Black Sunday Redux

Another Sunday with limited functionality in SL. Search down most of the event day and teleporting almost impossible. We know that Linden Lab is not going to close the flood gate no matter what. So what do we do as community members to get back the use of Second Life again?

Well, the client is open-source now.. maybe someone else needs to pick up the ball and run with it and make a "Third Life" with a much more robust design on the backend and a much better business plan.

Although I don't like the problems that SL has been having over the last few months, the thing that really bugs me is when they say something is "resolved" when it very clearly is not resolved.

LL, I love you dearly but a problem is not resolved when, less than a day later, you decide that you've got to shuffle 150+ sims to a different circuit. The "it's broke it's fixed oops - still broke! " cycle almost feels like it's a weekend ritual.

Sadly, it IS a ritual, which is why I no longer try to get on during the weekends. If it's not griefers taking the grid down by spawning crud all over the grid, it's the grid choking and wheezing under it's own weight.

Yes, they think it's fixed, but in reality, it's suffering from technician-itis. The moment they stop watching it, it's back to it's same old tricks. Unfortunately, I don't think they have the staff to babysit the thing 24/7. (Liaisons are not server monkeys, so they don't count.)

Open-Source clients will not fix this problem. The issue is not the client, bug-laden as it may be, but the basic infrastructure of SL itself. LL made many poor design choices early in the development process that are now coming back to bite them, and us. Until LL does a complete redesign of the server side infrastructure we can only expect this to get worse as the load increases. LL entered this as a "Grand Experiment" with little forethought on where it was going and what would be needed to make it a viable business platform.

SL is experiencing exponential growth, and even with perfect software (which we all know isn't really possible) they have a substantial challenge just keeping up with the explosive increase in hardware requirements. They're warehousing servers in Houston now, so the backbone between San Francisco and Houston can play merry hell with the grid if it's not working within acceptable limits - I'm sure they're finding all sorts of novel ways to break the grid at this point, and the fact that it's up at all is a testament to their dedication and expertise.

Patience. They'll get it sorted out.