What's new after lo, these many moons?

[Tabitha Caligari]

I've been away from SL for around a year now I think.  I logged in and there's a crazy new window to get used to.

Besides the fact that most of the places (yay Elbow Room is still here!) and people I knew are no longer around, what else do I need to keep in mind as I navigate the modern grid?

 

So far I haven't recognized anyone on the forum, except Prokofy :)

[Solaria Goldshark]

The good news is, you'll be back up to speed in a matter of days...things may have changed, but they are not all that different.      Oh wait..I forgot...you can have a name that's not really your name....Im not sure why that is exactly....

Now we have Lindens..and Residents....it's much esier now to tell who is who.

 

...and welcome back

:smileyhappy:

[Canoro Philipp]

the teen grid no longer exist. 16+ years old are on the main grid now. they are in the G rated sims only.

we have display names. that means that if you wish to change your name to something else, you can.
now, a display name is not the same as your account name, your account name is Tabitha Caligari and it always going to be, your Display Name (the name that it will be display to all users) could be anything you want. you can change it once per week on your profile page.

user profiles move to the web. you can see yours at http://my.secondlife.com/tabitha.caligari

downloading the last version of viewer 2 will update you with all the new features.

M Linden quit as CEO in the middle of 2010, and Philip Linden came back temporarly while they search for another CEO, and at the end of 2010 a new CEO was found, Rod Humble (Rodvik Linden), who was vicepresident of the best selling PC game in history.

new residents no longer have last names. that was eliminated from account creating.

Emerald (maybe you know that third party viewer) no longer exists. Linden Lab banned them from accesing Second Life because they commited a denial-of-service attack (which is a federal crime) using their users as weapon against someone who discovered that they were secretly collecting users data. some members of the Emerald team quit and formed a new third party viewer called Phoenix, almost identical to Emerald.

in a year, very interesting things have happened.

[Rhonda Huntress]

Other changes:

Media on a prim.  Mesh import is in live beta.  I don't know if you were here when Emerald was caught being naughty (again) and was banned, but they reformed as Phoenix viewer.  Kerstin's viewer is doing amazing things with shadows being just one.  It is the de facto photographer's viewer now.  Phoenix is working on their V2 version called Firestorm but other than that and Kerstin's, the 3rd party viewers are still using version 1 base code.  Drama, drama and then some more drama.  The more things change, the more they remain the same

 

[Keli Kyrie]

 

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Pep wrote:

You are now advised to log on here or inworld using a proxy if you don't want your IP address to be publicly broadcast. Pep

(Oh, and don't take any notice of emails claiming to be from the Linden Lab Moderation Team with a gmail address - they have to be hoaxes, don't they?)

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All the emails I have seen from them end with @lindenlab.com

 

[Tabitha Caligari]

Thank you everyone. You're right: it sounds like the more things change, the more they stay the same. I don't recall any third-party viewers at all. The latest new thing when I last played was the addition of flexi-prims. I guess I'll just have to poke around and see what's changed. Media on a prim and mesh imports I don't know what are and will have to find out. Is the Ivory Tower still around? IP addresses being "broadcast"? by whom? Is that like those annoying forum sigs that say "Your IP is blah and you live in City" but don't actually do any harm?

[Tabitha Caligari]

Somehow I lost my line breaks. Sorry about that.

[Rhonda Huntress]

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Tabitha Caligari wrote:

Thank you everyone. You're right: it sounds like the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I don't recall any third-party viewers at all. The latest new thing when I last played was the addition of flexi-prims. I guess I'll just have to poke around and see what's changed. Media on a prim and mesh imports I don't know what are and will have to find out. Is the Ivory Tower still around? IP addresses being "broadcast"? by whom? Is that like those annoying forum sigs that say "Your IP is blah and you live in City" but don't actually do any harm?

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Media on a prim is another step forward in the the "telivision" style objects.

Ivory Tower is still there (I think).

Re: IP address.  If you have music or media turned on, you actually connect outside of SL to the media server and it will need your IP to negotiate a connection.  This can be abused by scripts that can make your local browser broadcast its IP address.  So far no big deal. But then multiply this a few thousand times and start gathering all this in a database along with avatar names associated with addresses, where they were spotted and cross reference this with every other avatar that has used the same IP address.  OK, now add that the SL client is basically a web browser ... with the media stream expolit, it is also possible to push cookies onto your local computer.  All of this is done in the name of sim protection.  It also makes a handy stalking tool. Anyway, it was the source of tons of drama and eventually became banned tech so the priestkings destroyed those systems .... or something like that :smileyvery-happy:  The bottom line, it was more like anyone who bought the system (or could hack a web based database ... google it up if want to see how to hack RedZone) just needed to look up you and all your alts, the IP addresses you have used and anyone else who has logged on with your computer or who has connected to SL with your IP address.    Instead of "Your IP is blah and you live in City" it kept that information and shared it with anyonme who cared to look.  The possibility for abuse was high and I believe the merger of teengrid with the main grid was a deciding factor as well.