Ciaran Laval

October 28, 2012October 28, 2012

Internal LSL HTTP Servers Could Do With DNS

LSL HTTP Server is a lovely concept, unfortunately it has drawbacks. This works great when you want information from external servers, but it’s a pain when you want information from inworld objects. I’ve been working on making a notecard giver that you update centrally and it updates your remote boards, HTTP is a great way of doing this, the only problem is, URL’s are temporary.

What we really need is for these addresses to take advantage of DNS for simple tasks, so instead of the address being an IP address, it is something along the lines of http://www.secondlife.com/region_name/objectAddress. This is why DNS is such a great concept.

Currently I have to use a system of updating my remote boards using llEmail to inform them of the new URL. This means that I need to store the extenal objects email addresses and use llEmail to update them, this is not only cumbersome, it’s a waste of resouces as I have to communicate with a system that Linden Lab themselves recognises as having serious bottleneck issues.

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October 27, 2012October 27, 2012

Are CBS Clamping Down On IP Infringements In Second Life?

Over in the merchants forum Steve Atlanta has created a thread claiming that CBS are clamping down on copyright violations within Second Life, the thread can be read here. CBS have every right to do this, being as they own the intellectual property rights along with their partners.

If you’re selling Star Trek material without permission from CBS then you’re treading on very thin ice. Where matters are always a little more complicated, is when you’re producing items for roleplay. Insignias are probably out of bounds and you should have a disclaimer that you’re not official somewhere in your covenant or parcel, but general roleplay is usually good for the franchise and is usually encouraged.

We’ve been here before, Battlestar Galactica roleplayers in Second Life felt the wrath of IP infringement and were then given the green light to carry on as long as they played by the rules. I seem to recall a similar issue with Dune roleplay.

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October 25, 2012October 25, 2012

Bring Your Own World

The in thing in the workplace these days, the big headache generator for IT Support departments is bring your own device, or BYOD as it is affectionately known, or pain in the arse bloody devices (PITABD) as it is unofficially known. I was in a meeting this week discussing how wonderful it is that people want to link their own devices to our work network, how cost savings can be made on our own hardware purchases and how we need to have a list of policies as long as both arms to deal with issues such as data leakages, insecure devices, unprotected devices, authenticators to login, acceptable use policies yadda yadda yadda .. several cups of coffee later I came away with a headache and a feeling that the more control we seem to pass to the user, the more control we need to get back by investing in even more security and polcy documents

Which brings us to Second Life and what some see as it’s insular approach to the wider metaverse. Hypergrid Business is a great site to get the lowdown on other virtual worlds, collaborative projects between owners of different grids, sims. There are examples of great business and education projects using worlds other than Second Life. However I can appreciate why Linden Lab have been reluctant to join the party. The wider metaverse has been discussed at Linden Lab, Robin Linden discussed others joining the Second Life grid back in the day when she was here and running office hours. However controlling access is a problem and the bottom line really is, Second Life is not the right project to join other grids. However that doesn’t mean Linden Lab could never engage.

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October 25, 2012

Take A Snack On Large Group Fixes

Yesterday’s rollback on the Magnum RC channel meant that some potentially decent fixes to large groups were not unveiled. These fixes are designed to deal with issues such as large groups not loading, so you can’t change your preferences etc.

However, Linden Lab seem determined to get these fixes out into the wild one way or another, so they’ve designed a workaround. The workaround includes the sometimes used Snack release channel. This code has been unleashed on some sandboxes, to test the large group fixes you will need to use a development viewer, be a member of the Second Life beta group and visit one of the listed sandboxes. Which listed sandboxes you may be asking, well the full details (including how to join the Second Life beta group and how to get a development viewer) can be found in the forum thread started by Oskar (where you can leave constructive feedback), the thread is here.

However be warned, the reason Magnum was rolled back yesterday was largely due to a bug with llSensor() in the code, that bug exists on these regions.

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