Europe Getting the Short end of the stick?

Oh, honestly, someone's started a compensation thread now.

An interview I read with an Indian outsourcing mogul indicated that while those countries are good at the execution, the innovation and direction still is strongest in the West. Although this will certainly change in coming generations.

But yeah, one day we'll all be enjoying that pain.

You have a British accent, right?

Peopel seem to think I'm complaining, well maybe I am a bit, but some of the comments were certainly unhelpful (If it started with sarcasm or "Cry me a river" then the rest really isn't worth reading). I understand that it's all american based. I'm all for updates, it's just the frequency ontop of thier chosen update time.

Also, if this was free for everyone, then all the "Suck it up" or "Go elsewhere" childish comments would be warranted, but you know, I went through the trouble of paying for my SL experience for a whole year, (And considering the problems between LL and UK Paypal, it's no fun doing so, I had to waste about $5 just to pay LL through PayPal). So when you pay for it, the frequency of downtime can be a little tedious.

How do you know how much staff has to be present for an upgrade?
I'd guess it should be only one or two sysadmins...

I've heard about 15-20% (or more?) of SL is from outside of the USA. That should be something to keep in mind.

heh,yea.

I can only imagine you are pointing out i said ass instead of arse,as a Brit should pronounce it. Ahem

Honestly, I keep reading replies and feel like I accidentally stepped into furryland, it's like... BIG DRAMA in here over just some comments. Whatever happened to the art of discussion.

Oh.

So one or two sysadmins could have deployed today's update, detected today's critical bug and re-written the appropriate code, tested it and redeployed it within a few hours?

Really?

You don't read everything, do you? Just about every Wednesday, with the exception of one I can remember, SL has been down for a few hours. I came to SL, invited by several SL residents, one of which, happens to mean a great deal to me. This one particular man in general lives a very long way from me as well, and this is the only *day* we have to be together. That's why. No, SL being down for a day is not the end of existence, but staggering times would be a nod to the people who enjoy SL and for whatever reason find the same down times, a bit unfair. All I would ask for is that they stagger them, or stagger the days.

And, being in the career I'm in, it is a must that I am flexible, in both what I do and when I do it. Expecting that from a group whose product caters to the public, isn't out of the question.

Really? I guess the expansion of SL is causing the virtual gene pool to dilute more than I'd feared.

LL should base itself out of India like all American companies. Then this wouldnt be an issue.

Why are you willing to pay for something that is not accommodating of your needs? Really? There are other places that are. If you make a decision to stay in SL, accept it for what it is. Do they actively advertise in Europe on TV or something begging people to come here? If they do, they you can claim some sort of false advertising and bait and switch. The fact remain SL has been doing updates during the day all along, have never really accommodated other time zones all along, nothing has changed.

You call BS on my statement?I can give you all kind of examples, but I don't need to because anyone with half a brain understands how time zones work, so it is self-documenting. If an American has to deal with a European based company, they have the same time zone issues in reverse. That is the nature of time zones. Linden Lab is based in the United States, and they do not have a separate European grid. They have one grid, and it is hosted in California. As such, their employees work on local time. It is not reasonable to expect them to work around your schedule. They work around their own schedule. Hell, an event at 9 pm SL time is inconvenient for me and I live in the US but I wouldn't whine and make people change it, I deal with it.

Yes, it is whining to complain about something so obvious. Your concern is not valid, it's incredibly selfish and it comes up in one form or another all the time, generally like this "waaah SL is closed until nearly I have to go to bed!" or "wahhh SL is closed and I had the day off today" or myriad variations on the same theme. Deal with it.

No, I was flirting, this is SL.

You didn't seem to mention my notice of DaimlerChrysler, so here's some more.

Not to mention the ridiculous European farm subsidies and ban against the alleged "frankenfoods." Never mind that a French company is one of the industry leaders in that field.

Oh, it goes both ways.

SL has not been down every single Wednesday recently, and they have moved their update schedule out to 2 weeks, though even a weekly downtime would not be unreasonable. My point was that you and your love interest can still spend time together even with SL down through all kinds of other ways, so it is not some terrible inconvenience or unfair. If you can't hang out with him in SL, talk to him on an IM program or do whatever else.

These updates are necessary for the stability of SL, and your convenience or my convenience or any one else's is not more important that LL having the proper resources available to do the update at a time that is convenient for them. SL being down doesn't mean you have to get out of bed in the middle of the night, or commute to work in the dark, or leave your family and work ungodly hours, but people seem to expect that is what LL should have to do to make things convenient for them.

And we spit on your Yankee Microsoft as well! Ahahahaha!

*sticks on moustache*

*twirls it*

Did you ever care to consider that maybe he is affected as, after all, here he is on the forums when, you know, maybe he'd prefer to be in-world?

But no, I guess you didn't.

This entire thread boils down to two things. Responsibility by SL to it's clients who pay and some who pay a lot, to play the game. Secondly, tolerance, by those who post in this forum. Tolerance to those people across the globe who pay their money to play this game. We Americans need to learn and understand the word "tolerance". We also need to understand other people from other countries and in order to do that we need to begin here at home. Understand folks, that anyone who takes issue with the downtime of SL, isn't a bad buy, but someone who is affected by it and perhaps affected by it often enough to post.

Acknowledge their right as a paying client, to feel disgruntled that this happens at the same time for them. You might also think about acknowledging the responsibility SL holds to it's client to not only cure the bugs, grow the program, but also to do so in a way that is unjust to anyone who pays to play.

oooooooook

So... I am a Brit and although I do see the point of us getting the short end of the stick, I don't see it as a huge deal. Its just annoying that we get home from work or whatever and we can't jump on SL and do whatever it is we do. BUT, that being said, if LL were based in europe I am sure the other countries affected would have a lilttle bit of a whine. So being told to just get over it isn't really all that helpful, even if to some extent I agree

Personally, I just went to the pub after work, then I went shopping, spent some time playing tea parties with my lil girl and now i'm laying in bed watching phoebe give birth in friends.

It IS slightly annoying, its NOT the end of the world. It's just the way it is. I am not really convinced there is any way around it, or even if staggering the updates would work effieciently, its sometihng to think about tho, it never hurts to have a lil think, apparently.

I highly doubt that the upgrade of a grid of more than 1000 servers is done by 1 little sysadmin, nice try though.

As far as your statistics, that would still leave 80% in the US - so the statistics are not in your favor. Seriously, no downtime is going to be convenient for the user base - there are all kinds of people who are on SL during the day ET that haven't been able to access it today, myself included, and I am in the US. I just deal with it - I would rather SL be updated, tested, and stable than worry about when they are doing the updates.

I already posted this in another forum: when I worked as a sysadmin, for a much smaller local web/internet company than Linden Labs, we did updates from midnight local time. Yes, I had to stay up, yes, until 1 or 2 AM.

But I didn't whine about resting, about jetlag, I said that's the job of a sysadmin, and just did the job.

Considering a percentage of SL is European (10-20% ???), it should be taken into consideration.

PS: Another solution could be revamping the update process, making it only an hour or two long, maybe having sims come up one by one, so first you'd only see 10-20 sims when the update is finished, but all would gradually come back in another hour or two.

Gee, I think policemen, firemen, doctors, nurses, newpaper employees, Circle K gas station employees, and a whole sorted mess of others in this world get up in the middle of the night, leaving their familes to go to their "chosen" careers. Oh please.

The US *always* gets the short end of the stick in anything that's based in the Europe.

They're always happy to take our money... but we're always the inconvenienced ones too.

-Flip

PS: Do the Bristol Rovers still suck? I can only purchase their games on Pay-Per-View every now and then, and they're really happy to take my money, and I often have to watch games at 7am on a weekend. How damned inconvenient!

I've stayed until midnight doing my job and damned if I'm going to do that on a regular basis, even if an entire continent is bitching at me.

Having people there at six a.m. - six, dammit - is dedicated enough for me. I can hardly ask that they do a night shift so that I can log on the moment I get home. Worker solidarity, for goodness' sake.