Say what? When it comes to uptime, 'Second Life' founder is on cloud nine

Griefing, like this prankster's 'Super Mario' barrage, is one of the reasons behind 'Second Life's' more-than-occasional server problems. To be fair, this Mario army did not crash the virtual world.

(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET News.com)

Virtual world Second Life, the centerpiece of this weekend's Second Life Community Convention in Chicago, has occasionally come under fire for its outages. Scheduled downtime, unpredicted outages, server crashes due to onslaughts of thousands of Super Mario graphics flooding the tubes (those are from griefers, natch)--it's a headache for newbies and avid residents alike.

But in his keynote at the convention on Saturday morning, Philip Rosedale, the founder and CEO of Second Life parent company Linden Lab, suggested that we all look on the bright side. The virtual world is active about 90 percent of the time, he said.

"If you look at our overall service performance lately, we're sort of somewhere above 90 percent availability once you include the planned downtimes for updates and you include the unplanned stuff that we seem to be doing to ourselves," he said self-deprecatingly. Then he added, "That's one nine, and it's better to have one nine than not any nines at all."

[Bunderfeld]

Rosedale's got his head in the clouds!

While Second Life MAY have a 90% uptime, it's certainly not USABLE for 50% of that uptime.

Lag, Packetloss, Unstable SIMs, client crashing bugs, inventory loss bugs, and a slew of more problems, keeps a lot of the Second Life Residents in permanent frustration.

All one has to do to gauge how the Second Life Community is feeling is to look at the Second Life Blog at http://blog.secondlife.com and read the comments (WHEN they are allowed to post comments that is). You will see the majority of posters are screaming about getting a stable world instead of all these "enhancements" Linden Lab keeps adding.

Philip Rosedale should brag less about the "uptime" of Second Life, and pour more energy into giving the PAYING CUSTOMERS a Stable World in which to exist.

[Amd 64user]

That 90 percent "uptime" is a technical term

I've recently hit a year in secondlife. Just because the servers are up do NOT in anyway mean the game is functional. Transports are frequently down. The ability to rez or move objects frequently fails. Money transactions and things fail regularly. Basically the only thing that consistantly works is if you stand in one place and text chat. Even then you are prone to random crashes and your clothing might not rez and you cant move. That said, i still like the game, but I hate all the BS that Phil is spouting these days.

[enovikoff]

Good Grief, What about our First Lives?

As an enthusiastic Neal Stephenson ("Snow Crash") fan who loves the idea of the "Metaverse," I'm all for expanding our world of possibilities using the internet. However, there are some issues to consider here - even greater than one "nine" up uptime which is about the worst I've ever seen for an IT service. Recently there was considerable discussion about the *energy* that Linden Labs expends per Second Life user. The conclusion of one calculation is that it's about the same as a citizen of Brazil. Or, it would be like swapping the lifestyle of having a solar-powered home and a Prius for a Ford Expedition and a trophy home on the power grid. In other words, Linden Labs' impact on the environment is very heavy.

Then, there's the whole issue of expending one's time in a virtual universe where anonymity brings out the worst in human behavior as was shown in some recent psychological research in which people became cruel and uncaring if they couldn't see the facial expressions of those they were hurting. Most of us have our hands full simply trying to understand our own behavior and motivations when we have others to reflect the consequences to us in real time - how will we every become conscious of ourselves if we hide? This as I see it was the point of the "Matrix" movies.

In any event, all social, ecological, and ethical considerations aside, Linden Labs should consider outsourcing their IT. There's no excuse for one nine (or less as some on here claim) when you're in business.

-Eric Novikoff
http://www.enkiconsulting.net

[tsilverl]

It's a virtual world, maybe it needs time to work out the bugs...

I spend a fair share of time in SL and have experienced most of the
downside of the virtual world. Mario and maniacs and money not
showing up until two or three restarts - pretty pain in the ass stuff,
no doubt. But I don't mind. The Lindens are still providing an
incredible world with great potential. Now where are my damn
clothes...;-)

[bedeboop]

90% uptime?

It doesn't mean a whole lot when you are up if there are constant problems, not just with griefers but when you can't move because the system is too slow, items don't "rezz", your inventory is in a constant state of fluctation (you can find something in one logon, crash, and when you log back in it is gone).

Crashing is frequent for many residents! Not just myself, but others too.

I think what is worse though is that Linden Labs is just now, hopefully it will continue, to listen to the residents, who don't want more new things right now, they just want the old things to work.

It would be nice.

[pfrabott]

What?!

"That's one nine, and it's better to have one nine than not any nines at all."

Heh, I'm glad he doesn't write my keynotes. I'd have to fire him. His statement may be true but this is one of those things you never say to a customer. not to mension it sounds defensive and argumentative.