One Highly Displeased Customer

Okay, I'm about sick of all the bugs. I'm being as polite about this as I can be, but I'm seeing a whole heck of alot of other people complaining about the same things I am. So here's a suggestion, LL.. not to be mean or anything, but I'm also a programmer of sorts - try Testing things before putting them out!

I'm putting SecondLife "in the recycle bin" until I check back here and see that everything's back to "normal". 'cause I'm tired of my vehicles falling through the ground when I get out of them, I'm tired of my scripts glitching out between updates, I'm tired of all the "temporary" work-arounds for stuff that oughtta have been fixed since a few months after I started using SecondLife.

I think quality, at this point in time, is much better than quantity. The constant patching is getting to be a little annoying to some of us, and (coming from someone that was standing up for SecondLife's being new and what-not) I'm not seeing a "beta" tag anywhere. Point here: Focusing more on the stuff that's already broken before adding more stuff to something is more important, because when you bury broken stuff under the "gleam" of the new stuff, it will eventually break down like it seems to have.

For me, at least, SecondLife has become unusable. It crashes alot less than it used to and I get better frame rates than I did before the culling, but it's so... bulky and .. I dunno. I feel like I'm trying to manipulate a bar of 3-inch-thick steel with just my pinky fingers. It's very un-user-friendly right now.

My patience thin,
Myiasia Wallaby

[19:15] Myiasia Wallaby: ARGH! Why does my stuff keep disappearing while I'm editing it? I'm set to group, auto-return is off, yet when I try to edit the dang thing, it vanishes. Completely. Nowhere to be found!
[19:16] Myiasia Wallaby: It's happened, like, 3 times now.
[19:22] Adam Linden: Hi Myiasia, try clearing your cache and relogging, it may be a disconnect of some sort
[19:23] Myiasia Wallaby: .. I have -purge as an option in the shortcut in my task bar where the installer doesn't over-write it. Clearing cache is very likely to not do a thing for it. I tried exiting and restarting many-a-time anyways, doesn't do a bit of good.
[19:24] Myiasia Wallaby: As much as I hate to say it, with all the bugs and everything everywhere, this is probably something server-side.
[19:26] Adam Linden: Thanks for your opinion, please try.
[19:27] Adam Linden: If not, file a bug report

I paid for this. I try to be patient with updates. I try to seek help from Lindens that might know what they're doing.

... and all I get is "Clear your cache" or "file bug report". And I hate to say it, but that sounded snoody, that response. As an experienced PC user, I HATE having someone ride it off as my problem.

CLEAN UP YOUR ACTS, Linden Labs. I've read an awful lot in the past few days, and I for one, am in full agreement with all the complaints this time. And here I was generally standing up forya. Sheesh.

Yeah my stuff has been disappearing too.

A little differently than yours- i edited my store building yesterday, logged out. when i logged back in the building was back to "normal" and everything else i built and changed in the store was either gone or back to normal


"Clear your cache and relog" crap is insane. How are you going to tell someone who was building something and lost it (nowhere to be found in inventory, lost and found folder, seen by other residents etc) to try and 'clear cache and relog'

damage is already done


as for me, i filed a bug report and was told to call their office if i wanted help- WTF?

I'm of the same problem, there are a number of outstanding building bugs that have been in there for at least 3 versions and make building a very annoying process. Some of them may be Mac only, but I fail to see why one client should have building crippled just so that the others can get new features (vertex shading still isn't implemented on Mac yet, because it seems to have been promised and then promptly forgotten).

It's in light of all these bugs that I will not be purchasing a simulator until I see some progress, both on the bugs front, and in the realm of actually solving the economic problems rather than putting in half-baked stop-gap measures. The throttling stuff added recently will do what? Slow down economic collapse perhaps, but not solve the issue, or bring back dwell.
I'll add that I am perfectly capable of purchasing a simulator right now, and paying for the upkeep fees. But I will not, because all I see is my purchasing a computer that I can only use 6 days or less a week and which might randomly destroy my stuff (if I can even build it in the first place!).

I still remain hopeful, but despite promises, all I see is bugs being ignored (1.11 still has issues with text-box foucs despite massive numbers of complaints) and new features being added anyway. Out of the last few things how many are necessary? Occlusion culling has been very positive for me (though still seems to have inefficiencies, it occasionally causes lag spikes client-side), and the anti-push option is good. But other than that we've had three updates that could have seen the Lindens working on finding and fixing known and repeatedly reported bugs.

I actually started a petition about it, since the voting tool frequently breaks and is mostly useless anyway since you need to somehow distribute your measly 10 votes:
Click here to view the petition (give the link to your friends!)

Just wanted to add my name to the list. I spend hours and hours as a designer making things, only to return after a relog and find that every thing has disappeared.(forever) so all my time is wasted. I was told it was a cache problem and to empty mine every day.
So i do this now and still have many many probelms and disappearances. Not sure


My computer if fine for all other things that i do on the internet . It is only this program that seems to have unlimited problems.

Philip Linden.

I am a pretty avid builder and scripter and a sim owner in SL, and I am also a software mananger with a couple decades of development under my belt (you can tell I am a real coder, my spelling or terrible). Frankly, what I have heard about the "lovefest" development model of Linden Labs is just the most rediculous thing imaginable for maintaing a large complex piece of sofwtare. As a manager it makes me laugh out loud. As a user of the product of such a development model I am serisouly hurt and worried.

The current development model may have worked great during the prototyping and even 1.0 rollout phases of SLs developement, but that's when it should have been replaced by much more time honered development model. I have never seen a single program with so many maintenence problems. Philip Linden, you yourself, recently referred to these problems LL being "unlucky". [ed- Ooops sorry that was Robin Linden]. My heart sank at hearing [Robin] say that, it's bad news coming from the head of development. News flash, a huge number of bugs repeatedly pushed out onto paying clientelle are not "unlucky", they happen becuase a system is not working. I seem to recall seeing a post about how your preferred method of testing is to "push it out and see what happens". And even if this was in reference to the testing grids it is still not good enough.

I ran into two bugs in this release that were such utterly fundemental coding errors, they are type of bug that should /never/ happen in a release. I see these kinds of bugs during development all the time but NEVER in released software. I know /exacty/ what the bug is and how it should take no more than 5 minutes to fix, and yet they continue to persist for weeks sometimes. Why? "Lovefest"? Clearly you are currently pushing out under tested "betas" in the guise of updates to published software.

* Bug #1: New feature, the ability to sort the Top Scripts window in the esate tools. Good feature! Problem? The UI list is obviously backed up by a data list, these two lists WERE in sync because they were always ordered the same. Now, then you reorder the UI list selecting an entry and clicking "Show Beacon" puts the beacon the wrong object in the world. Item at UI list index 0 NO LONGER refers to data list item index 0! The UI list MUST keep a "pointer" index back into the data list and you "Show Beacon" not on item 0 in the data list but on the stored data list undex for item 0 in the UI list. This is basic high school UI programming mistakes here Mr. Linden. Hell the default windows UI models have a space to store this info for this VERY reason!

* Bug # 2: Spin controls and the scroll tabs in this latest release no longer reject double clicks. This means that if you click the mouse on them as fast as you can, the controls only update after every doubleclick time out. Practically speaking this means that changing values in a spin control while editing is about 5 times SLOWER than in any previous release that I have used. and this is a bug not found on anyother piece of quality software. This is brand new in this release. How? Why?

Getting rid of or working around double click logic on spin controls is something that every UI programmer that is worth his space knows how to do, obviously someone had already done it, how did it get /removed/? Did someone off the street come in and say "what is this complicated gook with the mouse handling in the spin control?!? I'll just get rid of it"?!?!? How could that regression have possibly happened? Lack of code ownership? Lack of talent in the people fixing bugs? Lack of proper commenting in the code? Lack of staff training to about not just removing code they do not understand? Change to code not even fundimentally tested by the persont hat "fixed" it? "lovefest"?

Whatever the answer is, it's a pretty sad state. Philip Linden, you need to let go of your current develoment model and development atmosphere in order to survive. YOU and everyone in charge MUST SEE that it is no longer working. The last 6 versions of SL have all REDUCED existing functionality significantly. THere have been a few nice features added, and some bugs undone but they are completely forgettable when your UI locks up because you pasted something into an edit control! 2-3 more releases like the last 6 and SL will be unusable.

Fix your current bug list of 200+ usability problems now. Go at least another 4 weeks (Take 8 if necessary!) of nothing but CAREFUL bug busting and performace improvbment in problem areas like dead scripts sucking huge amounts of CPU time for no reason. NO MORE FEATURES till this is done and SL IS the best SL it can be with the CURRENT feature set.

And please, as an SL in world developer and sim owner, fix those two bugs above? I have reported them but they are not listed in the release notes and last I checked they were not fixed in siva, they could not be easier to fix and in a time vs annoyance graph you'll get a hell of a lot out of taking care of them early.

Thanks, and here's to hoping that things turn around... don't wait to get "lucky" again, make your luck happen.

You know what really worries me, Farallon? When I saw this bug I didn't even bother to report it - there seemed no point - it was so obviously naive that I just laughed. I sense when you get to that point the end of "bothering with it at all" is not that far away.

/esc

They keep talking about "XML user interface" like Firefox.

I hope they're not actually implementing it, and I hope these bugs aren't the result of them replacing the existing working code with something horribly buggy and insecure like XUL.

Actually I think its always been like that. Ever since I heard about debug mode back in the day I've noticed you can edit the UI its just not encouraged right now.

I have two coding and building projects that I've put on hold until these issues can be resolved. The sad thing is even doing this, I can't escape problems with the interface. LL can't even fix the chat/IM focus problems that are driving me insane. If I close the IM window (either by clicking the "x" button or the "IM" button then the focus should return to the chat window automatically. Does it do this, of course not. Chat/IM are only the most used functions within the game why would we want those to work properly? Forgive my sarcasm, but can we please forgo the implementation of new features until the bugs have been worked out. This seems like common sense to me, but apparently it isn't.

It's already there and has been since I first joined: xul.dll, no vesion number information on it, but dated Wednesday, July 05, 2006, 2:48:34 PM.

The updates are coming way to fast. One update every one to two months rather than one a week would make much more sense. Its really starting to disrupt my business. Ever since the last update the sim my store is in has had quite a bit of downtime and more lag than usual. Even without these problems theres simply too much downtime with all these updates. A thoroughly tested and stable update released once every month or two makes alot more sense than all these quick unstable updates. Thanks.

The clear cache and relog crap doesn't wipe with me either. Even my grandma knows to clear cache and relog if things go wrong...

Now I know I'm not a paying customer but you're meant to look after all of us. I WAS going to signup for a paid account but come on... this shit doesn't exactly make me want to, I can get all these bugs for free so why pay for them?

signed and stamped. Sorry, but when reading about the "lovefest" working style on phillips blog, my only reaction was "wtf? that guys a moron!". Been there, done that, didn't get anything accomplished without something like a working QA and some strict grip on bug hunting before diving into features.

Hey, I started out as a coder myself (and in parts still am), did my own share of team management and project work - I know that it is fun to have your self-paced workstyle. But the other thing I definitely know about is that you only generate pissed customers if you continue to dive into cute new features and other fluffy stuff, but let bugs rot in your known problems page (and please, don#t give me the crap about "we care for your complaints" - if you really care, why is the known problems page (which only lists a subset of the actual known problems, as anyone just skimming the forums starts to notice) still filled with bugs from 1.9 - and bugs with designation "critical", that is?

Your product is cool. Being inworld is something I really like, I love to build, script and fiddle with stuff, meet people. But it really hurts my professional feelings if I see bugs rot away without even being touched, new bugs introduced with each and every release (and each and every feature introduced!), having reliable breakage after _every_ 1.11 release up to today (and yeah, on wed. you will go to break sunset/sunrise and sound, yay, how much I look forward to that ...) and adding some rather crude frontline support to that (no, if you open your registration to successfully include europeans and asians to the population mix, it is not a good idea to let live helpers point to the phone support, if you still only run on business hours ...)

Currently you at Lindenlab are doing much more damage to SecondLife's image than the actual bugs - bugs I can live with, if I see them fixed. Bugs happen, some stuff can only be found in high-load situations and not in preview, and some stuff us just plain hard to get right. But _every_ professional project I was on or I seen working did the same in situations like yours: take a step back and go on bug-hunting. Delay features, fix bugs. Get that known issues page filled with _all_ known issues, be honest about it. Then go down on that list and fix those bugs. You can do all your cuddly-lovely dev-stuff after getting at least 1.11 into a fixed shape again. Please?

bye, Barney

This happens to non-builders too. I recently lost several objects... some rather expensive. Not only were they not where I had placed them on my land, but they had not been returned to my inventory either. When I contacted live help, I was told I couldn't be helped and no compensation would be given to me for the lost items. But I could file a bug report just in case. Of course, no one answers the bug reports, so that was unhelpful even though I did it. While the responding Linden was very courteous and apologetic, no problem resolution actually took place.

Lucky for me, the creator of the items was very kind and replaced them for me at no charge. At least someone knew how to provide proper customer service.

While I appreciate that SL is always a work in progress, LL needs to appreciate that if they will charge for their service a certain level of support is required.

The only building problem I've ever run into happened a while back when I tried to return something to my inventory. It never made it. Just kinda vanished. It was far back before such an upsurge for attention on the current problems, I think, though.

That aside - I seem to continually run into things, or pieces of things, far up into the air. Not skyboxes, have you - just a random shiney sphere or a twisted torus here and there. Maybe a small object, etc. Like someone was editing it and FLING, it was gone nowhere to be seen, and assumed lost.

Bull, this is no cache problem.


Right after it happened to my, my friend rented a lot next to mine and WHERE DID HER STORE GO WHEN SHE LOGGED BACK IN?


Who knows, not anywhere in her inventory that`s for sure.

Amen.

Some people have one or two days off from work (and not always on weekends) - my off days happen to be Wednesday and Thursday, and I really look forward to my free time to spend in SL; the last 3 weeks it has been nearly impossible to have any grid time on a Wednesday, and usually Thursdays the system is "almost stable" at best.

I pay nearly $100/month between my two accounts, which averages out to about $25 a week. The tier fees are clearly listed as "Land Maintanence Fees", yet no such service is provided cause all the land every where is BORKED (if you consider your builds are not safe)! That aside, perhaps there should be a pro-rated fee for these months when there is a lot of grid "downtime" and all the residents "enjoyment factor" is squelched by poor "upgrade" decisions (oh I would so cry if my builds were disappearing, guess I got lucky).

Why not just roll back to a previous update while keeping the asset servers intact - that way at least the user anguish will subside some, we'll be able to spend time working on our various projects or businesses, and we won't be haunting the forums looking for an ear to listen to our gripes.

Anyone know a good class action lawyer (who will work for linden dollars)?

I believe that Basically the only thing that is going to stop the "Love Fest" approach to development is... well a Mass Exodus. Program Development structure simply does not work this way.

"Find what it is that you want to do and then do that" pfft please.
Ok Phil I'll work for you if what I want to do is repeatedly plant my boot in your Ass!

BTW is their a job open for that or is that an "entry level position" ?

I suggest A mass exodus and all you clever programmers and Web Developers out there get together make a new platform and overthrow Linden Labs.

I believe that when all Second life has is the Bare Rose HQ and empty Anshe Chung Sims and the rest of the Grid is Devoid of all but a smattering of Virtual Life, only then will they realize "Hmmm maybe we have done something wrong".

Some fact some rant, all of it just my 2 cents.

Please delete or pass your stuff to the nearest noob on the way out so it doesn't un necessarily clog our asset server till the year 3000
I;m sure there are some nice non evolving platforms out there you can join with no new features, bugs or residents since 2003
In short there's always going to be bugs, it's beta after all, whether it says it or not, otherwise everyone would pay to play. And there's nothing better around.

To be fair, if that happened due to a sim rollback after a crash or rolling restart, or because the sim lost its connection to the asset server then there really isn't anything anyone can do since the item literally never existed on the sim. The most they could do is go back, look at the logs and go "yes, there was a problem with that sim at that time" which isn't actually any help either.

Tech support Lindens are just peons in the LL hierarchy and things like that probably frustrate them as much as it does you since they're helpless to fix it.

---

I used to think that the "clear cache, tp to a quiet sim and relog" was a hollow line as well, but from my time on Live Help it did help people 3 out of 4 times and I don't think that would have changed dramatically in the past half year so you can't blame them for suggesting it. It really does help a whole lot of people.

That said, from the description you can usually tell if something vanished into a black hole not to ever return and they should just be honest about it. In those cases "clear cache, relog or file a bug report" is simply dismissing, just like "file an AR" is pointless in many situations but it does get rid of the person.

/me reads most of this before realizing it's over a year old...

Oops . I never noticed .

*mumbles something about necroposters and edits her earlier post*

Read the latest blog and you will have some idea of the cause.

They are using mySql for their database. Now I know mySql works, I use it myself but don't you think for something this size they should upgrade to something a tad faster and more robust.

In most places that usually means Oracle. This is no longer a hobby installation for them, they need a scalable database which they clearly do not have.