LindenWatch

not that it matters but...

2011-10-12T09:55:00.000-07:00

No orders, no reviews. That's the only amazon account I have, and I almost never use it.

Now....

2011-10-10T22:10:00.000-07:00

we wait and see...

An apology

2011-03-26T15:31:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry for keeping this blog on moderation only. There are two reasons for this.
Willilicious Georgette
Wayfinder Wishbringer

The constant abuse of our staff and followers from these two individuals means until I can figure out how to ban them all comments are moderated, and posts from these two users go straight to trash!

not dead yet

2011-03-25T19:50:00.000-07:00

LindenWatch is still around folks. The staff have had a really hectic month but we are working on two projects that we hope will make the wait worthwhile...

In case you haven't heard

2011-03-12T13:19:00.000-08:00

Alphaville Herald broke the latest of a saga. Rather then steal Pixeleen's work I'm linking you there..
http://alphavilleherald.com/2011/03/zf-redzone-security-breached-sl-passwords-compromised.html

My Redzone story and why I am glad to see Storm-1037

2011-03-04T12:07:00.000-08:00

By Cummere Mayo
(x-posted)

For over a month now Redzone has been coming under attack. I myself entered the mix when a woman hating griefer named Willilicious Georgette told me to fuck myself and worse. The full conversation was posted without my consent into the “neighborhood watch” that Redzone watches. At the time that was posted it wasn’t a violation to post it elsewhere, however it became such since then so I cannot post it here…

That conversation happened because I dared to point out that Soft Linden told the Redzone members to stop “monkeying around” with jira number vwr-24746. I decided at that time to educate myself about Redzone, CDS, Quickware, etc. The product advertisements and my subsequent treatment by Skills, Zfire, and their ilk let me when I told them in no uncertain terms I wanted opted out galvanized me. The stories and accounts of countless victims including many I knew personally drew out a vicious streak that know me well know I reserve for those that dare fuck with my friends.

Since then I have been maliciously accused of harassment for posting on the jira and closing out jiras that were either thinly veiled attempts to circumvent the TOS, or ideas that simply are ludicrous and ignorant, like the idea of making everyone use a credit card and linking alts via credit card. I have had my sim, my store, even my linden home (yes I actually have one and LIKE it), griefed. I have had numerous false abuse reports filed against me and those who stood up for me. I have had someone attempt to spoof my name in a horrible attempt to frame me for greifing a Redzone sim. I have been accused of trolling the Redzone forums where I do not and will never have an account. Ive had threats in world and sent to my email with promises that I will be banned from Second Life or bodily harm.

Through it all I have put up with it only losing my temper a few times. You know why?
Here it is: I am one of a number of people taking this fight to everyone. I’ve sent emails to Rodvik, Alexa, Soft, Sue, Amanda, Blondin, and several other lindens on this. Not all of them answered but the ones that did so sometimes in rather spectacular ways…

I’ve been ported to linden only areas to discuss what Redzone does, how Zfire planned to get around the adjusted community standards, some of the pitfalls of how LL could handle things. I was one of a few residents that knew that the media urls are going to no longer be masked specifically because of Redzone, CDS, etc. (If you don’t believe me check out https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/STORM-1037 where oz put the process into the Snowstorm backlog and assigned it to this sprint which means it should be implemented soon.) I was asked then to supply screens of everything I could and send them to Amanda, Soft, and Blondin, and to direct others to do the same.

I was one of the few that was aware that LL is actively wanting to take on the Media Filter that Cool Viewer and the Phoenix viewers have. Snowstorm told me if I could find a dev to implement a viewer cookie filtration system they would be interested. I approached Tonya from Phoenix and literally begged her on the SLU forum to look into it and I am hoping she will have the time to do it soon. Allot of this I couldn’t talk about till today because I was specifically told not to, but Amanda gave me the okay today.

Constantly I was told by Redzone users that I was trash, a copybotter, a stalker, a griefer, a whore, even a terrorist. Yes that’s right I’m a terrorist because I fought to destroy Redzone! Constantly I’ve been told I would be banned from Second Life.

Through it all, I’ve watched principled Redzone user after principled Redzone user start to realize what Redzone really was and what the core of the Redzone user group was like walk away and scrap Redzone. I’ve even suggested combinations of land settings, scripts, and orbs that did a far better job at copybot detection and protection (as much as can be done) to some of them.

I watched someone that I was convinced was attacking my roleplay half-sim walk away from Redzone. For the record, much as I don’t want to say it I no longer think Srilania really was the griefer. So Sri if you read this I apologize for that (and you should thank your partner and Jessica who both convinced me to keep an open mind. If they hadn’t I wouldn’t have seen past my dislike for you and, I admit, my sincere desire that it was you.)

I watched Zfire’s promises and predictions turn to ash, as LL pulled his product down off the marketplace twice, and blacklisted it in world, rewrote the CS, and pretty much publicly repudiated Zfire’s claims. I watched the Redzoners attack the TVPS that installed the Media Filter and watched Zfire add a ban by viewer feature. I watched LL respond with Storm-1037 as well as adopt the Media Filter as well.

I suspect I will be the target of allot more abuse from Redzoners. Some of them seem to think I am one of the causes of them falling down. Some FIC conspiracy taken right from a page in Prok’s book… I welcome it and all the AR’s they intend to throw at me. If LL actually listens to their garbage and bans me, so be it. After all, I intend to fully take Zfire down if he follows through on making his database public. However, it won’t be in world, it will be in the criminal justice system. I’ve already been asked to serve, and have agreed to do so, as a prosecution witness in a criminal case if he does make the database public.

Further changes are coming and it will interesting to see how Redzone, CDS, and Quickware users respond. Already they are whining about how implementing https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/STORM-1037 will destroy their privacy. Rather ironic don’t you think?
The only ones Storm-1037 might hurt are DJs but allot of DJs really don’t mind if people listen to their streams from afar. However, the two actual Djs responding to the forum, and the partner of a third DJ are all for it. In fact I have two DJ streams that are entered into my radios that I have been told I can listen to whenever I want (assuming they are broadcasting) from my home or sim. They feel it to be free advertising and a way to share with friends. And if privacy is really an issue you can always feed the stream through a proxy and then something like dyndns. There will be a half second delay or so but eh…
What the Redzone users fear—and rightly so—is that this is simply the next step in driving tracking systems and alt detection systems off the grid. And it is…

Linden Watch is holding off on C&D to LL readying one for RZ

2011-02-25T19:21:00.000-08:00

~by Cummere Mayo
Due to three very significant events that happened today Linden Watch is switching its strategy.
We had a Cease and Desist letter being looked over by an attorney and were making the final changes when three events happened back to back that have caused us to hold off.
First event, the harassment of several NON-greenzone users by redzone users such as a certain phoenix dev (who ironically lies about how her sim is under constant greifing attacks) and the adamant claims that the majority of content creators support their cause. (Most content creators I know either quit using Redzone or never did and I know well over 1000.)
Second Event, Major change in LL TOS that now makes alt disclosure an explicit violation AND makes disclosing anything on ANY site a violation.
Third event we cannot talk about YET, but has given Linden Watch cause for cautious optimism that LL isn't done with this issue just yet.
These events have caused us to decide we will instead be sending a cease and desist letter to Redzone's creator from Linden Watch. signed only by Linden Watch members and possibly accompanied by a court order to enforce it...

Interesting update...

2011-02-25T18:56:00.000-08:00

I've been quiet on the blogs lately, but this just was brought to my attention and its too good not to share...

Seems a certain maker of a certain security system has a FTA out on him... Hmmm don't see this mentioned on his forums...

An invitation

2011-02-17T09:58:00.000-08:00

Due to Linden Lab being unreasonably slow in making Facebook and Twitter share widgets opt-in only, and due to Linden Lab's refusal to take down CDS, Redzone, and other privacy violating malware systems, Linden Watch is putting together a Cease and Desist Letter to send to Linden Lab in the attempt to force them to act on these issues.
The Cease and Desist Letter will be the first step in a series of actions that will include possibly filing a lawsuit against Linden Lab as a direct defendant for violating certain California and Federal Privacy laws regarding the sharing of private information connected with Web Profiles and the in ability to opt-in or opt out, and as an accessory in breaking various harassment, privacy laws regarding what amounts to illegal gathering and selling of private information, illegal wiretapping (because many systems allow the monitoring of text or voice chat without consent), libel and defamation of character and other things.

We at Linden Watch believe strongly in privacy.

Those that would be intrested in being included in this cease and desist letter please put your Username in the comments along with if you wish your username to be shown or not. Thank you!

Why A Purely Web Feature Based Viewer 2 Will Always Fail

2011-02-14T14:13:00.000-08:00

by Cummere Mayo, Mythoes Llewellyn, Bitterly Sweet

It would be awesome if this post could start out with "It came upon a dark and dismal night" however the truth is none of us really remember what kind of day/night it was when the first web based features crept into v1. There they were implemented with care, but still had a high fail rate. This would be a powerful potent of things to come...

When Viewer 2 was introduced to the community it certainly felt like a dark day had come upon us. The viewer 2 was built with the look and feel of a third rate web-site. (Some people argue a web browser, but browsers have far more customization, and tend to follow basic industry standards like having file and edit menus.) Integrated (unknown to most) were the first generation web profiles. These were clearly usable and editable from within the viewer with little or no wait, and no real loss of function if the website hosting the profiles went down other then display of the information that the user put in, and the user pictures.

Most people never knew that these profiles were web based because Linden Lab never advertised that fact and because they were extremely well integrated into the system with the ability to edit the information without the use of a browser (whether built in or external.) Furthermore, this system didn't seem to rely on cookie caching, nor were critical functions like pay, teleport, online status, etc. mapped through the web page but instead were directly embedded in the viewer and worked regardless of the profile.

Other web technologies that were put in either from the start or very early on were a "enhanced" web mapping and teleport system (it should be noted the 1.x viewers also had a web based system for mapping and teleport), a web based search system, web based classified system, and a few other "behind the hood" odds and ends.
Of these, the only one that reliably worked was the mapping/teleport system.

Search routinely fails to load for many users, and then--because of the Search team's opinion they obviously pulled out of their asses that most people that use search don't need it to visit more then one place--would close AND reset annoying the vast majority of users. It should be noted that the jira on that was closed out despite unanimous request for that behavior to change, based on the on an opinion that the Search team was never able to back up, and in fact that public stats another department published decently contradicted. This along with bugs in the coding of the search itself has left this a permanently broken feature and a massive failure on LL's part.

The web based classified also simply don't work, as anyone that has ever bought one can tell you. This is true for both the ones in search and the ones in marketplace. In both cases even if they do actually show up (most times they don't) its usually not in any context relevant enough to actually do the person buying the classified any good. And good luck getting a refund...

Now, the web profiles have been changed again, and group and object profiles are due to follow. In the new profiles, not only are there privacy concerns that have been addressed on this and other blogs that still aren't resolved, but the system is bulky and slow when it does load, and fails to load at all for many users.
If it does load, the layout is filled with useless white space that social team insists is critical, has share and like buttons that you cannot get rid of whether they are on your profile or someone else's, and may have ads displayed that are to a direct competitor of the profile you are looking at (which seems to violate a lot of unfair business practice laws). Another Fail.

If they don't load and you don't have that person on your list, in a group you're in, or otherwise near you, attempting to pay them, teleport them, add them as a friend, or send them an IM is all but impossible and can only be done if they are in search (Assuming search loads). These options are no longer in the UI otherwise, not even as a backup. Again another fail.

If you dare turn off cookies to protect your privacy, then you are shit out of luck. There is no option in the V2 browser to only allow cookies from LL owned sites or even from trusted sites and turning off cookies causes profiles, and often search to fail badly.

By this time frustration for new users is through the roof and many simply quit by this point. For older residents this becomes yet another massive source of seething anger, frustration, and resentment directed at Linden Lab as a whole and at various Lindens specifically, even when often those lindens had no say. And both Search and Social the teams in charge of search and web profiles collectively continue to mostly ignore the users with the attitude they know our needs better then we do! Epic Fail!

Even the Linden housing has had issues with its web based controls not properly triggering the in world houses, further furstrating users both new and old!

And LL has plans to make this situation worse!

Group profiles which have also been web based are about to be revamped with all of their tools also going into a web site. Most of these tools don't even have redundancy within the viewer; things like Notices, group invites, roles, permissions, ejection tools and just about everything else that you currently do in the floater do not have redundancy anywhere.

Can you imagine the mess that will make when you cannot create, join, manage, or possibly even leave a group if you cannot get to the group page? What new user is going to stick around in this case? And what are the existing users supposed to do? Especially the business owners for which groups are a huge part of their ability to connect with their customers?

Furthermore, the more of these features pushed through websites, even if LL owned, the less secure the system is. Each is one more connection that can be spoofed, hacked, monitored, or hijacked. In case you have missed the message, across SL users are lashing back at things they feel invade their privacy, whether things like web profiles that LL is directly responsible for, things like Redzone that are run by other users.

Because someone will invariably ask what about features like social network integration, web inventory management (a much requested feature), the desire for web profiles by many people etc. The thing is that none of those features needs or should be implemented in a way that precludes easy access from the ui with the sole exception of the web management which is simply meant to be an additional tool to manage inventory and NOT a replacement for any of the inworld tools.

LL cannot afford to keep investing in moving the viewer to purely web feature based. It is too unreliable, too insecure, and relies on too many factors to work to ever be tenable.

LL: Let's Communicate about Second Life Everywhere but Second Life

2011-02-10T11:54:00.000-08:00

By Cummere Mayo

Amanda Linden released a new post on the official blog today. In it she laid out the new rules for use on the forums, blogs, and elsewhere. These rules are both more strict about speaking about topics that don't involve SL, supposedly will end the massive abuse agaisnt other residents found throughout the forums. One of the worst bits about the new guidelines is that criticism of LL will be invariably termed under the flaming guidelines, and that we are not allowed to question the moderation of posts which means that the moderators, some of which already abuse their positions, will be more free to do so.
In addition despite the intense oposition of both SL members and of Facebook members, Amanda anounced that Facebook is still the place to get some of the best updates about Second Life. Additionally she provides a long list of twitter threads to follow. An entire fricken list!
In facebook there are roughly 115,000 fans of the second life facebook page. Scanning through the first 50 pages of fans, almost 4/5 are accounts made using SL names, a blatent violation of Facebook TOS. Whats even more insane is more then a few of those accounts are from people that have multiple accounts on facebook, one for each Second Life alt.
This has not gone unnoticed in facebook. There are groups devoted to petitioning to get all Second Life linked or named accounts banned, to IP ban Linden Lab, to getting the Second Life fan page removed, and even one to get listing Second Life anywhere in your account automatic grounds for account termination. These groups combined have more then three times the number of fans of the Second Life page. And one of them is within a few thousand of passing Second Life on its own.
If telling us to watch facebook wasn't bad enough, Amanda provides an entire list of twitter accounts we should watch. Not one, not even two, but an entire list. And in addition, we should follow e-mail lists, a half dozen forums, the knoweldge base AND the blogs. All told we need to watch almost two dozen differant channels just to stay caught up with whats going on. (Thats just taking the five main blog channels, the five main forums, Facebook, the six most useful email lists, only the main twitter channel, and the usergroups.)
Out of those onlyy the usergroups arre actually IN Second Life. In fact Twitter and Facebook aren't even owned or hosted by Second Life.
Finally, even our one outlet for getting bugs and feature requests addressed is being made less useful. Instead of asking the makers of jira to add a feature to vote against items, LL is deciding to force us to watch items we are intrested in the outcome in order to get any intrest. Which is designed not to allow better guage what is important as it is to discourage users from using the Jira.
After all the progress in communication that has been made by Linden Lab in communications, this is a huge step backwards. In fact, this almost single handedly destroys any real hope of good communication through the use of information overload.
If LL was serious about communciation they would consolidate soem of their methods of communication, they would drop the fiasco of Twitter and Facebook and start opening lines of communication within Second Life itself. Chat groups within SL to get direct user feedback, forcing lindens to actually spend even just an hour a day on an alt inside of one or more of the communities within SL, and making each linden hold office hours in addition to the new user groups would go a LONG way towards truely meaningful communications...

Crossposted in both Lindenwatch and SecondLife Technologist

Calling "Social" Team Out.

2011-02-01T16:04:00.000-08:00

by Cummere Mayo

Anyone follwoing web profiles knows about the battle for privacy being waged by users agaisnt the Social project team at Linden Lab. Its being played out in forums, in chat rooms, in Blogs, on twitter, and in the jira; one of the most voted jiras being web-3494 written by yours truley.

In that jira several major issues about privacy and preferences are raised and and argued for by nearly all the comenters, leading to some "concessions" and promises. Promises that have yet to materialize. I'm going to blast through these in rapid succession.

Promise 1:
Said by Yoz on 1/20/11:

"As you may have noticed, the Real Life section has been removed from publicly-visible web profiles for the moment, so as to bring the new web profiles in line with the old ones. We don't know if or when they'll be back, but we would like to offer residents more control over the visibility of individual profile sections in the future; if this comes about (the likelihood and timing is not certain) then the Real Life section would be part of that."

The facts:
For a short time real life tab did indeed seem to be hidden but across the board the last couple of days everyone has been seeing this tab again. heres the thing, we don't see it on our OWN profiles, we see it on others. (For independant confirmation visit the Linden Lab blog here and read recent comments.) This is a depressing and outright inexcusable breach of privacy.

Promise 2:
Said by Yoz on 1/20/11:

"But, this is a good time to remind everyone: if you're sharing information in your profile and you have "Show me in Search" ticked (which also currently enables public web profiles), then it is at the very least visible to millions of Second Life residents and the Search system. Profile information is also explicitly excluded from the Privacy Policy (see section 6)."

The facts:
Turning off "Show me in Search" does NOT disable the web profiles for either the old or the new style. In v1 it removes you from the internet and in world search engines only. In v2 for both the world.secondlife.com and the my.secondlife.com it removes you from the inworld search engine, but still keeps you in the web search engine. For both it also only requires a password to see your profile details but still shows at minimum your name, photo, and a join here link to those not logged in. This is INEXCUSEABLE.

Promise 3:
Said by Fredrik on 1/25/11:
"We just deployed a new version that removes the Share This widget for profiles that have the "Show me in search" option checked.

We are working on a complete overhaul of the privacy settings that will allow users to have more control over their privacy.

Until then please do come with ideas and constructive feedback."

The facts: Neither checking nor unchecking this seems to have any effect at all on the Share This widget. It still shows up on everyone's profile once you log in. Again inexcuseable.

In all three cases we were told these three changes were already implemented and deployed. So my question to Social team is this: Do you really think we are that stupid that we cannot tell what our own profiles are doing? Did you really think before you fed us these lines? What exactly did you gain by lying to us?

I'm calling you out on this Social. Step up to the plate and implement these changes and apologize for the lies.

update 2/3/11:
Ive been told that the real life tab change was backed out as part of a process toward a more robust and grandular preferences system coming soon. I am taking a wait and see attitude on that one.

~CM~
Crossposted

Ressurecting LindenWatch

2011-01-31T20:04:00.001-08:00

So with the permission of the owner I am resurrecting Linden Watch. It probably wont be very active but we will see.
~CM~

The Jekyll and Hyde of Linden Lab

2011-01-31T20:02:00.000-08:00

by Cummere Mayo

In the time spent as a volunteer at Linden Lab one thing that has been constant is Linden Lab's lack of consistency. The teen grid, attempts to turn SL into a social networking site, taking marketplace live before it was ready, mixing the SL with RL, all things sworn by LL not to do, then done. Then there are the things like Adult content scandal, the homestead sims, the new search, display names, web profiles where vastly unpopular things were rammed down the community, often with severe consequences for the community, and in turn Linden Lab. These things helped contribute in a drop from concurrency of over 120,000 to well under 60,000 on the average day.

Yet throughout all of this Linden Lab keeps saying that they listen to the community, accept feedback, and want more community involvement in policy making. This is both Linden Lab's biggest truth, and their biggest lie.

Much if not most of the community seems to feel these statements are a lie. For those that don't, sometimes reconciling all this is hard. Sometimes, very hard.

Here's the deal: Linden Lab is bipolar; it always has been, at least in the three and a half years I've been active in Second Life. To drastically over simplify things there's two camps at Linden Lab. The part that desires community involvement and the part that just feels they know what the community needs more then the community does and this split has had drastic consequences for both Second Life and for Linden Lab themselves.

From the time I joined Second Life there were those like CG, Nyx, Andrew, Bambers, and many, many others, that opened their offices and sent a great deal of time explaining changes coming to Second Life, projects they hoped to see happen, and things they were working on. At the same time they collected feedback from the residents they could which sometimes changed things, and sometimes didn't but at least these lindens were visible, listened and explained their reasoning.

At the same time we had the Jacks and Fredriks of Linden Lab. Those who pushed through things because it was what they saw as good for Linden Lab and/or Second Life and to hell with the thoughts and needs of those that actually use Second Life, even those that make their livings though Second Life.

Many of these decisions forced to a feeling that is best described by one of my merchant friends: "We succeed despite Linden Lab, not because of them." Many of fled Second Life and many new users aren't sticking around. Other grids have been watching the past two years and pounced on their chance to take away business from Second Life. As a result two of these grids have concurrencies that are almost as high as Second Life and will probably surpass them by the end of this year.

Currently, there's hope that some of that can be reversed. Snowstorm and the Mesh team are not only incredibly open to feedback but actually have used much of that feedback in the decision making. Today Gez stated at one of the open source user group meetings that he wants tvp devs, heavy chat users, and chat mods to join a user group he intends to start in order to get feedback and help coordinate the transition to a better group chat system within Second Life.

Snowstorm and Mesh have shown their way is better. They are far more productive, and while users don't agree with every decision made, the discussion is open, and users at least understand the reasoning leaving for a much happier user base and a better, more respectful kind of interaction, even with some of the most passionate of disagreements.

This is the kind of thing that will save Linden Lab and Second Life. I truly hope Mr. Humble will recognize that fact and push those at Linden Lab that still opt for closed doors and "we know whats better for you then you do" kind of approach to work with the community or find work elsewhere.

It will take allot of work for Linden Lab to turn Second Life (and both its and Linden Lab's reputations) around. One of the first steps would be to temporarily shut down the new profiles and force the Social and Marketplace teams to adopt approaches much more like Snowstorm. The next is to get these new user group meetings going within the next two weeks and then to have those groups spend the next two weeks actively listening to the Second Life community. Maybe more.

Allot of those in favor of keeping the users in the dark seem to rationalize it with "We can't please everyone," "The users don't know what they really want. They can't even agree with each other," or my personal favorite, "We need to do this for new features we have planned."

My experience in Snowstorm shows that while you can't please everyone you can please most users, that the community can often come up with great compromises on its own, and where it can't, having options wherever possible does, and that by being open about your ultimate goal, you often can get there faster and with less friction by listening to the community and working with them instead of against them. While it can delay things initially to get user feedback and have community involvement, often that time is a better investment, because often later on things go faster because there's less to rewrite or change, and because there's far less damage control to do afterwords. Furthermore, dev time is far cheaper then PR time, and it takes allot more PR time to get back in good graces then to just take the time to communicate in the first place.

I have a huge investment in Second Life, although at times it really has hurt my real life, especially thanks to the privacy disaster with the new profiles. I don't want to see Second Life fail, and I am working very hard to do what little I can to make Second Life a much better place.

So now I am calling upon Mr. Humble and all the Lindens that truly understand that Second Life cannot exist without the vast diverse community to step up to the plate. Its time for those who have been working with the community to not only suggest but to demand their coworkers do the same. It is time, ladies and gentlemen, for Linden Lab to bury its Mr. Hyde.

~CM~
ps: Crossposted to another blog.

Explaining the long break

2009-09-26T19:05:00.001-07:00

Linden watch is currently on hiatus while one of the staff members is undergoing chemotherapy.

Snowglobe 1.1

2009-07-31T09:21:00.000-07:00

A new new release of Snowglobe is about to be released for download and it is amazing.
Theres over 23 bug fixes, 23 for issues relating to the previous snowglobe, plus some fixes for bugs that affect all 1.23 based viewers. Snowglobe is the first LL viewer to have the client side fixes for SVC-4444.

I will try and give a balanced account of my experiences with Snow globe so you can see if its right for you. I'll start with the downsides.

There are some issues with Snowglobe that 1.23 doesn't have.
*Snowglobe has several new texture bugs, many of which haven't yet been fixed in 1.1. This includes that avatar and attachment textures don't always rez nor do photos and textures passed from other users.
*The baking process is unreliable. Sometimes though you have clothes on and they rez for you, they don't always for everyone else, leaving your avatar either showing up skin only or in a past outfit to everyone else.
*The client still tends to just shut off for some people and freeze allot for others especially during login.
*The cache gets corrupted VERY easily.

Now then for the benefits.
*For many (I'd even hesitantly say most) users, Snowglobe rezzes most objects and textures (except for he ones that get hung) MUCH faster. Places that took my desktop three-four minutes to load and my laptop five-ten minutes to load take at most 90 seconds and four minutes respectively. (Hey my laptop is seven years old and seen more use then most desktops are designed to handle.)
*Snowglobe is more stable and better supports multiple instances. 1.23 would choke my laptop if I tried to run two instances, and my desktop three with constant crashes and freezes. Snowglobe still crashes and freezes but not nearly so often, and I can run two instances smoothly
and three with a struggle on my laptop and four on my desktop with very little performance loss.
*Lots of little tweaks. Snowglobe has allot of smaller tweaks in it that affect everything from camming to the map, and overall my experience has been it makes for an overall smoother, happier, and more stable experience.
*Better grpahics detection and implementation. Several bugs have been fixed and except for certain cards, Snowglobe tends to better detect and choose settings that allow for better performance from most cards then the standard 1.23 viewer, and for the most part I'm seeing up to nearly double the frame rates i was seeing on the 1.23 viewer.

Beyond just these advantages, there's a lineup of new features and bug fixes being worked on even as I type this that will be in the 1.2 version if not before. While I am not a part of the development team for this viewer, I envy those that are. There is a remarkable pool of talent from Linden Lab, the community, and various partner companies like IBM that are making Snowglobe truly amazing.

Where is Customer Service?

2009-07-10T21:43:00.000-07:00

The first in a series of articles in which I will be going into Linden Lab's massive customer service failures, this piece will lay out some of the background on just how bad things are. Though, I doubt anyone needs to be convinced of just how bad things are, I think that is actually the best place to start. In fact, to make it simple, lets start with the Better Business Bureau's ranking of Linden Lab. (For those that do not know what the Better Business Bureau is, it is a government agency that tracks businesses and takes complaints and the occasional praise and gives each company a score based upon the number of complaints (usually over a 36 month period), how fast they are resolved, and how well the customer is satisfied with the resolution, and a host of other factors.)
2009 has marked the third--that's right the third--year in a row that Linden Lab has received an F. An F is as low as you can go. In the beginning of February, they had 43 complaints. (Source: http://www.betanews.com/article/Better-Business-Bureau-gives-failing-grade-to-Linden-Lab/1235591771). That number has since hit 50 and will probably go higher, as some of the people that have been talked about in past articles intend on filing their own complaints. for the currant complaints and score please check out http://goldengate.bbb.org/WWWRoot/Report.aspx?site=99&bbb=1116&firm=57373.

Linden Lab whines that this rating is unfair and is from their start up days. And that they now have 24/7 support and answer promptly. The trouble is that this is a flat out lie. (In fact, the State of California is looking into seeing if they can prosecute Linden Lab for that statement.) Linden Lab as a company is FAR more then three years old. In fact some places, Like Linden Lab's website and the Second Life website clearly state Linden Lab is ten years old. Secondly, Unless you have a paid subscription or a concierge subscription, there is no 24/7 support. Your only recourse if you do not hold one of these membership levels is to file a support ticket. If the ticket is filed wrong, it gets ignored. Even if its filed correctly, it is EXTREMELY common for a ticket to go unanswered for months. That's right, months.
Even if you do have one of those levels of membership, you find out very quickly the 24/7 live help is neither 24/7 nor is it guaranteed to be supportive or for that mater civil. When my colleague had a vital piece to her store get messed up because of a bug, she went to support where Socrates Linden--who by the way is one of the supervisors--was not only INEXCUSABLY rude, but failed to help her in any way other then to say "file a ticket" and then the guy had the gull to give her an official warning because she tried to get him to DO HIS FUCKING JOB. Up to the point she issued an official warning that his actions could result in jail time. Because of that CM wasn't able to file the correct kind of ticket and by the time the correct department got it, it was too late to be able to help her. This kind of story is only all too common, and I have to say Socrates should be thankful that CM hasn't asked to have a warrant issued on him for the half dozen charges he really should be facing. (Yeah ladies and gents, CM is a real life police officer though for many reasons shes only part time right now.)
What is even worse is that in most cases, if Linden Lab bothers to respond to a complaint either filed through their system or filed through the BBB, most often what it boils down to is "Fuck you, we Linden's are Gods and you should be worshiping us, how dare you complain about us."
While most companies that want to succeed operate under the premise of "The Customer is Always Right," Linden Lab operates under the philosophy of "We are always right, and we will ban you if you dare say otherwise," even when they are clearly, sometimes even in the court system, proven wrong.
In fact, bad customer service is reportedly why many companies have pulled out including several universities, Reuters, and many other large corporations. (http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/11/why-reuters-left-second-life-and-how-linden-lab-can-fix-it). When Linden Lab failed to listen to its customers over issues like unjustified price hikes, unwanted age verification and adult content ghetoization, and employee harassment; failed to provide fast and efficient customer service; and actively encouraged bad conduct by employees; there simply wasn't a good reason for legitimate businesses to stay. In fact, many of these same entities laugh when Linden Lab tries to sell Second Life as a business platform. Even Linden Lab's sole surviving supporter IBM has realized that Second Life will always be first and foremost a game.
This isn't to say all support reps are bad. Actually there are a handful that do the best they can to be as helpful as possible, and they should receive praise for it. Teagan, Twilight, Joppa, Lotte, and even Minerva and Leo are usually very helpful and polite. Outside of the main support, Bridie, CG, Dessie, Louise, Dan, Andrew, Torley, and Simon are usually fairly helpful and polite as well as long as approached the right way. But the sad truth is, these few are (usually) the exception to the rule. For the most part, unhelpfulness, uncaring, and a total disrespect of the customer is a way of life for most Linden Lab employees.

A preliminary review of Snowglobe.

2009-07-09T08:54:00.000-07:00

I began using Snowglobe the other night. for those that don't know what Snowglobe is, its a new test viewer released by Linden Lab and believe residents involved in the Opensource project. Its heavily based upon 1.23 but with a number of patches from residents. The result is like 1.23 RC4 but much smoother, faster, and much more stable.
In fact heres what I noticed comparing the two:
Snowglobe uses about 1/3 the memory.
Snowglobe loads (from login to full rez and inventory aquisition) in less then 1/10th the time
Snowglobe doesn't seem to freeze as much on movement, alt camming, or certain activities as 1.23
Snowglobe does freeze slightly more often when opening menus, profiles, inventory, and online/offline notifications however the freezes generally are shorter in durration
Snowglobe seems to rez textures faster and not have the "forgetting" of textures that frustrates allot of people using 1.23.
Snowglobe runs multiple instances far better then 1.23. on my system I can run two versions of 1.23 and i get at least some performance degradation and allot of intresting quarks. In snowglobe I cant tell the differance between one or two. though a third does start to slow things down a bit. Probably cuase i only have one gig of ram.

There are however a few drawbacks to Snowglobe. 1.23 "final" had patches that changed the menus back to something more usable and allowed you to turn the ability to see ims in local chat back on. Also, snowglobe sometimes has a little trouble properly layering transparent and alpha layers, though not often. Also apparently, though i haven't yet seen it myself, snowglobe will only render in one direction. There's also the lack of protections form accidentally going into a PG area that plague all viewers right now.

Despite the drawbacks, however, I have to give the lindens and residents that designed snowglobe full props. I hope they will release an update soon, to update the pie menu and allow ims to be seen in local chat again. In the mean time: well done!

Linden Lab Replys to LindenWatch on Child Avatars in Zindra

2009-07-08T15:49:00.000-07:00

We asked LL the following:

I would like to know why Linden Lab has decided to condone child exploitation and child exploitation fantasies by allowing Child Avatars on adult parcels and continents. Also why does LL feel that these policies do not conflict with the child exploitation and child porno laws that require children and representations of children to be kept out of strip clubs, brothels, massage parlors, adult video and toy stores and all other RL adult businesses? Finally, what steps has LL taken to ensure that its decisions do not come in conflict with any child pornography and child exploitation laws, or indecency laws which many law enforcement officers, and lawyers feel this policy violates?

Here is their reply courtesy of Pete Linden:

Hello,The Second Life policy on 'ageplay' remains unchanged: ageplay is not allowed anywhere in Second Life. This includes on Adult parcels and the new continent, Zindra, and applies regardless of account-verification status. Ageplay is a violation of our Community Standards (as was described in this blog post: https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2007/11/14/clarification-of-policy-disallowing-ageplay), and Linden Lab reserves the right to immediately terminate the accounts of Residents who violate these standards. Merely having or using a child-like or miniaturized avatar is not a violation, whether on Adult parcels or elsewhere, so long as our ageplay policy is observed.
Best,Pete

A very non-answer answer. One that makes those of us here at LindenWatch and many in Law Enforcement cringe.

Linden Labs winks at Child exploitation

2009-07-07T16:38:00.000-07:00

On the Second Life blog entry https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/land/blog/2009/06/26/zindra-an-update Linden Lab finally expressly states they will allow Child Avatars on adult parcels including the Zindra continent.

Under the list of questions and answers that Jack Linden provides the final one strikes a blow to child rights advocates, law enforcement, and concerned parents everywhere.
"9) Are child avatars allowed on Adult land? Child avatars are allowed on adult land as long as they are account verified like any other Resident. Those choosing to represent themselves with a child avatar do not represent a minor as the account holder. Not all adult land is going to be hosting adult content either. There is plenty of protected land on Zindra that will technically be adult but safe in terms of content. This however does not change any prior policies regarding child avatars. Sexual ageplay is not allowed anywhere on the grid, regardless of rating."

In real life taking a child into a strip club, an adult video store, an adult toy store, or even a massage parlor (including the legitimate non sexual ones) is a crime. Many states, or even countries for that matter, make depictions of children in sexual situations even such as these where no real sexual act is occurring illegal.

When one has been around as many victimized children in real life as I have, and has seen how many of these children were abused by people that had an unhealthy obsession with role playing children or reading stories,pictures, or comics about being or being around children in sexual environments, that on can only think that in explicitly allowing Child avatars into adult land, that Linden Lab has shown they are all to willing to condone Child pornography and child exploitation.

To be fair we have asked Jack Linden about these policies and was referred to Catherine, from whom we still await a response. However, there just doesn't seem any good reason to justify this policy and it is a defeat for children and children's advocates everywhere.

Linden Lab war against volunteer and employee critics pt 2

2009-07-06T12:33:00.000-07:00

Real Life has been keeping me busy as has sorting though allot of the links and logs I have been sent. Anyways, time to get to the point.
In a very recent petition to get Alexa Linden fired, allot of allegations were made against the Linden Lab Employee Alexa Linden. The petition can be found at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/AlexaLinden/ I would like to help give a bit of support for some of these claims.
Here's some of the documentation behind Alexa's attempt to steal credit for jira's, and deny access to jira to residents and volunteers. Please read https://blogs.secondlife.com/message/4643#4643 as well as the comments near by. I would like to state that after claiming to someone that it was a technical issue, and that the name change could not be undone, that Alexa was forced to change these jiras back to their original authors. I would post the conversation logs i was given here, but it would violate the SL TOS so I cannot.
As for the accusations of Alexa selectively enforcing the TOS and standards on the Jira, one great example of this is on http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-13973 where she left up Youri's abuse for over a week, taking it down ONLY when at least half a dozen people began filing ar's against her precious Youri.
Much of the rest of the behavior has already been recorded earlier in this blog. (http://lindenw.blogspot.com/2009/06/linden-lab-war-against-volunteer-and.html?zx=a91b3609ddd65607)

Regardless, I strongly urge you all to PLEASE look over and vote for the petition. Lets sent a message... Abuse of power, threats, and superiority complexes are not what the Residents of Second Life want.

A great example of whats wrong with LL

2009-07-05T11:46:00.000-07:00

I went to support after a script that served to record alot of vital information for my business got snagged then reset itself losing everything. The entire chat i was treated pretty bad. Eventually I did start to lose my patience but I think anyone would have.
linden: you can request a rollback via www.secondlife.com/support
me: ....
me: /me notes this is support.
me: *is seriously growing pissed off by the LACK of competant customer service*
linden: This is live help, where anything I personally can help you with at the moment can be dealt with. I can neither help you with this at the moment nor do I have to ability to do so, you may file a ticket to support so that we direct you to who can.
me: yeah and the support ticket might get looked at in a month if im lucky
me: cause you guys ignore tickets
me: and i need this information today. tomarrow at the lastest.
linden: I'm sorry that you feel that we ignore tickets, that is simply not the case.
me: yes it is
me: tickets have gone months unanswered
linden: Then I would suggest you file a complaint as such.
me: .....

and a bit later when he still wasn't helpful:
me: *is seriously convinced that LL is scamming those of us that pay for our accounts*
linden: [name edited out], it's vital that I remind you that all transaction in chat or tickets must be conduted in a civil manner. You are constantly degrading, mean, accusational and generally harsh to all Linden staff. You will receive a formal warning on your account due to this behavior as you have already been warned informally before. If it does not change you account and all alts will be removed from Second Life.

If by "degrading, mean, accusational and generally harsh to all Linden staff" he means I've filed complaints on the lindens that have harassed me, or that I have stood up for myself and my friends against Harry and Alexa's harassment, and I actually expect support when I go to support, then yes I guess that's true then.

I am usually polite but firm, but if I am treated horribly or I will respond in kind. Its funny to hear that I treat all Linden staff badly when across my three accounts in sl, I have ten Lindens on my friends list and I had some come to my rezday party and others that gave me well wishes or gifts.

Its even funnier that this is supposed to be live support and yet this particular Linden seems to never be able to to help anyone.

Its also funny that Linden Lab has the lowest ranking availible IN EVERY SINGLE Better Business Beurro in the United States. and in at least four states including South Carolina and California there's advisements against the company for their customer satisfaction, and that the American Online RPG Guild ranked them as the worst game ever in customer service, customer satisfaction, and platform stability.

The fact this linden actually followed through on his threat to send me a warning, really pisses me off and may well result in my filing more charges against Linden Lab.

Linden Lab war against volunteer and employee critics

2009-06-28T12:09:00.000-07:00

Before I begin I want to say that this is just the warm-up. This issue really pisses me and some of the other staff and a few of the readers off, and because of how charged it is, I will be breaking this up and covering it in stages as I reign in my anger. Linden Lab has many things to answer for and this is one of the big ones.
Linden Lab has virtually made it a capital offense to criticize Linden Lab especially if you are a volunteer, employee, or former employee.
Without naming names--though I probably don't need to--an employee that was well loved even by many that did not share his political views, was terminated a couple of months ago with practically no warning, and with no explanation to the residents of Second Life. There is allot of speculation as to what the excuse Linden Lab used to fire him, but it is very much an accepted belief among many volunteers in Second Life that it had allot to do with his candid (and deserved) criticism for many of his peers and for some of the things Linden Lab was doing.
Whatever the reason, Linden Labs behavior after the fact was despicable. They moved quickly to ensure that people talking or asking openly about it were discouraged from doing so. Furthermore, at least two Lindens have come forward and stated it is very unlikely that the company would ever give a fair recommendation about the former Linden. Considering the work this individual did, and the contributions they made, such a career tanking move is not only Juvenile on Linden Lab's part but unethical as all hell.
This move comes about six months after another highly controversial firing of a linden. This time by one that refused to carry out an order Jack Linden gave to issue an unwarranted perma ban on a resident for protesting the Open Space / Homestead policy changes. For those that aren't familiar with the case, please look back to the various Second Life Forums regarding Open Space sims and I'm sure you will come across it. If not I may be discussing this one more later.
And it isn't just the employees being fired. Lately, Linden Lab has declared war on some of the volunteers that have made Second Life great. Look in the credits of almost any viewer version from 1.18 through 1.23 and you will see Cummere Mayo and/or Erinyse Planer listed. This woman has contributed heavily though feature selections, bug testing, testing the fixes to said bugs, cleaning up agendas, suggesting new features, reporting bugs, and even trying to organize and find relationships to various still existing bugs in order to make Second Life a much better place for all of us. Not only that, but she mentors allot of people, and works hard to establish new players to Second Life in a way that not only usually has them moderately proficient within a week, but often well customized and employed as well.
But because of all the work this remarkable woman has done, she has been a target of some of he more unsavery of Linden Lab's characters. People like Alexa Linden who seems to have a personal agenda that includes discrediting and undermining everything that Cummere and others like her have done. Alexa attempted twice to have Cummere banned from the jira and from Second Life and both times Linden Lab had to overturn it. When that failed she had one of Cummere's friends banned for a week on the slimist of reasons instead.
Additionally, no matter how correct Cummere might be in some of her jira posts asking people (often friends of hers) to look at a bug a bit more thoroughly before resolving it out to either support or as a duplicate, Alexa would stomp on Cummere and harrass her about it in world. And yet when Alexa's known boy toy Youri Aston made posts to a jira that were both largely irrelevant and very harmful to anyone that followed Youri's advice, Alexa refused to step in. In fact, when he began making deep personal attacks against Cummere in the forum and at office hours she did nothing, until others stepped in and filed complaints. Even then she only removed some of the personal attracts. There's still several posted in the Jira that Youri made, alleging Cummere is incompetent (an ironic statement from someone whose idea of help disables some peoples ability to see ANYTHING at all through their monitor, or disable the most basic protections from intrusion) or jealous.

Then about two weeks ago, without any warning or any real explanation Alexa kicked Cummere out of the group Batter Street Iregulars, a kind of combined bug triaging and viewer testing group and told her she needed to take a break from triages for at least two months or she would never be allowed back. She justified this saying that BSI had had "complaints" about Cummere while refusing to say what those complaints were. Clearly signs that if there were complaints they were blown out of proportion, but most likely they were nonexistant, save perhaps from Youri.

Alexa took these actions taken against someone that had been involved in these activities before Alexa was even hired. Someone that honestly does a better job then Alexa at handeling Jira and responding to residents and she did it just days after Cummere was hurt in a horrific car accident that left her body severely damaged and left her sibling in the UCI. Why did she do this? Well, allot of the other volunteers have their theories. One in particular stated "Cummere really hated the new viewer, and the new policies, and was far too vocal about it for Alexa's taste. Add to that that Cummere was butting up against Alexa's pet and that Alexa clearly disliked Cummere, and Alexa had the perfect excuse."

So far Alexa has declined to comment at all other then to make threats but we will be going more into this story soon as well as looking at some of the other volunteers and harassed by Alexa and others.

EDIT: continued in http://lindenw.blogspot.com/2009/07/linden-lab-war-against-volunteer-and.html

SLB6

2009-06-26T07:58:00.000-07:00

If Linden Lab isn't embarrassed by SLB6, they should be. This is one of the biggest chances for Linden Lab to showcase Second Life, and this year, instead of being a showcase of why to come to Second Life, it is a showcase of reasons to stay away.
First off, the theme, if you could call it that, was hokey, some kinda space colony based theme that was poorly implemented and poorly thought out, loaded with particles animated textures, and bad builds with Second Life's logo displayed everywhere, even where it should not be. It seems like its a requirement to have the SL displayed in order to be allowed to be an exhibitor. Very bad taste.
Secondly, it seems Linden Lab should get a better idea of how their own game works. The simulators are lagged even with just a few occupants. At thirty, the simulators lag so bad that getting dropped is a very real potential hazard. Part of this reason is the very real performance failures that Linden Lab built into their system over a year ago ((http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/Svc-2708)).
The rest is caused by the sims being completely packed to the gills with thousands of small prims of the very kind that cause the most lag: sculpted prims, animated prims, moving prims, scripted prims, micro prims, and various combinations thereof. Add to that that some genius decided to turn off scripts which known to contribute to lag when there's lots of scripted items out, and you have a recipe for lag so potent you almost are forced to wonder if the lag is intentional.
Three mild ideas for you Linden Lab: turn on scripts, use more mega prims, and use less scupltie and micro prims. Thanks!
If this Lag wasnt enough, add in the fact that almsot every booth has objects scripted to bring up webpages. Regardless of if you use the client browser or your sytem browser, this is laggy and annoying. If i wanted to waste my time navigating a thousand plus webpages, then I wouldn't have bothered loading Second Life and would have gone to Google.
Additionally there were A LOT less exhibitors this year. Fewer artists, fewer stores, fewer builders, and fewer organizations were represented this year. And role play? Forget it, I saw almost no role play environments represented this year. Probably partly cause of the hassle to apply, and partly because of the level of censorship prevalent. Linden Lab needs to wake up and realize that most of Second Life is NOT pg, and the vast majority of residents and organizations in Second Life do not want a sanitized Second Life.
The few stores, artists, and organizations that were there, for the most part didn't sell samples of their goods and instead had a few objects with pictures that gave landmarks to their stores. Given the numbers that did this, I suspect this is some sort of new policy, and its one that hurts because many people aren't going to take the time to go to the store then come back, and even if they take the landmarks, many will forget about them later.
Even the entertainment at this year's SLB was no where near as good. Most of the best DJ's and performers from last year were not invited back, and after hearing a few of the ear-cringing replacements that were lauded this year, I got smart and began avoiding the entertainment stages.
After about 5 hours of combined frustration trying to get around and see the sights, I have to say last year's SLB was much better. A more unified theme, the sims were less laggy except at the stages, there were so many more aspects of Second Life presented including the roleplay,and a far broader spectrum of clothing and art, even some mature content. Linden Lab would have been smarter to go with a similar model.
As it is, if you haven't gone to SLB6 yet, don't bother. If you have, I commiserate on the time wasted.

More about repeated verification requests...

2009-06-26T04:47:00.000-07:00

"Dear [resident], We have placed your account on hold pending confirmation of your identity. To confirm your age eligibility please send Linden Lab a legible copy of a government-issued identification document (state ID, driver's license,passport, military ID, birth certificate) that clearly includes both your name and date of birth. This is the only type of identification acceptable for establishing age eligibility. You may send your ID via fax or by filing a support ticket (see contact info below). If verification is not received, your account will be discontinued. If this message has been sent in error, and you meet Second Life's age eligibility requirements, we apologize and hope that this verification will not be overly inconvenient."

Every resident dreads this message, especially those that live in countries or have jobs where it is illegal to give out your state Id, or passports. Add to the fact that LL doesn't prepare you that even if you send Id right away it can take weeks or months to get your account reactivated. (Both times it's happened to me it took days and I was one of the lucky ones). But some residents have more reason to dread these messages then others. As we've already reported, some residents like Bitterly Gloom are getting one account reactivated just to turn around and have another shut down. Worse, there is no good recourse.

Let's do a more detailed case study of Bitterly Gloom. Her first ever account was originally shut down after Harry Linden, a Linden known as a womanizer and as a 'corrupt' Linden in certain circles of the resident community, took over a support ticket that asked for help tracing down an account spoofing the ip or hacking into a proxy server used by about a dozen Secondlife Residents. Instead of doing what any rational minded person would do and go through and eliminate the list of authorized accounts as suspects, he instead had EVERY authorized account verify. A process that for all but one of them took months. In fact for Velvet Peapod that process is still going on due to the types of id requested.)

Bitterly Gloom is contracted not to give out her personal information lightly, and not to any unsecured area, and especially not to a service like Aristotle that has been taken to court numerous times for sharing information they have collected through contracts just like the one they have with Linden Lab. Considering that she was one of those asking for help finding the unauthorized accounts accessing the proxy (those accounts are still active btw) and that she can't legally provide the info she tried to get out of it by arguing the facts and even pointing out the parts of her contract and of the state and federal LAWs that forbid her to share that information, and yet Harry's rather smartassed response was "I can understand your concerns about sending an form of identification..." and an adamant refusal to abide by the law or rationality.

He originally tried to get her to give allot of information including her address and her work id # and when she refused and she and her boyfriend offered to transfer the account to his name Harry responded:

"Unfortunately we cannot accept your boyfriend's identification for your own account.
We will not disclose your information to any third party without your permission, we simply require a form of identification to identify your account and update your registration details.
If you are unwilling to provide this information using the support portal I would suggest to contact our legal department, in writing, at the following address..."

May I take a moment to note here that the only information that Linden Lab "officially" requires is a name and birthdate. And that's exactly what Bitterly Gloom sent. She photocopied her drivers license, blacked out all the personal information other then her name and birthdate, photocopied it again, and sent that last photocopy via registered mail and had it signed for. Even then it took months before she had her first account returned to her.

In the mean time she created another account that she spent allot of money on, and started attending some of the bug triages and other things. She also started another alt, this one called Bitterly Gloom. She was just finishing up the initial look for Bitterly, when as her other she witnessed several bad behaviors on Alexa's part. She filed a complaint as Bitterly Gloom and unfortunately came to the attention of Harry who seized upon the chance to try and get Bitterly's address again, by shutting her down and telling her she had to reverify on this new account straight to Linden Lab. This despite the fact her accounts were made on information verified to her first account already. Teagan Linden stated that she should be able to just file a ticket on her original and now reactivated account and that might be enough since she was already verified, but then a supervisor answered one of Bitterly's several tickets covering Harry's ass by saying that Linden Lab wasn't willing to waive that requirement. Bitterly is currently looking into both criminal and civil charges.

Bitterly is one out of over a dozen people I personally know who have had this kind of thing happen. I already listed some of the others in a previous post.

Velvet has already verified one account and is among those that refuses to verify over and over, especially when before she lost the velvet account she was pestered for her home address and phone number, and her real life relationships to other residents on at least two of her other accounts. She has given up on another account because of harassment and threats to her well being that Harry and other Gteam members refused to quell despite multiple abuse reports by multiple residents and when she finally complained, she was told she might get more response by being "more friendly" to the Lindens by Harry. The only time she logged that account after was to tell a few friends her newest account name and to transfer everything she could to that new account.

"I was totally freaked out, I'm 18 and some guy I don't even know has on three accounts tried to either get my contact information or get me to give sexual favors. Oh hell no. I'll admit my newest accounts were made with someone else's information, but I wanted to feel safe. I borrowed an aunt's information and with her permission used it. So far so good, apparently if someone's information shows them as a 50-something year old woman, Harry isn't interested anymore," Velvet says as she explains why her new characters profile makes her out to be a widowed retiree. "It makes it harder to meet guys but if I find one I really like I explain the situation and if he accepts me we go from there."

No girl should have to feel like these two do. Its time that Linden Lab stepped up and did something, namely do right by the customers and get these situations fixed.

Please Verify Your Age... Again...and Again....

2009-06-25T05:30:00.000-07:00

Age Verification isn't even fully in effect and already we are seeing many disturbing trends out of Linden Lab, that show that Age Verification is being used by at least some Lindens as a method of extortion. Since Lindens, especially those that work on G-team, have almost unlimited authority and discretion to request age/id verification some of the more unscrupulous have already begun taking advantage of the system. I myself have had to verify my accounts twice and a recent alt I made was required to do so again, but since I was tired of it I flat out said to delete it.
However, the situation is much worse for many others. Take the case of Bitterly Gloom, a 29 year old deputy from Arizona. Due to run-ins with Harry Linden she drew his attention, and he decided to age verify her. However, he decided that beyond just a copy of an id with a name and birthdate, he wanted her State Id number, home address, and much more information. None of this was information she, or any sane single woman would want to give, and some of it as a deputy she was contracted not to give lightly.
She eventually mailed via certified mail with one of those signature tags her verification, and eventually after allot of pressure from her and her friends and possibly even Lindens, Harry reluctantly restored her account. By that time she had made two other accounts. Within days of restoring her first account, Harry then shut down the other two in rapid succession ordering her to age verify those, and stated that it would take more then a name and birthdate to get these reactivated, using the excuse that one was made "solely to file a complaint" despite the fact that over the span of a day, the avatar was spiffed out, joined at least four groups and was given a job. The other account that was shut down, had had nearly $400 USD worth of items on it, and had payment information on profile and was over two months old.
Harry seems to have a track record of targeting women with this sort of behavior. He has done the same to Ellowyn Akina, Velvet Peapod, and countless others. In fact, according to yet another woman that Harry locked out and requested verification "I made another account and contacted Harry in world to see what I would need to reactivate, and I was told I needed a documented with my name, age, address, and phone number. I asked if a copy of my university id would do and was told "only if your address and phone number was on there." I was totally freaked. Why is some random guy requiring my address and telephone number for a game? I ate the loss of my account and just made a new one."
What is worse is that LL seems divided on how to handle this issue when it should be fairly plain. One g-team member suggested that one of the victims should be able to file a support ticket from her reactivated account referencing the ticket from the other and request reactivation, however another male employee at LL turned around and stated that the request was "not unreasonable" and that "LL unprepared to waive the requirements" given by Harry to get her account back.
This is beyond scarey. This is what in my first life profession we call extortion and stalking.

Greetings from the newest author

2009-06-24T17:11:00.000-07:00

Hello, though you don't know it, I contributed a bit to the past posts here, and now I get my own spot. I am CM a long time volunteer in SL, almost since I joined. I mentor, I show people around, I do some minor tech support, I worked with the now broken triage system, and I was an alpha tester for the viewers. Sadly I am no longer involved in alpha testing or triage though I hope to change that.

I will be contributing to this blog time to time, and my punches will come hard and furious. I'm blunt and hold very little back. On the other hand I tend to give praise where praise is due as well. So I try to be fair.

I look forward to seeing all of you. And for those that can figure out who I am in world sen me a message!

A helping hand or three

2009-06-24T12:43:00.000-07:00

With so much that goes wrong in Second Life lately, and with the growing frustration many have with the employees of Linden Lab, it is important to sometimes take a pause and notice those that are doing something right.

I'd like to introduce you to two very important members of I-Team the inworld support team and one member of both I-team and G-Team (the Governance Response team) that have truly made SL a much much nicer place and judging by their fan clubs, seem to get at least some notice for it.

First off Joppa.
Joppa is hard to sum up, a man of a number of diverse interests and talents, and one that puts many if not all to good work while helping residents tackle some of the hardest support problems. If you need a troubleshooter, this is definitely the man to go to. But beyond that, Joppa is the kind of guy that will stop by and wish his fans a happy rezday, or invite them to a concert or party in the iworld island. He also can come up with a nice joke if a resident he likes is feeling down to try and cheer them up. All around one of the best Linden Lab has.

Next up is the amazing Twilight.
Despite her name, she doesn't seem to be too deep into the scifi/fantasy setting or the vampire setting while on duty (though I may just always catch her at the wrong time), but she has a calm personality that reminds one of the serenity of the twilight hour and helps bring peace, while she steps in and goes to work troubleshooting whatever ails you. She is also very patient and very kind, and I do not recall ever having an issue with this linden that wasn't the result of bad communication and that didn't get resolved with the same patience and kindness Twilight approaches everything with.

Finally there's Teagan.
Many of her fans, even those not in her fan club, will tell you teagan is "Just Awesome" and they would be right. Not to say teagan hasn't made any bad calls in her day, but I've always found her to be reasonable, and diligent, and she is extremely approachable so long as you give her respect and courtesy. Give her attitude and god help your sole. If she isn't too busy, this is one of the few lindens that has been known to share a good laugh, or to come by and say hi, and she is one of the few g-team members you can usually go to and ask for help making sure you are in compliance with the multitude of SL rules and policies without having to worry about getting banned as long as you take her advice seriously and aren't doing something outrageously stupid (like running a cassino or a fraud scheme).

Together and separately these three have gone far and above the job expectations and have become the model that other lindens should strive for. Well Done.

Hellen Keller Day (an event to skip)

2009-06-24T12:26:00.000-07:00

If the poor woman was still alive she would have been appalled. The lindens and the Linden wannabes (ie Youri Ashton) that are putting this event on had very little real knowledge of the deaf or blind community. Stated one deaf resident, "I suppose I should be glad they acknowledged us, but the entire thing made me feel like a second class citizen, and a defect one at that. Being deaf doesn't make me handicapped!"

Some of the blind are equally upset. While there are projects like MAX that are making accessibility a little easier, the over all feeling is that this is being done out of pity or charity. this is actually degrading to the deaf and blind communities. Though I cannot sign very well, I have several deaf friends, and while it can be hard to communicate at times, there is still a deep sense of respect and love between us, and I do not tolerate anyone pitying my deaf friends. The same goes for my friends that are blind or nearly so. They do not see themselves as handicapped and so why should they be treated as such?

Many members of both communities felt that's exactly what the Hellen Keller's Day is all about in Second Life and are dreading the 27th when it goes live because of what has already been previewed, as well as the blog postings about it and so forth.

All in all, the intentions were good, but the implementation too often very offensive.

Adult Content Policies

2009-06-24T12:08:00.000-07:00

With less then a week to go before the free move runs out, and the new continent becomes the only place that adult content is allowed, we feel the need to weigh in with the following facts.

The vast majority of the companies that Linden Lab have stated were pushing for this policy have come out strongly against how it is being implemented. At least two have started internal discussions about pulling out of Second Life.

Businesses have already reported major losses. When the new search engine went active many clubs including Nadia's Xscape, Crimson Seductions, and Bikers Paradise started seeing a major loss. Stores such as the famous Sn@tch came out strictly against it, and the Second Life blogs are riddled with posts about how businesses have lost money. These concerns were meant by Blondin Linden, his fellows Blue and Brent and most especially by Liana with an overwhelming response of "Oh well, not our problem." This attitude is best described by Liana's smart assed reply that Business owners must pick a smaller target audience.

Hello and wake up Liana. Not only are you toying with many people's sole livelihood, but this sort of behavior is called interference of interstate commerce.... a capital felony in the United States.

Finally, after exploring the new continent, we have found it to be a massive eyesore. It is ugly, poorly built and the dams that were so proudly touted by Jack Linden look worse then anything the newest, most experienced resident could throw together. And with only two weeks to choose parcels this is insane. Add to that the two week time for businesses to actually set up and move their locations you have not only the most unrealistic expectations but are spelling the death for virtually all of second life commerce.

Do yourselves a favor Linden Lab. Fire every one that worked on this policy and start over this time listening to the needs of your community.

Welcome To LindenWatch

2009-06-24T11:54:00.001-07:00

LindenWatch was set up by several volunteers frustrated with the direction Linden Lab is taking the social environment Second Life, and designed to provide a better look at the good and the bad of the policies of the company as a whole, of particular departments, and of individual lindens.

We will weigh in on anything that strikes our fancy and we are inviting others to join us.