At the end of March, Linden Labs (LL) released their newest Simulator… most people knew it as Havok 4 Beta. With LL touting this new release as the latest and greatest thing since sliced bread, most people waited with bated breath…
How would the new simulator function? What would the bugs be?
Over time, a few quirks have shown up… two I noticed right away were:
- Sinking while hovering - yep.. hover and sink. Just don’t hover over water, or you’re likely to end up drowning.
- Swimmers - nope, you don’t swim no more; at least not with the swimmer I use. You kind of do an imitation of the crane from the Karate Kid.
Both of these bugs are annoying, but I will live with them until such time as they are fixed.
But.. there is one bug which really picks my butt and is the reason for this blog entry. No longer does the “push” function work in most security orbs now. What does this mean?
Well… I live on an island that is generally supposed to be open for all to explore and walk through, but a while ago because a parcel close to mine was set up in a way that there was a constant flux of people coming and going, I was receiving an inordinate amount of unexpected and unknown visitors on my property. In response and in trying to keep the spirit of open land in mind (and to stay in compliance with the convenient,) I set my security orb to gently push people away from my property. They could still navigate if they needed to, but it was a subtle message that I wasn’t really looking for visits from a whole bunch of people I did not know. This worked well as I don’t see “eject” or “teleport home” as very kind options if someone accidentally wanders onto your land. In addition, teleport home does not work on group owned land which my land is.
BUT… and a BIG BUT…
Havok 4 has killed this option. Push is no longer effective and since I cannot use teleport home on group owned land, I am left with having to turn off the system. I refuse to use eject because … well it just doesn’t seem friendly.
Now hats off to Psykes Phaeton, the creator of the HomeSecurity(TM) Orb. When I IM’ed him about my observation, he told me right away what the problem was and pointed me to a Jira issue that looks at this problem…. Thanks Psykes - yes I have voted for it to be fixed.
So, I no longer have an operable orb located down on the ground, and while I have a greeter located closer to my house, I was thinking of buying a notecard giver that would cover my whole property. Off I went looking - first stop the SLExchange. I spotted a really cool one on there and thought I would buy it and headed off Inworld to the shop that sold it. Cruising the store, I was pleased to note that they also sold a security orb, and what really caught my eye was a sign that said “Havok 4 compatible.” Well, not to just buy something, I checked the SLX first and sure enough, found an advertisement there for the orb and one of the options was still “Push.” Pleased as punch that someone had figured out scripting that would work with Havok 4 and help me maintain my privacy, I purchased the orb.
To make a long story short - when I got home and set up the orb. . . surprise surprise… “push” was no longer an “active” option with the menu system - not in the way it was implied in the advertisement. I did contact the creator and ask if it was no longer a part of the orb because of the Havok 4 issue, to which I was informed that the orb does “push” people if on foreign land.. and that “push” was no longer an option because it was against Terms of Service for SecondLife. I was also told that the orb selects the “right choice” now because if “push” were used, then people would Abuse Report (AR) the creator of the orb.
Well you know what… I’m no dummy. I can see where the Bear has pooped in the Buck Wheat . . . and in my humble opinion, I think that the “Havok 4″ compatible (in this instance) is a L$ grab.
Compatible with Havok 4… sure…. so long as you do not want to use “push” as an option.
Abuse Reported for pushing someone off your own property with lots of notice (I always gave 30 seconds)… right.
I’d include the entire conversation I had with the creator of the Orb, but it is only out of courtesy that I will not name the orb in this blog. Needless to say I will not be recommending this Orb system to anybody, and they have lost any future business I may have provided them.
Morale of my long winded story . . . BUYER BEWARE . . . I got taken . . . I hope other people don’t.
To people who who make items… I might not be a builder, and hardly at all can I script, but please please please… don’t treat me like I’m stupid. Be upfront and honest.
As a final note - I believe most builders and scripters… business owners are scrupulous, honorable people… but it only takes on bad apple to make someone like me think twice before spending my L$ Inworld.
Catch you on the flip side.
PS. Anybody know of a good notecard giver?
