Is Philip Linden really serious about fixing the grid ?

Philip's right on the mark.

The reason why he's right is because there was *no* way to spec the product from the get-go.

No way.

Impossible.

This wasn't going to the moon, where you can pretty much calculate everything. How are you going to know the aggregate behaviour of 40,000 people at once? Or that there will even be 40,000, not 4 or 4 million?

Intelligent engineering design relies on designing to the task, and knowing what that task is. No way to know that here.

Even now, there's no clear way forward. Anyone care to put fifty million dollars of R&D on the line, and predict with certainty the population of the grid and all their emergent behaviour in 2011? Just five years from now.

So what you have is an iterative, learn-from-your-mistakes design evolution. Alright, you can still function - the key is to be able to adapt quickly. Very quickly.

The trouble really isn't in fixing the grid so it runs great in 2007. The real issue is fixing the grid so it runs great for your kids. I think the biggest mistakes (and successes) are still to come.

How can people believe all this? After what has been occuring on sl, these past few months. The levels of support have been below par with nothing but issues happening again and agin and again. If things were better around sl i would love to agree, but really its not forseeable agreeable with Philip Linden.

Won't fix anything anytime soon. Typically american way of doing things. Just look at history: How many years PCs have been running on DOS and versions of it? Did they fix that? just about every major catastrophy in the US has happened because someone refused to fix something... Chalenger's O-ring being the most spectacular example.

The only way LL can really fix the grid. Is by taking it offline for say 6 months and hammer on it. It's a non-solution.

LL is stretched between fixing the actual problems that occur atm, which is like rebuilding a 747 mid flight. And creating a completely new 747 in the background, which actually is built from the start to be fixed in mid flight.
A lot of the 'fixes' that LL is rolling out atm. (new central backbone, 'Het-Grid', 'capabilities model' etc.) are huge changes to the model, which are completely invisible, but are the foundation to be able to fix the grid (and make mistakes in fixes), without running the huge risks of deploying patches they do now.

The problem is, people only can see the 747 they're flying in right now. They want the direct fixes to the grid (With all the risks involved in patching stuff on a system not MADE to patch in mid flight), LL could put all their development force on fixing these direct problems, but it would be the never ending fix/break/fix cycle, as we see now.

Is Philip serious in 'fixing' the grid. Yes, he's very serious. Does that mean Philip is serious in fixing the problems we see occurring on the grid right now? No, he's much more dedicated atm, to create a platform which actually allows LL to fix those things (and deploy new stuff, replace parts etc.) without the current huge risks of deploying stuff first.

OK so SL worked better for you a few years ago when there were half as many people on the grid at any time.

Now you are having some issues, granted..

-asset losses
-lagginess
-sims going down
-rez failures
-prim issues
-vehicles suck
-login issues
-any others I missed?

What are these caused by? hmmm lets see..there are really only three factors to any IS system that can cause problems 1.load and 2.user action 3.hardware failure.

So lets have a look at the new features:

1.sculpted prims - reduce prim count (less load on asset servers)

2.Voice - really a must have feature if SL expects to compete for corporate events etc.

3.Windlight- a better rendering system that taxes less, better performance even for lower end machine - (less client lag, alpha sort s/b fixed)

4.Havoc 4.6 - a new physics engine will DRAMATICALLY improve sim stability, vehicles, general movement and gaming in SL (#1 reason of sim lag is stray physics garbage)

5.Mono - a new scripting engine to vastly improve execution for things like vendors (higher transaction success rate.)

The only thing the latest and near future releases don't address is the asset server architecture but guess what? open source servers are on the not so distant horizon too although this is not a 'feature' per se.

So maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, and flame away at my meager post count and miniscule 8 mos SL experience (it's what is in those posts that counts that matters btw)

-but-

Aren't these features actually fixes?

Why patch up an old system with bug fixes when you will just have to to it again when the new 'features' come out.

You are asking for a million band aids... LL is telling you what they are doing about your issues!!! Maybe when they release these new 'features' they should call them 'bug fixes' and you all would be happy.

-whyroc

Ok this person been around awhile. He seem almost anything and anything on Sl. He has alot of good thoughts here. Those that say RAH RAH SL......Please don`t saying all is fine is just going to make the situlation worse. Fix what is broken then move on to the next project. That hw we do in in RL here. But then again I am in japan we try to get things working and then SUPPORT IT.

Hidding your head will result in a head pounding experience later.

My 2 cents worth....

I think Phillip/Linden Labs are perhaps more passonate about wanting to fix the system, then perhaps they are able to, due to funding. Afterall, it was passion that led to the creation of the system in the first place.

Personally I think they got the business model wrong from the start (thats what happens when you are passion driven, rather than finacially driven), I suspect the 'hope' was that enough people would want to join the programme and pay the various revenue pipelines (teir, land purchase, premium accounts, prim taxes etc) to fund it's growth. I reality, this didn't go to 'plan'. The rapid influx of accounts over the past year, also didn't pay the dividends expected. Pressure from the initial investors wanting to see the fruits of their money, has perhaps curtailed a little of the passion to make the platform more stable and scaleable (keep squeezing the stone for the last drop of blood, before you pump more money into it, just to see how dry it can become).
Ultimately, now the ball is rolling faster than anticipated, it would only leave 3 options...

1) Keep plugging the holes and firefight for as long as you can hold out.
2) Patch the system up enough to make it appear a viable prospect for a buyer/more investors.
3) Bite the bullet and reform the whole thing from the ground up.

As the platform is ground breaking, there are no real concrete evidence to support its viability for continued investment (unless you share the passion), nor are there any tried and tested models to mimic (this is true on any 'inventions').
Convincing users that this form of commerce is to become the 3d internet of tomorrow, doesn't seem to have worked, when you look at the amount of dead accounts against those that have stayed the course.

I believe that LL have proved that the concept is a good one and has merit, but historically so did BetaMax.

I can give them a break with the tech isuues, whether they are easily fixable or not is beyond me, but as a paying Customer, there is no exusing their atrocious Customer Service. It is the worst I've seen.

I vote Extremely Serious.

If you had a business, and there was a problem somewhere that would affect it, you'd want it fixed ASAP.

Just makes sense.

With any luck we'll have a better SL sooner or later. With even more luck, they'll completely re-do the coding adding in all the new stuff & fixing the old.

The Havok upgrade has been promised for at least three years, unfortunately .

I think LL are very keen to fix the grid but at the same time a flow of new features is necessary. The thing is, SL and real life differ in some important ways. In real life there are always new scientific discoveries to make about the world and improving things within it. In Second Life, all of the new discoveries are about _people_; new things only come into the world when the Lindens put them there.

If innovation in the Second Life platform itself dried up, so would resident innovation eventually. Artistic products like clothes and avatars would continue to sell and evolve, but experiences like shopping systems or in-world games would stagnate as the "best" products entrenched themselves.