Gavin Hird

Maybe Innula, but Linden Lab is a US company, so they have to be in compliance with US payment processor requirements and legislation. How Dragonfish handles it in Europe is only of some bearing to them. Also, Linden Lab does not hold any gambling licenses, and they won't as it is in violation of US legislation. Dragonfish may most likely be in compliance with EU legilsation on handling person data, something Aristotle never was. The information they asked for on the age verification page was totally illegal for Europe as no government agencies are allowed to verify the information they collected unless the collector has a license to do so. Aristotle did not. Linden Lab did not. My hunch is that upholding their current practice both for the PIOF and Age Verify method was in violation of both legislation and payment proessor terms, they just gave in and adopted the "industry standard" method.

Ceka Cianci wrote: if adult content is on M regions it needs to be AR'd.. i'm not sure what you feel defines adult content .. but if it's there then it needs to be moved..thats just lack of enforcement and probably residents getting involved to make it known that content is operating on M lands..also a lot see adult content when there isn't any because of the misunderstandings of the ratings definitions.. I am sorry, but we - the Zindra community, have been sitting in meeting after meeting after meeting with Linden Lab representative handing them lists and ARs of litterally thousands of sims and parcels being in violation of the adult content policy. The response? "We don't have resources (manpower) to enforce the policy". Absolutely nothing happens.

Innula Zenovka wrote: I'm sorry, but I think you're over-interpreting the reasons for changing the age-verification method. The only interpretation I have done is saying that using credit card info as verification for age is a breach of terms of the major credit card companies. :matte-motes-wink: We know for a fact they changed payment processor for obscure reasons, and had all kinds of issues with PayPal. Getting rid of PIOF for account verification should bring them back in the clear with the payment processors. You don't have to be CEO to understand that. ... and as usual money talks.

Ceka Cianci wrote: you didn't need CC info to age verifiy..this change isn't about account verifiy, it's the change to age verification ..you could be age verified without PIOF... PIOF is only good for some adult places if your birthdate is old enough.. You are obviously confused on that. With the adult content policy Linden Lab provided two mechanisms to access adult areas and adult content searh. One was the age verify method where you had to "prove" your age by submitting documents or document ID numbers to a verification process administered by Aristotle The second was to register Payment Info On File, no more questions asked If you satisfied one of those two criterias, you were able to go to all the Zindra regions, most other adult regions and do adult content search both in-world and later in the marketplace. This procedure basically bypassed true age verification by equating a credit card account with being adult – a procedure that is in violation of the terms of Visa, MasterCard and possibly PayPal. This was one of the major criticim raised in front of the policy getting in effect. Some sim and estate owners, in addition, set age verified as a requirement to enter their land, but that is outside the scope of Linden Lab's policy. This addititonal protection some land owners felt they had is now gone, as in essense anyone can state their DOB to be whatever gives them age verified status, and access to the locked coffers. Blondin was not the only one behind the adult content policy, but he was more instrumental than most people seem to think. The reason why we will get full circle and have only two maturity ratings in the near future is that the new agve verify procedure quickly will obliviate M search, but also because Linden Lab has never been able to police their own policy. Because of that M regions are strewn with adult content and businesses selling content that is adult per their policy definition. This has significantly disadvantaged everyone who moved to Zindra, because they by and large lost their customer base as customers were able to find adult content compelling enough in M regions to not account verify. Region and business owners in private sims fared a little different as they most of the time managed to retain their original customer base despite having to set the region Adult. Most likely because the sim owners already had a relatively strong brand and customers who did not find alternatives (i.e. Xcite), and therefore got their customer base to go through the hoops of account verifying.

I think some of you give Blondin less credibility for the adult content policy than what he deserves. The more I saw of him, the more I realized that he was one of the architects behind this policy. So his leaving fits well in with this change in policy –a change I for one welcome. What prompted the change I suspect has more to do with payment processor issues than Linden Lab suddenly wising up. As far as I know, both Visa and Mastercard forbid using a credit card account as proof of age, which essentially the PIOF part of the adult content policy was. I suspect PayPal might have the same rule. Now the open question is what is the need for the 3-tier G,M,A rating any longer? Everyone on the grid will be "adult ready" within a few weeks, and give it a few weeks more, everyone who have an interest, and I suspect that is 85% of the residents, will have verified their age and set the A rating in their preferences. So what remains in search, for all practical purposes, will be G and A. Very few will bother to do M searches only. My prediction is that we will soon come around 360 deg and end up with only 2 maturity settings again.

This beta has significant stability issues on MacBook Pro. It is the first time in over 3 years I have experienced a kernel panic because of an application. This viewer did it :matte-motes-dont-cry: ... no high end graphics options turned on above bog standard High setting.

Luc Starsider wrote: Cerise Sorbet wrote: LL did not say that any of the following would work, so don't depend on them to keep working. It can be fun to experiment anyway. Skip this one if editing the viewer's default setting files is outside your comfort zone. At least for the moment, any 2.x viewer can use the new search. The SearchURL debug setting is too long to change from inside the viewer, but it works (for now) to change search.secondlife.com to search-beta.secondlife.com in app_settings.settings,xml, leaving all the following parameters intact. You can use the search URL in an external browser, too. Not sure how well it works, but a quick search to test it seems to work fine. [EDIT] Some links on the search page and in results that are in the form of secondlife:///path/to/result. These will not work in an external browser. [EDIT2] Under Events in the filter menu in an external browser (don't know if it is the same in the viewer) there is one check box for 'Happening now' and one for 'Ongoing'. Perhaps only one of these are needed? - Luc - Looks like it works fine in a browser as long as you don't click the "More Info" "Teleport" or "Map" buttons or a link to a profile. At that point it will launch the SL viewer (tested on a Mac). I am a bit puzzled it don't link to the profile on my.secondlife.com

What version of Mac OS X are you on?

Had an quick run and first impression is on the positive side. I sent the feedback that we need to be able to set maturity prefs with check boxes as those are filters relevant for individual searches. It is fine to pick up the Prefs setting as the default, but people will want to change these actively when searching. I also noticed that profiles clicked from search came up in the sidebar and not in web format. That may of course just be a glitch in the programming, but I could not miss how snappy that was compared to the web profile.

Just a control question: Did you install any virus protection software on your Mac? If you did, delete it (uninstall). It does more harm than good, and it not need as there are no know viruses or malware in the wild for the Mac. It will not protect you from the few know trojans you actively have to install yourself either. Then get the combo system installer (10.6.7) and run it to restore your system to a good, known state. Combo installer can be downloaded from http://support.apple.com/downloads/ Finally, did you do anything to your firewall settings? if so, turn the firewall off. Unless you have specific needs, it is not required to run on the Mac as very few ports are open by default and those that are, are all sandboxes. A default install does also not respond to pings.

Rebooting the system will not clear a locked folder issue, as the permissions are written to disk immediately and not only held in memory. If permissions (and other important files/folders) are messed up, a good strategy can be to grab the latest Mac OS X Combo installer, and let it reinstall the system to a known state. This usually will fix odd issues. Combo installers can be grabbed from http://support.apple.com/downloads/ ;-)

Any virtual machine will run SL like a total dog, so don't even think about it. (because of the rather crappy virtual graphics drivers.) Concentrate on getting the SL viewer running native on the Mac. ;-) ... and don't mess with the Application Support folder unless you totally know what you are doing. Drivers are not installed there anyway, and the SL viewer does not install any drivers on the Mac. Driver installation requires reboot as they execute in the kernel space.

onyx Marabana wrote: thank you leilei and luke. one more question: what about this issue of running sl thr ough bootcamp. how does that work? DOES it work? will i need to load windows7? and will it affect anything else l'm doing? thank you. om~ Yes, you would have to run Windows 7 and bootcamp is unlikely to have drivers for your MBP that will run SL properly. Sounds like your problem is not in the Application Support folder (which you really never need to tamper with), but in the Caches folder that lives in Library. Locate the SecondLife folder there and delete it, then restart your viewer. To me it sounds like something on your disk is write locked for you, so it may also be worthwhile to run Disk Utility and do a permission check on you harddisk. if you have been messing with Application Support, chances are you have changed permissions on folders, and running DU can undo some of that. Actually you should do this after deleting the SecondLife cache, but before starting the viewer again.

One thing you can do is to install gfxCardStatus from http://codykrieger.com/gfxCardStatus to check that your machine actually has switched to the discrete AMD Radeon HD 6750M when running the SecondLife viewer. You can also use this utility to force it into running on that card if the switching for some odd reason is not working as expected.

Jenni Darkwatch wrote: Totally agreed. If they want to expand, they need to find new markets. Your idea of licensing the grid software is great, as long as they don't do it the ridiculous way they tried with behind-the-firewall solutions Kingdon backed. The HyperGrid project seems to be very much dead though. An idea... how about licensing pre-installed "sims" to SL members in good standing? I.e. with verified RL info on file, NDA signed, but hooked to the SL asset servers for a lower monthly fee? It'd offload bandwidth costs from LL, might be an idea. I am sure there will be SL residents interested in spawning off grids based on the LL software if the terms are reasonable, but in principle such licensed software should be available to anyone in the same manner as Oracle or other middleware you find in the market. There would be no other association with Linden Lab of course (for both legal, commercial and branding reasons). Portable inventories are important, because going to another grid otherwise feels like totally starting over again. This is true both for regular residents as it is for content creators. It is stifling both because developers are struggling to recreate their stuff, and residents are reluctant to re-purchase goods they already paid for. It also means significant time is spent on non-inovation and it may even lead to content theft.

Elrik Merlin wrote: I'm not sure how good "going mobile" is proving for Blue Mars. Anyone got any stats? They seem to have sunk out of sight by and large. I'm looking for immersion. Phones are fine for comms and perhaps for some limited types of gaming but a tiny handheld is not exactly immersive. Don't have any stats, but they seem to be pretty happy about it, and by making that client, they became accessible on 120 million iOS devices (iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad.) Regarding immersion; Immersion basically sits in your head in this context. I can think of multiple role plays going on in SL where having SL reach into your pocket would add to the overall immersion, yeah? ... that all the way up to more mundane tasks such as sim and store management for those who run a business in here. Also remember that the latest iPad2 has more processor both in terms of raw cpu and graphics than the first laptop I used to access SL when I started back in 2007. The overall requirements for rendering core SL has not been dramatically changed since then. They can also output video to a 1080p display.

Jenni Darkwatch wrote: Phillip Rosedale often likened SL to the next evolution for the Internet. He missed a lot of key points: The Internet is going mobile, and turning to augmented reality, not virtual reality. LL could easily have made SL accessible via cellphones. It's trivial to do, yet no one there seems to see beyond the walls of their crystal palace. That might have broadened the appeal, but I doubt it. It'd only delay the demise. You are spot on! As I have pointed out many times both in the forums and blogs, SecondLife needs to get relevant in the mobile space – fast – to grow or even keep existing levels of users. They say it can't be done, but if you look at the Bluemars client for iPhone/Ipad, they keep chipping at it and developing an entry into their world that that appeals to the mobile crowd. There are a few competitors to SL on the horizon, but their appeal is limited as it currently is more of the same – just at a lower cost (at least for land holders). What kills the concurrency and recruitment is the lack of the "OMG – you can do that!!" moments that many of us had earlier, and that met us more or less at the gate (sans the griefers that are still there.) What has been chipping away at this are all the restrictions and segregation being imposed on the community (mentioned earlier in the thread.) All in the name of protecting Linden lab from litigation as per Californian law. Unfortunately this makes for uniformity that is gravitating to Disney Dull™ In addition to going mobile, to stay relevant, Linden Lab needs to license their server code to 3rd parties that can form alternative girds hosted in different geos and under different legislation. This, while at the same time provide roaming inventories and hyper girding to existing users. Only then can there be a return to true diversity and innovation. This development will happen regardless, only slower as competitors and open source server offerings currently are in catch up mode in terms of technological capabilities.

Not an enormous amount for the guys to be exited about - in terms of own physics that is, unless you want to flabber around a beer belly. How about adding the ability to flex the bicep and use the breast physics to adjust the pectorals on the male avatar? That would help relax the very static look that most skin creators shade into the male chest region, and that is also commonly seen in male shirts and t-shirts. Flexing the bicep would also make for more realistic arm movements. Just a suggestion :-)

DAZ Studio can also be used to make animations for SecondLife as soon as you have the SL avatar files imported. The basic version is free. I find it less convoluted than Blender, although here is a bit of a learning curve here too.

It is working now, so it must have been server side. No changes were made in the system firewall, and besides it is actually not running on this system (default Mac OS X configuration). Little Snitch is a good tool to understand what is going on on your system with network connections and there was nothing unusual my side of the equation. I'll just close this thread if I find out how. :-))

Yes, it displays the mandatory "Despite our best effort..." dialog and when you dismiss that it displays Connection refused as in the screenshot below. I have not removed any avatar specific files as they have not been touched by the system upgrade. To me it looks like the server side does not identify the viewer + OS version as an approved or known combination.

I am unable to connect with viewer 2.5.x or 2.6 beta after upgrading to Mac OS X 10.6.7. 2.5.2 says Connection Refused, and beta 2.6 prompts me to download 2.5.2 Anyone else seeing this problem? Connecting with Imprudence works as expected.

I agree with the comments of having a separate marketplace account for the AIS both for reliability, protection of personal inventory and it would also make it more viable for some to tie it to their real life identity without spilling the beans of one's personal SL dealings. It would also, as being said, make it possible to have an identity with the name of the store or company which would improve brand building. I have for quite some time advocated account wide inventories, connected to all alt accounts. This should simplify life for those who juggle multiple identities, and possibly help reduce the size of your asset store, as current configuration duplicates what in reality are identical items stored with different UUIDs due to no transfer settings.

There might be a fifth factor; the web based profiles. Often, if I see an interesting object in-world I look at it to see who the creator is, and check out their profile for classifieds and picks. With profiles opening as slow as molasses in viewer 2.5x I guess many simply can't be bothered to go that route any more. Exactly what the impact would be is hard to say, but it might be a contributing factor.

Biggest difference is that LL has made search both in-world and in the marketplace even more convoluted in order to "protect" the kids.