Bloomin Campers Again

Or is it just as many people as possible to drop as many hundreds of farming bots into, with no more inworld interaction other than watching your bank balance because you can and its a business model of the future
Yes, my heart bleeds for the blood, sweat and tears put in by people who's idea of SL residency is logging into the SL accounts page to transfer out their bots takings daily.
And yes for some reason, ripping off the government in Tax is socially ok while directly ripping off it's residents is frowned upon by them.

Untrue. LL is a private corp, not the same landscape in which Buffet lives. They report no quarterlies, nor are they under pressure from analysts. Their top management is safe from attack from anyone except their own board, and largely safe from that, given the political landscape on their particular board.

That said, they need to eventually demonstrate viability as a scalable platform for corporate uses, both for intracorp work and, I think, for "retail" class outreach to a diverse population such as that SL now supports. For that purpose, I'm not sure why LL would care that 1/3 of the online population is bots; if they were designing a test network, that would be a low percentage!

So from their viewpoint, I don't see that widespread bot usage is gaming the numbers.What? Show me the corporation committing the fraud. This is one resident lying to another within a game. If LL could not be sued over Ginko, it sure as shootin' cannot be regarded as complicit when a camping pad does not pay out.

That said, this is bad and clearly meant to defraud your camper of their time invested. However, there is no contract of any kind violated. I don't believe any legal liability exists, tho the intention is clearly evil and fraudulent.

Hmm Maybe we should just find AR these campbots when we see them, perhaps LL will get the message if the real residents get upset enoug rather than wait till real resident ar such a minority to bots Its becoming botlife

Hello Tegg,

My goodness you're a wee bit het up on this subject.

Well thankfully the current SL commerce model isn't dependent on whether or not you agree with it..

If I may clarify your point of view, you like camping chairs, and despair because there is an unscrupulous bunch of bandits farming them with a trusty band of robots.

It's a tough world certainly, and there is always someone willing to take your bright idea and turn it to their advantage. Damn the free market economy that I'm guessing employs you and is responsible for the existence of SL in the first place. .

I'll agree that this dastardly bunch may be seen to be taking advantage of some rather slow witted business owners and their camping chairs, however I'm not sure how this can be seen as "farming" the SL economy as a whole.

If the LL were ever worried about value being syphoned into RL via currency exchange, then they have all the same tools for controlling the currency markets that nations have.

The economics of the situation are pretty straightforward, and to be honest not that interesting.

In any event, it actually doesn't take much to deal with the camping bots (or whatever else they are called these days). Lindal Kidd has started a thread called Bot-Free Camping which gives some excellent ideas.

As for alts being used on camping chairs, I'll point you to my previous postings to this thread - I can't see the problem, the business owner is getting what he/she paid for ("apparent popularity" and the camper gets what they want, oh and you get what you want - something to moan about

Well it does help that modern day pirates wear uniforms that say "Customs" or "Tax Man" on the shoulder. LOL

Having dealt with both "traditional" pirates in Indonesia and "modern" pirates in many other places, (I will be nice I promise LOL), I MUCH prefer the "traditional cutthroat" - at least you usually know what they are after!

I suppose it IS unreasonable of me to be upset at paying a "fine" of $100 for not having a permit that the central government stopped issuing 10 years ago. Sigh.

I think you will find that SEC regulations apply equally in this case. Fraud "trumps" it all!



The fact that it hasn't happened YET plus $1 ($4 at Starbucks) will get you a cup of coffee!

The fact that LRL "knew or should have known" that fraud was being committed is quite enough. Te rest is a matter of proof and legal fees.

"For $1M in legal fees you too can get a 1 in 3500 chance to take this to the US Supreme Court where there is a 1 in 250 chance of getting what you want ..."
quote from a friend who does that for a living

'If you are even accused, no matter how baseless the allegation, then the company has just spent $1M in legal fees and paper work. Consider what that will do to your career..." - my former boss at Motorola concerning the same problem from the corporate viewpoint. (Did I quote you correctly Jeff?)

I say again: if LL is allowing this to continue, then they are putting the entire company future ont he line! Of course 4 year old startups are very high risk enterprises.

Campers I don't have a problem with but people or AV's that wouldn't be here except for camping to make RL cash I just see as leeches to the system.
I just feel the worlds quality is degrading as it becomes bot world

Hmm I think I'll take the weekly income tax in preference to being beaten, having a bullet put through my head then being dumped overboard to the sharks.

You seem to be losing the thread of your own arguments. YOU brought up the question of quarterly pressure in the post below. This was not in respect to fraud; you were saying that LL is forced to game their numbers to meet analyst expectations. My point is simply that there are no analyst expectations, because there are no quarterlies, because LL is still private.

Originally Posted by Karen Palen:
Like it or not, LRL (AKA LL) is part of the whole "con game" and forced to play games with their numbers so that THIS quarter's results are EXACTLY what the analystas say they will be...
*laughs* I don't think the "This is the end of SL!!!" alarm is justified here. The case under discussion is a camping chair which does not pay out. This is analogous to a RL situation where your neighbor, who lives in a rented townhouse, says he will give you a dollar if you sit on his porch for an hour. You do so, and he doesn't. The landlord (i.e. LL) is NOT responsible for his not paying you. Your recourse is to call him an asshole and tell the other neighbors not to do him any such favors.
LL is 8 years old, having been founded in 1999. They have pulled down a very small amount of publicly announced venture money for that period, despite revenues that clearly do not come anywhere near covering costs. Their financial backing has to date been very solid, and shows no sign of wavering.

Karen, forgive me, but while this is an interesting topic, you seem to be more interested in scoring debating points than advancing anyone's understanding of the issues. Accordingly, have fun with those who enjoy that game; it's making me tired. Thanks for that, incidently ... took right care of my touch of insomnia tonight!

How I would have looked at these as a club owner offering camping.

a) Fine, but I am paying you to be active in my club, not do something else. If you want to play with your grandkids go somewhere else. Eject

b) It is my private property, if I am being nice enough to offer you something to move on, you should take it. Eject

c) See B

d) Two can play that game. Eject and ban.

Sadly, yes. That's cos money is what people care about most in too many cases.

Well, gee, I really don't care if the neighbors are running an escort business or Mom's "Virtual Virtue" Apple Pie Warehouse, as long as they abide by the ToS. To me, Mainland trafficbots seem like a pretty simple case of denial of service in violation of the CS--but with a negligible likelihood of enforcement; and camping chairs (whether filled by campbots or not) would probably qualify as an attractive nuisance, with even less likelihood of enforcement.

And it's hardly surprising LL isn't highly motivated to solve the problem--and not just because of inflated user numbers. Imagining myself in a situation with a neighbor whose trafficbots are denying my customers access to the sim, I'd suppose that one of us will eventually just give up, sell our land to the adcutter with the fastest bots, and buy a whole sim--so what's the downside from LL's perspective? Or, if either of us were willing to just give up altogether, then that outcome is not much worth worrying about either, given the cost of a whole mainland sim at auction and its monthly fee from the perspective of RL cost of doing business: anybody not willing to invest that amount probably isn't going to matter to LL's bottom-line any time soon. (Whether that applies to the entire *class* of such micro-businesses, I really don't know. If every Mainland sim without a sole-owner were relegated to one trafficbot mall surrounded by wall-to-wall adfarms, I'm not entirely sure LL would need to give a damn.)

Yep, and it's a real business opportunity. All the static info that's available to LL's Google appliances can be web-crawled now. Couldn't use the dynamic stuff like traffic and click-thrus, but that may just make the system harder to game. Eventually somebody will do it--augmented with info from crawling the third-party product sites, too--if SL survives long enough.

I stopped posting in this thread, but I'll answer this one since it's addressed to me personally. But don't expect me to get into a discussion about it - I won't. You are entitled to your opinion (even if it's totally unrealistic), and I'm not going to try and coreect it for you.

I'm surprised that you don't know how traffic works. Read this thread to gain an understanding of it. They are high in the sky so that they don't cause any lag for people below - the store, which is also in the sky, and on the ground.

That's your false morality, and nothing to do with morals. Also, that was your answer to "how is it cheating?", and it doesn't say anything about how it is cheating, but it isn't cheating, so I'm not surpirsed that you couldn't answer the question.

Thank you for the compliment, and you are right - I don't need the alts to make a decent RL living from it, but I see no reason not to have them since they do cause more sales - more money in my bank.

"Defraud" is a heavy word. If I did things that brought people to the store when they are looking for what I don't sell, then it would be cheating. If I set things up so that I take people's money and don't deliver the goods, or something like that, then it would be defrauding them. But I do none of those things, or anything remotely similar to them, so I am neither cheating nor defrauding anyone.

SL is what the population makes it - don't forget that. It's not a matter of opinion - it's on the front page of the SL website - "It's your world". Some people want it to be a super clean place where normal business competition practises don't exist. Those people are dreaming. Some people want it so that all businesses are just hobbies and don't really need to make any money, except maybe tier. Those people are dreaming too. Some want it so that nobody does anything to change their search rankings - all dreamers. This thread is full of such dreamers.

The reality is that SL is a place where RL commerce exists (commerce in SL is converted into real money), and as long as that's the case, it will have businesses that are there for making money. People can complain all they want, but nothing will change in that repect. Don't expect business owners to stop competing, by using what's available, just because you don't like it. They don't give a sh.t what you like, and rightly so - it's none of your business. If what they do has a negative impact on other people, such as using all the sim's agent allowance for themselves, then they should be stopped from doing it, but as long as what they do doesn't have a negative impact on people, and as long as they don't cheat and defraud people, it's none of your business. You don't like camping? Don't frequent places that have campers. You don't like alts? Don't shop where they have them. Easy isn't it?

I'll tell you what. When you start a business, you do it your way and make the objectors happy. If you don't make an RL livelihood out of it, you'll have the inner satisfaction of knowing that you "did the right thing" in some poeple's eyes - you'll be a hero to a few people. Also, the real business people will be pleased with you, because you aren't competing with them for the real money that they continue to put into their bank accounts. Everyone will love you. I'm sure you'll like that. And while you are basking in the glow of being loved, the real business people are enjoying the fruits of business in their RLs. Everyone's a winner.

Thank you Phil. I wish I could have said this as well as you did here!

So you act like the typical third world dictator while whining about the fact that your customers all go somewhere else.

I have lost count of the empty "camping" spots which try to insist on a "real live presence".

In some cases I even recognize the bot writers behind the few avatars that are there - it really is a fairly small community!

Don't you mean half as arrogantly and ethically challenged? Honestly this "I'll do anything to give myself an advantage and ethics be damned" attitude is quite disgusting. I know one place I definitely won't ever be shopping.

I have to agree ..

While I think it is his frustration talking ..

Phil sounds like a jerk in that last post.

Does this really have anything to do with what Phil actually said?

I certainly can't find the connection.

Actually, I've lost track of whether these are trafficbots or campers or what, but the quoted passage just reminded me of something I'd been meaning to ask on one of these threads: Is there some limit to how high these things could be? Well, there's a practical inconvenience above 768m, and a hard limit on prim survival at 4096m, but why aren't they all parked up close to that 4096 max, to keep them truly out of the way? I guess they'd have to fly up there on their own steam--"set home" seems to max out at 768m; not sure about TP invites. They could of course fly themselves much higher, but then they'd have nowhere to sit, and a standing avatar is still physical--and gets animation updates--so should be quite a bit laggier than a seated one.

It's not entirely true that avatars at altitude "don't cause any lag for people below," but the lag they do cause is all server-side--and should be pretty minimal if they have no scripted attachments and are seated on an animated prim. Ideally, I suppose, they'd be out of drawing-distance from each other, but if they're seated on something that forces an animation, there shouldn't really be much for them to update each other about anyway, once they're all mutually rezzed.

This is really more relevant to private sim owners than for Mainland sim-sharers, of course; in the Mainland case, one would think the 40-avatar limit would apply before a reasonably optimized trafficbot army had much lag impact. (Actually, that's just a guess. I've noticed there's still quite a lot of server-client chatter even when there's really just nothing happening, so clearly the server does a bunch of stuff on a per-avatar basis--maybe there's more lag there than one would expect.)

Then you aren't trying very hard. This part in particular...

"you'll have the inner satisfaction of knowing that you "did the right thing" in some poeple's eyes - you'll be a hero to a few people. Also, the real business people will be pleased with you, because you aren't competing with them for the real money that they continue to put into their bank accounts."

He implies that anyone who places ethical considerations before profit isn't a real business person, which is the very essence of arrogance and stunted ethics.

Actually this thread lost a lot of of its value when people started bragging about how much SL or RL money they have.

Frustration, maybe. But with all the stupidy and crap that's been posted in this thread, what sensible person wouldn't get a little frustrated?

It's all very simple. Nobody here can change things, so live with it. If you don't like something, stay away from it. Hell, SL is big enough that you don't have to frequent places that have things you don't like, but to listen to some of the crap that's been posted here, you'd think that it was impossible to move in SL without being surrounded by campers, bots, and the like. Sheesh! Get a life, for goodness sakes.

naughty naughty - we are supposed to "play nice" here and not call anyone bad names even if they do spout a bunch of Marxist double talk that would make Karl Marx blush.

If no one can change things then why worry that people don't like it?

Wont hurt you any.

Complaining about complainers in a harsher tone then the camping complainers use isn't exactly all that impressive.