From the Official Linden Blog: "If you are using our Windlight or Release Candidate viewer, you might have noticed that you are currently not able to login or download the latest version of either. We have found an issue concerning both of these viewers, that required us to disable them for the time we need to fix the problem."
Every time you log into Windlight, God kills a kitten.
Saturday 29 December 2007
Thursday 20 December 2007
Away from SL
I am away from home for the holidays, and won't be able to sign on to SL until January 3rd. I thought I would be able to sign on with this laptop, since I was able to in the past (but only at about 3 fps). Apparently at some point since I last used this laptop, my hardware stopped being supported. Now it crashes whenever I try to sign in. Not that big a deal really, since I don't really have much time to spend on SL. You can still IM me and I can respond through email. I might even give out my email address or AIM/MSN if you ask. Happy Festivus everyone!
Wednesday 5 December 2007
Speeding up Windlight
I just discovered that if I turn on the "Hardware Skinning" option in the windlight viewer (which requires that "Basic Shaders" also be enabled), I get a fairly significant framerate increase. Where I'm currently standing, I go from about 29 fps to 40. This is having all options as low as possible, then turning on the skinning option. I am in Windows right now. The person here with me has a Mac, and says the option drops his framerate, so this might not work for everyone. I have yet to test it on Linux. Let me know how this option affects you, and what sort of system you have.
Sunday 2 December 2007
PS3 Home Preview
Check out this 25 minute preview of PS3 Home. It's kind of boring, he just goes through every possible thing you can do. In some ways, it seems to be a lot like Second Life, but there are some missing features and I think it's those features that make Second Life what it is.
What's missing (I think) is user-created content. Without it, it's really just a 3d chat room where you can own a house and put furniture in it. It's true that what I just described is how a lot of people use Second Life, but it seems like most of those people aren't really ones who play other video games. I doubt many of them own a Playstation 3. I think the people that do own PS3s won't really be interested in this.
What's missing (I think) is user-created content. Without it, it's really just a 3d chat room where you can own a house and put furniture in it. It's true that what I just described is how a lot of people use Second Life, but it seems like most of those people aren't really ones who play other video games. I doubt many of them own a Playstation 3. I think the people that do own PS3s won't really be interested in this.
Monday 19 November 2007
LSL Free Software License?
If you haven't figured out already, I'm a pretty strong supporter of free software. I haven't really seen any LSL scripting being done under a free software license, and that got me thinking about whether existing licenses would be applicable to the SL platform, or if a new license should be written to address certain aspects specific to SL.
In Free Software Foundation's formal definition of free software, they state that all free software must have the following four freedoms (numbered starting from 0 because these people are computer scientists ;P):
-- Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program for any purpose.
-- Freedom 1: The freedom to study and modify the program.
-- Freedom 2: The freedom to copy the program so you can help your neighbor.
-- Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.
Freedoms 1 and 3 require the code to be "open source". In SL, this means the scripts must be modifiable. Here is the problem: Let's say you buy an object containing scripts with a free software license. In order for the license to be fulfilled, the scripts would need to be modifiable, which means the entire object needs to be modifiable, which shouldn't be necessary. SL currently doesn't allow the scripts inside an object to be modifiable but have the rest of the object (prims, textures, etc.) not be modifiable.
Another option is that the creator could make the object no modify and just package the script files with the object. I'm not sure if that fulfills the terms of the license, though. The scripts would be open and free to distribute, but the scripts inside the object could not be modified. With SL's current features, it seems like this is the only feasible way to do it, but it's unclear to me whether it is meeting the requirements of free software.
It seems like this might be a similar case as cell phones running open source software. The software in the phone should be modifiable and copyable, but the hardware of the phone isn't. Does anyone else have thoughts on this?
In Free Software Foundation's formal definition of free software, they state that all free software must have the following four freedoms (numbered starting from 0 because these people are computer scientists ;P):
-- Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program for any purpose.
-- Freedom 1: The freedom to study and modify the program.
-- Freedom 2: The freedom to copy the program so you can help your neighbor.
-- Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.
Freedoms 1 and 3 require the code to be "open source". In SL, this means the scripts must be modifiable. Here is the problem: Let's say you buy an object containing scripts with a free software license. In order for the license to be fulfilled, the scripts would need to be modifiable, which means the entire object needs to be modifiable, which shouldn't be necessary. SL currently doesn't allow the scripts inside an object to be modifiable but have the rest of the object (prims, textures, etc.) not be modifiable.
Another option is that the creator could make the object no modify and just package the script files with the object. I'm not sure if that fulfills the terms of the license, though. The scripts would be open and free to distribute, but the scripts inside the object could not be modified. With SL's current features, it seems like this is the only feasible way to do it, but it's unclear to me whether it is meeting the requirements of free software.
It seems like this might be a similar case as cell phones running open source software. The software in the phone should be modifiable and copyable, but the hardware of the phone isn't. Does anyone else have thoughts on this?
Wednesday 14 November 2007
More Windlight
Is that a sunset, a sunrise, or did someone just get nuked?Also, we have found a pretty significant bug in windlight. For many, but not all, if you are in mouselook and you jump...you crash. Very weird. It happens right when you reach the top of the jump and start to fall. Unfortunately Jira is having issues and won't let me log in.
Impostors!
The Windlight First Look is back. An interesting new feature is what they are calling "Avatar Impostors" which claims to lower framerate in large crowds. I was wondering what this was, and when I saw what they meant my first reaction was to start laughing:
It looks like Hibiki jumped right out of an original Playstation game and into Second Life. Apparently they just create a low-resolution sprite of the avatar and then paste that in instead of having to render the avatar.
But does it actually work? My framerate was around 24 with it on when I was taking these screenshots. I turned it off and it dropped to about 17.
It looks like Hibiki jumped right out of an original Playstation game and into Second Life. Apparently they just create a low-resolution sprite of the avatar and then paste that in instead of having to render the avatar.
But does it actually work? My framerate was around 24 with it on when I was taking these screenshots. I turned it off and it dropped to about 17.
Tuesday 13 November 2007
Animal Groups
I thought this was fun. Here are the correct ways to refer to a group of certain animals:
| 1. A shrewdness of apes | 12. An exaltation of larks |
| 2. A battery of barracudas | 13. A troop of monkeys |
| 3. A kaleidoscope of butterflies | 14. A parliament of owls |
| 4. A quiver of cobras | 15. An ostentation of peacocks |
| 5. A murder of crows | 16. A rookery of penguins |
| 6. A convocation of eagles | 17. A prickle of porcupines |
| 7. A charm of finches | 18. An unkindness of ravens |
| 8. A skulk of foxes | 19. A shiver of sharks |
| 9. A troubling of goldfish | 20. A pod of whales |
| 10. A smack of jellyfish | 21. A descent of woodpeckers |
| 11. A mob of kangaroos | 22. A zeal of zebras |
Gmail's Spam Filter
I think this is the first spam email that has made it through Gmail's filter and into my inbox in at least a year. You can see some of the things it does to trick the filter. Overall, I think Gmail's spam filter is very good. I currently have 1632 messages in my spam folder, and they are automatically deleted after 30 days. So Gmail gets a score of 99.939% for this past month. I've also never found a message marked as spam that was actually a legitimate email.
------------------
Subject: Your baby-maker needs to be bigger in order to perform its functions well
market, particularly the Japanese bond market, where yields morepercent since October 8, suggesting that Soros had lost $100 million of
He was torn. Should he go back to Duquesne? Or take a chance and
Do you believe in miracles? We dare say you're likely to answer negatively.
We hadn't believed, either...until the moment MegaDick was introduced!
What this wonder medicine does to a male dic'k cannot be called otherwise than a Miracle!
Just picture to yourself, that your meat stick suddenly becomes longer
and thicker and makes women tremble with desire!
It's fabulous!
So, don't miss it out, accomplish a miracle in your life with this wonder-medicine![was a link]
of Japan was tightening its monetary policy. Seeing the handwritingLike Soros, Druckenmiller, a Philadelphia native, had attracted virtually48.5 compared to 17.3 in England and 19.7 in the United States. Sorosto $10,432.75 a share. This was even larger than the 17 percent drop in
-----------------
------------------
Subject: Your baby-maker needs to be bigger in order to perform its functions well
market, particularly the Japanese bond market, where yields morepercent since October 8, suggesting that Soros had lost $100 million of
He was torn. Should he go back to Duquesne? Or take a chance and
Do you believe in miracles? We dare say you're likely to answer negatively.
We hadn't believed, either...until the moment MegaDick was introduced!
What this wonder medicine does to a male dic'k cannot be called otherwise than a Miracle!
Just picture to yourself, that your meat stick suddenly becomes longer
and thicker and makes women tremble with desire!
It's fabulous!
So, don't miss it out, accomplish a miracle in your life with this wonder-medicine![was a link]
of Japan was tightening its monetary policy. Seeing the handwritingLike Soros, Druckenmiller, a Philadelphia native, had attracted virtually48.5 compared to 17.3 in England and 19.7 in the United States. Sorosto $10,432.75 a share. This was even larger than the 17 percent drop in
-----------------
Thursday 8 November 2007
This Fall
Every so often I will go to create a new SL account to see what names I can make from the new last names. Usually I'm disappointed because all the good ones are taken. I started out this time with more disappointment, as it told me that Paper Clip, Movie Clip, Charles Darwin and Steve Wozniak were all taken. Then I got to Fall and while "Next Fall", "Last Fall" and "Snow Fall" were taken, "This Fall" was not! So I am now the proud owner of an alt named This Fall. I have no idea what I'm going to do with him, though...
On another note, I was looking up "w/e" at urbandictionary.com and the second definition was hilarious (anyone can submit a definition):
On another note, I was looking up "w/e" at urbandictionary.com and the second definition was hilarious (anyone can submit a definition):
Building a Go Board
One thing I've wanted to do for a while in SL is make a Go board. The major design problem is that the game is played by placing stones on a 19x19 grid, so if I was just going to have a prim rezzed for each stone, that's theoretically 361 prims. I don't really want to make something that requires having that many prims available to use. Of course, stones aren't placed on every space in a normal game, but it's usually over 200 and games exceeding 300 moves aren't that rare. I've seen one Go board before in SL, and it just used this method.
The first idea I came up with was to have textures for each possible configuration of a small portion of the board, then repeat that to make the full board. I realized that this wasn't going to work when I started figuring out the details. First, how big do I make the sub-sections? I discovered that 2x2 is probably the biggest that is feasible, and even that requires a pretty big number of textures. Each space can be either empty, have a white stone, or have a black stone. So for 2x2 sections I'd need 3^4 textures, or 81. If I went 3x3, that becomes 19683. But I'd also need different textures for the edge and corner pieces, because the grid lines would need to end at the edges instead of sticking through. Finally, there's the problem that 2x2 sections don't fit evenly into a 19x19 board (in fact, 19 is a prime number, so no possible section would fit evenly). This means I'd also need to have some different shaped sections (like a 1x2 and 1x1) . So the final tally is:
- 81 textures for the middle 2x2 sections
- 81 textures for the side 2x2 sections
- 81 textures for the corner 2x2 sections
- 9 textures for side 1x2 sections
- 3 textures for the corner 1x1 section
So 255 textures, plus I wouldn't even be saving that many prims. I'd need a 9x9 grid of 2x2 sections to make the 18x18 board, that's 81 prims. Then another 19 for the edge to make it a 19x19 grid. And I haven't even mentioned that all these different sizes and types of sections would make for a coding nightmare.
So the solution I'm considering now is to have one prim for the whole board, and have the board send an HTTP request to a web server that would take the current board configuration and send back a texture for the entire board. The texture would need to be generated on the fly, as storing all possible textures is literally impossible (even if I could store a texture on a single atom, there aren't enough atoms in the universe to store them all).
This last option seems the most feasible, even though it involves some things I haven't done before, such as HTTP requests with LSL. And there's also the issue of the HTTP server. I can run it on my own computer when I'm building this, but unless I'm just going to use the Go board for personal use, I'd need a dedicated machine to run the server.
If anyone has any insights about this or other methods, please let me know.
The first idea I came up with was to have textures for each possible configuration of a small portion of the board, then repeat that to make the full board. I realized that this wasn't going to work when I started figuring out the details. First, how big do I make the sub-sections? I discovered that 2x2 is probably the biggest that is feasible, and even that requires a pretty big number of textures. Each space can be either empty, have a white stone, or have a black stone. So for 2x2 sections I'd need 3^4 textures, or 81. If I went 3x3, that becomes 19683. But I'd also need different textures for the edge and corner pieces, because the grid lines would need to end at the edges instead of sticking through. Finally, there's the problem that 2x2 sections don't fit evenly into a 19x19 board (in fact, 19 is a prime number, so no possible section would fit evenly). This means I'd also need to have some different shaped sections (like a 1x2 and 1x1) . So the final tally is:
- 81 textures for the middle 2x2 sections
- 81 textures for the side 2x2 sections
- 81 textures for the corner 2x2 sections
- 9 textures for side 1x2 sections
- 3 textures for the corner 1x1 section
So 255 textures, plus I wouldn't even be saving that many prims. I'd need a 9x9 grid of 2x2 sections to make the 18x18 board, that's 81 prims. Then another 19 for the edge to make it a 19x19 grid. And I haven't even mentioned that all these different sizes and types of sections would make for a coding nightmare.
So the solution I'm considering now is to have one prim for the whole board, and have the board send an HTTP request to a web server that would take the current board configuration and send back a texture for the entire board. The texture would need to be generated on the fly, as storing all possible textures is literally impossible (even if I could store a texture on a single atom, there aren't enough atoms in the universe to store them all).
This last option seems the most feasible, even though it involves some things I haven't done before, such as HTTP requests with LSL. And there's also the issue of the HTTP server. I can run it on my own computer when I'm building this, but unless I'm just going to use the Go board for personal use, I'd need a dedicated machine to run the server.
If anyone has any insights about this or other methods, please let me know.
Monday 5 November 2007
3D Desktop!
I've got to go see The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D just so I can get the glasses and have a 3D desktop:
Tuesday 30 October 2007
New Toys!
Well, I think I've solved the problems I've been having with my roommate's internet usage making C:SI dueling impossible. One solution mentioned was taking turns. I suppose that would work but as a computer scientist any solution that involves social interaction is always a last resort :P I ended up upgrading to a better router. It supports the QoS protocol, which basically lets me reserve a portion of the bandwidth for a specific program (like SL). Actually, I haven't had to set this up yet, as it seems to have fixed the problem by just having more capacity to queue and send out packets. I'd say this is the perfect solution for a computer scientist, since it involves expensive new toys and the opportunity to throw around fancy jargon like "protocol".
The long awaited C:SI update came out yesterday! But I haven't yet gotten the change to try it out yet. The infamous block bug is advertised as fixed. It will be interesting to see if this helps or hurts me, lol. There is a new feature to challenge someone to a duel. If the person accepts your duel, then your sword will not harm anyone but them until the duel is over. I'm actually not sure when I'd want to use this. I don't think I've ever been fighting and thought, "I really wish I couldn't hurt anyone but this person I'm fighting with." But as I was typing that, I remembered being accidentally killed while an innocent bystander in Shrouded ;) The new duel feature reminded me of something I was thinking about a while ago. If I ever get up the courage to dive into the SL Viewer code, something I want to do is create a sort of "duel mode" that will only render you and your opponent. My framerate drops about 5 fps for every person on the screen, so I think that would help a lot. Another great new feature is practice mode, which turns off damage on your sword. I think this is something I will use a lot when I'm teaching students. The problem with doing drills is that someone would drop dead after a little bit.
The long awaited C:SI update came out yesterday! But I haven't yet gotten the change to try it out yet. The infamous block bug is advertised as fixed. It will be interesting to see if this helps or hurts me, lol. There is a new feature to challenge someone to a duel. If the person accepts your duel, then your sword will not harm anyone but them until the duel is over. I'm actually not sure when I'd want to use this. I don't think I've ever been fighting and thought, "I really wish I couldn't hurt anyone but this person I'm fighting with." But as I was typing that, I remembered being accidentally killed while an innocent bystander in Shrouded ;) The new duel feature reminded me of something I was thinking about a while ago. If I ever get up the courage to dive into the SL Viewer code, something I want to do is create a sort of "duel mode" that will only render you and your opponent. My framerate drops about 5 fps for every person on the screen, so I think that would help a lot. Another great new feature is practice mode, which turns off damage on your sword. I think this is something I will use a lot when I'm teaching students. The problem with doing drills is that someone would drop dead after a little bit.
Wednesday 24 October 2007
Not Again!
Gmail finally has IMAP support! I have been waiting for this for years.
On another note, I am once again having problems with extremely high lag in SL (ping times are 1000 - 2000 msec). This time it's not due to the Wrath of God, but rather to my roommate using bittorrent. Yes, I could do things like disable port forwarding on the router so that bittorrent doesn't work anymore, but I'd feel guilty doing something like that. I mean, we all split the cost of the internet connection, so he has as much right to use it as I do. If anyone has any suggestions for how to improve this, I'd like to hear. I've been trying to look into possible ways of limiting the bandwidth bittorrent can use, but I haven't been able to figure out how.
On another note, I am once again having problems with extremely high lag in SL (ping times are 1000 - 2000 msec). This time it's not due to the Wrath of God, but rather to my roommate using bittorrent. Yes, I could do things like disable port forwarding on the router so that bittorrent doesn't work anymore, but I'd feel guilty doing something like that. I mean, we all split the cost of the internet connection, so he has as much right to use it as I do. If anyone has any suggestions for how to improve this, I'd like to hear. I've been trying to look into possible ways of limiting the bandwidth bittorrent can use, but I haven't been able to figure out how.
Tuesday 9 October 2007
24
It's my birthday today! I liked having my age be a prime number, but now I have to wait 6 years until that will happen again. I wont have to wait quite that long to have interesting ages, though, because the year before that, my age will be a perfect number (a hyperperfect number, even!); the year before that, it will be a powerful number; the year before that, it will be a deficient number (ok, so most of the ages I've been have been deficient numbers); and the year before that (next year), my car insurance will go down, as will the price of renting a car.
I had a sad realization today, though. The last time my age was a sublime number, I was too young to realize it, and now I will have to wait quite a while for that to happen again.
I had a sad realization today, though. The last time my age was a sublime number, I was too young to realize it, and now I will have to wait quite a while for that to happen again.
Wednesday 3 October 2007
Numbers
I was wondering about the numbers involved in creating a life-size Earth in Second Life, so I did some calculations. It would require 7,782,984 sims. That would cost $13,036,498,200 (13 billion) initially, and then $2,295,980,280 (2 billion) a month or $27,551,763,360 (27 billion) a year. Assuming each sim is run on a separate computer, that would be about 18,834,821 kWh of electricity. If Linden Labs became it's own US state, it would be ranked 36th (above New Mexico and below Idaho) in electricity consumption. The current size of SL is about 1/5 the size of Rhode Island. If SL continues to grow at the rate it grew between July and August 2007, it will reach the size of the Earth in 711,149 years. By that time, there will be 501,087,718,847 residents, so probably about 3,276 unique users.
Tuesday 2 October 2007
The Future of Video Games
I was reading this article about the next 25 years of video games. It talked about PS3 Home (which is Sony's attempt at competing with Second Life, or more probably with imvu) like it was some new type of entity that has never been seen before. "Sometime in the Spring of '08 Sony will break ground on the kind of virtual world that has been predicted by, well, about 40 percent of the science-fiction stories written in the last 50 years." I guess if PS3 Home will "break ground" on these virtual worlds, then Second Life "acquired the building permit"? And then it gets worse: "...but even if PS3 Home dies on the vine, it will, at worst, serve as the blueprint the next virtual world is built from. It could be the Model-T of what could, generations later, turn into something close to The Matrix." I think that, at worst, it will be remembered as that Second Life rip-off that sucked and no one ever used. Anyway, the article is pretty interesting despite the author's ignorance of certain things. He also did one of my biggest pet peeves by saying about Spore "They're planning on half a million stars with millions of planets orbiting. When we say 'infinite,' we mean it." Actually, you don't mean it, because you just clearly stated finite numbers. The worst is when people use the term "literally" when they really mean exactly the opposite. I mean, if you were literally so scared you jumped out of your skin, you wouldn't be talking to me right now, would you?
And now for something completely different
And now for something completely different
Monday 1 October 2007
Crackbook
Some people have put together a hilarious parody of Facebook. Make sure you see the news feed, applications, profile, and real profile.
Friday 28 September 2007
Robby Wins
I went into the Beta Grid to test the C:SI swords with the new Havoc engine. The following error appears when slashing: "Unable to create requested object - Parse failure." This happened with my Musashi Black Rose and Ashes Cursed Spirit, and Kasumi said it happened with her Archanox sword. However, the Wave Katana didn't produce this error (hence this post's title). Regardless of the error, all the swords could damage another avatar, however only the Wave could do damage to the practice dummy I have, which uses collision detection. Kicks did damage and produced no error messages with all the swords, but they didn't push the opponent. We were in a sim with llPushObject restricted, though.
Jumps are different. You can't move around as much while you're in the air. The effect this has on dueling is that when you jump slash, there is no way to avoid landing right behind your opponent (if they don't move) instead of far away from them like people often do.
For all the swords, the avatar didn't move during a special. They still did damage if someone was nearby, and Kasumi actually managed to hurt herself with one.
There was one bug we found that was hard to reproduce. After dueling, both of us were sunken into the ground. We fixed it by teleporting each other. During the next fight, I sunk so far into the ground that I got stuck in my falling animation and couldn't move. I tried to reproduce this by running around, jumping, and doing sword actions while out of mouselook, but it wasn't happening.
Jumps are different. You can't move around as much while you're in the air. The effect this has on dueling is that when you jump slash, there is no way to avoid landing right behind your opponent (if they don't move) instead of far away from them like people often do.
For all the swords, the avatar didn't move during a special. They still did damage if someone was nearby, and Kasumi actually managed to hurt herself with one.
There was one bug we found that was hard to reproduce. After dueling, both of us were sunken into the ground. We fixed it by teleporting each other. During the next fight, I sunk so far into the ground that I got stuck in my falling animation and couldn't move. I tried to reproduce this by running around, jumping, and doing sword actions while out of mouselook, but it wasn't happening.
Thursday 27 September 2007
Google's Virtual World
It looks like Google may be launching their own virtual world by the end of this year. It will probably use the data from Google Earth, i.e. be a virtual replica of the real world. It will be interesting to see what Google does with it. Since it doesn't look like there will sword fighting any time soon, I probably won't abandon Second Life, but knowing Google they probably have some pretty cool stuff planned. At the same time, it appears that Linden Labs is working on opening up Second Life as much as possible:
So it's possible we will see a future where the best parts of Google's new virtual world are integrated into Second Life.
Google is also going to announce on November 5 a new API that will be similar to Facebook's application API. Basically, web developers will be able to leverage social aspects of Google's tools such as Orkut and Google Talk on their own webpages. This is pretty huge, as it has the implication of turning the entire internet into a social network if the API is used extensively. The Google Talk API, for example, could be used to easily create an area in a webpage where everyone currently looking at that page could chat with each other. Imagine if this new social internet was completely accessible from and integrated into Google's virtual world. I think the next 5 years should be pretty interesting.
p.s.: Didn't Google try to buy Linden Labs earlier this year?
"We imagine a future where Second Life is able grow beyond the borders of Linden Lab. We see regions running on open source, alternative simulators. We see web services that allow people to build mash-ups of Second Life and the Web. We see organizations being able to integrate their members and their members’ avatars. This is the vision of future Second Life Grid that we want to develop."
So it's possible we will see a future where the best parts of Google's new virtual world are integrated into Second Life.
Google is also going to announce on November 5 a new API that will be similar to Facebook's application API. Basically, web developers will be able to leverage social aspects of Google's tools such as Orkut and Google Talk on their own webpages. This is pretty huge, as it has the implication of turning the entire internet into a social network if the API is used extensively. The Google Talk API, for example, could be used to easily create an area in a webpage where everyone currently looking at that page could chat with each other. Imagine if this new social internet was completely accessible from and integrated into Google's virtual world. I think the next 5 years should be pretty interesting.
p.s.: Didn't Google try to buy Linden Labs earlier this year?
Wednesday 26 September 2007
Jokes
I found a list of computer science jokes. I was a bit disturbed by the guy pointing at me and laughing.
Thursday 20 September 2007
Quality Metrics
Linden Labs now has a page showing Service Quality metrics. Right now, it just shows a bar graph of planned and unplanned interruptions since March. The trend doesn't look good. Hopefully the fact that they have made this information publicly available indicates that they hope and expect to improve it.
Wednesday 19 September 2007
Talk Like a Pirate Day
I've never been very good at pirate talk. Let me give it a try.
"I can burn you a copy of Spiderman 3 if you want."
p.s.: I realize the bold I added in my last post isn't very visible. I added underlining to make it stand out more. If you missed it, my final comment may not have made much sense.
"I can burn you a copy of Spiderman 3 if you want."
p.s.: I realize the bold I added in my last post isn't very visible. I added underlining to make it stand out more. If you missed it, my final comment may not have made much sense.
Tuesday 18 September 2007
ToS Problem Resolved
Ok, I got my alt working again by going to live chat support a third time. I spoke with "Patrick" again, but this time convinced him to actually fix my account. I got this amusing email when they fixed both of my accounts. I emphasized my favorite phrase in bold.
Dear Colin Kiernan,"Sir, we have tracked the problem with your account to last Friday, when your avatar witnessed a double homocide involving a pregnant woman and a kitten. It was extremely traumatic."
Greetings from Second Life. Occasionally, Linden Lab needs to determine the cause of bugs, simulator slowdowns, and various other occurrences that you may have experienced while in Second Life.
While fixing a bug, we were able to trace it to something that your avatar may have been doing, or something they may have seen. For this reason, we have disabled your ability to log in to Second Life while we examine your logs and try to determine the cause.
Your account will be returned shortly (usually within a 1/2 hour), and no changes will be made to your character or account other than those required to resolve the problem.
Your account will be restored as soon as we resolve the specific issue, and we will notify you via email when that happens. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please feel free to contact us if you have further questions.
Best Wishes,
Linden Lab
Comments from the Official Linden Blog
Sometimes I wonder what percentage of Linden Lab's employees take anti-depressants.
These are all from the past few weeks or so. Some of the best ones were from the Wednesday maintenance posts back when they shut down the grid every two weeks. I might go back and look through those if I find myself with nothing better to do.
"…we value free expression, bla bla bla"
"How about the account history page NOT updating for hours…a problem that exists since last thursday?
Good morning Linden…hope you guys/gals had a good rest - at least your sleep seems to be very sound !"
"It’s posts like these that make me laugh quietly to myself."
"WOW…… right now i can’t remember any of the bugs i was working around all the time that HASN’T been fixed!!! GREAT WORK!!!"
"You know this may be alittle OFF TOPIC - but you keep on with this new CRAP! I WANT YOU TO FIX THE SOFTWARE FIRST ! I have crashed 24 times today - get that LL 24 friggin times. This time EVERY NIGHT (LISTEN NOW) EVERY NIGHT I start jerking and jagging and stuttering and slobbering all over myself. I push 8md bandwidth !!! HEAR THAT LL ???? It’s not on MY SIDE> I am damn tired of it. You charge me $9.95 every friggin month “ON TIME” cause that’s the only software you HAVE that WORKS!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am sick and tired of friggin posting here cause you never fix crap - you never answer OR resolve “BUG REPORTS” you do nothing but introduce new crap that screws things up more. You are loosing premium members and “gaining” newbies that don’t pay crap!!! I am sick and tired of you not addressing the issues brought up in the blog replies. You whistle and bell us and give us a story. LL you have some SERIOUS ISSUES to address. Some of which are SECURITY ISSUES>which I have told you about the bugs in your software and you ignore. You take our money - on time. When your “cracked” software allows avatars to poof objects and manipulate other avatars and access my funds - you have a serious problem -YET YOU PAY NO ATTENTION TO IT OR ANSWER MY REPORTS!!!! That’s “good” business! You pay absolutly no attention to “bug” or “abuse” reports except send me an email. I can use your online support fine “that works” half the time to waste 70 minutes to get no where and cut off. Your relationship with PayPal - well let’s just say PayPAl don’t like you. Straight up!!! Everytime I do PayPal I call to call you - on MY DIME to set it straight - let me hear you explain that LL. It does get straight but it costs me another 5 bucks long distance to do that. How many lindens it that LL? You can remove this post if you don’t like the truth."
"/me laughs at yet another half-done pseudo-effort of problem solving."
These are all from the past few weeks or so. Some of the best ones were from the Wednesday maintenance posts back when they shut down the grid every two weeks. I might go back and look through those if I find myself with nothing better to do.
Can LL change anything without a bug?
LL made a change to the Terms of Service today. The nature of the change isn't the topic here, although it appears to be beneficial. The problem is I now can't log in to SL as I have to agree to the new ToS, but the dialog is stuck on "loading..." and won't let me choose to agree. I have tried restarting the client. Grr...
Update: I went to the support page on the website and connected to live chat. "Jake" asked what my problem was, I told him, he said "I will fix this" and then a few minutes later "fixed". I successfully logged in (I didn't see the ToS box). So...I avoided agreeing to the new ToS...?
Update 2: I am having the same problem with my alt (who I haven't introduced yet, that post is coming), but since my alt doesn't have a premium account, I can't use live chat. I went back to my normal account and back into live chat, telling them I was having the problem with an alt. This time "Patrick" said they knew about that problem and were working on it. I asked if there was a work-around, and he said they were asking people to just wait a few minutes until it loads. I think I have been waiting close to 10 minutes now. Where is "Jake"!?
Update: I went to the support page on the website and connected to live chat. "Jake" asked what my problem was, I told him, he said "I will fix this" and then a few minutes later "fixed". I successfully logged in (I didn't see the ToS box). So...I avoided agreeing to the new ToS...?
Update 2: I am having the same problem with my alt (who I haven't introduced yet, that post is coming), but since my alt doesn't have a premium account, I can't use live chat. I went back to my normal account and back into live chat, telling them I was having the problem with an alt. This time "Patrick" said they knew about that problem and were working on it. I asked if there was a work-around, and he said they were asking people to just wait a few minutes until it loads. I think I have been waiting close to 10 minutes now. Where is "Jake"!?
Thursday 13 September 2007
Tagging Inventory Items in SL
My inventory in SL is a nightmare, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who has trouble keeping it organized. I just sumbitted a feature request to Jira to add tagging support to objects, as seen in Gmail and many other services.
I think a very useful feature that seems easy to implement is to allow tagging of inventory items. By tagging, I mean assigning one or more keywords to objects. This can be seen in many of Google's services such as Gmail. This feature would make it much easier for a resident to find items in his/her inventory, which can be rather difficult for residents with large inventories.If you think this is a good idea, go and vote for it and then spread the word!
Currently, a resident must either spend a lot of time organizing everything into folders so they can easily find what they or looking for. Otherwise, they need to remember the name of the object they want, which is sometimes hard.
Assigned tags would be transferred along with items, so that people wouldn't have to tag each new item they got, which isn't any better than having to move it into the proper folder. Ideally, the tags would be pre-assigned by the creators and previous owners. This would make it much easier to find specific items. For example, I might have a shirt with "mens", "goth", "shirt", "short-sleeved", "black". If I felt like wearing a goth outfit, I could just look at all the items in my inventory with the "goth" tag. Maybe I want to show off my new tattoo, then I can search for the "short-sleeved" tag. There could also be tags that SL maintains, such as "added to inventory in the last 30 days" or "rezzed/attached/worn in the past 7 days", etc.
Monday 10 September 2007
Google Sets
There is an experimental Google project called Google Sets that is fun to play with. You give it a few words or phrases, and then it comes up with a list of related items. For example, if I give it "red", "green" and "blue", it generates a long list of colors (and "unleashed07", for some reason). As the list goes down, the terms seem to be less and less related. I can see a way this might be useful. Let's say you don't like iTunes, Winamp, or Windows Media Player. Type those into Google Sets, and it will give you a ton of other music playing programs, such as my favorite, Amarok (only for Linux...until Amarok 2 comes out). I was also able to stump it. I gave it "Oda", "Takeda", and "Shimazu", which are three clans from Sengoku era Japan. I expected other clans such as Mori, Uesugi, Hojo or Imagawa, but instead I got nothing.
Sunday 9 September 2007
Comparing Second Life on Windows and Linux
Here's something I found interesting. I logged into Second Life a couple times when I was still running Ubuntu, and I noticed something about my framerate. (Unfortunately, Blogspot appears to convert any image uploaded to a jpeg, which makes it hard to see the individual red dots in the screenshots.)
You can't see the dots very well, but there are two distinct columns on either side. On my old computer, I used SL in both Windows XP and Ubuntu, but I never saw this. My framerate is oscillating between about 35 and 42 fps, forming those two columns. Usually the distribution is more chaotic. It might have something to do with the dual-core CPU, or could just be that I'm running it on a much newer Ubuntu installation without a lot of other software installed. I thought maybe it had something to do with the window manager, so I ran SL without a window manager to see what it would look like.
Now we see a much more steady framerate. It also looks like this if I switch to fullscreen mode, but am still running a window manager (GNOME).
Now that I'm running Windows, I decided to do the same experiment. There's no point in comparing the actual framerates, as I wasn't always in the same place when I took these screenshots (but I did make sure I wasn't looking at any avatars or anything that was moving and might cause fluctuation).
In windowed mode, there's is a lot of fluctuation, and it tends to be all over the place. What's shown here is perhaps a little more extreme than the norm.
Fullscreen is better, showing slightly less fluctuation than Linux in windowed mode.
On a side note, I have probably used SL about equal amounts in both Ubuntu and Windows XP, so I'm going to write a short comparison for anyone who's interested. For me, it always feels smoother in Ubuntu, although when I actually look at the framerate there doesn't seem to be any significant difference. The Linux viewer also seems more stable. A downside to Ubuntu is that there is no support for video playback in the Linux viewer (which is why it is still tagged as 'alpha'), but I don't need that very often. One thing that always annoyed me in Ubuntu was the sound. I won't go into the technical details, but there are two options. If I just run SL normally, the sound is delayed about 1 second from when I should hear it. This is kind of annoying, and might actually hurt my dueling ability since a lot of my reaction is based on sound. If I edit the script that runs SL by commenting out a certain line, the sound delay is fixed, but there is a side effect that SL doesn't allow anything else to play a sound. There are times when someone will post a youtube link or something like that, and I can't watch it without logging out. It also makes it so I can't listen to music while I'm using SL, which is something I do a lot.
You can't see the dots very well, but there are two distinct columns on either side. On my old computer, I used SL in both Windows XP and Ubuntu, but I never saw this. My framerate is oscillating between about 35 and 42 fps, forming those two columns. Usually the distribution is more chaotic. It might have something to do with the dual-core CPU, or could just be that I'm running it on a much newer Ubuntu installation without a lot of other software installed. I thought maybe it had something to do with the window manager, so I ran SL without a window manager to see what it would look like.
Now we see a much more steady framerate. It also looks like this if I switch to fullscreen mode, but am still running a window manager (GNOME). Now that I'm running Windows, I decided to do the same experiment. There's no point in comparing the actual framerates, as I wasn't always in the same place when I took these screenshots (but I did make sure I wasn't looking at any avatars or anything that was moving and might cause fluctuation).
In windowed mode, there's is a lot of fluctuation, and it tends to be all over the place. What's shown here is perhaps a little more extreme than the norm.
Fullscreen is better, showing slightly less fluctuation than Linux in windowed mode.On a side note, I have probably used SL about equal amounts in both Ubuntu and Windows XP, so I'm going to write a short comparison for anyone who's interested. For me, it always feels smoother in Ubuntu, although when I actually look at the framerate there doesn't seem to be any significant difference. The Linux viewer also seems more stable. A downside to Ubuntu is that there is no support for video playback in the Linux viewer (which is why it is still tagged as 'alpha'), but I don't need that very often. One thing that always annoyed me in Ubuntu was the sound. I won't go into the technical details, but there are two options. If I just run SL normally, the sound is delayed about 1 second from when I should hear it. This is kind of annoying, and might actually hurt my dueling ability since a lot of my reaction is based on sound. If I edit the script that runs SL by commenting out a certain line, the sound delay is fixed, but there is a side effect that SL doesn't allow anything else to play a sound. There are times when someone will post a youtube link or something like that, and I can't watch it without logging out. It also makes it so I can't listen to music while I'm using SL, which is something I do a lot.
Chat with Dell Tech Support
Here are parts of my conversation with Dell tech support. I saved the chat log, but that turned out to be unnecessary as they emailed it to me a few minutes later.
Notice it was a about 2 minutes of silence after I stated my problem before he asked that question. Also notice I have already answered it in my initial statement.
Umm....I'd say I made the biggest possible software change? Also, notice the almost 2 minute delay again.
I like that I was asked what I had already tried, instead of the normal tech support experience where they take you painfully through everything you've already tried in mind-numbing step-by-step instructions.
Now, if you read my previous post, you know that I put a wireless card in the computer. But he didn't know this, so I don't know how he was expecting to be able to connect to my computer. I had already told him one of my problems was with ethernet device. Luckily, I did have the wireless card. The Dell software to do this failed the first time, but it worked on a second attempt. After connecting, there was a delay of a few minutes, followed by him opening Device Manager, then another long delay. A total of 12 minutes after he connected to my computer:
I waited for more, since I had stated above that I was pretty sure this was the problem but that I didn't know which ones to download. I finally asked where to get them and he said he'd give them to me; then navigated to the driver download page and began downloading. It was going to take 40 minutes, so I told him I had a slow connection and that if he just gave me the URLs to the drivers, I could download them and install them on my own. He gave them to me, and even asked me if I wanted him to call me the next day to see if it worked. I told him I'd just contact tech support if it didn't. I guess this was a pretty good tech support experience, compared to others I've had. From beginning to end it was 1 hour and 15 minutes, but during a lot of that I was waiting for a response, and could watch TV.
| 09/07/2007 06:33:15PM | Session Started with Agent (Harshavardhan_77570) |
| 09/07/2007 06:33:27PM | Agent (Harshavardhan_77570): "Thank you for contacting Dell XPS Premium Support. My name is Harshavardhan and my rep ID number is 0177570. How may I assist you today?" |
| 09/07/2007 06:34:08PM | Colin Kern: "I have just installed Windows XP on my XPS 410, but ethernet and sound doesn't work." |
| 09/07/2007 06:34:22PM | Agent (Harshavardhan_77570): "I will assist you with the issue." |
| 09/07/2007 06:34:40PM | Colin Kern: "Thank you." |
| 09/07/2007 06:36:29PM | Agent (Harshavardhan_77570): "When was the first time you had this problem ?" |
Notice it was a about 2 minutes of silence after I stated my problem before he asked that question. Also notice I have already answered it in my initial statement.
| 09/07/2007 06:37:37PM | Colin Kern: "I bought the computer from Dell with Ubuntu Linux installed, and everything worked fine then. But I have just installed Windows XP, and the sound and ethernet don't work." |
| 09/07/2007 06:39:02PM | Agent (Harshavardhan_77570): "Have you made any software or hardware changes?" |
Umm....I'd say I made the biggest possible software change? Also, notice the almost 2 minute delay again.
| 09/07/2007 06:40:35PM | Agent (Harshavardhan_77570): "Have you tried any steps from your end to resolve the issue?" |
| 09/07/2007 06:41:53PM | Colin Kern: "I looked in the device manager to try to diagnose the devices, and they did not appear in the list, so I believe the problem is that I don't have the drivers." |
| 09/07/2007 06:42:15PM | Colin Kern: "I looked at Dell's support website, but was confused as to which drivers I need to download." |
I like that I was asked what I had already tried, instead of the normal tech support experience where they take you painfully through everything you've already tried in mind-numbing step-by-step instructions.
| 09/07/2007 06:43:13PM | Agent (Harshavardhan_77570): "All right." |
| 09/07/2007 06:43:34PM | Agent (Harshavardhan_77570): "Can I take the control of your system to check with the issue?" |
Now, if you read my previous post, you know that I put a wireless card in the computer. But he didn't know this, so I don't know how he was expecting to be able to connect to my computer. I had already told him one of my problems was with ethernet device. Luckily, I did have the wireless card. The Dell software to do this failed the first time, but it worked on a second attempt. After connecting, there was a delay of a few minutes, followed by him opening Device Manager, then another long delay. A total of 12 minutes after he connected to my computer:
| 09/07/2007 07:13:59PM | Agent (Harshavardhan_77570): "You need to install the drivers on the computer." |
I waited for more, since I had stated above that I was pretty sure this was the problem but that I didn't know which ones to download. I finally asked where to get them and he said he'd give them to me; then navigated to the driver download page and began downloading. It was going to take 40 minutes, so I told him I had a slow connection and that if he just gave me the URLs to the drivers, I could download them and install them on my own. He gave them to me, and even asked me if I wanted him to call me the next day to see if it worked. I told him I'd just contact tech support if it didn't. I guess this was a pretty good tech support experience, compared to others I've had. From beginning to end it was 1 hour and 15 minutes, but during a lot of that I was waiting for a response, and could watch TV.
Finally!
Ok, here's how I finally got Windows on my computer.
In Ubuntu, I was able to apply the SP2 update to the files I had copied from the CD using Wine. The problem was with burning it back onto another CD. I extracted the Windows boot image, but it wasn't in a normal format, and as much as I searched on the internet, I couldn't find a Linux tool that could do it. I burned a few duds that contained the data but weren't bootable. The next thing to try was running trial versions of Nero or Roxio with Wine. Neither would run with Wine, so it was finally time to install Windows XP on my laptop. I got back to the point I was at before, and then got the trial version of Roxio. But guess what? The trial version doesn't allow the option I needed. I tried Nero and found out the same thing. So it was back to the drawing board. I finally discovered a program called nLite, which does everything for you. I downloaded it and had my slipstreamed CD within fifteen minutes.
So I went to install Windows with my new CD...and I still got the blue screen of death. The error was different, though. I wrote down the important information (some hex numbers) and then started searching around on the internet. I finally found out what the problem is on the Dell support website. My motherboard settings were set to "RAID on", and I needed to switch it to "RAID autodetect/ATA". When I went to change it in my motherboard, I noticed it said that switching could decrease performance, even if I only had one disk (if you don't know, RAID is a method of using multiple disks to either increase performance or backup data). It's interesting that they had this option set for Linux, but it doesn't work with Windows. I wonder if I should try to get a RAID driver and switch back to it. Anyway, once I had changed the setting, I was able to install Windows without a problem. Unfortunately, not everything worked when I booted it up.
The first thing I noticed was that I had no network devices. I noticed later that I also had no sound. The problem was obviously with drivers, but upon getting to Dell's driver download page I couldn't figure out which I needed to get out of the about a hundred that were listed. They were categorized, but there were still something like 5 for networking and 8 for audio. At this point, I was using my laptop to look for the drivers with the intention to transfer them with a USB flash drive. I decided it would be easier if I took my wireless card out of my old computer and put it in this one. I did that and then started running Windows Update. There was an updated driver for my wireless card that I selected to have downloaded, but when got to installing it, there was a flash of BSOD and my computer restarted. Windows booted up, BSOD after a few seconds, computer restarts, repeat. I got into safe mode and uninstalled the wireless card. Rebooted and still had the problem. I tried rolling back the driver, but it said it didn't have any previous versions stored. Instead of spending who knows how long figuring out how to fix this, I just reinstalled Windows. After this, I was very frustrated and just wanted to get things working. I went to Dell's support website and was able to chat online with a technician who eventually gave me the drivers I needed. Look forward to another post containing this chat session. So after getting the drivers, everything works, and I am being careful to not let Windows download that updated driver. I had a similar problem with my old computer, where it always wanted to download an updated driver for my sound chip, but it would always just break sound and I'd have to roll back.
So hopefully this will be the last of these types of posts for a while, as I can now enjoy a working computer. On another note, I have 2 other posts I want to do, and I'm thinking of a 3rd. I'll try to space them out, maybe save some for tomorrow. But expect more posts in the near future.
In Ubuntu, I was able to apply the SP2 update to the files I had copied from the CD using Wine. The problem was with burning it back onto another CD. I extracted the Windows boot image, but it wasn't in a normal format, and as much as I searched on the internet, I couldn't find a Linux tool that could do it. I burned a few duds that contained the data but weren't bootable. The next thing to try was running trial versions of Nero or Roxio with Wine. Neither would run with Wine, so it was finally time to install Windows XP on my laptop. I got back to the point I was at before, and then got the trial version of Roxio. But guess what? The trial version doesn't allow the option I needed. I tried Nero and found out the same thing. So it was back to the drawing board. I finally discovered a program called nLite, which does everything for you. I downloaded it and had my slipstreamed CD within fifteen minutes.
So I went to install Windows with my new CD...and I still got the blue screen of death. The error was different, though. I wrote down the important information (some hex numbers) and then started searching around on the internet. I finally found out what the problem is on the Dell support website. My motherboard settings were set to "RAID on", and I needed to switch it to "RAID autodetect/ATA". When I went to change it in my motherboard, I noticed it said that switching could decrease performance, even if I only had one disk (if you don't know, RAID is a method of using multiple disks to either increase performance or backup data). It's interesting that they had this option set for Linux, but it doesn't work with Windows. I wonder if I should try to get a RAID driver and switch back to it. Anyway, once I had changed the setting, I was able to install Windows without a problem. Unfortunately, not everything worked when I booted it up.
The first thing I noticed was that I had no network devices. I noticed later that I also had no sound. The problem was obviously with drivers, but upon getting to Dell's driver download page I couldn't figure out which I needed to get out of the about a hundred that were listed. They were categorized, but there were still something like 5 for networking and 8 for audio. At this point, I was using my laptop to look for the drivers with the intention to transfer them with a USB flash drive. I decided it would be easier if I took my wireless card out of my old computer and put it in this one. I did that and then started running Windows Update. There was an updated driver for my wireless card that I selected to have downloaded, but when got to installing it, there was a flash of BSOD and my computer restarted. Windows booted up, BSOD after a few seconds, computer restarts, repeat. I got into safe mode and uninstalled the wireless card. Rebooted and still had the problem. I tried rolling back the driver, but it said it didn't have any previous versions stored. Instead of spending who knows how long figuring out how to fix this, I just reinstalled Windows. After this, I was very frustrated and just wanted to get things working. I went to Dell's support website and was able to chat online with a technician who eventually gave me the drivers I needed. Look forward to another post containing this chat session. So after getting the drivers, everything works, and I am being careful to not let Windows download that updated driver. I had a similar problem with my old computer, where it always wanted to download an updated driver for my sound chip, but it would always just break sound and I'd have to roll back.
So hopefully this will be the last of these types of posts for a while, as I can now enjoy a working computer. On another note, I have 2 other posts I want to do, and I'm thinking of a 3rd. I'll try to space them out, maybe save some for tomorrow. But expect more posts in the near future.
The Void
Here I am in the void after sitting on something. I'm sure this has happened to everybody before. This time was strange, though, because I seem to have taken someone else's attachments with me. You can see my Wave on my back...so what's that other sword I'm sitting on? and that necklace thing? I've never seen that before in my life. That green/red glow (mostly red in this shot) is the multitool that most people have. It does that when it gets rezzed and not attached for some reason. All my attachments seem fine, so I can only assume that belongs to someone else as well. When I returned from the void, I looked around for these accessories but didn't see anyone wearing them. Very odd.
Saturday 8 September 2007
Freezing & Crashing
There was an article today in the Second Life Herald that had an interesting graph of some data from the recent key metrics release. It showed that about 24% of sessions are ended "abnormally". I'm not sure exactly what this includes...obviously crashes or freezes. I find this number surprisingly high, as I would estimate 5% of my sessions, at most, end in freezes or crashes. Since my internet problems have started, however, I'm sure I've been contributing to this number from all the times my connection has gone out on me while I was logged in. This makes me wonder how many of these abnormally ended sessions are actually not the fault of Second Life, but something on the user's end.
How often do you freeze or crash? Are there other ways your sessions ends "abnormally"?
p.s.: I am writing this from my new computer which is now running Windows XP. I was finally successful in getting it installed, and I may write about it. Right now, though, it's something I just want to forget.
How often do you freeze or crash? Are there other ways your sessions ends "abnormally"?
p.s.: I am writing this from my new computer which is now running Windows XP. I was finally successful in getting it installed, and I may write about it. Right now, though, it's something I just want to forget.
Wednesday 5 September 2007
The Fate of Second Life
Will Second Life still be here next year? In five years? To answer this question, let's first take a look at Linden Labs financial situation.
It's important to realize that revenue is not profit. Many people see that Second Life is generating millions of dollars a month, and then don't understand why LL doesn't upgrade their network infrastructure and servers to be able to support the growing population. The fact is that LL doesn't have millions of dollars to spend, because the cost of maintaining the grid at its current state is extremely high. An article published in the Second Life Herald this summer looked at the sources of income for LL and their costs, and found two important facts. First, that while LL is making a profit, it is a very small one; and second, that about 1/3 of their revenue comes from selling servers (private islands), and this doesn't include the monthly fees of those private islands, but just the setup fees. This means that unless LL significantly changes either their sources of revenue or their costs, Second Life is only profitable as long as it continues to grow at its current rate. This is basically what caused the dot-com bubble and burst. Internet companies assumed that the growth of the internet seen in the mid-late '90s would continue at that rate indefinitely. There are only so many people in the world, so obviously the growth is going to have to slow down at some point. For the dot-com companies, this happened around 2000. When will it happen for Second Life?
It was around the time I started SL that so many companies began experimenting with marketing in Second Life. If Second Life became an effective marketing tool, LL might be able to get support from companies to boost their profits. LL announced in their blog today the launch of a website focused on assisting companies and other organizations in creating a presence in Second Life. However, I began to see articles popping up a few weeks ago (I get email from Google whenever news stories with the term "Second Life" appear) reporting that many companies are now abandoning their Second Life projects. I think at this point it's too early to tell if and how companies will use Second Life.
There is an article I read earlier this summer I found intersting. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find it again. The author speculated that LL might not care about Second Life continuing for years to come. Why? He saw the trend of LL releasing new features one after the other while the quality of the grid degraded, and recognized a strategy that has been used by companies before. The idea is basically that a company spends all their money creating features (which they patent) and don't care about the actual product failing. Other companies will create their own versions of the product, and now the original company will be able to collect royalties on their patents. So in the case of Second Life, it might fail but if anyone else creates a virtual world with, for example, integrated voice chat, LL will collect royalties. The caveat to this theory is that LL doesn't appear to be patenting like crazy. I personally don't think this is what's going on, but you never know.
From what I've seen, it doesn't look good for Linden Labs, but I don't think this means the end of Second Life. Even if Linden Labs loses all its money, declares bankruptcy, and the grid is shut down, there is still the open source viewer and OpenSim. People will start creating their own grids using OpenSim. It's even likely that the employees of Linden Labs would start contributing to the open source projects (I can only assume they are as obsessed with playing SL as all the normal residents are). But these new grids won't all be linked together in a monolithic "main grid" like the current SL. Instead, there will be numerous grids for different purposes: A C:SI grid, a Gorean grid, an underwater basket weaving grid, etc. I think this is a good thing. Smaller grids are cheaper and easier to maintain. Also, because both the client and server are open source, each grid can have specialized viewers and server code for whatever service they are providing. In fact, I think that once the OpenSim project becomes more mature, what I've just described will happen regardless of whether the main grid goes down or not. I think that people will want to specialize the software to fit their needs, as has happened with almost every open source project out there.
But it's expensive to buy server machines and rent enough bandwidth to maintain your own grid. It seems like these new grids would have to charge lots of money to stay running. If you look at Second Life now, though, there are tons of private sims that people have provided free of charge, and those sims are pretty expensive.
Still there are some other problems that will have to be addressed. For example, what happens to our accounts? Will we have separate accounts for each grid we want to log on to? Perhaps someone will maintain an account server that the grids can talk to, so that we can maintain one account across all the grids. What will happen with money? Will we revert back to a pure barter system (I'll give you this exploding egg for that dancing cow)?
Regardless of these problems, I think the future of Second Life is bright, even if LL goes out of business.
It's important to realize that revenue is not profit. Many people see that Second Life is generating millions of dollars a month, and then don't understand why LL doesn't upgrade their network infrastructure and servers to be able to support the growing population. The fact is that LL doesn't have millions of dollars to spend, because the cost of maintaining the grid at its current state is extremely high. An article published in the Second Life Herald this summer looked at the sources of income for LL and their costs, and found two important facts. First, that while LL is making a profit, it is a very small one; and second, that about 1/3 of their revenue comes from selling servers (private islands), and this doesn't include the monthly fees of those private islands, but just the setup fees. This means that unless LL significantly changes either their sources of revenue or their costs, Second Life is only profitable as long as it continues to grow at its current rate. This is basically what caused the dot-com bubble and burst. Internet companies assumed that the growth of the internet seen in the mid-late '90s would continue at that rate indefinitely. There are only so many people in the world, so obviously the growth is going to have to slow down at some point. For the dot-com companies, this happened around 2000. When will it happen for Second Life?
It was around the time I started SL that so many companies began experimenting with marketing in Second Life. If Second Life became an effective marketing tool, LL might be able to get support from companies to boost their profits. LL announced in their blog today the launch of a website focused on assisting companies and other organizations in creating a presence in Second Life. However, I began to see articles popping up a few weeks ago (I get email from Google whenever news stories with the term "Second Life" appear) reporting that many companies are now abandoning their Second Life projects. I think at this point it's too early to tell if and how companies will use Second Life.
There is an article I read earlier this summer I found intersting. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find it again. The author speculated that LL might not care about Second Life continuing for years to come. Why? He saw the trend of LL releasing new features one after the other while the quality of the grid degraded, and recognized a strategy that has been used by companies before. The idea is basically that a company spends all their money creating features (which they patent) and don't care about the actual product failing. Other companies will create their own versions of the product, and now the original company will be able to collect royalties on their patents. So in the case of Second Life, it might fail but if anyone else creates a virtual world with, for example, integrated voice chat, LL will collect royalties. The caveat to this theory is that LL doesn't appear to be patenting like crazy. I personally don't think this is what's going on, but you never know.
From what I've seen, it doesn't look good for Linden Labs, but I don't think this means the end of Second Life. Even if Linden Labs loses all its money, declares bankruptcy, and the grid is shut down, there is still the open source viewer and OpenSim. People will start creating their own grids using OpenSim. It's even likely that the employees of Linden Labs would start contributing to the open source projects (I can only assume they are as obsessed with playing SL as all the normal residents are). But these new grids won't all be linked together in a monolithic "main grid" like the current SL. Instead, there will be numerous grids for different purposes: A C:SI grid, a Gorean grid, an underwater basket weaving grid, etc. I think this is a good thing. Smaller grids are cheaper and easier to maintain. Also, because both the client and server are open source, each grid can have specialized viewers and server code for whatever service they are providing. In fact, I think that once the OpenSim project becomes more mature, what I've just described will happen regardless of whether the main grid goes down or not. I think that people will want to specialize the software to fit their needs, as has happened with almost every open source project out there.
But it's expensive to buy server machines and rent enough bandwidth to maintain your own grid. It seems like these new grids would have to charge lots of money to stay running. If you look at Second Life now, though, there are tons of private sims that people have provided free of charge, and those sims are pretty expensive.
Still there are some other problems that will have to be addressed. For example, what happens to our accounts? Will we have separate accounts for each grid we want to log on to? Perhaps someone will maintain an account server that the grids can talk to, so that we can maintain one account across all the grids. What will happen with money? Will we revert back to a pure barter system (I'll give you this exploding egg for that dancing cow)?
Regardless of these problems, I think the future of Second Life is bright, even if LL goes out of business.
Tuesday 4 September 2007
Monkey Wrench
I went to the "Technology Solutions Center" on campus to buy Windows XP today (see my previous post), but it turns out I have to order on their website and wait for shipping; they don't keep it in stock. Being impatient, I started looking for alternative methods of getting an install CD of Windows XP with SP2 (other than pirating it). I came across this, which I am going to try. Basically, it involves copying the contents of the install CD into a folder, downloading the SP2 update and applying it to the folder, then burning a new CD. First, I am going to try doing it on my new computer in Ubuntu, using Wine and other tools. I would love to be able to say I took an old Windows XP CD and created a (legal?) up-to-date CD using Linux. If I fail (which is likely), the backup plan is to use my laptop and create the CD in Windows. That will be more annoying because I use Ubuntu on my laptop and so I will have to backup files, install Windows, create the CD, then reinstall Ubuntu, i.e., to get Windows on my desktop, which has Ubuntu, I have to install Windows on my laptop, which I want Ubuntu on, so that I can install Windows on my desktop, and then install Ubuntu back on my laptop.
Monday 3 September 2007
Worse than Dial-up?
It's story time again. This one is about the horrible internet connection I've been living with all summer.
For the past year, we had Verizon DSL, which was fine, although rather slow (downloads were about 90 KB/s on average). The problems started towards the beginning of the summer during a lightning storm. I was at my computer, on SL, and there was a popping noise accompied by my computer restarting. I don't remember there being a lightning strike or anything at that moment, but my only guess is that it was a power surge. When my computer finished booting (thank god it booted, the popping noise was not unlike that of a capacitor taking on too much charge), I noticed the internet was not working. I went down to the basement and saw that all the lights were off on the DSL modem, except for the power light which was flashing, and all the router's lights were off. I unplugged them and plugged them back in, tried other outlets around the house, still the same thing. I called Verizon, they sent a new modem, and I bought a new router.
With the new equipment, we could get back online, but the internet was unreliable. We kept losing our connection (dsl light on the modem would flash green, which means it isn't getting a signal from the ISP). It would come on and off, sometimes just for a few minutes, other times for hours at a time. Also, when it was on it was about half the speed as it used to be. I made multiple frustrating calls to Verizon tech support. Finally I convinced one of them that the problem couldn't be fixed by trivial methods such as turning off the modem and turning it back on, but that there was actually a more serious problem. They put in an order for a technician to come out and find the problem.
The technician came out and said that the line going out of our house needed replacing. You'd think he would then go ahead and replace it, but that would be wrong. Instead, he set up another date for someone to come out and fix it. Are these people really so specialized that one person is trained to diagnose a problem, but then someone else needs to actually fix it? So the line was replaced, and I hoped everything would finally work. Wrong again. The speed seems better, although still fluctuated, and the internet still goes on and off (notice I'm switched to present tense, as this is still the current situation). I didn't bother calling Verizon again, as it's like pulling teeth to get them to do anything other than the basic troubleshooting steps they always go through. Also, I'm now fairly sure the problem is with the internal wiring in the house. Fixing that is something Verizon probably wouldn't cover.
Obviously, this makes SL rather painful to play, which is why I haven't been around as much this summer. Let's take a look.
Now, it's not always like this, just when it's downloading something. So it's like this for maybe 5 - 10 minutes (remember, slow connection) after I teleport somewhere or log in, and maybe 30 seconds whenever a new person arrives. If you're not sure what a ping time of 6476 msec means, it means that if I push a command like 'w' to walk forward, I won't actually move forward until ~6.5 seconds later. The high packet loss rate ensures that a lot of my key presses never even make it to the server...but of course I don't know that until 6.5 seconds later. Add to this the sporadic total loss of internet connectivity, and you have a pretty hostile environment.
Things will finally be fixed when we switch to Comcast cable internet. They are scheduled to install it on September 13th.
For the past year, we had Verizon DSL, which was fine, although rather slow (downloads were about 90 KB/s on average). The problems started towards the beginning of the summer during a lightning storm. I was at my computer, on SL, and there was a popping noise accompied by my computer restarting. I don't remember there being a lightning strike or anything at that moment, but my only guess is that it was a power surge. When my computer finished booting (thank god it booted, the popping noise was not unlike that of a capacitor taking on too much charge), I noticed the internet was not working. I went down to the basement and saw that all the lights were off on the DSL modem, except for the power light which was flashing, and all the router's lights were off. I unplugged them and plugged them back in, tried other outlets around the house, still the same thing. I called Verizon, they sent a new modem, and I bought a new router.
With the new equipment, we could get back online, but the internet was unreliable. We kept losing our connection (dsl light on the modem would flash green, which means it isn't getting a signal from the ISP). It would come on and off, sometimes just for a few minutes, other times for hours at a time. Also, when it was on it was about half the speed as it used to be. I made multiple frustrating calls to Verizon tech support. Finally I convinced one of them that the problem couldn't be fixed by trivial methods such as turning off the modem and turning it back on, but that there was actually a more serious problem. They put in an order for a technician to come out and find the problem.
The technician came out and said that the line going out of our house needed replacing. You'd think he would then go ahead and replace it, but that would be wrong. Instead, he set up another date for someone to come out and fix it. Are these people really so specialized that one person is trained to diagnose a problem, but then someone else needs to actually fix it? So the line was replaced, and I hoped everything would finally work. Wrong again. The speed seems better, although still fluctuated, and the internet still goes on and off (notice I'm switched to present tense, as this is still the current situation). I didn't bother calling Verizon again, as it's like pulling teeth to get them to do anything other than the basic troubleshooting steps they always go through. Also, I'm now fairly sure the problem is with the internal wiring in the house. Fixing that is something Verizon probably wouldn't cover.
Obviously, this makes SL rather painful to play, which is why I haven't been around as much this summer. Let's take a look.
Now, it's not always like this, just when it's downloading something. So it's like this for maybe 5 - 10 minutes (remember, slow connection) after I teleport somewhere or log in, and maybe 30 seconds whenever a new person arrives. If you're not sure what a ping time of 6476 msec means, it means that if I push a command like 'w' to walk forward, I won't actually move forward until ~6.5 seconds later. The high packet loss rate ensures that a lot of my key presses never even make it to the server...but of course I don't know that until 6.5 seconds later. Add to this the sporadic total loss of internet connectivity, and you have a pretty hostile environment.
Things will finally be fixed when we switch to Comcast cable internet. They are scheduled to install it on September 13th.
How I found C:SI
In response to Robby's post, I'm going to tell the story of how I found C:SI, which is actually linked to how I found Second Life, even though I was on SL for a month before coming to C:SI.
The person who showed me SL was my (at the time) girlfriend. I had read a book called Snow Crash, which is a sci-fi book from the early '90s that describes the future of the internet as basically Second Life with virtual reality (in the book it's called the Metaverse, which happens to be the name of a newspaper distributed in SL). Anyway, I had lent it to my girlfriend who liked it a lot, and her Dad had mentioned SL to her (he doesn't play it, but he had read articles about it). She logged in to try it out, told me about it, and then the next day, January 25, 2007, I got my account. She logged in with me and we spent about an hour wandering around as newbies. After that, she never logged in again. She was disappointed that it wasn't exactly like the Metaverse from Snow Crash, and that she couldn't be exactly like the main character, who is the self-proclaimed greatest sword fighter in the world. Also, she recognized it was something she could get obsessed with to the point that it would consume her life. Unlike me and everyone else I know in SL, for which it HAS consumed their lives, she was able to get out while she still could.
I kept coming back, though. Until C:SI a month later, I spent all my time at a place called the Shelter, which is a dance club for newbies. I think what interested me about SL was the social aspect of it. I started graduate school a year ago in a place I had never lived before. All my friends from high school and college were hours away, so I didn't have any friends close by. SL was a place where I could make friends, which is hard when you aren't living in a dorm anymore and just going to campus for classes. One day at the Shelter, a girl showed up with a katana on her back. "Maybe this is more like Snow Crash than I thought," I thought. I asked her where she got it and she gave me a landmark to Samurai Island. I went there, was confused (I don't think I'd bought anything before in SL), and left.
I went back to the Shelter for a while, but I kept thinking I wanted to try the sword fighting. I don't remember exactly what prompted me to actually go out and try again, I think I was just bored one day. I ended up at Bare Rose (I don't remember how, maybe I searched for "katana"?), and asked one of the people working there where to buy a sword. She showed me where they sell them, and I ended up buying a Cursed Spirit. She also gave me a landmark to Shrouded.
I unpacked the sword, read the instructions, and tried swinging it around for a while. Then I went to Shrouded and watched some people fighting. I later realized one of them was Shidji (you can't forget a scary robotic death woman), but I don't remember who the others were. It didn't take long to realize there were clans, and that one should join a clan. I came back the next day and asked someone about joining a clan. That person happened to be Xiang Hifeng (or Kasumi as she is more recently known) who had just started Oda. I joined Oda and the rest, if you'll pardon the cliche, is history.
The person who showed me SL was my (at the time) girlfriend. I had read a book called Snow Crash, which is a sci-fi book from the early '90s that describes the future of the internet as basically Second Life with virtual reality (in the book it's called the Metaverse, which happens to be the name of a newspaper distributed in SL). Anyway, I had lent it to my girlfriend who liked it a lot, and her Dad had mentioned SL to her (he doesn't play it, but he had read articles about it). She logged in to try it out, told me about it, and then the next day, January 25, 2007, I got my account. She logged in with me and we spent about an hour wandering around as newbies. After that, she never logged in again. She was disappointed that it wasn't exactly like the Metaverse from Snow Crash, and that she couldn't be exactly like the main character, who is the self-proclaimed greatest sword fighter in the world. Also, she recognized it was something she could get obsessed with to the point that it would consume her life. Unlike me and everyone else I know in SL, for which it HAS consumed their lives, she was able to get out while she still could.
I kept coming back, though. Until C:SI a month later, I spent all my time at a place called the Shelter, which is a dance club for newbies. I think what interested me about SL was the social aspect of it. I started graduate school a year ago in a place I had never lived before. All my friends from high school and college were hours away, so I didn't have any friends close by. SL was a place where I could make friends, which is hard when you aren't living in a dorm anymore and just going to campus for classes. One day at the Shelter, a girl showed up with a katana on her back. "Maybe this is more like Snow Crash than I thought," I thought. I asked her where she got it and she gave me a landmark to Samurai Island. I went there, was confused (I don't think I'd bought anything before in SL), and left.
I went back to the Shelter for a while, but I kept thinking I wanted to try the sword fighting. I don't remember exactly what prompted me to actually go out and try again, I think I was just bored one day. I ended up at Bare Rose (I don't remember how, maybe I searched for "katana"?), and asked one of the people working there where to buy a sword. She showed me where they sell them, and I ended up buying a Cursed Spirit. She also gave me a landmark to Shrouded.
I unpacked the sword, read the instructions, and tried swinging it around for a while. Then I went to Shrouded and watched some people fighting. I later realized one of them was Shidji (you can't forget a scary robotic death woman), but I don't remember who the others were. It didn't take long to realize there were clans, and that one should join a clan. I came back the next day and asked someone about joining a clan. That person happened to be Xiang Hifeng (or Kasumi as she is more recently known) who had just started Oda. I joined Oda and the rest, if you'll pardon the cliche, is history.
Sunday 2 September 2007
Fighting against a Naginata
I'm going to expand on my comment here about the naginata in C:SI.
First, I'll just post the comment here:
The two main strengths of the naginata are range and power. Its weakness is speed. A basic idea that can be applied to any fight is that you want to try to take advantage of weaknesses while trying to eliminate strengths. There really isn't a way to take away the power advantage of the naginata, but you can take away the range advantage easily. As long as you stay within katana range of your opponent, then it doesn't matter that they have a longer range. Once you are in range, you can easily use your speed to get in strikes whenever they lower their guard. Unfortunately, most people won't tank against a katana if they are using a naginata. Still, you can catch people off guard by trying to stay close. I think they expect the opponent to try to stay away from them, but doing that would allow the range advantage to come into play.
I think I'll stop here and try to fight against some nagis when I can get back on SL, then post a follow up here of what I learn. Most of my experience fighting naginatas was a while ago, when it was more a sort of novelty. I don't think at that time anyone used it as their main weapon or considered it their specialty. It was more that people were just trying it out for fun because it was different.
First, I'll just post the comment here:
Things have changed with the naginata since I started C:SI back in February. It used to be generally believed that someone with a sword fighting someone with a nagi would usually win, unless the person with the nagi was much more experienced. Now, though, people seem to think that the nagi is stronger in general. I’m not sure why this is. It could be that people such as Mayan and Jane actually advanced the art of the naginata, so people are better with it now. But it could also be that people just aren’t taught how to fight against it. It’s been awhile since I’ve fought a nagi, so I can’t say which I think is true, but I used to be able to fight pretty well against nagis. You definitely can’t win if you do the exact same thing you’d do against a katana, but if you adapt I don’t remember there being any advantage to having a nagi.
The two main strengths of the naginata are range and power. Its weakness is speed. A basic idea that can be applied to any fight is that you want to try to take advantage of weaknesses while trying to eliminate strengths. There really isn't a way to take away the power advantage of the naginata, but you can take away the range advantage easily. As long as you stay within katana range of your opponent, then it doesn't matter that they have a longer range. Once you are in range, you can easily use your speed to get in strikes whenever they lower their guard. Unfortunately, most people won't tank against a katana if they are using a naginata. Still, you can catch people off guard by trying to stay close. I think they expect the opponent to try to stay away from them, but doing that would allow the range advantage to come into play.
I think I'll stop here and try to fight against some nagis when I can get back on SL, then post a follow up here of what I learn. Most of my experience fighting naginatas was a while ago, when it was more a sort of novelty. I don't think at that time anyone used it as their main weapon or considered it their specialty. It was more that people were just trying it out for fun because it was different.
The Circle of Life
I broke my computer last week. I was moving my memory into another slot to see if it would stop making the annoying noise it has been making, but something went wrong. I built this computer myself, meaning that the inside is a massive jungle of IDE and power cables, mostly centered over my memory slots. As a result, I couldn't see the slot very well and was doing most of the work my feel, which turned out to be a bad idea. I thought the memory was in all the way, but it wasn't. This resulted in smoke when I turned the computer on and a few of the metal connectors on the RAM had burned. I'm pretty sure putting any other RAM in that slot afterwards would have had bad results. I could have bought some new memory and maybe a new motherboard, but I just decided it was time for a new computer. After this experience, however, I didn't feel like building one.
I came up with a plan that would allow me to get a better computer than I had before for relatively cheap. First of all, I bought a new LCD monitor last spring, so I didn't need to get a monitor. That's about $250 off the price tag. The second part of the plan was to buy a Dell preloaded with Ubuntu Linux. Linux is a free operating system, which means another few hundred dollars off the price of the computer because I don't have to buy a Windows license. This is my gaming machine, though, and so I actually want Windows on it. I have my old Windows XP CD that I can use to install Windows once I get the computer.
I got the computer yesterday, and discovered there was a flaw in the plan. I boot up the computer with the XP disc and after it loads the necessary drivers it attempts to boot into a minimal Windows XP to do the installation, but crashes with a blue screen of death. After trying some things and searching around on the internet, I finally figure out what the problem is. My Windows XP CD has the original release on it, without SP1 or SP2. It wasn't until SP2 that XP supported PCI-E based graphics cards (all new computers now use PCI-E instead of AGP). So now the plan is to buy a new Windows CD. My plan still saved me money, though, because I can get it pretty cheap through the University. I just wish it wasn't Labor Day weekend.
I came up with a plan that would allow me to get a better computer than I had before for relatively cheap. First of all, I bought a new LCD monitor last spring, so I didn't need to get a monitor. That's about $250 off the price tag. The second part of the plan was to buy a Dell preloaded with Ubuntu Linux. Linux is a free operating system, which means another few hundred dollars off the price of the computer because I don't have to buy a Windows license. This is my gaming machine, though, and so I actually want Windows on it. I have my old Windows XP CD that I can use to install Windows once I get the computer.
I got the computer yesterday, and discovered there was a flaw in the plan. I boot up the computer with the XP disc and after it loads the necessary drivers it attempts to boot into a minimal Windows XP to do the installation, but crashes with a blue screen of death. After trying some things and searching around on the internet, I finally figure out what the problem is. My Windows XP CD has the original release on it, without SP1 or SP2. It wasn't until SP2 that XP supported PCI-E based graphics cards (all new computers now use PCI-E instead of AGP). So now the plan is to buy a new Windows CD. My plan still saved me money, though, because I can get it pretty cheap through the University. I just wish it wasn't Labor Day weekend.
Monday 27 August 2007
Welcome
Well, here's another attempt at me keeping a blog. I started a Livejournal my first year in college, and posted fairly regularly for about two years, but then I started posting less and less. 2 posts so far this year and a whole 8 for all of 2006. We'll see if I can get into the habit of posting more on this blog.
As for the content, it's going to be whatever I feel like posting about. Since so much of my free time is involved in Second Life, I'm sure there will be a lot about that, however be prepared to also see ramblings of a computer geek or liberal rants about the ineptitude of certain world leaders.
As for the content, it's going to be whatever I feel like posting about. Since so much of my free time is involved in Second Life, I'm sure there will be a lot about that, however be prepared to also see ramblings of a computer geek or liberal rants about the ineptitude of certain world leaders.
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