Merging unrelated Jira issues is a bad idea.
Folks have taken to merging Jira issues made by separate people, that concern completely unrelated matters, into one proposal.
This unwise practice eliminates the ability for people to express their support or lack of support for separate, distinct, unrelated ideas by voting for some of the ideas and not voting for the other ideas which have been included in the merged issue.
Any unrelated issues that have been merged together in this fashion should be reopened separately, to gain votes or not, on their own individual merits, as their individual authors intended.
A permanent end should be made to the intellectually defective practice of merging unrelated ideas into one.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Bryce 5.5 Now Available On Downloads.com
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Anarcho-Capitalist Stefan Molyneux on "Free Talk Live" 6-13-07
I received the following group notice from Chumly Chandrayaan of the SL in-world group Anarcho-Capitalists:
That location in secondlife linkable form is secondlife://237/173/76/
Group Notice From: Chumly Chandrayaan
Tomorrow, on Wednesday June 13th, the prolific Anarcho-Capitalist podcaster, writer, and philosopher Stefan Molyneux will be a guest on the show 'Free Talk Live'. Stefan Molyneux is the host of the "Freedomain Radio" podcast (nearly 800 seperate audio files), the author of 70+ articles and several books. You can listen to free talk live through a feed in the Gimme Liberty Bar in the region Sorens (coordinates: 237, 173, 76). The show starts at 7:00 p.m. central U.S. time.
Be there or be square!
That location in secondlife linkable form is secondlife://237/173/76/
Second Life Jira Issue MISC-35: Allow default view looking at front of avatar
Second Life Jira Issue MISC-35: Allow default view looking at front of avatar
Here's the text of my new feature issue:
Torley Linden responded:
I'm pretty sure Torley is wrong. I find no evidence that such a scripted device exists. My attempts to produce such a thing failed. I think the camera controls are designed to prevent one from being able to do this. Torley has not supplied any examples of scripted FollowCam attachments that behave in the manner Torley described.
Every single other 3D program with avatars and a virtual world that I've ever seen has some form of this ability.
If anyone can tell me where to find such a script please do so.
Please stop by the SL Jira site and vote for MISC-35 .
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-35
Here's the text of my new feature issue:
Allow us to select a default camera position and focus position that would let us see our avatars from in front instead of always defaulting to having the camera in back staring at our butts.
Torley Linden responded:
This can currently be done using a scripted FollowCam attachment.
I'm pretty sure Torley is wrong. I find no evidence that such a scripted device exists. My attempts to produce such a thing failed. I think the camera controls are designed to prevent one from being able to do this. Torley has not supplied any examples of scripted FollowCam attachments that behave in the manner Torley described.
Every single other 3D program with avatars and a virtual world that I've ever seen has some form of this ability.
If anyone can tell me where to find such a script please do so.
Please stop by the SL Jira site and vote for MISC-35 .
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-35
Sunday, June 10, 2007
SL Jira issue - MOTD on IM open - VWR-1149
There's a Jira issue created by Timeless Prototype, VWR-1149 that you might want to vote for.
When a user chooses to IM another person, as soon as the IM window is opened it should display the recipient's MOTD text that they will have entered in their preferences.
The text should be able to include http:// links that would open up a browser and could be used for FAQ pages etc.
It is essential that the MOTD appears before any messages are sent by the user. [Edit]It should display the MOTD regardless of whether the recipient is online or not.[/Edit] The idea is to reduce the massive number of IMs that come through to individuals, also known as "IM Storms".
Example use cases:
A person with a great deal of SL customers all asking the same questions: sets their MOTD to "Thank you for your interest in our products, if you are about to ask a question it is most likely answered already in our FAQ: http://www.example.com/faq.html. Please check that before sending any messages. Questions that are answered in the FAQ will not be answered via IM. Thank you."
A Linden Lab employee: "Hi, I am responsible for facilitating communications with open source developers. If you need some other kind of help from a Linden, please visit this page to directly contact a more appropriate member of staff: http://www.example.com/contacts_and_roles.html"
An RL business manager: "Please direct all queries via Joe Bloggs or Jane Bloggs as I am currently away on holiday. You can also contact us in other ways by viewing our contacts page: http://www.example.com/contacts.html"
An estate manager: "My hours of duty are from 18:00 to 21:00 PDT. For help outside these hours, contact Joe Bloggs"
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
In order to simulate reality one might need to have some idea of what reality is.
People don't agree on what reality is.
The universe is a seamless whole. There are no isolated parts of the universe that don't interact with the rest of the universe outside them.
When you try to simulate reality you are limited by the size of storage and computational speed to trying to simulate only small parts of reality.
If you simulate a city block sized area, then how do you explain the gravity ? If you just say it's by fiat, then you aren't simulating reality very well. If you include the body of a planet in your simulation then it will need to behave as if it where a real chunk of planet material of some sort. If you come to the edge of your city and can't go any further, how do you explain that within the framework of your simulation?
One part of many description of reality deals with macroscopic objects, the sort of objects that one sees in daily life on earth , the cups and saucers and books and baseballs and such. These objects appear to behave in somewhat the manner described in Newtonian physics. Thus to do a good job of reality simulation one needs to simulate macroscopic objects of the sort one sees in everday life. One also encounters substances in reality, so one's vr system needs to simulate substances.
Reality can be seen from different levels, focusing on areas and time durations of varying extent. In reality one can focus in on a onion skin with a microsope and some dye and see the cells and and cell components, so in a virtual reality, if you've got onions, you'd best have some cells, and you'd best have some microscopes too.
People don't agree on what reality is.
The universe is a seamless whole. There are no isolated parts of the universe that don't interact with the rest of the universe outside them.
When you try to simulate reality you are limited by the size of storage and computational speed to trying to simulate only small parts of reality.
If you simulate a city block sized area, then how do you explain the gravity ? If you just say it's by fiat, then you aren't simulating reality very well. If you include the body of a planet in your simulation then it will need to behave as if it where a real chunk of planet material of some sort. If you come to the edge of your city and can't go any further, how do you explain that within the framework of your simulation?
One part of many description of reality deals with macroscopic objects, the sort of objects that one sees in daily life on earth , the cups and saucers and books and baseballs and such. These objects appear to behave in somewhat the manner described in Newtonian physics. Thus to do a good job of reality simulation one needs to simulate macroscopic objects of the sort one sees in everday life. One also encounters substances in reality, so one's vr system needs to simulate substances.
Reality can be seen from different levels, focusing on areas and time durations of varying extent. In reality one can focus in on a onion skin with a microsope and some dye and see the cells and and cell components, so in a virtual reality, if you've got onions, you'd best have some cells, and you'd best have some microscopes too.
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Sculpted Prim Forum - Second Life Jira WEB-135
There was a proposal in the Second Life Jira Issue Tracker for a sculpted prim forum with sub-forums for topics specific to different modeling software.
Sculpted Prim Forum - Second Life Jira WEB-135
The proposal is titled "Sculpted Prim Forum". It reads as follows:
Torley Linden rejected it, marked it resolved, "Resolution: Won't Fix"
Torley's explanation for rejecting this idea is
Torley then mentions the high number of views the sculpted prim talk page in the Second Life Wiki has.
The reasoning in Torley's rejection eludes me. The evidence in the Jira shows no such proposals for the other issues Torley mentions. Torley is rejecting the sculpted prim forum based on imaginary requests, requests that exist only in Torley's mind. Further, rejecting a request for a forum because one imagines that people might in the future request other forums makes no sense. If that was the case one would have to reject the creation of the very first forum ever created, since it's existence might have spurred the creation of other forums in the future. The reason that people would request a forum in the future for different topics is the creation of a forum for sculpted prims worked well - if the creation of a forum for sculpted prims didn't work out, it is unlikely that would motivate people to request additional forums for other topics.
If people propose the creation of a forum for flexi-prims in the future, then that request should be considered on it's merit, not on the basis of potential but non-existent requests that might or might not be made in the future. Flexi-prims are variations of the same sort of prim that has existed since SL was started, and don't require the use of external software in their creation and editing, while sculpted prims are a new breed, not actually prims at all in the sense of prims being extrusions of lines, circular arcs, etc., and do require the use of external editing software with attributes quite different from the in-world object editor.
A good comparison is the Animation forum. The Animation forum was created in response to a change in SL that created a new type of entity, the custom animation, which required the use of external software, and I believe that has worked out rather nicely. It might be a good idea to use this model from actual SL history as the basis for one's thoughts on the appropriateness of creating a forum for sculpted prim discussion.
In addition, WEB-135 was made at a time when the jira system's login procedure was faulty, and the forum's BB code has been turned off, making it more difficult for people that support the idea to simply click on a link and log in and vote for it.
It's not surprising that the sculpted prim talk page in the Second Life Wiki was seen by lots of people, people can read the wiki without logging in, and the wiki is indexed by Google. If high readership is considered good, this suggests not that there shouldn't be a forum for sculpted prims, but rather that forums.secondlife.com be made viewable without logging in, and thus also indexable by Google. I've supported this idea for a long time. This would make a tremendous amount of useful information on how to use Second Life easily viewable by a large audience. A better measure of how effective a communication system a talk page in the Second Life wiki is would be the number of people posting questions there. That number, for the Sculpted Prims talk page, is not so impressive.
I suggest that those who want a sculpted prim forum make comments in the jira at the existing proposal mentioned above requesting that WEB-135 be changed back to unresolved status, and also that someone other than me create a new proposal of the same nature. Preferably someone real popular with a sunny disposition and lots of friends who can get the vote total up to at least a few hundred in a short time.
The Second Life Jira Issue Tracker is at jira.secondlife.com .
Sculpted Prim Forum - Second Life Jira WEB-135
The proposal is titled "Sculpted Prim Forum". It reads as follows:
A new Content Creation forum for discussion of Sculpted Prims seems logical.
There could be stickies or sub-forums for each major third party 3D modeling program used to create and edit sculpted prims for discussion of issues specific to each third party modeling program.
This would reduce the scattered placement of discussion about sculpted prims in the RA, texturing, building and other forums.
Torley Linden rejected it, marked it resolved, "Resolution: Won't Fix"
Torley's explanation for rejecting this idea is
I'm open to suggestions here, but if we're going to have one for sculpties, then from historical experience, we'd inevitably get follow-ups asking for sub-forums for flexi-prims, voice, etc. So, I suggest simplifying and starting new threads in Content Creation, generally Building, as appropriate.
Additional cultural aspect here: sculpties have been discussed extensively on the wiki, so that's another avenue:
Torley then mentions the high number of views the sculpted prim talk page in the Second Life Wiki has.
The reasoning in Torley's rejection eludes me. The evidence in the Jira shows no such proposals for the other issues Torley mentions. Torley is rejecting the sculpted prim forum based on imaginary requests, requests that exist only in Torley's mind. Further, rejecting a request for a forum because one imagines that people might in the future request other forums makes no sense. If that was the case one would have to reject the creation of the very first forum ever created, since it's existence might have spurred the creation of other forums in the future. The reason that people would request a forum in the future for different topics is the creation of a forum for sculpted prims worked well - if the creation of a forum for sculpted prims didn't work out, it is unlikely that would motivate people to request additional forums for other topics.
If people propose the creation of a forum for flexi-prims in the future, then that request should be considered on it's merit, not on the basis of potential but non-existent requests that might or might not be made in the future. Flexi-prims are variations of the same sort of prim that has existed since SL was started, and don't require the use of external software in their creation and editing, while sculpted prims are a new breed, not actually prims at all in the sense of prims being extrusions of lines, circular arcs, etc., and do require the use of external editing software with attributes quite different from the in-world object editor.
A good comparison is the Animation forum. The Animation forum was created in response to a change in SL that created a new type of entity, the custom animation, which required the use of external software, and I believe that has worked out rather nicely. It might be a good idea to use this model from actual SL history as the basis for one's thoughts on the appropriateness of creating a forum for sculpted prim discussion.
In addition, WEB-135 was made at a time when the jira system's login procedure was faulty, and the forum's BB code has been turned off, making it more difficult for people that support the idea to simply click on a link and log in and vote for it.
It's not surprising that the sculpted prim talk page in the Second Life Wiki was seen by lots of people, people can read the wiki without logging in, and the wiki is indexed by Google. If high readership is considered good, this suggests not that there shouldn't be a forum for sculpted prims, but rather that forums.secondlife.com be made viewable without logging in, and thus also indexable by Google. I've supported this idea for a long time. This would make a tremendous amount of useful information on how to use Second Life easily viewable by a large audience. A better measure of how effective a communication system a talk page in the Second Life wiki is would be the number of people posting questions there. That number, for the Sculpted Prims talk page, is not so impressive.
I suggest that those who want a sculpted prim forum make comments in the jira at the existing proposal mentioned above requesting that WEB-135 be changed back to unresolved status, and also that someone other than me create a new proposal of the same nature. Preferably someone real popular with a sunny disposition and lots of friends who can get the vote total up to at least a few hundred in a short time.
The Second Life Jira Issue Tracker is at jira.secondlife.com .
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