The shady truth about Barnesworth Anubis

Barnesworth has finally come out and admitted it: he is a thief. I always knew that guy was sketchy. Thank God he has publicly apologized to the indigenous peoples of Indonesia and their ancestors.

OK, his post is pretty funny, but it is sad as well. Barnes has the ability to deflate hot air out of a drama balloon with a poke of good humor, but these petty accusations of theft have been going on for so long.

If you take an old concept into a new medium, you do not all of a sudden gain ownership of that concept. You might consider yourself an innovator, but please do not think of yourself as an inventor. We see this nonsense all the time in the US patent system with obvious software patents, and we've seen it for years in Second Life (you brought a miniskirt into SL? no you thief, I did that first! you made a virtual log cabin?! that was MY idea!).

We see people using third party textures or images they find on the internet, and claiming ownership because they think they are the first to load it into Second Life. Absurd. Particularly rich is when someone steals IP from a major brand, and then accuses someone else of stealing when it is duplicated in Second Life. We also see people throwing fits over the natural process of artistic influence that has been going on since time immemorial.

Well, ok, I admit that I think Braque is a second rate Cezanne but that's neither here nor there.

These claims and petty dramas dilute the importance of real IP theft that does go on. Of course, I don't expect any of this to stop but one can always dream.

Still, thank you Barnes for the laugh of the morning.

Are you going to SLCC?

SL Woodstock event

There is a cool music event going on in Second Life today and tomorrow. Here is the latest notecard I received on the festivities:

SLWoodstock
August 16 , 17, & 18th
7:00PM-9:00PM SLT

Things are changing every day, so please visit us at http://slwoodstock.com/ for all the latest changes from performers to times.

CURRENT LINEUP BY LOCATION

Twilight Gardens on Edloe (61,131,29)

THURSDAY
7-8 PA SL Band/ Real life band name Produto Acabado
8-9 Grateful Stryker
FRIDAY
7-8 Clayton
8-9 Cylindrian Rutabaga

Nowhereville (181,189, 23) -Los Arboles

THURSDAY
7-8 Sebastian Jacks
8-9 Spence Wilder
FRIDAY:
7-8 FoxyFlowr Cure
8-9 Grace McDunnough
Saturday:
12-1 Natalie Moody
1-2 Jacek Zehetbauer
2-3 Rich Desoto

Club Cocomo on Pitt Island (133,113,25)

THURSDAY
7-8 JueL Resistance
8-9 Ictus Belford
FRIDAY:
7-8 Lyndon Heart
8-9 Sojurn Rossini

SLWoodstock currently sponsored by:
http://qdnow.com/
http://www.onrez.com/
http://podcasting.isfullofcrap.com/
DJ Doubledown Tandino spinning the 60s Phychadelic Funk & Rock

Grant awarded for Accesible Second Life Client.

Someone on the educators mailinglist send notice that a $90k Grant was awarded to Eelke Folmer from the Univerity of Nevada, to develop an Accesible Client for Second Life. Number 7 on this list.

Now what that exactly means i'm not sure, and what kind of improvements he has in mind. From reading his 2 website Eelke and Helpyouplay i do see he is very much in usability and accessibility, which the current SL client could a lot of improvements on.

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Parody Song about Second Life

Jurinjuran just twitter'd this great mp3 about Second Life by sarcasticgamer. Seeing that name it will not surprise it is sarcastic. ;)

http://www.docadamsaudio.com/sarcasticgamer/ThisSecondLife.mp3

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Second Life Relay for Life '07

With all the drama and the fuss about casinos, Second Life's annual most famous charity event, the Second Life Relay for Life '07, almost escaped notice!

It's the third year that the American Cancer Society is promoting this fantastic event, all crammed full with events as usual, and with more — and better designed! — sims than ever. And yes, in spite of all the attention gathered by so many things happening in Second Life — the major news media in SL are far too worried with other things — the sims are not empty, rather the contrary!

Still, to raise funds for victims of cancer, every L$ counts, so make sure you drop by and run a few laps and contribute to this fantastic cause!

My new scrapblog

William Gibson to visit Second Life

Jeremy Ettinghausen (aka Jeremy Neumann in SL), Digital Publisher for Penguin Books UK, has recently announced that William Gibson, masterclass cyberpunk author (who is credited as a co-founder of the whole genre with his book Neuromancer written in 1984), is going to be around Second Life to launch his latest book, Spook Country. There will be a few Gibson-promoted activities, like watching Gibson's latest movie No Maps for These Territories.

The fun part of the whole event is the contest for creating a Gibson avatar. If you're interested, just IM Jeremy Neumann!

Image of Gibson is © 2005 Michael Carpenter/Zenwerx Custom Programming

Coverage on Boing Boing available here.

Update: The date for Gibson's appearance is August, 2nd!

Stop the SL Criminalisation!

For a while now, the press, tired of talking about "sex" and "freaks" and "addiction" and "escapism", and, later, after a couple of years of talking about "business", have found a new way of misinforming the public: now the 7.7 million users of Second Life are portraited as criminals.

This is a new phase of the press. Probably they think that they can indeed insist on this new theme to gather the attention of their readers. After all, if sex doesn't sell a story, crime is the next best thing. And thus we're now labelled as people engaged in all sorts of criminal activities: from paedophilia, to gambling, to exploitation. There hardly isn't something every week to make the press happy — from the Bragg vs. Linden case to the German government's allegations that Linden Lab has to control content better (Linden Lab, in fact, is considering giving RL governments the necessary tools to enforce this — which might be far more important to stimulate growth in countries like China than Germany, anyway), to all sorts of scams and dubious business surrounding the World Stock Exchange or other SL-financial institutions, or pure and simple content piracy (always a recurring topic). Get a grumbling resident on an interview, and they'll have a story to tell. In a world where journalists hardly require to verify their sources (they can always apologise after the fact and retract their words), this is starting to worry 99.9999% of all residents, who definitely are far from being anything but "criminals", but are all thrown into the same bag by the ever-stereotyping media.

Well, it's time to fight back. And this is what Mario Gerosa/Frank Koolhaas is promoting: the Stop the SL Criminalisation campaign. His purpose is very simple, in his own words:

These days the italian press is representing SL as a bad and dark world.

I don't subscribe to this point of view. As I say in my book SL is very eclectical, art oriented and full of creative people. Don't let that a few people destroy the reputation of this world!
Let's fight the crimes in Second Life but let's also contribute to know this world better!

For this reason, I launch a campaign against the criminalization of SL and I invite all the ones who read to send me a photo of their avatar like the one I posted, taken in Imogen (227, 253, 28).

It's not only the Italian press doing this, of course. Thus his campaign might be well worth considering as a worthwhile endeavour — world-wide. All it requires is taking a picture and mentioning it to anyone who asks the infamous question: "Is it true that Second Life is a world of crime?" Which it most certainly is not.

Sculptie image protection

I thought I would help spread the word of one workaround proposed to better protect your sculptie images: make the files 32-bit alpha transparent, says Neph, passing on the advice from a poster tmp on SLCitizen.

This will of course increase the file size, and I've heard some grumbling recently about the dangers of lag produced by excessively large sculptie map images. If anyone out there is an expert and can comment, that would be great.