After a looong week, I unbelivably managed to get some of my freebies not just sorted out in my inventory, but actually up on my beloved OpenSim region, whose name I may change to “Bursting”. At any rate, there was some info I wanted to share with you.
Hello my dearest dears, this post is simply some great tips Maria Korolov, publisher and editor of Hypergrid Business, and all around OpenSim Maven, left in my comments. As before, I think these nuggets are important enought to feature as a small post. The first little gem pertains to my saying that I didn´t know an OS Grid hypergrid address, just the region name:
“Christine –
If you know the name of an OSGrid region, its’ hypergrid address would be:
hg.osgrid.org:80:Region Name
So if you forget to grab a landmark, you can still jump in directly.
All hypergrid addresses work the same way. If you know the hypergrid address of any region on a grid, you can figure out the addresses of any other region.
For example, all regions on German Grid start with
login.germangrid.de:8002:
Like: login.germangrid.de:8002:Airport
– Maria”
Belive me, we are all going to get alot of use out of that one. The next comment is a reply to my last post; her very informed opinion about the possibility of your inventory being hacked and items stolen in OpenSim,and Second Life vendors selling wares to people on OpenSim. I had a snake in SL named Juju that I wore constantly and I had thought of contacting the SL shop where I bought him, to see if they would make me one for my new home, but after hearing how easy it was to copy items in OpenSim I was sure it wasn´t even worth the trouble to ask. Maria begs to differ:
“Christine –
I hadn’t heard of that concern yet! Usually, creators worry that their customers in OpenSim will simply use their God rights (or MySQL hacking skills) to just change all the permissions on their items and then do whatever they want with them.
Which is certainly very possible.
Hacking into some strange person’s inventory… well, given that inventories typically have thousands and thousands of items in them, mostly junk (or maybe that’s just me), I can’t imagine any hacker would want to bother, instead of simply going into Second Life and copybotting whatever they want.
Meanwhile, creators who don’t trust their own customers can simply stick to grids where users don’t have access to the OpenSim servers. That includes most closed commercial grids — like InWorldz, Avination, 3rd Rock Grid, and SpotOn3D. And also Kitely — you can make OAR exports, but only of those items you have copy AND transfer permissions to. So creators should feel safe distributing their products on those grids.
Of course, that only hurts your legitimate customers, and doesn’t do anything to stop hackers (can anyone, really, do anything to stop hackers?).Personally, I believe creators should follow the iTunes model — drop the DRM, make their products as easy and convenient to buy as possible, at a reasonable price, and fight hackers through other channels (DMCA, contacting grid owners and having them remove infringing content, etc…). Pirated content — whether in OpenSim or out there on the Web — can be difficult to find (since the pirates can’t advertise), filled with viruses and trojans and fakes, and, of course, brings with it legal liabilities. If a legal option was convenient enough, who wouldn’t prefer to go with that? There’s a reason iTunes, Netflix, and Hulu are so popular!
Anyway, you never know. Give your content creator the chance. They might react out of fear and say “no”, or they might see a potential new market opportunity and say “yes.”
Over time, I’d bet that most content creators will be coming around to the second point of view — at the very least, for their out-of-date, no-longer-selling-anyway content.” Okay Maria! I´ll give it a shot! I have written to Juju´s creators at Zoobies in SL, and will keep you all posted on my progress.
Thanks again for taking time from your busy schedule Maria, to give us all this great advice!
And thus concludes our little mini post. I hope you found it useful, I know broadened my horizons. I have to leave you all now and deal with a treehouse situation. Ah, freebies. Adieu!
