Second Life clones....Already functioning

Ohh there are a lot of things you've said I've not fully agreed with, but all pretty insignificant stuff that I didn't feel needed drawing attention to it.

However, the big mistake you make here is an assumption that 'Big Brands' you know were always the big brands, well that's not the case, most of the original big brands are now small or dead or in some way gobbled up by another brand and all for differing reasons. One instance in which I know this happened, (and I know you'll take this on board) is that during the US recession in the 1930's all the big brands that stopped advertising to save money were superseded by smaller brands that continued to advertise throughout the recession.

So imo not all Big Brands are safe from copycat startups and copycat startups are usually the Big Brands of tomorrow.

I say a lot of things that some people don't agree with

That's when the world learned that stopping advertising when times are hard is not the thing to do. But those were very unusual times. Of course, big brands will go to the wall at any time, if they stop putting the names/products in front of people's eyes. That's what makes a brand, and brands are not cast in stone.

But I'm talking about all things being 'normal'. SL is *the* brand in this field, and I really don't believe that a copy of it can succeed - for two reasons. (1) SL is years ahead of systems like OL, and OL is just a copy - nothing new. (2) SL is the brand that the world recognises. To challenge it would take a hell of a lot of money, both to match it technically and to spend creating a brand, and I don't believe that such money could become available for a replica version. For a different version, yes, but not for copycat replicas.

You can put whatever label you want on a turd. It's still going to be a turd in the end. *Not equating SL with a turd*

SL may be the Big Brand right now, but like you said, many Goliaths have been slain in the business world. It may not be likely, but it is possible. As someone who doesn't worship at the oracle of Google or drink the LL Cool Aid, ANYTHING is possible. Yes Henry Ford had a better way to make cars. No reason somone can't come up with a better way to search than Google, just because they haven't yet.

I don't know about the other SL clones, I'm not interested in them. But someone will find a way to do it better. He may work for LL, or he may work for one of thse upstarts. Also plenty of Big Brands have fallen just due to their own mismanagement. If you ask me, the only reason SL has survived is because it is the ONLY viable product. As a business LL can't get out of their own way at times. Sometimes timing is everything. The right product shows up at the right time and it's over Johnny. You hope LL has learned from thier mistakes, quicker than someone else has.

It's a copycat now, but all it takes is some siliconhead working there to decide to turn left, where Linden turned right...........

That's what I said, Brenda. Just as Google came up with a way of ranking pages that produced noticeably better results, someone else can come up with an even better way, producing even better results, and climb to the top. That's what I've been saying - it has to be different. As an aside, the next major change in search engines will be LSI (latent semantic indexing), which tries to understand what a page is about, rather than index by cold clinical string of characters called words. It's a matter of who achieves it on a large scale first.

And I said the same about SL. Copycat, no - different, yes.

[added]
That was a response to your last but one post. You posted the last one as I was writing it. But it will suffice for your last post too. Yes, if something is different (a left turn instead of a right turn). That's what I've been saying.

Ok, once you started with the techno babble you lost me. Otherwise I guess we kinda agree on the rest of it.Works for me.

I think we do

Clearly in it's infancy. I will be interested to see how well it does. Created my account. For the awe inspiring join date down the road. When it has a full catalog of sex and BDSM equipment, I'll know it's made it!

Thats partly the reason I joined in as well, how bad is that! They have a thread on their forums where you can pick your last name too. So you can have your own last name, or sl name etc. To keep it simple (KISS (keep it simple stupid) I went and had them use this sl name. I cant keep track of extra names for pity sake lol So, yea, just in case it does make it, I have an oooold av! Woohoo

I got into OLG after a lot of failures, seems to me you got to be a PC expert or more knowlege than me, lol.
When I got in found all girls dressed a like!
The guy there told me I have to create my own clothes, body etc., there is nothing in my inventory there.
A girl said she had her skin/clothes for SL on her PC and would move then into OLG, well I'm lost on how to do that.
The programme its self is SL, go to search for example and it is the SL answers it gives!
Is it legal for this new system to use Lindens SL?
Does not seem right to me. I wonder if Linden will have it closed down, eg. copyrights etc.
Love
June

A terraform .raw can be uploaded, but the usual clientside method doesn't work. There isn't even an error message - it says it's uploading, but don't hold your breath; it's not. You have to type in server side command lines in a DOS style environment.

Incidentally, .raw files that load flawlessly on the SL grid won't load correctly - you have to tweak the terrain height multiplier sometimes to get them to render right. Again, server side DOS style commands.

Yes, I had to guess that trick. If you would instantly say:

"Oh, this looks terrible - 1/3 of my region loaded correctly and the other 2/3 is smashed down to zero meters, let's... try diddling the terrain height multiplier on server side, Obviously!"

...then you would be quite content with the situation at hand. Otherwise, if you simply waited for the terrain upload to work, well... you'd still be waiting.

It loads the terrain 'backward' too. But if you know how to import a .raw file into a texture editing program, display the channel with the heightmap data and mirror it around a bit you can easily fix that.

* * * * *

So... is a standalone opensim user useful to me? Sure is.

Is it useful for your typical SL resident that can't even activate, let alone read, the basic stats bar in the client? Maybe... not... so... useful...

..yet

Slightly OT: Phil, you may be a pain in the ass, but you make nice stuff. I just came from your store and dropped a few lindens.

Moi? A pain in the ass? But I'm such a nice guy I just have a few different views to some people, that's all, but they are well thought out even if they aren't agreed with And ty for the compliment - it's appreciated.

I decided to log into OL, and I've had enough already. I logged in (I turned out to be a girl, although I wasn't asked), I flew a short distance in the same sim, and then I couldn't move in any direction, so I logged out. I logged back in straight away, flew a short distance - 100m or so, saw someone so I stopped to chat, got a couple of lines of chat between us and I suddenly could chat, or move in any direction. That's enough for me.

I tried this today. Uploaded some of my clothes and skins and I still looked like a noob It's pretty glitchy but I liked it. There's not much to do though and you can't attach things to yourself yet. Oh, and sim crossing made me lag and crash. Reminds me of when I first started SL back in 04'

You cant transfer things to other people yet either so I cant feed my av in OLG the same addiction to <3 cupcakes like I do here even if you could do a shop lol

posted on their front page:

'Note* Openlife Grid Region Holders will be able to export creations made in this standalone version for upload to their OpenlifeGrid Region, this is a manual process atm but will become automated through your web account in the future. For More Information Contact Sakai Openlife'

so, create your build on the stand alone, free from greifers, then upload to OpenlifeGrid. That's what we have been wishing for from day one in SL, and these guys will actually implement it from day one...this feature alone will tempt a lot of people to move there.

After logging into both Openlife AND CentralGrid, seems they are both at the same stage of develoment from the laymans eyes anyway. Expereinced a silent crash after about 5 minutes on Centralgrid

Curious that on both other SLClones, when you loaded up a texture you actually recieved 1L$ in your account, if that hapened on SL , I would be one happy, and wealthy avatar!

Well Desmond, you just convinced me that I have absolutely zero reasons to bother with the OpenSim efforts at this time. Maybe in a few years, when they work the bugs out. But right now it would be about as useless to me as a rowboat in the middle of Death Valley.

And I might add, I work as a systems administrator in RL. So the technical aspects are't the rub. It's the fact that if it doesn't behave like SL does, it doesn't tell me what I need to know.

Ok, I went..It took a bit to figure out how to get to male AV but a nice guy helped me. It looks so much like SL... It would seem that LL owns it...Is weird for sure.. But also like pioneering a new world. It would seem whoever is running it really...plans to have their grid run with Sl's.
everything there say Second Life...half doesn't work but it is clearly Second Life.. I mean you have to modify the SL client string just go there.. and they even tell you to go get it from SL....
I like the idea of a new grid to play on...That's all i can say i guess..

Since nobody's mentioned it yet: A couple months ago, Zero Linden publicly challenged the OpenSim developers to come up with a way to start connecting OpenSim and the Linden grid

I joined OpenLifeGrid a few days ago, logged in to the grid, and promptly started sinking through the ground. If I wanted to do that, I could stay on SL and just cross sim borders.

I desperately want my own standalone sim, but trying to find out how to install one gave me flashbacks to MUCK-compiling. Which I managed easily enough in the end, but only after too many days of wading through instructions written by Unix geeks for Windows users that bore little relevance to the process on a Mac. So I'll save that for some time when I have a few weekends to spare and can safely obsess about it until I figure it out.

Day Oh, that's actually my main question. Will it ever be possible to host a sim or local grid on your own server and have it connect to other grids in a way that allows user avatars to travel between them? Either a constant connection or an intermittent one (presumably with different inventories for each grid)?

told ya.

I made an Account and so far I can't get a region handshake, but I can't wait to see what's done with this. It might fail fast or it might not.

Yes. As I understand it, the Company is looking into precisely that. I recall a meeting transcript where Robin was asking what people think a proper charge would be for such a connexion. I've heard of ideas such as a 'gateway' region being discussed, too.

But, would this be designed to work with grids not explicitly licenced by Linden Research, Inc?

That, I think, is going to be the real question. Possibly more due to liability concerns and potential complicity issues tied to activities that will most *certainly* go on in the unaffiliated grids.

Also, regions presume non-hostile neighbour links, from a technical standpoint. This too would need some deep consideration.