Second Life and Windows XP

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Microsoft is ending support for its Windows XP products April 8, 2014. That is a Tuesday  or 223 days from today, August 28, 2013. In general this would not matter much except for one thing, security updates. After all if your computer is running and doing what you want it to do, there is no need to update/fix it.

IC3
Internet Crime Complaint Center

But, the world is full of bad guys. It always has been and there is nothing that even suggests that will change. If you think advances in societal understanding and new laws are going to help I suggest you read Criminal Violence, Criminal Justice by Charles E. Silberman. (synopsis by Commentary Magazine) His conclusion as to what would work lacks a sound basis of reasoning. But, his analysis of what doesn’t work and why is well supported by documented facts. Crime is not ending any time soon. 

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Rod Humble Interview – July

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In July AllThingsD.com published an interview with Rod Humble that I missed. You can read it here: Linden Lab CEO Rod Humble on Second Life’s Tween Years (Q&A).

There are some interesting points in the interview. One is about mobile. The Lab apparently has a working viewer for mobile phones and tables, sort of… It seems building a user interface is pretty hard and likely the reason they have not been released.

Rod also says they are watching Valve to see if they build a console box and Android for their box. The existing consoles don’t seem to interest him.

There is also a hint of where Rod is at in promoting Second Life™. In talking about companies directing the content of their games Rod was pointing out the Lab intentionally avoids that. The interviewer was contrasting Twitter’s directive help and pointing out how they advise media outlets to Tweet, I read that as directing content style. Rod replied the Lab is interested in that, which I take to mean content direction advising and direction choosing. But, if he were to let the company do that he feels they should be very good at it. I gather he has not gone that direction because of his saying this, 2013, is the first year he has felt Second Life performance is ‘good’. He says the Lab may look at reaching out more next year, 2014.

It would make sense to not go 100% on a promotional program to bring people into SL if it was not performing well. One only promotes things when they are proud of them. So, we may see the promotion of SL change in 2014.

It is a short interview. But, there are some interesting insights.

RestrainedLove Viewer Redo

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Just days ago Marine released a new version of the RL Viewer. It had the replacement feature for z-Offset, Hover, Height Adjust, or whatever you want to call it. The problem is it had a gotcha Marine did not anticipate. But, that has been fixed and new version of the viewer is out.

This is a bit of a messy fix. Marine got it working. But, is not real proud of the hacky code needed to make it work. But, it works.

Also, it is not that easy or straight forward to use. READ THE INSTRUCTIONS.

See: RestrainedLove Viewer 2.8.5.5.

CtrlAltStudio Viewer 1.1.0.34244 Oculus

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There is now a viewer out with some Oculus Rift support. It is incomplete. But, according to the web site you can stick your head in and look around. See: An Initial Foray into Second Life with the Oculus Rift.

There is currently no User Interface. The author of CtrlAltStudi Viewer, David Rowe, says the Lab will soon release a Oculus Viewer with a UI. I’m not sure exactly what ‘soon’ means in this case.

As it is now:

Use the viewer as normal to get to where you want to go, then toggle into “Riftlook” mode (“3D” toolbar button or Ctrl-Alt-3) and don your Rift headset. Move your head to look around and use the arrow or WASD keys to move about. “Forwards” is the direction your Rift was pointing when you toggled into Riftlook. It makes most sense to use it while sitting down.

Jo Yardley is going to love this.

Second Life News 2013-35

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We have a bit of news on the server roll outs. The main gris will get the maintenance package from Magnum. This is the package with the Gray Box fix BUG-3547, the llListen fix BUG-3291, some crash fixes, and internal bug fixes… whatever those are.

Release Channels

All three release channels will get the same package on Wednesday. This package includes a physics fix to stop a griefing problem, another crash mode is fixed, fater regaion restarts for regions restarted by owners or estate managers. Rather than run through the full count down, the region will restart once all the avatars have left.

There are new region and parcel access controls coming. This package has the server side of those controls. Until we see a viewer with the corresponding controls, this change is not actionable.

Second Life’s SSA 2013-34

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Server Side Appearance baking is considered a success. We still have some bake fail issues and I’ll get to those. The Firestorm team has put out an article about SSA here: Server Side Appearance a Success! This article is worth the time to read. Jessica Lyon points out how the ignorant are complaining about how the Lab should have worked on something that really needed fixing… like bake fail was not a big enough problem.

Third Party Viewer Meeting 2013-34
Third Party Viewer Meeting 2013-34

Nyx Linden spoke at the TPV Dev’s meeting Friday (week 43) about SSA. Friday a new set of SSA changes were going external that means the SSA code the Lab has been working on for the viewer was made public. TPV Dev’s can now look at the code, find bugs, problems, and begin adding it to their development code.

Nyx says the Lab has this new code working in their development viewers. But, they currently consider it mostly untested. I suppose that means it has not passed through formal QA testing on the way to a viewer release candidate and remains mostly in development. 

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