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May 17, 2000, 6:11pm

For caretakers: the WorldSchedule xelagot script will change your world
attributes (including 3.0 and rights)
according to a daily schedule, without editing the script file. You may
at will include line-breaks and tabs in your
WelcomeMessage specification. You can run it permanently, or once and
stop it: it will always check the right
time for changing things. See
http://www.imatowns.com/xelagot/xlgasex_worldschedule.html for details.
It
requires the latest version of Xelagot.

May 30, 2000, 11:30am

Xelagots have a new script: NaughtsAndCrosses (TicTacToe). See
http://www.imatowns.com/xelagot/xlgasex_naughtsncrosses.html for more
details. It requires version 2.9999916 or greater.

May 30, 2000, 11:30am

LOL, trying from my second account, seems the moderator does not allow 2
identical posts in different newsgroups:

Xelagots have a new script: NaughtsAndCrosses (TicTacToe). See
http://www.imatowns.com/xelagot/xlgasex_naughtsncrosses.html for more
details. It requires version 2.9999916 or greater.

XeiaG

May 30, 2000, 11:30am

Xelagot bots have a new script: NaughtsAndCrosses (TicTacToe). See
http://www.imatowns.com/xelagot/xlgasex_naughtsncrosses.html for more
details. It requires version 2.9999916 or greater.

Jun 10, 2000, 8:05pm

Bots and Privacy

I am writing this short essay because I have noticed that even people
who are responsible for worlds and world hostings seem very confused
about the powers bots have, especially regarding privacy.

A bot can do many things better and faster that people using a browser.
In fact, bots can sometimes perceive and do things browsers can not do.
For example, a bot can detect when someont clicks on someone else, or
clicks or selects an object. A bot can also detect who is present
within its bot perception radius (the same radius that applies to
browsers).

But there there things a bot can not do. Here is a list of things which
concern privacy:

1. A bot can not read whispers which are not addressed to it.

2. A bot can not retrieve IP numbers, unless its owner's citizen number
has eject powers or is Caretaker.

3. Because a bot can not put on privs, even if its owner gets special
powers by putting on privs, the bot does not get those powers. This
applies to all rights: eject, caretaker, public speaker etc.

4. A bot can not get the url of the object path of a world, unless it is
Caretaker.

5. A bot can not get the object password even if it is Caretaker.

Bots can log conversations, just in the same way any browser can. Bots
can hide their identity just as a citizen/tourist can, by not speaking.
These two abilities of bots and people are controversial: why should a
browser or a bot log what I say? Well, since browsers can do that, why
not bots?

More annoying is the fact that some people in public places do not wish
to reveal themselves or their names. They may be logging what I say,
but I do not know who they are. In fact, it could be people I do not
wish to see or have near me. That, I feel, is a greater infringement on
my rights of privacy than anything a bot can do.

I saw today, in a world that allows all bots, a notice at GZ forbidding
bots in that area for reasons of privacy. The penalty: ejection on
detection. I have added that world to the file that prevents my bots
from entering GZ, but still wonder what sort of reason drives a world
owner to allow all bots, but use the argument of privacy for certain
areas. Any person or bot that misbehaves can be warned and ejected, but
using the reason of privacy to ban bots seems to me to rely on
misconceptions.

XelaG

Jul 15, 2000, 4:49pm

The latest AW newsletter has the following article:
DON'T CRACK!
Get the real story on using cracked versions of the AW Browser.
http://www.activeworlds.com/newsletter/0700/070016.html

Although I fully agree with the spirit of the article as far as viruses
etc are concerned, I fully disagree with the contents. AW has neglected
to provide a trans-universe browser, thereby fractalising its own
potential community and earnings. Many attempts to change the code of
the aw browser are aimed at correcting this behaviour. There is still
no way one can use ONE aw browser to surf the multitude of aw based
software (not to mention that you can't even interact or load the
rendering machine from a web page). The fact aw based worlds are only
reacheable by downloading the 1.5 MB files, plus that this action will
only work for one universe, handicaps the whole system... You will
never be able to organise a multi-system, multi-universe event unless
you tamper with aw's shortcomings: that is what most of the efforts to
modify the aw browser have been aiming at. Instead of publishing such
an article, it might have been much better if aw would have tried to
solve (it's not at all difficult to do so, MUCH simpler that trying to
push the rendering engine) their universality complexes. AW is worth a
lot to users, and promises a bunch... but it still seems to be
contemplating its own navel :(

Jul 19, 2000, 2:15am

Hi Agent1,

I am not blaming Roland at all for this. Roland works for AWCI for his money, and does his best. He is not the policy maker, nor
does he have the final say on priorities, as far as I know. Who does, I don't know, and I frankly don't care. But many people have a
lot of hopes and illusions set on AW, it is by far the best system around. I have been around long enough to see that many many
oportunities are being missed because of small and not so small negligences. If AW wants to 'break through', they should try to make
their system more available and user friendly. RW 3.0 may be great, and I am full of awe at the effort being done, but it does not
favour in any way AW in the short run: it requires restricting software and hardware, by which I mean, AW's potential user base will
get smaller, not larger.

Do you imagine new people and organisations trying to use AW, for instance for educational purposes, or commercial ones. How do you
explain to them: you need to download our very special browser... oh no, not fronm a web page, OUR browser... go delete your
cache...download our other browser (AW and Eduverse belong to AWCI, they can't communicate)... no we can't teleport you
cross-universe, no cross-universe features... well no, no interaction between your WWW browser and AW unless it is the imbedded
browser... no streaming audio nor video, no support for new technologies... oh sorry, only wav and midi... please don't have your
bots query the universe server for citizen numbers, sorry we can't provide them automatically, no not even the acting citizen number -
no, no inmediate identification... All these things may seem trivial, but you can not explain them to outsiders who inquire about how
to use this system, and you can not implemaent very basic commodities required by potential users :(

The focus still seems to be: THE Active Wordls universe, THE Active Worlds browser. The bot SDK, a wonderful acquisition, still
thinks, looks, acts the browser way. In fact, we have in the bot SDK a sub-set of the browser SDK... as if that was the limit to what
should or could be achieved. It all depends on the policy making department, not on the programming department.

Alex :(

[View Quote] > Roland tries very hard to implement features in new releases of AW. In fact, I find him to be the one that that actually interacts
> with the community the most out of all of the AWCI members.
>
> Anyway, if people need to crack the browser to do something, then I'm sure AWCI (or at least Roland) would want to implement it.
> This way, people wouldn't need to crack the browser at all.
>
> -Agent1
>
[View Quote]

Jul 19, 2000, 2:15am

Hi Agent1,

I am not blaming Roland at all for this. Roland works for AWCI for his money, and does his best. He is not the policy maker, nor
does he have the final say on priorities, as far as I know. Who does, I don't know, and I frankly don't care. But many people have a
lot of hopes and illusions set on AW, it is by far the best system around. I have been around long enough to see that many many
oportunities are being missed because of small and not so small negligences. If AW wants to 'break through', they should try to make
their system more available and user friendly. RW 3.0 may be great, and I am full of awe at the effort being done, but it does not
favour in any way AW in the short run: it requires restricting software and hardware, by which I mean, AW's potential user base will
get smaller, not larger.

Do you imagine new people and organisations trying to use AW, for instance for educational purposes, or commercial ones. How do you
explain to them: you need to download our very special browser... oh no, not fronm a web page, OUR browser... go delete your
cache...download our other browser (AW and Eduverse belong to AWCI, they can't communicate)... no we can't teleport you
cross-universe, no cross-universe features... well no, no interaction between your WWW browser and AW unless it is the imbedded
browser... no streaming audio nor video, no support for new technologies... oh sorry, only wav and midi... please don't have your
bots query the universe server for citizen numbers, sorry we can't provide them automatically, no not even the acting citizen number -
no, no inmediate identification... All these things may seem trivial, but you can not explain them to outsiders who inquire about how
to use this system, and you can not implemaent very basic commodities required by potential users :(

The focus still seems to be: THE Active Wordls universe, THE Active Worlds browser. The bot SDK, a wonderful acquisition, still
thinks, looks, acts the browser way. In fact, we have in the bot SDK a sub-set of the browser SDK... as if that was the limit to what
should or could be achieved. It all depends on the policy making department, not on the programming department.

Alex :(

[View Quote] > Roland tries very hard to implement features in new releases of AW. In fact, I find him to be the one that that actually interacts
> with the community the most out of all of the AWCI members.
>
> Anyway, if people need to crack the browser to do something, then I'm sure AWCI (or at least Roland) would want to implement it.
> This way, people wouldn't need to crack the browser at all.
>
> -Agent1
>
[View Quote]

Jul 15, 2000, 4:50pm

The latest AW newsletter has the following article:
DON'T CRACK!
Get the real story on using cracked versions of the AW Browser.
http://www.activeworlds.com/newsletter/0700/070016.html

Although I fully agree with the spirit of the article as far as viruses
etc are concerned, I fully disagree with the contents. AW has neglected
to provide a trans-universe browser, thereby fractalising its own
potential community and earnings. Many attempts to change the code of
the aw browser are aimed at correcting this behaviour. There is still
no way one can use ONE aw browser to surf the multitude of aw based
software (not to mention that you can't even interact or load the
rendering machine from a web page). The fact aw based worlds are only
reacheable by downloading the 1.5 MB files, plus that this action will
only work for one universe, handicaps the whole system... You will
never be able to organise a multi-system, multi-universe event unless
you tamper with aw's shortcomings: that is what most of the efforts to
modify the aw browser have been aiming at. Instead of publishing such
an article, it might have been much better if aw would have tried to
solve (it's not at all difficult to do so, MUCH simpler that trying to
push the rendering engine) their universality complexes. AW is worth a
lot to users, and promises a bunch... but it still seems to be
contemplating its own navel :(

Jul 18, 2000, 1:27am

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Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

No, not really. To be able to cope with various universes, AW would need
to incorporate a few very simple features.

They would have to make, for example, a unique naming convention for
universes (as for worlds within a universe), and separate folders for
each universe, to hold the cache, help and messages folders appropriate
for each universe, and the universe ini files and splash files. They
could add a 'shared' folder for files used by all universes, or use the
program folder for that. They would need to add a bit of code to their
program to manage these options. If my xelagot bot has it, why can't AW
do it? Not a priority, I guess, on against their policy, or maybe for
the same reason why they have never added a 'clear this cache' button
(that seems to be the remedy for most of the problems as far as aw
technicians are concerned).... who can guess ?

Anyway, their lack of interest in furthering this line of action is
really their problem. I do not need to show them the way (nor could I)
they have specialists working there... I can only give my opinion based
on my experience in 2 and a half years AW.

Alex.

[View Quote] > Well.. couldn't one just goto their 'aworld.ini' file, type in a new
> section celled '[universe]' then enter a host address or port number
> to access another universe?. Saves that download time and only takes a
> few seconds. It's a rather efficient way to travel across different AW
> universes, without a large download...Seems simple enough? (Not to
> mention obvious) M u n k u y "Alex Grigny de Castro (XelaG)"
[View Quote] --------------FB04BC253507012D7A0DBD17
Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">
<html>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
No, not really. To be able to cope with various universes, AW would need
to incorporate a few very simple features.
<p>They would have to make, for example,&nbsp; a unique naming convention
for universes (as for worlds within a universe), and separate folders for
each universe, to hold the cache, help and messages folders appropriate
for each universe, and the universe ini files and splash files.&nbsp; They
could add a 'shared' folder for files used by all universes, or use the
program folder for that.&nbsp;&nbsp; They would need to add a bit of code
to their program to manage these options.&nbsp; If my xelagot bot has it,
why can't AW do it?&nbsp; Not a priority, I guess, on against their policy,
or maybe for the same reason why they have never added a 'clear this cache'
button (that seems to be the remedy for most of the problems as far as
aw technicians are concerned).... who can guess ?
<p>Anyway, their lack of interest in furthering this line of action is
really their problem. I do not need to show them the way (nor could I)
they have specialists working there... I can only give my opinion based
on my experience in 2 and a half&nbsp; years AW.
<p>Alex.
[View Quote] </body>
</html>

--------------FB04BC253507012D7A0DBD17--

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