Histogram-based automated simulator parceling

Why is LL even parceling things by hand?
It doesn't make sense.
I mean, the ground mesh is a height map defined by a normal image isn't it?
Can't you come up with some algorithm based on the image histogram?
Things it could do:
- recognize a mountain and parcel off the top
- ditto for an island
- distribute the undesirable steep bits evenly among several parcels
- ditto for water areas

There's all sorts of possibilities here. Image processing is fairly advanced. I mean, we can recognize faces and track their position in real time. If you are using a laser pointer, we can detect the color change and track it in real time, and using OCR, we can even extract text you underline or circle around, so it's effectively possible to copy a piece of text from a book through your webcam instead of a scanner.
Surely we can come up with something to automatically parcel the terrain

What's wrong with building into a hill, or sharing the top of a mountain?

I find a steep area highly desireable, as it allows me to build vertical without it being an eyesore... it also provides a great deal of privacy.

I do like the idea of basing parceling by what sized parcels already exist (maybe as a friendly modification - over 1 month)

Hiro, the cruel reality is that people who arent part of the mainstream will always get screwed over by the rest of us
If you read the economic town hall transcript you will see that we are heading towards a world where the simulator is the basic unit of land, and LL never sells anything smaller than that at auction.
Welcome to SL v2.0, where Land Baroning is officially sponsored by LL.

Well, if this is true, consider the history of how the WWW did and does do IP address / domain name handing out.

I think it's logical for LL to want to reduce the overhead of spending time parceling and dealing with multiple transactions. It also may keep out the riff-raff land speculators - people who can afford smaller parcels and want a quick buck for little work.

But also, think forward, the whole-prim auction may become a necessity. As SL grows and becomes more commercial, it becomes impractical for companies to purchase anything less than one sim. $200/month is cheap for almost any business, and there is no dealing with crappy neighbors.

At the same time, I think LL needs to tighten some land baroning loopholes:
1. Make transactions public.
2. No week-long land-claiming time for auctions.
3. Freeze auctioning for people who have outstanding land to claim.
4. Suspend / remove auctioning priveleges for people who abuse the system.

The fact remains that land can be split automatically, and so there is no need for LL to favor the deeply pocketed. Heck, you dont need people to manually assign you an IP and some bandwidth, do you?
Good points on the auction system though. But that's not very relevant to my original post :\

I'd love to start buying sims and reselling them.. Could do some serious land developing.

Philip said at the town hall that LL is not going to do anything to make SL more restrictive on land auctions. He seems to want the economy to treat everyone the same, even rich people who do land speculation, and that means none of those "loopholes" will be closed.