SLOOP - THE TREE HOUSE

It is quite obvious that the modern Western culture gives us immediate access, almost instantly, to whatever may seem of interest to each one of us. It is also obvious that our attention span is shrinking as fast as our capacity to absorb new information keeps building up.

I dare say this has a price: we don’t have the time to build all that knowledge into a solid subjective structure, an inner house, a solid place, full of surprises, hidden corners, basements and attics and secret passages.
The fleeting contact we establish with all the info we absorb creates in us the false illusion of knowledge.
Those of us who are old enough not to have been cyber kids, can tell the difference.
We are fascinated with everything that’s new and State of the Art technology, but we miss the kind of time we used to spend trying to figure out everything the world has to feeds us.
So we feel our inner self is getting stuffed with knowledge, but it’s not getting deeper, it’s getting thinner.
The Spanish writer Manuel Vincent says that people are afraid to seek refuge within themselves, because that inner construction is “shaky”. So it doesn’t makes us feel safe, but quite the contrary.
And that is a shame, because being able to seek refuge within ourselves is a fantastic relief against adversity.
Like those “cabins” we made under the bed, with blankets and a flashlight.
Or the wonderful tree houses, where we felt safe, masters of the fortress, and open to fantasy.
When we loose our innocence, we loose the safety those tree houses gave us.

“When we stop playing –says Vincent-, we remain unprotected, alone in the wilderness, far from the world of dreams, having to face real enemies”.

Full of hope, he points out that there are privileged human beings that are still capable, no matter what age they are, to build that tree house inside their soul and make themselves strong and invincible against adversity.

There are many ways to do that, as long as we build it strong and keep in there some strong feelings, some strong knowledge, and keep out aggression and barbarity and inhumanity.
And, as you might have guessed by now… let me tell you: Second Life is one hell of a tree house.
The one that made us feel so strong when we where kids, the one place we felt safe to dream in.

Lets play.

Lets take care of our tree house. It’s a chance to have that magic place when we are too grown up to go climbing real trees.

Covadonga Writer

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Stability, a real boon

It is funny how one thing has changed over the last year. Not so long ago, you would hardly see 40000 people online, perhaps on a good day. Nowadays, it is common to see from 60000 to 80000 people online on a regular basis.

What happened? It looks like the Lindens' efforts to make the Second Life grid more stable have paid off. Gone are the days when you would have to wrestle with your client and connection just to log in. Unexpected grid crashes, unplanned restarts and downtime are now few and far between.

It was annoying for grid residents to deal with a grid that wouldn't let them get in or would kick them out at any time because it couldn't withstand large-scale traffic. This made people delay projects, lose sales, and miss events.

Stability is a real boon but let it be clear that all challenges did not find their solutions. If SL wants to "make it big", it has to be adapted for mass-scale use.

In RL, you can get thousands of people in a sports stadium. The only real limit to the number of people you can squeeze somewhere is actual size. In SL, a sim usually slows down when 40 to 50 people are around. Avatar rendering costs play a role in this, so do textures and "physical" objects that interact the everything around them.

People with more technological knowledge than me would say that SL has to be scalable. If works nicely when few users are around one particular place. But if you try to squeeze 100 avatars or more around a sim, the experience is atrocious.

This might even be the biggest challenge for Linden Lab. You can make the grid as huge as you want, but if you cannot concentrate avatars in one place for a special event, you lose much appeal. And we have yet to see real progress towards that.

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Frank Ambrose (FJ Linden) introduces himself on the Blog:

"Hello, I’m Frank Ambrose, the Senior VP of Global Technology, and I’d like to take this opportunity to let you know about some of the work we’re doing on the Second Life Grid.
By way of introduction, I’m a recent hire here at the Lab, having joined to lead our global technology team. Specifically I’ll be focused on grid infrastructure and our stability initiatives. As noted in the press release, I come to the Lab from many years at AOL (and prior to that MCI), where I experienced the kind of explosive growth, global scale and inherent stability challenges we face here at Linden Lab.
More than anything else, my tenures at those companies taught me the direct relationship between platform stability and user experience. I’m looking forward to applying that lesson, and a host of others, as we work to maintain, build and improve this complex virtual world. I am keenly aware of the pain that any service outage can cause and am both excited and confident that Linden Lab has focused the right resources to achieve this critical objective.

Given the complexities in our architecture, our stability efforts span many individual areas, most of which were detailed by Ian Linden’s May posting. Some areas will be addressed through short-term initiatives, while others will require significant re-architecture, software changes and new physical hardware. Throughout it all, we’re committed to making the transition to a more stable world as seamless and transparent to you as possible. To that end, members of my team will be using the blog regularly to provide updates on plans and progress towards meeting our stability goals."

Read the full introduction HERE

The main point seems to be that Linden Lab are working on stability - but we have all heard that before, right? So let's sit and watch the fun begin as the recent, fairly stable, grid gets pulled apart in the hopes of finding a long term solution.

"One of my initial observations is that many components of the infrastructure are “over engineered.” That’s not a criticism, its just a fact.

There are a lot of reasons for this and we’ve already taken steps to remove some complicated code that was deployed and contributed to some of our recent instability. It was designed with the right intentions, but just didn’t deliver.
Finally, I want to restate that we are committed to fix the grid. It’s my singular focus. But I also know that words are cheap and we need to start delivering on these promises.

If my days at AOL taught me anything, its to have a thick skin, and sense of humor. Whatever the comments may be, I’d much rather have an active group of passionate residents (frustrated as they may be), than a silent, disengaged group."

Great start FJ keep up the communication, good and bad news, and the residents will help you as much as they can!

Dana

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Opinions: by Dana

Today LaurapLinden posted 'More on trademarks' this I must say is an improvement on previous posts, but she reiterates to write to them with direct questions, this I must say I have personally done and the answer? Go back and look at the FAQs, so obviously not a good idea. Basically unless you can afford a trademark attorney wait for the cease and desist.
I won't go into what is said clarified or otherwise you can just as easily read it here, the one thing that struck me though is the level of unhappiness of most of the SL™ residents not only with the trademark/branding issues but overall.
Grid stability according to Linden Lab® is better with the roll out of Havok4, this is not the impression that most of us get.
Content theft is another major concern and the lack of action by Linden Lab on this issue is galling to say the least when they are working so hard to protect their own interests, but, leaving content creators out in the cold to fight their own battles.
According to their own metrics the economy is growing with more Lindens being spent, a 33% increase since the gambling ban. I would love to know where? Most business owners are distraught with the grid problems preventing businesses from running to a profit - stale transactions, items not delivered, payments not received etc........
Events are on a downslide as clubs and venues reign in, keeping the bare minimum to keep going. Most events are problematic, even the remembrance day was marred by grid downtime and login failures.
Again according to the metrics there are more residents than ever, are they true figures? We can all fly around to most places that look busy and find the BOTS sitting up on a platform or buried in a hole under the ground. These bots are the bain of many residents bumping places up in search falsely and causing lag for anyone in the region, but it makes the total resident number look good for the Lindens so of course they will not stop them and all calls for something to be done about them will fall on deaf ears - Why would they stop something that makes their figures look good?
I hear more and more about other options, residents looking for open source alternatives - why?
Have Linden Lab lost all the confidence of the residents to that extent?
We all know now that Linden Lab is a business and SecondLife is a business, that it was created by the residents for them, that the content creators and people made it what it is does not matter, more and more people feel left out in the cold by a corporate business.
Once upon a time the Lindens worked with the residents to created a wonderful world, now Linden Lab appears to be grabbing at anything it can to keep afloat amongst all the bad RL press and PR decisions.
Today will also see the opening of I-World island. What is I-World?
"Part of our support structure here at Linden Lab is a dedicated customer team called I-World. This team answers support tickets and live chats from residents who are experiencing some difficulties or looking for guidance with in-world issues. Some of you may be aware of us from your contact via the Support page but most of you will probably never have heard about us.
We help to ensure that your in-world experience goes as smoothly as possible by providing answers where we can and getting our technical colleagues to perform their magic where we can’t. We know there are things that sometimes don’t work so well in SL…things that get you down. We’re sorry that they happen, they get us down too and we want to get them resolved as quickly as you do."
I think they will be kept very busy with mobs of angry residents, is it any wonder the Lindens keep away? Every blog post is accompanied by complaints and anger from residents who just want stability, to play and love and learn in an environment that works the way it was intended.
'RESOLVED' - How many times do we see that only to try to purchase something and have it fail? How many times have we been logged out and spent an hour trying to log back in to that important meeting only to find a blog post an hour later saying 'logins are closed'?
How much more does it take for Linden Lab to realise they have lost the confidence and trust of most of the residents? Linden was once seen as a company that cared, that wanted to help residents to create something unique and wonderful a SECONDLIFE, now it seems that goal has been achieved with the help of all the fantastic content creators, scipters and residents, so does that mean Linden Lab can now just act like GODS and do what they like with it?
Seems that way to many.........................
Dana

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