Old Linden Viewer, or Sexy Independent Viewer?

Writing from Destin, Fla.:  off-Grid until 7/26.

Many users apparently have a bugaboo with the stock viewer we download from Linden Lab for use in Second Life.  I myself am a tolerant sort, and have not had any problem locating any of my main controls since I first started up last October — yes, I’m a nerd; I’ll admit it — but there are still some idiosyncrasies that I wouldn’t mind seeing adjusted, mostly in the Inventory area.  (Any tools allowing us to wrassle that particular bugbear into submission would be welcome!)  In M Linden’s letter to Residents on the Big Blog, he notes that the recent and current Release Candidates have over 50 crash fixes, and that Linden Lab is planning to redesign the viewer interface completely, to make it easier for newcomers to navigate.  (I’m always shy about this, or just plain fearful; “increasing simplicity” usually means we’re headed for the era of what the New Hacker’s Dictionary calls “drool-proof paper.”)

However, alternatives are coming at you.  Since the viewer is open source, anyone can tinker with it in an effort to improve it; and many have already.  In fact, Dusan Writer has been running a contest, with prizes totaling L$800,000, for Resident-created redesigns of the viewer.  And some have taken him up on it.  The field has been narrowed to five finalists, whose results you can examine both on their own sites and Dusan’s.  The final five will go up against the judges on July 22 at 2:00 pm SLT, in the Remedy region (logically, I assume).  If I was able to get onto the Grid right now, it’d be an interesting event to watch as each presenter makes their case.  In the presentations I’ve seen, each has had some interesting ideas, such as grouping logically related functions closer together, improved inventory sorting and filtering, and various levels of depth for newbies to experienced users.  Some of the pictures I’ve seen so far are rough, and could use smoothing of graphical concept, but there’s enough to get the main idea of what the designer is intending.

Will any of these prove to be popular?  That’s up to the individual Resident — whether they are content with Linden’s work, willing to wait for the Lab to continue the native viewer’s evolution, or wish to venture into uncharted territory.  I suspect there will be a mix of each; despite all the yowls from various quarters for changes, some Residents are content with how the viewer is progressing.  Some, frankly, may not want to invest more time in a new learning curve.  That could be to their benefit, or their harm, either way.  Only time and experience will tell.

Thanks to Hamlet Au.

“Interesting place to wear your hair, Harper….”

We’ve all had that feeling at least once, I suppose; we teleport somewhere, and find on landing that half — if not all — of our attachments have become unattached from where they’re supposed to be, and hooked back up in our (ahem) nether regions.  You either spend 5 minutes or so unattaching and reattaching everything, or log out and back in to do an “instant fix.”  It isn’t that instant, of course, but sometimes it’s faster, depending on just how much garbage has suddenly acquired an affinity for your 6 o’clock.

Kit had a bit more extreme case than most, it seems; I discovered this the other day.  Check the comments for a little extra giggle; and it also sends you to yet another article, with even better comments!!

Lost in a Den of Thieves?

(I was going to publish this yesterday, but the Real World interfered, and I’ve lost some of my planned links.  Ah, well….  Also, a caution:  just a touch of strong language below, but justifiable in the circumstances.  Read on….)

The latest business crisis on the Grid stems from, not to put too fine a meaning on it, out and out piracy. In-world designers are suffering from more, and more aggressive, batches of slime mold who harvest skins and fashions, then reproduce them and sell them at a tithe of what the original designer charges. According to the lead of Eric Reuters’ story, one Jolly Roger, filled with the sheerest gall and covered in brass, actually sent alts into a designer’s grand opening, shouting to the crowd that the same stuff was available at his store at a fraction of the price.

It’s evident that the labels of Second Life are experiencing what has plagued RL labels for years, if not decades: the cheap knockoff industry. Name companies have fought for many a day against Asian makers and importers of fake Rolex watches, Gucci handbags and Chanel sunglasses, not to mention the entrenched battle Microsoft pits against pirated versions of Windows. (Remember pictures from the RL news of piles of knockoffs being smashed under steamrollers?) This war now spills over to the virtual economy — and it’s a lot harder to fight. We do possess the intellectual property rights to our work, and presumably the textures we use. But the only way we can wage the battle is through filing complaints based on the American Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) — something the many international Residents have a hard time doing. Or lawsuits can be filed; but, if the perpetrator lives in another country, that brings a whole new factor to the equation. Other aspects can be imagined, of course; I leave them as an exercise.

When it comes to the question of individual downloaders vs. music corporations or movie studios, I probably shouldn’t talk myself; but I tend to lean toward the individual. The companies’ policy has been for years to milk every penny they can out of the consumer, with merchandise that is dramatically overpriced relative to the cost of producing it. (I believe this; I work in the retail end of the industry.) They seem either congenitally unable to realize that they can make up in volume what they would “lose” by lowering their list prices, or are simply too greedy in upper echelons to give the consumer a break. The designers of Second Life, however, are not megacorps, despite their appearance of being so. Any Resident who applies himself/herself to designing and using tools such as Paint Shop Pro can afford to buy a quarter- or half-island and erect as palatial a store as Nicky Ree or Elika Tiramisu. These people are small business people, just like the pirates; the difference is that they’re playing fair and square, by the rules of society and the laws of their countries.  And, most importantly, the ambition and drive to make something of themselves, as well as (perhaps) that thing that burns in the craw and heart of true artists — the need, physically and emotionally, to create.

The ones who are stealing from them are thieves, louts, lazy-assed oafs and caitiff rogues, plain and simple.  Their only concern is to make a fistful of lindens, and a few lindens more, and they don’t care how they do it, or who they hurt in the process.  Their vision is focused only on the short-term gain, and how long they can milk it — and, in that, they aren’t too different from the RIAA’s member companies.  Their thefts kill the market for the original work, smother the drive for creativity (that the thieves are, ironically, relying on for their stolen goods!), and contribute nothing to the community except pollution of spirit.  They and all their kind, if you’ll excuse the passion, are an accursed breed, and should be shunned as such.

You can help on this:

• Deal only with reputable merchants — though not just the big names, please; a small creator/merchant can be just as honest.
• If you spot someone ripping off a known skin or design, report them to the actual creator, especially the name and location they’re operating on.  Also report them to Linden Lab, to back up and document any claims the artist may make under DMCA.  Snapshots can document the situation; in this case, remember to keep the interface on, to collect as much information as possible.
• Vote on SVC-676, “Stopping texture theft and stop spreading of stolen items.”  Remember that you’ll need to log in with your Second Life name and password.  The process is not difficult at all, and lets you exercise community involvement and pressure on LL to take action.

In an ideal world, real or virtual, we wouldn’t need to deal with such wolf’s-heads, for they would not exist.  Sadly, even here in Second Life, we are faced with thievery.  Let’s help in the best ways we can, support true creativity as well as legitimate commerce, and drive the thieves away.

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Besides the Reuters article,  others have tackled the problem on their own sites and blogs.  A no-doubt partial list:

• Wagner James Au, New World Notes
• SLNN
• Does this make my ass look fat?  (sic)
• Ornamental Life
• Fashion Consolidated

A Few Handy Tips

I’ve been learning a few things this weekend about Second Life, and I’m putting them up here for wider distribution.  Along with this is one trick I’ve discovered myself — though someone else may have developed it already.  But Information Should Be Free (not textures, but factual information — more on this in future), and it deserves spreading around.

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This may be a little weird, but one Resident I asked for help said that it’s happened to her as well, or something similar.  Yesterday, I was relaxing at my loft in my favorite Dark Silver skin from chroma, when I remembered I had to get a closeup photo of Nyla Cheeky’s tinyprim-based cloche cap for my piece on her gown.  I quickly threw myself back into the dress and hat and hair, and my normal skin — but then, when I mounted the posing stand I keep in my loft, I discovered that my face was still silver!  Some canny camera work gave me the shot I wanted, but you can still see the tip of my nose is rather dark (grin).

It was still the same way today, and so it was obvious that something was up, either with SL, my client, or with a corruption of the file.  Once I had struggled off of my land — Frank’s Place in Oasis Resort is number 16 on the Popular Places list, and the loft is on the corner of the land — I put up a message on Fashion Emergency asking for help.  Back came the suggestions to (a) clear my cache by going to Preferences, Network, and click the correct button; and then (b) “rebake” my skin texture by Control-Alt-R.  That did the trick, and you should remember this if you ever run into the same situation yourself.

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I love most aspects of the current Google-style Search function in Linden Lab’s client.  But how many know that the results are displayed in, essentially, a Chat window?  This lends itself to a handy idea for finding specific items from a merchant’s wares.

This can be done in two ways, either of which require an outside application.  The first calls for you to select all the text of the product list from below the teleport button, by highlighting it with your mouse cursor.  (Or you can highlight a few letters, then press Control-A to select all.)  Control-C to copy it, then you paste the text into an editor such as Notepad or EditPad.  The second way is to copy only the URL you will find at the bottom of the merchant’s page, and paste this into the address bar of your browser, e.g. Firefox, etc.  This will bring up that page from the Second Life community portal, which appears to be what the new Search polls for results.

Any road, now search the text with the Find function to locate what you’re looking for.  You’ll get the price that merchant is asking — which is nice in itself.  But you’ll also get a set of Grid coordinates where the item’s billboard is located in the store.

Back to Second Life; teleport to the store.  Once there, open the Main Map, and click inside the region you’re in currently to get a red teleport target.  Then punch in the coordinates you found from the search.  Do not teleport; this could place you inside a wall, which would be embarrassing, not to say prone to knock you out of the Grid (grin).  Rather, just close the Map after doing this, then home in on your target by following the red beacon and arrow.  Voila; you’ve found what you want, and with a minimum of hunting through the whole store.  Very useful if the merchant has something as big as ETD Designs or other places.

Multiple Personalities on One Computer

How would you like to be two people at the same time, without having someone go and call the Civil Avatars to come and take you away in the white coat with the nice, long sleeves that tie up in the back?

“Well, get a second computer, along with an alt account, and –”

[WHACK!!]

NO, ya nimrod!  You don’t need the second computer!  You just need Torley Linden!!

QuickTime Patched

News flash:  Residents can breathe (slightly) easier around streaming video frames now.  Apple’s released a new version of QuickTime (Ver. 7.3.1), which should take care of the security flaw announced last week.  Fly, don’t run or walk, to apple.com, and download the appropriate version.

Previously:

• “QuickTime Exploit Found” 

How’s This New Search Feature?

I’ve had a day or so now to play with the new release of the Second Life viewer, and I think I can safely give an opinion.

For the basic functionality of the software — providing a stable, usable interface for the Resident with the world of the Grid — Build 1.18.5 does its job quite well. This is based on experience with only the two preceding builds, but I’m tempted to say this new client is more stable in the long run than those others. What makes it difficult, besides my relative lack of experience with earlier clients, is that my DSL line tends to blink for about a minute at a time at irregular intervals. Of course, it usually chooses to cut out at the most inopportune times….

Leaving that aside, I have no complaints at all. In fact, in a session this morning, the movements of my avatar made were smoother than I’ve seen before — though this could be attributed to a low sign-in rate and nobody else in my sim (grin). However, dropping in to Franks Place for some music and chat while I took a break from this article, I found the lag rate still acceptable. Franks is usually pretty busy; if this is a result of the new client, it’s nothing to sneeze over!

But what about the much ballyhooed Search function? Well….

1.18.5 Client Released

I was planning to do some talking about the planned improvements to the Search function Linden Lab had announced for their next client build — but the Lindens beat me to the punch (grin). I haven’t experienced much of it yet, but I’ll see if I can give it a workout, and put down my thoughts here.