Traffic Bots Against the TOS of LL?

Wow. He actually comes off less slimy when he's just calling people stupid.

Actually this is another place where you are way off the mark and wrong. It really does not bother me at all how much money you make or whether you need it at all.
I find it incredibly petty that you don't even need all that money and so could easily take the 20% drop of your earnings by not using bots and disadvantaging unfairly other businesses.

You see I am not motivated by the lure of winning in this way or by piles and piles of cash. You are welcome to them. There is more to life than these things.

What does bother me though is that you cheat - I was brought up to scorn and abhor cheating in all its forms. You cannot trust someone who cheats for *anything*

Amen to that.

Well I'd put that in the greed category. Earning more than you need is essentially greed.

I was offered L$25,000 for a 1024M plot of land, I told the guy that was too much and that I'd sell for L$12,500 but that was still L$2,500 more than I paid for the plot so I was engaged in a bit of greed there.

It would be interesting to see you define what "need" means though. Do you mean enough to sustain a lifestyle that includes a brand new BMW? A four bedroom house? Or just the basics like affording groceries every week? Be careful of getting into this territory as there are many things "we" do not need to have money for and yet many people have.
Broadband and computers may well be two of them.

Live your entire life by that value and encourage it in others and you will never be rightfully called greedy.

I'm not the one saying humans aren't greedy

I said not everyone was motivated by greed. I did not say that there are not times at which we all show greed. They are 2 different things.

Motivated by greed means that it is the driving (hence motivate) force behind what you do.

The increase of money at all costs is not a driving force in my life nor of many others. For some it is.

However this is all moot as Phil already admitted he just does it for the jollies of getting the highest score. If you buy that, that is.

Rising above your own greed for the interests of your fellow man... fair business practices being among those interests... would be a the mark of a civilized man.

Pandering to your own greed for amusment... well, you decide.

I agree that there times where we all show greed, I don't agree with your definition of motivation. If you're only motivated by greed then you'll have a different outlook to someone who is sometimes motivated by greed. However motivation does not have to be a constant.

For example I'm happy in my home but if someone made me an offer I couldn't refuse I'd sell it. I'm not looking to sell, I don't want to sell but I could be motivated to sell.

However *constantly* running bots for more profit would be motivated to greed.

Using generally underhand business techniques would be being motivated to greed.

True a person does not always have to be motivated by greed. I was talking as a general consideration. Generally a greed motivated person would seek out the dirtier side of doing business to get more profits in order to satisfy their greed. A person who isn't generally motivated by that would not. I was never talking about absolutes.

Agreed (no pun intended!).

Sorry sweetie. No offense intended.

I could indeed, but I see no reason to. I don't do anything that other businesses can't do, and it's not my responsibility to take care of them.

What motivates you is of no interest to me. What motivates me is competing - even against myself. And nobody can fault that.

I'm the same as you then - I never cheat anyone. What you call cheating here isn't cheating. You don't need to take my word for it. Read other people's posts in this thread. If someone thinks that something is cheating, then don't do it.

When you get right down to it, some people find fault with certain things, some people don't find fault with them, and most people don't care one way or the other. Those who find fault are right for themselves, those who don't find fault are right for themselves, and those who don't care are right for themselves too. It's not a moral issue, so nobody has any high ground. We are all right for ourselves.

The sooner that people learn to live and let live, the better it will be. The best idea is for each person to take care of their own little corners of SL, according to their own principles, and leave others to take care of theirs. If anyone thinks that something ought not to be allowed, then the place to raise it is at LL. Raising it here is futile, and is detrimental to the forum. Witness how long it has been since bots were first raised here - futile. And witness the holding back of useful information here because of people who can't mind their own business - detrimental to the forum.

Yea I bet those AdFarmers wish everyone had just minded their own business too.

What the F**k?

She told you to stop so you do it again and claim its not intentional.

Geez

I disagree, for the reason that you do not know why the person is trying to earn more than they need. Need itself is a sliding scale for most, reflected largely in the increasing range of choices a person has available and begins with those that have nothing and then those that have, but have no choices.

If you have more than you need, but the choices you exercise are to give to charity and to give to those that have less than you, your earnings do not reflect greed, but the reality that many that earn more can't simply choose to earn less and inequalities are then addressed with the foregone earnings. No, all you do is leave more money with either your company or clients, not with those that need the money. So you earn more and give to those less fortunate.

I could choose to buy the BMW (not that I would even if I wanted a flashy, over priced vehicle) or I could choose to give to the local homeless shelter. That choice has nothing to do with my earnings, other than the earnings are what make the choice possible.

And I bet Ginko Nick and his banking buddies did also.

Most of us are greedy if it's greedy to want more than we have or need. It's not a bad thing. It's normal human nature to want more - to want a better house, or a better lifestyle than we have or need, or to be able to afford things that we can't afford now. That type of greed, if greed really is the right word, is fine. That's the type of 'wanting more' greed that the anti-bots throw at people who use bots. I don't see anything wrong with wanting more, even if it isn't necesssary. I don't see anything wrong with a business wanting to earn as much as it can, or grow into being a bigger business, even aspiring to dominate the market, whether it's called greed or not. It's the normal way of things.

As someone mentioned, greed is a recurring accusation in these threads, but there's nothing wrong with wanting to do better and earn more. Perhaps the anti-bots ought to accept it and concentrate on their anti-bot stance rather than on nonsense things like greed.

Personally, I'm perfectly happy if I'm considered greedy just because I try to make the most of the business.

I think the point is not greed as in "wanting to earn more". It's in greed as in "considering earning more as being the sole necessary justification for a behaviour which hurts others". (And no, this doesn't apply to ANY behaviour that improves a business against its competitors - vhen capitalism is working properly, the things which make a business do better should also make things better for the _customers_.)

If it hurts others, then it would be wrong to do. I don't approve of doing things like that, and I won't do them. What I do hurts nobody.

The anti-bots point to me hurting competitors, but they are wrong. The only competitors who perhaps lose earnings are those who don't actually compete, and it's not the responsibility of their competitors to look after them.

They also point to hurting users, but they are wrong. My search listings exactly represent what I sell, and I sell at far lower prices than my competitors. So users don't get hurt.

They used to claim that I hurt the system, but they've stopped claiming that now, because they've learned that I don't hurt the system.

I don't know who or what else there is to hurt.

In SL terms, they are competing. It shouldn't be necessary to engage in potentially anti-TOS behaviour in order to compete, and that's fundamental in any society with laws. Also, having the ability to arrange 24hr hosting for a bot is way outside SL.



The search listings do not exactly represent the popularity or significance of what you sell.



You hurt the social system.

This is also flawed thinking.

Just because a competitor chooses not to use subversive, non-transparent, deceitful, or "artificially inflated" tactics to compete, does not mean they are not competing, it simply means that they have choosen to be more honest in their business.

So Phil would you shop at a real world store that used it's employees to increase the traffic numbers for people walking through the door in a manner similar to using traffic bots in SL?

I noticed you didn't answer earlier, so I ask you and all the rest again.

You never proved that, you just assumed victory.

People stopped saying it because you are too thick-headed to even try and conceptualize what they were saying.


Its ridiculous to think that 10,000 trafficbots wouldn't use SOME of the grid's overall resources.

What SL terms? Business is business in any terms. "Potentially anti-ToS behaviour"? lol. What's that got to do with anything? We can't foresee what the ToS will contain in the future, and we were talking about hurting others.

The search listing don't exactly represent the popularity or significance of what anybody sells. They represent what is there, the traffic generated by avatars on the land, and that's all.

Whose social system? There is no social system, and what little social parts there are, are not hurt by me.

They use networking and processing resources on the grid, but they don't consider that they are constantly in contact with the grid. They do query and are queried by other avatars (including the other bots, which send out a regular scan to make sure there is nothing to update...)