DoctorZen

Fair enough. Sentiment's the same.

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"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." — Evelyn Beatrice Hall

Beezle Warburton

Okay, this has been a bit muddled on my part, I'll get to the point I wasn't making at all clear -- do you have plans to release a new version of Phoenix without the online checking, or just wait until there's a new release?

The older versions will just have to wait for LL to figure out what to do with LSL.

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Jessica lyon

Ah, yes for sure! As soon as possible in fact, but we're currently in progress of getting Firestorm FUI out. We're in QA with it and it's a train in motion.

Once that's out though, Phoe without true online status will go out shortly after, along with some updates that keep Phoenix working with the new inventory changes etc. We've got some crash fixes to go in and various other things... Hopefully some incentive for users to update.

But yes, as soon as possible.

Tonya Souther

All right...what the precise nickel-plated fuck (as Bronxelf would put it) do you want from me?

Beezle Warburton

You have to herd developers. Not a minor feat by any standards

Andromeda Rage

From what I understand from what Kadah was saying in earlier posts somewhere, people on older versions of Phoenix may start to run into problems with inventory fetching and such. Not from LL outright shutting down those services right away, but more like those services falling into disrepair as they concentrate their efforts on the new ones. I think some of the stuff added to the Phoenix code in recent days not only includes killing the true online status thing, but also some fixes for inventory and other things.

(ETA: lol Jessica beat me to it.)

(ETA2: also appreciate that Phoenix can build on VS2010 now... I wish Henri would get off 2005 so I can finally uninstall it. )

Jessica lyon

LOL, that was actually an accident! But glad you like it! haha. You've got Tankmaster Finesmith to thank for that one.

Innula Zenovka

Thanks for the clear and thoughtful reply. But would it be hundreds of thousands? If you get out an update, particularly with the improvements you mention, and then you and LL announce that, as of some date a few weeks after the update, older versions will be blocked, won't many of those hundreds of thousands update in the meantime? This is an eventuality, after all, you must have anticipated back in December, when you wrote,I mean, I don't know how many more people now use Phoenix than used Emerald back when everyone was saying it could never be blocked when so many people were using it, but is the problem of forcing a lot of people to change really of a different order of magnitude than then it was, when -- as I recall -- LL pulled the plug with no real certainty that people would switch to Phoenix or anything else?

Maybe it is -- I don't know.

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Kadah Coba

Its been sounding like LL still wants nerf it, but now knows that it will be a clusterfuck if they did it the way they were going to. From the motions, I'm guessing their going to try to fix the miscliously issues it used to workaround (llGiveInv) and possibly rethink how the permissions are going to work.

DoctorZen

Who said I wanted anything? It's your petard.

But if you really insist on an answer, try this for starters: next time a controversial "feature" appears that you disapprove of, grow a fucking spine and stand up against it no matter how popular it is with the user base. They'll either adapt or leave. It shouldn't matter to you either way.

Tonya Souther

We don't either. We don't have comparable stats to the ones we get now from that time.

I would invite you to consider the fact that LL did not block Emerald until Phoenix had been officially released. There was an alternative for all those Emerald suers, and one they embraced very rapidly. Is there an alternative for Phoenix users that can't run 1600? Oh, yes, there's Imprudence and a few other non-mesh viewers, but would people pick them?

Jessica lyon

As the user base of our viewers have grown it's become harder and harder for us to reach out to them with important information. Only a small percentage read the blog, many have login progress screens disabled so they don't see our MOTD etc. Not long ago we decided to block an old and very unstable version of Phoenix.. I can't remember which version it was now. But we have a month of warnings, MOTD reminders etc. Watched the numbers drop slightly week to week. Eventually we had 20,000 folks on it or so, and we blocked it. Chaos ensued, I'm surprised we didn't have support suicides from it. It was a lesson to us that blocking old builds has to be a last resort.

As far as numbers over emerald during it's peak.. exponential.

Tonya Souther

Consider how many people have complained here about true online status. Then consider how many people have complained on SVC-4823 about breaking the function.

The SL world does not revolve around SLU and its hardcore users.

I'm standing up for the users. Who are you standing up for?

Brianna Ort

My SL world does happen to revolve around me.

You are free to do what you please as well. It hasn't impacted me in the slightest, so far as I can tell.

Beezle Warburton

I haven't had the world revolve around me since I gave up hard alcohol.

Beer just makes it lightly wobbly.

Innula Zenovka

I agree that they didn't block it before Phoenix was released, but did they not deliver their ultimatum -- get rid of the objectionable features and developers -- well before that? I thought the genesis of Phoenix was precisely that Phox and Arabella thought LL were bluffing and that Jessica and the rest of you were sure they weren't.


Though presumably if LL announced that they were blocking older versions, possibly even sending out an email to everyone (as they do for far more trivial matters) more people would get to know. It's a bullet they and you are going to have to bite sooner or later, after all, as you argued back in December.

Darnk Yun

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Ahaha, such a simpleton. It'z so much fun playing jokez on you. I waz only here to see how she waz doing, but I had fun while I waz at it. So long, Sere, au revoir, mon ami! Pleaze dream of moi every night! Oui! ~ Harle

http://leechmouth.deviantart.com/

Siana Gearz

OH NO NOT AGAIN!!!

Was true online status in Phoenix forbidden because a handful of people complained, because LL has an agenda of any sorts to make Phoenix suffer, or maybe, just maybe, because it was a WRONG thing to do in the first place?

Kadah Coba

Yeah... the first one that's going to cause problems is that LL is changing how "Copy and Wear" works on the server (which I think either is live or will be soon on Angi). Without the changes to HTTP inv for it, there is the possibility of causing some side effect that I can't remember, it might be inventory loss, but I don't know off hand. This one only affects "Copy and Wear", but LL will just keep doing things like that when they fix things or move them to the new APIs.

LL had told us originally that they would start to discontinue legacy services at some point that passed last year, but then a year later of nothing happening, they changed it to just that the old APIs are deprecated and are not going to be maintained instead of shutoff.
Jess really needs to stop basing our press releases on what LL says they may or may not be doing at some point. Stupid us for believing they wouldn't change plans completely. lol.


I think it was Nicky Perian that did the 1.5 on VS2010 work and Tank got it work on Phoenix. He accidentally pushed it to the main repo before I had time to review and merge it, so I had to get to sooner.

Tonya Souther

They delivered their ultimatum well before that, true. They could have carried it out at any time. That they didn't until after Phoenix was released should tell you quite a lot. They knew for quite a while that Phox wasn't giving in, and that we were working to release Phoenix.

Is it? What makes you think they're going to do anything other than just what they've said: let older versions continue to run, but not allow new versions with that function in it?

Jack Belvedere

Pancake is one of the nicest and most rationale people I've met in SL. I continue to throw my support behind the Pancake-Beebo-Elysiums of the world! Ignore the sharks with freakin lasar beams attached to their heads! Stay away from the liiiight!

Argent Stonecutter

I think that would be the safest path.

Alternatively, you could ask them to block some unique string in the existing bridge, and provide a new one they can get either by upgrading the viewer or *if they need to* "replace this file, click here to download the new version".

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Argent Stonecutter -- Skyhook Station -- Coonspiracy Store

"And now I'm going to show you something really cool."


The previous is a cybernetic datum published - in direct contravention of DoD Regulation #229RR3X3 - as being conducive to the physical, psychological and/or social well-being of the population.

Tonya Souther

LL banned it because it was the wrong thing to do on balance. But there are plenty of valid reasons for llRequestAgentData(), despite what the crowd here on SLU thinks. The mob here was howling for its demise; LL, fortunately, saw the light and thought better of just killing it.

It's not as thoroughly eeeeevil as the SLU mob wants you to think. If it was, LL wouldn't have told us to remove it in the next release but don't worry about previous releases.

Kadah Coba

I don't have Emerald numbers either, but from what various Lindens said not long after Phoenix started (and obviously after I joined) it was much higher than Emerald's and it was only just getting to the 40% range at that point. I'm guessing that Emerald at its peek may have been around a third of the whole grid.

You got any of those numbers still somewhere?

Tonya Souther

I don't know what they can use to block a script. However, this approach would require that we produce a replacement script for every released Phoenix version - and yes, they're all most likely different - and detailed instructions on how they could put it into their bridge object.

And then they'd screw it up. Trust me on this one; even a simple "highlight this in your inventory, right-click, select Edit, then create a new script, drag the script from here to it, delete the old one, and close the edit window" is going to be beyond many, many SL users. You and I often forget that we're exceptional in being able to build and script and edit easily. Most folks on SL never touch the editor at all, and those that have often have only done it once and then given up because they screwed something up beyond repair.

I'd be willing to bet that the folks who can't run mesh-enabled viewers due to their computer not being up to the job are precisely the ones who aren't experienced at editing.

So we're back to blocking old versions and forcing people to upgrade. You thought there was drama over Emerald getting banned? It would pale beside this.