Linden Labs doing everything they can?

Well... and FFRC pays for events like this, but can't when the meetings can't be held. This crash happened 15 minutes into the meeting but it isn't the end of the world to be sure. Just annoying. It's like having a kid standing in the highway jumping up and down and yelling look at me look at me.

Sooner or later, the highway needs rails to keep the crazy kids outta the middle of the road.

Ohh I'm in!

New update in the announcment forum. Linden is playing the "We'll have it fixed in our next update" card.

How many threads are there already on the forums about the problems with the update which hasn't even been released yet?

Torley didn't say it would be fixed. She said they would have more tools at their disposal to deal with attacks of this style.

That may be, but it is still the same old thing that so many software companies use as an excuse to try and keep the mob from going crazy.

It's been said many times, in many different forums, for many different software programs, but always falls on deaf ears.
"Don't add new features, fix the ones you already have"

This is one of the major problems with the agile programming method that SL is currently using. What agile means, is that basically, when something is done, you put it out. It makes it look like other areas are not being given any attention, however that's simply not the case. It just so happens that bug hunting and fixing is harder and more time consuming then most other things, if for no other reason then your not trying to implement, your trying to fix something that a previous programmer thought was perfect. If they held back releases untill all of their current developement was finished and through QA you would see a patch schedule much like that of MMO's. Mabey a major patch every 2-3 months. And even then every bug would not be squashed in the patches. I personally love the agile method, because you get results faster. Instead of holding up the entire development cycle because one team is bottlenecked, you simply move around them leaving them in the dust. But of course, everyone has their own favorite method of software engineering.

oh please. you are spouting off about choices/design and a whole lotta BS. Make them pay for this..Period. All problems fixed. Done deal. Scripts/builds/blah blah f'ing blah.....get some cash for that acct and we dont deal with griefers anymore. Make them PAY. if its worth 10 bucks...lol fine Let 'em

I can actually think of several ways that a person can launch an attack that brings down the whole grid with there being zero chance of being caught doing it. I am not going to say what any of them are, for obvious reasons, but I do feel that the Lindens need to put in some hard protection. Some kind of fail safe type coding.

"if object x replicates more than y times or if object x replicates more than z times a second, then delete object x and all spawns of it"

Ah wasn't aware this was a lets get angry and ignore the facts debate. In that case lets bring on the truthiness! Screw this! LL sucks! They are incompetant! They can't do anything right!

I agree, however that is impossible for them to do with the current setup of the grid. That was the entire point of my comments. It's not a simple issue like people seem to believe it to be. The world's design would have to change.

I'd rather see a bunch of unhappy VR capitalists and unhappy folks wielding twink-effect swords and have a functional grid, rather than a constantly global-attack-down grid. The VR capitalists would find another way to handle the issue and make their vendors work again....and the people mad their toys don't work don't concern me much.

The ooohshiny items like your sword do damn little good if the grid is down half or more of every weekend. Personally I am glad I downtiered and got rid of my land...and will most likely be going basic soon...tired of throwing money at the Lindens and return having an unstable grid because fixing the problem would annoy VR business owners and toy collectors.

however..(((

Nah..telling folks that the FBI will be called has already been tried. And the fact that someone threatens someone with something repeatedly tells me that that is their only 'deterrent.' That the threat can be called. Tis a bluff and a lame one. In other words, LL KNOWS that the FBI will not do anything in this and other grid attack cases. HOWEVER, Phil can file a bug report with the FBI and their people will contact his people (perhaps) via email with a vague, ineffective, annoying form letter

Nihil est omnino beatum..that's Esperanto for 'payback's are a b.'

Wow, what an obviously rigged poll.

Your not looking at the big picture. What would come after this? Well obviously object to object transfer.. then what. Making the delays impact all the scripts in the objects...

Slippery Slope. People will always find some way of exploiting an open system. Trying to patch the holes isn't the way to deal with it, preventing the fallout is the way. LL needs to make the downtime after an attack 10 minutes, and work towards that. Not start limiting LSL any more then it is.

I can actually think of several ways that a person can launch an attack that brings down the whole grid with there being zero chance of being caught doing it. I am not going to say what any of them are, for obvious reasons, but I do feel that the Lindens need to put in some hard protection. Some kind of fail safe type coding.

zero chance? umm no. I am a DSL engineer and you have 100% chance of getting caught. Doesnt matter where you are, whether you use dial up, dsl, cable, satellite, or your preferred internet cafe. you still go through the MDF no matter where in the world you are located.

You possess a data stream that can be traced..period. Bots complicate the issue, but that only means more work to find you via computer. Hackers are simple..black or white. Problem is priorities...how important is it to find this person? Is crashing SL important? Depends on who you ask doesnt it?

And you are the biggest LL apologist / relative of Phillip / LL VC / employee alt I have ever ran into ont he forums!

The big picture is this...I can only play long periods on the weekend and now EVERY WEEKEND some twink downs the grid once or twice. The big picture is I am paying to play....and thanks to LL's method of handling problems, I cannot. I don't give two shits for agile programming, design decisions, open programming, etc. that you bring up ad nauseum to justify the lindens. I want them to fix it and now. That's the big picture...the rest is a bunch of details you are dragging out as a form of smoke and mirrors to obscure the fact the reason this occurs is

A) LL is incompentent and cannot fix it (incompetence including early design decisions they cannot work around, agile (aka, fast-n-sloppy) programming, etc)
B) There is no incentive to fix bugs because its not 'glamourous' like adding a new feature and the management is not leaning on the programmers enough to make them do the unglamorous work.


And sorry, I want the slippery slope, if it means SL will remain up. Cripple LSL if you have to, but make it impossible to crash the entire grid with it.

And I can think of ways of doing it that no amount of restrictions on the scripting language will prevent.

I see your point regarding the "agile" method. Though it seems to be a somewhat risky version of OOP and the use of functions, DLL's, etc. Almost like someone said "Hey,it works for programming, let's run a business like that!".

With a number of "if"'s out of the way, I would agree that it is a fine way to run things, however I think users get frustrated when the newest version has old bugs (which, as you described is part of the way the agile method works), but has brand new features...that also have bugs.

Maybe what they need to do is make sure they have a "bug limit" and if the bug limit is breached, they can't release a new version until the number of bugs is under that limit.
Obviously MicroSoft would have to set their bug limit to around a 5 or 6 digit number, but I would hope that Linden Labs might be able to set it at something like 20 (wild guess).

And I totally agree with the idea of partially solving the problem by cutting the cleanup time to 10minutes. 10 minute downtime 2 times a week? I've heard other people here say that some other online RPG's have scheduled maintenance that is like that.

A) By "sloppy" programming you mean letting people write scripts and add content? Go play There, and then come back when you realize why nobody with broadband plays There. Also, every sufficiently large MMOG gets grid attacks they just come in different forms, like denial-of-service attacks, large-scale duping, 'being World of Warcraft at peaktime', what-have-you.

B) That's just B.S., when the server is down tons of people who aren't addicted to SL just up and quit.

Also I'm voting yes on the poll, just because it's a filthy one-sided Commie poll and we need to stand up to fascism parading itself like democracy.

How about this. Why don't you just nicely ask the people to only take down the grid on weekdays, since obviously it doesn't impact you. Since apparently your idea of a big picture is to make it so it doesn't effect you in particular.

Somehow, since this is the ADULT grid, I am betting that a lot of us work 8-5 (or thereabouts) during the week, and so I doubt I am the only one out there getting repeatedly screwed out of play time by Linden incompetence (while they hide behind TOS and do not credit us a dime for tier or monthly...even WoW's company credits days for primetime problems, or did at one time).

Apparently you have infinite time and tolerance for incompetence...I do not...and apparently you have a total disinterest in how your money is spent...I howerver do.

Excusing poor design decisions (if there is indeed an architectural roadblock to preventing this and not just another programmer that has never seen a line of code at LL talking out their a**) is not something I do, and I will keep complaining about it until LL tells me not to or they wise up and start implementing QA testing like real companies.

You seem to be missing the point entierly. The "big picture" is not "Please Maklin Dekard". Your getting mad at the wrong people. It's not the lindens that brought the grid down, it's the idiot that wrote the abusive script.

Using WoW as an example is a great example of you not understanding the issue. WoW downtime is infact caused by blizzard. This downtime is caused by a user.

This is also true of AmerExpress Gift Cards. I use them for online purchases on the rare occasion I may buy something online. However, they do ask for ID when purchasing the gift card, but, you can put any name on the card as the recipiant, even a made up name. It is the person who purchases the card that has to provide ID and correct name and address (must match ID) so either way you can be found.

Maklin strikes me as extremely selfish. I would like to see SL "fixed" (if that were possible, which I doubt given the open-ended nature of the game) for everyone BUT him. Since he doesn't care about anyone else's experience and would happily ruin theirs just to make his better, poetic justice would see only his experience ruined instead.

As for the poll, I voted "yes." Next time, try making a poll with real choices.

And the lindens do exactly WHAT about it? Platitudes and 4-6 hr cleanups...but no preventions. No prosecutions (and they should modify TOS to allow revealing character names and what punishments were inflicted...they hide behind tos on downtime). Their lack of fixes and lack of serious enough deterrent punishments makes them as equally culpable as the nitwit that crashed the grid.

And no, I understand the issue. I understand when WoW finds something a player can do to cheat (dupe) or destabilize a server, they damn well fix the problem even if the players bitch and whine about features being removed or nerfed. And they have removed entire guilds of troublemakers....but LL tolerates the groups from a certain website that have (at least once in the past) had members causing problems. LL makes no effort to rectify the problem or compensate the premium players...WoW does.

LL is too busy genuflecting to the ingame capitalists and coders and won't do squat to fix the problem because it might make people mad if their flashy swords stopped being lagmakers.