January 2007

Those readers perhaps a little Jaded by their Civilised Environments, and dreaming of Wild Adventure in Foreign Climes, might well be forgiven for being a little jealous of certain Brave Explorers who have recently engaged on a expedition to the Mainland - all to be documented in the regular publication Frontier’s Horizon.

You may have heard tales of the Mainland or read lurid stories of the loose women and men who inhabit it; as a slightly seasoned traveller myself, I must say that these are gross exaggerations in the main, and most of its inhabitants are perfectly well behaved. It must be said though that one may encounter very peculiar native cultures, some of whom may be a little short-tempered, and I am heartened and flattered that the explorers concerned have purchased Armaments from my humble establishment. Bees, bullets or balls of snow - I take some pride in producing all manner of Devices of Defensive Discouragement for appropriate situations, and hope that they are of Use.

(dageurrotype courtesy of Mr Rusty Buchanan)

I only wish I could join them myself, but I personally shall be following their endeavours with fingers crossed that none come to any sort of undesired sticky end.

Heaven knows that I am not a supporter of Public Phallic Griefing, the activity of tiresome faux-rebellious delayed teenagers, but neither am I a supporter of attempts to brush such activities under the carpet.

Puzzled by this reference? Quite possible - do let me explain. Ms Anshe Chung whilst giving a press conference recently was assailed by particles and prims of an obscene nature, something which was reported upon at the time. It now appears that the corporate entity anshechung.com is threatening anyone who published Photographs or Moving Pictures of the occasion with poorly-defined “copyright” proceedings in order to erase this supposed shame.

Quite how the shame of issuing baseless legal threats is less than the shame of being unfortunately assaulted by flexible penii is beyond me, but both behaviours are quite against my particular set of beliefs as to What Is Right. For your further elucidation:

* A report from the Reuters News Agency
* Entry on Clickable Culture
* A piece by the author Warren Ellis on Reuters including comments from Xeni Jardin from the BoingBoing site, threatened in this case
* The original video removed from YouTube, now on Google Video, from where one might download a permanent copy if one were so inclined.

Very poor behaviour. “Copyright” over one’s own form does not extend to portrayals of that form, nor should it.

I am indebted to a Concerned Reader, who has left a comment on a previous post regarding an automated method of searching for and purchasing land requested via the libsecondlife project Consultancy page.

land troller
• A method for using libSL for trolling Land sales. (first land and others) *** — $300
• You have a coder, but I need some more details that you can either post here or e-mail to ###. Do you want an automated method of purchasing land in SL, or do you want a system that alerts you when it finds land that meets certain criteria?
• What you want a spec?? haha …. first req would be a system that alerts when land available meets certain criteria…..if it could then automate certain purchases that would be great too. To be clear…I do not intend to use ALT avatars to cheat on first land. I currently do not own land, but am always getting beaten out by land scammers…..so I would also like to beat them at their own game and offer a FAIR price to n00bs after explain the reality of the land system.
• I will complete the first requirement and we can talk from there

Well, it is all very well saying that one has only the best of intentions, but a few matters do arise:

1. I tend not to be in the habit of believing random folk on the Aethernet merely because they say they may be trusted, personally speaking, no offence meant to Mr or Ms ***;
2. Once the tool is out there who can say who will then use it?
3. Nothing is said of not using it for conventional land sales, including everybody’s favourite activity, land swooping.

Heaven knows that I am not one to stand in the way of progress, and I have a decidedly neutral attitude to the notorious libsecondlife project. Automated land purchasement is however something that fills me with dread. We have enough of an issue with ridiculous prices arising for Mainland plots at the present time, aided as far as I am aware only by humanly assiduous greed. Inhumanly assiduous greed, well. Even in the Other World, there have had to be automatic systems created to counter the possible effects of automated stock trading and prevent immensely rapid rises and falls.

There is always some talk in these instances of respecting “the laws of the market”. This always brings to mind someone falling off a cliff being told not open a parachute lest it disrespect the law of gravity. It may indeed be the case that some sort of “market level” is reached, but there is no reason that that will at all be the best level for society, and in fact there is no guarantee that a stable level will ever be reached; a constant cycle of boom and bust is perfectly consistent both with theory and practice. This sort of thing is all very well for speculators, but even on the Grid land does actually have meaning to actual people outside of its value to land dealers. Even if it is not absolutely required for existence, it can be argued that it is necessary for a certain quality of existence; not only for builders but also for anyone who simply wishes an area in which to relax with a scripted brandy, tell tall tales to one’s friends and potential conquests and perhaps even compose a romantic Ode over Instantaneous Message.

Enough of my Socialist ramblings I suppose; that is an initial reaction, but I would wish to raise the tone of this Journal somewhat by penning a more detailed piece on what automated land trading may mean for the Grid, which I aim to do forthwith. Being subject to a Virus in the Other World - yes, they exist even there, though the term is of course a metaphor, I am not really suffering from the effects of self-replicating Engine instructions - I expect that I will have some spare time for this undertaking.

Oh, I must just add one observation - this is absolutely and precisely not the sort of thing that the libsecondlife project should be engaging in if they have any concern as to public perception of their endeavours. I have spoken at length about the fact that CopyBot now epitomises their output, and from those that I have spoken to, I believe that this is accepted as a situation that was Not Necessarily Handled As Well As It Could Have Been. libsecondlife as the originator of both CopyBot and LandSwoopBot… well, if anything is going to have the inventors’ castle burned to the ground, it would be that, and one can argue until one is blue in the face that such things would have happened anyway and nothing is safe on the Aethernet blah blah blah but it won’t make a bit of difference if you are identified as the group who did it first.

In entirely unrelated news I am currently being bombarded with Erroneous Instantaneous Messages informing me of things I have no interest in, mostly that objects cannot be created in regions in which I am not attempting to create objects and care not one whit about, and thus I am very unlikely to receive any Offline IM sent, as such things are capped at a certain level. Please, if you wish to communicate, write in a notecard and send that to me.

Well, I have finally managed to put up the snowball technology for sale, and to celebrate, here is a little piece of video, which, well, was made with a slightly older version of the Triple Snowball Cannon, so does not actually demonstrate all possible features.

Snowball Technology on Vimeo

It is still relatively entertaining, I feel, even if it does not demonstrate the effects of retracting the snow duct shielding on the Chambered Farenbaum Engine, nor the triple-fire mode.

The free Snowball System and the two costly products are available as usual at my Caledon shop - do see the left-hand sidebar for a link to the location.