07-07-2006 17:46
[UPDATE] "July 7th Town Hall with Philip Linden" is now available as an audio download in MP3 format from our Community: Media page.


Zero Linden graitiously typed along with today's Town Hall with Philip Linden, below is the transcript from the Closed Captioning Group IM, which ran alongside the event.



Jeska Linden: Welcome to the Closed Captioning Channel!
yankee Faulkner: hi hun
Victoria Jacques: ty:)
Mystique Batra: Ty:)
Zero Linden: I'm warming my fingers up....
Victoria Jacques: lol
Jeska Linden: The fabulous Zero Linden will be providing closed captioning for us today :)
Victoria Jacques: ty Zaro:)
Nat Primbee: He Type faster than Robin? :-)
Victoria Jacques: Zero :) sorry
Jeska Linden: :)
Feles Coffey: hello
Zero Linden: welcome
Zero Linden: John Swords == JS
Zero Linden: Philip Rosedale = PR
Zero Linden: JS: Welcome to the town hall meeting for today
Zero Linden: oops
Zero Linden: Johnn Ming = JM
Zero Linden: JM said that!
Zero Linden: Johnny Ming
Zero Linden: we are experiencing some silence here...
Zero Linden: PR: Can everyone hear us now?
Nat Primbee: no
Swift Control: yes
Hortman Burma: No
Zero Linden: PR: if you want audio,start and restart
Prokofy Neva: No
Zero Linden: the audio stream that is

PR: we are going to try to talk about as much as we can
PR: we obviously went to open registration and there had been lots of folllow up
work... last week we added information about the CC information in theprofiles
that seems like the right thing to do

PR: We believe very world wide and internent wide, and CC information seems sensibly like something that you as a land owner control,
live over who gets in after registration, we have been working to fix tthe features in the platform with respect to that
last week we have the ability to see who has given payment infor int he profile
next week we're doing more follow on info
1 is the ability to se t ona parcel if you want people who ahve CC info on your land or not
2) there is this scripting push abiltiyt that is a afoten used as a griefing tool
we are adding features to amanage that
first is the ability for you as a land owner to set if pushing work on anyone on your land
secondly, this makes other kinds of expeirneces
like fighting is more even if you turn off tha abilty to push at a distance
that will be in the wednesday release
the other is that we indadvertendly removed the ability to see who pushed you
we'll be putting that back in
so you can see the history of who pushed you and put that in an abuse report
there are also lots of bugs being fixed
we also added the ability when you band somneone from your land, it now bands up to 700 m.
other bans are still at 50m like land passes, etc...
looking forward to capabilities and features
ther are two previews now
hopefully we'll get most of 1.11 into next wednesday's release
there are alot of amazing things in i it
alot of it is that we fianlly got a large pass on the UI
one is that most of the UI is no XML, which will allow anyone to convert SL to local langauges
we are also moving forard on that too
there are whole bunch of UI issues
there are a bunch of fun new capabilities
like significant improvements to snapshots
you can not move your camera around while you're snapshoting with everything frozen
liike "Bullet Time" from the matrix
also you can set your resolution up to high values
there are other fun things in there, like a n eyedropper tool
to pick up colors and textures
tear off menus but
most importantely it sets the stage for us to fix UI bugs and get SL working in as many different languags as we can
the other preview that is up is 1.12
and that preview is mostly a substanatial over haul of the groiups capabilities
more powerful commerce abilities, abilities to delegate responibilities
these will be very exicciting
these are in preview now so youcan try them today
get in ther an check it out
now back to Johnny
JM: The first qeustion is from Michi Lumen
"The parcel band limint needs to be increased form 50"
PR: Yes, we're working on that ow right now
it is a little hard to do due to apacket size, but someone is working on it right now
JM: Prokfy asks "what do you think about the deluge of private islands will ahve, and do you have plans to close the mainland?"
PM: Last I checked the majority of regions were not islands
the new capabilityes in groups wshould set the balance more right on the main land offering mor estate like abiltiies to main land
you are starting to see island clustering
I think our main land is important in that you can do anythying in it
the clustered islands, those people are going to be conducintg their own social systmes
thier own social experiements
I think you're goin to see everything inbetween on these clustered islands
I think a year from now you'll see what looks like many mainlands
with respect to the land market, I can't predict
it seems important o allow the reslae land in as granular way as possibloe
there are already many etatre owneres effectively selling land through rentals
so I don't know if that change will have an effect
I wouldn't hazeard a geuss
PM: from (Name?>) "Are theyare any plans to suppoort other animation formats?"
PR: I'm not sure there is anywork on that
What's improtant is to open up the lcient enough to allow others to do plugins to other formats
since there are som many formats, the best way for us is to open the API up and allow people to do plug ins
though if you want to start a discussion or a vote ont hat, we'd be happy to look at it
BVH seems like the predominatne format
MH:
Lola Marquez: Question: Any plans to allow estate owners the option of letting renters pay rent automatically deducting USD or L$ from the renters account, then informing the renter automatically when it is time for renewal allowing them to contnue orsto
PR: I think the paln is to allow the estate owner to sell land to an individul with the ability to get the land back if there is a payment problem
I tdon't think it is a good use of our time to automated payment systems in placye
we are just going put land sales out and see how it goes
JM: Dirty McLean: Are there any plans to add more keys that we can script controls for?
I'm not sure anybody is orking on that,
we have not more boradly opened up the keyboard access
there is lots of interest, but no, not right now
Millie Thompson: Will there be new features in the avatar appearance editor? I'd like to see a slider to apply a spandex morph for the female avatar's upper body.
PR: A spandex morph I'm not sure I understand, that might be good to send me an e-mail on this
there are so many ways to go with teh AV editor somedays we don't even know where to start
there are so many things we could do on that
I'd say on that, send me an e-mail [email=philip@lindenlab.com]philip@lindenlab.com[/email]
probably we're a little behind on updates on the AV right now, but we ahve a group here on pushing new ideas on the AV
there are only 2 or 3 of the 17 or so devs. here with expertiese on that
to ask a q: join Lindne Town Hall questions
Michelle Margetts: will we ever get layered tattoo/skin options?
PR: I was just asked that the other day
we have definitiely have that onthe list
but I don't know when
the way the systme works, there is really only one layer, we just mix 'em
we will have the ability to mix muilitple layers, we just need a good UI
the architecture suppprts it, but we have to work on coming up with a UI
and things like chanigng clothes with scripting calls....
si Money: With the addition of the unauthenticated accounts, is there anything going to be done about IM control/privacy? I hate to block IMs from the public, but lately I get spammed by no payment info accounts constantly asking me to give them L$
Viceroy Tardis: I am curious if we will ever see the sim limit of 40 people to a sim be increased anytime in the future? Also I am curious if there will ever be a way to view the number of people who have been referred by you in your account settings?
PR: I'm not aware of any work on letting you set such a preference, but I'm writing that down and I'll pass it along
I don't feel like it is somehting we've discussed yet in the followup
to the open reg.
we should see how mnay peopl are having those issues
obviously there are TOS issues if someon is doing it alot - and so definitely follow an abuse report if one person is doing it alot
Jamie David: Abuse no work.
we have a fairl good ability to identify the account by different things we can look at
that are commonly used by ISPs
we can aggressively ban in these cases, even though it isn't perfect, we can be 99% effective
compare to spam - imagin if spam e-mail had ability to track who -
we can do that
it is against the TOS to do that kind of IM
Johnny Clarke: Question: Do you think the map will be filled with land one day, with no more free spaces? So i would be possible to walk to the whole world by foot?
PR: huh! I'd lvoe to see that happen
we'd love to be free to let people sput sims anywhere
I'd love to be able to swim or walk or fly anywhere
I think we'll do a better job about letting the software carry you over regions that don't have sims
Mario Fonzarelli: <--marifonz_sl skype i have audio question :D
I think that is the direction we'll ultimately go in
of course, if you're talking about a sailboat, we 'd have to do simulation in those void areas
but in the long run, pretty likely yes
from a stategic persepctive it is waht makes SL soo cool: that you can kind of see everywhere and get wevery where
Canimal Zephyr and Surreal Farber asked about Texture theft. Texture theft is becoming an increasing problem. How will you address the GL Intercept problem specifically and theft in general? Similarly, Lola Marquez asked about a girl in Teen Grid who was
found stealing /copying designs a month ago, now she was caught stealing another major designers work and reselling it and asking why she wasn't banned when it first happened.
PR: I got some e-mail on taht earlier today
I'm concerned about that as well
first I want to make sure we are rapidly folowing up on all DMCA claims
I don't have an answer ont hat as it was only a few hours ago
becuase SL things have the owners names on them, we can respond oto DMCA quickly
it is definitely important that there be a respect for Copyright
having said that
GL Interscept, there is no solution
to keeping people from makeing copies of things they can see
and from a legal perspective it isn't clear
on what you can restrict on this sort of use
the file sharing debates show how rich and deep this topic is
technically, there isn't a way to stop the copying of something you are experiencing on your PC
we are en't going to spend time ttrying to create indadequate solutions,since we dont' think it is a good use of our time
we need to create systems for easily handling cases where is it clear infringement
longer term, people are going to have to build their own systmes for regulation, and policing around reuse of content
I think that are going to start seeing it
and it is good in theevolution of SL as a whole
We will continue to creat many tools to handle it
rather than there being a single standard
for all situations
JM: Our first Skype caller:
(waiting for audio)
Foxdie Ghia:
I've got a question about link sets and physics
at one point it was possible to create joits
joints
is there a plan to bring them back
PM: There is
I built the wind chimes using joings
joints
that are so cool
I love 'em
we did an analysis of all the sim states and found that I, Philip Linden, and made over 95% of all the content
using joints
the problme was that the UI was hard, and there were a lot of crash reports usoing joints
and so we felt for stability we should take it out for now
when we get to Havok 2, which will happen eventually, but not as important as other stuff right now
but, once we get to a new version of havok, we'll be able to get joints back and maybe motors...
\I really think that physics is really compelling, but only if it is buildable and stable
FG: how about plans for multiple link sets?
there is an issue of heirarchy among objects, which we aren't working right now, but that would be cool
as people are now doing it in SL through complicated scripts
Arrekusu Muromachi: Question: Is it true that the group limit will be raised in the next version?
PR: I beliee it is
is it 25 we are raising too?
it is a techincal prolem with scaling....
Jamie David: Believes????
To 25, I see in IM
Mario Fonzarelli (via skype):
any implementing of voice in SL? and any protection for desingers about copyright
?
PR: I addressed designers and copyright earlier: with dealing with DMCA and adding tools
like we are with open registration
PR: the issue on voice is that we are playing around with this, like others are
I don't have any specific this is what we're going to do when
we are trying the systems and playing with it in world
it is very powerful for certain kinds of communication
on theother hand, I can't just "be" philip linden and keep anyonmous as I can when I type
we'd like to see voice filtering and maksing,
Viceroy Tardis: I have 4 questions in which I would like to ask via Skype, my Skype username is : uoradio , those questions are : 1. Limit on players in a sim 2. Sign-up Referrals 3. Trade Windows in SL 4. Multiple Titles and Permissions possibly for groups
but the techniology isn't very advanced yet and is just sort of infuriating
if there is technology that can change your voice, age, gender, and you can't tell -- I'd love to see it
MF: would there be any way to turn it off if you wanted
PR: Sure
Jamie David: LOL, Google
Unverified Quackenbush: Phillip. What is your take on Golf in SL, following your round at Holly Kai?
PR: I think Unverified was my caddy for the first couple holes
I went to the opening last weekend
I was actually in the passenger seat of a card over EVDO
driving 10 mi in real life while cutting the ribbon on the golf course in the SL
Ludo Merit: driving in RL
!
we are working so hard make a platform that has the kind of interactivity people
expect from games, I'm so happy to see this kind of progress
the golf game is a great examle
what it opens up is a great expereince in SL
you can play with 8 of yoru firends all dressed up and makeing fun!
I imagine you could play with that golf game but in an urban setting, hitting balls through buildings....
it also seems like a reasonable economic model
and a good awy to make moneky
money
and, caddying? what a great job in SL!
Mark Barret (via skype): I'm primarily a web developer
and would really benefit from a web API for accounts and other info
is there anything in the works?
PR: We have a group of 4 or 5 people working on our web services initiative
which offers just what you're asking
the first thing will be creating new accoutns via web calls
and we hope to be rolling out stuff in the coming weeks, not months
our over all approach is creat a rich web api so that it will be very easy for epople to create
a rich applications hanging off SL
look for some initial releases on that in the nex few weeks
otakup0pe Neumann and Meno Rich ask if Linden Lab has plans to implement open standards and also have private grids for educational organizations. Specifically in regards to the divide between the teen grid and main grid. This would certianly open up edu
educational organizations. Specifically in regards to the divide between the teen grid and main grid. This would certianly open up educational possibilities. Could be moderation necessary
Aston Barnett: Zero, concerning an earlier question of yours.There is an audio plug in called Melodyne that naturally changes vocal timbre. Can something like that be used in conjunction with sl
PR: 1st of all,open standards, and I've said it several times
given how broad the people are in SL, comping from all over the world, and no really create
technology or revolution hasn't been open
specifically, for grids for educators, YES, that makes sense
Jamie David: Aston no one listening ;-(
we built the teen grid as the first thing we could do with our resources
it doesn't cover all possibilities
that one could want
THere are over 50 islands owned by educational institutions
that is a tremndous amount of education activity in SL
it is very excisting to see
I have three teachers in my family and I'm on a school board here in S.F. - so I'm very excited by this
Gordon: (via skype) when are you cgoing to expand the scripting?
PR: one thing we can do is making easier to modify the properites of things with scripting
another is making scriting easier
perhaps joint, live editing of a script
it is really exciting that some pople are using SL to learn programming and engineering
probably like when Marc Andressen had folks first using the early web langauge
SL is basically this amanzing way to program the 3d world
as a random plug: on the topic of gas engines
we are now a coummunity of 30k a day using SL
if you think of us a s small city, how green we are!
we use just a few KW of engery -
(kilowatts)
we are a sort of really really green small city
Robin (via skype)
: my q is : we own one full sim, and three of the sims taht sourround it
it is a country based sims
and we want to connect it all togethers
we loooked into getting an island, but we though t was more advanteageous to stay on the main land
we want to know how to join them together
there are tradeoffs here
if there are people owning parts of those sims,
then it wouldn't make sense to let you kick them off
but the new group features that are coming out give you many of the fatures you want
like you can deputize who can manage the lists of people who can go on your land
these tools make it possible to allow you to do more of what you could do if you have an island
check it out in preview
I'd say, stay on the mainland
the idea of clustering and the magic spell of working with your neightbors is just a great appeal
If I were doing things in SL, that is what I'd do - on themain land
4 sims? the biggest privately owned area on the mainland?
Robin: 2nd part: I go up and look at popular places, and we are consistently busy, but the popular areas are have all the numbers
due to dance pads and charis
PR: We need to do better searching and and classifies and listings
that lets people find good content in other ways that are more effective than just dwell
Nightspy Rebus asks if is it possible to seperate the user name from the avie [avatar] name for login purposes, for better security?
PR: we've talked about that
there are a sophesitcated set of questions around that no matter how we do it
this XML UI change will make it much easier for ust o make such changes
it is a topic for discussion
Cory Edo (via skype): 2 qs: 1) I do a lot of group building
will there be any change to allow group building less buggy?
could you look into doing something past giving modify perms?
PR: there are two things: 1) have you looked at the1.12 preview...
I'm not sure if it addresses those issues?
the other things, I know that wer are also doing work on scripts
like we couldn't turn off scripts without turning off all scripts
sounds like you have a more of a laundry list
send me an e-mail
and I can run it by the team
Cory: Iabout teh god mode hack
two things I like: the long cam feature, and the abilty to seelct things
this is a big help to builders of large things
PR: we like when people get those things
we like to see what happens
as there are always two ways to go
There are viewer options that are supposed to be hidden
but you can turn them on by hacking the client
BUT , it doesn't flip any bits in the back end system - so you can't do stuff you aren't supposed to
our strategy is that we should just give people all the fatures that they like
like on moving the camera a long ways
one thing is working on restricting where you can put the camera -- the privacy issue
I would suspect that we'll just add that abilityfor everybody
we should give everyone those feaures or just make them not work at all...
DJ Under: Would it be possible to make it so if you own a sim, you can change all parcels on that Island at once?
PR: all the parcels properties? I don't know, we may have done a little of that with the groups enhancement
I think the answer is no, and realisticially, it probably isn't very easy
a good thing for the feature voting list
Stroker (via Skype)
looking forward to SL Con. in a few weeks
can you elaborate on the physical avatar
you've teased us on that
what can we expect?
what time frame?
on a side note - process credit balance turn around? a trader developer account where you pay extra 1/2 % to expedite?
PR: I'll take that to finance
S: the security risk is minimal, I'd like to see it
PR: You're talking about the time delay right? the only issue is fraud, ... so in cases where it is obvious... I don't know the steps, I'll bringi it to accounting
PR: I don't want to steal any thunder from the Physical AV team
I'm not sure what we've said about it
we are doing some really neat work that I don't think anyone has seen in a game before
that lets you move your body with your mouse
today we do it with animatinos
but there is a magic membrane we can't push against
we really wnat to move our bodies like we do in RL
we have a team of people working on that
Dayna Aquitaine: what about expressions we are lacking there
I dont' want to say anthing more than that
Sven Okonomi: Would it eventually be possible for people in europe to get other payment options? Currently theres only Direct Creditcard, or using a paypal account but only if that account has creditcard info. Some people love SL but do not own a CC.
PR: Yep - I couldn't agree more
about half of the people signing up for Sl are outside the Sl
outside the US
we want Sl to be a global phenomenon
we have done a back end system change over
and you'll probably see us do more payment systems over time
adding payment systems is very slow and difficult.. beurocracy
we are well aware of Europe
look for this in the next few months
DJ Under: They just tried to answer my question but they asked it the wrong way. I was wondering if you could change the MEDIA of all parcels on the sim at once?
PR: OH
that would be one to put int he voting tool
I don't think we are doing any work on that
that is something you CAN do with scripting
you have an object on each parcel
that is something acheiveable today
Student Grant: Are there any plans to allow mainland landowners to select the ground textures?
PR; there could be thousands of ground textures
and that could be a challenge
as the current ground is procedureally down
done
but short term it is a hard problem
for 100s of texutres
Student Grant: Are there any plans to allow mainland landowners to select the ground textures?
whoops

Rosie Arnaz: Are there any plans to increase the support call in for folks regarding missing inventories, connection issues, billing and such?

PR: send me an e-mail on what sorts of things you want 24 hour support on. It depends on what sort of thing, we have in world 24 support, but other things aren't as easy, such as billing

JM: That is all the questions
[looking for questions]

Fireshadow Mistral: More regarding Appearance: Tinies and quadrupeds are very popular - will there be options to allow smaller avatars or quadruped options from the Appearance screen?

PR: We don't mean to be discriminitory abou our bipedalism. The challenge is creating a multi-jointed model for the AV that does all we do we've been thinking about how to create a jointed model. The rendering challenge is that there can be all these AV's all standing about looking individual. We can do some things to reduce the load if everyone has the same skeleton but, I don't know how long it'll be ,but we'll get there

Ethan Therian: What is the status of including an integrated browser into the next few releases? ANd if so, will its support for online tech like PHP or Flash be included?

PR: we're trying to get mozilla in as fast as we can. We've got the help in Mozilla since it is open source is a moving target, and we've had to rework several times as it changes. I know that we've got someone moving that forward. ON the flash side I think we asked theopen source community to help us we got some help, but I'm not sure what will work now....


Tiger Crossing: Since prims are tied to land and land is tied to money, can we get better script control over how many prims people (visitors, group members, etc) can use on a parcel? This would be invaluable for rental properties.

PR: we are doing some work on that, we'd like to do this via scripts, we'll just keep putting int he appropriate restrictions in

Miller Rust: Can SL billing check if there is enough money in paypal's "Sourch of Funds" befroe taking a monthly fee, the same way it checks before we buy linden dollars?

PR: send me an e-mail, I just don't know right now. I don't know about the paypal gateway APIs, I can try to get you an answer

Brooks: (via skype) when will LL start to hire teen interns

PR: I didn't suggest that a while ago we are kind of overloaded, we took a few summer interns - and we don't have abilit to do it now I'm worry, I kinds spoke a little ahead of the game there. I don't have any spots now, and I appologize for jumping the gun here.

PR: We always have too many questions. Sorry, if we didn't ask yours it is just because we have too many, not because we are filtering 'em. I've got to go, I think we 've got more questions answer this time. This is going smoother and smoother each time we do it.

Lewis Nerd: i wanted to ask you about non-profit builds and people who didnt want to use commercial stuff

PR: Sorry Lewis - we are out of time, but in general, non-profit and non-commercial stuff is a huge percentage of stuff in SL. I'm not sure how to answer it

Lewis: (abridged) will you keep a focus on things in SL that aren't Commercial?

PR: Some commercial applications in SL are very exciting, and some commercial uses are exciting, but the things that make SL fundemnetally great are that it allows anyone to things that the sense of community and helping are things discover I don't care if it is talk about making money that brings poeple here.

PR: Alas, I've gotta run. I'll see you all next month. Thanks for all of you being here, take care, everyone and thanks to all the Lindens, and to Johnn Ming for being our host.

JM: There will be a transcript and MP3 will be posted later

Jeska Linden: Thank you to Zero for TYPING along :) :)