Dear Linden Lab

I don't think this needs much explanation. It's a "community" letter to Linden Lab, detailing some concerns many of use have as users of the SL platform. Thank you to Cristiano for spearheading this attempt at communication with The Lab and for Viv's original plea. Read about it here. I encourage like minded folks to sign the letter. It's not a rant, just a plea for long-standing and important issues to be addressed for the betterment our SL experience.

In the past eighteen months, Second Life has expanded, growing from a small
community of early adopters to a platform supporting millions of users. Linden
Lab has created a world that inspires a deep level of passion in its users and
provides unprecedented opportunities to share creatively, socially, and
financially.

With explosive levels of growth often come unexpected problems. In keeping
with your company's policy and rich history of resident involvement, we the
undersigned would like to take this opportunity to address some concerns that we
feel have gone unanswered for too long.

There are some consistent, ongoing problems that are getting worse under
heavy load, not better, and are not simply irritants but problems that are
causing financial loss in some cases, which is unacceptable. Here is a brief
list of the main concerns:

* Inventory loss - this is a devastating problem that is worsening. We have
no ability to protect our own inventories through backups, and are trusting you
to protect that data. This is the highest priority. Sensible inventory limits
(on non-verified accounts only), combined with better management tools and ways
to protect our inventory ourselves would help to mitigate the problem as well.
Regardless, this cannot continue - we will not accept financial loss as a
feature of Second Life. It is your responsibility as service provider to ensure
our data is not lost, and you are failing us.

* Problems with Find and Friends List - we continue to see search outages
on a far too regular basis. It is bad enough trying to get anywhere without
being able to use search, but many users are also paying money for classified
ads. Our friends lists just do not work reliably any longer, after years without
an issue with them. If America Online/MSN/Yahoo can provide presence information
for hundreds of millions of users, surely there is a way to make our friends
lists work again.

* Grid stability and performance - teleports fail quite regularly,
especially under heavy load. Attachments end up in places they did not start out
in, and sim performance varies wildly. None of this makes for a very pleasant
experience for users. Long promised improvement to physics and scripting would
help dramatically to reduce these problems, but there are a lot of other
scalability issues as well. It often feels like the grid is coming apart at the
seams. The promised use of limiting logins of non-verified accounts during peak
load has been severely lacking. This would be an effective interim solution to
load issues, but Linden Lab seems unwilling to use it.

* Build tool problems - the importance of build tools that actually work as
promised cannot be overstated enough - we rely on them to create content. Prim
drift, disappearing prims, imprecise placement, problems with linking and other
issues with the tools need to be addressed. Too much time is being spent trying
to work around the problems.

* Transaction problems - inventory deliveries are failing with an alarming
(and annoying) frequency, leaving merchants with the burden of replacing missing
content and having to try to confim the transaction in the first place. We trust
that our L$ balances are accurate, but given recent problems, that is a cause
for concern as well, and one we place our full trust in you to ensure its
accuracy.

We remain fully supportive of Second Life and are more than willing to
continue doing our part to help, but our confidence is steadily being eroded due
to a general lack of communication and the apparent failure to successfully
address the many issues detailed above. What we are asking for is that these
problems are addressed immediately, ahead of new features, and that we are able
to see tangible improvements. We accept that this will not happen overnight but
it also cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely either.

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

Sculpted Prims

Fun! Now where did I put that blender?

SL Speech Gestures Contest

As The Lab prepares to unveil its new voice feature, they are having a contest - The Second Life Speech Gestures Contest.

It seems that the voice feature includes "speech gestures" that are worn and randombly triggered while you are speaking in-world.

Gestures need to be submitted to Heretic Linden (quiet down in the peanut gallery) no later than 3pm LT on May 7th. Winners to be announced on May 9th.

Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act of 2007

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) introduced H.R. 2046, the Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act of 2007 (GREA 07), which would create an exemption to the 2006 act for properly licensed operators. The GREA 07 would potentially allow Americans to bet online legally.

The move recognizes the realities of internet gambling and seeks to gain some measure of control and create safeguards and standards, rather than the previous puritanical approach (and also rather "head-in-the-sand" view of U.S. online gambling behavior). This new attempt at regulation and enforcement is a far more realistic approach. With the wide availability of casino gambling (as in Las Vegas), riverboat gambling, state run lottos, track betting and off-track betting, the 2006 act seemed extremely disingenuous.

The GREA 07 would establish a framework to license companies to accept wagers online from individuals in the United States. The licenses would include protections for underage gambling, compulsive gambling, money laundering and fraud. In addition to consumer safety and financial integrity protections, the GREA 07 would also provide mechanisms to ensure all appropriate taxes and fees are collected from individuals and licenses (possibly the most interesting piece of this legistlation and which requires its own analysis). Online wagering companies would be bound by regulations in individual states, Indian tribes and sport leagues. Licensing would be handled by the U.S. Treasury through its anti-money laundering agency, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).

The 2006, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act was passed by the House. The 2006 act restricted the handling of payments by U.S. financial institutions for unlawful forms of Internet gambling (under U.S. federal or state law). Frank is quoted on the 2006 act in the House Financial Services Committee article, "The existing legislation is an inappropriate interference on the personal freedom of Americans and this intereference should be undone."

As mentioned, there is legalized gambling throughout the United States. The new legislation seeks to provide meaningful consumer protections for those choosing to gamble online and would institute practical and enforceable standards to Internet gambling. The Financial Services Committee has planned to hold a hearing entitled, "Can Internet gambling be regulated to protect consumers and the payments system?" at a TBD date in June of this year.

Astronomers Discover the Most Earth-like Exoplanet

A group of chaps from Portugal, France and Switzerland have discovered what they call the most "Earth-like" planet outside our solar system. Judged at only 50 percent wider than Earth, the exoplanet (scientific jargon for a planet orbiting another sun besides our own) orbits the red-dwarf star Gliese 581.

The planet would be about twice the surface area of Earth and at least five times as heavy. Due to the proximity to its sun (about 14 times closer than we are to our sun), the planet would have approximately twice the gravity of Earth and a 13-Earth-day-year.

Nevertheless, as the red dwarf is smaller and cooler than our sun, the exoplanet resides in the possible "habitable zone". According to Sté­phane Udry of Switz­er­land’s Ge­ne­va Ob­serv­a­to­ry, the planet's average temperature is estimated at between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius and would thus be home to liquid water. In the article, Udry further claims that models predict the surface to be either rocky or covered with oceans.

Due to the long burn of the red dwarf and its location as one of the 100 closest stars to Earth (a mere 20.5 light years in the constellation Libra), the planet obviously becomes a future target for exploration.

The team made the discovery (after having found another, much heavier planet around the dwarf star 2 years ago) with the Eu­ro­pe­an South­ern Ob­serv­a­to­ry’s 3.6-meter tel­e­scope at La Silla, Chil­e (High Ac­cu­ra­cy Ra­di­al Ve­loc­i­ty for Plan­e­tary Search­er).

Euthanizing Animals

Found this site that gives alleged documents regarding PETA's practices. I don't know whether this is real documentation, but the concept is always interesting as to where we draw our lines. Doublespeak and slight of hand is de rigueur in today's society. Why would PETA be any different? Understanding that, the website linked below may not be unbiased in it's ongoing crusade against PETA. Either way, there it is, an alleged PETA state government filing from days past.

CLICK HERE NOW!

Cyberdyne

No mention of whether they've started work on Skynet, but the Hybrid Assistive Limb (yes, HAL) is a smashing success.

HAL is originallly developed to help elderly or disabled people walk around with their own legs and HAL-3 achieved the primary goal in 2000.

In 2005, the latest model HAL-5 was given upper body limbs as well as weight saving and more compact power units, longer life battery, much smaller control unit and spectacularly designed outer shells.

HAL is a robot suit which can expand and improve physical capabilities of human being. By wearing HAL-5, you can hold up to 40 kg load by arms and can increase the maximum weight of leg press from 100 kg to 180 kg.

I'm particularly interested in the Buttery Pack. You never know when you might run into a pack of rogue lobsters.

Bicycle Lift

There's always a solution. Most times, there are more than one. This one certainly is goofy. We all know that riding a bike may result in perspiration. This is why we don't bike to work, right? It is. Stop your bitching about the weather, the distance and having a wrinkled suit. It's the sweat. It's bad enough if your shower doesn't take, but showing up to work in a full drench is the kind of thing they put on your permanent record.

What to do? Well, rig up a contraption to propel you up that pesky hill with ease, dang it.

Some chap in Norway by the name of Jarle Wanvik has done just that. The Trampe is a device made with help from the local ski lift manufacturer. The lift uses an electric motor to drive a cable and footplates. Just put your foot down and off you go.

Ready the Batmobile!

Lot's of weirdness surrounding the Gotham National Bank these past few days. I suspect some nefarious villains are contemplating a break-in over at Wacker and VanBuren.

Monday Backtalk

What's been going down with The Lab these past few days?

Originially noted at the start of last week, there was a Billing Processor Error. Specifically, residents experienced a "Red-X" error when trying to set up billing information. This has apparently been resolved. The short term solution was holding the shift key and clicking reload, maybe more than once. There was also an issue with PayPal "No Payment Source" errors the required customers to delete existing payment agreements and set up another. Also, particular numbered AmEx Gift Cards were not clearing through LL's payment processor.

The Linden Blog announced problems with search on April 12th. Substantially the same as search issues occurring just days prior. "As with previous problems, these should be intermittent and short-lived."

The Lab announced the removal of ratings in the upcoming Beta Test Grid. This is no great loss and it's good to see some of these functions left for the greater SL populace to take on via third party applications. However, I have never really understood the need to rate anyone on a personal level. It didn't really fit with the image LL seeks to portray for their product. On the flip side, a serious rating/trust system for SL businesses would be a useful tool, particularly for new residents. Unfortunately, due to the infantile nature of the entire human race, we will manage to mangle any such tool such that it resembles the personal ratings and is no longer a true measure of SL business. The Blog announcement included a list of resident sights seeking to provide just these types of services. One notable squabble has already popped up regarding one of the sites. Seemingly just another slickster trying leach a few dollars by forcing residents to pay to view comments made about them. No big deal, unless you run a business. Fortunately it seems there may be another option in the works, provided by someone that has been successful in tangentially related efforts through SLUniverse.

On the heels of the ratings removal, we have the April 13th announcement of the new Beta Test Grid. The new version hopes to fix rendering issues with 1.14.0, a tweak to the mature content flag in search that will allow for more granularity - noting a non-mature parcel despite it's location in a mature region, the previously mentioned ratings removal, and an LSL Wiki browser embedded in the viewer (for LSL Wiki Help). As usual, there is a full list of items and bug fixes. Buried in that list were bug fixes to fix avatar reverting to default appearance, fixed a case where you could not modify your modifyable object, and a number of viewer related display concerns. Let's all grab a seat and watch the implementation fireworks on the 18th.

Finally, on Saturday, April 14, there was the minor matter of inventory loss reports. Apparently some folks were experiencing inventory reverting back to default. In other words, losing all their items. The Lab Blog helfully noted that you should look in the Lost and Found, clear your cache, and look into region rollbacks as possible culprits. Of course, this is no comfort to those residents that actually lost all of their inventory, but The Lab was still investigating the reports and have helped a few individuals already. You probably needed to clean that inventory cesspool anyway. Additionally, now you don't have to pull ideas out of your tuckus as to what to do in SL. Go forth and shop. Fill those inventories.....and those economics stats.

WoW Tricks

http://uplued.com/waffleimages/files/9a/9a92fe2d5bbecc96589912090c3b22ecfdc9e0be.jpg

I don't even know what to make of this story. Mind boggling. Funny. Sad. The story runs the gamut.

The "facts" (I'm not vouching for the veracity of this, but the story is in the web's ether) are that a woman really wanted a WoW Epic Mount, which runs at 5,000 gold. In exchange, this WoW temptress was going to let someone "mount her". According to this random website, that is roughly equivalent to $625.

Truly spectacular. It seems the deal was consumated and all parties were satisfied. However, the Level 70 Night Elf Druid was not pleased with the amount of negative attention and outright derision that her offer generated.

Thank you, Freya, for bringing this to my attention. I would not have wanted to miss this tidbit. The Interwebz is crazy cooky, folks. Remember, let's be careful out there.

Take it easy, Kurt

Vonnegut passed away after 84 years on this planet. His official website shows only the well known birdcage image, door open, and the caption "Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.1922 — 2007".

The man produced some very interesting works. I'm not sad. Everyone goes eventually, and this was no early exit. If anything, it brings to mind literary works that had meaning for me and an excuse to refamiliarize myself with those wonderful novels. Vonnegut managed to hint at deeper, darker things without losing a sense of humor and irreverence that a person like me can appreciate. Fortunatly, the world of Kilgore Trout, Rabo Karabekian and the like continues on in the wealth of writing Vonnegut left behind.

There are always critics of anyone that receives attention for their work, but I always found the charges to miss the intent of what Vonnegut was doing. To each his own. Some critics see simplicity, repitition and a lack of stylistic development. I see a distinctive and effective style coupled with a brutal humor that shined a light on frank and disturbing truths about the world we live in and where it is headed. The troubled images of humanity are as valid today as they ever were during the era they were spawned in. Vonnegut's method of delivery confounds some people looking for something more traditional. So it is with authors dealing in the less respected genres and those that are hard to characterize at all.

I found his writing a joy and well worth reading. Included in that body of work are some fantastic speeches, interviews and essays. The man could make me laugh.

I also find his 8 Rules for Writing Fiction to be invaluable tips:

http://www.americanstate.org/vonnegut.html

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not
feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she
can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a
glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal
character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as
possible.
6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading
characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see
what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a
window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get
pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as
possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding
of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves,
should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
-- Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut,
Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons
1999), 9-10.

A Hex on Saturn

NASA's Cassini mission was able to capture images of the north pole of Saturn. What can be seen is an incredible six-sided feature surrounding the entire pole. The hexagon is nearly 25,000 kilometers in diameter.

Thermal-infrared light images indicate the hexagon extends approximately 100 kilometers below the cloud tops, which is significantly deeper than previously thought (first seen by Voyager over 25 years ago). A cloud system within the hexagon spins around the inside "like cars on a racetrack".

Take a look at this short clip of the clouds in motion.

Avatar Watson - come here - I want to see you.

LL introduces the Voice Beta client.

Here it comes. Haven't tried it myself yet. Should be fun for a few minutes. Beyond that, I don't know. It will be a weird transition when fully integrated. There are definite applications for teaching, interesting presenters, poetry, press conferences, and what have you. It is certainly another angle to annoy people. I have some reservations, but nothing worth going into. I'll reserve judgement until I actually try it.


"Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar." Edward R. Murrow

The New Underground

The Mars Odyssey, using its Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), located seven dark spots near the planet's equator. Scientists believe these spots could represent entraces to underground caves. Discovered near the Martian volcano Arisa Mons, the openings appear to be anywhere from 330 feet to 820 feet wide. One of the potential caves is believed to extend nearly 430 feet beneath the surface of the planet.

Speculation abounds as to what further information could be gained from exploring these caves more closely. Of particular interest is the potential to find any evidence of microbial life. More long-range thinkers could envision the caverns as the location of Martian habitats for future explorers. Plans are in the works to refine the THEMIS infrared techniques and to develop robots with the capabilities to explore the caves.

Certainly is an interesting development and something I'll be keeping an eye on. The giant Martian wasp army is bound to emerge from their underground lair soon.