Ayesha Askham

@Clarity The only workable solution that I know of is that used by the Phoenix/Firestorm group and that is to have meetings hosted by Treet TV within SL. I cannot tell you any more about it, but one of the Phoenix/Firestorm Support group in SL probably can. Try Notecarding Ed Merryman in SL and see if he can help you.

Gecko Despite the correctness of all the answers you have received so far I have to say something is definitely not right with either Linden Lab servers or their chosen ISP partner. I have seen some odd data from tests on the line to SL in recent days which are totally unconnected with my other net connections. Quite why or how I do not yet know, but I am poking a few possibilities. You have only to look at this forum or encounter one of the recent oddities SL has foisted upon us to see that LL are fiddling under the hood of SL again. I emphasise that after 4 years in SL I know how to isolate local issues! Persistence in eliminating all possible, probable and downright unlikely issues that may be interfering with your SL is the only couse of action open to you. I wish I could offer some positive proof, but I cannot. Just stick at it!:smileyfrustrated:

@Jack Point taken and having thunk about it, I suppose you are right! However..... I think I'll sue you for giving me nightmares about dancing octopi!:smileywink:

Jack You are a fount of experience in dealing with our Lords and Masters at The Lab....but in all candour I ask you...if the Lab cannot solve this region-crossing issue one way, we must surely find another? If, and it is a BIG if, the Lab was to actually solve this crossing bug we would all be happier, but realistically...is it likely? So, logically there must be more than one way to skin this metaphorical cat?

@Harm This sounds a very good idea. I would recommend that you raise a JIRA on this subject and then by the number of votes and watchers you will see what sort of support it gathers. LL will probably ignore it, as they so often do, but at least you would see the level of support your idea would get. When you have raised the JIRA please post a link to this blog thread so's we can come and vote!:smileyhappy:

Kobuk I can at least in part answer your question. An Alienware Laptop with an nVidia GTX 580M will run SL pretty well, but I am a little perplexed, since the UK market version has an AMD (ATi) GPU, and no nVidia option. For other posters I can tell you that the GTX 580 card is without peer in rendering speed, but a GTX 560 is only slightly less good...bang per buck, I'd go for the 560, but the 580s are bomb-proof once you've de-bugged the driver (if you are unlucky enough to have to do that..thankfully I haven't). Quite why ATI still doesn't render SL as well as nVidia I really don't know, this has been true these last 5 years now. The latest version of OpenGL has made a lot of difference to the speed and accuracy of the nVidia render pipeline, but everyone should be aware that use of Shadows and Light will come at an FPS cost, even on a 580! So long as you keep the lappy well-ventilated you ought to be fine on a good wired modem. My advice would be to avoid Wireless due to its packet-transmission issues, but it does vary.

Warumono This is a bit of a wild guess, but it may be that you have the chat translator in your viewer's preferences turned on. The Google Translator is no longer functioning (it was free now it isn't, don't ask me for details, I don't know them). Check your preferences and turn off the translator. If it's not that I'm stumped:smileysad: but you might check to see if there is a difference between the viewer's default language (in prefs again) and your computer's default language (another wild guess). Sorry not to be more helpful.

Oskar Welcome back to the asylum:smileyhappy:. Now...Maestro says the RC roll is "cancelled", the GSP have vacillated from a Wednesday Roll to a Thursday Roll, and now it's as though it never existed...this place (this Blog) is the only location any sane reliable info is ever posted. What is it with your colleagues over at GSP...you do all work for the same company don't you? A simple post giving the same info as Maestro's would surely be appropriate? One good thing...2012 can only get better...can't it?:smileyfrustrated:

Lucinda Your comments are likely to go unnoticed here, you would be better served raising a JIRA with LL on this matter.:smileyhappy:

There is still something odd about the reported activity on Restarts. Today, Wednesday Jan4th is scheduled (see the Calendar) for RC channel restarts, yet there is nothing on the Grid Status Page about them. Yesterday's Main Server restarts were reported and I assume that they duly happened (My sim is RC LeTigre so I wouldn't know). Nothing on our sim today. Nothing on the GSP. What is going on?? One post here suggests that the Release Notes will likely be published "When someone gets around to it". Now, I'm sorry, but that is simply not good enough. Scripters need to know what functions are being affected so that they know if their new scripts are not working for a reason other than bad compiling. My sim is still on the same server and running the same software as it was three weeks ago. Surely if there is someone who can update the GSP to tell us of the Main Server work and some unscheduled inventory server issues, they can say whether or not the RC channels are being restarted as scheduled? I may not understand the fine detail of changes to Server side software, but I can do more than make an educated guess. Moreover if a problem DOES arise, I can give better information on the JIRA. It is high time and more that Linden Lab at least showed its users some respect and acted consistently. That way more of us might be inclined to show LL more respect as an organisation. Edit: OK so now I see the calendar says that RC channels are being rolled tomorrow (Thursday)...so we wait and see.

@Alexi While this situation looks really bad from a "They aren't telling us" point of view, I think it is fair to say that the appearance of Rolling Restarts this week simply means that, restarts, no updated server software. The fact that there is nothing posted in Release notes and here on the server blog indicates that, plus maybe Oscar is still on leave! (Lucky wotsit). The thing that irritated me more was the total lack of restarts last week, in fact. If regular restarts are as damned important as some say, how come we got none last week, when they were still scheduled in the calendar?? What I would wish for and what I'd hoped LL had resolved to do better in 2012 was to be consistent. It's not a lot to ask. Edit: Come on Peggy! That is too arrogant for words and also just wrong.

@Arabella In my experience nothing posted on the GSP is no indication that the work has finished, merely that whoever is responsible for adding copy to that page is either absent or no one can be bothered to do it. On the restart thread Oscar said that though there was no new code being added this past week, restarts would occur as scheduled on the Google calendar. I don't know about you, but I saw nothing on the GSP and our sim certainly didn't have the scheduled Linden restart. Now, all that does is make Oskar look like a liar, something that he most assuredly isn't. I'm afraid it is just another example of Linden Lab's inability to operate "joined-up thinking". There are those who would say that since there was no new code, there was no need of restarts. Maybe that is true, BUT, if you were building and expected a restart you might stop for the duration of the restarts as scheduled, only to find that you have simply wasted a couple of hours when you could have been building. A great many of LL do not think that communicating with the residents of SL is either necessary or even wise. We just live with the consequences of that mentality. BTW, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all on SL and at LL.:heart::smileyvery-happy:

Happy Holidays Oskar! **Only uploaded images may be used in postings**://secondlife.i.lithium.com/i/smilies/16x16_heart.gif" border="0" alt=":heart:" title="Heart" /> (I think that's the correct salution to an American?) Ihave one small question: No deploys this week or next...but there will be restarts as scheduled, Yes?:smileyhappy:

@Nalates Oh dear. Wolf makes several valid points, re timezones, but to be fair to Linden Lab, so long as you don't work in RL, OH are accessible. The suggestion about not getting the OS upgrade right first time was made largely tongue-in-cheek, using a form of humour known to those of us near Europe (yurrup) called Irony. I'm told Americans don't "do" irony. Tough. I would not tell the developers at wherever Linux was born to "get it right first time" because I rarely do, and that would be silly and hypocritical. As to being part of "the entitlement minded crowd",and "out of the loop", I find your remarks insultingly naiive. I "do" quite a lot but much of it is in RL not SL, and I simply do not have the time to attend the OH sessions. All I ask of the Grid Status Page staff is what they now at long last appear to be doing, and that is to be consistent, so that I can work out what is going on. You may think that I am not entitled to that information. I beg to differ.

Noella The Knowledge Base is most likely to have the same solution that I can suggest, but nevertheless: The Voice and ambient sounds issue is most likely as a result of two important .exe (executable) files in you viewer being blocked by your antivirus programme. It is certainly nothing todo with having subwoofer speakers on your system The two in question are 1) vivox.exe which instals the voice software on your PC, and 2) SLplugin.exe which allows SL sounds to play through your system. Both are notorious for being swept up by antivirus programmes, especially Norton. The best way to solve this is to make exceptions to these two files in your antivirus permissions, but you may not know how to do that, and I'm afraid I cannot help you there. The other way would be to turn off your antivirus programme, but I really do not recommend you to do that. Since you run the Phoenix Viewer, you could join the in-world Phoenix/Firestorm Support group...they will at the least direct you to relevant pages on the Phoenixviewer.com site in the Phoenix Wiki. To join search the group's name under groups! Good Luck!

Thankyou Maestro:smileyhappy:

@Cincia Not for the first time you misunderstand my point, or perhaps I failed to make it clearly. What I would hope for is consistent information of the type that sporadically appears on the Grid Status Page. It is the inconsistemcy of it that causes irritation. I take your point about commercial sensitivity of some information...that's not what I am after. The notifications have been appearing and vanishing over the last week with perplexing frequency. I note now a sensible link to the whole process is in place , so most of my issues are met by that. The only partly related issue of hiding channel information from viewers propsed in a recent meeting at which Oskar spoke (was it the Beta server group...I forget) is another example of muddled thinking. Yes it might prevent some useless whingeing, but far more seriously it would prevent relevant information on bugs being relayed to the server group, and that would be of a distinctly detrimental nature in the progressing of SecondLife. The logging on to the site may be a transatlantic issue, I don't know.

OK I'm still having great difficulty getting in to this forum to Post, and it isn't the browser I use...what gives? @Oskar, This may seem irrelevant, but I'm going to ask anyway. In HELP>About in my Firestorm 3.2.2.24336 I get the server version listed as 11.12.03.246118, instead of 11.12.02.246118, which I see in the Release notes. Any idea why? I guess when we roll this UK afternoon it'll no longer be a problem, but I wondered if you happened to know why this might have occurred?

1) I'm getting really fed up of the number of times I need to try to log-in to these forums before I actually get to post! It's not my browser, it happens on Firefox as well! FIX IT! 2) More calmly, I have to agree with Wolf. The info is patchy and inadequate. Yes, of course we want the job done competently, Cincia, but does that really mean that if they do that the upgrade would in some way be compromised? Also, if it was so straightforward and mundane they'd've got it right first time!!

Well, last night I got the dreaded e mail...my account payment authority needed updating due to the end of the "Beta payment system". WT(Letter deleted) was it? BETA?? SL is over 10 years old and parts are still BETA??.. I quote: "Due to the conclusion of the Second Life local payments beta program, it is required that you add a new credit card or PayPal account" ...!! Anyway unless I deleted all my payment options I could not add any, so that is what I did. Now, it seems to have accepted my CC data, just as well 'cos it's my only CC! I just hope that I don't get another email telling me that I entered invalid data.

@Nalates Sorry, Nalates, I REALLY disagree with you over this. If you, Oskar, or anyone at Linden Lab seriously believe that they will get better information from users you and they are badly mistaken. Ciaran and Innula sum it up, I cannot be bothered to repeat their words, this is JUST PLAIN WRONG.

Now this is clever...I didn't log in to post this!! I perhaps should have said "Quiet in here, wasn't it?" Pity that the reason so many posted was a mass lock-out again. Still, it's sorted....for now.:smileysurprised:

Oh **** I just posted on another thread with precisely this issue. Can't log in, No friends listed online and cannot get connected to Live Chat. Brings back (unpleasant) memories of 2008.

I will just add a "Me too" to this. I cannot login anywhere either. What's more when I tried to sign in to post I ended up on the support page. I think SL is badly messed up again. Hasn't been this bad for a couple of years. I was online and fine earlier this UK afternoon.

I have to admit that I can barely believe this. Does this mean that when we go to "help >about..." in order to give LL support some knowledge of where we are, the RC channel won't be shown? That would be utterly insane and counterproductive. I am a little disgusted at Oskar's attitude, RC channels viewed in a negative light? Surely not...I've had half a dozen scripted objects either temporarily or permanently broken by borked server releases, two instances of which have occurred while our sim has been on LeTigre. I can only echo Innula's comments and those of Wolf. This is another seemingly barking mad move by LL.