Linden Lab has been, in the past, likened to a slumbering behemoth that must slowly chug – groaning and leaking oil – into a sort of smoky activity. Come to think of it, I think it was me that made that comparison, a couple of years ago.
“Agile” is an adjective that few users would apply to Linden Lab.
Yet it is not that the Lab isn’t agile. I’ve seen the Lab pull together and act with breathtaking and quite astonishing swiftness at times. The Lab is more like an ultra-fit blind-man positioned under a falling piano. Agile, yet not aware of when and where to make a move.
Here’s one example that a reader sent in. Issue ECC-49, affecting every pants-wearing avatar who is logged in with viewer 2, deterministic and infinitely replicable. Originally the bug was filed in the middle of November.
It garnered 90 votes, 34 watchers and 50 comments before someone at Linden Lab even became aware of the bug … by accident, a little over three months later.
Rhett Linden finally became aware of the bug, only because it was mentioned at a Machinima meeting on the last day of February, and is finally awaiting triage … or so it is to be hoped.
I suppose that’s eclipsed by the sim-crossing glitches, which only came to the attention of the Lab’s server-developers for the first time approximately three years after the first report. There are many dozens of other such incidences, and probably many months-old issues that haven’t yet graced the awareness of any developer.
Whatever internal processes and structure the Lab might have that allows it to focus resources to solve customer problems, all of these are wasted if the issues go completely unnoticed.
And thats why we shout and rant and tweet the hell out of #SL the loudest thing you hear about SL is how it’s not working properly lol
So if the Lindens did not know about it, does that mean they dont use the latest viewer2? does this mean they probably dont know that the new profiles are being repeatedly wiped from where ever the store the information?
@Loki It wouldn’t surprise me. Or maybe they just don’t wear pants, as a rule.
Ah, yes, the old “Hipster Skinny Jeans” bug
The failure to improve sim-crossings continues to baffle me. I’m not a coder, but it would seem that the metaphor of a “world” with a “mainland” and “continents” does not work too well if you cannot cross sim-borders painlessly. It’s still pretty awful, esp. in a vehicle.
But it’s a problem in OS worlds, too.
Pants are, however, important to modern males, unless they are Scots. And flare pants are soooo 1970s. We have to look sleek and modern and all that.
I’m buying a kilt!
As a viewer 2 user who finds the pants cuff bug one of the most frustrating things to hit in a long time, I have to note that I didn’t see it for quite a while because I apparently didn’t hang out with people who wore anything other than prim-cuffed pants. I think maybe that SL fashion trend masked the issue for a while. I’m glad they finally have it in triage — no matter how it got there.
[...] In case you didn’t realise, Linden Lab is like an ultra-fit blind-man positioned under a falling piano. Head piano-tuner and CEO Rod Humble has thanked everyone for their input on what they’d like [...]
This was discussed at the Viewer Design and Coding meeting on Tuesday – don’t hold your breath for a resolution. It seems to be one of those bugs that surfaces once in a while and then goes away again, maybe because somebody tweaked something.
Err… I must admit this is the first I’ve heard of this bug (or noticed it). Mind you, these days I’m usually wearing a skirt or pants and boots, so I wouldn’t see it. It’s funny though, I do remember this issue from ages ago. It took a while for them to fix then, too (if I recall correctly). I could imagine though that the discussion around the Lab’s water cooler (do people still have water coolers?) was probably about RedZone to the exclusion of just about everything else. To judge from the chatter on the forums and such, the only thing happening was RedZone.
Ignatius: someone was in a kilt at one of my meetings last night and looked quite fetching. I pronounce exposed calf muscles to be “in” for the season. The tam o’ shanter is optional.
*laughing*
That is what that was! I was having issues with a pair of pants in Phoenix the other day. Just made them capri length to go under the boots and was fine, but did get a bit puzzled why the slider wasn’t working
And a man in a kilt will round the heels of many a fair lassie – things to keep in mind, gents!
Isn’t the POINT of having a public accessible JIRA to have a place where users can submit problems for LL to see, triage, and address?
I think the problem is that LL is *trying* to have the right mechanisms to get feedback from their users, but they are unable to follow through. This can either be a scalability issue, a process issue, or a staffing issue. Either way, their processes are not working.
Case in point, I opened a LL support ticket in October 2009 with an Avaline issue. I got an initial “please be patient” response, but then heard nothing. Tried to follow up with chat support … “Sorry, not my dept”. In June 2010, when LL changed ticket software, this 8-month old ticket was magically closed.
I reopened it, pasting in the details of the original ticket. I finally got an answer — a WRONG ANSWER — 473 days (1 year, 3 months, 16 days) after opening the initial ticket: “Unfortunately the Avaline program was discontinued last year.”
After pointing out to the tech that Avaline functionality was still listed on the website, that it was still an active option in the account manager website, and that a random polling of 4 different advertised Avaline numbers showed them to be working correctly, I was told that I was right — they had incorrect information when they told me that Avaline was discontinued.
They never did address my original issue, and instead asked me to sign up again. I let them close the ticket because at this moment in time I’m no longer interesting in spending the time necessary for me to give them my business. This was arguably a sales issue (I wanted to give them money) and while I was waiting for the reply, I paid over $93 in premium membership fees for the privilege of obtaining support.
SO…. if they don’t have enough ability to address an issue I’m paying for them to address, in order for me to buy a service from them, how can we reasonably expect them to address issues — like the issue in your article — from which they wouldn’t make any additional income?
MMmm…. it’s happened before, it’ll happen again
I “fondly” remember the pants bug https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-7957 which took 9 months to resolve and either stopped you from updating the viewer and nvidia drivers or rendered large parts of your wardrobe useless. I’m so happy that the next generation now gets to feel, and appreciate, the love.
Tateru, dropping pianos on blind people may get you branded as insensitive again. Though the simile is quite a good one and I would suggest that the reason the lab is “blind” is that too few (“key”) employees actually use SL the same way that average users do.
Q: Is anything worn under the kilt?
A: No, it’s all in perfect working order.
Kilts are just plain sexy.
On a brighter note, https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/STORM-844 was fixed in today’s release of 2.5.1. This was reported in October. It involved the delicate job of changing the label on a button from “More >>” to “<< Less".
So Pat, are you saying that 2.5.1 is “more >>” or “<< less" fixed?
Or are you saying that LL is now giving "<>” ??
Try that last bit again… (apparently the blog comments didn’t like the angle brackets on my last sentence, and wouldn’t let me fix it)…
are you saying that LL is is now giving “{{ less” when they used to give “more }}”
All I’m saying is that they fixed something. I guess you better read STORM-844. Or do I need to push the “More>>” button in my satire-appreciation dialog box?
From memory, that was pretty low-hanging fruit. So low that if it was any lower, you’d have needed a shovel to find it.