Second Life – Page 158

December 16, 2013

Bots, Communication Limits And Why Web Based Group Pages In Second Life Still Have Potential

Communications in Second Life have long been problematic, this is largely because there’s so much communication going on, this is a good thing by the way. Some people consider Second Life group chat to be broken, indeed there’s a webpage that asks Is Second Life Group Chat Still Broken? Other people login to a load of group messages and basically ignore them because they can be annoying.

In a thread over at SLUniverse, Darien Caldwell has brought to people’s attention the fact that Linden Lab have changed the bot policy, largely in terms of communications via bots. There is a temptation to raise the issue that there has been a lack of communication regarding a communication policy but I won’t go there!

The policy appears to have changed on December 11th and the new policy can be read here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Bot_policy . The page states that bots can add to the Second Life experience but that as each IM, chat message, inventory offer and group invitation creates load on the servers there comes a point where excessive use can cause problems for other users.

This all sounds quite reasonable, that is until you see that the limit where a bot’s communication is excessive appears to be at a much lower limit than would be applied to an object or regular avatar.

Bots are now supposed to send below 5,000 messages a day. Now at first glance that may sound like a lot, that is until you see that Linden Lab consider a message sent to a group as one message per recipient. This suggests that if a group has say 10,000 members then a bot could potentially be considered to be abusing resources if it sends one message to that group as that could potentially be 10,000 individual messages sent, which would be double the policy limit.

Now this is where things don’t quite add up. If it’s considered bad for a bot to be sending 5,000 messages a day then really it should be bad for anything to be sending 5,000 messages a day. I suspect that bots are being used to abuse the messaging system and Linden Lab are trying to discourage their use in communications. This policy certainly does that.

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December 13, 2013

The Tech Companies, Not The Security Services, Should Take The Heat For The Spying Game

The recent fuss about The NSA and GCHQ allegedly spying on Second Life users largely made me go “meh”. I mean this is what I expect those agencies to do and I really can’t see any way of stopping them doing it. However there is a level whereby I feel protestations about intrusive behaviour could work, that’s at levels way below the security agencies, it’s with tech companies.

AT&T are, according to Gigaom, rolling out a new gigabit service in Austin in two flavours. Premier, for USD$70 a month and Standard, for USD$99 a month. The terminology sounds odd, with premier being the cheaper option. However here’s the catch, the cheaper option means you need to agree to being part of AT&T preferences, which is targeted advertising, or as AT&T themselves explain:

“U-verse with GigaPower Premier offer is available with your agreement to participate in AT&T Internet Preferences. AT&T may use your Web browsing information, like the search terms you enter and the Web pages you visit, to provide you relevant offers and ads tailored to your interests. ”

So basically for the cheaper option, you sell your browsing habits it seems. This idea isn’t new, websites with advertising will often have the option to turn off the adverts for a fee. However it’s still very creepy.

When the recent hoo-ha broke about the spies it wasn’t the NSA or GCHQ involvement I found creepy, nor was it Linden Lab talking to the NSA about virtual worlds. The NY Times article claims that Cory Ondrejka was the senior Linden exec involved and reports:

“In 2007, as the N.S.A. and other intelligence agencies were beginning to explore virtual games, N.S.A. officials met with the chief technology officer for the manufacturer of Second Life, the San Francisco-based Linden Lab. The executive, Cory Ondrejka, was a former Navy officer who had worked at the N.S.A. with a top-secret security clearance.

He visited the agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Md., in May 2007 to speak to staff members over a brown bag lunch, according to an internal agency announcement. “Second Life has proven that virtual worlds of social networking are a reality: come hear Cory tell you why!” said the announcement.”

That all sounds very reasonable to me, Cory seems to be using his knowledge of his old industry and showing them the power of virtual worlds, it’s the next part of the article where it all goes a bit tits up:

“It added that virtual worlds gave the government the opportunity “to understand the motivation, context and consequent behaviors of non-Americans through observation, without leaving U.S. soil.””

That’s where it all gets a bit creepy.

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December 9, 2013

Nobody Does It Better, Makes Me Feel Sad For The Rest

Nobody does it half as good as you, baby you’re the best.

Second Life has long had strange issues, for example there is an issue known as “Prim drift” whereby a prim does not seem to be in the location where you last left it, or prims mysteriously seem to disappear and then reappear, it seems there may be an explanation for this!

The Guardian breaks the news: Spy agencies in covert push to infiltrate virtual world of online gaming. Allegedly, The NSA and GCHQ decided that they need to infiltrate The Horde in World Of Warcraft and human avatars in Second Life. Furries everywhere celebrate smugly at this news. This does possibly explain why The Horde seem to win more often than not in the Warsong Gulch battleground in World Of Warcraft.

Not surprisingly Linden Lab haven’t responded to The Guardians requests, The Guardian claims :

“Microsoft declined to comment on the latest revelations, as did Philip Rosedale, the founder of Second Life and former CEO of Linden Lab, the game’s operator. The company’s executives did not respond to requests for comment.”

However in the land of Azeroth, there has been a response :

“The California-based producer of World of Warcraft said neither the NSA nor GCHQ had sought its permission to gather intelligence inside the game. “We are unaware of any surveillance taking place,” said a spokesman for Blizzard Entertainment. “If it was, it would have been done without our knowledge or permission.” “

I’m sure that the NSA and GCHQ are delighted that their covert efforts went undetected by the GM’s in World Of Warcraft, I mean it would be far more embarrassing for them if Blizzard declared “Yeah, our GM’s knew all about it.”

However the article does suggest that Linden Lab were talking to the security services, indeed it seems Linden Lab tried to sell a use case of virtual worlds as being a place where you could observe the behaviours of non US citizens without leaving the USA. I’m sure those agents who quite enjoyed the idea of leaving US soil to observe the behaviours of non US citizens were a tad miffed about this, although wild speculation that they joined the PN or griefed sims with giant penises to wreak revenge over this suggestion have been strenuously denied. The article claims:

“In May 2007, the then-chief operating officer of Second Life gave a “brown-bag lunch” address at the NSA explaining how his game gave the government “the opportunity to understand the motivation, context and consequent behaviours of non-Americans through observation, without leaving US soil“.

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December 9, 2013

Private Sim Losses Swell Due To Large Estate Closure

So last week I blogged that private estate losses were slowing down and that losses were around the teen to high 20’s mark per week. Now just to prove me wrong, this week Tyche “Statto” Shepherd reports:

“A net loss of 63 regions this week, Private Estates down by 69 while Linden Owned were up by 6”

However I do have a defence here, this change in pattern of net losses is due to the departure from the grid of 47 sims owned by Beach Front Realty, if you exclude that then this week’s losses would have been in line with the recent net loss pattern at around 22. There are still 16 sims owned by Beach Front Realty on the grid but the company have announced that all their sims will close by the end of December.

A notecard sent by Beach Front Realty stated:

“Dear Beach Front Residents:

The company of Beach Front Realty will regrettably be closing its doors effective immediately. Tiers will not be excepted on behalf of the owners at BF. All tenants will have a until the end of December to relocate to a different company.

For your convenience, we have located a reputable company that are willing to take our residents with a warm welcome. This company has been in business since 2007 and we assure you that you will be pleased with the new owners of the Estates.

The Estate name is called: Tribe Estates

The owners are as follows:

Alexxa Despres

Driftwood Miles

Please contact them as they are aware of the transition.

On behalf of Kandee and Breeze we want to take this chance to thank each and every one for the loyalty you have provided throughout the years. And would like To wish you all a Happy Holiday Season.”

I have been on friendly terms with Driftwood Miles and Alexxa Despres for quite a while, we used to joke around at Jack Linden’s office hour so I’m glad to see that they are trying to help out with soon to be homeless residents. Tribe Islands are good people.

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December 7, 2013

Toysoldier Thor Takes His Digital Art To The Real World

Second Life artist Toysoldier Thor has blogged about his first ever art exhibition outside of a virtual world. Toy exhibited 40 works of art at a corporate campus between October 26th – December 3rd and feels very happy about the experience.

This was not just a first for Toy, the corporation who invited him to exhibit were also experiencing their first exhibits by a digital artist. Financially this was a burden for Toy because unlike the digital world where you can upload an exhibit for L$10, printing artwork to canvas is a tad more expensive, to say the least. However whereas Toy wasn’t financially better off after this exhibit, the event was far from a failure, as Toy explains:

“Well I can tell you now with the conclusion of the exhibit, the response was simply amazing. More importantly, for this being my first ever real world art exhibit, the value I received from the experience was beyond my expectations in many ways”

Toy did make sales, 16 pieces were sold, which compares well with other artists who have exhibited at this location, the previous exhibit sold 2, whereas others have in the past sold a lot more, so for a first exhibit Toy did well.

However overall this was a very rewarding experience from Toy, taking the skills he’s learnt in Second Life and taking them to a RL exhibit was a huge step forward, not just for Toy, but also for other digital artists who can now see an example of how art can exist inside and outside the virtual world.

Toy started on this journey as a digital artist in 2010, he was of course already artistic and had commercial work to his name, which obviously helps, but he was a relative noob in the virtual world art scene. Spurred on by his friends in the Second Life art community, Toy gained more knowledge and skills to bring his work to life.

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