#SecondLife and Anti-Virus

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The Firestorm/Phoenix Wiki has a load of handy information for solving Second Life technical problems. I noticed today that they updated their wiki page on Anti-virus programs.  See: Whitelisting the Viewer in Anti Virus Software.

Image by: SarahCartwright - Flickr

They tell you how to handle; Avast, AVG, Kaspersky, McAFee, Norton, and PC Tools Spyware Doctor.

They don’t say anything about speed gains or risk.

Anti-virus software can place a heavy load on your computer. The result is you lose Frames per Second (FPS). Not all anti-virus programs are the same. PC Magazine did a review of anti-virus programs for 2012: The Best Antivirus for 2012.

PC Magazine doesn’t say anything about performance. Most reviewers seem to consider the only performance criteria to be whether a program can find the virus. While that is important, it seems some anti-virus programmers have taken the approach that all the computer ever needs to do is defend against viruses.

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Darrius’ Care & Feeding of Magic Boxes

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Direct Delivery is rumored to be on the verge of release. So, Darrius’ article may seem a bit untimely. However, until Direct Delivery (DD) actually arrives, the information he provides could save you lots of headaches.

Magic Box

Check out the article at his blog: Care and Feeding of the SL Marketplace Magic Box.

This is the most complete information I’ve come across on Magic Boxes. If you are having a problem with one of your Magic Boxes, the solution is probably in the article.

 

#SL Firestorm 3.3.0 (24880) Release Review

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I heard there is a new Phoenix Hour out. I suppose someday it will change to a Firestorm Hour. At about the same time the Phoenix Hours restart the next release of Firestorm is released.

This release has a load of features. As best I can tell all the Phoenix features have made it over to Firestorm.  In addition to those features new ones have been added. A good example is the Particle Editor. The code for the Particle Editor was written by Zi Ree. I understand it was written for Firestorm and shared with the community. I first saw the editor in Dolphin Viewer-3 in mid December last year. It has been popping up in other TPV’s ever since.

Particle Editor

Finding the Particle Editor is a bit trick. It is not part of the standard build panel as I expected it would be. After all one is editing a prim’s attributes, so it seems to me that is where it would be. The number of controls in the panel would be difficult to put in a build panel tab.

The Particle Editor

To use the Particle Editor create or edit a prim. Then in the top menu open Build -> Objects -> Edit Particles. Not overly intuitive. It would seem a button in the Build panel to open the editor would be more intuitive. The Features tab seems like an obvious place to put a button.

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#SL Server Scripting Update Wk6

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Flight Limit

If you start flying straight up you stall out a bit below 200 meters, about 175. This is a limit imposed by the Lab’s servers. We get around the limit by using flight feathers and other devices that let us fly higher and faster.

There is some discussion about removing that limit. Simon Linden thinks people using Animation Over Riders (AO) will be popping into orbit. I don’t have any AO’s that have flight enhancement. So, I’m clueless as to where that idea comes from.

However, without a limit a flight enhancement will likely speed up your accent. Whether it will slam you into orbit I have no clue. But, if we suddenly hit high altitudes when we start flying we’ll know that the flight limit has been removed.

It is unclear of the limit will be removed or just raised. May be the limit will be 1,000m or 2,000m, or some other value.

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#SL Content/Mesh Creation Week 6

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Mesh Physics – A question was asked about creating efficient physics for mesh houses. I’ve seen people having problems getting mesh objects they think are more efficient polygon-wise to actually produce less Land Impact (LI) cost. A few ideas came out in the discussion.

Runatai Linden Avatar - Way Cute

Nyx Linden says from Havok’s perspective, the physics engine, the simplest physics volume is a box. If you want to specify your own mesh, each triangle in the mesh is roughly as complex [physics-wise] to compute as a box. Ultimately using prims as physics shapes shouldn’t necessarily be problematic, though having a custom mesh can be better under certain circumstances.

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#SL Scripting News Wk6

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We have a varied collection of news out of the Scripting User Group today.

First we have word that the current release channel code will NOT roll to the main grid this week. So, there will be no update to the main grid this week. There are some problems and they will be adding fixes to the code in the release channels. Other problems have been fixed too.

Scripting Feb 6, 2012

We have only one code package running in all three release channels. While the single package has gotten good testing, the problems have held any update to the main grid. Later in the week we’ll know what new packages may roll to the release channels for testing.

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