Is this client software SUPPOSED to be a joke?

Because it certainly is a joke. A "client" that doesn't raise the slightest warning even if it hasn't been able to communicate with a server for an HOUR?!?!
Yet again I've lost building work because this client software doesn't do it's most fundamental job of all: communicate with the server, or if can't TELL SOMEONE!

If the so-called developers of this software insist on making this client so brain-dead, the least they could do is either
a) keep a backup of what it SHOULD have sent to the server so that after the (forced) restart it can save you having to redo everything
or
b) have the ability to re-establish the connection when the network is restored.

Unbelievably hopeless. Did you hire these guys away from Micro$oft or what, Linden Labs?

You want to tell me that for an hour, you didn't NOTICE you actually weren't online??? do you NEVER look at the upper right corner, where you can find the bandwidth and packet loss indicators that are a pretty good clue? Have you NEVER during that hours noticed that there are certain things like moving and interacting that just won't function anymore, let alone looking somewhere and nothing rezzes?

By the way, NICE post for a first post. 0o

If you were able to "build"... you were online.

What likely happened was the simulator you were on crashed hard without being able to checkpoint the recent changes. Most of the time when I encounter a sim restart

If you were just scripting... then yes, it is possible you lost your connection but the moment you hit (save) it would have informed you. You should still be able to copy/paste out of your script window.... it's been a while since I've encountered that however, I may be mis-remembering.

i have been a victim of this too
There are two cases where this happens. When you are building simply by moving objects around. Everything will look fine, but you could be disconnected the whole time. I tend to notice a problem only when using the building box... some (but not all) of the controls are greyed out.

The other case where this happens is when I'm doing Inventory reorganization, especially when renaming objects. Again, everything appears to work fine, even if you are disconnected. When you log back in, its like the whole thing never happened.

I would appreciate a pop-up box that says "You have been disconnected"

It is very frustrating. However, it is not fair to rant about it. The client is Open Source, and this is purely client-side problem. Since some of the controls, for example, the "locked" check box, are greyed out, the client KNOWS it has been disconnected. All we need is a way to clearly convey this to the user. Energy is better spent using JIRA or, if you are adept, fixing the code yourself, rather than ranting in these forums. Get to work.

No, really... if all he/she was doing was moving objects around (not rezzing anything new) then everything would have appeared to be working fine. The client gives no warning that the update to the server has failed.

Do you know they are paying some person living in japan here 5,000,000 YEN per month or $41,000 US to help build UI...............Now tell me is it worth it? Its was on a business report here in Japan. Frankly this same person ( i believe is a ex IBM worker in japan ( COUGH COUGH)) Well then again where is LLABS getting this money? And don`t you think LLAbs should be improving other parts of the game then just hiring and over paying for workers like this person?

Usagi

That's right. I was busy BUILDING.



Not when I'm busy building, besides which there is frequently nothing showing in those tiny little boxes even when I AM online.



What I was actually working on was texturing (making "matching" repeats across different sized/shaped prims, seamlessly aligning the textures, etc). That all APPEARS to work fine with no connection.

[/QUOTE]By the way, NICE post for a first post. 0o[/QUOTE]

What the hell does that have to do with anything? Just because I don't feel the need to post to a forum every time I scratch my butt doesn't make what I DO choose to post any less valid.

And speaking of nice posts, why did you even bother to reply. You have contributed nothing here at all as far as I can see. Do you really think that the SL client is a good example of software engineering? Do you want to see it's glaring shortcomings fixed? Are you just interested at attacking other people's posting for no good reason?

When I realised my connection was gone, I was actually texturing (fixing repeats, aligning to hide seams, etc). I guess I must have been doing that for the whole time there was no connection.
I actually lost my Internet connection, but the client seems unable to re-establish its connection to the server when the network is restored.

Definitely sounds like a bug to me. You should check JIRA to see if someone has mentioned it already and give it a vote... or enter it yourself and put the jira-id here so we can bump it with you.

Yes obviously the only thing I do is pi$$ off people. I just don't like it when the only reason people come to this forum are complaints like this. without any warning, just a one post rant oout of the blue. You weren't seeking help or anything, you were just complaining about something I had problems believing, because whenever I got accidentally logged out, there are loads of things that do not work at all so it would only take a short time to notice. Which I said in the above post too. What kind of answer did you expect to contribute something? if you rant how stupid the client is, what am i supposed to do? "Awww, yes, poor sir, I so agree, let's go on do a bit of LL bashing"???
And if you think this is something that sucks and needs to be changed, that's what JIRA is for.

The client has never had any disconnect messages or ability to reconnect automatically. We've been asking since forever.

Fixing linden lab's code is not the responsibility of its customers, open source or not.

And a simple server status ping on the client side is so elementary that they should be ashamed it's broken. I'd expect this kind of thing from a script kiddie writing their first IRC client in ksh, but not from the caliber of developer and project manager that we should all expect work at linden labs.

The problem is clearly within the hiring process. It seems to be flawed in such a way that people severely lacking the skillset to do the work that needs to be done (and to even figure out what needs to be done) are hired, while people with tons of meaningful experience and brilliant track records are generally not.

Part of the problem I think, may be with a bit of the reputation that linden labs has in the developer community. It seems to be in general terms seen as sort of a "toy company" with very good timing that makes a crappy video game. It's not the sort of place where brilliant developers want to work---its the sort of place where teenagers want to work.

The way around this, as it has been quite clearly shouted endlessly in the developer community, is (and has always been) with two things:

1. a huge salary for brilliant developers
2. work that's interesting.

The first one is pretty easy, but the second one maybe not so much. Figuring out a way to import an object from Lightwave is not something that brilliant developers want to do, no matter how large the inevitable sculptie penis forest will be. Thinking up a way to lift a voice-chat mechanism from someplace else and solder it into SL is not the kind of thing that a very good developer wants to be doing.

The sort of thing a very good developer wants to be doing is figuring out how to incorporate dynamic modeling and environments into the unreal engine, for example. Or coming up with a massive and elegant virtual weather system. Or even teaching Linden Labs all about hot upgrades and how to design a clustered system that does what we all want it to, instead of puking all over itself every six hours.

But I don't think this will ever happen. LL's revenue is high, and that's the bottom line. None of their technical problems are affecting their bottom line at all.

They have one. It works.
Just nothing happens on a ping timout other than it reports a constant ping of 10,000.
Ctrl+shift+1 to see the ping (just below the FPS).

Umm...then it doesnt work, and this little bug should be a giant wakeup call to them. It is inexcusable that it exists...this is something that should have been fixed before version 1.0, period.

Ummmm....?

The "excuse" I'm sure, is that traffic to/from LL is likely operating in a 'spray and pray' mode. Unlike most internet traffic which uses protocols that verify delivery. A deliberate choice to try to curb the ungodly volume of network bandwidth that SL pumps out.

You want more lag all the time so that you'll know sooner on the (hopefully not so frequent) occurance that the simulator you're on has crashed? Hm.

Everything has a cost... and it's not always in $.

On all the bugs we are having this one is low on my priority list. I understand that it caused you a major inconvenience, but for this bug is a 'workaround': Open the statistics bar while building, save your work on a regular basis, and keep an eye on your connection. You learned a lesson, and it will not be a major problem for you again when you keep an eye on your connection manually.

However, for a lot of other bugs there are no workarounds. What about inventory loss? What about not able to login? What about failing transactions? Even the attachments on my butt are more annoying then a lost connection (to me).

Let's hope most of these bugs are solved when they switch to the new messaging system as talked about in the blog, back in december:

http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/12/21/a-big-change-youll-barely-notice/

Meni.

Keep a flying follower around -- if it drops to the ground and starts twitching, you've lost connection.

Does that really work?

I use a HUD item that changes color once a second. If it stops blinking I've lost connectivity.

While I'm not arguing that it's a "joke", some things have been permanently frustrating. I've had packet loss reported at 109%. Not a typo.

And I can relate to not knowing I'm online. Usually I'm mid-script and chatting with a friend. Then I wonder why the friend suddenly got quiet for so long. Yes, I know to copy/paste to something external at that point, but software as brain-dead as mIRC knows it's off-the-air.

3 crashes in about 3 hours. And sound still is not fixed. I uninstaleld it, went back to 1.17.0 (12).

If I ever muck about in the source I'll code up some crappy "warning: disconnect detected" dialog or something.

Note the "if." I may or may not decide to hunt through the code for the relevant functions.

I've had this happen before and it's pretty annoying.

I usually fly around when I'm building now, moving to different spots to see the work instead of just using the camera. That's probably not so helpful on tiny builds, tho.