Discrimination against scripters who don't have web hosting?

Anyone else feel that way? With all the focus on all the cool stuff you can do with XMLRPC and HTTPRequest, and especially the rather bizarre double standard with regard to access to LL's own site (which I've queried on Answers)?

Actually, now you come to metion it... yeah.
I'm not hugely knowledgable about web protocols, but I understand the functionality that's been introduced and if you don't have your own (or access to) hosting then it's kind of a waste of time. (This is completely disregarding the clever person who allows offsite data hosting via httprequest - w-hat stuff i believe)

I don't think there's any discrimination going on but it would be nice (even if utterly unfeasible) if there could be some webspace that comes in with your tier payments.

And by webspace I mean hosting space with the relevant webserver apps such that you could rpc and httprequest to and fro. (oversimplifies things for the sake of his own drunken mind)

Anyhoo, no discrimination but I'd like to enjoy these features. Gimme some web-server space... (Joking by the way, I can pick up my own host, just would be nice if tier had maybe one more tangible benefit).

Cheers,

Dave

http://httpd.apache.org/

There are free solutions, including running it off your own pc.

I also think that if someone looks hard enough, they will find discrimination in anything.

What they are doing is providing another form of access. Not everyone has email servers, so we must assume the email functions are discriminatory, too.

Oh, and xmlrpc, I feel it's discriminating agianst me, as I have no experience in writing web applications to take advantage of this, so I can't use it.

All they did was open up another channel to interact with the outside world. If you don't have anything in the outside world to use with it, why are you worrying about it?

Oh, besides, there are creative uses for llHTTPRequest that don't require a webserver of your own... like parsing rss feeds.

I think the real discrimination is against those of us who have no idea how to code a C++/Perl/Java/whatever program to manage the HTTPRequest or XML-RPC calls. I know I don't know how.

sl sux we shud al just quit tonite god lolol

Yep, because programming should be as easy as

make program to destroy world

and it should work.

LL should have waited until everyone has hosting and knows a language to write the code in?

XML RPC YEA!
EMAIL TO (scripting service) YEA!
HTML hold up


i find this argument void now, before i got my 3.99 (USD) a month server (with 500mb of space and 25gb a month of bandwidth) i used free hosting, which if you do alittle research on google and some top rated listing sites you can come out fairly well

things you need

banner/ ad free , this narrows your options
PHP + Apache(scripting system that makes html on request, a webserver)
and (an optional) database, my sql is a comon one
if you cant get a database you can use plain text files to fake it
(notecards with read write and central management)

free servers with anywhere from 10-250 mb of storage space, small database storage, and ad free are out there with a good eye, paid services like mine with godaddy.com offer more space more bandwidth and "unlimited" database space ... for cheap but back to the basics

since your basicly bouncing small blobs of plain text to and from SL you dont really need a ginormous amount of overall space at first

the php scripting language is verry simmilar in structure to LSL, of course its much deeper with its avaible functions, but i am a noob to most of it, so i will leave the details to the pros



Hello World

<?php
echo "ping \n";
echo PHP_OS;
echo "\n Hello World";
?> 

outputs http://cheesefactory.us/sl-html/test.php in a browser

and can be formated in SL with tthe basics of this script

string file_php = "http://cheesefactory.us/sl-html/test.php";


default
{
    touch_start(integer total_number)
    {
        key request =  llHTTPRequest(file_php,[HTTP_METHOD,"GET"],"");
    }
    
    http_response(key request_id, integer status, list metadata, string body)
    {
        llSetText(body,<1,1,1>,1);
    }
}

Absolute bare bones can use this :

question.php

<html><body>
<?
	$question = $_GET['question'];
//
// do something based on question
//
	echo "::" . $result ."::" . "<br />\n";
?>
</body></html>

LSL script

default
{
  state_entry()
  {
	llListen( 0,"",llGetOwner(),"" );
  }
  listen( integer ch, string nm, key id, string question )
  {
	string address = "http://www.myweb.com/question.php";
	string extension = "?question=" ;
	llHTTPRequest( address + etension + question ,[HTTP_METHOD,"GET"],"");
  }
  http_response(key request_id, integer status, list metadata, string body)
  {
      //
      // split the result up into managable chunks 
      // ( ignore 1st and last )
      //
      list temp   = llParseString2List( body,["::"],[]);
      integer idx = 0;
      integer lln = llGetListLength( temp ) - 1;
      for ( idx=1;idx<lln;id++)
      {
    	llOwnerSay ( (string)idx + "=" + llList2String( temp,idx ));
      }
  }
}

That will take a URL like

http://www.myweb.com/question.php?question=what is the time in china

Allow you to read it in php, process it then return a result

Crude - but enough to start you playing

On the concept of the topic I wouldn't call it discrimination. It's like saying the web is discriminatory against people who can't code to make dynaimc web pages.

There are different levels of programming/building experience among the residents. Some can't build or script at all, some build, some build well, some script, some script well, some do both, some do both well, some have web hosting, some don't, some can program in C++ (etc), some don't.

So does SL discriminate against those who don't build or script? I say not. You don't need either to have fun in SL.

Discrimination is when you have no choice in the matter.

Discrimination is if you are male and it only allows females, if you are black and it only allows white.

Web hosting is something over which you have a choice. That is, you can get web hosting.

C++/Perl/Java is a choice. It's a choice for you to learn it.

No discrimination here.

If you want those cool functions that are not necessities for game enjoyment, then make the choices needed to use them.

When the time comes that I'd want to use those functions, I'm putting learning time in.

I think people who don't have web hosting should be compensated by LL

Yes, and blind coders, or ones who are too drunk to type. Also coders with one hand, think of it, half the speed. What kinda world is this?

I whore myself out whenever this question comes up.

I'm offering a deal where I will provide you with unlimited bandwidth, mysql database access, and even assistance creating and integrating php script with your LSL scripts.

IM me in-world, or email [email]geuis.teses@gmail.com[/email].

Ok, it was late when I posted that message so I guess I should clarify what I was actually thinking.

SL supporting XML-RPC and external calls: great!
People using these things to make neat things: great!
Potentially useful functionality that could be implemented within SL, such as secure object-to-object communication or access to world information, not being implemented or being dropped to the bottom of the BLOTTD because the most visible scripters have worked around it using XML-RPC, etc: no, no, nooooooo!

Here's an example of what I meant by "discrimination":

/139/f3/112136/1.html

LL deliberately blocked HTTPrequest from accessing information on the LL website directly, but if you have an external web server then it's all yours. Why should having external hosting be the thing to make the difference?

Okay. So go make you're own vw.
Yes, they need to shore up sl<->web data exchange. Don't hold your breath.

They also discriminate against people without Photoshop, people who don't have large hard drive capacities, and people who can't buy Poser.

Quoting from the LSL Wiki



I don't see any discrimination there. Everyone's treated the same, we all shouldn't be using LL URLs in our scripts.

Possible reason: LL makes site changes and they don't want to be (and really shouldn't be) held responsible for user content gone nuts due to their site changes. That's why it should be external. The responsibility should be ours that the URLs are good. That isn't much to ask for.

That's exactly the point - you can access that information if you have an external host, by sending the HTTP Request (or an XML-RPC call) to an external host that accesses the LL page for you. The effect is identical to having HTTPRequested from the LL page. Zero Linden confirmed here ( /139/f3/112136/1.html ) that this is intentional, apparantly because of "their internal network restrictions" (which seems a bit silly, since LL's internal network is something LL has control over)



I don't see this myself. An object using XML-RPC would go no less nuts if the PHP script couldn't detect LL's site changes than one using HTTPRequest would go if the LSL script couldn't.

"internal network restrictions" doesn't mean they have no control. It can also mean they don't want anyone poking around. It can also mean they want certain things NOT directly connected. Network admin and security is not a light matter.

So given everything pointed out so far, it looks more like they don't mind us using LL URLs just as long as it's not a direct connection. Sounds like they don't want to have to screen our requests through their internal firewalls.

There still is no discrimination. It's not like LL singles out people to not be able to access the URLs. All they're doing is not allowing DIRECT access by ANYONE.

They are however singling out people to not be able to access the information.

Who are these people being singled out?

If it's people who don't have a proxy then that's not discrimination. An inconvenience, yes, an additional expense, yes, but certainly not discrimination.

You call it discrimination because you can't access the info.

I can't access the info too. I have a space but I've no programming that will allow the access ... yet. Why can't I call it discrimination? Because if I wanted to access the info, I'll get the facilities and programming to get it done.

And none of those facilities are being withheld from you if you choose to get them.

Except that, seeing as you only get the first 1000 or so characters of the body back anyway, and it is formatted as html, you wouldn't get the information directly from an LL page. You'd need to pull it into some script that has competent text parsing capabilities, and only squirt out the basic data that you actually wanted.

So even if you could hit the servers directly, you still couldn't do what you seem to want unless you had an external site to run the scripts to parse it on.

@Blitzer
Yeah, there's that too. There is also the limit of 20 requests per 100 sec (effectively 1 request per 5 sec).