A Look Back, A Look Ahead

Well, then we shouldn't be presuming on their content... and I don't think I said that mono would run slower - just at a different speed - and some content may be relying on a specific speed and break if it ran faster.

If i as owner of the product can choose HOW i want to run it and it breaks I can always disable mono when needed.

Well, file a Jira iissue. Maybe it would make sense to allow owners to recompile scripts under certain conditions. Maybe if the item is modifiable, for example.

CG,

Thanks for responding to the slow renduring issue. And, I am glad to hear the release team personally feels the pain in your meetings so you can understand my frustration.

In my real life company I pushed my company heavily to use SL for our sales meetings with our remote offices with future plans to use SL to meet with prospective customers. About six months ago when SL began to turn more and more grey with slow rendering I quietly and completely abandoned the idea of SL for business use in meetings, training, customer meetings and demos. I imagine I am not the only avatar who enjoys SL for personal use and was using or planning to use SL for their business and who have now abandoned the idea.

LL has a ways to go before the business world will adopt SL as a communications platform as it has with products from Cisco, Sun Micro, Microsoft, etc. Hopefully, you and your release team can make significant headway with this problem soon and thus dramatically increase the potential for SL in the business world and make SL a wonderful environment for residents to use for entertainment. As it is today, I log out soon after just a short frustrating visit.

~Erik Silverstar

well, lots of nice places in SL existing
and also lots of nice places in SL having gone......

one question about statistics:
I see this on the stats page since days...
'Islands Added 3
Month Islands Owned
(End of Month) Islands Added
(During Month)
Temporarily disabled. We apologize for the inconvenience.'

why is it temporarily disabled? I am very interested in this numbers, could you please inform us about how many land was 'added' in december? can't be that complicated to count, eh?

Nice Places?

I know so much great places. But then again I also notice, that all of them are empty. And the most crowded (prolly most bots there) are shamefully ugly.

Why is it, that realy nice places are so rarely visited?

How do you think they stay nice?

Theses are all good goals, but i still think that Linden Labs is still missing the point of what they have created, Second life is largely a user created world, and its the users that create most of the inworld value of second life. A change in the business plan from how do we linden labs attract more users to make more $ to a business model that includes benifits to the people that help create the content and events inworld and invest in land.
With the set up cost of land as high as they are i don't see why land owners shouldn't be seen as investors or share holders. In RL I love shopping at REI, I"m a member , I get devidens, and I tell my friends to shop there and to become a member, when some one asks me about second life I tell them how much $ I lost from having 2 open sims.

so looking back over the last year in SL the things remember the most are all great friends Ive made, all the fun I had crating and setting up my shop, and all ways finding a new sim that made me go wow wish I could build like that!

So for 2009 I'm hoping to see Linden labs create a new relationship with the people in SL, if they do I may even come back

I'm convinced that what the lindens need, in the big temple on the big Linden island... you need a Linden Bear vending machine... like the kind you get chips out of, with those corkscrew wires... something like 255 prims..



I guess that would be cool.. until it jams.. think of the poor bears being skewered to death.

Depends on the Linden...it may be entertaining in some cases.

This has been truly an inspired year, and SecondLife has made it thus for me. I want to thank Linden Lab and all of the great SL people who have helped contribute to what I think is the greatest part of the site for me. Producing and writing the show I do every Tuesday night at 7PM, The 2nd QuestioN! is a great opportunity to maximize many great things about SecondLife. The show is fast, funny, fact-based, science oriented and truly we have the greatest audience in SL who are indeed part of the show. With the maximizing of all the tools SL offers, plus the truly amazing folks and outstanding SL contributors who have been on the show, The 2nd QuestioN! is a huge hit. And people who watch it outworld want to come inworld as well. It is intelligent entertainment at it's best.

I would of course love to invite M Linden and the entire Linden family onto the show, you have a seat on panel anytime!
Please see for yourself some of the great entertainment and learning we put on each week.
http://www.the2ndquestion.com/

There were, in 2006, Linden Box Vendors. The boxes included, often, mugs, t-shirts, bears, and/or a trading card. Many of these still exist inworld (I know of the location of two of these machines), but they're long dry. Impossible to keep stocked, I bet, even given the remote locations of 'em.

Kudos to those who keep a copyable/buyable bear at their Linden Village homes, double kudos to Lindens like Enus or Meta who make 'em interesting to find or get, or to those like Garry who ask for a piccie of you with the bear in return.

Back on topic...

* Wishes *

More LL events to use things like the Burning Life "maturity policy," or at lest treat all avatars equally. I talked about that a bit before, too.

Like one other mentioned, some small new features would be dandy, given they don't overly impact stability. I'd love to see things like shadows, improved bumpmapping, puppeteering, speedtree, better ground texturing, the continuing of the materials project, and other good thing to improve the experience for all users.

I'd love to see both an expansion of the infohubs and welcome areas (I still wish Hub Island had not died on the vine for Bay City!) as well as a dedication to improving conditions at new and current infohubs.

I'd like to see LL continue to turn a profit, and continue to change the world, too. I dun ask much.

Mari

I appreciate the post. Since we hear so little in the way of acknowledgement of the texture performance problems, it is easy to assume that they are being ignored.

However, 'a top priority for 2009' seems a little mild. This is an extremely critical issue in my opinion. The seemingly declining functioning of cache has to be producing a great deal of unnecessary load on the backend infrastructure. The negative impact on user expierence goes without saying.

Well, it doesn't get any better than that - short of some fire in the machine room.

What i would like to see for the new year is very simple


1 FIX THE TEXTURE THING
2 3 lindens (those most directly in charge) need to sit down with the "leadership" of the kids
community and answer the following questions

A exactly how detailed can a kids skin be before its an "illegal skin"
B how much clothing does a kids avatar need to have on IN PUBLIC (or in a picture)
C what items are not allowed to be in a "kids home"?

3 create a set of "kids only" sims were kids can be well KIDS without having to deal with
"adult" nonsense.

4 have 1 or more LINDEN accounts use kids avatars (say Candi and Kane Linden)

(ya know some folks use a kid avatar because their RL childhood SUCKED)

I'd say the community already has those: Funky Town, for example, where I'm spending this week. Most or all of the Mole builds (not gonna count that scary asylum) I would say are also at least neutral, and not "adult" per se.

But yes, I would love to see some folks see what kid avvies are really doing sometimes. I s'pect most Linden's know what we're doin too (and I know some Lindens have had kid or kid-like avvies over time) -- but it's an awful big concern as to what legal issues could happen if people do bad stuff. While you know which side of this I'm on, I don't envy any side of this issue

An ya, I've always been more than willing to sit down an discuss whatever, and have even. In or out of world.

Mari

Great to see everybody taking the time from their holiday to participate here. All my best wishes to everyone for a happy and prosperous new year!

A big shout out to Crap Mariner's "iTunes in SL" and all the cool stuff that comes out of Eshi Otawara.

I think SLCN TV also deserves some recognition for the professional work they do, providing great television entertainment for the entire grid, made in SL, for SL.

Thanks to Christiano for providing Snapzilla. The memories of a lot of people reside there.

And as for "Favorite Places" to visit/explore, my vote goes for the entire Mainland and everybody that makes it the crazy place it is. That's the *real* SL.

I'm looking forward to an exceptionally happy new year for us all. And Cath, M, CG, etc... if you'd like a MenuBar bear, let me know

One of the places I love going to is The Shelter in Isabel. A great place for newbies to start out, it's usually an 80's themed dance club, with helpfull people always there. Another place you may want to check out is my island, yeah, self promotion, but It's Vampires, It is home to Liber Obscurum, an Occult library, and a nice park to stroll through. Feel free to stop by sometime.


Also, can I get a bear from any Linden that wants to give them out?

Des~

P.S. Happy New year everyone, may 2009 bring a better year for us all.

Well in the spirit of good communication, cath. How about just answering my simple question? When are you going to ditch the IBM servers and upgrade to HP servers? The problems will all go away, including the slow-texture loading problem.

I remember a time when you could hang out with the Linden's in-world. They were just as regular as the residents. Then, one day, a million people stumbled in through the door, LL tried to become professional and all the lindens disappeared? Mebbe you can fix that!

Re: Cool places...

The Caves at Rua (and the build of Serenity from Firefly above)
The Carnival of Doom
of course the Lost Gardens of Apollo, which still blow me away
Any place that Ann Launay recommends


Re: Suggestions...

Someone pages back mentioned the New User Experience or the First Hour or whatever it's being called, and how LL is spending oodles of money hiring that high-falutin' company to redo the whole thing... when REALLY, LL should be asking US to do it.

We've got thousands of talented people who would love to help, and we've spent days on the Forums here offering suggestions, debating points, etc, and we just get shoved aside like last week's turkey sandwich. Is our input really that valueless? It's hurtful and sort of embarrassing to be told "thanks very much for all your suggestions; we'll be taking them into consideration," when it's obvious that you'd rather do anything BUT consider them, and hire out some big name company with no SL experience whatsoever. So they made a cute couple of Corona commercials. WE'RE the ones with hundreds of thousands of hours inworld.

Why doesn't LL put together a crack team of resident volunteers, led by a Linden employee, and make a NUE from scratch? I can pretty much guarantee it will cost less than That Other Company, and you'll get more appropriate results.

Hey CG! Thanks for coming on down to join us. Pull up a pew and grab a coffee and some donuts!

Few things.


* viewer side texture caching insufficient?
I actually have my viewer to purge cache on startup. Textures load quicker in this fashion than if the option was turned off.
* maybe rendering just being slow?
Do you think Pathfinder would like you very much if you suggested a new rendering engine? It is *hard* work after all.
* simulator bloat reducing performance of the proxy transmission of the textures?
How about some sort of 'optimizer' for textures on upload. Part of the problem is that people upload textures with HUGE filesizes. We both know SL downloads textures in the exact same way your regular web page does. Bigger tex file sizes means that the tex's take longer to download. Some sort of inbuilt optimizer should be considered?
* UDP transmission failing and textures not being retransmitted?
Depends on internet connection and system performance as to when the texture arrives, I find. I have tested this. This comes back to optimization.
* grey textures not being recognized as "missing", so no retransmit being requested?
Good idea, but wont this cause lag?
* something different altogether??
Ok, im going to say this again, because I know nagging eventually gets somewhere. Buy some HP servers and ditch the IBM ones. At least if you can't afford to replace ALL of the servers just replace the servers that deal with the upload/download transmission with much faster HP servers. - I know that Poppy is looking into B-Tree technology and that, at least, holds some promise.

In summary I do think a new rendering system could be implemented, but I would fear for general performance issues of people with slower systems. It wouldn't be polite to just start using the CryEngine, because half your populations' systems would just curl up and die overnight.
The more and more I look into the problem the more and more I can see potential fixes. But they are only temporary (even B-Tree technology would only last so long against scalability). The ONLY answer is to stop using the old IBM's and join the rest of the technological world in using HP servers. The IBM's simply can't cope anymore. It's like a VW beetle with seven fat people in it. 3 years ago the IBM's were fine. But we've grown exponentially since then. This is a case of getting the investors to see that SL will become a bad investment (and stop wasting money on PR excersises) unless they can stump up some cash to get rid of its problems (we all know premium accounts are dropping off, albeit steadily).
Thoughts?

and HAPPY NEW YEAR, CG, Cathrine and M.

As founder and lead of the Koinup Project,

I'd love to headlight the most shared and visited Second Life Places on Koinup of the latest months (you can look here for more details: http://www.koinup.com/places/ )

Cu Mara ( http://www.koinup.com/sim/Cu+Mara/ )

Creamshop (http://www.koinup.com/sim/CREAMSHOP/ )

REZ ( http://www.koinup.com/sim/REZ/ )

ReZoNe (http://www.koinup.com/sim/ReZoNe/ )

Unintended Water ( http://www.koinup.com/sim/Unintended+Water/ )

Tempura Island ( http://www.koinup.com/sim/tempura+island/ )


Koinup Places is a directory of the best places in Second Life, directly shared and posted by SL members .....each one can contribute... http://www.koinup.com/places/

The main goal of the project is to help people to find awesome hotspots in Second Life and have more engagement in world.....


For the 2009, I hope that more and more creatives, architects, builders and artists will jon Second Life and that tons of other fantastic hangouts will be available for the enjoiment of the community!

Some suggestions? Well, a few:
Try to involve more and more artists, digital artists, machinimamakers, photographers
Not only you can involve the creative guys already inworld, but maybe you should invest money to create a marketing plan for drive new and new creative arms in Second Life

As a machinima, photographic, artistic and modeling tool Second Life is unique and there are thousands of people out there looking for such a fantastic tool...

Look at the amazing machinima and photographic/artistic scene......it is incredible what you can do with Windlight and other fantastic features of the viewer....but probably all the potential of Second Life is not yet known outside the grid.......I invite you to let the world know about it.....

Bring these demographics to SL and you will see the amazing advantage they will bring to your brand......

Good luck and happy new year to all residents!

Didn't you get the memo? Why would LL want to do that when they can waste big wads of money on a noobie outside company who will do a worse job for them?

Because of Prim Perfect (homes and gardens magazine - I'm the editor) and Meta Makeover (SLCN TV programme - I'm the producer and, for my sins, the presenter), I get to see a lot of cool places - so many that it's hard for me to pick a few, without seeming to ignore others.

Poppet, much earlier, mentioned Wunderbar. I was out there yesterday, trying out the skiing (she's been advised by Alpinists on its creation, and it's a lot of fun). I also swung by the Princeton Voids (the Quiet, Dyna Fleur and Liquid Light were still up), on the grounds that it was the last chance to see them before they're gone as part of the Open Space debacle. It seems to sum up the positive and negative of Second Life at the end of the year: Creativity - and co-operation. And loss.

One of the things that does worry me - and that hasn't been commented on much is the decline of the 'print' media in Second Life. It may seem ironic when there are dozens of blogs out there to speak of a decline ... but the fact is that these are largely individual voices. I believe there should be the possibility of a serious, engaged and active 'print' media in the Metaverse. Instead we are seeing real life media companies withdraw their support and their inworld presence. Ironically, although I'm running a lifestyle magazine, we are finding ourselves developing the serious commentary (such as input on IP issues and the Content Creators Association) more and more to ensure it gets a voice out there.

Initiatives like Mal Burns and Tara Yates' Metaverse Week in Review show what can be done by independents and SLCN maintain steady support through programmes such as Metanomics. So the internal visual media is good - although it would be nice to see awareness of it growing in 2009. And it would be good to see more use being made of the Second Life Media Consortium. Very nice to be asked to join that - and there was an interesting Press Conference on the Linden Prize. Since then ... nothing. Not even a bar where hacks can meet and (virtually) drink.

The thing that, of course, continues to impress is the people. One of the highlights of the year was the Grand Tour of vintage and steampunk sims organised by Fogwoman Gray in a deliberate attempt to show solidarity in communities badly hit (as who wasn't?) by the Open Space. A series of events and parties in seventeen different locations over two days, it showed the creativity of places and people.

Another event I enjoyed - although I know that, on a wider scale, it had its problems, was SL5B, where the Prim Perfect and Meta Makeover teams had two gorgeous exhibition halls. Jeremey Ryan of Barefoot Designs and Dellybean North of True North Designs put together a GREAT build for us, with Kittie Munroe of Kitstar Designs doing sterling work on the graphics and interiors. Then there was the cafe, complete with Maar Auer dances - that amazing Charleston! For two weeks, it was a very cool place to be, complete with a TARDIS on the front patio (and we had M Linden visit too).

So ... in 2009?
My wishlist:
Not too late to salvage something from the Open Space debacle. January increases will happen. But something needs to be done about July. And that doesn't mean just picking off the most vociferous communities and setting individual deals. The quiet sim owners, the small businesses, the small nonprofits - their goodwill is probably easier to attain - and their disillusionment, in the end, more dangerous to the longterm health of Second Life.
Even the large, prestigious organisations have taken a hit. Princeton didn't make a large fuss, didn't scream and shout, but quietly packed up its voids and retired them. If one of the primary goals is education, this is worrying.

Stability - yes, I'll tick that box. Communication - that one too.

And perhaps being less bleeding edge with the viewers. Come on, guys - you want to be in the business of pushing Second Life, not flogging hardware by default - i.e. making it essential for your poor users to have to upgrade their computers every six months just to see what's in front of their faces! I cling doggedly to my Nicholaz viewer - it may no longer show me all the pretties, but it shows me enough, and my one year old machine can handle it.

Premium accounts. I'd LOVE to see my Premium account being about something more than buying me mainland that I a) don't want and b) can't afford. Well, I suppose it gives me $300 Linden a week and, more importantly, support.

Media. A serious, viable SL magazine that draws together the best and most challenging writers - and heaven knows there's a lot of them. One that can set up a real world presence as well as an inworld one. One that can critique in a diversity of voices. Is that impossible?

Let's see what 2009 brings.

(Hopefully a couple of bears for this marathon piece!)

Happy New Year M !!!

Lets Hope 2009 turns out to be a better year for all in SL and RL !

I would like you and the rest of the Lindens to possibly sometime come visit us out here on Beachcomber Isle and take a look around, We are newbie friendly but only ask no weapons or griefing allowed.
Beachcomber is owned by Argos Hawks (Sand Dollars Beach Resort), with co-founders: Legato Voight (Legato's Grotto), and Foxylady Lowey and myself (Coyote Ranch).

We offer a place to run jetski's, and some small boats around the Isle, as well as relax on the beach to watch the sunrise's/sunset's.
Play some well known games, do some shopping, and once in a while join in some dance events hosted with live DJ's. We even have a Tinies area for those tiny avatar's wanting to relax on the beach. (Oh geez, starting to sound like a commecial, LOL).

Anyways Happy New Year !!!

P.S. can I get a bear for Foxy and I ??