Caledon Oxbridge Q&A for 2013-12-01

15:00 Tali Rosca Greetings, and welcome to this December edition of the weekly QA, where the deans of Oxbridge will do their best to answer questions about Oxbridge, Caledon and Second Life.
15:01 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) * auuuughs*
15:01 Tali Rosca Each have their specialty and area of responsibility, which you can see here: http://www.caledonoxbridge.org/qna_index.php
15:01 Tali Rosca So with those formalities done, let us get right to it.
15:01 Larkylouz Thre rodents with defective vision. Note the manner in which they flee! They all pursued the spouse of an agriculturist. She severed their backbone appendages with a kitchen utensil. Did you ever, in the span of your existence, observe three rodents with defective vision?
15:01 Tali Rosca Any questions tonight?
15:02 Ami Panthar (ami.thibedeau) I have one
15:02 Tali Rosca Go ahead.
15:02 Ami Panthar (ami.thibedeau) Because we are a busy club, we are plagued by phishing scams in group IM, and at the venue. We are also targeted for "pay to join" group invitation scams at the venue. We have set the followed deterrents: 1. closed group join using a bot at the venue 2. Membership only can rez and use scripts at the venue. Invitation only to join is impractical because we have growth of abut 45 members per day. Do you have any suggestions beyond AR/group eject/Member notices, to protect our members and guests?
15:03 Tali Rosca Any good takes on that?
15:03 Wordsmith Jarvinen Avid moderators.
15:04 Martini Discovolante i liek to give the responsbel members torches and pitchforks :)
15:04 Ami Panthar (ami.thibedeau) lol
15:04 Tali Rosca That is really what I would say, too. Active, vigilant moderators. It's a chore, ut it's pretty much the only thing to do.
15:04 Wordsmith Jarvinen And a hope that LL completes the group ban mechanism soon.
15:04 Martini Discovolante smacks her paws for such typing!
15:04 Ami Panthar (ami.thibedeau) what is group ban?
15:04 Ami Panthar (ami.thibedeau) I love the sound of it
15:05 Tali Rosca And, Wordsmith beat me to it: LL is working on the group ban capabilities, which will let you, well, ban somebody from a group perrmanently.
15:05 Wordsmith Jarvinen Right now, you can eject from a chat group but not ban. LL is working on the ability to do the latter.
15:05 Tali Rosca It's still rather reactive, but it could come in handy.
15:05 Kamilah Hauptmann That avatar, at least.
15:05 Ami Panthar (ami.thibedeau) great
15:05 Martini Discovolante i t will be a big help.
15:06 Tali Rosca We're going into the holiday season now, though, so releases are slowing down.
15:06 Ravelli Ormstein in the fencing group i had some problems, i had to add a new role, remove chat ability from the Everyone role, and now i have to check each single group member first before i will set them to the new role. a lil bit the upcoming Group Ban will help, at least i hope so
15:06 Martini Discovolante oh with smaller groups that could be effective!
15:06 Tali Rosca LL will generally not release updates while everybody are away on holiday.
15:07 Ravelli Ormstein true
15:07 Ami Panthar (ami.thibedeau) If anyone has LL's ear, we could use a MUCH larger than 500 ban list for region
15:07 Wordsmith Jarvinen I believe the Vicerine mentioned taking someone's "voice" but not ejecting them the other night.
15:07 Kamilah Hauptmann recalls.
15:07 Tali Rosca Realistically, it's rare to actually have 500 active troublemakers.
15:07 Wordsmith Jarvinen The way of a feline with an impudent rodent.
15:07 Tali Rosca Once they get banned, they discard the avatar.
15:08 Martini Discovolante here we sort by date, and try to weed out eve
15:08 Ami Panthar (ami.thibedeau) yes
15:08 Ami Panthar (ami.thibedeau) amnesty day is every 6 months
15:08 Kamilah Hauptmann Oh right, someone soliciting sexual services. I just plunged the "haha, you can't talk" button. Someone else did the actual eject.
15:08 Wordsmith Jarvinen My boot.
15:08 Martini Discovolante teamwerx
15:09 Tali Rosca The ban lists of Caledon are generally not very long. That is, in part, a deliberate decision.
15:09 Ami Panthar (ami.thibedeau) High traffic on an Adult sim attracts all sorts
15:10 Wordsmith Jarvinen Some that are banned learn, so grow up a bit, and some just never come back.
15:10 Ami Panthar (ami.thibedeau) yes
15:10 Martini Discovolante trutru. and a club.. here we find that bing rather dull is a huge deterrent to crime of Stoopid.
15:10 Ami Panthar (ami.thibedeau) lol
15:11 Martini Discovolante "how interesting!--- do you know any FIVE letter words, young man?"
15:11 Ami Panthar (ami.thibedeau) lol
15:11 Larkylouz chuckles
15:12 Tali Rosca And that is only half joking, if even that.
15:12 Kamilah Hauptmann Pedantry and srcasm, valid weapons of war. :)
15:12 Tali Rosca Just quietly going about your business is usually a better deterrant.
15:12 Wordsmith Jarvinen Stupidity of the willful sort opens one to all sort of ridicule.
15:12 Larkylouz I find it helpful to keep a list of people I've had trouble with in the past, especially if they were'nt quite silly enough to get ejected.
15:12 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) Those who want attentionhave actually reached their goal if you scold them.
15:13 Ami Panthar (ami.thibedeau) yes Dylan has an elaborate Excel worksheet
15:13 Tali Rosca But in any case, I think consensus is that there isn't really much to do except simply having on-duty moderators.
15:13 Ravelli Ormstein Hello Phrynne
15:13 Ami Panthar (ami.thibedeau) thank you all
15:13 Larkylouz Hi Phrynne
15:13 Wordsmith Jarvinen True Mr. Elfbiter. I've often just said that there are rules and there are consequence. Your choice.
15:13 Phrynne Hello, Deans
15:13 Martini Discovolante whispers hello Phrynne!
15:13 Martini Discovolante agh
15:13 Tali Rosca Greetings. You come bearing questions?
15:14 Phrynne no, sorry, just apologies for lateness.
15:14 Tali Rosca Any other, then?
15:15 Wordsmith Jarvinen This is free form.... One may wander in while it occurs and wander out at will .... as long as it is not done disruptively.
15:15 Tali Rosca Freestyle QA battle.
15:15 Martini Discovolante we are workign up to a cage match
15:16 Tali Rosca For now, we have only reached cake match.
15:16 Kamilah Hauptmann likes the Dictatorship of Caprice and Whimsy model, it's great being at the top. :)
15:16 Martini Discovolante who said cake?
15:16 Emm? ?aybe (phillysmaybe) remembers cake is in the motto :)
15:17 Larkylouz is still fixated on 'smores
15:17 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) Cake is a lie....
15:17 Tali Rosca Wordsmith, to pass the time while people jog their minds for questions, any news about the class schedule?
15:18 Gronk Seriman No, If you like your cake, you can eat your cake...is a lie.
15:19 Johann Reisende (reisende04) that sounds deep
15:19 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) There are occasional questions about the scripting class...
15:19 Tali Rosca In particular, we are eagerly awaiting... yes, that :-)
15:19 Wordsmith Jarvinen Yes.... HH has been tied up ... I'm going to redo the examples.
15:20 Meora (menchor) geez with 8 legs he must be hard to tie up
15:20 Wordsmith Jarvinen Basically, a reasonable "script" for the class be he came up with page length examples.
15:20 Gronk Seriman heehee!
15:20 Wordsmith Jarvinen You can't imagine the rope it takes.
15:21 Wordsmith Jarvinen He knows his stuff and can explain it well, it is a matter of targeting an audience correctly.
15:22 Wordsmith Jarvinen That can't be assumed to have a programming background.
15:22 Tali Rosca So we're really drafting him into doing *both* a Basic and Advanced class :-P
15:22 Martini Discovolante i would have been happy with script ammendment class, setting a door, etc.
15:22 Wordsmith Jarvinen And will scream and run at a page of LSL.
15:23 Wordsmith Jarvinen I think that may well be the result....
15:23 Tali Rosca Interesting.
15:23 Martini Discovolante things anyone should be able to do here.
15:23 Wordsmith Jarvinen Even if we have one taught by another instructor, depending on his time.
15:23 Martini Discovolante liek a RL basick cooking class :)
15:24 Wordsmith Jarvinen Yes, much the same.
15:24 Tali Rosca The problem with such a "script hackery" class is that it quickly turns completely cargo cult.
15:24 Wordsmith Jarvinen And, we prepared this script in advance, that's been simmering here on the side .....
15:24 Larkylouz cargo cult?
15:25 Wordsmith Jarvinen A phrase made famous by Feynman
15:25 Tali Rosca The concept of repeating (completely unrelated) incantations in an attempt to create some desired result.
15:25 Martini Discovolante that's for me!
15:25 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) More or less that basis of occult rituals...
15:26 Tali Rosca It refers literally to some tribes worshiping radio towers or airstrips in an attempt to make them rain cargo, as they did earlier.
15:26 Larkylouz ah. thank you, Tali
15:26 Martini Discovolante well just showing peopel simple things liek hover text changes, door operations, simple functional scripts that will drive the car without having to be a mechanic, or Henry Ford.
15:26 Larkylouz "The Gods Must Be Crazy!"
15:26 Wordsmith Jarvinen Without understanding the real purpose. The reference is to the pacific islands after WWII. They built strips that looked like runways, control shacks, headpieces made of two half-coconuts with pieces of bamboo sticking out ..... but the planes (with the good cargo) didn't come.
15:27 Tali Rosca And a lot of scripting is done that way in SL.
15:27 Wordsmith Jarvinen The form was done well, but the substance behind the form was missing.
15:27 Elfbiter Skysmith (elfbiter) Those attitudes are not limted to Pacific Islanders...
15:27 Wordsmith Jarvinen Knows too well the truth to that.
15:28 Tali Rosca People saw a script which sort of did what they wanted, so they cut and paste parts from it; often parts which have no relation to the functionality they want, but was in the working script.
15:28 Kamilah Hauptmann http://www.3greeneggs.com/autoscript/ fun tool for basic scripts.
15:28 Tali Rosca Creating some truly frightening Frankenstein creations, as well as what is close to an urban mythology about why it works (or doesn't).
15:28 Wordsmith Jarvinen http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/cargocul.htm
15:29 Tali Rosca So that is why I am personally a little skeptical about teaching people to hack scripts without understanding them.
15:29 Meora (menchor) I thought scripting was sort of straightforward but kinda boring
15:30 Josain Zsun Anyone with students heard of the "Hour of Code" program happening this month? Over 3 million students being introduced to programming basics.
15:30 Tali Rosca Some people find it that. Other find it completely unrelatable black magic. Others find it a fun mental challenge.
15:30 Wordsmith Jarvinen Depends.... It can be quite creative ..... there a decisions to make of how to accomplish something.
15:30 Josain Zsun http://csedweek.org
15:31 Martini Discovolante Miss bbcsm, please right-click on any bench and choose SIT
15:31 Tali Rosca I haven't heard about that "Hour of Code". I'll look it up after the QA.
15:31 Johann Reisende (reisende04) I bet she wouldnt do that in rl
15:31 Wordsmith Jarvinen Somehow, I must resemble a bench.
15:31 Meora (menchor) Ha ha ha hahahaaa
15:32 Tali Rosca I realize that my opinion towards teaching scripting is a little bit "get off my lawn!"
15:33 Tali Rosca But my point is really that it is usually easier to actually *understand* why things work, rather than to clobber them together and invent explanations and urban myths.
15:34 Wordsmith Jarvinen And admittedly, there are some things that get done in scripts solely for the purpose of avoiding anomalies in what happens.
15:35 Tali Rosca That said, if you want to play around with scripts and tweak a couple of numbers to make them work, I recommend starting here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LSL_Library
15:35 Tali Rosca The scripts there are generally not Frankenstein creations, so they are a good starting point, rather than picking up some random freebie script which has been continuously cobbled together since 2006.
15:37 Tali Rosca If you want to learn basic cooking, you start with good ingredients; not by throwing a chrysanthemum bomb into the refrigerator, detonating it, and then making food of the remains.
15:38 Kamilah Hauptmann A litle reinforcement for what Tali's talking about, I spent years piddling with frankenscripting, where if I'd taken some foundaitonal studies things would have come together much easier in the long run.
15:38 Tali Rosca I'll get off my horse now.
15:38 Ravelli Ormstein prefab meals, Tali! :-)
15:39 Tali Rosca Prefab meals, fine, but don't try to use those as ingredients for your own dish.
15:39 Tali Rosca Anyway, that turned into a bit of a tangent.
15:39 Ravelli Ormstein no, and they never match exactly my taste, it is just that i'm lazy
15:39 Ravelli Ormstein yup
15:40 Tali Rosca So, any questions, or should I rant on?
15:40 Tali Rosca (Somebody stop me!)
15:40 Meora (menchor) Anyone know if the Linden's have finished tweaking Materials?
15:40 Wordsmith Jarvinen Anyway I did a diagram of the structure of scripting content. Rezzed on the sideboard. I mad the copyable, should anyone want to do that.
15:41 Very old leather fireside chair DINKIE whispers
(?PgUp or ? PgDn ) change your pose. Touch for menu.
15:41 Tali Rosca Materials are to my knowledge feature complete, and has been so for a long while.
15:41 Tali Rosca There may still be some rendering bugs, but I think most of those were fixed ~2 months ago.
15:42 Kamilah Hauptmann Materials are go, I have specular all over me.
15:42 Kamilah Hauptmann Next up is the collision bone rigging so boob sliders will affect mesh.
15:42 Wordsmith Jarvinen You need a rag to spot it off?
15:42 Ravelli Ormstein interesting sheet, Word
15:42 Tali Rosca It is certainly "go" and in use. And I don't think we can expect any chages.
15:42 Meora (menchor) plus it will adjust for fat and muscle
15:43 Wordsmith Jarvinen Note that the two material maps have special meaning for their alpha layers, if present.
15:43 Johann Reisende (reisende04) it means the alpha layers will be obsolete?
15:44 Kamilah Hauptmann @johann "In many cases"
15:44 Tali Rosca Not really. Clothes will just fit *better* when collision-rigged.
15:44 Wordsmith Jarvinen No, it means that they are used to determine the size of a specular spot (varying over the texture) and to determine the relative diffuse reflectivity.
15:44 Johann Reisende (reisende04) thanks
15:44 Tali Rosca Whether they fit well enough to completely avoid transparency layers is another matter.
15:45 Tali Rosca As for what Wordsmith is talking about, it is unrelated to the collision rigging.
15:45 Tali Rosca The "alpha channel" is just a 4th number alongside the red, green and blue.
15:45 Wordsmith Jarvinen The postings say alpha layers may still be needed but the shaping will be much closer.
15:46 Tali Rosca We're used to thinking of it as controlling transparency, but that's just one use.
15:46 Wordsmith Jarvinen (for the mesh deformation)
15:46 Tali Rosca The "Materials" system use it for different purposes also.
15:47 Wordsmith Jarvinen The shapes defined by the collision bones are a very rough approximation to the avatar shape, but they do scale with the sliders.
15:48 Tali Rosca The collision rigging is essentially what we already have with "Liquid mesh", so if you have used that, you know what to expect.
15:49 Emm? ?aybe (phillysmaybe) wonders what Ms Hauptmann is showing
15:49 Johann Reisende (reisende04) the collision rigging is going to be use for clothes or to create a new generation of shapes?
15:49 Kamilah Hauptmann is workingin the background, nothing to see here bbut a first draft.
15:50 Tali Rosca Probably both, really. It's intended for clothes, but "intended" and "what residents come up with to use if for" doesn't always match.
15:50 Kamilah Hauptmann But if this is relevant to the ambient topic, a body alpha will still be necessary. Because, Corset Shape YOU.
15:51 Tali Rosca Given that we have better slider-control of a mesh shape, I can certainly see some clever use for good, alternate mesh avatars.
15:51 Wordsmith Jarvinen This post has a picture of the collision skeleton. http://modemworld.wordpress.com/2013/08/26/liquid-mesh-looking-from-all-sides/
15:52 Wordsmith Jarvinen LL plans to add shapes for breast, butt, and "handles".
15:52 Tali Rosca I have a sort of personal dream that given that LL adds a couple of extra bones to the existing skeleton to match the current physics jiggling, they could throw in a handful of extra, unassigned bones which animators could use for whatever they please. (Wings, extra legs, tail).
15:53 Tali Rosca But I don't know if there are any plans for that.
15:53 Ravelli Ormstein would be nice to have a thousand legger
15:53 Wordsmith Jarvinen Nyx Linden once did raise the possibility of more general skeletons. I haven't heard anything about that being pursued, however.
15:54 Larkylouz I can see it now - centipede avatars.
15:54 Kamilah Hauptmann If those collision bones can be animated, I am so going to make a twerkbutt animator disguised as a hug attachment.
15:54 Larkylouz LOL
15:54 Wordsmith Jarvinen Nyx Linden (2010-12-06): Topic 2: "Will we have the ability to create custom
skeletons for animation, or add custom bones to the SL skeleton i.e.: fingers,
toes & tails?" "Answer: not yet! We'd *like* to look at more complex
skeletons, maybe even custom skeletons, but it won't be for the initial
release." Nothing has yet happened on custom skeletons.
15:54 Tali Rosca A thousand-legger would probably be pushing it, given the amount of bones needed. Though, in fact, it may not be necessary for just that. Most of the bones move in sync anyway, so you could rig many (offset) legs to the same bone.
15:55 Tali Rosca Most of the *legs* move in sync...
15:55 Ravelli Ormstein thanks for the quote, Word
15:55 James MacCloude (mac6572) well I haven't run into a Humantaur one yet
15:56 Tali Rosca The problem is probably standardizing the use of those bones without breaking things.
15:57 Tali Rosca We have a couple more minutes, so any last question?
15:57 Josain Zsun Has anyone read SL founder, PHILIP ROSEDALE, is quietly creating a next-generation VW?

http://bit.ly/HPpJGC

http://highfidelity.io
15:57 Ravelli Ormstein yep
15:58 Tali Rosca Fun to see what Philip is up to, but...
15:58 Tali Rosca Yeah. Him and a couple hundred others who has some buzzwords and will invent the next Internet.
15:59 Gronk Seriman I thought that'w what Cloud Party was!
15:59 Tali Rosca Cynically speaking, he is not saying anything which a lot of other people haven't already said.
16:00 Tali Rosca But between Oculus and similar visualization technologies, Leap motion control and various haptic feedbacl devices, and several people working actively with it, 3D virtual worlds will certainly change in the coming years.
16:01 Kamilah Hauptmann Need to dash, some family dinner tonight. I get to mock someoen's admiration and support of Rob Ford. :)
16:01 Wordsmith Jarvinen Journey well. and ... enjoy.
16:01 Martini Discovolante nooooo! lucky you!
16:01 Tali Rosca Whether Philip is at the forefront, or some other company... I don't know where O'd put my money.
16:01 Gronk Seriman Ha!
16:01 Ravelli Ormstein btw, if anyone would like to get an overview about how many virtual worlds are out there, you can have a look at this page. you can order for free some pdf-reports: http://www.kzero.co.uk/
16:02 Tali Rosca Related to that, Carmack has left Id Software to go fulltime on the Oculus.
16:02 Tali Rosca Anyway, I think that was it for tonight.
16:02 Tali Rosca Thanks for coming.
16:02 Martini Discovolante thanks all.
16:02 Tali Rosca See you next week, same cat-time, same cat-channel.
16:02 Kamilah Hauptmann *mew*
16:03 Gronk Seriman Thank you, Deans!
16:03 Larkylouz Thank you, everyone.
16:03 Wordsmith Jarvinen Thank you all.
16:03 Johann Reisende (reisende04) Thank you Deans
16:03 Ravelli Ormstein many thanks for coming!
16:03 Emm? ?aybe (phillysmaybe) thanks deans :)
16:03 Luna (lunaticalice) thank you Deans