Fix It Already

This is inexcusable. Every last person who gets paid to release and manage this horrific crap should be ashamed.

You don't know how to write a client, you don't know how to architect or manage a grid system, and you know nothing about customer service at all.

FIX IT.

Here's a suggestion, and I won't even charge you for it:

Your use of a "grid" computing solution is a terrible choice. I understand that by saying that you're using a "grid" solution, you attract the attention of the press and potential investors who don't actually know what you're talking about, but like the use of the word "grid", and I understand that that's a nice asset.

Grid computing is useful for a service that does not require heavy amounts of intercommunication between nodes. This is obviously a major problem with the SL server software, and cannot possibly EVER be addressed while you're using a grid system, period, case closed.

What you should be doing instead, is spending approximately the same amount of money (but probably a bit more on salaries) and handling the whole thing with Solaris or AIX running in their discrete native clustering models. I'd wager you could handle the entirety of your processing needs for the forseeable future (depending on how well the software is written of course--another thing you need to work on) with 5-6 Sun E20K machines running in a native solaris cluster mode, or you could even cluster with Veritas (which may actually work a little better in this case).

Anyhow, yeah. That was $8,000 of free advice right there, and I wont even ask for any linden bux in return. You got a great deal. Now use it.

Neither do you.

Yeah. Actually, in my "first" life, I've built a career out of architecting both linux-based grid systems and large solaris clusters.

I'd really like to see second life do more than succeed (which is what it's doing now, financially, for the shareholders)...I'd like to see it actually WORK. And a new client that does interesting pipelining isn't going to fix a damn thing.

But you're still here? I think maybe it's not quite inexcusable then..

Oh no! Not the shame! Anything but the shame!

Right right... when in doubt, throw brand names and money at the problem.

I'd rather see LL adopt InfiniBand than jump on-board with "the setting Sun" or "AIX and pAins".

And, this is exactly why it will continue to suck. The fact is, the majority of people in Second Life just whine and bitch about it being broken so much, and dont offer solutions. I've offered a vague solution, one that would definitely work.

And I'll tell you, if the Lindens don't feel like dropping their broken architecture and server software in favor of something that actually works, even better. Maybe they could use a bit of competition in the field, from a company with the motivation and resources to license and modify the unreal2/3 engine and slap it on a correctly clustered hunk of machinery...

Hmmm..

On second thought, Lindens, please continue to implement horribly planned and poorly written architecture and software, respectively.

Evidently you've not a penny of meaningful experience with either. Do go on with your neato nicknames for stuff though. Here's a few more:

Blowing Goats/Bloatus Notes/Bloated Goats (Lotus Notes)
Linsux (Linux)
RedHate (Redhat)
Slowlaris (Solaris---thats an old one!)
Berkeley Derived Sh*t (BSD -- thats an old one too!)

Damn fool don't know who he's dealin with.

Well, I guess I'm a minority then.

You should start your own company to compete with SL. If you're as good as you say and your "vague solution that would definitely work" is so much better, you could make big bags of cash. Best of luck.

Just the facts, please..why is this not a viable suggestion/improvement?

Ditto for Jopsy's suggestion of utilizing some form of Infiniband.

Please don't emotionalize or get into self-aggrandizement mode as those filters are already clogged due to severe overload.

Much thanks!

"not a penny of meaningful experience" -?-
It would be sweet if the IRS thought so too.

Dude, I haven't yet encountered a brand of operating system that I would be willing to endorse. AIX is an abomination designed by committee and when I have to deal with it it makes my life hell, (just this morning in fact). Solaris, as far as I'm concerned, still exists only because they're so in bed with Oracle.

Thinking that changing the hardware and os will "FIX IT" is lunacy.

Sure the unreal engine would look sweet... and flying a vehicle from one map to another might be only marginally more problematic than it is now in SL.

I would miss being able to build online though, and how many concurrent players does unreal handle on a map these days?

(And can new players connecting to a map actually wear anything that hasn't already been pre-compiled in with the map, that would be rather limiting?)

Well, alright, I guess I got called on that, but I really don't think your proposed solution has any merit at all. Come on, SL is a HUGE computational problem. I really don't think 5-6 of ANYTHING could possibly solve it. There's just too much computation needed. Every single one of the thousands of grid nodes that they have is used to capacity nearly 100% of the time (source: Ian Linden in a town hall). I guess my point is, it's easy enough to berate LL for doing a bad job, but I think you of all people, with your extensive grid-computing experience, would understand that SL is an incredibly difficult problem and it's not trivial to solve it, much less rearchitect it while it's running.

If your solution really does have merit... why not approach LL in a true consultative role to help them fix the problem? That'll do a lot more toward making the world succeed than berating them (I mean, who likes to feel ashamed?), or posting a suggestion here that they very likely won't have a chance to read (due to the volume of forum posts). They've implied that their biggest problem with handling the growth of the grid is not technology or methodology, it's in growing their workforce. Maybe they can use your experience.

Why is it that when someone comes along with a valid complaint about the level of service we all recieve the standard corporate defenders come out of the woodwork to attack her? Let her say her peace, suggest solutions and get it off her chest. I believe community members (customers) should support each other with valid complaints and not scare away the next intelligent poster because of fear of the sort of attck witnessed here.

In case you missed it... here's the "Valid" complaint you're defending:





If you cared about seeing changes made and wanted your suggestion taken seriously... which method would you use? (A) or (B) ?


(A) "The way you post on the forums sucks. Fix it you stupid moronic steaming pile of excrement! Throw away everything you've learned and start the over. Better yet, don't start at all, you're too incompetent to be trusted with posting on the forums at all."

(B) "Hi, it seems you're having trouble with (whatever issue). I'm sure you have reasons for doing those things way you do, but wouldn't it be worthwhile to try something more like ... (whatever solution) ... it might help reduce (*specific* bad stuff) and increase (*specific* good stuff)."



When I disagree with what LL is doing (and there are certainly times when I do), I pick appropriate methods that have a better chance of being effective to get my point across.


In the case of this thread... the OP made their attitude clear in the first post... and tried to redeem themselves by applying something they know from their first life job to a problem they clearly have insufficiently experience with. It's like telling someone who has a roof leak that they need to re-pour their house's foundation. Yes, sure, once the house is completely re-built from the ground up that leak may be gone... but where the hell are we supposed to we live for the several months it takes to get that to get done?

And who pays for it?

The OP made more sense than you just did.

Where was the "solution" that the OP suggested? This is neither a valid complaint, nor a suggested solution. It's a flame plain and simple. And it has no place on any of the forums provided at secondlife.com. I ask, does the OP honestly expect to be taken seriously with a post like this?

"This is inexcusable. Every last person who gets paid to release and manage this horrific crap should be ashamed.

You don't know how to write a client, you don't know how to architect or manage a grid system, and you know nothing about customer service at all.

FIX IT."

Naw, not really.

I would agree with the OP if SL was to stay the way it is. A few powerful minicomputers each running a continent would make much more sense than using thousands of PC's. I think it would take more than a couple of months to rewrite the system though.

However, when you take into account the final aim of widening the system to be available to all and sundry, with lots of pc's hosting sims owned by others, not LL, it makes good sense to stick with PC's. The one thing in their favour is that they are standardised and hardware performance is continually improving.

Now that the client has been open sourced it will only be a matter of time before someone writes a server to operate a client against, just the first step in widening the system. Sure, you will not be able to bring your assets with you, but I am sure that eventually server sims will serve the sim as well as assets and assets will be stored on each av's home sim.

PC alternatives/additions may be developed to improve 3d capabilities. Who knows? The sim server might need a ATI card just to help with the repetitive 3d aspects of the code. All it would take is for someone to write some microcode for the gpu!

Meanwhile, waiting with bated breath for AMD to bring out their answer to Intel's duo core!

And when they do, my dream machine will get all the more powerful, muhahahaha~!

I'll concede that insults can be more easily understood than analogies.

I'm not reacting to the fact that the poster is complaining. I'm mad that they're personally verbally abusing LL employees. I don't think there's any place for that, but a lot of people love to heap abuse on LL, in a forum where LL is too busy actually trying to solve problems to defend themselves. No one likes to be verbally abused; it really doesn't help anything.

A lot of times, verbal abuse comes as a result of lack of communication. I've seen it before; lived it, even.

Basically, as a customer, when you ask nicely 100 times and get ignored, then switch tactics on the 101st time, and things start happening, you tend to stick with what works. As such, it is as much the Lindens' fault as anyone's for not having effective and consistent communication channels set up with the customer base. It is true with every other business in the world; why do game development (and, more generally, software development) companies think they can get away with it?

They need someone to communicate, and not just delegate communication to the lunchroom announcement board. Communication is a two-way street. They need to listen and respond to what they are hearing, directly. I would estimate that a large percentage of churn is a direct result of the lackadaisical communications policy that they have fully embraced in the last year.

I don't think you can entirely pin this on the Lindens' difficulties with communication. For one thing, you have to remember just how many residents there are, and how few lindens there are. If they really spent the time to read and acknowledge the huge body of text that's directed their way in the forums, the blog, and on various blogs throughout the web, they wouldn't have time to actually implement anything. Don't get me wrong, I think maybe they could be doing a little better than they are now, but I'm realistic and know that they can't have perfect one-on-one communication with everyone.

I think that a lot of the time, customers have unrealistic expectations about communication with a company, and customers of LL are no exception. Especially in my country (the US), it seems like people who are buying a service or product automatically feel like the company is evil and they have to fight tooth and nail to get heard. People seem to feel the need to go in swinging to get any kind of attention. Ask any customer service representative and you'll know that no matter how reasonable you are, customers will always come in and be incredibly rude, when soft, persistent tones would be just as effective if not more.

We see that in these forums every single day. Customers come in here and scream their heads off, berating LL and telling them how horrible their service is (and yet, more often than not, not choosing to end their business relationship with LL). There seems to be a feeling that LL is completely ignoring us, which is not true. There's an unrealistic expectation that every single thing we say or suggest, constructive or not, must be read and responded to by LL, no matter which dark corner of the forums we speak it in, and no matter how unclear and unconstructive our comments are.

It's not constructive or efficient for LL to personally address everything we say about/toward them. It's not even possible: for every single suggestion made, at least one other person will be vehemently opposed. For every feature that LL implements that a large part of the community celebrates as having been a long time coming, at least a handful of people will come out rabidly against it. It happens every single time. If LL listened to everyone's feelings all of the time, they would be frozen in indecision and unable to take any action whatsoever.

Simply put, I'm saying that it's never okay to be belligerent, rude, obnoxious, loud, and personally abusive in the course of business. We must never forget that we're dealing with real, normal, everyday people when we do that. Most of the time, when a customer is belligerent, they're being rude to someone who wasn't really responsible for the decision that made them mad, and maybe can't do much about it. Shouting at someone just makes them feel horrible inside, and hardens them against customers, which is exactly what we don't want to have happen. If you wouldn't treat your neighbor that way, you shouldn't treat an employee of a company you're doing business that way.

And if that means that you can't manage to get your way, even with as much persistence, patience, and compassion for the people you speak to as you can bear, then it's time to reconsider what you're doing. It's not worth making someone go home and feel horrible for the rest of the day just so that you can get your way. If the company is truly so horrible that you feel you need to scream at them to get what you want, then it's not worth doing business with them. If it still is worth it to you to continue doing business with them, then you need to be calm and reasonable. In the case of LL, maybe it's time to email Philip Linden. I've done it, and I even got a personal response.