Montana Corleone

They will not do that, LL is based on Open Source technology, and DirectX is proprietary Microsoft technology that additionally MS do not supply to non-Windows platforms such as Mac and Linux. That would drive away the few creative producers they have left and SL would just be a cartoon sex world, if it isn't already! Oops, should have finished reading the thread first, since 2 other posters said the same thing! The other point is that yes, identical machines will give different fps because their internet connections and pipeline are different, internet routing is different, there can be server bottlenecks, LL often has problems between it's co-locations, parts of the global backbone may be down or under stress, packets may go by longer routes, at any moment the numbers of users logged on varies, plus your service provider may be playing fast and loose on occasion with your bandwidth. The fact it works at all at decent fps when the data is sent half way around the world for some people and not others is pretty amazing.

Because video uses huge, huge bandwidth. The way it works now is that only positional data is sent to and from a viewer, the physics is sorted on LL servers, then the results along with the textures are sent to your viewer, which then assembles the picture. This means minimal data is sent through the system, and it still gets laggy. Mobile devices do not have the same high speeds as landline broadband, generally less powerful processors and graphics, and most of the viewer is based on Java, and so the device needs strong Java support too, along with being able to use the many open source libraries and QuickTime for video and sound streaming. It might be possible to do what you say, but you'd be lucky to get a framerate of even 1fps lol.

It's a well known fact that LL gets commission from computer manufacturers to put in little bugs that make older computers stop working so you have to buy a new machine at great expense... :matte-motes-big-grin-wink:

Yes, annoying that drag and drop doesn't work. You have to click the picture, and then wait for a dialog box to appear, which may take 10 seconds or more, depending on the vagaries of SL.

Mmm, DNS is often due to a temporary loss of the internet connection, but you seem to be not having that if other apps connect. Not my field, but vague guess: there isn't anything in the proxy settings in preferences that shouldn't be there? Clearly it's something within those two viewers, or the preference files they use.

Ah yes, Brighton lol, the cause of adding VAT to European customers. LL should of course have been charging VAT from the start, but didn't bother because jurisdiction didn't apply as long as they sayed in California, but as soon as they opened in Brighton, they then had seizable assets there, and so a couple of days after opening they had a friendly visit from the UK tax guys... Methinks LL's lawyers were not earning their fees.

Sometimes I think it's just SL, and somehow the data coming from the asset servers seems to get lost opr held up. Avatars come partly from the baking process, so it's a different part of the asset database. Effectively it seems that any action that involves sending a new request usually works, such as relogging, rebaking, changing groups or other things affecting the data pipeline.

Actually it's much more complicated than that, and will depend on the jurisdiction in which the residents live. In some countries such a written contract will be valid in law provided it adheres to any laws concerning such contracts, and even verbal contracts may have the force of law, particularly since there may be logged chat of such contracts making them effectively written. While some may consider SL a game, you are in fact contracting for time and services between two real people, regardless of how much Lindens are worth in real money. Having said that, you are of course right in that generally most people won't bother with the law for such piddling sums, and it may be nigh on impossible to enforce if people live in different countries, but it doesn't mean the legal rights are not there. And again in certain jurisdictions, employers might technically have liabiility for things like pension or social security payments too lol. But if say someone loses a sim or business through the breach of contract, then the amount involved might well be worth persuing in a small claims court. And LL's ToS will have no say in that, because it cannot override the laws of the land.

Dedric Mauriac has some interesting ones, along with other gadgets at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Spini/147/48/233

Thank you! Clear, concise and good info. JIRA was a complete PITA on this and as usual the issue was folded into another ticket which was not at all the same isue.

You see, I must gain permission from the members of the chat in order to log or post that conversation elsewhere. Therefore, there is in fact a reason to "offer a disclaimer for open chat." Open chat = conversation. "Remotely monitoring conversations, posting conversation logs, or sharing conversation logs without consent are all prohibited in Second Life and on the Second Life Forums."Also, who I choose to quote does not matter as much as his or her applicability to the topic at hand. Sure, I could have quoted Dostoevsky, who I indeed love as a writer, or Dickens, who is a give and take with me, depending on the novel, or even Tolkein, whom I find immensely overwordy, but they would be less relevant to the conversation at hand and the Dursley's are much more familiar to a majority of people, thus making my reference more comprehensible to a wider audience. Brenna, you are confusing a couple of issues. The ToS and CS are not law. LL's ToS has in fact been successfully legally challenged (and changed) on several occasions. It's not just a question of privacy, but infringement of copyright. In any conversation, you only own the copyright of the parts that you speak or write. The section where you supposedly grant a non-exclusive licence for your stuff is in fact a dubious area of law, since under the Berne Convention (which underlies pretty much all countries' copyright laws and its successor WIPO) a person cannot be compelled to give up their copyright, which is in effect what LL is attempting to do. Similar cases have been lost before now by those wishing to compel people. However it is hazy when it's in public, which much of the info is: not just within SL, but posted on the web eg user profiles. Public chat ie Channel 0 again is a bit different, but IMs are completely private, and not publicly posted in "user accessible areas" and so using them is not only a breech of the copyright laws but also ToS. The basic rights are pretty simple. The Copyright Law is pretty long, but most of it is detail on sound and visual reproductions, but for written works, which typed speech is, the seven sentence Section 106 of the US Copyright Law covers it: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#106 Quoting parts is generally okay, as long as it falls within the Fair Use clause, which again is a fairly short section: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107 As you have surmised, pretty much any posting of chat or IM logs or any other info in reality means having the permission first, and again, you cannot put compelling conditions in your profile as a legal get out: it will not be a legal get out at all. Although this is straying a little from the topic, it is part of it: lawsuits is what it really is all about. LL can only impose certain rules, they cannot override the laws of the land in any shape or form, be they copyright or laws pertaining to minors, gambling, sex and prostitution and so on. It really matters not what individuals think, at the end of the day there is not sufficient protection for either minors, or people who might be liable to prosecution for inadvertantly interacting illegally with minors. Generally its the provision of forbidden things to minors that results in prosecution. The minor of course is not prosecuted. As per usual, LL is not only ignoring users' views, but is having its own interpretation of the law, and has not properly thought things through. There must be a reason behind the merger of the two grids: either it's part of the Linden geeky anarchic culture, or they need to boost the flagging numbers by including teens.

Actually in some areas a 16 year old is not a kiddie. Even in some US states the age of consent is 16. In my state it's 17. 16 year olds aren't so bad, and anyone younger than that are restricted to special sims. Depends how you define kiddie. Under 18 (in most countries) and they are still legally minors. Although the age of consent is usually lower, there can still be criminal problems, since although it can be legal to have sex with someone over the age of consent, it is not usually legal to pay them for it. For a real world case look at Frank Ribery, the professional footballer, who with several others is under threat of prosecution for paying for sex with a prostitute who was 17 at the time. Legal for sex, not for paying for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franck_Rib%C3%A9ry#Personal_life http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/7615113/Franck-Ribery-football-scandal-prostitute-breaks-her-silence.html The case is becoming complicated, because both French and German authorities are involved, and they are finding details of who paid for her airline ticket, as that would have required her true age, and thus the buyer would have known she was under age.

You have to be logged in to buy anything from the Marketplace, don't you? Doesn't seem much point to page thru all that stuff if you are not planning to buy any of it. That's true, but it's Terence Linden's words not mine - access. Access to me also includes being able to see it and search for it, not just buy it. LL are trying to cover their legal asses, and failing miserably as usual lol. If to search the site you had to log in first, as I believe you did with SLX/Xstreet, or at least the uncensored site, that would be fine. Most other SL connected sites require that, as do indeed most social networking sites such as Facebook. Perhaps that is on the cards and Jan 1st or whenever Marketplace will not be open to the entire planet. In order to comply with legal obligations, LL are trying to shield youngsters from such stuff, so not being able to buy it doesn't cut it. In fact, there's a possibility if they see all the forbidden goodies, they might just well lie about their age anyway so they can buy it. It's like tobacco, alcohol, prostitution in RL. It's not just disallowing purchase by under age people, they are protected from seeing it too by laws on advertising etc. And can't enter bars, Adult rated cinemas etc. As usual, it's LL rushing through implimentations without thinking things fully through, or even debating and listening to users who are their customers. These are all the sorts of points that would have been brought up. Where I come from, it's kinda normal to go through that discussion phase fisrt before you start implementing and coding. Well, it even happened with the politicians in France before Sarkhozy lol.

A Rich and Secure Experience for Teens Our goal is to provide a safe, secure, and rewarding experience to all Second Life Residents, no matter their age. Accordingly, we are putting safeguards in place on the Main Grid specific to the following teen age groups: For 13- to 15-year-olds: 13- to 15-year-old Residents will be restricted to the estates of a sponsoring institution. These Residents will not have access to inworld search or our Web-based Marketplace. Oh yeah? Funny that the Marketplace is an open site. Anyone can search, including Mature content if they are not logged in! Doh...

Yes, that's true. They did open an office in the UK back when they really believed SL would hit big time. It didn't happen of course and LL has since sacked a third of it's staff and closed the UK office. They are still charging the VAT though. Shoulda guessed Brighton was closed lol. Of course, according to the EU they should pay it anyway, it's just that some ignore it if they are abroad. But it makes you wonder if LL are still paying it, or trousering it...

I'm starting to see the new people come in now on 1.23 as "Mildred Resident" or "Herbert456 Resident" and then I see them in my transaction as just their first name like "Twinkletoes". But what happens if multiple people chose the name "Twinkletoes"? They can't have two "Twinkletoes Residents" and more to the point, they can't have a unique name for their creations, should they make them. What? You mean transactions as in sales? That will make handling customer lists virtually impossible.

Excellent post! Those are some of the dangers, from those who are still a little immature. After all, they can spam anywhere from PG areas. However, annoyances aside, a lot of the arguments here are based on legal problems. I don't mind the mature element, but once again it's a legal definition of who is an adult, and that's the one that counts. Unfortunately governments generally misunderstand the internet, and the laws can be draconian. Possession of an illegal photo yopu might not even realise was sent to you, or in the UK just visiting a site which could have been an innocuous link in a spam email is an offence, rather than having intent. It's the same as drug dealers using kids to sell drugs: the kids get off scott free, and they will here too, and they know it.

I agree with this in its entirety, except your assertion that the age of majority is 18 in most countries....do you have any evidence to back this assertion up? Well, it is throughout Europe, in most states in the US I believe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other places. Except in American Samoa where it's 14 lol. There's an easy list here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_majority Of course, as you say, it's really Californian law that counts, since that's where LL is based. We had a simpilar argument over gaming a couple of years back.

Why is there now a resident named "Gowns Resident," with account created on 11/19/2010, who shows up first in Search All under a search for "gowns?" Profile is blank but for the name. Search is performed in a TPV 1.x-based viewer. Is this an LL cludge of some sort, or a new way to use display names or avatars to game the Search system? (Also now taken/unavailable in account signup: Skin, Skins, dresses, makeup.... do we see a trend here?) I noticed this to. Yeah, its the all new, signing dancing single name accounts ie just one name + Resident rather than First Name and Last Name. Since so much of this stuff is gamed, I wonder if Lindens tipped the wink to their mates so they got new alts with these names, knowing they'd come top of the search listings? Of course Search All is pointless, and has been borked since they introduced it years ago. Use places tab instead to get rid of these pesky unwanted new av names. So yeah, cool new search improvements if you're a pal of a Linden, more useless for Joe Average.

What richness? Gazillions of empty sims? Spammers and griefers you do zero about? Copyright and creation theft? The possibility of interacting with kiddies in illegal situations? Good luck to those new users trying to find the 2 special sims LL uses to make the front page videos, the REAL SL is somewhat different. Surely having a rich world to start with is somewhat more important than how you access it? Perhaps if you tried listening to and acting on your users' views you wouldn't be so desperate to attract new people to keep the VCs happy. If you'd done a lot of that you would never have had such a disatrous churn rate to start with. Although you no longer give us the numbers (which generally means things are worse), it must be more than 10% churn of total users per month now? I'd have thought it's a better thing to do to keep customers that you already have/had rather than keep losing them and having to find yet more suckers.

Yes thank you, Hitomi for pointing out that the actual factual valid forum for getting through to the Lindens about the viewer is held on Wednesdays from 8:00am to 9:00am PST, which of course is ever so convenient for me being that its 3am ~ 4am, and even if I was living in San Francisco, Wednesday morning is like "a work day" for normal regular folk. Yes, that does seem never to have worried them lol. It has been suggested that they vary the times for these things so that they can get feedback from around the world, but they've ignored that. Just as they did when there were rolling restarts galore and system downtimes when they were trying to fix all the pretties they rushed in 3 years ago. They set that time for peak evening in Europe. Of course it was okay for Lindens, but considering at that time only 30% of users lived in the US, and 45% in Europe, it didn't make sense customer service wise. One of the reasons of course why European participation plummeted. They had just one French Speaking Linden, but managed to have several who spoke Korean. The fact that far more people speak French in the world than Korean didn't seem to faze them, or that could easily have found some by employing a few French Canadians... If I didn't know better I'd swear the Lindens were just playing "move the goal posts" ... "Report it to the JIRA and vote, no wait, voting that's no good, did we say JIRA? Ahhhh, the JIRA lol. I think it's short for Just Ignore Ruthing Avatars, Random Arguments, and so on. It's spaghetti. They seem to be so busy closing posts and referencing them to others in the vain hope you'll forget all about it. Bottom line is there are never any ANSWERS, just redirects to other problems, falsely closed issues, and redirects to solutions which are not the problem to begin with. Sorry, I know you try to help Hitomi, there's just been too many of these "display names" type decisions for me to take the lab seriously anymore. They have their master plan, and I get the feeling their lives would be so much easier if they got no feedback at all. Really that the Lindens ask for feedback and opinions on top of the hundreds of thousands of words that have already been submitted as feedback is rather disingenuous. And that really is that. They've never understood the issues and views of their customers, the residents. But at least we have OpenSim as an option now...

You know I've read some arrogant, self-important and downright nasty opinions on this blog, but this one really is something else. Just what on earth do you think makes you so darned special that you should be one of the chosen avatars on high that looks down on the newly arrived masses and casts them out like some kind of inferior beings? Is it the fact you happen to have a last name attached to your avatar? Absolutely unbelievable. Well, perhaps you didn't read the rest of the blog then, or the countless other discussions on the subject. It's a suggestion for people who do have a problem with the changes: spammers, griefers, under-age people, managing ban lists, frauds and so on, all as mentioned above. I have no problem with genuine people at all, but it will let in rafts of idiots, and handling them that way might be a way of getting LL to change it. They generally don't listen unless it hurts them in the pocket. Doesn't worry me personally at all, since I don't own land and all the rubbish, profiteering and scams with that lol, but it is an option for people, particularly if they start having problems with people with new names. But it is a bit like letting spammers change their names to defeat your spam filters. I can't for the life of me think of anyone who would rate that as a good idea. The fact that there are good people coming in is neither here nor there, LL has made it easier for the criminals and anti-social here instead of harder.

Adults seem to have formed an idea in their mind that a major process goes on when someone turns 18. We're looking at a difference of 730 days in age. So what you're saying is that someone who was born 730 days before me is on a much more mature level then I am, just because of when I was born? It seems extremely narrow to think that all teen's are immature and to constantly complain about moving to the MG. And, if you're so 'upset' over the 'immaturity' that will sweep the Main Grid, buy a private Mature sim, and stay away from them. It's not too difficult. By complaining about the teens you're being more immature then a teenager. Stop complaining about teens not being 'mature' when you can't have the maturity to give every person on Second Life a fair chance. No, we're not saying that, but the simple fact is that there is a LAW that makes such a cut off date. Doesn't matter how mature the person is, that law is rather inflexible. One day either way can mean the difference between prosecution and jail, or nothing. That's the real problem and danger, and the system as it is is open to abuse because of the basic flaw in Age Verification itself. It's sometimes difficult to make teens understand that simple point: it's not our choice always, but the law in most countries. But until of when the law is changed, that's the way it is. I agree some are more mature than others, just as adults are lol, but the law is always black and white on these things. Bear in mind also that it's not just the trouble itself, buit you are then registered for life as a child offender, which can mean trouble with employment, neighbours, travel etc for the rest of your life. Rather an extreme result for an inworld encounter with someone who has lied or gamed the system.

Greater self-expression probably explains it all, just like griefing is self-expression. It's funny, but LL on the one hand pretend to be concerned over kiddies in the grid and griefers, but at the same time they give tools or make changes to make it easier for those undesirables. Go figure. The simplest thing to do seems to be just to ignore any new names. LL is getting so desperate for new users because it has borked up so much with its policies that it has to admit kids on the main grid to bolster user numbers that if we all ignored them, LL would pretty soon change policy. Pretty simple to do it seems to me. After all, if Resident is going to be in their Avatar name even if not displayed, then it should be easy to change scripts to ignore, boot, eject or refuse to sell to such user names. If nobody talks to them or friends them, they get booted from land and can't buy anything, then they'll leave soon enough... How many people have signed up with Linden in theirs?

Actually, as always, I don't give a toss about something being pretty, or even an improvement on certain systems, becuase it usually means a problem on another system. I'm interested in core functionality. What I'm quite concerned with is a well known and repeated problem with inv, and what you're wearing, which can include HUDs as well as clothing logging in with different viewers. You can log in with a different viewer and find yourself wearing stuff you changed 2 days ago. Since this comes form the asset servers, I'm a little worried as to what is going on here. Why is there an apparant problem with updating inv i.e. asset servers, just because you change viewer? This may account for my stripey av appearance which seems to be including part of an old version of the login screen sliced over my baked textures.