RE: Inquiry on IRC.

Second Life is a world, not a tool. It's a cute little game for people that want to play with a 3D environment. Nobody has ever claimed that it facilitates anything remotely professional. In fact, many people have threated to pull their support if LL ever even hints that such a goal is included in their business plan.

So rest easy Invect. It is what it is and it's all it will ever be.

I've heard people threaten to leave Second Life if Linden Lab ever hinted at having a business plan!

Seriously, the real question is this: Why do Second Life users spend their time chatting on IRC and not in-world? People at Linden Lab know their software is crap, but shouldn't the paying userbase still be fooled?

So, you think vi is better than Emacs?

there's lots of us here, some like me, who got sick of the drama, and others who just weren't welcome there anymore.

blaze if you took the time to find out why they use internal irc instead of posting things like this you may be a happier man.

heh heh, I'll bite.

Why do they use IRC instead of SL?

The one thing I could think of is file based transfer, however if they're not using a company wide VPN and network based file system for that already then I think Philip should be looking for some new technical leadership...

Personally, I really liked Invest Hasp's response though:



Indeed.

blaze, it would probably be most helpful to LL if you could just put together a list of software programs they are not allowed to use. Just to give 'em a heads up, you know?

1. Solitaire
2. Minesweeper

Oh, daaaaaaamn! Daaamn! No you di'in't! blaze, yo, yo, yo, you been served! Daaaaaamn. Wow, Pol. That was amazing! Put together a list! Where do you come up with such genius? That... That's amazing. Wow.

Here I was thinking that eaiting their own dogfood was a good idea, because it might offer insight into why we developers and and wannabe innovators get frustrated and make these kinds of posts. But your argument, "make a list," that just blows the whole concept out of the water.

I wish I could contend against that kind of intellect with something like, "But if they don't use it for day-to-day chatting, then why should I?" Or maybe, "What would it take for them to get SL to a point where they used it as opposed to IRC?" Or even, "You know, with an API, they could graft IRC, an IDE, or whatever else atop SL, and make it something the Lindens, and the rest of the world, would use in day-to-day life."

But, you know, against the stone cold sarcasm of blaze making a list... I'm flummoxed. Good show!

Yeah I mean, why aren't Verizon board meetings done 100% on cell phones? I mean, they sell the damn things, surely it should be good for EVERYTHING!

Should Western Union employees be forced to send telegrams to each other for daily communications?

ATTN JOE AT THE MARKETING DEPARTMENT STOP
EAGER TO SEE NEW LOGOS FOR PACKAGING STOP
TELEGRAM ME WHEN YOU WANT TO GO TO LUNCH STOP

... and so on.

What a silly proposition/demand.

LF

I'm not sure this is proper use of this forum but here goes...

Well, I think the answer was given in the thread you mentioned... SL uses too much resource to just run it in the background, plus there is no way I know of to minimize the window to the size of a postage stamp like I do my IM, or drag the IM window out of the rest of the SL window to use it separately.

The iChat program on the Apple isn't QUITE built into the OS but it might as well be, so that's what I use. It handles AOL Instant Messenger accounts as well as the fairly useless Apple iMac accounts. On Linux I use something called Gaim (also available for Windows). Gaim supports every IM protocol known to man and probably a couple of interplanetary ones as well. One of the most interesting is Jabber. The new version of OS X also handles Jabber, which not only has free accounts, but also is not owned by a particular company such as AOL. So anyone can set up their own Jabber server. If the IM system in SL were interfaced with a private Jabber server, then SL users could IM one another outside of SL. Perfect solution as far as I can tell. I don't know why they haven't done this. Maybe I need to suggest it a few more dozen times.

IRC is of course better for GROUP discussions, although I think most of the current IM clients support this in one way or another too, IRC has been doing it forever, so it is a natural, existing, and free solution. Come to think of it, an IRC server, integrated into SL would allow for both private and group discussions in or out of SL, so maybe in that respect it would be better than Jabber.

Why the sass? A list is a great idea! That way we'll be properly prepared for more outrage when it's revealed that LL uses Microsoft Word instead of typing all of their documents into SL notecards.

erk - tastes bad!

But it gives you WINGS!

I typically am silly. And hate-filled. And bile-spewing. But you know, if "eating dogfood" is good enough for Microsoft...

Can you hear me now?

Then the Lindens need better machines. And, no, you can't shrink it as small as Y!IM or AIM, but that's the point of the "dog food" notion. If they were forced to use SL like other people want/try to use it, maybe they'd add those features.

No you can't do that now. That's the point.

Maybe a better phrasing of the question is "If LL realize that IRC is the best protocol to use for collaborative chat, why haven't they integrated it into SL?" The answer, of course, is that their not developing a desktop, platform or anything more than the world that it is. There is no answer to the obvious "why?" other than that's what Philip wants to do.

This is a different screenshot from the one over in the "Ask Linden" forum. I wanted to show all the tabs I had open in Firefox. To all those who say that SL is too resource intensive to run in the background while people develop software, I say... LOSER! LO-O-O-OSER! LOOO... ZERR!

Please try to think of another excuse why Linden Lab doesn't use SL for collaboration.

Sorry Jarod, I thought you were kidding. If LL produces something useful, they'll place themselves in a position of having to provide professional support. There's a huge difference between a TOS that says we guarantee nothing and selling mission critical software to people that expect it to work.

Gone would be the funfilled days of playing with The Grid All Hail The Central Grid, manipulating the toy community and piddling with the paper economy. LL would have to transform and return to base i mean transform into a professional organization. There's no reason we should expect them to do that as long as they can eek out a breakeven project like Second Life and have fun doing it.

Is this... Is this my Pentium-2 400mhz computer -- the lovely Roxanne Gateway -- running Second Life, Mozilla, Chatzilla, iTunes 4.8, PaintShopPro 6, and PuTTY all at the same time? Why, yes. Yes, it is.

You guys are going to have to do better than "resource" intensive.

Okay, fine.

You're philip linden, robin linden, ben linden, and so on.

You all log into a Sim for a chat.

You call an employee-wide meeting.

(Let us not assume that, because 90% of the employees work in the fucking office itself, it would be easier to just have a meeting in the board room).

You assemble everyone on a private Sim, invisible to every non-linden.

Whoops, there's 30 people here. Framerates dip down to terrible levels. Everyone is getting sub-5 fps. They can't move, because they'll be out of hearing range of everyone else.

Some folks can't type very fast, thus necessiating extra time while Newbie Linden henpecks his 3-paragraph response to a technical question.

3 tech lindens crash because they're running an experimental SL build on their machine. They relog, need a tp to the private sim. The responses they missed are repeated for their benefit.

So now instead of just using a 20-some-odd-year protocol that's perfectly fine and lightweight to use for 90% of text communication, we're using a 3d-limited space/virtual world that focuses on user immersion/the wow factor rather than effectual communication, at 5 frames per second to boot. Oh, and it's laggy. And it crashes alot.

Oh, and this is on top of what was brought up earlier; 30,000 users IMing every linden on the grid because they have various issues/just want to chat/report a bug/report a griefer/want to be a linden.

BRILLIANT, I say. Give this man a medal and a dev kit!

LF

And how is SL running? Tip top, I'm sure! 15 fps all around!

And firefox is rendering pages in under half a second!

And iTunes isn't skipping a beat!

I can show you a screenshot showing 40 graphics-intensive games running at once on my rig, it doesn't mean it's going to work WELL for any sort of productive use.

Show me a video of SL running on that same 400 mhz with all that shit running, and I'll be more impressed by your proof.

I mean, really, if it can do all THAT, surely it can record video too! That's trivial beans.

LF

I would say it is simply because IRC is accessable by the most people across multiple platforms. If John Doe Linden is at home after work on his Amiga on a 1200k baud modem, he can still talk on IRC. If Cameron Diaz Linden is in Equador and the best connection she can get is a 14.4k dialup she can still use IRC. It is the lowest common denominator when considering connection speed and cross platform communication.

You're missing the point of "dog food," Lordfly! We want them to log, experience these crashes, see the lag, realize how terrible the chat is for people trying to use SL for the express purpose of them
seeing the lag, realziing how terrible the chat is, etc. That's what "dog food" is all about, having the developers experience the software from the user perspective so they'll now what to fix.

Try to keep up with the adults.


So, in the future, when I pitch a piece of collaborative software to someone, I should go with "a 20-some-odd-year protocol that's perfectly fine and lightweight to use for 90% of text communication" and not Second Life? Gotcha!

You know, I started posting in this thread wondering why I should use Second Life... But, now, I'm wondering why you use Second Life. Your used experience sucks.


I'm glad you see it that way, because I damn well dseserve something for my insight! You're forgetting the simple, little fact that THE LINDENS HAVE THEIR OWN, SEPERATE GRID AT THE OFFICES!

But thanks for playing, loser.

I have to agree with Lordfly and Invect. Why would anyone ever think of using Second Life to conduct a business meeting, teach a class, facilitate a demonstration, disemanate information, host a game, or do anything that requires the virtual presence of more than a few people.

It would be foolish. It would ruin the immersion. It would crash The Grid All Bow To The Central Grid. Please stop and just let us play with our toy in peace. Please.