I have been in Second Life now for some time. First off, let me confess that I am one of those special kind of users, a full on addict. So my views are bit colored. I put up with far more than an average user probably would. I use the service far more than normal people do, and I bitch probably more than other people do. I’m in that 5-10% userbase of heavy users. But you already knew that.

Next I want to be clear, I am an eternal optimist. I want things to get better and I want to see Second Life succeed. I love the place, but then with every minor and major grid implosion is is being coming more and more clear that my optimism is not going to be paid off.

The other day Tiessa and I were discussing how things were on the grid. I commented that it seems like there’s a minor disaster every day now. She said, well, it used to be a major disaster every day, so obviously, it is getting better. I would argue that it is not getting better, it is getting worse.

I have seen things pretty bad on the grid. Major outages, inventory disasters, so many client crashes in one day I couldn’t even begin to count them, yet for how much better we are now, things are getting worse. Why? It’s a time and distance thing. Things have not improved enough given the amount of time that has past. It’s a slippery slope and it’s not obvious that it is happening.

Most of us put up with a lot - a lot - of basic shit with Second Life. Why? We really do love the people, the environment, and potential the place has. We got past the hideous learning curve, the icky UI, and the crashes. I think most of us try hard to overlook a lot of the warts of Second Life except when things go really wrong.

1. Ridiculously low number of avatars a sim can support without going into the toilet.
2. The joke it is to walk or gawd forbid try to drive or fly from one sim to another.
3. Hair up your arse. Hippos on your friends list? Other ludicrous problems.
4. Lack of foresight causing no end of problems.
5. Lag me into the ground.

The sad part a few of these problems could be assaulted with some brute force. Yes, it’s not the smart way to go, but it does work. A few years ago I figured out that a faster computer is much cheaper than a few hours of programmers time, and usually guarantees results. Take the current Class 5 sim servers. They started appearing in October 2006. With 4GB of RAM and a Xeon 5148. That should have obviously made the sims faster, right? Nope, it allowed them to pile more sims onto a single server. That’s what’s really going on. Servers are now twice as fast, but not Second Life servers, and even if they were, it wouldn’t matter, because they would simply pile more sims into a single system. In fact, I would suspect that they are already doing this, which leads me to the next bad thing that’s going to happen… over-commit.

Ah yes, now when they really want to start making money, they will start to pack more sims into servers, more than they can really run all at full speed, users be damned. Like we would know the difference at this point anyway? Linden Labs gets to sell more sims without actually spending any more on infrastructure. I’m sure the temptation will be irresistible at some point if they haven’t done it already.

I play quite a bit in the Havok 4 sims, and I can honestly say they seem to have done nothing for lag improvement. So, that’s a bust. I hear concerns that the mono project will not make things even slower than they are now. One thing that is probably hurting lag is voice. I’m not sure how much it’s being used, but it has to be eating up a lot of bandwidth. That bandwidth is now unavailable to make things less laggy.

What does this all boil down to? Things are not getting better, they’re not really getting worse, but it’s moving sideways. Neither really better but not really bad enough to really raise hell. Instead of bitching about what needs to be done, let’s go over an obvious wish list:

1. More than 25 groups - duh - already said it won’t happen. It’s just *too* hard for them. Whine bitch moan.
2. More attachment points, maybe some more clothing points. (We’ll just ignore that one.)
   
3. No more inventory loss… uh - we’re working on that. We promise.
4. More than 75 avies in a sim without lagging the hell out it. You can’t tell me in 2008 it can’t and should be done. If they wanted to they could support 150. Hell - 250.
5. No more lag. Let’s try not introduce the word LAG into every language in the world.
   
6. No more crashing clients. Let’s be honest here - world peace and harmony will happen before it drops below 5% of sessions ending in a crash.

You know and I know. Linden Labs has made miles of promises and has miles to go. You know they can’t deliver on them. Let’s all be brutally honest about it. It ain’t gonna happen. Anyone who’s been dealing with Second Life and Linden Labs long enough knows none of these things they can actually deliver on. It don’t think it is for lack of brain power, I think it has been a management problem in Linden Labs. We see Cory and now Phil depart management rolls, but probably now a culture problem. They have years of bad habits that will be very hard to break.

Where are we going to be in future? We will be in the same basic place in spring of 2009 as we are right now. Bitching about lag, inventory loss, and crashes.

Where does this lead us? Ask Ultima Online what happened when World of Warcraft came along. Second Life survives because their competitors are incompetent. They limp along dragging us long with them because of that. But it won’t last. Nature and capitalism hate a vacuum. And that giant sucking sound coming from Linden Labs will soon draw - if it hasn’t already - a competentcompetitor. Think it can’t happen? Ultima Online had a huge market share of the MMORPG field, now it’s tiny.

When will it start? I think the first sign will be a change in the value of the Linden dollar. I suspect Linden Labs has is actively manipulating the currency market to keep the exchange rate more or less constant. I expect that will end at some point as it is costing Linden Labs too much money. Then inflation will start. The economy will fall apart. It will be interesting to see how they might try to control it. Price controls?

Second Life is at tipping point right now. It’s going to get better or it’s going to get worse.

-Veyron

Okay, I knew there was going to be a lot of chatter about this coming up.  A tool called SecondInventory is out.  On paper it allows you to make a local backup copy of your inventory.  A completely sane idea.  Something that is preached religiously by computer professionals since like the beginning of time.

I can personally attest to loosing items, and I might add some expensive items to Second Life.  Failing to rez and going poof.  I’ve seen it happen right before my eyes.  Think it won’t happen to you?  I know someone who just lost something precious today.  It failed to rez and went poof.  It’s basically irreplaceable too and it was no copy.  I’ve take losses myself of about L$15000 over the last year and half.  One item was expensive and it did disappear out of my inventory.

I have become pretty obsessed about inventory loss.  To the point that I have boxes in which I stuff most of the things I can copy into.  I keep these boxes rezzed in another location  Hopefully in case my personal inventory takes a loss, I can recover some things.

But why on Earth is it to this point?  It’s pretty much inexcusable.  If you’re going to design a system that handle items that have value - assets in Second Life, then you make damn sure you don’t loose them.  Concepts like not loosing transactions (items could be considered transactions) have been around for ages.  Consider a double entry accounting system.  Someone screwed up and Linden Labs knows it.  If they didn’t loose things, this sort of product would have no real reason to exist (other than for naughtiness).

Which goes back to the flip side.  For content creators this is not really a good thing.  It potentially allows their items to escape the content control system in Second Life.  It has of course potential for misuse.  Computers are very good at one thing, adding and copying data.  In fact when you boil down how they work, that’s all they do.  Preventing them from copying data is really quite hard - if not essentially impossible.

Now I’m a big supporter of the content creators.  They are the ones who make Second Life what it is.  I am like a shopaholic.  I think the root of the problem rests squarely at Linden Lab’s feet.  They give you no means of backing up your data.  They give you no guarantees that your data is safe.  So, this program is a solution for a known problem.  Someone was going to do it eventually.

How do I feel about it?  Personally, I would love to have a tool like this.  Why?  Because I have a - uh - well, way to much invested in my inventory.  For example, I use a Huddles EZAnimator HUD.  A cool device.  It cost me L$1500 (I think).  Okay, not too expensive and it’s also a mod/copy/no tran HUD.  You load it with animations, poses, etc.  I’ve used it for over a year.  Mine has dozens of dances and animations, and I think over a hundred poses.  Things I’ve collected over the last year.  Of course, some of them are no copy.  Thus making that copy of the HUD no copy.  My guess is that there is about L$50,000 in animations, dances, and poses in it, maybe more.  Whenever I want to make changes to it such as adding dances or changing configurations I have to rez it.  I usually start getting nervous before rezzing it.  More than once it has taken a few moments to appear and start getting that sinking feeling.

I also have things that are one of a kind items, things you can’t get anymore, from people who are not around anymore.  I personally could use the tool ethically, it would certainly make me feel less anxious about my inventory.  I suspect a few other will try to use or use the device in naughty ways.  So, if content creators want to protect themselves from this program, the solution is not to go after this program, but to go after Linden Labs.  If no one is going to loose content, no one needs this program.  If I’m possibly going to loose content, I probably need this program.

It does have some upsides to it.  Even for content creators.  It could allow content to flee Linden Lab’s  Second Life for another SL platform.  Linden Lab’s SL is only worth anything because of the content in it.  If that content could escape to another grid, they loose their “monopoly” on it.  A content creator could conceivably pick up their content - which they own - and easily move it to another grid.  And then setup shop there.  Lack of content has probably been the biggest impediment to the other grids going anywhere.  Just being able to pickup all of the SL freebies out there and move them would be a huge thing.  Granted there are a lot of stick bits I’m ignoring here, but I think you get the idea.

I’m sure the yelling has already begun, but is the solution to inventory loss completed?  As of today I can attest it’s not.

-Veyron

I can’t say I didn’t expect this, but Linden Labs has mostly ignored demands for more groups.  The best they put out was some double talk about technical issues on the back end impacting performance.  Duh, like if I drive to work every day in my car, I will wear out my car eventually….

So the Jira for the feature request is unassigned.  Closing in on 1000 residents have voted for it.  And yet, not a single Linden has said boo in Jira.  Supposedly Jira is how residents are able to communicate technical issues and desires to Linden Labs.  Clearly, this is not working.  Why doesn’t Linden Labs make a blog statement on the issue?  Take 10 minutes out of their busy day and uh - communicate?

Here’s an idea.  State the facts, and have LL close the issue.  Show some cojones and pull the trigger.  Leaving it out there and letting the customers prattle on about it is just cowardly on their part.

Here’s an even better idea, how about offering more groups to the paying residents?  The ones who are now a tiny minority.  That small minority would put a tiny load on the system and Linden Labs would make more money.  Hmm, the more money would pay for more developers and hardware to do more things.  Nahhh…  That’s too easy.  Back to the head in the sand.

-Veyron

Blogged with Flock

Well, there’s been a lot of smoke on the latest greatest plans by Linden Labs’ plans to identify who is who in Second Life.  If this is a good idea or not I’m not going to get into.  An analysis by Gwyneth Llewelyn appears to make some degree of sense above all of the noise.  The thought that Gwyneth has here is that Linden Labs is trying to find a safe harbor from the US legal system’s propensity to sue anyone who has deep pockets for just about any reason (which I haven’t really seen with Linden Labs yet).

The idea in a nut shell is that Integrity will assume the liability of verifying the identity of the customer (avatar).  This means that Integrity is on the hook for making a mistake.  Now, there are of course a lot of negative arguments against this whole idea, mostly down the Utopian concepts of free sex, money, land, ponies, and whatever else we have all come to know and love in Second Life.  Let’s assume that the method of keeping this information separated from Integrity and Linden Labs is kosher and we are for the sake of argument’s here going to pass over that.

(Disclaimer, I’m not a lawyer….)

First example, an escort performs some services for a customer.  This customer turns out to be Jimmy, a 14 year-old on the adult grid (shock and horrors).  He cheated the Integrity system somehow and the escort verified he was of “legal” age (whatever that means) before delivering services.  Mom and Dad find out and are infuriated.  They sue Linden Labs.  Their lawyer files discovery motions in every direction to find out who is who, like who was the escort avatar, so they may conduct discovery.  Without the verifications by Integrity, Linden Labs, and probably the escort avatar are now under a court’s microscope (like it or not).  But with Integrity on the hook, Linden Labs can probably shield the escort and themselves and fire the entire episode off at Integrity - who they are paying to absorb the hit.

Second example, a vendor sells a sex dildo strap-on to 16 year old Tommy (he has some interesting kinks - that’s for sure) and Mom finds out.  Same thing as above.  The vendor should also be protected, and more important, the vendor’s business should be protected.

In the real world, anyone who runs a business they live on wants to take prudent measures to protect their source of income.  That’s why the soft porn magazines have a black plastic condom cover over them on the magazine rack and the hard core porn magazines are in another room.  It’s prudent.

Call me a prude (which I hardly think is the case), but I have limits myself.  Like children avatars inside of Second Life.  While playing around as a child in some sims might be okay, almost all of the places I go to it would not be okay.  Let’s use the example of Paradise Lost club.  Clearly, this is not a place for children.  It’s an adult playground, clear and simple.  It’s also an attempt at a business.  It makes sense to try to keep people who should not be there out.  Second Life is far closer to Las Vegas than Disneyland.

There is the purely moral point of unverified underage activity.  Most of us ignore the payment information on file or not on an avatar’s profile.  So, we do not really have that to go by for age verification anyway.  I would find it hard to believe that almost anyone who reads this blog would not be rather upset if they found out they were unintentionally involved in adult activities with an avatar that turned out to be a minor.  Right now, we escape that moral failing through ignorance, which is really not right.

A civil society makes compromises all the time for the better good.  Society does not believe that children are not capable of making adult decisions (which biologically they are not), and thus need to be protected from adults.  Adults have to give up a few rights to make sure that children, who are the most vulnerable members of society, are given some protections.  Rather than sounding like I propose the Disneyfication of Second Life, let’s attempt to keep it safe for non-adults, and keep it like the fun adult Las Vegas we all know and love (and figure out how to get gambling back too).

I’m pretty confident that everyone I know to more than a passing acquaintance in Second Life is an adult (at least legally speaking…  :)  but perhaps this verification system is a better way of being sure about it.

Lastly, rather than sounding like a hypocrite or zealot, I am very protective of my own Second Life identity.  It’s my means of increasing my enjoyment of the environment.   I play in Second Life for my entertainment, and I want to enjoy it to its fullest.  I too am concerned about how this verification will be implemented, I want to see this done right and hopefully it will be.  But I do see it’s value and why it is being done.

This is all going to be a difficult and painful process, but it is an unavoidable process of evolution for Second Life.  Hopefully things will turn out for the better in the end.

-Veyron

I see that Second Life is once again, venting copious amounts of smoke. But gosh darn it, we got this wonderful voice stuff that seems to be greeted with all the excitement of a fruit cake at Christmastime. Oh, let’s not forget, we’re about to get a new First Look viewer with Windlight…. Oooh look! Pretty colors… look at the fires coming out of the grid now….

Let’s not forget the gambling ban. Yeah, and you’re really gambling rezzing an object these days, that’s for sure. I almost tremble at the thought of rezzing a no-copy object these days. I’ve had at least 6 items go “poof” on me - gone for good. I can’t really go back to the vendors and ask for another copy. Some of these items I bought months and months ago.

I can see that memories are short at Linden Labs. We have been given lip service to what should be a reliable service. It’s by no means anywhere near reliable. Is the answer we need to pay? Something? Would that help? A smack upside the head? Emails to the Linden Lab’s board of directors? What is it going to take?

This is what always slays me, you have a fairly large core group of committed users (i.e. customers) who are more than willing to pay - yes - probably pay - for a fun and reliable experience (because we’re addicts really and we’re not getting our fix) and we’re being given the finger (you know - the universal middle finger…)

I see that Project Open Letter has stirred again. Okay - I think it’s time to find the torches, get them lit, grab the pitch forks, and as Henry the V said, “Once more into the breach….”

-Veyron

Well, gambling in Second Life is kaput. I’m not sure if to covers sploders, but I suspect it will. I suppose I’ve played my last sploder already. I hardly ever gaming in real life anyway and I never trusted any gambling in Second Life anyway, so no great direct loss to me.

I’m sure Linden Labs is being pushed to at least make an enforcement statement about this from the US Government. Oddly enough, gambling in the US is not illegal, as long as the local government is getting their cut of the action. It doesn’t really matter arguing or pissing or moaning about it. Gambling inside of SL was always an edgy proposition, because it is/was so easy to cheat the customer.

The pessimist in me believes this is the beginning of the end of this incarnation of Second Life from a number of stand points. This probably has the potential to crash the SL economy. All gambling assets are now essentially worthless. Anyone who has a gambling business is now effectively out of business. Expect a flight of L$ out of the world ahead of any banning of accounts by the gambling operators.

Land prices, along with the new continent coming will probably cause a property price crash. This is a good deal if you don’t own land, not so good if you already own land.

The next obvious attack of course will be on the sex side, and as people have alluded to the Furries seem to be the first target.

Private sims are not going to save any of us. Linden Labs still “owns” the server. They released the client, a good first step. The next step is the Open Simulator. I think Linden Labs anticipated this by open sourcing the client and trying to open source the server. I believe LL wants to just manage the asset server and the “directory” server, much like Network Solutions manages (and greatly profits) from managing and controlling the Internet domain system. In this model, anyone can setup their own physical server running the SL server software, perhaps pay some fee to connect up to LL’s asset database and directory server, and then join the grid.

LL avoids all of the issues over what is going on in that server, as they have no control or management of that server, just like Network Solutions.

The big deal now is to get the Open Simulator running….

-Veyron

As I surmised in my last post in this subject, The Herald has picked up on the dangerous legal course Linden Labs has charted. The best posting so far is from Virtually Blind. The blog post on Virtually Blind is fairly detailed, and complicated, but under US law, Linden Labs is really digging themselves a deep hole that is going to take some serious back peddling to get out of….

-Veyron

Disclaimer, I am not a lawyer…. And let me also state up front that I am not in favor of all of the grotesque child play activities. I even dislike seeing “children” avatars (dwarfs are obviously different than children - I can tell the difference) inside Second Life. The adult grid is just that, the adult grid. Children and facsimiles of them do not belong in the adult grid. That’s my position.

I have been watching for sometime, with some concern, Linden Labs increasing migration away from their previous laissez-faire attitude toward governance within the Second Life grid. While this obviously annoyed certain individuals, mostly leftist really (who are into that Big Brother as a state mentality) and right wing lunatic fringe. This laissez-faire governance was probably driven by a few basic problems, they would never have enough staff to enforce any real or serious rules they laid down and the rules themselves could become a real morass themselves.

Creating laws within Second Life would be a massive undertaking. The US Federal Code alone is a massive tome of laws, and only a small part of it covers criminal law (in the US most criminal law is covered by State Laws). This also avoided other legal messes and left the masses to themselves. In fact the terms of service is setup mostly to protect themselves. This attitude actually has an advantage to the Second Life citizenry. One could argue that under this policy Linden Labs is just a common carrier.

Being a common carrier in the US is a way of realistically performing commercial work without being criminally responsible for certain acts used for your commercial goods or services. An obvious example here is the phone company. Making a bomb threat using a telephone does not make the phone company criminally liable for the act. They were just the carrier, they do not monitor the call or vet out the activities. And that is the key. They do not monitor or vet the activities.

It is very similar to how the somewhat hated Digital Millennium Copyright Act works in the US. If the carrier did not know about the violation, they cannot be held liable for it. But once they are informed of it, they have to take action.

Linden Labs original policy set themselves up to be purportedly a common carrier - but that had not been upheld by a court yet since Second Life does not quite fit the mold one would expect of a common carrier (yet).

Now, here’s the bad part for Linden Labs - once you start to police your self for “naughty” bits, you start to loose your common carrier shield, if not entirely. If Linden Labs states or implies that they are policing the grid for “naughtiness” and they fail to do so, they are liable. In the US tort law is going to make them a target for lawsuits because they have money. And they only need to have a modicum of guilt to pay out millions. Since they do business in the entire US, a lawyer can shop the entire US for a court district friendly to his point of view and sue there. Being a US corporation, they are at the mercy of the US court system.

This posting from Linden Labs about keeping Second Life safe probably had their corporate counsel climbing the walls. I am perplexed at this strategy they are undertaking. It seems reckless and without much thought to it to the long term consequences - to themselves no less.

This also opens themselves up to legal attack from the other direction - terminated users. Let’s say this user is annoyed about that. They had a few hundred or thousand dollars of “stuff” in SL. They march down to the courthouse and pay $50US or so and make a small claims to LL for say, $2000 in damages. Now LL has to defend that claim. I’m not sure how they are going to defend it. Small claims court is a complete roll of the dice for all sides, and since LL probably has no counter claim to make, the person making the claim has almost nothing to loose. Judges really hate it when one side is acting capricious, illogical, or inconsistent. A litigant is going to be able to prove all of that in court, probably with ease. The lawyers will have a field day. Everyone looses - except the lawyers.

It always seemed the best approach for Linden Labs was just to be the supplier and not the government. Supply the viewer, the servers, and the infrastructure. Let the land owners make the rules/laws. That follows the common carrier model.

Now maybe this age verification thing is some attempt to segregate parts of the grid to marginally protect themselves. On paper maybe this seems to be a good idea. But it is being implemented in an idiotic and ham fisted fashion. If they were smart Linden Labs would just back off from the idea for now and let things cool down. Claim stupidity and call it a day - or ask for alternative ideas. State clearly what their objectives are.

I also wonder how they plan on enforcing these “rules”. A volunteer police department? Sex police? (Okay, don’t give too many people too many ideas…. I think I might have a uniform that might work for that…. but I digress.)

They also open themselves up to another legal trip up for them - privacy violation. If you do it in public, you have no rights to privacy. If you do it in private, you have different rights. Oh yes, yet another legal can of worms for them. Hmm… I own the land in SL, I had a skybox, I took precautions to ensure I was private, yet the sex police (Linden Labs or their assigned agent) spied on me and terminated my account, and defamed me. Again, it defies logic they would go down this route.

Linden Labs would like everyone to think that sex in Second Life is not a major part of the SL economy. They are lying to themselves. The VHS video tape recorder in the 1980’s was a hit because of pornographic videos not because people could watch Snow White at home it was Debbie Does Dallas. The Blue-Ray versus HD DVD groups are more concerned about not what the major movie studios think of the formats, but what the porn industry thinks of each format and which one they prefer.

Lastly, I think the Teen Grid, this reaction - if not overreaction - is all driven by a public relations and possibly an attempt to avoid a real government from stepping in and monkeying around. It is not driven common sense.

I’m not sure where it all ends, hopefully in a good place. Fear not, Linden Labs has paved the road and proven this technology and business model can work. If they screw it up, someone else will pick up the pieces and eat their lunch….

Synopsis: Acting dumb (you know - the previous modus operandi) in the end will pay off more for Linden Labs (and everyone else) than acting paternalistic.

-Veyron

I’m having an annoying issue with screen captures - it might not necessarily be the Second Life client, but I’m not sure. I’ve opened a bug report with Linden Labs. Torley has been real helpful in trying to track it down. It seems to have started with the last 1.15 release maybe. I’m getting an ugly black band across the center of a high res screen capture. It makes a screen capture pretty much useless. I’m going to tinker around more with it to see if it might be anything with my system or the client.

Has anyone else seen this sort of thing before or currently? There are some JPEG2000 capture shots in the bug report. If you need a viewer for JPEG2000, try IrFanView - it’s free.

-Veyron

Linden Labs buys a company…. They buy Windward Mark and promise to improve visual quality within weeks. Hmmm…. Well, visual quality would be a nice thing. I’m less annoyed about this sort of activity rather than focusing in on stability. The photographers in Second Life should be happy.

But they do need to focus on stability, some of these bugs are pretty stupid….

Gotta catch a plane…

-Veyron