Second Life News 2013-46

Main Channel

This week there is no roll to the main channel. Monday was a US holiday, which would normally through of this week’s rollouts. Since there is no rollout to the main channel, we should see the typical Wednesday rollout for the RC channels.

Wow Obduction made it to Server Scripting Meeting 2013-46
Wow Obduction made it to Server Scripting Meeting 2013-46

RC Channels

Blue Steel and Le Tigre will have the Experience Tools preparatory package running.

Magnum will have a maintenance release with bug fixes. One fix is: “Sim crossing on vehicle fails when parcel at opposite sim border is full.” (BUG-4152). Another is a case where a viewer with a high draw distance would not connect to distant regions which are within the draw distance area.

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Obduction Update

Obduction is the Cyan Worlds’ single player game currently in the Kickstarter process.

The latest update on Kickstarter tells us that Cyan plans to place the game on Steam. If your supporting this project or just curious, jump over to steam and have look. If supporting the game, please take time to login or sign up and rate the project. It will help get work out.

With 6 days left to funding, the project has funded US$869,605 of the $1,100,000 target, 79% of the target in 78% of the allotted time. It looks like it will fund, but it looks to be close. So, help out where you can; become a supporter and pledge funds, tell your friends, and help out at Steam’s Greenlight site.

Second Life Down Time

Thursday morning (11/7) starting about 7 AM PDT Second Life™ will sort of be down. The Lindens will be doing some database maintenance. They will have the following impacts:

During this period, a number of Second Life services will be impacted. Some users may be logged off and may be temporarily unable to log in for a brief period. The maintenance may also disrupt transactions, logins, and account registration. The land store and land auctions may also become unavailable during this time. 

Of course, it is unwise to rez no-copy items, attempt financial transactions, or modifying Market Place entries. Trying to build or script in SL will likely be flakey too.

You can see the post here: Expected Downtime Thursday, November 7. They say they will update the post when the maintenance is complete.

Second Life News 2013-45

I’m distracted with real life projects. But, the main channel is getting a rollout from the RC channels today (Tuesday). It is a maintenance package with some bug/server crash fixes. There is not much in the way of details.

RC Channels

All three RC channels will get the same package Wednesday. This package is preparatory changes to the Second Life™ infrastructure to allow eventual rollout of the Advanced Experience Tools.

So, what is changing? No one is saying. We can assume most of the change is going to have to do with the permissions system. If that suspicion is correct, we can assume that this will be a very slow well tested rollout.

Consider. Linden Realms was news in March 2012. The first rollout of Advanced Experience Tools (AET) resulted in Griefer Monday (June 2012). The exploit was about a hole in permissions, which is why I thin the permissions system is being changed. After that fiasco the Lindens said the project was being re-thought and it disappeared from view. Now we only hear bits and pieces about it, like preparatory infrastructure changes’.

The AET project is approaching its second birthday.

Also, one has to wonder how the Lab is going to handle permissions to denote what items in SL and the Market Place can be sold on Desura…

Windows 8.1 Upgrade

Windows 8.1 came out recently. For Windows 8 users the upgrade is free. Some of you will see it pop up as a standard Windows update without your doing anything.

Be warned! There are a certain number of computers that cannot handle the upgrade to Win8.1.

So Sad - Image by: Jason Lander - Flickr
So Sad – Image by: Jason Lander – Flickr

About 10/18 Microsoft started receiving reports of the Windows Update pushed out to users was failing. Some of the problems have been tracked to driver issues. The update installs Windows basic divers that are simply not compatible with the hardware.

But, the problem extends beyond just driver compatibility. In some cases systems do not have the hardware to support the new software.

Additionally there is a problem that Microsoft has yet to figure out. 

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