One of the things that changed during my period of not being inworld much was LL's terms of service for using SL. They changed in August 2013, they have just changed again, and the change has not been a good one.
People get het up about terms of service, often unnecessarily. The fact is, when your beautiful painting of a sunset, or the mesh for your combination screwdriver-coffeepot-and-sex-monkey, is rendered inworld, the data representing it needs to be uploaded and stored on LL's servers, and then downloaded to the viewer of anyone who comes and looks at it. This requires that data to be moved through a whole network (that there Internet thing, you may have heard of it) of other computers, possibly stored temporarily in places along the way. Besides the obvious technical challenges, in terms of intellectual property law, LL needs legal permission to do this, and that's where all that bit about granting an irrevocable non-exclusive license for the purpose of providing the service comes in.
Or did. Back in 2013, LL changed the terms of service to a much broader one, in which any content you create or upload to Second Life can be exploited, reproduced, redistributed, and more, in any manner whatsoever. Not just for the purpose of getting it from SL Viewer A to SL Viewer B across the Internet. For anything they like.
(A corollary of this - also enshrined in the new terms of service - is that we have to warrant that we have all the necessary legal rights to permit them to do this! The problem here is that this is broadly incompatible with a lot of IP law relating to Creative Commons licenses or even public domain works. Basically, the only things you can be sure won't breach the ToS are... things you have made entirely yourself, from scratch. All those prims in my tower, where I've covered them with textures bought in from USC and other places? Dubious, highly dubious. There is, though, a shovel and a pile of coal on one level, and I made the textures for those, both diffuse and sculpt maps, all by my very own self, so they are fine.)
Now, a lot of people were very upset about this, on the grounds that it constitutes an overly broad rights grab. There are quite legitimate commercial issues at stake here, too. There's quite a market out there for 3D meshes of one kind or another, they take time and talent to develop, they have a real commercial value - and if you upload one to SL, then LL now has the rights to sublicense or sell it for themselves, in any manner whatsoever, and if you don't like it, tough.
The inhibitory effects of this on content creators are significant - and SL needs its content creators, like no other online environment does. Without those creators, SL is literally nothing more than grass, water and sky, studded with people bitching at each other. Briefly. Before they give it up as a bad lot and go away to play Minesweeper.
I've been hit by this, in a small way, myself... I know SL book publishers inworld, and it so happens that my idiot mate who got me called Glorf is, in a small way, a frustrated author. He has unpublished novels, he knows me, I know publishers.... But, under LL's terms of service, putting one of his books inworld would assign almost all his IP rights to LL, forever, with no prospect of recompense, and this is a deal which not even my idiot mate is idiot enough to take.
So, recently, LL has modified those terms of service... and we have read them, and parsed them out, and discovered that the modifying parenthetical clause is stuck in at a point which makes it, essentially, meaningless. (I don't think I can add anything to the analysis here - which also, incidentally, demonstrates that the ToS is not only rotten English, but fairly rotten legalese as well.)
It is understandable, therefore, that content creators are manifestly Not Happy about this.
One wonders, really, why LL has chosen to go down this route. The best guess is that it might allow them to transfer our creations over to another service in future, the hypothetical SL2 (still very much hypothetical at this stage). I can think of other legitimate reasons for some broadening of the ToS, if I put my mind to it. Perhaps they want to make or license movies set in the world of SL, and don't want to worry about being sued if (for instance) my three-rotor hovering home in Steam SkyCity finds its way into shot. Perhaps. I could even be persuaded to accept this reasoning, if it was being presented that way - but it's not. I'm just speculating. All we know is that the ToS currently constitutes a grab at all our IP rights over our content. Which, to put it bluntly, sucks.
LL have given us informal assurances that they would never think about making free with our content in such an unprincipled manner. The problem is, informal assurances are like verbal contracts - not worth the paper they're written on. The only formal assurance we have comes from the ToS, and that says they absolutely can make free with our content.
And then there's the attitude of current boss Ebbe Altberg... who has, apparently, claimed that no one has told him what's wrong with the ToS, so LL can't possibly fix it.
It is at this point that I have to be a bit blunter than is my wont. A lot of people have made it plainly and explicitly clear what is wrong with the ToS. Granted, they have not all used exactly the same form of words - some of them are angrier than others about different parts of the thoroughgoing rights grab that it constitutes, and say so. But, overall, the message has been quite clear and unequivocal.
LL is claiming more rights than it needs to provide the SL service, and that has to change. Not just morally - commercially, too. It makes no commercial sense for anyone to provide LL with exploitable content for free.
And - which is where I have to be blunt - Ebbe Altberg knows this. He has heard what people have been saying about the ToS, and there is no way he can not know what the criticisms are.
So, when he says no one's told him what's wrong - well, he is flat out lying. There. That is me being blunt.
I really do try not to put the boot into the Lab when they don't deserve it, and I will bend over backwards to give them the benefit of the doubt. But there comes a time when they do deserve it, and there is no alternative, then, but to draw back the old steel-toecap Doc Martin and let fly. (Yes, for a job like this, I use my RL shoes. Though, right now, I would happily step on Ebbe Altberg's feet in my SL stilettoes, too.)
Showing posts with label Miss Bulmer gripes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Miss Bulmer gripes. Show all posts
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Sunday, May 18, 2014
Miss Bulmer is Positively Fuming
People who have nothing better to do, and also good memories, may remember that a while back I acquired a little pied-a-terre on the "Adult" continent of Zindra. I found a 512 lot going cheap, put together a simple cave dwelling that was vaguely in-theme with a much larger neighbouring parcel, and prepared to enjoy a little creativity and/or naughtiness.
Well, that was then and this is now... during my period of Not Getting Into SL Very Much, a land baron type started buying up the sim my little parcel is in. And as this person's tendrils spread across the sim, the friendly lesbian vampire dominatrices all fled away, to be replaced by - quite frankly - distinctly mean-looking rental units.
You can tell where this is going, can't you? Finally, it reached the point where there was this guy, and there was my little parcel, entirely surrounded by the new development.
Well, obviously, overtures were made on both sides regarding me selling off the parcel... however, from my point of view, they didn't go well. The way I see it, I want a small plot in Zindra; if I sell the one I've got, I'll have to buy a new one. And Land Baron's best offer never got anywhere near the price of a new one.
So, I figured, my options were to sell at a loss - not very appealing - or to play a long game: hunker down and wait for Land Baron's development to dry up and blow away in the wind. Annoying, but that's not why I'm cross right now.
I have, from time to time, been keeping an eye on the place, you see. Up until my last visit, things stayed more or less constant, Land Baron having considerately plonked massive landscaping prims around my little plot and put a barbed wire fence around it. However, last night, teleporting in, I found myself stuck in something, and contemplating a fountain and a tree directly over my head. Yes, folks, Land Baron had stuck a chunk of landscape prim right on top of my little parcel.
And, yes, that is why I am fuming.
I submitted an immediate AR for encroachment, of course... then I remembered that landowners can return encroaching objects, these days. So I sent them winging their way back to Land Baron, along with a notecard of liquid-nitrogen politeness raising my objections to his little scheme. What effect, if any, either of these things will have, remains to be seen.
Obviously, there are two sides to every story, and Land Baron presumably sees me as an obstreperous dog-in-the-manger obstructing the Grand Commercial Design for the sim. Which is, actually, fine by me. Just so long as Land Baron realizes that he is, in fact, a Walt Disney villain. Specifically, he's Keenan Wynn's character in Herbie Rides Again, the arrogant developer riding roughshod over the rights of the small property owner. Does anyone have a white Volkswagen Beetle I could borrow?
Well, that was then and this is now... during my period of Not Getting Into SL Very Much, a land baron type started buying up the sim my little parcel is in. And as this person's tendrils spread across the sim, the friendly lesbian vampire dominatrices all fled away, to be replaced by - quite frankly - distinctly mean-looking rental units.
You can tell where this is going, can't you? Finally, it reached the point where there was this guy, and there was my little parcel, entirely surrounded by the new development.
Well, obviously, overtures were made on both sides regarding me selling off the parcel... however, from my point of view, they didn't go well. The way I see it, I want a small plot in Zindra; if I sell the one I've got, I'll have to buy a new one. And Land Baron's best offer never got anywhere near the price of a new one.
So, I figured, my options were to sell at a loss - not very appealing - or to play a long game: hunker down and wait for Land Baron's development to dry up and blow away in the wind. Annoying, but that's not why I'm cross right now.
I have, from time to time, been keeping an eye on the place, you see. Up until my last visit, things stayed more or less constant, Land Baron having considerately plonked massive landscaping prims around my little plot and put a barbed wire fence around it. However, last night, teleporting in, I found myself stuck in something, and contemplating a fountain and a tree directly over my head. Yes, folks, Land Baron had stuck a chunk of landscape prim right on top of my little parcel.
And, yes, that is why I am fuming.
I submitted an immediate AR for encroachment, of course... then I remembered that landowners can return encroaching objects, these days. So I sent them winging their way back to Land Baron, along with a notecard of liquid-nitrogen politeness raising my objections to his little scheme. What effect, if any, either of these things will have, remains to be seen.
Obviously, there are two sides to every story, and Land Baron presumably sees me as an obstreperous dog-in-the-manger obstructing the Grand Commercial Design for the sim. Which is, actually, fine by me. Just so long as Land Baron realizes that he is, in fact, a Walt Disney villain. Specifically, he's Keenan Wynn's character in Herbie Rides Again, the arrogant developer riding roughshod over the rights of the small property owner. Does anyone have a white Volkswagen Beetle I could borrow?
Friday, May 16, 2014
Any Colour you Like, So Long as it's White
So there I was at Oxbridge, enjoying the traditional sight of a new avatar going up to anyone even vaguely female and asking for a date. (He gave me a chance to use the "my girlfriend's just TPed in" excuse, which is always fun... and receives a special Clueless Award for trying to chat up one lady with her very obvious husband standing right next to her.)
But, both Clueless Boy and the husband-and-wife - and several others who wandered through - were wearing unfamiliar, and rather sophisticated, avatars for new people....
The reason being, of course, new default avatars from our noble benefactors at the Lab. So, it became necessary to take a squint at these and see what is what about them.
What we've got, you see, are mesh avatars. The basic body is rendered invisible by a full-body alpha layer, and a mesh shape attached which acts exactly like your basic SL body. It's rigged, so it can change to reflect alterations in your basic underlying shape... up to a point; you can't do anything fancy like changing the face, for instance. And of course system clothing and other system-layer stuff like skins won't work on these things.
What are they like? Well, they vary. Some of them have really good detailed skins, others are... less good. They come with various bits of rigged mesh clothing, some of which is very good, as in "cannibalize it for other outfits" good. (Tali and I both fell with glee onKate Beckinsale's "Vampire Hunter Alison"'s leather trenchcoat.) There are other components which are worth nicking - one (otherwise fairly naff) female form has a set of included shoe alphas which might work with a bunch of pumps I can't currently use because they're invisiprim based.
The design of the avis is quite interesting. By and large, although some are traditional SL Barbie-dolls, there is a tendency towards more naturalistic sizes and shapes, which is rather gratifying (says the seven-foot blonde stick insect). The male avatars are pretty good looking, and certainly better proportioned than your usual SL man-mountain with very short arms. One thing I noticed, camming around them, was that the faces are, in places, a little bit asymmetrical. This is good: real faces are a little bit asymmetrical. On balance, we may expect a more interesting and (arguably) more attractive set of new people running around SL.
Oh, they'll all be white, of course.
Well, no, that's not strictly true - Tali found one vampire avi who is unmistakeably African male, apart from the fangs. So that's one unambiguously non-Caucasian. And some of the others might look vaguely Asian or Latino, in the right light... or might at least look as if they know someone who's Asian or Latino....
It is at this point that I heave a sigh, because this is an old, old rant, but it still needs to be ranted. It would not hurt, dear people in the Lab, to be a little bit inclusive. Just to the extent of offering options for non-Caucasians. Just to the extent of admitting they exist. One non-Caucasian avatar in the new batch. One. And even that one isn't fully human.
The excuse for this, apparently, is that the selection of new avatars is based on an analysis of what people actually go for when they're developing an initial look. The problem with this, it seems to me, is that defaulting to the majority choices makes the alternatives invisible. SL gets flooded with lookalikes, and the next batch of new people to come along adopt the same look, to fit in, and eventually we all look the same....
Assuming new people do come in, of course. I have to wonder just how appealing SL looks, based on its available choices, to people of anything other than Caucasian origin. My guess would be, not very.
Seriously, LL. Options. Inclusive options. From the outset. There is no excuse for failing to do this.
But, both Clueless Boy and the husband-and-wife - and several others who wandered through - were wearing unfamiliar, and rather sophisticated, avatars for new people....
The reason being, of course, new default avatars from our noble benefactors at the Lab. So, it became necessary to take a squint at these and see what is what about them.
What we've got, you see, are mesh avatars. The basic body is rendered invisible by a full-body alpha layer, and a mesh shape attached which acts exactly like your basic SL body. It's rigged, so it can change to reflect alterations in your basic underlying shape... up to a point; you can't do anything fancy like changing the face, for instance. And of course system clothing and other system-layer stuff like skins won't work on these things.
What are they like? Well, they vary. Some of them have really good detailed skins, others are... less good. They come with various bits of rigged mesh clothing, some of which is very good, as in "cannibalize it for other outfits" good. (Tali and I both fell with glee on
The design of the avis is quite interesting. By and large, although some are traditional SL Barbie-dolls, there is a tendency towards more naturalistic sizes and shapes, which is rather gratifying (says the seven-foot blonde stick insect). The male avatars are pretty good looking, and certainly better proportioned than your usual SL man-mountain with very short arms. One thing I noticed, camming around them, was that the faces are, in places, a little bit asymmetrical. This is good: real faces are a little bit asymmetrical. On balance, we may expect a more interesting and (arguably) more attractive set of new people running around SL.
Oh, they'll all be white, of course.
Well, no, that's not strictly true - Tali found one vampire avi who is unmistakeably African male, apart from the fangs. So that's one unambiguously non-Caucasian. And some of the others might look vaguely Asian or Latino, in the right light... or might at least look as if they know someone who's Asian or Latino....
It is at this point that I heave a sigh, because this is an old, old rant, but it still needs to be ranted. It would not hurt, dear people in the Lab, to be a little bit inclusive. Just to the extent of offering options for non-Caucasians. Just to the extent of admitting they exist. One non-Caucasian avatar in the new batch. One. And even that one isn't fully human.
The excuse for this, apparently, is that the selection of new avatars is based on an analysis of what people actually go for when they're developing an initial look. The problem with this, it seems to me, is that defaulting to the majority choices makes the alternatives invisible. SL gets flooded with lookalikes, and the next batch of new people to come along adopt the same look, to fit in, and eventually we all look the same....
Assuming new people do come in, of course. I have to wonder just how appealing SL looks, based on its available choices, to people of anything other than Caucasian origin. My guess would be, not very.
Seriously, LL. Options. Inclusive options. From the outset. There is no excuse for failing to do this.
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
Miss Bulmer is Displeased
OK, so the Fantasy Faire hunt is in two parts, it seems - the first one involves travelling to all the Faire sims, interacting with an object in each one, then returning to the NPC type chappie at the Jolly Crocodile in Wiggenstead Mooring, who will then give you the key to start the main Hunt.
That isn't why I'm cross.
This hunt involves wearing a scripted HUD with which to receive clues and cutscenes, and track your interactions and thus your progress. It is a lurid purple thing involving a unicorn, but, well, Fantasy Faire, if you get away with only one unicorn you're doing well
That isn't why I'm cross.
The clues are, for an experienced hunter like my good self, not too difficult. One, in Blackwater Glenn, was a bit of a pain, but only a bit.
That isn't why I'm cross.
The problem seems to be at Fairelands Junction. This sim is either wonky or massively overloaded, or very possibly both. Closing in on the last clue, at this sim, I've found myself being violently disconnected. Or teleporting in, finding myself in a semi-disconnected state (unable to move or chat), and then being disconnected when I try to TP out.
That isn't why I'm very cross. This is SL, that sort of thing happens all the time.
What is making me cross is that, almost uniquely in my experience of SL, the state of the HUD is being lost when I'm disconnected. When I finally get back on - an exciting experience involving cache clears, blue limbo, and skulking around in Pooley while things reload - I find that the HUD has reset to the state it was in at my last normal logout. This HUD, remember, is tracking my progress through the hunt....
So, every time I get kicked, I have to re-do the hunt stages I've done since the last attempt.
This is making me cross. Obviously, the thing to do is going to be to clear the non-wonky sims, then log out normally, hope that state is properly preserved that way, and then tackle the Fairelands Junction. Since TPing in causes me problems, I may have to walk in from Wiggenstead Mooring and walk back out. Assuming I can walk. Which is not a safe assumption.
I am cross. Did I mention being cross? Well, I am.
That isn't why I'm cross.
This hunt involves wearing a scripted HUD with which to receive clues and cutscenes, and track your interactions and thus your progress. It is a lurid purple thing involving a unicorn, but, well, Fantasy Faire, if you get away with only one unicorn you're doing well
That isn't why I'm cross.
The clues are, for an experienced hunter like my good self, not too difficult. One, in Blackwater Glenn, was a bit of a pain, but only a bit.
That isn't why I'm cross.
The problem seems to be at Fairelands Junction. This sim is either wonky or massively overloaded, or very possibly both. Closing in on the last clue, at this sim, I've found myself being violently disconnected. Or teleporting in, finding myself in a semi-disconnected state (unable to move or chat), and then being disconnected when I try to TP out.
That isn't why I'm very cross. This is SL, that sort of thing happens all the time.
What is making me cross is that, almost uniquely in my experience of SL, the state of the HUD is being lost when I'm disconnected. When I finally get back on - an exciting experience involving cache clears, blue limbo, and skulking around in Pooley while things reload - I find that the HUD has reset to the state it was in at my last normal logout. This HUD, remember, is tracking my progress through the hunt....
So, every time I get kicked, I have to re-do the hunt stages I've done since the last attempt.
This is making me cross. Obviously, the thing to do is going to be to clear the non-wonky sims, then log out normally, hope that state is properly preserved that way, and then tackle the Fairelands Junction. Since TPing in causes me problems, I may have to walk in from Wiggenstead Mooring and walk back out. Assuming I can walk. Which is not a safe assumption.
I am cross. Did I mention being cross? Well, I am.
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Gagged!
Taking advantage of a brief opportunity (and a public wi-fi hotspot) to post something: my home Internet connection is out of action, hence my unusual silence! I'm hoping to be back to normal, or what passes for it, come Monday. In the meantime, I am stuck in reality. It's weird...
Monday, July 16, 2012
And, while I'm grumping...
... and inspired by a charmless buffoon who wandered into Oxbridge somewhat before I crashed last night...
If you are looking through the ToS and the local sim rules and plotting very hard to find some course of action which is not technically griefer behaviour - then that in itself is griefer behaviour.
(This particular guy was quite determined to pick some kind of fight. Fortunately, everybody there, including a sixteen-year-old anime fan, was too mature to fall for it.)
If you are looking through the ToS and the local sim rules and plotting very hard to find some course of action which is not technically griefer behaviour - then that in itself is griefer behaviour.
(This particular guy was quite determined to pick some kind of fight. Fortunately, everybody there, including a sixteen-year-old anime fan, was too mature to fall for it.)
More irritability
My feedback on the second support case I had to raise, to report that I couldn't access the first one.
You will notice that I don't feel my problem was solved, that I was very unsatisfied with the whole business, and - most damningly - that this was what I was expecting.
There are people who make unreasonable demands of LL on a technical level... but, come on, guys, I'm running Windows 7 and Internet Explorer, this is not some obscure custom system, and it is not unreasonable to expect the flippin' support web page to work!
Thursday, July 12, 2012
A pox on "standard sizing"
The mesh clothes I picked up at the fundraiser yesterday will just have to be considered as donations to the cause, I fear. At least the shoes, makeup and motorbike seem OK!
The problem, of course, is that they were all made using the "Standard Sizing", against which I have inveighed before... and my shape, though not all that peculiar, especially in SL, is way outside the permitted variation allowed in the standard sizes.
It's not a question of being too tall, or too thin, because the existing adjustments along avatar bones work just fine to accommodate that. The problem lies in the subtler interplay of proportions - and, I suspect, in what's currently fashionable in SL.
The problem seems to exist mostly for those of us who want a vaguely trim-and-athletic look. I don't want exaggerated curves and a pair of Zeppelins moored to the front of my torso, thank you very much, so the larger sizes, which cater to the voluptuous amongst us, are out. So, no problem, right? I just use the small sizes, and they scale up to my height, right?... Wrong, because the smaller sizes don't seem to allow for any significant musculature, or breadth (I have narrow hips and comparatively broad shoulders). The S and XS sizes seem heavily biased towards what my friend and fellow blogger CC Creeggan describes here as "Tableau girls". It's a popular look among the waif-like and generally gamine. It's not my look, though, or anywhere near it. Of course, I can just hide everything under alpha layers...
... except those don't adjust at all for body proportions, they are painted over certain areas of your avatar's surface, and if the lines on your avatar's surface don't match up to the ones on the mesh item you're wearing... tough. So, with the best will in the world, I find myself clipping through mesh clothes in unexpected locations. Forearms seem to be the worst - my arms are longer than many avi's, even though they are actually too short to be well proportioned in RL. And, wearing a corsety-type top, I found that, in all the sizes available, the breadth of my shoulders made for a visible discontinuity between the mesh and me - I suddenly broaden out at the point the mesh's corresponding alpha ends.
At best, I can only hope to conceal my entire lower body beneath an alpha, leaving me looking as if I've stolen somebody else's legs. In size XXS trousers, the legs of someone in the terminal stages of some obscure wasting disease. In size XL, the legs of someone whose bottom needs its own postcode. In intermediate sizes, an unlovely combination of the two.
Let's consider the tops... Well, since I have small breasts, anything above XXS leaves vast echoing caverns around my chest. Selecting size XXS, though, generally means my breasts clip through the clothing whenever my av physics kicks in, and sometimes even when it doesn't. I can't win.
I would post some snapshots, but they are just too, too, depressing.
I am more and more convinced that the "standard sizing" was based on a sample of commercially available shapes.... and so reflects what's currently fashionable in SL. I will stand by my previously stated opinion: for those of us who exercise our own creativity and make our own shapes, it is effectively useless.
And since mesh clothes continue to be a growth area, can we please have all the wrangling over the mesh deformer tool sorted out, so that I can actually wear some?
The problem, of course, is that they were all made using the "Standard Sizing", against which I have inveighed before... and my shape, though not all that peculiar, especially in SL, is way outside the permitted variation allowed in the standard sizes.
It's not a question of being too tall, or too thin, because the existing adjustments along avatar bones work just fine to accommodate that. The problem lies in the subtler interplay of proportions - and, I suspect, in what's currently fashionable in SL.
The problem seems to exist mostly for those of us who want a vaguely trim-and-athletic look. I don't want exaggerated curves and a pair of Zeppelins moored to the front of my torso, thank you very much, so the larger sizes, which cater to the voluptuous amongst us, are out. So, no problem, right? I just use the small sizes, and they scale up to my height, right?... Wrong, because the smaller sizes don't seem to allow for any significant musculature, or breadth (I have narrow hips and comparatively broad shoulders). The S and XS sizes seem heavily biased towards what my friend and fellow blogger CC Creeggan describes here as "Tableau girls". It's a popular look among the waif-like and generally gamine. It's not my look, though, or anywhere near it. Of course, I can just hide everything under alpha layers...
... except those don't adjust at all for body proportions, they are painted over certain areas of your avatar's surface, and if the lines on your avatar's surface don't match up to the ones on the mesh item you're wearing... tough. So, with the best will in the world, I find myself clipping through mesh clothes in unexpected locations. Forearms seem to be the worst - my arms are longer than many avi's, even though they are actually too short to be well proportioned in RL. And, wearing a corsety-type top, I found that, in all the sizes available, the breadth of my shoulders made for a visible discontinuity between the mesh and me - I suddenly broaden out at the point the mesh's corresponding alpha ends.
At best, I can only hope to conceal my entire lower body beneath an alpha, leaving me looking as if I've stolen somebody else's legs. In size XXS trousers, the legs of someone in the terminal stages of some obscure wasting disease. In size XL, the legs of someone whose bottom needs its own postcode. In intermediate sizes, an unlovely combination of the two.
Let's consider the tops... Well, since I have small breasts, anything above XXS leaves vast echoing caverns around my chest. Selecting size XXS, though, generally means my breasts clip through the clothing whenever my av physics kicks in, and sometimes even when it doesn't. I can't win.
I would post some snapshots, but they are just too, too, depressing.
I am more and more convinced that the "standard sizing" was based on a sample of commercially available shapes.... and so reflects what's currently fashionable in SL. I will stand by my previously stated opinion: for those of us who exercise our own creativity and make our own shapes, it is effectively useless.
And since mesh clothes continue to be a growth area, can we please have all the wrangling over the mesh deformer tool sorted out, so that I can actually wear some?
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Breakthrough!
It doesn't actually get beyond "Loading...", but it's better than yesterday. At this rate, I might be able to see my support case as early as next week! No idea when or if it'll ever be resolved, of course.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Couldn't have put it better myself
I have been attempting to deal with LL's support system, submitting a ticket for that "logging in dumps me in a disconnected state" issue, which is back again with a vengeance.
The following screen shot shows just how far I'm getting.
Says it all, really, doesn't it? Ladies and gentlemen: LL's customer support.
The following screen shot shows just how far I'm getting.
Says it all, really, doesn't it? Ladies and gentlemen: LL's customer support.
Sunday, July 8, 2012
Normal service will be resumed
... since it is unusual for me to leave more than forty-eight hours between blog entries.
Unfortunately, real life has rather intervened, in the form of a blazing row with my mother, over the merits of me spending time on the computer. (Which, since both my social and my work life rather revolve around the Net, is a bit of a problem.) My mother has reached that time in life when she disapproves of everything but the Royal Family and the Antiques Roadshow, and the Internet falls under neither heading.
It'll blow over - but I am keeping my head down until it does. Sadly, I have to live with my mother. Or, at least, someone has to, and there aren't any other volunteers.
Unfortunately, real life has rather intervened, in the form of a blazing row with my mother, over the merits of me spending time on the computer. (Which, since both my social and my work life rather revolve around the Net, is a bit of a problem.) My mother has reached that time in life when she disapproves of everything but the Royal Family and the Antiques Roadshow, and the Internet falls under neither heading.
It'll blow over - but I am keeping my head down until it does. Sadly, I have to live with my mother. Or, at least, someone has to, and there aren't any other volunteers.
Friday, July 6, 2012
The sincerest form of flattery
There has been, it seems, a sudden outbreak of copybotting, to which I was alerted by no less a presence than the august Dean of Caledon Oxbridge, Martini Discovolante, who was gratified to hear a newcomer compliment her appearance - and then mortified to see said newcomer assume it, instantly....
This is, of course, nothing new, and it's not easy to prevent. The simple truth is, if you are going to appear on other people's viewers, the information needed to construct your appearance has to be sent to their computers - and it is not at all difficult to intercept and record that information. All it took was one person malicious or clueless enough to write and release a tool for doing this, and imagination- and morality-challenged people everywhere could take advantage of it.
There are limitations, of course - copybotters can't duplicate content that's shared only between your client and LL's servers, so things like your inventory, and the contents of your items, are safe enough. And I'm inclined to wonder if the upcoming changes to the rendering pipeline will make life harder for the copyers; if your skin and clothing textures are pre-baked on the server side, it's not going to be easy to separate the layers out in someone else's client. I hope.
And, of course, copybotting is a violation of the Terms of Service and merits an immediate abuse report if you see it... not to mention, if it's content you've made being copied, the authority of the DMCA behind the complaint. LL can, and do, remove ripped-off content, replacing it with "generic" items of the same basic type.
Which is all to the good.... I am not a fan of the more strident interpretations of copyright law and intellectual property rights, but the basic principle is sound: people who create things have the right to distribute it the way they choose to, and to get paid for what they do. I may choose to give stuff away - I have, on some occasions - but it's my stuff, and I get to choose when and how I do it. I may be a techno-commie, and even a pixel-stained technopeasant wretch, but I draw the line at simply leeching off other people's creativity. And I hope all my readers do too!
This is, of course, nothing new, and it's not easy to prevent. The simple truth is, if you are going to appear on other people's viewers, the information needed to construct your appearance has to be sent to their computers - and it is not at all difficult to intercept and record that information. All it took was one person malicious or clueless enough to write and release a tool for doing this, and imagination- and morality-challenged people everywhere could take advantage of it.
There are limitations, of course - copybotters can't duplicate content that's shared only between your client and LL's servers, so things like your inventory, and the contents of your items, are safe enough. And I'm inclined to wonder if the upcoming changes to the rendering pipeline will make life harder for the copyers; if your skin and clothing textures are pre-baked on the server side, it's not going to be easy to separate the layers out in someone else's client. I hope.
And, of course, copybotting is a violation of the Terms of Service and merits an immediate abuse report if you see it... not to mention, if it's content you've made being copied, the authority of the DMCA behind the complaint. LL can, and do, remove ripped-off content, replacing it with "generic" items of the same basic type.
Which is all to the good.... I am not a fan of the more strident interpretations of copyright law and intellectual property rights, but the basic principle is sound: people who create things have the right to distribute it the way they choose to, and to get paid for what they do. I may choose to give stuff away - I have, on some occasions - but it's my stuff, and I get to choose when and how I do it. I may be a techno-commie, and even a pixel-stained technopeasant wretch, but I draw the line at simply leeching off other people's creativity. And I hope all my readers do too!
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Not all that proud
I went out to see the Second Pride sims - six of them, celebrating LGBT pride and culture in Second Life. A good thing, to be sure.
After Fantasy Faire, and SL9B, I was expecting something rather fun, though. Unfortunately, it's six rather empty sims, of rather bland builds. There is a funfair, which looks vaguely fun. There are important things, like memorials, and art galleries, and a museum of the struggle (still ongoing, alas) for gay rights. It's all very worthy and not very interesting....
Also, I am minded to gripe on a personal level; last I heard, there was an L in LGBT. But you wouldn't think it to see most of this place. So far, I have found a stall for SL's "Oh Boi" lesbian magazine, and that is all I've found. I suppose I shouldn't grumble; in the world of Second Pride, that seems to put us about equal with the Goreans, and we get nearly twice as much space as the Amaretto breedable horses.
Perhaps lesbian groups were approached, but chose - for whatever reason - not to participate? Or perhaps it's that famous lesbian invisibility, that we hear so much about. Anyway. For me, this festival is something of a disappointment. Your mileage, of course, may vary.
After Fantasy Faire, and SL9B, I was expecting something rather fun, though. Unfortunately, it's six rather empty sims, of rather bland builds. There is a funfair, which looks vaguely fun. There are important things, like memorials, and art galleries, and a museum of the struggle (still ongoing, alas) for gay rights. It's all very worthy and not very interesting....
Also, I am minded to gripe on a personal level; last I heard, there was an L in LGBT. But you wouldn't think it to see most of this place. So far, I have found a stall for SL's "Oh Boi" lesbian magazine, and that is all I've found. I suppose I shouldn't grumble; in the world of Second Pride, that seems to put us about equal with the Goreans, and we get nearly twice as much space as the Amaretto breedable horses.
Perhaps lesbian groups were approached, but chose - for whatever reason - not to participate? Or perhaps it's that famous lesbian invisibility, that we hear so much about. Anyway. For me, this festival is something of a disappointment. Your mileage, of course, may vary.
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Scammers live in vain
Much annoyance in RL, from a spate of phone calls of late. This is that scam where someone (usually with a very thick Indian accent) phones up claiming to be from"technical support department of Windows", tells you that your computer is generating error messages all across the Internet, and offers you assistance in fixing the problem. Actually accepting such an offer - not that I have ever done so, myself - is pretty much guaranteed to sign you up for new exciting experiences in the area of identity theft and malware installation. You too can be part of the thrilling new botnet everyone is talking about!
After a lengthy argument with our telecoms provider, we got a four digit code to punch into the phone, to flag these up as fraudulent calls - probably useless, since the scammers behind these things just buy time at a new call centre every so often; the hapless drones in Kolkata are reading off the scripts that are given them.
Needless to say, it is a scam, absolutely and completely - Microsoft do not make, or authorize anybody to make, unsolicited phone calls of this nature, and in any case the idea of my lone laptop ringing alarm bells across the globe is patently ridiculous. If I'm in a bad mood, my response to these people is along the lines of quoting the Computer Misuse Act at them and advising them to get an honest job. And, I have to admit, increasingly I am in a bad mood with these people. I've had four of these calls in the past three days, now, and I am quite a cross Glorf about it.
Exercise for the alert student: given that I'm on a dynamically allocated IP address, how much work would you have to go to, in order to establish that a series of error messages all originated on my PC? Answers on a postcard please.
After a lengthy argument with our telecoms provider, we got a four digit code to punch into the phone, to flag these up as fraudulent calls - probably useless, since the scammers behind these things just buy time at a new call centre every so often; the hapless drones in Kolkata are reading off the scripts that are given them.
Needless to say, it is a scam, absolutely and completely - Microsoft do not make, or authorize anybody to make, unsolicited phone calls of this nature, and in any case the idea of my lone laptop ringing alarm bells across the globe is patently ridiculous. If I'm in a bad mood, my response to these people is along the lines of quoting the Computer Misuse Act at them and advising them to get an honest job. And, I have to admit, increasingly I am in a bad mood with these people. I've had four of these calls in the past three days, now, and I am quite a cross Glorf about it.
Exercise for the alert student: given that I'm on a dynamically allocated IP address, how much work would you have to go to, in order to establish that a series of error messages all originated on my PC? Answers on a postcard please.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Special circumstances
If I were in the business of "naming and shaming" my least favourite stops on Hunts - which I'm not - there are a couple I would care to nominate, right now.
Oddly, neither one has done anything technically wrong - they aren't late putting stuff out, their Hunt items are within a reasonable distance of the sign and the starting point, their clues (while uninspiring) are there... they are both playing it strictly by the book.
Except, both of them have massive amounts of lag.
And it is predictable that they will have massive amounts of lag - there are factors at work, in both cases, which put a strain on sim and viewer alike. I would detail what those are, but that'd probably let other hunters identify the stores, and I said I wouldn't do that. But let's consider, shall we, the stuff that might cause this? Lots of information - massive, massive texture files, for instance. And lots of scripting. And, sometimes, combinations of both, like temp-rezzers for complicated objects. All of this can have a drastic effect on SL's performance, reducing even adequate computers to a slow crawl, and causing mine to drop me to a frame rate of 0.4, and then crash.
So... yes, these guys are playing by the rules, technically. But, y'know, if your store is going to hammer visitors' viewers just by virtue of existing... you might want to consider cutting the hunters a little more slack!
Oddly, neither one has done anything technically wrong - they aren't late putting stuff out, their Hunt items are within a reasonable distance of the sign and the starting point, their clues (while uninspiring) are there... they are both playing it strictly by the book.
Except, both of them have massive amounts of lag.
And it is predictable that they will have massive amounts of lag - there are factors at work, in both cases, which put a strain on sim and viewer alike. I would detail what those are, but that'd probably let other hunters identify the stores, and I said I wouldn't do that. But let's consider, shall we, the stuff that might cause this? Lots of information - massive, massive texture files, for instance. And lots of scripting. And, sometimes, combinations of both, like temp-rezzers for complicated objects. All of this can have a drastic effect on SL's performance, reducing even adequate computers to a slow crawl, and causing mine to drop me to a frame rate of 0.4, and then crash.
So... yes, these guys are playing by the rules, technically. But, y'know, if your store is going to hammer visitors' viewers just by virtue of existing... you might want to consider cutting the hunters a little more slack!
Saturday, June 2, 2012
One size (doesn't) fit all
The brouhaha over the mesh deformer rumbles on, apparently with no end in sight. Quite a number of designers, in their own efforts to get a handle on mesh clothing, have adopted a range of "standard" sizes for mesh clothing, which enables you to pick out a size which will fit your avatar's shape, hopefully well enough that some judiciously placed alphas will ensure a perfect fit. There's even talk of incorporating this standard sizing into the deformer tool itself, so that meshes can be adjusted to fit on these standardized models....
The problem, of course, is: what if you're not a standard size?
Which I'm not, and which most of the people I know who've made their own shapes are not, for all sorts of different reasons. I went for a tall, willowy, slim build with little excess fat, a moderately athletic breadth of shoulder, and very slender hips. As a result, I am a skinnier version of the Amazon Barbie type you see so often around SL; in "standard size" terms I am something like an M for height - and XS or XXS when it comes to bosom and backside. (I figure my avi is something like a B cup size.... which, in SL, makes me an ironing board.) Tali, who has tried for athletic and muscular and still magnificently curvy and feminine - as befits someone who is part jaguar - finds herself busting out all over, except at the bust, where she is naturally proportioned rather than SL standard. As for those of my friends who have attempted actual naturalistic female shapes... they might as well give up now, really.
The standard sizes were apparently decided on by a survey of some 500 shapes. I have a dreadful suspicion that those were 500 commercially available shapes.... which means, heavily biased towards SL's notion of the ideal woman - a baseball bat with watermelons nailed to it.
(You gentlemen can stop snickering. The ideal SL male, apparently, has arms that barely reach to his waist, and a torso stuffed with Lego bricks instead of muscles.)
The problems are, of course, compounded by the fact that the basic SL avatar mesh could use some improvement to start with... the idea of "Avatar 2.0" has been floating around the blogosphere, but it's hard to see how that would be implemented without breaking an awful lot of existing content. And that problem will only be exacerbated, of course, if people go ahead with making lots of mesh clothing based on the existing avatar model....
I don't know. Rigged mesh was supposed to bring all sorts of benefits in its wake... but, unless the deformer tool gets going, it seems like the only way I'll get mesh clothes that fit me is if I fire up Blender and try knitting them myself. (Which might not be a bad thing... but it's time-consuming stuff....) Certainly, it seems that, unless you actually are a "standard" size, standard sizing is not going to help much. If the deformer tool is fully implemented and fully integrated, it might be a help to designers, who can create outfits based on a range of approximate sizes, and wearers can then pick the nearest one to shrink-wrap onto their actual avatar shape. But there is no way I am going to inflate myself into a standard size. I have many ambitions in SL, but looking like I was drawn by Rob Liefeld isn't one of them.
The problem, of course, is: what if you're not a standard size?
Which I'm not, and which most of the people I know who've made their own shapes are not, for all sorts of different reasons. I went for a tall, willowy, slim build with little excess fat, a moderately athletic breadth of shoulder, and very slender hips. As a result, I am a skinnier version of the Amazon Barbie type you see so often around SL; in "standard size" terms I am something like an M for height - and XS or XXS when it comes to bosom and backside. (I figure my avi is something like a B cup size.... which, in SL, makes me an ironing board.) Tali, who has tried for athletic and muscular and still magnificently curvy and feminine - as befits someone who is part jaguar - finds herself busting out all over, except at the bust, where she is naturally proportioned rather than SL standard. As for those of my friends who have attempted actual naturalistic female shapes... they might as well give up now, really.
The standard sizes were apparently decided on by a survey of some 500 shapes. I have a dreadful suspicion that those were 500 commercially available shapes.... which means, heavily biased towards SL's notion of the ideal woman - a baseball bat with watermelons nailed to it.
(You gentlemen can stop snickering. The ideal SL male, apparently, has arms that barely reach to his waist, and a torso stuffed with Lego bricks instead of muscles.)
The problems are, of course, compounded by the fact that the basic SL avatar mesh could use some improvement to start with... the idea of "Avatar 2.0" has been floating around the blogosphere, but it's hard to see how that would be implemented without breaking an awful lot of existing content. And that problem will only be exacerbated, of course, if people go ahead with making lots of mesh clothing based on the existing avatar model....
I don't know. Rigged mesh was supposed to bring all sorts of benefits in its wake... but, unless the deformer tool gets going, it seems like the only way I'll get mesh clothes that fit me is if I fire up Blender and try knitting them myself. (Which might not be a bad thing... but it's time-consuming stuff....) Certainly, it seems that, unless you actually are a "standard" size, standard sizing is not going to help much. If the deformer tool is fully implemented and fully integrated, it might be a help to designers, who can create outfits based on a range of approximate sizes, and wearers can then pick the nearest one to shrink-wrap onto their actual avatar shape. But there is no way I am going to inflate myself into a standard size. I have many ambitions in SL, but looking like I was drawn by Rob Liefeld isn't one of them.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Maddeningly incomplete
OK... so, I can understand why the viewer comes up, at login, with a list of my favourite places to log in at, on account of, y'know, this is what I tell it to do.
I can understand it not doing that, because clearly the malicious viewer pixie has flipped the bit that says "show favourites at login" - it is annoying and it shouldn't happen, but if LL chooses to install a malicious pixie into their viewer, who am I to argue the toss?
What I don't understand is why it only shows some of the list. Sometimes. Not all the time.
Are there a couple of places it disapproves of? Are two of my seven favourites places which are not the In spots to be Seen At? I can't think of any other even semi-sensible reason.... Well, no, maybe I can. The missing places are the oldest and the newest of the entries on my favourites list. Maybe there is some sort of fencepost error going on with the database query, and the top and tail of the list are being chopped? It is strange, but it could happen.
Not for the first time, I wish LL would just fix this crap.
I can understand it not doing that, because clearly the malicious viewer pixie has flipped the bit that says "show favourites at login" - it is annoying and it shouldn't happen, but if LL chooses to install a malicious pixie into their viewer, who am I to argue the toss?
What I don't understand is why it only shows some of the list. Sometimes. Not all the time.
Are there a couple of places it disapproves of? Are two of my seven favourites places which are not the In spots to be Seen At? I can't think of any other even semi-sensible reason.... Well, no, maybe I can. The missing places are the oldest and the newest of the entries on my favourites list. Maybe there is some sort of fencepost error going on with the database query, and the top and tail of the list are being chopped? It is strange, but it could happen.
Not for the first time, I wish LL would just fix this crap.
Monday, May 21, 2012
Key issues
My keyboard worries continue apace... really, I need at the very least to send this laptop in for a service. Unfortunately, I also need to use it on pretty much a daily basis; you can see where there is a conflict of needs, there....
This makes stuff like scripting so frustrating as to be darn near impossible... which means Tali, bless her, is currently doing all the work on the rebuilding of Caledon's ferries. And she - and I - have been running into some issues with the (relatively) new keyframed movement system.
Basically, this is a setup where you can feed an object a list of positions and rotations and times - all the details for a key frame, in fact - and SL will move it smoothly from one specified frame to the next, without all the faffing around you would normally have had to do with setting position and rotation (for non-physical objects) or applying impulses (for physical objects). It is neat, it is easy to script, and it gives a surprisingly smooth ride. When it works.
Tali is running into an intermittent but persistent bug where the first frame in a sequence gets ignored, which, naturally, throws all the rest out of whack. Meanwhile, I have found that region restarts are extremely bad news for anything that's executing a keyframed movement sequence when the restart happens. I have four "gravity lifts" running on keyframed loops up and down sections of my tower, and not only do they all freeze in place when the restart hits, they all behave in different ways once it's finished and I try to reset them. It's as if the sim is trying, in some rather patchy way, to preserve state in the keyframed sequence over the reset... and sometimes this takes precedence over any attempts I make to restore the things by hand! One of the lifts, in particular, simply won't respond to manual script resets, or even a complete recompile - I have to delete it and rez a fresh one from my inventory after each sim restart.
It's a nuisance, as we were kind of hoping to use the keyframed movement stuff on the new ferry system! - It really is good, when it works. And Tali's implementation of the Catmull-Rom algorithm to generate intermediate waypoints makes for a very smooth ride indeed. Now, all we need to do is get the damn bugs out, somehow!
This makes stuff like scripting so frustrating as to be darn near impossible... which means Tali, bless her, is currently doing all the work on the rebuilding of Caledon's ferries. And she - and I - have been running into some issues with the (relatively) new keyframed movement system.
Basically, this is a setup where you can feed an object a list of positions and rotations and times - all the details for a key frame, in fact - and SL will move it smoothly from one specified frame to the next, without all the faffing around you would normally have had to do with setting position and rotation (for non-physical objects) or applying impulses (for physical objects). It is neat, it is easy to script, and it gives a surprisingly smooth ride. When it works.
Tali is running into an intermittent but persistent bug where the first frame in a sequence gets ignored, which, naturally, throws all the rest out of whack. Meanwhile, I have found that region restarts are extremely bad news for anything that's executing a keyframed movement sequence when the restart happens. I have four "gravity lifts" running on keyframed loops up and down sections of my tower, and not only do they all freeze in place when the restart hits, they all behave in different ways once it's finished and I try to reset them. It's as if the sim is trying, in some rather patchy way, to preserve state in the keyframed sequence over the reset... and sometimes this takes precedence over any attempts I make to restore the things by hand! One of the lifts, in particular, simply won't respond to manual script resets, or even a complete recompile - I have to delete it and rez a fresh one from my inventory after each sim restart.
It's a nuisance, as we were kind of hoping to use the keyframed movement stuff on the new ferry system! - It really is good, when it works. And Tali's implementation of the Catmull-Rom algorithm to generate intermediate waypoints makes for a very smooth ride indeed. Now, all we need to do is get the damn bugs out, somehow!
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Trying too hard?
So I TP into a place... that had better remain nameless, I think.
"(name redacted) has invited you to join a group. There is no cost to join this group. (details redacted)."
Well, OK, fair enough. But then I walk ten meters west....
Up pops a dialog box, welcoming me, inviting me to visit a website and join a group (the same group? Probably. I didn't check.) At the same time, an automated object nearby welcomes me, tells me about promotional offers, and also informs me how to apply for a modelling job.
Now, bear in mind I've not even got to the flippin' front door yet...
So I go through the front door... and I wander towards the Midnight and Mini Mania boards... and am hit by another dialog, inviting me to join another group, apparently solely for calling the letters on the Lucky Chairs here. And one pace further on, I'm hit by the same dialog again... And, in fact, this is an improvement on the last time I was here, because there are four Lucky Chairs, and last time I got a group invite from each one of them. Not to mention, there are frequently live greeters on duty too....
Yes, yes, you want potential customers in your update group, you want to build brand awareness, you want customers to feel you're aware of them and you value them... You also, at some point, want to just shut the flip up and let us shop.
(If you walk onto the welcome mat at Hebe GBE, you will find it says hello to you and offers you a notecard and a landmark. And then it shuts up. You can jump up and down on it as much as you like, and you can deliberately click it to get it to repeat its message... but it won't spontaneously talk to you again until another fifty people have trodden on it. Irritations like the one I've just described are why I scripted that welcome mat.)
"(name redacted) has invited you to join a group. There is no cost to join this group. (details redacted)."
Well, OK, fair enough. But then I walk ten meters west....
Up pops a dialog box, welcoming me, inviting me to visit a website and join a group (the same group? Probably. I didn't check.) At the same time, an automated object nearby welcomes me, tells me about promotional offers, and also informs me how to apply for a modelling job.
Now, bear in mind I've not even got to the flippin' front door yet...
So I go through the front door... and I wander towards the Midnight and Mini Mania boards... and am hit by another dialog, inviting me to join another group, apparently solely for calling the letters on the Lucky Chairs here. And one pace further on, I'm hit by the same dialog again... And, in fact, this is an improvement on the last time I was here, because there are four Lucky Chairs, and last time I got a group invite from each one of them. Not to mention, there are frequently live greeters on duty too....
Yes, yes, you want potential customers in your update group, you want to build brand awareness, you want customers to feel you're aware of them and you value them... You also, at some point, want to just shut the flip up and let us shop.
(If you walk onto the welcome mat at Hebe GBE, you will find it says hello to you and offers you a notecard and a landmark. And then it shuts up. You can jump up and down on it as much as you like, and you can deliberately click it to get it to repeat its message... but it won't spontaneously talk to you again until another fifty people have trodden on it. Irritations like the one I've just described are why I scripted that welcome mat.)
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Famed in song...
A minor issue which caused me to make some caustic comments during Steam Hunt has prompted someone else to set their objections to music... it did the rounds on the Caledon Oxbridge University Group chat last night, and I think it merits a link here!
Just Glue Some Gears On It (And Call It Steampunk)
Talking of hunts, there will be one starting soon at Armada Breakaway.... I am torn. On the one hand, designers like Albus Weka and Sidney Arctor, you don't want to miss out on. On the other hand.... :: looks mournfully at her inventory ::
Just Glue Some Gears On It (And Call It Steampunk)
Talking of hunts, there will be one starting soon at Armada Breakaway.... I am torn. On the one hand, designers like Albus Weka and Sidney Arctor, you don't want to miss out on. On the other hand.... :: looks mournfully at her inventory ::
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