Fifteen or so region owners were at the Server & Scripting meeting Tuesday. They are having horrible griefing problems and are looking for help.

Post Server & Scripting Meeting 2013-21

Seems repeat griefers are plaguing SL. That is not news. If you have looked at these problems, you know there is no easy way to get rid of repeat offenders. Those not familiar with the technology of the Internet always think there is a technical solution. Griefing is a human nature problem as in many cases the solutions are not technical but a matter of law enforcement.  We see that in games, forums, and real life where problems of violence and hate are ongoing. Humans bent on anti-social behavior find ways around the technical solutions and legal restrictions. Technology is not going to stop humans from misbehaving. Nor is government, even when it has its foot on everyone’s neck… the complete removal of freedom. People misbehave.

There was no roll to the main channel this week. The grids did restart. I’m not sure why. Well, some that I was on Tuesday morning were restarting.

I have no idea where this is…

RC Channels

This week we have 3, I hope, packages running in the RC channels.

Blue Steel
This channel is running a revised Experience Tools package, still nothing to see. No new information about the tools or the server changes. 

If you are looking for an easy way to make mesh things, this is for you. Yuzuru Jewell makes a collection of tools for making things you can upload to Second Life™. A new version of Tatara is out. Inara has done a quick review of it. See: Tatara: a furnace for creating sculpts and mesh.

In same shop as Tatara – A PINK tank! Wow!

The collection consists of: TATARA and ROKURO Pro SOMATO, SHIBORI, NOMI, and KUMIKI Serial Box Shop. You can find them here: KANAE PROJECT. I don’t know if Yuzuru’s tools were used to make the tank. I just thought it too nice not to show.

There are versions for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Some versions come in both 32 & 64-bit.

I tend to leave drama out of my coverage, unless I feel I can contribute something to people’s understanding of it and hopefully reduce the drama. I think it worth your time to read Jessica Lyon’s recent post on the Firestorm blog.

See: A message from Jessica Lyon.

Obviously they are getting enough abuse Jessica felt a need to speak up. She did well.

If you have played with the new avatar Appearance Setting HOVER you may have noticed it is less than ideal. The slider ranges from 0 to 100. At 0 the avatar is lowered 2m. At 50 the avatar is neither lowered nor raised. At 100 the avatar is raised 2m.

Since the sliders are integer settings each setting increment of 1 moves the avatar 4cm (1.6 inches) up or down. If you watch the change from 50 to 49, it looks like it moves more than 4cm to me. (see image below – click to enlarge images)

New Appearance Setting: HOVER

I’ve used third party viewers (TPV) to adjust my height and found much better control. But, with the release of SSA (Sever Side Appearance – baking) those adjustments in TPV’s will stop working.

SO… how do we get our height adjusted now? Well, the choice for now is Appearance HOVER. But, what if you only need to adjust 1 or 2 cm?

Viewers

You may or may not have realized that most viewers now have the Server Side Appearance (baking) code. Also, the servers have the server side of the code now. This will allow the Lindens to start enabling the code in test regions in the main grid.

There is a Snack RC channel that supposedly has it enabled. But, that is unclear. We’ll likely hear more about this at the server meetings this week.

Dev Viewer

The Development Viewer is done. That channel is no longer updating. We will only see Beta and Project Viewer as the Viewer RC Pipeline rolls out, which will happen over the next 2 to 4 weeks, probably. 

This Sunday morning I am going reading blogs and forums to see what is going on in Second Life. The interesting things I am finding follow:

Nice Places

Honour has images of Alice is Wonderland [SIC]. See: SL10BCC, Jumping Down the Rabbit Hole in Second Life. It is a region that is as strange and odd as the original story conveys and Honour does a good job of capturing that in her photos.

L$ Exchange

Maria Korolov on Hypergrid Business post more about the ongoing saga of the L$ Exchanges. See: Linden Lab allows third-party currency sales. Maria sees this as the Lab reversing their position. I don’t.

All exchanges MUST buy their Lindens from the LindeX. People can then buy those L$ from the Exchanges. But, in reality these will no longer be ‘exchanges’ as no one will be able to take money out of SL EXCEPT through the LindeX.

So, the exchanges are now only retailers of L$. It looks like many people will still have a significant problem getting money out of SL. This is of course the whole point of FinCEN regulations.

Forum Discussion

There is a question and discussion in the SL Forum about: Any solution for cashing out in Euro with LindeX? 

The High Fidelity team has a new blog post up. This one is about using Google Glass to drive an avatar’s head. They go on to mention having made an Android app that collects a phone’s sensor data. This essentially turns the phone into a WII like controller.

With their testing of Glass they found that the Android app was transmitting data to it. They aren’t where they can use it yet. But, the communications is working.

They also mention the have Oculus Rift working. In regard to High Fidelity, I have no idea what that means. Can they see into their test world? Or do they mean drive an avatar?

Whatever, there are lots of interesting pieces in the puzzle.