Linden Barn Door Cries Out To Horses

Well, this is better than a stick in your eye, and vindicates a lot of what I've been saying since I first got banned from the town hall prep on the blog over this issue, and then got banned from the town hall itself over the issue of thugs reverse-engineering and the extremist opensource movement. Philip Linden, who is a bit of a perverse engineer himself, just announced that he was stepping down from day-to-day operations, and OMGODZORS they didn't even wait for him to be settled on to his meditatation mat on the M-owned and Alexa-decorated pasture they've farmed him out to before announcing this policy about third-party viewers. I wonder if he is furious. Sad. Something...

Here's the money graf, that comes right out of a Prokofy blog:

There are currently many third parties who create and distribute viewers. Most of these viewers are useful because they are innovative and many enable a more customized Second Life experience for those who use them; however, it appears that some of those third party viewers also contain functionality that is being used to copy content without the right to do so, facilitate griefing, enable phishing, collect user data without clear disclosure of such practices, and distribute software that contains harmful elements. When our revised policy goes into effect, any viewer containing functionality that can be used to impede our efforts to manage Second Life will not be tolerated. We will collaborate with developers to work towards a clear set of expectations and guidelines; however, we will also, if necessary, take action against those who actively seek to disrupt our service or violate our Terms of Service.

OK, sure, that first sentence didn't sound like Prokofy, but some of the rest of it does, and it's all good. For extra credit, go on the JOIN THE DISCUSSION and see Blondin Linden respectflully noting that Prokofy has a good idea in suggesting that people aspiring to have their third-party viewers hooked up to the magic of Second Life must a) be a member in good standing and b) have some kind of RL info and payment info on file (let's see if they do this).

Naturally, there's the predictable shuffling and snuffling about how this will put a "chill" on creativity. Um, right. Well, please *do* put a chill on the "creativity" I've been documenting.

One of the very, very predictable chesnuts we're seeing wheeled out like in the comments here is this notion that "only the good guys register and that doesn't get the rogues".

Well, no. It shows us who the good guys are who are willing to register and comply with a code of conduct, you know, like they also have on Facebook and other services admitting devs. Why would SL be different? If Emerald refuses to comply with this request, that would tell us a lot, hmm? Then what I've been saying about all these day-olds and 30-day-olds buzzing around this much-hyped hacker might turn out to be validated, eh? So let's see what they do. I'd also like to see them stand up in the court of public opinion as they are now having to do backed by Linden scrutiny on the blog, to answer about their "need" to scrape avatar keys (and I've answered *that* chesnut too there).

When you register the good, you register the good. Always a good idea. Then the bad stand out more. Then you have a grid against which to compare and contrast and mainly...*mark*. That's what it's for. To draw that thin line between sanity and insanity which so seldom gets drawn in SL.

To borrow an analogy from Sierra Leone, if I may:

For years people fretted about blood diamonds. How to stop those evil rebels who cut off little children's arms to keep control over their evil greedy diamond hustling operations? How to ensure that they didn't reach the outside world and end up as engagement rings of fancy society folk? Or even one of those people who spends one monthly salary on his ring for his gal, following the instructions of Beyonce -- and the diamond industry.

Seriously, if you like it then you shoulda put a ring on it. Oh oh oh oh oh oh.

And the answer is: you can't stop blood diamonds because people who are as ruthless as rebels willing to cut off limbs are not going to submit to some questionnaire that Amnesty International might devise at the border.

So...you try another way. You certify the good diamonds that aren't from conflict zones and not purchased from the rebels. You bag them and say "these are good, buy these". Maybe you accidently let some through there, it's not unlike the problem of certifying overfishing and such, but still, you can identify the difference between a conflict zone and a non-conflict zone and diamonds coming from them more or less.

Then you work outwards. There is more and more incentive. Want to get on the white list? Then stop the conflict. Etc. Not perfect, but...better than trying to catch the blood diamonds which is so very hard (and...you shouldn't stop trying to do that, but the whitelisting isn't a bad way to go, either).

It's about changing one's psychology from binary thinking to multinary thinking : )

Already, some savants are pointing out that the new policy doesn't say "ban" but merely "suspended". The Lindens are always gentle with their script-kiddies "skiddies" as some call them, because gosh, they wouldn't want to harm their "creativity". Sigh. Yes, in this world, criticizing the FIC on the forums is worth a permanent ban for life and even a threat to your private property (metaphor), yet crashing sims and stealing other people's content is merely a "learning curve".

I have to marvel at how a lot of this got driven by Gwyn simply squawking because someone misrepresented her as being behind a rogue viewer, and she knew that was so bad for business she spoke up, and demanding a registry -- which earned her a slew of hate.

Once again, I marvel that the thuggishness shown time and again by the opensource movement is never a reason for utterly discrediting it at the root, but then, this is to be expected in a context where Battle Royale skins are celebrated as, um, art. I couldn't watch those clips til the end, cube, I guess all those students being turned into red mist are just going wild with the spray-painter in art class, eh?

Comments

[cube inada]

"It's about changing one's psychology from binary thinking to multinary thinking : )"

now i see some cube in that:)

but as i posted, see the FILM, not the "15 year old fanporn cut and post"

and today another HS student tossed himself in front of a train in northern ca in the same place were 3? others from his same school did this year.

satires dead, binary cant grok it.
but binary can produce scars and fashionmodels in blue teddies, and call it "fab". and im not even sure the mentions of battle royale by those "fabsters" even refers to the film... though i assumed it from the RP -female- war-mentions etc etc spewed out in the comments..-- but then i saw the blue nighite images at the fashion blog--- so far from the films imagery, only the truly autistic could claim any link...

And good for Linden, if they follows through, one day they could be fair service platform of growth, instead of a cult and an eco -social lab experiment for a few.

sometimes a duck is a duck.;)

[Alex]

Most people talk because they have something to say. Neva talks because he HAS to say SOMETHING. Never saw him put a noun against a verb without attacking somebody or something. Sad really. The only citizen in SL who's mouth has been continuously moving for five fucking years. Do us a favor, dumbshit.. STFU both in world and out.

[Gatz]

Politicians have given up lifelong careers for bouncing boobies; what's a stolen identity in comparison?

LL has clearly been forced to enact this policy to protect their assets since so many of their customers seem unconcerned with protecting their own. The spam and malware industries exist because there are lots of folks out there who will give their password, credit card number, social security number, etc. to pretty much anybody who asks for it.

It's one of the big problems integrating SL into any other social media platform for public consumption - you can't do it without storing or passing confidential information through the middleware. The problem works in reverse too.

I'll reiterate the sure-to-be-ignored advice that anyone should ask themselves before downloading or using any software or service:
"would I buy a car from this person?"

[Ewan Mureaux]

When Emerald becomes an approved viewer will you shut the fuck up?

[Prokofy Neva]

No.

[Prokafy Novo]

I hope I love you all my life.

[Ankara Paravane]

Prokofy, from what I've been told, more or less the core or a core of Lindens approve and use the Emerald Viewer. Now as a FOSS advocate, I like FOSS projects which are useful (some are crap, some are pointless, but wth...), but I have issue with some of the developers on the Emerald Viewer for the same reasons you do: that they have other motives involved in its development. Namely, to harass others. Plus, to be honest much or all the touted features in Emerald Viewer has existed in other FOSS viewer projects for months or even years. Examples include Nicholaz's work on the Cool Viewer, the Restricted Life Viewer (its developers also focused on stability and optimization like Nicholaz did), the Imprudence Viewer (which is about getting a pure FOSS viewer, plus some decent edit modes for objects, which in this case allows for easier creation of nanoprims), and so on. So, I can't say that bouncing prim breasts are quite the innovation, than simply technical titillation.

As for the copybot aspect of the Emerald Viewer, I think everyone is still beating around the bush on the issue. The heart of the issue is that LL has *never* made it their first priority to make works of art in SL secure through a DRM mechanism. The copy, transfer, and modification flags are not DRM as they do not restrict the actual objects as downloaded in the client cache (they unencrypted and be easily imported from cache to any 3d modeler/editor with zero reconfiguration). Hell, even a simple mechanism like baking all layers to the skin layer would kill or impede the copybotting (for profit) of skins and clothes. But LL has not commented on that suggestion (which btw, would also lower client side DL bandwidth issues...).

[Desmond Shang]

This may be a bit tangential to what everyone is saying... or maybe it's not.

I feel pretty much like I'm stuck using the official viewer.

Why?

Because if *anything* went wrong, I can say: look, I've used the official viewer. And that can be (sort of) confirmed; sure, the viewer setting could be spoofed or something theoretically, but I'm doing all I can in good faith to:

a) use a viewer that won't potentially have bad code in it

b) not potentially introduce issues not covered by Linden Research's design.

Paranoid? Maybe. But just try and get support from AT&T, if you use their DSL but not their modem. Forget it.

If anything happens to my account, it will be while I run on standard Company software, without modification, and no one else to blame.

Remember the openspace debacle? Rather than deal with the truth of the issue (hey, stuff a 'homestead' just like you were, we're having a 95/month Fire Sale!) ... just six months prior everything hinged on the official description of openspace regions that dated back to class 4 hardware and ancient versions of server side code. And 125/month was the only way these things could possibly remain.

So I wonder how good support will continue to be if X or Y happens to your account, and you happened to be using a 3rd party viewer.

It's like going back to the Ford dealership and telling them that your aftermarket engine mods deserve warranty attention. Sooner or later, watch the Company balk and say "forget it."

This above all things is the reason I don't use alternate viewers. Low risk perhaps, but ridiculously high consequences for hundreds of people, in my particular situation.

Would you rent from a land baron who used, say, cryolife or thuglife even just rarely? It might be a really, really bad idea.

[Prokofaux Nympho]

Prokofy,

I have to tell you at this point, because you seem to be clearly too fucking dumb to even notice it.
And most of all I feel sorry for the adwords advisers who get abused by misleading impressions due to your ignorance here.

Are you still wondering why your adsense account got in trouble?

Then look on the upper left corner of your site below LINKS ADS. You placed a 728x15_4 format in a 170px side column, which cuts off the first link in two and hide the other links, you donkey!!

So, to your comment : "It has normal Google adsense ads and nothing else." somewhere on your avatar ass wipe digital papers. No it doesn't. It has mis-implemented Adsense ads in violation of the Adsense TOS. And yet you still have those ads...

You Poll widget is cut off too and can't even be read.

Talk about the public good and ethics all you want. But fix your own god damn shit at home and learn a bit about html and the web before bitching about things you clearly don't understand.

[Cristal Menges]

I agree with Desmond. I might lose out on gizmos but I know the viewer is safe.

I would love to see some of the gizmos in the Lindens viewer, I thought that was what open source effort was about so Linden Labs could also benefit from submitted stuff back?

[Kimberly Rufer-Bach]

Desmond, thanks for stating that so well.

[Untameable Wildcat]

I actually think it would be a good idea for LL to collaborate with third party viewer makers in granting a "digital passport" to access the main grid. There is nothing stopping third party viewers from accessing third party grids, but it would mean that an author had taken the time and effort to comply with a minimum set of standards, for which a digital passport would be granted to be included in the code.

Think of it as a digital "compatible with SL certificate" - a code that allows a viewer to link to the grid.

It would also mean that should a viewer be discovered by LL to be propogating anything contrary to the ToS, LL could stop that viewer from connecting by revoking its digital passport.

Dictatorial? Yes - but let's remember, the main grid BELONGS to LL and they don't extend the right to access it as a public service. If you can't agree to the ToS anyway you shouldn't be using SL in the first place, so I see no problem with LL implementing a digital passport system for third party viewers.

[generic viagra]

How to stop those evil rebels who cut off little children's arms to keep control over their evil greedy diamond hustling operations?