General

The old fashioned votebox made by Alberto Linden

Some things in Second Life just die hard or not at all, even if they don't serve any purpose anymore. For example, this vote box to the left was in former days quite a common sight in Second Life.

It is a scripted device, made by Alberto Linden, and consists of 13 prims. It was used in times before traffic (aka as dwell) was invented to measure the popularity of a parcel. People just voted for it, all boxes where polled once a day and that's how they got their measures in former times. Parcel owners got some stipends out of it, if it was a popular place (or something/somehow like that). You could just take of a station standing somewhere a copy, so it was really easy to get one.

At least it had a task its existence. But when traffic was introduced, the old mechanism of getting traffic was disabled. So those voting stations don't serve any real purpose anymore, besided doing some nice sound effects when you touch them and eating away your prims.

Newbies still tend to believe those stations are useful; they are wrong. There are, though, some newer objects around, which mimic the design and look of the old station to a certain degree, but just act as counters, telling the owner which avatar voted for them at which time and date and that's it, then. But since old habits die hard I expect to see them still for quite long on the grid in many clubs, belonging to owners, which don't know better or are fond of them.

Many people, like me, have been suffering an annoying error message since months now - "Missing object from database."

It comes upon you without warning. You login, want to rez your favorite chain, skin, whatever, and you only get instead "Missing object from database." - Bam, you're blasted! You even don't get the name of the object at all, so you have to figure it out on your own what's missing - bummer!

So, what can you do against this? Not much at all. This bug has been bugging residents since months, it's spreading like a virus and still unfixed. The only thing you can hope for is that the Lindens are fixing it sooner or later, sooner would be better, of course.

There's an entry in their famous JIRA system for it called SVC-553, take a look at it. Quite interesting read and for sure tell them what you think about it. This is such a fundamental bug, because it's undermining the trust in the inventory and handiwork of the Lindens at all, that it's a real shame that it's still unfixed since August last year!

Oh, yes, external backup, anyone? No? New CTO, anyone? No? We're all busted! Until this thing is fixed it's unsafe to buy anything at all, because YOU could be the next!

I rarely comment on other software than Second Life here at all, this here is one of the rare cases.

Feeddemon, argueable the best RSS aggregator for Windows out there, is now free as in free beer. The company that bought it from Nick Bradbury a while ago, Newsgator, is now giving the fully enabled version away for free since the beginning of January. Before that you had to buy this version for 25 US$, which was also quite a good price if you take a look at the features and sheer speed this beast offers to you. You want a feature? Bet that in 99.9% of the cases Feeddemon has it and much, much more!

If you are really a news junkie, then this is the only program you'll ever need! The same goes now for NetNewsWire, the standard RSS aggregator for Mac OS X, backed up by the same company.

Since I've been away for a while from my time, now the time has come to write some new stuff. I just haven't been much in a writing mood, that's all, but still many times in Second Life.

Well, what's the matter, then?

• Teleports are still as unreliable as ever.
• The usual avatar still has only the possibility to be member in 25 groups maximum. Way too low... there's been some effort around to persuade Lindenlab to raise this number, but if it is going to be succesful? We're going to see.
• Virtual banks are no longer allowed in Second Life. A good move, especially after the bad example of Ginko Financial.
• I still don't see the open sourcing of the official server code, since this is the biggest source for revenue they have. It's that simple.
• I still wonder what's the next big thing is going to be. Now that Havok4 is being tested and WindLight is still in the Beta viewers only, SL leaves much room for improvements.
• There's been no really important open source viewer or fork of it, now one year after the opening of the source code. Why not? Because the server is still closed source.

Age verification is finally going operational. First it's going to be on a grid wide beta on the main grid, the impact of it is something to be checked out.

It's unusual that a beta feature is going to be released on the main grid, but in that case it makes sense. I just wonder what took them over 7 months to get that feature ready; it's something that's going to make Second Life more corporate friendly in the future, that's for sure.

This is quite interesting and amusing. Why interesting? Because PN and 57 Miles were on real friendly terms, they made together 12 lengthy podcasts named "Second Rant". And now they split apart - and it's the usual picture, PN got banned on the whole website (if possible, that is).

Of course, another lengthy article by PN about this event on his own blog, nothing so far on Metaversed.com yet. The reasons why? Because PN called one on the group channel of Metaversed to "fuck off", the last podcast was way too critical or so, mostly because PN is not good for his business.

Well - whatever. This is not the last thing we're going to hear from skipjack Prokofy Neva - just another finished act in the whole drama around this avatar. That's all.

If you're running a somewhat bigger group (> 1000 members or so) be careful if you want to use group chat. It's still broken, meaning quite often message B shows up before your message A does. If you are able to use it at all, that is.

And - you still cannot disable chat for all except some moderators, so a group always tends to get "spammy" from time to time. Many people now have a very short fuse if reading messages from a group chat, too. Most times it's just a waste of time, anyway.

Like Jenny saying "hi", Mike saying "hello", Jenny asking "wanna dance" and so on and on...

Hamlet Linden once goaded me and goaded me to try to ask me if I had any regrets. Did I wish I hadn't been so critical? So radical? So like "Noam Chomsky"? But that's all fake. I'm a normal, common sense person speaking normally about something that isn't normal lol. THAT's the problem. I am completely puzzled as I have no regrets.

Prokofy Neva on himself

”I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig, you get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it…" (George Bernard Shaw)

Benjamin Duranske on Prokofy Neva and why he stopped reading his blog and communicating at all with him.

We are all sometimes in a situation, where you want to get to now a new person on the block and try to get into a conversation with him or her. Some don't have a big imagination and are using always more or less the same lines, which gets very boring and they're not good, either. It's just typical like the old line "ASL please" from IRC (Age, Sex, Language).

So, how should you not try to do a first talk? A typical talk could go like this:

1. "Hi!" or "Hello!" - nothing against that.
2. "Where are you from?" Well, is this Second Life or something else? At least I don't want to share with all parts of my real life, so normally this is something you should ask later perhaps, when you know the avatar a little bit better. Rule of thumb is for me: if it's not in the profile of the avatar, don't ask.
3. "How old are you?" Even more worse. We are in Second Life, not real life, I cannot stress that enough, and why should my or your RL age matter from the beginning to somebody else? This is just wrong, wrong, wrong.
4. "Are you really a male/female?" If you should really ask that one, you've lost it there completely. That's the worst thing you could ask on a first chat ever.
5. "Are you solo?" Well, this is ok to ask in Second Life, if someone hasn't something like that in his/her profile. You still shouldn't do it on first talk ever since this gives the other side just the impression you're after a fast lay or bf/gf. It's wrong to ask this about the real life in first talk ever. If you want to ask it, do it better after a few dates; the better way is just to read the profile of the avatar. Most avatars have a statement there somewhere if they are taken or not.
6. "Wonna fuck/have some fun?" Unless you're visiting a swinger club or sex club that's also one of the dumbest things you could ask in normal places. Better just don't do it.
7. "You're beautiful." Arg. Also a very worse pickup line. Face it: almost 99.9% of all the avatars in Second Life are beautiful. Why? Because it's easy and because most like it to be that way! So telling someone already at the beginning that (s)he is beautiful is really ridiculous since normally all other avatars around are, too.
8. "You're a good dancer." Also arg. Have you ever, ever seen a bad dancer in Second Life? Have you? I for myself haven't and it's no wonder why: most dances are packed into poseballs and of course looking good. And since you're seeing in 80% of the places always 80% the same pose balls, there are no bad dancers in Second Life. We're always good dancers there.
9. "I need 10 L$ to buy myself something." If you want money, don't ask people for it you don't know, get the money yourself. Either camp somewhere on a dancing pad, just buy it or do some work to get some money.
10. Befriending someone on first conversation. Just don't do it. This normally goes wrong. Many ppl tend to clear their friends list from time to time and why should I keep up with somebody I don't really know? And if I try to befriend someone on first sight I don't really know him.