land scanners part the fourth

Read between the lines, Buster. LL has stated time and time again they don't discuss future features until preview, with the exception of some controversial changes.

D'you see them occupying every single spot in the sky?

No feature needed. Just tell the author to take them down.

On balance, I'd rather have a bias towards allowing things rather than a bias towards disallowing things. Freedom. I'm for that.

....so the resource clogging now moves to the web site as people set their browser to reload the page every X seconds. Lovely. I guess it is less of a resource hog (unless each load of the page forces a query of a database which slows something down in-world).

IMNSHO, buying public land is a losing proposition anyway. So much of the grid is for sale, it's going to be hard, if not impossible to move the land before the tier fee eats up your entire profits on the "deal". Even if the public land concerned is greatly desired by the neighbor(s), I do hope they'd have the good sense to let the land scanner eat a few months of tier before buying it - if ever.

Well, instead of dozens of sats scanning every sim every minute or so, now it only does 1 transaction per release. This solution is scalable. The satellites are not.


Not really. With the average land price at 4L/m and LL saying it wants to keep prices stable and possibly slightly rising, then someone can still make 100% profit and sell for 50% of going rate.

maybe Pete refuses to explain himself because he's already been tried and found guilty by the forums. When Ingrid and I talked to Pete he was very nice and spent an hour testing the scanner in boardman with us. The results I posted and got basically bashed saying I didn't know what I was talking about ...these objects are resource and sim killers...seems the testing Andrew did backed up what I and others found to be true.

Uhh.. at a median value of 6.25 l$, somehow I suspect making a profit on 1 l$ land is going to be pretty easy!

However, the land page has terrible lag. Anyone with a scanner will always get there first.

Talen, read andrew linden's response. It recognizes the real issue at heart and explains how SL is addressing them.

I did read Andrews posts especially noting how the objects are negligable to sim performance and don't affect the asset server like everyone thought it did.

Just to interject my opinion!

I don't think the impact (or even the purpose) of these scanners on a sim are really the issue in my mind. My issue is with skirting the rules, abusing the rights of land owners and the "public trust".

It may be fine for Pete to do this, as one person doing this grid-wide may not be a problem. But imagine a dozen people doing it...two dozen...a hundred! Why buy plots of land in every sim? Don't buy land at all, and make your system work off the collective grid. That's just not right.

If you can quote him trying, do so.


I'm not going to rehash the thread for you again and again... a number of us have laid out a number of serious, legitamite concerns of which, and the only the very least of one of them is the current effect on the sims.

If you need more rebuttal than that, please just re-read the 50 or so pages of stuff. 95% of it is extremely civil, and it's all there. You can even skim through and just look for bulleted lists and that will do, too.

Because it's a virus, and as such against the TOS.



It's interesting on how the FEW defenders of those items try to minimize the numbers or in different cases the experience of the ones against them.



Error, they stated there is no proof they are malicious (there is a sensible difference), and about the lightweight, Andrew's opinion of lightweight seems to be something that doesn't single handedly bring the bgrid down. A bit broad as a definition.
Anyway even if it's not heavyweight or malicious it's still a grid wide virus, and as such against the TOS.



A virus doesn't necessarily need to occupy every simgle byte in a system to be a virus.

I still have to find someone able to deny it's viral nature.

Don't worry, it will all be clear soon. Someone will write a virus that will replicate into every land parcel in the grid under the pretense of counting blue triangles. At the appointed time it will stop counting blue triangles and start dropping prims and C4 bombs, kicking off every user, returning every prim on every parcel to its owner, and crashing every sim. When it comes back up we'll have a landscape strewn with default size cubes.

Then Linden will outlaw viruses.

i agree this is roughly viral in nature, not in the ebola kill ya in 24 hours kinda virus... but more like a really really nasty long drawn out cold that you just can't seem to shake off. The fact there is no way for a land owner to specifically opt out of this system despite the fact they may ethically object to what pete is doing, or how he is doing it.. is something i find rather disturbing.

I sent a letter to philip, and when i get home tonight i will repost it here for everyone to read...

essentially what i am asking for is not that these systems be outright banned, what i am asking for is an official policy on best practices for these systems so that a few simple rules are enforced on grid-wide projects...

essentially the following:

1) projects must have tangable benefit to SL as a whole, or the people whos resources are being used. (mapping satelites with public databases, commerce delivery systems, messaging networks, etc okay... land scanning for private gain, not)

2) for every sim 'included' in a project, at least one landowner must sign onto the project. If no land-owner in sim X agrees to a project, then that project must have a way of not including simX (this is a no brainer assuming the system actually can give benefits to people who agree to let it use their land honestly, as Ice Brodie's project has shown)

3) Projects must be subject to best practices guidelines for simulator usage. A grid-wide system that would work, checking an email every 10 seconds, should not be allowed if it is concieved with 10 script timers all 0.1 seconds each

4) all objects involved in this project must meet basic view and informational guidelines. They must not be hiden/invisible/impossible to select etc etc. They must be descriptive, and have a means of providing for landowners whos property they use a means to determine a) what their purpose is, and b) what resources they use (email relay, object movement, etc) c) they must provide a simple killswitch means of self-termination via either the owner, or LL, should a problem cause the creator to loose control of the network


Any system that wants to use grid-wide resources would need to be reviewed by LL (and honestly this isn as big a deal as it sounds, i mean given there prolly will only be a few of these ever running concurrently), and anyone attempting to run an un-authorized system *SHOULD* be subject to punitive/disciplinary action by LL via either TOS or CS


i mean seriously guys... this is a great idea, and can lead to some amazing things in the future, *IF* LL steps up to the plate and understands their responsibility to regulate these networks, because as Pete Fats has shown, the land-owners of SL are completely powerless to do anything against these forms of networks themselves, when they are this maliciously coded.


-edit-

to clarify #2, either a small in world gui listing grid-wide projects that you could 'sign your sim on to' with a simple button press (think seti@home) or to start mebbe just a simple forum section with a listing for each project, and desired sims, that people could post in and pledge their sims to

More likely, they'll decide that that "c4" virus is a ToS violation and ban the creator. Not everyone can be a Fetid Inner Pete Fats/Fate/Few/Foo.

Basically, yes. (Define "spot". Obviosly they are not contiguous.)

Technically then your cars are a virus as well. Everytime one is purchased it replicates itself to the new owner....they are used across the grid using resources and more copies are made daily. How many have infected the grid so far....

You are just one car maker....how many are there? How many cars are there grid wide?

My god we have a car pandemic eating up valuable sim ...no...grid wide resources. We must get rid of this VIRUS and ban its makers. My god people Vehicles will bring down the grid we must ban them all now. Next we go after Tringo...god knows how many of those tringo boards have replicated over the last month.

Hmmm this is more serious than I thought it seems LL is spreading a VIRUS as well...everyday it replicates itself in the welcome area....these things are called Avatars and they are replicating at a very high rate and seem to do the most damage of any of these objects...If you have 20 or more of these objects ( read VIRUS) in your sim the sim resources begin to crawl. I demand that LL cease and desist making this virus and unleashing it onto the grid. At last count there were somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000 of these avatars across the grid.

Please save the reductio ad absurdum for people who know how to do it. Supplies are limited.

Actually, even if i always minimized this thing about the FIC, i can't shake off the thought that if Pete Fats was a newbie and not a charter member here since the beta he would have banned alongside with his lbv2 on the first day of this thread.

Anyway since it's viral nature LBv2 is a violation of the TOS and needs to be removed.

LOL your defence of LBv2 is getting every day more ridiculous Talen, unfortunately we are not so cluesless like you would wish to be able to win at forums

1: My cars don't self replicate, they replicated by their users, exactly like any utility product that gets installed in new systems according to their owner's will.
2: They are fully returnable, exactly like any utility program the system user can click "uninstall" to get rid of them, exactly like an utility program. and when you return one it won-t automatically be replaced by another after 15 seconds.

Conclusion: My cars are an utility program, LBv2 is a virus and needs to be returned due to the TOS.

Actually you are quite clueless. You have no clue what this object does or how it works and just like human nature you would rather kill what you fear and have no understanding of.

I see you failed to critique the avatar virus .....nasty lil virus it is too....they can't be deleted and they can't be removed from your property because they can hover over the ban height. I hope LL does something about this soon at the very least they should explain in detail exactly what each one of them does as they seem to work independantly from eachother ...although I have seen some grouping characteristics.

Cant be removed? There are security scripts to do this. If you need help Im sure someone will sell you one. And you can almost guarentee they wont be back every 45 secs.

So since i don't understand computer viruses i should let them roam my system?
LOL. So pathetic.



I didn't fail to, i didn't even bother to, since it was an utterly ridiculous point. But looks like Annah had mercy of your cluelessness and explained it to you.
Anyway avatar are manned beings so they are not even comparable to viruses.

This logic (along with the references to witch hunting) reminds me of an old Monty Python skit.

Logic:

1. Witches burn, and wood also burns so therefore witches are made out of wood.
2. Wood floats, so therefore witches also float.

Conclusion:

If someone floats, then they are a witch.

The pathetic part is your classification of these things as viruses and calling for them and their creator to be banned. Then stating that the only reason the person hasn't been banned is because he is an old timer ( FIC) which is laughable at best for many reasons.

Utterly ridiculous yet avatars fit your very definition of a virus to a tee and as much as you and Annah would like to believe a security script can get rid of an avatar there are ways around security scripts.