Month: July 2014

UWA Transcending Borders challenge: L$1.03 million in prizes

Posted on by Inara Pey

On Monday July 21st, 2014, the University of Western Australia (UWA) announced the opening of their new combined Art and Machinima challenge, Transcending Borders, which brings together their 7th MachinimUWA and their 5th UWA Grand Art Challenge into one event.

Transcending Borders is sponsored by  Tom Papas & SciFi Film Festival, LaPiscean Liberty & SL Artists, AviewTV, Taralyn Gravois and Arts Castle Gallery, TheDoveRhode and Peace is a Choice and S&S Gallery of Fine SL Art, Jon Stubbs & UWA Student Services, as well as The UWA Virtual Worlds Project, and the prize pool is an impressive L$1,030,000, with a further L$240,000  available as special audience participation and other prizes!

Those wishing to participate are free to enter either the art or the machinima challenge – or both, if they wish; just so long as all entries are received no later than midnight SLT on October 31st, 2014. Winners will be announced in December 2014.

Entrants are invited to interpret the challenge theme, Transcending Borders, in any way they please. It might refer to transcending borders between space and time, or the past and present or the present and future, the borders separating nations or cultures or languages, or any one of the many borders we encounter as we navigate our physical and virtual lives.

The major rules in submitting any artwork or machinima to the challenge are (please also refer to the UWA blog post for the full set of rules and requirements):

  • Artwork entered should be able to be interpreted by the casual viewer as representative of the theme. If the link to the theme is difficult to ascertain, it should be referenced in a note card accompanying the work
  • Any submitted artwork should not exceed 150 Land Impact, and should preferably by submitted with COPY permissions, and art entries are limited to one per entrant
  • Machinima entries should preferably be no more than 4 minutes and 30 seconds in length, although this is not a “hard” rule
  • There is no limit to the number of machinima entries which may be submitted by an entrant, however, the average viewer should be able to determine how any given film fits with the theme; if this is difficult to ascertain, it should be referenced in the notes accompanying the film on the web
  • All submitted machinima must be made specifically for this challenge, and must include “For The University of Western Australia’s MachinimUWA VII: Transcending Borders” in the opening credits.

Art submissions should be made via the art entry receiver at the UWA Art Chellenge Platform in Second Life. Machinima entries should be uploaded to any publicly-accessible location, but preferably to YouTube or Vimeo, and the details of the entry (name, creator, location, etc.) supplied to Jayjay Zifanwe and LaPiscean Liberty in-world or by e-mailing the details to Jayjay (jayjayaustralia@hotmail.com).

L$515,000 in prizes in both the art and the machinima categories, with each category having a L$100,000 first prize.

Furthermore, the machinima category has an additional special UWA Prize for the best machinima which features one of the Winthrop Clock Tower, the Sunken Gardens or the Somerville Auditorim.

There are also two special Curator Prizes, one for art and one for machinima (the latter will be awarded to best film which features one artwork from the current art challenge or a winning entry from past UWA art challenges).

For full information on the challenge, including infromation on the theme, all rules, submission guidelines, prizes (including audience participation prizes) and details of the judging panel, please refer to the UWA blog post.

Related Links

Viewer release summaries 2014: week 29

Posted on by Inara Pey

Updates for the week ending: Sunday July 20th, 2014

This summary is published every Monday and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:

  • It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy. This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog
  • By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information

Official LL Viewers

  • Current Release: no change
  • Release channel cohorts (See my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
    • Group Ban RC viewer version 3.7.12.292031  released on July 16th – allows certain group members to ban avatar from a group or from joining a group  When an existing group member is banned, they are also automatically ejected from the group (download and release notes)
  • Project viewers:
    • Experience Keys project viewer version 3.7.12.291846 released on July 14th – adds support for viewing and managing Experiences and for contributing content for Experiences (download and release notes)

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V3-style

  • Kokua version 3.7.12.34831 released on July 15th – core updates: core parity through to LL 3.7.12, chat text entry bar tinted based of the type of conversation; preferences added for name and grid display in the program title bar + more – change log

V1-style

  • Cool VL viewer updated on July 19th – Stable release to version 1.26.12.8 and Legacy version 1.26.8.66 – core updates: please refer to the release notes

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

SL projects update 29/2: server, viewer, TPV meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

My apologies for this appearing a little on the late side; things have been a bit manic in the physical world of late (not helped by the Tour de France and the German GP this weekend!), and I’ve been slipping behind on blog posts (I’ve also got to talk to my minions about vacation scheduling….).

Note that the following notes are taken from both the Server Beta User Group meeting of Thursday July 17th and the TPV developer meeting on Friday July 18th, the video of which is supplied below (my thanks to North, as always). Items taken from the later are time stamped within the text, so you can locate and listen to the discussion in full via the video.

Server Deployments Week 29 – Recap

  • On Tuesday July 15th, the Main channel was updated with the Experience Keys project, which had previously been running on Magnum. This roll-out coincides with the release of the Experience Keys project viewer (see below) and the release of the Lab’s first Experience Keys demonstrator game, The Cornfield.  Please refer to the release notes for further information
  • On Wednesday July 16th, the Magnum RC was updated a new infrastructure project that adds support for the upcoming changes to the Skill Gaming policy. Release notes
  • On Thursday July 17th, BlueSteel and LeTigre were both be updated with the Experience Keys project, but otherwise remained on the same  server maintenance project as week 28, which addresses a JSON-related bug, an interest list related race condition, and to improve L$ transaction logging for payments made by scripted objects. See the release notes (BlueSteel) for details.

SL Viewer

Group Ban Viewer

The Group Ban viewer reached release candidate status on Wednesday July 16th, with the release of version 3.7.12.292031. This viewer allows certain group members to ban avatar from a group or from joining a group  When an existing group member is banned, they are also automatically ejected from the group. Please refer to my Group Bans overview for further information, if required.

Maintenance Release RC

[04:20] This viewer, version 3.7.12.291824, has been tracking with the same crash rate as the current release viewer (3.7.11.291465), and as such is expected to be promoted to the de facto release during week 30 (week commencing Monday July 21st). However, it has been reported that the Mac Alt-Cam bug (BUG-6760) fix doesn’t work and has been referred back to the Lab for further investigation.

Oculus Rift Project Viewer

[04:56] It is anticipated that an updated version of the Oculus Rift project viewer will be appearing soon, potentially in week 30. The update will bring the viewer up to par with the current 3.7.12 release code base.

Log-in Test Viewer

[04:44] There is a special log-in test viewer currently on closed use (there is no publicly available version), which is being used for some kind of A/B testing related to logging-in to Second Life. Precisely what this testing is geared towards is unclear.

Viewer Autobuild Process

[05:50] Oz Linden has been working on improving the viewer autobuild process, and there is a new version of autobuild, together with a wiki page on the changes and improvements. The new version brings with it a number of improvements, such as stricter library version checking, full transitive dependency checks, additional error checks, etc. This is considered to be one of the steps required in order for the viewer to be compiled using Visual Studio 2013. Full details in the video for those into self-compiling viewers.

 Third-party Viewer Directory Updates

[00:20] The Third-party Viewer Directory, which lists all Second Life viewers and clients which have gone through the self-certification process, has been revised.

Until recently, the directory was listed by viewer crash rate – with the most stable at the top. However, this was something of a hit-and-miss approach due to a number of factors, including significant changes made to the code within the viewer which is used to detect and report crashes. So instead, viewer and clients are now split into three categories:

  • Those which are actively maintained “full” viewers which are updated regularly to track new developments in the Linden Lab viewer, and implement a full graphical environment
  • “Lightweight”, text and mobile clients, such as Lumiya, Group Tools, Radegast and so on
  • Those viewers which have not been updated recently enough to be considered fully compatible with current Second Life services (e.g. they lack things like server-side appearance, etc.).

Group Chat

[11:56] Work is continuing on group chat. At the TPV Developer meeting, Oz Linden summarised this work as:

We are working on group chat; I don’t really have much to report on that this week. We’re doing a set of experiments and collecting a lot of data, and then we’re going to come up with the next round of changes to make. One of the things we’ll try to do, once we think we’re done with this project – and I have no predictions for when that will be – is tell people how it went and what we’ve done.

It may well be that before we’re done, we’ll come back to this group and say we’re making changes to interfaces to viewers for group chat in order to improve the situation. I don’t know of any of those yet, but I’m not ruling them out. We’re going to try to make group chat a lot better, and if that means not being 100% backwards compatible, then that’s what it means. At this point we’re not looking at changing the protocol with anything else. Not ruling it out, but that’s not the correct direction.

Experience Keys

The Cornfield, the Experience Keys demonstrator game
The Cornfield, the Experience Keys demonstrator game

The current creator beta programme for Experience Keys has now been filled. Commenting on it at the Server Beta meeting, Coyot Linden referred to it as proving “wildly popular” and that the Lab have “heard some really cool ideas for new experiences”. He also referred to this being “round on” of the beta programme – so there may be more opportunities for creators to be involved in the future.

During the Server Beta meeting, a request was made for the Linden to consider allowing the popularity of an Experience (e.g. the number of people engaged on it) to be made available, with the suggestion it could be done in a number of ways:

  • As information made available only to the Experience owner (so they can see how popular a given experience they’ve created is proving to be
  • As information which can be (perhaps optionally) published by the Experience owner (e.g. via the Experience Profile)
  • As information which can be displayed in the Search tab of the Experience floater, allowing users to search for the most popular experiences at any given time.

Commenting on this, Simon Linden said, “The numbers will definitely be interesting, but we’ll have to think carefully about what and how to expose it.   As an owner, it makes sense for you to have an idea what’s going on with your experience.  I’m not so sure about others.”

Part of the concern here is about the popularity figure potentially being used by griefers as a means of targeting popular regions / activities and causing disruption. Following Simon’s observation, Dolphin Linden added, “yeah, technically the number can be made available. But how and to whom needs to be thought about, but numbers about your own xp can be tracked if you want with a little bit of work. We might also be able to just get an ordered list of the top 10 experiences or something, without disclosing actual numbers.”

Continue reading “SL projects update 29/2: server, viewer, TPV meeting” →

LEA announce AIR 7 selection

Posted on by Inara Pey

LEA_square_logo_60On Sunday July 20th, the Linden Endowment for the Arts announced the successful applicants for the 7th round of the LEA’s Artist-in-Residence (AIR) programme.

They are: Ais Aeon, BabypeaVonPhoenix Bikergrrl, Ellie Brewster, Uan Ceriaptrix, Giovanna Cerise, Peli Dieterle, Mac Kanashimi, Neeks Karu, Frankx Lefavre, Sowa Mai, Lor Pevensey, KatanaBlender Resident, MarioZecca Resident, FirleFanz Roxley, Searby, Pixels Sideways, Mandel Solano, Betty Tureaud, Octagons Yazimoto and Kimika Ying.

Solkide Auer's The Timewalkers, LEA15. from AIR Round 6
Solkide Auer’s The Timewalkers, LEA AIR Round 6

The LEA received over 30 applications, and those selected were viewed as presenting “truly outstanding proposals that represent a diverse range of virtual art.”

The successful applicants will each be allocated a full region within the LEA for a 6-month period. They have up to four months to prepare their projects, which range from full-sim immersions, to innovative builds geared specifically for multimedia works such as sound and machinima. Each installation must be open for a minimum of two months of the 6-month allocation, and it is expected that some will be open in advance of the four-month build deadline. All exhibits must be open to the public by the end of October 2014 at the latest.

Xineohp Guisse’s The {Lost} Garden of Sundarya Lahari - LEA AIR Round 6
Xineohp Guisse’s The {Lost} Garden of Sundarya Lahari – LEA AIR Round 6

All openings will be announced in the LEA blog.

 

TOSing the (word) salad (or why I think the latest Terms of Service update misses the mark)

Posted on by Inara Pey

On Wednesday July 16th the Lab issued an update to Section 2.3 of their Terms of Service. I’ve already provided some feedback on the update and how, thanks to the use of parentheses, it appears to be limited to only addressing the issue of the Lab attempting to sell user-generated content for their own profit; something which is also indicated by the official blog post on the matter being focused solely on that issue as well.

However, there was more I wanted to say on the matter, but which, as an expression of personal opinion, I didn’t want to include in what was essentially a “news” article. So please excuse me if I now take the opportunity of doing so.

I’m actually not at all surprised that the Lab has looked no further than addressing the issue of their selling, reselling or sub-licensing user content. Prior to the update being published, I spent a fair amount of time reading Ebbe Altberg’s forum comments in relation to the Terms of Service and transcribing his statements on the matter at various meetings. One thing that struck me in doing so, was that throughout all of them, he only ever referred to revised the ToS in terms of addressing this singular issue.

Unfortunately, even in dealing with this one issue, the Lab appears to have again managed to introduce ambiguity into matters. In their blog post, they state that the updated Terms now require some nebulous form of “affirmative action” on the part of users in order for the Lab to sell, resell or sublicense their content. But what form is this “affirmative action” supposed to take?

It’s fair to say that the revised Section 2.3 of the ToS doesn’t give any indication, other than perhaps via the very generic statement of, “as permitted by you through your interactions with the Service”, which could mean almost anything.  Even a check on Section 2.4 of the ToS – which the blog post points to as being the basis for the additional language in Section 2.3 – offers little enlightenment. It merely states that “interaction with the service” might be as simple as using the permissions system with any content you place on any Second Life region accessible to any other user. As such, people could be forgiven for taking the blog statement about “affirmative action” as little more than cold comfort.

... Except the ToS doesn't really indicate what such "affirmative action" might be, other than in the most generic of ways
… Except the ToS doesn’t indicate what such “affirmative action” might be, other than in the most generic of ways

Beyond this, why the Lab have persisted in ignoring concerns over the removal of all reasonable limitations on the granting of shared rights to them, remains a mystery. It’s not as if they weren’t aware of any issues on this matter, because at the end of 2013 and early 2014 efforts were being made to put such concerns directly and clearly to them. I know this to be a fact, because I was an active participant in one such group engaged in those efforts.

And if you’re not convinced that the July 2014 update leaves the matter of granting unqualified rights unchanged, then as I pointed out in my original article, you need only look as far as the statement following text which has been added to Section 2.3. It is completely unchanged from the August 2013 version of the ToS, still stating that the Lab might “otherwise exploit in any manner whatsoever, all or any portion of your User Content (and derivative works thereof), for any purpose whatsoever…“

Again, no-one is denying that the Lab requires the non-exclusive granting of certain rights in respect of users’ content. That is to be expected and should be understood. Without such rights, Second Life ceases to work. It is simply the extent to which the Lab require the granting of such rights since August 2013.

An unaddressed concen with the August 2013 Terms of Service was the removal of all limitations around the granting of rights to the Lab in respect of user-generated content. extent to which the Lab require users to grant them shared rights to their content. In October 2013, Agenda Faromet suggested how the August 2013 ToS update could be improved - through the re-establishing reasonable limits on the non-exclusive rights granted to the Lab in respect of content - just as had been the case up prior to the August 2013 update.
Agenda Faromet, speaking at the October 2013 in-world meeting about the August 2013 Terms of Service changes, was perhaps the first to clearly bullet-point why a reinstatement of reasonable limits on the granting of shared rights to the Lab in respect of users’ content might benefit the Terms of Service.

Up until the August 2013 update, the ToS had required rights to user-generated content “solely for the purposes of providing and promoting the Service” (see Section 7.2  of the May 2013 Terms of Service). Even allowing for the fact that since August 2013 the Terms of Service have been applicable to all of the Lab’s products and not just Second Life, it is hard for the untutored eye to understand why this language couldn’t have been carried forward in respect to rights granted to the Lab. After all, “the Service” could apply to Patterns, Desura and any other platform the Lab produces, just as much as it applied to Second Life.

And therein lies part of the problem; because the removal of all limitations on rights granted to the Lab appears to be entirely arbitrary, it gives rise to suspicions and mistrust over the company’s motivations. As such, it is a shame the Lab has never really made any effort to clearly express why they believe such a sweeping change assists them in their role as a service provider when compared to the previous, more qualified granting of rights. While it would still be a very poor second to actually working with concerned users to try to amend Section 2.3 to the benefit of all, providing such feedback might at least help in allaying the aforementioned suspicions and mistrust.

Unfortunately, I tend to feel that we’re unlikely to see any further movement on this matter; the Lab have revised what they felt needed to be revised, and it’s not as if they were unaware of other concerns related to recent ToS revisions. As such, and like it or not, we still have a Terms of Service which still has every appearance of being creator / collaboration unfriendly.

And in that respect, when considering the July 16th update, I’m left with a quote from William James rattling around my head:

A difference which makes no difference is no difference at all.

Related Links

Relay for Life 2014: the weekend is here!

Posted on by Inara Pey
RFL of SL 2014 logo by Sunshine Zhangsun
RFL of SL 2014 logo by Sunshine Zhangsun

The 2014 Relay for Life weekend in Second Life is upon us, and with over $300,000 USD already raised this year, it look like the weekend is going to be a scorcher. The theme for the weekend is Journey of Promise. As with previous years, the weekend will be focused on the 42-regions Relay Track and activity regions and the American Cancer Society region.

The aim this year is to raise $401,000, with $382,000 already raised. 401 is the form used to mark retirement in the USA, and the plan is to retire cancer!

Event Highlights

The following are the main events scheduled for the weekend – but remember that there are relay laps, entertainment and more going on across the entire weekend. All times are, as usual, SLT.

Saturday July 19th

  • 10:00: Opening Ceremony
  • 11:00: Survivor/Caregiver – CELEBRATE
  • 12:30: Teams Lap
  • 14:00: CRAZY HAT – wear the craziest hat you can find
  • 15:00: CARTOON CHARACTER/ANIME – become that cartoon character of your dreams
  • 16:00: BLACK AND WHITE – wear only black and white during this lap
  • 17:00: SCI-FI/FANTASY – represent the Sci-Fi or Fantasy character that you wish to be
  • 18:00: PIRATES –  pull out your eye patches, pirate hats, scarves and more!
  • 19:00: BALD IS BEAUTIFUL
  • 20:00: PURPLE!
  • 21:00: Luminaria Ceremony – REMEMBER
  • 22:00: MOST COLOURFUL – how many colours can you wear?
  • 23:00: 10TH ANNIVERSARY – ONE TEAM!
  • Midnight: PJ PARTY
The Survivor / Caregiver maze at RFL of SL 2014
The Survivor / Caregiver maze at RFL of SL 2014, seen from above

Sunday July 20th

  • 01:00: HOPPY BALL BOUNCE WITH US – bounce around the track! Find your hoppy balls in the Relay Info Stations!
  • 02:00: SIXTIES (60’s)
  • 03:00: BEACH PARTY
  • 04:00: KIDS and CHILDREN – dress up as a kid, shrink your avatar
  • 05:00: HEROES EVERY DAY AND SUPER – we all have those we consider heroes…who is yours? Superman, parents, doctors, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc
  • 06:00: Fight Back – make that pledge…what will YOU do to fight back against CANCER?
  • 07:00: INTERNATIONAL, CELEBRATE YOUR NATION! – wave your flag, dress up in your colours
  • 08:00: COFFEE AND DOUGHNUTS IT’S BREAKFAST TIME!
  • 09:00: FORMAL HOUR – time to put on your finest gowns and suits and walk the track in those dress shoes
  • 10:00: CLOSING CEREMONY – head over to the Activities Regions and tune in to the stream
  • 11:00: VICTORY LAP
  • 12:30: RAFFLE DRAWS
  • 13:00: SILENT AUCTIONS end

The Luminaria Ceremony and Fight Back

At 21:00 SLT on Saturday July 19th, the Luminaria Ceremony will talk place. The track regions will all be set to midnight and thousands of luminaria will be lit, each one representing a survivor or someone who has passed away from cancer. People are invited to walk the track in silence for one hour as dedications are read over the broadcasting stream.

06;00 SLT on sunday July 20th will mark Fight Back. Pick up your specially made FIGHT BACK ARMY CAP and Fight Back Flags – available at the Relay Stations, and join us as we make our fight back pledges to save a life this year; your own, a friends, a family member, or someone you don’t even know yet.

Where to Start

The best place to start is the Welcome Area, particularly if you’ve not participated in the RFL of SL weekend. Here you can pick-up your track tools, which will record the distance you walk around the track and allow you to chat with friends and those around you and walk at the same time. You can also obtain a reference guide to the luminaria donation colours and detailed of the themed laps for the weekend. Greeters will also be on-hand to answer any questions you may have. Once you’re ready to go, use the teleport to get to the track regions.

Useful SLurls

Related Links