DISQUS

CyFishy: Unfortunately Vimeo, while providing a high quality technical service, has recently announced that it is banning "game videos", and while they do say that they will be allowing "machinima" (for now) they do not really define that very well. As we all know, Second Life is Not A Game, but I dare say that the difference will not be something they care terribly much about, and I also dare say that a lot of Torley's video, for instance, would be banned as a "walkthrough" or some such.

Amusingly enough it decided to remove or replace quite a few of my appointments and to-dos the other day, and not consistently either, turning back the clock between a day and a week or two. Twice.

Whilst I am, you know, generally quite fond of historical perspectives, I would prefer to keep them out of my next action lists. (Syncing between Tiger and Leopard may be an issue here, or, well, it may not - it isn't as if one ever gets anything out of Apple Technical Support.)

Complete sync failures are one thing, if necessary one can always export and import into another machine, but sync _errors_ are unforgiveable.

This one and then this one seem the choicest offenders.

I must say that I have heard plenty of people saying with deep regret that they can't practically run the current RC, and that if Mr Nicolasz does not keep producing clients they don't know what they will do. These are not people unaware of the situation. Sometimes they live in places where they cannot get hold of the necessary parts; sometimes they cannot afford them. Sometimes both.

For that matter, none of them are neophobic either; I can't remember any great negative reaction to Windlight. The early Windlight clients were actually pretty impressive and in many cases faster than the pre-Windlight ones. But now, well, they aren't.

I myself simply cannot properly develop in SL on my preferred machine, a one-year-old iMac - a high-end consumer machine that is absolutely fine in every other circumstance. I work around this but that is actually more to do with my having access to a PC as well which does nothing but run SL really.

And this is just speaking of people who are pretty technically skilled and won't mind putting in a new graphics card if they can get one and their system can cope with it (it is certainly not always a case of just opening the case and plugging in the new one - I recently had a horrible example of this trying to upgrade the machine belonging to my parents). The average person with a Dell that they'd thought pretty okay, confronted with 5fps in SL, will not go out and fix things; they just will not come back.

Soundsnap is certainly the place to which I go first. Apart from the convenience of the interface, it has a simple and easily understandable licencing system: "it's all free, use it how you like".

Soundsnap also absolutely excels in providing bleeps, buzzes, twings and electronic noises in general.

I do use Freesound, and have indeed contributed to it, but I confess that I do not think I properly understand the ramifications of the Sampling Plus licence or whatever it is called, and this worries me. Still - it is better for detailed source recordings I would say, particularly those of an obscure mechanical nature, and the quality is higher.

SoundDogs is very much aimed at the commercial market, and while it has a wide selection of stuff, the costs of the proper quality files are prohibitive for the average SL developer. I would rather obtain something _close_ to the target for free, and edit and blend it with Audacity or some such. I could perhaps see myself using it for a very specific topic where the sound had to be precisely accurate - perhaps a replica machine of some sort.

"It doesn't have a purpose! Why isn't it like a proper game, like Spore? Why isn't there a tree from start to end which tells people what to do? It's like it _isn't a game at all_!"

Does anybody have any information, incidentally, about data (a) distribution and (b) retention policies on the part of Aristotle? LL has stated theirs, but unless I have missed something, I have heard nothing more than that Aristotle "complies with all relevant US law" (so basically they do pretty much what they want with it).

What a good idea! I never thought of that. Particularly when combined with a desktop searching thing such as my favourite, Quicksilver (though Google Desktop, say, would work too I imagine).

On a tangent I wonder if secondlife:// links work in the in-world browser - one could put a large number of them in one's web profile and go to them directly from SL. Perhaps.

When you can move around using the wiimote, then I may admit that this is sexy. IRC is not sexy.

I agree, there has been a definite reduction in the aggressive greenness of the Scary Green Eye Hand Thing, as I dubbed it. It is considerably more pastel now and the shiny has been turned down.

I would like to know who came up with it in the first place. I'm sure it has some esoteric significance... possibly Egyptian, relating to the ancient secrets discovered carved on a prim by archaeologists, brought by Philip to the secret chambers below the Laboratory, where developers work tirelessly to bring about what they call the New Age of True Enlightenment...

...I have said too much. *They* are coming, I fear. I must away.

And what, precisely, is wrong with telnet MUDs? Or MUSHes, more appropriately. If SL all goes pear-shaped, I have repeatedly said that I will set up a MUSH myself.