Texture "Hosts File"

Hot on the heels of the "Impeach Bush" goodness, I have a reasonable solution to the problem.

When I use web browsers, I run using a modified hosts file, which redirects all nefarious site content (ads, spyware, unauthed cookies, etc) to the default blank page: 127.0.0.1.



Wouldn't it be nifty if we had that same feature as part of our client? Basically, the ability to define in a notecard (or similar) a list of key redirects.


Then we could just grab the key of Mr. Impeach Bush or those flashing-ads-from-hell and redirect them to a picture of fluffy bunnies or something.

And the problem would be solved. The asset server is more or less built for this sort of thing. Could be fun, ya?

Could be... but... I think the difficult part of this is not getting the feature implemented, but more like getting the key to that impeach bush texture. Remember, you can't even get the key to a texture in your own inventory if you don't have full perms on it. Having the key essentially gives you full perms.

You don't need the picture of the ad to block it from your webbrowser, just the host of the image. I think the simple thing would be is to add "Block Content" option on your Muted list. Getting Lazarus's key isn't all that hard as the Ginko controversy has proven.

5a8462b4-ecc9-4675-add6-d44b06b5b0e0 -Lazarus Divine

We have the source, all we need are the tools.

The question though is how well this would effect things. The main concern I think is with shops trying to open near these impeach bush signs (it's fairly easy to find good land for a home and these signs target shop areas).
If you block out the signs, then people who visit your shop would have to do the same or they will still see them.

HOWEVER, it happens that with the addition of p2p you can now have customers TP directly into your shop, or into an entrance area, thus meaning they don't see the big unattractive signs around your land. You just erm...have to do without windows...

Have an option to use the landowner's texture replacement preferences, so when you go to a build, you see the environment as the builder intended you to.

Kind of like the style options in browsers that let you decide to see the page the way the author designed it or to use default settings or your customs settings instead.

this could lead to several issues with vendors etc allowing this to properly work would make security holes everywhere....

I can't think of any security holes this would cause. It seems the feature would work by preventing the download of any objects 'owned' by the listed key. The only downside I can think of would be script handling, since all that is done server-side. Even though you wouldn't see the blocked objects in your viewer, they would still exist, and could still act on your avatar via scanner or push. And how would llGiveInventory() calls be handle from the ignored owner (since the suggested feature only prevents client downloads of objects/assets.)

The feature could also prevent the download of the actual agent to which the key belongs. However, that would then become a security issue, since it would allow an ignored person to be invisible, yet still have access to chat an obects of the ignorer.

I think I see what Lina might have been getting at. Say I grief you enough to get you to hit the option to stop seeing all objects I own. Then I go to your store, put out a few transparent boxes that accept money, wrap them around your vendors... Now when people come to your store and try to buy products from the affected vendors, they pay me instead. This can be done already, but having your objects not even downloaded by your intended victim means they won't even see them if they turn on "hilight transparent". They will if they own the plot and do a sweep for objects, but... that's not always the case.

Perhaps contrived, but still tricky.

575fdd7c-4439-abea-72b6-5693684cce7e

Now that the hard part is done will they implement the feature?

Thing is, all he has to do is read this forum, discover that we have his key, and he simply uploads the texture again, which gets a new UUID, then goes around and retextures his cubes....

Of course, if we keep forcing him to retexture, that may prove to be more work for him than its worth. Who knows.

You've just made a giant leap from having the key to already being able to block it.

I haven't seen anybody post a working solution for blocking it yet. If you have one let us know!

Well, doesn't the texture get cached... with the key as the name? I haven't played in my cache recently, but I thought that was it. Suppose you're able to replace the image associated with that particular key in your cache, maybe with a full-alpha texture. Then you make the file read-only. Would that do it, at least on your local level?

Well, this isn't a perfect solution, but it's one that will prevent the anti-bush signs from being cheap to operate.

Make the available build hight on land equal to the land mass. So if you have a 512m plot of land, you can build up to 512m high. If you have a 64m plot, you guessed it - 64m tall. The result is that the signs would need to be placed on larger areas of land, rendering the anti-bush operation more costly to run, and require higher tier fees.

Ultimately, the person should be banned and this line of action stopped. Free speech is fine and dandy, but this isn't the gov't telling someone what to say - we're all operating on privately owned and operated hardware. We all agreed to an AUP/ToS when signing up - and these actions should not be tolerated.

I've created a feature request for it:

http://secondlife.com/vote/index.php?get_id=851

Let's see. You specifically saw fit to take advantage of your proposal to declare one particular thing someone does "unacceptable". So I don't need to guess your motives; you've already revealed it's censorship. Good going.

And now, according to this proposal, anybody who owns the default First Land is now condemned to building something small. Of necessity, that includes all vehicles and all legit building forms.

Bye-bye, nice content-neutral balloons; bye-bye tall medieval towers.

Goodbye, all you creative SL things for which we don't even possess words to describe, but aren't meant to "grief".

Bye-bye, skyboxes-- our only means of achieving anything approaching privacy on SL short of buying your own island for $1000USD + $200USD/month, and closing it off to everyone.

All in favor, say,
"Suppression of dissent is more important than human rights!"

I can see why you don't like anti-Bush signs. I'll be sure and put up my own, so you can stop hallucinating it's just one guy who needs to be put in his place for daring to speak up. Don't forget to add my name to that list of people who need wire-tapping without a court order.

To provide a serious reply, I would say yes, this would be a wonderful step in the right direction.

However, seeing as how the positive things in SL are often manifest in the way we 'share' our digital dream, rather than divert it - the method does not solve the problem very elegantly.

I can see the day when a wall of trash would be placed out anywhere, with the argument - just replace it all!

So it runs into the scaling issue as well. However, without a better commentary, what you propose is better than the 'nothing' I have.



With the exception of declaring such extensive abuse of SL as a form of griefing, and banning such perpetrators forever, with maximum prejudice.

Will there come a time in SL when we can right-click a texture and have it blocked out from the clientside like how Firefox does it easily with AdBlock?

And in addition to "SHOW TRANSPARENT", we get a "SHOW BLOCKED"?

Maybe it could be made so that you could have a texture option button or something like that and when you click it you'd get a window full of small thumbnails of all currently visible textures and you could for each texture select to either render it, not render it or render another texture instead.

So you think that texture keys are readily available by looking in the cache directory? That seems like a very insecure method considering that if you have the texture key you basically have full rights to that texture. I haven't spent time investigating this but I seriously doubt this is the case.