Category: News

Help People Island closes today

Posted on by Inara Pey
Help People Island

Today marks the end of an era in resident-to-resident  help in Second Life: Help People Island will be closing its doors today, with a final farewell party at 13:00 SLT.

Help People Island (HPI) was founded six years ago and has provided resident/volunteer help to other residents that includes everything from self-learning through to one-to-one assistance and teacher-lead classes in all major aspects of living in Second Life and working with the tools and technology, including the Viewer. Around 1,000 people visit the island per day seeking help and advice – and also simply to visit and have a little fun during one of the HPI parties. Over the last six years, an estimated 500,000 residents have passed through the island.

One of the self-help areas

HPI has been sponsored by Help People Inc., a private research and development company founded in 1969 to study human behaviour in the service industry with the stated purpose to learn how to increase sales through service. Sadly, the Board of Directors of Help People Inc. have decided it is now time for the company to focus its efforts elsewhere; hence the closure of HPI.

A farewell statement to all those that have been involved in HPI in part read:

“HPI has been a staple within the Second Life Community for 6 years, it’s hard to believe it started out on a small little area that barely got 10 people per day, in comparison to the 1000+ per day that we now have. Over the years, with the help and perseverance of all of you, it exploded into the greatest of ALL Help Group’s in Second Life and we feel what we have all contributed will in fact linger on for year’s to come. In our history within Second Life, we have helped and assisted in excess of 500,000 residents.

“It’s absolutely unbelievable how many people we have all touched, but there is nothing but fact in those number’s. We cannot begin to describe the amount of joy that we have all felt on a daily basis just knowing that ALL of us were and are in fact making a difference. A positive difference. And while this is an extremely sad time, that joy is even larger.”

Classroms and auditorium

Groups related to HPI will also be closing following the party and closure of the sim. It is hoped that a forum for those interested will be established in the next few months at Help People Inc’s website, and the letter sent to group members asks that they keep their eyes on that site for news once the sim and Groups in-world have closed. It is not clear as to whether the HPI blog will close – one hopes it will be left as an archival document.

HPI tourist office: helping people find their way around SL’s sights

The Farewell Party

Billed as HPI’s “Goodbye, Farewell Amen” party, the event will commence at 13:00 SLT, and feature “Five DJ and three hours of music, dance, fun” to take place at the Island’s Sky Garden. The five DJs participating in the event are:

  • The Lord Charles
  • Kahuna Chrome
  • DJ Timmy
  • Kew the Music
  • Keif Denimore

The venus for the party is HPI’s Sky garden – teleport to Help People Island (teleports routed to an arrival point) and look for a teleport totem (right) – one is located on the right side of the arrival area plaza.

Another code breakage hits SL

Posted on by Inara Pey

On top of the recent attachment update bug, JIRA (SVC-7283) (as well as the releated SVC-7294) – there is now another scripting breakage that has been deployed to the grid.

PRIM_PHYSICS used in the likes of llSetPrimitiveParams, no longer functions as expected on server release code 11.09.09.240513, leaving scripted vehicles and animals (among other things) not working, malfunctioning and/or running amok.

A JIRA (SVC-7305) has been raised for the issue, which has a widespread impact.  And it has to be said that the JIRA is starting to read like a poorly executed farce, with LL responsible for the script.

  • It appears one creator of scripted vehicles running on the mainland which are now effectively out-of-control, and her account has apparently been suspended as a result
  • Other creators are reported issues with potentially thousands of sold products which, while there is a potential code alternative available (via STATUS_PHYSICS) – this still means considerable re-coding for many creators and a massive product update (and why should they, when the cause isn’t their fault?)
  • Responses from Linden Lab are hinting a fix (again) will not be available for RC channel release until next week, with the implication a full roll-out could be two weeks away – and that, despite the clear severity, there is resistance to accelerating the fix within the company!

Two breaks to basic scripting functionality in Second Life coming a week apart isn’t liable to win Linden Lab awards in the popularity stakes. It’s also liable to have the tinfoil hat brigade nodding to themselves and muttering comments about event numbers, coincidences and conspiracies.

As if we don’t already have enough of that doing the rounds.

The simple guide to Age Verification

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update July 10, 2012: This article is now out-of-date as a result of Linden Lab changing the Age Verification Process. For updated information, please refer to this blog post. 

Back in July of this year, I reported on Linden Lab’s overhaul of the Age Verification process (and the small part I may have played in the thinking around it – pardon the horn toot).

It would appear that either people are continuing to avoid verifying themselves (hardly surprising given Linden Lab didn’t actually, well, tell anyone about the changes) or are unaware of any reason why they might want to verify themselves. As a result, Linden Lab are, some time in the next two weeks, going to be e-mailing all those using SL who are over the age of 18 to advise them of the Age Verification process and what it means.

If you’ve not already age verified and wish to gain access to all of Second Life (assuming you are over 18) and get ahead of Linden lab’s mail-out. Here’s how:

  • Log on to http://www.secondlife.com. This will display your Dashboard
  • On the left of the Dashboard is a panel with your name at the top. In this panel are a number of options: ACCOUNT, EVENT, etc.
  • Click on ACCOUNT. This will expand a list of account-related options
  • Locate the AGE VERIFICATION option on the drop-down list (highlighted, right) and click on it
  • You will be taken to the age verification page.

The Age Verification page will display a form requesting that you confirm your date of birth (as given when you signed-up for Second Life. If, for any reason your date of birth is incorrect or doesn’t display, you can select the month, day, year by clicking the appropriate arrow button and making a selection for each from a drop-down list.

To confirm your age, make sure you click on the confirmatory check box, then click on SUBMIT. That’s it.

You’ll be taken to a page confirming you’ve been age verified with the message, “You now have access to Adult-rated areas in Second Life! time to explore. Have a great time!”, together with information on how to update your Viewer’s maturity preferences and a link to the Destination Guide.

Maturity settings are generally found under the GENERAL tab of a Viewer’s preferences, and should be set to General, Moderate, Adult (Viewer 3.x & TPVs) or PG, Mature, Adult (Viewer 1.x TPVs) to get the full benefit from Search.

New season of Designing Worlds

Posted on by Inara Pey

Today at 14:00 SLT, Saffia Widdershins and Elrik Merlin return to Treet TV with a new season of Designing Worlds.

Says Elrik: “We have a great line-up of shows for you this season…we have some exciting new destinations lined up”.

Saffia adds, “We’re going to be visiting some old friends to see how their places have changed and expanded since we were last there”.

So make a date for Designing Worlds, Mondays at 14:00 SLT on Treet TV.

New movement option for SL

Posted on by Inara Pey

Nalates Urriah keeps her finger on the pulse of what is happening on the technical side of Second Life, reporting on a range of weekly User Group and other meetings held in-world.

This week, she reports on an interesting new scripting function Falcon Linden is working on.

llSetKeyframedAnimation() is designed to allow objects to be moved through a non-physical link set. The function should allow a range of objects to achieve smooth movement, and will allow avatars to stand / sit on objects as they move. As such, the function should be ideal for the likes of trains and elevators to run smoothly along their tracks / up and down elevator shafts.

Going up? Smoother elevators on their way (among other things!)

There are some animation issues, however – notably when walking on an object using the function, an avatar’s animation will get a little messy. The function also must use the Prim Equivalency system and come in at under a physics weight of 64.

Nalates reports that the new function should soon be working on two regions on the Beta grid and that Falcon will post to the wiki page (linked to above) when the regions are supporting it. Those testing the function are asked to include the function name in the title of any JIRA they raise.

With thanks to Nalates Urriah

SL “Showstopper” bug: Updating worn attachments breaks content

Posted on by Inara Pey

The server roll-out of the 13th September introduced a new and unexpected bug into the grid, as defined in JIRA SVC-7283:

“Attempting to issue llRemoteLoadScriptPin() on a non-full perm script to a worn/attached object fails with “Unable to add item” error message. If there was an existing script with the same name in the destination object, that script is deleted, often resulting in the items being made completely useless.

“A similar error occurs when using llGiveInventory() on a no-transfer item to a worn/attached object. In this case, the error message is “Unable to give inventory: ‘Destination did not accept'”.”

Simply put, this means that at present, attempting to update worn objects runs the risk of breaking them completely.

The JIRA is currently assigned to WorkingOnIt Linden, which means it is being investigated – indeed, Maestro Linden has commented on the JIRA, and has confirmed the bugs. He’s even offered some well-meaning advice:

“The workaround for updaters that affect attachments such as HUDs is to first drop the attachment or detach it and rez it on the ground before using the updater.”

However, this doesn’t help in all cases – particularly those using RLV items which they may not be able to remove; there are also those update systems that rely on the object being worn.

What is more worrying, however, is the seemingly casual response from Linden Lab to the issue. There has been no official indication to content creators that there is a potentially major bug impacting their items – people are being left to hear about things via word-of mouth.

Nor does the Lab – via Oskar Linden – seem all that concerned about getting a fix for the problem out sooner rather than later. Commenting on the JIRA, Oskar Linden states:

“We have traced the cause of SVC-7283 to a security fix around permissions. Due to the urgency of the security issue, we deployed the fix to all channels of the grid at once. Unfortunately, we cannot ‘roll back’ the change at this point, since doing so would compromise permissions across the grid. We are working on a fix for SVC-7283 – we hope to deploy the fix to an RC channel next week. We apologize for the inconvenience and problems with update scripts which are caused by this bug.”

So a potentially significant bug has been introduced right across the grid – and Linden Lab hope to get a fix out to 10% of the grid next week. Does this mean that if successful, the fix will be held over a further week prior to being rolled out to the remaining RC channels and the rest of the grid?

If so, it is wholly unacceptable.

The bug was apparently introduced as a result of a fix being pushed out without sufficient regression testing. Fair enough; however, if this can be done with a security fix – and given Linden Lab have successfully recreated the bugs through Maestro Linden’s tests  – then frankly the normal release cycle should be foreshortened as far as possible:

  • The fix should be coded
  • The code should be tested for potential impact
  • The code should be *immediately* release to an RC channel and baked for 24 hours on that channel
  • If no significant impacts / bugs found as a result of the RC test, the code should immediately be rolled out to the rest of the grid.

And I sincerely hope that this is what Linden Lab will be aiming for. If they are – then we need a clearer statement of intent than Oskar is giving.

In the meantime, one would hope Linden Lab would at least take the issue by the horns and for once communicate the problem with their users, rather than leaving it to people to stumble upon it through either word-of-mouth or through actually encountering an update failure.

Updates

15th September

Maestro Linden reports on SVC-7283:

“We have a fix for this bug that looks promising, which is currently on Aditi (the ‘Beta grid’). The fix version right now is thermonuclear 11.09.14.240803. You can find this version on a handful of Aditi regions; I’ve been testing in the region ‘Pixelpark’, which has a large sandbox area.

“With this fixed version, llGiveInventory() and llRemoteLoadScriptPin() should be able to deliver (no-copy or no-trans) items to worn attachments as long as the attachment’s owner permissions (in terms of copy and transfer) don’t exceed the owner permissions of the item.

“The following 2 cases are still blocked, however, for security reasons:

  • “Adding a no-transfer item to a worn attachment which is transferable
  • “Adding a no-copy item to a worn attachment which is copyable

“These cases might be fixed in a future project, but first the server will need to support dynamic updating of worn attachments’ permissions.”

17th September

The fix developed by Maestro Linden is receiving some positive feedback from those testing it on the Beta grid; as such, it is to be rolled out to an RC channel (no details on which as yet) on Wednesday 21st September.

This probably means that the fix will not be implemented across the entire Grid for a further week.

Additionally, a further issue was uncovered relating to permissions restrictions that impact content creators (but not necessarily their customers), wherein NO TRANS items cannot be moved between root and child prims in a full permissions item. Maestro Linden has opened a JIRA related specifically to this issue, SVC-7294.

19th September: The bug fix is confirmed for a roll-out on an RC channel this Wednesday (21st Sept). Those wishing to have their regions included int eh release should submit region names to JIRA SVC-7291.

21st September: The bug fix was apparently rolled out to all RC channels today (it seems the release notes for the RC channels don’t expressly refer to the JIRA), and appears to have corrected a part of the problem for some content creators impacted by the issue, but not for others. Further updates expected.

In addition, there are still issues beyond this JIRA that need addressing – hopefully through SVC-7294, although no roll-out date is available for this yet.

27th September: SVC-7283 rolled out to main grid.