Second Life News 2013-35 #2

ToS Change?

There seems to be another ToS change. I have not looked to see what it is, but I did get a prompt to agree to the ToS today. I was in a hurry to be some place, so I didn’t read it.

Main and RC Channels

All the planned changes covered Tuesday have rolled out. All seem to be working. So, there really isn’t any ‘news’ for that part of Second Life™.

The server change that allows a server to restart as soon as all avatars are out of the region is on the RC’s. For now this is a region owner or estate manager tool. But, the plan is to move it into the Server Update Roll Out process to speed up the process.

There has been some discussion of having the server trigger a shutdown-coming-event in scripting. This would allow viewers and scripts to respond to a shutdown. One could have a viewer TP you to another region rather than let you get logged out. Expect such a feature to be a third party viewer feature first.

For now this is just talk. 

The change that made it to the main channel is the one that prevents people from tp’ing in during the last 60 seconds of a region restart count down. That should help avoid being chased from region to region by shutdowns. I hate logging into a region and then it too gives me a shutdown warning.

In Second Life Access Controls I wrote about the change in the current RC package. With some thinking you can see how to use the new controls in a white list sort of way. There is a viewer change that has to happen before the new change is usuable.

Ribbon Particles

Oz Linden has heard nothing about work on the viewer in regard to the new ribbon particles. So, they came up at the Server Beta User Group meeting.

Maestro Linden says the feature is linked up in one of the viewer releases… I’m not clear on which one. The problem is not with rendering the particles. It is in activating the particles, as particles are created via script: llParticleSystem(). The Linden Scripting Language (LSL) lacks the changes needed to implement then particles.

Scripting Syntax Updates

This is a process that Lindens have started to improve a couple of times. It is a project starts and stops.

As it is now when scripting changes the changes happen in the server code. Then over on the viewer the syntax checker has to update. I’m not clear if a syntax check will keep a script from compiling and running. I think if you know the command and have the command’s syntax correct then the script will compile. But, there is no way to know the syntax unless the viewer syntax files are updated or the SL Wiki is updated.

I think Ima Mechanic, Oz, Andrew, Simon and probably some others have put some time into getting a feature built into the server and viewer that would allow the viewer to upload its syntax info from the server. This would make new LSL features available as soon as the server updated.

As yet this project has not made to completion.

HTTP

Some of Monty Linden’s HTTP changes will be arriving in the RC channels next week (36). These are said to be paving the way for smarter updates… object and render update information. Maestro plans to talk more about that next week. You can read more about the HTTP project in: Second Life’s SSA 2013-34.

BUG-3763 llXorBase64

BUG-3763llXorBase64 produce different result of llXorBase64StringsCorrect.

I am fuzzy on this one. This is a series of Keystone Cops’ fixes. The function is used for encrypting communications between processes in Second Life and external services.

llXorBase64Strings ( string str1, string str2 ) – 25 January 2007 – Deprecated – Returns a string that is a Base64 string of str1 xor’ed with str2. – DOSE NOT RETURN a properly XOR of values.

llXorBase64StringsCorrect( string str1, string str2 ) – 25 January 2007 – Deprecated – Correctly performs an exclusive or on two Base 64 strings.

It didn’t work correctly. During the conversion to a byte array the last (bitcount % 8) are discarded from both str1 and str2. See Implementation for details. It also considers any null encountered in str2 to mark the end of str2.

llXorBase64 ( string str1, string str2 ); – 24 June 2013 – Returns a string that is a Base64 XOR of str1 and str2 – correctly. Well, it is better but it has its problems. BUG-3763[AC]  llXorBase64 returns wrong result after second str2 repeat.

This function is being fixed again. Rather than make another function, this function is to be repaired. It may make it to and RC channel in a couple of weeks. But, the fix is currently on the channel DRTSIM-226. A region running it is: Chooqu.

3 thoughts on “Second Life News 2013-35 #2

  1. A new ToS?? That’s weird, I didn’t and haven’t yet got a prompt to agree to the new ToS. Not had one since the last change some weeks ago.

  2. Pingback: Dies und Das aus dem Web (KW 35 / 2013) - [O.L.D.] Old London Docks

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