WADE1 Jya

The scrum (move fast & break things) management style dictates they must finish the 'sprint' on time. It's all about a endless series of hyperaggressive deadlines. Strategy & planning ahead go out the window. Think Ford's assembly line process applied to software development. The machine cannot be stopped or slowed for the workers. The workers move according to the machine. Quality is irrelevent, it will be 'completed' June 1st precisely and all magic boxes will be killed same day. That's what I predict they'll do anyway. As you might guess i've lost faith in their system. Also I have no time for a messy conversion of my +300 items in an environment of cascading data corruption. I don't know when I will ever have time for that. So personally, they've left me out in the cold, thanks a lot Linden managers.

Weak... :catindifferent:

Before mesh launched i warned this kind of activity would begin to happen on a grand scale and also knew it was highly unlikely Linden Lab would do anything concrete to guard against it. Now, seeing what direction the company has taken since, I think attracting this new type of user activity dovetails well with management's future roadmap for the product. As predicted, Linden Lab turns a blind eye to rampant distribution of graymarket/blackmarket IP & only takes action where they are required to by liabilities & under the law. Same as with Google and Facebook's business practices in regard to protecting IP of small publishers or indy content creators, some token measures are thrown out there, just enough to guard against their own liabilities. Taking the most passive stance legally permissible to this kind of activity works greatly to these corporations benefit, unless or until current IP enforcement laws change. Profits go up, and the venture capitalists are thrilled. This is why Google and Facebook both took such a strong stance against SOPA, yet are peculiarly in favor of the vicious new CISPA (the ultimate internet police state bill) because while SOPA hurts their business model, CISPA reduces their liabilities. It was hypocritical of these companies to pretend they were standing up for our 'internet freedoms'. To make it worthwhile for commercial developers & to allow innovation to thrive, a more secure environment & some basic market regulation (such as Apple supplies) is required. Casual 'sharers', not commercial developers, are obviously Linden Lab's target market -- it is a much wider & easier market to target.

Its nice they have some residents who care (instead of jumping at things in a predatory way), watching out for loose ends & helping them out. Corporate legal departments can be slow on the draw, these things can take time since many lawyers still do most things very oldschool way. It can tend to be a bit dinosaurian. Perhaps LL has one of this kind, not very agile. I've made them aware of the legalities of this bit a few days ago: Inworld Employment <<'employment' has precise legal definition, open liability. the way this is presented becomes misleading. Get an inworld job or hire a Resident. <<'hire' also has precise legal definition, open liability. 'job' with this phrasing & context is perhaps even a little risky also. still no action there yet either :matte-motes-stress: but its good to know they are aware & hopefully busy working on these things.

Heh yeah its hard to twist the head around exactly how it could function but there is all kinds of interesting & strange hybrid agencies forming in all fields these days. It may be impossible & silly.... but you might be surprised what is possible. BTW I have no wish to start any action against Linden Lab, but I am very interested in stopping online worker exploitation everywhere. Linden Lab may or may not have any say in how exactly it would fall into place once the process began. They may, as network operator, have certain obligations... or not. Likely they'd be just as excited as us to see any sort of transformative process unfold & proud of their world suddenly harmonizing into a higher order of complexity. If it developed into anything newsworthy, I am sure they would love it just for the free publicity. Jurisdiction may be irrelevent. I'm going to contact a Canadian union organizer to get more information just to satisfy my own curiosity :catembarrassed:

Identify Your Rights 1 Know that federal and state laws both protect your right to form a union. 2 Contact a union organizer to help guide you when planning your union. ......I don't live in USA so I might be stuck at step 2. Probably have to be in the same jurisdiction. Someone living in California would be preferable. @Sassy: this may all happen 'inside' Linden Lab's product. It would be comparable with workers communicating through teleconferencing or Skype, it in no way invalidates rights. Wherever there is labor (including online workers), real life laws apply. I do like the terms (this stuff is far above & beyond ToS) & I will use the product :catvery-happy: If anybody wants to go about trying to do this, I do have available land to use for such a thing, to meet up & use for meetings, organization planning, etc.

I checked into this more and it is a risk. Linden Lab (and any residents who offer 'employment') have just been lucky so far. Some legally safe titles for what is happening in this forum would be: Inworld Jobs >> 'Jobs' are work someone aims to complete, without any inherent legal obligations or protections attached. Inworld Work >> 'Work' does not imply you get anything in return & may even be forced duty (ex. prison work, home work, etc) Inworld Tasks >> Things that need done around here. inworld Labor >> Hey you're working, it's something to do... Ouch ... just noticed they're actually using the word 'hire' too, this is way too specific and gonna lead somebody to be in a lot of trouble one day! Wide open liability. "Get an inworld job or hire a Resident." <<not good! nobody is getting hired! This sentence is very troublesome terminology. It should say something much more generalized & safe, such as "Find tasks to do inworld or get a Resident working for you." Well, I warned you guys... carry on... :matte-motes-sour:

Funny enough I have had a sort of working avatar's union come to mind several times over the last couple years. Some sort of agency to stop avatar exploitation & build worker's rights in SL. I mulled it over a few times over the years (even considered dedicating some of my unused land to it) but didn't know how to actuate it effectively (so it wasn't just a joke) & i also wondered if Lindens would ban me for it (seems like its quite a 180 turn against their current directives), but I'd love to kick something like that off! Products could even be stamped "Union Made" and customers could buy confidently knowing they are supporting fair trade practices & not enabling exploitation. Question is could it actually be done? I suppose for starters we'd need a legal representative... & I imagine some tech-loving lawyer somewhere would even help pro-bono just because such a thing would be pretty innovative and cool. Somehow I get the impression a content creator's union is the last thing on earth Linden Lab management would want us talking about LOL I imagine one of them reading this convo and going :matte-motes-shocked: NOOOOOOO! EDIT: Here's some info I am just reading about it: How to Start a Union

This is too funny. I checked out the image just now and it is now relabelled as 'MadStyle.jpg'. So after you spotted it, they changed it. Now that's a sign of guilt if I ever saw one :catsurprised: LOL everything around here is just getting too ridiculous.

^^ this agree with you 100%, Couldbe

Somethings definitely up. My diverse spread of various products (more than just The LOLO Pet Shop) ...& other secret more businessy stuff I've built up over the years since 2006 has always had a very predictable profit rate (with brief exceptions), but lately things are most choppy & erratic -- never seen anything quite like this over the years, even back when we had Shutdown Wednesdays, major downtime & stuff. Completely hosing marketplace & turning it into a giant gatcha machine which might as well have spaghetti for a database is probably the main part of it. Since Linden Lab stopped releasing quarterly reports, I have to assume all SL stats are in severe decline (new sign ups, monthly cash flow, average time spent online, etc) so that's probably the other side of the problem. Must admit the trend for SL lately seems to be downturn & start of each downtick lines up directly with the showstopper issues as Linden Lab introduced them. Yes I do track events like this meticulously :matte-motes-nerdy: I think Linden Lab is losing people's trust big time, or so many things are failing at the same time that people are just giving up, or at least cutting usual SL sessions shorter due to all the major issues. Probably a combination of these three factors. Let's hope we all (Lindens included) weather this storm, to see daylight break again.

Perrie Juran wrote: Kampu Oyen wrote: So here's a test: What situational variables will explain the already-announced box shutoff of 1 June without DD support for breedables as anything other than an intentional service downgrade? When did they announce box shut off of June 1 ????????? "Update (March 31, 2012): While we work to address current Marketplace issues, we will not require any Merchants to migrate listings away from Magic Boxes to Direct Delivery before June 1, 2012." http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Merchants/Marketplace-and-Direct-Delivery-Update/td-p/1462915 "Not require...before" does not equal "box shut off." I read that to mean that on June 1st, precisely (not before) we will require all Merchants to migrate all listings away from Magic Boxes to Direct Delivery (because a box shut off happens that day). --------------------------- As to the thread title, many of you probably missed the threads spammed all throughout the forums earlier this morning openly advertising for some sort of really nasty copybot/griefer/malware/spyware viewer. Luckily, moderators evaporated these threads fairly quickly but I am sure it will be discovered elsewhere & be insanely popular in certain circles. Seeing the proclaimed capabilities of this thing was proof enough for me that hiring the best of the TPV people onboard & then banning all TPVs would be very smart move for Lindens. Start prosecuting all unauthorized network access attempts as this is now a felony under US law. Scary perhaps shortterm for them to take such definitive action, but the huge longterm benefits can't be ignored. Closesource it & add some quality industry-grade security -- you know like Apple's got. The security holes here are just too big & they can certainly afford to lose certain crowds that are only here to drag SL down anyway.

Kampu Oyen wrote: рыба воняет с головы когда рыба очень вонючий, он был мертв слишком долго, и уже ни для еды :catsad:

Kampu Oyen wrote: A theory of intentional service downgrades does. We are close to agreement. There is a theoretical reason why this could all be intentional but describing exactly what this reason would be in plain detail would probably get me banned -- especially so if that is in fact what is happening! I'll just say it would be nothing maliciously aimed at us from Lindens. In fact, it would not be about us at all. Its just how things are done in their world of venture capitalism & very sad for all involved (including Lindens) if this is in fact what's happening. However I don't think things are going quite that bad, not quite yet anyway. Alternatively, (and I think more likely) is the theory that passively following what is currently very popular (but very flawed) Silicon Valley management strategy such as Zuckerberg's "move fast & break things" does explain all we see. Works fine if you are designing facebook which is a horribly designed website propped up & heavily funded to survive no matter what because facebook just so happens to be the most effective spying tool on the planet with every spy agency from CIA to Israeli secret police drooling over it, vested in wiretapping & datamining this network, a perfect 'informational space' component to help in achieving 'FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE'. "Move fast & break things" or 'scrum' as Lindens might refer to it as is not so great when you are a tiny company nobody heard of with only 60,000 or less interested users at any given time, developing a platform that doesn't benefit any known elite agenda. Move fast & break things also leads to unintentional service downgrades for the 'little people' out there trying to use the product. The users aren't the focus anymore under this strategy, as its all just one big careless experiment hoping something really cool happens & profits start pouring out of it like its a magical fountain to please their venture capitalists.

To the OP: if you haven't been around for quite some time, its changed a lot! If you are giving something away for free you can talk about it anywhere. For example if you are a game modder that pulled a great mesh from wherever & slapped Linden's amazing new oneliner movement 'scripts' in it & hope to virally distribute this thing everywhere --- go nuts! Commercial products are strictly taboo. Resident innovation is crushed. No real advertising to help products survive is allowed anywhere & in case you were somehow making it -- the landscape is turned upside down with amateurish bugs to level the playing field every 3-6 months. If you're very tricky & agile you can maybe survive? One thing you can try is to advertise on third-party sites, sites which we cannot mention by name in this forum as it is a ban-worthy offense. The current state of affairs speak volumes to me about Linden Lab's roadmap & direction for future of SL.

I think I just managed to fix some of my listings affected by the data corruption that Linden Lab infected marketplace with which scrambled many merchant's images. Somehow these images are editable now at least for me? Anyway I noticed review data is broken too on these listings with previously broken images. I'm not sure if it was like that before fixing the images. Hope this data corruption issue is not like a whack-a-mole where you hit one issue down only to have another issue pop up somewhere else immediately after. For example this item (I fixed image on it already) now shows 0 stars (impossible right?) somehow for 1 review, but when you click on reviews you can see its actually a 5 star review. On another item I noticed the reverse after fixing the image. It says the item has a 5 star review, but when you click on 'reviews' to check it out there is a 1 star review there with a nasty comment in Portuguese that I'm pretty sure isn't even a review for my product (hope not :matte-motes-stress: ) Has anybody noticed similar issue with corrupted mismatched reviews? Is there already JIRA for this somewhere? If so it got my vote!

I just bit the bullet & chanced it to try to fix when I found today I could edit at least 5 of my corrupted listings. Yay? :catindifferent: Perhaps all are editable now? I didn't go too far with it because I don't know the cascade of damage it might cause to my own store (or other people's stores). I may have like 80 scrambled listings tomorrow... who knows? Also have no idea if the fix will hold, if it will revert, or cause new problems. This is a ridiculous situation that it is all running live with zero information on the state of affairs.... I also apologize in advance if my edits today caused anyone else's listings to scramble! So sorry if I cause someone else more work... I will never know :catsad: Of course we can not link who is causing damage to what in this live running data spill. Gotta take this slow. I will now leave it sit to 'bake', allowing for the site to index everything repeatedly. If the fix works, I will fix all my other listings soon, and let everyone know in these threads if I think it is safe to edit. Wish me luck :matte-motes-stress:

Kampu Oyen wrote: someone worked very very hard to assure this specific effect. I agree with everything you said except this little bit^^^ Since CTL invested metric tonnage of effort into DD, CTL may naturally be seen trying to protect the DD agenda while this data corruption issue continues to balloon, but I doubt the cause was intentional sabotage effort. Its most likely just extremely amateurish database management. With a bit of research you'll see it is likely a problem caused by bad database design. I see how being on the receiving end of the issue it seems pointedly personal -- like some sort of maverick attack.... that's possible, but I doubt it. Just google 'database redundancy' & 'database normalization' for more info about this standard problem which is symptomatic of bad design. I am just starting myself to deal with managing extremely large datasets for the creation of my own worlds. As a newbie to the field with no experts on hand (I am unfortunate to be born of small capital & just can't afford to hire them yet) I have already accidentally caused this problem in my own database work. Luckily, I did take some basic precautions, like maintaining a stepped archive of the data's timeline history which allowed me to rollback & eliminate the issue. Took me maybe an hour to solve & I learned never to do that again! The fact that Linden Lab is trying to squash this three weeks later indicates to me that none of even the most elementary precautionary measures were in place, & most likely all corrupted fields are nonrecoverable. That's a frightening level of unprofessionalism for a large company. Normally all paying customers affected would get compensated for an issue of this magnitude ....or at very least get some honest communication on progress (or lack thereof)... but this is Linden Lab we're talking about.

According to the JIRA comments, there are some outside of the 14xxxx range now. The first incident on JIRA happened directly after someone converted to DD, although CTL (with no proof) argues it happened before DD started. So my suspicion is DD is causing data redundancy issue (which most likely can't be reversed) caused by conflict between the DD list and the MagicBox list in the database. I suspect that as more people convert to DD it will get more scrambled (as this is the nature of the problem). The only way it will stop happening is when LL applies appropriate database normalization measures, which they quite likely do not even have an expert on staff to take care of this properly. I am shocked that appropriate measures were not in place already & it makes me worry if all our data (financial info, L$ balance, SL inventory, etc) could be stored in this same dangerous way. Anyways, continuing to run the marketplace site live while this problem can & will only exacerbate is completely insane, in my opinion. Marketplace should be closed until this is resolved.

Oh how did you fix it Kenbro? You're the first person I've heard to successfully fix it.

Hmm... excellent advice for most normal real world things... but why I think that is bad idea here is because data corruption is still ongoing problem. Whenever this started I reviewed my store & found 4, now today there is 16 infected. What's to say I go through all that work you suggest & my new store gets infected too? What do I do then? Start over again? No thanks, that could end up being like trying to swim up a waterfall, and I have much better things to do with my time :catvery-happy: I'd suggest everyone to keep checking over your listings to make sure they stay intact. All you can do is report to JIRA if one day they are not. I finally had a chance to properly fill out the appropriate JIRAs today... for whatever that is worth. I think I know sort of what is going on & I agree that it may not be a fixable issue. Reverting to the old Xstreet site might be the best idea now, unless they deleted everything there already. Hope you continue to have the good luck that this hurricane doesn't blow over your way.

Doesn't really matter what Linden Lab says the L$ is. Lindens can describe L$ however they like... they can say it represents currency, tokens or.... snailshells :catlol: IRS would decide for themselves what they think the L$ is and tax it accordingly.

I'm not completely clear about tax in USA because I reside in Canada. What I do know is everyone living outside USA who receives payments of even pennies by any American company would be required by IRS to have an EIN or ITIN or else IRS will tax them a stiff 30% on all moneys (assuming IRS is aware of the payment). I believe all payments would be clawed back retroactively upon discovery which could get scary for anyone unprepared. As far as I know, Lindens have never asked foreign accounts to supply EIN or ITIN, or even supply a W-8BEN to do business in SL, so potentially any foreign people who withdraw money regularly from SL could lose big time at some point. For US citizens living in America, I really have no idea what happens. Americans living outside USA must pay 30% tax. I am ready if IRS ever clamps down on SL because I have an EIN since I do business with other American companies which always requires this (unless I wanted to just lose lots of money for no reason). EIN & ITIN are basically IRS trying to make sure Americans living abroad pay tax. So all foreigners receiving money must have one of these numbers just to prove they are not American living abroad.

Since 'Linden Lab' moved this to "forum feedback", I'll assume they are aware now & will check it out :catwink: Thanks for being on the ball, that's much easier than the other ways of contact suggested here & saves me having to crosspost it.

As far as I know they do look at the forums quite often, but ok... what would you suggest is the most appropriate way to direct their attention to the matter?