There is simply no excuse for this...

I agree with the overall point ... that the current SL game and economy will slowly become irrelevant (the time is nowhere near now, tho). However, I disagree that the RL companies will be relying on us for "market". There is no effective way to market en masse within SL, and until someone has a brainstorm about that, using SL for advertising remains a bad investment.

I think the successful RL companies in SL are not going to be relying on us for much of anything. They are building an incredibly vital intranet/extranet for purposes like:
-- Meetings inside a multinational company
-- Conferences
-- Customer demos/introductions/meetings by invitation
-- Education
A company like IBM, which makes a lot of money nowadays from selling services, could also market their environment to other companies as a managed service.

We, and this game we play, will of course be one of many businesses hosted on the grid. Right now we are the only business on the grid. That will change.

off-topic: Are you from Pittsburgh? The first thing that popped into my head when I read your post is "hey, that's a Pittsburgh speech pattern."

I went to Motorati, and it was cool - so is Nissan, if you want to go and find a place with decent roads to drive.

I also went to STA Travel. This is an example of a place that could actually be useful for Second Life residents, to get information about traveling to places all over the world and being able to learn a little while playing. STA has its own orientation portal for newbies. I don't know how well attended it is, but it was pretty busy when I went.

If they start fixing things right, we would not need to back up inventory! But LLABs just plays and plays and plays and lets the situation get worse and worse! Voting for those would not only causes a nightmare in a worse case situation. But also would cause a nightmare of promission loses if indeed LLABs servers turnes up errors!!!!!!!!!! Figgy is right its just crasy!

Actually, the first asset server failure message I received was at the end of 2004 when I lost all of my snapshots taken in 2003 and 2004 along with all my textures. In 2005 I lost many animations and so many other items.

Inventory loss due to asset server failure and missing from database has been a recurring severe problem since 2004 and, after waiting more than 3 years for a fix, I would not hold my breath that it will be resolved soon.

Sorry about that, I only mention April because that is when a certain update was required and I lost a massive amount of items. Thats also when I found the JIRA...I should have said it was a major issue for *me* since April. To hear people have been having this issue for years isnt encouraging in the least though

Count yourself lucky.

I am perplexed. I purchased something earlier in the day and there is was in my inventory. But after logging off, now it is no where to be found (and I didn't accidentially delete it). But hold on, we have voice right? Now that everyone on the grid has been forced to upgrade their clients we can all chat online with each other ... exchange all the stories of how things go missing. Sure is nice to know that voice is more important than lost and missing inventory items.

Not only do I shop less because of inventory issues, there are a few creators who I won't give my business to again because they never returned my IMs letting them know I had no copy items that were lost and would they consider replacing them. It's not their fault but I just can't see gambling on them again, especially if I can't count on them to help me if I buy something and it goes missing.

On the flip side, the folks who did respond when I Imed them have a loyal customer for life.

You should also consider the possibility that the merchants never received the IMs.

Much like when there are system issues where you pay a merchant, get no product, and the merchant gets *absolutely* no indication that the sale was borked.

On a similar note, I have checked the "IM to email when logged out" flag and never get IMs in email.

I'm not saying this is the case for all merchants you may have tried to contact, but neither should you assume that you are actually being ignored in all cases.

As to not being a consumer in this "despite our best effort" system, I can't fault you for that.

This is a serious f*cking problem. And I'm waaay beyond the simple "sigh and move on" stage. I lost HUNDREDS of scripts, hundreds of items, and these morons have provided me NO way to protect myself from THEIR idiot asset server problems.
It's inexcusable and needs to be addressed f*cking pronto.
If I don't see a blog post about it...or some other sort of recognition that it's gone on long enough, you can bet your ass I'll do whatever I can do to make sure as many nasty, ugly articles and references on it make it as far as they can on digg and reddit and any other tech-related blog I can possibly find.
So - another question...if Linden Lab refuses to address/correct serious issues like this...what's the best way to light a fire under their asses?
I'm so disgusted with their "support ticket" bullshit, and their nonexistent customer service that whatever light I can shine on this pathetic problem seems to be long past due.
While they've provided a neat and interesting digital playground, Linden Lab needs to be held accountable for recurring, serious problems that have not only the ability to annoy and enrage, but which also can cause a significant financial loss to residents.

So far I've seen very few ignition sources:
1) Stop paying them (not too effective when you are 1/50k voting with your wallet)
2) Get the media to do a sensationalistic article (usually only results in LL adding additional, asinine rules)
3) Be the FBI and tell them you know about their use as a money launderer (difficult to be the FBI, also generates new, bad rules)
4) Sue them (expensive, also generates new, bad rules)

Here are things known not to work:
1) Complain to LL (support, telephone, e-mail, blog all equally ignored)
2) Complain to LL board and investors (I know of one instance where this got a response, that being "hmm, we'll take a look"
3) Complain to fellow customers (possibly gratifying empathy, but null effect)
4) Complain to the Better Business Bureau (don't know why anyone thinks this will ever work for any firm)
5) Try to inform the world through grassroots (they mostly already know)

I know that leaves you with few options; 'tis pity 'tis true.

I'm still looking for some answer that justifies LL's stalwart refusal to address their serious database problems. Why can't they return my lost material? If it's showing in my inventory...there should be *some* trace of it in that ungodly mess of a database. Why can't they offer a simple backup solution for inventory items? If it's only a few (thousand) lines of code which eat up a whopping hundred K of space - let me save a snapshot on MY harddrive of MY friggin' database!
Why can't they offer a web-based way to backup an avi's database? What's so d*mned difficult about backing up a fragment of a MySQL database?

It seems that the powers-that-be better get their *sses in gear and SOLVE this f*cking problem, pronto.

If not - then their entire d*mn universe is nothing more than a gambling game. You never know - purely by chance - when ALL your money, your hard work, your investments will suddenly vanish.

JUST like a game of craps.

You me and about 100,000 users on sl would like this information. But I highly doubt will ever get it. Remeber they take no reponcibities (SP) for any lost of content. I think its about time they do. But as long as LLABS refuses to saying anything more then "well work on it " Or any other straight answer I say well its there company if they want it sink it in the sea let them.

Yup. Its a gamble.

No wonder commerce in Sl is collapsing. No one wants to buy anything they can't get or hang onto. Vendors don't want to make stuff they may lose.

Since LL can't or won't protect our inventories, they should make it possible to back them up ourselves. Whenever I've suggested this in the past I've deluged with lame excuses why this won't work, can't work and is impossible.

Given that our inventories and assets are the heart and soul of SL I would think that more people would be screaming about getting the problems fixed.

A wonderful way to creator more space right? cause people to leave and WALA! More space for the bigger players that LLABS cares more about then us. Why else havent they fixed the inventory problem? They have some of the best geek minds from MIT working for them right? Doesnt make sence. We are being more and more of a another chapter of SL history.

I am no longer purchasing in world. All my bad builds belong to myself.

Seriously, this is bad - and they need to fix it. I don't believe that LL is consciously NOT fixing these issues, perhaps they simply don't know how to.

And that is scary.

Lots of creators have an issue with replacing "no copy" items because of "scammers" for one; And for two I think many creators have just about had it with covering up for issues that they did not cause. Its easier to shop somewhere where the person will replace without question and I think we all like to shop at those places, but I do kind of understand why that type of IM is being ignored. Do I condone that behaviour? no. On the issue of just plan courtesy, I can not stand when people choose to ignore an IM, even if the answer is "no," take a minute to reply to the person. If I spend my money somewhere and that person can not even converse with me regarding an issue, I will never shop there again.

I just went through an (unresolved) issue of IMing someone for 3 days straight, I know she got my IM, but instead of just answering she choose to ignore me. I will never do "business" with this person or anyone associated with her again.

They won't fix it because it will require too much cash and too much work on the part of their already embattled coders to convert the database to something that will scale easier. They're finally enjoying the money and don't want to let go of it. But they are pissing it away with stuff like acquiring Windlight first. As much as I enjoy voice, I would have preferred a stable platform so the businesses can grow.

I lost about 12 really fantastic dances recently and didn't receive a response from the vendor. I might try again - I keep buying from him cos he is good and he might not have got my IM. On the other hand I am sure people pull scams all the time so that when you really DO lose something ... sigh.

Those that know me personally or heard of my store SB Lighting, know.... I certainly understand the way inventory loss is a big problem. As far as Im concerned if you have bought the item you are intitled to receive and use that item. It doesnt matter if you broke it...or it gets lost on rez or disapears out of inventory. I will personally come to your place of business and set it up for you if theres a problem or you have technical troubles (and normall through in a free store item for the inconvenience)

I know theres a lot fo the SL community where your custom only goes as far as the register and when you walk out the door thats the end of it. But to date I have NEVER had an unhappy customer. My ONLY rule is that I dont give out refunds as my equipment is no transfer, but if somebody has bought the wrong item I would normally supply the correct item free of charge. Of course this does leave my customer support open to abuse but certainly most of my customers are decent trust worthy people and mistakes DO happen.

I never keep singular items in my inventory.... things like scripts are kept twice in my inventory and at least once in world.

am i to understand that nothing will be done about the stuff that is missing form my inventory?

From now on might I suggest copying the data in all scripts you have permission to and pasting them in notecard or Word files on your computer. Everything is backed up on my hard drives....why not my inventory too...

And speaking of IBM, IBM workers are staging a protest in Second Life at the IBM sims.

http://www.localtechwire.com/business/local_tech_wire/news/story/1849345/

coco

Thank you for that link Cocoanut.



Aren't big businesses in SL for the advertising the platform can provide them with? Would a big presence of protesters drive up the traffic numbers for their sims all while not allowing anyone else there for the duration of the strike because the sims are full? In other words, they would help their traffic and no one would see the strike unless they went there early? If this is the case, I would let them carry on with their strike if I were IBM.

Not IBM. IBM is in SL to build a set of 3D collaboration / conferencing services that they can outsource to other companies.

http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2006/10/24/ibm-eyes-move-into-second-life-v-business/

It seems clear that they will have one of the first third-part servers on SL's grid.