Alphaville Herald Daniel Voyager Dwell On It Massively New World Notes Second Life® NewsIn what can only be described as “Holy Fucking Moly!”, the Second Life most popular sim chart has been infected with bots. Two of the sims were infected a while ago, and two new ones just recently. There is a lot of speculation as to what is going on in some of the Arabian bot-infested sims. Please use extreme caution when visiting QMRNA, KSA, Arab Avatar, and Miami Island. Enter at your own risk.
Image Credit: New World Notes
Holy Moly!
Although it never actually went away, camping appears to have made a huge comeback recently. Just today I was out looking for some pizza when I stumbled across a sim labeled ‘KSA al7ejaz land’ that contained 55 campers. Quite an amazing sight. They all looked rather bored and hungry. Maybe next time I stop by I’ll bring them some pizza.
I sort of wonder if all these new bot and camper occurences could be tied into Hamlet’s mysteries or not.
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/al7ejaz%20land/19/62/3964
Still unable to locate a decent pizza joint, I travel onward and find another location that has even more campers. Over 65 at this joint. It’ called Kingdom of Jordan. What is odd about this place is that the campers were sitting on the same exact bench as the last location, and the room was located at about 4000 meters in the sky and there was a mysterious spinning orb with the words Voodoo Sploder written on it, same as in al7ejaz. Quite disturbing to say the least, and these benches do not look comfortable at all. They make my butt hurt just looking at them.
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Jordan/130/43/4000
They really know how to stack-em and rack-em over at Club Stacks on Miami Island. In the sky at around 2100 there are two large orbs containing about 30 bots. You’ll need a flight feather to see them:
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Miami%20Island/58/221/2099
Perhaps the fixed search is causing a re-surgence of bots as of late.
Holy Moly!
There I was just minding my own business over at Planet Michael when I decided to check in on the Second Life grid. That’s when I spotted them. Over 75 bots hanging out at the Virgin Islands. At first I was a a little shocked because bot swarms that big are usually not around for very long, as to be noticed, however, this particular bot swarm has hung around long enough to make the very top of the charts over at New World Notes. I’m not sure how Hamlet missed this one, especially because I e-mailed him twice about it. Perhaps he’s just going crazy again. However, there they are. At the top of the chart. I wonder how long they will stay there. This is most bizarre indeed.
Image Credit: New World Notes
Be sure to mark your calendar for this amazing event. In just 2 short weeks, Club Republik will be hosting a live Second Life mixed reality event at the real life San Francisco Club DNA Lounge. For anyone who missed the event last year, this is your second chance to make Second Life history.
All you have to do is show up at Club Republik on Saturday, August 6th at 9PM SLT. The BootieSL party starts then and will be going all night long. The SL residents who show up will have their avatars broadcast onto very large projectors strategically placed all throughout the real life Club DNA Lounge and the music with dj performances from the event will be streamed into Club Republic. There are also close to a dozen camera’s placed throughout the DNA Lounge that are webcast for your viewing pleasure. For those of you who are lucky enough to live in or around San Francisco, you’ll be able to attend the real life event at the DNA Lounge. Last year both the real and virtual clubs were packed and Yoz Linden even made a special appearance. This year should be even more amazing. Be sure to get the word out!
Direct TP to the club: http://slurl.com/secondlife/NuRepublik/110/177/25
Club DNA Lounge Live Camera Feeds: http://www.dnalounge.com/webcast/justin.tv.html
(This event is even better if you have a multi-monitor setup – 1 monitor for SL and 1 for the live Club DNA cameras)
Review and highlights of last year’s event:
http://infinitesunset.wordpress.com/2010/07/11/event-bootie-second-life-mashup-my-mind/
Great Wicked Googalee’s!
In what can only be described as shocking, bizarre, and borderline insane, it would appear that the world’s first Google+ bot has passed a ‘proof of concept’ stage. With this new crazy bot, it looks possible to instantly add over 5,000 friends to your Google+ circles for instant spam. Just what Google+ doesn’t need. Interesting video below.
Holy Moly and Great Gonzo Garbonzo Beans!
This just in… Under the wire, it appears that according to sources over at the Alphaville Herald that there may be a new twist on an older Second Life security glitch that is able to be exploited in such a way that it allows rezzing of objects on no-rez or restricted land. Perhaps even a new HUD to make the exploit easier to use or something. This means that possibly, someone could rez a Meero on your land, not feed it, and let it die of starvation. At this point, PETA would be all over your ass. For more on this late breaking news, head on over to the source…
Today the Lost Gardens of Apollo have closed down for public viewing due to a financial crisis and high tier costs sustained by the owner of the simulation, Dane Zander. There is a last plee of hope being sent out to Linden Lab at this time. If the call is answered, the simulation could be saved.
Whether or not the Lost Gardens of Apollo are saved, only time will tell, time that only Bill Paxton can predict…
A small excerpt that Dane has posted in the NWN blog comment section is included below:
“I have taken the liberty to write Linden Labs about this, and have offered Apollo to them – to be an official Linden Labs owned and run sim. That way, it could perhaps stay open. Let us give them time to consider that, and see what happens. Linden Labs have felt the crisis as well, so I completely understand their need to be “in business for the money”, and not do these things without due consideration. While I wait, I am moving my RL home, and backing up my SL one – Apollo.
So here we are – the simulator I once swapped for a high-priced Mainland sim with Anshe Chung, and made to my liking, will end its long life now. It was just closed to the public. So, once again. Thank you all. For everything. Most sincerely yours” -Dane Zander
I wasn’t out looking for trouble last week… It was a nice night to go hang gliding and so I chose the peaceful location of Amydria, a very nice water-front community with boats, docks, and decent food. I started my descent at 4500 meters dropped from a Space Harrier that was in the neighborhood. As I descended down on Amydria, I picked up an unsual wind current that started to steer me away from the sunset I was heading to when out of nowhere….Smash!
Next thing I knew I had smacked right into a large light blue multi-compartment box that was just hovering in the sky around 4000 meters. The box appeared to be completely surrounded by a slight coating of transparent aluminum. Needless to say, it was this aluminum alloy that completely destroyed my hang glider causing it to go crashing to the ground. Luckily, I always carry with me a set of small suction cups which I was able to pull out at just the right moment. I grabbed onto the large blue floating box and slid my way in through a small opening where the compartments intertwined.
Once inside I used a small flash grenade to get a glimpse and to my shock and amazement, there they were. Fourteen bots were in one compartment, and 5 in another. They were all lifeless, they spoke not a single word. I was horrified and not only that… I was trapped. I had no way to get back to the ground save jumping and hoping I wouldn’t be crushed when I hit the icy ocean waters below. So I remembered what Ken Uston would do in a situation like this. From his book Mastering PacMan, he taught me the fine art of improvisation. As luck would have it, I had a small brand new package of dental floss with me I had received from the dentist the day before. It was in my back pocket. I used the dental floss to create a makeshift parachute out of the clothing that the bots were wearing. I decided luck was on my side, jumped out of the box and opened my chute at 1500 meters. The makeshift parachute opened and I drifted down to safety.
Time for a Heineken.
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Amydria/138/33/4096
Massively has just posted a 34 minute audio interview with Rod Humble. I listened to it while eating some vanilla ice cream because I couldn’t sleep. The interviewer is a 7 year old SL resident and some of the questions were very good. Rod seemed to handle most of the questions quite well so get yourself some ice cream and give it a listen.
Finally! What is sure to be an amazing movie that many Second Life residents have been waiting an eternity for, Neuromancer is now confirmed to begin filming in 2012. Check out the info over at Slashfilm.com. And for those of you who missed it, the US version of Johnny Mnemonic is finally out on Bluray in 2 weeks!
Rod Linden has just announced the return of the Resident Help Network. This program significantly helps new Second Life users get acclimated and it was greatly contested when it was originally dropped some time ago. Many will be happy to see it return. This program will most definately help in the user retention area.
In a stunning move which looks to be aimed at helping the Second Life Furry community, Rod Humble recently announced “But, we know that the beauty of Second Life is in the diversity and richness of how we choose to represent ourselves inworld. So, we’re adding 12 animal and 12 robots and we’ll soon have vehicles too”.
This announcement was made in the new dynamic login screen which also looks to be a rather nice upgrade compared to the old look. In the post, Rod Humble explains that the new Second Life Basic mode will include many more avatars, including the animals, which may be good news for furries since the original Basic mode did not include animals or anything that even slightly resembled a furry. It is good to see that Rod understands SL and is helping to cater to a wider audience. For anyone who hasn’t read the post yet, be sure to check it out. It is filled with a ton of positive items, including, a hint at possible upcoming lag fixes.
In a most bizarre, crazy, and unprecedented move that can only be described as “HOLY ‘WTF?’ MOLY!”, Facebook locked out Ars Technica from its own Facebook page and many others due to possible bogus copyright infringement complaints. According to Ars Technica, there may be an official Facebook statement made sometime soon that will explain this most unnerving predicament. Hopefully, this very same incident does not happen to Second Life, otherwise, there will be massive chaos in the streets, and in all the gorean temples, and in other places, like those places where they burned all the sculpties awhile back. Those were very scary times and nobody wants to see that happen ever again…
“Everyone who uses Facebook is on some level a Facebook partner. A thoroughgoing social site, it is nothing without its users. That Facebook would so harshly judge and move against its most valuable assets without any semblance of fairness or evenhandedness is disappointing.”
“Prior to the account lockout, we had received no notices of infringement or warnings. Truly, we awoke to find that Facebook had summoned a judge, jury, and executioner and carried out its swift brand of McJustice all without bothering to let us know that there was even a problem.”
It’s that time of year again. Time to upgrade, and for Second Life that means some serious hardware…
Unfortunately, I don’t have the mega-bones to spend on the kind of serious hardware that Second Life could utilize, like the very latest dual quad core Xeon system that would be perfect for Second Life’s insatiable CPU requirements, so instead, I opted for the reasonably priced single i7-2600K quad core CPU. This made a nice jump in Second Life performance coming from the 4 year old Intel Q6600 processor. The newer i7-2600K 3.40 GHz CPU is overclockable and can easily reach almost 5.0 GHz on air. That is power most awesome!
In terms of Second Life performance, this means you can actually run with dynamic shadows and framebuffer objects with detail level fairly high including 4x and 8x anti-aliasing. Crowded sims and super draw distances still slow your framerates down quite a bit however. Still waiting for that problem to some day become fixed. If you happen to be looking for new and exciting ways to improve your Second Life, perhaps it’s time for some retail therapy. Upgrade your system and you will be improving your Second Life at the same time. Besides, Duke Nukem and Serious Sam sequels are just around the corner…
If you live in Second Life and you are the type of person who is very over-protective when it comes to your Ozimals, you may want to stock up on security items for when this guy comes around to your place. Word on the street is that he is setting up all of this gear so that he will be able to go on a massive Ozimal hunt later this year. No word on the exact dates just yet…
Be afraid…Be very afraid…
As of late, the amazing Second Life Project Snowstorm beta viewers have really been something to see with new code released very frequently. Last week they finally even added avatar physics that we have been waiting for. Just look at those supple pouting and bouncing breasts.
Time to d/l the latest version….and bring the Heineken!
With the recently released Unreal Engine 3 Tech Demo, we are once again reminded of how badly Second Life needs a graphics overhaul. Hopefully, Rodvik Linden will be addressing the Second Life graphics deficiencies in 2011. If I might make a suggestion, perhaps a graphics engine that is on par with the Unreal Engine 3 would be perfect for Second Life. Just look at those gorgeous real-time graphics. Can’t you just imagine what a graphics engine this good could do for the Second Life club scene? I can… Watch the video, and when you get to the part that shows the XXX neon sign, just imagine that is the entrance to your favorite Second Life nightclub.
The more I read about China being censored, the more I think China should have a larger presence in Second Life.
A while back, China did the most despicable thing and arrested over 5,300 people for having porn websites, and we know China blocks Youtube, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., but perhaps China isn’t blocking or censoring the SL grid just yet, and it could be our opportunity to get information out to Chinese residents. Anyway, this latest alleged Chinese government attack on Google G-Mail is quite nefarious.
Shame on you Chinese government. Shame on you.
In case you missed it, Engadget recently published a very good article about the right to be anonymous online. The article goes into some detail about why people should have the right to be anonymous as they use the internet, and I think the same holds true for Second Life residents as well. It’s a very good read if you get the chance and the next time someone tries to sell you on Facebook integration, you’ll know they must be crazy.
In an article related to Second Life anonymity, Little Tateru posted an update on the RedZone-like Second Life alt detector known as QuickWare Alts Pro which has just been yanked from Second Life almost as quickly as it arrived. It was designed to detect your Second Life alts by exploiting the Second Life media glitches that have been around for many years now. Soft Linden slammed the magic ban hammer down and then shouted out very loudly “No More!“
Well, he didn’t actually say it in those exact words, but just pretend he did…
Now the important question is, when will the media glitches be repaired?
In another bizarre event related to online identities, the likes of which I hope we never see happen in Second Life, a user who posted a negative comment in an online website forum was banned from the game Dragon Age 2.
Late Breaking Update (3-12-11):
Holy ****ing Moly! In yet another incident related to the Redzone fiasco, the Herald is now reporting that the Redzone password database may have just been compromised which could lead to those users Second Life account passwords being in jeopardy for people who sometimes use the same passwords with different user accounts. Also potentially at risk, “over 1.6 million unique IP addresses connected to various avatars in the database, and geo-location tools to identify real life location of Second Life players monitored by zf Redzone”.
Another Update! The Herald is now temporarily offline. It just doesn’t get any stranger…
It has been quite the roller-coaster ride for online identities this week, that much is certain. It’s time for a Heineken.
