Today in Second Life we had:

• 31,387 new signups bringing us to 10,490,916 signups total.
• A peak concurrency of 56,181 at 2:25PM (a new record!), and a minimum concurrency of 29,033 at 11:50PM. Median concurrency for the day was 43,077.
• The Grid Stability Index for the day was 1.15 (lower is better).
• An early morning services failure caused considerable angst at the time, but took place quite early, and the rest of the day ran surprisingly smoothly.
• Linden Lab has started a survey on inventory-loss. If you've lost stuff, you're invited to run through the questionnaire.

At 5:50AM SLT (US Pacific) a number of Second Life services began to show signs of failure, as noted by Eloise. Only 37,734 users were logged into Second Life at the time the troubles commenced, so the cause is unclear.

Search is not working, nor is much of the map functionality; teleports are generally flakey and failing more often than not. Users are reporting mass failures of group IMs, presence is messed up (the friends list) and some issues accessing account balances and inworld inventories. Linden Lab acknowledged the problems 26 minutes after they commenced, at 6:16AM. At 6:23AM we are informed that the Linden Lab Operations Team is investigating cause and remedy.

[Update: 7:00AM - Linden Lab reports the problem is solved, but has not provided any details as to the cause.]

Today in Second Life we had:

• 33,975 new signups bringing us to 10,458,688 signups total.
• A peak concurrency of 52,879 at 2:15PM, and a minimum concurrency of 30,912 at 2:05AM. Median concurrency for the day was 43,974.
• Concurrency remains much higher than usual.
• The Grid Stability Index for the day was 2.04 (lower is better).
• The Support Portal was offline for maintenance between 6PM and 10PM SLT (US Pacific) this-evening.

[Update: Unfortunately, Friday's concurrency numbers got tangled up with Saturday's. The numbers and times have been corrected.]

Six of Second Life's top brands Eros Designs, RH Designs, Le Cadre Network, Nomine, PixelDolls and DE Designs are filing suit against Thomas Simon (known as avatar Rase Kenzo), and ten other as yet unidentified avatars. The suit was filed in Brooklyn, New York by attorney Frank Taney, a partner with Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney who is representing Eros Designs against Volkov Catteneo, for similar copyright violation.

As long-time SLI readers are doubtless aware, there is no technological means that exists to guarantee prevention against copyright violation. Indeed, most such measures are usually bypassed or broken before they are even released into the wild. That leaves one forum for copyright violation - the same one that has always been there. The RL courts and the legal system.

Today in Second Life we had:

• 43,383 new signups bringing us to 10,423,964 signups total.
• Median signup rates are lower today, but we're still pulling about 1,465 signups per hour.
• A peak concurrency of 52,439 at 2:40PM, and a minimum concurrency of 28,867 at 1:40AM. Median concurrency for the day was 41,201.
• Concurrency is still riding to close to record levels, which is quite unusual, and well over what is normally expected for a Friday.
• The Grid Stability Index for the day was 2.05 (lower is better).
• Login and search services had something of a cow today for approximately 90 minutes this-morning.
• The Ed Wood Festival Highlights of Yesteryear as a part of the Ed Wood Machinima Festival.
• A non-release-candidate release candidate. Yes, that's a little tricky to explain.
• Announcement that the downtime scheduled for October 31 has been postponed. You can all put down your blazing torches and pitchforks, now.

There's a new release candidate available on the optional downloads page. It's one with known problems and it isn't actually a candidate for release. The previous release candidate turned out to have some pretty severe problems, and it seems some people just won't quit using it anyway. So this release is a roundup of fixes for the folks out there who are eating bees.

So, we get the impression that, esssentially, bee-eaters this release is for you. Not eating bees? Give it a miss, and wait for the next release candidate, which might actually be a release candidate.

At 8:30AM SLT (US Pacific) all Second Life login services ceased responding.

At the time of the fault, 41,337 users were online. With users unable to log on, concurrency numbers have been falling rapidly since that time.

[UPDATE: 8:45 AM - Linden Lab acknowledges the problem, and promises further updates]

[Update: 9:05 AM - Logins are back up]

[Update: 9:15 AM - Logins remain up. Search has failed]

[Update: 10:00 AM - Search started responding to queries again about 5 minutes ago, and is hanging in there.]

Assuming CSI:NY had not aired their program featuring Second Life on Wednesday this week, projected signups for Wednesday and Thursday were expected to total 47,434. Actual signups for Wednesday and Thursday this week exceeded that projection by 74,412 signups, with 122,846 new registrations taking place in that 48 hour period.

The incident was marred, however, by the failure of the webservers for the CSI event, preventing many from registering via the CSI registration portal or downloading the OnRez viewer, both provided by the Electric Sheep Company.

Today in Second Life we had:

• 69,344 new signups bringing us to 10,378,489 signups total. That's the largest number of signups we've had in quite a while.
  
• A peak concurrency of 52,481 at 1:50PM, and a minimum concurrency of 28,610 at 1:40AM. Median concurrency for the day was 40,876.
• The Grid Stability Index for the day was 1.43 (lower is better).
• News came down that Dilbert's Scott Adams is coming to Second Life next week.

Popular CBS crime-based science-fiction series, CSI:NY aired last night across North America, featuring Second Life as a major feature of a two-part story, the second part of which is due to air in February 2008.

I hate spoilers, so we'll skip talking about the story. Second Life, as it is portrayed, is given a pretty reasonable treatment - the skepticism of many of the core characters is not unusual - however, this is not the Second Life you know, just as CSI is not the forensics department you'll find if you go downtown.

Today in Second Life we had:

• 51,414 new signups bringing us to 10,309,155 signups total.
• A peak concurrency of 50,496 at 2:05PM, and a minimum concurrency of 27,778 at 1:10AM. Median concurrency for the day was 39,746.
• The Grid Stability Index for the day was 1.22 (lower is better).
• The stipend payments system experienced some difficulties today.
• The OnRez viewer was released, and we give a batch of initial impressions, and Eloise took a gander at the CSI:NY sims that opened at 6AM SLT (US Pacific) today.
• The Havok beta gota refresh with a whole bunch of bug-fixes.
• Friends Online had to be shut down this-evening, but it is not clear why.
• The CSI:NY episode with SL went to air this-evening. Although, apparently there were large numbers of registrations, the website for the download of the OnRez viewer failed, preventing many from obtaining the viewer. So, while there was a sharp increase in evening logons after the episode, there was no flood. Perhaps tomorrow. More likely, on the weekend. The Jury is still out as to whether the whole shebang will be a hit or a miss.

We're getting some signs that the Second Life grid may be under some unusual strain. Concurrency, while fairly flat (rather than the sharp decline that would be normal at this time of day) is reporting late, with updates coming approximately ten to fifteen minutes later than they should.

Additionally, Teeple Linden reports that the Friends Online page is being taken off the air for a few hours. No cause given.

Sidewinder Linden reports that the beta grid (Aditi) has been updated with a new version of the Havok 4.6 code, fixing a dozen issues. We're told this will take about 24 hours.

We're also cautioned that the beta grid database will be refreshed from the main grid. Make offline copies of any scripts you have in beta, because everything in your beta inventory will be replaced by early next week.

An extremely terse note from Linden Lab implies but does not state that there is a problem with stipend payments this week. The exact wording is "We are presently working on a solution to ensure all residents receive their stipend as soon as possible."

The phrasing suggests that it's broken rather than slow, being that it is the sort of phrasing that's used in corporate statements when something important is on fire, stolen, or unexpectedly vanished into a parallel universe. Hopefully, it's just an accident of sentence assembly and all we are looking at this week is general slowness.

[Update: 10PM SLT (US Pacific) - Linden Lab reports that stipend payments are in progress and expected to finish sometime before dawn]