Technical Malfunctions

Since a couple of weeks I have been experiencing some strange technical problems in SecondLife. Below I will give you a complete list of the various problems, the causes that have been suggested to me and what I have done to try to solve them.

I noticed all the problems at the same time, so as far as I know they arose simultaneously. At that time I was using the Firestorm viewer.

Problem 1:  Repetition of my chat in local

Frequency: Daily

Description: When I speak in local chat all my remarks are repeated once. It looks like this in local chat:

"Bock McMillan: I am speaking in local chat.I am speaking in local chat."

or 

"Bock McMillan: I am speaking in local chat.

A.A: Bla bla bla

B.B: Yodel-yodel-yodel

C.C: Di-da-de-da-dum-dee-dum.

Bock McMillan: I am speaking in local chat."

What I have tried to illustrate above is that sometimes the repetition is instantaneous while at other times there is a delay of between 10-60 seconds. There are no brackets around the repetitions. Mostly I can see it happening myself but at other times I don´t see it.

Suggested causes: a) Translation is activated, b) Pushing Page Up, c) Lag

a) I have checked this at least 25 times and translation is never, and has never been, activated, besides if it were a translation it would - usually - have brackets around the repetition.

b) No, I do not try t annoy myself and everyone else at the venue by pushing the "Page Up" key on my keyboard every time I have spoken in chat. (You will have to take my word for this, I´m afraid.)

c) Yes, it happens in venues where there is lag, but it can also happen where there is no lag at all.

Problem 2: Repetition of my chat in Instant Message

Frequency: Daily

Description: When I speak in IM all my remarks are repeated once. Reportedly sometimes the repetition is instantaneous while at other times there is a delay of between 10-30 seconds. I cannot see it myself but the people I am talking with tell me about it.

Suggested causes: See Problem 1.

Problem 3:  Repetition of payments

Frequency: Daily

Description: When I buy, donate or tip my payment is repeated either immediately or within 60 seconds afterwards. This means I make two purchases and receive two deliveries of everything I buy or that I donate or tip twice the amount I had intended.

Suggested causes: Lag (See Problem 1 c and my additional information about this)

Problem 4: HUD's are turned on or off involuntarily

Frequency: Daily

Description: If I have a HUD turned on it turns itself off and if I have it turned off it turns itself on.

Suggested causes: Lag. (See Problem 1 c and my additional information about this.)

Problem 5: Involuntary movement

Frequency: Weekly

Description: When I am standing around or dancing at a venue my avatar starts moving around until it ends up in a corner from where it cannot be moved.

Suggested causes: Lag. (See Problem 1 c and my additional information about this.)

Measures I have already taken to try to solve the issues, to no avail so far.

1. I have cleared my caches 984,367 times (Well, no less than 100 times if that is more believable)

2. I have restarted  my modem no less than 25 times, on occasions leaving it off more than an hour.

3. I have re-installed the SecondLife viewer more than 20 times, making certain that I did a fresh install every time.

4. Switched to Linden Lab´s viewer 3 and then back again to Firestorm and then back again to Linden viewer 3, making sure every time that I did a fresh install.

5. I have talked with a sweet Linden on the labs Live-Chat support. She made the same suggestions that I have listed above (1-2), checked my avatar for corruption and told me it was low but she was going to run a cleaning procedure anyway, which she did. 

6. I have taken off all my attachments and HUDs and reset the HUDs.

7. I have run several virus and malware scans on my computer, both online and offline.

Today, after yet another fresh install, I took the drastic measure to delete everything in my Inventory that was younger than sixty days. Luckily I have not been purchasing much lately, but unluckily all your holiday greetings had to go I am afraid. Results of this drastic measure are still pending. This measure did not help at all!

(The information in this post was later turned into the support ticket #01587329 I sent to Linden Lab)

Coming Viewer Improvement - Experience Keys

Linden Lab, the makers of SecondLife, are working on new exciting improvements as seen in this video about "Experience Keys", where Torley Linden explains what it's all about.

According to Torley, Experience Keys is in its final development phase and Linden Lab is now looking for high-quality experiences to beta test the toolset. The lab needs our help to stress-test these features and demonstrate how easily experiences can be converted.

(Tipped by loyal BiSL-reader Tomais Ashdene)

Update
And as luck would have it, I waited to long after the tip so it has now been scooped by the following

• New World Notes; Improved Permission System May (Finally) Make Second Life a Decent Game Platform
• Jo Yardley's Second Life;  "The Cornfield returns" and
• Daniel Voyager's Blog; "The Return of The Cornfield in Second Life".

Support Ticket #01587329 XIV

It´s the middle of the night here now and I woke up after a nightmare and needed to drink, so while I am airing out my bedroom and cooling it down I checked my email.

There was a new message from Theresa Linden at Linden Lab waiting for me:

Illustration from Gliffen Designs

"A comment has been added to your Case.. 

Case: 01587329
Avatar: Bock McMillan
Type: Other Inworld Issues
Status: Information Requested
Hi Bock!

Thanks again and again for the info. I love details! I hate that you had to delete your inventory to see if it were associated with this. Any new updates since this has happened? Or are you on a very well deserved hiatus? LOL!

Warm regards,

Theresa Linden

To reply to this case, either Reply to this email, or visit : https://secondlife.com/my/support/?caseID=01587329

(To view the Case online, you will need to log into Secondlife.com with this Avatar: Bock McMillan)"

----

I sent my dear tech support the following reply:

"Hello dear Theresa,

You´re most welcome, after all we are in this together and I must do my part!

No, nothing new to report really. As Bock I keep on repeating in local chat, IM and with payments on most venues except when at home on Southern Charm. The newly created alt (LadyCruellaMcMillan) doesn't have any problems at all. She is fine wherever they both go while he is a stuttering fool, although still very dashing and charming of course...

I have a Swedish friend Zigadena Gabardini, who had the same problems. After I had been on the Second Pride meeting on Sunday with my bandwidth set to 5000 and been free of any problems for two hours, I told her to yank up her bandwidth (which was set to 500) up to 5000. She tells me that she has had no problems with repeats in local chat, IM and payments since she pulled up the bandwidth. Bock of course, as I have already told you, was not so lucky.

Hugs (we Swedes hug a lot and all the time),
Bock"

Trying to deal with reality V (The conclusion)

Från: Linden Lab - Support [mailto:no-reply@secondlife.com]
Skickat: den 19 april 2010 02:37
Till: x@x.se
Ämne: Ticket #4051-7546025: Customer Posted a Comment (Ramifications of SL partners passing)

Requested Information:
Hi Bock

Many apologies for the delay in responding to you.

We are pleased to advise we will proceed with transferring the ownership of this region to your account and you should hear from us within the next few days as that is completed.

If you have any further questions please feel free to add them to this ticket and we will respond as soon as we are able.

Best regards

Belinda

----

Yeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!

Thank you so much, Belinda Linden´and Linden Lab! I am so happy and relieved I don´t know how to express it except in one way...

BIGGEST HUGS EVER!!!

A Match Made In the SL-Heavens

Oh my, have I got news for you all! It is so exciting I can hardly contain myself, filled with jubilation and excitement as I am.

At the editorial meeting today I met with The Much Honored Bock McMillan, laird of Southern Charm etc, etc, at his mansion (a.k.a. "Gossip Central" due to the always well informed laird's highly dependable sources).

The laird had a particular bit of thrilling information to impart today, "directly from the two involved horses mouths" as he chose to phrase it.

Please sit down and breathe deeply three times before reading any further. This blog cannot be held accountable for any damages you may incur while reading this post!

OK, here goes!

His lairdship informed us that my Philip (a.k.a. Philip Linden in SecondLife or Philip Rosedale in first life) and my Ebbe (a.k.a. Ebbe Linden in SecondLife and Ebbe Altberg in first life) are romantically involved. So what we all thought was merely a bromance between our wonderful dreamer/creator and the best damned C.E.O. of Linden Labs we've ever had has evolved into a deep love between the two.

The guys have decided to move in together with both of their first life families as well. For that purpose a large mansion (sixteen bedrooms with ensuite baths) has been bought outside San Francisco for them and their families.

It is reported that both the wives and the families on either side get along famously with each other and are all for this somewhat unusual arrangement.

This is a marvelous - albeit unforeseen - development for SecondLife and all it's residents. Let us rejoice with the happy couple and their families!

Support Ticket #01587329 XIX (Updated)

I got this email from my friend Theresa Linden at Linden Lab this morning. It is quite a lot to respond to so I am posting the response I am sending when I have gather the information that Whirly wants.

Illustration from PCCare

Somehow they seem to be under the impression that the unchecking of the HTTP Textures did not help, I cannot understand why because I thought I told them in my report that it actually worked very well, except for the first four minutes or so. 

I blame myself, my English must be poorer than I thought and I will have to clear up that misunderstanding in my response to them. So here goes with the email from Linden Lab.

"A comment has been added to your Case.. 

Case: 01587329
Avatar: Bock McMillan
Type: Other Inworld Issues
Status: Information Requested
Hi Bock!

More fun and more suggestions from Whirly here:

Sorry to hear Bock is still having problems.

Some more thoughts...

When did this problem start for Bock? Can he think of anything that changed at his end that coincided with this issue starting?

eg) Change of ISP, moving house, new computer, new router/cable modem, change of router configuration, installing different firewall/antivirus, installing any "gamebooster" type software, Kitty walking on the keyboard...

His system info is taken when not logged in so doesnt show packet loss.

When he is seeing the repeating chat etc, if he goes to Help -> About Second Life, what does his packetloss show on the last line?

Where did he actually take his connection readings to?

Are his readings looking as good if he measures to where LL have their servers?
Follow these links, then select "Your Preferred Server":
Dallas,TX: http://softdallas.speedtest.net/
Phoenix,AZ: http://brinkster.speedtest.net/
Reston,VA: http://reston.speedtest.net/

Does he have another computer in the house connected to the same network and can he reproduce his problem on that?

He has reported that he created an alt LadyCruellaMcMillan, and there are none of these issues happening with it.

Is he totally sure about that?

It seems this problem can seem cured & then reappears the next day. Did he test long enough on the fresh noob before declaring there was no problem?

If his problem really is account specific, that seems quite strange & probably isnt a good sign for a hopeful cure lol Is there anything unusual about his Bock account that could possibly have an effect on his problem? 

eg) Does Bock have a massive inventory size and is he maybe clearing his cache each login? (People do this often >.<) or was Bock a reactivated account after being deleted?

It sounds like Bock has already been put in test character & that didnt help the issue, so I guess t...

To reply to this case, either Reply to this email, or visit : https://secondlife.com/my/support/?caseID=01587329

(To view the Case online, you will need to log into Secondlife.com with this Avatar: Bock McMillan)"

---

Hip Hip Hooray, It's My 10th Rezday Today!

How time flies! It amazes me to think that today I am celebrating my tenth anniversary in our wonderful world of SecondLife.

Bock 2017 by Richard De Grataine Suoh

It's been a wonderful and amazing journey and I wouldn't wish to be without it. In those days we were born ugly and we stayed ugly. We duckwalked and had our clothes plastered to our bodies. Some days we would crash 45-50 times a day and still we would soldier on through those bad days and log right back in again. After each teleport you had to check yourself, so that you hadn't ended up with your shoe sunk into your ass or your hair stuck to your groin.

But we sure did have fun, even when we and watched the number of logged in residents getting close to first 5,000 holding our breath and waiting for SecondLife to crash. Then that number rose to 10,000, 20,000 until we no longer thought about it.

Bock 2007 by Bock McMillan

Life improved gradually - and at times very fast - but most of the time there was some improvement that gave us all hope and energy. Well except for under the reign of M Linden, those years were a total waste and we were all rather despondent until Philip Linden took the reins again. At the moment we are experiencing another golden age with great improvements under the benevolent rule of Ebbe Linden.

I am going to stick around for a couple of years more to see where this whole exciting adventure ends. It's going to be a thrill!

Philip Linden agrees to makeover

My favourite interim CEO Philip Linden (aka Philip Rosedale in RL) of Linden Lab gave a keynote adress at the SLCC 2010 where he promissed us a lot of improvements in SL before the end of the year.

SLCC 2010 stands for "Second Life Community Convention 2010" and was held in Boston, U.S.A., August 13-15, 2010.

Philip was as always charming and easy to listen to, even for a technically challenged person like myself. I would say I understood close to 98,7 % of what he was talking about, which amazed me. You can read all about the serious stuff on many other blogs, for example here "Tinas universum" (there is also a list of the serious promises and a link to the video of the speech) but they all seem to have missed the three most interesting  and important points Philip made.

Firstly Philip actually agreed to a long-awaited makeover of his avatar and invited all designers and the rest of us to help him out in that process. Philip wants the new look to make him sexier and better represent what Second Life offers us today but still stay in the "general area" of his present avatars looks.

We will all get the possibility to suggest a new and more up-to-date head and body. Among the contributions that are sent in Philip will choose the heads and bodies he feels comfortable to be in and we will all get to vote which combo we like the best.

Secondly Philip gave me his e-mail adress. (Well OK, not me personally but thats totally beside the point.)

Thirdly Philip promissed us all to make it easier to wear shoes in the future.

I was listening carefully to hear him promise something about my long asked for 50 group for premium accounts, but alas he said nothing about that this time.

A Message from Ebbe Linden re. SecondLife & Covid-19

Ebbe Altberg, a.k.a. Ebbe Linden, the CEO of Linden Lab, today published a message regarding the novel coronavirus and SecondLife operations on the SecondLife community blog (URL).

"Second Life will continue to be available without interruption as we get through this tough time together. Due to our previous crisis contingency planning and the flexible nature of our distributed workforce, we are not expecting any changes to response times for support inquiries and payment processing. 

We know that Second Life serves a great purpose for our community as people seek ways to stay in touch with their friends and co-workers, as they grapple with new social distancing protocols, mandated remote work requirements, and other precautionary measures. 

With the closure of many universities and displaced conferences and events, Second Life also continues to be an option for disrupted organizations looking for new remote work, classroom or event solutions. To help, we recently implemented a reduction in pricing to a flat $99/month per region for qualified education and nonprofit organizations."

Read the full message at the link posted above!

Support Ticket #01587329 XVII (Updated)

When I got home from work on Friday I had the following message waiting for me from Theresa Linden ant Linden Lab.

Please start the music at the bottom of the post before starting to read!

Illustration from NYSE Magazine

"A comment has been added to your Case..

Case: 01587329
Avatar: Bock McMillan
Type: Other Inworld Issues
Status: Information Requested
Hi Bock!

Here are some suggestions to try:

Another cause we have found of this duplicating chat/purchase issue is HTTP textures - it can make a users connection bug out with these symptoms if it cant handle HTTP data well.

Bring up the develop menu with CTRL+ALT+Q Then Develop -> HTTP Textures -> Untick this Then relog (essential) and see if the problem is any better

When the duplicated chat/purchase issue is caused by HTTP textures you will sometimes find that the problem doesnt start until after a user has teleported during a session. Sometimes it needs more then one teleport for the issue to start. Sometimes it will only start when a user enters a region where he doesnt already have the textures cached or if several new avatars arrive on a region where he is, downloading all their new textures over HTTP can set it off.

If it does not help at all then re-enable HTTP textures as its best left enabled if their connection can handle it.

Also, try setting your affected avatar back to the default test character by going to Develop>Avatar>Character Tests>Test Male. They seem to think if your alt is not encountering any issues that reverting this avatar to the basics may provide some clues if you try this.

Let me know how it goes!

Theresa Linden"

To reply to this case, either Reply to this email, or visit : https://secondlife.com/my/support/?caseID=01587329

(To view the Case online, you will need to log into Secondlife.com with this Avatar: Bock McMillan)"

---

This evening I sent Theresa the following reply:

"Hello dear Theresa,

I will do as the developers ask - of course - although You and I both know we have already tried the reverting to the test character before, without avail.

I will get back to you a.s.a.p. with reports after having tried out these recommendations from the developers!

Hugs,
Bock"

Update
Music for your pleasure while reading this post (as suggested by +Eddi Haskell)

SecondLife Turns 15, Let's Celebrate!

SecondLife was launched on June 23rd, 2003 when the adorable Philip Linden, our divine creator, first set foot in this world where Kahvy Smith only existed as an atom that would develop into the first dinosaur. Apmel Goosson wasn't far behind (just a fem nanoseconds) but still came in as first runner-up.

So this year it is celebrating its fifteenth anniversary. Wouldya believe it? It looks so old and mature...

Our darling Ebbe Linden and the Linden Lab har promised that there will be a yearlong celebration. Read all about the improvements at the SecondLife Community blog (url), which include lower mainland costs, the return of last names, improved performance and migration to the Cloud and much much more.

Happy 15th birthday SecondLife!

Support Ticket #01587329 XIII

Further developments as more pieces are added to the confusing puzzle.

Illustration from Wonderware

I received this email from my dear Theresa Linden at Linden Lab today.

"A comment has been added to your Case..

Case: 01587329
Avatar: Bock McMillan
Type: Other Inworld Issues
Status: Information Requested
Hello Bock,

Welcome back and thanks for the updates! Your last reply unfortunately got cut off for some reason as you were saying: "This got me totally con..."

I don't know why the system has cut you off but I do need the rest of that information. So, if you are able to, please paste the rest of it to me. I would be grateful. Also, if you can please include in your next reply your computer specs (from Help, About Second Life).

Thanks a bunch and I hope your headache is gone :(

Theresa Linden

To reply to this case, either Reply to this email, or visit : https://secondlife.com/my/support/?caseID=01587329

(To view the Case online, you will need to log into Secondlife.com with this Avatar: Bock McMillan)"

To which I responded as soon as I read the email.

"Hello Theresa,

Thank you, yes the headache finally decided to leave me on Sunday morning. I was extremely grateful for that! ;)

The part missing from the previous email is:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
"This got me totally confused and to the brink of total madness (as you may notice I sometimes like to exaggerate wildly). I had two accounts running on the same computer, one with problems and one without! Well, even if I was not quite at that point I was still feeling absolutely despondent and felt that we would never get control of this problem. We stopped the testing for the day and I ended it with deleting everything in my Inventory that I had amassed since September 2012. Luckily I have not been shopping a lot lately...

I am going back in today, feeling refreshed and eager to try again. I will get back to you with a new report on the results later today.

Hugs,
Bock" 

--------------------------------------------------------------------

And this is what it says under Help, About Second Life, Info:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
"Second Life 3.4.4 (268697) Jan 3 2013 19:48:48 (Second Life Beta Viewer) Release Notes
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz (3392.31 MHz)
Memory: 12269 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 8 64-bit (Build 9200) Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 580/PCIe/SSE2
Windows Graphics Driver Version: 9.18.0013.1090 OpenGL Version: 4.2.0
libcurl Version: libcurl/7.21.1 OpenSSL/0.9.8q zlib/1.2.5 c-ares/1.7.1 J2C Decoder Version: KDU v7.0 Audio Driver Version: FMOD version 3.750000 Qt Webkit Version: 4.7.1 (version number hard-coded) Voice Server Version: Not Connected Built with MSVC version 1600"
---------------------------------------------------------------

I hope the information will be helpful and am waiting to hear from you soon again, meanwhile I will keep on experimenting...

Take care,

Bock"

And then the following postscript:

"P.S. As you can see from the info I yesterday tried switching to the Beta-viewer to see if it would help, it didn't.

Bock"

In Memoriam Ebbe Altberg

Yesterday we got the sad news that Ebbe Altberg, a.k.a. Ebbe Linden, had passed away the day before. 

My thoughts and condolences first go to Ebbe's family, friends, and coworkers at Linden Lab in their loss, but also to all residents of SecondLife. 

Ebbe was a game-changer for Secondlife when he came to us as the new CEO of Linden Lab in 2014, especially when it concerns the relationship between the Lindens and us residents. 

Inara Pey has expressed my feelings eloquently and much better than anything I can achieve so I refer you to her blogpost; Living in a Modem World, In Memorian: Ebbe Altberg.

Attaboy Rodvik!

Video streaming by Ustream

This video from the SecondLife Community Conference this year.(SLCC 2011) is going completely viral on the SecondLife blogs. It shows Rod Humble, CEO of Linden Lab (in our world better known as Rodvik Linden) giving his keynote speech.

Noob Rodvik is actually starting to gain my confidence. I like what I hear him say in this speech. Testing and bug-fixing are a priority for him, as are lag, usability and added value features for the paying customers.

Best thing is that Rodvik reveals he doesn't much like the Viewer 2 either and actually hates the sidebar like many of the rest of us!

Keep this up Rodvik and you may become my second favorite CEO. There is no one that can beat my dreamer Philip Linden, but they can come pretty damned close.

Support Ticket #01587329 XX - Hopefully Last (Updated)

Om my, while I was being busy gathering all the information to answer the questions Whirly posed in the latest email relayed by Theresa Linden at Linden Lab I think I may have stumbled over the solution to my repeat-problems all by myself.

It has nothing to do with bandwidth, my computer, HTTP Textures or whatever but the default settings of the viewer in combination with the Bock-avatar. (As you may remember my alt Lady Cruella has no problems and never had.)

Since a few months I get these graphic settings by default.

Please notice particularly that "Quality and speed" is set to somewhere between "High" and "Ultra" .
Well, I never bothered to change that once it turned up that way, but when I went to the Miss. Wigstock 2013 contest on Sunday January 27, 2013, I was expecting loads of lag so I though I better pull down the "Quality and speed" to at least "High" and uncheck shadows. All that evening I did not repeat one single time!

After the the contest I did not access SecondLife until after I returned home again from a business trip and there was an email waiting for me from Theresa. Before starting the tests I reset all the settings to default.

It was at this time that Whirly had asked me to uncheck the HTTP Textures, as you may remember that was quite successful during my testing after the first three or four minutes. However, when I logged back in one of the following the repetitions came back even though I kept the HTTP Textures unchecked.

That made me very despondent, sad and weary, I thought I may have to trash my Bock avatar and everything that was tied in with it. I stayed away from SecondLife a couple of days to think about it. Anyway, while I was in first life I began to think about the contest and what a great time I had without any repeats and that made me remember that I had changed the settings.

So today I tried it, and lo and behold, glory, glory, hallelujah it worked! Actually it worked well when I pulled down Quality and speed to High or if I pulled it up to Ultra, the only time I got repeats was if I set it in between High and Ultra.

...the only problem now remaining is that I freeze up after almost every teleport and cannot move or speak and then crash. But that is actually a problem I can live with - I think...

I am sending these results to Theresa Linden now!

Update February 7, 2013.
The improvements still last.

I can recreate the chat repeats if I change the graphic setting to in between High and Ultra. And when i change back to High or Ultra it goes away.

Äntligen var Valentindagen här!!!

Jag inledde den stora dagen med att åka i väg för att krama en Linden.

Tyvärr fanns varken Philip, Torley, Blue, Teddy eller ens lille Rodrigo från chat-supporten där, så jag fick hålla tillgodo med att krama Cudly Linden istället. Lindens kramanimation var alldeles bedrövlig så det såg ut så här...men det var tur kanske så fick jag inga tjejbaciller.

Luftpussar med Curly Linden

Därefter åkte jag ut för att shoppa ringar till Ars och mig för att ge honom som en Valentin-gåva. Med mig hade jag den bäste "personal shopper" som finns i hela SL, min vän Gilgalahad Gunsberg. Förutom att känna till alla bra ställen så är han en av de "hunkigaste" karl-avatarerna som finns, och en av de klokaste och vänligaste också. (Han får inte vara med på bild!)

Sedan var det dags för årets näststörsta händelse, den största är "Vimmel" på tisdagen den 16 februari 2010, kl. 20.00, Valentine-festen anordnad av dronningen, Gittrika Mint, Vampi Twine och Annabella Lundquist.

Tack för en välordnad och trevlig fest, töser! Det gjorde ni jättebra!

Överblicksbild i ett tidigt skede av festen

Här ses jag med Millimina och mina security guys

Foto: Millimina Salamander

Kandinsky Beaumont med den absolut häftigaste outfiten (hade hon varit kvar till slutet hade hon säkert vunnit) och Berra Soderstrom (som karlsloken visade sig heta, tack Vampi!).

Bejiita Imako visar sin söta rumpa

Sötast rumpa hade dock Irwin Blanchere

Job Opportunity at Linden Lab

I read on GWNews today that there is a job opening at Linden Lab, creators of SecondLife. in San Francisco, California.

My first instinct was "Bock, you must send in an application whatever the job is!" but when I kept reading and hardly understood any of the requirements and responsibilities I decided that perhaps I shouldn't burden the Lab with my CV.

After all what use would the Lab have of my talents as a semi-charming European pseudo-nobelman with almost five years of virtual living experience and an ability to often change appearances but still always remain stunningly handsome, mostly humble, often patient and sometimes friendly.

Especially when the Lab is looking for someone with "strong, versatile computer science fundamentals who will become core contributors to refactoring, building, and designing new features of our server product. You will need strong skills in application and server-side development and experience with open-software and distributed software teams is a plus" and responsibilities that include "Refactor code written mostly in C/C++ with some C# and python". (Ughhh say what...?)

When I had - very reluctantly - disqualified myself as a candidate I thought of Mrs. Vampi Twine-DeSantis (the laird´s main tech support), Mr sirhc De Santis (cool cat and skilled techie) and Mr. Sven Idyll (technical wiseguy with a profound knowledge of the workings of virtual worlds). I would warmly recommend all three for the job to my friends at the Lab.

If you wish to read the full ad and perhaps apply for the job go to Craigslist Software Engineer at Linden Lab.

Linden Lab on Trump's Ban on Immigration

Statement issued by Linden Lab on Trump's Executive Order on Immigration 2017-02-02 00:00:00 UTC

"We at Linden Lab are extremely disappointed in and adamantly opposed to Trump’s recent executive order on immigration. We reject racism, intolerance, and xenophobia.

We are proud to include immigrants among our leadership, colleagues, and customers, as well as our families, friends, and communities. We value diversity, compassion, and understanding, and we are proud that our products enable people to come together and form meaningful connections regardless of differences in their offline lives.

Trump’s order is counter to what we value and antithetical to American ideals. We join the many voices calling on the US government to remove this restriction as quickly as possible and to refrain from imposing additional barriers that threaten opportunities for immigrants, under-represented minorities, and women."

---

You make me proud guys!

Linden Lab - Punish Criminals, Not Victims!

From Insyx Piranha:

"You probably have heard my story about being robbed of my Ls and LL not helping me due to me being only a basic account. I am still pissed that LL has yet to help or even acknowledge the crime against me. I have not been reimburse for the monetary values taken from me either. I am sure this has happened to others. Well now you can stand up and use your voice to help me, and others, fight this injustice that LL places upon us."

For the events leading up to this petition please read Petr Hastings-Vanbeeck´s blog Confessions of a Digital Daddy Bear; When bad things happen to GOOD PEOPLE! or Blithe SL Magazine; You´re a Customer, Not the Resident of a Dictatorship

If you wish to sign the petition please go here, Petition - Linden Lab: Punish Criminals, Not Victims

---

Linden Lab has an obligation towards all residents in  SecondLife to protect us from criminals and criminal activity as far as they are able to do so and to ban accounts that prey on residents from using SecondLife again.

(Tipped via Ziggy, Eddi, Petr and InsyX himself)

Philip Linden 2.0 - We Have a Winner

 

Woooohoooo the winner of the "Philip Linden 2.0" contest was declared today!

The winner is Mars Absent of The Abyss. And I must say I think he did a stunning job given the limitations Philip set up for the contest. It is a sexier and updated version of Philips earlier avatar, so I can fully understand why he chose it (but I hope he drops that glittery crotch- and asscover thingy a.s.a.p.).

.......

The finalist I personally would have selected for my favourite interim CEO of Linden Lab was Twisted Lemons entry (below), but I guess it is way too sexy for Philips purposes.

Thanks so much to the wonderful, the lovely and the bodacious Mrs. Vampi Twine DeSantis for alerting me of this development.