Camping Scams? Speeding up payouts?

Today I found an avatar stood idle in the store ( second one ) unresponsive to IMs or ope chat. We can detect when ppl have attempted to use outside software for stealing txtrs but it takes 24 hours to show.
Anyway as she was no payment on file and brand new I ejected her explaining why and got no reply.
She came back as her name showed up on my multi gadget within 5 minutes and was stood using one of the 3 camping ' work it ' devices BUT it showed she had made L$50 and as I stood watching within 40 seconds it went upto L$52 THEN it stopped ( almost as though she had seen me stood watching her )

How can this happen?

Again no response to the IMs so I banned her this time and still got no IMs from her.

Is there some scam that ppl are aware of that somehow can speed up the payment from camping devices?

Did she actually get paid the $52?

Why is there a need for campers in the first place? What search actually uses those numbers?

There was a thread in here a while back that mentioned camping bots that had somehow gamed the chairs to pay out every 30 seconds something like that. I'm not sure what the consensus was, except to get rid of the chairs, or stand there monitoring them all day.

Camping is a way land owners inflate thier "traffic" numbers so thier places seem popular but are in fact only popular with people who havent figured out that the cost of the electricity they are using to camp is actually more then the money they make camping. It is a deeply flawed system, excessively gamed and takes a lot of resources that could be used much more productively.

There have been promises from LL that "traffic" will eventually be eliminated, at which time camping will most likely be eliminated as well, but don't go holding your breath waiting for it to happen.

Hi Lillybeth

What you experienced is probably more due to lag than anything. I have been testing my camping systems over the course of the last couple of days and have experienced some time anomalies. It appears that the system has slowed down however when it comes time to payout.....the system 'catches up.'

Definitely a bot tho. I must admit that I tested a few bots while building my campers. If you have an issue with bots I suggest checking out camping systems by Dragos Zaoh, Lord Leafblower, or Sofa King Grab and Go campers (shameless plug) These systems all have unique features that were developed to discourage bot usage.

Regards

CC

It's also a good way for noobs to pick up some spending cash. Camping was a godsend for the first few weeks until I decided to put some RL money into SL. Touring round money trees at 1L$ a time was a waste of time. I wasn't unreponsive but was taking the opportunity to read through tutorial notecards etc. Got boring pretty quickly but I wouldn't bet on me still being here without it.

I understand it is a pain in terms of causing lag etc. but if it disappears is somebody gonna come up with a viable alternative?

Only if LL make a real attempt to restrict alts (by payment info required even if not used?) can abuse of any system be sorted, be it camping, noob stipend or whatever.

Ah, the moneytree/camping debate :) I made over 200L through moneytrees, and I think 5L from camping. I only did the camping thing once and didn't like it. The moneytrees had more of a "here you go, some money, now buy my stuff" vibe (which I preferred) instead of the "here you go - sit there, I might pay you when you are done, and in the meantime I'll get nice traffic numbers" (and yes, I did fear something would happen and I wouldn't get paid (crashed, system problem on their end, etc.). I loved finding the money-fruit on the trees - sometimes 25L all at once :) Ah, those were the days :) Found some great places, also, going from tree to tree :)

edit: actually, I tried the camping thing twice, didn't get paid the first time.

That's a really good question. I guess I shouldn't sidetrack this thread pondering what can be the noob-friendly successor to traffic-gaming, once traffic is finally gone, but it's worth some thought. (Unfortunately, I've no coherent thoughts germane to the actual question. I'm hard-pressed to come up with any way a camping script could be mislead by anything sitting on it, unless there were an intentional "back door" vulnerability in the script. It would be hard to create such a bug by accident, I think.)

It's been said many times before... but if you can afford a $1000 computer and $50 a month for a broadband connection, then you can certainly afford to drop $5 into SL to buy some 'play money'. If your circumstances/finances are that tight that you can't afford a one off $5 payment then perhaps it's time to reassess your priorities.

Camping only promotes the 'welfare' and 'something for nothing' culture that has damaged Second Life so much, but for some reason people who have been here long enough to realise that - and know better - keep the cycle going by introducing new players to that same dreadful scourge on the grid.

There are more than enough "freebie" items out there on the grid to keep most people occupied for several weeks without even having to spend a penny in the first place.

Actually, I can't. Every time I put money into SL, real world hard-earned money into SL, my credit card company freezes my credit card.

While it is gamed, there are also some the really do use it while they decide if they really want to put anything into SL. I never thought it was about if people could afford it or not. It is more about getting people a few $ to start with. Buy a few small things and hopefully they will enjoy what they bought and "upgrade" later. Many, many people come into SL expecting to be handed money, just like every other MMORPG there is out there. It may take some time to earn money (grinding?) but to put more money into a game is just not the way that most people are used to. The hope is that they will find camping to be boring and not productive, but understand that just a few buck placed into the system can get you a lot of really cool things.

If someone has figured out a way or has written a script to cheat camping chairs.. my hat's off to them. I have nothing against someone wanting to game their traffic numbers, but let pay through the nose...

Expenditure on my PC (self-built over 2 years ago for about 1/2 what you're quoting) and my broadband deal are not relevant because neither were in place to facilitate access to SL and nor would they ever have been if that was their sole or primary purpose. As it happens I haven't been able to work in over a year and had to think very carefully about priorities before putting money into SL.

It takes time to get to know SL, where the good freebies are - let alone the sheer volume and quality available - and even what $5 buys in L$. At least it did me but then as my profile indicates I am a slow learner . As indicated in my earlier post, I feel that had I not camped I probably wouldn't have stayed. Ok, if there had been no camping I might have found alternatives sooner; I can't know that for sure.

I'm not defending camping per se, just saying how I experienced it. I'd be surprised if I was the only one.

As Pie Psaltery pointed out, if you are paying for your own electricity camping is not a way for new players to make a little money. Depending on how much electricity your computer uses and the rates your utility company charges it may actually be a way to lose money. Camping makes about 4 cents or less in real money per hour. Minus the pennies worth of electrical current your computer is consuming while you camp and most people end up either netting a loss or making only a few pennies per hour. People who camp don't think of it that way because their payments for their linden dollars come hidden in the form of a few extra dollars to their utility bill rather than as a separate itemized expense on their credit card or bank statement but they end up paying for their lindens too. The only difference is they are anchored to a spot while people who prefer to pay Linden Lab rather than their utility company for linden dollars are free to roam and take full advantage of the game.

Ok so the best way to make money in SL is to not sign into SL. In fact the best version of SL would be to set your desk facing your front window and have a keyboard and mouse. When you click on something nothing happens, its really pretty out there, and you use no electricity.

These debates aggravate me because of the reduction to the ridiculous. Well it takes so many pennies to run this or that offsetting your camping expenditures by negative 18%. Give me a break.

Camping like everything else in this game is a strategy. Have you ever considered that smart campers might utilize 5-6 alts and net about 2000L per day while maintaining a business in SL also? Have you considered that perhaps some of these campers might be offsetting their tier monthly and are acquiring larger lots of land and therefore dumping lindens and content back into the community?

The last computer I built has been on for 4 years and most of my friends in the tech community leave their's on as well so the electricity argument falls on deft ears. Once again I feel I must point out that in RL Google offers adwords to bolster traffic. SL offers camping and other strategies. Whether you like it or not is one thing. But don't insult our intelligence by making an arguments about how much it costs to run a computer. Hey if you don't like what's on the TV -- change the damn channel.

It amazes me that whenever someone doesn't like something in this game, a crusade starts. Gheezus, there are more than 10,000 islands in this game and 4 continents --GO SOMEWHERE ELSE if you don't like it.

My name is CC, I am the Sofa King, and yes I build camping supplies.

Buying $5 worth of Lindens will get you 1250, as I type this. That is 2.5 cents per Linden. At 12 Lindens an hour camping, that is .30 worth in real money an hour. Going on the high end say my computer and monitor burn 330 watts an hour.

I pay 5.7 cents a KWh. So my cost to run my computer for one hour will cost me a little less than .02. So I would .28 cents an hour camping.

I want to clarify something I just -need- to clarify as a techy here:



No..no, you can't. Don't get people's hopes up about a serious matter like this, and if somebody sold you Mystic Magical Tool that supposedly does this, note them down as a scammer.

Lilly,

If you know a way to detect this that works then please state it here so others can benefit. Also if you do have a method then I am not sure why I see your textures out there selling for full perms....I just saw a prim full of them selling for 7 linden at one of those selling freebie and BIB places that are all over SL now, and they list you as the creator.

Which is it, can texture swiping be detected or not?

Fair enough, I've got to concede the point on utitlity costs of being online in order to watch my AV clean windows for half an hour. However, when I signed up for SL it was a total learning experience. I didn't think about spending money buying Ls or what the exchange rate might be, let alone the relative cost of my electricity against the RL value of the L$s 'earned'.

If I'd known what questions to ask on Help Island or been lucky enough to run into a noob freindly resident who thought to put me right on these things (instead of spending several weeks as a starry-eyed tourist or ploughing my way through the Ivory Tower tutorials) I'm sure I would have put my $5 in. What I actually got was a notecard from NCI informing me that I could get a job (is a pole-dancing in SL that much different from camping dance pads?), look for money trees or camp.

I might suggest to someone from NCI that they amend it to point some of this out. But I imagine if they did, someone's going to complain that they're 'restricting trade' or something.

Total BS. No way to detect it and no way to stop it. It is not something happening in the store. The "pictures" of the textures are caught in the flow of information at thier computer. Stolen textures still don't do very much good anyways, you do not recieve the alpha channel info. I will also point out that the ability to get the "pictures" of the textures has been around forever. No good texture creator has gone broke because of it. Make a good, high quality product and people will buy it.

Making such a statement in the first post of the thread lends suspicion to the other claims made.

You can't possibly detect people "stealing" your textures' keys, either -__-

On the subject of gaming camping chairs, again... there are some bugs concerning sitting and entering a banned sim (your avatar remains sitting even though the object isn't there), I wonder if it's related.

Well, actually, LL can; the asset servers have mystical powers. But I'm very surprised to hear that this information is being shared with texture creators a priori, as opposed to it being supplied to law enforcement in the course of a DMCA take-down investigation. My surprise is not because of a privacy issue (although...), but because of the sheer volume of raw data that would have to be supplied, apparently every day.

Well, actually, no they can't. All you are doing is decoding the information stream coming into your computer anyway. How in the heck is anyone including the OP, LL or even your ISP going to be able to tell what you are doing with that info?
Sorry but this is old news. In one form or another people have been able to access texture info for a loooooong time. Every now and then a thread will emerge about it and people are shocked and outraged. There is nothing you can do to stop it and it is not a problem. No one has ever gone broke because of it. It does not matter what you get, either a pic of the texture or even the key. You still never get the original creation with all the layers etc. If this was a problem then no one would be able to make money selling textures, hair, skin etc in SL, and yet they do! In fact some make a LOT of $L selling.

My response was specifically to detection of texture key theft (not to stolen texture images). Every use of an asset key is known by the asset servers; that's how assets are eventually retired: when all references to them are gone from objects and scripts in-world and in inventory.