Kategorie: Personal

My experiences with the voice beta

There was yesterday the announcement about the public availibility of the voice beta version of Second Life. Since I had spare time and a new, shiney headset, I downloaded the special beta client and gave it a try.

The first thing you’re going to notice is that you are not seeing much difference to the normal beta clients at all. Voice capability is disabled by default, so you have to enable it by yourself in the preferences. The second thing I experienced is – it’s much better to enable voice in the so called push-to-talk mode – meaning, that you’re only transmitting audio into the game world when you’re pressing down some key. Otherwise all people around you can be hearning echos if your soundcard is not configured correctly, many computers tend to transmit much noise, well, let’s just say it’s a waste of bandwidth and computing power.

I know how voice is being handled by services like Skype. Skype automatically adjusts the microfon volume while you speak, so that the microfon level is always nice mannered and not too loud. In the Second Life beta you’ve got to adjust the microfon volume on your own, so you should better now how to setup the volume mixer under Windows or Macintosh. Yup, there’s no beta for this available at the moment under Linux.

Well, if you’ve got your settings then right you can enjoy the voice capabilites of the beta – or not. First you need to get to a region, though, that is voice enabled in the beta grid. There are not many available and you can see a list of enabled regions in the release notes of the beta client. According to Lindenlabs there are these voice enabled regions at the moment on the beta grid: Abbotts, Lusk, Pulveria, Spaceport Alpha, Morris, Da Boom, Tehama and Balance. BTW, it’s not advisable under Windows to use the Shift-Key for enable the push-to-talk mode, since this is per default enabled by Windows to enable some advanced features for people with disabilities after pressing it fives times. Better use another key or turn those features of in the system settings of Windows.

„My experiences with the voice beta“ weiterlesen

Fun with crashes

It’s nowadays not funny anymore to do business or events in Second Life. The rule of the thumb is: the more people are online the same time, the more instable and slower the grid becomes. We had an event yesterday in the garden, the sim is able to hold 40-42 people at the same time. The owner even requested a reset of the sim one hour before the whole thing started.

And what happened: About 30 minutes after the event started, the sim was full, the whole sim crashed. We were lucky it crashed only one time, though, other sims have been reported to crash several times on Saturday while being full, e.g. for a wedding.

So, what are the consequences you should make? Well, it’s obvious, though SL is an excellent platform, that it has got major scaling problems at the moment. So, if you really want to do events in it or make serious business or teaching, better find dates where not so much people are online, to get a better experience of the grid. It’s probable that when there are many people online that the grid is going to behave strange and has hiccups, again, and this is getting worse day by day at the moment.

About Twitter, the newest hype in town

There’s a new hype in the town called „Web 2.0“ hype – it’s being called Twitter. What it is about?

To cite themself:

A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? Answer on your phone, IM, or right here on the web!

So it’s basically about you telling the rest of the world what you’re doing right now in your pitiful life. Not more or less, period.

Frankly said: why should I care about that rubbish at all? I value my privacy and for sure I am not going to tell the whole Internet what I am doing right now, where it still can be found after years and forever!

For an example, how this might look like, just follow this link. So it’s basically a very stripped down form of a diary with some community features around it. Period. Boooring…

The SLLA is pointless

I’ve included the RSS-feed of the SLLA blog some days ago to my RSS aggregator, just because I’m curious and wanted to know this group a little better beside the media coverage they got last week.

Well, I read the article about „army rally and protest.“ They’re claiming that they want to install a government in SL made by the people. Sounds like a nice idea at first, but I’ve read that about 2-3 years ago the Lindens already asked the people if they want such a thing – the answer was a big NO back then.

Two quotes from the article are:

Our demand is clear: we want a debate between SLLA and Governor Linden. Where was the openness for dialogue when First Land was taken away, or when Linden Labs started selling chunks of our world to IBM, Sony and Warner Brothers?

Why should Lindenlabs care at all? They are a business company, not the welfare, they need to make money, they even more need to make profit. They gain profit when people enter the world, or companies, it doesn’t matter. Profit is necessary to continue the development of this platform.  Well, and to the first land issue – better such a reaction than no at all, I guess. The original intention of first land was being perverted by land bots and such.

From our actions at American Apparel last year to our resistance to corporate control of our AV lives, we are building a movement together! We will strike again very soon, count on it.

Why am I reminded of Monty Python right now and must think of the People’s Front of Judea? Whatever.

The one who owns the technology makes the rules, plain and simple. If you are not satisfied by the rules you are free to leave the platform.  I mean, why should Lindenlabs care at all about these people? It’s nice in the form that they’re making free media coverage for the game, makes even more nice PR when they’re willing to meet with them, but the truth is – they’re usefuls idiots at the moment. Not more, not less.

Disposable pawns for the Lindens, so to speak. If they really would like to get rid of them they can do it anytime without much effort at all.

Exactly to the point of the participation of the people Prokofy Neva (…) wrote an article some time ago in his blog called „The adventure capitalists“. To cite the main passage of it:

Dear Philip,

All of us who pay tier, collectively, pay Linden Lab something like $9.5-$10 million a year (I’m not sure how many total hidden/non-hidden sims there are with tier and island billing). It’s as much as a venture capitalist. We’re the adventure capitalists.

Could we as a group get a seat on your board? We could run elections among the 42,000 mainland landowners and the thousands of island owners (about 50,000 total perhaps?) The person who was acclaimed by assembly or voted for by direct ballot could serve on your board. At least you could consider having that seat in an advisory, non-voting capacity –though the stake is real. It’s 70 percent of your revenue, correct?

The first comment on this blog entry was made by Allana Dion in that way:

Dear Wallmart CEO,

All of us who shop in your store, collectively, pay your company something like $9.5-$10 million a year (I’m not sure of the exact figures). It’s as much as a venture capitalist. We’re the adventure capitalists.

Could we as a group get a seat on your board? We could run elections among the 42,000 daily shoppers and the thousands of weekly shoppers (about 50,000 total perhaps?) The person who was acclaimed by assembly or voted for by direct ballot could serve on your board. At least you could consider having that seat in an advisory, non-voting capacity –though the stake is real. It’s 70 percent of your revenue, correct?

She’s right there. What Prokofy Neva and the SLLA want is something like this: when you’re going to a bar/pub/restaurant, it is run by an innkeeper in one way or another. But they want to make rules for the innkeeper how to run it and this is not going to work. Well, they’ve got no right to make these rules or any kind of claim to do so. And that’s why the SLLA is pointless.