land scanners part 5: Private sims.

The virus known as lb v2. has now spread to private sims.
(with permission from person who IMd me, obviously)

Now even people who pay $1000 US and $200 a month don't even have the ability to maintain their own island's contents.

When will this stop?

Impressive!

You have to give PF credit for his persistence.

He (or someone else who replicated the script, but I doubt it) either:
(a) sneaked in the rezzer so it shows as an item in group / owned by the sim owner, either by having someone in group do it, or by having a trojan in an item someone had thought was harmless
(b) dropped a land scanner that replicates itself. (which with llAllowInventoryDrop and llGiveInventory, is possible to keep rezzing, giving contents back and forth to do)

You've got to be kidding?

It may not be against TOS (or just riding the top of the TOS) to do what he is doing now, but using resources in private sims?

Is this true?

Ahahah Trojan. Ok, now that would be funny!

There should be a rule that objects can not do anything that they don't clearly state.

Did you verify this one? You probably should, it all sounds a little improbable. I mean, come on.. that's just taking this all one step too far.

Have not confirmed this, and I have to go to work. Can someone please confirm it? Thanks.

This would be against the TOS because:
(a) These self-replicate indefinitely, rather than just get spawned off something
OR
(b) It's a trojan script hidden in another script, which is against CS to my knowledge.

We can't exactly confirm it, as you never gave us a name ;P

Just check a few private sims and the locations we all know and love:
64,64,400
192,64,400
192,192,400

Here is the scoop.....

Sunday-Monday the sim in question crashed hard 2 times.. no real idea why

Monday 33 objects owned by others....returned...later in the day 68 objects owned by others ...returned.

Tuesday 29 objects owned by others....returned...55 objects later that day....Linden Involved... Cant find the objects anywhere in the sim ...Returned them. 20 mins later with only 2 people sitting in the sim 19 objects appeared...talked to them as they sat with no objects rezzed nearby.

Wednesday 119 objects owned by others..

This Sim is set to return objects in 180 mins. Everything is set to owner or group for the isle.

These objects cannot be scanned for by anything out there even the linden who helped out couldnt find them.

If it was a few objects sure it could be a box or something rezzed by someone but this is just silly.

might need to be more specific... i checked a few private sims and didn't find any lb objects

The trojan would only be against the TOS if it was harmful, seems data collection is not :/

Technically, spyware that monitors your cookies / web site usage / non-personal pieces of information isn't illegal, but there's a general consensus that it's retarded.

heh! and you question MY ethics?

if these are in fact public land scanners, as everyone keeps suggesting/guessing/pulling out their ass, why would they be on private sims, given that you can't sell the land? Wouldn't that suggest that in fact they have an entirely different purpose (assuming they have any other purpose than to get certain people riled up).

Yo Petemeister. Here's a free idea to save your rep and stop the mass freakout.
Allow people to opt out of your system.
You can do this by having people touch your little flying cubes. Then you can use llGetLandOwnerAt to find out if you're over somebody's land, and if so, llDie.

It solves the object-on-your-land problem, but not the overall wasteful processing problem.

Besides, Pete would have to redesign his algorithms to avoid parcels, then, else people around the motherships could effectively shut him down.

And you seem to imply that this is a bad thing?
The only redesigning you would need to do would be to TRAVEL anywhere, and only check owner after you have stopped.
Or, check land owner before even going anywhere. If the cubes have fixed destinations, they can avoid the whole trip since llGetLandOwnerAt works for any point in the sim.

It doesn't change the fact that this is:
(a) totally unscalable
(b) no reason to need constant scanning now that released land is public knowledge
(c) was done without ever asking the community permission or if it was a good idea; if Pete stands behind the fact that it might be useful and low-resource hogging, then he should have come out and declared their purpose from the get-go rather than hiding it like a cheating lover sneaking around the house washing the sheets
(d) it's extremely suspicious just how hard these are to detect and remove

Yep, and with good reason. Thanks for posting on the subject, Pete, as a number of us have been anxious to hear from you. What are those legal-but-horribly-impolite scanners of yours over my land doing anyway? Why are they on some islands and not others? Why do you feel entitled to have every sim on the mainland report some never-been-disclosed information to you?

If these are "merely" gathering statistics as some of your more vocal defenders have asserted, why don't you openly share the data as Cadroe or Chromal does? Why have you sent literally thousands of these to my home sim where land effectively never changes hands? Why have you responded to polite requests to remove these objects from all residents of a sim by turning them off for a little and then surreptitiously turning them back on after a little while?

Answers to these would likely make some of your more rabid detractors think you considerably more ethical than your current conduct affords.