Privacy Mode (Make yourself invisible to scripts)

You have the floor, what folks, what conditions?

Oh, not this again.

(a) It's a contentious issue. For those of us who never meet somebody with a "weapon" (as opposed to somebody who just griefs by rezzing stuff or bumping or being rude, or uses a popgun or freebie device - everyone I have encountered personally) this is just irritating and interferes with the normal, expected operation of scripts, breaking existing content without really interfering with griefers, who do whatever they have to to irritate you. It's not like stopping push, sensors are _eyes_.

But, more significantly:

(b) It's an LSL change which isn't an overwhelming necessity. By "overwhelming" I mean something like "llGiveInventory should return a value based on whether it succeeds or not, seeing as how it so often fails". Anything contentious and not overwhelming is just not going to get done. Even the overwhelming stuff may well not get done. Even the serious damn bugs don't get fixed. So proposing it is an entirely academic exercise.

It won't even spark any debate, mostly I would say because proponents are so keen to label anyone saying anything negative about it as "supporting terrorists". Er, "griefers", I mean. Supporting griefers.

You apparently do not have a large friends list and build, or you would see a reason to hide online status from friends. I don't want to lose them as friends, but I'd rather not get IM'd repeatedly when building or attending inworld meetings.

And even the primitive text-based MU*'s had a hide from individual and hide from all mode...and the ingame IM programs returned 'User not online' if you were hidden and someone paged. That IM to find out real status is just pure linden laziness or oversight.

Two words: Busy mode. Or is that too much trouble as well?

You won't get those on the forums, constructive discussions or options.

I've already seen one builder/coder I respect jumping on the 'It will break existing content!' bandwagon. IMO, tough, recode it and move on...non-coders REGULARLY endure linden changes/fixes that break content, break business models, etc...we adapt and move on. Why is it coders feel they should be Immune from changes that break content and that the sacred LSL is sancrosant?

_Nobody_ should have what they have built suddenly stops operating based on a random whim (though I can't think of an occasion where anything apart from scripts has encountered this in the recent past in any case). Invisibility to other people would be fine; actually, it is an outstanding bug that saying that one's online status should be hidden from all but friends is still bypassable by script, an ancient bug really. Invisibility to scripts in general, no thank you.

Again, not that it has a hippo's hope of occurring in any case.

That works well for FRIENDS, they know not to bother you in Busy....but I really love customers that think their question can't wait porting around your stores and demanding you stop to answer their questions ASAP...been tracked and interrupted this way. A hide from ALL switch that returned a 'not online' to all IM's would be best.

Also, I have had busy 'switch off' for no apparent reason. Turn it on, make sure it is on, get IM's later on, never turned it off, but its off. And besides, even if busy worked 100%, why do folks opposed to this feel they have some magic right to track others status via 'ping' IM's?

First, how do you know they are TPing around your stores unless you're there? Do you have a visitor tracker that detects them or are you trying to ignore customers while standing in your own shop in full view of them? Because I can fully understand why they'd consider that rude when a simple "I'm working right now, I will contact you about this later." should suffice. As for "ping IMs" I fully agree that this is obviously a bug and should be fixed but that's far cry from what this JIRA is calling for and again, screwing with LSL just so a few people can hide from "th3 grieferz!" and/or their friends/customers strikes me as sheer overkill when we already know it will break things by design and will probably break even more unintentionally assuming LL goes about it in their usual hamfisted manner.

This is a simple one. Second Life is a great technocracy. The residents who master the technology have power over the residents who do not.

A lot of the complaints about "broken" scripts seem to be complaints about one user's script being suddenly unable to force a second user into a situation the second user wants to avoid.

In other words, the crime of broken scripts is a crime in part of superior coders controling residents who are inferior coders.

The privacy mode idea is a good one, and there seems to be some thought into the overall effects on the common functions of Second Life, to try to tailor the idea to maximize a resident's control over avoiding unwanted control by others' scripts, while minimizing disruptive effects on Second Life as a whole.

Any concerns shouldn't be centered generically on the principle of "don't break scripts." The two concerns are:

1. Unexpectedly disrupting functions that a resident benefits from in others' script without realizing how they are benefiting from anothers' script. The one example of this I've seen in this thread relates to giving gifts.

2. Use of the privacy mode to circumvent legitimate security scripts from others. That privacy is not effective against the owner of land seems to deal with this kind of problem; privacy mode could not just be used to sneak past legitimate security scripts on land. It could possible sneak around personal security scripting, but the privacy mode would seem to moot the need for personal anti-griefing scripts and objects.

And yet again we have the tired old factionalised "it's okay if you mess with THEM, what THEY do doesn't matter, THEY are just trying to CONTROL us" piffle, as found... well, in every case ever, actually. As if there was a difference between scripting and building and animation and every other form of content creation.

I have a couple hundred people on my Friends list, and I don't see a reason to hide my online status from friends. You know why? Because I actually LIMIT my friends list (ha! and I STILL have a couple hundred people on it! ) to those who understand and respect my wishes when I don't want to be disturbed (by using Busy mode, generally). They also understand that if I don't immediately respond to them, then I am probably busy and they can check back with me later, or I will get back to them when I have time.



Some do. Some don't. Some saw a need for it. Others didn't. I don't have a problem with it, personally. I can deal with it either way, but I certainly don't want a solution which breaks functionality, despite stupid hyperbolic "coders want control over everyone" comments. :-/

As an example, say we have a rules notecard giver on our estate; when people arrive for the first time, they are given the rules, and it is logged that they are given the rules. We depend on that functioning to avoid the "I didn't know that was against the rules" excuses. If we couldn't sense them because they were "hidden", then we couldn't depend on that functionality anymore, and would have to resort to less resource-efficient methods.

There's a lot of content which is innocuous and harmless and helps residents go about doing things. Being in "hidden mode" would mean that people couldn't buy things (touching a vendor would let let everyone know they were there!), allow them egress / ingress to venues (walking through an invisible llVolumeDetect() portal would give them away ZOMG!), and things like tip everyone jars wouldn't be able to give them money (llSensor 4TL!). Dance machines wouldn't work, furniture would be broken, the list goes on.

I do agree with Ordinal that the scripted online status check is broken (well, or badly designed). Hiding from your friends is definitely pointless as long as someone can rez an object and see your real status.

Well there does seem to be one difference, some people who admit they don't have a clue how LSL works have no qualms about trying to tell us what is wrong with it and how to "fix" it. For the public good, of course. You don't often see that happening with texturing, building and animating. I certainly don't recall any cries to change the way anims worked after the deformer concept was realized. Oh but I forgot, that requires a script to run those anims so I suppose that's yet another way that LSL is used to grief people.

This comment is worrisome to me because in this thread I've listed several other fairly obscure misbehaviors that residents will experience, and those were just off the top of my head. The real problem that I've been trying to point out is that it's damned near impossible to come up with a list of what all would break with this proposal, and even nearer to impossible to explain to residents what won't work when they're in the proposed privacy mode. It's not a question of scripting around some new behavior, it's a question of coming up with some coherent, finite explanation to residents of what they won't be able to do in that mode. The only comprehensive description I can muster is: Scripts you didn't even know you were using will stop functioning or malfunction in unpredictable ways depending on land settings and the privacy settings of those with whom you're interacting (whether you know it or not).

And it's concerning that folks seem happy to let scripts break like this, apparently because they're written by scripters instead of builders or something. I mean, I'd be pretty aggravated if one fine morning all alpha-channel textures were replaced by plywood; I don't think it would help matters to tell the builders that they should get busy fixing everything.

Folks playing on the mainland, over and around other's land. CCC and TCS dogfights often happen over land not owned by the participants, after all.

I agree with this. I would support having the OPTION to TEMPORARILY prevent other people from using annoying targeting/scanning toys on me... stuff like what you'd find in MystiTool's AV toys section, etc... I would like to shop in peace and NOT be followed by a retarded follower that spams consumer messages at me every 15 seconds and blocks my cam. I can easily turn off privacy mode to purchase something if needed. I don't want greeter bots sending me LM's or notecards. If the "rules" are so different to any other public area that I need a card to explain, I will be leaving TY.. WITHOUT a LM. Etc.. etc.. Just the list of legitimate, non-griefing applications for something like this is huge, and as a resident I have every right, and SHOULD have every option needed to be able to block these invasive annoyances. Seriously, anyone who says that I shouldn't have the option to exempt myself from this kind of junk based on those reasons alone undoubtedly has self-serving motivations behind trying to prevent such options.
However, the fact that this would also break security/privacy devices on a grand scale is THE ONLY single reason I can't support this.

I do a lot of different things in SL and I also use public sandboxes from time to time.

I can count the number of times I've been griefed on one hand.

I have a large friends list, AND I use Busy Mode to great effectiveness when I'm really *busy* building. I simply ignore IM's I receive during that time, everyone gets a politely-worded "Busy building or AFK" message.

I really DON'T see the problem. This solution is WAY overkill. It sounds like the OP can't set personal limits/boundaries effectively, and wants to use some complicated scripting changes to enforce these limits.

I thought I'd already addressed that point.

Oh, you missed the havoc 4 rollout then? I think that broke just about every car script in SL, and there was no toggle button to make them work again.

I don't have a single vehicle that has been "broken" by Havok 4, and I have quite a few, thanks. In some, the handling has changed slightly, but for the most part, I am not having any serious issues with H4 and vehicles.

And let us not forget that H4 was tested extensively before they rolled it out for just this reason, something I highly doubt any "privacy mode" would receive given LL's propensity to just spring LSL changes on us without much, if any, prior warning.

Emphasis mine. 'Nuff said.

This thread is made of win.

But i wonder, it seems Whispering hush has an axe to grind against something... or someone?

I have lots. Even the Dominus had an update after the H4 rollout, every vehicle that hovers should also have an update.

Fixing a generic Drifting Thoughts car script was more than just removing the impulse lines in the timer.

Flight was mostly ok, i made an impulse timer jet engine script that works in h1 and h4 with no differences.

Cars were definitely broken.

Just one thing really, a vast majority of residents in SL don't even understand how 'busy mode' works, that you can't shop with it on, etc. Just imagine the amount of posts in here, or whines on the Blog about scripts not working by residents who have this on without an idea of what it is or does.

With this I can see that in the future we would have to add this to a ever expanding list to reasons why something is borked to a user…

1. do you have privacy settings on?

2. do you have 'busy mode' on?

3. etc

and the replies?

"what's privacy settings?"

"were do I turned it off?"

etc.

I do agree that a system to accurately put you in a invisible private mode is a good idea, but somehow I just don't see this has being the way.

I have a lot faith in the ability of the residents to eventually understand the software that they are using. For some of course that will never happen to the degree that it will for others.