High Fidelity – Page 12

July 25, 2014

Buy Your SysAdmin A Beer, Even If It’s Virtual

The first rule of SysAdmin club is that nobody talks about SysAdmin club. The second rule of SysAdmin club is “How can I perform this boring bulk task with a script?” Today, the last Friday in July is the fourteenth Systems Administrator Appreciation Day. Generally people outside of SysAdmin groups aren’t aware this day exists, indeed plenty of people inside SysAdmin groups aren’t aware this day exists.

xkcd have a comic explaining the devotion to duty that goes into being a SysAdmin :

A comic should be here — Devotion To Duty

SysAdmins are the people who make it possible to login to your systems, be it at work, Second Life, Kitely, Inworldz, OpenSim, World Of Warcraft yadda yadda yadda. They help you recover that data you didn’t backup, they help you connect to the wireless network despite the instructions on how to do so being on the wall above their head.

They ask you “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” and really mean it as a helpful suggestion and have scorn poured upon them for doing so. No really, it’s a good tip, trust me I’m a Sys… umm blogger.

Plenty of SysAdmins you don’t see very often, they are mysterious, they may well spend most of their time in what is known as “The Server Room“, a place that is air conditioned to an absurd level to stop the servers from overheating, it’s cold in there and often dark, but these are the sort of conditions in which a SysAdmin can thrive. When you see them at an office function you ask someone else who they are, and the other person reveals their name, a name you’ve heard of, a name you’ve cursed, the name of the person who put a limit on your mailbox and refused to even consider raising said limit until you’d deleted those funny cat videos.

SysAdmins can in many cases be easy to spot, they are usually the people with their heads in their hands after yet another wonderful idea from senior management undid all the good work they carried out after the last wonderful idea from senior management.

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July 10, 2014

The Problem Of Governance In A Virtual World When There’s Only One Governor

On another question, its also unfortunate that in some countries in the EU that gambling is allowed, but because our servers are all in the US these residents cannot gamble. This is something we can fix and we’re working on it. In the meantime, unfortunately no gambling. – Zee Linden 1st August 2008.

The above quote from the then CFO of Linden Lab, Zee Linden (AKA John Zdanowski) was actually in relation to a discussion about Linden Lab annoying the life out of us Europeans by introducing VAT to our bills. Eventually a lot of us realised Linden Lab were the wrong target and I still find the law silly as it applies to Second Life. There are good reasons for collecting VAT for electronic services, but Second Life isn’t a good example. The problem is that the EU regulation simply isn’t flexible enough. However I’m not here to talk about VAT today, I’m here to talk about governance and in particular governance in a virtual world.

The VAT discussion was an example of laws applying to one set of Second Life users based on where they live. However this was only an issue for European residents, it didn’t apply to Americans. The gambling ban on the other hand applied to all Second Life residents, even those who lived in countries where online gambling wasn’t illegal. I should point out here that even in those countries, gambling in Second Life would have been questionable as it was unregulated. However even a licensed gambling outlet would not have been allowed in Second Life because Linden Lab are based in San Francisco.

Now if we go back a bit further in time to the Second Life Community Convention of August 2007 we can find an old Reuters interview with Philip Rosedale. This interview is interesting because it gives an insight into where Second Life was back then and what they were hoping for. However the section I want to highlight is this exchange :

Reuters: Is there a problem where German laws are more restrictive than American laws on ageplay? And likewise, American laws may be more restrictive than European laws on gambling. Are we moving to the lowest common denominator?

Philip Rosedale: No.

The lowest common denominator is just not what you want to do. It’s not going to happen on the Internet, and it’s not going to happen here. We’re doing what we can as a platform to try to make that the case.

If you want to apply a local jurisdictional law to people, we’re going to make it so you apply that to people who are individual avatars trying to go to one place. That’s what we’re doing with age verification. We’re making that a feature that’s tied to land and people, not a feature that’s tied to the whole system. When we’re confronted with a legal or regulatory matter where we need for legal reasons to enable a certain type of restriction on behavior, we do that as locally as possible and not have a lowest common denominator.

Reuters: So there may be code in the future where your avatar is tied to your real-life nationality and then based on that nationality certain restrictions may or may not come into play?

Philip Rosedale: Right.

If the local restrictions that countries for example are making on avatars, if those restrictions are well-published and transparent and in the public light, I think we’re going to get to a good overall set of choices. Countries will make the right choices about how they want to restrict people’s use in Second Life if they can see what other countries are doing rather than us being the sole decider of what’s right locally.

So we can see here that Linden Lab wanted to be able to restrict behaviour locally. However this is very challenging when Linden Lab are the only governor, more on that later but what fascinates me about this is that the new skill gaming policy is actually going to try and enforce this notion of restricting people’s access to areas and activities based on their local jurisdiction. This has been quite a long time coming.

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June 24, 2014

Second Life Can Still Thrive With The Birth Of Linden Lab’s New World

Back in March 2009 Tateru Nino wrote an article for Massively : Give Us More Worlds Linden Lab. The general point of the article was that Second Life should not be the only virtual world Linden Lab managed. Tateru’s idea was that there could be multiple grids running on Second Life technology and that each world could have different characteristics. However Tateru also wrote :

One-size-fits-all doesn’t just doesn’t work in the mass-market. Otherwise there’d only be one kind of iPod. What the Lab really needs is a number of differentiated ‘world’-products, each offering something a little different.

In October 2011, I wrote a blog on a very similar theme : Multiple Linden Lab Grids For More Virtual Worlds. I also talked of Second Life technology being used for multiple use cases and that Second Life did not need to be the only club in town :

This isn’t to say I feel the main grid should close, the main grid is where it’s currently all at and Linden Lab should nurture and cherish what they have, develop it and make that product an appealing product to current and new users who want that level of freedom and creativity, it remains a wonderful idea. However in terms of wider appeal and getting others interested in their own controlled spaces, Linden Lab could well consider making Second Life the technology the option for those who seek it, rather than Second Life being the only product in town on their servers.

Now Tateru and myself were largely talking about multiple grids using Second Life technology, rather than virtual worlds running on completely unrelated technology. However with news of Linden Lab’s new virtual world plans making the news, I really don’t see why Second Life and the new world can’t exist at the same time. They will simply offer different options and appeal to different people. Obviously both worlds will also appeal to people who want to engage with both worlds but this is no different to how things are now with people who engage with one or more of Second Life, Kitely, Inworldz and Opensim. People are also keeping an eye on High Fidelity.

I’m a bit bemused at the reaction in some quarters to Linden Lab’s announcement on the new virtual world. People are talking of how problematic it will be to migrate. They are talking of how they should be compensated for their Second Life land. They are talking of how higher sales tax fees and lower land tax fees will hinder rather than help content creators. The reason I’m bemused about this is because Linden Lab have not announced that Second Life is closing and that people will have to move to their new world, indeed, as Inara Pey reported, they’ve said :

Does this mean we’re giving up on Second Life? Absolutely not. It is thanks to the Second Life community that our virtual world today is without question the best there is, and after 11 years we certainly have no intention of abandoning our users nor the virtual world they continually fill with their astounding creativity. Second Life has many years ahead of it, and in addition to improvements and new developments specifically for Second Life, we think that much of the work we do for the next generation project will also be beneficial for Second Life.

Now I can understand people being cautious about the future of Second Life, especially those who own a lot of land, but I can’t understand some of the outrage at this point in time. I would have a different point of view if Linden Lab were telling people they must migrate, but that is not the case.

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May 7, 2014

High Fidelity Needs Time To Develop

I find myself being dragged away from the wonders of Fantasy Faire by some sort of magic beans. Something seems to be in the air. When The Elder Scrolls Online was in beta, one complaint from their beta testers was that they were gagged by the NDA and therefore couldn’t counter misinformed posts.

This brings me very briefly on to High Fidelity. The thing with High Fidelity is that it’s in a very limited Alpha right now, but has been generating some recent publicity. Indeed Inara Pey recently posted some excellent insights about the platform, largely based on a video that apparently should not have been consumed by the wider public.

Now here’s the thing, High Fidelity is probably at least a year away from properly seeing the light of day, so discussions about the platform, client, avatars, technology are largely a little premature. High Fidelity needs some breathing and development space.

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April 24, 2014

New Scientist Visits High Fidelity And Feels A Great Social Presence

Samantha Murphy of New Scientist Magazine has had an early look at High Fidelity and appears to be very enthusiastic about it, without actually going into a lot of details, the article Second Life 2.0: Virtual world recreates the real you is a little out of date in some regards, for example Samantha writes :

It’s easy to forget that Second Life, a free-roaming virtual world, was a big deal when it launched in 2003. Users could go anywhere, do anything. Reuters even had a dedicated Second Life reporter for a while. It still boasts a million active monthly users according to Rod Humble, the CEO of Linden Labs, which owns the game. But despite this it has never really lived up to its promise.

It’s tempting to pick this apart, Rod Humble these days appears to be a chap in a hat somewhere as we await more news on his latest venture, rather than being CEO of Linden Lab. Oh and yes, it’s Linden Lab, not Linden Labs of course. However these sort of things can be overlooked, the article is more about High Fidelity, rather than Second Life. However it’s fair to say that Samantha Murphy appears to be a virtual world enthusiast and she does mention issues with her Second Life experiences of the past :

I had a few issues with Second Life. I often conducted interviews there, but my painstakingly created avatar would often appear half-naked, with an arm stuck awkwardly above its head or facing a wall. So when Rosedale invited me to be the first to interview him in High Fidelity, I jumped at the chance.

Now what is surprising after reading that Samantha had problems with appearing half naked in Second Life is that she reveals that when she goes to High Fidelity to interview Philip Rosedale she isn’t half naked, no, it’s worse than that, she informs us that she has no clothes on! However, there is a perfectly plausible explanation for this, Samantha is in robot form in High Fidelity and therefore doesn’t need to be clothed.

Samantha soon discovers that her facial expressions are being mimicked by her avatar via use of a webcam. Then Philip arrives, unlike Samantha, Philip is clothed and in human form. Philip’s facial expressions are portrayed on his avatar too, the eyebrows rise, the mouth moves and it goes further, his hands move and point too. This isn’t all done via webcam of course, other pieces of hardware are required such as a 3D camera that uses the same chip as Microsoft’s Kinect and the hand movements are captured by use of a Razer Hydra games controller. High Fidelity’s use of these extra peripherals are signs of a more advanced experience but it’s not going to appeal to everyone.

However Samantha is impressed by this and so is Jeremy Bailenson, director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab.

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