Dalien landless, no more sales for primskirtbuilder from me (for now, at least).

heh. appears I'm (finally) out of land where the thing was being sold. Hence, not selling the primskirtbuilder anymore.

The copies should be around, and if you apply a certain effort, you might find a free copy.

The exercise did teach me an interesting lesson - apparently the value of "free" is not really understood nor appreciated, and if you put a decent price tag, people seem to be MORE willing to get it.

The never ending wonders of the human soul... Oh well, they wrote exactly that in the MBA book. It's good to confirm the theory by practice.

The end of the free primskirtbuilder.

I've written about a supposed clone of my primskirtbuilder.

Well, subsequent discussion, where phloughi tizzy helped me understand my mistake with accusing the item without testing, I think the following is the best way to do:

1) Herewith, I bring the public apology to coral giha for apparently accusing the item to be a copycat without the proper study of it.

2) I would like to thank phloughi tizzy for helping me understand my mistake

3) I am now ceasing the distribution of the free full-permissions version of the primskirtbuilder - the item will be sold at L$1500. I think it is a reasonable price to still allow a wide range of folks to use it.

You can find the item inworld, and also at SL Exchange, and OnRez.

Feel free to write up your review if you like.

Indeed, if you still have the "free" version - feel free to give it to the friends, and they can still use the "tips-based" compensation model.

How to do business in SL: find a freebie, reduce permissions, resell.

update: the continuation of the story is here.


One of the SL residents has kindly mentioned to me that apparently there's a clone of the primskirtbuilder for sale on the SL Exchange.

In case you prefer to pay L$3500 for a clone, when you can get the original for free, you can visit the seller's page here.

Now, looking at the whole range of products offered by this seller, I suspect that I'm not the only one from whom this undoubtedly entrepreneurial person have "borrowed".

I do not feel like pursuing any legal actions for this person - it's boring.

But I hope you might help me by just exposing this.. err... arguable commercial practice by dropping this person ("coral giha", as it is written) an IM with your opinion about his actions.

I suggest that if you have purchased this item, you grab the original *full permissions* item for free from me, and claim your money back. (hey, and you can drop a fraction of that L$3500 into my tip jar, I would not mind :)

Content IP rights, again...

It's been a while since we last chatted with the folks about the content rigts and associated issues.. Yet, reading Vint's post, I figured I'd react.

Despite of what some people say, the content protection is much less of a technical problem rather than the problem of changing a mentality. Second Life, face it, is all about the economics. And while there is demand, there will always be a suppply.

Now, I'd be terribly interested if any of the content creators would be interested to run an experiment - to offer the "genuine skin" at L$1000, and then somewhere else offer the "stolen skin" at L$100, with the explicit mention that this skin has been stolen and the mention of the place where to buy the genuine skin (and of course to have the genuine skin place have a link to the "stolen skin" place). It might be a very enlightening experiment. I, from my side, can sacrifice a little bit of my reputation and offer the place to distribute the "stolen skin" (I think I still have some place to put the prims on), if anyone comes up with an offer for the content. Obviously, the cash (1/10th of the original price) from the event would be to the author, and the results should be jointly published.

Anyone up for a challenge ? That might be an interesting experience.

I'm tagging this as well as "primskirtbuilder" in case any of the creators using it feel like giving this experiment a shot.

Even though I'm pretty confident that the "pirate" version will certainly outweigh the "genuine" one - there's still a potential economic benefit for the creator due to a possibly bigger volume.

If there're no takers - then let's leave this just as a mental experiment for the readers - think of the above situation, and what choice would you have made, and drop something in the comments - it's interesting to know your opinion :-)

Dear content creators...please help...

EDITED: Thinking about this occasion - maybe it is all not all that bad and I should make a brand "Dalien Talbot" - and use it to help promote smaller enterpreneurs ? What do you think? A lot of small enterprises working together might make a big difference... please drop a note in the comments.


...please ensure you read the documentation (and if there is not one, means that someone has tried to mod the primskirtbuilder and did not do it properly - get the proper copy at the SLUrl on this blog.

Ok, now a longer version. I've got contacted by a SL fashion site for the wonderful clothes I built and for the permission to feature a line of clothes that I made.

So, to write it up once again - I do not make clothes :-)

The primskirtbuilder has in it the prim - which obviously had to be created by me, and which for commercial uses *should* be replaced by yours - otherwise all the skirts will appear as if they were done by yours truly, heheh ;)

Note that there was absolutely no evil intent in doing this - it was simply impossible to get something "working out of the box" otherwise.

Not that I mind the fame and all, but I feel sorry that someone who put a work into creation of a nice stuff, would not get a credit for it.

As such, I'm looking for the designer of the below shown item "reika-sweet". I googled on the name a bit and think that the avatar's person is located in Japan - but maybe this is just a coincidence.

Please locate yourself if you want your name to be featured in the fashion site :-) - I've already sent the mail that it's not my creation, but would be awesome to find the real author :)

Here's the photo of "not my" creation :-)

to all the primskirtbuilder users - thank you for your donations!

Since the first post where I mentioned that all the donations for the primskirtbuilder will go to "Hackers for Charity" and where I sent a little bit of lindens to that foundation - my account balance grew up to L$7200 thanks to your donations.

Now that I've sent L$6000 from that over to Johnny (leaving the remainder as a "safety margin" - just in case I need to upload a texture or two) - it's time to thank you all for your donations. In real world, 6K lindens is not a big deal - but I am happy to contribute even with a small amount.

Again, thank you all, and have a nice 2008!

microfinancing in SL: a loan to you on *your* conditions.

I've been thinking about the power of trust, and about how Grameen bank functions without any tough measures and has quite high return rate (i.e. people do not run with the money). Looking at my SL balance, which thanks to your tips has risen to around L$3800 (which is a bit too small to throw to the friends at the charity), I got an interesting idea.

I can lend up to 3xL$1000 to those three who come up with the compelling business ideas and whose business plans are convincing enough.

How do we arrange the community pressure ? very simple. I will write the names, the business plans and the terms of the loan (amount and the suggested interest) on this blog.

So, if you are determined enough to rather loan L$1000 than to buy it for three RL bucks, feel free to drop an IM or leave the comment here.

The only restriction is that the time interval is bound by 4 weeks and the returned amount must not be less than the one borrowed :-)

How much you return (i.e. the %% - it's up to you to determine).

Let's see if anything comes up out of this crazy idea...

p.s. and obviously - by sending me an IM, you allow it to be published here.

I hack charities! :-) Do you ?

In the keepalive post, I wrote about the great project http://ihackcharities.org - the "geek association" to help the charities with whatever they need.

I wrote the email to Johnny and he replied. He did not have the avatar in SL, so he created one - his name is "HaxTuff Hirano".

Thanks to the primskirtbuilder users and your generocity - my linden balance was growing. I think it grew around L$5000 in the past month, or so.

Well, the good news is that it is now around L$900. I've transferred L$22000 to Johnny so the folks can use this for helping the charities.

From here on, all the donations you make for the primskirtbuilder will go to the ihackcharities.org project - or, as well, you can pay to HaxTuff Hirano directly as well.

I will periodically go inworld, and publish the amounts I transfer.

a keepalive

No, I'm not dead - like I wrote some time before, I can't go dead - even if my human does :)

It's just that the human got bit more of the RL - but hopefully has some time in the the future so I can continue on hacking the opensim & blogging away.

Partially the new toy is to blame. The story was that the human went to buy some food, and instead bought this toy.. He was a bit frustrated that the only file sharing protocol was SMB (which also refused to work with the XP home edition, for some reason), but after some googling - found the openmss.org website, so now the brick does work with SCP too, and some more coolness is on the way :)

Apparently it can run full-blown debian, but the 64M of RAM make it difficult to compile anything modestly serious.

As another interesting thing (and the reason why this non-prim-skirtbuilder post is tagged with the primskirtbuilder - is the site http://ihackcharities.org.

And before you start your fury about the evil tekkies messing up with charities - go and read up.

It's a site focused to get the technical skills where it is needed.

So I have figured that even though there's not much time that the human can dedicate directly, it would be very logical to send all of my linden dollar balance and the tips that I receive for the primskirtbuilder to these folks so they can direct them to the charities.

I've written Johnny an email with the question on how to get the L$ to the project, so as soon as I get the reply, whatever is currently on my SL balance (not much, around 20K linden) will go to the project - as well as any future donations for the primskirtbuilder.

So - if you arrived here by clicking on the "News" button on the primskirtbuilder from inworld - check out again in a few days, maybe we can all contribute to a good cause!

Help save the nipples!

Or, "You have already initiated the downgrade process.".

As you know, I am pretty much male. To a large extent. Masculine, even. Whatever dandellion says about the meaning of nipples for women, I think for males they do matter even more. First of all, ours are nonfunctional. Then, theirs form a much more aesthetic view. I know I am biased, but nonetheless, I'd plead to not underestimate the importance of the female nipples in the male's life (well, besides all the Freudian things it's really literally thanks to them that we're actually here).

As my RL av keeps telling me - "you have to provide the business case to make things move". An I kinda agree with that. So, after reading yet another gem, I figure I'd provide a small business case, and decided I have a better use for the money that I spend paying for my "accounting" alt.

So, as of today, the "accounting" alt (which was not free account), has been downgraded to a free account. Great - means I get 25 bucks per month I could spare on something else - hosting, beers, what not.

However, still shows up as premium... And another attempt to try to do it gives a nice message.

"You have already initiated the downgrade process. Your account will downgrade to Basic Access on Tuesday, September 11, 2007"

"Next bill date: Tuesday, September 11, 2007"

Amusing. Although understandable as a straightforward way to prevent the "loopholes". But anyway, amusing. Since there are smarter ways to do this, I'd think.

How this will impact others ? Well, not much. I always was and will remain a free account, so unless there is further discrimination by whatever means, I might very probably appear inworld from time to time. Although the other ways to spend the time seem to be much more rewarding.

One somewhat noticeable impact that could happen is that the plot that I had used for primskirtbuilder, would disappear. Anyway I hope there are enough copies in-world to distribute it. Go grab a kit, and build your own (tip jar is at your discretion, but just dont resell :) - and send me the SLURL, I'm gonna put it here.

And just to add the spice, I'll mention what I got after a couple of weeks, after submitting the primskirtbuilder at the development portal, I did get a notice to resubmit the submission because the page that I was used was supposedly no longer active.

1) if it was no longer active, how in the world would one have known my email ? (I'd just expect it to fall into the void)
2) if it was "no longer active", and my submission *did* get there, why my dear friends would you not clean up *your* glitch and resubmit it yourself ? (or, as I'd assume the email notifications or whatever to be automatically generated, so they can be formally redone into the new 'interface'. c'mon. the whole thing could have been written by a computer science student who missed no more than 60% of the classes. Or do I misunderstand, and there is superflucious quantum physics involved ? Give me a break, please.

I'm patient when it comes to grid being down - being a "tekkie", and understanding a little bit the kitchen behind, I do realise there are some nontrivial things that the grid monkeys have to maintain. I'm patient when it comes to the client crashes - after all, Nicholaz did fix quite a few of them.

But, I am sorry, I do reserve the right to disagree when I face the clinical cases of extreme nonsense.

Oh, by the way, here's some indecent pictures made by Greeks: here, and here. Iridium, go visit Louvre, or the Hermitage, or any other museum other than Linden Village - they DO have nipples there! And moreover, sometimes they are even PAINTED!! IN PINK! :)

Uh-oh.

*still speechless*

p.s. Not sure if I can still sell the land, but if anyone wants 1x2048 (square-shaped), 1x1024 (square-shaped), 1x1024 (rectangle-shaped), and 1x512 (primskirtbuilder plot, PG) - IM me, we can arrange the transfer for a symbolic "buggy" fee of L$-1. Yes, I will pay you one linden for each piece of land that you grab from me. (If I can still sell it, that is, having requested the downgrade to the basic account).

Just one request - for the primskirtbuilder plot - keep the primskirtbuilder there, please :)

And thank you again Iridium...

p.p.s. While diagonally reading dandellion's post, I've forgotten to repost, what I consider to be quite appropriate for this case, and I repost from the blog:

[quote]
Laetizia asked for an apology:

I demand an official apology on the Second Life blog, containing the words overzealous, overstepped, clear and boundary. I demand that the statue be allowed to stand on the intended spot, in her full nude glory, with a notecard giver next to it to give out the full text of said blog.

In addition to this, I ask an apology for Iridium Linden's words.
[end quote]

Curiosity spike: where we are with opensim.

The curiosity spike was not about going and checking out the rich varieties of dom-sub interactions. Since I did have the pending wish to check out how the things went on the opensim front (and since I shamefully disappeared due to increase of RL things to be taken care of), of course I picked the opensim :)

So. Apparently I was lucky to get the code *just* after the start of a large refactoring, aimed to make the code easier to read for the new developers and put the structure more logical, so a lot of stuff was borken.

But!



First pleasant thing, is that by default, the NewRuth is now wearing something, and have a decent skin. You can see there are things in the library.

There are not so many, so the question goes to the primskirtbuilder users and others who do make the clothes - anyone interested to immortalize his/her creation by making it part of the default library ? If yes - leave a trace in the comments of this post, on how to reach you :) There are no deadlines nor anything, so it is entirely up to you if you want to participate, or have something that you had created and you want to donate.

The second - there is now possible to specify the parcel music URL!!! But this will be a topic for another post one day.

Let's talk business....which business? ain't it free?

Ok, business they say... ok lets talk business :D

Yes, the primskirtbuilder is and will remain free. However, I think i managed to find a way to help you in distributing it and to share the tips - so you can get money by distributing free software. Interesting ? read on...

I've created a primskirtbuilder distribution kit, which you will get inside any copy of the primskirtbuilder now, and also as a separate box to the right of it at the plot in Mindulle.

You get:

• a landmark to plot in mindulle


• a wonderful texture made by Vint to put on the wall


• the panel with this texture


• README file


• Primskirtbuilder itself


• A copy of the primskirtbuilder distribution kit


• My tip jar, which will give you 50% of the tips as a distributor, and will give the other 50% to me to pay for the beers :)

The the tip jar had to be made closed-source, to prevent any altering of it - (it does have to request the debit permission from you!), so check very carefully that the script is made by me, and that the tip jar has the same look as on the original distribution area. You can get anyway the full source of the script in the README notecard to check what it does. If you do not trust me - then delete the tip jar! :)

The kit itself is no-mod too, just to prevent the temptation of adding the stuff to it :).

What do I expect from this ?

1. increased distribution of the primskirtbuilder since it creates a financial incentive (variable and irregular, I do admit - but these are the rules) for people to distribute an open-source free product.


2. maybe, some more lindens for me as a result of this activity. I am curious if it becomes anything significant (and if it becomes anything at all :)

have fun!

Is popularity a good thing ?

Today one of my old SL friends, Dinova Yanyean, who saw the primskirtbuilder some time ago, and has been always telling me I should market it (which I hate to do, since it is a boring activity for me), decided to help me out with this, and notified a folks in a few groups about it.

The effect was incredible :) Well, see yourself.



Tons of people arriving, trying the stuff out, chatting - so, having a lot of fun.



After a while the wave started to decline, when I got an IM from Jerry Martin, whom I invited to the area to continue the discussion. In a nutshell the proposal is that I should close-source the primskirtbuilder and start selling it at L$2000. While the idea is interesting, it does not go very well with my principles, so the primskirtbuilder will remain free and GPL-licensed. (this does prohibit the close-sourcing of the derivatives of it and blunt reselling of them too, btw).

I will enclose the discussion for your information - according to what I know, the pasting of the public chat does not classify as going against ToS, so I presume it is OK.

I will enclose the start of the discussion for your information.

---

[17:55] You: hi Jerry
[17:55] Jerry Martin: hi there
[17:56] Dinova Yanyean: hey fashion officer
[17:56] Jerry Martin: pleasure you meet you all
[17:56] You: indeed.
[17:56] You: so wanna give it a whirl ?
[17:56] Jerry Martin: sure
[17:56] You: grab a copy and rez it on the floor
[17:57] Jerry Martin: holy cow , lock that thing up and put it in a vendor , charge 2000L for it
[17:57] Dinova Yanyean: looll
[17:57] Jerry Martin: not kidding
[17:57] Dinova Yanyean: i told him too
[17:57] Dinova Yanyean: lol
[17:57] Dinova Yanyean: but its now free
[17:57] Dinova Yanyean: and copiable
[17:58] You: well, its been free for a few months
[17:58] Dinova Yanyean: lol
[17:58] Dinova Yanyean: please test it i want to see what you think about it
[17:58] You: that's one of the reasons opensource is good..
[17:58] Dinova Yanyean: its command free
[17:58] Dinova Yanyean: a really new idea
[17:58] Jerry Martin: Dinova , i'm the original inventor of the PrecisionWear Dress Maker , it's been around for a year and a hlf
[17:58] Dinova Yanyean: ohh ups
[17:58] Dinova Yanyean: lol
[17:59] Dinova Yanyean: i didn't know
[17:59] Jerry Martin: it's currently in the patent pending stage
[17:59] You: i did not know about precisionwear either - i just saw a looprez freeb script and wanted to improve the user experience :)

---

Since Vint was quite an integral part of the creation of the primskirtbuilder (I did create it for her, as it quite obviously says in the script :), I did invite her - so the remaining part of the chat is to be continued on her blog.

Apparently, Ged Larsen (the creator of the LoopRez, from free version of which I did borrow the base logic - even though it was modified - Thanks Ged, btw! While the formulae are not difficult, rewriting them from scratch would have been very boring) did receive even some patent claims about the same matter.

What I have said to Mr. Martin, and what I will repeat here - I would like to continue as before (especially since now that the primskirtbuilder has been out there for some time and I can not control the distribution of the full-mod object - and especially since the only time I did hear about the prim skirt building was Ged Larsen's LoopRez script that I got from Vint). And while the conversation was interesting and entertaining, this is my decision.

Today I saw myself quite a few happy people - even those that did not have L$2000 probably. And this is something I am not willing to lose.

So - feel free to grab a copy and tell your friends :-)

p.s. I do have a couple of interesting ideas for all the users of the primskirtbuilder, should post them sometime within a month (if the RL does not interfere) - so check the news every now and then...

UPDATE: I did get a reply from Ged Larsen, where he mentioned that although my free script did pretty much kill the interested for him in pursuing a new version, but that I am all right to use the script that he has released into public domain.

So - thanks a lot to Ged! And folks - Ged does make other stuff, so go and check out his blog at http://slged.blogspot.com/. He has a very nice LinkRez generator which will help you save some time if you are building the necklaces.

Primskirtbuilder lifecycle

The GUI for the LoopRez that I've built, due to the availability of the "News" button showed some very interesting reflection on the blog stats. There's been quite a few hits, and the number of hits was a very interesting declining curve. Now, roughly a month after I've started it, the number of hits went pretty much down to zero, which allows me to successfully conclude this project for the time being.

It looks like it was helpful, and I am glad that I could make others' life bit easier.

There is also a lesson with respect to the tip income it brought - it proved that the "tips" model of distribution is reasonably workable - although, same as in the RL, indeed selling the closed-source version may be a more profitable in the short term. However, what this means is that the suppliers are forced to deliver the better quality products for the same price - so I believe the open-source model is quite beneficial to the consumer. (Just don't be too strict and let those producers starve, ok ? :-)

I am leaving this post as an anchor for the suggestions on improvements and general feedback about this creation, and if there are some interesting ideas, and I have time (which is a bit difficult), maybe they would see the light.

I'd like to again thank all the user community for all the tips, and I am glad that you liked it :-)

I have some ideas for some other projects for the future (and some are partially implemented) - so stay tuned to the blog for more news :)

Thanks to Vint...

...Everyone can now enjoy this nicely looking ad instead of a catastrophic hack that I had made. Vint, did I already say today you're great ? :-)



p.s. yeah, and my snapshotting skills are not much better than my photoshop skills, I know :-))

Pictures, dude, you forgot pictures!!!

Oh, indeed - after looking at the screen of SL client for a few days I thought I can make a blog posting without them - naaah, does not look cool.

I've fixed the annoying bug with the texture/colors not reapplied if you rerez different number of prims, also added a small random delay for each prim when it applies the parameters (might be of some use to limit the asset server bashing), also added the "News..." button to jump directly to the news on this blog related to this device. (consequently, the most current version is 1.02 - you can grab it by searching in places for "primskirtbuilder" and going there).

Now, the pictures:



Me, standing on the posing stand, with the skirt prototype (under me in the awkward place :), and control prims (left and right from me).




Yours truly, after doing some manipulations to the prim on the left (changed size, texture, color, transpareny and position) - you can see that the whole skirt prototype has changed.



Once I was satisfied that I probably made the ugliest looking skirt in SL ever, I click on it and select "Link...". It asks the permissions, and after a short while - moves to the left - ready-made object with the green ball being the root prim...



I am trying to put this wonderful creation on my head...



And suddenly it turns alive, this aggressive out-of-space alien medusa - starts flying away and attacks me with blu-rays!

...Appears that fashion is a rather dangerous occupation, did not know that. So, be careful! :)

Vint's prim skirt builder

or, Dalien-fashionista, continued :-)

All right. So here it goes, my modest coding result.
In short - it is an in-world GUI for the LoopRez, with the rotation enhancements that I mentioned in one of the previous posts.

The package includes the manual and everything else, and is distributed under GPL license - so if you are interested, you can peek at the mess of the scripts :-)

I'm very glad that it seems to be a success - a few folks that saw it, gave reactions ranging around "cool", "wow" and similar - so you might try it out too.
Just be sure to RTFM if something does not work according to your expectations.

I'm posting the version 1.01 - which contains a couple of tweaks compared to the version 1.0 that I was trying out with a few people:

• "precaution timer" for the case where you derez the posing stand and forget to derez the skirt/control prims - they get deleted after some 10-15 minutes. Previously it worked only for control prims, now it works for all prims.
  
• texture reset timer (after re-rez) - seems might have been a bug there - I tried to make it more "gentle" - see if it works in all cases now.
  
• wiping all prims ("Wipe all..." option in the dialog) now also resets the script.
  

A few words of caution / known quirks

1. The textures sometimes do not get re-posted onto the newly recreated skirt when you re-rez it with different number of prims. I think it should be fixed now.
   
2. The change of attributes on many objects sometimes creates strange behaviour. This is a bug in SL, I think. For this you can try out the script in the distribution area (see slurl below).
   

The distribution/try out area is a piece of land in Mindulle, where you can pick up your copy, also rez it and test it out. The plot is set to autoreturn in 120 minutes, so it is a sandbox for all the practical purposes. And a tiny prim limit and small space will help ensure it is used for purposes of testing the primskirtbuilder only :-)

The SLURL is here.

Enjoy, and feel free to write in the replies what you think about it! (bugs/features/etc.)

Update: the characteristics update after the re-rez still seems to be borken.. grr :) workaround: change the texture on the master prim to something else, wait for it to replicate, then change it back...

Update2: setting the high prim limit to 60 maybe was a bit of overkill... let's set it to 30 for now.