General News

Looking Back at Second Life 2012

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The Linden Blog has a new article this month titled: A Look Back at Improvements to Second Life in 2012 and Forward to 2013. It is worth the read, but it is pretty small. Having written 568 posts this year I thought it was a little light. So, I decided to look back over the year. I had no idea how much work I was getting into.

This article is the result of my look back at 2012. I have uploaded the WORD (docx) file I used to compose the article. I think it makes for a handy quick reference that can be searched. I find trying to search the blog for specific information less than ideal. So, if you want a quick reference to when things happened, get the file. Please do not re-post or publish it.

This article is long. But, check it out to see how many things you remember. I was surprised how much I had forgotten. I was also surprised how fast and how slow some things happened.

For a short version of this article see: 2012 – The Short List

Please forgive the poor use of tense. I found writing in past tense rather awkward. Also, notice I have made page numbers correspond to months.

Update: I have added the 2013 review here: Second Life 2013 in Review

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#SL news #3 Week 51

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It is the Christmas Season and in the merriment some news is leaking out about things to come.

Avatar Baking

I think most of you have heard a public countdown clock is running on Third Party Viewers (TPV) being able to deliver this service. Those that don’t change over will render avatars as grey or clouds.

Yuzuru Driving to User Group Meeting
Yuzuru Driving to User Group Meeting

What is less known is the new service only uses the HTTP protocol to deliver baked textures. In most ways this is a good thing. However, a number of people in Japan are seeing problems with HTTP texture being slow. Most of the rest of the world outside of Asia is NOT seeing that problem. They see a speed up. So, if you are in Japan and you are seeing a slower HTTP delivery of textures, get in touch with Monty Linden. But, be sure you know it is not your computer and be sure you can add information to the discussion before contacting Monty. 

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#SL News Week 51

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Today I made it to the Open Source meeting, something I seldom do as it is too early for me, 7:00 AM. A few interesting things came up.

[youtube HueOLnF7sW8]

Phoenix Viewer

Oz was asking how the community was talking the ending of Phoenix support and the end of the Phoenix Viewer’s useful life. From my perspective, it has been surprisingly quite.

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From #SL Griefing to Extortion

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This article got way longer than I intended. Even after I went back and did a trim pass to reduce the size. But, I did not want to write another piece on griefing that didn’t place a new perspective on the subject. Griefing is advancing and getting more sophisticated and dangerous. I’ve pointed out those dangers and possible defenses. Also, anti-griefers are starting to become self-righteous griefers abusing others in the name of fighting griefers. It is a mess.

Crying Leo by storyvillegirl on Flickr
Crying Leo by storyvillegirl on Flickr

In RL we see the same mess with Pro-Life and Pro-Choice people. The idiots on one side kill doctors that perform abortions. The idiots on the other side try to force people with religious objections to pay for abortions. Both are insane and display disregard for their ‘stated’ principals. Getting the rational people on both sides to work it out is the only solution.

In recent months griefing has progressed to include extortion. Extortion is a RL crime. Griefing in Second Life™, particularly in the SL fashion industry, has been a part of the drama of SL. Griefing via extortion is probably only a new-to-some-of-us thing. The old song the Lab does nothing continues and is lame now as it always has been.

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Metareality – Where are you?

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It has been almost two months since we heard anything out of Metareality, Gianna Borgnine. No podcasts and no Plurks. So, what’s up?

Metareality Podcasts

Draxtor™ Despres just yesterday sent me a notice that Flufee episode 17 was out. If you have been reading you saw me post it here. Whatever, he is on the Metareality podcast shows. So, I asked him, what’s up?

He says Gianna is ‘splendid’ just busy. The broadcast team is working on lots of intense projects. I think that is going around. I’ve got two big tutorials in the works. Darrius just got his Virtual Land Marks our the door. Geenz is busy with the materials system. So, it figures Gianna and her Sand Castles studio would have things in the works. And we all know Karl has to do that Angry Frogs thing and Christmas is getting close.

No ETA for a return of the podcasts.

#SL Virtual Landmarks…

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Landmark Tower – By: fakelvis – Flickr

We have movement on Virtual Landmarks. I’ve been writing about Virtual Landmarks since August 2012 when Toysoldier Thor proposed them (see SVC-8082). See: Virtual Landmarks. They are a feature that is on the Linden ‘would really like someday’ list. The last I’ve heard is they are not on the production schedule. This means there is a bunch of stuff ahead of them and no definitive priority has been set.

That no priority has been set means we have no idea when we may Virtual Landmarks (VLM) in Second Life™. But, Darrius Gothly has just written an article titled: Time To Push Second Life Forward – Virtual Landmarks. Obviously it is about VLM’s. It does a very good job of explaining the purpose of VLM’s. The best part is there is now a way to get VLM’s.

The Tech

Darrius and I have both compared VLM’s to URL’s that use a web site’s domain name, like blog.nalates.net. Somewhere there is a server that looks up that name and tells your computer where my web server is and how to connect. VLM’s in SL will need a server to provide a look up service too. It is setting up such a server that the Lab has yet to prioritize and start work on.

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