In an odd twist the Lab has made available a legacy Second Life™ viewer for those running obsolete, unsupported operating systems. That means Windows XP and Mac OS 10.7 and earlier. You may know that current releases of the SL Viewer will not install on these older systems.
Something Old by Ermandalee, on Flickr
You can get a copy of this viewer from the Official Alternate Viewers Page. Official name: Second Life Obsolete Platforms Viewer version 3.7.28.300847.
This viewer will NOT update. There will be no updates and while I am not sure about the auto-update feature I suspect it is disabled.
I and other in Second Life™ are waiting for the retail release of the Oculus Rift. Jo Yardley has an article on the Oculus Rift. Seems she is announcing they have an announcement about a coming announcement… See: Oculus announcement about the Rift Headset, it is coming. It is all about this video:
Release of the Rift headset is still planned for first quarter 2016. The video tells us nothing. All we see is the version of the hardware to be released. Jo has lots of information about the Rift in her article.
The Lab and most other viewer authors are building 32-bit programs. We are seeing more people building 64-bit viewers. The Lab has yet to move that direction with their Second Life™ Viewer. The stats coming out of the Lab show that 64-bit versions are way more stable or in plain English; crash less often.
Lifeguard Kwai by Bernard Broono, on Flickr
The game PlanetSide 2 is discontinuing support for 32-bit systems. Specifically their new version of the game will only run in a 64-bit operating system. Massively OP mentions it in their article: Planetside 2 Discontinues Support For 32-Bit Client. The game managers realize some people will be locked out of the game. From there stats it is ‘a very few people.’ Management presumably feels keeping up with technology is worth the cost of losing a small number of users.
Canary Beck points us to an article by Auryn Beorn: Defend yourself from manipulators. It is interesting that this pops up now. A friend of mine just pointed me to The Federalist’s article by Stella Morabito titled How To Escape The Age Of Mass Delusiona day or so ago. Both of these writers are working with the presupposition that people are manipulating us. I’ll expand on that later.
Bobby and the Aversion Therapist by Robert Goldstein, on Flickr
Auryn starts off with entitlement. Auryn describes the entitlement people I have a problem with exactly as I see them. The TL:DR is give an inch and they’ll take a mile, cause you owe them.
Massively OverPowered has an article by Editor-in-Chief Bree Royce titled: Why MMORPG’s Still Need Traditional Chat. The article is about the problems of jerks annoying people in global chat. We have our share of those people in Second Life.
Je suis Charlie.. by VOIDAR // Ashley Carter, on Flickr
I find the article interesting because I think it reflects what is going on in RL. Chat in virtual worlds is different. But, it is still humans conversing. Humans may feel they can get away with more in anonymous chat. But, their basic behavior and thinking does not change at login.
Nor do our solutions for these problems in virtual worlds differ from what we propose and experiment with in RL. People in games seem to be learning that the final step in the progression of language restrictions and attempts to control abuse is removal of the ‘global’ chat system. In RL we are imposing restrictions on Hate Speech just as we try to restrict it in game worlds. It doesn’t work in either place. In both places all forms of conversation are injured.
In RL it gives governments and bureaucrats control of what is said. In games it is moderators that have the last say. Bree’s take is that life is better with messy annoying chat than without it.
Many of us in Second Life™ run businesses and some of us also run RL businesses… ummm… that means businesses not in SL. I suppose whether a business is in SL or not, the business is real. Whatever, I came across this article on making better use of Facebook to promote your ideas, products, services, whatever…
Embryonic-3 : Mecha-Amonite II by Nebraska Oddfish, on Flickr
For bloggers in Second Life, or anywhere I guess, there is the problem of how Facebook is reacting to comments on linked-to sites. Having comments on in my blog drops my points with Facebook. They are less likely to extend my reach, or in simple words… they will show my stuff to fewer people.
As the article points out, you can have comments on your site. But, if you can encourage visitors to comment on Facebook, your reach will increase. It isn’t so much that you have comments that is the problem for Facebook. It is that Facebook responds positively to people commenting on your links on Facebook.
So, whether you are selling something or just trying to increase your popularity, there are good and bad ways to do that with social media.
