Going off-topic to talk about COPYBOT

Friends, I'm going to deviate from my usual rhetoric, to talk about something that some people in SL just don't seem to understand.

Today, we talk about the EVIL COPYBOT! What makes COPYBOT so evil though? COPYBOT is just a script that makes calls to an outside source and then makes copies of things. But, my point is this, COPYBOT is nothing more then a program or script. Unless someone actually uses it, and then uses it for EVIL, then COPYBOT is nothing more then a script/program.

How COPYBOT is used should not determine if the Creator of COPYBOT is suspended and banned. If Linden Lab is so concerned about COPYBOT, why don't they develop the tools to log its use and find those USING it, instead of going after the Creator?

You see, when you decide to punish someone from the LSL Development community for their work, the rest of the Development Community could be severely hampered. I mean, who wants to stumble on a innovative way to back-up your hard work (building creations) only to find that Linden Lab says you are evil for thinking up something that would do that?

Linden Lab, and everyone else for that matter, shouldn't be crying for the Creator's head, but instead, should be making sure that WHOEVER is using COPYBOT, they are using it in a prescribed manner that is legal.

Just for a point of reference for everyone reading this, I've never USED COPYBOT, never OWNED IT, never even seen it in use. But I still support the free developement of all programs/scripts that we can use in SL to make our lives a little easier. Sure, there will always be people who use these programs for wrong, but does that make the creator evil?

I guess this is just a natural progression from my strong beliefs in FREE SPEECH. While I detest and abhor NAMBLA, I will fight for their right to speak. While I detest and abhor the KKK, I will fight for their right to speak. The minute you curtail one groups right to speak, you curtail us all, and my father and his brothers, didn't fight in a World War so our freedoms could be curtailed.

Let's therefore stop blaming the creator of COPYBOT for making an evil program. The program in and of itself isn't evil or good, it's just a program. The USE of such program though, can be evil or good, but that makes the USER evil or good, not the creator of the program.

There seems to be movement...

I know this will shock many, it has me. Today, Linden Lab announced that on MONDAY, the 25th of June, they will be releasing an OPTIONAL viewer, along with conducting ROLLING RESTARTS on ALL SIMs so they can apply a number of bug fixes.

Why is this important? Well, normally Linden Lab would wait until their normal Maintenance window to do something of this magnitude. Instead, it seems that the Powers That Be have finally understood the Communities urgent cry for change.

This is good news, and like you, I'll keep watching to be sure we continue to move in this positive direction.

Let's not sleep just yet friends, keep the pressure up until we have a Stable Grid, Stable DB's, and no more BUGS!

It's Broken...It's Broken....It's Broken....AGAIN

Today I was finishing up a contract build/landscape job, and like every good and thoughtful builder in Second Life, I was putting PRIMS into LINKSETS and making sure everything is ready to go for the transfer process, and then, out of the corner of my eye, I see it. Quite unbelievable really, since I am known as the "Perfect Connector", but, there it was, a gap between my stairs.

Now, this SHOULD be impossible, since the stairs were put together using the Shift-Copy method in LOCAL mode, meaning a perfect connection every time. So, how did these stairs get out of whack? Then I remembered, a year ago, we, us Builders of Second Life, were having issues with LINKING PRIMS together, as they would suddenly MOVE when you LINKED THEM to one another. But wait, this bug was fixed nearly 9 months back, it was a HUGE thing then, so it can't be broke again; can it?

Well folks, the bad news is, we are going backwards with Linden Lab apparently. The more we complain about the GRID, the Asset Servers, the bugs, they just figure they'll get us back by re-introducing old bugs into the world. I must admit, if I were Linden Lab, and I was wanting people to just stop asking for a better world, I too would re-introduce some of the more hideous bugs we've seen, so people would see just how much better things really are. Kudo's Uncle Phil and Aunt Robin, a brilliant way to stop the complaining.

I just wonder though, if they are going to keep re-introducing old bugs, is that considered an enhancement?

The correct way to communicate...

I find it interesting really, that a company the size of Linden Lab, with all their employee's and supposedly higher educated Management Teams, and yet they don't understand that basics of communication.

First, and foremost, for ANY communications between two entities to exist, one must be willing to listen to the other side. Without actually listening, you aren't communicating, you are just yelling at someone. Linden Labs, in the last 5 BLOG entries must have forgotten this simple rule, as they have closed comments on every single listing.

I suspect this is really in hopes that the community, which is becoming quite HOT under the collar, continues to ask the simple question, "Why can't you provide us a stable grid and no bugs?" Linden Lab apparently has no answer, and therefore, doesn't want to communicate, they just want to disseminate their propaganda and damn be the customers.

What then can we extrapolate from these latest shananigans from our friends at Linden Lab? Perhaps those doing the blogging have failed to be trained on how to open the comments, or maybe their comments are broken? Better yet, perhaps Linden Lab is finished listening to it's core members and community complain and they don't care about any of the REAL RESIDENTS of Second Life any longer? Why else would a company just stop listening? Why else would a company just stop communicating? Unless of course they are ashamed of the mess they've made out of our world and just hope we all go away.

Sorry Papa Phil and Mama Robin, we aren't going anywhere, until we take back OUR WORLD, remember, YOU gave it to us, and WE entrusted you to keep it nice; do you really think you have done your jobs? Perhaps your salaries should be commensurate with your performance, if that were the case, I would be happy to loan you a couple dollars for McDonalds on your way home tonight.

Stop the madness, give us a stable grid, and open your ears once more.

A Call to Arms

My friends, today I sent a passionate plea to a couple of my friends at Linden Lab. Begging them to stop the madness and make our world of Second Life stable. I've fired the shot across their bow, and hope they see it as a friendly gesture to wake them up to the inevitability of the death of Second Life if something isn't done, and done fast.

So, now I take another shot, at you, the reader. What have you done, if you agree with me, to tell Linden Lab that you want change? Have you joined a group that supports the fixing of bugs, grid issues, etc? Have you started your own group to call out this injustice? Have you signed the project open letter, or joined their cause?

A people that won't speak, are a people that won't be heard. If you aren't heard, how can Second Life ever get fixed? If Linden Lab seriously believes that there's only a handful of people complaining, do you think they will ever do what we ask?

I'm asking everyone, to do one simple thing. Get Involved. If you don't know how, here's two simple ways. First, join the group SILENT PROTEST in Second Life. I created the group in hopes to garner support from other EVENT HOSTS who would instead of holding their regular events, would hold SILENT PROTESTS during them. If there are no events going on in Second Life, Residents will start to leave and complain. Linden Lab will understand our message then, and I fear only then. Second, go to Project Open Letter, and ask Cristiano what you can do to help. Take it to heart what he tells you, and go and do.

Only by the community working together, will we ever get Linden Lab to listen to us. This isn't a fight about shutting off the wonderful world of Second Life, it's a fight about saving it from it's demise. If Linden Lab continues to heap more and more enhancements on the grid, the grid will eventually collapse upon itself and we will be without a truly remarkable place; Second Life.

By the way, if you are a Linden Lab employee and you agree, tell Philip or Robin, they are honest and caring people and will be happy to listen to what their own employee's are saying; right Philip, right Robin?

Blogging is easy, when the material is plentiful...thank you Linden Labs!

Someone asked me the other day, is Blogging hard? You know, when you Blog about anything, you need to have a viewpoint and material to shed light about your viewpoint. When you Blog, like in my case, about Second Life being broken, you might think that it would be hard to get material, because certainly, any respectable gaming company would try their best to keep BUGS out of their system.

Well, in the case of Linden Labs, that's not exactly how they choose to operate. You see, instead of fixing bugs, and grid performance, and database issues, and teleporting issues, etc., etc,. they just continue adding more and more enhancements to their system. I suppose they think it's easier to just pile on new stuff and when they do so, the community will SHOUT FOR JOY and forget all the problems. Let's take for instance this past weeks "FIX". This week's fix, which came in on Wednesday, was supposed to bring us the new and wonderful world of WINDLIGHT, where the sky will seem more realistic. Now, in all honesty, I viewed this in the FIRST VIEWER and will say, this is a wonderful addition and looks great, that is if you have a system like mine with dual 7900GTX Graphics Cards that can handle the overload, but still it is nice. So, it's in the world right? WRONG! As soon as it was put in, it was pulled out, and you ask why? Because it was FULL OF BUGS. Now, in an apparent attempt at sanity, Linden Lab decides that one of their buggy features will be pulled because it's not working correctly. Imagine, if you will, if they would do that with all the other bugs the community has complained about. There have been no less then SEVEN times since WEDNESDAY that Linden Lab has on their Official Blog brought to the attention of the SL Community that there are problems, again, in the system. Let's count the ways, shall we:

1. Assett Servers Issues - June 13
2. Support Portal Down - June 14
3. Assett Servers Issues - June 14
4. Windlight Pulled - June 14
5. Errors Purchasing $L - June 15
6. Login Screen Error - June 15
7. Database Hiccups - June 16

In three days time, there have been SEVEN issues with Second Life, although ONE of those, the Support Portal is a WEB issue and not a client issue, although, without the Support Portal, no bugs can be reported; perhaps LL is trying a new way of stopping the flow of bugs being reported? What will it take for a company that prides itself on "listening to their customers", to "LISTEN TO THEIR CUSTOMERS?" Will it take a post like this, aimed at emberrassing Linden Lab and it's employee's before they will say, "We will do something about these problems finally!", or will Philip, Robin, and the rest of the Linden Lab Employee's continue to turn a blind eye at what they are doing to a truly wonderful place, that is Second Life?

So, back to the original question, is Blogging hard? Not when the company you blog about is giving you material every single day of the week!

Once again Friend

*EDIT*

And now this appears on the Official Blog of Second Life:

"We are currently investigating some intermittent issues regarding assets at the moment. These issues are manifesting themselves as an inability to rez, attach or take an object; attachments failing to rez; texture uploads not completing; and, in some cases, scripts failing to save. Our operations team is working to resolve this as quickly as they can."

What more can we say, but read on and know this, when you are right, you are right!

*EDIT*

This taken from the Official Blog of Second Life:

"We are investigating the chance that stipends might have failed or partially failed to post this week. Please bear with us while we investigate. We will update this post once we have more information."

Maybe the problem isn't that Second Life has become too complex for it's own good. Perhaps it's that Linden Lab doesn't have the talent available to run Second Life? Twice, in as many weeks, the Stipends have failed to be payed out to some Residents. Has Linden Lab gone so far in "enhancing" Second Life that it can no longer get it to perform the rudimentary functions it's suppose to?

Isn't this what we have been saying all along, that Second Life has grown so much that it's dying on itself? While we once again beg Linden Lab to stop making enhancements to Second Life, we doubt they will take heed, even now. Even as the simplest action as paying a stipend to Residents has become bugged because of all the other enhancements added to Second Life over the years, Linden Lab continues on the course of "improving" it's product; at the life of that very product.

I suppose when all is said and done, and Second Life has died out because those at Linden Lab wouldn't listen, we'll hear the excuses being made about how the "technology couldn't keep up with the dream", or "It just wasn't meant to be". The truth is Second Life, as it is today, is an amazing world, and if enhancements were stopped, and bugs fixed and the grid stabilized, then Second Life would continue to be an amazing world, and not a dying one. The real crappy part about it all is people have been warning Linden Lab all along, and while they will rely on excuses when all is said and done, we, those who sounded the warning, will have nothing left to fight for, and the world we once loved will be just one big pile of junk, destined to be remembered as the virtual world that could have been.

The GRID is stable....really

From the BLOG of Second Life:

"We’ve received reports tonight of search not working properly. It is currently being looked into by our Operations department and should be back up as soon as possible. Thanks for your understanding during this maintenance."

It's amazing really, how every week, Second Life Residents keep reading reports concerning either Searches being down, or Teleports being down, or STIPENDS not being paid, or some other issue we've all grown much too accustom to. Why do we, the Residents of Second Life, continue to blindly go our own way, seemingly either unaware or uncaring about how Second Life is failing around us.

It's these issues that first started to bring me to the realization that our world, Second Life, is slowly dying out because WE, the RESIDENTS, are allowing it to happen. We cannot expect Linden Lab, a corporation in business to make a profit, to actually stop enhancing their product. It's like the Monkey that is trying to get the peanuts out of the trap. It refuses to let them go, even though in doing so, it saves it's own life. All it can think about is getting the peanuts it has its hands around. Linden Lab just wants to make their product more and more appealing by adding more and more enhancements, it doesn't even see that in doing so, Second Life is dying.

As the Residents of Second Life, we have a unique opportunity to save our world. We, the RESIDENTS, can stop asking for enhancements and demand instead that the bugs fixes be done, the GRID be stabilized and moving forward the GRID be made so that it won't FAIL when new enhancements are added. WE have this ability, if WE stand together and demand this action. How can we do this? SILENT PROTEST is a group within Second Life that is asking ALL event hosts to stop holding their regular events, and instead, hold SILENT PROTESTS during the normal time of the events and at their regular locations. Once New Residents begin to voice their disapproval at this to the Linden Avatars, then Linden Lab will take notice of what is going on and what we demand be done before the regular events up again. WE, as a community, can affect our world in so many ways, and one of the most IMPORTANT ways now, is to save it by getting the attention of Linden Lab and demanding things get fixed before more "TOYS" are added for us to play with. Without our action, this community will cease to exist, because there won't be a world for it to exist in.

Password Reset, never heard of it...why?

**UPDATE**

At 11:52AM CDT I received an email from Linden Lab stating that because of changes (or should that be ADDITIONS of) to the COMMUNITY REGISTRATION PORTALS, SOME customers passwords had to be changed. In order to accomplish this though you will need to contact SUPPORT over the phone; International Residents can file a TICKET through the Support Portal and someone will get back to you as soon as they can.

This was MORE then 24 Hours AFTER I had fixed the problem, and again, this issue still has not appeared on the "official" communication portal of Linden Lab; the Second Life Blog!

**UPDATE**

Sometime yesterday, someone at Linden Lab, or someone at one of the co-hosting locations, did something to cause THOUSANDS of Second Life users to contact Second Life Support to have their passwords reset.

I know this firsthand because I was ONE of those THOUSANDS that had to wait through endless explanations of how support was answering the calls as fast as possible. I waited for at least 15 minutes before a very nice Support person apologized profusely for the problem I was having, but refused to shed light on WHO or WHAT caused the problem.

What makes this even stranger, is that there is NO EXPLANATION on the Linden Lab BLOG as to what happened or why it happened. Linden Lab has said numerous times that they were efforting to communicate with their Customers better, yet a full 36 hours after something like this occurs, Linden Lab hasn't said a thing about it. Just how can you expect your customers to believe you are sincere about keeping them informed, when you don't utilize your OWN Blog to explain a major issue like this? Not only is Linden Lab turning a blind eye to the problems of Second Life, now they are turning a deaf ear to their own customers.

Initial Thoughts about Second Life

When I first thought of coming out with a BLOG about Second Life, I was thinking about how best it would be to start out. I want everyone to understand something from the word GO, I am a HUGE Second Life supporter and believe Second Life is one of the best Virtual Worlds around. Second Life truly brings anyone's imagination to life and allows everyone to share their creations with others. After years of playing other "Static" online world games, I grew tired of having to follow the "arc" of someone else's choosing. With Second Life, I can do what I want, when I want, and no one can tell me different.

As much as I support Second Life I also believe that Second Life is dying. It's not hard to come to this conclusion when you spend a few hours in-world. Second Life has been plagued with GRID destabilization, Lag, Packetloss, Inventory Losses, Teleporting Issues, and thousands of small bugs, some as old as the world of Second Life.

So, what is it I want to accomplish with this Blog? It's my hope to bring the attention of the Second Life Community to the impending doom of their, and my, favorite world. Linden Lab, the developers of Second Life, seem to have turned a blind eye to the problems facing Second Life. Instead, they continue to add enhancements and those merely add more weight to the bloated world already, and destabilize the GRID even more. The Second Life Community CAN stop this IF they come together and demand Linden Lab clean up the world and provide us a stable GRID.

Since Linden Lab hasn't listened to the hundreds of angry complaints brought by their own users, I decided to start this Blog, with hopes that the Community of Second Life can voice their displeasure, in a positive and friendly way, with Linden Lab.

So, I guess we should get things rolling....Wake up Linden Lab, your world is dying!