E-Mail 'OpenSim land area hits new high of 88,000 regions' To A Friend

21 Comments

1. 

   Alchemy Viewer with hypergrid currency support was released a few days ago. It is available to download now.

   1. 

      Author

      Thank you Cinder. I just made the change to the post. This is the download link, right? https://alchemyviewer.org/pages/downloads.html

   2. 

      Thanks for the update! Good to know!

2. 

   Once again great article. well done. Was interested to note that Genesis Metaverse showed an increase in user’s but a drop in region equivalents. But well done to all the grids mentioned.

   1. 

      I am so happy to be involved in a number of the reported grids! Learning about hypergridding has come kind of late to this old bird, but it has been so well worth the effort to learn!

      I’m also aware of the drop in equivalents, but the grids may be reporting only the region itself and not the equivalent size. VAR regions are singular regions, after all, and I think HGB should try to report the VAR’s apart from the standard region. Those regions are amazingly wonderful for use with vehicles as they don’t have those annoying sim crossings we all despised in SecondLife (though I used to take a vehicle and see how many sims I could cross without crashing!) I have the utmost respect for all these grids and love my virtual life in them!

      1. 

         I totally agree. I think and am pretty sure that Maria and david report region equivalents though.
         They base the grids region numbers on the land area equal to a standard 256 x 256 region. for example although not posted as they are included in the DigiWorldz count, Kea Nation would report 2016 regions although it is actually 126 linked 4×4 VAR regions. But I do agree Open Sim is really a great place to be

3. 

   Holy crap,
   “The massive growth in land area in the month was led by OpenSim Life which added a total of 2,458 standard region”

   Not only are you still scraping my stats , when I asked you not to, you are still getting them wrong … SMDH

   1. 

      I just checked the database … the link we have to the stats page is here: http://opensim.life/osloginscreen/

      There are several different land area numbers provided, including various region counts.

      But it also shows land area of in square kilometers. When a straight square footage number is available, we’ll use that.

      Each square kilometer holds 15.2587 standard regions. (Each region is 65,536 square meters.) At the time the data was collected, that added up to 2,532 regions. Today, it’s listed as 165,960 square kilometers, or the equivalent of 10,876 standard regions.

      We do not remove stats from our report because grid owners ask us to. Otherwise, we’d only be running stats for those grids whose numbers went up that month. However, we do remove stats when those stats are not accurate.

      If this page shows inaccurate land area information, I’ll remove those numbers from the report.

      1. 

         So yes you are scraping and republishing my stats without my permission and your interpretation of the stats, be they wrong or right is not my concern. But since you will not stop and you were asked to do so, I’m going to state right now, I am going to post random stats, just to screw with you. And since here in public I am saying that the stats will be falsified, you will be publishing FALSE stats. Have fun.

         1. 

            bit of a immature attitude

            1. 

               I just realized this could be a troll — the email given in this comment doesn’t match the one we have on file for the owner of the grid. I’ve contacted the owners directly, and if they confirm that the stats on their stats page are, in fact, random made up numbers — which actually sounds a lot like something a troll would say about a competing grid! — then I’ll update the story and the database.

            2. 

               There was an email sent to David from the grid account , maybe you should check that …

            3. 

               I can see that you will not stop, yet there is even a legal disclaimer on the page requesting that the information on the page not be republished, so THAT makes it NOT public, but as I can see that logic and common respect don’t apply here, I will remove my comments, as they fall on deaf ears anyway ..

            4. 

               That’s the link that was in the get_grid_info information page as the login screen for the grid. When looking for stats, we check that first. This is the page that also shows the official name of the grid, and other key information about it.

               For example, here’s the info page for OSgrid: http://login.osgrid.org/get_grid_info

               Meanwhile, I sent an email to the owner we have on record for this grid, to confirm that the numbers are, in fact, incorrect. I haven’t heard back yet.

               Meanwhile, there seems to be a misunderstanding about the nature of public information.

               There are certain things a company cannot copyright. For example, a telephone company can’t copyright the listing of names and phone numbers. (That’s why a lot of competing organizations can publish phone directories.) However, a company CAN copyright a particular creative work — an article announcing the release of the data, for example, or the graphic that goes with it.

               So, for example, the design and graphics on a stats page are copyrighted, and a competing grid can’t just grab them and use it for their own.

               Note that I said “competing grid.” If the graphic is use in a non-commercial, editorial way, then people CAN use that information. So, for example, if I’m writing an article about how different grids design their websites, I can use screenshots of those websites in an article.

               This is pretty much a mainstay of business journalism. If you weren’t allowed to publish earnings numbers when companies released them, or write reviews of their products, then we wouldn’t have much of a press left. (I covered Wall Street for about ten years, so I’m very familiar with the concept of publishing information companies don’t want to have out there.)

               If you don’t want the public to have your numbers, don’t publish your numbers. Plenty of other grids take that path, for a variety of reasons.

               On the other hand, publishing the numbers means that every month you get an in-bound link in an article indexed by Google News. This is good for SEO, and is one of the main reasons we do this article every month, in addition, of course, to helping people find new grids to visit. The stats are a major attention-grabber, which means that more people see the article — and see the other news items in the report, and see that OpenSim is alive, and growing, and worth visiting.

               I do not make money from this. I do enjoy exploring OpenSim and writing about cutting edge technology, but Hypergrid Business isn’t my claim to fame and fortune and doesn’t actually give me any power.

               (My day job is covering cybersecurity and artificial intelligence: links here — http://www.mariakorolov.com)

            5. 

               It is immature to ask to be left out of something you don’t want to be a part of , and then be ignored? Then Ok it IS immature ..

         2. 

            I’m not sure why you think this is personal. It’s a database that collects public information. You don’t have to publish stats. But once you do, you can’t restrict how media report on them.

            That said, given that you’re saying that you are deliberately publishing random numbers, we will of course take your grid off our stats list. We do that whenever we have information that a grid is either deliberately or accidentally providing incorrect data.

            I do have to say that I’m not sure what you’re trying to accomplish here. If you don’t want people to know your stats, just don’t publish them.

            Publishing the stats then saying “but don’t believe us, these numbers are just random” is pretty weird.

            1. 

               My stats are on a page that is not published as a public page , it is only published as a extension of the grid for the viewer to read, which you had to pull from the grid info to “make” it a public page .. Yep it is a bit childish, so be it.

               These stats are not published as a pubic page they are not listed ANYWHERE as a public link and are intended for viewer use only, that must be a difficult concept. But Ok, we know you think you are entitled to EVERYTHING in the virtual worlds as you are the end all and be all of reporting. Yet I am being the childish one. You were asked to not publish them but in your own words, “We do not remove stats from our report because grid owners ask us to” , so that is a bit egotistical on your part, and again I guess I am being the childish one … So be it .

4. 

   A person claiming to be the owner of OpenSim Life posted — then took down — a series of comments about the stats on their grid. I contacted the owner via the information I had on file for them, and they didn’t respond, so don’t know if the comments are accurate or not. In them, the owner claimed that their stats were random and made up.

   Were they a troll?

   But the stats page WAS edited just now to remove the land area stats, leaving just the numbers on the home page. Does this mean that the comments WERE legitimate, and the stats are, in fact, incorrect?

   Or maybe the owner saw the discussion, and removed just the incorrect number — the square kilometers — and the rest of the data is accurate?

   I’m so confused! I just rewrote the lead of the story taking out their stats altogether (we don’t want to knowingly run incorrect data) and was about to post it — but now I’m thinking that I’ll compromise and use the numbers they have on their home screen. After all, I don’t want to take the word of a random online commenter that a grid is making up its stats.

   So basically, I’m going to take the grid’s numbers on their home page on their face value.

   Meanwhile, if anyone has corrections on anything in this story — or anywhere on the site, for that matter — please email David, or email me directly at maria@hypergridbusiness.com.

   Thanks!

5. 

   In case anyone was following the comment thread here as comments were popping up and disappearing again, the actual owner of OpenSim Life did contact me to confirm that the numbers we had previously for them were incorrect, and they also took down their stats pages. So I revised David’s story accordingly, in case you’re wondering why the headline and the lead have changed.

6. 

   Interesting note on the Metropolis banning of certain sims; It appears that they have also banned all of their (Metropolis Grid) members from the ability to hyper grid to another sim mentioned in this article. Apparently the ownership of Metropolis grid feel they can decide where and where not their registered members can visit from their grid and do so without telling their members. Granted they can do as they damn well please, but I’m appalled that they are arbitrarily decide something like this without informing the average user.
   My beef is that as a member of their grid, they can stop me from going to specific places with out notifying me. It’s clear they are doing so to stop the import of alleged copybotted material into their grid but they are crazy if banning people ability to hop to another grid is going to stop these items from entering their grid. In fact it will probably drive people to bring more into their grid. If you are that damn worried about and illegal content, then make your closed grid. Maybe they should focus on improving their service to their members to provide a more lag free experience. And FYI – I’m not one of the people banned or involved with the sims that were removed, though I do support ones ability to use their content where ever they want.

   1. 

      My grid was collateral damage in all this. I had to remove a lot of items from the asset server and inventory after spending all weekend hunting them down. Some of the domains and IP’s were blocked in such a way that they were actually crashing the servers hard this weekend, trying to lookup the creator ID’s. I’ve never seen that before.