land scanners part the fourth

they won't, but eh...

I sincerely hope this is not true. Because if this is true, then that would mean Profoky Neva is right about something. Gawd please don't let that come to pass.

It would also make me think again about the long term viability of SL. Not because there is a connection, but because that would be a sign of stupidity on Linden's part, and SL will probably self distruct if Linden is stupid.

Buster

While there has been discussion about impact on sim performance, I have yet to see any comment on possible impact on the asset server. Given several million calls to llRezObject(), I wonder if the recent asset server freak-outs are related to the scanner operation.


Not really. As others have already said, I'm unhappy with a policy that is based on percieved intent. How could anti-spam laws distinguish between ethical and unethical emails? They can't, so they are written based on actions and behavior, not intent.

I am flabbergasted at how mild the response from LL has been over this ongoing incident. I know that many reactions from residents have arguably been excessive, but I think LL doesn't understand the potential scale of the downside. I have heard rumors that since LL has given the OK to write grid-wide, self-replicating scanner networks, several LSL coders are working on their own versions to release publicly, so everyone can have one. Even if a scanner drains only 0.1% of a sim's performance, what happens when there are thousands of them? What happens to the asset server? How long will it take LL to pick up the pieces and put SL back together again?

I hope that is not the case.

If I read between the lines correctly, the way people would "show" them wrong would be an adolescent gesture, akin to proving a person can die if one bleeds from multiple wounds, when the complaint is not having received a band-aid.

Those of us who care more about getting rid of the damned objects than putting egg on the Linden’s collective face will work with the opportunity presented to us:



It might not be exactly what many, even most would wish for, but it is an opportunity nonetheless. We may work with it, or we may pout. Our choice.

I would also point out that *planning* to show them, and succeeding, could well put them squarely in violation of TOS 5.1(v) if intent can be demonstrated:

“take any actions or upload, post, e-mail or otherwise transmit Content that contains any viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, cancelbots or other computer programming routines that are intended to damage, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data or personal information”

Note that Robin specifically mentions no evidence of foul intent. Even if they accept the argument that the scanners constitute a virus, intent has not been demonstrated to their satisfaction -- conceivably a reason why 5.1 has not been invoked by them. A person who plans to show them wrong may well be in a different situation than what exists now for the owner of the rampant scanners.

The vast majority of the community have never *heard* of these things.

Some people on the forums are winding themselves up about them.

Never confuse the forums with the actual community.

you don't need to read between the lines. just read some of the other threads. i think it was quite explicit.

how this will be shown to be the case might be informative. it will be hard to say that a low sim use scanner with no nefarious intent is a problem without creating a double-standard or exhibiting blatant favoritism.

the reason many people haven't been scanning is because they didn't think it was ok with ll. ll has basically said it's ok as long as it's not nefarious and doesn't use too many resources. there is a lot of data out there that's worth mining, and as more people mine legitimately for useful data using scanners per ll's current requirements/statements, it will be a thorny issue for ll to shut down one scanner network without shutting them all down.

i don't think that this was the best door to open, but eh... it's open now.

Thank you, you've put my mind at ease. In a community of intelligent, creative, lightsabre toting techno-geeks, it's easy to project the worst into the situation.

i would have to disagree with both of these points... first, the assertion that they do not have nefarious intent assumes that nefarious intent is sole-ly limited to blasting people out of the sim or attaching reproductive parts, and okay it does neither of those... i would call stealth data gathering on other people's property pretty nefarious though.. and i would say the creator probably agrees given how hard he made to locate the objects, and how hard it is to see what they *do*

on the second point, that might be true for one, but how about when a sim is along one of their 'routing' paths and you end up with 16-20 of them coming through at once, once every minute... forever... it really does bounce framerates, but also the user updates, when the flock of them goes by, and it is very very frustrating that we cannot stop this from happening...

sure okay one person doing it.. what if this gives several other people ideas.. now 5 people are doing it.. or 10 people... its something that needs to be stopped, before it gets out of hand and everyone in SL had to deal with viral networks all the time

the best analogy i can give is if when you go home after work, you find a stock broker sitting at your desk day-trading on your computer. While yes technically he isn't *damaging* anything... you would probably have a very legitimate reason to call the police on him anyway because as someone who walks in to find a stranger doing things in your house.. there is no way *YOU* can know what his intentions are and given that its your property in the first place, you are the one paying the mortgage every month, he sure as hell shouldn't have let himself in uninvited.

How about if we had an automatic 'unsubscribe' request object?

once per unique object that enters your land, if you do not want it there, it simply sends a message to the objects owner, asking them to remove your land from their autonomous object movement. You could even code it so it would not trigger for vehicles, or manually run attached scanners, or scanners on anyone elses' land..

all this would do is if something enters *your* land, without your permission, it would notify the owner of that object that you wish to no longer allow its use of the land and resources you are paying for.

whats nice is that the 'impact' would be relatively minimal... think like spam email... if someone sends you one, you have the option (hopefully) of responding with an unsubscribe request... if they send you a second one.. well you can request to unsubscribe to that one too..

if in the course of a day they send you 10,000 emails, well you can send them back 10,000 unsubscribe requests.. and if that particular spammer does not like RECIEVING that many unsubscribe requests.. well.. he can always just stop sending you spam in the first place can't he?

there's no upside in this for the owner of the satellite network. often times in order to get anywhere, they need to pass through your land even if they aren't going go scan your land.

My efforts can gladly be done through alternate means if it means that the greater good for SL is served, and the scanners in question here are viral. I am willing to loose functions in my system to gain peace of mind that my home doesn't have 1000 objects an hour overhead.

well theres two basic cases here... one, you are assuming this cannot be coded so that legitimate low use (say once per day) objects can not be targeted by this (i believe they can be exempted via code)

secondly: a legitimate satelite fly by would make for worst case *one* opt out request, not 10,000... which is much easier to deal with... and if you as the landowner so chose, a white list of objects could easily be made.

Perhaps an awareness campaign in the WA?

ooh and incase anyone's counting here are the rough numbers of how many of these are rezed:

roughly 400 mainland sims
every sim gets one of these rezed per minute


do the math and thats 576,000 of these objects made per day
every day

and this isn't a problem? this isn't impacting the asset server (since each one needs an asset definition), this isn't impacting the SL->world conduits? since each of these obviously phones home at least once

576,000, assumign 400 sims, of these are created a day. (behavior explained to me as: how many mainland sims there are x 1 per minute x 60 minutes an hour x 24 hours a day)
Each sends an e-mail... so I'm told.

.....

No wonder the asset server's having problems x.x
No wonder e-mail and RPC are dodgy x.x

Anyone who wants a scanner which can pinpoint these things to see if they are above your land, (its the only way yer really gonna see'm readily) just IM me in world and i will send one to you (i'm releasing them to public domain, so please feel free to spread them around as well)

Not quite. These more than likely only email when open land is found. In that case it may or may not be one per cube opened.

yer assumin the only thing this scans for is public land... i think this would be a bit of a case of swattin a fly with an ak-47 if that were the case.. i duno what else it does, but its probably safe to say it is 'data gathering' whatever that data is

in any case if this doesn scream changin 'release land' to 'release land to governor linden' just on general principles, i duno what will

Nice try on their part to find the usual escape route not to ban someone.
But no, it's not specified anywhere. This makes LBv2 a TOS violation anyway. When talking about computer related products there is no difference between in world and outside world. SL is nothing else than a computer program and LSL scripts are nothing else than computer programs. This makes LBv2 a FULL FLEDGED computer virus. The fact that it affects only one program (Second Life) Doesn't change this.
LL should abide to their own TOS and ban both the virus and the ones spreading it.



NO need to demonstrate any intent. The definition of Virus is independent from foul intent, some are just a silly and irresponsible way for a teen to gain antention and some are not even damaging (the mcAfee listing is FULL of low threat virus that don't damage the computer in any sensible way more than occupying a small portion of system resources). This dopesn't mean they aren't viruses and doesn't depenalyze their spreading. The TOS itself doesn't specify intent, just the spreading of a virus, that can come out of irresponsibility, not only out of foul intent. And even admnitting that pete fats has no foul intention (thing that i would personally exclude, since he perfectly knows what he is doing) he IS being terribly rude and irresponsible.
5.1 paragraph V has not been invoked by the lindens probably out of their fear of banning someone, whatever the reason.
But Article 5.1 paragraph V of the terms of service HAS been violated, both in it's letter and in it's spirit and it's LL's duty to enforce it.

And again, before someone tells me that this would ban many legitimate and useful satellites: no, it wouldn't. A legitimate and useful satellite doesn't need to avoid return at all costs, nor it needs to self replicate, nor it needs to be hidden.
If you want you can simply get rid of it by clicking Return (Uninstall?). Exactly the difference between a Virus and a normal utility program.
Banning Pete and his land scanners due to 5.1 paragraph V wouldn't ban any legitimate and useful function of LSL, would simply ban a VIRUS.

I've got one of my beneficent counter-spy satellites coded but as yet unreleased that detects the "lb v2" scanners and periodically drops to ground level to chat to people present that there are viral scanners present in the area and give a URL for further information.

These objects conform to all of the proposals I've seen for begnign wandering scanners:

1. they are visible
   
2. they are not temp-on-rez and therefore deletable by landowners
   
3. they are not self replicating
   
4. they operate at altitute but are phantom (non-collidable) and high visibility
   
5. they dispense a notecard explaining their purpose upon touch
   
6. they don't place continal rez burden on the swampped asset server
   
7. they don't use the LL e-mail servers or inter-sim or inter-world comms
   
8. they have readable scripts so that no one need take my word for it
   

Unfortunately, policy statements have been so ambiguously worded that I'd likely be in violation of the ToS/CS in some way and as I'm not part of the FIC, subject to banning.

Maybe I'll have my cat open an account. It's 3 RL years old, how many is that in "people" years?

this is the stunning aspect of the whole affair. people are not going to be comfortable knowing that hundreds of invisible, temp on rez objects might be replicating over their land at any time. that's always and forever going to be perceived as creepy and unacceptable. the more people that find out about them, and confirm their existance, the bigger ll's problem becomes.

this is a no brainer. but then so is chucking telehubs in the trash and making the welcome area invitation only. organizations die slowly & painfully when they succumb to "hypothetical loss syndrome." it boils down to not wanting to implement changes that will vastly benefit the young, growing community because it might just make a couple of older people mad enough to leave and never come back.

on the up side. cory can accumulate reams of data from this incident. we might see papers about it as early as the summer conferances.

Mmm, that's only about 15. Cue 'no minors' flaming, now.

"So far we have seen no evidence that these objects have any nefarious intent, nor do they degrade server performance (although I realize you may not agree with this assessment)."

Do we get this guarantee for EVERY single such potentially malicious grid-wide scheme, and in a timely fashion? Or every time we see one, do we have to beat on the forums until we get a response? I remind you my first post of this nature was months ago, when I found the Tringo land areas being scanned.

And doesn't forcing objects onto your land, even if you have forbidden it, constitute malicious?

Sorry Robin, your post is attempting to circumvent all the issues other than the ones outlined by your questionably applicable policy. The issue is much larger than whether the objects should be able to enter your parcel.

No player, or group of players, should be allowed to write an application that utilizes the entire grid. I can not believe this was ever the intent of the designers of SL. Never have I seen such potential for choking the grid.

I AM FORMALLY STATING, and INFORMING LINDEN, that I FORBID THESE OBJECTS ON MY LAND. They are designed to be nearly impossible to block and difficult to delete. They are being FORCED on me and I DO NOT WANT IT. I will file an abuse report EVERY time I see one because they use my land without my permission and that is not allowed.

I will follow with an abuse report, although I may as well whistle dixie. Thank you.

This is not directed at anyone in particular...

but I have a hard time believing these things do not degrade server performance. I'll admit to be fairly new to LSL, but work on retail systems during the day. When we have a scenario where we have a large number of short running jobs, we tend to make 1 never ending job (until IPL) monitor to prevent the 1000s of quick running jobs going through the system level job initialization/creation and then the associated clean up routines.

So I start to wonder how much overhead is being used to rez these 100's (haven't witnessed this, just read) of objects and then destroy every 5 secs (also read from other posts). Even if there was no embedded script, I would imagine the frequency and quantity would seem to have a noticable affect.