Linden Labs is At It Again

 

I have stated before that the Linden Labs technical support is the worse I have seen.  Even after the ticket has closed, they will continue to harass you on it by email.  They say something like, “The solution is given.”  Linden Labs really thinks they do not have to obey the laws of the land, the Constitution of the United States of America.

I posted this ticket early of June 2009, and if it the problem was not resolved by now, I would have left SecondLife a long time ago.  It sounds to me that Linden Labs is harassing me to leave because I stand up for myself as an American should do.  If this is the case, then the United States Federal Government needs to get involved in this 3-D virtual reality.  Either in virtual world or a real one, every human being has rights under humanity.  I am believing that Linden Labs is not only breaking the laws in the USA, but international laws.

All business is done in a private area.  The business owns their property, and have the right to make rules and policies as they see fit.  That is right and proper.  They do not have the right to violate the laws that are governing them to have these corporate policies in the first place.  Linden Labs and SecondLife are under the protection of the United States of America, The Constitution of America, and the Declaration of Independence of America.  Each and every citizen knowing or unknowing of the laws has to obey them.  Ignorance is no excuse.

 

 

It is amazing to me how corporations thinks they can get away with breaking the laws that are giving them the freedom to have a business.  It does not make any good sense.  Without a Republic, there would be chaos and mayhem.  A tyrant government does not produce freedom.  Neither does anarchy.  Liberty is only produced with a government that works for the people and by the people while the citizens are free to do what they want to under the law.

People have made real life money within SecondLife.  That makes it real enough to have a system that will abide by the government.  Even though people from all over the world can log into SecondLife, all legal matters are under the USA.  It should not matter if SecondLife is a virtual business or a real, flesh in blood, business.  The ones that are running SecondLife, Linden Labs, are acceptable to obey the law in the USA.

By any circumstances in any country is anyone above the laws of the land.  Everyone has to obey the laws.  This is common sense that seems Linden Labs does not have.  Linden Labs is a multi-million dollar corporation.  They are not struggling at all.  They have the money to do a lot better than they are doing right now.  instead of doing what is right, Linden Labs has broken laws left and right, mistreated all their customers, and SecondLife is hurting due to it.

 

 

In this SecondLife 6th Birthday Bash, I have hardly seen anyone there at the simulation that was designed for the celebration.  One might think Linden Labs would get the message and fly right.  Instead they are getting worse and worse as the days go by.  It is not against the law for a business to fail, but the laws do clearly state you have to treat every citizen with the utmost respect.  That is why I am writing this blog posting.  I am saying Linden Labs is not doing right in all fronts of life, including obeying the laws that are governed to them.

 

Brandon Bowers

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Making Money in SecondLife

I was doing a search on how much money is being made in SecondLife, and the search results were very old.  This tells me that the 3-D virtual reality structure is dead.  Let’s face it. If there is no change in any technology structure, than it is going no place…other than backwards.  How fast technology is growing, going backwards is not good at all.

The biggest wall that is hurting SecondLife is not that SL was a fad, but the ones that are running SL are falling behind.  Here is the Grid status report of June 20-21, 2009:

[RESOLVED June 21, 2009, 8:34 PM Pacific]  All regions have been returned to service.  The land store is open again.

[UPDATE June 21, 2009, 6:40 PM Pacific] We’re down to under one hundred regions waiting for reactivation.  Hopefully this will be over very shortly.

 

[UPDATE June 21, 2009 6:22 PM Pacific] We’re still working to bring a few hundred regions online. We’ve found ourselves short on simulator hosts today due to a power issue in one of our colocation centers. As the colocation center gets that issue rectified, we’ll use the available hosts to return existing regions to service first, and then reopen the land store.

[UPDATE June 21, 2009 4:30pm Pacific] The Land Store will be offline while we work to restore the remaining regions.

[UPDATE June 21, 2009 2:25pm Pacific] Our technicians are working quickly to restore remaining regions. Please refrain from restarting regions as this could cause a longer downtime for that region during this maintenance issue.

[UPDATED June 21, 2009 1:43pm Pacific] Our technicians are continuing to work to restore service to all remaining regions.

[UPDATED June 21, 2009 12:56pm Pacific] Our technicians are continuing to work to restore service to all remaining regions.

[UPDATED June 21, 2009 11:35AM Pacific] Our technicians are continuing to work to restore service to all remaining regions.

[UPDATE June 21, 2009 10:42AM Pacific] We are continuing to work on restoring regions at this time.

[UPDATE June 21, 2009 9:38AM Pacific] Multiple regions are still offline at this time, we will continue to enable all remaining regions as soon as possible.

[UPDATE June 21, 2009 8:04AM Pacific] Our technicians are continuing to work to restore service to all remaining regions.

[UPDATE June 21, 2009 6:45AM Pacific] Our technicians are working to restore service to 70 remaining regions.

[UPDATE June 21, 2009 5:00AM Pacific] The number of regions that are offline is down to 250.  Our technicians are working to restore service to these.

[UPDATE June 21, 2009 3:00AM Pacific] We’re working to restore service to approximately 450 regions.

[UPDATE 12:30AM PDT] Maintenance is ongoing, we are slowly bringing services back online. We had some secondary hardware failures, we hope to be back to full speed soon.

[UPDATE 22:10 PDT] The emergency maintenance has begun.

[UPDATE 21:50 PDT] The emergency maintenance has been moved forward, and will be starting at 22:10 (10:10pm). We will post here as further updates are available.

[June 20 18:37pm PDT] - At approximately 23:00 (11:00pm) PDT tonight, one of Second Life’s primary datacenters will be undergoing emergency maintenance. For an orderly maintenance cycle we will be bringing approximately 5,000 regions offline during the course of this maintenance starting at 22:30 (10:30pm) PDT. We will keep this blog updated with more information as it becomes available. Thank you.

 

For the grid of SecondLife to go bad most of June 20 and all day of the 21st, that is not good at all for the services that Linden Labs give for SecondLife.  They can do much better.  This is the six year of having SecondLife online.  In the past 2 years, SecondLife had more issues and more people leaving SecondLife due to how Linden Labs is running this system.

From what I have read, Linden Lab had 3 different presidents in the past six years.  I do not know about you, but that does not look good for Linden Labs nor SecondLife.  With the new Adult regulation that has been put into place, what has it done?  Why has not Facebook, MySpace, and other popular social networking services done the same thing?  Answer:  They would not be all that popular anymore.

I am for child safety online.  First of all, children should not be online in the first place.  Would a parent drop their children on the streets alone?  For children to go online, that is about the same thing.  Until Internet Service Providers (ISPs) can stop children from getting online in the first place, no services will rightfully and completely protect children online.  I have not seen any software or services that had rightfully done the job in keeping children away from inappropriate websites online.  There is no such thing as 100% safe, online or offline.

Instead of rightfully protecting children in SecondLife, the new adult service is causing all sorts of frustration for the adult customers.  When a business upsets the apple cart with their customers, that business looses.   The six year Birthday bash of SecondLife is this day, Monday, June 22, 2009.  How many that will not show up on this event will rightfully tell Linden Labs how bad things are with SL.  In the results of how many do not show up, will Linden Labs change things? 

The reason for me writing this posting is not to be bitter or ugly towards Linden Labs, but to speak out for all the customers of SecondLife.  I am one of them.  I want SL to succeed.  There can be endless possibilities for SecondLife if the ones that are maintaining it does a lot better job.  Right now, I have heard, seen, or read anything positive about SecondLife here lately.

Maybe Linden Labs will do something if they stop making a lot of money from SecondLife.  It seems they are not caring if thousands of their customers are leaving SL.  I believe when Linden Labs stops making money from SecondLife, it will be too late for them to do anything to do anything positive.  Once anything starts falling downhill fast, it is hard to stop.

 

 

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Is SecondLife Going downhill?

The Internet in the 21st Century and Beyond.

In my last post, I stated how bad the technical support was with the ones that run SecondLife (SL), Linden Labs (LL). As of this post, there are about 63,112 inworld. I have seen it much higher. True one count of the number that are inword does not make or break SL, but I am starting to see worlds in SL falling due to they are getting less and less visitors.

I cannot say if SecondLife will fall in the history books, but there are not many that are celebrating this 6th Birthday of SecondLife. As with many businesses, if the customers are not happy for whatever reason, that business will not stand for long. Linden Labs needs to rethink how they do things. How can one make real life (RL) money in SL if it they do not have customers to come to their shops? For many others, SecondLife is an escape from RL.

Either a business or for fun, SecondLife is losing it luster. The problem is more than the frustration of moving around due to lagging and what nots, but due to the ones running and keeping up with how SecondLife is being run. LL is showing they do not care for the ones that are inworld, their customers. Even businesses that are in SL, their worlds are a ghost town. There are hardly no events at these sims. They used to have a few events each month. I know this because I use to go to them.

Go to YouTube. All the videos about SecondLife is at least a year old. There are schools in SL still, but when I go to visit these sims, no one is there. Even the worlds that are in the showcase section of the SL search hardly have anyone there. The Showcase sims are suppose to be where a lot of people visit. SecondLife is turning into one bare 3-D virtual reality.

I can understand with the economy, things are hard all around, but that does not stop people from using the Internet. Social Networking is still a big thing today. I do not believe the reason SecondLife is loosing out is due to the economy. Either in prosperity or an economic downfall, customers will continue to come back to a business if that business treats them as they should be treated. When people shop these days they have learned to shop wiser then before.

The economy downfall, to this date, has not stopped people from buying things, but it has caused them to learn to think better. If they continue to learn and grow in their day-to-day activities, the economy will start to push in the right direction. Life is changing due to the economic problems. Suffering is adding up day by day. Jobs are dropping just as fast, but people are still living onward.

SecondLife as well as any other online business can continue as well. The ones that are running the system must realize they have their online business due to their customers. They know if they loose them, they will lose their business. Linden Labs needs to learn this, or SecondLife will be in the history books, if not forgotten completely.

Let's look at what LL has done about the "cracking down" on adult content within SecondLife. It is still going one now. Sex, drugs, pornography, crime, and all sorts of malcontent will always be there in life. Laws, rules, and other govern control is needed, but they will always be strife in all walks of life. Instead of Linden Labs controlling these problems, they have caused more frustrations with the average individual customer than anything. The same problem is going on before this so called "crack down" from Linden Labs.

Do not get me wrong, rules are needed, but LL could have done a much better job. I have strongly believed they should have done something like that when SecondLife started. Doing it now after 6 years does nothing, but cause problems for the average customer that has never caused any problems whatsoever. Rules and laws done poorly causes lack of freedom from law abiding citizens.

That is why I believe SecondLife is dying, and falling hard. I have many times thought about canceling my accounts from SecondLife. Why I have not done so, I do not know. Where there is life there is hope, I guess. As the weeks and months go by, I am starting to see less and less hope for a future in SecondLife. I keep thinking to myself, there are so much more I can be doing online that has nothing to do with SecondLife.

In the past, I have written great things about SecondLife. Maybe that is why I am still logging inworld. If only things got better, things will start to go right for SL. That is what I hope will happen. It is all up to the ones that run this 3-D virtual reality, Linden Labs. They can turn things around if they really want to do so. If they do start to do right from this point forward, SecondLife could change very quickly. I am sad to say, I do not see LL going to do better anytime soon.


Brandon Bowers

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SecondLife Technical Suport SUCKS!!

The Internet in the 21st Century and Beyond.

Here is a ticket that I have written to Linden Labs about me crashing before I even log inworld to SecondLife:

Ticket Details

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Ticket Summary Ticket #: 4051-6276589 Email Notification (Organization Contact): Yes Status: Work In Progress Date Created: 16/5/2009 7:39 AM PDT Date Updated: 6/6/2009 8:42 AM PDT

Ticket Description

Summary: I logged uot last night, but I am still on the grid. I cannot log back in If issue is about an Alt account, what account?: Ticket Type: Special Questions - Basic account or Guest Login Basic or Guest Access - only a few ticket types allowed: Basic Account issues: Contact Email address: mjbrandonbowers@gmail.com Technical issue: Inworld Issue: Viewer/web: What Type of Connection do you Have?: Operating System: Web Browser: What Graphics Card do you have?: Are there multiple monitors?: Crash/Error: Error Message: Listing issue: Group issue: Region Request: Land issue: Group name: Location (region, coordinates): Accounts issue: Partner name: Billing type: Linden$ Payment: LL Payment type: Resident payment issue: Billing issue: Charge type: Credit issue: Payment type: Paypal email address: Real name (on payment account): Credit Card type: Transaction Amount: Transaction Date: Transaction Time (PST): Region Change: Transfer type: Other person's name: LandStore Beta agreement: Region Name: New name for Region: Owner of island it will be adjacent to (if any): Order Date (approx): Avatar Name: Registration Date: VAT questions: Disabled Issues: Auction ID: Class 4 Region Name: Class 5 Region Name: I want to be a DPW builder: Core Skill: Name of Guest: Type of issue: Billing Problem: L$ and LindeX issue: Inworld Problem: Software Problem: Feedback: This region is: The region Class is: Transaction Type: Buying Price (will be debited from your account by Linden Lab): Selling Price (which will be credited to your account, less the transfer fee): Region Rental Type: How many regions?: Region Rental Starting Date: Region Rental Ending Date: Terraform: Wire Transfer Acceptance fee: Amount you wish to credit your account (in US$): Your real name, as listed on your bank account: Earmark funds for:: Please include a description of any moves, renames or changes. We will waive the fees, provided you make the request below. Complaint Area: Complaint Type: Linden Name: Mentor Name: Mole Name: What date is your region billed on?: What date do you want us to take down the region?: What was the Region used for?: Why are you canceling the Region?: What is the best way for us to contact you about your experience?: Phone number: Re-enable qualification: Did you check the Knowledge Base?: No, I did not check the Knowledge Base Preferred Language: English Details: Last night I logged out fine, but now I cannot log inworld. It states that the system is trying to log me out. I am not inworld at this time from my SL player. Need to be completely logged out so I can log back in. Thank you. Reference Ticket number: #4051-6273905 Who are you: How did you hear about us: I would like more information about: Solution Provider Issues: Solution Provider Directory: Solution Provider Program : I need action on an issue : Linden Lab policy : Please schedule time with me : Request for publicity : I qualify for a wire payout because: My full Legal Name is: My Postal address is: My phone number is: My Tax ID/SSN is: Account number: Bank Name: Bank Address: Bank Contact: ABA Number: IBAN Number: SWIFT Number: Attachment:

Solution Solved: (16/5/2009 8:01 AM PDT) Hello Fraterphoenix Finesmith, Thank you for your ticket with regards to this technical issue that you have been experiencing; it seems that the problem has been caused by your avatar becoming stuck in-world, in what we refer to as a "stuck presence". As such we have now cleared your avatars "presence". Before logging in please clear/delete your Second Life cache, then connect to a different region. You should also ensure that your internet connection is wired/cable and not wireless. Use of a wireless internet connection is not supported. How to clear the Second Life cache :- 1) Click "Edit" then "Preferences" in the "Menu" tab. 2) Click on the "Network" tab. 3) Click on the "Clear Cache" button. How to log in to a different region:- 1) Click "Edit" then "Preferences" in the "Menu" tab. 2) Click on the "General" tab. 3) Change your starting location to either "Aqua" or "Pooley" 4) Quit Second Life 5) Log back into Second Life If you require any further assistance, then please do not hesitate to contact us. Regards Stephen Linden Lab Support

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History Action Date Actions Contact Name Comment 6/6/2009 8:42 AM PDT Customer Posted a Comment FraterPhoenix_Finesmith Finesmith Doing what you have suggested is not working. Could it be that I need to get a new computer. I have a 2.2GHz processor, 1GB memory, GeForce 8400 video card. I want to continue to use SL, but I cannot do so if I cannot log inworld. 6/6/2009 8:19 AM PDT Reopened FraterPhoenix_Finesmith Finesmith I have done that many times. I even unistalled the SL player and reinstalled it. I have done everything possible on my end to fix this error. I have graduated from Lanier Technical College in Oakwood, GA, in the computer field. So hopefully, I can deal with any issues that might be the problem logging into online accounts. Another words I am not an engineer. :) 6/6/2009 8:05 AM PDT System Ran Alert Solution Reminder 23/5/2009 8:05 AM PDT System Ran Alert Support Satisfaction 16/5/2009 8:01 AM PDT Sent Final Resolution Stephen Ontyne (See solution)

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Bottom line is SecondLife is dead if the support team does not give a damn about doing what is right. All I care about is to log inworld to SecondLife and do my thing. I do not know all about computers, even though I did graduate from Lanier Technical College with a certificate and 3 diplomas in the computer field, but I do know that when an issue is on my end or not.

I highly suggest that anyone that is making money in SecondLife in the Real World, watch your back. Linden Labs are crooks. They have made more than their share of money in the six years since SecondLife has been online. As most technical support, it is not always on your end. Let me talk about the OSI Reverence Model:

Layer 1: Physical Layer
Layer 2: Data Link Layer
Layer 3: Network Layer
Layer 4: Transport Layer
Layer 5: Session Layer
Layer 6: Presentation Layer
Layer 7: Application Layer

At home or at the office, the personal PC deals with the first three layers of the OSI Reference Model. These layers are called the lower layers. The upper layers is called the cloud. The cloud means it can be anything under the sun, and there is no way to control these layers. It is true that 75% of what we do with out computer on or off line is the physical layer. When we log into somethng online, SecondLife or otherwise, then the handshake is established. Once the first three layers pass the threshold, it is no long in our control.

What is our responsibility in the first three layers is how our computer is connected together to the power outlet, the card that will send and receive data, and our connection to the Internet. If you can read this blog than you have the physical layer working. If you are reading this blog online, that means both the data link and network layers are working. Right off, this blog posting is outside of your control.

SecondLife grid is a lot more than simple logging into an online service. All that one deals with is on Servers. One cannot even back up one's inventory to there personal computer. Linden Labs controls everything. This alone is a giant flag to state the issues you face is never on your end. If you do not meet the minimal requirements, the SecondLife Player will let you know before you even log inworld. Once you do meet those requirements then, any bug issues is not, and I repeat not on your end of the OSI Reference Model.

This means that Linden Labs is 100% at least resposnible for any bugs, log in issues, or whatever. When you report an issue to them, and they do not respond in kind, then they are in the wrong. That is why I have posted this ticket of mine. I never like to state a boycot. I do not want to have that type of responsibility to deal with. Though, I will highly warn seriously in putting one's hard earn money into SecondLife. Linden Labs can and has froze accounts both inworld and off world with no reason whatsoever. All that money that is in one's SL account is held at ransom.

I am sure that not all have dealt with any major issue with Linden Labs and SecondLife. All I can say to those people is watch your back. Yes, Linden Labs and SecondLife are in the United States of America, but for some reason LL thinks they are above the law. When it comes right down to it, no one can do anything about LL misjustice. As I cannot do anything about my issues in logging inworld, no one can rightfully vedicate him/herself by the power that LL has over their customers.


Brandon Bowers