This Virtual Life

The World has Changed

2007-07-05T10:11:00.000-05:00

Following my last post lamenting my absence from a world I was once completely ensconced with, I decided it was probably a good time to log back in and satisfy my growing nostalgia. I had thought about it for days. I even resisted for a while. And like it always has been every time I get these urges, my experience lasted all of fifteen minutes. Nostalgia satisfied and my stomach left bitter, I logged out again.

My first stop was Gibson, my home; the great city of Nexus Prime. It was empty like it once was and nothing had changed. The same buildings were in the same places as I wandered the same spaces. It blew my mind to say the least. This was Nexus Prime, a city known to never be complete! For as long as I had been in Second Life it was undergoing constant revolutions, redesigns, and developments. It's been over a year now and the city hasn't changed drastically if at all. My heart sank immediately. I couldn't stay long.

I next visited the original Welcome Area. It never changed as often as Nexus Prime, but it too was the same. Overflowing with new residents as it always has been. Mostly blank staring avatars standing around silently. I felt a slight wrench of nostalgia for the old balloon ride and the path that led to the first sandbox I ever rezzed a prim in. It would be the last wrench as I couldn't stand it for long.

I headed back to Nexus and scraped through my aging friend list. A few people were on. I knew better, but I IM'd them anyway. Hoping I guess that maybe there was still something there. Everyone was working. Like, working their jobs. Our conversations fizzled out after the initial recognitions. I almost felt another pang of nostalgia, but I was used to this one... instead it became a dryness in the mouth.

I would've searched the directories or wandered, but I knew what I would find. The world was a different place. It had changed. The home I once had is gone.

Several Months Out

2007-06-22T09:50:00.000-05:00

I can't even really remember the last time I logged into Second Life. It must've been at least 4 months now or more I'm afraid. I'm still paying for my account every month however, so I must still desire to maintain the option of a presence. Perhaps simply for bragging rights or so I can jump back on the bandwagon when it starts rolling again. Either way, I've become exactly the phenomenon that I had never quite understood a couple years ago.

I've become a Second Life lurker.

I've become too disinterested with the current state of the culture, but am inherently curious and drawn to the concept of Second Life. Years ago when I was logging on every day for at least an hour or two (and often times far, far more); I would occasionally run into some ancient member of the Tyrell Corporation. This was always a time to take pause from one's current activity to celebrate, question, and generally pester the poor sap. We'd fill them in on what has happened, learn what they've been up to, and in the blink of an eye they were gone.

It was interesting to me because much of what I knew about them was left in relic prims strewn about Gibson or by second-hand accounts of their deeds from other members. It was like some of these older members had some group folklore attached to them. Meeting them was quite like meeting heroes or deities of legend.

While I would speculate as to how much of an impact I actually left (if any), I think I've joined them. I keep up with the goings on and log in from time to time to experience the world anew before disappearing back into the digital ether. Instead of familiarity, it's like waking from a long sleep into a world so vastly confusing and alien from the one you knew. I'm constantly amazed by the pace of cultural change within the world, as I'm sure my group's ancestors must've been. New members, people, memes, locations, policies... one wonders how these newer users aren't running around like chickens without heads.

It's also quite shocking to meet new members who know you only by the tales left behind.

(or perhaps by your mysterious name in the group list and your aging profile in the directory).

Will I ever come back? If I did, would I be able to process and accept the changes since I was last actively involved or has the world changed too much for me to adapt?

It's virtual, isn't it?

Linden Lab to Open Source Second Life Server

2007-04-19T15:20:00.000-05:00

Keeping on the trail they began blazing when they open-sourced the client code, is Linden Lab really brave enough to open-source their server code?.

Of course, a big question on the minds of many people is, "How will Linden Lab make money?"

The idea of "free" still hasn't caught on it seems.

There are many ways for Linden Lab to make money. Hosting, consulting, and other service-oriented offerings are a start. If they register as a non-profit, they might get a certain "backdate" window in which their benefactors could claim tax refunds. They also make themselves socially important; by contributing to the betterment of society, they've given themselves the recognition and freedom to work on other projects. There may be other ways that I haven't covered even... but there are plenty of other "open-source businesses" out there changing the world (Canononical, Red Hat, MySQL AB, etc).

What will it mean for us users?

Probably nothing at first. The source-code for a sim is probably rather gargantuan. This means it will take time for developers to skim through the code and figure it all out. It could take a few years before the community of open-source developers fully digest and begin to extend the server beyond tweaks, bug-fixes, and minor enhancements.

What's important is what is possible with the source freely available.

I suspect our classifications and conventions will begin changing as we think of new ways to extend and redevelop the server. There are lists of desires and bugs that the community has wanted fixed or implemented for a long time now. However, as it will no longer be a proprietary system; the onus is largely on us as the residents. It really will become our world at last.

Maybe in the early stages of this development, we'll see a revival of a BBS-like era.

Until we, the residents, decide to connect those disparate networks with our ingenuity and imaginations.

Eternal September's Long Arm

2007-03-13T09:49:00.000-05:00

In this op-ed piece for the Toronto Star entertainment section, author Murray White paints Second Life as a dystopian present. One gets the impression that the flood of corporations getting involved in Second Life is ruining a virtual world and community that was once Utopian and ideal. He interviews several residents and commentators to support his story and in all it turned out to be pretty good.

What I take issue with is the lack of research. I'm finicky with details. Granted, it's an op-ed — but is that any excuse to not provide at least one counter-point? It seems more like the journalist got interview with a bunch of whiny one-sided residents and wrote a story using choice quotes that support his point of view. Would it hurt to offer a little balance to support an argument?

Case in point: all of these residents that complain about the supposed "corporate invasion" of Second Life obviously forgot to mention that all these corporations occupy private islands in-world; sequestered far from the mainland. In fact, one would have to willingly teleport themselves to these islands. For all intensive purposes, it could be possible for a new resident to go about their business in-world and never even notice that there are all these evil corporations ruining their experience.

"The corporations come in and they don't understand the delicate aesthetic that's in place. And all of a sudden, all of the brand pollution we're exposed to in real life exists now in SL," says Douglas Gayeton, a Los Angeles-based filmmaker who made a documentary on SL using footage captured in-world. "They've taken a beautiful place and made it quite ugly."

Talk about melodrama! The mainland in SL shows scarcely a single sign of the existence of these brands. Perhaps if the author actually logged into Second Life and wandered around to backup this quote, he'd find it was misleading. There is no evidence of "brand pollution" and hardly anything has been, "ruined."

And then he goes on to talk about the common pattern of emergent online communities — the unavoidable Eternal September effect...

It's a path well-worn by SL's online ancestors, from The Well, a proto-online bulletin board community founded in the '80s through chatrooms, message boards and networking sites Friendster and MySpace. Early adopters shape the community as they wish, then have no choice but to stand by and watch it endlessly reshaped by the chaotic deluge of new users – some troublemakers, some commercial exploiters – that flood in as it gains popularity.

This is true of any community. It's cool until everyone else likes it. When an emergent trend reaches a critical mass, the original supporters find themselves disenfranchised and move on to new frontiers. It happened with punk, it happened to the Internet, it happened to MOO's, message boards... you name it.

But not all of the early adopters of Second Life have moved on from the world or harbour intentions to join competitor communities. Many of the avatars I've known for years (come to think of it, I think I've lost track just how long I've known some of them) are now developers for companies like Electric Sheep or else are still involved some how. While I myself still join in, I've yet to join in the corporate invasion of SL. I may be disenfranchised, but they are for entirely different reasons.

I recommend reading the article and drawing your own conclusions. Maybe you'll agree with the views and opinions expressed. However, I would suggest putting some of the points to the test. The world has certainly changed with the deluge of new users; but the future is hardly grim.

Twitterbox

2007-03-09T08:55:00.000-05:00

Looks like someone beat me to it.

Well, a more complete version anyway. That's the story of my life I suppose -- an erratic mess of half-completed ideas. You should see my desk. Covered in papers with notes, pages of source code, and half written stories. I've reams of half finished songs. I'm like a walking proof-of-concept.

Anyway, I should give this Twitterbox a whirl and see if there is any way to improve it. :)

Cheers to Ordinal Malaprop.

Electric Sheep to be first investors in open-source SL client?

2007-02-28T14:22:00.000-05:00

Here's the press-release regarding Electric Sheep Company acquiring a $7 million cash injection.

Sort of old-news now, but the snippet at the bottom is what really caught my eye:

... Electric Sheep plans to use the financing to create software to make virtual worlds ready for mainstream consumption...

Could that mean what I think it means? Is Electric Sheep planning to develop their own SL client?

A Stranger in Second Life

2007-02-22T11:48:00.000-05:00

This has to be the best first-impression review of Second Life that I have ever read. Not knocking SL or anything, but it's just so true. And honest. Read it here.

Just goes to show that maybe some of those really offensive "n00bz" out there aren't entirely clueless lusers... just normal people who're just looking for a good time and get caught in the vapid stupidity that abounds in SL. I tend to stick to the bright side of things lately, and this my friends is good for a chuckle. It's honest and that's what counts.

I hope someone at LL reads this and actually finds something worthwhile in it.

Twitter Update

2007-02-10T11:55:00.000-05:00

Well, the alpha version of the client was just completed last night. A few lucky people are helping me to test it. I'd like to get a few more to help out with it. At this stage, if you get in early your opinions will really help me shape the final product.

Twitter got started on the idea that many people were starting to communicate to their network of friends via status messages. Ever guilty of changing your IM screen-name or away message to let people know what you're up to? That's sort of the idea behind it and maybe you'll feel right at home using twitter. It lets you keep your network of people updated on what you're doing.

Twitter is many things to many people. For me, I don't post very often in a blog because I feel obligated to say something. If I don't have anything interesting to write, I feel like I'm just dumping blogarrhea all over the net. It makes me feel like a gimp to just post a "Going out for a hair cut after work and will probably watch the new episode of House tonight" kind of post. Twitter changes that -- it maxes at 140 chars and is meant for those little updates. I can keep people in the loop and not futz up my blog content.

Twitter is being used for a lot of things. Like flash-mob style coverage of events. I made an SL client because I thought it might be a cool way for people to keep their avatar friends up to speed on what they're doing. I'm sure there are many other applications like perhaps a SL-Maps mashup in the future (like this one which appears to be missing at the moment).

Other cool uses of twitter here and here.

Creating a new IM for SL

2007-02-08T09:52:00.000-05:00

I began working on a new IM client for SL earlier this week. It uses the amazing Twitter API. With it I hope to enrich communication in Secondlife. The first version will likely allow simply to send updates however, an HUD attachment will likely be on the way.

Development of this project is not without difficulty -- Secondlife's support of HTTP is rather limited and doesn't allow for HTTP_AUTHORIZATION requests. To skirt the issue, I'm writing a simple proxy script to add the appropriate headers and forward the request. I have a server to host this proxy on temporarily, however it's likely that if this IM client becomes popular I could see my bandwidth usage go up. I'd say it's more of a temporary home. If anyone can give it a permanent one, it would really help.

For anyone who's interested in hopping on the bandwagon early, go get yourself a twitter account for your avatar and add me as a friend or just follow my updates if you're so inclined.

Parties interested in committing resources, you can reach me in world, via twitter, or mail me by putting together my name with a period in between at gmail dot com.

The First Second Life

2007-01-24T09:25:00.000-05:00

Was these guys.

Second Life is GPL

2007-01-09T09:18:00.000-05:00

I thought it was still at least 8 months off or more before this would happen. However, I just found out that the client source-code has just been open-sourced. This is big news and according to boingboing, the blogosphere is already burning over it.

I nearly fell out of my seat.

I started waiting for this day years ago. It was when I came to the cynical conclusion that Linden Lab could not mature the technology as fast as the demand required. I stopped submitting bug reports and participating in pre-releases. Their management style was very creative and allowed for some really neat breakthroughs -- but it stopped being so wonderful when things like the UI started being ignored and eventually went straight down the tubes. When bugs I reported years ago are still present. When they still haven't hired a dedicated UX designer. When several promises went unfulfilled (I'm still waiting for a full-version linux client guys; let alone the updated physics engine, better avatar meshes, and a distributed asset management system).

This will hopefully change a lot of things.

Things I can't wait to see:

An offline sim you can run on your own local LAN (Possible with just a client if you can reverse-engineer the protocol; even if only in a small sand-box sim).
In-world hyperlinks
A feature-complete Linux client
Pluggable rendering engines (anyone want to take a crack at an ASCII version of SL?)
More communications protocols with outside services like SSH, svn+ssh, rsync, http, etc.
Embed-able text editors

Now that the snowball has been started, I suppose it's only a matter of time before we start seeing improvements in Second Life. There are a lot of geeks that have been really interested in it from the start, but like me, have been put off by the closed-source nature of the beast. Now bug reports can be answered. We don't have to sit and cross our fingers after submitting post and request and report, hoping that our prayers and dark rituals have been answered.

Now the wait is on for an open-source version of the sim code and a published standard of the communication protocol.

All the Hype of Second Life

2006-12-12T16:56:00.000-05:00

I don't think I could've put it more succinctly than this article. Clay Shirky, the author, really puts what the jaded Internet users already know into plain English: Second Life is not a great new frontier, and it isn't introducing new paradigm-altering concepts. In fact, he even cites a quote about LambdaMOO -- a text-based MOO that I still frequent to this day.

Shirky is right and I really wish more people in Second Life would wake up and smell the coffee. Or maybe as an elitist, I actually don't and just say I do so there's something for me to bitch about. Either way, for such a forward-thinking company it just seems totally ass-backwards that Linden Lab is believing its own hype. A cardinal rule in life, as in marketing, is to "know thyself." Like so many other companies out there, they are really failing to grasp this concept and it's ruining their future in the marketplace.

IMO, if Linden Lab really wants to keep Second Life on the up and up; they'll get a clue and start focusing their efforts back on their core-competencies. They'll stop over-marketing and hyping their product and concentrate on making it better than it is now, because it's really starting to fall behind and become stagnant. Just my two-cents.

Open Comments

2006-10-29T13:01:00.000-05:00

At the request of a commentor on this little blog, I am opening up the comments on this site to anonymous posters. I generally kept it closed due to spam -- my other blogs get tonnes of spam comments all the time and these days, a lot of spam even gets by Akismet filters. So we'll see how it goes, but if I get a tonne of spam on this one I'll probably switch back. Yes not everyone has a blogger id to post comments with, but no offense -- I'd rather not have spam than allow anonymous posters.

I am all for anonymity on the net. So if you really want to post something here if I close up the comments to registered users only; use the Tor proxy and take 10 seconds to fill out the registration form. If you're not quite that paranoid about anonymity; then just fill out the form. At least then if you decide to have a blogger blog, there'll be an account waiting for you.

It's a hassle for some, I know -- I blame spam.

The Future of the Internet is not Secondlife

2006-10-18T10:55:00.000-05:00

I might get a lot of flames for this but it's probably true. Secondlife isn't the promised-land of some post-human immersive reality. It isn't going to become the replacement for the Internet. There are many reasons, but I'm going to examine just one --

The Croquet Project.

The 1.0 SDK was released not to long ago to the development community. It is hoped that developers from around the world will start contributing to the project and speed up its development. It comes under an MIT license making contributing a valiant and probably worthwhile endeavour. I recently downloaded it to give it a test-drive and start seeing what it was all about.

The interface to Croquet is still very crude, but is still usable enough to get started. Those familiar with Secondlife will also find that the avatars are lacking in some of the functionality they are used to -- but will soon notice after some experimentation that they are not limited to the bipedal human form. However, despite the shortcomings (it's still a beta afterall) one might be quick to notice how advanced it really is even in these early stages.

It's scenes like these in the demo that made me do a double-take. Already Croquet is capable of importing objects from 3D modeling software such as Blender. Scripters will have a hay-day with Croquet -- the entire system is built on Squeak; a derivative of Smalltalk. The best part is that scripters with the right permissions can even re-write or modify the system code that the world is running on without restarting the server or recompiling. My favorite part so far however is probably the most important feature of all -- hyperlinks.

"Worlds," in Croquet are individual entities. They are self-contained like a box. You can run one on your local machine and mess with the source code, import objects, and experiment away. If you have a network of computers, you can a world on each one and network them together. This is where Croquet gets really fun -- you can create "portals" to other worlds. They look like something out of a sci-fi movie: like windows with another world on the other side. The other world is of course rendered in real-time and you can even manipulate objects through the window (assuming you have the appropriate permissions of course). It's really an eye-catcher... and stunning since some of the latest games are only beginning to start using this and Croquet is already implementing it in a networked P2P system. So these portals are just like 3D hyperlinks to other worlds.

What is really going to make Croquet the real deal when it comes to the future of the Internet is that it's basically an operating system. With an embedded virtual machine, it can run on its own hardware or on top of any operating system. It can interface with applications on the host machine and users can share those applications collaboratively even if that application wasn't programmed to do so. You can already pull up a mozilla browser or an x-terminal in a Croquet window and share it in 3D. You can stream any media and some developers have already integrated VOIP clients. The single biggest reason why Croquet will become the future operating system is that the users can run and modify the code that the worlds are built on and they can integrate their own applications.

Try doing that with a proprietary system like Secondlife.

The Internet is open. Not closed. Croquet, IMO, is the future.

In a Glass Box

2006-10-15T12:29:00.000-05:00

The latest project from Millions of Us has Versu Richilieu stuck in a small room in New York for 72 hours. The idea is that she will replicate her surroundings during this time in Second Life. It's a bit of a performance piece to show off the new Intel hardware.

If you want to know more about it, Rocket Boom did a great job covering it.

The Long Tail

2006-10-13T16:30:00.000-05:00

I had the pleasure of attending Chris Anderson's inaugral appearance in Second Life this afternoon. The interview was conducted by none-other than Hamlet Au (formerly Hamlet Linden) who was sharp and progressed with a natural course of questioning. Chris gave great answers and was very amicable. Overall I found it to be thought-provoking and quite impressive.

However, the long-tail didn't end at the event. I raised the idea of a fan-made game to the Cave Story community recently. The discussion I found, had much to do with the long-tail in media: the democratization of tools for the production of video games, like music and movies, is becoming more accessible to everyone on the Internet. Sites like YouTube allow people to upload their own media and much of this media reflects the media we as people in this media-centered age consume. The pattern follows the long tail into niches where fan-made media is generally consumed. Star Wars spawned fan-made films to continue the story and expand the universe... it appears to me that people are accepting and integrating the media they consume into a personal mythos.

IMO, it's only natural that games will be much the same way.

However, acceptance of the idea within the Cave Story community has been quite poor. While some people have been supportive with ideas on how it could be done, others are far more derogatory. It seems to have incited "holier than thou" reactions from more than just a few individuals. They believe that a fan-game is un-original and therefore not acceptable... or something. I honestly don't understand it.

The question still remains: how are or how should derivative works be handled in the video games universe? Would you get sued for creating your own version of Metroid? Could you commercially distribute a game you made with cameos of characters from other games? For fans who wish there was a sequel despite the author never intending to make one -- if they had permission, does it matter who made the game? This happens in commercial sequels all the time. Why not fan-made sequels or prequels?

I'm curious. Sue me.

Warren Ellis in Second Life

2006-10-11T20:16:00.000-05:00

Mini-update here but I needed to express my glee when I discovered just now that Warren Ellis, one of my favorite writers who penned the most excellent, Transmetropolitan is a resident in Second Life... and he blogged about it!

Here's hoping I find an excuse to get a chance to meet him, even if only in avatar form for a few minutes.

Writing for New World Notes

2006-10-11T19:47:00.000-05:00

My first article for New World Notes is almost ready after much deliberation and fighting with my perfectionism. It's been quite the experience and one I hope to repeat more frequently, though with more timely articles. It's admittedly been a few weeks since I sent in my proposition to Hamlet... I hope he's not disappointed.

I really look forward to seeing my article on NWN. I've been reading NWN for a few years now so it's kind of neat that I'm actually submitting a story that will be on it. Though I can't find the story in the archives, I have appeared on occasion in the annals of NWN history. I swear.

Anyway, for all of you dying to know -- I'm covering the emergent communities surfacing in Second Life. In particular, I'm examining a slice of developments in Nexus Prime where groups have surfaced that role play within its walls and geographically identify with the landmark the city has become.

Sounds juicy? Wait till you read the interviews! Ownership politics and mythos oh my!

Avatars and Body Language

2006-09-20T20:29:00.000-05:00

via Omega Point

Body language in the real-world is an essential and powerful communications tool. With it we can convey what is often referred to as, "sub-text." Not to be taken literally, the dictionary definition explains the meaning thus:

2. The underlying personality of a dramatic character as implied or indicated by a script or text and interpreted by an actor in performance

To frame it in context, astute observers of human interaction eventually notice that in any conversation there are two lines (sometimes more!) of communication taking place simultaneously between two peope: that which is said, and that which is implied. For the purposes of this post, sub-text refers to implied speech.

Sub-text in real life is easy to communicate and happens almost sub-consciously for most people. It's all about the way you stand, the direction your eyes glance, the way your mouth moves when you speak... dozens of tiny hints are hidden in your physical movements that often say more than what your actually saying.

In Second Life, most of us assume some form of humanoid equivalent. With the power of user-created animations and gestures, is it safe to assume that we can transmit sub-text in our conversation online? With arms and legs and hands... even some facial expressions; it's a world above plain-text in emails, IMs, and IRC. How can you compare, :-) to a full 3D avatar with a smile animation?

However, like emoticons, body-language (if you can call it that) in Second Life is highly distorted. While one is able to convey more information -- it takes a really clever mind and quick hot-keying to make an avater convey even a fraction of the body language we use in our day-to-day lives. There is also the problem that because of the lack of range for body movement, subtleties are either exaggerated or outright ignored making it difficult to seperate the noise from the signal. Where emoticons lack information, it is in my opinion that Second Life can sometimes add too much irrelevant information. Like the fabled, "lol;" not everyone is keeling over with laughter at your joke.

Thankfully our amazing human brains are built to work with signal noise. There is enormous amounts of it in our daily lives and activities, and so it's reasonable to assume there will be in Second Life as well. For example, I'm sure most of us understand that when an avatar is keeling over laughing at our notorious trout joke, it may only really mean we got half a smirk or so from the person beind the avatar. So if there is extraneous noise, but we're able to filter most of the obvious stuff out, how does that affect our perception of our online relationships? What about meeting new people?

This blogger suggests that it may also distort our relationships as it distorts our communication. Many people who consider themselves less-than-socially adequate tend to find strong bonds and meaningful relationships in Second Life. This could be because we're now expanding our ability to communicate online with degrees of (clumsy and limited) sub-text... via proxy. It could also be because that proxy is a projection of our ideal selves, which in turn expands the bubble of lies that protect our true natures in real-world situations.

When truth begins in lies, Second Life might actually be a utopia.

Trusting Second Life

2006-09-10T20:23:00.000-05:00

Certain recent events have sparked a train of thought that I keep returning to whenever I read news such as this. This is more of a meta-post regarding issues of ownership and copyrights in Second Life. I hope that whoever started the chain of events that led to Torrid's departure reads this and learns something.

Security

There is no security. The fundamental principle of network security is that for every measure there is a counter-measure. The second fundamental principle is that security becomes becomes cumbersome to the user it protects as much as it does to the intruder it defends against. Once we can accept this we can move on.

Second Life then, being a computer network at its core, cannot be assumed to provide protection for our intellectual property. As a system, it is vulnerable to intruders. The more we protect it from intrustion, the more difficult the system will become to use. The more difficult the system is to use, the less practical and accessible it is to those it is meant to protect. Therefore, Second Life will never and can never protect your intellectual property.

Property

Fair use is under attack by paranoid copyright holders. It is under even further duress from paranoid copyright holders who do not understand the principles underlying the foundation of the Internet. This is largely due to the ease of reproduction and distribution of intellectual property that the Internet affords people. In trying to protect themselves from unscrupulous practices, rights holders are taking actions to enhance copyrights that restrict consumer use of the very properties they purchase.

Fair use is a simple concept to grasp: As a consumer, Betty purchases a new pair of jeans. However, Betty is very creative and alters the jeans to fit her own style. This is generally considered fair and acceptable. She purchased the jeans, they are now her property to do with as she pleases.

However, people seem to think that computers make things complicated when they are not. Let's go back to Betty who has just downloaded a new track from supermusic.com -- a legit online music retailer. Like the pants, it is generally accepted and considered fair use for Betty to remix the song or use it as a sound track for her home movies. She purchased the song and the recording became her property.

In Second Life, the same accepted rules governing fair use are logically applicable. Betty logs in and buys a new sweater for her avatar. Like the jeans she bought in the real world, the copy of that sweater is now her property and if she'd like to modify it to suit her style, it is considered fair use.

... afterall, would you buy a car if you were only allowed to drive it and not modify, tune, repair, or alter in any way? What if you weren't allowed to open the hood either?

Sharing

The nature of the Internet changes a lot of our concepts regarding redistribution and "sharing." It's a hot topic for copyrights holders of all streaks. The recording industry has been grappling with people sharing music files for years and the movie industry has also joined the fray. While smaller, books have also come under attack by sharing.

The thing is that all these copyright holders don't understand is that it's perfectly legal to share. The methods of sharing have changed over the years of course. We've gone from trading and lending physical media, to recording it from radio, to mix tapes, CD's, and the Internet (and trading on the Internet has undergone it's own evolution from FTP to Torrents). All of these technologies were disruptive in some capacity when they were first introduced: records cut into money from live performances, radio and the Internet cut into the sale of recordings. However, the industry had only evolved from each disruptive development. That's life.

Sharing in Second Life however, takes a very difficult turn. In this burgeoning virtual world, the sole method of compensation for content creators is their ability to limit or control reproduction. Where in the real world an author will still sell books despite giving electronic copies away for free online; Second Life has no ties to real life in order to give content creators such luxury -- or does it? Is the internalized, self-contained, and inward looking nature of Second Life steering it to an anti-social economy?

Conclusion

Don't upload what you don't intend to share. Content creators have to face the reality that they cannot trust the systems in Second Life to protect their work. They should realize that there will never be security enough without seriously eroding the usability of Second Life itself. Therefore they'll have to eventually come to terms with the fact that people may create knock-offs or derivative works as people do in the real world; and they'll have to factor that risk into their business.

It's the belief of this blogger that content creators could do more to protect their intellectual property by monetizing it in more diverse ways. Selling within Second Life is one thing, but the nature of Second Life is an economy of scarcity which makes sharing -- a powerful tool in generating hype and market buzz -- really difficult. Monetizing in diverse ways could mean taking intellectual property outside of the virtual world into the real one.

For example, a clothing designer in Second Life is at considerably more risk of people copying their work and ferreting profits away from them. However, their bottom line might be affected less had they taken their designs to a real-world printing shop and supplemented their revenue streams with real clothes alongside the virtual ones.

Anyhow, when I find the lucky lawyer who will conceed to my grilling -- I will be focusing on fair use and it's related gray-area: derivative works. As I currently understand it, anyone can profit off of derivative works. This could have a large bearing on the current climate and attitudes towards what is considered an unscrupulous practice. However, there are some really flunky legalities to it that I hope to understand better from the interview. Maybe we can settle things once and for all?

As for what has happened, I think certain people have been rather insensitive and dense. Had they stopped to consider their responses before acting they may have appeared to at least posess a modicum of intelligence and social grace. However, for whatever reason, their markedly anti-social behaviour has really hurt someone for no good reason.

If you're reading this, I would consider it a hollow victory for you. You've done more harm than good and have done nothing to improve anyone's lives in any way -- even your own. As I understand it, a Betty bought something from you and modified it for herself. Then you went all willy-nilly and here I am telling you you're an idiot. Thanks for bringing down the status-quo a notch, you're really classy.

Linux Client -- Spoke too Soon?

2006-08-30T18:10:00.000-05:00

Just downloaded the new 1_12_0_51742 version of the SL linux client and I must say that I am pleasantly surprised. It has addressed most of the issues that have been reported since the alpha client was released... finally!

I do hear that LL is trying to release the client without the static libraries this time. It's causing some issues for certain users -- but thanks to the wonder that is the Internet, those problems are being addressed on the forums pretty quickly. For myself, I simply needed to install an older version of the Berkley DB libraries (libdb-4.2) and I was good to go on my Ubuntu 6.06 box. Work arounds currently exist for Redhat users and others.

Rumour has it in the forums that icculus.org is involved in porting the linux client now. Browsing through his site you may notice a few projects he's simply abandoned half-way through, so lets keep our fingers crossed that he sticks to this one. I'm a big fan of is work for sure (and even read his book on linux game programming). If he does stick with it, I think we'll finally see the linux client catch up quickly with the others.

This release makes me very happy. It's almost up to speed with the windows client which means I now have one less reason to boot up Windows. With the Genuine Advantage program just being released, that's a good thing. Only a handful of programs I now rely on windows for (and a couple games, sure).

Linux Client Still Lagging Behind

2006-08-25T21:37:00.000-05:00

I still personally consider it a crackpot and biased theory, but it is still undeniable in my mind. The adoption rate of linux is getting better almost exponentially in recent years -- and as I understand it, a big lacking area in linux is gaming or entertainment software. Call me crazy, but I think there will be a decent size of the potential gaming market in linux.

I still call it a crackpot theory because all I have to go on is anecdotal evidence generated largely from personal observation, discussions with other linux users, and well.. the severe lack of games and entertainment software available to the growing number of linux users. Now games do not make the system, but for the joe-average user -- anything that will help people to slack off is a good thing. Games let us loosen up a little.

But this isn't about why I think linux may become a new niche frontier for games development. This is about Linden Labs ignoring the linux platform. Every release since the linux alpha client has been introduced has had the same line in the release notes: "No linux client specific fixes in this version."

I think that's pretty sad. Linux is a powerful platform that is well internationalized, free, and has growing interest from academic institutions. Linden Lab has a client that can connect to their service for free and has been targeting adoption of their service among academic institutions. Imagine if the SL client was in the Ubuntu non-free (as in open-source) repositories? Adoption rates are starting to take off, but if you want them to sky-rocket you need exposure and easy access.

I really do hope they start releasing fixes to the client soon and make a formal release soon. Skip beta and go right into full release with the same feature-set as the other clients. Spread the word, start packaging it for various distros and get it hosted in repositories around the world.

Let those forums burn to the ground

2006-08-12T10:04:00.000-05:00

I am actually relieved that the forums are finally coming down, believe it or not. I say good riddance; while the technical forums were useful -- the discussion forums were just a big, whiny bonfire.

It's sad that a group of former discussion-forum-junkies are probably getting together to bitch about it. All they ever did was get together on the forums and bitch about pretty much everything that LL did with SL and flamebait eachother. Now that the resmod program had failed to reduce the cost of maintaining such cacophony -- I think it's a smart move to just cut the bad parts off for the sake of the whole.

So goodbye discussion forums! May you roast in flaming hell!

Tim O'Reilly on Virtual Worlds

2006-07-12T16:41:00.000-05:00

Tim O'Reilly recent gave an interview on Vitamin in which he talks a fair bit about virtual worlds. Second Life is even mentioned and talked about a few times including references to The Electric Sheep Company. I recommend downloading the mp3 and checking it out. Tim's a smart guy.

Big Scary Protest

2006-06-24T18:46:00.000-05:00

There are surprising few these days who have the practical sense to accept that as a rule of thumb, rules are often broken. In the network world we have the saying, "never trust the client;" such a rule resonates throughout our culture... we're taught to be mistrusting people.

Somehow despite this ingrained idea, there remains a strong contingent of people who are still so naive as to believe that people follow rules. They're naive to believe that security measures work. The simple fact that they cannot fathom is that every rule can be broken and no security measure is ever in the least bit bullet-proof.

I am of course referring to the recent protests in Second Life regarding Linden Lab's recent decision to remove the billing information requirement from the registration process. Wether a smart move or not, it remains to be seen -- though the backlash is absolutely incredible. It appears to be a smart move in this writer's opinion since the basic Second Life account is free... so why bother registering a credit card?

The main argument of the majority of protestors believe that credit card registrations block the under 18 crowd from accessing an adults-only service. They fear that these teenagers will be exposed to content that is morally and legally questionable to show to a minor. Of course they also fear children themselves -- recollecting nightmares of the pot-smoking, bubble-gum chewing rebels terrorizing the neighbour's dog... coming now to invade their virtual life that had previously been so safe from their inane behaviour.

Guess what folks? You might even be great friends in SL with a minor and not even know it. Like it has been said by many other residents aside from myself: minors have been in SL even before the teengrid. Many I imagine are still on the main SL grid regardless of the cute little playground Linden Lab has offerred them to keep the child-fearing adults happy.

Let's at least try to understand teenagers... once they hit around 12 years old, children will try to get in as much trouble as they can. They will start to expose themselves to sex, drugs, and everything the horrible world can throw their way. They will find their way into it no matter what you do. If they want something, they'll find a way hands down.

I know I did.

So if you think credit card registrations actually do stop minors, you're trusting the client. You'll have to re-think your concepts of the security of the world. You might have to come to grips with the fact that while teenagers are annoying and not very aware of the world -- they are curious and you'll have to understand them. They shouldn't be in SL and personally, I don't want them in SL either. We have some tools to help us weed them out if we find them. Perhaps instead of wanting a broken system back, we should be thinking out better reporting tools or social structures to assist us in keeping SL the 18+ environment we've come to enjoy.