Philip Linden's roadmap

Hmmm ! some interesting ideas but why do I think it will be primarily used for advertising, more 16m plots with flash animations (which LL will have even less control over) geifing the hell out of the rest of us.

Why do you think that?
Probably because that could be what we would notice most while wandering around SL
Spiritual pygmies and black hats will (ab)use anything they can get their hands on.
The useful stuff would generally be used to discreetly enhance creativity.


There is a danger that an embedded web browser would be a vector for
- Client lag
-- Think of 20 rotating prims with different flash animations on every face!! It will happen - and worse.

- Security intrusions
-- Many people escape the effects of browser exploits simply through restricting their browsing to certain types of websites. In SL, if the embedded browser was set to render all web content, that fig leaf would vanish completely. It is a dead certainty that we'd see determined ongoing attempts to exploit security loopholes through web content.

If the LL project is simply a technical exercise to implant a *full* browser into the SL client, then we are in for big trouble.
LL will have to put considerable thought into how the thing *will* be abused, and build in restrictions, filtering, counter-measures and protection.

Can you imagine the frustration of trying to AR an object being used for a web exploit?
The chances of getting a Linden in a timely fashion currently appear to be slim to nothing. The chances of getting a support Linden who will understand the exploit are probably zero. The stock response will an an advice to take the matter up with the web site host.



One would hope that the default browser would be set to what I generally use for general Net - "paranoid mode"
A *simple* panel to control options for the browser would be a must-nave.

I can just imagine the horrors of some Griefer using one of those illegal website on prim in location that no one except a Linden can remove and having to see it literally for weeks.
I am just glad for place to create do art in, its incredibly healing for me. I don't know about anyone else.

I can understand your point, Nika. But if that is true, it actually makes me sad that they're basically just being used as marketing.



But nobody has ever lived in that build. And nobody can really "live" in SL, no matter how many facilities it has.



Certain people, yes, but by no means everyone.

Again, they're both beautiful videos, but why can't we take them for what they are - bits of beautiful art by a unique individual using SL as a canvas? Using them as a "dream of SL" just seems like using a Van Gogh to sell easels on a false pretence. Why can't we just look at the painting?

My point is that they are NOT generic bits of beautiful art using SL as a canvas. They are bits of beautiful art ABOUT sl.

They say:

-- SL permits you to experience beauty, such as that in the Starry Nights build, in new ways (the fact that it wasn't left up or completed for us personally to go to is, I think, irrelevant: it could have been).

-- SL permits you to externalize faces (or aspects) of yourself that you have never expressed before.

Well.. could it have been? If it had been, Robbie would have had to choose between paying US$295 a month for doing so, or filling it with advertisements and vendors. It's hard to find words to say how sad that is.

But the point is, the impression the Lindens give is that they also think that's sad, but that they weighed the tradeoff and decided that, well, SL has to be a business to carry on existing so the money will have to take priority. That's fine, and they have the right to do that, but it's not so great when they turn around and say that the dream of SL is exactly the thing they traded off!



Only in the same way that a guitar permits you to become a composer. Of course, that doesn't mean we should stop selling guitars. But music shops wouldn't sell guitars the way they do, if the model for owning a guitar was that you paid them US$10 for every month in which you had actually played it. And this is the problem, LL are trying to get retention for SL but they're selling it in the same way you'd sell a one-off purchase product.