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Why Did the Postcards from SL top Working?


Prokofy Neva
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On 2/17/2018 at 6:15 AM, Whirly Fizzle said:

OK, once again Whirly, look up top at the original post and note that this worked FOR YEARS and right up until two weeks ago.

AND it worked with this -- html, coming from the "Post Cards from Second Life" system:

So on February 5, it was still working, sending postcards, with images, and with this HTML:

<p class="asset asset-link"><a href="http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Thoughts%20of%20Love/238/113/21">http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Thoughts%20of%20Love/238/113/21</a></p>
<!-- (DWIM) attachments start here -->
<p><a class="asset-img-link" style="display: inline;" href="http://3dblogger.typepad.com/files/secondlifepostcard-10369.jpg"><img class="asset  asset-image at-xid-6a00e54fce13cf883401b8d2d76d4d970c img-responsive" alt="secondlife-postcard.jpg" title="secondlife-postcard.jpg" src="http://3dblogger.typepad.com/.a/6a00e54fce13cf883401b8d2d76d4d970c-580wi" /></a></p>

All of that posted, and that meant the picture posted, too.

Now, all that posts is the SLURL and nothing else.

Maybe the Typepad people literally just put that advice you've cited here in answer to my ticket about this LOL. I don't recall it before. But if it were always there, the fact is, Typepad had no problem taking HTML as recently as February 5, I can see it in all the weeks preceding that as well.

Re: "we are now more IETF compliant and its probably sending the image as a multipart file, so this change may be making Typepad upset."

Yes, that may be it. You know what I think about that, however, knowing what IETF standards are about -- they are not voted on democratically or rationally, the engineers...hum.

Yes, they hum, and if the hum is loud enough, a proposition is passed. It's really dam weird.

It always seems strange to me that engineers, who insist on mangling human reason to match their machines and engage in 0/1 binary thinking suddenly can't have a vote, up and down, with a majority ruling, but have to have this completely unscientific thing called "consensus" like a Soviet collective or a Central Asian kuraltai. Dictatorships are enabled by such methods.

I'm really hard put to see why a simple HTML script to load some files such as I've pasted above here has to be sent in multiple parts. I'm sure not only is there a "very good reason" for this in the engineering mind, the fact that it just ruined postcards for people doesn't matter. And as other people are reporting that they can't even send the postcards to their own email address, it's not just my issue.

I'll go a few more rounds with Typepad on this AND I will try to get "the same" answer or "some answer" from the SL ticket system but what an annoyance. It was previously -- for years -- easy to make one click and send a blog from Second Life to a popular blogging platform, Typepad, which is in fact not a "dead" or "backward" blogging platform -- and now it isn't.

I don't know if WordPress has an email blog post function, surely it must but I don't want to fuss with WordPress I get enough of that frustration in RL jobs.

So the work-around is to send the posts with the photos stripped out, then snap the picture, save to hard drive and then upload to the post after. Not the greatest but there it is.

Another prospect is to only post to Twitter, not the blog. I'll test if that is working and maybe if Postcards are now also broken with Twitter, which the Lindens likely find more cool, they might change despite any slavish obedience to "IETF standards".

PS Re: Snapzilla -- hey, now if THAT broke down you can be sure the surly regs there would get Ebbe's attention, he reads them! 

So really, there isn't an objective reason for it not to work, if it can work on Snapzilla. BTW I will never use that site for very good reason, but it doesn't matter.

If it can work there it can work at Typepad unless Typepad is merely bagging it as spam

Edited by Prokofy Neva
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Contrary to popular opinion, we do read these. I flagged this for attention yesterday (a Linden Lab holiday), but am just getting to it.

I'll make an effort to help sort this out, but let's please eliminate the counterproductive finger pointing and hostility in all directions.

We've made a number of changes to how and when we send email, including changes to some of the software used for postcards. These changes are motivated primarily by the fact that email from SL has in the past often been filtered and discarded or rejected because it was sent incorrectly or to bad addresses. We are trying to make it as reliable as email ever is by upgrading nearly everything about how we do it (and by the way, our internal data shows that that is having a very positive effect). The changes will continue for some time.

If something we changed broke Typepad posting (and I have no reason to doubt it), then we'll have to find out from them (presumably through you, Prokofy) why they are not using it. It is said above that Support claimed that our mail sending is now more standards compliant; this is true, but it's still possible that we could do something to help Typepad understand it if we knew what was giving them trouble.

We make strenuous efforts to test our changes for backward compatibility, but the universe of things that Residents do with our product is far far too large for that testing to be comprehensive.

Edited by Oz Linden
completed a sentence that ended early
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4 hours ago, Oz Linden said:

We've made a number of changes to how and when we send email, including changes to some of the software used for postcards.

 
On 2/15/2018 at 5:41 AM, Alyona Su said:

No, I am NOT trying to troll you or anything, I'm serious...

...chances are there are enough changes in the LL systems that handle these back-end communications that...

 

/me feels SO VINDICATED.

'nuff said.

Edited by Alyona Su
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Um, well, look here, folks.

First, it's not about what Whirly found, God bless her, that was helpful because that's not the issue, and the pictures posted 2 weeks ago even with that "help tip" so it's not "a thing".

And...The problem is fixed now at Typepad. But not by Typepad. Because in our last episode, I had contacted the Typepad engineers and I had about 6 rounds with them on various facets of the problem. I gave them all the links to broken posts, the HTML, I explained what you were saying, and they couldn't make sense of it. Then there was the President's Day holiday so they said, sorry, we're on holiday (they're nice that way) but we'll return to this in a few days. They wondered if your system was blocking my "special unique post email" that Typepad generates for you as "spam". But I didn't think so as I have used it for years (it only generates a new one if you ask it to, not each time).

And, no, Oz. It's not about "finger pointing and hostility". It's about having to shout above the din of all the fanboyz and fangirlz here to get any point made with any documentation made -- the record shows that, you're an adult and "above the fray," seemingly, read it, and get it. It is visible. In spades.

Always the nasty put-downs of non-tech people as being stupid and using supposedly "obsolete platforms" blah blah blah. All the other nonsense of specious ideas about it, swipes at me (in other posts reporting bugs or issues) that I could ONLY be reporting this because I'm a greedy, rapacious land baron in SL trying to get out "ads for my properties". This is so patently ridiculous that one doesn't know where to start, as my little blog doesn't have enough traffic to ever somehow "produce a sale" -- and wait a minute, hey, what if it did?

Because there are very large operations in SL with hundreds of islands, not small operations like mine, that have mammoth amounts of investment in your platform that hey, might like to use this feature as an advertising function and what could be wrong with that? Surely, despite whatever your  own private pro-Sanders views or whatever kind of tech-left or libertarian views you hold (you're not required to "share") or hatred of capitalists and big companies that techs so often hold (except of the BIG IT companies of course), you can grasp that capitalism is okay, after all, Linden Lab, your employer practices is.

But yes, you are steeped in these cultures and methods. You were snapping at me that there couldn't possibly be a problem because...um...the word I used "scanning" was "not one we use". You see that literalism of techs always hobbles understanding of problems that users find. Always. Because you should be enough of a conceptual thinker that you don't jam on "scan" versus "check" but that you accept that someone has found something with good will -- which is in fact proven to you only arduously as they struggle to capture it in the wild.

It's like this:

A programmer is going to the grocery store and his wife tells him, "Buy a gallon of milk, and if there are eggs, buy a dozen." So the programmer goes, buys everything, and drives back to his house. Upon arrival, his wife angrily asks him, "Why did you get 13 gallons of milk?" The programmer says, "There were eggs!"

Every damn time here, Oz, it's "there were eggs" when what you were asked to do was buy a gallon of milk for the thirsty. 

So you write this thing:

We've made a number of changes to how and when we send email, including changes to some of the software used for postcards. These changes are motivated primarily by the fact that email from SL has in the past often been filtered and discarded or rejected because it was sent incorrectly or to bad addresses. We are trying to make it as reliable as email ever is by upgrading nearly everything about how we do it (and by the way, our internal data shows that that is having a very positive effect). The changes will continue for some time.

This might as well be an announcement from an airline telling us the flight is still delayed but never telling us why or when it will take off. That is, I'm sure it is a rich and meaningful paragraph for you that reflects your actual concern and hard labour but for the non-specialist just watching at home, it's just a corporate statement without meaning as when it was made, Typepad posts were still broken. 

Let me break this down so you understand better.

First, we're snowed by the idea that all the changes are made are actually for our benefit and we must be grateful - as we "all know" how "badly email works from SL"

Second, we're told that there was this terrible state of email -- that some might understand, some might not because not everyone uses SL in combination with email in the same way, for Postcards or anything for that matter. The average person, say, with a Premium Account might get a notice from LL about an offer, or maybe an IM from a friend that they sent to offline via email on preferences -- and that's it, so it works.

Third, we're told that this internal data about a thing that we haven't been given to understand (perhaps it's a proprietary secret and that's fine) is now improved and the Lab's own reports show it's working fine -- but if Typepad wasn't, or somebody's own email wasn't working with Postcards, what does it mean? It means nothing.

Works on My Machine isn't just a phenomenon for techs to wield against norms; it's a slogan that every single user can keep coming back with in reverse Doesn't Work On My Machine -- and the answer is too often "Well, your computer is old, it's ready for kindergarten (5 years)" -- the famous answer of Lindens years ago.

No, Oz, I don't have a computer I built myself from parts off New Egg like you do. I have a Best Buy computer because even though I live in one of the largest media/tech cities in the world, that's actually all that is mainly available for the non-specialist to play your game. Your game doesn't work on a lot of computers at all, laptops, forget about it.

So to continue on the substance here:

Yes, I routinely find hundreds of messages from my customers, automated rental boxes, Linden Lab itself, etc. in the spam file, in fact I often find that the most urgent and valuable messages with real things in them are in that spam file, but no matter, I'm a grown-up and I can look there.

Oh, but stop right there, Prokofy. You mentioned automated rental boxes. Yes, well see that's just it -- there are an ENORMOUS NUMBER OF THINGS in Second Life that "talk" and send messages and if you set your preferences for them to go into email -- which is the best way to avoid this claim so many make that there were "too many" and they "didn't get them" you'll see that the average email program, Yahoo for example or even older ones like Juno or even Gmail -- can't figure them out. Cannot handle the load.

Those talking SL things -- vendors, objects, avatars sending messages, you name it -- have enormous numbers of letters and numbers in their names showing an avatar key, a SLURL, a you-name-it. The virtual world with all its talking things let alone people just really overwhelms email. So I'm glad you're on it. But it's bigger than your platform.

Yahoo's problem, aside from being massively hacked by Russians and poorly working in general is that often things don't even go to the spam file at all. They just withhold them, period. If they are weird long things from SL. Or even from Russia itself which they automatically ban now, so that even independent journalists or opposition people can't send email to me any more. And frankly, Gmail, which is something techs prefer and they all scorn you for having Yahoo which they view as hackable is really no better (funny, it's Google that sends me the MOST messages every month that an authorized STATE is attempting to get at my email or docs and funny, it's Gmail that led to the DNC hack! Hello! You can say PICNIC, I can say flies at PICNIC from Cosy Bear and Fancy Bear) 

What I'm trying to suggest here is that "Linden Lab's problem with email" isn't just a problem of all these voices chattering out of SL, actual communications from actual things like Linden Lab itself but all these chattering automated objects, vendors, notifiers, groups, ads, etc. etc. -- but a problem vastly of email systems themselves. Email itself has not reformed as a system. For 20 years, we have had the same interfaces, the same idiocies in being unable to save our own email except with complicated mbx files that can't always be opened later, the same lag, crashing, and idiocy - and Google's Wave, enabling the *removal of other people's text* was not the answer. The same hacking, the same spam the same everything. While you're tinkering with just making "legacy email work with Second Life" why not invent an entire new online email system for virtual worlds (which will be everything some day) and make it work so much better? You know, from scratch, like you did Sansar? Because without a communications system alongside/embedded/compatible with the virtual world, there really is no virtual world as I think I could prove and you might yourself understand.

That is, you need to think about this problem in a totally more Zen and Burning Man-like way, Oz. Have I reached you yet with this point?

So, to come to the point just for today, in the here-and-now: I know for a fact Typepad did nothing. So you, Oz or other Lindens "did something" and we "don't know what" because now Postcards from Second Life work on Typepad and I can resume my happy little shopping blogging as a happy little avatar.

Maybe it was some simple thing like putting Typepad in a whitelist, and putting other sites or emails from people complaining it wasn't getting through "in a white list". I know I could send "Postcards from SL" to my actual Yahoo account but my Verizon account which is really under a shell of a Yahoo account in their deal with Yahoo just never showed anything, not in spam not anywhere. See above -- Yahoo doesn't let some things through on some forms of their accounts because -- whatever. It just happens.

Maybe you fixed this "two part file to keep in compliance with IETF" (hum). Who knows! You don't have to tell us. I know in a month or three months it might be broken again (as it has been in the past). I'm very patient, I've been in Second Life 13 years now.

 

 

 

Edited by Prokofy Neva
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22 hours ago, Alyona Su said:

/me feels SO VINDICATED.

'nuff said.

So only in the totally, skewed, fact-free, context-free world of the forums, where no one remembers what they posted even yesterday or its ramifications, can you feel "vindicated" and claim that you "knew all along it was something about the Lindens' software changes."

Let me refresh your memory about what you ACTUALLY WROTE as the reasons for my problem with Typepad:

Prok, you've been using Typepad since before 2006 and you're still the only person I've ever known to use it. :)  Maybe it's time to update to something more modern?

No, I am NOT trying to troll you or anything, I'm serious. I was just reading a thread about how the old HippoVend system stopped working in 2016 - and people are still posting (even as of this morning) about "Wait, what?"

So, you aren't clear about your workflow: are you just doing this stuff through email or are you using one of the HUDs that were available way back when to post from in-world to your blog (like the old ones that posted to other blog platforms, or Flickr, etc). I'm just thinking if you're using something like that then chances are there are enough changes in the LL systems that handle these back-end communications that the HUD has become broken - in which case see if there's an update to that gadget. If you're doing straight email then the same thing may apply, though I'm not sure how one would go about troubleshooting or otherwise fixing it.

May it be time to search Market Place for a new gadget and change your workflow?

OH, and if you're using the LL Viewer and its built-in thing (Postcards? - it's been years since I've even looked at that) - then maybe a ticket is in order?

So, you've erroneously complained this is a PICNIC and my use of Typepad.

You've erroneously claimed that this is my purported use of an old HUD which of course I don't use, they broke years ago.

You've erroneously claimed that a now obsolete vendor is a clue to somehow understanding this problem with Typepad -- it's not obviously.

You've erroneously claimed that I "need to find a new product on the Marketplace" -- a HUD to send Postcards? Are you serious? When the VIEWER ITSELF has a function to do this?

You've ACTUALLY ADMITTED that YOU YOURSELF don't use postcards and don't really follow its issues -- and then 

You've erroneously claimed that I should "just put in a ticket" (as if I wouldn't think of it) as this could "only be a problem on my end" and not globally WITH THE LINDENS" SOFTWARE.

 

And you're feeling vindicated? No. You should feel deep, deep shame and apologize for your snarky, nasty, fact-free post, that's what.

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29 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

So you, Oz or other Lindens "did something" and we "don't know what" because now Postcards from Second Life work on Typepad and I can resume my happy little shopping blogging as a happy little avatar.

Maybe it was some simple thing like putting Typepad in a whitelist, and putting other sites or emails from people complaining it wasn't getting through "in a white list". I know I could send "Postcards from SL" to my actual Yahoo account but my Verizon account which is really under a shell of a Yahoo account in their deal with Yahoo just never showed anything, not in spam not anywhere. See above -- Yahoo doesn't let some things through on some forms of their accounts because -- whatever. It just happens.

Maybe you fixed this "two part file to keep in compliance with IETF" (hum). Who knows! You don't have to tell us. I know in a month or three months it might be broken again (as it has been in the past). I'm very patient, I've been in Second Life 13 years now.

I'm delighted to hear that it's working again, for whatever reason.

I really wish I (or even Linden Lab) could take the credit. I certainly hadn't made any changes yet (though I had contemplated some). Maybe someone else did something, or maybe not...

Here's hoping that it continues to work.

Thank you for your patience, and for your 13 years in Second Life!

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1 hour ago, Prokofy Neva said:

So only in the totally, skewed, fact-free, context-free world of the forums, where no one remembers what they posted even yesterday or its ramifications, can you feel "vindicated" and claim that you "knew all along it was something about the Lindens' software changes."

Let me refresh your memory about what you ACTUALLY WROTE as the reasons for my problem with Typepad:

Prok, you've been using Typepad since before 2006 and you're still the only person I've ever known to use it. :)  Maybe it's time to update to something more modern?

No, I am NOT trying to troll you or anything, I'm serious. I was just reading a thread about how the old HippoVend system stopped working in 2016 - and people are still posting (even as of this morning) about "Wait, what?"

So, you aren't clear about your workflow: are you just doing this stuff through email or are you using one of the HUDs that were available way back when to post from in-world to your blog (like the old ones that posted to other blog platforms, or Flickr, etc). I'm just thinking if you're using something like that then chances are there are enough changes in the LL systems that handle these back-end communications that the HUD has become broken - in which case see if there's an update to that gadget. If you're doing straight email then the same thing may apply, though I'm not sure how one would go about troubleshooting or otherwise fixing it.

May it be time to search Market Place for a new gadget and change your workflow?

OH, and if you're using the LL Viewer and its built-in thing (Postcards? - it's been years since I've even looked at that) - then maybe a ticket is in order?

So, you've erroneously complained this is a PICNIC and my use of Typepad.

You've erroneously claimed that this is my purported use of an old HUD which of course I don't use, they broke years ago.

You've erroneously claimed that a now obsolete vendor is a clue to somehow understanding this problem with Typepad -- it's not obviously.

You've erroneously claimed that I "need to find a new product on the Marketplace" -- a HUD to send Postcards? Are you serious? When the VIEWER ITSELF has a function to do this?

You've ACTUALLY ADMITTED that YOU YOURSELF don't use postcards and don't really follow its issues -- and then 

You've erroneously claimed that I should "just put in a ticket" (as if I wouldn't think of it) as this could "only be a problem on my end" and not globally WITH THE LINDENS" SOFTWARE.

 

And you're feeling vindicated? No. You should feel deep, deep shame and apologize for your snarky, nasty, fact-free post, that's what.

Yes.

Yes I am. Every reply you've made to my posts what I expected from you. I know better than to take anything SL 9including you) seriously.

So go ahead and be yourself, at least you've been consistent all these years.

Oh, and I'm still vindicated. :P

OH, and I forgot to ask about my first post and your response: did you LIKE my post before or after your vitriol? Just curious. Bahahaha!

Edited by Alyona Su
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