land scanners part the fourth

Give it a coupla weeks when more of us start doing it. Hundreds? Try thousands.

You don't actually own the land. Technically, it is "allocated to you" and you have a subscription to use the land according to Linden's land use policy, which is subject to change. (i.e., you pay "Land Use Fees"

Because Linden is trying to simulate an economy, it is reasonable to speak in terms of "property rights" when trying to influence policy. Unfortunately, your formal declaration doesn't help you under RL law, becuase you don't have the rights you are asserting -- you have only the rights that Linden grants you under their license to use SL (i.e., the TOS).

Buster

And indeed, you may as well whistle dixie.


People forget: You don't own any land in SL. It's all rented. Server resources, and everything to go along with it are still owned by LL. You pay a monthly fee to hold 'land', which includes no resource guarantees.

And above the ban height, that's all public access. Anyone can go there, anytime. You rent the land, not the airspace.

If they say the scanners are OK, the scanners are OK. Even if it does screw with your land, or use resources.

You don't like it, I don't like it, but this has been given a green light.

(And don't think that this post means that I like or agree with it. I'm just being realistic about this.)

Absolutely false. You can return items even if they are at 10000 meters over your land. You rent the land AND the airspace.

Yes, but the rights that you get by "renting the land AND the airspace" are defined by Linden. It isn't real land.

This changes absolutely noting on the fact that LBv2 is a virus and as such has to be dealt with.

this may be ll's definition of "nor do they degrade server performance".

also, your number may be off as these are temp on rez objects. it's unlikely they live long enough to reach their final destination, so they probably need to regenerate.

This all sounded to me like a bunch of hooey.

And then eltee gave me a scanner.

Reproducing with furious abandon directly above my parcel in Kaili was lb v2. New instances of the object sprang up with alarming regularity. I moved around my neighboring sims and in each, I detected more objects.

You're telling me hundreds or thousands of objects rezzing every minute of every day doesn't create a drag on resources? What if there were fifty people running this system instead of one? Five hundred people?

The tenacity of lb v2 is something that must be seen to be believed. I look forward to a resolution from Linden that fairly restores order to the systems pervaded by these objects. As it stands, a single person is using the resources of the entire grid every minute of every day.

Doesn't seem Kosher to me.

Now THAT I agree with.

the only thing that could be off in my calculation is the exact number of mainland (non void) sims. For each sim, there will be one scanner per minute, rezzed, somewhere, every minute, forever. That is a fact. Whether they get there or not is a matter of debate but i think they do.

The reason for it is when jumping to another sim, a temp on rez object's temp status counter is probably re-set so as long as they can move fast enough (and they do) they will always make it to their target sims (and they do)

ooo you're probably right. i'd forgotten about that. i'll test that later.

as far as i can tell, the status counter is not re-set. but i was moving the objects manually, might be different if they move themselves. also, i didn't move them far... just over the sim border. when i do this the key stays the same, and the script doesn't restart, and the on_rez event doesn't trigger. however, if i create four temp on rez objects and move two of them across the sim border they die at the same time, but at a different time than the two that did not move.

if you edit a temp on rez object's script, it loses it's temp on rez status and still stick around, but the temp on rez flag is still set, when you take it into inventory and put it back out it will behave as temp on rez.

i wonder if you give an object an inventory object if this will cause similar behavior, it might cause the temp on rez status become altered.

One of the reasons we didn't give land owners absolute control over the infinitely tall column above their land was to open up the skys to travelling scripted objects. Granted, vehicles with sitting avatars, and scripted attachments are special cases and could be given access through infinitely tall colums of "no outside scripts" however there are many legitimate and interesting applications of drones that would then be eliminated.

I don't even know what the cool drone applications would ultimately be but I can imagine a couple: robotic messanger deliveries that can navigate across the entire grid or "heat seeking" missiles for ariel dogfights. It is difficult for the system to tell the difference between an "lb v2" and "carrier pigion v5.3".

Right now there is a mismatch between the rights landowners have over the column over their land. The total primitive count on the parcel reaches to the sky, however the "no scripts" setting does not. I suspect that mismatch contributes to some people's desire to demand absolute control over their column extended to all heights. It sounds like that mismatch will have to be stated more clearly as a property of parcels or perhaps completely eliminated. When it comes to elimination either the max height of static objects would have to be brought down below the limit of the "no outside scripts" ceiling, or the ceiling would have to be raised.

One of the many things we are looking into for the next major overhaul of the scripting engine is to be able to allocate script execution resources in a simulator based on land ownership. Of course, we probably wouldn't tie 100% of the script execution resorces to the owned land, since we would want to set asside some portion of it to run scripts however such a feature would gaurantee landowners to some % of the total execution pool.

The per sim load from the "lb v2" drones is actually rather small. The fact of the matter is that an avatar with hoochie hair and a jetpack burns dwarfs the local load of a stream of lb drones... by a LOT. Similarly a pile of prims that constanly changes color makes the load from a high-altitude drone inconsequential. Incidentally these are examples of things that are currently more expensive than they should be and we'll be optimizing them in the future.

There IS a potential "tragedy of the commons" when it comes to global CPU resources, however it has not yet become the monster that some people fear. On a global scale the lb scanners are probably eating up a disproportionate amount of script execution, but compared to the global CPU pool available the lb scanners aren't noticably affecting useablity of the grid. Of course, if everybody were to make identical scanners then clearly the grid would be burried under the load -- the tragedy is definitely a possibility. The LL developers have discussed how to cap a user's global CPU resources and we haven't yet come up with the solution, however we'll probably figure out a good way to do it eventually.

Finally, as far as I know the lb scanners are querying public information. Their function would be made obsolete by providing a more efficient way to obtain that information. We're looking into whether we'll be able to provide easier access to grid information.

Thank you very much for commenting on this issue, Andrew. It's great to know you're listening.

I think the point you mention about global usage is the one that causes the most significant umbrage on the part of most people troubled by lb v2. For 99.9% of users, their impact on global sim usage is like this:

- Demand localized to a single server for attachments and streaming assests and all the other goodies that come from having presence on the grid.

- Long-term scripts and objects that reside on the user's property. These are localized in the servers for which users pay to access land.

In total: Most folks are using the resources of one to a dozen servers at once. More for business owners and huge land holders, perhaps.

The perpetrators behind lb v2, on the other hand, are using the resources of 400 simulators at once.

People have paid for using their hoochie hair and jetpack at their points of presence -- one simulator at any given time. Some have also paid for their use of a chunk of simulator. How much does it cost to use the entire grid? What's the pricing plan on that? Does everyone get to do it?

I understand that's it not easy to create an artificial system for protecting against objects like we're talking about without also nailing benign objects. But I don't think that matters.

The community has stated overwhelmingly that they do not approve of this unauthorized use of resources for which they have paid. It's Linden's house. If someone starts peeing on their carpet, that person may be asked to leave.

We know the culprit here. What's stopping people from asking the perpetrator to desist until a more effective system exists for apportioning simulator resources?

Andrew, I think that many of the people in these "landscanner" threads realize that there *are* legitimate uses for drones and unattached, scripted objects travelling through other people's property. The main problem with these "lb" objects is that they *aren't* travelling through other people's parcels. Our parcels are their destination. They're coming to our land, not once in awhile to map the land, not every week or couple of days to see what the land ownership breakdown of SL is, but all the time, every day, as often as they can. The fact that we can't ban temp-on-rez objects is, I imagine, in order to permit some interesting and as-yet unknown uses of LSL to function. Sort of like permitting people to use the sidewalk space on your property, or not making a fuss when someone turns around in your driveway. I'd have a big problem though, if someone managed to come up with a way to camp out on the sidewalk in front of my house and constantly take photographs of it, or leave their car permanently in my driveway.

Even if these people are not using up significant resources, they're overstaying their welcome (at best). These temp-on-rez objects are based on the idea of, "Well, I'm only here for a short time", but they spawn a new object before dying, thus bypassing the built-in "hospitality" of the populace.

If it's OK with LL then, I suppose there's nothing that I can do except profess a profound interest in the publicly-available land information of Pete Fats' and possibly Schwansen Schlegel's properties, and talk to Tcoz Bach about one of his new satellites. Thanks.

Andrew: What i read in your post is a lot of "will" "would" and "maybe" and again the whole point is completely missed.

the examples you bring of items that can cause more server load of lbv2 (still to be demonstrated btw, i am VERY dubious than hoochie hair can cause more server load than MILLIONS of lbv2 rezzing and derezzing over the WHOLE grid) are things that:
Option 1: Come and go, don't stay 24/7 consuming server resources all over the grid and if a land owner doesn't want them on his land can either return them or ban the user from his land.
Option 2: Are owned by the owner of hhis land, that PAYS for that land and has every right to use server sources.
The comparation between such items and LBv2 does NOT stand. They simply can't be compared due to the two EXTREME differences mentioned above.

In any case the consumption of server resources caused by lbv2 shouldìn't even be a point of discussion because of the FACT that lbv2 IS a virus (due to the elements stated in a previous post in this same thread that NO ONE has been able to deny so far) and has such has to be treated according to article 5.1 paragraph V of the Terms of Service.
The fact a virus is written on LSL does NOT make it less a virus, just a virus written in an unusual language.

#1 there is no perpetrator as no crime has been committed.

The community hasn't stated anything overwelmingly....the forums have and at best thats 10% of the users.

Also in almost every sim is Linden owned land who's to say they are using your resources considering that the Linden land should have resources posted to it as well.

If these self-replicators want to hang out only over the roads, and the Lindens want to permit that use of the roads, that's their affair. But the Lindens had better permit it for everyone who wants to release phantom plagues upon the grid. Such as it is, these are enjoying free transit upon all sorts of parcels, Linden and not. edit: there's also no way for the owners of these parcels to prevent further invasion. That's as close to tresspass as I think we can come in SL.

In any case, the existence of Linden land is red herring. If I code up an identical system and give it to everyone I meet, soon all simulators will be lagged by five hundred self-replicating objects from five hundred different people. If I'm a griefer and I leave a sim-clogging scripted object on some land next to your parcel, I can't excuse that behavior by subsidizing the resource usage with the Linden road a few m2 away.

What concerns me andrew more than anything is the fact that as a land-owner i have no way of preventing someone from making my sim a 'waypoint' sim for some hypothetical system, and running thousands of objects a minute through it. Now This person has basically arbitrarily dampened my own ability to use my land, and there is nothing i can do about it... even if i owned an entire mainland sim there is nothing i can do to say that i don't want unknown objects spying on myself, my guests, or my land.

Except potentially asking the person to stop.. which is where i get interested in potentially coding a resource.

If someone builds a house over my land, say even 500m up... i have a right to delete it, as it is using resources i am paying for.

Now lets say someone who keeps building that house over my land, even if i ask them to stop... what can i do? i can keep deleting their build.

Now lets say this person is a clever coder, and wants to get around my tricks and makes a system where he continuously creates his house over my land every 60 seconds 4 sims over, and then flies it over to his chosen 'homestead' over my land, every 60 seconds to replace the existing one there...

for all intents and purposes what LL is saying there is absolutely nothing i can do to prevent this, and it is perfectly within that persons rights to do so, regardless of the fact i am the one who is paying the big bucks and trying to run a large SL build...

Something about that doesn't sit right...

I understand from a coding standpoint it would be difficult to diferentiate between a relay object network, and a scanning network like this one. However from a disciplinaty or arbitrational standpoint it would be very simple.

Make a judgement call, require people who want to use the whole network to pay a fee to LL to do so (or to the landowners of the sims they are using) and then make sure what they are doing is above board, and is not in this particular case, using the combined resources of the grid of SL to line one person's pockets with public land.

Given the relative rareness of the networks (probably only a handful would ever run at any time) and their potential for massive abuse, i think regulation of them is probably doable, and more than called for. If pete wanted to pay $5 of my tier fee every month for using my simulator, then okay you know that would not be so distressing... or even if he was simply required to ask permission, or agree to limit the persistance of his network over people's land who do not want it running... etc

as it is now i see *NO* difference between these scanners and the x number of emails for \/i@gr4 i get every day in my in box... both are perfect examples of greedy people lining their pockets on my time or my dime.

So there, Andrew has commented; lb v2 will stay, and scanners as such, are condoned.

I said this a long time ago. This kind of thing is absolutely condoned by LL, and any land owner is powerless to stop it.

I hope someone will release a scanner with similar function to lb v2. If Pete gets free, easy money, I want in, too. At the very least, a 1000% increase in competition will dampen the allure of swarming phantoms.

http://secondlife.com/land/index.php

All public land scanners are now moot and should be considered either resource hogs, or in this case, TOS violating viral code, as all public land in the game will be displayed here

I have a better idea. It seems to me that land owners were never supposed to own the column of air to infinity above their land just so air traffic couldn't be impeded in any way...The land tools support this because they only work to certain heights.

I don't own the airspace over my house at 400ft so make it the same way in Sl. All land is yours including air space up to 400m after that it belongs to the lindens.

It's over. Huh.

Spreading a virus IS a crime, and lbv2 IS a virus.



Having 10% (actually even 1%) of the population available is the dream of any statistic analyst.




It's still VERY early to say that.



Perfectly stated.