Think out of the box, people!!

I've been a registered user for little about a month or so.. more or less. I love forums and I read the forums every day, about 20 times a day. I don't post much... don't like to write just for the fun, but when I need to... and I do need to now.

I've noticed that on this and other forum topics and threads, specially on the suggestions, someone comes up with a feature they'd like to see implemented and, all of a sudden, you get tons of replies explaining 3 paragraphs through how that's not possible, not fiesable, not confortable, not likeable, not DOABLE. Heck, I even see how people speculate what it will cost Linden Labs to impliment such ideas. (And I know they are not Lindens, since they sometimes refer to LL as "they".

I understand we've got experts on the field and I'm not trying to burn anyones knowledge or reputation. But to implement solutions, must one not be creative? And to be creative, must one not think out of the box? Break paradigms? Hey, if someone should gripe and complain and explain why something isn't possible - it should be Linden Labs, not us. We shouldn't be making things easier for them (sorry lindens, but you do understand why I say this, don't you?). We are responsible for pressuring them to give us the best service possible, and better and richer features every day.

I follow Morgaine Dinova's (I hope I did not misspell) way of thinking in that I believe everything is possible, given the correct amount of effort and resources. Let there be deficiencies on the resources. That we can understand and cope with. But PLEASE!!! Do not promote deficiencies on effort - That should never be an issue.

Just my 2 cents...

Noooooo! Not the box! Anything but the box!

Agree 100%. There just was a post on the dearth of new ideas in SL... if all new ideas are systematically shot down nobody will dare to venture...

You said it Marker!

Since I'm being put forward as an example, let me be clear on something.

I support advances in technology, and when someone proposes such an enhancement I argue in its favour if the subject is in my area of knowledge and if I can see a way of implementing it without engaging hypothetical warp drives. That comes from being an engineer, and hence from being pretty realistic.

If in contrast someone were to propose a new feature that in my understanding could not be implemented with current technology, not even with engineering comprises and tradeoffs to keep the resource requirements within limits, then I would describe the current difficulty but never ever say that it is impossible. Because in technology nothing is impossible, merely hard. The only impossibilities are in your mind.

Furthermore, I would listen very eagerly for suggestions from others who might have figured out a way to overcome the problem where I have not. For an engineer (which is just another name for problem-solver), there are few things more exciting than to learn of a new solution to a problem that you couldn't figure out how to overcome, at least for me.

That's technology though. In non-technological areas these rules for defending progress do not apply, because you cannot measure progress in intangibles in objective ways that are not subject to dispute. The area of middleman services in SL is one such area, and while I am sure that everyone is proposing laws and services with the best of intentions, it's worth bearing in mind that intangibles often have two very different sides to the coin, and those are labelled WINNER and LOSER.

I've already written on this issue in another thread so I won't say much here, but to be on the losing side of a corporate vs consumer divide is a restriction of the freedoms we currently have in Second Life. Currently we do not have an equivalent divide in SL because anyone can be a producer or a consumer or both without restriction, but the instant that something in SL can only be offered by a corporation in 1L then the picture changes utterly. SL then becomes no longer a hope-inspiring Second Life but just another package of institutionalised 1L unfairness. And that would be sad.

So, please don't point to me as a defender of anything but technological progress.

One thing you have to take into account is that some of these new and innovative feature suggestions have already been suggested and discussed at length a few hundred times already, and really aren't in any way new and innovative. I'm not knocking Morgaine's suggestions but I fail to see the point in getting worked up over ideas that are very unlikely to ever happen, and that would require a fundamental change to the entire design of the world. You can write letters every day to the company that made your car saying "wouldn't it be cool if it was also a plane" but people might point out that it's highly unlikely to ever happen, especially when the inventor of the car has already stated in print why it's not a plane. If you then took on a condescending attitude towards the person who passed along that information, they might then start to argue with you

I understand your point and I thank your responses. But, I think I read somewhere about a car that is also a boat, and a car that can fly is probably comming in a few years from now (I think somebody started to pay attention to the letters I sent saying it'd be cool if cars were also planes). Let's continue... hmmmm, let's see, there are also planes that are boats... boats that are hotels, I'll start emailing someone so we might have planes that are hotels in maybe 10 or 20 years (allthough airforce 1 is not too far from that). Are we getting the picture here?

I dunno. I'm also an engineer (although in telecomm, but we're family). I know there are limitations. But the only way to break limitations is running flat into them. If you start slowing down before you get there, hoping they move or dwindle... they might eventually never be overcome.

My position is that sometimes, I see customers defending and protecting the corporation eventually turning it into a whining crybaby that's gonna start saying "aaaaaaw that's too hard and it won't work anyways" and everyone just resorting to "okay okay hun, there there... we'll settle without it, we understand".. not knowing that the very force that pushes SL and any corporation to better itself is the frenetic insistance of it's customers.

It's been discussed before... so? Maybe things were overlooked! Maybe something new is possible after some patches and no one has bothered to revisit some old ideas! If you see some post and you know that it has unmistakenly been debated before, maybe a link to the previous thread can be given. But peer-to-peer mouth shutting only drowns inspiration and soon everything could get so old or slowly evolving that who knows what might be of SL then.

My 2 cents (4 cents given up to know...)

That's fair enough, Chip. But when you use a metaphor, make it applicable.

The technological suggestions with which I've been involved recently (only one of which is my own as I usually analyse those of others) fall into a small range of categories:

1. More varied body shapes for the cars (eg. Deferred Loading meshes) without asking for behavioural enhancements equivalent to making them fly.
   
2. Better cache access and sim-client delta protocols (caching tests and followups), which clean up road pollution and can make the cars move faster but not vertically.
   
3. General improvement in user choice and configurability (XMLify the whole UI) which just allows the car's dashboards to be modified;
   
4. Rationalization of existing UI controls (Leave My Camera Alone! and related threads) which merely asks that the car's boot doesn't open when you turn on the washers;
   
5. Extended facilities for high-speed mouse-driven interactive gaming (General Mousebutton API), which suggests very specific enhancements to the gearbox and steering that would turn a sedan into a much more responsive sportster.
   

Nowhere have I asked for, nor strongly defended, any proposal that doesn't fit into the essential streaming paradigm, and that's the only true invariant in Second Life because the Lindens want most things to be mutable. Everything else is merely a current step in evolution, not carved in stone. Ever.

Importing meshes is not one of my own proposals, but so many people have requested that facility that as an engineer I cannot avoid asking myself whether it is possible to implement them within a streaming framework, what their impact would be, and whether the disadvantages of the proposal (every proposal has disadvantages too) can be overcome through tradeoffs and compromises. That's ordinary engineering.

It so happens that Deferred Loading meshes can in principle be incorporated into SL without disrupting anything, and in fact with an overall benefit to clients and servers alike. Of course, this involves compromises --- while free lunches derived from amazing new insights do appear occasionally, they are very rare, and meshes get no free lunch so they require some tradeoffs before they become feasible. Nothing new to see here, move along. It's just ordinary engineering.

The only thing that remains for me to say is that your continuous attempts to stall progress by constantly referring back to what others have said achieves nothing, beyond possibly getting into the good books of those you quote. I doubt that the latter is true though: the idea that Philip and Cory and others might be impressed by a deferential attitude is, I think, unlikely. I can only guess of course, but my feeling is that they'd be far more interested if you had some new ideas to contribute, or if you helped other people develop new ideas instead of stomping on them as a habit.

And when we're reasoning about a technology and the problems involved with implementing it, don't even bother to quote the Almighty herself about something being impossible, because appealing to authority is an elementary newbie mistake in logical reasoning. By all means pick out a specific technical point made by someone else and show how it highlights a severe technical barrier. If the point is accurate and relevant, it just adds another detail to overcome in the current problem. That's no biggie, all engineers welcome detailed analysis and any difficulties found being pointed out.

Solving problems is good, it's why we are no longer squatting in caves and hunting with spears. If you don't see a solution yourself, at least don't try to stop others from finding it please. There is always a solution.

Amen!

Very well put.

I look forward to Linden Lab having the programmer hours to fix and/or implement every suggestion put forth by the inhabitants of Second Life, whether it fits within the current "engine" or, for that matter, the current physical infrastructure of the game from server farm CPU to home computer screen. Labor hours and computing capability aren't really barriers. They're just hurdles. If the architecture were perfect, we'd have just one number of worry about: 3.0 x 10^8. But I hear that's just a temporary hurdle, too. I think I'll have a run at it!

Perhaps some large cash contributions to Linden Lab would help implement these creative thoughts?

Correct.

I guess you haven't heard of open source. If you're willing to move beyond current preconceived limits, there are always solutions, including in the area of resourcing development. The only time there are no solutions is if you are not prepared to make any changes and concessions.

I guess you'd better check out Bell's Theorem then if you think that the speed of light will always limit us in everything forever. Mathematically, Bell's massively reviewed and reanalysed work in quantum logic implies that there are no "separate parts" to the universe, and that all parts are connected in an intimate and immediate way. In the lab, this can actually be seen in the correlation of electron spins in spacetime-separate particles which implement causality or influence far beyond mere superluminal speeds. It's real. Kinda sucks for FTL detractors I guess.

Don't use the word "impossible* too much. Engineers have no qualms about making previous generations look silly. The universe does whatever it feels like. It doesn't care much about the dogma of mere humans.

I guess you haven't heard of the guess you haven't heard of game, in which we all act like people are ignunt in an effort to ignore the current realities of commerce. If you want the Linden LAB paradigm to change, start working on U.S. society and its corporate environment. You might also suggest that they move the operation out of SoCal, perhaps make it entirely extranational.

The only one saying "impossible" in this thread, Morgaine, is you. Except now I've said it! Arrrgh! Guess I'd better just leave before I say it again.

Sorry, but that doesn't wash. You know very well that your comment about the speed of light was to imply that some things are indeed impossible, and that since we have equally good command of English, that I would know exactly what you meant.

The way I think of the Feature Suggestions forum is that it can be a valuable tool for LL to learn about what features we want and decide on which they are going to give us.
LL is a very small company. Drastic decisions can kill it. Most of what people suggest around here is insane and would require a very invasive and prolonged rearchitecting of SL's core engine(s), by challenging its basic assumptions and design guidelines. Some of it isn't even technically possible because LL relies on third party engines such as Havok which impose insurmountable constraints on what can be achieved within SL.
"Thinking outside the box" lowers SNR and makes this forum less useful. The more crappy threads with outlandish proposals LL has to wade through, the less feasible, useful features get noticed and implemented.

Hehehe this flash thing would be perfect for this forum:

http://www.trials-shack.co.uk/posting.html

My understanding and relation to technology (including techno music) is that the more advanced the technology is -- with its "Golly, gee whiz!" factor -- then the more intuitive and simple it needs to be to get the most out of it. Yes, technical details are important, yes, the little things -- AND the big things, and everything else in between -- do count.

However, in the end... what I like is this: if something works, it works. I don't necessarily even want to hear a reason. If I want to know the trick behind the magic, I will ask. But cooking up technobabble like a bad episode of Star Trek, enough excuses to make Donald Trump surly, makes me uncomfortable.

I have become increasingly aware of the limits "under the hood", but at the same time, have also become increasingly grateful and wowed to have found Second Life, despite the fact that the possibility of "limitlessness" will always be just that -- as a pathway into what is hopefully a bright future. Some things about the world may not change; however, your perception of them might.

If someone takes a crazy idea and makes it work, I'm thumbs-up. Airplane. Lightbulb. Seedless watermelon.

Moleculor,

<<Noooooo! Not the box! Anything but the box!>>

Stop to think out of the box!

Wow! This thread has gotten more exposure than I believed it would. Thank you all for your time and replies.

Just emphasizing my idea that if someone gives out an idea and it ultimately can't be done at all, or maybe it could be done but it's too expensive, or it could be done and not too expensive but only one soul in the whole world wants it, let it be LL who says so. Let us not drown the voices inside our community because those voices are those of the market... and the market is what drives business and technology. Maybe something isn't possible now, but after two major upgrades it is! Then the hardowrking engineers in SL might look back and remember a once wacky idea (but supported or at least not shot down by the community) and realize that it's possible and it could add value to the experience and might even implement it!!

A couple cents more...

Your sarcasm detector is broken, which is a shame, because you're one smart cookie. I'd explain my not-too-intricate posts in shorter words, but you'd probably take that as patronizing.

Thankfully, I got away without using the word impossiDAMMIT.