[Opensim-dev] Thoughts....

Wed Mar 5 16:52:01 UTC 2008

Todd,

You're expecting too much from technology. What you are saying is 100 
times harder to do (close to impossible, really) than encrypting things 
so that only authorized people can see them. There is no way that one 
can automatically distinguish Star Trek's Enterprise from a horse 
carriage. Meta-info like name and description is unreliable, because one 
can name a carriage "Star Trek Enterprise". What you are asking for goes 
into the field of computer vision, one that is still in its early infancy.

Negotiations like that must be done at some other level. Good old human 
communication, over a simple Access Control List facility, can take you 
99.99% of the way. So if you want to enforce the theme of your 
role-playing virtual world, either close it down so that only your 
trusted friends can enter, or have it open under a ToS that explains the 
rules of the game and the consequences of breaking them ("you must be 18 
years old or older" etc :-). Note that you will have the freedom to 
write a ToS that is very specific to your role-playing world, not the 
generic one that LL has. You can make it as restrictive as you want. 
Enforcing it is another issue altogether... So if you really really 
don't want to be bothered by mood-breaking off topic avatars, ever, 
close things down, make your world accessible only to the people you trust.

OpenSim is trying to figure out how to support surfing of avatars among 
grids, because that is something that lots of people want for conducting 
real business and outreach in virtual worlds; but, like on the web, that 
kind of openness stops in sites/grids that have an Access Control in 
place. The option of closing things down to authorized accounts is not 
only a well-practiced concept on the internet, but one that OpenSim 
supports at the very core.

I must say, though, that I don't see any connection between the concrete 
thing that you said and education, except, perhaps, the Police Academy :-)

On a technical note, the Inventory is harmless. All assets in Inventory 
are sitting nicely on some hard disk, doing absolutely nothing. It's 
only when people attach them or rez them that they may become a problem 
-- these actions move the objects from the disk where they are sitting 
to the memory of the server, where everyone can see them and where they 
can run scripts, if allowed.

Diva / Crista

Todd Adams wrote:
> @ Cristina
>
> Along the lines of permissions between grids...
>
> There are people who are going to want to set up specialty grids for 
> role-play.  If they are creating a fantasy medieval world, they sure 
> do not want people bringing in the latest CCC spaceship or BFG 2000 
> particle beam weapon into that world.  Maybe it should just be flagged 
> so its grayed out in inventory until arriving at a world the item is 
> compatible with.  On the flipside, people role-playing a Star Trek 
> universe are not going to appreciate newcomers arriving with a +6 
> Vorpal Broadsword...
>
> Beyond allowing/disallowing,  certain inventory items could be 
> embargoed or taxed in the local currency.  A flexible enough system 
> would be an excellent learning tool for college and high school 
> economic classes.
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 5, 2008 at 3:04 AM, dr scofield <DrScofield at xyzzyxyzzy.net 
> <mailto:DrScofield at xyzzyxyzzy.net>> wrote:
>
>     Cristina Videira Lopes wrote:
>>
>>     Burnman,
>>
>>      
>>
>>     Technically your comments are off, as Michael already pointed
>>     out. They are so off that I think they are directed at the Open
>>     Sourced LL viewer,  i.e. at the ability for clients to get
>>     complete information about the objects inworld to the point of
>>     being able to store them locally and to replicate them. Note that
>>     this has nothing to do with OpenSim, strictly speaking. But let
>>     me comment on that.
>>
>>      
>>
>>     [...]
>>
>>      
>>
>>     While the solution is technically feasible, what sense would it
>>     make to go around the world seeing garbage everywhere?? Plus
>>     anyone who wanted to see the decrypted objects would have to use
>>     an extended version of the LL viewer, one that does decryption.
>>     Not to mention the added performance overhead. … Again, I doubt
>>     massive adoption, but this could definitely be done, technically.
>>
>     completely agree with that. the point of a virtual world is that
>     you *can see the virtual world* --- again, this is the core
>     fallacy of DRM: you want keep your content a secret but at the
>     same you need to give your customers access to the content
>     otherwise why would they pay for it???
>
>     let face facts (and i'm repeating arguments others and i have
>     made, i know):
>
>         * clients will have to be told about the shape and texture of
>           virtual world objects --- *otherwise they won't be able to
>           render it*
>         * scripts can be kept on server, clients don't get access to
>           them (unless you own the object or share it)
>         * in a future interconnected grid of grid (let's call that a
>           virtual universe), you could add "permissions" that let you
>           specify to which grids an object may be exported, that way
>           you could say, i trust the LL grid, i don't trust dr
>           scofield's grid because, oh, i don't know, she doesn't agree
>           with me on DRM and VW ;-)
>
>     that last approach will have consequences for your customers
>     though: they won't be able to take the objects they bought from
>     you with them to dr scofield's grid. some won't care, some won't
>     like it --- and probably not be return customers. but that then is
>     something you as a content provider have to come to terms with.
>
>
>         cheers,
>         dr scofield
>
>     -- 
>     dr dirk husemann, mathmatics and computer science, ibm zurich research lab
>     SL: dr scofield ---- drscofield at xyzzyxyzzy.net <mailto:drscofield at xyzzyxyzzy.net> ---- http://xyzzyxyzzy.net/
>     RL: hud at zurich.ibm.com <mailto:hud at zurich.ibm.com> - +41 44 724 8573 - http://www.zurich.ibm.com/~hud/ <http://www.zurich.ibm.com/%7Ehud/>
>         
>
>
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