The good old days

We used to have our cache in a folder named Cache.

Ah, the good old days.

Cache-22

Examples of Cache-22 remain common and persistent.

The only things that never change are all the things you'd want to.

What prompted this is the change in the location of the often mentioned never loved SL Cache folder.

There are numerous references to it being located at

(Windows XP) - C:\Documents and Settings\< username >\Application Data\SecondLife\cache

but now it is at

C:\Documents and Settings\< username >\Local Settings\Application Data\SecondLife

I bet someone somewhere not too far from now in time is using old documentation and trying to find the Cache folder when there is no SL cache folder named "Cache".

I am finding this change hard to remember. I wish the name of the folder could at least have the world Cache in it.

Someone is going to delete their other folder named SecondLife that has all their chat logs, user settings, and so on as a result of these two differently purposed folders having the same name but different locations.

Why don't you just make a new folder, call it what you want, and then change the cache location in SL?

Talking of the good old days I remember when we used to have interesting threads over the weekend....

Yeah. What happened to the Friday threads? I have seen one in quite a while.

That's because SL would be shut sown most of the weekend, trying to fix what they broke on Maintenance Wednesday.

I'm tired of doing it again and again, for one thing; anytime you have to delete your settings, the cache location will be reset to the default.

Then there's the fact that I have Cool Viewer, Rainbow Viewer, Imprudence (which I always want to call Impromptu, for some reason), the SL viewer, Hippo Viewer, Nicholas, RealXtend, SnowGlobe Frequency, and others I don't recall loaded, I wouldn't really want to maintain a custom location for all of them, although I do have a now mis-named GreenCache folder and a SnowCache folder - which is probably not being used as a result of updating SnowGlobe and deleting the settings file for it in an attempt to deal with it's crashes.

In fact, that is actually the case, I'm running SnowGlobe, and have deleted my settings file, and the cache is back at it's default, and I've just now become aware of this, and rediscovering the relatively new home of the cache folder, not where and named as God intended it be, but in some kind of heathen location in the Local Settings folder.

Plus of course my doing that does nothing to make all the old documentation floating about on the web correct.

Also I wouldn't have gotten to make this spiffy post if I had just made a folder with Cache in the name.

Sometimes it feels that way.

Many people had been asking for this.


.... and LL listened.

Had many people actually been asking for this? Why? Would it be "geeks" wanting to make SL consistent with some set of rules about proper application behavior?

I always want to type behavior "behaviour".

It's hard to get a good thread going by yourself, when you try to be polite and stay on the subject of SL and virtual worlds, and can't talk about other virtual worlds without waking up the SL fanboys and dogmatists about what the definition of a virtual world is and such.

Let's see you start an interesting thread, Mr. Disparager Of My Thread!

Do you remember the good old days before the ghost town? We danced and sang and the music played like inna de boomtown.

Well, perhaps it was that the guiding concept became work rather than fun, and the game elements were removed.

In a way, if you think about it, it makes sense that retention is low because the lure of "Join, and you can be a consumer of things others make!" isn't compelling. If a person wants to create that's one thing, but often people don't, or they don't know they would like it.

Smart Cachers have their cache stashed in a custom folder defined off the root for each version of viewer installed. This prevents weird bugs related to the mishmash of viewers using the same "facility".

And defining your chat log location is also a good idea.

We need to be allowed to define where the logs go as well. Too many available bugs by viewer related to directory structures.

Well, it wasn't so much the numbers of residents asking for this, but the millions of people who are still to sign up. It was these unheard voices that wanted the cache moved.

It would have been wrong not to listen.

Although to me SL isn't a "giant mall," I've heard it described that way by people who are exploring. There are a lot of shops, and tons to buy, but that has never interested me and I somehow manage to avoid it all - so my view of SL is shaped by my own interests. A new person just goes here and there and may not realise that what they are seeing is slanted in one direction or another - say, towards the commercial. I have logged in to VR programs and made spot decisions based on nothing much, so I'm sure others do, too.

Although to me SL isn't a "giant mall," I've heard it described that way by people who are exploring. There are a lot of shops, and tons to buy, but that has never interested me and I somehow manage to avoid it all - so my view of SL is shaped by my own interests. A new person just goes here and there and may not realise that what they are seeing is slanted in one direction or another - say, towards the commercial. I have logged in to VR programs and drawn conclusions based on nothing much, so I'm sure others do, too.

The lure of consuming things others make seems to work quite well in places that are called virtual worlds like Club Penguin, Habbo Hotel, and other places, doesn't it?

I think I read that the dropout rate is 50 percent for the first visit, i.e. half the people that try SL don't try again.

I don't think that could have to do too much with building versus consuming. I suspect it has a lot to do with their computer's and internet access not being up to snuff, for one thing, plus, there's probably a lot of folks that expect it to look Absolutely Marvelous, like the Avatar movie, which it doesn't. None of the "real 3D virtual worlds" - There, Active Worlds, Hipihi, look absolutely marvelous. The better they look, for those with systems that can handle it, the more people will drop out because their systems can't handle it.

Indeed, I have drawn that conclusion (hardware not up to the job) myself, but I'm just trying to think of additional reasons. I do think a game aspect keeps new people interested (as humans seem to thrive on leveling) until they actually know enough to branch out in ways they had not even known existed upon joining.

Maybe game aspects could be added for new customers up to 30 days, or what-have-you. They'd get a stipend and rate each other and have quests and leaderboards and prizes. Then at 31 days they lose that aspect.

I'm just idly throwing thoughts out - I haven't thought about these.

Millions of unheard voices. (tm)

That's what I have done with CnowCache and C:GreenCache.

However, as I said, the SnowCache folder wasn't being used owing to having deleted the settings folder, which reverted the location to the default. If SL was stable enough to not feel the perhaps superstitious need to delete the settings file in hopes of preventing further crashes it would be a lot more rewarding customizing things.

I sure wish SL would store some things on it's end of things that are currently stored on user's systems. I'd pay them for it. Sell my little parcel and instead pay to never see those n00b warnings again, and have it remember that I don't really like the default camera position, and such things as that.