Second Life

Things about SL

Second Life News 2013-46 #2

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Some big news from this week is the release of the ‘Interesting Viewer’, this is the viewer with improvements from the Interest List project (ILP).  The project is about doing a better job of deciding what to render first.

Torley did a good job of illustrating what the project does.

[youtube W7AC1RojXOk]

For months we have been getting the server side changes from the project. For weeks we have been promised the viewer side changes. Now those changes are out in a RC Viewer release: Second Life 3.6.11 (283895) Nov 13 2013. 

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The Second Life TOS and Impatience

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There has been a turn taken in the battle to get the TOS changed. Mostly drama and little productive result that I can see. I’m mostly involved in RL projects the last couple of weeks. I obviously missed something. So, what’s going on?

UCCSL Guild Hall
UCCSL Guild Hall

Hopefully, you know about the TOS change in mid August. It is hard to tell how many people are troubled by the August TOS change. I believe it is a small number. I also think the ones bothered most by the change are the more left brained creative types that can see and understand the impact of the TOS change. I think that more left-brained group is a small part of the creative community. I believe the result from the nature of artists is; the majority of the creative community is just not interested in the TOS change. 

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Market Place Change

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Yesterday a new post appeared on the Second Life™ Blog: New Merchant Requirement. The Lab is making Payment Information a requirement to sell on the Market Place (MP).

MP New Requirement
MP New Requirement

Making this requirement should stop some of the churn of accounts made by griefers and copyboters.

This will be hard on some international users of SL. Getting verified and having a means to move funds in and out of SL is easy for those of us in the USA. It’s more difficult in many countries.

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Second Life News 2013-46

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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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Second Life Down Time

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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

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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…