Skybox Security?

Many skyboxes are at 12000 feet, so people feel that they want to secure everything up to that...and beyond if they could, which they can.

It takes awhile to go above 12000 feet, and even if they went to 100,000 feet there is no guarantee that a security orb won't boot them anyways.

feet?

Sure, but I was responding to your point that SL is designed as a landscape by commenting that, just because you can see a landscape, it doesn't mean you can wander around it.

As to your point about what "some landowners believe," I think LL's reply to my inquiry answered that. It seems that, from LL's point of view, there's nothing to stop landowners from using the free device you distributed and preventing all access to the airspace above their land, so long as they give "reasonable" warning and don't send warnings to people who're not over their land.

Whether or not they should do that is another question, but it would seem that, as far as LL is concerned, they can do if they feel like it. So, while in RL you can't shoot down people flying over your land, it seems in SL you can, so long as you give them a bit of warning to get out the way.

Most people, I'm sure, don't want to do that; I'm willing to bet that most fliers who find themselves zapped by over-zealous scanners, be they yours or anyone else's, are the victims of the user configuring it incompetently rather than deliberate malice.

Wouldn't it be better, though, to start from the proposition that if someone wants to put his skybox at any altitude and maintain some sort of air exclusion zone around it, he's fully within his rights so to so, and concentrate on finding ways flyers can safely negotiate the other 3.5 or 4 thousand meters he's probably not bothered about?

What did you think of my idea of detecting the flyer's course and telling him how to avoid anything he's going to get too close to if he continues his present course? That would certainly be all I wanted, were I to put up security gadgets on my mainland building platforms.

In the extremely unlikely event you encounter a parcel with security orbs stacked to 10,000 feet, go around it.

Great idea! The problem would be easy to solve, but the implementation would be problematic: how do you get land owners and other security device developers to use such a standard? At least for my system, I plan to allow configuration of zones of altitudes that are protected, leaving the rest (by default) to be free for anyone to use.

I guess, as others and you have suggested, that charging might not be the best way to get people to install an "enhanced-security system", but to design a free system that is better than the commercial ones and make it so that it is fair for everyone, land-owners and flyers. Protect what needs protecting, and leave the rest open for everyone to use with technology implemented that can communicate what is open to those flyers.

Did you ask specifically about that product? Did the Linden seem to understand it? It's a new tool, and until it actually does something they have NO specific policy on it, and they may well decide it's over the top without changing anything else.

That would be the *easiest* thing for them to do, if they want to avoid wasting support time dealing with people who run into it.

No they don't. You're the only one who I've seen even mention securing the whole column. Everybody else just secures a small bubble in it. Nobody places security devices every 192m all the way up to the top.

No, I asked what the rules were; I wasn't interested in the legality or otherwise of any particular device but in checking Hank's contention that special rules applied to the mainland, which it would seem is not the case, since I like to know what the rules actually are, whether or not I agree with them.

If you think it would be helpful, and someone can direct me to the latest spec, I will certainly ask a follow-up question with details of the actual device.

Did Hank actually make the device he was on about earlier - the one that covers the whole column up to 4096m? He was so against restricted flying that I thought he was just making it up. If he has made it, why? Why make something that is much worse for flyers than what he was complaining about?

I'm making a device (single prim, single script, launches temp-on-rez hunters that fly up your land and scan as they go all the way) that scans the whole column (0m to 4096m), so that free fly zones can be specified, your skybox can be protected, and flyers can be notified where they can fly so they avoid the "OMG I just rezzed inside of a building and am getting booted by an overzealous security device" problem.

It sounds a bit laggy

Why not just launch them once as permanent prims that set themselves at suitable altitudes to cover the column?

Or why not just have one at the spot that needs the security? That way, a user doesn't need to set a safe altitude. It just needs to tell people go up or down 100m.

It sounds a bit stupid.


You mean exactly what we have now?

Maybe he wants to make the worst security orb ever in hopes that LL will ban them all.

In which case, landowners will probably be able to convince LL to extend banlines to 4,096 meters. Be careful what you wish for.

Yes, but with the addition that it would tell people to go up or down nn meters to avoid a fate worse than death. One of the big problems that the flyers have is knowing which way to go when they get a warning. A device that actually told them would be a huge improvement.

The way I see it, there are only three options now, backwards, up and down.

I'm trying to remember the last time I lost a vehicle to a security orb, and I can't.

On the other hand, I lost five airships tonight to SCV-22.

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-22

Four -- forwards could, quite often, be the best idea. The scanner is scanning (normally) a sphere, so, depending the angle at which you're travelling relative to the scanner, you may well just have clipped the edge of the sphere or be passing though it well away from the skybox. Simply ignoring it could well be the quickest way out of the danger zone.

In my ideal system the scanner, located in the skybox, would detect both your position and your direction of travel, do a little simple trig, and -- probably 9 times out of 10 -- decide that your present course will take you away from the skybox so it can just ignore you unless you're still there the next time it scans. Only then would it tell you to go away and suggest a direction.

Ouch about the airships.

Yeah, I want to reiterate the advantage of simply plowing ahead on a forward path and hoping for the best. This approach is surely the best for a fast-moving craft; slower vehicles such as balloons might possibly be better off retreating, although I'm not even sure of that.

The reason is that by the time one gets a warning, on average one has been inside the secured space more than half a sensor interval (half an interval to be sensed, plus time for a possibly lagged script to process the event and push a warning dialog to the viewer). You may well be out of range before the warning even appears, in which case retreat just puts you back in the line of fire--possibly at the very next sensor reading, just in time to become the next victim of the trap.

About SVC-22: one thing that's especially insidious about this bug is that it really punishes attempts to stay over protected land. If one could perfectly follow the meanderings of public paths, it would be fine, but this isn't realistic.

Instead: What kind of parcels are most likely not to have enough prims? Microparcels. Where were adfarms most popularly located? Along roads, and even more perversely, precisely where those roads curve most abruptly.

Or a good Irish, fiery red-headed tongue-lashing if I happen to be there.

Not really...I had someone fly around and bump into my outside walls until he figured out how to get in, probably with the cam inside and sit method. I said, "Hello, may I help you?" which on further thought may not have been the best response in some cases.

This guy got up, walked over to where I was sitting and stood right in front of me...never saying a word. I asked again if he was looking for something and he STILL just stood in my face. At the time I had just moved into a new place and hadn't purchased an orb. I pulled up the pie menu and was *just* going to freeze/eject/ban him when he flew away out of my range.

So to the original question, yes, I use an orb. I love the one I have now as it gives a choice of 3 separate methods of ejection from least to most "polite", is supposed to recognize owner sim boundaries and no matter how high I set the range it will not bleed onto my neighbors' properties and the coolest...it has an option to give a read out of avatars ejected. (So far none has.)

Oh, ETA: for those people who enjoy flying in planes, hot air balloons, whatever, there is a wide range of time I can select before the person is ejected...i think it "may" go to a minute but may be a bit lower than that. Anyway, settings higher that 10 sec.

Sounds pretty good, as orbs go. Could you drop a LM on me, just in case I ever need to know? Or someone else asks for a recommendation on orbs? Thanks.

Do you hire yourself out as a security guard?

You misunderstand what scanning between 0-4096m is for. It is so that you can get an accurate tally of who is where. Depending on how you utilize that information allows it to be categorized as "psycho-scanner", "good-scanner", "excellent-scanner".

The point of scanning everything is so that you can send notifications to those who are about to encroach onto your "protected" part of your land instead of the inane situation where we have now where you have no idea that you are about to violate someone's "airspace". Once you violate it, you are given a warning with nary enough time to do anything about it. It may be 4x the warning limit before you even visually realize that a structure is there before you are booted home. 10 sec warning, 15 second warning, 30 second warning, doesn't really make any difference...they are all the same.

Enter the "psycho-scanner"...you can now tell if someone is getting near, and give them sufficient time to react. Not so psycho, now, is it?

Um, Hank, scanning 0-4096 doesn't make any difference when you're only scanning a max of 96m sideways... and not even that far if you're near the edge of a sim.

Right; so you aren't warned you are about to encroach on an area that you will get teleported home for trespassing on. By scanning farther, you can make warnings sooner for those that you anticipate will encroach on the target zone.

But unless I'm misunderstanding something.. if someone's a few hundred metres above or below the target area when you detect them, they're going to have to be ascending or descending at a pretty sharp angle to risk getting anywhere near the target, aren't they?

Oh, forgot to mention...it scans at all edges as well as the scans spread out in all directions. So the limit of scanning is as far as the scanners can travel, which would be at least over the owner's land. Now anything scanned that is not over the owner's land is ignored, so what you are left with is the totality of the avtars within the owner's land borders up to 4096m.

I understand it perfectly, you're trying to satirize landowner rights.

Vertical scanning is useless. Aviators don't care about security orbs that are thousands of meters away in a direction they aren't travelling.