Further Conversation... with M Linden

Yes, the Het grid has now given LL the opportunity to update server code without the old 4-5 hour shutdown. which for us in the UK used to occur at the day's peak play time of the evening. It was a known philosophy of LL that meant we could experience RL for 1 day a week, or even have a play on the Beta grid and give some real testing to the next code development due to be extended to the main grid.

Unfortunately this same Het grid seems to be slowing things down on a day to day basis. Customers maintain a lot of the major bugs these days should have been identified before deploy, but unfortunately the lack of Beta grid use by customers gives LL little opportunity to find all those sets of circumstances that cause these problems for some. Conversely the fact that new RC viewers are being tested on the main grid means that a lot of show stopping errors are identified and rectified before release of any new standard viewer.

Finally as I said previously. Yeah the situation did get bad in Autumn 2007 when I effectively left the game for a while due to LL's unwillingness to listen to customer complaints, and the then impossible performance of the grid when a grid wide shutdown for new server code was followed by certain major functions of SL being baulked for several days until an emergency update to roll back or rectify the code.

Hi Felix,

My view is your 2cents (smile) are more valuable than many aggressive posts in this here thread. Roughly, the idea could be to afford SL residents choosing between two different clients.

- A first "light" client s/w allowing to run SL with 3/4 years old computers or recent low-end ones for those residents that use the platform for basic activities (e.g.: hopping at random from region to region, in-world discovery, chat with contacts/friends and any other activity of the like).

- A second may be more "demanding" client for those residents that consider SL as a business platform for the sake of making money (or to some extent, who are willing to be comfortable enough for building/scripting and occasionally sell items to compensate a bit the tier fees). That would obviously require a high end computer, however it is just common sense than when one is wishing to make money out of something one has to invest into an appropriate logistics/infrastructure/etc enabling their defined business purpose and goal.

Just my 2 cents in return.

Yeah, this is a big deal. The Beta grid is down too much of the time, and it's rarely clear what is being tested where and when. It was a huge help for H4 and Mono, and lead to relatively smooth introduction of both technologies (all things considered). But day-to-day, too many little bugs get introduced into the Main grid, and then rolled back, because there's just not enough pre-deployment testing on the Beta grid. Het grid makes those rollbacks relatively painless, but one fine day, something will get partially deployed and be bad enough to bring down the whole grid. A bit more rigor about Beta grid testing of new server releases is definitely in Engineering's best interest.

@Astarte thread entry #147.

Well, in fact we do agree on my initial statement: Things are going far more better since June/july this year. Don't we?

PS: I'm from the EU too though not from UK (simply cross the channel to guess where)

Hi M

Here are my comments for the record:

What's better than last year?
- Het grid - No big outages for system upgrades
- H4 - before H4 I couldn't link 2 story house that fit well inside a 512 plot, now I can link a house on a 4096 on the first attempt
- H4 again - makes megaprims usable when cut and hollowed; Linden support for megaprim liberation in the future
- Windlight.

What's worse than last year? Client stability on the Mac platform. This time last year I had a client that didn't freeze my whole computer requiring force quit or hard restarts every few minutes. This time last year the reports of freezing and crashing Mac Book Pros were 2 months old. These reports are now 14 months old and still unfixed. The "fix" that was announced around January which involved a new client, upgrade to Leopard and special Apple graphics update failed to fix the MBPs and started my non-MBP Mac freezing and crashing the same way.

Memory leaks in the Mac client have existed for months or years and not been fixed. Resident-created solutions exist but are not adopted.

Default settings still have options enabled which instantly crash the client on certain hardware - so how is a new user supposed learn to disable these options?

JIRA, while valuable, often results in long, discursive reports which don't help LL discover problems or solutions. Read VWR-7779 for a litany of woes from bitterly disappointed high end Mac users.

The platform must continue to evolve and develop, but if the client fails to Just Work then it's impossible to use the new features.

In summary then, I hope to see client stability get the attention it requires to make a foundation for increased functionality and usability improvements.

The hard part that these old computers are choking on is downloading thousands of textures, decompressing them all, then squeezing them in to what little vram they have and drawing them onto the thousands of prims & avatars in sight. So unless you're proposing that this "light" client be text only I don't see how your idea can work.

Dear Mr M,

I want a new bicyle for xmas please and a xbox.


thankoo

Well, I WAS directed here from Resident Answers, thread name "How is this legal?", to see if I could get a human being to look at my friend's issues both pre-and-post-banning (despite the privacy issues being a factor against resolution -- then again, so is an utter lack of any information on her problem EXCEPT in the forums, which she's been blocked from since this most recent issue started August 5th). But given the lack of Lindens responding, I'm not sure... but I'll give it a shot anyway.
Basically, my friend Micheille Jun (her Premium avatar) was blocked in late July for a payment issue -- she saw what she's sure is the same charge regarding Lindens purchased on both her credit card and her PayPal account, and, like a genius, disputed the charge with both of them instead of just one. (Plus it's only possible for this to happen in a serious glitch in Billing.) When her Primarily-Used avatar Valerie Tachikawa was also blocked, she panicked, and, following the instructions given her by support, canceled the dispute with both the credit card company and PayPal (after informing our circle of friends with an alt; I questioned the wisdom of this, and exchanged YIM handles so she didn't need to use the alt). She's sure she successfully canceled these disputes, by the way.
And all was well, until about the 4th of August (at least that's the last message I heard from Valerie), when she was blocked for "Receiving disputed Lindens in excess of L$5000". She also managed to get another notice about 'multiple chargebacks and disputes' later on. But she was never told who caused the dispute, or what 'disputed Lindens' means -- and try Googling it, you get nothing of substance -- or what the chargebacks were for (if it was her credit card, her PayPal, or both), or why they couldn't tell her a damn thing. (Though the forums people said that it was to keep people from learning anything in an investigation. I could SWEAR I'm in the USA, where people are innocent until proven guilty, and the customer is always a customer and should be treated with respect, but I guess San Francisco doesn't count as the US anymore.)
Now, unfortunately, Mich is a SL addict, so she immediately hopped back on with a new avatar to tell our circle of friends what happened. (I'm still trying to figure out how to slap someone through the internet, but she was under a lot of stress.) Anyway, about a week after this, she got impatient and mildly depressed because she didn't look like 'herself', so she borrowed money from a mutual friend to buy her Val-skin. She was booted within five minutes.
It was about this time that a RL friend of hers told her that SL had a habit of not concluding their investigations until the offended party's dispute was retracted, and that there is a dispute from 2006 still in the system. Also around this time was the major trigger for her anxiety: An e-mail from one of her support tickets (unfortunately, her anxiety led her to create as many as two support tickets for each avatar a day for the first couple of days; she had no idea that by 'spamming' the system she'd probably make the situation worse) stating that "We have a proposed solution to your problem", and a link back ... to her closed-without-comment ticket.
>>Okay, while I do NOT believe this is an indication of Support hating her and wanting to toy with her emotions, like she does, this is unconscionable. And I don't blame her for automatically assuming that Support doesn't give a s**t about actually helping -- hell, she'd been ignored for more than an hour while on Live Chat about this problem. Not disconnected, merely ignored. Not even an "I can't discuss this". And the people on the forums actually started to suggest that she actively evade SL, because all the evidence suggested that you'd given up entirely on ever trying to solve her dispute. (I'm really regretting forwarding the post subscription updates to her, considering...)<<
So she creates yet another avatar. And, for a time, it seems to be working, although our mutual friends worry about the money she's managing to spend via SLX. Still, she manages to feel comfortable, for three weeks... then, after making no purchases that aren't free, she's blocked again... and, well, lucky her, she actually gets a response about it -- saying:
Greetings Valerie, Linden Lab has determined that you have used at least one of your Second Life accounts in violation of the Second Life Terms of Service. Such actions result in the removal of your account from Second Life. We have determined your primary account and all alternate accounts will be permanently banned for said abuse. Kind regards, Linden Lab"
Well, this doesn't sit well with her (nor me, as it still says nothing about her original issue, nor does it say exactly what her violation was, but she's the SL addict being told she has to give up all hope), as she gets too depressed to sleep for a few days. But slowly, gradually, she starts to recover from the error a few too many people make online (as in, she's lived the past year of her life mostly here, and not in reality). And she even finds a good string of releases in City of Heroes and other games.
And then... the reason why I'm writing today. Because last week, she got ANOTHER e-mail with a 'proposed solution'. It led to a link that had... the exact same letter I copied, plus TOS sections 2.6, 2.4, and 4.1. (Which kind of confirmed our theory of why she was banned -- at least 2.4 does, though 4.1 has the whole 'objectionable content' thing that makes me wonder why the Xcite and Sensations/Amethyst companies are allowed to be in existence. And the specific part of 4.1 wasn't highlighted.)
She... didn't take it well. I spent three hours talking her out of her funk on YIM. And I got worried... are more of these on the way? And what the hell help is it to tell a banned person they've been banned?
I just want it to stop. No more jerking her around. I want someone who gives a damn about the fact that they ended up screwing one of their better customers to call HER and explain what the hell happened. If there IS still a pending investigation, let her HELP you with it.
Or should we hit PC Magazine or Max PC and start spreading around how horrible the support system is, and how LL doesn't care to fix it?

Maybe it doesn't download all textures? What if you were to replace all walls and floors with a default texture and maybe some other stuff.
We should all have default wall and floor pieces on our harddrives so we don't spend a fortune in bandwidth every year downloading the same textures 365 times.

You have already posted about this in another thread and had responses...??

lol

v good

To be fair...and trust me I have attempted to see things from both sides as issues have affected my SL too.

Take any company.. say erm... British Telecom or Virgin Media..
I am sure they have thousands of customers all paying their monthly fees complaining to themselves and their family/friends about various aspects of their service.

And I am also sure there will be mention of said aspects in certain unrelated forums on websites on the internet.

But the problem for LL is their business head quarters and main point of advertisment is "Internet based" as in the SL website.

I am certain they have a similar % than most large business has in complaints about various service issues.

The difference is, their complaints are aired in public at the main location of where their " head office" is .. the SL website, which in theory is the same as having say Virgins customers pickiting outside their head office gates with banners saying:

" refund me your service sucks" with a news crew being there and it being aired on a certain TV channel...its BAD publicity and any business would do all they can to remove it from public view...

If I was LL I would open a free call customer service number for all "paying" residents ( personal gripe..I dont believe anyone getting something for free has the right to moan about it...and apparently neither to LL )


I also think by the very nature of what SL is makes the complaints a lot higher.
SL is "software"
Software reacts differently on each persons PC depending on what other software they have installed, and their band width and graphics card and RAM etc.
My family work in PCs and the amount of customers that telephone in complaining that their new PC is "broke" and going NUTS until we talk them thru the process on the phone or visit them and show them their ISP is hanging out of the back of their PC is overwhelming,
PCs are complicated things, software conflicts are very common..and we all "blame the game" rather than look into our own software.
I am not suggesting that all of the complaints about the SL client are not valid I am just saying I guess a large % is not linked to the client but more to how it conflicts with various aspects of a persons PC.
So it increases the complaints for LL a lot more than say a telephone service that requires a simple wire and phone.

The lack of customer support in " real life " such as a human voice on the end of the phone that doesnt just give you default responses is not good.

They need to treat customers as real people who pay REAL money as we do!
Not "resididents"


LL are not perfect and nvr will be.
No one person or business is.

I see less and less noobs wanting to learn a trade or how to build...when a noob walks into my store and says " Im just starting to learn to build" I give them a free set of textures because we need these types of people...ok....maybe I meant " I " need these type of ppl.

We made SL what it is today by around 80%. And we paid for the pleasure and it was a pleasure.

I certainly understood your post# 84 to mean an offline mini sim server.
It's a wonderful idea.

When I joined SL back in early '07, the OI experience was a simple trail to follow. It covered the basics.
I've tried creating accounts in the interim when I hear that the setup has changed.
I found the later versions to be confusing and laggy, so much so that I abandoned two avatars in the process for weeks until a window of available time coincided with low concurrency.
The newer processes did try to explain a lot more. However, my feeling is that they tried to explain too much in one fell swoop. A new user might not appreciate the relevance and/or might not be able to retain the knowledge.

An offline introduction in which a user could exercise all of the basic options would deliver them a smoother experience and remove some load from the grid. win-win
That offline sim could offer a clear trail for someone to follow, and would support most of the features - including an extremely limited inventory purely for exercise. All of the central server databases could be implemented as small flat-files.







Welcome Areas - and their policing:

My last trial alt ended up with Waterhead as its Home.
No Mentors to bee seen in my few visits, but plenty of Mentals. There may be worse areas, but this one was not very inviting for a new user.

People have posted above to the effect that LL can not afford to patrol all of the Welcome Areas.
One Linden with a bank of screens could keep an eye out for visual signs of obvious trouble, and dip in at random or in rotation to check what is happening on sound.
This sort of security monitoring is wall-to-wall in RL.
It wouldn't require any special hardware other than a swivel/wheelie chair and a bigger workstation.

Just a point, my post was not a complaint about the software, it runs well for me, I have not crashed in months, never fail to TP, never have lost anything important from my inventory, my point was that the forum was opened to answer questions put to LL by the users of SL, why then do LL not answer the questions.

If you look back through this forum topic, you will find some replies, every one of them to posts that say nice things about SL, and not one that answers a solid hard question.

My original post was not a complaint about SL, or the software, in fact I have no real problem with that side at all.

I do however have a problem with promises to answer questions which are NEVER carried through.

Some time ago we were promised complete transparency, to me that means making things clear, answering questions, and putting the the questions and answers where they can be seen by any user of SL.

All questions are now hidden here in the forums, something that the average user of SL does not know even exists, and if they do know, they usually have ho idea how to get here, and if they are not a premium account, they cant reply anyway.

All of the replies in this forum were to posts saying nice things about SL, not one actually answered the hard questions.

I love SL, and will not leave unless I am pushed out, and LL know that this is true of the majority of the users, so they just dont care.

That sounds exactly like the OSGrid to me, you can download a server to your desktop and play there as long as you like.

There are problems with it, but then there are problems in SL as well, so its good training

LL opened the forums to ALL accounts this year including basic/NPIOF accounts.

Only from other residents, and as I said, the answers actually made the situation worse. But I swear, no matter what Micheille has done, no matter what more they think she did, this is the kind of customer service that would be unacceptable at a back-roads fry shack, much less a multimillion dollar company like Linden Lab is.
But what do they care? I think that the most they can lose here are about ten to MAYBE twenty people who quit in disgust, plus one fairly good customer they railroaded, and with a million log-ins a week, why SHOULD they care?
Although, my last thought about papering the magazines with the fact that this is how LL treats its paying customers (particularly if we mentioned that Mich is out almost $200 US in L$) ... do you think it might do something to the system? Something for me to ponder, I guess.

Ah yes sorry, I had read that and I forgot it.

However, I have been in SL for 2 years , and found the forums by accident a few months back when I worked as an admin at the SL5B sims.

Since I knew nothing about the forums, how many ordinary newish people do you really think will find them?

And the point remains that LL do not answer any questions except the ones they like.

About the ad-farming and garbage in Mature mainland parcels. I have pieces of land around me that spit annoying particles, and builds that are horrific. My neighbors around me are great but there's a few litter bugs who just put crap everywhere. It's gross to be around.

There are bullets in the sky that no one ever cleaned up. (I'm talking like 10.000 10.000 10.000 size.) And parts of a builder box that someone forgot to take their wall with them. And then little things people I guess have rezzed and left.

I just wanted to add that mature mainland holders would like some cleanup too. I don't know if I missed it or not because I know there was talk that adland was taken away from PG sims.

But also there is still a thriving gambling economy. I've seen enough sploders, plinko, and those old west style hand crank machines around. I saw 1/2 a sim of them all up and working. Mind you the place was dead, but still... I thought gambling was banned.

Other then my little gripes SL is getting better and better. I haven't had any time lately that I haven't wanted to log in and hadn't been able too. But the new viewer is slow. Even on my cable connection. But it's probably because of all the objects around me. Because when I log in to my OpenSim to test out my sculpts I run fine and fast with all the settings on high. *sighs and laughs* Just wish the real SL was just as fast. (And no the OpenSim I have is hosted on a server not my home computer so that's not why it's fast. It's just not cluttered with 100+ objects spewing particles everywhere.)

*laughs and gives a thumbs up.* It's still fun to be a part of SL even if I have to deal with lag. I still enjoy myself.

This is a problem. One hopes that the Forums will get more prominent billing and more widespread use after their upcoming facelift and integration with the blog and wiki / knowledge base. Frankly, with the current long-neglected state of the vBulletin software, I too would be ashamed and embarrassed to promote them. Now, however, I'm reasonably hopeful that LL realizes how effectively the Forums fit with the virtual world itself as complementary forms of crowdsourced content.

Well there are some things I would like to address here. First being traffic. It was stated in this blog a steady increase. However, and being honest and given personal observation and web stat sites (such as http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/secondlife.com). I have seen more leaving SL personally than coming. I have seen fewer people in places that used to have many. So as far as traffic climbing I would disagree. And then the note of having fewer client crashes or other problems. I have not seen too much change in this. Continued rezzing problems, crashes, etc. Not just by me but various people I've talked to. I still get the unable to teleport problem as also those I talked to do as well. I also still run into the teleport somewhere, and a few seconds later SL trying to reteleport me to the same spot. Then it disabling all teleports after that til I relog. Why I am mentioning this. SL is focusing very hard on expansion and new ideas. Which is good. However, to expand efficiently and effectively one must have some sort of stable base to build from. And SL since my time here has yet to see any good stability to merit expansion. There was even a note a long time ago by some the top people in SL asking LL to fix all the bugs before doing features. LL replied saying they would work to fixing these issues. And here time later, the letter seemingly ignored, problems very rampant, and yet new features. Before voice, before windlight, before many of the other additional features it should have been LL's main focus to make a more stable platform. Its a wonderful idea, wonderful technology, with some awesome staff ... it seems to me to lack true responsiveness like any good company should have. In that LL shouldnt be so hard to gain members. But fix the problems in the system they have, to keep the current ones. True you want new members to join also. Though you want the old ones to remain there as well. And after a while even the new ones, after seeing SL's problems...more than likely dont stay. To revamp SL's total number I feel a "If you dont log on in 30 days" for the free accounts. Should be put into place. This way weeding out many of those that no longer play. This would apply to paying customers just the free accounts. SL would see a heavy drop in its numbers. Its like saying you have all flavors of ice cream but only having vanilla in the end ... I am not saying anything in a way to bug anyone. Just what I have seen. I love SL alot or I wouldnt be writting this =). I just feel LL's focus isnt entirely where it needs to be. It keeps looking far forward, but not seeing the problems at home.

Someone asked for an offline way for people to learn to use SL, I posted a reply saying that you can download a server from OSgrid, which is the open source platform based on SL, the post was removed, why???

Ok my thoughs on this subject secondlife is much more stable to the degree that i never have had a veiwer crash at all in months also i know that the problems with lag and crashes are mostly due to spending time in overloaded sims this is why i stay clear of them the term overload is where their are just too many scripts and textures that plays havoc with graphics load and sim resorces. M sl does seem quiet but that is as we know avaters are still too wide spread because of the amount of sims out there a few years ago their was atleast 8 people to 1 sim at any given time on mainland I hope that users levels will soon catch up to actual land mass.

Just wanted to let you guys know that everything is looking good on my end and i have noticed the change after the initial few month of getting things underway for the better.

One never finds a forum post in their Google search results. This probably has something to do with the forums remaining not well known about.