Please stop releasing updates... they usually make SL worse

ummm no. to continue to post updates?upgrades w/o addressign the bugs that the last few updates have caused is equivilant to using bubble gum to stop a leak in the hoover dam. i agree updates are necessary, however LL needs to, as one poster put it, address the issue of the numbers of people joining the game every hour, fix any and all security issues, and foremost make sure they recreate a TYPICAL SL SIM situation BEFORE releasing any new upgrades. just because everythign went smoothly on the beta grid soes not mean it will in the main game grid. this is Programming 101, basic stuff in other words.

do not get me wrong, i know there is no perfect upgrade/update and there are bound to be a few "issues", however, to ignore the previous ugrade issues, and churn out a new one, is truly asking for it. and with each upgrade that does not address the simple bugs, you leave your self open for more attacks and hacks.

sometimes its the simple things that leave the doors wide open for attacks.

Matter of fact, I just recently used the store analogy (mall, actually) to explain why this kind of thinking is not logical, and won't work.

When I remember where I wrote it, I will copy and put it here. (If I can remember where "here" is. Too many forums and blogs! haha)

coco

Found it:

Imagine going to a mall. Anyone can walk into the mall, right? You don't have to prove who you are, or leave behind any information that would make you be accountable for your actions, or even buy anything.

I think LL wants SL to be the mall.

But it can't be the mall.

Because the mall has abilities that go beyond its mall-ness, and SL doesn't. (Or doesn't much anyway.)

If someone acts up in the mall, they get escorted out. If they bring the mall to its knees, they get escorted out and ultimately sent to jail, because ithe mall is connected to the real world.

This can be done because the person is identifiable: Not only in the form of his actual body, which can be grabbed, but in terms of real-life identification (not to mention plenty to lose).

But the giant SL mall is set up in such a way that once the disrupter has left the premises (which he always can, without any security officer stopping him), there is no way to ever find out who he was.

That scenario leaves all the regular mall-shoppers at the mercy of whoever wants to come in and disrupt. The disrupters can do what they like with no fear of consequence whatever, because they are untrackable, and can become someone else in an instant.

This is why no one solution is adequate.

Coding solutions which prevent all mall-goers from having abilities aren't good. Societal striation of versions of mall-goers - "trusted" vs "non-trusted" - kind of go against the grain. Mini-versions of these, though - which would do the least harm - might be a reasonable partial solution.

But wouldn't it make more sense to stop the disrupters at the mall entrance? Why stubbornly refuse to stop them at the entrance? There is really little good argument for that, because SL can't really be a real-world mall.

Without the real-world abilities to identify mall-goers when it becomes necessary (when they disrupt), there is no security in the mall that will ever be respected by the disrupters, because none will ever be effective. And the regular mall-goers deserve a peaceful mall. (In fact, they will leave if they don't get it.)

This is why it's important to have some social rules for identifying the virtual mall-goers, such as forcing people to at the very least supply a working e-mail address when signing up, and verifying it.

Which is why so many web sites and online games require that, and more, before you can gain entrance to the mall.

Not doing it is kinda stupid.

coco

Hrmm... I'm sleepy and probably not too articulate but I'll try anyway.

No one gets carded for talking on a cell phone during a movie at the mall's theater. Unless someone steals or damages or something (or someone), the most that will likely happen is the perp being escorted off the premises.

These other websites and games you refer to... do they have a pricing model which essentially puts the burden of paying for 'free access' upon those that profit from their participation with the site/game? Malls charge their vendors... SL charges their land owners... the vendors and land owners charge their customers... or pay out of pocket... and the customers browse and buy whatever their whims dictate.

My point is, I guess... that the same problems that affect malls affect SL. High school brats may or may not have id on them, if they refuse to say who they are when detained for a minor disturbance but nothing jail worthy... then they have to be released just as anonymously as a perp in SL. They can watch their cameras and try to catch the lout if they try sneaking back in... much like LL can block IP's and such however, it's not always effective.

Me personally, I'd happily pay 25% more... maybe even 50% more for movie ticket if there were an usher with a billy club lurking in the room to bonk anyone that starts gabbing. But instead, I merely get charged extra and forced to watch adverts if I want anything resembling a decent seat.

Anyway... I'm okay with the current entry model... I've run something similar for years and learned how to cope with annoying type that are hard to completely ban or persecute. To use a tired old security analogy, "a hard shell protecting a soft chewy center" isn't what we need... SL needs to have a soft shell around a harder and more robust center. Either that or it needs to stop advertising and recruiting and go back to the days when it had a population base much smaller.


--
Me: Hey, do you mind?
MovieYacker: Yes, I do mind! I paid for my ticket I can do what I want.
Me: Okay, fine. But answer that phone again and you'll be wearing my $5 soda.

But the perp *will* be escorted off the premises.

And if they keep coming back and being disrupteive, they will get banned from returning, and if they violate that they can get charged with tresspassing and go to jail. This limits the kind of disruption they can do.

If SL only had to deal with the equivalent of people talking on a cellphone in a movie theatre, or rowdy teenagers, I don't think we'd be having this conversation. The kind of "gay pranks" people pull in SL you only see in romantic comedies... and when folks try it in real life they end up in court or on the Darwin Awards.

Hrm... I see what you mean... but it's still very difficult to 'ban' someone RL or online. Think of soccer matches in the Europe, there are certain people that have been 'barred for life' for becoming violent during matches and inciting riots, causing damage. They manage to sneak in anyway. Better surveilance and security help decrease the risk but it's always there even if we do card at the doors.

Our most recent grid attacks are probably more appropriately compared to arson. Carefully planned, malicious and deliberately destructive. RL or SL... the perp is likely long gone and very hard to track down.

The question is, how many potentially excellent residents will never bother to try SL if LL re-fills the moat and raises the drawbridge, in the utterly futile hope that it will discourage that 1 person out of 100,000 with arsonistic intentions?

And, if LL puts the wall back up... aren't they doing exactly what this miscreant probably wants them to?

Yes, but in RL this kind of person is the exception, and only the most obsessive and antisocial types have the motivation and ability to cause persistent problems... so few people are inconvenienced by "pranksters" acting out in real life even as often as once a year.

Unless SL is locked down to the point where our abilities are as limited as they are in real life, any kind of analogies between SL and a mall or a football game are misleading at best. The only choice here is between cheapening Second Life until it's limited as the First, or making the loss off access to SL likely enough that only the obsessive will risk it.

It's not futile at all. Right now the level of risk in committing arson in RL is pretty high. You might get away with it a few times but if you keep doing it you will be caught. Less antisocial behaviour has a lesser risk, but it's still too high for most people to engage in it for fun. The level of risk involved in attacking Second Life, as often as you want, is pretty close to zero.

I don't think so. The attacker wants to mess up SL, and anything LL does to make SL worse is all to the good. Right now LL's doing more damage NOT putting the wall up. The latest inventory loss problem has all the earmarks of a grey goo fence gone wrong, for example.

I'm a game tester.. I've been doing it for a few years, and from my experience new versions/updates.. whatever.. break way more than they fix. It's just how things work.. devs always look at the positive path and very rarely think about the negative path.. which is where almost everything breaks. Even the best programmers I've worked with, the ones that think about every possible outcome still have buggy code. In my opinion this isn't a matter of the devs falling short, it's not having good testers. The only way it could be the devs fault is that if the testers are finding the bugs and they are just punting them around.. how serious some of these have been I highly doubt that though.

Which makes me wonder.. since most testing is done on the production side in games (teams are usually about 20-70 off-site people in my experience, but on-site I've never been on a team with more than 5) and sl doesn't seem to be produced by anyone.. it seems like they own it directly(?).. it makes me wonder if they have the test team to make up for it. The only other thing I could think of is that the client just runs perfectly over there because they are so close to the servers (which could explain why they can't repro all these 100% repro bugs maybe). Shrugs. That happened to me once on a job.. working on the 360.. it was Microsoft, so they solved it by just sending us all home with a box and testing from there a few nights a week. It's amazing how many bugs came up when we did that.

What really surprises me with this update, is how many bugs that seem to have been around for awhile are left unaddressed. In my opinion the devs have it easy, there are so few (although huge) things that they have to keep track of.. in normal games they are expected to make all the equipment and such work.. in this game we are in charge of that. It's not like it's just the inventory bug that's happening.. I've run into all sorts of crazy shit these past few days.. things randomly unlinking (not the whole thing, just bits and pieces randomly).. stuff missing from a class I went to last week.. and tons of crashes (I crash about 2 or 3 times a day.. on a perfectly working computer). And it's pretty sad that no one's bothered to come on and really talk to us about it. Jeska was on here at 2 in the morning last week updating us every 30 minutes or so about this mysterious grey goo.. but now a very serious issue happens and no one has anything to say? Where's the immediate roll over patch for this? Just people loosing stuff they bought.. no big deal.

Shrugs. Just thought I'd give my two cents.. I'm done ranting now.

Jes