January 2013 – Page 7

January 9, 2013January 9, 2013

Lag Storm Bernard Wreaks Havok!

“We’re starting off the new year with a bang” announced Maestro Linden and that certainly seems to have been the case as the unexpected Lag Storm Bernard (named by Loki Eliot) left many a sim creaking in its wake. There was many a warning to: Please refrain from rezzing no copy objects, making inworld L$ transactions and remember to save all builds as the storm caused the Linden firefighters to embark upon a series of rolling restarts to combat the worst case scenarios that were playing out.

Reports were coming in of performance issues, packet loss, problems rezzing, requests for a rollback, and in some cases, outright grumpiness as people, probably without hats and waterproofs, inspected the trail of chaos.

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January 8, 2013January 9, 2013

When Offers Go Wrong

Tateru Nino has received word on why the weekend Amazon offer was pulled with a reply from Peter Gray of Linden Lab:

“This offer was terminated early due to repeated attempts to circumvent the one-per-customer limit, but we saw great demand for the deal and hope to be able to offer similar special promotions in the future”

Inara Pey has decided to award Linden Lab’s Amazon offer the inaugral SL Palme d’Face Award, for not seeing the blindingly obvious. However Linden Lab don’t appear to be the only people unable to see the blindingly obvious, Adobe have been at it this week too.

Yesterday it went viral that you could download the Adobe CS2 suite for free, this included old versions of Photoshop and Illustrator, which generally won’t play nicely with the latest operating systems. This rumour started due to Adobe announcing that the activation servers would be turned off and they placed the serial numbers on their site, in no time at all word spread that CS2 was now free, people were downloading away like mad and then the links stopped working and Dov Isaacs of Adobe quashed the rumours in a forum thread:

“On behalf of Adobe Systems Incorporated …

You have heard wrong! Adobe is absolutely not providing free copies of CS2!

What is true is that Adobe is terminating the activation servers for CS2 and that for existing licensed users of CS2 who need to reinstall their software, copies of CS2 that don’t require activation but do require valid serial numbers are available. (Special serial numbers are provided on the page for each product download.) See <http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1114930>.

You are only legally entitled to download and install with that serial number if you have a valid license to the product!

– Dov”

When I say this rumour about CS2 being free went viral, I’m not talking about forum threads, it was reported by the likes of CNET and Forbes.

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January 6, 2013January 6, 2013

Amazon Offer Hits The Buffers

Well the Amazon offer was a nice idea, I’ll give Linden Lab credit for that. Alas it has ran into a few, shall we say, teething problems. A few things have came to light over the weekend. One being that Second Life had apparently expanded to Amazon in December. Inara Pey has some thoughtful commentary on the issue, pointing out that there were issues with how this was being marketed on Amazon full stop. Inara comments on the lack of information about what Second Life is.

Tateru Nino is also critical of the way this was marketed, with Second Life being listed as a game. Now the question then arises, what category should Second Life be in if not game and as someone else on Tateru’s blog post points out, Linden Lab are using Amazon game connect, that’s where the linking of your Second Life account to your Amazon account comes into play. Amazon game conncect is aimed at free to play games who want to sell digital goods, so it’s the right fit. However whereas Tateru’s criticisms may initially look different to Inara’s, further reading shows they are not, Tateru is basically criticising the lack of information about what Second Life is too and points out that in terms of expectations, listing Second Life as a game is going to lead to people having different expectations as to what they will find when they enter Second Life.

There have of course been other issues, one of which has been that people were able to link more than one avatar to their Amazon account and therefore receive multiple bonus payments in Linden Dollar form. The way to deal with this going forward is for us to have a master account for Second Life, but I’ve blogged on the benefits of the master account before.

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January 5, 2013

Is Rod Humble Doctor Octopus?

So back in August Second Life was talking about expanding to Steam. Back in August, Peter Parker was Spiderman.

Fast forward to January 2013. Second Life announces it has expanded to Amazon, not yet Steam, much to our surprise.

Fast forward to January 2013 and Peter Parker dies and Doctor Octopus is the new Spiderman! Apparently Peter Parker switches his memories and morality into Doctor Octopus and he becomes Superior Spiderman, rather than The Amazing Spiderman. Here in Second Life we have a case where in a battle the Steam deal might have died but the memories and morality have been transferred to Amazon!

Coincidence? Almost certainly but I can’t have fun with it it that way!

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January 5, 2013

Second Life Expands To Amazon

Ok, so, this is a shocker! Back in August Linden Lab announced they were expanding to Steam. However, today comes the extremely surprising news that Second Life has expanded to Amazon! I have to say, I didn’t see this coming at all, is Jeff Bezos still an investor in Second Life?

Now to use Amazon for your Second Life purchases you need to link your account:

Link your Amazon account with a new or existing Linden Research account so that you can purchase virtual items on Amazon.com and send them directly to your game.

1. Link

2. Download and Play

3. Equip

Your Amazon account will be linked to a new or existing game account using a secure, shared token

You can download your game, install it, and start playing

Purchase virtual items like currency and upgrades on Amazon.com and use them in your game

Important: When linking, you will be asked to create or sign in to an account for this game. Amazon will not collect your game account’s password. Amazon will not share any of your Amazon.com account information with the game company, including your Amazon.com username, Amazon.com password, credit card information, address, or telephone number.

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