User:Which Linden/Office Hours/2009 Dec 3

• [11:02] Johan Laurasia: Hello all
• [11:02] Which Linden: hi!
• [11:02] Morgaine Dinova: Hi Johan!
• [11:03] Morgaine Dinova: Hi Which!
• [11:03] Morgaine Dinova: Hiya Xugu!
• [11:03] Which Linden: how are things?
• [11:03] Which Linden: had a nice thanksgiving?
• [11:03] Johan Laurasia: good, I've been playing with wings 3D for sculpts lately... finally making some headway
• [11:04] Johan Laurasia: I showed up a bit late... everyone was in a turkey coma
• [11:05] Enkidu Linden: hey there
• [11:05] Johan Laurasia: Hi Enkidu
• [11:05] Which Linden: nice...I've always wanted to learn how to make sculpts -- the bamboo here would get a lot less prim-heavy if I could do that
• [11:05] Johan Laurasia: oh yeah, definately
• [11:05] Johan Laurasia: it's been slow go, but I made quite a bit of headway last night
• [11:05] Morgaine Dinova: Hiya Enkidu :-)
• [11:06] Enkidu Linden:  :)
• [11:06] Xugu Madison: hi Morgaine, everyone!
• [11:07] Xugu Madison: Which... you were going to look into user submissions to the Library... ?
• [11:07] Which Linden: Yes!
• [11:07] Which Linden: And I found out that it's petra who nominally manages that
• [11:08] Which Linden: By nominally I mean, "it seemed like no one else is more likely"
• [11:08] Which Linden: I meant to ask her personally but failed to
• [11:08] Xugu Madison: Does Petra have any sort of office hour?
• [11:08] Johan Laurasia: lol
• [11:08] Which Linden: I don't think she does, but you could check
• [11:08] Xugu Madison: But Which, I expect you to be omniscient..
• [11:08] Xugu Madison: .
• [11:09] Which Linden: There are no gods, only man!
• [11:09] Xugu Madison: Office Hours page says no :( If you could ask her about how I do this, would be appreciated!
• [11:09] Which Linden: ok
• [11:10] Which Linden: what do you want to add to the library anyhow?
• [11:12] Johan Laurasia: we're talking about the inventory library?
• [11:12] Which Linden: yeah
• [11:12] Xugu Madison: I've got a bunch of little scripts I think everyone should have. Texture UUID dumper, prim face identification by clicks, prim counters, little knick-knacks
• [11:13] Enkidu Linden: mmm cold coffee
• [11:13] Enkidu Linden: morning's last bad surprise
• [11:13] Johan Laurasia: the library script folder is a bit light
• [11:14] Xugu Madison: I can probably even throw some of the more complex stuff in too if it'll make people happy. Not entirely sure what's appropriate for the Library...
• [11:14] Which Linden: yeah I dunno either -- it seems like it's just there for example content and "getting started"
• [11:14] Morgaine Dinova: goes to refresh the mug
• [11:15] Which Linden: my avatar however is constructed using only textures from the Library
• [11:15] Which Linden: flexes
• [11:15] Johan Laurasia: yeah, honestly, I never even looked there, I was directed to the wiki and went from there to learn
• [11:15] Aimee Trescothick: who are you calling a mug o.O
• [11:15] Xugu Madison: hey Aimee!
• [11:15] Morgaine Dinova: lol, hi Aimee :-)
• [11:15] Aimee Trescothick: hi :)
• [11:16] Morgaine Dinova: I actually have a nice coffee mug with a blue (well, grey/blue) kittie on it.
• [11:16] Xugu Madison: Basically, I've got a lot of little scripts people can play with, and if it's not going to be considered overcomplicating matters I've got more complex scripts/scripted items that could go in too
• [11:16] Morgaine Dinova: And now getting coffee ...
• [11:16] Xugu Madison: and well done on making your avatar with library textures Which!
• [11:17] Johan Laurasia: I'd like to donate an analog clock script
• [11:17] Opensource Obscure: hello everybody
• [11:17] Johan Laurasia: or the entire object full perm so ppl could study it
• [11:18] Which Linden: man, I wonder if there's like a museum of science-type thing already or if that's something we could start
• [11:18] Which Linden: Museum of Prims
• [11:18] Which Linden: we could set up a mini-one here if you want
• [11:19] Morgaine Dinova: Hi OO :-)
• [11:19] Opensource Obscure:  : )
• [11:20] Opensource Obscure: the old freebies LL store seems a good place where to put such a thing Johan
• [11:20] Opensource Obscure: i can give you the lm
• [11:21] Aimee Trescothick: heh,the "original prim" would probably be worth a few lindens
• [11:21] Aimee Trescothick: which came first, the plywood or the cube?
• [11:21] Johan Laurasia: the lag
• [11:21] Johan Laurasia: lol
• [11:22] Morgaine Dinova: We need an SL object respository specifically marked by creators as allowing off-grid transfer of their contributions.
• [11:22] Which Linden: yes, defniitely Which came first
• [11:22] Which Linden: uh...not what she said
• [11:22] Aimee Trescothick: lol
• [11:22] Which Linden: isn't there a Philip Linden shrine somewhere containing prims that he made?
• [11:22] Opensource Obscure: yeah
• [11:23] Opensource Obscure: Philip Linden Memorial Prim, Bay City - Docklands (16, 218, 24)
• [11:23] Which Linden: ha ha ha
• [11:23] Which Linden: awesome you had the landmark already
• [11:23] Opensource Obscure: hey i'm a groupie
• [11:23] Johan Laurasia: A customer of mine put 4 tower clocks in his build in Bay City
• [11:23] Morgaine Dinova: That's not a very complimentary name, makes it sound like he's dead :-)
• [11:24] Which Linden: I recall seeing him inworld one time and hew as giving some demo and around him was this paperrazzi-like cluster of resis all trying to edit/take/copy whatever prim he was working on
• [11:24] Johan Laurasia: I've chatted a few times with Philp, pretty laid back guy
• [11:25] Morgaine Dinova: He appears every now and then in Groupies IM. Always seems extremely level headed there.
• [11:26] Which Linden: alright, well I guess that's settled then
• [11:27] Morgaine Dinova: Hey Dzon, brilliant work, well done! https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SNOW-375
• [11:27] [[User:JIRA-helper: [#SNOW-375|JIRA-helper: [#SNOW-375]]:
• [11:27] Dzonatas Sol: thank you Morgaine. I keep adding features =)
• [11:28] Which Linden: neat
• [11:28] Xugu Madison: is currently pushing SVC-5092
• [11:28] JIRA-helper: http//jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-5092:
• [#SVC-5092] inventories available: over WebDAV
• [11:28] Dzonatas Sol: I think the REST like interface is working really well
• [11:28] Which Linden: man anything that doesn't block the view of the world is a big step forward
• [11:29] Morgaine Dinova: Xugu: that's an excellent idea, although of course LL is not going to implement that ever, until forced by competition. So it's really a Jira for Opensim --- great stuff!
• [11:29] Dzonatas Sol: now i can chat and watch movies here while we talk =)
• [11:29] Morgaine Dinova: Which: Xugu's Jira makes a good topic for your area of interest actually
• [11:29] Which Linden: the webDAV stuff?
• [11:30] Morgaine Dinova: Yep
• [11:30] Morgaine Dinova: Not the client-side, that wouldn't be up your street, but server-side issues
• [11:30] Which Linden: I mean, yeah, that's definitely something that we should do; the issue I think is that the viewer does expect something pretty different rom WebDAV
• [11:31] Opensource Obscure: (( dzonatas, should I get artwork & libraries from LL's branches/2009/oss-viewer ? ))
• [11:31] Which Linden: this is something that's affected the current efforts to move inventory to web services
• [11:31] Dzonatas Sol: yes
• [11:31] Morgaine Dinova: The viewer can change. Community devs don't hang about --- look at Dzon :-)
• [11:32] Which Linden: yeah; definitely agreed that's the right architectural direction to go, regardless of whether the viewer uses it
• [11:32] Opensource Obscure: (( ./develop.py configure = OK. building! ))
• [11:33] Xugu Madison: I'd assumed as an alternative access method, but doing everything over WebDAV could make a lot of sense....
• [11:33] Morgaine Dinova: Ew, develop.py is antique .... cmake .; make !!!!
• [11:34] Morgaine Dinova: Xugu: always better to use an existing mechanism wherever possible rather than inventing a new one ... build upon existing tools and stability.
• [11:34] Morgaine Dinova: Even if it's not 100% optimum, still better.
• [11:34] Dzonatas Sol: OO: make secondlife-bin snowglobe-communicator snowglobe-sharp
• [11:34] Dzonatas Sol: if it doesn't
• [11:34] Xugu Madison: Last time I looked at WebDAV, it didn't look too difficult to implement, either. I mean, not something we had time for, but there's one and a half of people in my dev team... I think LL is a bit bigger
• [11:35] Opensource Obscure: morgaine, update [1] PLZ
• [11:35] Which Linden: I'm sure the complicated part of implementing WebDAV inventories would be mapping it back to whatever crazy backend structure we have
• [11:36] Xugu Madison: knows the feeling
• [11:36] Morgaine Dinova: OO: lol, aye, updating docs would be good. And no Rob now either to help
• [11:36] Xugu Madison: I also suspect someone will use words like "permissions system" and "arrrrrrgh, it burns"
• [11:36] Which Linden: "ow my face!"
• [11:36] Morgaine Dinova: Xugu: what is "your team", where?
• [11:37] Opensource Obscure: morgaine: Rob almost never updated the wiki in the last 12 months
• [11:38] Morgaine Dinova: Which: dealing with the SL permissions system for interop is going to be "interesting", to say the least. It's not really going to be portable to multiple asset and inventory services.
• [11:38] Opensource Obscure: afk dinner yummmmm
• [11:38] Which Linden: Morgaine: no...it's a real tricky ball of wax is what it is
• [11:38] Xugu Madison: Morgaine, web application development as part of comp sci, at St Andrews uni
• [11:38] Which Linden: Not quite as simple as -rw-rw-r--
• [11:39] Morgaine Dinova: Which: "wax"? That's a very generous choice of material, I think we could find closer analogies :P
• [11:39] Xugu Madison: We're either part of the distributed systems group, or the networks group, or business improvements, or just not in a department. I don't ask, lest they look too closely and I don't get paid for 2 months until they forget about it
• [11:39] Morgaine Dinova: Xugu: aha, cool!
• [11:40] Morgaine Dinova: lol
• [11:40] Morgaine Dinova: Getting paid, now there's a concept. I need to find a way of getting paid for VWRAP work ;-)
• [11:41] Xugu Madison: We occaisionally try getting funding for OpenSim related stuff in education. It might happen...
• [11:41] Aimee Trescothick: people get paid for working? o.O Damn that's where I've been going wrong
• [11:42] Morgaine Dinova:  :-(
• [11:42] Johan Laurasia: u and me both Aimee
• [11:42] Aimee Trescothick: lol
• [11:42] Which Linden: You should try what I'm doing: not working but getting paid! LOL
• [11:42] Aimee Trescothick: :D
• [11:42] Which Linden: ducks
• [11:42] Which Linden: JUST KIDDING
• [11:43] Aimee Trescothick: quacks
• [11:43] Aimee Trescothick: I'm working on getting there :)
• [11:43] Morgaine Dinova: I guess I need to write something that people want, or go back to consultancy.
• [11:43] Melchizedek Blauvelt: quoted! (just kidding too)
• [11:43] Xugu Madison: Have a group of students doing practicals in OpenSim at the moment. Going really well, actually. Giving them like 1/8th sim each really seems to help the creativity
• [11:43] Morgaine Dinova: WHICH!!! /me prostrates in awe
• [11:43] Which Linden: The whole sim is too much room or something?
• [11:44] Xugu Madison: Which, I mean last time they had something like 512m each, given more space they've gone a lot more... crazy
• [11:44] Xugu Madison: went in to check on them and they've got a submarine and a castle,and are working on shooting each other
• [11:45] Enkidu Linden: awesome!
• [11:45] Xugu Madison: (they were told to make doors)
• [11:45] Xugu Madison: There will probably be a paper on all this later, anyway, and I shouldn't ruin the suprise :)
• [11:46] Which Linden: ha ha ha
• [11:46] Which Linden: I love that: theey were told to make doors
• [11:46] Xugu Madison: It's a human-computer interface course, so we figured give them a completely different interface type to try
• [11:47] Which Linden: This is frequently true of Second Life meetings
• [11:47] Which Linden: I love those cartoonishly large bullets
• [11:47] Xugu Madison: Oh, and despite hosting the server inside the firewall, IT services have still found a way of firewalling it from some of our users
• [11:49] Which Linden: That's what you payt hem for innit?
• [11:50] Which Linden: I think we used to have a lot of firewall-related issues, but in the end they've all gotten sorted out
• [11:50] Which Linden: SL requires a buttload of ports and connections
• [11:50] Xugu Madison: It's the UDP they really hate
• [11:51] Morgaine Dinova: We're doing away with the UDP in VWRAP
• [11:51] Xugu Madison: Good to hear. It's always seemed like it's used as a poor man's TCP by SL....
• [11:51] Which Linden: SWEET
• [11:52] Which Linden: Well...actually Morgaine, how do you dispense with object updates?
• [11:52] Johan Laurasia: buttload.. that's a technical term isn't it?
• [11:52] Morgaine Dinova: Which: dispense?
• [11:52] Which Linden: I mean how do you justify them going over TCP
• [11:52] Xugu Madison: aren't they rather required to arrive?
• [11:52] Which Linden: It seems that object updates are the perfect use case for UDP
• [11:52] Which Linden: No...they aren't required to arrive
• [11:53] Which Linden: It's better if they all do, but if one falls on the floor the proper response is to send the next one
• [11:53] Which Linden: Rather than resending the dropped one
• [11:53] Morgaine Dinova: Which: er, no, that's the wrong question to ask. The right question to ask is how do your justify using UDP when the semantics of SL data transfer are totally unrelated to the semantics of UDP.
• [11:54] Which Linden:  ? The semantics of object positional updates are congurent with the semantics of UDP
• [11:54] Which Linden: congruent
• [11:54] Morgaine Dinova: Which: only intersticial ones, as a heuristic. Movement in SL is *NOT* optional.
• [11:54] Morgaine Dinova: It's a common fallacy.
• [11:55] Which Linden: Right, the interstitial updates that happen continually
• [11:55] Morgaine Dinova: Sure you can sent interstitial UDP packets in idle time, but those would be additional. The primary movement has to be reliable.
• [11:55] Which Linden: It has to be eventually consistent
• [11:55] Johan Laurasia: well udp is faster, and more suited for streaming hence the reason for it's use over tcp.
• [11:56] Morgaine Dinova: UDP would merely provide fill-in for finer granularity. It should never carry primary data that has to be reliable.
• [11:56] Morgaine Dinova: Johan: UDP is *NOT* faster. That's a common misconception.
• [11:56] Xugu Madison: saw something freaky once, which was an alternative to UDP that didn't even guarantee the packet would arrive undamaged or not, on the principal that a damaged packet was likely to be closer to correct than nothing
• [11:57] Morgaine Dinova: UDP is actually slower, because the stack hasn't been so optimized as TCP's as a result of a decade of HTTP.
• [11:57] Which Linden: Hm, interesting concept Xugu
• [11:57] Xugu Madison: UDP is faster if you don't then build all the TCP stuff on top of it. FLow control, in-order delivery, guaranteed delivery, etc. Cases where you can skip those are very rare, though
• [11:57] Which Linden: Morgaine: really? I can only imagine that making sense in the context of delivering reliable content
• [11:58] Which Linden: I believe that all VOIP is UDP, for example
• [11:58] Which Linden: Now I have to check that belief
• [11:58] Xugu Madison: Which, don't forget flow control! Don't want the connection getting flooded accidentally...
• [11:58] Which Linden: [2]
• [11:58] Morgaine Dinova: It's also a fallacy to say that "SL uses UDP" as transport. SL uses a proprietary circuits protocol that happens to be layered on top of UDP. The efficiency gain of using UDP is lost because you have to go through the circuits layer, which itself is not as highly honed as the equivalent TCP.
• [11:58] Which Linden: ha ha first google result: an article entitled "why tcp/ip is not sufficient for voip"
• [11:59] Aimee Trescothick: yup, VOIP is generally UDP
• [11:59] Which Linden: Morgaine: yeah definitely agreed that what we've got now is the worst of both worlds
• [11:59] Morgaine Dinova: SCTP is tailor made for VoIP. TCP is indeed not sufficnet.
• [11:59] Aimee Trescothick: which makes it about as much of a nightmare for getting through firewalls :D
• [12:00] Which Linden: Heh...well my major thought is that while TCP will probalby have better characteristics than circuits, it seems that a proper UDP implementation would blow the doors off of either
• [12:00] Morgaine Dinova: Anyway, we'll see. We're going to have to experiment with TCP-based transport before we know all the ins and outs for object updates.
• [12:01] Morgaine Dinova: Which: unfortunately there is no "proper UDP" implementation. I'm actually rather surprised that LL hasn't made a workgroup for it at IETF.
• [12:01] Xugu Madison: Any idea of timeline for HTTP textures BTW? Seems Babbage has been working on it for years...
• [12:01] Morgaine Dinova: It would be very interesting
• [12:02] Which Linden: I don't know what's up with HTTP textures, it has been in the works for years as you say
• [12:02] Morgaine Dinova: Xugu: Babbage? On textures? Don't think so.
• [12:03] Xugu Madison: Morgaine, Babbage does a lot of web service stuff, or oversees it at least, as well as scripting
• [12:03] Morgaine Dinova: Interesting. Don't recall him mentioning it at OHs, I'll have to ask next time.
• [12:03] Which Linden: Not sure who's on the project now, but you're right that it may not be Babbage (if he was ever on that)
• [12:03] Xugu Madison: Could have sworn he was talking about working on it at his hour...
• [12:04] Aimee Trescothick: the map stuff in Snowglobe is basically the first stage of it
• [12:04] Morgaine Dinova: Yeah
• [12:04] Aimee Trescothick: so Merov would be the good one to ask
• [12:05] Which Linden: Yeah, the viewer side of it is pretty easy IIRC -- the tricky part is getting around the fact that the simulator currently throttles textures and that doing them over HTTP would dramatically change network load
• [12:05] Xugu Madison: I must run. Thanks for hosting Which, good seeing you everyone!
• [12:05] Which Linden: Yes I should go too
• [12:05] Morgaine Dinova: But maps are a special case, there's no sim-driven update stream, it's pure GET.
• [12:05] Which Linden: And all the GETs go to S3, not our servers >:-)
• [12:05] Morgaine Dinova: Aye
• [12:05] Which Linden: Great discussion folks!
• [12:05] Aimee Trescothick: yeah, and they're not being got from LL :)
• [12:05] Johan Laurasia: TC Which, and thanks
• [12:05] Which Linden: Talk to you next week!