Warning! Self-replicating Land Scanner on many sims!

I see some people in this thread trying to understand and I sense a lot of ignorance and hatred too.

Because of one high-profile abuse case the general hatred is going to spoil things for everyone.

The sad thing is that the next satellite you see you will immediately hate with extreme prejudice without actually knowing what it is or does nor even measuring its effect on a simulator. This is the ignorance part.

Now I know that a lot of people are dead against a 'police state' where everything is controlled/regulated, but at some point we have to wake up and realise that to a large extent we will see real life history repeating itself in SecondLife.

An analogy:
In real life, radio frequencies are in short supply and have important use, so they are carefully regulated. Not everything that transmits is evil. So what you typically do is register your need to broadcast at a certain frequency with a central authority and anyone else broadcasting is told to desist.

How this can apply to SecondLife:
Create a central registry of satellites giving details and statistics. If a satellite exceeds a threshold of resource usage it fails the certificate. If a non-registered satellite is discovered it is reported to the central registry so the newb has the chance to go through the certification process. Failure to do so will be escalated to Lindens as an abuse report.

You don't want SL to be like this, but mark my words - it's coming. When the population grows in order of magnitude we will hear it more and more: Linden Labs wants us to run this world as much as we can before having to rely on them.

I sat on a cube, went to 400 meters, turned on object beacons...

In 5-10 minutes, I saw 7 of these 'Pete Fats's lb..' objects! (One at a time.)

I returned 6 of them, the 7th one I couldn't catch... Somehow they always keep reappearing/respawning

This IS annoying...

Its not "coming", its allready here.

And we dont really want it.

*golf clap*

Brilliant Spider. If any of us object to this we must be newbies. Nevermind that the vast majority of people in this thread are residents with a year or better behind their belt. Because, oh no, we've broken into the "people complaining about things I personally don't think they should" = "newbies" logic zone.

*shrug*

That aside, I don't care what the lindens term this. I consider this abuse. I will report it as such. I'm not alone in this. And maybe, just maybe, after having to wade through a couple dozen abuse reports every few days from people fed up with these things the lindens will consider that their stance might have been *gasp* a mistake.

Like you said:



And part of that will to shape our future is our desire to shape the laws that govern our society.

You go on at great length about how this is an issue of personal freedom and we shouldn't crucify the 'poor guy'. Freedom goes hand in hand with responsibility. If your going to be putting scripted objects on peoples land, you have a resonsibility to tell them, ask permission, explain what it going on, and should they invoke their right to refuse, you have the responsibility to listen and comply. You have no right to do it, either by virtue of land ownership or by weight of morality otherwise. Seeking permission first is the only honest path: Seeking forgiveness after the fact, or (as in Flip's case, I believe it was... pardon me, i'm not reading this entire thread to find out which person it was) agreeing to remove the scanners then later /returning/ them, all while (mind you) these objects are designed to be extremely hard to notice and absoultely impossible to deal with... That earns you no societal credit.

He /compounded/ the fact, acting far worse than chance did, by: Making the objects all but impossible to detect (Chance at least gave us a sporting chance), not using his own land (Chance did most of the time, albiet not all), and at the same time making it absolutely impossible for land owners to take care of the problem over their own land on their own. Nobody should have to ask, like I said, to remove items that don't belong on their land from it. But by virtue of this nefarious system, it is impossible for land owners to do anything about it directly without resorting to the basest griefing techniques, or repeated abuse reports. Of those, one of those is within the ToS... so I know which one I'm going to be doing.

No, I havn't contacted Pete asking him to remove them from my land. First of all, from (again, I believe) Flip's report, I have reason to believe that wouldn't do any good... as soon as I let my guard down, they would be back. But the bigger picture is, I shouldn't have to get permission from someone else (basicly) for them to not use land I own for their own mysterious uses. It works the other way around, and being a "great guy" or a long-standing member of the community or an olbie or whatever gives you no "get out of condemnation free" card. Period.

The "poor guy" crucified himself by thinking himself outside the bounds of societal norms. Too bad.

As for telling me to "get out" of SL if my thinking runs differently than yours on this matter... You have no right to expect me to do that. Nor any reason to hope.

So maybe some clarification is needed from the Lindens on things like this. I assume we are allowed to now, and have always been able to...

1. Setup a network of prims, grid-wide or across several sims.
   
2. That are created "temporary on rez" as to avoid the land autoreturn features of people's land.
   
3. That are temporary so they don't impact people's individual plot's prim allotment, but use sim resources and prims nonetheless.
   
4. That keep respawning those prims as to avoid the server-enforced autoreturn of temporary on rez prims.
   
5. Even if we don't own land in that particular simulator.
   

I don't think the issue here has anything to do with land barons, or the existence of scanners, or their purpose.

The problem I see here is the misuse of resources. Chance Small used a 16sqm plot of land (a very small amount of land in a simulator), but used a disproportionate amount of server resources. That was a problem then, and is now.

Now, you don't need land at all. You can use server resources all you want, avoid the built-in prim limitations, and utilize every server on the grid (even private islands I would gather) for your own purposes without even having to own any land at all.

LL has already said that they aren't against TOS, and technically they aren't. But what is happening is respawning temporary on rez objects avoids BOTH the land owner's autoreturn and the server's temp-on-rez autoreturn. Thus you are making viral, non-returnable objects.

Actually, this is very pure Tragedy of the Commons.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

LL, as the defacto government, needs to step in and assure everyone that either a) this isn't using server resources (maybe it isn't, but a little * several 100 sims is a problem) or b) that they're going to do something about it.

However, the analogy to avatar attachments is completely valid. Someone profits by people purchasing their attachments and if they're all over the grid, they can be causing as much if not more problems then this.

So, we all need to accept - if you ban scanners you may have to ban hoochie hair as well.

This actually has very little to do with how much lag these things are or are not causing, blaze. Lag is basicly just a tangental concern.

Well, there is a difference between attachments on avatars and self-roaming, self-replicating objects. We all accept that people have a right to be in this world, and that there is a human being behind each avatar. If we are at a party, no real biggie, you are with 30 or so other friends having a good time.

Hoochie Hair and other "laggy" attachments are not intentional, but something that is a problem if overused.

However, if you are in a sim when something that uses this intentional "technology" (to get around autoreturn rules) and it causes an effect on the performance on the sim, with no human being present, you have the right to question it.

I have known Maggie and Pete since Beta. I endorse everything she said.
Pete, if anything, plays casually, and mostly tinkers with stuff.
He isn't here for the money, he doesn't have a store, and I can't say I've ever seen him buying or selling land. He's lived in the same old place since the dawn of time.

The info goes to someone else.

All of which may be true, and I have honestly no reason to suspect it isn't.

However.

None of that changes anything.

When Version 1.2 came out, and we all had to pay for the sim server resources we used (via land tiers and object limits tied to land), I remember conversations with Philip Linden. We all talked about server resources as they pertained to non-permanent objects. Things like vehicles, roaming birds, stuff like that.

So LL's point of view is that there are a certain number of resources set aside for visitors to a sim (i.e. non land owners). Things like a pool of prims for things like bullets (usually temp-on-rez), vehicles, self-roaming objects that are just passing through. All of these things have limitations put on them. Vehicles for example are only excluded from the server's enforcement on autoreturn if an avatar is sitting on them. Bullets (temp on rez ones) are autoreturned by the server after a certain period of time, determined by the server based upon demand. Flying birds have to fly fast enough to avoid autoreturn, or find a flight path that goes over friendly land.

What is going on here is tha avoidance of autoreturn completely by combining temporary on rez with self-replication. Is this good? Is this bad? I think that depends upon how much effect they have on the simulator and whether it is grid-wide.

If you need to use a fair amount of grid-wide resources, I think you should own land grid-wide. Especially if it's something used for profit motivations, but that just muddies the waters.

Thats an interesting question.

Swanson, care to respond??

I'm upset that there are so many voices here speaking bad things about Pete Fats. If you had known him as I have over the years you would know better. Pete is not a malicious person by nature. As Eggy mentions, Pete does tend to experiment and tinker - I can't really speculate what he's doing with those cubes of his. As far as I have read it doesn't seem like any here have tried to ask him or if he would remove the objects in a civil manner.
Is he lagging sims? Maybe, maybe not.
Has he violated the TOS? No.

This might be true, and honestly i couldn't care the less. He is been (and currently is it seems) plain irresponsible and damaging grid wide, and thus needs to be punished to pose an example.
If he is not a land baron then someone else might be benefitting from the data he gathers, and this should be something for the lindens to investigate to ban both the perpetrator and the one that benefits from the data gathered this way.
Being here since the beta or being a charter member shouldn't in any way allow people to grief others without being troughly punished.



Me too, over MY OWN land.



False, read better.

One thing I am suprised is that people don't see it as a problem where you unleash something upon the grid that is self-replicating, apparantly causes problems in those affected sims, and then don't log in a lot to make sure you aren't causing havoc.

Agreed Hank.

And now people are suggesting that there is a motivation behind this - the acquisition of land.

I think it would be quite easy for the lindens to discover. Data can be tracked in chatlogs, they can simply see to whom such data is sent and what kind of data it is. I have the evil suspect that Pete wouldn't be the only oldbie nailed to his responsibilities.

All of which is absolutely irrelivent.

Being a "great guy" does not give you licesense to violate social norms left and right, generally act in a rude and suspisious fashion, and deliberatly design objects that the owners of the land they are on are absolutely unable to deal with in any way, and not be called on it.

Then again, great guys generally don't do things like that.

this is not quite accurate spider. what we have to realize is that ALL things cause lag. sims store and process information about everything in a sim. fifteen-thousand is the upper limit of single texture, non twisted, uncut, solid cubes that a sim can support without melting through the floor. if you're reading this, take a moment to think about that.






just that many simple prims will lag a sim to almost uselessness. now consider adding severel hundred textures, a bunch of crowded tiny twisted hollow prims and a few dozen timers & listening sockets to that load. it's a wonder most sims operate at all.

ll has foolishly (sorry guys but it's just plain foolish) given us the impression that we can load a server with anything we can produce and not have to worry about the lagging effect it has on the environment. that's simply not true. this world will lag terribly until everyone realizes that we have to think responsibly about what we're demanding every time we rez an object.

that said, our bloated inventories add to the load too. resources are resources and have to be constantly calculated and maintained by the system. having bloated inventories is akin to having so many cases on the docket that the court can never hear them all. so they just keep falling further and further behind because people just keep adding one frivolous suit after another. oh well, i guess that's just how we are.

This script has been reasonably well tested but is not amazingly user friendly. If you don't understand what it is doing, please find someone who does to help you. Please note the warnings in the comments. It has been revised to neither send IMs to the "lb v2" owners nor send mail to Linden Lab. This script can report any of three ways:

1. reports detected object via local chat - good only if you ride the detector up
   
2. send an IM to the script owner (you) on each detection
   
3. send e-mail to an address of your choice containing a summary report
   

This script may spam *you* and then you'd have to report yourself for abuse, and that could get ugly.

As this script is itself a high altitude scanner, it has been written to automatically die after an hour. I suggest putting it in a highly visible prim, and it must be placed only over your land.

Now for the blindingly colored script.

// lb scanner - looks for "lb v2" objects at known location and reports them
// 10-mar-05 malachi petunia, free to distribute and modify, just don't remove these top two lines


// This is not a "friendly" script to non-scripters, use at your own risk.
//
// How to use:
// 1. set the monitorPos variable to a position over your land, 400 should always be the Z coordinate
//    if monitorStation is not on your land, this will produce "lies", I can't check for you because
//    group land is handled funny
// 2. change the mailMe, imMe, localChat, and maxReportLen as you see fit
// 3. save the changes to the script
// 4. put the script in a highly visible prim
// 5. take a copy of your object - because it will self-destruct in an hour
// 6. (optional) sit on the prim, turn on View->Highlight Transparent and View->Object Beacons
// 7. say the command "/9 start"
// 8. The sensor will delete itself after an hour of sensing and reporting

vector monitorPos = <192, 63, 400>;         // sim relative coordinates for placement of sensor

integer mailMe = FALSE;                   // if true sends periodic report to "userMail"
integer imMe = FALSE;                    // if true sends im on each detection to scanner owner
integer localChat = TRUE;                // if true chats a report on each detection

integer chatChan = 9;                           // where the sensor listens for commands (e.g. "/9 start")
float sensorRadius = 3.0;                       // how tight a sphere to monitor, 3m is usually more than enough
float autodieTime = 3600.0;                     // die after one hour of monitoring

key pfKey = "3e43422a-fb6b-4a38-9756-d6ffaa8635c7"; // key for agent named "pete fats"
string userMail = "me@example.com";                 // e-mail address destination for mail reports
integer maxReportLen = 20;                           // how many unique scanners to see before mailing 

// end of user modifiable parameters

key scannerOwner;           // may change upon rez or xfer

key lastSeen = NULL_KEY;    // stores the last object seen so as not to be redundant

string simName;             // where was this canner rezzed
vector restPos;             // point of origination of scanner
list keySeen;               // for remembering objects already seen 
list storedReport;          // buffers a list for periodic mail

debug(string s) { llSay(0, s);}

// init() - reset to start state, returns FALSE if init incomplete
//
integer init() {
    debug("init()");
    llSensorRemove();
    scannerOwner = llGetOwner();            // XXX this might work for a group deeded sensor on group land
    simName = llGetRegionName();
    restPos = llGetPos();
    keySeen = [];
    storedReport = [];

    if(mailMe && (userMail == "me@example.com")) {
        debug("the default mail address userMail was not changed from the default, stopping.");
        return FALSE;
    }
    
    string s = "init complete, monitorPos is " + simName + " " + ((string) monitorPos) + " reporting to: ";
    if(mailMe) s += userMail + ", ";
    if(imMe) s += "IM to " + llKey2Name(scannerOwner) + ", ";
    if(localChat) s += "local chat. ";
    debug(s);
    debug("autodie after " + ((string) (autodieTime/60.0)) + " minutes of scanning");
    debug("type '/" + ((string) chatChan) + " start' to begin");
    return TRUE;
}


// mailReport - email report to userMail, clear buffers
mailReport() {
    debug("mailReport()");
    llEmail(userMail, "lb v2 dectection report " + simName , llDumpList2String(storedReport, "\n"));
    keySeen = [];
    storedReport = [];
}
    

// storeReport - collate reports of novel objects and mail if over maxReportLen
//
storeReport(key k, vector p) {
    if(llListFindList(keySeen, [ k ]) == -1) {
        keySeen = keySeen + [k];
        storedReport = storedReport + [ ((string) k) + " " + ((string) p) + " " + llGetTimestamp() ];
        if(llGetListLength(keySeen) >= maxReportLen)
            mailReport();
    }
}

// report - send an alert according to the report booleans
// 
report(key lbKey, vector lbPos) {
    lastSeen = lbKey;
    string pos = (string) lbPos;
    string msg;
    
    msg = "'lb v2' is over my land at " + simName + " " + pos;

    if(localChat) {
        llSay(0, msg + " key " + ((string) lbKey));
    }
    if(imMe) {
        llInstantMessage(scannerOwner, msg);
    }
    if(mailMe) {
        storeReport(lbKey, lbPos);        
    }
}

// placeStation(vector) - non-physical movement to the argument position
//
placeStation(vector p) {
    debug("placeStation to " + ((string) p) );
    while ( llVecDist(llGetPos(), p) > 0.01 ) 
        llSetPos(p);    
}



default {
    on_rez(integer n) {
        init();
    }
    
    state_entry() {
        if(init()) {    // do nothing if mailMe is set but userMail isn't
            llListen(chatChan, "", scannerOwner, "");
            llSetTimerEvent(0);
        }
    }

    listen(integer c, string n, key k, string m) {
        debug("default listen: " + m);
        if(m == "start") {
            placeStation(monitorPos);
            state argos;
        } else if (m == "die") {
            llDie();
        } else {
            debug("unknown command: " + m);
        }
    }
    
    timer() {
       llDie();
    }
}       

state argos {
    state_entry() {
        llSensorRepeat("lb v2", NULL_KEY, ACTIVE, 10, PI, 3);
        llListen(chatChan, "", scannerOwner, "");
        llSetTimerEvent(autodieTime);
    }

    sensor(integer n) {
        integer i;
        key k;
        for(i = 0; i < n; i++) {
            string pos;
            k = llDetectedKey(i);
            if((llDetectedOwner(i) == pfKey) && (k != lastSeen)) {      // found a new one
                report(k, llDetectedPos(i));
            }
        }
    }
    
    listen(integer c, string n, key k, string m) {
        debug("argos listen: " + m);
        if(m == "stop" || m == "reset") {
            placeStation(restPos);
            state default;
        } else if(m == "reset") {
            state default;
        }  else if (m == "die") {
            llDie();
        } else {
            debug("unknown command: " + m);
        }
    }
    
    timer() {
        llDie();
    }
}

Here is an example of the mail reports the script generates. It lists three items per detection: object key, position, timestamp. As the "lb v2" objects have been seen cycling back each report will contain only the first observance of a specific key.

Object-Name: lb scan
Region: somewhere
Local-Position: (192, 63, 400)

c5423d9c-a8d3-c63d-fb99-b8f0c24cdbbe <192.00000, 64.00000, 400.00000> 2005-03-12T14:54:08.262474Z
dbeab9aa-e382-dcb9-0d6f-899343514306 <192.00000, 64.00000, 400.00000> 2005-03-12T14:54:11.317076Z
974c21e0-81cd-70fd-b6c8-f4f1bc0179f3 <192.00000, 64.00000, 400.00000> 2005-03-12T14:54:50.743823Z
01fc208b-f6b7-4bde-939a-398fddfbc93e <184.00000, 64.00000, 400.00000> 2005-03-12T14:55:54.270145Z
5d9479ea-f162-8fe4-c100-893141d20992 <192.00000, 64.00000, 400.00000> 2005-03-12T14:57:00.877380Z
50ac575c-df20-2ae4-3faa-6d35216abf14 <192.00000, 64.00000, 400.00000> 2005-03-12T14:58:04.496459Z

I read ALMOST all of the posts here and think that I might want to remove Fate/Fats/etc.'s reason for doing this. S/he is doing this to find land, sell it and make TONS of money. Taking away other's fair chance of finding this land for themselves.

So, I might make a script that does exactly the same thing and distribute it freely. I think that would be fair competition.

Ah, and yes, I would ask the user to restrict the running of the script to their land.

Robin Linden just said that it's okay to IM someone about objects on your land that you can't autoreturn...

/invalid_link.html

However, I'm still not clear on what would be considered spam IM. If you send an IM for every object over your land that isn't subject to autoreturn, and that object is constantly autorezzing new versions of itself, the person would get swamped with a flurry of IMs. Still confused.

Can tentants scan their land?