By Avatar JayR Cela
Good afternoon dear readers. Spring 2014 is just around the corner and things are looking rosy in the Open Sim Virtual World development and user experience environment. Hyper Grid is alive and vibrant with inter world Virtual Tourism. Several interchangeable V~ Currencies are soaring on the market, fashion designers have made a huge splash in the real world with absolutely stunning creations. Inter Grid vehicle creators have seen a tremendous upswing in their sales with cutting edge designs.
It's a little bit crazy out there, not everything works 100% - 100% of the time, but many users do not seem to mind. Everyone we have spoken to is having a wonderful and exciting time. As well known virtual resident and Fashion Diva, "Mary Anonymous" recently put it. " Oh I am having such a fantastic time here in the OS universe, I used to hang out in SecondLife, but it just got to be so LAME ( he-he ) and besides it's no longer relevant. A Has Been ~ Such Old News ( giggles ) And Inter~Grid entrepreneur, vehicle and weapons designer "Dave Somebody" had this to say, "I want excitement, not some creaky old fart stuff, and I'm making a ton of money here now"
So there you have it folk's Mary and Dave's sentiment's seem to be resounding throughout the OS MetaVerse by young and old alike. The once mighty SecondLife, originator, leader and previously dominant player in the Virtual Worlds environment, although still in existence no longer seems to be relevant.
So what went wrong with SL ? Rumor has it that there was a slow but steady brain drain of independent creative talent, unwittingly imposed by non-forward thinking top management at the Lab.
Once the user base realized that things were stagnating in SL, while at the same time Open Sim was bristling with new and fantastic ideas. OS by welcoming these same talented, creative independent developers ( that LL turned away ) with open arms, the flood gates of creativity opened, and by that time it was to late. I guess the Lab figured they were the only game in town ?
JayR Cela :_)
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
SecondLife : The New TPV Policy : I Can Finally Speak My Mind : How Will It Affect You : Kissing Innovation Goodbye ? ~or~ Follow The Yellow Brick Road Toadies
By Avatar JayR Cela
So what exactly does the new TPV vetting policy mean to the average user of SecondLife ? ( After yesterdays PH-FS meeting I can finally express my opinions. That meeting by the way, filled 4 Sims with 75 avatars in each one and crashed repeatedly until a Linden eventually stopped by to investigate, ultimately moving the event to a more robust server ) Not a whole heck of a lot for the immediate future. The loss of name tag viewer identification and custom coloring of those tags. So to the average or casual user that's about it. At least for now. In the foreseeable future, at least in my mind it indicates a lot less innovation outside ( or thinking outside of the box ) of what is officially sanctioned by the lab first.
What ever constitutes a shared user experience in SL must first be approved by LL to work with the standard ( stock ) version of V3 first, before it will be allowed to hit the SL grid. So let's clarify a shared user experience, and no it does not pertain to RLV enhancement's. So all the people living on the Zindra continent and Goreans can breathe a sigh of relief. Here are a few examples of a shared user experience. Multi layer clothing and attachment points, body physics, region and or individual parcel windlight settings are the easiest examples to explain.
When multi-attachment points and clothing layers were first introduced by the now defunct Emerald Viewer team a couple of years ago it created quite a stir. Unless you were using the Emerald Viewer, no one else in SL besides fellow Emerald users could see them. For instance, you were an Emerald user and had decided to wear 2 or 3 necklaces to compliment your perfect outfit. They looked just great on you and to all your friends that were using that viewer also, but walk into a night club filled with multiple SL Viewer user's and the additional 2 necklaces were off somewhere floating around your head instead of gracefully adorning your neckline. This problem was even worse when it came to multi-layered clothing. I had several experiences where I was eventually banned from a popular SL night club because I was not wearing a skirt or top. Oh I looked just fine on my screen and to others that were on the same viewer, but to the average user I was partially nude. So this was or is considered as a shared user experience, not everyone could see the same thing as I was seeing on my screen.
Eventually this lead to the Lab adapting, and improving upon both of these features, here in lies the problem. You see LL did not adapt until they were forced to. There were just too many Emerald users out there in SL Land to ignore. The new TPV agreement ( and I use the word agreement with tongue in cheek ) under the new TPV policy, developers must first make sure that #1 the new feature works with the Stock V3, that in itself is not a big deal, it's #2 that puts a kink into things. #2 any new shared user experience has got to be first approved by LL before it can be implemented. And I don't know about your experiences, but even getting LL's attention is not unlike hopping into a bucket, lowering yourself into the water well, and adding a hundred pound of bricks into the bucket with you along the way. Guess what ? Your going to sink right to the bottom.
I have witnessed this several times before in SL, the first was the Inter-Op project headed up by Zero Linden and the Advanced Working Architecture Group ( AWG ) this so called consortium of LL and some top notch coders who were SL resident's including help from IBM was supposed to usher in a new era of the Virtual World experience. Allowing people to travel freely between SL to alternate grids, Open Sim, OS Grid, Open Metaverse etc... this was and still is a kick ass idea. After 2 years that project went absolutely nowhere. At least not in SL, it is now alive and well in the Open Sim virtual universe, as the Hyper Grid protocol.
Another example is the absolutely horrid User Interface ( UI ) of the initial Viewer2. When Phillip Rosedale first introduced Project SnowStorm with the purpose of bringing online a Rapid Application Development ( RAD ) working environment into the SL viewer development process, it took nearly 2 years before someone finally admitted that the UI was a miserable excuse towards enhancing the user experience, and it still is sorely lacking. Two freaking years, what the hell kind of RAD environment is that supposed to be ? It's not ! It's a Big Black Hole ! Toss your money into the wishing well and hope for the best. What kind of incentive is this supposed to be to talented Third Party Developers ? It's not an incentive, if anything it's a great big Screw You TPV's ! You are better than we are at being creative, so you can not play here anymore ! Unless you want to Follow The Yellow Brick Road, and perhaps, just maybe the Wizzard will take pity upon you.
And then the ultimate slap in the face to the dedicated Third Party Developers, is the removal of Viewer Tags and colors, don't give me this happy horse shit that some users are being bullied into trying alternative SL Viewers. Give me a break, that has got to be the lamest excuse the LL PR department has come up with so far. I'll tell you exactly what this is. The Lab is ashamed, it is being slammed into the dust bin with the sorry excuse it calls a Virtual World Viewer. They cant for what ever reason or another make something better than the TVP's so what the hell, lets bring them all down to a level playing field, that way all the SL Viewers will be just as lame as ours, and maybe no one will notice.
Rather than embrace change, and take advantage of some truly creative thinking, the lab has chosen to play it safe. Hmmmm kinda makes me wonder where Apple Computer would be today if Steve Jobs had decided to tow the line, and drink the PC Kool-Aid ?
I think it is high time to add an extra layer of management between who is responsible for insuring the viewer code is stable, and who ultimately makes the creative decisions about what the eventual goals of enhancing, the user experience should be. If someone continues to say, well we cant do this because of that, and we cant do that because of this, do you really want to associate yourself with them ? NO ! Because they are hindering your creativity.
The people we refer to as Third Party Developers are very passionate, dedicated SecondLife users. Please notice the word "Users" there is a difference between a user and a coder ( with some grey areas ) the exception beings the TPV's, these people actually use the product. In the 1 year that I was attending SnowStorm meetings, ( before I got banned for being outspoken here on this blog ) not once in that entire period of time did I ever see a Linden even bother to change the outfit they were wearing. What does this tell you, personally it tells me they are not USERS ! They don't even have a freaking clue as to how people actually use the product. If someone is going to be in a position of making decisions ultimately determining what is and what is not enhancing the user experience, it should not be left up to only the people writing the code. It requires someone that actually goes out into SL, buys clothing, goes dancing, gets involved in sail boat or motor sport racing and so on and so on, not someone sitting in an office cubicle all day hammering away at code or going back and forth from one mindless unproductive internal office meeting to another all day.
This has got to be the most narrow minded, bone heading thinking I have seen the Lab come up with yet. The TPV's are running absolute circles around the internal viewer development department ( And they are not even on the payroll ) My God ! can you imagine if these same people actually had access to the Server Code as well ? Ha I can imagine, Open Sim, that's whats going to happen ! What possible incentive does a Passionate, Dedicated, Creative and PRODUCTIVE TPV have here ? Absolutely Zero, Zip, Nada !
I am positive, and confident when I make this statement. These tallented, dedicated, passionate, creative developers and users have better things to do with their free time, besides sitting around watching paint dry on the wall, while their creative ideas get sucked down into the abyss of typical LL procedures and gridlock.
In closing : Respectfully Mr. Rodvik Humble I know that you follow this blog on it's Twitter link. I only speak out here because I care. Please reconsider this decision, at the very least. Put someone, a creative, passionate user in control of what takes priority. No more we can'ts, We the users want to hear, we can. It may be hard, but we can do this, and we will do this, not because it is easy, we will do this because it is hard. And we intend to stay #1
JayR Cela :_(
P.S. Supposedly the next Phoenix Hour scheduled to be broadcast on Treet TV will feature Oz Linden as it's guest.
So what exactly does the new TPV vetting policy mean to the average user of SecondLife ? ( After yesterdays PH-FS meeting I can finally express my opinions. That meeting by the way, filled 4 Sims with 75 avatars in each one and crashed repeatedly until a Linden eventually stopped by to investigate, ultimately moving the event to a more robust server ) Not a whole heck of a lot for the immediate future. The loss of name tag viewer identification and custom coloring of those tags. So to the average or casual user that's about it. At least for now. In the foreseeable future, at least in my mind it indicates a lot less innovation outside ( or thinking outside of the box ) of what is officially sanctioned by the lab first.
What ever constitutes a shared user experience in SL must first be approved by LL to work with the standard ( stock ) version of V3 first, before it will be allowed to hit the SL grid. So let's clarify a shared user experience, and no it does not pertain to RLV enhancement's. So all the people living on the Zindra continent and Goreans can breathe a sigh of relief. Here are a few examples of a shared user experience. Multi layer clothing and attachment points, body physics, region and or individual parcel windlight settings are the easiest examples to explain.
When multi-attachment points and clothing layers were first introduced by the now defunct Emerald Viewer team a couple of years ago it created quite a stir. Unless you were using the Emerald Viewer, no one else in SL besides fellow Emerald users could see them. For instance, you were an Emerald user and had decided to wear 2 or 3 necklaces to compliment your perfect outfit. They looked just great on you and to all your friends that were using that viewer also, but walk into a night club filled with multiple SL Viewer user's and the additional 2 necklaces were off somewhere floating around your head instead of gracefully adorning your neckline. This problem was even worse when it came to multi-layered clothing. I had several experiences where I was eventually banned from a popular SL night club because I was not wearing a skirt or top. Oh I looked just fine on my screen and to others that were on the same viewer, but to the average user I was partially nude. So this was or is considered as a shared user experience, not everyone could see the same thing as I was seeing on my screen.
Eventually this lead to the Lab adapting, and improving upon both of these features, here in lies the problem. You see LL did not adapt until they were forced to. There were just too many Emerald users out there in SL Land to ignore. The new TPV agreement ( and I use the word agreement with tongue in cheek ) under the new TPV policy, developers must first make sure that #1 the new feature works with the Stock V3, that in itself is not a big deal, it's #2 that puts a kink into things. #2 any new shared user experience has got to be first approved by LL before it can be implemented. And I don't know about your experiences, but even getting LL's attention is not unlike hopping into a bucket, lowering yourself into the water well, and adding a hundred pound of bricks into the bucket with you along the way. Guess what ? Your going to sink right to the bottom.
I have witnessed this several times before in SL, the first was the Inter-Op project headed up by Zero Linden and the Advanced Working Architecture Group ( AWG ) this so called consortium of LL and some top notch coders who were SL resident's including help from IBM was supposed to usher in a new era of the Virtual World experience. Allowing people to travel freely between SL to alternate grids, Open Sim, OS Grid, Open Metaverse etc... this was and still is a kick ass idea. After 2 years that project went absolutely nowhere. At least not in SL, it is now alive and well in the Open Sim virtual universe, as the Hyper Grid protocol.
Another example is the absolutely horrid User Interface ( UI ) of the initial Viewer2. When Phillip Rosedale first introduced Project SnowStorm with the purpose of bringing online a Rapid Application Development ( RAD ) working environment into the SL viewer development process, it took nearly 2 years before someone finally admitted that the UI was a miserable excuse towards enhancing the user experience, and it still is sorely lacking. Two freaking years, what the hell kind of RAD environment is that supposed to be ? It's not ! It's a Big Black Hole ! Toss your money into the wishing well and hope for the best. What kind of incentive is this supposed to be to talented Third Party Developers ? It's not an incentive, if anything it's a great big Screw You TPV's ! You are better than we are at being creative, so you can not play here anymore ! Unless you want to Follow The Yellow Brick Road, and perhaps, just maybe the Wizzard will take pity upon you.
And then the ultimate slap in the face to the dedicated Third Party Developers, is the removal of Viewer Tags and colors, don't give me this happy horse shit that some users are being bullied into trying alternative SL Viewers. Give me a break, that has got to be the lamest excuse the LL PR department has come up with so far. I'll tell you exactly what this is. The Lab is ashamed, it is being slammed into the dust bin with the sorry excuse it calls a Virtual World Viewer. They cant for what ever reason or another make something better than the TVP's so what the hell, lets bring them all down to a level playing field, that way all the SL Viewers will be just as lame as ours, and maybe no one will notice.
Rather than embrace change, and take advantage of some truly creative thinking, the lab has chosen to play it safe. Hmmmm kinda makes me wonder where Apple Computer would be today if Steve Jobs had decided to tow the line, and drink the PC Kool-Aid ?
I think it is high time to add an extra layer of management between who is responsible for insuring the viewer code is stable, and who ultimately makes the creative decisions about what the eventual goals of enhancing, the user experience should be. If someone continues to say, well we cant do this because of that, and we cant do that because of this, do you really want to associate yourself with them ? NO ! Because they are hindering your creativity.
The people we refer to as Third Party Developers are very passionate, dedicated SecondLife users. Please notice the word "Users" there is a difference between a user and a coder ( with some grey areas ) the exception beings the TPV's, these people actually use the product. In the 1 year that I was attending SnowStorm meetings, ( before I got banned for being outspoken here on this blog ) not once in that entire period of time did I ever see a Linden even bother to change the outfit they were wearing. What does this tell you, personally it tells me they are not USERS ! They don't even have a freaking clue as to how people actually use the product. If someone is going to be in a position of making decisions ultimately determining what is and what is not enhancing the user experience, it should not be left up to only the people writing the code. It requires someone that actually goes out into SL, buys clothing, goes dancing, gets involved in sail boat or motor sport racing and so on and so on, not someone sitting in an office cubicle all day hammering away at code or going back and forth from one mindless unproductive internal office meeting to another all day.
This has got to be the most narrow minded, bone heading thinking I have seen the Lab come up with yet. The TPV's are running absolute circles around the internal viewer development department ( And they are not even on the payroll ) My God ! can you imagine if these same people actually had access to the Server Code as well ? Ha I can imagine, Open Sim, that's whats going to happen ! What possible incentive does a Passionate, Dedicated, Creative and PRODUCTIVE TPV have here ? Absolutely Zero, Zip, Nada !
I am positive, and confident when I make this statement. These tallented, dedicated, passionate, creative developers and users have better things to do with their free time, besides sitting around watching paint dry on the wall, while their creative ideas get sucked down into the abyss of typical LL procedures and gridlock.
In closing : Respectfully Mr. Rodvik Humble I know that you follow this blog on it's Twitter link. I only speak out here because I care. Please reconsider this decision, at the very least. Put someone, a creative, passionate user in control of what takes priority. No more we can'ts, We the users want to hear, we can. It may be hard, but we can do this, and we will do this, not because it is easy, we will do this because it is hard. And we intend to stay #1
JayR Cela :_(
P.S. Supposedly the next Phoenix Hour scheduled to be broadcast on Treet TV will feature Oz Linden as it's guest.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
SecondLife : The New TPV Policy : A Need To Know : Questions Answered Today
By Avatar JayR Cela
Well the new LL restrictions on TPV development are about to go into effect March 1, and what exactly does this mean for users of all the wonderful products so many of us have come to know and love.
Personally I have done my best to keep several opinion's to myself. There is no sense in fanning the flames, and running up a rumor mill of misinformation. So if you really want to know exactly what the lowdown is, today Feb 28 at 2:00pm SLT, Jessica Lyon, project manager of the Phoenix~FireStorm team will be live at the Rockcliffe University in SL hosting a meeting and hopefully clear up a number of unanswered questions. The event will also be carried live and available for viewing throughout SL courtesy of Treet TV.
For further information please take a look at the Feb 27 post on the Phoenix~FireStorm blog."Policy Changes Q & A Phoenix Office Hour"
http://www.phoenixviewer.com/
JayR Cela
Well the new LL restrictions on TPV development are about to go into effect March 1, and what exactly does this mean for users of all the wonderful products so many of us have come to know and love.
Personally I have done my best to keep several opinion's to myself. There is no sense in fanning the flames, and running up a rumor mill of misinformation. So if you really want to know exactly what the lowdown is, today Feb 28 at 2:00pm SLT, Jessica Lyon, project manager of the Phoenix~FireStorm team will be live at the Rockcliffe University in SL hosting a meeting and hopefully clear up a number of unanswered questions. The event will also be carried live and available for viewing throughout SL courtesy of Treet TV.
For further information please take a look at the Feb 27 post on the Phoenix~FireStorm blog."Policy Changes Q & A Phoenix Office Hour"
http://www.phoenixviewer.com/
JayR Cela
Saturday, February 25, 2012
TPV : The New Requirements : Mores Thoughts : Lots Of Alternate Grid's
By Avatar JayR Cela
I was doing a little of poking around on the Hyper grid Business blog just now. There are a Huge Amount of Open Sim Grids out there. I registered my name JayR Cela on about a half or dozen so a couple of years ago, establishing a cross platform, or grid persona, spent a few hours adjusting my appearance. And did a little bit of exploring, looking for freebee outfit's (And Be-leave Me There Plenty Of Them) basically testing various viewer's for blog article idea's.
The Feburary 15 post on Hypergrid Bussines is a fantastic read for any one interested in some recent SL vs. OS statistics.
http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2012/02/opensim-exceeds-second-life-private-regions/
JayR Cela
I was doing a little of poking around on the Hyper grid Business blog just now. There are a Huge Amount of Open Sim Grids out there. I registered my name JayR Cela on about a half or dozen so a couple of years ago, establishing a cross platform, or grid persona, spent a few hours adjusting my appearance. And did a little bit of exploring, looking for freebee outfit's (And Be-leave Me There Plenty Of Them) basically testing various viewer's for blog article idea's.
The Feburary 15 post on Hypergrid Bussines is a fantastic read for any one interested in some recent SL vs. OS statistics.
http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2012/02/opensim-exceeds-second-life-private-regions/
JayR Cela
Thoughts that sunk in about the new TPV policy changes
Mister Acacia is online
OK, I did post yesterday with the intent of just stating the facts and a bit of interpretation that I got from Oz Linden and others present at the meeting where the changes were announced. Here are my thoughts about each:
Viewer tags: They're going away. In fact, as it currently stands, your tag will not only lose it's viewer identifier, but also the color you choose, if your viewer uses color. Every tag will be the same color and will not show the viewer you're using.
Why did they do this? Well, they claim that V2 users have been bullied by TPV users to change viewers. Our Jess confirmed this does happen. So, why punish the entire grid because of some bullies? Why not AR and ban them? Or does the AR system suck as much as V2?
Personally, I think this is because they're tired of being the minority viewer. They want to level the playing field by bringing everyone else down to their standards. But that's just my opinion. If their viewer wasn't crap, maybe it wouldn't stink.
Still, removing viewer tags means first that it will be harder for folks to actually support viewers to quickly determine in a live venue which viewer you're using when you ask your question. LL, it seems, doesn't do any inworld support and so has no concept of efficiency in this situation.
Next it means that you can't be sure if someone is using a viewer that might be capable of copybot functions. And for those who ban text viewers, your ban won't work any more.
Finally, it means we lose the ability to wear the color of our choice and instead have to wear what LL says we should wear. Plus 1 for Firestorm's Contact Sets, which lets you color viewer tags for your own view at least. Make mine light blue please.
Then there's true online status. First, no viewer can contain a feature to show true online status. This doesn't exclude HUDs and the like, but the Phoenix feature has to go. And it will, Tonya pushed an update and 1602, at least, will not bypass a user's desire to hide their status.
I'm all for this, actually. If I don't want you to know when I'm online, that's my right, isn't it? But, on the flip side, vendor and other customer-facing scripts that wait until you're online to deliver things to you will stop functioning because you'll always be offline to them. Now, LL claims they thought this through. Really?
Next is kind of minor, viewers can't push viewer details unless the user opts in to such an action. If you're a Firestorm or Phoenix user, this means that when you post something into your Phoenix/Firestorm Viewer Support group, the next release of the viewers will have the Specify Viewer Type option turned off by default. No biggie, except we'll have to remind people who ask for help to turn it on so we can have the first question answered right away.
The most damaging is the one that might just spell the biggest decline in SL usership ever, and that's that no viewer can give users a "shared" experience that can't be shared by users of LL's viewer. In other words, if their viewer doesn't render it, then nobody's can.
They want all shared experience development and code to be done on their own viewer first, then released by their viewer first, before any other viewer can release it. Are they fucking kidding? They can't hire innovative developers so they have to essentially extort code from others? And not pay them, and hold that code hostage until such a time as they get around to putting it into their viewer? Which could take years?
OSGrid and InWorldz might see a development boom as a result of this as developers abandon SL, which LL seems to have foreseen since they thought this all through, and start developing and releasing viewers for other grids.
So all the shared experience features you see in TPVs now that aren't in LL's POS viewer are potentially on the chopping block for removal. I don't think LL is quite that stupid, but one never knows. Their policy has always been written with a very broad pen so they literally can dictate (oh there's that word) what viewers can and cannot do.
Well, except they cannot tell TPVs not to use other grids.
Mister Acacia is offline
OK, I did post yesterday with the intent of just stating the facts and a bit of interpretation that I got from Oz Linden and others present at the meeting where the changes were announced. Here are my thoughts about each:
Viewer tags: They're going away. In fact, as it currently stands, your tag will not only lose it's viewer identifier, but also the color you choose, if your viewer uses color. Every tag will be the same color and will not show the viewer you're using.
Why did they do this? Well, they claim that V2 users have been bullied by TPV users to change viewers. Our Jess confirmed this does happen. So, why punish the entire grid because of some bullies? Why not AR and ban them? Or does the AR system suck as much as V2?
Personally, I think this is because they're tired of being the minority viewer. They want to level the playing field by bringing everyone else down to their standards. But that's just my opinion. If their viewer wasn't crap, maybe it wouldn't stink.
Still, removing viewer tags means first that it will be harder for folks to actually support viewers to quickly determine in a live venue which viewer you're using when you ask your question. LL, it seems, doesn't do any inworld support and so has no concept of efficiency in this situation.
Next it means that you can't be sure if someone is using a viewer that might be capable of copybot functions. And for those who ban text viewers, your ban won't work any more.
Finally, it means we lose the ability to wear the color of our choice and instead have to wear what LL says we should wear. Plus 1 for Firestorm's Contact Sets, which lets you color viewer tags for your own view at least. Make mine light blue please.
Then there's true online status. First, no viewer can contain a feature to show true online status. This doesn't exclude HUDs and the like, but the Phoenix feature has to go. And it will, Tonya pushed an update and 1602, at least, will not bypass a user's desire to hide their status.
I'm all for this, actually. If I don't want you to know when I'm online, that's my right, isn't it? But, on the flip side, vendor and other customer-facing scripts that wait until you're online to deliver things to you will stop functioning because you'll always be offline to them. Now, LL claims they thought this through. Really?
Next is kind of minor, viewers can't push viewer details unless the user opts in to such an action. If you're a Firestorm or Phoenix user, this means that when you post something into your Phoenix/Firestorm Viewer Support group, the next release of the viewers will have the Specify Viewer Type option turned off by default. No biggie, except we'll have to remind people who ask for help to turn it on so we can have the first question answered right away.
The most damaging is the one that might just spell the biggest decline in SL usership ever, and that's that no viewer can give users a "shared" experience that can't be shared by users of LL's viewer. In other words, if their viewer doesn't render it, then nobody's can.
They want all shared experience development and code to be done on their own viewer first, then released by their viewer first, before any other viewer can release it. Are they fucking kidding? They can't hire innovative developers so they have to essentially extort code from others? And not pay them, and hold that code hostage until such a time as they get around to putting it into their viewer? Which could take years?
OSGrid and InWorldz might see a development boom as a result of this as developers abandon SL, which LL seems to have foreseen since they thought this all through, and start developing and releasing viewers for other grids.
So all the shared experience features you see in TPVs now that aren't in LL's POS viewer are potentially on the chopping block for removal. I don't think LL is quite that stupid, but one never knows. Their policy has always been written with a very broad pen so they literally can dictate (oh there's that word) what viewers can and cannot do.
Well, except they cannot tell TPVs not to use other grids.
Mister Acacia is offline
New TPV Policy : More Thoughts About Linden Lab ~Vs.~ Perhaps Open Sim ?
By Avatar JayR Cela
Let me open this post with several statements.
#1 I am trying to put a positive spin on this situation.
#2 Oz Linden is in a management position at the lab. He may or may not be responsible for this.
#3 The dust has not settled yet.
OK, now that I got that out of the way, there are an abundance of alternative's for third party developer's to take into consideration. Now in my (never so humble) opinion, I think it is about time to take a closer look towards moving forward into Open Sim territories.
For this particular example I will be using OSGrid and FireStorm. I am not affiliated with either. It is just my opinion. OSGrid is a very stable, and extremely inexpensive platform for developers to migrate to. No one is going to stifle future development here, in fact it is encouraged to the 9th degree. And FireStorm is my favorite viewer.
Oh yeah, did I mention that OSGrid is HyperGrid enabled ? This opens a much broader range of potential avenues for any developer than the stagnating, and shrinking SL platform does.
Vivox voice, mesh and widlight work also. So if anyone out there is interested in looking deeper into the quickly growing Open Sim frontier, I can point you towards no better resource than Maria Korolov's blog Hypergrid Business http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/
And you may want to take a look at this recent post on the Glassdoor blog about what it is like to work at LL.
Linden Lab – “A once great place to work with an exciting product now on the decline”
http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Linden-Lab-RVW1352577.htm
In closing I would like to leave you with this thought. Usually when a company open sources one of their projects it is because the internal development team is unable to bring the project to fruition in a timely manor. Sometimes people get discourgaded and the project will fork. I guess this just does not seem to be the case here. At least in the Lab's mind.
Any ways the dust still has not settled on this, but perhaps it may just be time to say. Catch ya later LL ~ or ~ Adios Amigos.
JayR Cela
Let me open this post with several statements.
#1 I am trying to put a positive spin on this situation.
#2 Oz Linden is in a management position at the lab. He may or may not be responsible for this.
#3 The dust has not settled yet.
OK, now that I got that out of the way, there are an abundance of alternative's for third party developer's to take into consideration. Now in my (never so humble) opinion, I think it is about time to take a closer look towards moving forward into Open Sim territories.
For this particular example I will be using OSGrid and FireStorm. I am not affiliated with either. It is just my opinion. OSGrid is a very stable, and extremely inexpensive platform for developers to migrate to. No one is going to stifle future development here, in fact it is encouraged to the 9th degree. And FireStorm is my favorite viewer.
Oh yeah, did I mention that OSGrid is HyperGrid enabled ? This opens a much broader range of potential avenues for any developer than the stagnating, and shrinking SL platform does.
Vivox voice, mesh and widlight work also. So if anyone out there is interested in looking deeper into the quickly growing Open Sim frontier, I can point you towards no better resource than Maria Korolov's blog Hypergrid Business http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/
And you may want to take a look at this recent post on the Glassdoor blog about what it is like to work at LL.
Linden Lab – “A once great place to work with an exciting product now on the decline”
http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Linden-Lab-RVW1352577.htm
In closing I would like to leave you with this thought. Usually when a company open sources one of their projects it is because the internal development team is unable to bring the project to fruition in a timely manor. Sometimes people get discourgaded and the project will fork. I guess this just does not seem to be the case here. At least in the Lab's mind.
Any ways the dust still has not settled on this, but perhaps it may just be time to say. Catch ya later LL ~ or ~ Adios Amigos.
JayR Cela
Friday, February 24, 2012
SecondLife TPV Policy Changes : Op-Ed By JayR Cela
By Avatar JayR Cela
HI there everyone, I just finished reading my fellow columnist, and friend Mister Acacia'a TPV policy changes, post. And I just had to make a few observations here.
Let me start off by saying that "The Sky Is Not Falling !" ( at least not yet )
New TPV, and TOS changes have come and gone over the years. Many of us are still here, for myself it has been since September 2005. In that period of time a lot of people freaked out at first, but once the dust settled, everything just got back to normal again.
The only thing I can really think of at this point ( since I did not attend the meeting ) as far as the Viewer Name Tag issue goes. It must come as a HUGE Embarrassment for the Lab that such a small, teeny tiny, its'y bits'y, almost minuscule percentage of SL resident's chose to use the the official LL Viewer. LOL all ya have to do is go to any popular place in SL to witness that for yourself.
There are a few other issue's I can think of that might be affected as well, but there is no sense in speculating at this point.
Oh by the way, I have not been in SL very much the past couple of weeks after my recent heart surgery. I've just been recovering, ( more mentally than physically ) and involved with an audio editing project in RL. Doing a lot of reading the new software instruction manuals too.
Believe me I will know more soon.
Thanks for reading the Blog, bye for now
JayR Cela :_)
HI there everyone, I just finished reading my fellow columnist, and friend Mister Acacia'a TPV policy changes, post. And I just had to make a few observations here.
Let me start off by saying that "The Sky Is Not Falling !" ( at least not yet )
New TPV, and TOS changes have come and gone over the years. Many of us are still here, for myself it has been since September 2005. In that period of time a lot of people freaked out at first, but once the dust settled, everything just got back to normal again.
The only thing I can really think of at this point ( since I did not attend the meeting ) as far as the Viewer Name Tag issue goes. It must come as a HUGE Embarrassment for the Lab that such a small, teeny tiny, its'y bits'y, almost minuscule percentage of SL resident's chose to use the the official LL Viewer. LOL all ya have to do is go to any popular place in SL to witness that for yourself.
There are a few other issue's I can think of that might be affected as well, but there is no sense in speculating at this point.
Oh by the way, I have not been in SL very much the past couple of weeks after my recent heart surgery. I've just been recovering, ( more mentally than physically ) and involved with an audio editing project in RL. Doing a lot of reading the new software instruction manuals too.
Believe me I will know more soon.
Thanks for reading the Blog, bye for now
JayR Cela :_)
TPV policy changes
Mister Acacia is online
I'm writing this as the Third Party Viewer Developer meeting is taking place. They're adding some changes to the TPV policy, all of which are prohibitions. Here they are:
Of course these changes are not being well received. Basically it means that if you can't do it in the latest LL viewer, you can't do it in any viewer. Why is something only LL can say, and they're not saying anything but a politically-spun answer. The real answer seems pretty obvious.
I invite you to discuss this with LL.
Mister Acacia is offline
I'm writing this as the Third Party Viewer Developer meeting is taking place. They're adding some changes to the TPV policy, all of which are prohibitions. Here they are:
- 2.a.iii : You must not provide any feature that circumvents any privacy protection option made available through a Linden Lab viewer or any Second Life service.
- 2.i : You must not display any information regarding the computer system, software, or network connection of any other Second Life user.
- 2.j : You must not include any information regarding the computer system, software, or network connection of the user in any messages sent to other viewers, except when explicitly elected by the user of your viewer.
- 2.k : You must not provide any feature that alters the shared experience of the virtual world in any way not provided by or accessible to users of the latest released Linden Lab viewer.
Of course these changes are not being well received. Basically it means that if you can't do it in the latest LL viewer, you can't do it in any viewer. Why is something only LL can say, and they're not saying anything but a politically-spun answer. The real answer seems pretty obvious.
I invite you to discuss this with LL.
Mister Acacia is offline
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
My Life : Everything is Cool
By Avatar JayR Cela
Well I went into the hospital this morning and was put under, they inserted a laser device in order to repair my heart. I'm glad to say everything went as it was supposed to.
So I guess I will be around, and keep continuing to piss off just about everyone / LOL
JayR Cela :_)
Well I went into the hospital this morning and was put under, they inserted a laser device in order to repair my heart. I'm glad to say everything went as it was supposed to.
So I guess I will be around, and keep continuing to piss off just about everyone / LOL
JayR Cela :_)
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Virtual Worlds : I'm hooked On GIMP
By Avatar JayR Cela
Hey if ya have not played around with The Graphic Image Manipulator ( GIMP ) you are really missing out on a free gift. Once ya get used to it, ya can pretty much do anything. It's way Kool !
http://www.gimp.org/
JayR :_)
Hey if ya have not played around with The Graphic Image Manipulator ( GIMP ) you are really missing out on a free gift. Once ya get used to it, ya can pretty much do anything. It's way Kool !
JayR :_)
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