Slashdot Mirror
Second Life Virtual World to Get Firefox
lecreuset writes "Clickable Culture has an article discussing the imminent wedding of Firefox and Second Life. From the article: 'The virtual world of Second Life will leverage an embedded version of Mozilla Firefox in a future release, supporting in-world web browsing and the display of web pages on the surfaces of 3D objects, according to developers at Linden Lab.'"
That's great unless they start sticking advertisements all over the place with it...
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
I read this and I was like "Second life? What?" To save you lazy suckers Googling: http://www.secondlife.com/
It is unfortunate that the developers decided that a 3D world is needed to have fun. It takes a solid connection and a fast computer to run because of it. Furthermore, it is much more difficult to create and position objects in a 3D environment. A top-down, bitmap based 2D environment would've been preferable in my opinion. Easier, simplier, more accessable, and a lot more fun. I'm a MUDer though, so what do I know?
http://secondlife.com/whatis/
"Second Life is a virtual world - a 3D online persistent space totally created and evolved by its users. Within this vast and rapidly expanding place, you can do, create or become just about anything you can imagine. Built-in content creation tools let you make almost anything you can imagine, in real time and in collaboration with others. An incredibly detailed digital body ('Avatar') allows a rich and customizable identity. A powerful physics simulation running on a backbone of hundreds of connected computers and growing with the population allows you to be immersed in a visceral, interactive world that as of April 2005 covers more than 12,000 acres and 20,000 owned plots of land. The ability to design and resell 3D content, combined with the ability to own and develop land and a microcurrency, which can be exchanged to real money means that you can build a real business entirely within Second Life."
DBA? Software Engineer? My company is hiring! Click
Wow can't wait to have 3-D popups hording my screen. I love the fact that unscrupulous advertisers have figured out how to game Firefox, I'm starting to see more and more popups again. I guess its time to turn off Flash.
The more you know, the less you understand.
I am surprised Second Life still exists. After all if I am going to pay a monthly subscription I would much rather have something that gives me content (W.O.W.) than something that asks the community to produce its own. Second Life sounds like something that should have been an open souce / free / funded by donations project.
Philosophy.
A gathering place for pedophiles and bored housewives.
iirc, there's a quake mod that renders html as textures, although it's not browsable. I couldn't access the site, though. It got slashdotted already. Does it just display the html as a texture, or is it browsable?
I'm sorry. The number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again.
Wait a dog garn minute, let me get this straight...
I'm going to be able to slack off from my virtual life (and say, read slashdot) while I'm slacking off from my real life playing Second Life?
Okay, and meanwhile, in Darfur...
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
Let me know when it gets to First Life...
If you lower your screen resolution, the large blank page will become somewhat smaller, and the text thats missing will become much larger.
That wasy, the nothingness will be easier to not read.
liqbase
This article certainly brings up an interesting topic: integrating different programs and making them work. It might be useful to have a media player that also acts as a web browsers or a file manager that autmatically downloads news from a website. I don't expect something like what I just suggested to catch on anytime soon, but multi-purpose programs would be nice to have -- after all, who wouldn't want a program that does everything?
If you're reading this, stop it.
I suggest "popouts". We need a popout blocker.
I already have a "L"ife... If it was second "W"ife...that is another story.
Thats fine, you don't need a new graphics card just to browse.
This simply allows people ingame to use all the proper features (and I would assume your user profile settings) of a real browser.
If your not using the game, then this news isn't of use to you.
liqbase
Here you go, sir. Pure open source goodness.
Yeah, why do I have to wake up from my virtual game world to reach for my iPod on my real desktop? I want all my virtual objects with me in my virtual world.
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Browsing the web inside a game? Somehow this reminds me of Penny Arcade comic. Yeah, I'm Karma whoring...
Rude comment, considering this doesn't have anything to do with the browser. Moderators must be getting lazy....
Thank you to anyone who listens and relises I shouldn't need to upgrade my graphics card to check websites.
Well, that is the price of progress. I remember needing to replace my *CPU* to view websites (Java 3D modeling needed "MMX" or whatever...). Your complaint should be with the people who are building the websites. The browser is simple enough to put on screen - we've been doing that for years. It's your fault for wanting to do the latest, greatest thing.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Firefos IS heavenly!
It's already happened with the 3B browser. That's a browser which lets you wander through a city consisting of hundreds of websites. When you click on a site it takes you to it. The browser and all the 3D page rendering is done with Mozilla.
http://www.3b.net/browser/index.html
Just in case anyone from Linden labs is reading this, I would like to say that I almost signed up for their free trial, but did not because they required me to sign up for an account in order to get the free trial.
I will never sign up for one of those "free trials" where you have to cancel before your free trial expires, otherwise you pay. First of all I tend to be forgetfull and I may not cancel at the right time, also god knows how complicated their cancelation procedure is.
I am disappointed that a computer game which slashdotters seem to would borrow a tactic which is mostly used by porn sites.
Wow, lets add another thing to second life to further lag things out. Recently an "update" was rolled out which added quicktime movie support to objects in game. Pretty nifty concept, except when people go outta control and put 20 automatically running Hillary Duff music videos inside the same piece of land, then its nothing but lag-fest.
Can't wait to see what happens with it when the HTML contains a ton of animated images, or annoying popups.
I've seen Second Life mentioned on Slashdot around last summer, and I'm still in game :-)
:-)
It might not appeal to all -- it's not exactly a game, more of a virtual place, where you can live your imagination, build, socialize. Don't expect WoW-like quality and content, but you can get and do much more, many things you can imagine, can be scripted to an extent. Or you can make clothes, build houses, cars, etc.
It's a virtual world, and it's getting somewhat similar to the Metaverse (like in Neil Stephenson's Snowcrash novel), though it's way way far yet.
You can try it out free, and stay if you like it, nothing to buy, and also you can live with a one-time payment, if you don't want to spend monthly on it.
Yes... I AM an SL addict
The virtual world of Second Life will leverage an embedded version of Mozilla Firefox in a future release
I'm sorry, the links are totally Slashdotted... what is second life? Is that like another AlphaWorld?
Please can I have a simple web browser which blocks pop ups, ads and doesn't allow in spyware and other junk.
Why the lack of ambition?
Your virtual character can have a web browser that attaches not to a virtual server, but an actual one. The Second Life server.
If you have sufficient karma, you will be able to use your web browser to find out what virtual person sent you the spam/created the pop-up/whatever, and obliterate their existence. It'd be like have root access to God's server.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Sounds nifty with an in-game browser. Almost all non-fps games I play, I play in windowed mode, so I can read mail and browse while playing. But ok, this is for advertising in-game, I would guess. There are probably also usefull things you can do with it in the game.
;P
But many of us still need to get a first life, before we can move on to a second one
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
The Metaverse in Snow Crash did not have physical feedback. The Metaverse was accessed via 3D goggles, with some of the input controlled by sensed body motion.
What about the Linux client they promised at start? If it's good enough to run their servers, it's good enough to have a client. Specially as they use OpenGL for graphics and already have a MacOSX client.
If I have posted far, it is because I replied to giants.
I tried this out after one of the ads for it. Free to get into. Crappy graphics, at that level why bother being 3D, but hey, at least its functional. You get your choice of a few starter outfits and things, all of which are the equivalent of the starter n00b armor in WOW or some other MMORPG because they immediately label you as such. To improve your gear, or hairstyle, or whatever... you don't quest for it like in WOW, you have to pay, as in real $$. Not to a real account, but I mean for the actual items. I think they gave you a pittance to start with. I didn't stick around long enough, but I thought there might be some other way to accumulate money, such as selling things to other players (again for real $$).
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
GNAA sure is fucking stupid, but their trolls are funny
I sell out to The Man every day.
The game is governed by fucking morons who will suspend you from the game for doing anything that doesn't conform to typical elitist MUD admin rules. It's not a "metaverse", it's a haven for social retards like furries and e-thugs. I suggest you stay away from this game if you're looking to keep your sanity. It's full of the internets worst.
...lalala BOM! a popup window hits you! Literally.. Add a shotgun to the program as well and you'll have an instant shoot'em up hit.
You seem to make an extremely common grammatical mistake youself -- namely, split infinitives.
Or "namely, to split infinitives". Sure I do. Also, I start some sentences with "And", for rhetorical style. And sometimes mistakenly start sentences like that one with "I also start". When I bend the language, it often does not confuse, because the deviation itself does not mean something else. When I make such a confusing mistake, I appreciate getting a reminder of the correct usage, when it constructively indicates one. Rather than merely insulting, that kind of comment is helpful - which yours ain't.
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Man, have you ever been to http://www.gnaa.us? I did it just to see what their site was like. I was surprised at how professional the layout was. I mean, just listen to this little gem:
GNAA leverages core skillsets and world-class team synergy through sodomy to provide clients worldwide with robust, scalable, modern turnkey implementations of flexible, personalized, cutting-edge Internet-enabled e-business application product suite e-solution architectures that accelerate response to customer and real-world market demands and reliably adapt to evolving technology needs, seamlessly and efficiently integrating and synchronizing with their existing legacy infrastructure, enhancing the e-readiness capabilities of their e-commerce production environments across the enterprise while giving them a critical competitive advantage and taking them to the next level.
Talk about masters of corporate IT bullshit buzzwords!
This is a freaking cool idea. My head spins with excitement on the prospects of this process. To integrate a web browser engine into a 3d engine so that games and 3d-interactive worlds can access the online information network of billions!
So freaking sweet. I want to be able to browse the web on the rippling drops of waterfalls in a Myst like setting.
And if it's Second Life that allows this bridge to be crossed, then Kudos to them and all the best to Firefox for making the claim to that.
But.. I still ain't up for paying real world dollars for 10 acres of polygons.
Wow. You sure make a lot of mistakes for such a picky grammar nazi. Here's a helpful comment: stop worrying about liberties others take with the language until you, yourself, reach perfection.
I will make exceptions for its/it's misuse, as well as for your/you're. Misplaced apostrophes carry a manatory death sentence.
Yeah man, its unreal.
:P
But hey listen. Don't ever go into their IRC (irc.gnaa.us #gnaa). Well, do, so you can see what its like, and then run like hell at their sheer stupidity
I sell out to The Man every day.
Are they using Firefox per se, or the rendering engine, Gecko?
Crappily embedded midi files in elevators, bathrooms, and every virtual object "owned" by god-fearing midwestern housewives
Crappily embedded 6 meg bitmaps to wrap a virtual baseball
DoubleClick webbugs in your vitrual space to know who keeps peeping in your virtual windows so scumbags from South Florida can sell you virtual viagra, virtual calais, andd virtual farm animals fucking virtually knocked-up britney spears.
"Block Clothing from this server"
"NOTE: These virtual tattoos are optiimized for virtual tits of the size D cup or larger."
s'wut i sed.
Anybody happen to remember a book entitled "The Avatar" (or at least including the word "Avatar") that included a virtual world much like what is described on on Second Life's What Is page? Did a quick search, but couldn't find it. Read it maybe 8 years ago and it apparently wasn't that good, but my failure to remember it keeps nagging at me.
some of us are busy doing things with our first life, like writing and supporting the code, installing and supporting the networks, that others wasting their first lives in favor of this second life depend on.
If anyone currently embroiled in that space wants to give up some excess first life, feel free to direct it to me. I'd love to take thirty or forty years at a time on and live for a few centuries.
(insert eye roll here)
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
What the fuck is this article even talking about in the first place. I'm totally out of my element here people.
...at least they aren't using IE, their character could get a virus.
Please stop.
You're giving everyone with a reasonable grasp of the english language a bad reputation.
Nonsense. You don't even have the authority of a flimsy Slashdot userID. You can't speak for the English language - in fact, your incorrect capitalization excludes you from the group with a reasonable grasp of it. If you're not going to contribute anything useful, quit your whining.
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I've got it, why don't they build a support for OpenGL and DirectX in their 3D world then we can play real online games inside SecondLife! Wouldnt that be great.
Amy: I could swear I was really playing Virtual Skeeball!
Yes, since we all know that A) Arguring with an AC proves anything B) Knowledge of a single language determines things such as intelligence.
Thanks for being the average "I'm better than you" slashdotter.
"If you're not going to contribute anything, quit your whining."
What are you talking about? Apart from the near-irrelevance of (A), who said anything about "intelligence"? Or even "I'm better"? Every post I've made in this pernicious thread, otherwise composed of unsubstantiable abuse, has 1> corrected a mistake, rather than merely criticize it, and 2> pointed out the useless nature of the purely abusive content of the posts attacking mine.
Now, it happens that I do think I'm better than those other posters - at posting, at the language, at debate, at any number of endeavors in which they've shown their hand, and come up short. But I haven't said so, until now. Where are you coming up with this stuff?
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Spoken like a true "catcher"
I tried to join second life, but apparently US military members overseas are forbidden to join. The US military has used the same mail system for decades, yet second life insists on using a billing verification system that apparently does not allow APO/FPO billing addresses or non-US phone numbers. Almost every other retailer in the world knows how to bill and ship to an overseas APO/FPO address and online credit card verification is a fairly mature technology, so it is very strange that their system is completely unable to handle my credit card.
Ironically, the only other online retailer I've ever had this problem with was the "Motley Fool" investment advice service, which was equally strange. The 2 services that use billing and address verification systems that refuse to allow US overseas military members to join, are a "global" virtual world service, and a major financial advice service. You'd think they'd know...
By "stop", I meant "now".
You really are a bit twisted.
Who cares what you say? All you can do is post whining nonsense. You're so infatuated with your own whining that you don't even realize that you're just making yourself a bigger target, with this endless, stupid thread. Now, according to the script, you'll reply with your own surrender masked in some kind of passive agressive post telling me "you've got to have the last word, so you can have it". Baby.
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What I really wanted to try was to open a web browser inside second life, and use a remote PC applet to log onto another computer and log in to second life again. So you could be playing second life inside a browser inside second life. Or you could even do real work in the browser using workspot.
The question is, would other users be able to read and see what's on your screen?
That's OK man, because - misguided as you are - I still love you.
Callum Linden and I are the two developers at Linden Lab working on Mozilla embedding. Some details:
:-) Our competitor There.com uses Internet Explorer to do their internal web browsing, but they only support PCs. We love open source tools and use LGPL stuff extensively in both server and client. Plus, we need support for Win32, Mac and Linux.
Why bother? We want to allow people running Second Life full-screen to access our web site. Right now, if you want to bid on a piece of virtual land, or read the scripting language wiki, you have to either run in a window or switch out to your browser. That sucks, so we're fixing it.
The second goal is to get to third-party web sites. I want to trade SL currency on Gaming Open Market while staying in-world. Our internal scripting language supports e-mail into and out of the world, as well as XML-RPC. Lots of people have used this to build cool web sites that tie into the virtual world. See the postcards on Snapzilla postcards and the Second Life del.icio.us tag for examples. Getting these connected into the world would be a big win.
Why Mozilla? Could there be any other choice?
Working with the Mozilla codebase has been interesting. It's huge, and very complex. But I'm proud to say we've found and fixed a couple bugs in Mozilla, and contributed the changes back to the Mozilla folks. I'm looking forward to Firefox 1.1 and the potential for the new Cairo/OpenGL rendering subsystem -- that may really help with embedding for 3D worlds.
So despite the linked description, Callum and I are working on getting an interactive 2D browser working first. Web pages on the surfaces of 3D objects may not ship in the next version (1.7). It'll ship as soon as it's done.
As an aside, if any of the Mozilla developers are reading this, we could use some help with embedding, specifically how to post mouse-click events into an embedded instance, please send me mail.
Cheers,
James
Third Life, an alternate reality game withen an alternate reality game!
I don't need to. The AC's owned you enough to make me content :).
You're content with the irritated response of a person who doesn't mind responding sensibly to a gang of anonymous idiots? Keep up those posts of your own - you'll have plenty more to chew on.
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Nice to see this finally happen, but it's not exactly new. Chromeffects could do this back in '98.
Now if only someone would make it work in VRML/X3D...
I have always wanted to date a virtual girl with slashdot displayed on strategic 3D body surfaces...
There arises from a bad and unapt formation of words a wonderful obstruction to the mind. (Francis Bacon)
http://interreality.org/projects/crystalzilla
"Proof of concept" using all free software (client and server): Free 3D engine, free web browser, free networking architecture. Pending changes to Mozilla will be integrated into user applications sooner or later. Hackers wanted...
The split infinitive that can only be faulted from the position of a false analogy with written Latin.
As such, splitting an infinitive is not a grammatical mistake, it is perfectly acceptable English grammar. The Fowler brothers suggested that: "The 'split' infinitive has taken such hold upon the consciences of journalists that, instead of warning the novice against splitting his infinitives, we must warn him against the curious superstition that the splitting or not splitting makes the difference between a good and a bad writer.". That was in 1907 so I think you are a little behind the times, in 1926 H.W. Fowler wrote that writers who avoid the split infinitive are "bogy-haunted creatures".
Even that most conservative of arbiters, the Oxford English Dictionary states its not a grammatical mistake but may be considered bad style if it is not done to mitigate an ambiguity that would otherwise be present. Given that splitting an infinitive nearly always results in the reduction of ambiguity in the construction of a sentence I think their point is likely rhetorical.
Moderation -2
50% Flamebait
50% Overrated
This thread really showed how Slashdotters would rather get in a flamewar about grammar than brainstorm how to make simulation games more like the fictional ones we like. I mention (and correct) a "common grammatical mistake", without further criticism, as a way to introduce a detailed discussion of VR. Practically no one says anything about the VR. Practically everyone flames me about "grammar nazi" content, when I didn't even focus on the grammar mistake. In fact, I sympathized with it, and indulged it as a pretext to examine the real issue. But I got flames, and that ridiculous TrollMod record.
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