Project Bento Update 2016 w39

I’ve had problems with the previous two meetings. Changing computers, recording software, and a couple of air-head mistakes resulted in some messes I wasn’t willing to upload or spend the time to fix. This week I got things together and have a recording.

I have sped up parts of the video. So, you won’t have to manually skip through as many pauses in the discussion. But, only by 50%. I slow down to normal speed when people talk.

Following is a summary with time marks. Summaries are always my take on what I heard. Put some salt with what I write. 

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Second Life News 2016 w39

Servers

Caleb Linden is taking some heat for announcing an update rolling to the Blue Stool [sic] channel.

Whirly's Cartoon...
Whirly’s Cartoon…

The main channel is not getting a new package. The planned roll was held back to add a fix for slow script performance.

All three RC channels, including Blue Stool, are getting a revised package with Minor Internal Changes and Fixes BUG-40565 “Significant script performance degradation observed in server version 16.09.14.319788”

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Second Life: Beggar Bots

People are reporting more occurrences of Beggar Bots hitting their groups. BUG-40546Group Chat Spam Bots. People are asking if they should be reported. The ToS is fuzzy on the topic. In general begging is not a violation of the ToS. Spamming is. So, we see varied opinions on whether to report or not.

Whirly Trapping a Beggar Bot
Whirly Trapping a Beggar Bot

The apparent consensus among those in the know keeping up with such things is: REPORT ‘EM. The Lindens are working at closing and banning accounts of the spammers.

Group managers have the Eject and Ban tool. Some do not realize it has been upgraded. Originally it did not terminate the current chat session. So, E & B didn’t immediately shut them up. Now it does. (SVC-32

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Second Life: Third Party Viewer UG 2016 w38

Oz Linden reviewed the status of viewer development. He pointed out that the Visual Outfit Browser (VOB) is now in the main release version of the Linden made SL Viewer.

They updated the VLC RC and Bento RC viewers with VOB.

✧◦ Waldelfen ◦✧
✧◦ Waldelfen ◦✧

Both RC viewers are doing well in the crash rate stats. Oz expects the VLC version to release to main viewer in week 39. That will leave the Bento RC as the only RC. Seems like the pipeline is emptying out…

Oz pointed out the Lab did block a few old viewer versions. Saying, ‘Only a few thousand users…’ would be affected. That number can sound bad. But, as a percent of SL users it is way small, likely way less than 1%. 

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Second Life: Halloween 2016

October is almost here. Halloween is near. The Highlight’s page in Featured News is listing lots of Halloween oriented places. Soon there will be rotting virtual pumpkins all over Second Life™. Oh… wait… even more scary, those evil pumpkins never die.

Botanica’s Halloween Haunted Cornfield Maze
Botanica’s Halloween Haunted Cornfield Maze

Check the Featured News and the Destination Guide often as new places will be appearing almost daily. Those listed Friday are:

  1. Angel’s Haunted House – fun, actually scared me a couple of times
  2. Dark Sewers
  3. Slaughter Creek
  4. Medieval Fantasy Manor
  5. Deadman’s Island Haunted Sim
  6. Haunted Home of Frankenstein
  7. All Hallows at Moochie – pretty place
  8. Shenanigan’s Spooky Halloween Cemetery
  9. Screaming Woods
  10. Oh the Horror Cart Sale & Hunt
  11. Skeleton House – Halloween Store

Halloween is becoming a huge economic thing in developed countries. Almost as big as Christmas. I dress nicely for Christmas parties but, I DRESS UP for Halloween.

Second Life Changes 2016 w38

Thursday about noon the Lab announced some of the things that will be changing in Second Life™ viewers. We know viewers will change. But, never exactly what change is coming. See: Important Viewer Evolution Update.

Most of the changes mentioned, we know about.

Dark and Red
Dark and Red

The viewer’s built in web browser is changing over to Chromium Embedded Frame work. So, it is basically a new browser, like Firefox or Chrome. This affects lots of things inside the viewer, search, profiles, etc. Most importantly it is part of the frame changing how streaming media is handled. There is an RC version of this change on the Alternate Viewers Page.

The avatars are changing and the RC version of the Project Bento Viewer is out, also on the Alt Viewer page.

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