Script Abstraction Layer to improve Grid Downtime

[Portion of post originally submitted on http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/09/18/second-life-grid-issues-3/]

(Regarding frequent unscheduled downtime):
To what extent could the current evolution of SL be compared to early versions of Windows which crashed frequently? Eventually something was done to make Windows more stable.
I remember reading something about a code abstraction layer between machine and user created code. Could the same architecture be adapted in SL to make it more stable, versitle, and user friendly? Maybe the same design with relation to user created scripts - whereby most scripts become outside entities querying the SL engine (if they fail they fail outside the engine - resulting in poor performance for the single user who created the code rather than the entire grid).

Just food for thought - not sure how this would be implemented.

That's already going on. Scripts in SL run in a virtual machine, which shouldn't be able to crash the actual OS on the servers.

The real problem is that some script actions are capable of exercising the servers to the point where the grid is basically useless. THat's what's really going on: the grid isn't crashing, it's just too busy and the Lindens are shutting it down to fix it.

All of the attacks I know about were based on self-replicating or massively replicating prims. What the scripting engine needs is a way to clamp down on replication. My idea was a generation counter (someone on IRC referred to it as a TTL counter - a fair comparison). Limit scripts on non-owned land to just 2 generations, and you solve most of the potential griefing problems.

The thing is, LSL runs on shared servers, and as long as people are capable of doing ANY programming on that shared server, there are going to be ways to monopolize the computing power. THat's what these attacks are all about: monopolizing the computing power. These problems can be corrected, but I haven't seen a working solution yet - and I've been watching SL for more than 2 years now.

What's "2 generations"?

2 scripts?
2 objects with scripts?
Or 2 generations of a self replicating object?

The first two I'm against and the third you have no way of detecting. And if this thread is in responce to the grid attacks this last week, guess what? NONE of them took out the entire grid like the grid attack of the same nature back a few months ago before the Grey Goo Fence was built by Andrew Linden (piece of code that limted the rate at which objects could rez more objects, the rate is something like 240 calls within 6 seconds. I think the limit was lowered, but I'm not going to read through the 6 page thread on it).
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If it wasn't for that fence I think the attacks this week would have crippled the entire grid. I however was unaffected. With the exception of turning off scripts for a few minutes, I never knoticed.