General News

#Second Life Translation Bump

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In December of 2011 Google ended their free language translation service. Now Bing is ending theirs, may be. Google announced their intentions to do so early in 2011. Public outcry caused the management of Google to reconsider. In the end they decided to turn it into a paid system. Bing made their announcement in April of this year.

Bing Translator API

All the Second Life™ viewers and third party viewers, once upon a time, used the free service Google provided. There were various translation devices in Second Life that used Yahoo, Google, or Bing translation services. Google’s seemed to be the preferred service.

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MetaReality: Making a Difference

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MetaReality has this week’s podcast out. Salome Strangelove and Karl Stiefvater (Qarl Fizz, formerly Qarl Linden) are guests in this week’s edition.

Metareality Podcasts

I’ll remind you this is not a transcript of the podcast. This my take on what I heard said and relationship between what I heard to what was meant by the speakers is purely coincidental… well… may be not. I try to convey the meaning of what is said. If you find anything offensive or upsetting, listen to the audio before raving.

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N-Core at Fund Raiser

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Another artist/merchant is contributing to Gala Phoenix’s legal fund by offering products and contributing all the proceeds. I have several pairs of N-Core shoes. I love them. So, I am thrilled to see N-Core participating.

N-Core and other Designers Join DMCA Fund Raiser

Now… if I could just get into the region… I may not be able to make it in until after SL peak concurrent users. So, late the afternoon… dang. (Update: I did make it. It is more impressive than I thought it would be.)

One Voice Location (SLURL) – N-Core Exhibit (SLURL)

This fund raiser runs from July 9 to 22. An excellent note card came with the group announcement explaining the situation. I like well written informative articles. So, I’ve included it after the fold.

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AvaCon Abandons SLCC 2012

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AvaCon is the group that arranged the Second Life™ Community Conventions. They provided the service to Linden Lab™ via a paid contractual arrangement. This year the contract terms were unacceptable to AvaCon. They are not saying what the deal buster was. Of course I haven’t heard anything out of Linden Lab either way.

Whether the Lab will retain another company, arrange the event in-house, or just forget it, we don’t know. But, it doesn’t look good. Someone will have to be hustling to arrange the convention.

Daniel Voyager apparently noticed the post on AvaCon’s blog. He has an article about it: SLCC 2012 Cancelled, which seems a bit overly pessimistic to me, but he may be right.

I am sure someone has a call into a contact within the Lab to see if they can get a statement. I don’t have those kinds of contacts within the Lab. I won’t give up all hope until I her something from a Lab spokesperson. I also won’t be betting against Daniel’s conclusion.

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Fund Raiser DMCA Abuse

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You may or may not know about some of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) abuse that is happening. I’m a free market supporter and in general believe in protecting Intellectual Property Rights. But, this 2001 law in the USA, with similar laws in other counties, violates some of ideas expressed by the founding fathers of America. This law uses guilty until proven innocent logic, which is about as anti-American and anti-freedom as one can get. The remedy to prevent misuse, which opponents of the law said would never work, is a law suit for damages.

Fund Raiser in Pulse

The problem is a DMCA Complaint is easy to file with almost no downside. Fighting it is difficult and there is no real up side. The recording industry and related companies liked that it was difficult to fight and easy to use. DMCA has consistently been misused for coercion and elimination of competition. We are seeing its misuse in Second Life™.

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