Second Life Bits II Week 15

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Large cyberattack was carried out via Google

This is making the news today as we find out Russian and Chinese hackers have been into and are in the White House computers. This looks to be a finger to Obama by the Russians after the President said he was making a big push for cyber security… yeah, secure this.

Google advertising pushed links to Engage Lab that used exploits in  Java, Adobe Flash Player, and Microsoft Silverlight to infect computers.

The attack lasted about 2 hours before Google detected it and shut it down.

Google Play Spy

The app Webpage Screenshot is apparently a spying program. A Swedish newspaper broke the story. Today Google is taking down the app and killing its ability to report to its master.

See: Google Chrome Extension Spying On You.

Adult SL Photography

Sex is a big part of art. And there is no exception for photographic art in Second Life. If you haven’t heard of Domino Dupre (NSFW) check out her collection of erotic imagery from Second Life on Flickr.

You’ll find her composing a regular collection of erotic imagery that is shown on The Sexiest: PornStars’ blog. (NSFW)

Windows Oculus Desktop

There is an app for that… Ben Lang writing for Road to VR has published: Latest Version of ‘Virtual Desktop’ is Here, The Free App That Makes Your Entire Windows Computer Oculus Rift-capable.

If you have an Oculus or Oculus like HMD, you can download Virtual Desktop and see what the future may look like. Get the links from within the article.

US Sanctions Hit Russian WoW Players

Would you have thought…?

Massively Overpowered is carrying a story about how US sanctions against Russia is hitting players in Crimea. See: Sanctions Force World Of Warcraft, Diablo Iii Ban In Crimea.

Second Life: How AISv3 Impacts Some

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Agent Inventory System version 3 is about new back end programming that improves the inventory system. Listening to Firestorm Team members and other third party developers there have been big problems with the system. It has been enabled on SL servers for some time now. Form where I am I can’t tell if it is problematic code made by the Lab or integration problems because of third party developer code.

Danseuse
Danseuse by Charisma Jonesford, on Flickr

Marine explains there were other problems too. So, they have had legitimate reasons for avoiding HTTPInventory.

Either way, the result has been a problem and third party viewers have lagged implementing the update. Now that the Lab is disabling the older UDP protocol for inventory things have to change.

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Second Life Servers Week 15

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We aren’t hearing a lot about what is happening with Second Life™ development at the Lab. This usually happens when the Lindens are completing a well known project, like Experience Tools. Or they starting a new project they aren’t completely sure will fly and they are saying nothing.

Sakura Maiden
Sakura Maiden by Lucifer Lightbringer, on Flickr

In this case I think they are focusing on Experience Tools. It isn’t that they aren’t working hard and or not much is happening. It is more about how exciting is finding a ‘;’ that is in the wrong place? Not very. Plus there are a couple of things finishing up that I suspect are consuming resources. The Tools Viewer that is a representation of the change in compiler tools is one that has created a bit of a bottleneck. I think once it rolls out the bottleneck will break loose and we will see more features releasing. 

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Second Life: Metanomics Translator Failing

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I have seen a couple of posts in the SL Forum about the Metanomics translator giving a script error and not translating. I decided to try mine.

~Carolina Bertolline~
~Carolina Bertolline~ by Luaflor Moo, on Flickr

I don’t get an error with my copy of the Metanomics translator. I get a bunch of garbage in the chat window. It is definitely having a problem with the Second Life 3.7.27 (300424)  viewer. 

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Second Life: Smooth Surface Mesh Seams

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If you have ever tried to make big things that require they be made in parts, you have probably run into this problem: the join points show. Look at the example in the lower right of the image (2 arrows). The desired result is to the left (single arrow).

Image by by Drongle McMahon - Arrows by me.
Image by by Drongle McMahon – Arrows by me.

This is not a matter of getting the vertices to match. Even if they do match perfectly, you get shading errors in Second Life. This is a problem with vertex normals.

There is an ongoing thread about this problem in the SL Forum: Visible seam when connecting two smooth shaded pieces. A good explanation of how to achieve a smooth surface at the connection point with correct shading is given by Drongle McMahon here.

Second Life MMO’s?

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The acronym MMO is about Massively Multiplayer Online, usually follow by a G for Game and in some cases RPG for Role Playing Game, but you knew that? Yes… Did you know MMORPG predates the computer gaming era? I bet not. Did you know the MMORPG type games with a persistent world evolved from MUD games? (Multi-User Dungeon)

MUD games were mostly mainframe based and were popular in the 1970’s. My dad told me of playing one by mail… I can’t even imagine what that was like. One turn per week… I complain about an extra 100ms of lag. 

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