Firestorm Viewer Updates

 

With our focus on Veterans Day and the passing of Baron Wulfenbach/Melanippe of Themiscyra , it slipped our minds to write about Firestorm getting updated on November 11. The new version is labeled Firestorm 7.2.2. 

The new version fixes some bugs, including some that could cause you to crash. There are also some changes such as offering the Avatar Starter Pack in place of the Avatar Chooser (the old avatars should still be in the library).  One can also mark items, and outfits, as favorites. There's other details such as chat moderation,additional emojis, voice fixes, and more. 

 

For additional details, check out the Firestorm blog (here). 

 

Firestorm PBR Viewer Online

 

 Last week on Thursday June 20, Firestorm announced on their blog that their latest viewer version, the 6.6.17 viewer, was out, one that could view PBR (Physical Based Rendering) content. This includes some high detail content, and mirror surfaces. 

It is time! After nearly seven months of testing and seeking bug fixes and merging improvements and features, we are unleashing the Firestorm PBR viewer today. PBR was first released by Linden Lab back in November 2023. We have been working with them to help ensure that bugs and glitches in those early releases were addressed before we passed it on. Since then many improvements have been made, not just in the performance and stability but with new features such as realistic mirrors and better terrain. It is now time to pass all that on, and we felt that there was no better occasion to do this than just before the SL21B celebrations, where—I have been told by someone who got an early insight—”some of the best builds I have ever seen in Second Life” have been created.

 

They listed a "timeline of release notes and updates" to help keep track of what features were under development and when.

I downloaded the new viewer, and I went to a place where there was some PBR content: The Shop and Hop. The hallways separating the sims, I had noticed panels with wavy gray patterns before. With the new Firestorm viewer, they took shape as leafy plants. 

 

Someone (I forget the name) pointed out a place where I could see a PBR mirror. I went there, and I went to my Preferences and made sure "Mirrors" were active. And it worked. 

But, it wasn't perfect. Lag seemed to be slightly worse, and I couldn't get water surfaces to reflect. Firestorm admitted there would be problems for many, "This is a big step."

I don’t want to underplay the enormity of this change from the 6.6.17 viewer. The visual experience will be drastically different, and for some, it will take some getting used to. The hardware demands will be quite different, too, and you will have to make some (sometimes significant) changes to your “normal settings” to get the best out of your experience.

A lot of why we have held back is to try to get ahead of many of the bug fixes and issues that we knew would dominate the support teams time. While this release is certainly a lot more stable than early PBR viewers and I would say it is probably as stable as any previous viewer, the bugs and annoyances that you will experience will be different and new, and people naturally worry about this. Our support team will be working very hard to help you all through this transition ...

And bugs there were. The very first to comment wrote, "Being on an older computer it was horrific, more useless SL bells and whistles..." another went "I am going to be perfectly and brutally honest, its worst. From what I have seen the settings are changed into a way that the reflections became more unreal then before, the water is horrible" A marketing manager for a boat show wrote, "this is just AWFUL. What terrible timing. ALL the vendor’s semi-transparent sails are now ruined and need to be redone... the water is purple, and the foliage all has a blue-purple fringe at the transparent edges ... Worse yet, I had to clear my cache to get my slide-show textures to load and finally display properly. And, of course, the average attendee doesn’t have the skills to get into their settings to clear the cache or turn down settings to even make the boat show remotely viable."

Two friends of mine reported trouble. One told me she experienced bad lag at the SL21B, worse than last year, and when looking at another friend's PBR mirror she crashed. Former Newser writer Grease Coakes told me he had so much trouble crashing at the SL21B trying to play music, and had problems going back to May, he made the decision to leave SL with no plans on coming back.

So it seems we have a viewer update with much to offer. But it seems work to fix the bugs is needed. 

Readers with problems (and praises) are encouraged to make a comment below.

Bixyl Shuftan

 

This Saturday at The Science Circle

 

 

Saturday, May 27

 

    ~*~

    

    At 10 AM PST   

    Bugs and Babies:  Endosymbiotic Embryogenesis in Carpenter Ants

    By Dr. Mary Anne Clark

    https://www.sciencecircle.org/event/bugs-and-babies/

    Auditorium

 

    The Science Circle (72,129,30)

      

    ~*~

 

    At 9 PM PST   

    Places in Second Life

    By Jes Stannard

    https://www.sciencecircle.org/event/places-in-second-life/

    SC Meeting Spot

 

   The Science Circle (72,129,30)

 

    ~*~

    

    NOTE: Non-members required to register once

    IM Jes Cobalt or Nymf Hathaway

╚══════════════════════════════ The Science Circle (72,129,30) ═╝

 

 

Grid and Viewer Glitches?

 

 Lately it seems my alt Rezzdarnnit is living up to his name.

It's been a little more than a week since the February 1 outages that took out a number of sims for a while, caused people to have problems logging in, and other problems. Since then, I've heard of, and to a lesser degree experienced, a few issues that aren't just the usual lag. Some people are taking longer to rezz, longer to see others rezz, longer to see sims rezz, and some trouble logging in.

  

The news isn't *entirely* bad. Since upgrading my Firestorm on the day before the required update, my frames per second is sometimes quite a bit more than it was before, at least when there's few to no other avatars around. 

Checking the Grid Status Report, there was a mention of a long-running issue "Online Friends Display Issues," for close to a month, " We are aware that some of our Residents are currently experiencing issues with online friends not showing correctly. Our engineers are hard at work to correct this behavior as soon as possible; however, there may be an extended time frame before this occurs." 

 

This hasn't been the first time the Grid has had more than the usual amount of bugs. During Second Life's move to Amazon Cloud servers, there were many to the point Linden Lab was asking for patience for the many weeks it would take. What could be causing these issues, we don't know, yet.

Hopefully things will be fixed soon.

Bixyl Shuftan

Glitches Plague Second Life

 

 

 Second Life invariably has occasional glitches. But February 1 2023 was worse than usual. Numerous sims were offline. Some avatars wouldn't rezz properly or at all. People had trouble logging on. The Lab had been doing some rolling restarts. But it soon realized it had a problem, admitting to outages and script errors on it's Grid Status Report.

 

We are investigating reports of occasional errors upon logging into the viewer as well as reports of slowness or time outs on web pages such as the Marketplace and my.secondlife.com. We are also aware some residents are appearing as a cloud for longer than expected upon logging in. Our engineers are actively trying to alleviate the issue. We apologize for the inconvenience.

 

Some residents would describe their problems on a couple forum threads here and here, "I've been an orange cloud for three hours." Draxtor Despress' Second Life Book Club would have to postpone it's weekly show to Saturday due to the glitches, which showed in his recording. Checking the maps, one friend commented, "I don't think I have ever seen so many sims down at once on the map."

 

On 3:45 PM , the Lab posted that the issues were resolved. But for about an hour after that, I continued to see people having problems with their avatars rezzing. By 6PM, it appeared things had finally cleared up.

 

It;s safe to say this was Second Life's most glitched day in many months. Fortunately, it wasn't as bad as the early days in which it seemed Linden Lab had to shut down the Grid for a few hours every week to "bang on things" until the bugs were fixed.

 

Image Credit: Vicious Hollow, Matoazma Kazyanenko

 

Bixyl Shuftan

 

EOTB: SL Destination Guide Still Being Worked On

Although Linden Lab completed the move of it's data from old servers to The Cloud a few weeks ago, the job isn't quite finished. A few days ago in the official blog, Strawberry Linden stated that the way the Second Life Destination Guide is updated developed bugs and glitches in the move that are still being worked on. There will be no new updates "for the foreseeable future."

On December 22nd I announced that the Second Life Destination Guide was being uplifted to the cloud. That process is still underway, however, we have run into some errors. For this reason, the web publishing tool that allows us to update the Destination Guide is still unavailable and will be for the foreseeable future until these errors can be corrected. I am hoping it won’t be much longer than another week or two. I will continue to update you on this status every Friday.

The submission form for the Destination Guide is also giving errors because of this, so please continue to email your submissions to editor@lindenlab.com and we will add them as soon as we have access again.

To read the blog post in full, Click Here.

SL Poetry: "Oh TP Crash"

Oh tp crash,
Oh tp crash,
How I love the tp crash,

Oh tp crash,
Oh tp crash,
How I love the tp crash,

Just when I want to simply go home,
You lock me up and throw me to the gnomes,

Oh tp crash,
Oh tp crash,
How I love the tp crash,

Here is my hope for Linden wootmas gifts,
They only get smelly coal and malware bits.

Oh tp crash,
Oh tp crash,
How I love the tp crash,

The End , Thank you and Merry Wootmas 

by Caleb Kit, on the Raglan Shire Discord channel

Linden Lab: "We Apologize For Recent Service Disruptions"

Glitches are more or less a part of the Second Life experience. But if it seems they've been getting worse lately, it's not your imagination. And even Linden Lab is admitting things are buggier than usual. In the Tools and Technology blog on Friday October 16, Oz Linden stated in the "Uplift Update" that while there's been overall improvement in the Second Life infrastructure, "it’s the bumps in the road that are most noticeable to our residents. We apologize for recent service disruptions ..." He would point out several "rough spots."

Region Crossings
One of the first troubles we found was that region crossings were significantly worse between a cloud region and a datacenter region. We did a deep dive into the code for objects (boats, cars, planes, etc) and produced an improvement that made them significantly faster and more reliable even within the datacenter. This has been applied to all regions already and was a good step forward.

Group Chat stalls
Many users have reported that they are not able to get messages in some of their groups; we're very much aware of the problem. The start of those problems does coincide with when the chat service was uplifted; unfortunately the problems did not become clear until moving that service back to the datacenter was not an option. We haven’t been able to get that fixed as quickly as we would like, but the good news is that we have some changes nearly ready that we think may improve the service and will certainly provide us with better information to diagnose it if it isn't fixed. Those changes are live on the Beta grid now and should move to the main grid very soon.

Bake Failures
Wednesday and especially Thursday of this past week were bad days for avatar appearance, and we're very much aware of how important that is. The avatar bake service has actually been uplifted for some time - it wasn't moving it that caused the problem, but another change to a related service. The good news is that thanks to a great cross-team effort during those two days we were able to determine why an apparently unrelated simulator update triggered the problem and got a fix deployed Thursday night.

Increased Teleport Failures
We have seen a slight increase in the frequency of teleport failures. I know that if it's happened to you it probably doesn't feel like a "slight" problem, especially since it appears to be true that if it's happened to someone once, it tends to keep happening for a while. Measured over the entire grid, it's just under two percentage points, but even that is unacceptable. We're less sure of the specific causes for this (including whether or not it's Uplift related), but are improving our ability to collect data on it and are very much focused on finding and fixing the problem whatever it is.

Marketplace & Stipend Glitches
We've had some challenges related to uplift for both the Marketplace and the service that pays Premium Stipends. Marketplace had to be returned to the datacenter yesterday, but we'll correct the problems that required the rollback and get it done soon. The Stipends issues were both good and bad for users; there were some delays, but on the other hand we sent some users extra stipends (our fault, you win - we aren't taking them back); those problems are, we believe, solved now.

So why all of the glitches and bugs? Oz called the Uplift to move Second Life's data to cloud servers "a massive, complicated project that I've previously compared to converting a steam-driven railroad to a maglev monorail -- without ever stopping the train." He would later try to reasure the residents, "While this week in particular has seen some bumps in the road, it's actually going well overall. Lots of the infrastructure you don't interact with directly, and some you do, has been uplifted and has worked smoothly." He would go on to say almost all of the Beta Grid's sims were in the Cloud, and "we've uplifted around a hundred regions on the main grid. Performance of those regions has been very very good, and stability has been excellent." He would go on to say more sims would be uplifted over the weekend and that "Uplift of the Release Candidate regions, which will bring the count into the thousands, will begin soon."

Oz would say the Uplift to the Cloud should be completed, or at least be close to it, by the end of the year.

To read the blog entry in full, Click Here.

Bixyl Shuftan

Reader Submitted: The Cloud Move

Kἶէმƈεlἶმ Lմἶղƈօɾἶმlօէε Kεlνმɾl (Kitacelia Resident) recently sent a reader submitted commentary about what she feels has become quite an aggravating problem: increasing lag along with bugs and glitches due to Linden Lab moving data from it's current servers to cloud-based ones. The Lab's "good idea," from her point of view, is causing a lot of problems. So she took the time to explain the problem as she sees it.

Read Kitacelia's reader submission in Extra.

Tiny Empires Game Not Working With New Last Names

image from Liska Fuchs

Yesterday, Linden Lab announced that residents (with Premium accounts) could have their last names changed after paying a fee. But while the Lab has been trying to work out the bugs with how residents interact with objects and Marketplace, there are still problems with things outside the Lab's direct control. For instance, some resident-created games may not recognize the new names. In one group notice inworld, there was a warning to players of the game "Tiny Empires."

For Tiny Empires players:

LL has reinstated “last names” effective today as a new option for Second Life Premium Members. Premium account holders may change their first, last or both names.

However, active TE players should NOT, repeat, NOT do this at this time. There are reports that one GV changed her name and was demoted to a wanderer. The Emperor has been asked to confirm or deny this and if confirmed, fix the glitch that allowed it to happen.

Until that time, please do NOT change your name.

 This was also mentioned in the Second Life forums.

I just paid £42.97 to change my name to Eva Nova and was so pleased, until I logged back in to SL and put my games HUDS on to find all progress lost. I had a guild in Tiny Empires 3000 and also played the classic game, for many years. ...
 
Please everyone be careful before you rush in like I did because I have destroyed years of progress on my games.

Also, Oldesoul Eldemar notified the Newser of a notice he'd gotten from Caspertech:

We were prepared for the name change stuff coming well in advance. It will not affect the operation of CasperVend or CasperLet in any way.

However, if you change your name, you will need to continue using your old name to log in to CasperVend.
~Casper

So those in Second Life changing their names early will likely go through a number of inconveniences.

Bixyl Shuftan

Glitches on The Grid

On Friday January 17, Club Cutlass in Sunweaver Bay was having it's "Military" party when all of a sudden, everyone's viewer crashed. As people came back online, they saw the sim was down. It took several minutes, but eventually the area was back online and the party resumed.

But this wasn't the only glitch this weekend. On Sunday afternoon, January 19, people were saying in SL and Discord they were having a hard time logging on.  Checking the Grid Status Report, the Lab confirmed there were login issues that day, as well as trouble on the 17th.

We are aware that some Residents may be experiencing problems trying to log into and/or stay connected to Second Life. Our engineers are actively trying to alleviate the issue.

It took a few hours, but eventually the Lindens "banging on things" had some results, and people were able to login and log off without worry. At least most of us weren't worried. One friend of mine whom was both at Cutlass on Friday and had login trouble Sunday half-seriously wondered if somehow the Lindens were out to get her. They weren't of course, though it certainly felt like it.

Bixyl Shuftan

Glitches in the Grid

If you're wondering if Second Life seems more buggy than usual, you're not alone. Over the weekend and on Monday, I've heard from a number of people about various things on the Grid going wrong. Yours truly has experienced occasional lag, and sudden viewer crashes, and I've heard a complaint or two about sim crossings. But friends have told me some of their items just haven't been working right. A contest board at a club I frequent had trouble working for the manager. One friends permapetted horse got sick from hunger, and it was supposed to be free of the need to eat the company's food. Another friend was sailing, and even away from the sim borders the boat could barely steer.

So what was going on? On Thursday September 26, Linden Lab would announce in the Grid Status Report that an attempt to allow scripts to run better ended up breaking the ability of some to work with others.

Investigating - We believe we have identified the source of the scripting problems that rolled to the main channel this week (and so are present on the entire grid now). That simulator build had improvements to script scheduling that reduced overhead, allowing more scripts to be run per frame. Unfortunately, it appears that those changes also exacerbated a previously undetected problem with scripts communicating with other scripts.

The most obvious example of the problem concerns the timing of the object_rez event delivered to a script that has requested the creation of a new object. When a script creates a new object, the script that requests the creation gets an object_rez event to indicate that the new object is ready. Normally, the scripts in the new object should be running before the parent script gets the object_rez event. Similarly, scripts get an on_rez event when the object they are in is rezzed; the order in which those on_rez events occur is not defined, but previously all scripts in the object would get those events roughly at the same time. What we've discovered is that in rare circumstances, the on_rez and object_rez events could be delivered before the all scripts in the new object had been started. When that happened, any communication between the scripts would not work as expected.

This out-of-order event delivery was previously so rare that it had never come to our attention, but the script scheduling changes had the side effect of making it more likely that some scripts would get the rez events more quickly, increasing the chance that the events are delivered before the other scripts they expect to communicate with are ready.

We are working now on a fix; we hope to have the fix deployed on a set of test regions on the beta (Aditi) grid for the weekend so that creators can test with it (watch this space). The rolls for next week will revert the main channel to a version prior to the scheduling changes, and the RC channels will get a version with the improved scheduler but modified so that the rez events are never delivered to any script until after all scripts in the rezzed object have been started.

We know that this bug has affected many of you and your enjoyment of Second Life, and are profoundly sorry that it was not found before it was so widely deployed.

 The following day, the Lab announced on the Grid Status Report that there would be rolling restarts on the Grid.

Update - We will be doing a roll to address this issue on Friday, September 27th, at approximately 10:00 PM PDT. We apologize for the disruptive weekend roll and will try to minimize impact. Thank you so much for your patience during this frustrating time.

Early Saturday morning, September 28, Linden Lab would do rolling restarts. In the forums, Mazidox Linden would say:

"Yep, we are rolling the grid right now to revert the most recent update to LSL script improvements. This should prevent further issues with objects communicating. (But if you continue seeing issues with scripts, whether it's communication or something else we want to know about them!)"

On Monday, yesterday, the Lab declared the problem over.

Resolved - The scripting errors which resulted in many scripts, huds, and other items to not function properly should now be resolved.

However, friends of mine are still complaining about problems that are mostly likely due to script errors, "There is something wrong with (Linden Script Language) and (Linden Lab) broke it," one told me. She also told me as far as she knows, the Lab is still working on further fixes. So it looks like there are still glitches on the Grid.

Bixyl Shuftan

Recent Windows Updates May Slow Down Your Computer

If you think your computer isn't running as fast as it was, you may be right. But it may not be hackers slowing it down, but measures to stop them.

On January 3, Intel and other makers of computer chips announced that two flaws had been discovered. Nicknamed "Spectre" and "Meltdown," they exposed the users of the computers with the chips to potential hacking attacks. The result has been both companies and individual computer users having to update their computer software. Unfortunately in the case of Windows updates, there are problems. The company "confirmed that some Windows 10, 8 and 7 adopters will face slower computers once the patch is installed."

While brand new machines with Windows 10 shouldn't see much of a slowdown, users of older computers with Windows 10, 8 and 7 would likely see a noticeable slowdown. One article stated the slowdowns would be from 5% to 30%. For computers with AMD chips, there was an unforeseen problem. The Windows updates were making these computers unable to reboot and making them "bricks."

There's also a report that the CEO of Intel sold the maximum amount of stock he could, about $24 million dollars worth, upon finding out about the flaws.

It is unclear when there will be further updates that allow computers back to their previous speeds.

Sources: Express, Tweaktown, BGR, Telegraph, CNN, Forbes 

Bixyl Shuftan

Further Adventures in Ark Survival Evolved

It's been about a month since the Newser did a review on "Ark: Survival Evolved," the survival game on an island filled with dinosaurs. Since then, Bixyl Shuftan and some of his friends have continued playing the game, in both public and private servers. Here, he writes about some of the adventures, and misadventures, he and his fellow survivors have gone through, as well as a few more helpful hints and observations about the game.

Read more in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.

Unscheduled Maintenance

Yesterday in the afternoon, things weren't going quite right for some Second Life residents. Some couldn't log in. Others couldn't teleport or ended up in places like the hub in the Adult sim of Arapama. Ending up there, the only way I could escape was to log off and relog at my Home location. So what was going on? A look at the Grid Status revealed a problem.

Unscheduled Maintenance
Posted by Status Desk on October 27th, 2014 at 03:24 pm PDT
[Posted 3:24 PM PDT, 27 October 2014] We are currently undergoing unscheduled maintenance to several systems. Some Residents may experience difficulties with multiple services, including logins, Web dashboards, and searches. Please keep an eye on this blog for details.

Eventually people were able to log in and port as they were before, though for a while, things were frustrating.

"Server Side" Blues

Well, yours truly is down to one working viewer. With Linden Lab's "Project Sunshine" and it's "server side" baking, the result was my Singularity viewer, which hadn't offered an upgrade since May, starting to get buggy. It was freezing up frequently, rezzing slower, and crashing more often. And finally, it's starting to become unusable, freezing up when starting then crashing. So that leaves a year old version of Cool VL. More recent upgrades of this viewer for some reason won't work. And neither will Firestorm or the official viewers.

The result is well, some avatars looking like the one above. Exploring my options on what to do.

Commentary: Doing the Lag-tastic

If there's one thing that bugs each resident almost constantly, it's the ever-present lag. Sometimes it seems worse than usual. Those of us with longer memories may wonder, "Is the lag really worse than usual, or is it just me?" So when a few others also complain, well, you figure you may be right.

But if person after person complains, saying they've had to stop using a new viewer for an older one, well, you may be pardoned for wondering if there's something rotten in Ahern.

So what's behind the lag behind these complains? Some I chat with blame the more recent updates to the viewer. And indeed the most recent update to the official Linden Lab viewer frequently causes things to freeze or even crash whenever I Instant-Message someone, or get an IM from someone. Others complain about their Firestorm viewers, going back to the old Phoenix, even if it's no longer supported by the team. One person compared it to going back to a worn and ragged but comfortable pair of old shoes when the new shoes kept pinching your feet.


For myself, Firestorm doesn't work on my computer, and except for the first release or two never has. The bugs I found in the official viewer meant going back to full time use of Cool VL, but the version I use is some months old, and at times such as a crowded sim can show its age. For some peculiar reason, their more recent Mac viewers won't work for me. Then a friend and I were talking about the Singularity Viewer. Mentioning I stopped using it when it stopped updating their Mac client, she told me they had started doing so again and the most recent update was just a few weeks ago. So I gave it a try, and it worked!

Well, not perfectly. Things still take a while to load. But it did put a stop the the occasional "invisible jacket" Cool VL sometimes game me. Then again, maybe the lag seeming so bad is just my imagination.

Bixyl Shuftan

QuickTips - "Getting Help"

The next in Linden Lab's "QuickTips" videos, how to get help for bugs and similar issues.

Second Life is fun — but sometimes you might encounter a problem inworld.

Need help with your land? Have a billing question? We want to help you make the most of your Second Life. This week’s QuickTips video tutorial walks you through the many support options available to both basic and premium Second Life users.

Learn more about our Knowledge Base and Support Portal, as well as Abuse Report options and more.

Yes We Have No Pandaria

Tuesday Septemeber 25th was the day "Mists of Pandaria," the next expansion of the MMO World of Warcraft was up for sale. And so huge numbers of WoW players were up and at starting up new characters of the new race and class available in the game. So me being a player of the game, where are the screenshots?

Unfortunately I don't have any, because World of Warcraft stopped working for me.

Expansions to the game are always preceded by a major patch. And in the middle of downloading, it just stopped cold. The suggestions provided by technical support are not working. This is the most trouble I've had in over five years of playing the game.

One friend of mine who's been spending more time in Warcraft and less in Second Life suggested going ahead and scraping the game and reisntalling. But that's going to take quite a bit of time.

In the meantime, any pictures of Pandaren on the Newser in the near future are going to come from others.

Bixyl Shuftan

"Direct Delivery" Marketplace Troubles and Rodvik's Response

Direct Delivery for the Second Life Marketplace hasn't gone the way Linden Labs intended. At first, it seemed to be a simple bug of gifts to others not always reaching the recipient. But apparently, it's much more.

Inara Pey noted a number of other problems, including, "Listings on Marketplace do not match the actual items," incorrect merchant information (products from one seller listed as belonging to another), "products from one merchant appearing in stores belonging to other merchants, items incorrectly priced," and "incorrect ratings assigned to products (G-rated items appearing as Adult, etc)" She also stated she was beginning to observe "rising accusations of 'theft' among merchants as they come across what appears to be their own goods being listed by others." Tateru Nino called the source of the problem a "unicode bungle," listed in the JIRA as "WEB-4587."

The initial response from Linden Labs was largely silence. Then a few days ago, Rodvik Linden gave a few answers on his Twitter account, pointing out an update on the commerce forum, "team has been crunching non stop to get those issues addressed. We will update as soon as we have a fix." Calling it "not an acceptable quality of roll out," Tateru Nino deadpanned, "perhaps is wasn't an acceptable quality of rollout, but it was the level of quality that we have become used to all these years."

The commerce forum update was further updated the next day, saying "two of the top three outstanding issues" were addressed

• WEB-4580: purchases are now delivered to recipients with the inventory name (which does not allow unicode characters). This will prevent future orders from getting stuck in the Being Delivered state due to this issue. In addition, all orders affected by this problem have been pushed through.
• WEB-4587: updates have been made to support updating store search results, which we will process over the next week; we continue to work on the issue related to mismatched data on listings. We do know that this issue has existed since September 2010 (during the migration from Xstreet to the Second Life Marketplace).


Hamlet's article on Rodvik's response drew some positive feedback from readers, mixed in with cautionary notes, "Wow, a straightforward acknowledgment, with no BS, no spin. … Kudos to Rodvik, may this act serve as an example for all of LL. This kind of forthcoming communication can make all the difference in the world in making SL live up to its full potential." the same resident also stated, "Whether it's truly accompanied by the promised action is a different issue … everyone should hold LL's feet to the fire on this regardless until it's fixed."

On the Linden forums, residents seemed a bit more critical, "And yet he can't even manage to post this timely info on his company's official website?" "Although it is refreshing to see a CEO like Rodvik use some of the other social media to communicate with the community, the flaw with Rodvik is that he seems to ONLY use non-LL official tools to interact with his customer base. "

Second Life Newser has yet to hear whether or not things have improved on Marketplace or not. But judging by some of the comments observed, some merchants and shoppers will be relying less on it.

Sources: Living in a Modem World, Tateru Nino, New World Notes, Twitter, Linden Forums,

Image Credit: Emilly Orr, Sera Lok

Bixyl Shuftan