Asset servers are causing issues Yet again

[Nightflowerlily]

For the last few days now this week 23rd of March 2015 until today bulk deletes are constantly returning to sim and this is not just in one sandbox but many. Its happening on my land as well and I have an extremely good PC with Nvidia graffics. Having problems not only with that but also returning obejcts to my inventory.

And what up with the Scheduled Server Maintenance over several days it seems anytime I want to do any work they are doing anouther Server Maintenance. I have been in SL for over 8 years now, and it is driving me crazy. Why is it that some many other virtual worlds and internet games like world of war craft can have more stability than Second life? I spend an a lot of money in world and own quite a lot of land but the issues still remain no matter where you go in world. Its getting to the stage I am seriously thinking of getting rid of my land and going back to a basic account. Whats the point of being a paying member when SL can't even fix these issues over so many years? I live in Ausralia so it also means I am paying a lot mor for my land than those in the US so its another reason I have been thinking of going back to basic account. When you pay such a lot of money you expect good service I own a region amount of land.

[ChinRey]

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Nightflowerlily wrote:

For the last few days now this week 23rd of March 2015 until today bulk deletes are constantly returning to sim and this is not just in one sandbox but many. Its happening on my land as well and I have an extremely good PC with Nvidia graffics. Having problems not only with that but also returning obejcts to my inventory.

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Yes, that can be really annoying and you have my sympathy. But it sounds more like a connection than a server issue. Did you check if you have any packet loss?

 

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Nightflowerlily wrote:

Why is it that some many other virtual worlds and internet games like world of war craft can have more stability than Second life?

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Three reasons:

1. Age. Even the best written software picks up a lot of clutter over the years and it's not always able to take full advantage of recent developments in 3D technology.
2. Incoherent development. Until recently LL's focus seems to have been more on free standing - often buzzword-driven - projects than a consistent development of the platform as a whole. And of course, each and every content creator in SL does their own thing, often with little or no regard to how it affects SL as a whole.
3. Complexity. SL is simply so much bigger and more complex than other virtual environments.

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Nightflowerlily wrote:

Whats the point of being a paying member when SL can't even fix these issues over so many years?

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Ah, LL's approach to bug fixes, that is an interesting topic to study. :matte-motes-big-grin:

Part of the explanation is of course that if you are a programmer developing your own fresh project is much more fun than hunting bugs in code written by somebody else years ago. But I think it's also because the code at this stage is so complex and full of unexpected dependencies that any changes to it will have unexpected consequences. Fixing one bug inevitably creates four new ones. Sometimes it is better to jsut accept the existing flaws rather than risk making new even worse ones.

 

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Nightflowerlily wrote:

I live in Ausralia so it also means I am paying a lot mor for my land than those in the US

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Does it? I didn't know there was a price diference depending on there you live.

 

 

[Ayesha Askham]

This issue or tranche of issues appear to be selectively affecting users in Australia, who are having multiple issues, only some of which can be laid at the door of their ISPs.

There are other threads in this forum relating texture issues that seem very much CDN related and much of LL's recent "Scheduled Maintenance" may have ben aimed at improving connections with the CDN.

The idea of passing off certain functions to a third party (the Content Delivery Network) sounds fine in principle but it would seem that as with many things the reality is less good than the concept.

Many users report improved functions and texture-rezzing with the arrival of CDN but many others find that the converse is true and the advent of CDN has actually degraded performance, while a third group, myself included, are seeing no change at all.

But as the OP notes, the problems are not limited to texture transfer and indicate a throttling at another part of the pipeline.  This is a matter that needs urgent attention is users in parts of the world other than the USA are to continue to find SL a worthwhile passtime.

ETA: Whirly Fizzle's post in the main thread here 

https://community.secondlife.com/t5/Second-Life-Server/Deploy-for-the-week-of-2015-03-23/td-p/2916641

suggests that many of the current issues facing users are related to the much vaunted but bug-ridden AIS3 code recently introduced by The Lab.

[Whirly Fizzle]

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Ayesha Askham wrote:

ETA: Whirly Fizzle's post in the main thread here 

https://community.secondlife.com/t5/Second-Life-Server/Deploy-for-the-week-of-2015-03-23/td-p/2916641

suggests that many of the current issues facing users are related to the much vaunted but bug-ridden AIS3 code recently introduced by The Lab.

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Eh?  No.

The problems on the RC servers are not caused by AIS3. Infact one of the known problems is caused by not using a viewer with AIS3 support.

[MBeatrix]

Does it? I didn't know there was a price diference depending on there you live.

FYI, it does. I pay the set price plus 23% tax (VAT)

[Amethyst Jetaime]

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MBeatrix wrote:

Does it? I didn't know there was a price diference depending on there you live.

FYI, it does. I pay the set price plus 23% tax (VAT)

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The VAT is added by your country not LL.  The tax goes to your country not LL's profit.  Therefore you don't pay anymore for the actual sim than anyone else.

[MBeatrix]

The VAT is added by your country not LL.  The tax goes to your country not LL's profit.  Therefore you don't pay anymore for the actual sim than anyone else.

Ha! Funny that you're telling me what VAT is... FYI, VAT is always collected with the price to pay for whatever product, unless you are a business related to that product/service, established in a different country from where the product/service is paid.

It doesn't matter to where the money goes — I pay it (and SL is entertainment for me, not a way of making my living.) Therefore, SL is more expensive for me than it is for US residents, for example.

 

[EDIT] Although I didn't write LL takes any profit from VAT — it was you who mentioned that — I'm not so sure they don't... They may well do in banking interests between the time they collect the tax and when they actually send it to the country in question.

[Ayesha Askham]

Ah...OK, Whirly.  But there seems to be so many newly introduced issues that I conflated them.  My mistake.

However I did not actually say that any specific issue was AIS3 related, but the post sort of implied it, rereading it.

So far as I knew many of the inventory issues that are being suffered by FS users and some others ARE related to either AIS3 or the lack of support for it.  We are damned if we use it and damned if we don't.  Hohum.

[Nalates Urriah]

If you aren't sure where your country's tax dollars are going, you should get informed. 

Speaking without knowledge is a certain way to expose your... well... you fill it in.

[MBeatrix]

If you aren't sure where your country's tax dollars are going, you should get informed. 

Speaking without knowledge is a certain way to expose your... well... you fill it in.

 

It seems that some people here have reading problems... Where from what I wrote you got that idea?

Having profit isn't wrong. Getting banking interests from what I mentioned is common practice, and I wouldn't expect someone from the Lab would come to Europe with their pockets full of Euros to hand them to where they belong — so banking is what is advised, don't you think?

Really, pompous posters should start reading what other people write sometime, instead of reading their own "belly buttons".

Now, do you really know what you're writing about?

[Sayrah Parx]

For what it's worth, VAT payments are usually calculated, reported and paid to governments on a quarterly basis. It's also possible to be on an "annual plan", where the quarterly payments are estimated based on previous reports without being calculated for the "quarterly time". In that case, the calculations are done once a year and a refund (or another payment) is necessary, if the estimated quarterly payments were too high (or too low). So Linden Lab would be making quarterly payments to governments regardless. However, there is usually a limit to how much someone can take in VAT contributions, to be allowed to calculate it annually instead of quarterly. So it's a good bet that they're not really making any money from the VAT contributions.  The extra accountants who are needed to deal with the VAT calculations for different countries have become a cost of doing business.  So in a way, their customers from countries with a VAT are actually costing them more.  I'm sure that Linden Lab would be more delighted than its customers if they didn't have to deal with the VAT impositions by so many countries.  Although I was shocked to hear that it's 23%, that is insane.  I don't know how people deal with that.  In the US, sales taxes around 6-8% are bad enough (but only apply online if a business exists in the same state).

[MBeatrix]

[...] I'm sure that Linden Lab would be more delighted than its customers if they didn't have to deal with the VAT impositions by so many countries

Oh yes, I'm sure the Lab isn't happy having to abide to it, either. If there were no other reasons, because people from the EU would have more money available to spend in SL if they didn't have to pay VAT.

[...] Although I was shocked to hear that it's 23%, that is insane

Now imagine how shocked I am having to pay it... :matte-motes-silly:

Anyway, the point of what I wrote was never "if VAT is profitable for LL or not". If it is, good for them and for us all — the more income the Lab has, the better they can make SL and future platforms. And as far as I know, having profit isn't illegal... not even in China (OK, maybe it is in North Korea.) The point was letting ChinRey know that we don't all pay the same to have stuff in SL, but the whole thing got sidetracked by people who can't read what others actually write and stick to it. And, of course, this isn't the right forum for such discussion, so I'm stopping right here, right now. :matte-motes-wink:

[Nightflowerlily]

Thanks for your reply and yes the price difference is because the exchange rate at the moment the US dollar is worth more than the Australian dollar so what is costing US user's $195 for a region is costing Australians an average of $260 for a region. 

[Nightflowerlily]

Thanks for your reply it helped to relise I am not the only one with these issues in my country. Hopefully it will improve further and thanks for the link.

[Nightflowerlily]

I have no issues with packet loss 

[Qie Niangao]

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Nightflowerlily wrote:

Thanks for your reply and yes the price difference is because the exchange rate at the moment

the US dollar is worth more than the Australian dollar

so what is costing US user's $195 for a region is costing Australians an average of $260 for a region. 

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[Emphasis mine.] That's the thing: AUS$ 260 is the same price as US$ 195 -- you're not paying any more than folks who use US$s for their payments. You just have to count higher. (I'm straddling US$ and CDN$, so it's a familiar topic here, too.)