Warning! Self-replicating Land Scanner on many sims!

Not that it really matters, Shiryu, but - realizing that you are Italian, "Devil's Advocates" would be a more colloquial usage in English than "attorneys of the devil"

Thanks for the clarification, anyway i think the meaning was quite clear

I noticed significant lag near this mass of scanners in Ainu.

I encountered quite noticeable lag near this mass of Pete Fats created "scanners" in Ainu:





Are they getting stuck trying to cross sim lines and massing up like this or is this the way they are designed to behave?

I am also wondering if the clothing store owner below this swarm realizes that it's above their shop... I wouldn't be very happy if it were my shop.

"wasn't that, uh, that Keanu Reaves film?"

Actually, the Devil's Advocate is a time honored appointment from the College of Cardinals. If memory serves, while they are deciding who the next pope will be, they choose one of their own members to act as the Advocate for the Devil. It is this man's job to investigate the proposed candidate very VERY carefully, bring forth any skeletons in his closet, any reason, no matter how small, that might be grounds for dismissing the candate from the papacy. This not only ensures that a less-than-deserving candidate does not get into office, it also ensures that the pope who is elected is above reproach. Any and all problems with the man's past have already been brought forward, examined, and put to rest. The greater good is served by the Devil's Advocate, because he brings forth arguments that he may not himself believe in, to ensure that all sides are heard.

Perhaps the Devil's Advocate is not so despicable a person, despite the repeated use of the phrase in this thread.

are we going to have a DAC (devil's advocate corps) to go along with the FIC (fetXd inner core)? are they just the FIC legal department?

Cubey I am sorry if I bothered you! I wasn't trying to say anything bad you or your planes. I love your planes and airships and the Abbotts Aerodrome and have enjoyed every interaction I have ever had with you!

I picked out your planes as an example of a good neat thing no one would have reason to complain about. Your planes are extremely well designed and made at it's always nice to see one around. It's even better to stop and take the time to look at them in detail because your workmanship is so exceedingly good, you set a standard that other builders should keep in mind when making their own builds.

In fact I saw an Abbotts Aerodrome blimp fly near my property today and I was happy to see it like I would be happy to see a Goodyear blimp in real life.

Cubey, I am so very sorry if I bothered you in any way with my mention of your planes. I love your planes and I love the Abbotts Aerodrome and I have enjoyed every interaction I have ever had with you.

I mentioned your planes as neat things that any one ought to be glad to see go through their property. Your planes look great at a distance and when you take the time to take a closer look they set a standard for workmanship that all SL builders should keep in mind in their own work.

An Abbott's Aerodrome blimp flew near my land today and I stopped what was doing to fly over and around it and enjoy the view of it.

The Aerodrome itself is easily good enough looking to go to visit just to look at the hangars and runways without even considering it as a place to buy a plane at.

Best wishes Cubey.

In case it's still not clear about why I picked out Cubey Terra as the person who would be making an arirplane it's because to me Cubey Terra is THE name in planemaking in Second Life. I know that there are other skilled planemakers but to me the SL aeronautics industry is something done by Cubey Terra and others.

If what you say is true, then there is a considerable impact on the sim due to his scanners.

In that case, LL may have to reconsider their opinion on the impact these have on the public.

but they run eventually, and when they run it's noticable. the worse the sim is for lag, the more noticable the problem is.

so i created a script that rez's an object fairly often.
and at more than 400 m.

the objects created are temp on rez, and have an script that does not do anything.
(note: these other temponrez object to which people are objecting are much more active as they move, probably sense for other objects of their type, check their position, and report back.)

when the script is running:
the sim's time dialation changes by -.02
the sim's fps wildly flucuates from 5k to 1k.

when the script is not running:
the sim's time dialation is steady
and the sim's fps is around 5k

If those malfunctioning objects are causing lag, then they should be removed.
What I'm trying to get at here is that I don't want any blanket rules against projects on the grounds that they are "self-replicating", "world-traveling", or data collecting devices.
I have seen too many vocal minorities (aka drama queens) force LL into taking actions that have limited my enjoyment of the SL experience. I do not want it to be restricted any further in the future.

Eggy, rather than simply emotionalizing the discussion further, why not address the facts?

The facts are that this sort of device does not scale.

If even 20% of the SL users was using a public land scanner, the system would bog down.

What upsets a lot of these people is that they have the capability to *easily* do the same thing but they realise that it would be rude so they don't. It angers them that *they* have to go without because they are the ones being polite.

Notice that this is completely different from land barony. Land barony does scale. If everyone did it, we'd just have a super efficient market system.

Got to admit,though...

It's a beautiful and evil design. If the sims were able to stand a bit more stress, I'd salute him for creative design...

As it is, I'll salute him and then shoot him with a 21 gun salute.

This makes me wonder: Does LL have a way to enforce process processing limits on people? Stop them from hogging all the CPU?

Nope. There's a prim limit, but with temp rez and poor scripting, you can easily take up the entire grids CPU if you wanted to.

Hmmm.. which makes me think about that paralell computing project I wanted to work on ... heh

Why? Can you demonstrate that the usefulness of such devices to some outweigh the abuse to many?

If so, please do. I'm keeping an open mind.

Now you see, that's just sloppy...

There needs to be a circut breaker at the very least. If somebody takes over 50% of the CPU for an extended (a few minutes?) time, it needs to kill the script with an 'over the limit' warning... Then again... this little bugger would get by the basic version of that rule...

How about: A user and his items can't take above a certain % of CPU for an extended time? It refers to the total cpu usage, regardless of what's running the script, as long as it belongs to the user...

Just thinking out loud...

Why? Can you demonstrate that the usefulness of such devices for some outweigh the abuse to many? And wouldn't you have to distinguish between the functions and potential abuse of each of the three examples you cited?

If you can demonstrate this, please do so. You haven't so far, but I'm keeping an open mind.

Whoa there, that's not as open a mind as you think:

What you just asked for, in the context of the current conversation, is:

"If you can demonstrate this [now], please do so. [Otherwise remove the feature.]"

If they do that, then nobody could ever develop such an item, unless done right now. Later is too late, since the features won't be there to test.

Now, as to how a little self-replicating bot could be useful:

Cute messenger service (I know, unneeded. But so are elevators, and I see a lot of them...)
Play "Hunt the Wumpus" (Which several of you seem to be doing)
A neat way to build an instant teleport grid. Just have the little buggers send a teleport request on command... (dunno how useful this might be.)
Put guns on them and conquer the entire known SL World! (Insert evil laughter here...)

See, useful!

Yeah, but that's one helluva large IF there, isn't it?
At the moment we are up to... 0,00005% (1/20,000)
If demand for global data-gathering grew, the right course of action on LL's side would not be to ban the crap out of everyone, but rather allow us to collect data in a more efficient manner.
I have complained ad nauseum about how script location should be irrelevant but LL doesn't want to listen.
For instance, why the heck should llRezObject be limited to 10 meters?
If I own a whole sim and want to autorez something large on it, I have to move the rezzor around, or tell the rezzed prims where to go. This is silly.
Also, why should sensors be limited to 96 meters? Or rather, why should I even need a sensor? What the heck IS a sensor in the context of e-commerce anyway?
If I own a whole sim, why can't I simply get a list of all users, their keys, positions, etc.?
I'm not a physicist, I'm a database coder, I'm used to being able to gather all the info I want in seconds with a simple line of SQL. Why is it so hard to gather data in SL in the first place?
If I bought a web server, I would be able to access all the logs. I would be able to see exactly how many people visited my server, what pages they browsed, when they browsed them, their IP, where they came from, etc.
It would also be one hell of a lot cheaper than buying a sim, and I would have shell access, the ability to install whatever software I wanted on it, etc.
If this is to ever be a platform, then developers should have full control over the system, period.

Sure. See the links provided in a former post of mine in this thread.
Also:
Hank Ramos's balloon script allows you to travel to any part of the grid.
Thing is, it relies on a notecard with a list of all simulators, their names and coordinates.
There was no way around editing it manually, which of course doesn't scale.
When he open sourced it, I started working on a way to automatically generate this giant database.
It was to be a self-replicating, world-travelling system. It would only need one prim per sim, though, and it would run once a week, or once a day, tops.
That little prim would only need to get the simulator's name and coordinates, email them back to a central server, spawn a few prims that would move to the adjacent simulators and then die.
The whole process would only take a few seconds per prim / simulator.
It would definitely be put in a tiny invisible cube, of course... not in an attempt to be SNEAKY, but rather in an attempt to not DISTURB you with large moving plywood cubes.
I never finished this because LL said they were adding a command to get a list of all sims in 1.6, so it is no longer necessary to make a fancy system for it.
Easier data gathering is the way to go.
Forum drama and blanket banning of potentially useful technologies is not.

Whoa, yourself. I didn't do any of these things. You're reading your own concerns into my words. Easy to do, isn't it?

I'm all for creativity and experimentation. I'm also for "releasing creatures into the wild" that have universal benefit. I'm even for "releasing creatures" that benefit many and may create a few problems for some.

I am, however, largely against the idea of taking action without giving thought to the various consequences, both for the creator, the subject, and the bystander.

The question I asked was fair, and serious. I've read the thread; I haven't made up my mind, however, because I haven't heard balanced arguments about potential uses and abuses, and methods to insure one and insure against the other. So far, most, I say again, "most" of the arguments have been largely "he has no right," versus "Pete's a nice guy."

Great. Maybe so. Take it further.



edited for typos

A big if??

I just wrote a self-replicating scanner (this one makes sure there isn't any other scanner within shouting distance) will replicated over the grid looking for public land.

What if I simply made it available to anyone who goes to a certain coord for free?

Why can't *everyone* have a public land scanner?

Thank you. I know there are some very worthwhile things that can be generated from these scripts.

Is the issue then about the worth of the project that Pete Fats is pursuing, versus the common simulator resources his project may or may not be eating? If so, why haven't we heard from Pete Fats? Seems to me he could clear this up fairly well.

True enough.

Really, this issue is not about this "Pete" guy at all. It's about if this kind of item/design is within the fair-use terms that we all abide by.

Even if this issue is found lacking, that does not mean that Pete should be punished at all, or even 'warned'. It just means the TOS would have to be updated and he advised that it's not an appropriate action anymore.

Because, let's be honest: Nobody cares if you like what he's doing. That's not the issue here... The issue is if it's going to reduce other's ABILITY to enjoy the sim...



Why do I suddenly see this code being put into a bunch of cute, fluffy bunnies that hop about the entire sim?

He may not even know this conversation is taking place here. I've spoken with more than one user that said, "What forums?"