Firestorm Webrowser Viewer Made Available on Limited Runs

 

Normally, Linden Lab doesn't say much about Team Firestorm, the group of volunteers behind the most popular Second Life viewer. But on Friday, they made them the subject of the latest post on the official Second Life blog. They announced there would be a Firestorm version of the Project Zero mobile viewer. 

 

But, there would be a catch to using it. One needed to pay to use it, and it would only be for a total of several hours.

We’re thrilled to introduce a brand-new way to experience Second Life with Firestorm. Now you can use it directly from your web browser! No download, no installations, just quick and easy access to your virtual world with high performance and low lag.

To celebrate this launch, we’re offering an exclusive test run: special packs of five hours for just L$250 (US $1). This is a limited offer to help test the service, and it will not reflect the final pricing when we fully launch.  

As the Lab stated, it was a limited time offer, and in about a day the "special packs" had all sold out.

 

 For the blog post in full, Click Here. 

Net Neutrality Scheduled to End June 11

By Bixyl Shuftan

On December 14 2017, the Federal Communications Commission voted to end it's protection of Net Neutrality. The decision came despite numerous advocacy groups, over 200 businesses and trade groups, as well as skepticism of the public at large. Among the corporations calling for it's continuation is Linden Lab, whose founder Philip Rosedale predicted "especially negative" consequences as Internet providers could easily introduce bandwith caps and by-the-megabyte billing.

The new rules did not go in effect right away  They had to be posted to the Federal register first. For some reason, this had not been done for over four months, provoking guesses as to why. But on Thursday May 10, the FCC stated in a notice that thirty days after the following day, or June 11, the new rules doing away with the Net Neutrality protections would begin. "These unnecessary and harmful internet regulations will be repealed," FCC Chairman Ajit Pai stated.

So what happens next? There is a bill in Congress being pushed that if passed would require the FCC to keep the current protections. But while it needs only one more Senator to support it, it faces an uphill battle in the House. In the courts, more than twenty states have also filed suit to stop the FCC from repealing the present-day rules. Several states, including California and New York, are considering legislation enforcing Net Neutrality within their boundaries. But a spokesman for the FCC states such legislation would be illegal and would be challenged in court.

Gigi Sohn, an advisor to a former FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, commented that net neutrality's future will probably "stay murky" through the rest of the year.

Because of the importance of the issue of Net Neutrality, the Second Life Newser declared FCC Chairman Ajit Pai as it's "Man of the Year" for 2017 as we felt the potential harm of the disposal of these new regulations to Second Life outweighed the accomplishments of any one group of residents or any one accomplishment of Linden Lab.

Sources: CNN, Motherboard

Image Credit: Lanai Jarrico

Bixyl Shuftan

Cica Ghost's "Arachnid "

After some time doing some videos, Becky Shamen is back with another art exhibition review. Her latest exploration took her to the Weeds sim, where Second Life artist Cica Ghost has her newest artistic exhibit: "Arachnid." The latest in a line of Cica's exhibits which go back to 2012, it's aptly named with webs and spiders. So what did Becky think of the work?

Read Becky's article in Design.

Direct Messages for Second Life Web Profiles Disabled

In October 2011, Linden Lab added a feature to residents' profiles on the Internet on https://my.secondlife.com . Already able to make public posts on them, they could then also send private "Direct Messages." This feature allowed users to privately communicate with one another without logging on. At least they could until December 2013, when residents began noticing this option was disabled. This was traced to some profile maintenance on December 12.

Inara Pey managed to get in contact with Linden Lab's communications director, Pete Linden. Pete told her that indeed the feature was no longer available.

On this inquiry, I can confirm that yes, as a result of a rise in abuse of the system, we have turned off the direct message function on My.SecondLife.com profiles.

This isn't the first time Linden Lab has given misuse of a feature as a reason for discontinuing it. Some third-party viewers had the ability to tell their users what viewer everyone else was using. But in February 2012, Linden Lab ordered that this feature be removed. Team Firestorm leader Jessica Lyon stated that the Lab had been asking her for several months about removing this feature saying there were reports of "bullying" because of it. It was a reason some residents found hard to believe was the Lab's main concern.

Checking my own profile, there were a couple spam messages. Not everyone on my feed had these, however, "Um, I don't see any ads."

While a few people seem to be in favor of the Lab's decision to remove direct messaged, "Yay! I found them annoying." The majority are not, "It's ridiculous for it to be shut off just because some people can't be bothered to use the tools already there to manage their privacy; it's not that hard to avoid getting spam or any PMs at all if one doesn't like the feature. Typical overkill to take it away from all of us who *did* use and enjoy it!" Loki Eliot joked, "OK so its not a good idea to tell Linden Lab of any bugs that can lead to service abuse in case LL can't fix it and decide to remove the service."

So it seems the feature is gone because of some spammers, "one rotten apple does spoil the bunch."

Sources: Daniel Voyager, Inara Pey, Ciaran Laval

Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day

Gemma Cleanslate sent this picture from "Magellan's Grid" when she got caught by one of the villain's pets. Now what job would he have once the bad guy was defeated?

Bixyl Shuftan

CISPA Passes US House, Stalling in Senate

While the nation's attention has been on the Boston bombers and questions about their links to Islamic terrorism, computer users faced some other worries. On Thursday April 18th, the CISPA Bill passed the US House of Representatives by a vote of 288-127.

CISPA, officially named the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, was introduced supposedly as to help the government "investigate cyber threats and ensure the security of networks against cyberattacks." But it has been heavily criticized for being a threat to the public's right to privacy. This includes permitting authorities to search databases without warrants, and Internet service providers would be banned from making "legally binding" promises to protect users' privacy.

Fortunately for privacy activists, the bill's future is iffy, at least for the short term. The Senate has been preoccupied with other issues such as immigration and the right to buy firearms. The White House has also threatened to veto the bill if concerns about privacy issues were unanswered, "Citizens have a right to know that corporations will be held accountable, and not granted immunity, for failing to safeguard personal information adequately … " This is a similar course to what happened in 2012, and the bill was never taken up by the Senate that year.


Sources: ABC News (Chicago) , CNet, Wikipedia

Bixyl Shuftan

"Six Strikes" Internet Rule Likely Installed Monday

By Bixyl Shuftan

Internet Privacy activists expressed worry when on Monday February 26, the "Six Strikes" rule was set to go into effect. Devised last year, the rules involve the "Copyright Alert System" set up by the following Internet Service Providers: AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon.

Under the system, copyright owners are supposedly alerted to people downloading their content without permission, and they can alert the ISPs to the people targeted by the system. The first alerts are warnings. After a few warnings come "mitigation alerts" which depending on the ISP results in temporary reductions in Internet speed, a downgrade in the service tier, redirection to a page for a period of time, or other measures. After six alerts, there are no more, but each supposed violation is recorded in case the matter is taken to court.





Critics point out that the system is imperfect, that in wireless Internet "hot spots" that an innocent user could potentially be tagged as illegally downloading even if he/she wasn't as open wi-fi signals allow for their IP address to be used by others. Also, there are methods for determined pirates to avoid the system, such as cyberlockers, streaming sites, offline swapping, and others. Then there are privacy issues. Electronic Frontier Foundation director Corynne McSherry called Six Strikes, "just a great big expensive system to snoop on and intimidate people" whom she felt were mostly behaving themselves. She called it's recording of violations, "a private copyright system, and it doesn't have the protections and balances that the public copyright system has." It has also been noted that the system's software to identify copyright violations was inspected and approved by a former lobbyist of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

In early 2012, RIAA was among those trying to get the US Congress to pass the SOPA bill, which alarmed critics who stated it's vague language threatened to shut down the Internet as we know it. It was in the months following it's defeat that the Copyright Alert System and Six Strikes was set up. It was supposedly to be enacted in late 2012, but was delayed by the damage from Hurricane Sandy.

Sources: The Guardian, Torrentfreak.com, Theverge.com

Bixyl Shuftan

Proposal for UN Agency to Control the Internet

It was almost a year ago in which the proposed SOPA bill threatened do away with the Internet as we know it, including places such as Youtube, Facebook, and Second Life. Today, there's something else that's gotten the attention of Internet advocates: a proposal turn control of the Internet to an agency of the UN.

The ITU, or International Telecommunication Union, is an agency of the United Nations dealing with information and communication technologies. At this time, there is an international meeting of delegates in the Persian Gulf Emirate of Dubai to discuss a plan that would hand the ITU control over the Internet. Currently the entity in charge of the Internet is ICANN which does so through an agreement with the US Government with "a mandate requiring that it operate in a bottom up, consensus driven, democratic manner). A leaked document suggested the delegates of some nations were pushing for a global Internet tax. While worrisome in itself, what got Internet freedom activists more worried was that the plan would allow nations full control of how the Internet operates within their country. For repressive nations, this would mean full power of censorship over online communications. Undemocratic countries such as Iran and China, which already censor websites their rulers don't like, would this time have the blessing of international law.

Vint Cerf, the Vice-President of Google, spoke out against the proposed regulations, "only governments have a vote. Some proposals coulees allow governments to justify the censorship of legitimate speech, or even cut off Internet access." Openness, he argued, was a founding principle of the Internet, "Our protocols were designed to make the networks of the Internet non-propietary and interoperable. … allowed for contributions from many sources. This openness is why the Interned creates so much value today."


Google has also launched a petition against the ITU proposals, "A free and open world depends on a free and open Internet." As of December 3rd, about one million had already signed, the results shown on an interactive map.  Mozilla, the company behind Firefox, has also acted against the ITU plan with a commentary calling for it's rejection, "Why is ITU Governance of the Internet a Bad Idea," and providing "a kit of tools and resources to support people in making their voices heard at the ITU."

The European Parliament has already rejected the plan for the UN agency to take control of the Internet.

To sign Google's petition, Click Here. 

For Mozilla's tool kit Click Here.

Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day

By Bixyl Shuftan