December 2007 Archives

Here, you will find a reposting of the Second Life End User License Agreement. While most of the 11 page document consists of Linden Labs protecting themselves from claims from their users, there are some very interesting little tidbits in there. Fun bits are highlighted, while color commentary appears in red.  The clauses without any highlighting have been removed, while selected clauses have been reproduced in full.

Enjoy!

TERMS OF SERVICE AND END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR SECOND LIFE

2.5 Account. By using the Service you agree that even though you may retain certain copyright or other intellectual property rights with respect to works you create (your "Content," as defined in Section 6.1 below) while using the Service (as specified in Section 5.3 below), you do not own the account you use to access the Service, nor do you own any data Linden stores on Linden servers (including without limitation any data representing or embodying any or all of your Content).

So while I might own the rights to a sex platform i create in SL, I don't own the digital data that comprises what I've created.

Linden Labs is adimant that Second Life is not a game. Catherine Smith, Linden Labs spokesperson points out that "There is no manufactured conflict, no set objective... it's an entirely open-ended experience." However, the Second Life system gets cheated an awful lot.

Second Life (SL) supposedly aims to create a virtual world where users can create their own experience. A large component of this world is an economy where Linden dollars are exchanged for in-game objects that are created for users for users. These transactions, and their integrity are managed by the servers run by SL creators, Linden Labs. The weak point in this system however, is the Second Life client. While objects cannot be "owned" until they are purchased from another user, visual descriptions of the objects are downloaded to anyone running a Second Life client so they can be viewed.

Last week I posted about how an online poker player was outfitted with the digital equivalent of X-Ray Specs. I should have saved the analogy for this post because tens of thousands of first-person shooter gamers are seeing more than they are supposed to.

The What
Groups of dedicated “hackers” use a variety of cheating methods to gain an edge in first-person shooters online. FPS players refer to cheaters as hackers, not as in skilled programmers, but in terms of players running modified or augmented game software on their machines.

Wall hacks + Aimbots
The software the cheaters run allow them to see through walls (wall hacks), automatically aim for the head (aimbots), and generally gain more information about the state of the multiplayer game than they should be entitled to (ESP).

No doubt many a poker player have wished for a pair of X-Ray Specs during their poker career once or twice. Well in the case of Potripper on Absolute Poker, no extra eyewear was needed.

The Backstory
Just to get everyone up to speed on the whole Potripper fiasco that hit the news a couple months back…
On September 12, 2007, a really funny game of poker happened. Talk had begun about some very suspicious patterns of play on Absolute Poker, but some of the net’s most well-known card players weren’t dissuaded by that, or the $1,000 buy-in. Too bad for them, because one of the players was using an account that allowed them to see everyone’s cards.

People have been cheating at card games since they were first invented in 9th century China. The way the cheating has gone down hasn’t changed much: sleight of hand, collusion and marking cards. But in the digital age, poker has come to mean a very different game. When played online, poker now comes with a set of rules that has all new avenues for play, as well as cheating.

Playing card games like Poker rely on shuffling a deck of physical cards. By shuffling the 52 cards of a standard deck, players all have an equal chance of getting any card in the deck. When playing online however, algorithms are used to “randomly” distribute the cards. I put that in quotes because nothing a computer ever does is truly random. Randomness in computers is simulated by the generation of an integer with a deterministic pseudo-random algorithm, mediated by a “seed” number. Most computer programs use the hardware system clock to generate a constantly changing seed number. For most applications, this method sufficiently simulates randomness. However, when real money is being placed on the virtual table, this lack of randomness can be exploited by syncing a client computer to the server’s system clock.