General News

The End of Second Life?

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Everything ends. It is just a matter of when. We hear this story of Second Life™ ending all the time. It is not new. Lots of Chicken Little. That SL has not ended, does not mean it won’t. The sky COULD fall. But, I think we will have plenty of warning should the end draw near.

mediterranean girl
Mediterranean girl by Annahyss Resident, on Flickr

I came to Second Life from Myst Online, which has closed and come back a number of times. So, I’m used to games I like closing. Rizom is another one I liked and played for a time. It too closed and came back. Others just closed. 

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Second Life News Week 17 TPD

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The Third Party Developers met last Friday. This is the first of those meetings to run a full hour in some weeks. So, we have new information on several subjects. Some of that information I published on Saturday and Sunday as smaller posts rather than one gigantic post. This article will be the smaller bits of news from the meeting. But, it still went over a thousand words.

Balloons
Balloons by Vitos Davi, on Flickr

Oz Linden announced the next TPD Meeting is next Friday May 1. This is one week away, out of the normal pattern. He will be gone the following weekend and is pushing that weekend’s meeting up one week.

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Second Life Login Failure Update

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We currently have an inventory problem that prevents logging into Second Life. The currenlty frequent cause of the problem has been tracked down to having Flat Inventory.

Let the Magic Unfold
Let the Magic Unfold by Carthalis Rossini, on Flickr

A flat inventory is an inventory where thousands of items are in a single folder. Mostly the term denotes an unorganized inventory where stuff is mostly in the root or objects folders rather than being organized in folders and subfolders. As the viewer is downloading inventory folder by folder a folder with thousands of items can take too long to download and cause a time out. This jams up the login process and you get a failure message. 

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Second Life Removing Snapshot-to-Email

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In the Third Party Developers’ meeting Oz Linden mentioned that someone spotted a maintenance version viewer without the ability to send snapshots via email from Second Life. This omission of the feature Snapshot-to-Email from this RC version is deliberate. It will eventually be removed from all Linden and Third Party Viewers.

Blue Note
Blue Note by Marco Pagot, on Flickr

The way the system works, the images are sent TO whoever with the FROM address of the user-sender, at least when the Lab knows the sender’s address. But, the email is being sent from a Second Life server, so they are spoofing the FROM address. This ‘spoofing’ is a common practice of spammers and black-hat crackers. So, the SL servers are getting blocked by numerous ISP’s automated systems as spammers. That is affecting other email services the Lab uses to communicate with users.

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Linden Lab: Call to Third Party Developers

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At Friday’s Third Party Developers meeting Oz Linden was asking from some specific help and changes in behavior from the Third Party Developers. I’ll get into the what and why with this post.

Fantasy Faire 2015 - Ravenshold, The Lost Land Hunt - II
Fantasy Faire 2015 – Ravenshold, The Lost Land Hunt – II by Caitlin ‘Caity’ Tobias, on Flickr

The Lab is making new ways of doing things and working to make all the Second Life™ system’s processes more robust, which I take to also mean more efficient and reliable. One way of accomplishing that is changing more and more processes to use HTTP and CDN (Content Delivery Network). 

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Second Life Viewer Managed Marketplace Update

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At this weeks Third Party Developers’ (TPD) UG meeting Brooke Linden provided an update on Viewer Managed Marketplace (VMM).

gentle bride
gentle bride by mmm lisichka, on Flickr

The VMM beta has launched on the main grid. They are limiting access to the beta for now. Also, VMM is currently only in English. In a couple of weeks the localization (multi-language support) will be in place. You can get more information about VMM in the wiki’s VMM FAQ. Additional information is in the Knowledge Base: VMM. And there is technical information on the VMM API here. 

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