Jaffee Gaffer

I'm a long time DJ in both the real world and in SL and I understand pretty well how the process works. My question is this. Does Second Life pass the digital stream packets through to the viewer which converts the music to analog or does it somehow pass the analog audio stream? I'm guessing it passes the original packets to the viewer for conversion to analog audio. Can anyone answer this with certainty? Thanks.

I purchased an item on Marketplace and I was (1) charged for it in-world as expected, AND (2) I was debited for it in RL out of my debit account. First of all I don't need two copies of a copyable item, but worst, I don't want to pay three times as much for the second copy! I want my debit card transaction reversed immediately.

I know everyone has a different experience with SSB/Sunshine, but it's far from a perfected technology. I see rapid changes MOST of the time. After I've changed clothing two-three times, it simply stops updating. If I reload textures, the unbaked textures reload as unbaked gray textures. At that point, I MUST relog to bake. My partner uses a different viewer and her results are even worse. She's lucky if her clothing changes appear at all after the first time. She must relog almost every time she changes clothes. It's not just me either. At clubs I frequently see many gray people who never bake. Never. They remain gray for the entire time I'm there. We're both on good broadband connections. I get consistently 29mbps down and 6 mbps up, so it's not my local connection. She is on a similarly fast connection. We're using different viewers and I've tried others. The fact is that SSB isn't a 100% successful change. When all is said and done, in MY experience, SSA/SSB/Sunshine is MUCH WORSE than client side baking was. But it does no good to complain. I just get told over and over "It works fine for me." So what?

As always the blame is instantly placed on the user. I have a 30mpbs connection, which I dare say is faster than 90% of SL users. I just got a NEW router as well, so maybe it's LL and not me. Everyone I know is having issues with it. Thanks for playing. Next time try being constructive instead of destructive.

So, here we are in September now and SSA/SSB isn't working well at all. It;s not my vewers or my connection. It's LL's crappy code, as usual. But it's okay, having a gray head for hours is an improvement I suppose.

It's great that you fixed something that wasn't really broken at all, and made sure that it was broken big time now. I'm running two different viewers, both updated for SSA code, and BOTH are failing at updating avatar textures. It might be good for LL to implement what we in software development used to call ALPHA and BETA TESTING (in house) before releasing products. But it's okay. All I have to do is RELOG in order to update my avatar's appearance. No problem at all. Oh, and before you blame me for the problems, I'm on a lightning fast connectionn (30mpbs down, 6mbps up). Everyone I know is having problems with SSA, so don't expect me to believe it's working fine. I know LL's software releases too well. --Not a happy camper.

You can always count on Linden Labs to fix something that wasn't broken, and thereby ensure that it's broken for weeks or months afterward. Baking was NOT a problem, but is certainly is now. What a stupid screwed up mess. This is the SLOWEST baking I've seen since I started in 2007. In fact, some things NEVER bake until you reboot several times. Can we just go back to client side baking?

Here's why all of this really pisses me off. I just looked up all the transaction information, pasted it into a text document outside of SL, wrote the creator a letter with all of the information, pasted it into a notecard, SAVED THE NOTECARD, dragged it onto his profile, CLOSED everything, and then, about 60 seconds later heard the DING. The notecard never saved, which means he got an EMPTY notecard, and since I closed everything, IT'S ALL LOST. So I have to DO IT ALL AGAIN. Why not just FIX THE SYSTEM?

Well, as both a merchant a customer, if the system would work better (properly), none of this would be an issue.

I'm really getting tired of purchasing an item from MP, only to accidentally decline it. I just purchased an item, then I received some junk and just as I go to decline the unwanted whatever, the purchase notice drops down and I decline my purchase instead. How frustrating can it get? Now it's up to me to go to the merchant and beg to have him manually redeliver it, and I have to wait 24-48 hours. Brilliant. Just put the stupid purchase in my inventory and TELL me in CHAT that it's there. Why would I want to BUY something and then DECLINE it? Or at least give me a redeliver option in my account for past purchases! This could NOT be more stupid.

What the heck is going on with rezzing? I purchase a product, I rez it to unpack it, it never rezzes, but it's gone from my inventory. It never returns to inventory and it never rezzes. This has happend to me repeatedly. I really hate buying things that SL can't rez without losing. What the heck is going on? Even better, who is going to reimburse me for all the lost stuff I've never even seen because it never rezzes? The merchant sees that it was delivered successfully. So, I pay my money and SL takes the inventory. Great scheme.

I've been doing much testing and comparing since my last post. The problem is not exactly as explained by Stone. I have repeatedly taken screenshots showing that I've dropped 0 -- count them -- ZERO packets, yet I'm still missing thousands of items from my inventory. Another interesting phenomenom is that it's almost ALWAYS stuff I've made myself or purchased, and NEVER old freebie junk from my noob days. This kind of shoots down the dropped packet theory because if it were simply dropped packets, it would be randomly different things every time, with fewer repeats of the same thing. I have a few things I've made that I use when I DJ, specifically my tip jars, a floor standing microphone that serves as a pose stand/placeholder, and a simple posestand/placeholder without the microphone. These are consistently missing from my inventory, despite the fact that I have dozens of copies of them and several variations. Fortunately, the copies I've deleted are almost always in the trash. So, it appears the trash is more reliably loaded than normal inventory, for whatever that means. It's sad when you have to delete things in order to be able to consistently find them. I've also been logging off and relogging on totally empty sims (sims for rent by large land holders) and my inventory loads much better on these sims. So, it's obviously more of a LL server side problem than a lost packet problem on my end or in the connection between my home and LL's server farms. When I crash on a busy sim while working, and am forced to relog there, I typically lose around 20,000 intems from my inventory during that one incident, and it takes nearly an hour of repeated relogging and reloading inventory on an empty sim to recover it all. V2 and Firestorm are not the answers. I've tried and tested it and virtually every function involves with DJing a gig takes more keystrokes/mouse clicks than it does in Phoenix. And it's significant. Add to that the HORRID font legibility in V2 and FS and it's a joke. These may be good viewers for new kids coming in to play, but they are nigh unto useless for performing a professional work function. Someone needs to fix this problem, either in a v1.23 level viewer, or by completely redoing the UI and font problems in V2/Firestorm. This is an insane example of someone redong an interface just because they can and not because it makes sense.

Today I had virtually NO clothing in my inventory with 30 minutes to go before a DJ gig at a formal ballroom (Frank's Elite). After three relogs, and a change in the total loaded each time, I still had no clothing other than the ones on my back, and the number dropped with each relog. I've been forced to run Firefox while I DJ which is a total nightmare, though better than V2.x. I can't find anything. I can't read the chat and IMs, I don't get pop up notices of tips, and it's taking about twice the internal memory to run it so I can't run anything else to download requests. Here's how my inventory folders looked with 15 minutes to go before my first of two gigs:

Stone: I don't mean to sound unappreciative of your efforts. The new inventory loading system you built seems to work flawlessly so far, and I am *truly* appreciative of your concern and your efforts. It's just frustrating that I've been dealing with this for more than three years and LL has never admitted that there is a problem. Yet, nearly everyone I talk to has had inventory losses similar to mine. I supplement my RL income by DJing in SL, and I do pretty well. But I arrive at gigs only to find I have NO tip jars in inventory! Amazing, especially since I built them and there are dozens of variations in my inventory. You'd think at least some of them would show up! And often, the only ones I see are in the trash. So maybe deleting objects and not clearing the trash is the solution. The trash is always there. Then, the next day, I have my tip jars, but I'm missing my props. Or I'm missing something else I had before. The other thing I find interesting is that the old crap I collected as a noob is always there. It's the new things I've purchased or built that don't retrieve. I buy a prop to use at a gig on a holiday, and when I get there, I don't have it. You can't imagine how that drives me nuts. And it has happened time and time again. But those free clothes from the noob days are always there. But again, I do appreciate your work. It seems to have solved the problem, whatever it is. Now I just hope someone puts it in a viewer that makes sense.

Well, yes, it's the viewer, but specifically, it's ALL viewers using the old inventory system. The new one works well, but I have to put up with a truly horrid viewer to get it. My hope is that they will add the new inventory system to Phoenix. I tried the new Firestorm Beta, and it loaded all my inventory instantly (much faster than LL V2.7 did). But I can't stand all the CRAP cluttering up my screen and blocking my view when I try to build. I don't neet a stupid button bar. I don't need a GIANT dock on the side with my inventory when a small window would work fine. If they add a V1.23 style UI option to Firestorm, then that will be my solution. The new UI is awful though, and any attempt to deny that is juvenile.

Pingtest results: San Francisco: Packet Loss 0% Ping 73ms Jitter 4ms Grade B MOS 4.36 Denver: Packet Loss 0% Ping 29ms Jitter 4ms Grade A MOS 4.36 Tucson: Packet Loss 0% Ping 73ms Jitter 1ms Grade B MOS 4.37 Los Angeles: Packet Loss 0% Ping 67ms Jitter 2ms Grade B MOS 4.37

FYI, I installed LL V2.6 viewer yesterday. It did manage to load all the inventory, although very slowly. I tried Firestorm, just for kicks, as well and it failed. It loaded around 43,000 items out of about 68,000 total.

I always set up new PCs from scratch. I never "upgrade" Windows either. I always do clean fresh installs. I learned long before it was admitted publicly that MS can't write a valid upgrade system. (I learned it with a customer's machine when I upgraded it from Windows 3.0 to 3.1 and his video drivers wouldn't load any longer. Nearly a year later an article in InfoWorld warned everyone not to use Microsoft's upgrades.) I run Speedtest.net regularly. 22mpbs down and 4mbps up. That's danged good speed. I get rocking speeds everywhere I test, EXCEPT when I test with a server in... guess where... San Francisco, which is where LL is located. I get 1.9mbps down from that server and still around 3.5mbps up. I've tried several SL bandwidth settings, both high and low. No difference. I refuse to use V2.x... I installed it, tried it, hated it, and deleted it. It totally messed up my other viewers too. Keep in mind, I'm a former professional tester for major software companies you may have heard of, including Novell. I know how to test, how to isolate problems, and how to verify my testing. I've left no stone unturned at my end. At WordPerfect I tested "third party" issues where multiple third party products were running and causing problems on various versions of DOS and Windows.

Well, the only advantage I see of logging in on a "protected land" sim is that there are many fewer textures loading, etc. I have gotten better results when I log out and back in naked underwater on Pooley (protected land sim). No huds, no prims, no scripts and minimal textures to load and draw distance set very low. But even then, I rarely get even close to all of my inventory. I do not use viwer 2.x. I've tried it and HATE it. It's idiotic. I will try Firestorm when it's released. I'm currently using the current release of Phoenix, but as I stated, I've had this problem in EVERY viewer I've tried, and I've tried several. The very fact that LL designed a totally new way to fetch inventory for v2.5 indicates they recognize they've had a problem with this all along, whether or not they'll admit it.

Okay, to satisfy some of the posters here, I've done more testing. I've been logging out and in on protected land, wearing nothing but skin... no prims or scripted objects, no HUDs, etc. Did it work? No. I did eventually get all my inventory to load... once. Since then it's been continually going down to where I'm missing about 6,000 items again. For you who keep telling me that perhaps it's on my end, perhaps you could be more specific and actually suggest something useful than just stating it's somehow my fault. As I've stated now more than once, I've changed and tested variations in EVERYTHING except LL's asset servers. That is the ONLY constant here. Oh, and I should add that nearly everyone I speak to experiences this same problem to one extent or another, except you few who have posted here that you never experience it.

I've experienced the same problem in ALL viewers. Speed of loading is not the issue. It's loading all of it, period. Maybe I should start keeping a list of others with the same problem., I met another one just today. The problem is clearly not at my end.

Let me summarize: 1- I've changed computers, so it's not that. 2- I've moved from the Mid-West (Michigan) to the West, so it's not regional bandwidth issues. 3- I've changed ISPs and internet connection hardware entirely, so it's none of those. 4- It occurs on my alts as well as my main account, so it's not account related. 5- It occurs regardless of inventory size, so it's not that. So, if it's not my account, my computer, my inventory size, my ISP, my router, my modem, or my area, how can it be me? Just because it doesn't effect everyone, doesn't mean it's not LL's issue. I know dozens of people who experience the same thing, and they're all over the world.

Oh, and as I mentioned, I've tried SEVERAL different viewers, including the SL viewer, Phoenix, Imprudence, and Cool and they all experienced the same problem. I've tried ALL of the inventory tricks. I clear cache (BOTH caches) and relog. It takes SEVERAL relogs to get close to the total I should have... I've gone to protected land to do it and it still doesn't load all the inventory. Then some days, I have it all, only to be missing inventory again the next login.

I'm amazed at how all the answers blame me, my hardware, or my internet connection! Well, guess what. It's not that. 1- The problem existed when I first came to SL more than three years ago. Since then I've purchased a new computer... no change. 2- I'm on a high speed broadband cable connection in one of the best parts of the country for Internet speed and bandwidth. The MAIN TRUNK of the Internet in the western states runs through this area. I've tested and tested my Internet connection and I CONSISTENTLY get around 22MBPS download speed or higher. My upload speeds run a consistent 4MBPS or higher. 3- Since I came to Second Life and began experiencing this problem, I moved from the east to the western part of the country, and no change occurred. Yes, I do know about software development and testing, and this is clearly a problem on SL's side. Here's a factoid: I've got screenshots of my system on days I was missing more than 4000 items of inventory and I hadn't dropped a single packet. So, if it's my computer or connection, how is that possible?

Simple request: I want ALL of my inventory, EACH and EVERY time I log in. Why can't LL find a competant database developer who can fix this POS so it can do that? This has been a problem for years. What is the deal? I've been involved in computer software development since the early '90s. I've never seen such an incompetant database design. Yes, I know all the "tricks" to load inventory, and they work somewhat, sometimes, but I RARELY have all my inventory. And inventory SIZE is not an issue, since I have alts with less than 2000 items that experience the same problem. FIX THE DANGED ASSET SERVERS!