Warnings

[L4L]-Gestures & Walkers (Freebies) <3

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It seems there is a new griefer gift rumored to be making the rounds. If you are given anything, make sure you know who gave it to you before opening or rezzing it. If it is a griefer crasher that you rez, you show up in the SL server logs as the one rezzing the griefer tool, which could create problems for you, i.e., Abuse Reported or banned from SL.

The attribution that this L$L thing was a warning from Simon Linden is untrue. Simon says he never made such a statement, but did comment to be careful opening anything you are given when asked about this specific item.

NSA, Google, and Games

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Within the SL Blogospher several people are writing about the NSA listening to players in Second Life™ and other games like World of Warcraft™. Well, they are listening to our phones, reading our emails, tracking our Internet use (notice how often Google comes up in the results) and tracking our GPS locations. It should be no surprise that they are inside our games and listening to  us.

I’ll paint you the really dark picture of what is most likely happening.

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The security teams are looking for any way that terrorists and bad guys can communicate. If that was all the information was used for, it would not be a problem. But, they are limited by law in the USA and they are breaking it. If they are willing to break one law for a supposed good reason, they will have little if any resistance to breaking others for what they consider good reasons. But, they are still breaking the law, something politically active citizens shape. 

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Taxes Closing Regions?

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I saw a discussion on SLUniverse about a number of regions closing without notice. The discussion centers on the closing of Beach Front. See: Beach Front Realty Closed?

It seems the land owners collected the month’s tier from tenants and then closed the regions. Correspondence with Linden Lab revealed the closing was ‘deliberate’. I suppose that means the region owner contacted the Lab and scheduled the closing. Not having seen the actual correspondence I cannot tell if the phrasing is nuanced spin that might indicate the Lab closed the owners regions for some reason.

The tenants may be able to get their money back via PayPal. The Lab generally considers these things a resident-to-resident matter and stays out of them. 

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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.

Windows 8.1 Upgrade

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Windows 8.1 came out recently. For Windows 8 users the upgrade is free. Some of you will see it pop up as a standard Windows update without your doing anything.

Be warned! There are a certain number of computers that cannot handle the upgrade to Win8.1.

So Sad - Image by: Jason Lander - Flickr
So Sad – Image by: Jason Lander – Flickr

About 10/18 Microsoft started receiving reports of the Windows Update pushed out to users was failing. Some of the problems have been tracked to driver issues. The update installs Windows basic divers that are simply not compatible with the hardware.

But, the problem extends beyond just driver compatibility. In some cases systems do not have the hardware to support the new software.

Additionally there is a problem that Microsoft has yet to figure out. 

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Virus Warning

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I’m not big into virus warnings unless something radically changes. Well, it has. So, read up and rethink your backup strategies.

New Ransom Ware

There is a new style of ransom ware that has come to America. Europe has apparently been dealing with it for weeks. It is called Ransom Ware 2.0 or CryptoLocker.

To understand what Ransom Ware 2.0 is doing read: Destructive malware “CryptoLocker” on the loose – here’s what to do. It’s a bit techie.

As best I can tell, the program leaves your readable copies of files in place while it makes encrypted copies using strong encryption. When it finishes encrypting your files, it then erases your readable copies and displays an extortion notice. If things go as they planned, you will probably not notice a problem until you see the notice.

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