User:Babbage Linden/Office Hours/2009 10 07

Transcript of Babbage Linden's office hours:

[3:13]	Ardy Lay:	Hi Babbage
[3:13]	Xugu Madison:	Babbage! I knew considering going AFK to get coffee would lure you out
[3:13]	Babbage Linden:	hello everyone
[3:13]	Babbage Linden:	how's things?
[3:13]	Yann Dufaux:	hi babage, long time no see ㋡
[3:13]	Ardy Lay:	Sleepy
[3:13]	Nock Forager:	hello babbage
[3:13]	Xugu Madison:	Better. I have free time again :)
[3:14]	Xugu Madison:	how's things there?
[3:14]	Yann Dufaux:	i feel, ok but i need a tea, is 6h15am here ㋡
[3:14]	Babbage Linden:	i've been looking at plugging content theft exploit holes this week
[3:14]	Babbage Linden:	which is just about done
[3:14]	Xugu Madison:	The Neil Life mess?
[3:15]	Babbage Linden:	we're just working out the deployment plan at the moment
[3:15]	Nock Forager:	wow, so it's really based on exploit...
[3:15]	Babbage Linden:	not, sure xugu, can you point me to somewhere?
[3:15]	Babbage Linden:	i just have the jira reports I'm working from
[3:16]	Babbage Linden:	and i can't go in to too many details, obviously as we haven't deployed the fixes yet
[3:16]	Yann Dufaux:	Xugu, Neil life viewer is an parazite viewer i think no?
[3:16]	Xugu Madison:	I think that covers it
[3:16]	Babbage Linden:	so, there are some content theft problems that are just based on copying geometry sent to the viewer
[3:16]	Babbage Linden:	and textures
[3:16]	Xugu Madison:	Ah, no, this is a completely different content theft problem then :)
[3:16]	Babbage Linden:	there are not easy technology fixes to those problems
[3:17]	Babbage Linden:	apart from rendering frames in the cloud and sending video to clients
[3:17]	Babbage Linden:	but, there are also, occasionally problems with the in world permissions system
[3:17]	Babbage Linden:	which is what I've been working on this week
[3:18]	Babbage Linden:	the current path which is being exploited will be much more secure shortly
[3:18]	Xugu Madison:	Good to hear!
[3:18]	Yann Dufaux:	Babbage, i know that its an big big troubles, this bad opensource , but without fixes for the moment i think you can give to somes user the right to detect this bad viewer ㋡
[3:18]	Xugu Madison:	You'll tell us all about it once fixed, right?
[3:18]	artoo Magneto applauds ^^
[3:18]	Babbage Linden:	which will hopefully please content creators
[3:18]	Babbage Linden:	it's very difficult to detect bad viewers
[3:19]	Babbage Linden:	as they can always claim to be good viewers
[3:19]	Babbage Linden:	the fixes need to be on the server side
[3:19]	Xugu Madison nodnods
[3:19]	Babbage Linden:	which is what I've been working on this week
[3:19]	Yann Dufaux:	why cryolife are detected by some script and not the other bad viewer?
[3:19]	Xugu Madison:	Is there any hope of catching duplicates of existing objects, out of curiousity? I suspect it's infeasible due to database size, but...
[3:20]	Babbage Linden:	xugu, that's really hard too
[3:20]	Nock Forager:	So these huge Banning is only for users of the exploit?
[3:20]	Babbage Linden:	as the database is huge
[3:20]	Ardy Lay:	For a script to detect a viewer, the viewer has to chat on a channel.
[3:20]	Liisa Runo:	the script just listen channel -777777777 and detects cryolife with that, but not all cryolifers send that message
[3:20]	Babbage Linden:	you could potentially use hadoop to detect duplicates
[3:20]	Yann Dufaux:	channels - 77777, is the radar of emrald ㋡
[3:20]	Ovaltine Constantine:	-777777777 is Emerald
[3:20]	Babbage Linden:	but then people would just slighty jitter objects to make them not match
[3:21]	Babbage Linden:	you'd have to allow for "close matches" as duplicates
[3:21]	Liisa Runo:	ah, well, to me their all the same, cant remember the names :P
[3:21]	Ovaltine Constantine:	You're thinking of 8281825
[3:21]	Xugu Madison nods "Same problem you hit with textures, I imagine. Far too easy to make a texture very different on disk, but look virtually identical"
[3:21]	Babbage Linden:	at which point you'd get false positives
[3:21]	Babbage Linden:	and call things theft that aren't
[3:22]	Babbage Linden:	in order to be effective, duplicate detection would have to detect everything that wasn't jittered to destruction and not match objects that aren't mechnical copies
[3:22]	Babbage Linden:	i don't think that's doable
[3:22]	Nock Forager:	ya techinically yes, but should do something for casual copy.
[3:22]	artoo Magneto:	same for animations, i assume
[3:23]	Babbage Linden:	if to detected complete matches
[3:23]	Xugu Madison:	Wouldn't it be good enough to have it be able to highlight things for someone to check manually. Even if you merely increase the chance of catching a copy, it makes it riskier for the copiers. Just a thought...
[3:23]	Babbage Linden:	copying viewers would just offset a prim by a few CM
[3:23]	Babbage Linden:	also, there are legal issues involved in looking at content
[3:24]	Babbage Linden:	i am not a lawyer, but once you start looking at uploaded content you can have issues as a common carrier
[3:24]	Xugu Madison:	Good point
[3:24]	Yann Dufaux:	but babbage, but the other solution are radical, to charge some fees for importe xmls fils to the hd ㋡
[3:24]	Babbage Linden:	so, even if we found some duplicates, we might be in trouble for looking and not finding all duplicates
[3:25]	Babbage Linden:	yann, yes, there are non-technical solutions that add friction
[3:25]	Babbage Linden:	which are being looked in to
[3:25]	Xugu Madison:	You would be, by my understanding, now you mention it. It's a daft set of laws that you either can, or cannot filter. There is no trying to catch waht you can and accept it's incomplete
[3:25]	Babbage Linden:	but, we're getting quite a long way from my bug fixing this week ;-)
[3:25]	Babbage Linden:	i'll just say that all the content theft issues are being looked in to and discussed
[3:26]	Ardy Lay:	Babbage, I was told last week that you were interested in my bricks.
[3:26]	artoo Magneto:	dont forget forced permission on animations... that worries me personaly the most atm
[3:26]	Babbage Linden:	and that where we can we will implement technical fixes as soon as possble
[3:26]	Yann Dufaux:	well!! ㋡
[3:26]	Yann Dufaux:	this is a great news ㋡
[3:27]	Babbage Linden:	so, hopefully i will be done with these exploit fixes this week
[3:27]	Liisa Runo:	wild idea: new flag to textures: "this texture can only exist in prim created by the same person"
[3:28]	Babbage Linden:	once i have wrangled the deployment plan
[3:28]	Babbage Linden:	then i'll be moving back on to script limits analysis
[3:28]	Yann Dufaux:	i have other question why , on other user can crash a simple viewer .. is possible!
[3:28]	LordGregGreg Back:	that flag would be lost after a evil export / import
[3:28]	Babbage Linden:	and simulator memory usage analysis in general to feed back in to our performance improvement work
[3:29]	Babbage Linden:	yann, my fixes will help there too
[3:29]	Babbage Linden:	as they also avoid corrupt content being uploaded
[3:29]	Liisa Runo:	import cost money, and when LL some day start to actually remove stolen content when found, botters dont want to re upload the sculpts over and over again
[3:29]	Babbage Linden:	which can be downloaded to other viewers to crash them
[3:29]	Xugu Madison:	Anything coming in terms of user-visible web services, BTW? Wondered about things like uploading images by web service (for those of us who generate images programmatically)?
[3:29]	Babbage Linden:	liisa, that is a possibility
[3:30]	Babbage Linden:	xugu, we're currently hiring for that role
[3:30]	Liisa Runo:	<3
[3:30]	Babbage Linden:	the person who will lead opening up our data via web services
[3:30]	Yann Dufaux:	okey, because some times is a crap on french sandbox, abnout this some griefers use that to crash all ppeople
[3:30]	Babbage Linden:	the big piece there again is permissions and authentication
[3:30]	Yann Dufaux:	about*
[3:30]	Babbage Linden:	some information you want available
[3:31]	Babbage Linden:	like public events you're running
[3:31]	Babbage Linden:	but you also want to have private events that are only viewable by certain people
[3:31]	Babbage Linden:	we currently have the capabilities system for making services accessible
[3:31]	Imaze Rhiano:	Have you (or someone in your team) had time to look SVC-3895 ("Rezzing Mono scripted object cripples sim FPS") ?
[3:32]	Babbage Linden:	we need to work out whether that is the right way to do public web services
[3:32]	Babbage Linden:	imaze, we talked a lot about that last week
[3:32]	Babbage Linden:	we will be looking in to it soon
[3:32]	Ovaltine Constantine:	Does soon mean next year?
[3:32]	Babbage Linden:	it probably needs to be folded in to the asynchronous rez work
[3:32]	Babbage Linden:	it means end of this year, start of next year
[3:33]	Babbage Linden:	there may be a simple fix, in which case we'll try to get it in to 1.34
[3:33]	Babbage Linden:	but if what we need to do is put rezzing in another thread, that's a lot of work
[3:33]	Babbage Linden:	question: is this a new mono issue, or has it always been around?
[3:34]	Babbage Linden:	i don't remember problems with rezzing when we were developing mono or testing it in beta
[3:34]	Babbage Linden:	(i remember rezzing 100s of scripted boxes at a time while checking time dilation and FPS)
[3:34]	Ardy Lay:	There is a profound difference between LSL and MONO in rez and derez impact on simulators.
[3:34]	Ovaltine Constantine:	Not sure, but I recompiled all the scripts in my FauxTool (red and blue thingy on my shoulder) to LSL and now region crossings are barely noticable to me
[3:34]	Imaze Rhiano:	I personally haven't experienced that - or at elast noticed - but I think this is mostly happening in busy Sims
[3:35]	Liisa Runo:	complete sim froze dont show up in TD and FPS
[3:35]	Ardy Lay:	Right, interframe work is increased dramatically with MONO
[3:35]	Imaze Rhiano:	Issue is created 24/Feb/09 10:49 AM
[3:35]	Babbage Linden:	anyway, I'll go through the jira reports once I'm done with this exploit fix
[3:35]	Babbage Linden:	please chat JIRAs now, so I can find them in the office hour logs :-D
[3:36]	Ardy Lay:	I have an easy reproduction handy, as do many others.
[3:36]	Ovaltine Constantine:	Usually I notice when I cross into another region because I can't stop flying for like 10 seconds, but I was flying around earlier and didn't even notice I was in a different sim
[3:36]	Ardy Lay:	Big performance issuses: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-3895 http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-4196 http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-4537
[3:36]	Babbage Linden:	please write up repros in JIRA and then give any objects I need to test with to me
[3:37]	Babbage Linden:	apart from exploit fixing we've been interviewing new engineers in brighton
[3:37]	Babbage Linden:	and so will hopefully have our C# team together soon
[3:38]	Babbage Linden:	which is great news
[3:38]	Yann Dufaux:	what the environement, what tjhe viewer and computer setting?
[3:38]	Xugu Madison eyes the web dev jobs at LL "Always requiring languages I don't know :("
[3:38]	Xugu Madison:	Yes! C# team GOOD!
[3:39]	Babbage Linden:	xugu, learn python, it's great
[3:39]	Yann Dufaux:	i look this jiras, and i see no environement
[3:39]	Babbage Linden:	and C#, obviously
[3:39]	Xugu Madison adds Python to the to-do list
[3:40]	artoo Magneto:	do you know about the new dmca system too babbage ?... it says it can entirely remove content from suspended accounts
[3:40]	artoo Magneto:	entirely from the grid
[3:40]	Babbage Linden:	no, i haven't been involved in that
[3:40]	Liisa Runo:	sounds awesome
[3:40]	Babbage Linden:	but i know there is work going on there
[3:41]	artoo Magneto:	ok.. it was communicated in sldev.. i just look forward for it
[3:41]	Babbage Linden:	again to address content theft and support content creators
[3:41]	artoo Magneto:	yea... people spread my animations widely and fullperm.. just from people to people.. its a true mess
[3:42]	Babbage Linden:	it's a very difficult problem to solve
[3:42]	Liisa Runo vawes bye bye to noob sculpts and yellow lamborgini you see every place
[3:42]	Babbage Linden:	see also the music and movie industry's struggling
[3:43]	Babbage Linden:	content creators in SL have the same problems as sony and emi
[3:43]	Babbage Linden:	and content creators on the web
[3:43]	Yann Dufaux:	yeah, you know the same trouble since you have give all source code ㋡
[3:44]	Babbage Linden:	scripts in SL provide more protection
[3:44]	Babbage Linden:	as they aren't sent to the viewer
[3:44]	Babbage Linden:	but for people creating and selling animations or textures or objects it's hard
[3:44]	Babbage Linden:	but we're doing all we can to help
[3:44]	Babbage Linden:	from a technical and policy perspective
[3:45]	Babbage Linden:	and there are lots of people linden looking in to the problem
[3:45]	artoo Magneto:	good to hear
[3:45]	Yann Dufaux:	well, i think you need to clarify the ToS with this big viewer probleme ㋡
[3:45]	Babbage Linden:	and there will also always be people who are prepared to pay
[3:46]	Babbage Linden:	and do the right thing
[3:46]	Liisa Runo:	there is no way to completely prevent copybotting (exept sending only video to clients) but if LL get tools to remove assets, the botting will not be so popular (now i see copybotter in sandbox every day)
[3:47]	Babbage Linden:	lissa, yes, i agree
[3:47]	Xugu Madison:	Liisa, and there are some approaches to extracting geometry from video of an object, so even that wouldn't be a permanent fix
[3:47]	Babbage Linden:	and we're looking in to it
[3:47]	Yann Dufaux:	Liisa, i see 2 per day for the french side, and its very hard to send a AR, if i have no prof
[3:48]	Babbage Linden:	right, just making it easier to say i saw something suspicious here
[3:48]	Babbage Linden:	please check uploads by this account
[3:48]	Babbage Linden:	would help
[3:48]	Liisa Runo:	i collect pictures that show copybot, puppetmaster, and orginal creator inspected
[3:48]	Yann Dufaux:	okey thanks to this precision, babage ㋡
[3:48]	Ardy Lay:	I wouldn't know how to tell they are copying. What can I look for?
[3:49]	Babbage Linden:	right, it is easy to make undectable
[3:49]	Babbage Linden:	undetectable, even
[3:49]	Babbage Linden:	as copying is just the same as viewing
[3:50]	Babbage Linden:	and everything copied can be uploaded later somewhere else
[3:50]	Babbage Linden:	so, yes, very hard
[3:50]	Babbage Linden:	but being worked on at linden
[3:50]	Babbage Linden:	right, i need to head of soon
[3:50]	Babbage Linden:	is there anything else we should talk about today?
[3:50]	Yann Dufaux:	if an noob of 2 day are a creator of the hair or all clothing on this last .. is very suspicious ㋡
[3:50]	Xugu Madison:	I need to head too, we're about to be unplugged. Good meeting, thanks for the updates Babbage, see you all next week!
[3:51]	Yann Dufaux:	well, how i can verify the creator clothing? ㋡
[3:51]	Babbage Linden:	i was thinking about this the other day
[3:51]	Yann Dufaux:	i can't with the inspect
[3:51]	Ardy Lay:	Is the copying activity typically done by new, anonymous accounts?
[3:52]	Babbage Linden:	a good clothing business to be in would be one that makes reactive clothes
[3:52]	artoo Magneto:	yea.. inspection of clothing and animations would be a great help.. also to see the permissions the owner has
[3:52]	artoo Magneto:	like for attachments
[3:52]	Babbage Linden:	that are scripted and respond to the environment
[3:52]	Babbage Linden:	if interactivity is an important feature
[3:52]	Babbage Linden:	they become much harder to copy
[3:52]	Babbage Linden:	as you would need the scripts too
[3:52]	Ardy Lay:	But add to the script load and the related issues.
[3:53]	Babbage Linden:	yes, but they wouldn't need to be complicated
[3:53]	Babbage Linden:	also, you could servicify your clothes business
[3:53]	Ardy Lay:	Simply exsisting is adding to the issues I mentioned.
[3:53]	Babbage Linden:	sell subscriptions to your clothes instead of objects
[3:54]	Babbage Linden:	invite subscibers to catwalk events
[3:54]	Babbage Linden:	give them the latest and greatest creations there
[3:54]	Ardy Lay:	Complexity of the script does not make a difference in the rez-derez issues.
[3:54]	Babbage Linden:	similar to the new business models used in music
[3:54]	Babbage Linden:	very interesting area
[3:54]	artoo Magneto:	yea.. i have updaters and hud on my items... people copy them anyway
[3:55]	Babbage Linden:	ok, i need to head off, any last thoughts?
[3:55]	artoo Magneto:	they either get a expensive full featured original... or a free stolen copy without functionality..
[3:55]	Babbage Linden:	right, and that is a choice artoo
[3:56]	Babbage Linden:	so, you have some aspect that is not copyable
[3:56]	LordGregGreg Back:	thank god there are people who actualy respect creators and will do the right thing.
[3:56]	artoo Magneto:	yea.. i keep inspecting soreal shoes.. 95% are stolen
[3:56]	Babbage Linden should actually get some shoes at some point
[3:57]	Ardy Lay:	I have good feet. I don't need shoes. :-)
[3:57]	Babbage Linden:	if anyone knows where to get good victorian gents shoes, please let me know :-D
[3:57]	artoo Magneto:	*fully featured ;D
[3:57]	artoo Magneto:	okey.. thanks for working on the viewer problem
[3:57]	artoo Magneto:	and all that
[3:57]	Babbage Linden:	i will pay good money for them, naturally
[3:58]	Babbage Linden:	;-)
[3:58]	Ardy Lay:	Hehe
[3:58]	Babbage Linden:	thanks for coming everyone
[3:58]	Babbage Linden:	see you all next time
[3:58]	Imaze Rhiano:	bye babbage
[3:58]	Nock Forager:	thank you for the meeting, babbage.
[3:58]	Elric Ember:	Swank Brothers has Victorian shoes for men
[3:58]	artoo Magneto:	is this meeting weekly ?
[3:58]	Imaze Rhiano:	yes artoo
[3:58]	artoo Magneto:	ok
[3:59]	Nock Forager:	ah some advertisement. We will have LSL Convention from this weekend @ New Script region.
[3:59]	Nock Forager:	Anyone interested feel free to come :)
[3:59]	artoo Magneto:	tp me then :D
[4:00]	Nock Forager:	Will call you up at this week end :)
[4:00]	artoo Magneto:	^^ cu then
[4:00]	artoo Magneto:	xx
[4:00]	artoo Magneto:	bye all