I suppose most of my readers know about Flatterbots. These are automated avatars that run an AI program to carry on a conversation. They basically flatter you while they beg.
There is an interview with the person behind the bots on: Every Second Man. See: The Mind Behind the Scam.
I was answering a question in the SL Forum about 3D and Second Life. The involved people seemed short on info about how 3D works for single screens. So, I was looking for a good explanation of the state of the tech. I came across an article at Tech Crunch.
Title: A Guide to 3D Display Technology: Its Principles, Methods, and Dangers
The word ‘dangers’ caught my attention. How can 3D be dangerous? This is a 2010 article. But, it points out the nature of the human visual system and brain and what fooling it with 3D displays does. Something I had never heard of or thought about.
It seems people coming out of long 3D movies are having problems with depth perception. Oh fun! More incompetent drivers on the road.
The real problem pointed out is for young children. We really have no studies or solid data on the effect. But, the points made in the article seems intuitive, which doesn’t make them right. But, it is a serious consideration for those raising young children and exposing them to 3D TV and games.
Apparently this is enough of a problem that Samsung posted this warning on their site:
READ THE FOLLOWING WARNINGS BEFORE YOU OR YOUR CHILD USE THE 3D FUNCTION.
Update: See VR Matrix Disassociation from Real Life.
Once again, there is no roll out to the main channel. Bugs in the release candidate channels prevented a promotion.
These channels will get the same package as last week, but with fixes for the found bugs.
This channel get a slightly different package. It is the same package as is running on Blue Steel with the addition of additional bug fixes, an improved fix for the memory leak fix, and a new feature: longer animations.
Server-Scripting Dec 2012
In a short article I mentioned the animation change. Animation files were previously limited to 60kb. That limit has been changed server side to 120kb. The change will allow for 60 second animations that are more complicated.
A viewer change is required before we can take advantage of this server side change. No one is sure when the viewer change will hit Dev or Beta viewers. Continue reading
WARNING: A malicious freebie is making the rounds in second life.
If you receive an object called “[L4L]-Gestures & Walkers (Freebies) <3”, delete it at once. DO NOT Rez, or wear it! This object will rez replicating micro cubes in YOUR name filling up a sim, which could cause it to crash, inadvertently making YOU the villain and subject to banning, and/or an AR being filed. Those cubes then send the malicious freebie to other avatars in the immediate vicinity, making it a vicious cycle.
Simon Linden said, “…it’s pretty much an ugly social-engineering griefer ploy.”
Whirly Fizzle provided a link about it: http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/exdepart and said, “[L4L]- Gestures & Walkers (Freebies) <3 is the one thats getting used a lot, ATM.”
Recently I’ve been seeing more people having problems with Norton Anti-Virus giving false positives on various viewers used with Second Life and OpenSim. The problem us usually the file slplugin.exe. The SL & OS viewers run multiple copies of file. So, a false positive renders the viewer unusable.
Today I saw this article: Symantec Software Update Rendered Many PCs Useless. It basically says if you have Windows XP and update your Norton Anti-Virus, it will eat your computer. Poof! You are down with no way to find out how to fix the problem.
Warn your friends that run Windows XP.
If you are a Norton AV user, consider moving to another AV program. Microsoft makes a free anti-virus program for Windows that is pretty good. It called Microsoft Security Essentials. It uses far fewer resources then Norton. So, you should see your computer speed up.
Neither Norton’s nor Microsoft’s AV appear in several AV Top Ten reviews of retail AV packages. I think that is a clue that AV makers are paying to be in those reviews. Generally Microsoft makes it into the top 10.
I prefer ESET for Anti-Virus, but that an opinion. I have not done personal tests for some time. But, I have found there email support good and reasonable fast, 1 business day.
Avast Free Anti-Virus is very popular. It is the top download on Cnet. It gets good, not great, reviews on performance and security.
Everyone in the media is making a big deal of the DNS Changer Virus. If you have it, you will drop off the net in a few days when the virus kicks in.
If you have an anti-virus program and it is working, try doing a manual scan, then you are likely OK… like 99% certain to be OK.
You can visit a rather lame page to test whether you are infected. If it gives a positive result, you DO have a problem. Visit: http://www.dcwg.org/detect/. This is the page mainstream news media is sending people to.
The problem with it is: it does not definitively test whether you have the virus or not. Your ISP could be unintentionally hiding the problem. So, only the positive result is definitive. However, the site has a FIX for the problem.
The US FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) has a better ID and fix it page.
The FBI page about DNS Changer (link died 5/2017) is here: http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/november/malware_110911
This is so big in the news because people can’t tell if they have it or not. So, fear of the unknown kicks in.
So, how do you definitively tell if you have a problem? Go to the FBI site. Since this is a DNS Changer how do you know if you are at the FBI’s site? OK, that is a problem. I’ve spelled out the URL’s to help. The red and green parts have to be in the URL as shown. If what I have does not match what you see in the address field when you get to the page… have a friend email you a copy of the page.
I put this up because some are asking me how to check if they have it. Since they are not finding anything and it keeps coming up in the news, they want a definitive answer with some meat. So, this little post.
Recently a number of us have been seeing a flock of organdy-yellow pyramids appear around us when trying on mesh. They look very much like the script warnings we see when a script fails. However, they are a little different in that they do not have the little piece of paper denoting a script within the icon.
These non-script inspired pyramids are caused by mesh failing to rez. It is unclear whether this is solely a viewer issue or a viewer and server issue. Whatever the case, the quick fix is a relog or teleport to another region.
One can also change the viewer settings to reduce the likelihood of being a roosting perch for a flock of pyramids. The setting can only be founds in the Debug Settings.
This is hard to test so I’m doing some speculation on whether or not the change is worth the effort.
MeshMaxConcurrentRequests – Number of threads to use for loading meshes. Default value 32. It is probably better to reduce this setting if you have a slower connection. Try increasing it if you hang out in places like TRUTH Hair. I know at least one person setting this at 256 and claiming it cured the problem. I’m not convinced.
I suggest leaving it at 32 unless you have a significant and persistent problem. If you do decide to change it, try 16 or 64.
I can’t find any other settings that limit mesh render. I seem to remember there were more. But, they have disappeared from recent viewers. So, there is little we can do to avoid the problem.
Oskar Linden: “Let’s talk about Monday. So, as you all are more than well aware, some of the tools in the experience tools project on Magnum got abused over the weekend (week 22). Monday morning (week 23) was pretty much fire drills all day. I rolled out of bed and logged in and BAM, even before my coffee.
We do take active griefing vectors seriously. [We] determined a fix for the issue. We got it tested and deployed Monday afternoon. The griefing exploit was unintentional.
The exp tools project was removed from the [release channel] grid this week. It lost its slot on Magnum [RC]because of other security issues, those that were addressed in this meeting actually. I want to thank all of you for the feedback you gave to Huseby last week.”