as long as voice can still be toggled off to reduce CPU strain, i’ll be a happy camper. i have never done audio isl, i like the veil of sl and my first project was for a Deaf artist so i came to enjoy the silence that is part of what sl is to me today

it’s a break from the chatter and noise of rl for me (plus, i am always in several IMs and can’t imagine if they were all talking to me at once!) =)

Shell game economics with other peoples money, till someone has to pay. Viacom- Google, like AOL/ TW before is yet to be a done deal;)

What again must be “reinvented” is not the idea of a closed platform, but of closed file formats and open file formats, and how they interact. which is why web3d standards were always open standard file thinking, not open source tools like viewer thinking.

anyhow- the rule is simple , if RL business cant use the stuff, then no one pays for it to be developed. If the expectation is “consumers” will pay for it, then you need to eventually OWN the content you combine with the tools/platform service, cause consumers dont pay billions to make consuming essier/faster / better?..lol, all they pay for is the media they love or want or think they need.

I still think itll be impossible for one company to own the 3dweb with even the scale that AOL owned the “connected dial up email/web services” with “maybe” 15 milllion users in 1997.( they never had the reported 26 million)

Box the tech for business to mess around with. add scalabity to the so called “grid” and IP protection for realife law of business, so that economic vlaues can get beyond slave linden pay of pennies, and then theyd have a toy business, a vacation business, and an entertianemnt business that would dominate the digital nets…. or they should just sell out to APple or SONY already and let them market it.:)

Linden intervention in public affairs, Linden scaremongering etc instead of working hard to create a *platform* just puts me off when I think about it.

Explained in depth here: http://tinyurl.com/p4w2hj
here: http://tinyurl.com/rbmwcr and here: http://preview.tinyurl.com/qwyc5n

However, this move away from the mac worries me. Especially when many gaming worlds are moving to embrace it, and the users it brings. It may not be a massive legion but its enough to make money. And I don’t see them moving to cryengine, it would break almost everything in-world.

Unless…they already have deals with individuals and companies to insert ready made content in world with the new system. This would ensure these lucky individuals an almost clean slate opportunity. And most current residents would be hard pressed to catch up.

Clubside is right, gamers have a pathological hatred of Second Life. There is just no use trying to court them. Gaming in general is still viewed as a wasteland of misfits. But the gamers have the notion that they are a few steps above the average Second Life user. They are less loserish, I guess? Whatever that is worth.

I have to say, I’ll be very very very curious when the new viewer comes out, because I’m convinced it will be highly NON-interoperable with other Grids. I mean - most of it is based on, as Tom said, making it a VOICE client with friends lists, instead of a friends list with voice tacked on.

(Yeah, I know, the emphasis on voice is getting a little irritating…and to SEE it, I didn’t make that leap, I just think Tom didn’t word it very well…it was just to say that voice is more intuitively integrated).

In any case - the new viewer will have ‘deep integration’ with the social media/Web site/friends list/group and voice features - so doesn’t that mean it will be mostly borked on other Grids? Is that why Snowglobe exists? To maintain an illusion of interoperability?

What I WONDER is whether this allows them to shift in the direction of a ‘more closed viewer’ with, perhaps some of the content protections you’re talking about.

Finally, I have to say that the new rules for XStreet and the clamp-down on brand infringement, and the content protection road map, seem to lean in the direction of much tighter controls - but not perhaps for the reasons we’d like, but instead to protect larger brands who might be able to come back with THEIR virtual goods.

As far as controls over bringing the goods in world - I can’t help wondering whether the acquisition idea doesn’t fit in there somewhere. But also - what can you do about it, really? Will the Lab vet mesh content? Or will they keep working on DMCA complaints and hope it sorts itself out at the user level?

Doesn’t matter from the macro level - they need a business plan that the VC guys and the IPO lawyers and Microsoft (or whoever will buy them out) can be happy with, and frankly transaction-level content ripping from existing 3D libraries will be less concern than a lack of policy or widespread abuse.

they must resolve the open source viewer security issues and how they at this point dont balance, but destroy any inworld content monetization on real world economic standards.