Well after all the tech problems at the Phoenix Hour, now the Phoenix Firestorm Hour, I finally got to see the video of the meeting. I’ll paraphrase it here. As usual I’ll provide time marks so you can listen to the parts that interest you. I try to be accurate, but I have biases and preconceptions so I can hear things differently than they are intended. So, you’ll find the video at: New Linden Lab Policy.
I’ll point out here that the paraphrasing I have here is 5,000+ words. The meeting was an hour and 45 minutes not counting time out for crashes and region restarts and the 40 minute delay in starting. If I had stuck it out from my early arrival to the end I would have had more than 3 hours in the meeting. I really think some of the changes talked about here are FAR less important than the fact they regions didn’t stay up.
If you’re in a hurry, there are 250 words at the end that pretty much sum things up.
Video Summary
0:00-2:00 Opening, intro, and thanks. The Firestorm-Phoenix Hour is planned to run every other week now. They took a break for a few weeks. They are back now.
02:00 Meeting started 40 minutes. Jessica invited all the Third Party Viewer (TPV) Developers as she could reach.
03:00 – Clarifications. Explains what policy is and that she is providing her interpretations of what the policy is. She says she intends to avoid drama and accusations. She plans to give any personal opinions toward the end. My opinions are where ever I happen to include them. Please avoid contributing my opinions to Jessica, she gets enough heat.
04:14 – Oz Linden offered to be part of the meeting. Jessica decided it might go better without him. Because of the misinformation and anger in the community Jessica felt his presence might lead to drama and chaos.
05:00 – Jessica plans to have Oz in a meeting next week. Watch the Firestorm-Phoenix blog for news on that, may be next Wednesday or Thursday. They will do the show on Treet TV. You go Treet TV. If the meeting happens, there will be a Q & A portion of the meeting.
I would love to see as big a turnout of people as this meeting got. While I don’t wish them problems and I do hope things go well, the technical problems Treet TV ran into keeping the regions up should be experienced by a Linden first hand. I know the Lindens know about the problems and are working to up the number of avatars that can attend an event like the FS/PH Hour, but Oz dealing with them might, and that might is iffy, change the Lab’s priority.
06:00 – How to ask questions during the show. Basically IM Phaylen with questions. Those in the stream were able to use Treet TV’s Stream Chat to ask questions, which TankMaster Finesmith, one of the Firestorm-Phoenix Team, would forward to Phaylen or Jessica.
They ask people avoid asking questions in local chat. Someone may answer such questions but local chat is not going to make it into the video… So, those of us watching the video would never know you asked a question or hear the answer. Sending questions by IM to Phaylen gets them into the meeting video.
07:30 – For now only viewer ID tags, custom colored tags, true online status, and scripting for online status will be changing. Just yesterday Oz Linden announced that the Lab is going to hold off on the scripted status change until they figure out how to provide for the numerous legitimate use cases.
Phoenix has the ability to ask the server if a person is online, whether the person has given permission or not. This feature is going away.
RLV (Restrained Love Viewer), show beacons, and other features are not changing.
09:00 – All third party viewers must conform to the new policies, whether they are listed in the third party viewer directory or not. Jessica points out that the Lab’s viewer doesn’t have to…
Taking Firestorm and Phoenix off the directory, as some suggest, does not change the requirement that they comply with the policy.
09:30 – What motivated these changes? What affect dose third party viewers not being able to ID their self have? Jessica avoids the motivation question, which I think was wise. She doesn’t speculate. Instead she starts with the first policy change: 2.a.iii : You must not provide any feature that circumvents any privacy protection option made available through a Linden Lab viewer or any Second Life service.
What this applies to is a setting like online status. In the Friends Panel one can click whether a friend can see your online status. The Phoenix has True Online Status which circumvents my setting and provides the Phoenix user with my online status. This feature will be removed from the Phoenix Viewer.
11:15 – Jessica explains how the Phoenix viewer provides the information. The feature True Online Status was developed during the Emerald Viewer days. An LSL script (Linden Scripting Language) is built into the Phoenix Bridge. The Bridge is an attachment the Phoenix viewer creates and attaches to your avatar. The script poles the server to see if the target person is online.
The reason for developing the viewer feature was/is the HUD’s that provide the same feature. The HUD’s pole the server every 5 seconds. Lots of HUD’s means LOTS of server requests and they add to the region lag. The Phoenix viewer makes a single request. So, it is thought they helped reduce lag.
12:45 – Jessica doubts anyone thought about the privacy issues at the time. It was just a neat way to reduce some server lag. But, the feature violated the Lab’s then existing privacy policy and now the new policy specifically targets TPV’s.
13:15 – The Lab is looking at breaking the LSL function that allows the HUD’s to get one’s online status. When that happens, those HUD’s will stop working. But, there are legitimate uses of the function that provides that ability. Jessica explains what the thinking on the function change would be at the time of the meeting. As I write this review of the meeting that information is already out of date.
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