Direct Delivery questions

[Mickey Vandeverre]

Good Lord - I wouldn't go through these constant upheavals and poor customer service if I did not like Second Life.

Can go to a number of other venues and have a perfectly enjoyable and pleasant and productive experience that flows flawlessly and profitable with more tools than you know what to do with, and excellent customer service in a heartbeat, and happy, friendly, merchants who collaborate and support each other - and the same for the customers.

There is HUGE potential here.  Frustrating to watch it dwindle to a snail's pace.

 

[Josh Susanto]

>As to working in inventory, scripts don't run if not rezzed in a simulator.  Why ask for a magic box in inventory when what is being offered doesn't even require a box?  It's not how it is, see above.

Or maybe that IS how it is.

Maybe the new system really does still use boxes, although they're not called boxes, and they're all rezzed for us on some big, secret sim which is separate from the rest of the grid.

Do you really have any reason to believe otherwise, other than the fact you've been told otherwise, directly or indirectly by people I've already shown can't be trusted?

[Sassy Romano]

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

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SO.... at this time... the ONLY AUTHORITY to provide the correct answers to the FAQ as well as to answer our questions that were not in the confusing FAQ is the group that should be stepping up.....  LINDEN LAB.

 

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Regardless of who is a participant in the beta, the above remains true.  Participants of the closed beta testing are not restricted from saying so but for the reasons mentioned, I maintain that it's probably why they choose NOT to state their participation.

LL should be doing a better job of communication, everyone agrees with that but at this stage, there's little to be gained in arguing as to how DD has been implemented and why it wasn't done differently.  It is what it is right now and the opportunity for people to test it has been announced so there shouldn't be any surprises when it goes live.

The opportunity to have any peripheral influence in how DD functions is/was the same as any other beta programme and that's to participate.  That opportunity becomes more widespread when it's publicy available.  (That's not to say that LL will listen or has listened in the past).

The choice to test it remains up to the merchant, nobody is forcing merchants to make themselves aware of the processes that they will need to be familiar with and how to prepare for changes required.

As to "coming clean" and telling people why beta testers should be trusted, I disagree.  Beta testers aren't making policy.  Communication remains LL's job.  I wouldn't trust the beta testers to know the fine details of the implementation.

[Sassy Romano]

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Josh Susanto wrote:

Maybe the new system really does still use boxes, although they're not called boxes, and they're all rezzed for us on some big, secret sim which is separate from the rest of the grid.

Do you really have any reason to believe otherwise, other than the fact you've been told otherwise, directly or indirectly by people I've already shown can't be trusted?

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That would be a pretty dumb and needless way to do it wouldn't it?  Think about how a database works and you'll have the answer.  I don't need to be told otherwise, my intellectual powers of reasoning based on what I know about the type of systems involved leads me to derive my own thoughts.

[Josh Susanto]

>That would be a pretty dumb and needless way to do it wouldn't it? 

Actually, it would be a really smart way to cover up if they couldn't find a better solution.

> I don't need to be told otherwise, my intellectual powers of reasoning based on what I know about the type of systems involved leads me to derive my own thoughts.

Yeah, maybe you're right.

I guess it would be kinda' like running a GUI on top of DOS instead of writing a more efficient OS specifically for GUI.

[Paladin Pinion]

Mickey, I'm not counseling anyone, I'm just speaking for myself. We do have to wait, because we can't test until next month. I personally prefer that people also wait to criticize until they actually have some experience with the system, but that's probably wishful thinking.

But remember, you don't necessarily need to do anything right now. The magic box is not going away yet and you can continue to use it for some time. You can try moving one item to the folder, and see what happens until you are comfortable with the new process.

More important, you don't need to rebox  or change anything you are already selling, everything will already work whenever you want to use the new delivery method. You don't need to change the items you already have, just move them into the folder. No need to unpack or repackage. You can move 1 or 500, it doesn't matter. Just drop them in.

 

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You are telling us that we are wasting energy.  I don't think so.  Sounds to me like people just want information in order to get organized. so that they don't get thrown off course pretty rapidly.

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I said it was a waste of energy to criticize a process we haven't seen yet. I agree 100% that people want and need information. A few of us have been trying to help explain the online info but it hasn't been very well received. It's true that the answers are there though, and they are much simpler than people want to think.

[Mickey Vandeverre]

You have less than 100 listings.  It's not a concern for you.

 

[Paladin Pinion]

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Mickey Vandeverre wrote:

You have less than 100 listings.  It's not a concern for you.

 

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True, I've got it easier. If I had as many as you, I might just move a few boxes per day over the course of several months. You won't have to change them, just drop them in.

[Darrius Gothly]

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Paladin Pinion wrote:

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Josh Susanto wrote:

>I don't know why LL can't read our current magic box and transfer the listings

Please do not encourage LL to take unnecessary control over additional parts of the process. You know why.

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I agree with you. Someone asked why LL couldn't just grab our box contents and use those as the source, and I didn't know why. But now that I think about it, I'd much rather be in control of the process, and maybe LL considered that too. It's likely that most of us will want to start with only a few transferred items, and then gradually move the rest over after we see how it goes.

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The link from SLM to Magic Box is handled through a link to the old XStreet website or, it would seem as part of their last major update, handled by code directly within the SLM itself. The problem, so we are told, is that the path from SLM to Magic Box to delivery to Customer involves an unreliable communications link (proven) and problems with in-world object-to-avatar deliveries (also proven).

So DD is meant to go from Inventory to Inventory thus eliminating all problem parts. The rationale (and it's good too) is to make it just a database copy ... from the source location to the destination. In this case the source is some internal inventory folder that they create based on stuff we upload from our Merchant Outbox, and the destination is the Customer's SLM Inbox.

So good, so far, right?

My Magic Box has a database record in the same database as the Customer's Inventory (or at least in a database that is equally accessible). The UUID of my Magic Box is well known to SLM because it has to know that to communicate with it in the unreliable method used now. So the database copy that is at the heart of DD could just as easily be from my Magic Box's inventory to the Customer's Inventory.

If I change the contents of my Magic Box, I must synch with SLM but everything after that is complete.

The net result would have been a solution that caused almost no disruption in how we work now, would not have required any changes in documentation, and would have resulted in the loss of only one feature ... delivery of folders instead of a single boxed item.

Apparently the value of that one feature outweighed the benefits of "minimal disruption" .. or they don't consider disrupting us as having any value. Either way, it appears to me exactly as Lasher stated ... they do their level best to obfuscate anything they do.

[Mickey Vandeverre]

You have 12 listings.  It is not a concern for you.

You have the luxury of not counting on daily income to keep your store in place.

Others have land investment, time investment, listing enhancement investment, outside advertising investment, and more.  Moving a few listings a day is not an option to stay in business.  I sell more than a few different offerings a day.

We are paying for a service, for land, for enhancements, and a commission on sales, and other things,

It is titled a "Market" place.

This forum is titled a "Commerce" forum.

They push to sell us advertising and enhancements.

What part of that are you completely incapable of understanding?

[Toysoldier Thor]

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Sassy Romano wrote:

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

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SO.... at this time... the ONLY AUTHORITY to provide the correct answers to the FAQ as well as to answer our questions that were not in the confusing FAQ is the group that should be stepping up.....  LINDEN LAB.

 

---

Regardless of who is a participant in the beta, the above remains true.  Participants of the closed beta testing are not restricted from saying so but for the reasons mentioned, I maintain that it's probably why they choose NOT to state their participation.

LL should be doing a better job of communication, everyone agrees with that but at this stage, there's little to be gained in arguing as to how DD has been implemented and why it wasn't done differently.  It is what it is right now and the opportunity for people to test it has been announced so there shouldn't be any surprises when it goes live.

The opportunity to have any peripheral influence in how DD functions is/was the same as any other beta programme and that's to participate.  That opportunity becomes more widespread when it's publicy available.  (That's not to say that LL will listen or has listened in the past).

The choice to test it remains up to the merchant, nobody is forcing merchants to make themselves aware of the processes that they will need to be familiar with and how to prepare for changes required.

As to "coming clean" and telling people why beta testers should be trusted, I disagree.  Beta testers aren't making policy.  Communication remains LL's job.  I wouldn't trust the beta testers to know the fine details of the implementation.

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We both agree - as do most Merchants that the only authority to explain how DD works and to answer the questions flying up in droves is LL. 

Although I would think the Closed Beta Testers that have been using the DD for a couple months should be able to provide an educated opinion, no one here should be trusting any poster's opinion as to what LL's FAQ is trying to say - unless LL has stated it and clarified it.  Technically, everyone else here would be guess as to their interpretation of how DD works.

So its nice that you and Paladen and other are posting your guesses as to what the FAQ means... its only a guess.

As per your comments on providing influence on DD's design and functioning, even the Closed Beta Testers have no influnece either - at least they shouldnt.  Once a solution reaches any form of Beta - open or closed - the fundamental design and even coding around the functions around the design should be close to locked.  The job of the Beta Testers should not be there to rethink the solution developed by the developer.  They should be there to execute use cases against the solution.

So, unless LL is an immature shoot-from-the-hip development environment (oops hold on - they are), the Beta Testers would have had no input to convince LL that the OUTBOX should be the Magicbox or that the Outbox / Magicbox should be a MASTER source and none of its contents should be deleted after upload.

That is a major reason why I did not even try to be a DD closed beta tester - I know LL well enough to know I would have had zero ability to change their solution for the better.  Secondly, LL hand picks their closed beta testers and I am 99% sure Brooke would not have invited me.  They want want "always agreeing" slave labor testers - not someone that would challenge your marvelous ideas / designs.  I know a couple fellow merchants that did want to be closed beta testers and were rejected - and I am sure I know why.

So... at no stage does any non-special Merchant have any significant influence on how DD was designed.  Only a few merchants with special access to Brooke and company had influence.  Too bad they have little clue how to design a solution.

I still shake my head that so late in the game - and as DD enters an open beta - only a couple months from production release - LL has not even figured out the "automagic" magicbox to DD transition system.  All these months and they are only now trying to design a solution for this?  Ohhh this is a red flag for the DD screwups as the first merchants try to move to DD.

[Josh Susanto]

I have A LOT of items, but I'm still willing to move them if DD actually works better than what we have now.

I figure I'll just have to move them again anyway even if DD doesn't happen, when all my boxes, including the ones held in inventory, turn up borked again and I have to get new boxes again. 

Really, it's hard for me to imagine how DD can really work any worse than the current system has at times, or as well as the current system has at times.

If it's a more consistent pain in my ass, I might even prefer that.

 

[Toysoldier Thor]

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

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Paladin Pinion wrote:

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Josh Susanto wrote:

>I don't know why LL can't read our current magic box and transfer the listings

Please do not encourage LL to take unnecessary control over additional parts of the process. You know why.

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I agree with you. Someone asked why LL couldn't just grab our box contents and use those as the source, and I didn't know why. But now that I think about it, I'd much rather be in control of the process, and maybe LL considered that too. It's likely that most of us will want to start with only a few transferred items, and then gradually move the rest over after we see how it goes.

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The link from SLM to Magic Box is handled through a link to the old XStreet website or, it would seem as part of their last major update, handled by code directly within the SLM itself. The problem, so we are told, is that the path from SLM to Magic Box to delivery to Customer involves an unreliable communications link (proven) and problems with in-world object-to-avatar deliveries (also proven).

So DD is meant to go from Inventory to Inventory thus eliminating all problem parts. The rationale (and it's good too) is to make it just a database copy ... from the source location to the destination. In this case the source is some internal inventory folder that they create based on stuff we upload from our Merchant Outbox, and the destination is the Customer's SLM Inbox.

So good, so far, right?

My Magic Box has a database record in the same database as the Customer's Inventory (or at least in a database that is equally accessible). The UUID of my Magic Box is well known to SLM because it has to know that to communicate with it in the unreliable method used now. So the database copy that is at the heart of DD could just as easily be from my Magic Box's inventory to the Customer's Inventory.

If I change the contents of my Magic Box, I must synch with SLM but everything after that is complete.

The net result would have been a solution that caused almost no disruption in how we work now, would not have required any changes in documentation, and would have resulted in the loss of only one feature ... delivery of folders instead of a single boxed item.

Apparently the value of that one feature outweighed the benefits of "minimal disruption" .. or they don't consider disrupting us as having any value. Either way, it appears to me exactly as Lasher stated ... they do their level best to obfuscate anything they do.

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THANK YOU DARRIUS!!

This is exactly what I have been trying to say countless times!!

The Magicbox is only a record in the Asset server (as Sassy made it so clear to all of us back in the spring).  So since its in the Asset DB.... all LL Developers had to do if they used common sense was to use the magicbox Asset Record and do the same DB copy to the MP DB table - where MP's new DD could do all the distribution.

No disruption of our magicbox.  The Magicbox stays as a MASTER SOURCE.  No transitioning.

Hopefully because you explained it now Darrius... people like Sassy and Paladen will understand.

But again, too little - too late. LL NEVER CHANGES THEIR MINDS.

 

[Paladin Pinion]

Mickey, I'm sorry it sounds like I don't have empathy. I didn't mean it to. What I've been saying has nothing to do with any of the things you mention, none of those will change.

To use the new delivery system all you must do is: Shift-click a few of your boxed sales items in your inventory. Copy. Open the outbox folder. Paste.

That's all, you're done. How does this interfere with your land investment, your income, your commission, or your business? You don't have to even use the system until you hear that other people say it works. You can keep the magic box until you are sure.

I'm not being condescending, I'm just puzzled why people think this is going to be so hard. I do understand that they are worried about bugs, and about the system not working properly. That's a very legitimate concern, and I want to know it's safe too before I use it. The more people who test, the better the result will be. But you don't have to test if you don't want to, you can just keep the magic box until you know it works.

I'm honestly confused about your reaction.

[Paladin Pinion]

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

The net result would have been a solution that caused almost no disruption in how we work now, would not have required any changes in documentation, and would have resulted in the loss of only one feature ... delivery of folders instead of a single boxed item.

Apparently the value of that one feature outweighed the benefits of "minimal disruption" .. or they don't consider disrupting us as having any value. Either way, it appears to me exactly as Lasher stated ... they do their level best to obfuscate anything they do.

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True. But I suspect the number of problems newcomers have with unboxing was a big part of the decision. It fits in with LL's decision to dumb down the viewer (stupid "basic" mode, thankfully now on the way out) and other measures LL has taken to make the initial experience easier.

I remember when I first started, I had a box on my head too. I had to ask someone why. It's so common it's become a standing joke, and at some point LL moved the default attachment point to the right hand to help prevent embarrassment.

[Darrius Gothly]

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Paladin Pinion wrote:

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

The net result would have been a solution that caused almost no disruption in how we work now, would not have required any changes in documentation, and would have resulted in the loss of only one feature ... delivery of folders instead of a single boxed item.

Apparently the value of that one feature outweighed the benefits of "minimal disruption" .. or they don't consider disrupting us as having any value. Either way, it appears to me exactly as Lasher stated ... they do their level best to obfuscate anything they do.

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True. But I suspect the number of problems newcomers have with unboxing was a big part of the decision. It fits in with LL's decision to dumb down the viewer (stupid "basic" mode, thankfully now on the way out) and other measures LL has taken to make the initial experience easier.

I remember when I first started, I had a box on my head too. I had to ask someone why. It's so common it's become a standing joke, and at some point LL moved the default attachment point to the right hand to help prevent embarrassment.

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Ah, yes .. the fabled "box on the head" experience. If I recall correctly, I arrived just before the transition from head to hand, and over my first few weeks wore a box in both places.

What you say makes sense as they (LL) were trying very hard to make everything super simple .. I guess in keeping with "Fast, Easy and Fun". (Too bad no one remembered at the time that Tic-Tac-Toe is also fast, easy and fun. *sigh*)

However, on that topic, I still maintain that insulating SL Users from the skill of unboxing an item is akin to insulating a child from learning to walk because .. *GASP* .. they might fall down some at first. *facepalm*

[Paladin Pinion]

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

However, on that topic, I still maintain that insulating SL Users from the skill of unboxing an item is akin to insulating a child from learning to walk because .. *GASP* .. they might fall down some at first. *facepalm*

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Yeah, agreed. I had a friend who wouldn't let her toddler play on the lawn because it might have been sprayed.

People will still need to know how to unbox though. Some things will have to be boxed due to their content, and a lot of the items -- probably all of them at first, anyway -- will still be boxed. It's the merchant's choice, and choice is good. Merchants who want to make things easier for customers will eventually choose to pass folders instead of boxes.

Right now I see lots of attempts to fake that, like auto-unpackers disguised as cute shopping bags (I hate those) and similar attempts to insulate new users from the horrors of unboxing. So I think there's probably some support out there for an easier method, and it may reduce customer support for merchants too. I've seen an awful lot of pissed off people writing to the forums here about how they paid good money for something and all they got was a box, and they want to warn people about this or that merchant who ripped them off. They get pretty mad, and even if they learn quickly what's going on, they still shouldn't have to go through all that.

As an aside, I think that "Basic" mode was a much poorer decision on LL's part than this one. It solved nothing, and was crippling and intrusive, the opposite of what they wanted to accomplish. In comparison, this decision solves an actual, serious problem, and whether I drop market items into a box or into a folder doesn't seem like that big a deal to me. The drop point is really the only thing that's changing.

Darrius, when the beta starts, will you go with me to the testing grid? I've promised to give a fair report, and I will, but people will believe your input more readily at this point, I think. I have some canned goods somewhere I could sell you as a test.

 

[Sassy Romano]

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

Hopefully because you explained it now Darrius... people like Sassy and Paladen will understand.

 

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I always did but comprehension doesn't change the implementation.

 

 

[Sassy Romano]

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Josh Susanto wrote:

>That would be a pretty dumb and needless way to do it wouldn't it? 

Actually, it would be a really smart way to cover up if they couldn't find a better solution.

> I don't need to be told otherwise, my intellectual powers of reasoning based on what I know about the type of systems involved leads me to derive my own thoughts.

Yeah, maybe you're right.

I guess it would be kinda' like running a GUI on top of DOS instead of writing a more efficient OS specifically for GUI.

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Overheard at an internal LL Marketplace Direct Delivery team meeting:-

 

Project Manager: "So project team, here's the plan... we'd like to remove Magic Boxes because we're getting lots of complaints about non delivery so what we've architected is ... get this team, it's awesome... We're going to consume extra server resources by rolling out some additional simulators and on those sims we're going to rez thousands of Magic Boxes, then somehow we're going to burn developer time recoding the UI to provide a fake UI to the fake Magic Box and here's the best part...IT WON'T FIX THE PROBLEM WOOT!"

Voice from the back: "...but... wouldn't it just be easier to just doodle around with the inventory UUIDs?"

Project Manager: "..."

Like I said Josh, I prefer to reason the answer for myself.

[Josh Susanto]

>No disruption of our magicbox.  The Magicbox stays as a MASTER SOURCE.  No transitioning.

I think I'm not the only one who has concluded that magic boxes are too slow for the shopping cart.

But I understand it's not the box, itself which is the problem. The problem is a data bottleneck between the box and some other part of the system.

DD intends to avoid both that bottleneck and, probably unnecessarily, the box to which it connects. 

The first part makes perfect sense; the second, less.

A possible advantage I can see without boxes is that boxes also appear to be subject to region-specific forms of lag, and other region-related issues, such as people getting erroneously banned from the regions where their boxes are rezzed.

From a naive standpoint, there's no reason to think that DD won't work a lot better than a system with boxes.

All my doubts about giving up a part of the system that is now working just fine (except that my SLM account, itself, seems to be borked; see other thread) comes from the fact that the people bringing us DD are the same people who brought us the great service received on dates like 8 August and 13 September. 

 

 

[Josh Susanto]

>Like I said Josh, I prefer to reason the answer for myself.

Again, you are probably right.

And, again, what you say makes almost perfect sense, assuming that the non-box solutions they tried actually worked.

But what if they didn´t? Haven't? Still don't?

LL would need to come with something to fill the hole created by promising DD.

I don't know that that is what has happened.

I just know that if I don't construct alternate theories, that job will be left to others who are not as good at it.

The solution I've described is conceptually not very different from what has been applied many times, by many companies. The DOS/Windows thing, I've already mentioned. Enron also comes to mind. And if you look at the US federal government and its recent corporate bed partners, you'll see plenty else; just the tip of the iceberg.

Incredibly stupid things happen all over the world, every day.

Don't assume that because Lindens are probably much better coders than you are, they are also better at making decisions about what to promise, when, and how to deliver. 

Really, how are they observably doing the what/when/how of DD so far, separate from the question of whether there's a secret sim full of boxes defined as something other than boxes?

 

[Josh Susanto]

>People will still need to know how to unbox though.

We mostly know pretty well how to do it when it works.

When it does not work, we know not so well.

Reducing the amount of unnecessary unboxing that people have to do would compensate for a lot more than just user ignorance.

 

[Sassy Romano]

I'll try to fill in the blanks for you Josh.

The magic box doesn't really exist.  It's just a blob of data that is being interpreted by a piece of software, the simulator.

If you want to reduce things to this level then you're absolutely right, Direct Delivery is nothing more than a magic box but instead of being a blob of data being interpreted by a simulator, it's a set of tables containing records.  If you want to view that as software then that doesn't really exist either!

At this conjunction, the good news for you is that you can call Direct Delivery a Magic Box.  It's sort of the same, all data in a database about objects that don't really exist.  I'm glad we got there in the end. 

(Windows never set out to be an operating system at version 1, it was just an environment, nothing more)

[Josh Susanto]

I'm pretty aware that none of it "exists".

But a difference between the current box system and DD is supposed to be that DD data receptacles don't have to be rezzed in order to function. 

That's the part I find to be suspicious.

That is; my suspicion is that the new receptacles actually are rezzed somewhere, code-wise, if not viewer-wise.

If an invisible tree in an invisible forest on an inaccessible, unviewable sim fails to fall and there is no one there to not hear it, does it still lag the other trees?

 

[Darrius Gothly]

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Paladin Pinion wrote:

[..] 

Darrius, when the beta starts, will you go with me to the testing grid? I've promised to give a fair report, and I will, but people will believe your input more readily at this point, I think. I have some canned goods somewhere I could sell you as a test. 

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I'm going to try and get onto Aditi soon and do some testing .. hopefully document the process for everyone to read on my blog. I'll holler at you when I'm ready to give it a test.