A statement from the Not Possible IRL group regarding Rezzable's BuilderBot

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

The members of the Not Possible IRL group held two meetings and shared many thoughtful notecards and IMs today expressly to discuss Rezzable's BuilderBot, and reach a consensus. The conclusions are as follows:

• The overwhelming majority of those who participated in today’s two meetings agree that Rezzable’s BuilderBot appears to be a useful – even important - tool for serious/professional creators and contractors.
• NPIRLers denounced the death threats expressed in comments on Rezzable’s blog and expressed concern about the sanity of the people posting them, as well as the safety of the Rezzable employees.
• We were reminded that Second Life® residents have been asking for viewer-side back- up tools for years, and statements made by Philip Linden on April 16th during Rob Linden's Open Source Viewer office hours were recalled:

[14:30] Philip Linden: on assets... i definitely think we need explicit perms for off-grid to make it OK to move content to other grids.
[14:30] Philip Linden: NOT ok to copy stuff otherwise.
[14:30] Philip Linden: And I'd say we'll act as much as possible to protect folks rights in that.

[14:32] Philip Linden: full perms doesn't mean off-grid, because the creators may well not have understood the implications.

• Members concurred that most content creators in Second Life are at little risk of having their creations ripped by BuilderBot, largely because it is much easier to use a CopyBot instead of devoting hours to ripping a sim, importing it to one’s OpenSim, and then using a CopyBot to put it back into Second Life.
• Numerous members noted that Linden Lab did not anticipate or think through many of the issues we are dealing with today and that Second Life sits on and is as vulnerable as any digital content is on the Internet. It was remarked that even before the viewer went Open Source, it was not too difficult to hack the cache. Moreover, content is moving off of Linden servers and “joining the cloud.” How ownership is handled in the cloud needs to be determined now and the solutions to these issues, within the context of Second Life’s current infrastructure, are legal, not technical.
• A number of members suggested that Rezzable should code in an ownership check, and that including a pay method and a license key associated with each copy of an item created by the tool might be a reasonable way to track copies. “If (Rezzable) could find a way, others will too, but at least they will have the legacy of doing the right thing.”

New viewer for the Second Life power user, by INSILICO's Skills Hak

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

June 28 Update: I've just concluded a meeting with the creators of the Emerald, the GreenLife Emerald and the Gemini viewers and will be doing a new blogpost later this week listing features and benefits of each one. All of the creators of these three viewers have published their source code and have pledged that their viewers are clean and malware free. As always, it behooves the end user to exercise caution and download extra-official viewers directly from the creators and not from mirror sites. I'll be providing specific URLs, as well. Many thanks to Dirk Talamasca and Beezle Warburton who counseled me before and during the meeting.

She's a masterly creator with unparalleled taste. She's spawned an epic kingdom of a city, with towering edifices, buzzing drones, and dark hideaways. Her avatars are monstrously good. She's a businesswoman, and her virtual megacorp of apartment dwellings and shops thrives. In fact, is there anything INSILICO's creator can't do?

Now Skills Hak has created a viewer for Second Life® that's getting rave reviews from the most demanding members of Not Possible IRL. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Things tend to happen in batches, don't they? On Tuesday this week I shared the news about the Open Source Meerkat Viewer by Pleiades Consulting and the Open Metaverse Foundation with Not Possible IRLers. The Meerkat makes it intelligently possible to move content (objects, selected geometry and textures that you have created) from Second Life to OpenSims.

Not an hour had elapsed when the King of Glow, Spiral Walcher, pinged me to share his excitement over the Open Source GreenLife Emerald Viewer and its numerous features that are heavily advantageous to builders.

I hadn't even finished that conversation with Spiral, when Skills Hak's IM came in. She had just put the finishing touches on V5 of a viewer of her own... the Gemini. Two days have elapsed since we've been playing with it and the praise just keeps rolling in.


Click to see large

When I asked Skills if the Gemini is useful to non-builders, she replied, "I wouldn't say it's a client for builders. It is more for Second Life's power users... for people who know the Linden Lab viewer already and are asking for more."

Skills was quick to point out that she's not really a programmer and that this has been her first C++ project. She also stressed that she can't give much support for the Viewer since she's busy with all her other projects, so go easy on her, guys.


Click to see large

What about the Emerald Viewer appealed to you that you used it as the foundation for Gemini?

Skills: I wanted to to have a *clean* version of the Emerald Viewer, so I compiled it myself. I am also very snoopy and need to take everything apart to understand how it works. This is basically what happened during the last month.

Emerald is a stable, balanced viewer with a lot of useful features, so I "borrowed" a lot from there. Credits for many features go to the Emerald team, Chalice Yao, Zwagoth Klaar and to many other patch contributors in the JIRA (too many to name them all).

What are the three biggest features and the three biggest benefits that Gemini offers?

Skills: I think the most important plus is the stability and render speed. I carefully balanced out settings and optimized it for graphic-intensive environments like my own sims. I have uptimes of up to 12 hours here now! (which is really good for the high end INSILICO, haha!)

I removed many of the building restrictions, giving people more freedom to be creative, while stomping bugs that give builders headaches every day. The new import/export function should be very handy for grid hoppers, too.

I just love the comfort the UI gives you: No long click sequences anymore to get to frequently-used functions. That alone saves me 50% clicks per day :) You can ditch your radar HUD, too, and save script lag. It's all built into the client now. I plan to implement a combat system at a later point, but need to improve my weak C++ Kung Fu some. :)

... and the security: It's really hard to crash this viewer by using exploits and you can basically stand in the middle of a griefer attack and just laugh at them.

I optimized it for speed, comfort and security. It has no shadows and the new mesh transparency effects yet, as it is based on the LL 1.22.11 source code. The official 1.23 viewer is a rather rushed release; it was only a RC4. Other versions had up to 14 RCs! Linden Lab just needed to release it quickly for the adult content changes. There is absolutely no need to update at the moment. Everything is working as it used to be. I picked some of the goodies from the 1.23 though, and put them into mine. I'm also thinking about implementing optional RLVa. Many people seem to need that functionality in an everyday client.

You'll find the full list of features here, and my to-do list is full of ideas. There's a lot more to come!


See also: Doomed in the Skies: INSILICO

A win for the open source community: The Feds find open source licenses too legit to quit

Via Xeni Jardin of boingboing, a flag we can wave proudly today

Lawrence Lessig , Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, and founder of the Creative Commons, has just shared that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, or what he calls "THE "IP" court in the US," has "upheld a free (ok, they call them "open source") copyright license, explicitly pointing to the work of Creative Commons and others. (The specific license at issue was the Artistic License.)"

He goes on to explain that, "in non-technical terms, the Court has held that free licenses, such as the CC licenses, set conditions (rather than covenants) on the use of copyrighted work. When you violate the condition, the license disappears, meaning you're simply a copyright infringer. This is the theory of the GPL and all CC licenses. Put precisely, whether or not they are also contracts, they are copyright licenses which expire if you fail to abide by the terms of the license. Important clarity and certainty by a critically important US Court."

Mike Gunderloy provides a good explanation of it on the Ostatic blog.

Keystone Bouchard's "Wikisonic" to get Real at the Tech Virtual Museum

"Turns out, I guess, that it actually is possible in Real Life. Go figure!" said Keystone Bouchard (aka Jon Brouchoud). Gasp! He was referring to his Wikisonic project, an instrument for collaborative musical composition that he created in-world with the technical assistance of Annie Obscure, and the scripting assistance of Dirty McLean, and that I blogged about back in early November.



Keystone is the founder of Architecture Islands, an incubator for architects and designers in virtual worlds, and also leads the Architecture in Second Life community group. He is co-founder of Studio Wikitecture, a Web 2.0 based architectural collaboration methodology, and founder of Crescendo Design, a studio specialized in developing sustainable design concepts. His ‘Nutrihouse’ design was chosen for construction in the Cradle-to-Cradle Home competition from over 625 entries worldwide. And I could go on for quite a while longer here, but let me hurry on to tell you the news...


In early February, Keystone got it into his head to submit Wikisonic to the Tech Virtual Museum Workshop in San Jose, California. "The main idea of the project was to invite collaboration, virtual and otherwise, toward the design of museum exhibits for The Tech museum. By submitting the concept, I had essentially open sourced the Wikisonic idea," explained Keystone, and like so many of the concepts that he conceives, it is now licensed under a Creative Commons license, and can be reused as long as Keystone is given credit.

In the Real Life version of Wikisonic, for which Keystone won a cash prize of $5,000 US, visitors will see a series of notes arranged on a wall similar to the notes on a musical staff. Each note will have a switch, with activates and de-activates both a light and an audible tone (each note in a scale in the key of C) contained within each note/switch. A trigger perpetually circulates through the score. As it passes by, it will play only the notes that have been activated by visitors.

The Second Life version, which Theory Shaw and I had the privilege to try out in this video with Keystone, can be seen here. When you active or de-activate a note, the installation changes - in real time - and a collective "song" emerges.



You can play with Wikisonic in Second Life, by teleporting directly from here to Keystone's Gallery of Reflexive Architecture. The Real Life exhibit in San Jose will open in June, and Keystone will be there.

Get your *own* grid! Thomtrance O'Toole provides step-by-step instructions for OpenSim + binary executable

I like to think that everything we publish on this blog is significant and valuable information, but what I am going to share with you here, today, has the potential to be transformative, and for some, will be on par with a religious experience.

ThomTrance O'Toole is a deceptively easy-going, self-proclaimed mad Celt Goa King and the owner of Happy Clam Island, the home of Organica. There - together with his busy clan of 'Happy Clams' - he blissfully DJs vintage Goa trance tracks and promotes global sustainability and Permaculture. Make no mistake... this man is no light-weight. In fact, he is profound, and I am deeply honored to call him a friend.



Several weeks ago, ThomTrance O'Toole IM'ed me in the most excited tones to say that he had pursued a thread of an earlier conversation we'd had regarding OpenSim. I entreated him to share his findings with me via notecard so that I could distribute said information to the rest of the NPIRLers. ThomTrance is always teasing me gently, and this time was no exception. Here are the contents of that notecard:

Today, I blamed Bettina Tizzy for ruining my life.

On the boundary of the phase transition from a two dimensional NET, to a 3D Metaverse, the bleeding edge is where life begins, where we take small steps into the new Metaverse... being able to create a region of your own, a sim of your own, beyond the boundaries of Second Life, is one of these steps.

OpenSim, an open source project is now in Alpha release 0.4, and I am here to report that yes, Second Life is possible outside of Second Life.

Today, at Bettina's prompting, I tracked them down, downloaded the source, and built the alpha release. Running the executable in stand alone mode, on my desktop, I quickly, and easily established a server.

And it is a *piece of cake* to set up and log in. (Download file - about 18MB - to login = 10 minutes!!!). Note that I have the source code and have built the code into a binary... an .exe, which I will give you via the NPIRL blog.

Now here is the interesting part: I used my Second Life client (1.18.2) to connect to this server, and logged in with the user I created when I originally started the server. Connecting to "ThomSim" , I was presented with a raw island, and a Ruth avatar. (Don't mess with the estate.XML until ye know what ye are doing thom, he said, after needing to reinstall it after doing exactly that).

But this space, this sim, even though I could build on it, and terrain it, and change my av, existed in my desktop, outside the grid of Linden Labs! My head is still spinning, as I realize that this opens up our Metaverse to new grids, all accessible through the SL client . Like the Web in 93, with just a few small servers out there serving up primitive HTML pages, I can see this as a turning point for our Metaverse, a freeing event that will allow us ALL to host and build regions and creations in an ever expanding Metaverse.

Granted, this is an alpha release, not everything works, plenty to still work on, but to login to SL......MY own SL running on my desktop, was a thrill I have not experienced in years.

In the coming week I will prepare some detailed instructions for the non-coders among us, and Bettina will have a link soon to a binary executable from her wonderful blog. A sim of your own coming to a desktop near you.

Until then, Love and light,
thomTrance

P.S. I can see me completely immersed in this project now, so thank you Bettina - for "ruining" my life!!

We haven't seen much of ThomTrance these past few weeks...

But ZOMG, look, look, look at the AMAZING information ThomTrance has created for us! Follow this link to find his gift: step-by-step, easy-to-follow instructions that even non-coders can use on how to get your own grid PLUS a binary executable.

I just hope we don't lose you forever! Please report back to me periodically, would you?

... and ThomTrance spoke yesterday of creating the Not Possible IRL grid. I'm pinching myself. Blessings, ThomTrance. <3

DanCoyote Antonelli overcomes Real Life constraints in Second Life; finds a home and venue for his art

The realm of any original theorist is a lonely place. I spent two engrossing hours with NPIRL'er DanCoyote Antonelli, and we only scratched the surface of the world this thinking man has invented for himself. Whether or not you agree with... or even understand his doctrines, know this: DanCoyote is making art history in the metaverse, and you can and should experience this masterpiece for yourself now at the Arts and Letters installation for Full Immersion Hyperformalism: (Teleport directly)
Bettina Tizzy: Who is DanCoyote and where is he/what does he do in real life?
Dancoyote Antonelli: DC Spensley is the artist behind the agent/avatar DanCoyote Antonelli. DanCoyote is a logo, not a personality. While I respect that people have a rich role playing life in SL, and know how important it is to many, it is not my project to role play in SL. I am called DC in both worlds. It is my project to merge the two through my art practice.

I am in San Francisco… have been a practicing, exhibiting artist here (in RL) for over 20 years. (My) work spans genre and medium. I am fortunate to have many different threads in my career, (and) while I create and display physical works in RL, I also have a burgeoning digital output as well. The two connect actually, theoretically and literally.

I have been attempting serious art with digital tools since Photoshop 1.0, so my research is many, many degrees older than SL. However, none of that work had a venue.


I thing the Web is a lousy place to show art. It is like TV in that all things become equal and flat on TV. Let’s say you have Gandhi on one side, and Britney Spears on the other in an interview on TV. The audience assumes they are both equal since they are being interviewed on the same show… but in fact, they are not. Gandhi is a world hero for the ages, Brit is a pop entertainer. Both contribute, but not in equal ways... so I do not like to show my work on the Web.

Bettina Tizzy: Please describe that aha! moment... when you realized that SL was the right venue.
Dancoyote Antonelli: I actually had an opportunity to get into SL in 2004, but was in for a few minutes and decided it was a strip mall; didn’t come back. In early 2006 I was at the San Francisco Art Institute doing a performance piece called "Love is Stronger than Hate," when a friend told me about a call for entries for Ars Virtua. Rubaiyat Shatner is the curator. I contacted him via email and he gave me instructions to meet him in SL.

As I (re)explored SL, I realized a few fundamental things. #1: This young culture was starving for serious art. Retail, porn and gambling were the dominant forms as they are in RL. I knew then I wanted to plant roses.

The second thing I realized is that my work was native in SL. I had finally found a home and a venue for work I had been doing on faith for a decade.

#3 is the third realization that people in SL are surrounded by cheap reproductions. The art market - such as it was - had topped out at 300 Lindens. I decided to do a conceptual experiment to begin to cultivate value in SL, and refused to make copies of my work for any reason. (I) don’t resell work after a collector acquires it. My first offerings were around 2700L.

Bettina Tizzy: So all one-of-a-kind pieces? Every single piece you make?
Dancoyote Antonelli: Yes, unique. My only concession is that I can display works, but not make them available for collectors. So in the last year and a half, the value of my work has evolved from 2700L to 150,000L. I sometimes display a work in a collection, yes, but never resell editions, prints, copies, etc. Unique objects are of great value to collectors… and art can, and does appreciate in value, just like in RL. This is not to say that I am all that interested in commerce. It was a conceptual experiment.

Bettina Tizzy: My read is that you are opposed to open source.
Dancoyote Antonelli: Many people jump to that conclusion. Open source is important for tools and delivery artifice. It is an enabler. (In any life,) your value in commerce of any kind is directly connected to the quality of your ideas. Ideas = creative capital. (I support it) by making some things open source. I have also done very public works at the OSMOSL (Open Source Museum of SL), an experiment with Brown University.

The feeling out there on the street is that open source means my content should be free. Tools and delivery should be free to encourage culture. Artists, like plumbers need to pay the bills; (get paid) for their work… and artists make creative capital.

Bettina Tizzy: Explain, in lay terms, what Hyperformalism is...
Dancoyote Antonelli: I use Hyperformalist to describe the art movement that the art world missed…the differential of technological proficiency and old school modernist dominance kept critics and thinkers from mainstreaming important developments in the boundaries of art. Part of my conceptual project is what I call “neologism.” I am a theorist as well as a practice person. Neologism = new word, in demonstration of theory.

Everything I do is abstract, but none of it is random. Hyperformalism is formalist abstraction, (as in) basic building blocks of aesthetic experience: form, shape, color, volume, etc, in hyper medium which allows for scripting and ersatz gravity.

The work I do in SL is not modeling for RL. I make it my mission to push as hard as possible to overcome RL constraints. It is my goal is to bring the Guggenheim audience into virtual reality to experience my work.

Bettina Tizzy: What tools do you use primarily?
Dancoyote Antonelli: (I) have been using Photoshop since 1.0. Another tool I use is a film production model. I use everything at my disposal. I own 10 Macs of every generation, and have software tools for every generation… many not available anymore.

Visual art is only a portion of my project. I also compose audio and perform. DanCoyote actually came into being as an audio performer at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco where my combo played at the "Bang the Machine" show: DanCoyote and the Alonso Quixano Experience. I am a fan of John Cage, in that I believe that the constraints of "music" are too limiting. The stream here (Arts and Letters) is my work.

Bettina Tizzy: I am listening. Describe it.
Dancoyote Antonelli: At different times…atonal, arrhythmic audio, hyperformalism, related to Edgard Varese.
Bettina Tizzy: but, but… that description sounds... so cold! I find it warm and conflicted, and earthy, and other worldly, at once.
Dancoyote Antonelli: It is warm because it is not practiced. I set up circumstances. I don’t dictate. I compose the circumstances of chance operations - like in Cage - but not for the same reasons. Cage was trying to take the hand of the artist out of the picture. That has been (proven) impossible. My hand appears in the possibilities, the set of potentials I bring to bear, not in the choreography of what occurs.
Bettina Tizzy: That is too theoretical. Take that down a few notches and explain it to me as if I were your grandmother. What do you mean?
Dancoyote Antonelli: I make noise, granny,
Bettina Tizzy: ahaha
Dancoyote Antonelli: …for its own sake... in complex ways that some call art and most call noise.

DanCoyote’s key collaborators are:
Patrons: Giulio Perhaps, Larry Pixel, Kitty Tully.
Scripters: ZenMondo Wormser, Qarl Fizz, Seronis Zagato.
Music: For the SkyDancer show: ZeroOne Paz, Mick Mahoney; for Arts and Letters: Jamie Timms with the JAMX Co-Lab.

Many thanks to DC for providing some of the photography for this post.

Arcadia Asylum's inventory... it's gone: asset server issues are calamities

October 1 addendum: Thanks to the prompt efforts of Kona Linden who responded to NPIRL'er Ponk Bing's request, we have been able to verify that Arcadia's inventory is in place and appears to be fine. For more information, see the 16th comment to this post. Thanks Kona and Ponk!

Arcadia Asylum is the self proclaimed queen of trash in Second Life - and no, we're not talking about smut... she's strictly PG. Arcadia, whose first SL rez day is imminent, is peerless in giving a place that "urban decay" look. You see, it was Arc who built the now defunct Slum City, and Rags to Riches as well as the Pawn Shop at the Hobo Village Infohub.


I haven't finished introducing you to this feisty steam-punk urchin unless I also mention that she is resolute in her belief that all creations in Second Life should be open source and free. Her profile reads, "If you payed (sic) for anything made by me, even for L$1, you were SCAMMED!!!" Arc's made a pile of freebies, and they are - every single one of them - full perm.

Anyway, I got word on Saturday that the contents of her inventory had been wiped. If you know Arcadia and her builds, then you will probably agree with me when I say that this is a tragedy. (P.S. - In Arcadia's very, very special case, most everything she created is "out there," so her builds are still there. So are many of her textures, which she freely gave away when Slum City still existed. However, rebuilding your tools from scratch can't be anything more than a downer and a drag.)

Arcadia's vehicles can be found all over the grid.

Arc's reaction to the situation was to say that she was going to move on to other virtual worlds and go make her freebies there. We haven't heard from her since.


Hobo Village Infohub is a mess. An intentional mess. After the demise of the gambling industry in SL, Arcadia tossed slot machines in the bonfire there.

This got me mulling over the implications of lost assets. There are a handful of people in Second Life whose inventories contain one-of-a-kind treasures, not just of their making, but that of many other creators. What if their inventories were vamoosed?

I logged in last night and posted a question to the knowledgeable crew in the First Look group: if LL wanted to, could they back up a specific person's assets? "Probably not," was the reply.

Darn. I had hoped to propose that Second Life set up a program whereby, on an annual basis, a few people's inventories were given the designation of "Second Life Treasures," and then promptly backed up in order to preserve these repositories as living patrimony.

I realize that this would not be an easy program to implement. Beyond the technical difficulties, the selection criteria for whose inventories are the most valuable would most assuredly be a controversial and political Waterloo, but I still maintain that it would be worth the trouble.

Meanwhile, we are still Arcadia-less. For days now and every few hours I receive an IM from one great builder or another that begins "Arcadia's inventory is lost," or "has anyone heard from Arcadia?" The Friends of Arcadia clan, which is evidently enormous, is fretting. Is demoralized. Misses her... a lot.

Here, Arabella Steadman is wearing Arcadia's backpack... so complete with goodies, it might as well have a kitchen sink hanging from it.

Arc, if by any chance you are reading this... please come back. I hereby promise to give you anything from my humble inventory that is transferable. I think it is safe to say that so would scores of others.