The practice of illegally copying or cloning objects in Second Life, as least for me, is a very big issue that should be taken seriously but there are merchants and creators specially in SLExchange who does not believe or do they care about this issue. In one thread, a creator and a merchant posted her […]
When I first signed up with Second Life, it was clearly stated that it is for people 18 years of age and above. Those who are below 18 years of age are not allowed in Second Life but that doesn’t mean they can’t enjoy Second Life, that is why Teen Second Life was created.
Reading Second Life’s blog, they posted about the release of a new candidate viewer (1.18.6 RC0) and the implementation of age verification in it.
I really don’t get the logic of it. If Second Life (the main grid) is for adults only then why add an in-world age verification system. Age verification should be done, initially, at sign-up and not after signing up.
Thus this mean that Linden Labs admits the presence of minors in the main grid and they have failed to limit access to adults only?
I’m not saying that an in-world age verification system is a bad thing. In fact, it’s a good thing because there are indeed minors in the main grid and I’ve met some of them who admitted to me that they are minors but that should be the job of Linden Labs and not the estate or land owners since the sign-up process is still controlled and conducted by Linden Labs.
Implementing an in-world age verification system can also mean that minors are in fact, if not already, welcome in the main grid. Now what’s the purpose of having a Teen Second Life?
Instead of features like this why don’t they focus on important things like viewer stability and scalability. Linden Labs is wasting manpower and resources for something that should have been part of the sign up process for the main grid of Second Life.
Again, it is assumed that everyone in the main grid are adults and if there’s going to be an age verification system it should be placed at the sign up process and not after you signed up and besides, they admitted that it’s not full proof so why waste people’s time with this thing.
©2007 Kabalyero. All Rights Reserved.
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I logged in today to find my avatar ruthed and yes, he was wearing a purple shirt and red pants but there was something strange about it. My ruthed avatar was tall for a ruthed avatar look.
The surrounding area also looked strange and different. Almost all of the textures didn’t load making everything looks sad and gray. Am I still in Second Life?
Fortunately, I wasn’t in Second Life. The avatar you saw is indeed my avatar but that photo wasn’t taken in-world Second Life. The photo or snapshot was taken in-world OSGrid.
OSGrid is like the Open Source version of Second Life’s grid. It uses OpenSim, an Open Source version of Second Life’s server or simulator code. OSGrid is pretty much like Second Life, what you can do in Second Life you can do it also in OSGrid although many features are still underdevelopment and OSGrid also uses the Second Life client. If you have Second Life installed then you can use that to login into OSGrid.
With Open Source projects like OpenSim and OSGrid, the ability to manage and operate your own region or sim is becoming closer and closer to the public’s reach.
Other Open Source Grids:
These grids, together with OpenSim, are still work in progress so don’t expect any stability from them but you can try any of them. You don’t need to download any viewer if you are just planning to visit in-world. Second Life’s viewer will work just fine. Instructions are available from their websites.
©2007 Kabalyero. All Rights Reserved.
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It seems that Second Life’s viewer can also be affected by this exploit which was recently found with Quicktime. We all know that Second Life uses Quicktime to play in-world movies and because of this the viewer can be open to exploits too. It is strongly suggested to turn off or disable videos for the mean time until a fix is developed. Also, the exploit does not only affects Second Life’s viewer but all platforms that use Quicktime.
I haven’t really used that feature for some time now. I think the last time I watched a streaming video in Second Life was almost 3 months ago. I disabled it, together with voice chat, because both features are giving me too much lag in-world.
Anyway, there is a new viewer and the windlight viewer is also updated. The problem I encountered now with the windlight viewer is that it tells me that my machine is below the required specifications to run Second Life. WHAT! I think there is a bug in windlight’s hardware detection because I can run windlight without any problems.
©2007 Kabalyero. All Rights Reserved.
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