After Ruud Lathrop, Thomas Conover, Seronis Zagato and others tried to bring attention to the grid performance problems on Monday (Zagato, notably was reportedly threatened with a banning by a Linden Lab liaison for her efforts to inform affected residents), Linden Lab have found the issue and are today progressively restarting the grid with updated software that they believe will fix the issue.

The restart should be complete around 1-2 PM SLT (US Pacific). This restart is running North to South, so if you get a warning that the simulator you are in is about to shut down, you can teleport several sims northwards to escape the restart wave.

[Update: 1pm SLT - The rolling restart is now complete]

Second Life residents Ruud Lathrop, Thomas Conover and Seronis Zagato, to name just a few, have noted a significant performance decrease in simulators grid-wide. Performance of all scripts appears to have dropped a full 50% across the board, since the rolling restart on Thursday. This appears to be impacting residents in subtle ways, including causing problems with network vendors and security systems, and problems with the scripted orientation systems on Linden Lab's orientation islands.

When Seronis Zagato attempted to alert other Second Life Volunteers to the nature of the problem (as it had a noticeable impact on new resident experiences) she was, she says, dressed-down by a Linden Lab liaison. Ruud Lathrop has created a JIRA issue to alert Linden Lab to the problem, and to accumulate votes for it to be fixed. The issue is SCV-385.

Throughout 2006 (and through much of 2005), vigilantism has been a small but noticeable part of the Second Life society. An armed response to an armed threat. Of course nobody can really get hurt or really die in Second Life. Not in any way that costs you in anything other than time and blood-pressure, but there it is. It happens.

Some groups scour the grid looking for miscreants and violate the TOS/CS by using weapons and griefer tools against the griefers. Some hire themselves out as security forces for events, clubs and casinos. Some reportedly cause griefing under alternate accounts, providing both the sickness and then being paid for the cure.