion Schnook: Uhoh, that's not good.
[15:23] 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...
[15:23] Cory Linden shouts: business models are supported on the web, so I
suspect that several of them will apply to an open sourced SL
[15:24] Subghoul Epsilon: he's offline i think.
[15:24] Jeska Linden shouts: 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. :)
[15:24] Shoq Venkman: Bug Bounties
[15:24] Subghoul Epsilon: yup. well known. but in SL....
[15:24] Aston Hildyard: Who wants to start working on an open source client
with a "Mute Prokofy" button on the HUD?
[15:24] Cory Linden shouts: 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
[15:25] Subghoul Epsilon: that's already in the client aston
[15:25] Jeska Linden shouts: 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?
[15:25] Gannon Redgrave: I am going to make a client that censors the word
"lol" 8)
[15:25] Kota Dumont shouts: where do we go to download the open source
code?
[15:25] Zaphod Kotobide: I'll pay you large sums of money for that one
Gannon. "lolz"
[15:25] Cory Linden shouts: 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.
[15:26] Jeska Linden shouts: 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?
[15:26] Gannon Redgrave: well there's only so much your client can do I
guess
[15:26] SignpostMarv Martin shouts: Bounties have a place on the Wiki:
https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Category:Bounties and
https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Community_Bounties
[15:26] Hermia Linden: Please let the speaker speak
[15:26] Shoq Venkman: Will there be cell cameras present out at the shed?
[15:26] Cory Linden shouts: It may be possible to do that on the client.
I'm not sure.
[15:26] Torley Linden: (A reminder the Open Source Viewer code and more
Open Source info is right here --
http://secondlife.com/developers/opensource/ )
[15:27] Jeska Linden shouts: Zi Ree: can we get a picture of an actual colo
SL uses? :) I'd love to see the hardware involved.
[15:27] You: SEARCHES HAVE RIGHTS!!!
[15:27] Cory Linden shouts: they don't like camera being inside the colos
[15:28] Zi Ree: aww
[15:28] Jeska Linden shouts: David Frantisek: Will any sort of plugin
environment be developed for SL in a future release?
[15:28] Taft Worsley: Q: what is LL sop for when a rogue client is release
and what will they do to prevent it ??
[15:28] Thornne Speculaas: Camera flash = Hardware damage. :P
[15:28] Cory Linden shouts: Almost certainly, for sufficiently large
definitions of future
[15:28] Thornne Speculaas: And yes, there is light-sensitive stuff in a
computer.
[15:28] Jeska Linden shouts: Antonius Misfit: Now that the viewer is open
sourced, is it possible to create a viewer that can stream open source media
formats?
[15:28] Zee Kaos shouts: Any idea if or when HTML on a prim is going to be
developed / released?
[15:28] Dave Zeeman: Taft, probably nothing since people should be using
the default. :P
[15:28] Cory Linden shouts: Yes
[15:29] Thornne Speculaas: HTML on a prim's been in development for several
versions now.
[15:29] Jeska Linden shouts: 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/?
[15:30] SignpostMarv Martin: http://66.221.51.119:9008/
[15:30] Taft Worsley: http://radio.sltunes.com:8000
[15:30] 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...
[15:30] Thomas Shikami: good idea
[15:30] Zee Kaos shouts: Will the html on a prim eventually just be an
offshoot of what exists in the profile area under "web" ?
[15:31] Gannon Redgrave: asset registration business? huh?
[15:31] 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.
[15:31] Thomas Shikami: I'll start one right now
[15:31] Jeska Linden shouts: 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.
[15:31] Taft Worsley: Q: would it be better and less bndwidth intensive if
inventory was local on the client side ??
[15:31] Cory Linden shouts: We were just talking about this today. Yes,
that will get into the dev schedule soon
[15:31] Aslan Pertwee: Cory> only Lindens have enforcement power in SL, how
is someone supposed to run an "asset registration business"?
[15:32] Jeska Linden shouts: David Frantisek: Should we expect a fix in the
near future to the memory leak problems?
[15:32] Cory Linden shouts: Fixes, yes. Will that get all of them?
Unfortunately that will probably be an ongoing problem.
[15:33] Jeska Linden shouts: 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
[15:33] Cory Linden shouts: The FAQ talks about this. There will always be
a separate grid up that is in sync with the open source release.
[15:33] Jeska Linden shouts: David Frantisek: Where can those who are
having technical problems developing using the source code provided get
help?
[15:34] Cory Linden shouts: FAQ, wiki, irc, each other.
[15:34] Jeska Linden shouts: Kamilion Schnook: What is the current status
of the MONO Scripting engine, And when can we start testing on the beta
grid?
[15:35] Kamilion Schnook shouts: Even if it's just in one simulator! Viva
SIM-CAPS!
[15:35] Cory Linden shouts: 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.
[15:35] Jeska Linden shouts: 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.
[15:35] Cory Linden shouts: Windows 98? No.
[15:35] Jman Udet: like SL would run on a slower computer
[15:36] Zi Ree: use linux
[15:36] TalNova Aji: lol
[15:36] Jeska Linden shouts: Bato Brendel: Will SL be finally or in the
planning of supporting PPU technology like Aegis PhysX cards?
[15:36] Zak Escher: DOS
[15:36] Thornne Speculaas: That was answered earlier :E
[15:36] Jeremy Duport: Actually, the libSL client runs pretty nicely on
lower-end systems.
[15:36] Thomas Shikami: I guess mono is wrong for scripting
[15:36] Cory Linden shouts: Nothing planned right now.
[15:36] Thomas Shikami: it has to be a VM to work
[15:36] Zak Escher: C64
[15:36] AiBu Nakamura: eeek!
[15:36] Zee Kaos: if it ran on lesser machines it would need much lower
video requirements
[15:36] Josh Nitschke: Vic20 FTW
[15:36] Jeska Linden shouts: Henry Kirshner: Are there any improvements
planned to the building tools?
[15:37] Kamilion Schnook: TestClient runs pretty dang good on a 600Mhz
system with multiple agents logged in.
[15:37] Zee Kaos: would probaly end up looking like.. LOL DARE I SAY IT?
"There"
[15:37] Zee Kaos: hahahah
[15:37] Katanya Genosse shouts: hiya LIndens can you hear me???I am wayyy
out here!!!
[15:37] Zee Kaos: if u ask me, keep it on high end, this platform can look
so much better then.. older systems could even try to do
[15:37] Cory Linden shouts: 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.
[15:37] Jeska Linden shouts: 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?
[15:38] Taft Worsley: Q: what is LL sop for when a rogue client is release
and what will they do to prevent it ??
[15:38] 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...
[15:38] Cory Linden shouts: seem to want something called polygons for
their modeling needs. Not sure why.
[15:39] Katanya Genosse shouts: LMAO
[15:39] Aston Hildyard shouts: CSG for life!
[15:39] Zi Ree: lol

[THIS IS THE PRANK AGAINST ME THAT KING FREDERICK WARNED ABOUT THIS MORNING RIGHT HERE ON THIS BLOG, AND THIS ISN'T MY ALT--PN]

[15:39] Prokofy Novi shouts: What are your technical plans to thwart the
bolshevik displacers like Plastic Duck and his w-hat comrades in serial
systematic griefing? They have attacked my tenants repeatedly and stalk me
in RL and when they get banned the grief enablers are still here to help
them upon their return.
[15:39] Jeska Linden shouts: 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?
[15:39] Robin Lobo: lol
[15:39] Taft Worsley: the reason for my question is 3 of our staff have
already for exploits in the SC
[15:39] Cory Linden shouts: 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.
[15:40] Jeska Linden shouts: David Frantisek: Are there plans to improve
the jpeg library released with the SL source code?
[15:40] Cory Linden shouts: Hopefully you will. libjpeg needs optimization
work for j2c.
[15:40] Jeska Linden shouts: 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?
[15:41] Taft Worsley: Q: is there proceedure in place for exploits - how do
we report them to LL
[15:41] SignpostMarv Martin: Bug Report: Category: Exploit
[15:41] Cory Linden shouts: 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.
[15:41] Jeska Linden shouts: 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.
[15:42] Prokofy Novi shouts: Cory but what about my tenants? MY TENANTS!!!
[15:42] Dave Zeeman: Hahaha
[15:42] Cory Linden shouts: An excellent point. I agree that the map stage
is annoying.
[15:42] Jeska Linden shouts: Eduardo Falken: Will be possible to create our
own client-sided LSL functions in SL Client Viewer?
[15:42] Torley Linden shouts: (Further info on the DMCA process is here:
http://secondlife.com/knowledgebase/article.php?id=270 )
[15:43] Cory Linden shouts: 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.
[15:43] Jeska Linden shouts: 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?
[15:43] Shoq Venkman: Steve Jobs had nothing on this show, today. Go
lindens!
[15:43] Zee Kaos shouts: isnt copyright protection a problem Everywhere?
and no matter where you go, to walmart, to ur fav P2P or torrent site, or to
SL, piracy will always exist. Why are the lindens being pressured to respond
to a worldwide problem?
[15:43] Cory Linden shouts: No
[15:43] Jeska Linden shouts: David Frantisek: Are there plans to add
distributed computing/peer-to-peer functionality to SL?
[15:44] Cory Linden shouts: We'll be publishing a roadmap for SL's future
later this quarter which will talk about that a bit.
[15:44] Jeska Linden shouts: 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/ ?
[15:45] Cory Linden shouts: It depends on the patch. Enabling more input
devices would be very cool, though.
[15:45] Dave Zeeman: Of course they will.
[15:45] Jeska Linden shouts: Taft Worsley: What will LL SOP be when a rogue
viewer is release and what will they do for preventing its use?
[15:45] Dave Zeeman: SL needs joysticks :)
[15:45] Zee Kaos: standard game controller input would work well with
windows
[15:45] Katanya Genosse shouts: What about our land issues? When do we as
land owners get some releif from those who use all the land
resources????sorry I cant get the 'town hall group"?
[15:45] Gannon Redgrave: I have already used a joystick with it, search
internet for "joy2key"
[15:45] Cory Linden shouts: 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
[15:45] Kamilion Schnook: And GlovePIE can deal with many kinds of input
devices
[15:46] Jeska Linden shouts: 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?
[15:46] Zee Kaos: thanks for the joy2key link, thats great!
[15:46] Cory Linden shouts: Not sure, I'll pass that one to Robla and Ginsu
[15:46] Gannon Redgrave: yeah especially advantageous at samurai island
haha
[15:47] Jeska Linden shouts: Ting Yue: What would be the prerequisites to
open sourcing the server? tech hurdles or more a business decision?
[15:47] Cory Linden shouts: tech
[15:47] Jeska Linden shouts: 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?
[15:48] Cory Linden shouts: 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!
[15:48] Kota Dumont shouts: can we rent sever space from Sl so we can build
our own islands?
[15:49] Jeska Linden shouts: Marcus Reisman: I would love an update on the
sim-caps and backbone projects in the next year? :-)
[15:49] Gannon Redgrave: that's it I'm opening a client store in-world
[15:49] Jman Udet: u can already do that kota
[15:49] Cory Linden shouts: 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.
[15:50] Jeska Linden shouts: 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...
[15:50] Gannon Redgrave: no it give u a web site 2 dl it lol
[15:50] Cory Linden shouts: Yes, we are actively talking about the right
way to do that.
[15:50] Torley Linden shouts: (The blog post on sim-caps and backbone etc.
is here --
http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/12/21/a-big-change-youll-barely-notice/ )
[15:50] Lucy Linden: ty
[15:51] Lucy Linden: brb
[15:51] Jump Enhancer v1.1: Couldn't find animation curAnimName
[15:51] Hermia Linden: /yw
[15:51] Jeska Linden shouts: Henry Kirshner: Are there any plans to
integrate voice chat into sl?
[15:51] Cory Linden shouts: Folks are already using voice. Such as the
language lab project.
[15:51] Cory Linden: Blender would have to buy me coffee first, maybe a few
dates, before I would consider it.
[15:52] Josh Nitschke: LOL squee
[15:52] Jeska Linden shouts: 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?
[15:52] Cory Linden shouts: We hadn't planned to move in that direction as
it make cross platform maintenance more of a pain in the posterior.
[15:52] Jeska Linden shouts: 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?
[15:52] Kamilion Schnook shouts: I hereby offer my services to host patches
and 3rd party binaries (if allowed) to the general public, via the forums on
http://www.sllabs.com -- Please IM me in a few hours for more details!
[15:52] Cory Linden shouts: Client side for now.
[15:53] Jeska Linden shouts: Anna Zwiers: Can we have a way to backup
inventory? Haven't been able to edit clothes/character for a week now.
[15:54] Cory Linden shouts: 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.
[15:54] Jeska Linden shouts: 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?
[15:54] Cory Linden shouts: I know that community is planning the next
round of group work right now, so that is worth mentioning to them. Will
pass along.
[15:54] Jeska Linden shouts: 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?
[15:55] Cory Linden shouts: Haven't a few folks done those already?
[15:55] Cory Linden shouts: OK, last question?
[15:55] Gannon Redgrave: Lindens sure like the word "folks" >_<
[15:55] Squeebee Wakawaka shouts: Are we done?
[15:55] Jeska Linden shouts: 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?
[15:56] Cory Linden shouts: Jira exposes voting and other methods for doing
that. Take my word, you don't want to look at Jira's database.
[15:56] Cory Linden: OK, that's all!
[15:56] Kamilion Schnook laughs
[15:56] Kamilion Schnook shouts: THANKS SO MUCH CORY! :D
[15:57] Cory Linden shouts: 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!
[15:57] Hannah Shenley: Thanks very much for that
[15:57] Jeska Linden shouts: Thanks for coming out today everyone, we'll be
posting this transcript to the blog!
[15:57] Fumon Kubo: Cyas.
[15:57] Marbles Tokyo: /shout thank you for this opportunity
[15:57] Zion Undercity shouts: thank u cory!!!
[15:57] Farrokh Vavoom shouts: Thanks Lindens!
[15:57] HatHead Rickenbacker: tnaks!
[15:57] Rainbow Drake: Thankyou Cory, Jeska & Torley!
[15:57] Sarah Elwro shouts: thank you
[15:57] Argus Collingwood shouts: tyty
[15:57] Melinda Latynina: /clap
[15:57] Torley Linden shouts: Great to see y'all... 'twas a pleasure,
curiosity's such a boon. :)
[15:57] Christopher Wachmann shouts: thanks lindens!!
[15:57] Aslan Pertwee: Thanks for the meeting and the answers
[15:57] Judge Hocho: Thanks for ignoring my questions
[15:57] Zion Undercity shouts: thanks for all the hard work !!!
[15:58] Intolerable Ginsburg: thanks corey and other lindens!
[15:58] Torley Linden shouts: In case you didn't see it earlier, Jeska
blogged about this Town Hall in advance, along with general instructions for
how it works:
http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/01/08/town-hall-with-cory-linden-tomorrow/
[15:58] Jeska Linden: lol
[15:58] Adrian DuCasse: wwww
[15:58] Jeska Linden isn't even sure what tekki wikinista means
[15:58] Monicaxir Kline: yes.. please do more town halls like this it makes
yu seem so miuch more contactable
[15:59] You can't enter this region because
the server is full.
[15:59] Torley Linden shouts: You're super-welcome, thanks for coming!
[15:59] Code Tracer: hi philip
[15:59] Philip Linden: hi there
[15:59] Torley Linden: Jeska, I think that's like a diva fashionista... or
something.
[15:59] Code Tracer: how r u ?
[15:59] Code Tracer: do u have a minute?
[15:59] Adrian DuCasse: i'm good
[15:59] Zi Ree: mrew Philip! :)
[15:59] Philip Linden: great.
[15:59] Shoq Venkman: Can we go to the bar now?
[15:59] Torley Linden: Midnite, we gave earlier advance TOO. :)
[15:59] Adrian DuCasse: where is the bar
[15:59] Timeless Prototype shouts: the party is free, but that's as in free
beer!
[15:59] Shoq Venkman: Hi phillip
[15:59] Torley Linden: We like to inform you as far in advance as possible.
[16:00] Adrian DuCasse: what's going on?
[16:00] Monicaxir Kline: I wated for fourt hours for this and it was worth
it!
[16:00] Philip Linden: RL festival?
[16:00] Adrian DuCasse: he's kinda bad...
[16:00] Seph Swain: Again they didn't say when we get HTML on a prim ;)
[16:00] Kamilion Schnook shouts: NASA'S GONNA BE IN SECOND LIFE!
[16:00] Philip Linden: Did everyone find the town hall useful?
[16:00] Gannon Redgrave: lol
[16:00] Code Tracer: do u have a minite talk about a RL festival?
[16:00] Kamilion Schnook shouts: Just heard it from a rocket scientist :D
[16:00] SouthernRonin Serapis: good gracious
[16:00] Monicaxir Kline: yes philip
[16:00] Gannon Redgrave can't wait for the search town hall
[16:00] Aslan Pertwee: yes
[16:00] Torley Linden: Sorry, I can't get all your IMs... way too many of
them. :) But as for repeaters, Tateru Nino (who scripted the system) and I
are going to check it out, yes. :)
[16:00] Monicaxir Kline: I think youve set some minds at rest about the
security aspects of Open Source!
[16:01] Adrian DuCasse: whos is the singer?
[16:01] Zi Ree: great question.. great answer ;)
[16:01] Adrian DuCasse: haha
[16:01] Philip Linden: cool.
[16:01] Shoq Venkman: Phillip, I think we need an HTML on a Prim town hall
[16:01] Adrian DuCasse: it's crazy here man
[16:01] Kamilion Schnook: Torley: Thanks so much... <3
[16:01] Zi Ree: No.
[16:01] Adrian DuCasse: everybody is speakin at the same time...
[16:01] Adrian DuCasse: can we change the music?
[16:01] Gannon Redgrave: jeeeeesss christ
[16:01] Torley Linden: Also Kooky, FYI... this time we used the Linden Town
Hall Closed Captioning group as a "repeater".
[16:01] Torley Linden: Heyhey Philip.
[16:01] Philip Linden: well we need to get HTML on a prim working, at
minimum :)
[16:01] Zi Ree: town hall.. on speed :D
[16:01] Seph Swain: Phil: Yes.
[16:01] Katanya Genosse: oh now I can get in sniff lol
[16:01] Monicaxir Kline: yes I ported to the next island and sneaked in!
[16:01] Monicaxir Kline: lol
[16:01] Philip Linden: heya torley
[16:01] Zi Ree: dynamic texture.. be nice
[16:01] Kamilion Schnook: Phillip: I just want to personally thank you for
going FOSS...
[16:01] Torley Linden: *nods* I understand Kooky -- in the future watch the
blog, Jeska posted details there too of how to listen in...
http://blog.secondlife.com as always =)
[16:02] Torley Linden: Each time we do a Town Hall, it's nice, we can
streamline the process and look at it afterwards and see what happened.
[16:02] Code Tracer: Philip http://www.tcf-nj.org
[16:02] Kamilion Schnook: Phillip: and expect NASA to be poppin in SL soon
;)
[16:02] Zi Ree: yea.. open source.. make us.. go "WTF!?"
[16:02] Philip Linden: thx Kamilion
[16:02] asher Hebert: Philip when ar you doing your next town hall?

____________________________________

Comments

[Kyrah Abattoir]

well you acted like a jerk, you got treated like one.

[King Frederick]

Prokofy Neva = Event Griefer

[Joshua Nightshade]

OMIGOD! The alt made two comments. WHAT A HORRIBLE PRACTICAL JOKE!

That's like, totally, cyber raping griefer porn sodomizing destruction-of-civil-liberties torture on an English muffin.

[King Frederick]

Oh, I just saw the "prank" comment-- actually I was just joking in the comment. That "alt" probably isn't you, and is indeed pranking you, but my comment wasn't a real warning. The comment itself was the "prank" --e.g. make you paranoid that W-Hatters were renting spaces on your property in order to pull a massive prank.

Obviously if we were doing something like that, I wouldn't let the cat out of the bag... or would I? ;-)

*mysterious chimes*

[Cocoanut Koala]

My goodness. So many people shouting and disrupting. W-Hat griefers and everything.

But hey, they booted you!

THAT is the important thing.

Blech.

coco

[Cat Cotton]

Ya know LL is really starting to piss me off with their stance on who gets banned and why. I did not sign up to a dictatorship society. I signed up to a program where I was free to voice my opinion and build what ever it was I wanted. For crying out loud don't they know who writes their paychecks? It sure as hell isn't the empty corporate sims. Makes me wanna scream "Power to the ppl" at the next townhall. Ban me? Go right ahead I would rather be banned than to put up with this heavy handed one man poor excuse for a government.

Crisps.

/end rant

[Joshua Nightshade]

It's not you either. You think your 9.95 a month, if even that, makes a difference? But wait, how many times have you tiered down and quit just 2006 alone?

[Howie Lament]

You're just lucky they didn't do worse. You were only there to spread your FUD, and started bitching at random people, are you really surprised you got kicked out?

LL has every right to do as they please with you, it's their servers, their rules. You have no freedom of speech in SL, that's not how it works. Quite frankly, you don't have freedom of speech on this blog either.

[Lewis Nerd]

Kinda amusing really how Linden Lab open source their software, allowing anyone to do whatever they please - however negative it may be to the overall good of SL - yet they can't handle a few dissenting honest comments from people with genuine concerns that they refuse to address because OS is "such a wonderful thing".

Having sat through last nights meeting, I remain entirely unconvinced that OS is the way that SL should be going.

Lewis

[Sarah Elwro]

I was there at the technical town hall... and your "report" has very little in common with reality.

I noticed you edited your transcript to remove most of my comments regarding your horribly ignorant stance on open source (there are other transcripts floating around and others may verify this by searching for my name). I talked about how you can't be bothered to open a book and learn, and so apparently that makes others "elitist".

You might be interested in this: I spent much of last night, after the town hall, compiling the SL client source code. I had valuable help from those 'elitist' types in #opensl on the efnet IRC network. But I expect you don't want to hear that, since closed-mind/open mouth seems to be your thing. The license under which the Second Life client is released is, at its heart, about freedom, cooperation, education and openness. The knowledge is there to be learned, by those who are interested. There is nothing closed or secretive about it. Quite the opposite.

The truth is, you made a fool of yourself last night. I hope your mission last night was about self-publicity, because you certainly didn't gain any respect.

[Prokofy Neva]

I assure you that I didn't edit a thing, and I got two copies of this from 2 different people and they were identical.

Truly, what happens is that when there are 4 sims together like this, some people are out of chat range. So by all means, publish your own chat history, it's instructive. I never censor stuff like that.

It's not that I "can't be bothered to open a book". I've read stuff on open source for years, and on computer development, I remember reading Soul of the New Machine in one sitting years ago. I will read anything that is comprehensible to a person of basic intelligence with a college degree.

It's fascistic, however, to demand that society be made up only of people who are skilled in one area, and everybody else can't get an explanation of what they're doing, and can't get information of even the basic sort.

It's a totalitarian vision I won't stand for.

Imagine if all the doctors in real life suddenly arrogantly told you, when you showed up with a pain in your side, that you had better read a book, or go to med school, to understand why they were going to schedule surgery for you.

Imagine if all the car repairmen told you when your car broke down that you merely had to pay them $599, vaguely waived some jargon and mechanical terms at you, and proceeded to disappear with your car for 2 weeks, after which it wasn't fixed.

Oh, right. That's what happens. And that's why tekkies are more like nasty car repair mechanics than skilled surgeons.

I don't think I made a fool of myself at all.

At that technical town hall, there was not a single person who represented a major land or content business in SL. Those major land and content business people don't talk so aggressively and with such infantile bullshit talk as these OSS anarchist nutters.

And some of them will quietly do it their way, no doubt, but I think the pubilc has a right to know what happens to the world we live in when the Lindens turn it over to asshole kiddies like this.

The sneering and defiance and know-nothing ism exemplified by this gang of thugs is really disturbing.

Know-nothing, because they can't envision conceptual thought, and making concepts accessible to others who are equally as intelligent but merely in other fields.

They just become exasperated over even abusive and say "go read a technical manual".

It's truly deeply fucked.

The open source movement has its detractors, even within its own movement. Anybody can see this by reading all the stuff around sites like Eric Raymond (I personally found it utterly hilarious that this opensourcenik's page was filled with links that didn't work to read his basic works ROFL).

The license under which the Second Life client is released is, at its heart, about freedom, cooperation, education and openness. The knowledge is there to be learned, by those who are interested. There is nothing closed or secretive about it. Quite the opposite.

You claim this. If that's the case, I'd expect to see a good deal more helpful and nice commentary from people in this group than we've seen for months before the client was open-sourced.

What we've seen of open-sourcer extremists is the antics of libsecondlife.

I found it fascinating that everyone harangued me in this conversation telling me that a) John Hurliman is the maker of CopyBot and b) this is public knowledge on this thing called the SVN, which I take to be a kind of bulletin board/library shelf/thingie that people use to coherently post their collective progress no this project (funny LL doesn't have that up yet for THIS project).

Yet John Hurliman can't bring himself to admit publicly that he is the author, something we all suspect.

And SVN, whatever its status as this magic open library page, is opaque to people who can't be expected even to know what SVN is or means.

Honestly, most people in SL aren't bothering to follow this. I bother to follow it, to study, to learn. All I have gotten for my rightful and legitimate comments, criticisms and questions is permbanning by these Bolsheviks.

Telling, innit, that my remarks on the Linden blog for which I was permabanned *still stand*. They aren't erased. Because they violate nothing.

Telling, innit, that my question to Jeska is asked even after I'm banned.;

Telling, innit, that my question to Cory on Dec. 20 was answered, and he even said "excellent question".

Only in Second Life, Bolshevism 2.0.

[hitmanWilly Welles]

Where do I begin...?

First off, there is nothing inherent in OSS to make it "insecure." If anything, it makes it more secure since any programmer anywhere in the world can find and fix the security holes before they become an issue.

Secondly, its the CLIENT thats getting open sourced. All the major data is kept on the server side w/ SL. Its the equivalent of open sourcing a web browser. Do you feel any less secure knowing that people are using Mozilla/Firefox to view this page? Same thing for SL.

Thirdly, any code changes I make, all you have to do is ask. I assume you are somewhat familiar with LSL scripting. C/C++ is almost the same thing. I'm not some random kid who happens to know some code. Just because I don't do it as a job for money doesn't mean I don't know what i'm talking about.

Finally, I have been an open source proponent for years. If it didn't work, would the number of servers running Linux today be as high as it is? Corey even said that their stacks run Debian. Debian=GNU/Linux=OSS. And I am not a "nutter," thank you very much.

Seriously, Prok, you have made trolling into an art form.

P.S. And, for the record, I have never been a member of W-Hat, in case you were planning on trying to pull that card.

[Prokofy Neva]

W-hat has many spin-off groups, networks, and connections with various other groups, and it's a kind of psychosis, a mentality of tribal affiliation that lame losers pull over themselves as a security blanket.

>First off, there is nothing inherent in OSS to make it "insecure." If anything, it makes it more secure since any programmer anywhere in the world can find and fix the security holes before they become an issue.

That's just one, sectarian, extremist school of thought. Indeed, there are significant criticisms of the WAY in which OSS projects are done, and of the OSS itself. You aren't invoking "the truth" here but merely your position.

One of the concepts using the "illness as metaphor" fallacy and meme is that by exposing LOTS of people to the vulnerabilities you'll get so much useful and good-willed imput that it will be fixed and the holes filled.

But there's nothing to indicate that will happen in SL, too, and it doesn't even work that way everytime every other entity has done this.

on Raph's blog, people speak convincingly of how GAMES as distinct from say, somebody's email program, are NOT open-sourced and with good reason.

Just because something is vulnerable, it doesn't mean exposing it to many possibly more malignant forces than those who at least sign up for an SL avatar, means it will fix things.

Adam Broitman has summoned this up in an article about marketing and SL:

"The placement of "the self" in Second Life is unlike any medium before it. To my knowledge there has never been a platform (outside of certain games, and other virtual worlds) where users can see themselves as part of the content (think Andy Warhol’s "15 minutes of fame," only prolonged)."

We're part of these fucktards' experiments as people, whether we wish to be or not. That's why Broccoli Curry's concept of needing some kind of clearing=house that makes sure every custom viewer isn't crashing the grid is needed (sorry I called Broccol "he" and it is "she", didn't see the picture or person in the laggy TH).

Indeed. While there will be a system for coders to submit stuff to this new Linden named Rob, people immediately began grousing in these conversations that they couldn't just log their thing on and start testing it immediately and link right up to the main.

I predict that within 30-60 days, we will see a major, major griefing session with a new logged-on client that may or may not be cleared by LL.

>Secondly, its the CLIENT thats getting open sourced. All the major data is kept on the server side w/ SL. Its the equivalent of open sourcing a web browser. Do you feel any less secure knowing that people are using Mozilla/Firefox to view this page? Same thing for SL.

Um, yeah, we got all that. Honestly, this default asshole attitude that those of us watching at home are retards unable to distinguish between "client" and "server," which you learn in your first week in Second Life, is really, really offensive. Check the superior asshole attitude at the door, please.

Mozilla isn't a good example for me, frankly. For one, hey, every try to type an apostrophe some days and be hijacked to the FIND function lol? Who knows where all this log on data is going.

But more to the point, web 1.0 browsers, which are out there, 2-D, and not integrated with myself in a 3-D world, are not at all a good comparison to what the experience is going to be in SL.

We are Back to Beta. And we are going to be seeing the movie from inside like ZeFrank talked about and it's not going to be pretty and we are in for a very rough ride.

>Thirdly, any code changes I make, all you have to do is ask. I assume you are somewhat familiar with LSL scripting. C/C++ is almost the same thing. I'm not some random kid who happens to know some code. Just because I don't do it as a job for money doesn't mean I don't know what i'm talking about.

I'm personally worried that some of the most honourable computer programmers and specialists I know in Second Life have told me they aren't going to be downloading this client and working it. Either they feel it's not really where the stuff is att (the real stuff is in the server code, as Clubside very, very aptly noted in the post-TH thread), or they don't know enough of C++, or they just aren't lame script kiddies with acres of time on their hands.

In a way, if you zoom out from this, your heart has to break for the kids who are going to be working 24/7/365 for this man and his pet rock in the sky, without any compensation, who will not be feted or even get jobs or even be noted or remembered. It really is like the pyramids -- lots of bones to get crushed under the weight of the blocks.

>Finally, I have been an open source proponent for years. If it didn't work, would the number of servers running Linux today be as high as it is? Corey even said that their stacks run Debian. Debian=GNU/Linux=OSS. And I am not a "nutter," thank you very much.

Linux is for nutters. Linden using Linux is not an advertisement. I don't have to argue this one out. Linux is for nutters. I do have to wonder about Linux nutters promoting SL itself as an advertisement for something working because it has Linux. I mean, this is common sense.

>Seriously, Prok, you have made trolling into an art form

Trolling is merely the term that rigidly orthodox tekkies use to describe anything that challenges their interpretation of the world and the law, or which threatens their power over other people.

[Spanky]

It would seem that Sarah has had some comments edited out of this transcript. There are some responses to Sarah left in which do not fit her 'hunger strike' comment.

[Prokofy Neva]

Once again, I did not take ANYTHING out of the transcript AT ALL except those things like "so and so logged on".

You can see the identical thing from Broccoli, who gave me the copy and published it, and I have yet another copy that looks exactly the same.

Can you get it through your thick head that chat range of 20 me LIMITS what can show up in a transcript in a 4-sim meeting????

This has been proved over and over and over again.

Let her put up the damn comments here or anywhere, I did not remove them, and have absolutely no reason to remove them.

[Ian Betteridge]

"That's just one, sectarian, extremist school of thought. Indeed, there are significant criticisms of the WAY in which OSS projects are done, and of the OSS itself. You aren't invoking "the truth" here but merely your position."

Name an open source project which has had significant security problems that weren't fixed damn fast. Compare the record of Linux servers (open source) to Windows servers (closed source). Compare MySQL (open source) to Microsoft SQL Server (closed). Compared Apache (open source) to IIS (closed).

[Ian Betteridge]

"Who knows where all this log on data is going."

Anyone who is capable of reading the code, because it's published.

"Trolling is merely the term that rigidly orthodox tekkies use to describe anything that challenges their interpretation of the world and the law, or which threatens their power over other people."

Just as "griefing" is the term you use for anyone questioning you too closely or disagreeing with you on a public forum, my dear :)

[Prokofy Neva]

Griefing is indeed what you do with pestery, literalist, gotcha remarks that are not a normal debate -- even sharp debate, but playing pounce. It's juvenile, hon.

[Joshua Nightshade]

If she could hear your comments well enough to reply, then your chatlog should've copied what she said. Otherwise, if the problem was distance, she wouldn't have heard you ranting to begin with. What do you think, the 20 metre limit only works when you "send" chat? Lord mercy.

And Prokofy can't script for shit. I still wonder who set up her rental systems for her.

[DF]

A little comment in favour of, and in defence of Linux:

Unlike Windows, which does EVERYthing for you itself, and totally takes over all control of your computer, linux requires the user to install it all and get it running in the first place. it's not for nutters, it's just not for people who don't know too much about the technical side of computers. lord knows, the only reason I still use XP, is that I have NO IDEA how to get Linux working. Windows you can ust flop in the rom, and sit back and wait... My BF however does, he's quite the apt programmer.

And I also have felt like I was being 'shunned' by 'elitist' programmers/scripters, but that's simply becuase when they start to talk about the technical stuff, they often lose sight of the fact that most of the terms they throw around are chinese to the average user like me... And to explain in detail every single of those terms, and why, (eg translate it to non-tekkie English) would take them longer then for a noob to learn C++. I know I have tried to make my BF make me understand the really interresting technical stuff, but I usually gave up sooner then he did.

When a surgeon has to explain in detail where he will be cutting, and why, and not why in a different way or with a different knife, you'll be dead before he's able to remove your tumor.
I don't really have to know *how* and *why* I only have to know he will be able to sucessfully remove it. For the rest, I have no choice but to just trust him.

Of course I agree with you, I don't like the idea of just anyone having a go at 'cutting the tumor out', but as long as the hospital says it's OK, it's okay enough for me.

I used to be heavily against LibSL and the open sourcing, mostly due to Copybot. But, whilst LL is working hard and still the list of things that could be improved and fixed grows longer with each update, I am more positive, as it will get the workload off their shoulders a bit if people help them find and fix bugs.

Gotta agree with me, SL can use lots of improving ^.^

[Hiro Pendragon]

Ah, yes, Firefox and Linux are such elitist societies, too, for being open sourced.

Oh, wait, no, they're not.

[Ian Betteridge]

As I said, Prok: anyone who disagrees with you is a griefer. Any facts that disagree with your world-view are ignored in favour of what can only be described as "shit Prokofy Neva has made up".

[Slider Zamboni]

I posted this to the other rant, but just in case anyone missed it, don't trust Linux, trust Microsoft! They're just in bed with the government agency that is best known for breaking privacy laws to steal your phone records and initiate a domestic wiretap program without letting the public know. THIS is what you're defending Prokofy? Seriously? Or is this all a big joke?

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9007 719&intsrc=news_ts_head

The U.S. agency best known for eavesdropping on telephone calls had a hand in the development of Microsoft Corp.'s Vista operating system, the software vendor confirmed yesterday.

The National Security Agency stepped in to help Microsoft develop a configuration of its next-generation operating system that would meet U.S. Department of Defense requirements, said NSA spokesman Ken White.

This is not the first time the secretive agency has been brought in by private industry to consult on operating system security, White said, but it is the first time the NSA has worked with a vendor prior to the release of an operating system.

By getting involved early in the process, the NSA helped Microsoft ensure that it was delivering a product that was both secure and compatible with government software, he said.

[Prokofy Neva]

Hiro, you're just tuning in. We already dismissed that sort of loony argument because Firefox doesn't rent land and have people build houses on its application and sell islands, etc. So, analogy is crippled.

Ian, you'll do a lot better when you cite actual thoughts and arguments, instead of constant style critiques or little psychological jabs and faux analyses. I defend my point of view against your sillyness, and that doesn't mean I don't concede your right to a point of view and that you have one, but it's just not viable or correct for me. You merely enjoy trying to show up people, trip up people, play gotcha, and engage in all those stupid aggro things that I find often British leftwing commentators often engage in when they are confronted by Americans whom they imagine to be rightwing, but who are just liberals calling them on their hate and extremism. So, give it up Ian, go back to coding as promised. Make Ian's Correct Client For Viewing Second Life with that new download, why don't you.

Slider, I'm not biting on this bate because I'm the sort of person who cares deeply about civil rights, and was the sole person to ask, on Tony Walsh's column about Skype and its new lie-detector equipment, why all the civil rightsniks weren't on this, the way they are on the government eavesdropping on us.

I think it's wildly hilarious that all you extremists who always sneer at me for imagining there's a conspiracy, that are data is being scraped, that they are recording us blah blah and laugh like hyenas about people objecting to Mark Barrett's SL Stats.com can suddenly genuflect and kneel and become all hushed and ominous about the USG listening to your puerile net chat. Truly, it is a rich contradiction rife with humour.

I have absolutely no dog in the hunt involving MS, Linus, the government, and the Trilateral Commission and maybe the Zionists, too (I bet they have some hella software that is listening the hell out of every one of our keystrokes, eh?)

I don't have any use for these powers that be and I'm happy to challenge them, but what is the right amount of security? Would any be OK for you? I mean, seriously, thinking of 9/11 and all, which really did happen and which really blew away my job, my neighbours, buildings, everything. I'd just like that not to happen again. And while it's fashionable to Blame America First and Blame Bush on this, at the end of the day, the extremist ideology of men's minds was the cause, and that's exactly why I bother raising questions about the extremisms I see in SL.

[Prokofy Neva]

DF, I'm sure the libsecondlife folks are crying "score one for our propaganda" right now with your tale, but I can only say, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

let's see how it plays out. I'm hugely skeptical, knowing that human nature doesn't change, and we know have these morons increased 10-fold. Uncle Philip is telling us not to worry, that having 10 times more of them will make them look over each others' shoulder (and he waxes all eloquent about how people are basically good.

People are not basically good. That's a secular humanist belief I do not share. I'm not doctrinaire about the concept of Original Sin. But vast experience longer than Philip Linden has been on the planet, in his cossetted lifestyle, has give me plenty of material to illustrate the wisdom of the ages that people in face are prone to evil.

If ever there was a place to prove that people are NOT basically good, it would be Second Life.

People are basically defaulted to commit evil, and to the extent they struggle against the default of their own fuck-you hedonism and pride and vanity, they are able to do good.

But rather than stray into high matters of theology, let's just look at whether libsecondlife is basically good.

Answer: not that I can see, given the huge percentage of them who griefed, and the fact that the very leader of the outfit did all the immoral and illegitimate things I've outlined in my series "Liberated Second Life" in past months.

I've perused the so-called SVN issue, i.e. here:
http://www.mail-archive.com/libsecondlife-dev@lists.berlios.de/msg00003.html

Though the meaning is specialized, "subversion" sounds to me like a good word for all this activity
:)

What I continue to maintain -- because there is documented proof of this -- is that this program wasn't opensource as they claimed. At the time Baba was constantly showing it off, people kept asking him for copies. He wouldn't give them. At one point he sent me one and I pressed "delete" as I felt it was an exploit and had reported it to the Lindens.

After he demonstrated its coolness, he then later cobbled together this "permission card" thing that would first ask you if you wanted to be copied. To which I said, um, no thanks. One of me is enough : )

But here's the sort of thing you find on this SVN in which people claim it was opensource and viewable:

"PostPosted: Thu Nov 16, 2006 7:43 pm Post subject: Still Open Source? Reply with quote
After this CopyBot incident, I read the post on the front page as effectively stating, "We're closing the subversion repositories to trusted developers", and sure enough, I couldnt get anonymous svn access.

So my question is, is libsecondlife still Open Source, or is it now just freeware developed solely by those who are in the 'inner circle' of the LibSL team?

And the even greater question is, where _is_ the source code, if it isnt available from subversion?"
http://www.libsecondlife.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=261&sid=4ac6cbb62df8b2aba7c386835cbbc888

You wonder if Lindens ever eyeballed any of this stuff.

BTW, for those of you watching at home and going on and on and ON about this crap of libsecondlife being the greatest thing since cream cheese, this back and forth between them will really open your eyes and make the veils fall from them.

It's always been my contention that open source=closed society.

I can find no more obvious documentation of that then these sorts of comments from the group's own forums which talk about the inner circle. I mean, this isn't rocket science.

Among the more fascinating posts is from Nepenthes, and I copy it here (and will save the whole thing in case they wipe out their traces), which you'd think came straight out of Prok's blog, but comes from among their own:

"Like it or not, libSL has produced a tool that can steal things. You're getting blamed for things LL is to blame for (some tricks possible if you know UUIDs that should be disallowed based on the permissions of the object with that UUID) some things that are unavoidable (without end-to-end working DRM it will always be possible to steal content somehow if your system is able to display it) and a few things that are your fault. Throwing up your hands and saying "but it's our hosting providers fault!" isn't going to win you any sympathy.

I personally felt libSL was a stupid idea from the begining - the entire security model of SL relies on people not knowing how to pull data from the stream and re-assemble it. Obviously the client can't display something it doesn't have locally in memory, so the best choice is some minimal encryption (e.g.: not storing textures as .tga files in the cache etc) and obfuscation (hoping no-one reverse engineers the client)

Instead LL decided to put together a group of pet hackers to tear SL apart and tell the world what they found. You guys have a goal of making an open source client... once that happens how long do you think it will be before someone decides to take the routine that gets object details for display and connects it to the routine to create prims? How hard would it be to take that open source client and add a line to the download handler for textures/sounds/animations that quietly saves a copy to disk?

You're busy patting yourself on the back for all the security flaws you discovered and let LL fix while blindly ignoring the fact that your ultimate goal will make theft of objects a point-and-click exercise."