CTO Cory Linden Leaving Linden Labs

That was in a different paragraph, it was an aside.

No I'm talking about the user interface, the buttons and allowing people to modify the look easily, which is something they want to do. You should pop along to one of Benjamin Linden's office hours, he most definitely wants to change the user interface.

There are loads of real business here, and they aren't all leaving at all.

The idea that people running their own servers are going to do it at a pittance of the cost of owning land via LL simply doesn't stack up. LL would not exist, tier is the core backbone of their business model.

I don't know Cory Linden from Adam, so I can't comment on him on a personal level, but I can comment on my perceptions of the "fruits of his labors" as one of the many users of the technology for which he was ultimately responsible for delivering.

What has happened is that SL has become technology that is very cool, but scales horribly. It all worked fine when there were a few hundred people floating around the grid at any given time, and when the asset server wasn't so bloated with such a huge amount of data to manage and distribute. But as Second Life grew, it became a victim of its own success, and the technology has not adapted to this new reality.

While I am a software type by trade, I don't have the answer as to how Second Life should be architected, but I am certain that the current implementation is failing miserably.

Whoever heard of a "society" with 100's of thousands of residents, but where no more than 40 or 50 can gather at any given time (i.e. the limit on avatars in a sim). The asset server is horribly broken, teleporting and other sim/sim coordination is god awful, the physics engine is little more than a play toy, and the build environment is severely limited.

The real problem is that this has all been happening for a couple of years now, is only getting worse day by day, and there is no solution in sight.

Personally, I think Cory did a wonderful job developing the "prototype" of the technology and did a great "proof of concept". But now the rubber is meeting the road, and its time to make this thing work the way it should work given the realities of growth over the last 4 or 5 years. Perhaps its beyond his expertise or abilities to deliver on the next generation of SL, and that is why he was let go.

Just a few observations, and an unsolicited contribution of my $L0.02...

- Ace

with the creator of Ultima Online building a virtual world, they better get scaling, quickly. I would much prefer to see coexistence.

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/22428.wss


im sure this partnership between LL & IBM has had quite an influence on decisions as well.

Your proposed solutions would actually have the opposite effect than you think, in my opinion. People massively underestimate the amount of bandwidth that would be needed to host a sim. Open source servers won't be a panacea. The only people who'll be able to afford to host them are other corporations.

As for the economy, without a way to earn real money to recoup costs for land, software, and time not spent on a real job, there'd be a whole let less for people to play with or places to go because most people who provide those things now would no longer be able to justify the time and expense. They'd still need to recoup their expenses, and then you'd have to deal with two economies instead of just one. Having the L$ tied to real money brought some bad things with it, but the breadth and quality of content and attractions avaiable now in SL is light years beyond what existed before it became possible to cash out. I don't believe that would have happened to nearly the same extent had LL not taken that step.

Money isn't the root of all evil. Greed is. Unlinking the SL and real world economies wouldn't eliminate greed. It's been here since the beginning. Back when prim limits weren't tied to amount of land owned but were shared by everyone in a sim, people would rez as many plywood cubes as they could afford the L$ tax on to "reserve" them so no one else could use them. No matter what SL does or becomes, with this many people here you're going to have every human vice and virtue on display, regardless of whether or not real money is at stake.

which truly isn't worth much compared to much of the wisdoms here already mentioned . RL business have/can/do put avis on their web sites right now. They can stream music to the site and the web site is selling the company's/person's creations and or wares. It is a stable proven format and is as well there when needed. Also at least when you drop something in place on a web site it is there until you remove it.

With all that's been noted, I do hate to see Cory go and can only wish him the very best in all his future adventures.

Now SL really needs to step up to the plate in stability if they wish to bring in or keep, or interest small or big business. For at this point it is really game format and just not as stable as a web site truly is for business.

Not Open Source----not in what I am saying. Open Source will never be secure.

There already is not enough bandwidth. Bandwidth will be there in the future--another reason LL should not have rushed it. As far as hardrives go...Terabytes are already available and in the future will be much more and cheaper.






I said, use real currency for real life or non-virtual items. No reason not to. No reason not to charge real money for created objects, if the intention is a real life business.



Greedy people are not going to go away, but with land one's own on one's local machine(s), goodbye to greedy land baron's, goodbye bot buyers. With vigourous policing against theft, then they won't be anywhere near as prevalent.

[/QUOTE]No matter what SL does or becomes, with this many people here you're going to have every human vice and virtue on display, regardless of whether or not real money is at stake.[/QUOTE]

It isn't hard to see what crosses the line and becomes theft, hacking, scamming griefing, etc. Just enforce a strict TOS that still allows the broad freedoms of Sl---plenty of freedom. It really isn't brain surgery.

Don't build a platform that will just become a scammers paradise---a 3D spam and scam parlor.

if people want to have a stock exchange or bank or gamble----with Lindens --fine--its ficticious and fantasy. But if people want to hack, steal or grief, then bust and ban them cold.

If you want to do REAL business in SL...use real money with existing methods like credit cards and paypal etc---not Lindens. Then theft is clear cut, real life cyber crime.

The UI is part of the client.

the link to the above IBM article has some good points, and i hope theyre carried out:

...
More specifically, IBM and Linden Lab plan to collaborate on:

* "Universal" Avatars: Exploring technology and standards for users of the 3D Internet to seamlessly travel between different virtual worlds. Users could maintain the same “avatar” name, appearance and other important attributes (digital assets, identity certificates, and more) for multiple worlds. The adoption of a universal “avatar” and associated services are a possible first step toward the creation of a truly interoperable 3D Internet.

* Security-rich Transactions: Collaborating on the requirements for standards-based software designed to enable the security-rich exchange of assets in and across virtual worlds. This could allow users to perform purchases or sales with other people in virtual worlds for digital assets including 3D models, music, and media, in an environment with robust security and reliability features.

* Platform stability: Making interfaces easier to use in order to accelerate user adoption, deliver faster response times for real-world interactions and provide for high-volume business use.

* Integration with existing Web and business processes: Allowing current business applications and data repositories – regardless of their source – to function in virtual worlds is anticipated to help enable widespread adoption and rapid dissemination of business capabilities for the 3D Internet.

* Open standards for interoperability with the current Web: Open source development of interoperable formats and protocols. Open standards in this area are expected to allow virtual worlds to connect together so that users can cross from one world to another, just like they can go from one web page to another on the Internet today.

....



thats a heavy load....

I think Meade was commenting on you saying both that they need to put stability in front of everything else and, same paragraph or not, mentioning skinning, which does nothing for stability and probably adds complexity.. No worries - probably just read it wrong.

Just FYI, this is quite incorrect. Any security scheme that relies on the secrecy of *code* instead of *data* is utterly doomed from the start. But that's not news: it's been standard practice for... I dunno, at least twenty years. (I don't think that was the main point, though, and it's pretty far from the thread topic, so I won't belabor it further.)

I'm all broken up.

I concur and quote largely for truth, but the root of all evil is pride. Pride leads to fear of loss, which translates into greed, gluttony, envy, and just about every vice you can think of.

And pride may be why Philip and Cory were at loggerheads - professionally, if not personally. But the CEO wins...

The UI requires client and server code to function. The recent changes to allow functionality for restricting parcels to verified residents only required changes to client and server code.

I did say nearly all attention should go to stability You can't put all your eggs in one basket though.

This is very true.

And unless the person's sole business is SL, then you wont be able to use your computer for anything else while your sim is running.
No checking email, no surfing the web, no using MS Office, no Photoshop. To do anything else is to take away bandwidth and resources from YOUR sim. Not to mention, some ISP's get a bit upset when a home user starts to gobble up enourmous amounts of bandwidth.

They'll also have to learn how to use textures conservatively, no more giant 1024x1024 textures all over, no excessive scripts, no excessive prims or giant prims.

Hmmm... I wonder if there's an Open-Source Program out there somewhere that would let people simulate what it'd be like to run their home PC's as a Server? Maybe let them see how their systems would handle it.

The problem is that this would offer people two stark options. Either:

a) You can do business in L$. You'llearn access to more and more in-world content, probably quickly far beyond what you'll ever use; but you'll never be able to earn more land, and you'll be paying your own tier fees forever more.

or

b) You can do business in US$. You have to sign up as a PayPal trader or a credit card merchant. You can be sued for US$ dealings, so you have to register a company, keep accounts, declare everything for tax, etc.

I know that b) is already true for the major businesses in SL, because they earn so much. But it's still possible for someone whose main interest is creativity, to buy some land, make something, earn L$ for it and put that towards their tier fees so they don't have to pay per month for getting to create things that are enjoyed by others. Yes, I suppose this is slightly iffy - technically every cent should be declared for tax even if it doesn't change the total you pay - but they have the option of renting their land from a landlord, and paying their rent in L$, thus avoiding even that because they never handle any real money. If it was impossible to trade L$ for US$, then that would become impossible too, and lots of people would be put off by having to either pay to entertain others or become an RL business with all the difficulties that involves.

Please reread what I had written. there will be NO tier fees. The land is on your own local machine one sim per avatar and you can add land till you use a sensible maximum of paid alts all tied to your main account. No more hiding behind alts for policing purposes. You can build offline and plug into grid when you want. Add another computer with each alt and you have more sims you can join or not.
So you are paying for your own computer and you really do own the land on your own hardrive(s). You host your own business and be connected to the grid 24/7 or as much as you like. Do your own maintanance. a Sim comes with a premium membership, but you host it on your own computer(s) One master account and a sensible number of same price, paid alts, each able to run a sim. So you really do own it. Updates and policing is the companies job. The size of a sim is dependent on your storage, up to a reasonable limit. Many more prims per sim.


You really want a sim which costs as much as leasing a nice car...? That you don't really own or that you can't really control it's fate? You already have a computer. add a hard drive if you need one. By the time this kind of system was implemented, massive terabytes drives will be a cheap investment.




You can already be sued. If you have a business you already have to pay taxes.

I really wish Cory well - he was part of building something quite amazing which has allowed us to spend a lot of time meeting people we would otherwise never have met, been able to stretch our design talents far beyond what we thought we could do, and generally opened up a whole new way of being "on-line".

I'm not going to speculate on what will go on in the future - I see a lot of wishful thinking going on here. But the biggest frustration for everyone is the lack of stability and performance as more people come on-line (scalability, I think you call it). I'm sure this is scaring away many many more people who just get frustrated by never being able to get in-world.

While things like Windlight cause a bit of a "wow" factor, but I don't think they will bring in premium accounts (or non-premium that bring money in-world). The things that will cause someone to stay and spend money are the stability and the fact that they can stay in-world without losing items, without crashing, and without lagging like crazy because someone standing close to them has a lorry-load of bling on them.

This new physics engine, while I don't understand the details, seems to be going a way to make things better in terms of performance. I think that's a good sign.

I just hope that the LL team remains focused on solving those issues and making it feel more like a world, rather than a piece of bleeding edge software.

Chip has already pointed out the problem with this - it would be hugely expensive, due to the cost of the computer and the bandwidth. Most people would rather not leave their computer switched on 24/7, but according to you, if they don't then other people can't see the things they've created unless they meet up with them.

If you actually do this, all that will happen is that one or two residents will offer to run the sims 24/7 for others in exchange for US$ and we'll be back to how it is now..



I have a computer, but running Second Life itself consumes 100% of CPU. That means, the same computer can't run a sim too - not without performance dropping. And even if I buy a new computer, I'd have to leave it on all the time in order for others to be able to visit my business (the majority of my in-world sales are made to US users, who log on while I'm tucked up in bed!).

As Chip mentioned, the bandwidth costs would also be devastating. In the UK, the standard "home" connection is ADSL, which is no good for running a server. If you want SDSL, you have to have custom wires installed. So, 512k SDSL? The price is equivalent to US$301/month. More than a sim, even without any other maintenance fees.. and that's only for 512k of bandwidth. If I allowed 50 users into my sim then, well, I hope none of them have bothered buying broadband or anything bigger than a dial-up modem, because my sim can only provide them with 9000 bps each... I do have a very dim memory of using 9600 baud modems.. it was around 1991... They, um, wouldn't work well with SL.. or I could go for the highest price consumer option, 2mb SDSL! For just US$422 a month.. and divided 50 ways it's still only 40960 bps each.. I remember using 56k modems too, in 1994... they wouldn't work well with SL either.



Not if you do business only in L$, because you are not dealing in any real money.

The intermediate solution is that you will have hosting companies where the actual SIM will be located; but who charge a much more reasonable rate to keep you connected to SL's grid. Don't have to buy a new computer, don't have to install new T1 lines..you just rent server space the same way you do now. It would be more secure anyway..and I doubt that SL is going to pass out access code to any tom, Dick or Jane...not at first anyway. IBM partnership starting to make sense?

I guess I got lost on what you wanted. I remember reading about buttons and skinning options, which are client GUI items.

anyways whatever it is, theres the SLDev wiki where you can make requests and get things rolling

not sure if i got all this and related info, but ill try

home computers arent fast enough to be hosts at this time. I believe their sim servers, at least 6 months ago, are rack-mounted, burning-hot multi-core machines with 8 gigs ram and ridiculous abmounts of HD space. Wholesale cost of these are about $3000-4000, plus IT costs. Just electricity costs of a server like this in the Bay Area runs about $50/month. i don't remember if current servers host 2 or 4 sims.

Upload speeds are also horribly crippled. It's still near impossible to host a regular web site from a home server if the content is anything more than text. In SL, anyone who has thir own online streaming needs additional services just to broadcast shoutcast to more than 2 people. I end up hogging half my upload bandwidth just so people can listen to a song.

Hosts that deal with LL are already loaded and getting ticked from what ive heard. we use a lot of bandwidth to run around on our virtual dirt.

Ultimately our sims will be hosted at home. Shoot, ultimately we'll be hosting them from our cellphones. Current infrastructure wont allow for it tho. unfortunately.

I've seen future models of hosting fees in Virtual Worlds, where the charge is based on visitation. I think thats a good way of looking at it. Visitors use more bandwidth on a sim than a sim sitting silent. The server has to work when visitors are present, otherwise it's idle. This can provide fairness to neigbors who dont get as much visitors, hinder camping incentives, and provide some nice scaling if your virtual disco bombs one month.

This can cause problems too of course, such as if you want to have a experimental or art sim that suddenly becomes popular. Non-profit policies would need to be well-implemented, as well as an understanding that anythign that consumes resources has to be paid by somebody. A good sense of reality can offset tho. For example, The Apollo sim builder is making a killing selling the items they made for their sim (at least according to prices and ratings on slexchange). So that leaves a strange concept of actually building things people like, vs. tricking them in with campers and spam and phony traffic stats.

LL has proposed a new type of sim as well, where you get more land, less prims, and you cant set to home. The cost will be much less, but balanced as far as server load. Basically "lite" sims. I think you have to purchase more than one as well--a design to allow for meadows and large open spaces. i think its a cool concept.