Second Life ToS Change

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In August the Linden Lab Terms of Service for all their products changed. One change most of us missed is now a point of considerable concern.

Access the Second Life Terms of Service
Access the Second Life Terms of Service

I’ve been watching discussion of the change in ToS that explicitly states we grant Linden Lab the right to sell any content uploaded to Second Life. I am not seeing what I consider a good explanation of the situation or clear opinion on it. Inara Pey has an article that shows the EXACT change and highlights the pertinent sections. See: ToS change and content rights: Lab provides statement. 

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Second Life Chat to Speech Program

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Yuzuru Jewell gave me a copy of his newly released program IDOBATA Pro. This is a simple, no installation program that converts text to speech using the built-in Windows speech service.(Reference) It is a standalone program so you can run it from a USB drive.

You can get the Second Life Text to Speech program here. It has a 3-day free trial period. The license can be purchased in world in Phasic Foo. The cost is L$1250.

Second Life Chat to Speech Program
Second Life Chat to Speech Program

IDOBATA Pro allows you to point Windows at the Viewer’s chat file. It detects changes to the file and sends new text to the speech conversion service. The result being you hear what is being typed into chat.

The program is designed for Windows 7 and 8, 32 or 64 bit versions. My thinking is that if it run on Win7 it will run on Vista, but I haven’t tried that. I am getting accustomed to Win7 and have not booted over to Vista in a couple of weeks. 

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3D Modeling Made Easy

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Jo Yardley has an article on her blog about 3D Sweep, a program that Rod Humble tipped her off about. The program is unique in that it uses techniques similar to what humans use to see 3D objects in 2D photos.

Jo’s article is: Stunning but easy 3D modeling from photos. She includes the video I have here.

[youtube Oie1ZXWceqM]

A more detailed explanation of the software is at Singularity Hub here: Israeli Researchers Debut Software That Extracts 3-D Objects From Photos.

The article explains, “Shamir and his colleagues haven’t decided yet whether to pursue 3-Sweep as a commercial product, but they are continuing to improve the software and have applied for a patent on what they’ve accomplished so far, Shamir told Singularity Hub.”

Since they are patenting it, I would assume someone will make commercial software out of this technique. That will take some time so we likely will not see this out for use any time soon. 

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Second Life News 2013-37 #3

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It seems because of the voice update, every simulator server and voice related server in the system had to be restarted. So, rather than restart RC regions twice this week, the Lindens decided to do all the rolls and restarts in one pass.

This process started about 2 AM PDT. They completed the roll about 10 AM PDT.

Blue Steel – Le Tigre: The interesting bit about this package is there is threaded region crossing code for vehicles. This information did not make it into the release notes. So, there is going to be some confusion as to whether it is there or not in some minds. But, Simon Linden is clear that the crossing code did make it to the RC.

Andrew defines it a bit better saying, “…the data streaming on the way OUT of the region is now threaded, which doesn’t make the crossing any faster, but may reduce lag spikes as witnessed by everyone else.” 

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Second Life News 2013-37 #2

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The server roll outs are breaking pattern this week. All channels are being rolled today Tuesday. There will be roll outs Wednesday.

All channels are getting a voice package update. About the only change we will see on the gird is this voice update. Otherwise the servers stay pretty much as they were.

RC Channels

As I wrote, the roll out for all RC channels happens today, Tuesday. Blue Steel and Le Tigre get a new maintenance package. This is the one that has a fix for an Auto-Return exploit used to bypass parcel auto-return. there are other bug fixes, but the auto-return one is the one most residents will see improving Second Life. These channels also get the new voice code.

Magnum channel continues to run the same package as last week (36) with the addition of the new voice code. This package is preparatory work for changes coming to the viewers. The changes have to do with texture and asset fetching. I think this has been referred to as Monty’s HTTP package.

Summary

We’ll know more after the server user group today.