Making the Trains Run On Time

Ordinal Malaprop, SL's equivalent of Rube Goldberg, Victorian-style, has made a cool thing -- a web map application that not only shows off SL to the Internet but evidently, actually helps make something inworld work better.

It's the neatest thing on two legs this week in SL, and I want to be the first (after Ordinal!) to blog about it.

Her Caledon Tram had the same problems that Nigel Linden's train had up in what we used to call the "new continent" and have now taken to calling the "atoll continent" (It actually has some moth name but I can never remember it).  Nigel's was good for many an uproarious time as it would run off the rails and fly over the prairies to the ocean and sink in 8 meters deep, or would pile up cars and crash, or simply disappear. I suspect this has something to do with timing, sim seams, and the angle of the Earth to the Sun.

In any event, the no-nonsense Ordinal was not content to sleep in Europe on her different time zone while North Americans fussed over the train bunching up. So she figured out how to make a web application that would help make it run on time. There's something that rezzes in world, too.

I'm not certain that this train-running-on-time thinger that she has made *requires* the web connection, but since it has something called " a message via llHTTPRequest" which goes "to my Tram Ping Server, with its current location" and the "server then records this information in a file," I'm thinking it does.

So much of the stuff in SL that takes you out to the Internet doesn't really bring you back. Or is a nasty experience. Like the official SL forums, for example. Or Second Citizen, where the Poison Posse reigns supreme, having been drawn off like pus from their infection of the SL forums.

Or other things that brag about all their "apis" or their use of "social software" but which just appear to be so much circle-jerking -- in fact the jerking is so irregular and the circle so broken that it's more like broken-rectangle-jerking.

One of the things Hamlet, Pathfinder and other assorted Lindens and Lindesidents always go on about is "delicio.us". Leave aside the cutesie URL -- um, yeah, we realize it's supposed to be "tasty".  (These cutesie URLs will never be as funny as all those anti-Lukashenka sites that make ample use of the fact that "net" means "No" in Russian lol).

I'm just not getting it about delicio.us. I find it utterly vapid. The material is always arranged by date, which is useless, unless you're an addict already to somebody's page, and for something supposedly arranged by topic, it doesn't seem to be set up that way. The topics are stupid, wavering between Funk & Wagnall's and generic Cool, which is always first-cousin to Lame.

So you'll get somebody's cool blue graphics page, with the kind of range of BIG and tiny typeface that looks like the labels on the face lotion jars at Kiehl's, and then all that stuff. Like it will say:

Architecture
Avitars
Cars
Lime
Second Life
Temple Cats
Virtual Worlds

or some other noveau groovola type of thing, but you click on it and really get nowhere.

A good example is the "Resident Blogs" list that Pathfinder has set up. I don't know why this thing always seems *still* stuck on Aimee Weber, but it's partly because 10 different blogs might have written about her exploits or something. Go look at it, and you'll see how hard it is just to see a list of blogs, or a list of residents, in alphabetical order, which would make sense.

The new-age kind of "let's just kinda grok around with it" stuff is supposed to be "intuitive" or "viral" or some other clap-trap, but it's also just stupid. I really wish somebody would go to the trouble to make a normal alphabetical list of all the blogs and/or all the residents to click on with all this typeface and dumb-ass sounding categories signifying nothing.

Delicio.us seems more about a popularity contest, too, where Satchmo can get his friends to click and save stuff and it goes up higher on the list, or somebody with just time on their hand to be a super fanboy can keep saving their friends, and it all floats. This is that "wisdom of the crowds" stuff which actually translates to mob idiocy in a setting like Second Life and the tropism of Lindens to pick their pets. (What's hilarious about Pathfinder, btw, if you haven't checked in to the WAs and his Explorer cards lately is that rather than feeling a modicum of shame for having picked Ulrika not once but TWICE for the picks in the same week (!) and then not updating the card and leaving it out for AGES, he then went and did that again, picking something twice (now utterly unmemorable) and even writing 'I know I'm picking this twice, but..." Will they ever learn???)

These inane social software things reach their apex in something like slprofiles.com I hope everyone reading this will join slprofiles.com and come and Be My Friend 4 Life. If I can only get enough of you to click on me and make me your Friend, I can have More Friends Than Aimee. In fact, I need to take a leaf from the old Will Wright manual for ballooning in TSO, where you *pay* for friends.

These exercises don't enhance the world, while taking you out of it. They don't deepen the viability of it, it seems to me, but just create more inane time sucks, mindless popularity exercises, and more bad grainy pictures of nakie girls and their cats titled "Me and My Pussy".

I have this awful feeling that the Lindens are going to be trying to get into the MySpace game with our avatar profiles, which of course, many people have honed to a fine science, with their picks, pictures, sayings, classifieds, First Life Info, skills, etc. etc. It has an option to check it off on the web, and I think you can do that and appear in the SEARCH now (I tried it and it didn't work but may it will soon). Can you picture the secondlife.com bogged down with this stuff? Probably they'd like to keep it off site and are just as glad to have something like slprofiles.com do it.

Meanwhile, there are more serious applications afoot. One of the most promising ones is www.slhandbook.com run by a new resident named Clubside Granville. I admire Clubside not only for taking on the Lindens right off the bat, challenging the received wisdom that you can never, ever, ever get Governor Linden to change his land, to simply jumping in, hiring a bunch of surveyors, and making a third-party information site without FlipperPA, and without Adam Zaius. It's so refreshing to see somebody just do it, and have the skills to do it, and not being also trying to tweak the platform and economy their way while they're at it.

It's hard to know whether the labour-intensive data entry required for something like this can be maintained, but I gather Clubside is trying to automatize it. What it could mean is at last some order to the chaos of sims.

We all know how bad the FIND works in SL -- even FINDING the FIND is a chore for newbies that I often help them with first thing -- it's that little button hidden at the bottom of the screen, sometimes visually seeming to be mixed up with your task bar from Windows.

SLHandbook looks very busy with too-tiny print at the moment, but that will subside -- it's clearly a very rapidly growing and very intense operation, and that's a great thing to see. Pictures randomly appear, but there's no dumb rating of them like on sluniverse.com  We get some window into a variety of sims with a sense of  real curiosity, "let's go explore this," rather than queuing up at Metaverse Messenger and waiting our turn with the Sim of the Week to see if we can get on the Kewl Kids' Sim List. Ideally, everybody will get to be a kewl kid on slhandbook.com if you just bother to file the data. Lots more could come out of it -- shopping data that is leveraged and becomes a significant counterweight to the Electric Sheep's SLB -- something I'm all for. The more competition the better, especially if those involved are not driven by their need for profit or fame, but by a sense of public service.

Ultimately, if a site like slhandbook.com and other sites get working right, and the HTML-on-a-prim and Mozilla thing happens right in SL, then we could actually open up a little window like a little Zabar's or mini yellow pages in our user panel and use it to get around SL. The dream of typing in "dress, little black" and arriving right at the right shop could be realized. Add this capacity to the inside of the group tools (which are promising to be able to have inventory moveable within it) and you could really make the social software thing rock for a purpose, not just to show off itself and get all giggly and giddy about the technology itself. How? By having better management of everything from rentals to political causes, RL and SL, or things like records of the auctions or the winds of Second Life for sailors. Imagine making a Farmer's Almanac for Second Life that actually lets you predict when that *better* sunlight is going to shine (have you ever noticed that turning on the sun yourself is never quite as good as that natural sunshine?) and the best days to buy on LindEx (Friday evenings).

I guess this is a good time to mention Max Case's Neighbours. Max Case has always been a major irritant to me, ever since he deliberately griefed two of my events with pranksterish, annoying questioning meant to obstruct. Still, if he had created something that helped us maintain a watch on the Lindens and their tendency to make misleading claims about their servers, I was cautiously supportive. He got all uppity when I queried him what he was doing with all the data he was scraping -- they always do! -- but I was willing to have my privacy invaded (isn't it already??? duh, it's the Internet, duh!) for the sake of being able to go to Lee Linden and say, hey, you're overstacking my sims again dude, cut it off.

So after I finally got the Max-o-tron or whatever it is called, and wrestled Max about putting the thinger out more strategically in his store, I flew around with my HUD. It dutifilly recorded the fact (Seemingly) that on Alston, Furness, Maryport, and Ravenglass, sims that I watch over like a mother hen with chicks because my rentals are scattered all over them, were all overstacked. Worse, they were overstacked with some of the private island high-traffic sims, like Anshe Chung's Plush. Now THAT was annoying, I thought to myself, not only is the mainland kicked in the teeth every which way, it is once again sucking hind tit here on servers in competition literally with Anshe's prime servers.

Except...it wasn't true. I documented all the alleged over-stacking and sent it to Lee Linden. Lee is, of course, one of those storied Lindens that people love to sit around the campfire and toast marshmallows to. Most people have Lee stories and many find it fun sport to try to top each other. I think my all-time-great Lee story was when I once complained to him about Erie lagging and tenants moving out, and he hurled me that old Linden chesnut about the "physics objects". I didn't buy it, and pressed him further -- he finally reluctantly conceded that he'd check (given that he was answering LL email from what seemed like home at an odd hour, I was impressed). The next day, he left me a message that went something like this: "I checked Erie. I didn't find anything. Maybe it's different when there are no avatars on it."

Well...yuh. I had one of my Second Life Special Moments (TM) at that time, realizing that it was silly, night after night, trying to put tenants on these sims and getting them to be happy. The sims work *so much better without avatars on them* that really, we should just put sculptures on them and watch from afar as they spin silently like blossoms...

I remember I first fell for that physics bit from Phoenix Linden, not knowing what he was talking abuot, and accepting this as the reason why Louise was sick. To be sure, when a crashed helicopter was stuck in Ravenglass Hall the other day, sim FPS halfed, and the FPS was in the toilet. I moved like a drugged fly, trying to find the problem, dreading the thought of calling Lee and being told it was a physics object once again (they always say that). Well, I think a helicopter does qualify as a physics object LOL.

But in Erie, now for the second time, and no with NO avatars in sight, with its sims ostensibly overstacked like an overbooked airline, sharing space with 4 other sims that were nowhere near it in that wierd Cat-in-the-Hat algorhythm the Lindens got going to get the server farm perking, it turned out that Max's data was all wet.

"Go and see those sims and see which servers they are on," Lee instructed patiently. I have to say that for me, talking to Lee has never been a frustrating experience (except in person on the phone where you don't have some typing lead time to calm your nerves) because he's so brainy and logical. You will never get an illogical thought from Lee Linden. Lee Linden is nothing if not logical.

I went to the servers, clicked on "About SL" and looked at those "agni" numbers. By God, they were different. That is, if I had a list that looked like this:  Erie, Plush, Loon, Hiatus, Plethora (ok I made up those last 2 sim names, geez, who can remember them these days), when I actually went to Hiatus and Plethora and looked under the hood, the numbers were *different*.

I pinged Max and asked him about this -- I double-checked on Neighbours, but each time, while I had different sims, when I actually rushed to p2p, the sim numbers were different.

How to understand? Max didn't respond. Well...hmm...I suppose the sims are overstacked for only brief times...or in fact there is a lag in data.

THAT the sims are overstacked seemed one of those received wisdoms. The Lindens seem to deny it. I suppose we can't learn the truth. In any event, a third-party website has once again been called into question.

Which brings me to my favourite topic, the topic that makes Cristiano hopping mad, and that is the scraping of data.

Few people probably noticed the altorific "Jiggly Puff" (he of no picture, skills, comments, or anything on his profile, despite some time on him) asking really outrageous questions under the guise of "SL Answers," the lobbyist's dream spot (because you ask a question of those polite Lindens, and no other resident can refute you, so that your tripe gets to stand and the Lindens are likely to do a smackdown because they won't want to get involved).

"Jiggly Puff" simply asks Philip to give him the store. He wants to know why there aren't LSL functions to turn over all land data and all group data to him, Jiggly Puff to...uh...study.

Why? why should proprietary data from LL -- and by extension my proprietary data and yours, too -- go to these pseudonyms and anonymous avatars who don't sign the TOS outside of the SL realm? No third-party site is bound by the TOS (nor should it be, except voluntarily). Contacted inworld, JP told me he was just interested in studying stuff or some vague answer, but of course, he could be a famous land dealer or famous IRC channeler or who the hell knows.

I don't see an answer yet to these questions -- thank God -- but I can't be sure that in fact the Lindens, who love server data as much as the next wonky tekkie wiki, won't just hand it over.

Well, aren't we all for information flowing freely? Sure, but why only into one hands, to those who are not publicly accountable? Tekkies always tell you smugly that "information and knowledge want to be free," while they help themselves handily to the locks and keys to it in the code.

Grabbing land data will yield huge amounts of commercial data not only on the land business but all businesses taking place on land, information on all business deals and land changing hands, and even the people who visit lands and the outing of alts. Same with groups -- grabbing groups and their dynamic history can be the kind of information that various mafias and clubs and RPs might pay for or even virtually kill for. Who's in, who's out, who's banned, who's not, etc.

I find it hugely annoying that no one thinks about these things, ever, except to laugh uproariously in your face and tell you that you've got a tinfoil hat on. Yes, and it's dripping with egg salad, too.

I suppose ResAd or ResGov or whatever the Lindens are going to call their Quislings will be first to grab at this stuff or comment on them, given what we're told about all their capacious programming.

Someone, in making sure the trains run on time, we have to make sure we don't end up with regimes infamous for making the trains run on time, but running over a lot of people in the process.

Comments

[Max Case]

I don't normally do this, but since you made threat of posting your twisted version to blog to slander me, I kept the log - I thought people might find the source text interesting.
For the insterested, this was conduction via IMs being forwarded to my emails, so the clean up is a bit rough.
Prokofy Neva:

Hi, I've come to your store twice now trying to find the thing that enables you to register a sim to see if it has neighbours or not, and I can't find it, and I don't to ride elevators up and down -- where is this gadget?

Max Case:
Hi Prok. if you follow the link from the page neighbours.maxcase.info it will highlight it on the map. It's by the big statue to my glory :)

Prokofy Neva:

Um, what other data do you scrape off people and sims while you are collecting this information merely about their neighbours? And...how can we tell anyway hahahah?

Max Case:
:) all your conversations are belong to us
j/k. we can chat inworld. but really, i just keep track who sub what for leaderboard, and sim coords.

Prokofy Neva:

I have no way of checking that, of course, and I don't think that putting prims all over the world on other people's land, or even enacting scripts on their sims, is necessarily a legitimate exercise, I'd have to think about it.

Max Case:
Huh? Who is putting prims on peoples land? It's meant to be worn! Once again, you let your paranoia get the better of you.

Prokofy Neva:

No, I didn't say that, and I'm not paranoic, I'm legitimately demanding accountability from those who take data.

Prokofy Neva:

If your system does not require little networked prims across sims on little parcels, or the temp-on-rez of prims like other scripted programs do that gather data, like the land scanners, well, great! But how can I know that? You have no expalanation of

Prokofy Neva:

how your system works for the general public

Prokofy Neva:

I did follow the SLURL precisely

Prokofy Neva:

I went there twice, i found various gadgets and an elevator

Prokofy Neva:

In world you don't

Prokofy Neva:

you can't even find the stupid thing at your store where you claim it is

Prokofy Neva:

And duh, I got that it is meant to be worn, and reported on 4 sims, jesus, do you think I'm stupid?

Prokofy Neva:

you need to learn the difference between stupidity and a demand for accountability

Prokofy Neva:

you don't have any explanation, inworld, or the thing itself, you claim can be picked up -- I went to your store twice

Prokofy Neva:

jsut do basic custmoer service and stop being an ass

Max Case:
Actually, if you follow the link to it, it's right there. I never claimed it was in store area. If you got it properly, you would have had the notecard that goes with it. But I believe on first rez, it mentions the website to go to

Max Case:
But you're not even a customer. It's just a free service. You are the one being a posterior about it.

Prokofy Neva:

Um, if it isn't in the store area, then...put it there maybe? because...how can anyone guess where it is lol?

Prokofy Neva:

do you want people to report on sims or not?

Prokofy Neva:

put the thing out where the vector leads when you SLURL there duh

Prokofy Neva:

that's exactly what I did, I went not only on your picks, the second time I went on the SLURL from that link

Prokofy Neva:

you are impossible

2:42 pm (54 minutes ago)

Prokofy Neva:

This is what is hilarious, your concept of "not even a customer"

2:42 pm (54 minutes ago)

Prokofy Neva:

You are being an ass for pretending to engage in a public service for the public good and then not even putting the thing out

2:42 pm (54 minutes ago)

Prokofy Neva:

at the place you land when yuo follow the SLURL duh

2:42 pm (53 minutes ago)

Prokofy Neva:

please, is it so hard to put it there where you land in a little vendor or orb ? geez

2:43 pm (53 minutes ago)

Prokofy Neva:

btw dumbass, the first time I went there, I actually bought some of your junk while looking for this damn things so actually I AM a customer
max case

to Prokofy
2:43 pm (52 minutes ago)
heheh

Max Case:
2:44 pm (52 minutes ago)
Look. Go to neighbours.maxcase.info In the About sidebar, there is link that takes you DIRECTLY to the machine that gives out registrators

Max Case:
2:45 pm(51 minutes ago)
I don't know which link you used, but maybe you used general Games 1 one. Of the 200 people who have picked one up, you are the first who couldn't find it. But I apologize if i was harsh.

Prokofy Neva:

your picks should have something that leads to a store, where it is, why is that so HARD to get???2:45 pm (51 minutes ago)

Prokofy Neva:

People do not look for it from the website often, but use picks which is the normal thing people do here
2:45 pm (51 minutes ago)

Prokofy Neva:

put it in your goddamn store linked on your picks, is that so HARD???
2:45 pm (51 minutes ago)

Prokofy Neva:

do you want people to use this or not?

Max Case:
2:47 pm(49 minutes ago)
I ran out of picks spaces

Prokofy Neva:

um, you have a picks space for the store, put the thing in the store2:49 pm (49 minutes ago)

Prokofy Neva:

why is this rocket science???
Max Case:
2:51 pm(47 minutes ago)
Its not. You just cant stand someone doing things different :> But I will put out another dispensor over there - te 2 prims wont kill me. Though to be honest, I don' necessaily want tooo many people using it. or thats a lot of incoming emails.

Prokofy Neva:

yes, I understand, like most tekkie wikinistas, you hate customers!2:52 pm (46 minutes ago)

Prokofy Neva:

gasp, imagine hating MORE information and MORE participation in a pubilc spirited thing like this *getting all kinds of media coverage*!!!!!!
2:52 pm (46 minutes ago)

Prokofy Neva:

get a yahoo email then I guess
Max Case:
2:52 pm(46 minutes ago)
Not at all! And who's a wikinista?

Prokofy Neva:

You are, for being the second person to tell me I'm "not a customer" while putting out a thing in the public domain2:52 pm (46 minutes ago)

Prokofy Neva:

this is worthy of a blog!
2:53 pm (46 minutes ago)

Prokofy Neva:

Smile! you are on Second Thoughts : )
Max Case:
2:55 pm(44 minutes ago)
Yahoo account? Oh, were we talking in your capacity as reporter?

Prokofy Neva:

we aer when you tell me I'm "not a customer"2:55 pm (44 minutes ago)

Prokofy Neva:

are you in the public eye or not?
Max Case:
2:57 pm (41 minutes ago)
Sigh. This is hard for me to follow. Yes, I am sorry, but really, you bring out the best in me!

Max Case:
2:58 pm(41 minutes ago)
Not really in public eye. But thats why I like talking to you - you make me feel important.

Prokofy Neva:

Yes, Max, you're used to heckling others at their events, sitting up like Buddha in the sky and making arrogant and nasty remarks, harassing them, and pranking them about what you aer doing, but hey, they never get to ask a thing of you, eh?2:58 pm (41 minutes ago)

Prokofy Neva:

Um, that's why you're in all the blogs and articles with this project? please
2:58 pm (41 minutes ago)

Prokofy Neva:

your friend Hamlet has made you a slebrity?
2:59 pm (40 minutes ago)

Prokofy Neva:

think about what it means to tell someone, "you are not a customer," when you have put something out in the public domain "for the public good"
Max Case:
2:59 pm (40 minutes ago)
Huh? Of course you can. Many people do. And I have gmail acocunt - is that ok? [email protected]

Max Case:
3:01 pm(38 minutes ago)
Like i say - really, only you, cuz you act all arrogant. I hate that. We just have differing views I guess. And I object to your characterizaition, but whatever.

Prokofy Neva:

it reveals that it isn't realyl about thatMax Case:
3:03 pm(36 minutes ago)
But thanks for all your feedback. Send me a link when blogged.

Prokofy Neva:

No one else bothers to access your services who isn't in your immediate little tekkie circle so you dno't get a a flavour of it3:04 pm (36 minutes ago)

Prokofy Neva:

telling someone they aren't a customer when they are, is wrong
3:04 pm (35 minutes ago)

Prokofy Neva:

I'm not arrogant, you are, I asked for you to put the thing out in your store, and you give me nothing but back talk about tit
3:04 pm (35 minutes ago)

Prokofy Neva:

do you WANT to sell stuff with loss leaders like this or NOT?
3:04 pm (35 minutes ago)

Prokofy Neva:

do you genuinely want to help the public know what the Lindens are up to with these servers or NOT?
Max Case:
3:05 pm(35 minutes ago)
Yes. Fair enough. I was factually wrong. I noticed you also got a votemachine :> I was referring though specifically to the neighbours service. Not a customer in the traditional sense, though you could be a user

Prokofy Neva:

I'm a prosumer.Max Case:
3:07 pm(33 minutes ago)
Hehe. Cute comeback. The thing is, it's not a loss leader, and it's not about selling. This is my point - we are on 2 different wavelengths. I guess we really aren't soulmates.

Prokofy Neva:

um no, you got that right3:07 pm (32 minutes ago)

Prokofy Neva:

and yes, you are performing a public service, so act like it, instead of treating SL as your person sandbox
Max Case:
3:09 pm(31 minutes ago)
Listen to you! you don't even hear it in your voice.

Prokofy Neva:

you can't even see it when it is front of you3:10 pm (30 minutes ago)

Prokofy Neva:

Did it ever occur to you that the rest of Obscure might *not* enjoy looking at your giant Buddha statue?
3:10 pm (30 minutes ago)

Prokofy Neva:

geez
3:10 pm (30 minutes ago)

Prokofy Neva:

you are so un-self-aware
Max Case:
3:11 pm(29 minutes ago)
ahh so this is about that!? now you are mixing apples and oranges.
No one has spoke about it to me.

Prokofy Neva:

No, it's an example of your lack of self-awareness even as you insist on putting things out in the public domain.

[Max Case]

conducted, not conduction

[Prokofy Neva]

I have a copy of the same transcript, Max, too, because it's an excellent example of this "you aren't my customer" crap that FlipperPA identically pushed in my face, after distributing freebies and then suddenly hiding behind the fact that if you got it for free, then you aren't a "customer". Hypocrisy.

And your "expose" here, which I never had time or inclination to publish, merely proves my point: you are stubborn and evasive, and refused to put out the Registration prim you so heavily advertised in the store that was first easily accessed on your "picks" on your profile, which is where people look when they struggle in vain to locate something -- because your other link takes you to some tower with an elevator with no signs and nothing clear about it.

As I said:

"your picks should have something that leads to a store, where it is, why is that so HARD to get???2"

And why the hell *is* that so hard to get? Why should a SLURL link on your third-party site, which not everyone will have accessed first, what you use to rely on getting the registration? Because SLURLs require the game to open, and often require you to keep clicking on the map.

Why the HELL is it so hard to put a link in your profile AND put it in your main store????

If you thought your publication of this transcript "exposes me" or "puts me in your place," the laughable thing is that it does it for you.

You can't even imagine that the rest of the world doesn't exactly enjoy having to see in their view day after day a giant -- and I mean giant, like the Buddhas of Bamiyaan! -- glaring white textured statue of yourself in a Buddha pose with spikey hair.

I mean, I don't know where to start with this, I really don't.

Let me point out several other things here that you're trying to do with this "expose"

1. You are completely ducking the main topic. Lee Linden says your system is flawed. It isn't showing what it purports to show, neighboured or stacked-up sims. They aren't really neighbours when you go check them out. What say you? Have you any defense against this charges that *your system doesn't work, your info is faulty*?

2. Is there any reason why this handy reg-o-thon can't be placed out in your main store with all your other products?

3. Do you or do you not place prims inworld on 16ms or other parcels and do you or do you not use scanner scripts to collect data? You're evading that question. It's legitimate, given the state of the discussion in SL about land scanners and land swoopers, people who use scanners that are sometimes known to lag sims, and people who temp rez or even per rez objects out on land, sometimes not even their own, using their "stations".

Yes or not? You evade that question completely. At least someone like Weedy admits to scanning, and then explains that she uses a less laggy scanner.

Everyone understands that the item you offer is a HUD, and HUDs don't take up prims, duh, and are a thing you wear -- the info comes from the avatar flying around, not from prims on land ostensibly. But...does this system or does it not depend on other prims deployed that work in concert with it? Why is that so hard to understand as a *legitimate question*?

Answer the questions.

[Max Case]

I answered this:
"But...does this system or does it not depend on other prims deployed that work in concert with it? "
already. the answer was no - it does not depends on other prims deployed. Sorry to dissapoint you :/
Always missing you,
Max.

[Prokofy Neva]

Then why are you deploying prims on little 16ms? LOL. You're missing the point too, sorry to "disappoint".

Um...could we get an answer on the simple issue of how what's newly displayed from a fresh HUD registration is not accurate? How it is *not* what is the case? Max Case? Could we get an answer on that?

[Max Case]

"Then why are you deploying prims on little 16ms? LOL. You're missing the point too, sorry to "disappoint"."

You referring to these?
http://www.maxcase.info/?s=perpetual&submit=GO
?

[Prokofy Neva]

Could you respond to the facts we've documented that your device does not show accurate information? Or do you need to keep distracting?

[Ordinal Malaprop]

Er, I was just going to say thank you for mentioning the tram system. As a technical note, it wouldn't *have* to use the web, but there are two advantages to doing so - firstly, if there's a problem with SL that means that trams just randomly vanish (which they do, sometimes three or more times a day, for no apparent reason) it seems like a better idea to keep tabs on that from *outside* SL... and secondly, I like to be able to watch trams going round Caledon from my desk at work, and make sure that everything is okay. I'm sure that other people might like to watch it as well, and then, hopefully, come to visit Caledon afterwards.

It is very much an adjunct to the world though. I am interested in using web tools to make SL better, not the other way around. I've been thinking of putting in other markers as well, showing particular attractions and events and businesses, so that people who were interested could dive back in... the tools to store and search information that I can use in a web application are *far* superior to anything in LSL... but I would want that to be just as accessible from in-world as from the web. HTML-on-a-prim will help there I expect.

[Prokofy Neva]

>Er, I was just going to say

Yes, I realize, even a compliment in my blog, such as it is, feels like something you'd rather not have, but for short and sweet little squibs, see Hamlet.

>Yes, I was wondering if it actually *depended* on the outside HTML connection, but in a way, having that visual representation that you can in a sense "remote control" from your RL work desk seems important.

And I love the idea of having more spots on the map that connect. Like stops on the trolley.

I wish Caledon had a yellow pages. The FIND list in SL isn't very good of course. You shuffle around on the back of people's PICKS and that doesn't have everything they sell.

It would be great if you had a thingie that you could type
"Machine, Perpetual Motion," and tp to that place in Caledon.

Making yellow pages is of course something that is being tried by 411sl.com and slhandbooks.com but I also think that if people in specific areas/communities can take this on, it will be better.

I like that you are thinking "what can the web do for SL" instead of "what can SL do for the web" which is the way most of it goes.

[Ordinal Malaprop]

That's pretty much the sort of thing that I've been looking at making. I played with people giving me landmarks that could go in a central box and people could search on words in the title... but if I have a database on the net, it can search much much faster and store all sorts of other information too. Somebody actually using it in-world wouldn't even notice the difference either - you touch a box, you say what you want, it searches for it and it gives you landmarks.

I think that just a central flip-book of landmarks would still be a good thing to have by the telehubs for now, though, as it will take some time to produce a more detailed system.