Bots?

Thought I smelled something fishy
Still I would be more happy with an answer that actually was a reaction to my arguments. As said, I don't even have those 2 bots anymore. So feel free to read 20 instead of 2, what would be the argument then?

And while you're answering Marcel's question, would you like to respond to my #93 post, which demonstrated that one of your arguments was completely wrong, Gabriele?

That 20 bots or even alts logged is stopping real people logging in when logins are limited due to concurrency issues. In that circumstance you would be contributing to denying other peoples access to the system unreasonably. I think the burden of proof lies with the person(s) arguing that 20 bots are fine to show that this is not the case. The word "concurrent" itself even means (roughly) "at the same time" so if the Lindens say that loggings have been disabled due to concurrency issues then they mean there are two many logins for the system to cope with "at the same time". How could it not be the case then that a person with 20 bots or alts logged in would not be denying a real person a login under those circumstances?

No Phil, I don't intend to engage you in any debate or further conversation in the future due to your behaviour on the forums.

That's a pity - that you find it difficult to admit when you are wrong, that is. Oh well. I take it you won't mind when I point out where you are wrong?

I already showed you why that idea is completely wrong. See post #93 if you missed it.

Because they have no direction.
Nobody in there can make a decision that they might have to account for.
They fear the TAO and the Love Machine.

What your 3 Lindens did was simply answer the question as a technical question.
They very probably were quite aware of the reason for the question, but didn't want to go there.

This is absolutely not the same as any of the 3 or LL as a whole saying that the bot use was okay.

I must have missed that.
Can you provide the URL where LL specifically said that?


If there's no URL/pics , it didn't happen

Again, you are mistaken, Sling. I specifically asked LL if using traffic bots is ok, and the answer was yes. I posted about it in this forum - I even quoted it. So, as far as LL is concerned, traffic bots are fine at the moment. I.e. modifying the Places tab search results is fine at the moment. With that in mind, it's reasonable to assume that modifying the All search results is also fine with LL.

You must have missed it. There was a thread started because quite a few people had been penalised one day for alt abuse. It concerned me because of my traffic bots, so I went to LL and specifically asked if my use of traffic bots is ok or not. The answer, which I quoted in the thread, was yes it is ok.

There is no public URL for it, but it did happen.

Ok. But who cares (apart from the bot runners) what the balance might be?
So log 10 of them out in order to free resources for one non-bot.
Make it 20 or whatever.

So it didn't happen then.
No wonder I missed it.

Other evidence that bot use is perfectly fine with LL:-

(1) It is safe to assume that they know all about them, and they've never said to stop using them, except when they fill a sim so that people can't get in.

(2) During the recent "future of traffic" discussions with LL, the use of traffic bots was frequently brought up - including by me. Not one negative word about them came from LL.

It's impossible not to conclude that, for whatever reason, LL is perfectly happy with bots at the moment.

You're calling me a liar? If I said it happened, it happened. There's no need to be offensive - or blinkered.

You are confusing lack of action with perfect happiness.
For example, I have a number of times ARed a neighbouring parcel that near constantly keeps the sim topped up with zombie campers. The only time they turn to campers from 30 to 20 and then 10 is when they run an event and need the avatar slots for warm-body avatars.
According to your (1) above, LL should be taking action.
They are not. This means that they are perfectly happy with the situation(?)

LL are sitting in there fiddling with stuff now and again. They can't control the thing. They must be wetting themselves. Under the veneer of the TAO, the Love Machine and the happy clappy, it must be very ugly working environment.

You are confusing facts with imagination, plus a rather large dose of wishful thinking. LL:-

You say that you quoted a Linden in some thread.
There's no way of knowing if that was a verbatim quote or your interpretation of something that was said or unsaid.
Given the large amount of self-interest in your arguments, I'll stick with:

No URL - it didn't happen.

Why not get that particular Linden that you say said such and such to come out and say it in public?
Why would they not do so?
If it's policy, then it's policy.
If it's one Linden saying something in privat, or saying something that might possibly have sounded like something, then it's not policy.

Okies!
So in times of peak load, when logins get shut off the bots that are logged in are
1. preventing residents from entering regions
2. negatively impacting the regions
3. causing distress to other residents

Perhaps it takes 5, 10, 20 whatever of a certain type of bot to match the load of a live avatar.
No matter what it is, they are consuming resources.

It would appear from the text above that whatever might be the current position regarding bots at times when the grid is not overloaded, bots should definitely be booted and locked out at peak load times.

So you're calling me a liar - and that's very offensive. I've been called many things in this forum because people don't like me using bots, but that's the first time I've been called a liar. I'll say it one more time - if I said it happened, then it happened. You are free to accept it or not, but don't call me a liar.

I'll tell you why - although I already told you but it seems it takes some doing to get things to sink in. I contacted LL because of those penalties, and the response (which I quoted again here) was as I said it was. End of story.

Now, if you with your blinkered view, cannot see the obvious, then that's just you, but I imagine that most people are well aware that bots are fine with LL, simply because they know about them and choose to do nothing about them. So railing against them in the forum is a waste of time and effort. Your best bet is to learn to live with it. SL does not revolve around you - you have to live with the way things are.

Utter garbage!

I have said that you are quite possibly mistaken.
In the same way that you have turned that into an accusation of lying, you might well have turned something a Linden said into something else.

If LL have a policy on the matter, then there should be no problem with producing the policy statement.

In fact Phil indeed pointed it out perfectly in posting #93, wether you like him or not. We have seen concurrency number of 65000 running just fine, where at 55000 the system borked under the load.

Understanding the infrastructure with the information we have, this is quite locical as well. Keeping 65000 connections alive is piece of cake, even I can design a system able to do that. But keeping 50000 connections alive that perform a lot of actions, can be way harder. If it were just a question of numbers, things would be solved very easy. Again, this is based on my knowledge of infrastructual problems. Not the specific SL setup, as I don't know it. Network load and serverload are an issue in every heavily used environment though, and a lot of the same concepts are valid in every environment.

Okay, one small example:
Take an average Windows 2003 server, with Terminal Services installed, and MS Office. (so you can use a session on that machine).
- start logging in as many accounts as you can. Stop when you get into trouble.
- Now do the same, and start up MS Word for each and every account you logged in.
100% sure, you will get into trouble way faster in scenario 2 then in scenario 2. You are not just logging in, but actually use resources.


@Sling: In the past I enjoyed a lot of your postings. They were at times very funny. Your latest contributions to threads about bots and/or paying for picks show perfectly well that you had better stayed with the funny posts. Nothing wrong with that.

You apparantly are only satisfied with a Linden posting here an official Linden opinion. And even then I would expect you to say you want all Linden employees to post a QFT in the same thread. Well, that is not going to happen very soon, so we seem to be done talking.

@All
Lets get back to the basics. LL provides us with a platform, and some tools. We use the tools, and some misuse the tools (for example griefers). If you think someone abuses the tools, file an AR. Or, like Kitty did, file a Jira. Her contribution showed they can have some effect, and though I strongly disagree with the effect it had, she did use the right way.

If LL takes action upon your AR/Jira, you can safely assume you were right. If they do not, it seems not important to them. Does not prove you are wrong, but it proves you better spend your energy on other things.

You have to introduce first the mandatory payment account, it means delete all the free accounts, i don't have the latest metric.. aren't they 95% of the users? Lol do you think is it a smart move? cmon. Realistic proposal pls.



I actually work with 3 accounts (with the client editor).

I guessed what you meant anyway, I am not perfect typing myself, and you are right there is not suppossed to be a "winner" this is a discussion of points of view, and I was hopping you took it that way, I try not to use the word "you" in replies because it does tned to make statements look as personal attacks when it is not you I am questioning but the principles behind your concept and maybe I do look like I take things to extremes, but the way I see it people can't partially exploit something then complain when other people use similar concepts to justify that what they are doing isn't an exploit either. I see a line that defines traffic bumping as an exploit.
I'm yet to hear a valid explanation why bumped traffic figures are still realistic traffic figures just because the tools to do it are available.

Actually this IS a realistic proposal, and it is not just me thinking this is a good thing to do.
many people are basic, because they can. Why pay 72 dollar a year if you can play without doing so. Especially with estate rentals, no one needs to be premium.

As soon as they would make it mandatory to be paying member after a trial period of a month, a percentage of the basic group will get premium, my guess is even a high percentage of the actually active accounts. The ones that drop, well they drop. It is not at all unrealistic to have people pay for play. WoW for example grew quite big, and they do not offer free accounts either.

The Sleek advice was actually ment as an advice to free some computer resources You still have 3 avatars logged in, but use much less resources then with 3 SL clients.