Symantec Norton Anti-Virus Problems

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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.

Singularity Viewer Release 1.7.0 Review

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The Singularity viewer retains the V1 user interface while adding many of the new features found in the latest version 3 viewers.

The significant additions in this release is the feature allowing multiple items to worn on the same clothing layer. With that addition we also get a Current Outfit folder, something that will be needed for coming Shining: Avatar Bake changes.

The announcement page lists a number of improvements in this release of Singularity. See: 1.7.0 – Multi-Wear release!

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Bits and Pieces

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I found several interesting articles out early this morning and from late yesterday. These are worth checking out.

Wigs For Kids

Hair Fair

Hair Fair runs from July 14 to 29. This is a huge event and a great opportunity to help out the non-profit Wigs for Kids. This event is usually crowded and lag is a significant problem. A number of things have been done to alleviate lag. Most everything in the regions is non-physical, meaning you can walk through shop walls and fly through the ceilings/roofs.  The idea is to reduce the collision information the regions must calculate.

This year they have ideas for personal reduction of lag that I have not heard before. One is to set the Debug Setting: RenderAvatarMaxVisible to 5 rather than the default 35. Press Ctrl+Alt+D to add the ADVANCED menu item to the top menu. You will find the Debug Settings in Advanced. Type or copy RenderAvatarMaxVisible into entry field and change the value. At some point after leaving Hair Fair you will want to change this value back to the default 35.

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#Second Life Translation Bump

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In December of 2011 Google ended their free language translation service. Now Bing is ending theirs, may be. Google announced their intentions to do so early in 2011. Public outcry caused the management of Google to reconsider. In the end they decided to turn it into a paid system. Bing made their announcement in April of this year.

Bing Translator API

All the Second Life™ viewers and third party viewers, once upon a time, used the free service Google provided. There were various translation devices in Second Life that used Yahoo, Google, or Bing translation services. Google’s seemed to be the preferred service.

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MetaReality: Making a Difference

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MetaReality has this week’s podcast out. Salome Strangelove and Karl Stiefvater (Qarl Fizz, formerly Qarl Linden) are guests in this week’s edition.

Metareality Podcasts

I’ll remind you this is not a transcript of the podcast. This my take on what I heard said and relationship between what I heard to what was meant by the speakers is purely coincidental… well… may be not. I try to convey the meaning of what is said. If you find anything offensive or upsetting, listen to the audio before raving.

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Firestorm Viewer Follow Up

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I’ve gotten to use the new Firestorm viewer for a bit. I like the Firestorm default mode and have only been using that mode. It is nice. It is close enough to the Linden V3 interface I can find most things easily.

It has the debug settings for CameraOffsetRearView and FocusOffsetRearView, which I change on all my viewers to give a better camera position. See Camera Position Tips for more on that.

The performance of the viewer is faster than Linden viewers. I turned off Sun/Moon Shadows to get the skin color adjusted in my new N-Core Eloise ‘One Voice’ shoes. My FPS was hitting 40 in my apartment. Nice. My Core2 Quad and nVidia 560Ti are not as fast as I had hoped. But, this version of Firestorm is faster than the last.

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