Given its commitment to shut down Teen Second Life at the end of the year – and to migrate the teen users before that – Linden Lab now has less than 48 days left to get the teen users onto the main Second Life grid.
It might be even less, actually. The end of the year is looming, as is the Christmas/New Year period where the Lab generally cuts back to skeleton support, and there’s hardly anyone around to deal with exceptional circumstances, let alone the day to day issues. I can’t see any evidence that there are going to be more supporting staff on this Christmas than the last few.
Thanksgiving is also going to eat up some scheduling time and quite likely more of it than the Lab is used to, since its overseas offices didn’t observe that particular festive occasion and used to continue to operate through it.
With that in mind, smart scheduling would be to get the teens off of Teen Second Life as quickly as possible after Thanksgiving – assuming the code seems to be ready – so that there’s still staff around to handle the inevitable problems before the Christmas break.
If there’s a deadline for Display Names or Mesh, it’s probably also in December, though the former still apparently has yet to migrate beyond the worst of the complaints – if indeed it is going to at all.
I’m sure it will all eventually shake out fine, but personally I’m going to find something to hang on to.
Any word about the CEO search? That’s another thing time has been ticking on. It’s going on a month now since Philip’s left. If we really consider his tenture ‘interim’, it’s been 4 months or so now since Linden Lab’s had a real CEO at all.
Nothing that I’ve heard at all. I daresay a few people would have fronted up to be considered, though. Prospective CEO candidates almost always come to you, rather than the other way around.
The Lab operates under the Delaware Corporations Act, which is more relaxed than any I have seen on the number and type of serving company officers that a corporation has to have.
There are so many unaddressed problems with the teen merger, I really don t know how they plan to prevent the inevitable access to mature and adult content which right now is as easy as standing on a sim border.
Regarding the deadline for mesh: J.Linden stated at his office hour that it’s targeted for “after the winter break”.
I would be happy to see it happen at all, even it sounds quite a long time till “after winter break” (I’m not native English – does it mean “after Christmas holidays” or “after winter, in spring” ?).
The explanation given for this targeted date was “There’s still some work to do on the UI.”
Hard to say. For me, it’s Summer, and I’ve got no idea what break exactly they might be referring to.
@Trinity, I am not imagining this but cannot find the reference. Linden Lab noted–where oh where?–that protections would be in place to prevent minors from camming across sim borders into Mature or Adult sims.
Coders out there…I’m sure it can be done, but how easily? And can they get it done on time?
I have my doubts about all of this, and I expect some sort of change of deadline or other revised policy.
Many European universities have 16 & 17 year-old first years. How can they even *be* on a university parcel that’s zoned mature after the new plan–if it ever occurs at all–comes into place?
@Trinity Dejavu: ” I really don t know how they plan to prevent the inevitable access to mature and adult content which right now is as easy as standing on a sim border.”
Hmm, good point. Lets have a go at TOS writing –
———
115.1 – If a region is rated Mature or Adult and neighbors a region rated ‘General’, then that region should not have any items deemed Adult within visual range either directly or by a user shifting their point of view camera, whether the user is standing in the sim or not.
115.2 – Think of the children!
As far as I’m aware, the same tech that blots out the main sims from the teen sims is going to be in use (Teen Second Life is on the main grid with the rest of the sims already – but teen users can’t see sims they’re not supposed to).
Oh, also visual range is pretty much as high as you can crank up the viewer. Without adjusting its files, that’s a couple of sims radius.
Display Names is already available gridwide. I suspect Viewer 2.3 will be released ASAP; that’s the only real holdup for its adoption by more than beta testers. The next release of Phoenix will also support DNs.
Given that, I don’t know what else needs to be done to have them in wide use, with all of the problems and warts.
I think Mesh will be rolled out well after the first of the year. There are still too many unanswered questions about it. There’s also the minor matter that nothing but V2 will support it, and that creates a massive chicken-and-egg problem I believe will essentially render mesh DOA until TPVs start supporting it. I commented about that on my blog.
To me, “after winter break” means “after New Year’s Day,” although I doubt with something like this they mean Monday the 3rd of January. But yes, “after Christmas holidays.”
@Tonya, every software has it’s life cycle. Barely no programmer supports Windows98 anymore. I see it as plain evolution that the 7, 8 year old viewer 1.2x code base is slowly fading…
Slowly fading, yes. With V2-based viewers at most a third of the user sessions, and the latest ones capable of viewing meshes not even that, why would a content creator bother? Until major TPVs put out viewers capable of viewing meshes, there’s not much incentive to use them. People aren’t going to switch to V2 to show content that isn’t there; they won’t even switch to it to show meshes if they do exist.
Yes, there’s a lifecycle there, but mesh isn’t going to push V1 over the cliff, no matter how much LL wishes otherwise.
@Tonya
Sounds like according to you mesh is senseless to release until at least Imprudence and Phoenix release a respective 2.0 viewer AND users choose to use those instead of their still functioning 1.3 versions.
The only crux there can be is that mesh IS compelling enough for all users to want to switch to 2.0, TPV or otherwise. If mesh isn’t at the very least that compelling, for content creators to want to release mesh content and users to see it, then I’m pretty sure mesh has bigger problems that makes it ‘DOA’. This is a far bigger matter than deprecating pre-2.0 code which could’ve and still could be done more straight forward with policy anyway.
So personally I’d take user willingness to switch to 2.0 as a given if mesh is to be any kind of success. That would also serve its part in creating demand for TPVs to switch to 2.0, but there’s no resistance from ‘em in the anyway. Imprudence at least has shared plans and timetables. TPVs don’t have the same hangups as Linden Lab so I don’t see any significant waits for users that just won’t use a Linden Lab viewer for whatever reason.
Ezra, you’re fundamentally right: I think mesh is premature right now.
The problem is that everyone knows Viewer 2 sucks. Badly. A 2 to 1 majority of existing users is rejecting it, either by staying on 1.23 or else using a V1-based TPV. They can’t stand the V2 UI, and nothing at all will make them switch.
We’re hearing loud and clear from our users that they will not use a V2-based viewer unless the UI gets a major overhaul. We’re planning just that with Firestorm. It’s not going to happen overnight, though, and until it does, only a small minority of users will even be able to view mesh.
Fundamentally, it comes down to the question “is mesh compelling enough to get users to use a viewer they despise?” I’m convinced, from listening to users, that that answer is”hell no!”. Obviously, you agree with LL that the answer is “yes”. The next six months or so will tell the tale, for it’s about that long that it will take to get Firestorm and Kokua out the door.
FWIW, Phoenix hasn’t determined a timetable tor Firestorm simply because we’re concentrating on getting the next 1.5 release stable and shipped. Once that’s done, our attention will turn fully to Firestorm; until then, there’s little point in trying to establish a timetable.
As to why people use TPVs, it’s more than they just won’t use a LL viewer. I should put up a full blog post about that; commenting here won’t do it justice.
Everybody ‘knows’ that v2 sucks ? Maybe everybody in a certain group of people is of this opinion…
These days nobody gets into such fervent discussion about “What is the best Internet viewer, Internet Explorer or Firefox ?”. But that’s maybe because the Internet is already 20+ years old, SL just 7 :-O.
In this blogs we are discussing it’s ‘content’…it doesn’t matter what ‘viewer’ you are using to read/post here. It doesn’t matter for anyone, except for yourself.
Viewers are tools, and everybody chooses the one that matches the personal preferences and taste.
Seriously, people still get into vociferous arguments about the ‘best’ Web-browser. People mistake like/dislike for good/bad.
Llittle Guest, I agree that it normally wouldn’t be a big deal which viewer was in use. The problem, though, is precisely what’s under discussion: LL can roll out mesh all it wants to, but only those using one particular subset of viewers with a small uptake will be able to see or make content with them. Thus, a discussion of mesh must necessarily consider whether they’ll be used at all, and to what extent, because of the deficiencies, real or perceived, of that particular subset of viewers.
@Tateru, I agree. In another software forum from time to time a (respectfully said) newbie comes up with a “What software is better/should I use ?”-question, regarding 2 similar programs. The consent is quickly: try both and use what you find more handy and use this. At the end, the tools doesn’t matter – the output/content does.
@Tonya, what’s the alternative ? Should LL adjust it’s development/release to how fast/slow TVPs accept those ?
Is natural that TVPs will always support new features a little bit later than LLviewer.
Honestly, it has been officially known since v2 was released:viewer 1.2x will be discontinued, no longer improved by LL and at any time v1.2x might be not able to connect at all.
I’ve seen both, people switching to TVPs because of features, but also saw people transitioning from TVPs to LLviewer – because of particular features.
At this point i’m out of the discussion. The ‘what’s the better viewer’ has been going too long – and it can’t come to a final answer.
There’s been a lot of water under the bridge. What’ll finally happen is that TPVs will eventually get to the V2 codebase, at which time LL won’t be constrained any more in adding features. Just don’t expect it to take less than 6 months.
The problem is that LL’s V2 rollout severely hurt their own plans, because the viewer sucked for many, many people – including the very content creators they’re supposed to be wooing. Yeah, there are folks who love it. Great, more power to you, have fun. Just recognize that 2/3 of the user population disagrees with you, often violently, and don’t assume it’s just a refusal to run LL code or a refusal to adjust to something new or smple laziness. Many, many folks have tried V2, found it wanting, and gone back or to a TPV.
@Tonya,
Count me out from the “everyone”. I think viewer 2 is ok.
Yes I use imprudence more often than I use viewer 2 but my only compelling reason to use Imprudence is it more easily lets me jump from grid to grid. The other stuff in Imprudence is “nice to have” as far as I’m concerned.
So for me, the answer to the “compeling” question is “will I switch to using viewer 2 so I can see mesh”. I think I would….
And then…. I would switch back to Imprudence (or Cocoa) or whatever it’s going to be called when they have mesh built in…
@Tonya
‘Everyone’ probably just uses what gets the job best. I still use Imprudence simply because I can remember more easily where ‘Upload’ and ‘Build’ is. If I had to switch to 2.# for mesh, it truly isn’t that big of a problem to me.
I’d say a majority of people that aren’t using 2.# aren’t doing so because they violently hate it, but just because we options and preferences. I’m sure if you had to sum it up and you probably have somewhere, you have a list of gripes about 2.# and you’d weigh it against the advantages of mesh. Short of “it came to my house and killed my cat” appearing, most people will be able to do that reasonably if they have to.
And “if they have to” being key here. You’re giving a minimum of six-months time table before TPVs support 2.0 despite Imprudence having already announced Kokua and Phoenix announced Firestorm, so exactly what is that based on?
It’s truly a faux worry, there’s no TPV resistance to mesh and Linden Lab has issued the code necessary to begin work well ahead of mesh’s launch.
My suggestion: drop whatever religious reasons you’re against Viewer 2 and worry about more important, real problems in this little ecosystem of ours.
Kokua and Firestorm are announced. Neither is delivered, and neither will be for months yet. 6 months is the estimated timeframe for Firestorm (and I can say that with authority, as I’m the lead Mac developer for Phoenix); I’ll be surprised if Kokua’s out very much faster.
There’s no TPV resistance to mesh or V2, just a long period of de-sucking the user interface.
It’s not a religious resistance to the V2 user interface, either. Jessica Lyon’s mailbox exploded when she asked for specific suggestions on what needed to be done for Firestorm. She’s still wading through literally thousands of responses. For many people – especially content creators – V2 is just plain unusable. Telling them they don’t understand the problem and should just go ahead and switch – the favored response of those who do like V2 – is insulting their intelligence, to put it mildly.
I’m told the V2 codebase is better by a long way. From what I’ve seen of the V1 codebase, it could hardly be worse. If it truly is better, then I’ll be happy to help make the UI usable for more than a third of the community. There’s a LOT of work that has to go into that, though, revolving around the sidebar, the menu organization, the chat windows, and generally not wasting immense amounts of screen real estate.
Huh.. so we may be migrating before the end of the year. Gotta admit, I’m a little worried.
@Tonya
You’re still of the opinion that every person not using Viewer 2 equates to a person that finds it ‘unusable’ as you put it. Any attempts to define margins of reasoning are guessing games. I guess a lot of it has to do with mere preferences, you guess its largely an issue of rebellion and hate, we’ll see when mesh is out and what content creators do and what residents do in order to experience it.
@Blaze “Before the end of the year” was the announced plan, anyway – so that everyone could be settled before the plug was pulled on TSL. It makes sense. There’s just not a lot of time left.
The big problem I have with Viewer 2, which ought to be easy for Linden Lab to have fixed by now, is the colour scheme. Viewer 1.23 gave us a choice, and I could find a scheme which suited my vision. Viewer 2 does not, and that’s a huge barrier for me. I can’t see much of the UI stuff I need to be able to read to learn.
It’s not just Linden Lab not listening to customers. This is an area which is hugely important in UI design, and there are recommended standards which have been totally ignored.
Mesh isn’t worth the eye-strain and headaches.
As for the Teen Grid, I don’t think it is far wrong to suggest Linden Lab have four weeks of useful working time before the end of year.
Maybe we’re the wrong people to be hearing anything. We’re not teens. We’re not in the teaching business. LL did so much to isolate the teens. But if this needs server revisions, we’re not hearing about them. I’d expect elements to be in the release candidates by now.
Latest news: no rollouts planned in the week before Thanksgiving. Which prompts thoughts about an excess of turkeys.
Display Names: seems to have been supported by servers for about five weeks. Viewer support, I’m not sure of. It was in a Viewer Beta, I know
Display Names is in Viewer 2.3, and has been on servers gridwide for a couple of weeks now. Interestingly enough, the last gridwide rollout turned if off for a few hours; they hadn’t turned DN on in the config they were pushing.
LL’s not planning much for December. They don’t want to find themselves working long hours over the holidays to fix something broken.
I don’t think teens on the main grid will need any code revisions that aren’t already there. Like DN, I expect this to be a simple configuration setting, nothing more.
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