Darnk Yun

OMGIJUSTTALKEDABOUTTHISINANOTHERTHREADOMG!

NO THEY DON'T *throws a fit about it*

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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/

Joshua Nightshade

It's also worth underscoring that Tonya's first appearance on SLU was in a thread where a handful of people had very mildly complained about misattribution by Firestorm. Tonya's first posts were throwing her hands in the air, declaring what a poor reputation the entirety of SLU had amongst Phoenix and viewer devs in general, declaring the entire forum trolls and hivemind mobsters, and eventually rounding it with good old fashioned "WE GIVE OUR LIVES TO YOU, WE ARE SAINTS, YOU'RE SO UNAPPRECIATIVE OF THE GOOD WE PROVIDE."

In response to this and people patiently telling her that she was being a bit hyperbolic, she put half of SLU on ignore (the specific posters she continually repeats at any given opportunity) and basically foamed at the mouth before repeating how horrible the site is and how much she hates it.

At no point has she ever been reasonable or disagreed with anybody respectfully. She's been a martyrvictim from day one and is apparently perfectly content to screech about how abused she is if you give her half a chance.

If you contrast that with Jessica and Arrehn and other developers who I don't generally agree with but nevertheless believe capable of being rational, Tonya makes the project she works on look inexcusably bad. But woohoo she's a freedom fighter y'all, peow-peow!!

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Darnk Yun

Soen Eber

Please don't leave.

I was confused by this, because I hadn't noticed anything you said being hateful, rude, or anything like that - you've been quite helpful and informative, actually, and have a truly wicked LOLCATS collection. I actually spent half an hour or so going over your posts and they were all quite good in every conceivable sense of that word.

The only thing I noticed was Latif was going after you early on, and people may have been accidentally lumping you in with some of the more antisocial developers on the board. I don't know why Han went off on you over the gay thing but I think it might have been a friendly fire incident since the Beeboo comment you were replying to was a reply to some strident homophobe (and Han might have confused you for her), and you've said nothing earlier on sexual orientation.

I have a lot of respect for you.

Han Held

What I went off about was a post that seemed (to me) to say that a gay person saying snarky things was on a par with the discrimination and harassment (and death threats) that gay people face.

This pushed buttons for me and I went off about it, then I saw that no one agreed with me, so I assumed that i misread something somehow, and let it go.

I'd rather not backtrack to dig out quotes or w/e; but that's why I went off.

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Drama is easy
with eyes closed
misunderstanding all you read

Leah Mayo

I was checking the connection to make sure my reply gets through.

Fingerpointing, drama whoring, and poo throwing ahead. Up to you to proceed.

Kadah Coba

My collection of them dates back to the early 2000's when it was just "funny pictures of cats" and such. Back during, I think, the 3rd incantation of my pre-SL and pre-Gmod group's forums, back when most of the illuminati were still alive, we actually had official caturdays to post as many non-repeat lolcats as possible. Needless to say it lead to an arms race and proliferation of scripted auto posters.
Those were the days. Well, at least still someone dies of brain tumors, or complications of sever food poisoning, or other random things.


Not all of the abuse and/or drama I've gotten from SLU, has been on SLU.


My response was to all this bickering over supposed gay bashing happening here. I'm bi and both straights and gays have tried to give me shit, both sides have people that are full of it and should just be ignored. I'm so used to it now that it only usually bothers me when its direct or personal, like you reply way.
The last thing I'm going to do here is flaunt my sexuality at someone just to troll them unless they're attacking me already.

Naiki

It was intended as jest ^^ Hopin by the amount of LOL's it got most people took it as that ^^

Although saying that.. I only have 2 people on mute on SLU, Trasee may end up on that list if I don't get the cake and tea I was offered all them many moons ago! And no pictures of it either! I want the real thing dag nabbit! *Sits waiting at letter box*

Misty Harley

That's kinda what I mean though.

They won't be forced out of SL. They will be forced to other viewers if the updated PX that you already plan on removing the true on line status issue, doesn't work for them.

Really, it's you and your teams choice of course to either ditch something that you know won't be compatible with SL (or isn't already for some things) that also happens to have something you (and other dev's here) are personally uncomfortable with having in the viewer to begin with. In which there are viable alternatives to them if the updated viewer of your own doesn't work for them.

I just don't understand why you wouldn't ditch it, taking all things into consideration. Different thought process I suppose. If it were me, I would ask LL to block all the older ones for not only the true status (that you guys are happy about getting rid of and glad LL made the policy) but because it's becoming obsolete anyway. I mean, if I felt relief that a policy forced something out of my viewer....that tells me that it's time to pull the plug on other viewers of mine that I can't force it out of. Better to be able to sleep at night after the 1-3 days ruckus dies down versus having to deal with this for months on end with people via support for a viewer that is becoming incompatible.

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Kadah Coba

I don't think there are any (older versions of Phoenix included) that both support old non-sse2 CPUs (eg don't have mesh) and but support future API changes (eg HTTP inv). Unless someone is maintaining a non-mesh v1, I don't see these people having any alternative, including keeping the old Phoe build for much longer.

Misty Harley

I thought PX had mesh and those who didn't upgrade to the mesh version are on the old viewers for old computer reasons.

If not then the following would be wrong but really....it sounds like by your post (for my non techy brain) that the older version of PX isn't 'special' in the sense that it operates any worse or better then the older versions of other viewers that are also without mesh (imprudence, cool-viewer, rainbow, etc and probably some I don't know about)

The question is...will they go to them? The answer? Yes, if they update to the new PX and it doesn't work for them, they will move to a new viewer after screaming and crying that LL hates them. Past history tells us that is exactly what will happen. They will either finally bite the bullet and upgrade to the new 'fixed' PX or they will skip that all together and go right to FS. If neither of those options work for them, they will go to an older version of another viewer. Very few (and I do mean VERY few....as in maybe a handful) will rage quit and leave SL.

Being very frank here (see Beezles no-caffiene brain moment). PX, older version isn't a special snowflake that could never possibly be replaced by another viewer and to think so is a bit of ego stroking and excuse making......nothing more.

However, again..the caveat is that it's your guy's viewer. You can do what you want with it.

Kadah Coba

I meant the much older ones that have had a large number lingering on them for a long time. 95% of the ones on the current version will likely update within the first month after the next release, that's pretty much been a constant.

Misty Harley

I meant the older ones too. They will move to other older viewer ones if the PX/FS new ones don't work for them.

That will be after a bit gnawing, wailing and flailing of course. No doubt about that and in all honesty...it will make MY job harder too (help run a help area in SL that's pretty popular) but they'll get over it quickly enough and move on.

Jack Belvedere

It's the Good Cop Bad Cop trick!

Kara Spengler

Actually they do! I was skeptical at first but when I saw them listed somewhere I ordered them out of curiosity.

They are little ones that are sliced so are more like mushrooms than anything else. Or did you think they were plopping a huge spud down in the middle of the 'za?

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Innula Zenovka

But do you know why the 5% don't update, and roughly how many is that?

I'm still trying to get my head round the implications of Jessica's saying that (though that's well down on the "hundreds of thousands of people" she was unwilling to to block a little earlier).

Whether we're talking about hundreds of thousands or a couple of tens of thousands (which is a quite a big difference) I'm a bit surprised there's that many active users running SL on machines that don't meet SL's minimum specs (because they don't have SSE2 support) and, as I understand it, must be getting on for 10 years old now, at least. Henri Beauchamp has never, since he started releasing them back in 2007 or 2008, produced versions of Cool Viewer or Cool VL for machines without SSE2 because, he explained, he couldn't think of any machines that lacked SSE2 that would be capable of connecting to SL in the first place.

There's all sorts of reasons people don't update stuff, of course. I've come across plenty of folks in SL, and so must have the Phoenix/Firestorm support team, who don't update their graphics drivers from one year to the next, not because they can't but because it's a nuisance and they can't be bothered, and their computer runs fine on the old one, so what's the point? And I'm wondering how many of the 5%, whether numbered in the tens or hundreds of thousands, aren't in that group rather than the group of people trying to run SL on pretty ancient machines.

Certainly watching in the Phoenix/Firestorm group, as I do (it helps me support my products to know what issues people are having), I've seen plenty of people complain they simply can't run Firestorm -- or even the Mesh version of Phoenix -- and then quote specs that suggest that, whatever the problem is, it's not with their hardware. I always want to suggest, except they probably wouldn't conduct the experiment even a knife-point, and I'd start a riot anyway, that they try downloading the latest official viewer just to see if they can run that.

I guess what I'm saying is that LL, I know, have access to details of people's hardware. What I'm not sure about is whether you have similar access -- perhaps LL share their data with you -- so you and LL both know that there's all these people who want to run SL but simply can't see mesh because their machines aren't up to it, so old versions of Phoenix are their only option, or it's that that you infer from the fact that people are having problems running the Mesh version of Phoenix and aren't having similar problems with the older ones that it's because they've got 10-year-old computers rather than because of, perhaps, some problems in the mesh version of Phoenix.

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Kara Spengler

Not just old computers ... mesh is random in what hardware (especially graphics cards) it will and will not like. I was able to replicate the same performance drop on my main machine on one that was only a year old.

Misty Harley

I think I'm just generally confused about the older phoenix viewers that are in question right now. So many users....only a a few users....no other options....other options.

My head....it spins!

Tonya Souther

Hey, I wrote that! If you think that's funny, you should see the truly craptacular regexp test that I replaced, that broke on 0.09/0.10...

(Hint: Regexp is a nice hammer, but not every problem is a nail.)

Yeah, that would explain it. That's probably what happened.

Hm. I wonder if the bridge really is downward compatible...

This is an ongoing debate within the team. Some of us do want to block older versions just to avoid the support headaches and the crash bugs and the avatar bake issues. Others say that it's the user's choice what version to run. We really haven't resolved that argument; as a result, we're currently not blocking anything we don't have to.

Optimist.

We do know, though we can't say beyond "5%". As to why they don't update, some just can't get newer versions to run; some are misinformed (we still get comments that people won't update from 373 to anything later because they don't want to lose secondary attachment points! I Am Not Making This Up!); and some simply see no reason to change. We don't know how many won't upgrade for which reasons.

Two different cases. Blocking 1600 would block hundreds of thousands of users, although most would upgrade. Even so, a large portion of those would discover the need to upgrade when 1600 wouldn't log in for them.

He's obviously incorrect. You'd be amazed at the kind of creaky, ancient old systems people use Phoenix on. I know we are.

Good question, and one I'm not sure it's possible to answer.

You should see the complaining we get when the support folks suggest it as a debugging measure.

LL only collects those statistics intermittently, and we have gotten them in the past, but not to any level of detail. Oz did tell us a few months ago that they hadn't looked at how many people can't run SSE2 code in a long time, but it was about 5% when they did.

We do know the mesh renderer puts a heavier load on the machine, not just in the processor requirements, but also the memory and graphics card and driver, so many older machines with SSE2 still have a hard time running it. That goes for CoolVL and Singularity, as well. The mesh renderer was written with the assumption it would be running on a fairly modern system, so it's rather profligate with its use of system resources.

Siana Gearz

You are confusing things there. I seem to recall Henri offered SSE (1) optimized executables from the very start, while the official viewer wasn't. Is to be considered, AMD Athlon XP series of processor is a good deal faster than Pentium IV, but does not support SSE2, is certainly fast enough to run SL viewer even in well populated locations. With some stretch of imagination, even Pentium III and earlier Athlon won't run SL much worse than a cheapo netbook. (edit: all of these CPUs mentioned, even the oldest ones, support original SSE)

Yes, we sometimes receive summaries from them. Of course TPVs have different operating principles from LL. LL can think that a few % people are dispensable, or that they are a burden to develop for and don't contribute enough to their income to cover for that and that we have to take care of them instead. Also what about problems which stem from, say, bugs of Phoenix Mesh on specific systems rather than the systems being inadequately old, how is that not a reason to use an older version, if they must? They don't have a lot of alternative really. CoolVL is likely to have same problems, and Singularity is likely to have all problems they'd be having with Viewer 3 (which is a QA DISASTER - it runs well exactly on a kind of system a software developer would have) and then some.

Naiki

Siana Gearz

Hey i don't have any objection to the code that i quoted per se, it's not incorrect or particularly flimsy. But it being yours, just makes it EVEN funnier that you must insist on the viewer working different from what this code says Which was the whole point.

Tonya Souther

Ah, but as you noted yourself, the viewer does indeed work differently from what that code says. I was going on what had actually happened. Test results trump "the code should do this" every time.

I don't even remember thinking "hmmm, that's strange..." when it happened; I was more interested in testing whatever I was on there to test and then going back to Firestorm.

Siana Gearz

A small fraction of Phoenix users is still a huge lot of people, and yes there are options, but each of them may have its own problems. Finally, it's not nice to leave even one person behind, if this is something that can be avoided at all, if it's something that can be done within our resources and limitations.

Siana Gearz

Yes, but considering you need not to break things, it's important to fully understand test results and the cause, else there will be something you will overlook and break.