My visit to Intels Science Sim

OpenSim is still Alpha software, but that doesn't stop it being used for projects such as Intels Science Sim

Intel recently showed an advertisement on Youtube to show off it's Science Sim offering, and it's vision on the 3D web. I don't think it went down well in some quarters. I have been to the website before for a (very) quick read, but never actually visited the Sim.

So here I go.




I also noticed the website has been updated recently.

You need to go to the Getting started page, and then create an account, then setup your viewer. I connected using the latest Imprudence viewer, the 1.2 beta, and found it's Grid manger very handy.

You first appear at a rotunda, as pictured above, and this gives you a basic tutorial on using the viewer.



I'm grey here because Imprudence didn't render properly (Sorry Jacek), At the time I thought it was lag, or OpenSim being difficult. Right In the middle of the above picture you can see a item that invites you to TP to another site, So I did so.

( This is where I started to get very confused, so please stay with me )

This took me the edge of a Lake with some boats, but at time I was more concerned with a change of clothes and generally making myself look good, I didn't see anything in the inventory or in the library, and was now a bit mystified on where to go next.

I could see a path, but it was behaving oddly, disappearing then reappearing, I followed it to see where it went. I ended up at a building called "The Saltwater House"


At this point I logged out as I was still grey, and the scenery was still behaving oddly, I thought there might be something with the Imprudence viewer and SciSim.

I relogged with the Hippo Viewer they recommend.
With the Hippo Viewer I was immediately able to see my clothes and myself, rendering did seem a bit slower, but I was able to perceive more. I was back at the Saltwater House.



"The Saltwater House" belongs to the Fashion Research Institute, below the sign it offered some clothes both Male and Female Avatars, and as I was rather tired of being Ruth, I was happy to accept.

The House is not fully rezzed in the the picture below, but the clothes are in front of the sign, where I am standing at the bottom left.

Before:-


After:-
Ok, that a bit better, but just a bit errrr Unsexy...possibly some adjustments are needed


A bit taller, thinner. longer arms...hmmm those boobs, lets fix those, longer torso..ok all saved...now lets try to get out of edit mode...errrr please..really...now?.
Then I crashed. Bum! That looked to be a network issue on my end.



Relogged, and had a look at the MAP. Then I realized that the shape mods didn't take, but that could have just been me crashing. I couldn't be bothered to try again, so I decided to stick with having the Librarian look.

Back to the Map, and that was very confusing, as the Grid looked to be about 10 sims, and I couldn't see my Login point.

I then walked down to the dock, and got in to a boat, it then sank, taking me with it. Hmmm



I did wish to get back to the login point, but I couldn't see a way to TP, to I started to fly around the sims, I came across a very interesting garden.
It looks like it took quite a lot of time to make.



Next I came across the the shop Bella Fantastic, it looks not fully completed or not rezzed in full, and I couldn't buy anything, which was a bit of a shame as I would have preferred the very nice outfits in the windows to my current outfit.



I continued flying up the coast and next found a giant white horse, and then a herd of them appeared, I seem to have reached a populated area.



It looked to be the Fashion Institute Sim Shengri la Spirit. This had more clothes, skins, eyes for sale at 0$, and some clothes and jewelry didn't display the $ sign, so I guess they were for display only. I spent some time exploring, and was rather impressed at how pretty it all was.

I also got a new skin and some red boots, from one of the shops :-)


More Horses :-)

The FRI is beautifully done and looks brilliant, I wish my Laptop was able to display it more. It did start to occur to me, that I must be missing quite a bit due to my draw distance.


So I decided to TP via the map, this seemed to work and I was TPed to a very large building with minarets, and gardens this was still the FRI.

This picture below shows just how big building can be in OpenSim. It's huge, really huge, you can tell the scale as I am at the base of the first fountain from the right.



From here I TPed to the most South Easterly region of the grid, and found lots of pencils ...really...although on first glance they look like the original Cylon baseships.

The Metaverses biggest pencil case.


Here is when I really started to get confused, I noticed all the Regions start with Shengri La, and I had been flying around in Circles


Ok...lets try again!
TP again to the north..I just now realized the names on the Map all started with Shengri La, but I seem to have been flying around Spirit, Lets go to Rosemary to the SW...on arrival.. Buildings.
I flied down, and I really was confused and it was Belle Fantastique again..., OK TP to Tyme, and back to that Garden ..eh!
There is one Sim that stands out on the map, and that is Gallery...and then found myself back at FRI I was wondering if the Maps were just wrong.



This is when I went back to the ScienceSim Website to find the listing of what to visit.

Search doesn't work in Hippo :-( , so looking around the map again I realized I had been missing a part of it, and TPed to an island.
This had some google pages and a pendulum, It looks like the frequency of the pendulum was being written to the board.




There was a board that you could send messages to. That was interesting.
This is more like what I expected to find, a demo of the technology that can be used in OpenSim.



Ok, back to the ScienceSim Website, it had one SLURL secondlife:// like to Quicksort, So I clicked that, and then had it open Hippo Viewer. I was TPed me to a island I never even noticed on the Map. I had a go with the Quicksort demo, but now I was looseing enthusiasm.

I had been here for a few hours now and the effort of finding anything here was making me rather tired.



I had a look in the Hippos Menus and thought "All else Fails...TP home", so I ended up in Newton at the Rotunda, again, I didn't see this on the map.

These are the areas where the Sims are called Newton, Kepler, Galileo and Einstein, so this was looking very promising, and it was where I started from..Hooray!

So lets have a look around.

Yes, more tutorials, and place that will let you have some free avatars




I then found the Newton Observatory, this has TPs to Yellowstone park, a display on the Solar System, Fern Seed, and other places in SciSim.


I first went to Mt St Helens, but while it was very large, didn't really thrill me. No photo of it, sorry. But it did have the HyperGrid Gateway on the bottom right have corner of the Sims

Back to Newton, and then to the Solar System display



I dropped from the Solar to the ground, and found a meeting room, a Star Gate, and then a bit further flying I found an other meeting room, and then an auditorium.


Galileo has a giant Pagoda, and some smaller ones. Close by is a camp fire

...then Galileo pine village.


I was looking inside the Senate building and that when I saw it!!


I saw a Green Dot..yes..someone was also here!!! As you may have noticed, I didn't meet anyone so far.
So this is when I rushed over to meet Shenlei Winkler, who is the owner of the FRI. She was happy to talk for a while and we talked the various things happening in SL and the way it's heading, and how OpenSim was going forward in leaps and bounds.



Then I realized she was the owner of the Sims I had been lost in and she said that yes the Sims are very spread out, and that's for a reason. But as we talk ed so much I for got to ask why.
My main question was to ask where everyone was...and was reminded that it was the weekend, and this is educational grid :-)

Here is the Senate Chambers, the meeting place for the ScienceSim Government.

On the lake outside the Senate Chambers I deside to check for any fish.

The region around the Senate was rather built up with houses, and meeting rooms. No guessing who owns the one in the next picture.

Here we finish my trip to Science Sim. There were more pagodas, and meeting rooms, but at this stage I had been logged in for about 5 hours.

Some more information on Intels ScienceSim, Intel, IBM and


Intel Blogs, and extra Reading

ScienceSim January 2009

ScienceSim Auguet 2009

Information on the FRI

The Blog of Shenlei Winkler

She also has a book Shengri La Spirit

V-Business is a consortium of businesses for the expantion of 3D virtual world technology.


The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
-Winston Churchill

Heritage key

I have been interested in the use of OpenSims for quite a while.
Heritage Key is operated by Rezzable, and its goal is to display interactive Archaeological sites in a virtual environment.

I was able to visit a few days a go and I was quite pleased to see how it was.
Unfortunately I'm not much of a writer, so I will pass you over to Honour Mcmillan who visited it
last month and it much better at writing and describing it than I.

But I will include some photos, excuse the quality, as my laptop is just able to run the customer Viewer. (No Linux Option)

As you first enter the Sim, you appear in a room to dress your Avatar, and learn how to operate the viewer. As I already knew, I didn't stay for long, but grabbed hair and a skin.

The next room is a sort of destination lounge, and it has posters for Egypt, and you can pick up some clothes suitable for an Egyptian explorer. As you can see below I was dressed as an English Archaeologist on an English dig :-)

From here it's a Teleport to the Compass Rose as below


Above is the Compass Rose, from here you take the balloon to the Dig site, and King Tuts tomb.


There is also a gallery with some Egyptian artefacts that are fantastic in detail, and there is also the Cosmic Walk, where even more artefacts are on display.

After the Gallery you get to visit the Nile, there is a house, and here you can see the typical reed boat of the time.
BTW you might want to stay clear of the crocodiles, if you go swimming in the Nile.


Inside the house you can get properly dressed in a variety of clothes for male and female.



Here I am back inside King Tuts tomb, and naturally this intrepid explorer shows he has very good manners by bowing to me.


For those interested Howard Carter is buried is in Putney Vale Cemetery


And Lord Carnarvon is buried near his family seat


"Those were the great days of excavating... anything to which a fancy was taken, from a scarab to an obelisk, was just appropriated, and if there was a difference with a brother excavator, one laid for him with a gun." --Howard Carter, 1923

Self Help

Learn to think for yourself, it's the best "Self-Help" ever

"Whenever a poet or preacher, chief or wizard spouts gibberish, the human race spends centuries deciphering the message."
Umberto Eco

Art, Bad Art, Flickr and Theft

Pixel Pixel Pixels, we see them everywhere, on our screen and basically in our mind.
Talented People can created a great picture from scratch, 2D, or 3D, it's art. It
usually requires skill and practise. I basically have neither of these, but I appreciate those who do.
Fakery I'm not keen on, and some SL based art is great, and some of it it quite ugly.
I mostly mean Morphs, this it sticking a an SL avatar face on a RL body or an other picture, usually done badly, and it just looks plain wrong.
I do like the blending of SL and RL objects together to make something new, becuase it's obvious, and not set to decive anyone

I look at the comments on Flickr saying how talented some of them are, and I just think yuk that is just plain ugly. I don't say anything , as I can't do any better.

When I have said I like a picture, it's when I mean it, it's not just to be nice.

I'm not always up on copyright etc and Creative Commons but I have Ryker and Vint who will put me straight, if it miss something. (Probably quite loudly, with the banging of shoes)

Nimil Blackflag has had enough of this to start a blog about it


How do you like the above Picture?
I got it here :-
http://shinjuchan.deviantart.com/art/United-Artist-Against-Theft-92387168
It's Free Use, I don't have to acknowledge or link back to it. But then, I'm known to be polite


Borrowed thoughts, like borrowed money, only show the poverty of the borrower.

LADY MARGUERITE BLESSINGTON,
English socialite and writer
(1789 - 1849)

Imagine No Religion

Imagine No Religion
Originally uploaded by Napalm filled tires

Ireland is moving back a few hundred years, well back to the Middle Ages really, or is that the Dark Ages.

Either way, it's a long time back.

Ireland is bringing Blasphemy up to date....Hmmm that whole sentence is just so wrong.

The Irish might never hear that wonderful song "Every Sperm is Sacred"...

The Guardian puts it this way

There is a secular fightback here:- http://blasphemy.ie/


Blasphemy? No, it is not blasphemy. If God is as vast as that, he is above blasphemy; if He is as little as that, He is beneath it. - Mark Twain

No One is safe

Lots of people blog for various reasons, for some it's a form of creativity, for others is to let the "Truth" be known, an online diary, to see how the other half live, and some people actually blog for general information sharing.

Nightjack was a policeman who blogged about his job, one of many Police who do, but his became popular and got an Orwell award. Natually he was anonymous as this is not really the sort of thing you want the criminal fraternity to know who you are.

The Times thought it was important to find out who this person was, and did so. A High court order has now set a precedent that anonymous bloggers in the UK can't expect any sort of privacy due to the fact what they are doing.

My own view is much like the Telegraph

The loss of anonymity is something that nobody can prepare you for. When it happened, I recognized that I`d lost one of the most valuable things in life. To this day, I`m not all that happy about it. - Harrison Ford

SL and network crashes

You hear it all the time, you see it all the time, and it happens to you..all the time.

Just when you have got those prims aligned, or just about to try on some great outfit, the Viewer crashes.

Then swearing and the shaking of fists starts.

Last year Meta Linden said that most crashes are due to Video drivers, but then again it's possible that some are network issues.

I admit I am biased as I usually work in the networking area of IT, so I would see it more as a networking problem.

When data packets are sent across the Internet or the local LAN, they can either be in TCP/IP packets or UDP packets, simply put TCP/IP sends messages back and forth checking that all the packets arrived, and UDP is fire and forget.

I don't know what SL runs on, but I found something that might be useful to Windows users to check on the data packets from LL.

I this found on Raymond.cc , it makes a change in the registry and lets you see any network errors that have occurred. There is a screen capture near the bottom to show you what it looks like.

I was able to install this on my work XP PC, with out any problems or reboots. It should work on Vista/2000/7.

"We have no intention of shipping another bloated OS and shoving it down the throats of our users." -- Paul Maritz, Microsoft group vice president

Goodbye Rheta

Today I'm in mourning, for someone who I barely knew, and for her baby who was just about to be born.

I have a little boy of 18 months, and I love him very much. It's surprising how a child can change the way you look at the world.
It's how you notice other children, how children seem to know that they are in this child-like state together.

Today we heard about the death of Rheta Shan on her blog .

In my mind I can see her out shopping, on the other side of the road she can see her normal bakery. At 9 months , she can't walk very fast, she puts her hand on her stomach and says something like "Yes, soon it will be time", then starts to cross the road. Then she hears the sound of an engine, but it's too late.... I won't be able to get rid of this image for some time.

Both Rheta and baby died, and I'm just so sad that there is one less little person, who would certianly made the world a slightly better place, as Rheta did.

My thoughts are with her husband, with her family, and those of her friends who knew her virtually, but who were no less real.

Today when I got home from work I hugged my little boy and I could feel the tears, just like I do now.

I often travel around the UK, and I like to see the Cathedrals, while I have no organized religion, they are still great places, next time I will have two more candels to light.

Goodbye Rheta, and goodbye baby Shan.


Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished. If you're alive, it isn't. ~Richard Bach

Google predictive text

The image is coming out rather small for some reason, but enter "Second Life" into Googles predictive search. :-)







Some say Google is God. Others say Google is Satan. But if they think Google is too powerful, remember that with search engines unlike other companies, all it takes is a single click to go to another search engine. - Sergey Brin

Moving to OpenSim

I've never met Zonja Capalini, but her blog has lots of good writing , and you can feel the anger flowing from her keyboard.

Her latest post is about her OpenSim Condensation land, and how it's progressing, and how she is still very angry at Linden Labs. From what she has written about her customer support experience, I don't blame her.

Now I really want to go to Condensation land, it looks beautiful.

I have been able to install my OpenSim on a Linux server, and it's permanently on, but it just sits there idling, as I really don't have much time to do anything with it yet.

The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet. -William Gibson

The Ultimate SL blog list. At least for now

ArminasX Saiman has been a very busy man. Some time ago he decided to have a look how many Secondlife blogs were active. This was done via Technorati rank.

I wondered this some time ago , and the consensus was there would be 500 or so, ArminasX and his mighty crew of helpers found at least 1,202. I guess it was a lot of work.

I'm equal ranked 84th :-) Who would have guessed?

It's more likely that there are a few more that have been missed, and there are those that are abandoned, but one day might be resumed.

Personally I hate it when someone deletes their blog, it's almost like a personal insult.

"Here are the thoughts I shared with you, and now I'm taking them back."

I think the pleasure of completed work is what makes blogging so popular. You have to believe most bloggers have few if any actual readers. The writers are in it for other reasons.

Blogging is like work, but without coworkers thwarting you at every turn. All you get is the pleasure of a completed task.

- Scott Adams (creater of Dilbert )

Learning French

I have been trying to learn to speak French, but so far I can't say it's been going well. It would have been nice to have the change to live there for a year or so, but I suspect with the current economic outlook, it's not very likely.

I have a few books on the country and some teaching aids, so to get a deeper understanding of the country, I have read or am reading:-

Sixty million Frenchmen can't be wrong

50 things to hate about the French

The discovery of France

The complete Merde

Unleash your inner Gaul

Two lipsticks and a lover

For the language itself:-

Teach yourself French in 3 months

BBC the French experience

Michael Thomas

Accelerated learning French

I'm still working my way though them, Michael Thomas has a good reputation for his European languages, but I have yet to see how the Chinese course works.

Can't say I found French For Dummies very helpful, it was very dry, and not very interesting.

There is also Rosetta Stone software, I hear it's very good. But these days I use Linux at home, and it's Windows only

I would love to spend some time in France hopefully in July, but that is when the French all take holidays.

It's also a case to decide what part of France to visit.

The history of the country is surprisingly diverse, at least as written by Graham Robb. Much more than the simplistic ideas than the Anglo Saxons moved in after the Romans left.

I've been to Paris once before, and Calais twice, and living in the UK for so many years I really would like to see more of Europe.

We always have been, we are, and I hope that we always shall be, detested in France.
The Duke of Wellington

F***myslife

GoSpeed Racer has started http://fmyslife.wordpress.com/

I hope it becomes a place of angry venting :-)



Life may suck, but it beats the alternative.
-Anon

Censorship and who is touching your ports.

The Australian Senator Steven Conroy has had a few set backs recently, the main one being his blacklist being published on Wikileaks, this brought the entire list under scrutiny.

What was found was not impressive, I quote from the Brisbane Times

But about half of the sites on the list are not related to child porn and include a slew of online poker sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator and even a Queensland dentist.

Clever isn't it. Blocking a Dentist.

I used to work and help run an ISP in Australia, and the Govt have been trying to find ways to censor it for over ten years. I remember having discussions about it in 1999.

Remember this is for our own good, just like the Australia Card was supposed to be as well. This was a National ID Card for everyone, that was to be implemented in the 80s, it never got off the ground. Two years ago, the Howard Government was going to give it another try. But it would only be needed to access the Government provided Medicare system, so as long as you had enough money for private heath care you were fine. (HA!)
BTW I asked Vint Falken if they had ID cards in Belgium, they do, and you can find a list of countries that have them here.

So what else other treats to the Internet have surfaced recently?
SCO have a Morality police section it seems.

SCO is short for Santa Cruz Organisation, they are, or were a major player in the Unix software field, but when faced with declining sales due to Linux, they decided to take Linux to court. So they have taken Red Hat, IBM, and Novel to court for various things, and have found to be totally wrong in pretty much everything they alleged.

They also share with this group cp80.org an intersection of Mormons

So this group of Mormons want to stop all porn and objectionable material from TCP/IP port 80, that the main web browsers port. Weird.

I understand Mormons are very popular in California right now in the way they made sure that Prop 8 didn't pass.


It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creeds into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.”

Robert Heinlein

Quote of the day

Soft Cake
Originally uploaded by jjacek

Jacek wins Quote of the day with :-

"Oh bother. I borked my kernel and now I can't boot."









Everybody may know that work is good and games are bad. But everybody can be wrong too.
-- Edward Castronova

Let hope

fix-sl-lets-hope
Originally uploaded by shockwaveplasma

I have been looking for a way to so this for a while, and finally found Obama.me

Thanks a lot to Vint Falken for the picture



"When using single quotes, double quotes do not need escaping and vice versa. " - lslwiki

OSGRID

I visited http://osgrid.org , for a short time, just to see what it looked like. Well, it needs a much better Ruth, it's quite awful.

This visit was inspired by the latest post from Gwyn basically she says the future of 3D worlds is with Linden Labs following the Opensim model. But go read it yourself.

“We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

Happy New year

Happy New Year

Wishing everyone a great 2009

New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls and humbug resolutions. - Mark Twain

Not a believer

I'm not one for faith, as it seems to be the ultimate answer for those who can no longer think for themselves.

One thing I do believe is that the UK Labour Government has created yet another disaster in the encouragement of so called "Faith Schools".

So rather than mixing with young people of different backgrounds, and possibly learning that there are other people who have different ideas, these schools will foster isolationism and intolerance.

Another brilliant idea from Tony Blair, who converted to Catholicism, and oddly enough is supposed to encourage peace in the Middle east.

Question:-
Lets see, name a group of people starting with, ummm "C", who have persecuted the Jews for just about 2000 years?
Who has also been the enemy of the Arabs since about 1300 or so , that also starts with "C"

Answer:-
The Catholic Church...

Genius....Really,,




So yeah..I gave...


Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color. - Don Hirschberg

On the Bus

Here is a quick update on the Atheist bus campaine

You can see here that the word is spreading

When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion.
-Robert Pirsig

Fighting Australian Censorship

The Australian government is hitting a few obstacles with it's Cleanfeed program, and I can only say this makes me very pleased.


Although the forces of stupidity are strong
The Rebel Alliance is starting stir.
And what are Rebels without posters

We have a petition as well

The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion. ~Henry Steele Commager

SL Magazines that exists outside SL distribution.

This is Nadine Nozakis entry for the Bloggers Mix n Match.

You can find the details of this idea of here at Vint Falkens blog:-

http://www.vintfalken.com/sl-projects/sl-bloggers-mixn-match-link-overview/


Now read on:-

I enjoy reading, I read news, gossip and much about SL on a daily basis yet this topic made me think, what to write about. I mean what is a magazine?

wiktionary gives:
magazine (plural magazines)

1.An ammunition storehouse.

2.Detachable ammunition holder enabling multiple rounds of ammunition to be fed to a gun.

3.A periodical publication, generally consisting of sheets of paper folded in half and stapled at fold.

I'm pretty sure that even though I'm a fan of guns in SL, and carry on Zoes tradition, as I'm a girl with gun, that not the topic for this blog, it's the third meaning. As the works changes zine are as well. There are mainly two big types of magazines out there now. News and others on of the biggest running magazines in SL is the Avastar, even if it have been closed, it still much what formed the news around second life.

Today I see the news flow dominated by Hamlet and his New World Notes , and Tateru writing for Massively.

Neither of these are magazines in the traditional meaning. They are public stories more like a blog, when ready and the news value is there, something on the other hand you can see major magazines turn into on the web side.

The other form that is growing now is big nice fashion magazines, such as Glam and Runway. These are nice web publication at about 100 pages each. Nice layout nice images and the really nice glossy paper feel, however I miss reading them in my google reader.

Even given that the fashion magazine can be a nice long relaxing read, and gives some great ideas both in photo and dressing. The art in many of the more stunning outfits and dresses is quite awesome, but must be kept to the look like normal super models. Maybe as I'm a vampire it's a little strange. Maybe it's just a part of the fashion industry as such.

Once I meet a boy who was planning on making a paper, now one hears very little of it. Now it's more modest in that area probably to do with the economy slowing down. Lets look at an example.

New World Notes, main writer Hamlet Au. This is one of the major sources of news in Second Life, Hamlet keeps following many different aspects and also have contact with some of the Lindens feeding us with comments and information from the inside.

Hamlet makes the publications much like a blog like the major web-newspapers. The pace is usually about two three stories a day.

By Nadine Nozaki

Christian love for all, except when you want to kill gay children

There is a good reason for me giving money to the Humanist Society, and it's right here:-

http://baptisthomeschooling.blogspot.com/2008/10/perilous-times-sodomites-in- school.html

Oh, It's gone, it seem that wanting to blow up a school full of gay kids is a bit much for blogger.

Thanks to Google Cache you can read all of this fantastic christian love for others.

http://tinyurl.com/5ewusx



"When lawlessness is abroad in the land, the same thing will happen here that happened in Nazi Germany. Many of those people involved with Adolph Hitler were Satanists, many of them were homosexuals--the two things seem to go together."
--Pat Robertson

and the quote, well most of those working with Hitler were actually Catholic, and not many where Gay either.

On the busses

The things you see on the sides of busses these days

BTW, I donated. I'm sure the FSM will forgive me.



Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. - Seneca the Younger

The Great Wall of Australia

I used to work in the the ISP industry in Australia sometime in 2000, the Government of the time was always throwing around the idea of censoring the Internet.


The main culprit was Sen Richard Alston beloved by the Register as the World Biggest Luddite, now we see this ridiculas idea being carried by Sen Stephen Conroy , who just might be the Worlds Second biggest Luddite.

It was generally agreed in the ISP world that this was impossible/impractical, and just a way to get votes. But the government has been beavering away in it's fevered desire to shield us sensitive Australians from the sad debauchery that prevails on the Internet.

The government has a Netalert program that is designed to keep children safe on line, this of course is a worthy idea, but typically doesn't really account for much. The UK has a simalare site called Stay Safe on Line. I suspect many of the UK internet users have ever heard of it.

So far only one person has come out to save us, and produced the wonderful Netalarm it's designed to help those poor adults who are just to stupid to think for themselves, oh hang on, this might just be a parody site. It will get blocked soon, you can count on that.


There are a few issues that need to be looked at


Someone else is going to decide what I can look at on the Internet...seemingly I have to abide by their moral standards. This is the same as someone deciding what TV I can watch, or what Videos I can rent.


Does this mean I will all ways have Safe Search turned on in Google? Possibly since google can find P0rn it will be blocked totally.


One of my favorite site is Boingboing.net, it is blocked by many censorware programs as it links to ways to bypass these Censoring programs. So I can say goodbye to BoingBoing.


Age of Conan has bare breasted woman characters, so we can say goodbye to Chimmera. (Actually it seems a wardrobe revolution has taken place in the last few months)


SL, that's a major den of sin and depravity, well I guess the Gov had better block that as well. It has it's one embeded browser, so that will not be blocked.






Does filtering work?

Not if your a reasonably intelligent child, it only took Tom Wood about 30 minutes to break the government recommended filter (GO TOM!!). Not only did he bypass the blocks, but it still looked like it was working as the tool bar icon was still there.


So lets see what else can we use to view material that might be deemed unsuitable by those Australians who feel the need not to be coddled by the government:-




We have overseas proxy servers

The Tor network

Webpages by email

SL users have a web browser built in the client, oh of course, it's probably going to be blocked.




So what can we do? Probably not much as it's almost certain not to work, and will be another waste of taxpayers money. The govenment wil no dought call it a truimph, and says it protects familys.

I have some questions
What happens if the servers doing the filtering fail?
Will the interent just completly stop?
Where will the servers be located?
How do I get a site rechecked to get unblocked?
Is the list of blocked sites and material going to be public? If not, why not?


There is a petition than can be signed, but then again, since when have politicians ever regarded them? I guess that site will be blocked as well.


We used to say that Australia has a "cultural cringe" but..well that was a long time ago , and now we Australians are well over that. I have a slight problem with that belief. It looks to me that it's still there and actually increasing.


You only have to look in the newspaper about the supposed outrage over the latest works by Bill Hensen, a world renowned photographer. Our brilliant new PM called them "revolting", but I'm glad to say that some people have spoken out for common sense . In the past he has done nude of teenagers and there has not been a problem, so what has changed?


Sometimes I'm ashamed to be an Australian.


Censorship reflects society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime. ~Potter Stewart

Hate and the Virtual Person

The definition of a Hate Crime from the UK Home office

Hatred is a strong term that goes beyond simply causing offence or hostility. Hate crime is any criminal offence committed against a person or property that is motivated by an offender's hatred of someone because of their:-

race, colour, ethnic origin, nationality or national origins
religion
gender or gender identity
sexual orientation
disability

In Second Life and other Virtual worlds people can choose their race, colour, height, even not to be human.

In the last few weeks there have been some remarkably bigoted opinions aired on some blogs, about other people who make the choices to be a difference race or gender. Threats have been made to "out" them. I personally think this is covered under gender identity.

Sharing/publishing information about the RL another SL citizen is also forbidden under the TOS, and can get your account cancelled.

Sophrosyne Stenvaag was so disturbed by these occurrences that she has decided to make October 25 "Gender Freedom day", and this will be celebrated in Extropia.

What is even more disturbing is the fact Sophrosyne and I are seeing different occurrences of the same problems. So it's even worse than we both thought.

The Metaverse Journal has also reported on the day, and a google for "Gender Freedom day" brings up a few results, but not nearly enough for it to be widly known.

Class, race, sexuality, gender and all other categories by which we categorize and dismiss each other need to be excavated from the inside. :- Dorothy Allison

Freedom to Read

This week is Banned Book Week in the USA.

September 27 - October 4, 2008

I quote from the Website:-

"It was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. More than a thousand books have been challenged since 1982."


According to the American Library Association, more than 400 books were challenged in 2007. The 10 most challenged titles were:

1. And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
2. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
3. Olive’s Ocean by Kevin Henkes
4. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
7. TTYL by Lauren Myracle
8. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
9. It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
10. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Why is this so important? Because it means the suppression of ideas, the ideas that can show other long held ideas to be fake.

Who has hit the headlines for wanting to ban books? OMG it's Sara Palin, but is it true?

It might have been possible a year ago to find out for sure, but now, I suspect every disinformation trick will have been pulled, and getting the real story via the internet is impossible.

"There are many little ways to enlarge your child's world. Love of books is the best of all."

— Jacqueline Kennedy

New threat to Internet privacy

Seems the ITU and the UN want to know who everyone is on the Internet. Unsurprisingly China also want to know that your not really a dog.


http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10040152-38.html?tag=nl.e703



When it comes to privacy and accountability, people always demand the former for themselves and the latter for everyone else. - David Brin

Petition to Linden Lab on the Policy of Trademark Enforcement

Totally Taken from Gwyneth Llewelyn, no change has been made to the text or content.

LL has gone way to far with this Trademark issue.

Petition to Linden Lab on the Policy of Trademark Enforcement

By: Gwyneth Llewelyn

Introduction

Linden Research Inc., a company incorporated in Delaware, United States of America (”Linden”), doing business as Linden Lab®, developers of the Second Life® virtual world platform, owners of not only the Second Life® registered trademark (in the US, Europe, and other countries), and the eye-on-hand logo, but also of several recently registered trademarks (including, but not exclusive, to the words “SL”, “SL Grid”, “Second Life Grid”, “2nd Life”, etc.), has launched, in May 2004, the “Second Life® Fansite Toolkit”, which was later reinforced with referral programmes like “Viva La Evolution”, to positively encourage the widespread use of Linden’s trademarks, so long as it was quite clearly displayed that no infringement was intended, and a disclaimer to non-affiliation to Linden.
A direct quotation of the previous accepted use includes the following paragraph:

USE OF SECOND LIFE MARKS

While you are in full compliance with the usage guidelines described here, you may use the “Second Life” name on your website, as well as the related logos and graphics available at Toolkit, solely in the form described there. Additionally, you may use screenshots from Second Life to the extent that Linden Lab has the right to authorize use of the content within such screenshot, including screenshots of Linden in-world objects and Linden avatars, subject to these usage guidelines.

The full text of the acceptable use of Linden’s trademarks is published here. Three versions of the Fansite Toolkit were distributed by Linden, which included banners, logos, and a set of images, as well as a PDF encouraging their dissemination (the link is not available any more).

Under these gentle terms, users of the Second Life® platform have set up dozens of thousands of websites, blogs, forums, 3rd party services (both inside the Second Life® environment or on the World-Wide Web). The intended purpose of the “Fansite Toolkit” was not only accomplished, but overwhelmingly effective. From about 10,000 registered users in May 2004, the number of registrations climbed to over 13 million users in March 2008, and the growth continues — as well as the growth in the number of fansites related to the Second Life® environment. A quick search on Google comparing the number of times “Second Life” is referred on Linden’s own sites (9000+ results) compared to what the non-Linden sites (24 million results) shows quite clearly that the promotion and marketing of “Second Life” as a Linden product is, by far, being done outside Linden’s own feeble efforts — as it was intended.

The terms of the “Fansite Toolkit” enabled furthermore a small startup company in San Francisco, without any advertising, promotion, or little public relations in 2004, to create one of the most effectively known technologies on the Internet, enjoying raving press reviews in late 2006, and, since then, a product and an environment that cannot be further ignored by the mainstream. Like it or hate it, the Second Life® virtual world is now part of the Internet’s history. All this was achieved thanks to the huge community of very enthusiastic users of Linden’s platform, who have promoted its use way beyond Linden’s own ability to market their own product.

“Genericide”

The secret of Second Life®’s success was, however, accompanied by an adaptation of the word to describe not only Linden’s product, but a new concept that did not exist before: a community of users that generate content in a shared environment, using Linden’s tools and Linden-managed computer servers to provide an interconnected grid where this content can exist. The usage of “Second Life” was never strictly associated with the client software (the 3D viewer installed on users’ computers), the server software (running on Linden’s servers), or the communication protocol (which, until recently, was even unnamed). Rather, “Second Life” was employed, for the past four years, to describe all the above together as a technology empowering user-created content in a virtual world environment using Linden’s technology. The subtle difference has, however, huge implications. “Second Life”, as employed on the 24 million links stored by Google,^(ref) describes not patented software (the Second Life® client is, indeed, free and open source) nor a “technology”, but an “environment”, a “virtual world”.

The situation is very analogous to the usage of the terms “World-Wide Web” or “Internet” (the latter having at some point been trademarked by Microsoft around 1995, with little success), both describing a certain use of several technologies, hardware, software, and telecommunications, but where no definite claim can be made on the resulting environment created by a community of users. Derivative words like “Internet Service Provider” or “Web consultant” are popularly used. The difference between those two terms is that no organisation currently managed to secure a claim to those names.

But further examples are also common, where registered trademarks have been adopted by a community of users generating content for their platforms. Thousands of sites and technologies have used the term “Mac” in their names, or even “Windows” (clear cases where the respective owners, Apple and Microsoft, have indeed solidly claimed their registered trademarks). “Mac” and “Windows” fansites abound and help the promotion of these technologies and platforms. The difference, in those two cases, is that the popularity of those technologies was heavily promoted by their owners through massive advertising and public relations. And still both companies “allow” the widespread use of their trademarked names in 3rd party websites, fansites, service providers, or even products!

Second Life®, by contrast, never enjoyed the same level of promotion by Linden. It relied on the “Fansite Toolkit” as the primary — and most successful! — way of “viral marketing”, effectively crowdsourcing the co-promotion of the Second Life® virtual world by its users. And these, obviously, were very eager to do so — since all participants in the virtual world, Linden and their users, benefit tremendously from this cooperative promotion. “Your World, Your Imagination”, Linden’s motto for their Second Life® virtual world platform, was taken to an extreme, and perhaps unprecedented, level in the history of technology dissemination.

Linden, however, now fears (probably very correctly) that the usage of Second Life® might fall under “genericide“.

Recent developments

Possibly advised by their legal advisers, Linden announced here and here that they would start as of now to aggressively discourage the usage of all Linden-related registered trademarks, thus effectively reverting its four-year old policy of co-promotion through marketing crowdsourcing. The major issue with the current population of Second Life® users is that dozens of thousands of products and services were created within compliance with the old guidelines, and there is no provision made by Linden to “grandfather” existing services now currently in existence. Almost all have no legal protection that will allow them to contest any of Linden’s claims in court to shut their services down if they receive Linden’s Cease & Desist letters. Linden’s claim to their trademarks is, naturally, factually correct, unambiguous, and entirely within Linden’s rights.

There is, however, one aspect of Linden’s claims where we feel the Guidelines are overshooting the legitimate intent of Linden Research in preserving their trademarked brands and preventing their dilution. We refer to the section “Proper Reference to Linden Lab’s Brand Names in Text“, which basically outlines how any mention of terms trademarked by Linden has to be written any text published. Among other things, it claims to make sure the brand names are only ever used with an “appropriate generic noun” of which Linden provides a list, and that “as often as possible”, down to capitalisation, spelling, elisions and contractions. In effect, this precludes any usage of trademarked terms in text in most of the forms current nowadays, and dictates to commentators, bloggers and critics how and what to write when referring to trademarked terms.

The issue, however, is even more serious. Although Linden’s prevention of the use of trademarks under the new guidelines could be contested in court, either in the US or elsewhere, possibly appealing to estoppel, as a matter of fact, Linden can — through its new Terms of Service, that all users required to sign to access their content on Linden’s virtual world — simply ban any user that Linden considers to be in violation of their trademark claims. By virtue of the same principle, Linden can simply ban any user that exerts his or her rights to free speech, nominative use of trademarked terms as laid down by US law, or equivalent rights under local legislation.

This is “doing justice with your own hands” — without laws, without trial, without a jury, without recourse. The Linden Terms of Service allow Linden to ban any user from using their services, without any reason whatsoever. Linden can, at whim, delete accounts and content (even copyrighted content) from any user without a complaint.

Granted, complaints can be filed against Linden — but in a court of law. In at least one case (Bragg vs. Linden), a user of the Second Life® world managed, through a lawsuit, and with a settlement agreement, to get access to his content back. But this requires effectively users to sue Linden in order to get their access back, no matter if they are or not violating Linden’s trademarks. Linden does not require any impartial judgment to validate a user’s claims on the lack of violation. Linden can safely ignore their four-year-old policy and revert their decision at whim — because they can ban accounts that refuse to comply with their new Terms of Service.

In effect, Linden is able to enforce their own interpretation of the usage of their trademarks by banning all content they view as “threatening” to their claims on registered trademarks, no matter if it is displayed inside Linden’s virtual world or anywhere else on the world. Linden’s decision to ban avatars and remove content is unilateral and not appealable unless a user is willing to sue Linden in a court under the jurisdiction of the State of California.

This total reversal of Linden’s policy threatens to shut down most (fortunately not all) of the sites providing 24 million links to Linden’s products and services; it threatens to deprive Second Life of hundreds or thousands of 3rd party services, websites, fan sites, blogs, Second Life®-specific media, artistic and cultural developments, educational and research efforts — not to mention thousands or dozens of thousands of the most energic “evangelisers” that have co-promoted Linden’s products and technologies in the past which might, in less than three months, see their accounts banned and their content deleted with little or no hope of appeal.

Open petition to Linden Research, Inc.

The community of users of the Second Life® world always recognised, beyond a shadow of doubt, Linden’s full right to its registered trademarks, which were almost always duly credited, and clearly stated their non-affiliation with Linden and that they had no intention of infringing in any of Linden’s rights or claims to the trademarks. Some of those trademarks were never disputed, for several years since their registration and use by Linden, and Linden’s claim to them is solid and universally accepted world-wide. Linden, in return, gently condescended to a limited usage of their registered trademarks for specific purposes, well stated in a clear document (the “Fansite Guidelines”). The very few exceptions where abuse occurred could be effectively dealt with by Linden’s own legal advisers and were very reduced in number.

It is our belief that the extreme switch to the complete opposite of what has been actively promoted in the past four years is not a good marketing strategy — effectively, fighting off, one by one, all the most energetic promoters of Linden and their products, shutting down their right to talk and co-promote Linden’s technology and environment, ban their accounts, and remove their content. A four-year policy grants (at least under estoppel) the large community of enthusiastic supporters the moral right to request from Linden a better model of co-promotion, one that is fair and balanced, protective of Linden’s legal rights as valid owners of their registered trademarks, but also that allows “fansites” to continue to spread and promote Linden’s products without fear of litigation.

We thus propose the following:

1. Accept that, by introducing the “Fansite Guidelines” four years ago, Linden effectively allowed co-branding and co-promotion of their registered trademarks, so long as these were displayed on “website[s] created and maintained by residents or other devotees of Second Life®, with content primarily focused on some aspect of Second Life.” and had no other purpose. These “Fansite Guidelines” lead to fair expectations (under estoppel) of goodwill of Linden towards a fair use of their trademarks without intention to infringe on any of Linden’s rights.
   
2. Rewrite, but not eliminate, the “Fansite Guidelines” to be more strict, but still allow the usage of Linden’s trademarked words as part of the co-promotional effects, accepting that their existence in no way invalidates Linden’s claims on their registered trademarks, but only serve as a vehicle for promotion and marketing.
3. Require that all such websites register with Linden and formally accept the Guidelines (very similar to the request for the display of the “inSL” logo). Remember your international audience, too, and provide translations as well.
   
4. Reinforce the duty of all websites under the “Fansite Guidelines” to be strictly compliant with these, or face a Cease & Desist letter/Takedown notice.
   
5. Request to all owners of such websites a clear display of their non-affiliation with Linden or its subsidiaries, stated clearly and unambiguously.
6. Reword the statements of the Brand Center, which currently states that no requests for the usage of any of the trademarks (with few exceptions) will be taken, and that most emails will never be answered (or even read). Instead, work on a case-by-case basis, grandfather existing products and services, and work with organisations, groups, and companies owning those websites to make sure they clearly comply with the Guidelines.
   
7. Request assistance from the users to locate, identify, and report websites where your Fansite Guidelines are not in compliance, or their non-affiliation with Linden is not being clearly and unambiguously stated, or where your registered trademarks are illegally used. Deal with each case separately and encourage first the non-compliant websites to voluntarily display conforming information, and threaten with a Cease & Desist or takedown letter if they refuse.
8. Remove the threat to ban avatars from users that have inadvertently ignored (or misunderstood) the Guidelines. Instead, warn them and give due notice of their lack of compliance with the Guidelines, encourage them to sign on and register their sites, and validate their compliance after the warning.
   
9. Continue to invest in the world-wide co-promotion of the “Second Life®” brand by launching different levels of “affiliation programmes”; “inSL” is a good start but a very weak one with limited value (no aggressive promotion by Linden of the logo and word).

We would also request Linden to further clarify the potentially censurous policy towards residents implied in the guidelines in conjunction with the Terms of Service:

1. Clarify that the rules and policies outlined in the brand guidelines under the heading of Proper Reference to Linden Lab’s Brand Names in Text do not apply to cases covered by rights of free speech, including but not limited to nominative use of trademarked terms under US law and equivalent rights conferred upon users of the Second Life® service by local legislation.
2. Clarify that Linden Research does not intend to ban or threaten to ban users exerting the rights delineated above, independently of the contractual relationship created by their usage of the Second Life® service.

We feel that the above proposal, if correctly implemented, and duly promoted, will not only reinforce Linden’s claim to their registered trademarks, but positively encourage their further widespread in all media, without hurting the millions of hours spent in the past year by dozens of thousand of users to promote and disseminate Linden’s products and services world-wide.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following residents, who helped fleshing out the above document, provided insight, comments, and rewriting of several sections, as well as some minor legal advice.

Cat Magellan and Ana Lutetia, for their encouragement in writing the petition
Rheta Shan, for the extensive revision and adding several sections and changes
SignpostMarv Martin for comments and more external links
Jamie Palisades, for comments on estoppel and genericide
iAlja Writer, Tateru Nino, and several others for taking a look at the document and making some private comments
PalUP Ling, for the T-shirt (and his promotion)
Jacek Antonelli, for her uncannily good Mouth in Foot logo!
The unofficial community of Second Life® residents on Twitter, for a lot of comments, input, and ideas
An even larger group of bloggers that wrote about the issue, providing lots to think about, and including, but definitely not limited, to the following articles:
http://www.vintfalken.com/insl-your-world-your-imagination-our-trademark/
http://sl.governormarley.com/slpress/?p=27
http://codebastardredgrave.com/2008/03/26/so-they-owe-us-a-sl/
http://dedricmauriac.wordpress.com/2008/03/25/a-generic-post-to-avoid-copyright-infringement/
http://www.technovia.co.uk/2008/03/the-huge-kerfuffle-over-second-life-trademarks.html
http://harperganesvoort.wordpress.com/2008/03/27/sl-brand-center-followup/
http://laetizia.wordpress.com/2008/04/02/clarity-there-is-movement-there-is-not/
http://www.massively.com/2008/04/02/making-your-mark/
http://getasecondlife.net/2008/03/second-life-geral/a-comunidade-portuguesa/ (even more links here)

Robin Linden, for some early clarifications before Catherine Linden posted her article on Linden’s Official Blog
and Everett Linden for reading this document before it was publicly posted.

Permission to copy the above text, modify it, or translate it into other languages, is granted by the author.

“Second Life®”, “SL®”, “SL Grid®”, and “Linden Lab®” are registered trademarks by Linden Research, Inc. (Delaware, USA)

Jacek Antonelli’s Mouth in Foot logo is used under a Creative Commons Attribution License.