Is Loki a pervert ?

It's been a while since I posted here. That is mainly because I had little or nothing to tell you. Linden Labs changed that last night by sending me an e-mail that made me wonder whether to laugh or cry.

Dear loki Popinjay,

This email is notification of action regarding your Second Life account,
loki Popinjay, for violation of the Second Life Terms of Service or
Community Standards. The violation in question occurred on August 29, 2008 in the region of Cannery Rezzable.

Violation: Community Standards: Broadly Offensive Content or Conduct

Real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depiction of
sexual violence including rape, real-life images, avatar
portrayals, and other depictions of extreme or graphic
violence, and other broadly offensive content are never
allowed or tolerated within Second Life.

Nude photo of young girl holding a teddy bear needs to be removed
immediately. Alternatively, you may cover up the nudity with photo
alterations.

Action:
No additional action is being taken at this time.

Appeal Process: The decision to suspend your Second Life access was
reached after investigation of your use of the Second Life software and
service. If you would like to appeal your suspension, you may contact
Second Life Support, in writing, at the address below:

Second Life Support
Linden Lab
945 Battery Street
San Francisco, CA 94111

You may also appeal electronically by filing a support ticket via the
support portal at http://www.secondlife.com/support/

Please provide relevant information that you believe would explain the
above violation. Linden Lab reserves sole discretion in considering
whether to take any action on a written appeal.


This is the picture in question:

'Virgo'

Now, you have to know this picture is part of the Avatar Zodiac series I made for SL5B where it was on display until the very last day. Without complaints. It's been on display at the Cannery for weeks now. Without complaints ... till now.

Avatar Zodiac at SL5B

Frankly, how stupid and narrow minded do you have to be to find this picture offensive? It is in no way meant to be sensual let alone sexual in nature and all "bits" are covered. Since it was meant for SL5B where strickt guidelines were enforced as to what would be allowed and what not I actually added some hair to cover a nipple.

Is it me who has the distorted view here? Ah well, guess that's what you get when you live in some "Sodom and Gomorrah" called Belgium where the government only this week bought a painting by James Ensor for the Arts museum in Ghent depicting not one but TWO completely naked girls for 2.8 million €.

'Kinderen aan ochtendtoilet' by James Ensor

What bothers me the most is the procedure LL seems to follow. Probably some redneck complained and LL takes action by ordering me to remedy the situation. Last I looked the correct way to act would be to check the complaint and if found correct at least give me a chance to defend myself. In this case I would be very surprised if the complaint was indeed checked and the above mail is surely not a question for my view on the matter. Even more so it states I get a chance to "explain the above violation". It is not even questioned if it actually IS a violation.

That said I don't like to be nailed to the cross for being a pervert. In my opinion this picture is not in violation of TOS. So I'm not taking it down until my time at the Cannery is up and I will protest the supposed "violation of TOS". Surely there must be a few Lindens with some common sense...

Oh, and to answer the titel: of course Loki is a pervert, just not this kind ;-)

UPDATE:

I just received this notice from Harry Linden:

Hi there,

Linden Lab has reviewed, at your request, a discipline action recently taken against your account.

Our investigation shows that the discipline was correctly applied.

If any further information is required, Linden Lab will contact you regarding this incident. Otherwise, please consider the matter resolved as no further communications will be sent.

Guess I was wrong about the common sense

No Snippets Today

When I open my Flickr's contacts page it's been plastered with the same text-picture for a while now. Make no mistake I understand the outcry. What Linden Labs is doing at SL5B is giving in to a bunch of religious fanatics, right-wing moralists and overall narrow-minded biggots. So I do support Stephen's cause but I will not put the picture on my stream.


"Why?" you ask? Well, because I think that would be a bit too easy. For one those concerned enough to protest will still be a small minority and can easily be ignored by Linden Labs. For two because just paying lip-service to a cause has never changed anything. Three because I mistrust mobs rallying behind a protest sign. I prefer to make up my own mind and choose my own plan of action. Four because just saying "I don't like this" is not very constructive and five and maybe most important because this is part of a larger issue and focussing on this single aspect will oversimplify the larger topic at hand.

Essentially this is about accountability. Who is responsible for what... Are we responsible for our own actions in world or is Linden Labs? I would assume we are but I guess Linden Labs is not too sure about that and fears being sued over what people in-world do.

And really, it's not surprising considering we live in a society where lawsuits are the glib and profitable answer to our own stupidity. Blame someone else for the result of your idiotic behaviour; the lawyers will find the minor technicality to hang them up on and reward you, and themselves, with a boatload of money.

I'll admit Linden Labs' reaction and the way they communicated it is a tad unfortunate to say the least but I imagine they just trying to cover their own butts. With the influx of new avs and SL getting more popular the aforementioned biggots have arrived too and claim their space under the WindLight sun. I say don't blame Linden Labs for protecting themselves but take a good long look around you in RL and drink in what this world has become. LL is nothing but the messenger of bad news and they don't deserve to be shot. Blame them for their half-ass communication, for their poor resident relations, whirly-gig decisions and at a stretch for their lack of balls to stand up and resist. LL is treading the never-before tred grounds of a virtual society created, and, to a degree, mirroring real society. Unfortunately that very same society responsible for demonising a number of lifestyles is also responsible for making the $ king and let's face it, LL need their $$ to survive.

Yes, I sympathise with Stephen, his family and those who wish to protest but I'm afraid it's moot point. "SL is SL and RL is RL" is too easy a slogan. They are intertwined and this is a prime example. Want to change SL? Start with RL and no, I don't mean by posting a pic on Flickr...

Wonderland

Early March I wrote a post about why I think Linden Research should open their server sources. I concluded: "I think Linden Labs basically has no choice but to open up their source. If they don't others will soon be competing to set the standard for an open grid". From the looks of it I may have been right even though the competition comes from a somewhat surprising source.

Santa Clara, California based Sun Microsystems, developpers of the Solaris operating system, Java and builders of high-end server hardware have been in SL for a good long while now. The sims they own are only partly open to the public. Some are Sun employee-only isles. I often wondered why they didn't use SL more as they are known to be big proponents of the "the network is the computer" adagio and SL fits that bill perfectly.

Java mascot Duke in SL

The answer is simple, they have develeoped what they call "Project Wonderland". It is described as a "toolkit for creating collaborative 3D virtual worlds." Sun's vision for this Java based multi-user virtual environment is to "provide an environment that is robust enough in terms of security, scalability, reliability, and functionality that organizations can rely on it as a place to conduct real business". This all sounds like music to my ears because let's be frank: SL is neither secure nor reliable and I have a hunch they are at the end of the ride in terms of scalability. Functionality? Everything in Wonderland seems to comply with open standards which will make interaction with existing tools easier. At the moment Maya is used for content creation but other tools like Blender, 3D Studio Max, Lightwave and a number of others are being looked into. Imagine how much easier life would be if you could use these standardised tools to create content ready to upload.

Even though it is still in it's beta stage (present release is version 0.4) Wonderland is not just an exercise. At Sun's Menlo Park Campus there are 19 physical buildings named MPK1 to 19. Now they have a new building: MPK20, built in their own virtual world. In this video Nicole Yankelovich (Principle Investigator for Collaborative Environments program at Sun Microsystems Labs) shows us around MPK20.

Watching this video you can see it doesn't look as imaginative or artistic as SL does but, that's just a matter of content. The core functionality is there and what's more it's all based on open source projects. Wonderland relies on these existing technologies:

• Project Darkstar - provides the scalable, persistant server software infrastructure
• JVoiceBridge - provides realtime immersive stereo audio with distance attenuation
• Java 3D - provides the scene graph on which the 3D world and scene manager is built
• Project Looking Glass - provides the 3D scene manager

So, could Wonderland be the keystone of the Metaverse? I don't know but it seems to me Sun steps up to the plate well prepared. Compared to SL, Wonderland is build on existing tried and tested open source technologies, it complies to open standards and since it's Java based it's completely platform independant. On top of that Sun has the resources and more importantly the in-house knowledge to address issues like secure authentication, content protection, compatibility with open document formats and many others. Unlike SL, Wonderland is not a stand-alone client-server application, it's embedded in an existing framework.

Did I mention I like Sun stuff ?

Even though they themselves seem to see Wonderland purely as a collaboration tool for businesses and educational puropses I think it's important that a big company like Sun recognises the fact virtual worls have an added value and deem it important enough to devote time and money to them well beyond setting up some sims in SL. Unlike LL's server code the Wonderland source is out there. Will someone pick up on it?

Interesting reads about Sun and its involvement with virtual worlds:

The Wonderland homepage: includes the Wonderland sources and a binary download
Wonderblog : a blog about project Wonderland
Virtual wolds at Sun: A blog about Sun's involvement in vitual worlds including SL

Just for the record: I'm in no way associated with Sun Microsystems other than being a Solaris sys admin :-)

Snippets on Friday 04/11

As usual on Saturday :-)
Looks like it will be a busy evening! but first:


RC 1.20

Last Thursday we all had the pleasure of being handed what will probably go down in history as the worst ever SL client. Numerous people reported huge bugs in RC 1.20. Some have problems with "snapshot to disk" like Mylena Aquitaine reported (you can vote for the jira here). For others like Vint Falken the renderglow feature is totally borked and I'm sure the list goes on. The LL blog reads like a todo list these days.

Apart from the bugs there is the new user interface formely codenamed Dazzle. It is clearly desined by someone who is either blind or working in Redmond (which is probably even worse). As far as I am concerned it's hideous. Who needed a new UI in the first place? Give me back the old look!

I'm sure it's not easy to test new releases on every single system / graphics card out there but I think it's about time LL starts using the wages of their trademark lawyers and UI fiddlers to pay for developpers and software testers. It may only be a release candidate but even at that it should never have seen the light of day.


More artwork exhibits

This evening Saturday 12th at 11am SLT you can go to the opening of the "Las Tres Gracias" exhibit featuring the works of Florence Babenco, Zonja Capalini & Ludmilla Writer. I'm sure it will be worth a visit.



Go there straight from here


Relay For Life Concert

Some of SL's top live musicians will be playing a benefit at the stunning Bliss concert venue on the intersection of four sims. It promises to be one of the largest concert ever in SL. If you want to do your bit to help raise funds to fight cancer, here's your chance to do it the fun way.

Confirmed artists (as far as I know):

Bara Jonson (manager Amanda Steadman) - 4/12 at 2pm
Maximillion Kleene (manager Kat Vargas) - 4/12 at 3 pm
Edward Kyomoon (manager Bomsey Munro) - 4/12 at 4pm

Time : 2pm - 5pm SLT

Go there straigt from here


Fashion Show at Nex-Core

For those of you who are interested in fashion there is Nex-Core's "Ivalde Fashion" this evening.




Last reminder

Good luck with it Sho !!


Go there straight from here

Asset Servers

In my "Snippets on Friday" post of March 21th I pointed out there were some fears LL was going to obsolete the asset servers and replace them with a distributed database hosted on the sim servers.

Reading comments and talking to people about the isssue I already got the impression this scenario was rather unlikely. Today that was confirmed as Tess Linden was kind enough to reply to an email of mine with this statement:

"Our cluster of Isilon asset servers are not going away with this new
release. We are not adding distributed databases on the simulator
hosts. We're adding small distributed web services in front of our
central *database*, which is different from the central asset servers
and different from distributed databases on sim hosts. This would allow
requests to the database to be cached more coherently.

The current architecture will begin to hit the limit in terms of
scalability and this is a large effort to try to maintain that, to bring
better experience to the residents."

Thank you Tess for sheding some light on the issue.

Tess is a Software Developer at Linden Lab working primarily on the distributed server components. She's been at Linden for 2 and a half years.

Snippets on Friday 03/21

Can't believe I actually made it on time this week.

Sad News

This is all that's left of the Magma Art Group sim.


For reasons unknown the owner, Omurtag Milev, has closed down this place that saw some great expositions in it's short existence. I for one will miss the place. Good luck in your future endeavours OM!

More Sad News

I always knew Katharina Malthus is a smarty. She posted a pic on Flickr dealing with her concern LL is moving the asset databases away from the central asset servers to smaller distributed databases on the sim servers. There is no doubt in my mind it will not help solve any lag problems if anything it will probably cause even more asset problems. As she states in her comment this is still not officially confirmed. Let's keep our fingers crossed...

Good News

A cute little birdy told me April's exhibit at the Avatrait gallery will be dedicated to the art of talented Shoshanna Epsilon. Definitively something to look forward to. I actually posed for her last night with my friend Kynne Llewellyn. Can't wait to see my bare butt grace the walls of the gallery ;-)

More Good News

Multi talented Nephie Eerie has shared with the world some of her musical work. You can now listen to her tunes on http://www.thesixtyone.com. If you do, make sure to register and give her songs a bump she deserves it.


For those of you who don't mind a download she still has two of her mixes online. I'm listening to one of them while I'm writing this as I often do :-)

Opening Pandora's box ?

For a while now I've been wondering what route Linden Labs is going. Rumours have been around that the server code would be open-sourced but until now that hasn't materialised. Would it be a good idea? Unlike some others I do think it's a good idea. Obvious benefit of opening the code is more people will look into it and fix the bugs and security holes that exist presently. It will also allow for a breath of fresh air when it comes to new features. Most of all it means the SL-grid can grow and evolve. In my opinion 2007 was the year LL suffered from their own success. The grid has become laggy and unstable,riddled with bugs, security holes have left it open to griefing and DoS attacks and it looked like LL was scrambling to put out fires left, right and center but was never able to get control.

Many times the analogy has been made between this stage of development of the grid and the early days of the web. At present the grid is a privately held project with limited resources and limited space to expand. Imagine what could happen if those limitations were lifted. It could lead to the grid being an international network with sims all over the place. Sounds like the World Wide Web reinvented in 3D to me. It doesn't mean we all have to start running our own sims, but we could if we wanted to. More importantly, those willing to invest their money, ideas and creativity into a next generation www could do just that.

Maybe LL could follow the path the likes of Sun Microsystems, Novell and RedHat have taken. They split off an open source branch (open Solaris, open SuSE, Fedora) and take whatever good comes out of it into your their own relaeses. You could imagine LL taking a similar route: free open-sim server code for everyone to tinker with and use but unsupported by LL and server software sold and supported by LL. Sims based on LL supported servers could have a closer integration with the Linden owned grid.

Of course there are concerns. Some argue open sourcing the server would make the grid unsafe since it would allow owners of sims outside the Linden Lab controlled part of the grid to steal all content from whoever enters their sim or use it to plant malicious code on your pc, or ... the possibilities are endless. That is probably true and it will definitively be a challenge to find ways of solving those problems but it doesn't change the fact that the practical problems disappear in the shadow of what could be. The Internet as a whole has never been a safe place; there will always be people out there looking for an opportunity to steal your credit card number, prey on your children or make your life hell just for the fun of it. I believe the benefits outweigh the risks.

I think Linden Labs basically has no choice but to open up their source. If they don't others will soon be competing to set the standard for an open grid. I think LL owes it to itself to be the true pioneer of a really open Metaverse. They will probably never be able to keep control of the SL-client, nor do I think they intend to, but their server software can be the foundation of things to be that are far greater then what they could achieve all by themselves.

Who's afraid of Linden Wolf ?

An awful lot has already been said and written about Daniel Linden's by now almost mythical blog post "Keeping Second Life Safe, Together". It came in reaction to a German TV report about child porn and sexual age play on the grid that raised more than a few eyebrows. I don't intend to rehash all the points made and questions raised already, but I do wonder what Linden Labs hoped to achieve with this blog post. Clearly they must have anticipated a lot of residents would be outraged and opposition would be fierce. The announcement was also deliberately vague. Who is going to define "broadly offensive and potentially illegal" in a metaverse that spans continents, countries, cultures, age groups and so on?

So I wondered "why did they do it and why this way?" Legally the statement by Daniel has no meaning and even then, according to what law? US law because they are US based? What about the rest of the world? Of course, by posting this blog they can say they tried to do something but still it doesn't hold water. At first I thought they were just trying to buy time while an army of lawyers was examining their options, but to me it's more and more clear they just can't regulate everything. Out with the lawyers... Did they do it to escape a bad rap in the press? I don't think so, there are far better ways to do that. Then why?

I think a perverse and frankly broadly offensive game is being played. It's called "scare tactics". It goes like this: first you make a vague statement people can and will be punished for certain actions you don't define properly. Next, watch how people who don't want to lose land, money, friends, whatever start to steer clear from what they think might be interpreted as "broadly offensive". Now ain't that grand! You don't have to tell people what they shouldn't do anymore. They will do it for you. So what's next? Close a few sims, ban a few people and make sure you properly reinforce the whole idea? I call that scare tactics and an easy way out to say the least.

Apart from this being intellectually very unfair, it is also a very dangerous game as it will not affect those die hards that will continue to peddle truly illegal content. They will just be a little more careful but in the mean time Joe Blow's innocent kinky fun is ruined.

Thank you Linden Labs.

My advice? Don't give in ... enjoy SL as you always have.