Archive for Rant

What’s wrong with the Grid? There’s nothing about problems on the blog…

{ May 22, 2008 @ 12:00 pm } · { Rant }
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That’s right, the “Official Second Life Blog” no longer reports on grid problems. It has been this way for a while, and the announcement is now buried beneath a pile of neon-colored tutorial videos. Not everyone saw it, though, and since LL is pretty terrible about announcing problems in-world, some residents (me) feel left in the dark when transactions, teleports, and logins start failing. This feeling of ignorance is compounded with anger when inventory items start to disappear, revert mysteriously to earlier versions, or completely fail to save/compile/update (scripts).

So, what the hell is wrong with the Grid? Why can’t I find any info on the blog about it? The answer is simple: PR. The link to the blog is much more prominent on the SL website than the Grid Status link. Heck, blog headlines even appear on the Community page. The much ballyhooed three column design of the blog places all the super-happy positive news front and center, and in a nice, large font size to boot. Problems are shoved over to the easily overlooked (and likely ignored) left-hand column. This probably helps create the false impression that everything is fine and dandy in the metaverse, while still providing marginally useful information on grid problems to anyone who happens to notice.

What does that column say right now? “Database Issues Affecting Multiple Services.” Well, that sounds… well, it sounds like something, right? Not very descriptive. In order to get any useful information, you now have to go to the Grid Status Page proper. That’s where you find the following message:

“[UPDATE 12:30 PDT] The Support Portal is currently down, and the Land store has been taken off-line for the duration. Please continue to monitor this post for updates.

Issues with the database are currently affecting inworld services, logins, and the website. Please refrain from attempting inworld transactions, rezzing valuable or no-copy items, and logging in until the all-clear is announced.”

Long story short, the Grid is borked. Broken. Dead. The last sentence should read: “Please refrain from using Second Life until we figure this shit out.”

Thanks for making it so easy to figure out why I can’t do anything, Linden Labs. Thanks.

-Naeko

Age verification in SL – Or, the end of alt-cam.

{ August 29, 2007 @ 5:21 pm } · { Current Events, Navel-Gazing, Rant }
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“Trust is the foundation of any community. And one cornerstone of trust is identity.” So sayeth Robin Linden. … continue reading this entry.

Voice communications in SL

{ August 3, 2007 @ 1:14 am } · { Current Events, Navel-Gazing, Rant }
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BREAKING NEWS: VOICE IS LIVE IN SL! MUTE BUTTON VOTED MOST LIKELY TO BE NEXT BROKEN FEATURE.

Aside from the fact that voice communication has been added to the main viewer (as an optional update), the above is completely false. At least, as far as I know. Which is not far at all.

Thankfully, controls have been added to manage voice capability on a per-parcel/estate basis, thus allowing those areas where voice would be a hindrance to the SL experience to simply disable it. The sky, it would seem, is not actually falling despite what some would have us believe. Or at least, the sky is still somewhat half-heartedly propped up.

The arguments for and against voice communication in SL are far too numerous (and enumerated in many locations already) for me to detail them here. Suffice it to say, you will not be hearing my voice in SL any time soon. This is partly because I’m a hopeless misanthrope, but also because I value the anonymity provided by the interwebs. I am, or rather, prefer to be, just another face in the virtual crowd. I also value the written word as a form of communication, despite the fact that I do my best to offend the gods of literacy with every entry in this blog.

The internet and the virtual world have, in a sense, reduced our ability to communicate to the modern equivalent of guttural intonations commonly associated with less civilized proto-humans (with all apologies to Geico’s cavemen). This of course does not apply to all who communicate via electronic text transmissions, but it certainly is not helped by the proliferation and profusion of this communicative form. That it is so widely available and easily accessible necessarily means that even the least capable among us has the ability to transmit his or her thoughts to a vast audience. This usually comes across as: “u r teh seksy! u want 2 cyber?” In the context of this discussion, it is not so much the content of the message that I find offensive as it is the actual structure of the message itself.

Shorthand is certainly useful for transcribing events, discussions, meetings and so forth in such a manner that the person doing the transcribing can easily and accurately recall the substance and detail of the original event. As a means of communication, however, it falls very short indeed (pun intended). While I don’t believe that those who attempt to communicate via this virtual-world shorthand actually speak the same way, I am led to believe that there are very few of them who have anything worth hearing to say. Thus I take the absolutist approach of choosing to ignore all voice communications in SL based on the assumption that most voice communications will be callow at best. You are free to disagree with this approach, as some undoubtedly will.

The bottom line is simply this: If you want to chat with me, take the time to learn the QWERTY keyboard layout (exceptions made, of course, for non-english speaking residents) and expect a rather terse and dis-interested reply to any sentence containing the letter “u” in place of the only slightly longer “you.”

O RLY?!?

-Naeko