Category Archives: Virtual World News

SOPA, PIPA, and OA

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You have probably heard enough about these laws. But, the depth of the deceit in these laws is escaping many of those writing about SOPA, PIPA, and OA. Some creators and merchants in SL actually support SOPA, PIPA, and/or OA, which I see as shooting their own foot.

It is reasonable to want to protect one’s intellectual property and ownership rights. It is a basic tenet of freedom to protect private property. Without such protection things devolve into anarchy and poverty. It’s a basic lesson of history.

One should research the facts and make up their mind if they are to support SOPA, PIPA, and OA or not. The best analysis and explanation of the proposed laws I’ve seen is Gwyneth Llewelyn’s article: SOPA/PIPA revisited. Please read the article. Gwyn has taken the intellectual step to reason beyond the surface of the issue and look at how the proposed laws can be misused.

 

 

 

 

I’m Back…

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SOPA and PIPA are not gone. We didn’t win. We were impressive. But, the politicians and the commercial interests involved have just stepped aside and allowed the wave of protest to pass. They are expecting us to go back to sleep.

Alec Rawls writes on Watt’s Up With That about Cass Sunstein, an Obama czar, wanting to use copyright laws to stop rumors and conspiracies, in other words to stifle free speech. The copyright laws in the US have the idea of fair use. That idea is to be modified so that you can’t write about ideas I espouse on this site. That would stop discussion of those rumors and ideas.

Harry Reid, the chairman of the US Senate, is rewriting PIPA to try and get it through the Senate and to the House. The bill is about getting the government to enforce copyright law for Hollywood. The most heinous aspect is the efforts to dispose of due process. The change is to make one guilty until they can prove their innocence. That’s an over simplification but…

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SOPA Update

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ReadWriteWeb has an article on recent developments in the SOPA, Protect-IP, and OPEN bills. The Obama administration is saying they will not sign any bill that would allow censorship or changes in the domain naming system. Personally, I think that is smoke to quite the resistance these proposed laws are drawing from around the world.

I will point out that this is the same administration that issued a ‘legal opinion’ telling government agencies they may ‘legally’ lie to avoid complying with Freedom of Information requests. See the LA Times editorial:  Obama’s secrets

Additionally this is the administration that signed an executive order that relives the government from following due process when American citizens are accused of sexual misconduct on campuses. Guilt is to be determined by the college or university administration. Failure to do so is cause to cut off funds to the institution. See this article by a Buddhist Obama supporter. (It links to the WSJ)

I suggest that any time a politician tells you what he is going to do, you better watch them. The result you get is often very different than the politician’s words.

Keep writing letters to Congress. See: SOPA is Still a Problem for detailed information.

#SL Region Crossings

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Well… things are a mess in regard to region crossings. Andrew’s Friday afternoon meeting was overrun with region owners, sailors, and aviators looking to find out when regions crossings would be working better. 54± people were in Denby, which made it hard for me to get in. Later in the meeting there were 80 people in the region. Persistence does work. 40+ were in Longfellow and 10 or so were stuck in Hanley.

Full Regions for Server Script Meeting

Some of the meeting was relayed to the Second Life Beta group chat.

Since the latest server update and the recent kernel updates region crossings with vehicels have become a problem. Walking or flying across is less of a problem then attempting to drive, sail, or fly a vehicle across.

There is also concern about the Havok upgrade that went into testing this week.

Whatever the case, sailors and aviators showed up in mass at Fridays user group meeting. I’ll have more information later, after I have time read through some chat logs and meeting minutes. Watch for Server News.

Mesh Deformer Project Meeting Today

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To day at 2 PM PT/SLT in-world will be a meeting about the Mesh Deformer Project. The meeting will be at Garden of Dreams. This is designing Worlds Treet.tv studio. A featured speaker is a Maxwell Graf, well-known designer and owner of Rustica. Also Graham Dartmouth of Builders Brewery and and Jusden Jonstone, an Opensource Developer, who has worked both for Linden Lab and for Third Party Viewers will be speaking.

Designing Worlds Planned Mesh Deformer Project Meeting

The Mesh Deformer is about getting mesh clothes to work with the appearance sliders. It is more complex than that, but basically that is the part that will affect most SL residents.

I suspect we will get new information on the project. There is likely to be some fund raising going on too.

This meeting is an hour after the Content Creators User Group (Mesh Group) meeting. This is the week the Lindens said they could give us more information on their research into what may be the best way to provide mesh deformation in SL. I’ll have more on that later in the day.

You can learn more about the project at Indiegogo.com.

SL Viewer Interface to Change

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Well… this should be interesting. We are getting a new Viewer Interface by the end of October or there about.

It also explains why the viewer development team has basically disappeared. While the Lindens were proclaiming they would never do another Hide and Develop project without user input, our new CEO having messed that fiasco has the Lab apparently doing exactly that… we’ll see how it works.

The announcement is at SLUniverse. This is an expansion of the recent SL Forum announcement of New Things in SL. The information is about a week old. Finding these gems of information in odd places plus some stats someone posted in the  SLUniverse thread about how many have read the SLUniver forum vs the SL Forum shows the Lindens have yet to figure out how to communicate with the users.

Cyanist to Fix Second Life Clothes

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This is just an interesting bit of trivia for my Myst friends. The trivia is the headline and is repeated in the last line of this post. The rest in between is making it make sense for Myst-Uru fans. Many in the Myst-Uru fan realm are not 3D modelers and they are not part of the SL community. So, many of what those of us in Second Life consider basic information needs to be explained.

Relto in Myst-Uru World: Uru Live

To set the stage, Myst fans need to know what’s up in English not SL jargon. Second Life (SL), is a virtual world in which about 660 Uru fans have joined the in-world group D’ni Refugees (SLURL). I’ve long pushed it as a place to start learning 3D modeling. I think a large portion of those fans in SL have learned some aspect of 3D modeling. Whatever the case, modeling in SL has been done with primitive shapes (usually called prims). The primitive shapes are changed by parametric deformations. There’s a geeky term, I’ll explain it.

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Shockwaves in Second Life

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End of SexGen?

The Alphaville Herald has a story about Stroker Serpentine leaving Second Life and making his Cadillac of sex beds, the SexGen Ultra 600,flagship of his SexGen line, available for free. Yes, for free. This was a multi-thousand L$ product.

Think about what that will do to other sex bed makers and the makers of sex animations. For them this is disaster, economic chaos. At least many are spinning it that way. When one considers there are entrepreneurs that sell prim cubes to noobies for L$100 one gives less credit to the sky-is-falling screams.

As The Herald points out, some regions pay tier from sales of their sex products. This release will impact many of them and we may lose a number of regions… or not. Only time will tell. But, it seems likely to me.

Read the article here: Free Sex Beds

There is lots of drama in the issue and RL lawsuits.  Some of the drama is… discussed… here: Jumpman Lane – The “Kang” of Second Life. This is an interview that appears in the Alphaville Herald. You’ll have to decide who is telling which truth or building drama and ego or whatever else you can read into it. I have no clue.

Getting the Free Goodies

The free stuff is sitting here: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/SexGen/131/120/22

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