After a torturously long thread on the unusable bloghorrum, which you could only read (tortuously, too) in your email box with its 1,000 plus posts, Blondon Linden, who is in charge of "Mainland Communities" (where I guess the Lindens mentally slot third-party viewers because they adversely effect residents there more than on islands), closed the issue and said the Lindens were going to have "brownbag lunches". These brownbags will be closed to the public and by invitation only.
No sooner was the thread closed, and Burning Life, the anarcho-nihilist festival of geek tribes in SL, drawing to a close, then the news began to go around the blogosphere that a huge "motherload" of ripped content had been plunked down on a roof in a build in BL and "liberated" to "the People". It was sickening. Particularly intricate new forms of exploitation and theft seemed to be in play, although some said that it was an old, closed exploit and a box left over from that exploit in the summer (possibly that was just Linden-planted counterpropaganda).
Looking at the list of victims of the rip, I can only say that some of the people in that list, like Bird Lilliehook, aren't connecting up the dots between their love of opensouce and third-party viewers, and the ripped status of their creations in SL.
Hence, the "brownbags" that are to begin apparently in early November where hopefully these dots will get more crayons connecting them.
(If you aren't from America, I could add that "brownbag lunches" are work meetings that your bosses make you have during lunch, where, instead of feeding you food at his own expense for making you work during your break, you are expected to go run outside within two minutes and buy something hideous at the nearby deli lol. Well, if you are up higher in the food chain, brownbags are what you have when you want to discuss something in a work group, because nobody feels like taking anybody else out to lunch. "Brown bags" are what people used to bring lunches to work in; today, they are available usually only in plastic bags rarely as actual brown paper bags in delis (usually they only have the tiny variety that just perfectly fits a can of beer, so the alkies can pretend that they are just carrying a purchased alcoholic beverage instead of violating the law with a "moving violation" drinking alcohol in public lol).
OPEN SOURCE=CLOSED BROWNBAG
Um, gosh, with all those thousand posts from the forums in my email box, I guess I missed that invitation from Blondin, but word on the street is that the Emerald viewer devs are invited, and various geek types, but it isn't known yet if any civilians will be invited. I bet the Lindens will want the way clear to speak only with their own kind.
I raised the issue with Blondin about the inherent Marxist internal contradiction in closing off participation from the public in discussing an *opensource* viewer.
He blandly told me, "This isn't about open source, this is about the third-party viewer".
Priceless Lindenism, eh? And soooo political. Yes, this is about power-sharing of sorts and I wonder how it will end. There are a variety of scenarios:
o The Emerald people, who are the biggest pit bulls among the anarchic viewers, will threaten rampant grid-crashing and content theft, kind of like a rolling Rezzable Builderbot situation, unless the Lindens back off from this or that intention, i.e. the intent to ban encryption or other features
o The Lindens will have been pre-rolled already before the kabuki theater of the brownbags, which, while controlled in their discourse only with the script kiddies, are still to be filmed by Torley. So they will babble about a registry that the Emerald people will be able to join because it will mean nothing.
o The Lindens will actually mean business, they will be stern about their requirements, the Emerald devs will not join in a dramatic pout staged for the video cameras, but in the end the Lindens will register some or all of them anyway.
o The Lindens will be stern and mean business and cast off the Emeralds, who will then come back to grief SL not on Emerald but their other viewers they developed in previous lives, but the Lindens will catch them and all will be harmonious and prosperous in Lindenor which will embark upon a golden age of 200 years. Or days.
And coming to the logo mash-up I illustrate here, I could note that these elements could have nothing to do with each other or be intimately linked, and who is to know. That is, there are varieties of sources now describing how a number of Emerald devs worked on V-life before Emerald, or worked on cryolife or Thugslife or whatever before/during/after Emerald, and were either ripping or helping others to rip or selling rippers, essentially. There is no way to verify any of this because even if the Emerald devs were to confess about their pre-30 or 60-day old avs they have now, they could be doing a classic griefer fake-confession as a distraction.
THE OPENSOURCE REGIME AND THE CLIMATE OF IMPUNITY
It's part of the anarcho-skiddy culture to denounce each other constantly with angry fingerpointing or to confess to misdeeds and going legit with reckless abandon, moving in and out of crime and back again in the space of an hour or a day. Like all criminal operations through history on much grander scales, the skiddies also want to boast about their misdeeds and record them, so eventually you find everything they've done because they want you to know. Scorpion Aristocrat pretty much sums it up in a thread where Lonely Bluebird tries to distract from the heritage of Emerald, and Scorpion catches the connections between Vlife and Emerald which he describes both as products of Greenlife:
I think the creator knows more about his product than you do. I posted the reference links & even quoted him word for word defending the VLife/Greenlife viewer mentioned. Emerald may be one of many viewers that GreenLife creates, VLife being one of those viewer versions (which he defended against a virus accusation & did NOT deny making).
Regardless of the genesis of the viewers and their features, and when the skiddies pulled them on and off (and don't forget how long the copybot sat on the JIRA due to Rob and Alexa Lindens' casual tolerance of theft) I like to think about all this in another, philosophical way: Emerald and the other viewers create a climate of impunity, because they set up the proposition that the user should have the maximum amount of freedom and creativity and protection from other users, but have no clue or concept about those other users' rights. Even without the ripping capacity, which they may have put in and taken out as casually as the Lindens, they are very solipsistic and narcissistic in that regard; the quintessential feature in the Kirsten viewer of erasing the view of other people, and erasing their builds you don't like, about sums up the nihilism inherent in Emerald and other viewers. The Lindens think of this merely as "emergent behaviour" and "customization" and are heedless of the corrosive effect it has on society by undermining the literal shared view of the space.
But I don't see this making for happiness. In fact, very far in the distance, as this begins to spread into real life more as a norm and an objective, I see it as eventually inciting violence and civil war. Making people and buildings you don't like invisible inevitably leads to that kind of situation.
THE ANTI-COPYRIGHT PHILOSOPHY OF SITEARM MADONNA
As I think about this content ripping so fittingly positioned in the nihilist Burning Life (which I critique on the forums as a de-civilizers), so sadly emblematic of SL these days, I zoom up to a higher view, and I blame Sitearm Madonna. That might be shocking, as Sitearm Madonna isn't a thief, and isn't anywhere near any ripped boxes whatsoever.
But she is the architect of the ideology of devaluing content copyright, as we saw handily in her outrageous interventions in the monster opensource thread. She thinks copyright is a thing of the past, and the new wave is to submit to corporate or company control and give up your copyright to the man in order to get a salary, create, and not have to think about ripping. When pressed on this outrageous stance, she began to babble, as anti-capitalists always do in the usual brainless way, that "of course" she was for copyright for "the little guy," but not for big evil corporations, they shouldn't get to hobble creativity and block the way for everybody by clinging to their copyright for years.
So wait. How is that corporation that hires her or becomes her client as a super-duper Gold Solutions Provider expected to hang on to its IP when she is busy going around agitating against big evil corporations being able to have IP rights.
Sigh.
Since she is now head of flogging the Solution Providers Program for the Lindens (!), it takes on a particular grim dimension as she is busy setting up the future regime, which is summed up in that cynical comment I recall earlier this year, sneering at "little dressmaker genocide", i.e. we aren't going to baaaawww and QQ about zillions of little dressmakers getting their little dresses copied.
I could add that what would objectively serve Sitearm's class interest, and the interests of other Gold Solutions Providers in the Lindens' pocket, is if new people were barred from passing content and therefore blocked from competing with them. Hello!
Disturbingly, the "solutions" that were "provided" in this long thread -- besides reining in the anarcho-communist coders -- were getting rid of free accounts or blocking new people from either being able to transfer objects, i.e. sell things, or make and transfer scripts. Of course, the Lindens will never let somebody not script on day one of their new griefer account, as their own coders will screen like stuck pigs and the sandbox foxes will also riot.
But they wouldn't mind blocking newbies from selling so that their friends' older accounts never have any competition, and only a stunning ability to play Strategic SL at the right level of Paladin will enable one to compete in the marketplace.
I find it appallling to consider blocking legions of newbies, where the real creative engine is, and preventing them from the level playing field of entering the economy, in order to stop the copyright theft and griefing which presumably only comes from new accounts.
Lindens already make it very hard for any existing member to add more than the allowed 5 accounts by blocking signing up with your own name -- or perhaps it may even go further, and block by IP. The fact is by using anonymizers, however, all the griefers get away with murder. Look at all the nasty accounts made with the first name "Prokofy" on 10/22/09 by griefers with names like ProkofysSuicide Engineer etc.
I don't think the Lindens should be doing anything remotely like stopping free accounts with no payment, although I do think they need to get better about removing the obvious griefer accounts and they should definitely not block newbies from the economy, that's outrageous corporativism or communism, it totally rots.
BANHAMMERS TO BAN HAMMERS, YES
But the alternative for them is to weather the kind of harassment and griefing and snotty superior argumentation that you can see on the thread with all the obvious repeated mantras about analog holes and wolves in sheeps' clothing and the impossibility of banning hammers just because someone might use one for murdering someone. Regrettably, even Fleep Tuque fell for that meme.
But of course you can register and ban hammers, and let me tell you, if in real life there were the number of arsons and murders committed with hammers that there are in Second Life with sim crashings and physics freezes and griefing with third-party viewers, hammers *would* be registered and possibly even banned for sale without a license. Every time someone comes up with this silly theory, I note that handguns are registered or banned, and that never seems to penetrate as they keep saying only people kill people -- which is why, um, every state has gun registration rules that *people* using the guns must comply with.
Naturally the skiddies would like to think of viewers as not guns, but hammers building stuff, but that's not how to see them.
Third-party viewers are weapons in the struggle for power in the Metaverse, they are guns to shoot other devs with and critics, and fight for the list of features and control of the grid.
REGISTERING CHICKEN-KILLERS
I also noted the obvious points about crime control: why try to lock down every kid returning from school and every parent, when you should register known sex offenders? Go at the problem from that end of the equation, i.e. make those who are the problem register, not those who aren't the problem.
This engendered hysterical screaming by the skiddies, who said I was equating them with child predators.
I could note that among their anarcho-nihilist ranks, there are more than the usual share of "ageplayers" but that isn't the point, as there is nothing to show that every opensourcenik is a child abuser just because he may hew to the cynical line that simulated child abuse should be allowed in SL.
No, the point there, if we can reason by analogy and think conceptually and look at patterns, if those skills could somehow be imparted, is to make the point, again, that you control the problem people, not the masses of people who aren't the problem.
To be sure, the analogy isn't perfect because sex offenders don't register themselves or get registered forcibly and even publicized until first they are caught. How can you get chicken killers to register?
And, while the laughter is understandably scornful, I can only say: by asking the chicken killers to register.
Er, how do you get people who kill chickens to register? Well, Emerald dev Lonely Bluebird has killed at least 49 chickens of my tenants and mine, and supposedly Emerald will be registering or is in "talks" about terms for registering, so, um, that's how *shrugs*.
Lots of chicken killers will register, you'll see.
And the fact is, most of the viewers *are* chicken killers because they all are made by people who *could* make malicious features or easily turn on ripping and griefing because they have the knowledge and because in many cases they have indulged in making ripping viewers before their career in non-violatory viewers. They do this to 'see how it works" *cough*. Most viewers are a click or a toggle away from violatory behaviour, pure and simple .We all know that. They are on an "honour" system but it's honour among thieves, given *their past histories*.
Well, what chicken killer would register his viewer as a chicken killing viewer, you ask?
And obviously, they won't, but the program is sort of like one of those ceasefire programs where the rebels are supposed to turn in their guns and get a sack of seed and some hectares of farmland. You hope that peacetime living will be a compelling argument all its own for going legit.
Yet...registration of *what* against *which guidelines* and *how* -- and what *consequences for not registering* will be are all being politically hashed out now.
To get an idea of the difficulties with the inhouse attitude on this, read this chat helpfully provided by the Emerald skiddies on the old Xstreet now-moved forums of July:
| Ceg Mcdonnell wrote: |
| Emerald doesn't get you banned. I've been using it since March 2009, and I'm still in world. According to LordGregGreg (Emerald's author), Emerald has been made from the very start to be completely TOS compliant. It will not get you banned any more than the LL client will. In a notecard I received from LordGregGreg's Group: [21:07] Zwagoth Klaar: So, it should be that a fully GPL compliant client should not be a determining factor is the banning of a user if they were reported for an infraction, and simple use of the client is indeed something that can not get them banned without investigation of use? [21:10] Teagan Linden: If someone is using a fully GPL compliant client, say for example the old Onrez viewer, then no, they would not get banned simply for using it. [21:10] Zwagoth Klaar: May I quote you on that? [21:11] Teagan Linden: Um, sure? [21:13] Teagan Linden: The SL viewer would not be open source if we didn't want people to play around with the code, add in customizations they like, improve things, contribute to the community. Using a viewer that doesn't contain GPL violations but is simply an open source viewer with fun tweaks, improvements, RP specific features, etc is not a violation. [21:14] Zwagoth Klaar: Thank you for your time and responses. [21:14] Teagan Linden: My pleasure  |
Never forget that the Lindens are in on it and they opensourced their viewer so that anyone could do anything because they don't care, it's just a game for them.
THE GRID GRID
And I'm going to call it fairly early: the Lindens will put in a viewer registration program, they will offer some perk to do so, and will try to drive out non-compliant by freezing them from the economy, possibly by the threat of removing the ability of new accounts with no payment on file to sell things, or doing what the EA.com late-stage The Sims Online did, allowing only premium accounts to cash out money that they earned inworld from sales of their creations. That is, we need payment forms to be able to cash out today, but there is nothing to stop one from having 10 different accounts without PIOF passing money around to a main. The Lindens may seek to block that in some way in the future.
I can't imagine what perk the Lindens have to offer to come in under the tent of their viewer program. Entry into that contest to win a laptop? Pats on the head in Linden office hours and a promise not to close your JIRA? I don't know what the Lindens have to offer, but maybe it will be secondary stock in their company before an IPO? The perk part isn't clear, but I don't think the Lindens have a lot of perks to offer, and they will use their other tools for cooperation, which are threats and punishments.
And I'm making that judgement by analogy with the other reining in of other sectors they have started to control.
THE GRID GRID
o The Solutions Providers may be technically open to all to register in, but only the Gold Solution Providers have a chance of really getting noticed and getting big contracts. If you don't come in under this tent you will be punished by the worst thing of all: being out of the loop in hard information about intentions and features.
o The Merchants registry (details of which are more sketchy than others) may be technically open to all, but your willingness to prove that you own the IP to the content you make and possibly real-lifisms and various other unknown restrictions will be tested. If you don't join the merchants' club, you will be locked out of the opportunity to have your goods appear on products.secondlife.com which is the new advertising portal for merchandising Xstreet. Pink Linden, hardly chastened by her maiden voyage with the FICization of the slutwear industry, is busy picking out only certain Halloween object makers to feature on a fancy interactive shiny new site -- and that's how it will go, using all the handy categories that Collussus has just harvested out of the population like "furries" or "Gor" or "work avatar".
o Obviously, unless you list on Xstreet, you will not be seen either, because the visibility of your store inworld depends on a wide variety of factors, many not in your control (number of new sign-ups, classified market, geographical contiguity, etc.) While I still think these can work for you if you are willing to work at it, the perception that the Lindens are funnelling marketing and advertising opportunities is widespread.
o The private island Community Gateway program may be technically open to anyone who can comply with the strict criteria, but only a handful of big communities with the staff and the endurance of all the Lindenness can really participate. If you don't get in gear with this, you will be punished by not having any new people see your offerings on the sign-up page or in orientation and click on you.
o The mainland Community Partnership program may be technically open to anyone with a sim on the mainland, but it has discretionary criteria and some troubling requirements (like the need to give away content, to vote for participation, to share Linden land with less powers as part of the project, etc.). If you don't play ball with this, newbies will not be streamed to your property, and in the growing chaotic world, forget about having your rentals agency or business become visible in any way *unless* you participate.
All of this filtration I call "the grid grid". It's the grid of the Lindens' agenda and beliefs and intentions and political ideals that they will layer over the world as it has become, and filter out what they need, what is presentable, what sells their platform and helps new customers and retains old. And that's all understandable.
As always, there is the question of whether free life can go on living underneath this grid as it always has, but sometimes with great difficulty.
Now why you blame the communists again? Haven't they suffered enough already? Other than that a good laugh. You made my day once again Prok :).
Posted by: Boy Lane | October 28, 2009 at 06:07 AM
"Most viewers are a click or a toggle away from violatory behaviour, pure and simple ."
this is not correct. ALL viewers are a click or a toggle away from violatory behaviour. pure and simple.
Posted by: Magggnnus | October 28, 2009 at 07:09 AM
No. There isn't a copybot function in the regular viewer; you'd also have to access a few menus to override the "fly"; you wouldnt' be able to get all the avatar radaring and keys and such so easy.
There is no question that the third-party viewers crack open other people's privacy and content and batten down the user's privacy in ways that override the shared community of SL as originally conceived by the founders.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | October 28, 2009 at 08:27 AM
Some are saying that this entire thing is simply too bizarro to be real. For example, how odd that such a large scale theft would fall into the hands of Stroker Serpentine, of all people, for exposure, and instead of going to LL he would contact Tenshi, the SL Tabloid Trash queen. It doesn't add up. Speculation is that Stroker could have manufactured this himself to empower his stance in his court case against Linden Lab and used the blabbermouth Tenshi to take it wide. Every creator stolen from was extremely high profile, so what better way to raise awareness than to make THEM victims? Sorry Prok, whole thing seems fishy to a lot of people.
Posted by: Lindsay | October 28, 2009 at 09:09 AM
Their forums are amusing to read, though. I have not seen such militant techie / programmer-tunnelvision since I gave up reading slashdork.org, er slashdot.org. And add on a good layer of 'we aren't techies but we love feature X' fanboys and its comedy gold to adults working in the technical field.
I really LOVED the techno-dweeb that declared he HAD to have private IM's or he'd leave SL (yet supposedly was an old timer..apparently it didn't bother him not having it pre-Emerald). Yet another not fully evolved techie claimed it was US and most nations law requiring businesses to encrypt to prevent disclosure (Amazing, I have communicated with some of the largest tech companies in the US via email without encryption. Guess they are breaking the laws sending me confidential info?). The almost complete hysterics over OTR is amusing, in a trainwreck sort of way.
You also have to admire the brass of the main dev, posting his little screed against LL's not yet created policy on browsers...considering its their world and he is allowed to be in it by their permission. Ego a MILE wide, it seems.
After reading the forums, jira and now the emerald forum, I have come to the conclusion that most 'programmers' (they really aren't techies, per se, there are far more technical fields that do not require programming than do) are man-child personalities. Grown up only in age...ego driven, arrogant, not willing to follow rules, won't accept responsibility for their actions and apparently have never been told no by anyone in authority. Even the spectre of being told no by an authority (LL in this case) is sending them into fits of self-aggrandizing fury.
Posted by: Maklin Deckard | October 28, 2009 at 09:42 AM
For those with short attention spans, and to reinforce the points, here is what I see as the two hard truths stated in this post:
"Third-party viewers are weapons in the struggle for power in the Metaverse, they are guns to shoot other devs with and critics, and fight for the list of features and control of the grid."
and
"Never forget that the Lindens are in on it and they opensourced their viewer so that anyone could do anything because they don't care, it's just a game for them."
It took me ~2 years to figure it out, but the grid was lost the day they opened up the viewer's source.
Second Life had a lot of potential from a creative standpoint, and still does if you're into wasting time, pro-bono work, get rich quick schemes, or 'education'.
But as a business tool, a commerce tool, A platform for serious collaboration, or a medium of expression for people who like to get paid and pay bills, it falls down flat.
The only secure grid now is one where you bar everyone access. Reminds me of a song:
"If you want to keep something precious, lock it up and throw away the key" That's SL in a nutshell. If you don't want it stolen, don't bring it into SL.
Posted by: Darien Caldwell | October 28, 2009 at 11:34 AM
Malkin Deckard = Prokofy ALT :)
Nerv... NONSENSE! Grandma Neva is only 53 years old, RL.
Still a little old to be pissing and whining about technology she's too old to understand though. :-)
Prokofy... Nice rant! Have you had that brain tumor checked out yet?
Posted by: Alex | October 28, 2009 at 11:47 AM
Alex, um, could you remind me again of your first and last SL name so that I can match up your insults here? That's my rule : )
Lindsay, I can't think of anything more stupid and tendentious. Stroker *hardly* needs to manufacture a new ripping event in SL to make his lawcase, he has like a gadzillion other examples of ripping in the last 6 years from his own business and numerous other businesses to form a class action suit without ever having to refer to SL again for facts in the field, good Lord.
The fact that Stroker's bed is always targeted because he is profile and because the skiddies always want to show off their crimes and get maximum attention is why it's in that batch.
As for Stroker going to Tenshi, that's just business pragmatism, as she has a popular website shoppingcartdisco.com that likely has more traffic than the Herald now, and even if not, has more engagements and comments than the Herald whose comments lately have all but disappeared even on the most controversial stories. My comments are far more active than the Heralds even at their height and Tenshi has the shoppers and the prim divas commenting and that gets views. So that's why Stroker went to her with his story.
Nice way to blame the victim.
Maklin is not my alt, but a completely different person. I'm trying to think if I ever even met Maklin in world. I know I've bought a few things from his shop but I honestly don't remember exchanging more than a few words with him. People don't have to be my friend, my tribe, my alts in order to agree with me, these are universal principles.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | October 28, 2009 at 01:26 PM
No, I am not an alt of Prokofy or anyone else. Prok and I met once, ages ago at one of Robin Linden's office hours...we IM'd a bit about the Linden-Speak going on. More proof that I am not Prokofy's alt, I get along with Desmond Shang. :)
I am employed as an IT Professional (Not a 'geek', not a 'coder', not a 'hacker') on the systems / network administrator side of the corporate house. I have, over the years, had more than my share of amoral and arrogant putzes who think because they can string code togeather they are the ultimate experts in the technology field. They are not. I've also had to help clean up after said dipshits in situations where their screwball tribal politics negatively impacted various projects. I have a VERY limited tolerance for the coder-groupthink as is prevalent in the GPL community and most ESPECIALLY the OS community that has formed like a cancer around LL's ill-conceived open sourcing of the client.
The entire Emerald forum as represented by its developers is full of the amoral, arrogant coder-children, threads repleate with phrases like 'we know that it will be abused by some, but we can't penalize the legitimate users by not putting in' (paraphrased from what I read this morning). Amoral...if you know its going to be misused, don't do it...pure and simple. Its not hard, its not rocket-science...but it is above coding in difficulty...its called showing empathy for others (in this case, the victims of the ones misusing the features). The Emerald Devs might want to try it sometime, though I doubt they have it in their shrivelled little coder-worldview of coding for ego strokes while ignoring consequences.
Again, just because something CAN be done does not mean that it SHOULD be done.
Posted by: Maklin Deckard | October 28, 2009 at 02:25 PM
The last society of tribes all ended up Slaves to the owners of the better weapons.
Lets call this model of virtuality- user gen content, as it leaks toward reality, as it is.
How about Slavery 2.0? Shiny enough for the newbies?
Really getting to be the time to burn Nebraska. -The New South?
Digest.
Posted by: cube inada | October 28, 2009 at 03:01 PM
Sorry but the emerald forum seems pretty good at bug reports and I have yet to run into arrogant coders...just my opinion...
Posted by: Miss Jar | October 28, 2009 at 03:14 PM
"if you know its going to be misused, don't do it...pure and simple."
By that criterion, can one do anything? Anything can be misused.
Posted by: Melissa Yeuxdoux | October 28, 2009 at 04:17 PM
PROKOFY "Alex, um, could you remind me again of your first and last SL name so that I can match up your insults here? That's my rule : )"
You should recognize me, dear. We've locked horns often enough. You should not need reminders... Like I said, how's the tumor?
Posted by: Alex | October 28, 2009 at 05:24 PM
While you have pointed out what are real and significant issues with third party viewers, one of your metaphors is factually incorrect:
"Every time someone comes up with this silly theory, I note that handguns are registered or banned, and that never seems to penetrate as they keep saying only people kill people -- which is why, um, every state has gun registration rules that *people* using the guns must comply with."
This is incorrect. While most states have their own laws concerning how and where handguns may be purchased and carried, but few require outright registration. Only California, Nevada (Clark County only), Hawaii, Illinois, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and the District of Columbia require handgun registration.
(source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/interactives/gunlaws )
Posted by: Carl Metropolitan | October 28, 2009 at 06:34 PM
You may have been thinking of concealed carry legislation. Most states do allow for concealed carry of handguns but only with licensing and/or registration. I believe only Alaska and Vermont currently allow concealed carry of a handgun without restriction.
Posted by: Carl Metropolitan | October 28, 2009 at 06:38 PM
Oh, I remember you "Alex," you're the guy from yolto.com
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2008/04/yolto-has-got-t.html
You grab people's blogs and reprint them whole and sell your own ads and game cards against them. I banned you before because I said that was wrong, it was not really an aggregator site but a theft-site, and that's damages to me under my rule number 2.
Your name is Alex-something and you showed up on Ning and the Virtual Worlds Expo forums, with I believe a job in a university or company somewhere in the NY or NJ area, which is where your IP address puts you, and you sounded like the usual middle-aged male loser on the Internet.
I figure that anyone who writes this to me:
" Prok, your ability to remain unabashedly stupid is at once amusing and cause for alarm! Tell me dear, when was the last time you had a test for a brain tumor? I hope said tumor has as much mass as your in-world penis, else we might lose one of the most hilarious running jokes in SL history. The joke being? That you are in any way relevant in either world."
or this:
"
Alex
Alex said:
The reason you're griefed at all, grandma is because you so richly deserve it and the reason people call for your banning is because you deserve that too. There are people who never heard of Emerald who have now been polarized in its favor simply because of your wild-eyed ranting. So go ahead, you senile old witch. Blabber on. Proponents of Emerald just love to see their ranks swell as a result"
or this:
"
Alisandi
Alisandi said:
Prokofy Neva: I really have only one thing I want Lindens to do, really, which is to go away and make the servers work, oh, and build more dams LOL And the Lindens have only a single request of you, Prok. Get your fat, menopausal ass out Second Life and STAY out."
...is probably suffering from impotence, you know, erectile dysfunction and inability to get a girlfriend? Something like that, I would say.
While these comments are standard fare around here and aren't grounds for banning, and while you kinda-sorta linked to your RL name, it's a hidden RL name. that is, in vain will someone look for any name like that on yolto.com
And that's the point of my rule, the spirit and not the literal letter, which is to link your nastiness up to your reputation. So your nastiness is sort of linked up to your reputation yolto.com, which I imagine isn't winning any metaverse awards merely for selling game cards and linking everybody else's content, but it's good to link up your nastiness inworld.
So hmmm what can we do there. What is your SL name? Who knows? Well, another name you use is Y Enoch. Probably some science fiction name.
How do I know that? Because the Emerald viewer people are such believers in grabbing information and publishing it and not caring about people's privacy, that they *publish the IP address of everybody who comments on their forums*. Gosh, innovative, what?!
So there we can see you've made this lovely pro-Emerald comment:
Keep up the good work guys! Emerald is one of the few SL
August 12, 2009
Imho, Emerald is the best SL client on the market today. I use it daily and now can't live without it - thanks to its useful functions. To any of those still doubting the safety of this client: Emerald is OPEN SOURCE. That means that ANYBODY can look at the inner workings of Emerald, and many people do. IF there were security issues, I guarantee you they would have been found by now.
Anyone who believes unbiased rumors about such an amazing product is only hurting themselves.
0
Y. Enoch
Right. OK, well that sounds like a threat!
So, in any event, Alex/Y Enoch/Whatever, YOU ARE BANNED because you are overriding a ban that was put in before against you for content-grabbing.
Even if you don't appear to grab my content anymore (I can't really take the time to tell) you aren't putting a recognizable RL or SL name here while still reserving the right to be an asshole, so, um, be gone! buh-bye, and try some Viagra for that shrivelled member of yours, and maybe pour it on your ugly face too, eh?
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | October 28, 2009 at 06:43 PM
BTW-
on a radio commercial a few hrs ago MEG(EXCEO)WITMAN was promising californians, "real non government" JOBs, like the Millions of Private industry JOBS she created for the many regular folk using/selling on EBAY..;)
thats sounds so wonderful...lol i wonder how many who have used (been used) by ebay will vote for her..lol
but her "ability to sell herself as a JOB MAKER " got me thinking...
From virtual to real government...only the foolish children dont see the truth.
then again, we annointed two actors as governors and both wanted, and one got( could get by law) the presidency.
Posted by: cube inada | October 28, 2009 at 07:02 PM
a quote:
"In the modern world of business," he wrote, "it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create."
David Ogilvy
Posted by: cube inada | October 28, 2009 at 07:14 PM
I personally believe it was orchestrated by Stroker himself, he’s always running to the press, FFS it’s nothing more than marketing for him. And yes, it certainly is going help his case as they are ll high profile creators.
I don’t advocate theft of any kind, but I don’t give a rats ass about stroker, he’s a dick. Self proclaimed Hugh Heffner of SL, his poor wife must be SO proud.
Not to worry Stroker, the FBI will probably visit you again, LMAO, I mean they visited you because some kid nicked your stuff and made about 1000 piddly USD, so I’m this big hoist will send them running to your doorstep again, yeah cos they have nothing better to do
Posted by: Kyle | October 28, 2009 at 08:17 PM
I find it appalling that people would blame the victim here and conjure up this lame-ass forums jackals' version of reality, as if "he did it to himself".
Stroker has no need of "more" publicity as he has gotten tons. And what about all the other people? Hundreds of them. They're going to rip their stuff in order to give Stroker glory? Makes no sense!
I find it all offensive to the extreme that victims of copyright theft are now thought to be causing their own problems. It's that same sick mentality that says "I make myself a target" and my chickens "deserve" to be killed, etc.
The nature of the content of Stroker isn't the issue. Just because it's sexually related doesn't undermine the issue of content theft whatsoever.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | October 28, 2009 at 09:09 PM
Carl, thanks for that correction, because I'm on the East Coast where all the states have those laws, I feel as if it is required to register a gun. And if the point is, it's required if you will have a conceal and carry, then the point is the same.
It doesn't matter if there are only SOME states, or NOT ALL that further have the registration of conceal and carry, or the proof that you aren't escaping from a mental hospital or whatever, the background checks.
The point is, there IS registration of things that are used to kill people. And that's normal, and expected, and not somehow "oppressive of creativity" or "undermining of personal security". It's ok.
The analogy is NOT to hammers -- and if hammers were used like viewers are used in SL, as I said, they WOULD be registered! Harmful things need to be registered. You don't go around trying to convince everyone that they aren't harmful; they can be.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | October 28, 2009 at 09:12 PM
well, that's what the rumor mill is projectile vomiting in great volumes, I just chose to believe it!
Posted by: Kyle | October 28, 2009 at 09:21 PM
Mon dieu...
You have made me laugh for hours at work with the Picture above.
The only thing missing is an emerald green alien with a "special" probe in his hands
Posted by: Ysanne Korpov | October 29, 2009 at 09:50 AM
In most states its not the guns that are registered at all. It's the person that has to be licensed to carry concealed. I'm licensed by the state but the state has no idea what handgun I carry or own. It's applicable here because the state has taken steps to insure only responsible law abiding people are allowed to carry concealed unlike LL with SL viewers. Your basic point is certainly valid.
Maybe an answer would be to have all open source contributions go through SnowGlobe which at least has some checks on the content going into it.
Posted by: Amanda Dallin | October 29, 2009 at 12:47 PM
I should comment with a disclaimer first. When the words "open source" were first coined, I had absolutely no idea of the political implications about it (aye, I consider myself naive, and even more so in those remote days). The notion that programmers contribute their source code freely towards a common goal, working on their spare time, is at least as old as the early 1970s, when Unix was distributed that way (in tapes – the Internet didn't have enough bandwidth!) to spread it as much as possible, and, by doing that, growing the number of nodes connected to Internet :) There was no Richard Stallmann or the FSF those days, and people just did it because they could — there was no "ideology" behind it really, just the desire to get the Internet being built, and built fast, cheaply, and with universal access.
Way way later than this, the whole notion of "free open sourced software" became interlinked with Stallmann's "Information Should Be Free!" meme, and of course these days, one labels all pro-open source evangelists as "left-wing", or, if they're extreme evangelists, anarchists/nihilists. I would might find it amusing if it weren't used as a way to pre-label the work from some people as being anti-capitalistic and a threat to our current societies.
I personally am a supporter of a completely different aspect of open source software, which lies in-between the two extremes, and, really, has been the only one that has proven to be both beneficial and successful. There is no name to it, but I call it corporate-driven open source. Prokofy, you point out that a large majority of the hard-core, left-wing, open source evangelists out there simply steal their own company's time to do their own projects; or they're students living with their parents; or they get social benefits from the state (often because they've got mildly sociopathic personalities rendering them unable to work) to be able to stay at home and work for free. However, there is a class of hobbyists around there, who simply write code because they have fun doing so, and that doesn't turn them into Evil Communists just because they give the code away. It's exactly the same thing as someone who blogs for free; like my roomie uses to say, "if your opinion is valuable, why do you give it away for free?" which makes her reluctant to embrace blogging; after all, in the pre-Internet days, everybody who wrote something would sell it to an editor (newspaper, book publisher...) to get it distributed. On the Internet, however, you can write away for free and distribute it for free, too. It doesn't turn bloggers into Evil Communists.
The hobbyist open source programmer is just like a blogger. They simply do it in their free time. But I'm sure that many bloggers also "steal" their company time; for instance, many, if not all, journalists I know update their personal blogs right from the office instead of working for the newspaper that employs them. And they spend hours at it. One might tolerate that they read others' blogs (to keep in touch, hunting for news), but if they're updating their own blogs, they're stealing company time, and should therefore also be labeled Evil Communists/Nihilists/Destroyers of Civilisation As We Know It.
Now, this is not to say that many of those so-called "hobbyist programmers" aren't, in fact, ideology-driven. Many are. I happen to know so many that are that I'm sure it's not a coincidence :) But I'm not even sure if they're the majority, although I can be easily persuaded that they are the most vocal — for a good reason, if you're an ideological activist, you're going to be very vocal about it. If you're just having fun in your spare time, there is no drive to be that vocal...
In any case, I see the "hobbyist open source programmer" exactly as the "hobbyist blogger". Their audience is always restricted — even though the Internet might disseminate their work (code or words) quite widely, that doesn't mean that people are interested in their work at all. Self-maintained open source code, where there is just one programmer and their code, tends to disappear after a few months — as the programmer turns to different things. Similarly, how many people have picked up blogs, seen they have little interest, and stop writing after a few months? The majority of "hobby blogs" out there have a relatively short time span, and the same happens to the "hobbyist" open source development.
On the other hand, there is what I call "corporate-driven open source". The goals here are quite different. Open source doesn't mean free (a typical misunderstanding). You can sell open source software for a license — that's what all companies I work for have always done — and that code is copyrighted, it's not public domain. The two major reasons for clients to buy a license for non-proprietary code (ie. available for the client to read) are security (you can see what the code does, it's not hidden from you), future maintenance (if the developer company goes bankrupt, you can still continue to use their software without fear that it becomes obsolete: you can maintain it yourself) and personalisation (you can change it at will).
This is the kind of software that companies like IBM, Sun, Novell, Google, and even Microsoft (yes, Evil Microsoft also has a huge open source division!) are willing to put out. Some of it is licensed. Some of it is not (e.g. you can download it for free under an EULA or ToS, but are not required to pay for it). And some companies, like, say, MySQL (now a Sun company) might distribute the code for free, but you pay premium for technical support. Even Oracle, at some point, used that model. It's proven that it's a commercially viable solution, and that's why so many companies engage in that.
Corporate-driven open source doesn't work quite like the hobbyist open source. It's usually directed: companies have purposes, goals, timelines. These get often published or discussed with partners and clients. Corporations behind those open source efforts control the repository — of course anyone can download a copy, tweak it as they wish, and often distribute it as they like, but generally nobody is going to do that, for a very simple reason: reputation and accountability.
Let's give an example. Mono is a product from Novell that replicates Microsoft's .NET framework on non-Microsoft environments (well, you can use Mono on Windows too :) ); the world's largest installation of Mono is, surprisingly, Second Life Grid :) Mono is an open source project — anyone can contribute code to it, and there is really a huge array of developers world-wide. However, of course, the core Mono developers are Novell programmers. Novell holds the repository and checks the approved revisions in. If you're a Novell customer, you're familiar with Novell, a company with three decades of existence which has a good reputation and good track record. You know who they are. If you install Mono on your computer and it deletes all financial records by mistake, you know whom to sue; but, on the other hand, it's obvious that Novell will guarantee that this won't happen. Crackers and nihilists might be able to log in to Novell's repository and submit viruses and Trojans to it, but, sooner or later, because Novell's reputation is at stake, this will be tracked down, the culprits sued, and the code cleaned up (to the best of my record, this never happened :) ). Nothing prevents a team of left-wing activists to copy the Mono source, tweak it, and offer it for download from someplace else — but who would be insane enough to do so, except other left-wing fanatics? The majority of the world will happily continue to enjoy the "clean" Mono from the reputable, accountable source only and never dream of using software from an unreliable source.
So why doesn't Novell make the Mono code proprietary and safe from the nihilist groups? Because Novell has a limited amount of programmers on the Mono project (even if they're 200 or so...) and the more people they can get to volunteer their free, spare time working on it, the better the code gets. Many of those "volunteers" are actually employees from other companies who use Mono, and adapt the code for their own companies' purposes. They're not "stealing time" — they're tailoring the Mono code to make it work for their company, and the result code, if deemed "safe" enough, might even be part of Mono's trunk (allegedly, for instance, Linden Lab might have contributed some code that way — I might ask Babbage for confirmation on that). So employees, partners, clients, and volunteers co-develop a framework where all have a vetted interest in, and the result is something better than what the original core team had in mind. And it's far cheaper! Novell, of course, has good reasons for having people downloading Mono and hire their services to get it running properly...
I gave just one example of corporate-driven open source software; there are thousands like that (yes, even at Evil Microsoft and Evil Apple). They have very similar models, and very similar purposes. And this doesn't mean that the companies behind those projects are 100% open source developers; even Sun, famous for open sourcing almost everything they have, and pretty much being one of the first corporations strongly behind the open source movement, has a lot of proprietary code :) Apple, like always, do open source with a twist: the core Mac OS X is 99% open source (an open source project called "Darwin", which is driven by Apple), but the important bits that make Apple sell it for US$29 or so are utterly and totally proprietary and as hack-proof as Apple managed to make them :) (So, no, Darwin doesn't look remotely like Mac OS X if you install it :) )
So how does this apply to Linden Lab's own open source efforts? I really think that the way to go — not today, not next year, but on the long run — is pretty much what Amanda Dalin has suggested. The Second Life Viewer will continue to be open source for ages to come, but it will be hosted on a Linden Lab repository, and it will be driven by Linden Lab's own agenda. Snowglobe is an example of this. The volunteer programmers (and I'm talking about the hobbyists without a political/ideological agenda) grumble and complain that Snowglobe's system of checks is "too slow" for them, but that's a necessity in all corporate-driven open source projects! It's the only way to ensure that Linden Lab's reputation, which is at stake, is not tarnished.
So what I believe that will happen in the near future, perhaps next year, is that the Snowglobe model will be the prevailing one. There will be no other "official" SL viewer (meaning that LL doesn't need to split up their teams). Snowglobe, like all other corporate-driven open source projects, will have "stable" and "bleeding edge" versions (it sort of already has something like that). Most residents will stick to the stable versions. The "bleeding edge" versions will have all kinds of nifty features in it, some of them potentially harmful (even if just in the sense that they will crash your computer by triggering the wrong parameters for your graphics card or something like that), most of them advanced experiments looking for volunteers to test them out. Volunteers and... members of the Linden Lab QA team, who, at some point, will sign off a "bleeding edge" version as being "stable" enough and good for consumption by the general public.
What will happen to all other "third party viewers"? Well, during this "transition phase", the supposed list LL is setting up will just list the ones that are "safer" (whatever that means in this context), but remember that most of these viewers will not be around in 2-3 years anyway — like all hobbyist open source projects, ideological or not, the time to maintain them is too high, and the "cool kids" have notoriously short attention spans. The many who haven't will slowly migrate to work under the Snowglobe umbrella. This will not only hold the volunteer hobbyists, but naturally enough, people from IBM, Intel, Sun, and who knows, even Microsoft (who wish that SL's authentication uses Microsoft's Live ID system) — partner-clients who have a direct interest in the SL viewer and who want it to have special features to benefit their corporations. So they will "volunteer" those changes.
Who will be using the "third party viewers" in 2-3 years from now? Well, very likely, just the handful of inevitable crackers and griefers and ideologically-driven minions of Stallmann and other left-wing libertarians :) The general public, however, will be using Snowglobe. This is pretty much what happened with all corporate-driven open source software out there, and I have no reason to think that something different will happen to LL's own viewer.
As a matter of fact, LL is actually compiling a list of "cool features" that make people use Emerald instead of Snowglobe. I can imagine that if those cool features — I mean the ones that do not violate ToS! — were ported over to Snowglobe (after all, the Emerald code is also open source and free to download...), there would be no reason for anyone to use Emerald, and the problem would be solved very quickly. Even more so as the honest volunteers working for Emerald (I'm not claiming anything here; everybody's innocent until proven guilty in court, not on a blog :) ) would quickly be the first to switch over, contributing their code to Snowglobe, and submit to LL's QA team...
Posted by: Gwyneth Llewelyn | October 30, 2009 at 09:17 AM