Posting on Second Life via web4lib@webjunction.org

I came across this posting on a list serve I subscribe to. I thought it is pertinent to next week's readings on Second Life. I will cut and paste the discussion below.

Do any of you install the Second Life client on your Public Computers? If so, are there some important things to consider in regard to security or configuration?

Thanks.

Jane Frasier
Software Support Specialist
Jefferson County (CO) Public Library
10500 West 38th Avenue
Wheat Ridge, CO  80033
Phone: (303) 403-5296
Fax: (303) 403-5295
Check us out on the Internet at http://jefferson.lib.co.us 

Hi Jane,
We install SL in our Learning Commons. A number of the issues we have
are probably highly specific to our local environment for
authentication and profile management--so I'll just say, make sure to
test SL extensively on your machines as far as logging in and out of
the application, since it does some odd things with how it stores
profile and session information. We've seen behavior where you can
launch the client successfully and log in, then log out and come back
an hour later and the entire application crashes on launch. Clearing a
user's cached local profile on the network usually resolves that
issue.

The big one to watch out for with SL is the frequency of updates to
the software. Linden Lab updates the software fairly frequently, and
invariably the update is forced, meaning you can't run the older
version at all. This becomes a problem in a managed lab environment
where you're having to constantly update the image every time a new
update comes out or the application becomes useless. Essentially you
have to have a method for pushing out Small Frequent Updates to your
machines or else you're going to be going around to every machine
individually to install as admin, or constantly thawing and
re-freezing, or what not based on how  you manage your images.

-Maurice

************************************
Maurice York
Interim Head, Information Technology
NCSU Libraries
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC 27695

maurice_york@ncsu.edu