The Rock Closed

A ‘skill’ game in Second Life™ has been shut down by the Lindens. Named The Rock Trading, you can get that latest information here: IMPORTANT INFORMATION FROM LINDEN LAB, PLEASE READ POSTED BY ROCKERDUCK VELLA, 12-MAY-2015.

Untitled by Mia Resident, on Flickr

Losing Linux

There is an update to the Linux story. The Lab has made a blog post on the subject. The link is iin an update I added to the end of my post: Second Life Losing the Linux Viewer? Inara Pey has also written about the update and included an audio clip of Oz talking about the change at the Third Party Developers’ meeting. I link to her in my update.

Atlas Obscura Update

In the discussion of the article Forgotten Wonders Of The Digital World: Second Life there is an update from Hamlet. See: Second Life and Adult Sex where I have added links and a small update at the end.

Gmail Login Change

Have you noticed? Google is changing how we login. An article on Tech Crunch by Sarah Perez, Gmail’s New Login Screens Hints At A Future Beyond Passwords, speculates on what is coming next.

As it is now, many are unhappy with the change. It has broken a number of login/password storing applications. There are also problems with those that have multiple identities and accounts. There are privacy issues too.

We’ll have to see how this shakes down and what Google does. At some point they will have to reveal their plan.

What Comes From The Deep by Kaylith Zeurra, on Flickr

Second Life Social Media

Iris Ophelia has posted the second article in her series on social media for Second Life users. See: Iris’ Social Network Guide for Second Life Users, Part 2. This one covers some of the less known ones and includes some big ones that sort of missed out in her earlier Part I article.

VR Challenges

The Road to VR has an article titled: VR Devs Experiment With Virtual Locomotion at HTC Vive VR Jam in Austin. This is about Valve’s HTC Vive VR. They are using a 15×15 foot (4.6m) room for a gaming area. This is what I call the coffee table problem. How does one get room to play in VR when you can’t see the physical world around you? Like Star-Trek’s holo-deck you use an empty room.

What happens when you need to move more than 15ft? What happens when you need to go upstairs? Swim? Fly?

The Room Size thing is a new paradigm in gaming. I suppose there will be a call for this. Businesses like the laser tag games will be able to make use of this. But, what happens when you put a bunch of players in an area and bang into one another? What is the liability? How reliable will the sync between an actual wall and the VR wall be for something like a game that plays in a laser tag type environment?

PayPal and Your Rights

PayPal and eBay are going to become separate companies. They will continue to work together. But, they are changing their TOS in regard to Intellectual Property Rights. This is very similar to what Linden Lab did.

Read the proposed changes here: PayPal Policy Updates – Effective July 1, 2015. The part most people won’t like, if they are paying attention:

Section 1.3 reads as follows:

“When providing us with content or posting content (in each case for publication, whether on- or off-line) using the Services, you grant the PayPal Group a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicensable (through multiple tiers) right to exercise any and all copyright, publicity, trademarks, database rights and intellectual property rights you have in the content, in any media known now or in the future. Further, to the fullest extent permitted under applicable law, you waive your moral rights and promise not to assert such rights against the PayPal Group, its sublicensees or assignees. You represent and warrant that none of the following infringe any intellectual property right: your provision of content to us, your posting of content using the Services, and the PayPal Group’s use of such content (including of works derived from it) in connection with the Services.”

Everyone is getting on the I-own-your-stuff-wagon…