Landcutting will be too timid

No matter what Linden Lab makes of its landcutting, I can already tell you that the move will be too timid. No matter what the policy is, there is something important to add in order for Second Life to have a comprehensive property rights system in place.

The missing key element will now be zoning on the Mainland. SL needs to have a policy that separates commercial zones from residential ones, on whole sims. It is too important an issue to avoid it, at least for the longer term.

I see two major advantages if zoning ever becomes a reality.

The first one is obvious for home owners: having more uniform sims where clubs and stores are not located a few meters away from a nice house. Not only would sims be less noisy, but the design of the sims would naturally fit better with their purpose. A great inspiration for this should be private estates. Hundreds of estates are cleverly designed and divided. Even a sim filled with small squares of beach beats the current disorganization that prevails on Mainland.

I also see another motivation to implement zoning, and that's smoother exploration for users. Right now, flying around sims is an almost fruitless activity. You can stumble on the nicest and oddest locations at the same time. Some sims are totally deprived of interesting places to discover. Now, a nice commercial sim (such as Shoes) will allow you to find interesting stores, but Mainland suffers from a lack of those. Please, don't tell me that malls fulfill that need.

When will LL adopt such zoning policy to make our second lives better? Better sooner than later.

Of course, I welcome the idea that landcutting will be limited. It will help regulate land prices. This is a better deal for land buyers. It will also favor the real estate businesses that are serious about striking deals on nice pieces of land.

Don't underestimate the importance of property rights in Second Life when you read this. In any world, real or virtual, proper management of property is the most important role that regulators can play, security aside. It is the most basic, most crucial form of organization in civilization. If property is a mess, the quality of life goes down.

No Limits - The wastelands!

Full story in EXPLORE

Cartoon of the day

By JamesT Juno
Click for full size

Goddess Apparel

A store with a wide selection of elegant gowns, Goddess Apparel has much to offer the shopper looking for a quality dress. Taking pride in her work, and continuing to work on new designs, Athene Forder has much to offer.

Check out the story in DESIGN

Cartoon of the day

By Bixy Shuftan
Click for full size image

Second Life Fight Live

Have you ever been to a boxing match? Have you ever been to a boxing match in SECOND LIFE? I HAVE!

New reporter Kim Trefusis tells us all about it in the EXPLORE section..........................

Education Support Faire Opens

“The goal of the Faire is to bring together educators, academics, and students to explore the support mechanisms available to Residents who use Second Life to enhance real world educational efforts.
The Faire opens this Sunday, January 25th at the region Supporte, and will last through Friday, January 30th. A full list of individuals and groups with displays and/or presentations at the Education Support Faire can be found here."

I was invited along to the fair presentation by Gazanfer Jehangir who has also provided me with the transcript and some pictures:

I'm Eme Capalini, a volunteer with Virtual Ability, Inc. Thank you to Linden Labs and Pathfinder for inviting me today.
This morning I'm going to tell you a little bit about our group, then describe our adaptive orientation facilities.
During our specialized intake process, we provide new SL residents customized orientation and training at Virtual Ability Island.
I've been working with the Virtual Ability group in SL for a year and a half.
At first I was part of the training group, helping a woman who is a quadriplegic learn how to shop.
For the last year plus, I've been the Task Group Leader for the design and build effort that resulted in Virtual Ability Island.
There, new residents can learn SL fundamentals in an accessibility-friendly environment, and existing residents can receive ongoing training and information about health-related issues and support groups.
Research for basic curriculum took place over the past year and a half, as we conducted individual one-on-one training sessions with friends and referrals to our group.
We identified a list of basic skills we felt everyone needed to know in order to function in SL.
This curriculum was refined through many iterations into a sequence jokingly called the ADLs (activities of daily living) of SL.
About a year ago, an opportunity arose that allowed us to expand from the individual training we had been limited to.
We partnered with the Alliance Library System of Illinois on a project funded in large part by a grant from the National Library of Medicine.
This partnership was the beginning for us to design the facilities on a new island, dedicated to bringing in and providing initial training for newcomers to SL who have chronic health conditions or disabilities.
My Task Group spent many months studying orientation centers in Second Life with a goal of creating the best of the best, not only for people with disabilities but for anyone wanting to learn how to get around.
Universal Design is a philosophy of the design of manmade spaces that seeks solutions that support everyone, those with disabilities and those without.
On our course, we used Universal Design principles in several ways. If you look at the pathways you will see they are flat where possible, ramped according to ADA specs where not.
Through our web site (using "Reg API") and soon as a Community Gateway member, new residents arrive at the beginning of our orientation course the first time they log in to SL.
Questions:
Pathfinder Linden: have you had RL educators approach you about using your resources to help them with students in SL who are dealing with disabilities?
Eme Capalini: Pathfinder, we do work with educators, and are partnered with Alliance Library System
Oronoque Westland: thanks for a wonderful presentation...does VAI offer assistance to educators who want to incorporate Best Practices re: accessibility in their SL builds?
Eme Capalini: Yes, we would be happy to assist you
Gentle Heron: yes we do, and so does Accessible Builds (Polgara Paine)
Eme Capalini: We also have information on our website for groups that need indepth assistance
http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/secondlife/

More info can also be found on the Wiki HERE

New reporters and new blood?

Yesterday I introduced you to Lizzy whose first story you can find in the people section, today I would like to introduce 2 more new members of the SLN crew:
Christina can be found in the PEOPLE section and she will be helping newbies to find their way in the complicated world of SL as well as exploring the grid herself:-

First Day
There have been so many things written about Newbie's, and there are so many help tips out there to help make things easier for your Second life. I don't want to do a repeat of what has already been done, but I will probably repeat some of the advice that experienced avatars have given you or will give you. I suppose I will start with giving some personal experience with my first days in this virtual world of Second Life and then I hope to give a weekly update as to what you can do as a newbie..............

Continued in the PEOPLE section

Next Joan introduces herself:

If You Build It?
If there is one thing I've learned in my period in Second Life, it's that the saying "If you build it, they will come." is not always as true as it should be.
I'm sure most readers who enjoy exploration will have at some point stumbled across an awesome sim or location, only to find it completely f****** deserted, without even a tumbleweed to grace it's empty streets. (And for those readers who find the word f*** offensive. I would suggest you are perhaps reading the wrong section.) It was at one of these places my first adventure into the world of reporting began, at the Vampire Succubus Club.
But by now your asking yourself, "Who the hell are you? I came for Penance Sautereau's special brand of hotness. Why am I reading you instead? Has a band of ingenious hackers seized SL-NEWSPAPER.com? Has the very fabric or reality itself been torn asunder?" .......................

Continued in the REDLIGHT section

Welcome to all our new Crew members
Dana

Introducing Lizzy Arriaga

We have 2 new crew members this week to introduce you to, the first is Lizzy who joins us a freelancer:

Newbie in Second Life
Let’s be honest here, all of us have been through the “Newbie” stage in Second Life. It’s a stage full of mixed emotions. You feel happy for being part of a new evolution in the game world. You feel confused because you have no idea what to do in the game. But, mainly, you feel excited as you learn to play and learn the tricks to survive in such a strange world. Survival! Yes, I never thought that would play such a great role in a game!

Continued in the PEOPLE section

Tricky Track

Upside down and LOVING it??
Gemma discovers a new place to have fun.
Find out more in the EXPLORE section.

Teen Grid merger?

Speaking as a guest of Metanomics with Robert Bloomfield on Monday Phillip Rosedale (Linden) had a lot to say and the transcript is a great read one of the most important points he made was this about the future of the Teen Grid:

PHILIP ROSEDALE: Generally, I think that the future of Second Life needs to be one where people of all ages can use Second Life together, and that's the direction that we're taking in our planning and our work. I think that the educational opportunities for Second Life are so great for all ages that we need to make it as available as we possibly can to people. If you look at what we've done with the Teen Grid, I think we've done a good job, as a small company, of being inclusive and creating an environment in which teenagers were able to use Second Life, I think, perhaps earlier than, I don't know, we might have been able to. We pushed hard to get that working.

But, if you look at the problems with having a teenaged area, which is itself so isolated from the rest of the World, they're substantial. There's an inability for educators to easily interact with people in there because we've made it an exclusively teen only area. Parents can't join their kids in Second Life so problems like that are ones that we think are pretty fundamental and need to be fixed. We need to stop creating isolated areas that are age specific and, instead, look at how we can make the overall experience appropriately safe and controlled for everybody. So that's the general direction that we're taking there.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Do you expect any official action or public notice on this anytime soon? And is the idea am I hearing you right that it would basically be to allow people of any age to come into at least some parts of Second Life? Is that what I'm hearing?

PHILIP ROSEDALE: Definitely. From my perspective, our long term strategy is that but I won't make any specific "this is what's coming next and that's where you can expect it," in that regard. We're still working on how to do that and what to do next.

With Linden Labs push towards education this move is perhaps not unexpected as the age limit has caused all sorts of issues for a lot of schools and universities wanting to get involved in Secondlife but many are predicting TROUBLE ahead.

Source: Metanomics.net

The swallowing of Xstreet and OnRez, a bittersweet move

So, Linden Lab has finally seen the light about the advantages of World Wide Web integration with Second Life as a complement for information and transactions. Buying Xstreet and OnRez definitely is in their interest.

Now, what should we make of it? There is a fairly large number of issues raised by this. Forget the basic questions such as the timing of integration. There are more important things at stake.

The first one is clear: technological integration and the merger of accounts with the Second Life grid will make business simpler. No need to sign up for an account on a different site and to manage it separately in order to have a Web presence. Doing away with the time wasted to deal with a non-integrated platform could mean less hassle for merchants.

If LL handles this properly, there also is great potential to overhaul the clunky Web presentation in Xstreet and slap better options for Web storefronts. The example of more refined OnRez storefronts should be a good source of inspiration. More flexibility could even make this better. Also, Xstreet's terrible search engine could also be upgraded or replaced for better shopping experience.

As you can see, Linden Lab has a golden opportunity to provide much-needed change. If they aim for greatness and make their e-commerce platform amazing, this might even eliminate the need for external Web sites that many of us currently have.

On the other hand, better integration with the grid can come with a huge tradeoff. Will the new Web platform inherit Second Life's stability problems? Even if you couldn't make a purchase at Xstreet when the grid was down, you could at least surf there in “just looking” mode.

What about culture? There were a few differences between management of SL and Xstreet. If Linden Lab has angered many of us with a variety of bad decisions in the past, Xstreet has been more user-friendly. Will mismanagement show its ugly head on the integrated Xstreet?

Another large question is money.

With the buyout, Linden Lab has conflicting fee policies. At the moment, doing a transaction in Second Life costs nothing but holding land is the main source of spending. In Xstreet, you pay 5 Linden dollars for each 100 of sales. Will LL abolish the Web fees to make business easier, leave it as is, or increase them? The first solution would be the only right one. We already pay enough money on tier and accounts for mainland owners, shouldn't we given a break at some point?

If LL abolishes the currency exchange on Xstreet, it will be a bittersweet move, too. Its PayPal mass pay was much appreciated for instant money transfers. At the same time, a savvy user can squeeze more net money out selling Linden dollars on the official Lindex. Trying to find a matching buying order at specific rates on Xstreet can take much more time... if it happens.

My last note is a bit cynical: did Linden Lab have defensive motives when acquiring Xstreet? When its bosses rebranded SL Exchange into Xstreet, they stated that this was an occasion for them to look beyond SL, should other virtual worlds become more interesting or complementary in the future. Was this buyout a way to make sure that we are all tied to Linden Lab?

That's food for thought, my friends.

Linden Lab Goes Shopping, Buys Virtual Goods Marketplaces to Integrate Web Shopping with Second Life

Strategic Acquisitions of OnRez and Xstreet SL Shopping Web Sites to Enhance e-Commerce Functionality for the Virtual World

San Francisco, CA – January 20, 2009 - Linden Lab®, creator of the virtual world Second Life®, today announced a key milestone in its expansion of the Second Life platform: acquiring two Web-based marketplaces for virtual goods, Xstreet SL and OnRez. These acquisitions join several other recent strategic initiatives, including enhancements to the experience for new users, which will enable Linden Lab to reach a broader global audience for Second Life in 2009. Linden Lab is consolidating the two marketplaces on the Xstreet SL platform, offering one online shopping experience for customers and merchants. This will make it easier for Second Life Residents to find virtual goods to purchase and will provide merchants broader channels to sell their products.

The global market for virtual goods is estimated to be approximately USD $1.5 billion a year,* and Second Life plays a significant role in this market. In 2008, Residents of Second Life purchased and sold more than USD $360 million of virtual goods and services. Shopping for virtual goods has become one of the most compelling and popular aspects of the Second Life experience. The acquisition of these e-commerce sites will aid the continuing growth of the Second Life economy by making it even more convenient for buyers and sellers to transact virtual goods and services online.

Similar to e-commerce sites for real world goods, such as Amazon and eBay, Xstreet SL provides an online catalog, where Second Life Residents can browse, purchase and sell Second Life-related virtual goods and services. Just as e-commerce Web sites provide a complement to shopping in real life, Xstreet SL complements how Second Life Residents shop inworld – visiting 3D stores, shopping centers and malls to purchase virtual services and goods from the Residents who created them. Linden Lab will integrate the Xstreet SL marketplace with Second Life, making virtual goods easier for consumers to find on the Web. The enhancements to the e-commerce experience will also drive Residents inworld to collect and use the goods they purchase online, enabling Second Life merchants to further promote their inworld stores. Merchants will also gain additional ways to market the more than 680,000 Second Life goods currently listed for sale online, including apparel, animations, vehicles, buildings and furniture.

"Linden Lab is expanding its footprint in the virtual world industry through four major initiatives – localizing the Second Life experience in key markets around the world, simplifying the 'first hour experience' to broaden consumer adoption, enhancing the platform for enterprise users and building our virtual goods marketplace," said Mark Kingdon, CEO of Linden Lab. "Content creators and merchants are pillars of the strong Second Life economy. With these e-commerce acquisitions, we will now be able to offer content creators and merchants an opportunity to substantially improve their businesses, while enhancing the Second Life experience for all of our Residents."

"The vibrant inworld economy is part of what makes Second Life such a compelling experience for Residents," said Jay Geeseman, founder of Xstreet SL. "Just as e-commerce can enhance the shopping experience for real life goods, so it can for virtual goods. With the Xstreet SL marketplace integrated more closely with Second Life, Residents will be able to find goods more easily and shop more conveniently, while merchants will have broader channels to sell their creations."

For the immediate future, Xstreet SL will continue to function as it has with only minor changes. OnRez will remain active for a few weeks to give customers and merchants an opportunity to migrate their accounts and product listings over to Xstreet SL. More information about the transition and future development plans of Xstreet SL is available in the FAQs available here:

Acquisition FAQs

Merchants and Shoppers FAQs

For more information about Linden Lab's strategic initiatives, including these acquisitions, please visit the official Second Life blog at: http://blog.secondlife.com/

* Source: Lindenlab.com

This is just like RL (2)

(This is the second half of a piece comparing similarities between life in SL and in RL.)

Why do couples go down the drain in Second Life? Why? And sometimes, why so quickly? As strange as it may sound, my answer will be to tell you guys that there isn't that much difference between a relationship here than in real life.

I took a lot of time to examine my own partnership, the way I behave here, and the way other people do. It leads me to leave that although some users may "role play" - thus be exceptions - our human nature ends up showing around here.

Someone who cherishes individual independence will be extremely annoyed by someone who is needy or controlling. Two strong minds may clash after their "honeymoon" time. A guy's lack of tact when talking about other women can make his partner feek uncomfortable. The list of grievances can go on for long, but you get the point. Those are very human traits and the only difference between what we see here and our RL relationships is that there are computers and Internet access between us.

I think that the chief reason why many partnerships end up failing is stalemate. After some great times together, partners neglect each other. If they are involved in business, they spend all their time together working. If they don't meet often because of their separate activities, it isn't any better. Can you see the big picture there?

In short, just as it is in RL, not having "quality time" is what breaks the union. When couples meet, they go out, explore, dance, sit down, talk and have fun. They can do some work and spend time away from each other, but there is some form of balance. They want to enjoy themselves. Once routine breaks the pattern and makes quality time disappear, some cracks start showing up in the relationship.

This may leave you wondering if the whole thing is worth it. Just as RL partnerships are, yes. But this sometimes mean that you have to "work" on your couple if you want it to succeed. Going to dance in a club or exploring a cool sim, just like in the "old days", or just hanging out wherever you feel comfy, is the solution to get the "magic" back. If you don't want it, it may mean crossroads.

Hey, who said that virtual worlds were that different? They are just like RL.

Cartoon of the day

By Bixyl Shuftan
Click for full size image

Weekend Grid Outages

Although the second half of 2008 showed a big reduction in usage hours lost to outages (we reduced outage hours by over 50%), stability challenges have increased over the past month on the Grid. This weekend was especially painful, and the first time since joining Linden Lab that I’ve experienced a full mySQL crash (this occurred just after 4pm PT on Sunday).

When the central database crashes, it takes approximately 1 hour to rebuild tables and indexes before accepting queries and becoming fully functional. This was the main reason for us to employ the painful triage process of temporarily blocking logins, while the database is in an overload state. These 5-10 minute “blocking periods” are substantially less Resident impacting than a full database crash, and a 50-60 minute restart cycle. However, neither is acceptable and I wanted to continue updating our efforts to stabilize the infrastructure.

You can read the rest of what Frank Ambrose (FJ Linden) has to say HERE

But I personally would say a great deal more is wrong than shows on the surface? How many of you can get to the support page from the secondlife website? or even from individual articles - I had to find a backdoor through the wikipedia to be able to submit a support ticket.
How many have had their credit card suddenly rejected after a long time using the same one?
Some have shown signs of these problems and these are on top of the actual inworld issues which are plaguing us all
I for one wonder what exactly is going on at Linden Lab just now as they seems determined to drive its most staunch Residents out.

New Office for SLN

We outgrew our old office so have had a makeover with a much more spacious building.
Feel free to visit you will be able to pick up all our freebies in the main reception area plus we have 2 money trees to help those just starting in Secondlife, one is by the entrance the other in the courtyard - also a great place to sit and read todays news!

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Ian%20Bernard/95/161/37

Each crew member has their own office plus we have added an online indicator board so if you have a story you will know if someone is online to talk to you.

In the top of the water tower is our photo studio a great place for getting just the right shot for your story.

We will probably have a party next week just to celebrate - but more on that later, for now come and visit and have a wander around.

Wiped out

I was writing a column about my old hangout, the STA, which vanished a year ago, when I got word about something happening in my current SL home Woodlin. So I logged in to my apartment’s location in Dreamer’s Cove ...

And it was gone.

Nothing left but the green landscape.

Talking with others, it seems someone hacked the account of the owner, Dax Loon. One witness to the chat told me it was obvious from the pornographic insults that it wasn’t her, “whoever did this ... that’s one sick individual.” At least one resident was banned from Dreamers. Everyone was ejected from the sim group and her friend list. We still have no idea who would do this and why, some griefers in SL wrecking destruction simply because they can. Details are still coming in.

People are still logging in, wondering what happened, and those who know, explaining. Dax Loon still has yet to log on.

So what happens next?

Time will tell.

Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the day

By Bixyl Shuftan
Click for full size

Trapped UnderRedTape - perceived protection

What do you do if you have a problem with someone in Secondlife?
The official answer is to fill out an 'Abuse Report' which is usually answered with an automated response that thanks you for your report and informs you that you will NOT know the outcome of any investigation to protect the person you are reporting.
But if that is the case how then do we know that Linden Lab actually do anything at all when an AR is filed? Simple answer we don't we can only judge by the resulting behaviour of those we report.

Trapped Underwood recently bought a sim AS IS, meaning as a complete business including buildings, landscaping etc. for this he paid real USD and was allowed modify rights of the previous owner - now from experience this sort of thing rarely works but I will gloss over that for now as it is not the issue here.
Not long after the transfer was completed Trapped discovered some major discrepancies in his initial information of a healthy business (SIM) when confronted the previous owner (Rex):
i.Revoking his Mod rights.
ii.Returned all of his stuff.. meaning Trapped showed up and everything that was in Rex's name including landscaping was gone.
iii.Sent their Private IM conversations to other people. (A ToS violation in itself)

Trapped submitted Abuse Reports and requested a rollback - this was denied as it was a resident to resident issue, eventually through negotiation with Rex, Trapped was able to get the rollback and as far as the Lindens were concerned the matter was closed but the harassment did not stop in fact it escalated:

"Rex kept coming back to me to try to come back.. when I refused the new threats started even personal ones to the effect that he even posted in an IM my RL name city and state saying “he knew where I was and if he wanted to he could be talking to me in person right now”
I submitted another report to the Lindens
The Lindens told me not their problem call Law enforcement.
REX (previous owner) WAS NOW BANNED FROM THE SIM"

It became apparent to me that the Lindens were doing nothing. I found it hard to believe that Rex would continue to harass me if the Lindens had at least talked to him. I supplied the Lindens with all of the IM window conversations between Rex and I.
I questioned the Lindens as to what they were doing because Rex’s harassments were continuing. They told me that as per their NON DISCLOSURE POLICY they could not give me any private information.
I stated to them that I did not want private information I wanted to know what was being done to protect me.
Their response was always the same NON DISCLOSURE POLICY.
I told them that they were using their NON DISCLOSURE POLICY to hide behind the fact that they were really doing nothing
I now wanted to speak to supervisors and was again thrown back into the “place a ticket loop” which I did.
I got the run around but I refused to go away.. I specifically asked to speak to Harmony Linden and Jack Linden, Harmony was always in a meeting and Jack was never available."

When reading through this and talking to Trapped I felt acutely sorry for him as I along with many others have seen this sort of thing before BUT why do the ToS not protect him? Why has nothing been done? This Rex has continued in his harassment and when threats are taken out of Secondlife (Trappeds real identity was known to Rex through the business transfer) then surely Linden Labs should respond to it?

The Terms of Service state:

CONDUCT BY USERS OF SECOND LIFE
4.1 You agree to abide by certain rules of conduct, including the Community Standards and other rules prohibiting illegal and other practices that Linden Lab deems harmful.

specifically:

(x) "stalk", abuse or attempt to abuse, or otherwise harass another user. Any violation by you of the terms of the foregoing sentence may result in immediate and permanent suspension or cancellation of your Account. You agree that Linden Lab may take whatever steps it deems necessary to abridge, or prevent behavior of any sort on the Service in its sole discretion, without notice to you.

Yet this abuse continues to this day and Trapped is now considering legal action against Linden Labs for the perceived protection of the Tos.

Linden Labs response to his many support tickets and abuse reports:

Hello Trapped, Patch has escalated your ticket to me following your request for "someone of importance." As he has explained, Linden Lab does not provide any details regarding the results of an Abuse Report. That is to say, none. This is a matter of long-standing policy and is also mentioned in the auto-reply email that is sent when an Abuse Report is filed. This policy is in place to protect the confidentiality of all Second Life Residents, and would serve to protect you if the position were ever reversed. I am sorry that we disagree regarding which pieces of information should remain confidential, but we will not violate our policy in this regard. I understand that you may have other issues regarding this situation you wish to discuss, and I am happy to do so. However, I request that you consider the matter of the Abuse Reports closed as this is our final word on the issue. Thank you, Maurice Linden Support Operations Manager

At no point has Trapped asked for any information pertaining to Rex's identity or asked for any confidential information all he has asked for is to know why nothing has been done to stop the harassment he is suffering but Linden Lab hides behind their NON-DISCLOSURE POLICY and Trapped is left to deal with any and all harassment with no recourse.

Do the Terms of Service protect a user - yes if you are the one harassing someone!

Add your comments of how effective the AR system has been for you? Has it worked when you have had a problem? or have you been Trapped in a loop with no recourse?

Dana Vanmoer

Post Christmas Grid blues

Each year, after the Christmas gifts have been unwrapped and all those people who treated themselves or family to new computers/Internet access, Secondlife sees a surge of new signups and more people using it than ever - the problem with that?
Quite simply the grid cannot handle it!
Most of us who spend regular time inworld are aware of the issues and mostly what is behind it - basically once the grid reaches 75k+ online everything goes down the toilet - teleports, transactions, rezzing, building even dressing becomes problematic.

Lets have a look at the last few days:

[RESOLVED] Logins and In-world Issues

Posted by Status Desk on January 6th, 2009 at 10:45 am PST

[Resolved 10:45am PST] - The database has recovered and all issues have been resolved.

[10:30am PST] - We are currently experiencing a problem with the database. There may be difficulties with logging in, rezzing objects, completing transactions, and searching. We are aware of this issue and our ops team are working to resolve it as swiftly as possible. In the mean time, please avoid making important transactions or rezzing no-copy objects.

[RESOLVED] Inworld Issues/Logins Disabled
Posted by Status Desk on January 6th, 2009 at 04:10 pm PST
[RESOLVED] Inworld Issues
Posted by Status Desk on January 7th, 2009 at 02:58 pm PST
[RESOLVED] Inworld Issues
Posted by Status Desk on January 8th, 2009 at 01:34 pm PST
[RESOLVED] Logins Disabled
Posted by Status Desk on January 10th, 2009 at 01:54 pm PST
[RESOLVED] Logins Disabled and Inworld Issues
Posted by Status Desk on January 10th, 2009 at 04:53 pm PST
[RESOVLED] Logins disabled
Posted by Status Desk on January 11th, 2009 at 11:20 am PST
[RESOLVED] Logins disabled
Posted by Status Desk on January 13th, 2009 at 03:39 pm PST

Each of these represents times when Logins have been restricted, a black week for any Secondlife business.
Some have called for allowing only premium accounts to log in at these times and yet others slam this notion as many who would like to go premium cannot do so, therefore making the idea unjust.
Then there is the question of bot activity, if as Linden Lab numbers suggest, 10% of those signed in are bots then surely shutting these out would allow real players more of a chance to log in?
But how do we or Linden Lab know which accounts are bots?
Age old question and one many have tried to answer - but to be honest our answers do not matter Linden Lab will do what Linden Lab chooses as always.
I am not technically minded but even I can see the grid is struggling - Linden Lab says 10% bots - most believe that is a very conservative estimate it is more likely to be around 25 - 30%. Now how about if the bots were registered? Then when the Grid is struggling bots are logged out? Wouldn't that make more sense than locking out paying Residents? Even those who run bots would rather have paying Residents inworld than their bots surely?
Hopefully with all the grid issues Linden Lab will finally make a move on the traffic scam that causes most to use bots - once the reason for them is gone it will make the need for bots redundant. But for now Linden Lab have chosen to chase their tails and deal with issues as they arise rather than dealing with the root cause (as always).

Dana Vanmoer

Hurricane who?

Looks like Fire Island is being hit once again and is under Lock down as yet another hurricane rips through the community - but who is it this time?
Actually no-one seems to know, although finding the name of a griefer is not difficult and that IS known, but who is behind it?
There are accusations flying all over the place with friends old and new being blamed as well as little black books being scrutinised in case someone from the past has light to shed on matters - or of course the griefing attack could just have been an isolated incident that happens within any community once in a blue moon.
But I really feel for the residents of the community, being under attack is not a nice position to be in but, being under lockdown is just as bad - friends cannot visit, groups are closed to new members - of course it also means if you are looking to join the community you will have to wait as its now invitation only and you can be sure anyone wishing to join will be put under a microscope. Lets hope they never had friends of a certain name.
Griefing is childish and petty and I for one hope the community finds out who is behind it but throwing accusations around ??????????????

This is just like RL (1)

Observations in the last few months leave me to believe that there is much more to SL relationships that even we, people involved, could ever believe.

I saw some interesting situations that lead to such thought. Imagine when, this morning, I was told by a girl I know that she had the time of her life with her partner. However, he intends to leave this world, probably to focus on real life. Even though her words were measured, there was sadness.

More than a year ago, I remember watching a close friend hurting because her new partner was discussing at length about other women he kept meeting on the grid, just as it can happen in the flesh. It didn't seem to be taken lightly.

I even saw a few people leaving Second Life because, in the end, their virtual relationships with the other gender was ruining their real love life. Just when I thought that these people were pulling off something I thought impossible, their "other" partner brought them back to Earth.

We may only be avatars on computers, but the people that signed up are real. What they do together, what they tell each other, what they have in common can come in different form. However, it is not less real.

One of the problems that SL couples meet is routine and boredom, which are as lethal to a relationship that they are in RL. They also are lethal for the SL existence of a person. But that's a topic I will cover in a few days, in a separate column.

I bet Mitch Kapor, who was chairman of the board of Linden Lab when he made harsh comments during the SL5B closing keynote, had a clear idea of why people react the way they do to virtual relationships.

Remember this quote from him: "So the first is, in the earliest wave of pioneers in any new disruptive platform, the marginal and the dispossessed are over represented, not the sole constituents by any means but people who feel they don't fit, who have nothing left to lose or who were impelled by some kind of dream, who may be outsiders to whatever mainstream they are coming from, all come and arrive early in disproportionate numbers."

It must be because the dispossessed are over represented.

I am saying this with tongue firmly in cheek, folks ;-)

Grid issues

Unless you have not been inworld the last few days no-one can have failed to notice the ongoing issues like teleport failures transactions, uploads etc - yesterday saw logins disabled for a time but even then it didn't really seem to get things sorted out and today the sorry tale continues:

Logins disabled

Posted by Status Desk on January 11th, 2009 at 11:57 am PST

Due to a sudden overload on our database, we’ll shortly restrict logins.

You might experience inworld issues like failure to rez, teleports not working and other inworld services being slow or unresponsive.

Please monitor this blog for updates, and refrain from making huge transactions or rezzing valuable no-copy items at this time.

I don't know about anyone else but I find the most frustrating thing about the grid status is when it says 'RESOLVED' when those inworld know full well an issue is not resolved at all and we have no real way to let the Lindens working on the issue know that they have NOT resolved it.
LIVE chat is just about useless and 9 times out of 10 I get told to clear my cache which I just find hilarious (As if I would contact live support before doing just that!) or i get told to submit a ticket!
OK fair enough if the tickets were ever looked at and of course by the time they are usually the issue has been fixed anyway so that's just a complete waste of everyones time.
Anyway looks like we are in for another bumpy night in SL - seems to be quite common again just now and someone please tell when oh when will they sort out the graphics issue? I am sick of having to turn off palletized textures everytime i log in!
Having 75,000 online is obviously just too much for the grid to handle and if maybe the Lindens would look at limiting all the bot activity maybe the real residents might get to enjoy the platform a little more but we all know Linden Lab will not do anything about the bots!

Cartoon of the day

By Bixyl Shuftan
Click for larger image

What a week!

Actually its been pretty quiet all around, not helped by the fact so many friends have been hit by illness this week.
I have spent quite a lot of time on Skybeam as they changed from winter to spring thaw and had fun rebuilding Breezes and Glitters houses, its nice to be there and actually be made to feel like part of the community even though I don't actually live there - you will often find me at their events as they tend to be at a good time for me - but what was I saying, oh yes community; I expect there are quite a lot of communities in SL now and as it grows larger there will be many more, it must be a challenge in a virtual world to try to keep a community working together, just like in RL, you will find the bad apples in the barrel but I find in any community a good core to it can help to strengthen ties and its a great way to make friends.

Coming up soon is another community project I always get involved in that of the RFL clothing fair, I have had some inside info on the plans and this year the clothing fair will be absolutely mindblowing - I can't wait. Of course you will be able to get all the up to the minute events right here and we will do our best to talk to as many involved as we can, but knowing the sheer size this time around, it will a real challenge for us and one I look forward to.

We are still looking for some new writers so if you love events in secondlife or are determined to show the world what there is in SL pick up an application from our main office HERE just drop it to me inworld.
We also love to hear your stories and experiences from newbie days through to love and heartache, these go under our reader submissions banner in the appropriate section. drop us a snapshot too with a line of text - we want to show everyone what wonders there are to see and do in secondlife and for that we need your input - SL is so large now keeping up with all the places to explore is impossible but every now and then we all find a gem worth visiting or telling others about, Bixyl and Gemma are really good at hunting those out and letting you know in the explore section, why not tell us about somewhere you have found?

Dana Vanmoer

Cartoon of the day

By Bixyl Shuftan
Click for full size

Styles of edo full of surprises

After Styles of edo won Vain Incs Readers Choice Award for mens formal wear Edo has upped the ante find out how in the DESIGN section.........

Reader Submission - I was thinking of getting an Island...............

About 2 years ago in Second Life I was a relatively new person, in game a few months. I became what is now outlawed a Casino operator as one of the many things one could do in game.
The truth of it is I lost my island which would I still be there if the person I went in on the island hadn't completely ripped me off.
I posted on the Second Life Forum which has had good and bad comments. I was not asking for either. I just was looking at it as a place to vent my frustration with the whole ordeal because even not one Linden would look into this which is really Internet fraud.......................

Read on in the PEOPLE section

Winter Fun

Find new places to explore with Gemma Cleanslate and Bixyl Shuftan in the EXPLORE section

Are they kidding with Openspace?

I wonder who Linden Lab think they are kidding with the launch of Homestead sims and their keeping of Openspace as a low-end product.

When you look at the way Openspace is set up, it is good for almost nothing but building a bit of nature and flying around alone. I am pushing it to the extreme, but any serious use of those sims, even residential use, is not advised. Why would anyone pay a setup fee and US$75 per month in tier? For US$20 more, you actually get something decent if your use of land is not intensive.

It makes no sense to try fooling people into paying that much money for so little. How much time per month will people spend walking around and flying around land that offers very little but scenery? How many customers will buy into that? I can't see that becoming an important market for long-term purposes.

It is high time for Linden Lab to focus on users instead of just selling land for the sake of collecting tier. Otherwise, it is burning itself in the long run because when competition shows up in virtual worlds, anything more decent, more open and widely accessible will become popular. Right now, there is no doubt that LL is doing well. Land use and tier is an incredible backbone. But what people do in SL will determine its future. If they enjoy activities, they will stick around. If they get bored, abandon land and leave... things get a bit more complicated.

That's something to think about in the new year. Have a good one, folks!

Cartoon of the day

By Bixyl Shuftan
Click for full size

Memorial Service Held for Majel Barrett in Second Life

On Sunday January 4 at 10:00 AM SL time, a memorial service was held for Majel Barret, the wife of Star Trek’s creator Gene Roddenberry. She had passed away two weeks ago on December 18 2008. Hosted by the Galaxy Fleet Command group, it was held in the Constellation sim.At the door, there were ceremonial dress uniforms for GFC group members, as well as black armbands for anyone. Near the entrance was a memorial book freely available. The service was attended by people from a number of Trek groups, as well as some outside them.

Continued in EVENTS.

On a lighter note....Prad Prathivi has fun with Linden email

Prad Prathivi actually managed to get into a top Lindens gmail account? Seriously you have to read this, see it full size HERE. Well done Prad this is absolutely genius just at a time when everyone needs a little lightening up!

Eye on the Blog - About the Homestead Launch and Script Limits

As we have previously blogged, Homesteads will be launched as a new product on Monday 5th January. Those of you that own an Openspace should already have received emails from us explaining the changes taking place; this post is to ensure that you have as much information as possible ahead of the change.

In launching a new product, there are many areas that will change, including additions to the website, new knowledgebase articles, and of course, changes to the Land Store itself.

Timing:

• January 5th: From 8am until 12 noon SLT, Land Store closed for maintenance. Upon opening, both Homesteads and Openspaces will be available as options for island owners.
• January 5th: All Openspace regions to undergo rolling restart. Most will happen before Noon SLT.

Billing

• If your normal monthly bill date is before the 5th you will be billed your new rate in February 09
• If your normal monthly bill date is on or after the 5th, you will be billed the new rate in January 09
• Educators that have paid for a half or full year in advance will be unaffected by rate increase until their renewal date. For more information and to confirm renewal dates contact the Concierge team.

Script Limits

• We will need to implement script limits to prevent a heavily overloaded region from negatively affecting the performance of another region.

Timing for Script Limits:

• In Q1, we will be gathering data on script load, and sharing this usage data with the community before deciding what the most appropriate limits are.
• In Q2, we expect there to be Viewer changes to allow you to monitor your script usage against those limits.
• In Q3 we will begin enforcing script limits.

Read the full post HERE
Source: The official SecondLife Blog