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LL pushes flawed “age verification”

On the official Second Life blog, Linden Lab announced that they have pushed their “IDV” scheme — often referred to as “age verification” — into a live beta-version SL client. This means that you can download the IDV version of SL and try out the verification features (“Age verification enters Grid-wide beta“).

In short, Linden Lab will ask residents to pay them a fee to get “verified” status for their avatar. In the verification process, residents are asked to provide their real name, plus some ID, such as SSN, driver’s license number, passport number, among others. This information is sent to a US data-mining company called Integrity (whose sister company Aristotle, sells data…hmm), who sends back a “verified” or “unverified” response.

According to Linden Lab, landowners will be able to block unverified visitors from entering their land, and will be legally responsible for preventing minors from seeing anything objectionable should any happen to sneak into their land.

Reaction is sharp and overwhelming: residents hate the scheme, which they say may be illegal and possibly untrustworthy, among other objections. Despite months since the plan was revealed, Linden Lab fails to address these legitimate objections:

  • In many countries, it’s illegal to require someone to submit ID numbers, like SSN, SIN, driver’s license, or passport to a website (or in some cases through any medium).
  • Many feel that this isn’t information verification, but information gathering by Integrity, a data miner. I will not willingly provide my ID to a US data-miner, myself.
  • Of those who provide their ID data despite the legal question, the accuracy of the Integrity verification is questionable. Many are verified with incorrect information, and other are not verified with correct information. Some report that Canadian residents can’t verify, even with correct information.
  • Many residents don’t have any of the ID numbers required. If you’re a UK resident, who doesn’t drive and hasn’t travelled outside the country, there is no way to verify — banned from large portions of SL, perpetually suspected of being underage.
  • Many estate owners are faced with a conundrum: If they want to allow their tenants to possess content above kids-level fare, they will be faced with legal liability if they don’t block unverified accounts. That would mean losing a great many paying tenants who are undoubtedly adult, though unable or unwilling to use the verification process. It also means estate owners are faced with giving away their ID to Integrity (if the process even works for them) or losing access to their own estate.
  • Finally, any kid who wants to sneak into SL can just borrow a parent’s info. Even ignoring all of the above issues, the process can be thwarted by any child with half a brain.

I have to ask — why is Linden Lab pushing to implement an identity verification system that can’t possibly verify identity? All this will accomplish is to add yet another barrier to new residents and drive away existing residents.

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Hackers exploit flaw in Apple QuickTime to rob Second Life residents

If you logged into Second Life yesterday, you’ve seen the announcement from Linden Lab:

We were alerted a short time ago that a QuickTime exploit has been discovered which may allow an attacker to crash or exploit the Second Life viewer. The Second Life viewer uses Apple QuickTime to play videos and streaming media. This exploit affects QuickTime usage on every platform that uses it, and to date, Apple has not released a fix for the exploit.

While the Lindens are very clear that this is an exploit in QuickTime and not Second Life specifically, they were less than forthcoming about the exact details of the exploit. Mercury News fills in the details.

Charles Miller…and Dino Dai Zovi…, two experienced hackers, say they have found a vulnerability in the way Second Life protects a user’s money inside the virtual world from being stolen. It has significance because that currency, dubbed Linden dollars, can be converted into real world dollars.

According to Mercury News, QuickTime can be directed to a malicious website that “allows them to take over the Second Life avatar.”

Personally, I’m not clear about how this could work. Each land parcel in Second Life has an associated video stream, so the landowner would have to add the URL to their land — it’s not something a hacker can do without the landowner’s permission. I understand that malicious websites can exploit vulnerabilities in computers, but there’s a big gap between planting a virus and taking complete control of the Second Life client. Assuming that this malicious code is able to do that, one can’t use the Second Life client alone to plant viruses in-world, as Miller says. Many script-kiddies try that daily, and accomplish only annoyances — replicating cubes with offensive pictures, for example. Eventually, those cubes either meet behind-the-scenes defenses and get cleaned up with no harm done — they’re hardly viruses.

This isn’t the first attempt to steal Linden dollars. Previous attempts have been crude scripted objects in-world that depend on residents accidentally granting debit permissions.

To protect your Linden dollars from this hack, open Second Life and click Preferences in the login screen. From there, go to the Audio & Video tab and disable video streaming.

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Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto

This week I took a short breather from Second Life while my beta testers put TerraVend through its paces. Immediately I had this feeling like I had emerged from the Matrix. For the months I spent immersed in the metaverse, I had neglected the meat-verse. I turned from my computer and saw the truth of my existence: I had dirty floors. It was horrible. I shudder to think of it even now.

So naturally, being the geek I am, I threw technology at the problem. Enter my new worker robot: Roomba from iRobot. No, I’m not satisfied with just the vacuum cleaner and broom. I have to get a robot to do it for me.

The idea of having a household robot is straight out of science fiction. Didn’t we all expect that by the twenty first century we would all have hovercars and household robotic servants? We don’t have actual robot servants yet (or the hovercars), but I think the Roomba is a step in the right direction.

The compactness of the Roomba is impressive. It’s a small, disc-shaped vacuum cleaner about 35cm across and about 10cm high. It has a large bumper on the front and an infrared sensor mounted on top. Underneath it has light and sound sensors, as well as the brushes for cleaning.

After charging it up, I let it loose in my home. It drives in almost random patterns across the floor and under furniture, bumping into and avoiding obstacles. By determing the size and shape of the room, it adjusts how long it needs to clean, and — this is the coolest part — when it’s done, it drives itself onto to its charger and turns itself off.

For a little thing, it cleans surprisingly well. It takes, I’m guessing, about 5 times as long as a human to accomplish the same task (about 30 minutes for my living room), but it has the advantage of being completely autonomous. I can push the Clean button on the way out the door, and when I come back, the floors are clean.

So what kind of impact does a household cleaning robot have on my life? Already, I can see my habits changing. First of all, I’ve never taken so much interest in my floors, but I think the novelty of it will fade in time. Second, I don’t try quite so hard to avoid making messes, which is a terrible, slovenly habit to develop. If there’s dirt on the carpet from my potted tree, why bother cleaning it up when the robot can get it? Toast crumbs on the table? Sweep them onto the floor for the robot. Toenails? OK, well that’s just gross and I won’t go there, but I can appreciate the apathy that sets in when one relies on robotic help. If I had a robot to fetch food and beverages from the kitchen, I’d never leave the couch.

Imagine a future, then, where everyone has a household robot that cooks, cleans, and brings food. We would all grow corpulent and lazy, unwilling to think or act for ourselves. And I for one welcome that future, if it means we get cool robots. Corpulence here I come!

Until I get an actual robotic servant, I’ll have to make do with this bumbling little vacuum cleaner robot. With a little duct-tape and a tray, I bet I could make it bring me drinks.

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A happy Windows Vista user

I had been waiting with bated breath for this machine. My new kick-ass computer arrived the other day by Purolator. So far, it’s absolutely true what they say about Windows Vista — it’s an absolute joy to use. You can’t imagine the pleasure I feel when I see error messages from applications that ran perfectly well under Windows XP.

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Giant squid found in Tasmania

A giant squid has washed up on a beach in Tasmania. ” It would not taste very nice at all,” scientist says. I ask you… if you can’t make truck-wheel-size calamari, what use is it?

(Link)