New news on the possible fate of landbots

or if they talk back before you send your message and they don't know you're online

The reason why there can't be a "seller confirmation box" is to prevent bogus sellers listing land, and then when someone tries to buy it, clicking No on the confirmation no matter what.

What would be the benefit of that? Using it for ad space?

Perhaps a more radical solution is in order.

Entirely eliminate the setting that allows sales of land to anyone, but allow sales to specific people. Use auctions instead for selling when you don't have a buyer. The seller could choose a starting price, perhaps a reserve price, and the number of days to keep open, with a minimum of one day.

Unlike some auction systems, the seller should be allowed to withdraw the auction at any time. That way, if they find a specific person they want to sell to, they can still do so without waiting for the auction to be over. Thus the auction delay would never hurt.

That doesn't seem like a compelling reason.

The auction system they already have to bring their own land to market isn't working properly (or at least the auction home web page isn't). Good idea, but I don't expect them to ever be able to get such a thing up and running.

chris norse wants to outlaw? to encroach on the freedom of another citizen? to regulate?!?

If they added something that let the seller confirm the sale, they'd have to have something so that they buyer could back out before the seller accepts/rejects the offer.

I'm sure there's some annoying thing a bogus buyer could do with that...

Using it for ad space, plus just plain griefing.

Another problem is the ability to delay. A griefer could just not log in for a few weeks, leaving your land sale endlessly pending, and your L$ in flux. If you allow a buyer to pull out if the delay is too long, then a griefer (or a landbot) can repeatedly buy and unbuy a parcel to lock it out from other buyers at zero cost.

There's other effects, too. Suppose I have two parcels next to each other. I set them both for sale quite cheaply. Two different people buy them both. I accept the sale of one of them, then when prompted if I want to sell to the second person or not, I unplug my network cable. Then I wait and don't log in for a few days. Then I go to look at what the first person is building there. If they've built a 100ft tall plywood sex club (um, that's a plywood club, not for plywood sex, although you never know ), I say Yes to the second person's offer and they get the now devalued land. If they've built a beautiful sculpture garden, I say No to their offer and increase the price as it's now in premium surroundings. Essentially, it means that ALL the risk of buying and selling with unknown neighbours can be passed on to the buyer.

You have a devious mind.

Bots aren't citizens. I wouldn't give your toaster rights, why would I give a computer program rights.

toasters have feelings too!!!!!!!

I script.

Trying to spot strange or abusive interactions that could come from particular obscure sequences of events is kinda part of the job description.

I could have really used you during my last acid trip.

banlines arent citizens either. neither are 16m adplots.
we are talking about the people that utilise these things, not the objects themselves. i suspect you already realise that, chris norse.

Bots are run by citizens.

Just sayin'

Do you have any more strawmen to bring out Nina?

Yes I know. You don't like me. I could really care less. The opinion of a bitter woman such as yourself is of little concern to me.

Have a good life Nina.

Ammend TOS to provide that avatars must be controlled by a sentient being.

All bots become TOS violations

So would half of the rest of us

reading thru the 10/04 transcript and to the most current, there where a couple legitimate reasons to Curb land bots.

Rob Linden: Generally, there's nothing wrong with automation per se, though anything that causes undue strain on our server infrastructure is not welcome, and exploits certainly aren't welcome.

Rob Linden: whether land bots constitute an "economic exploit" is somethign I'm not qualified to answer on Linden Lab's behalf.


Seems thier opting to discuss it in private because they dont want to get the general population into a fistful of chanting. with this type of thinking on LL part, sounds like they know they got to do something about it, but arent going to talk too much publically till its solved

LL isn't going to ever say Bots are not allowed. Little known fact, LL themselves use bots extensively. For instance lately they have 3 bots, performance Tester, performance2 Tester, and performance3 Tester Tping about the grid, constantly logging in and out, I assume to test grid performance. And if you search the last name Tester, you'll find a large number of accounts, some manned by people, but I'm sure many are not under human control. So it would be kind of "do as I say, not as I do" for them to say nobody could use bots. Bots are here to stay. But the question will be under what conditions they are allowed to operate.

Agreed.
This reminds me of a thought I keep having about LL.

They don't seem to be good at thinking about the social impact of their designs. They don't seem to be good at thinking out how people will game the system.
Whatever about their tech skills, they absolutely suck at people skills.

I remember when LL decided to throttle Search rate as an answer to landbots. The no-brainer counter from the bot operators was to run a number of bots in parallel.
Result: Humans trying to page down through search results got inconvenienced. Landbots continued to DDOS the database.

Ban lines (but fergawdsakes let's not start discussing them here):
This is very much a techie/geeky solution - with absolutely no thought given to the visual effect on neighbours. It's a very half-baked solution.

16m as the minimum plot size:
Great for someone who needs to have a scripted prim in a sim for techie stuff, but .........

Traffic: Instantly subverted by camping, camper bots and bot farms.

Mainland and Estate "land acquisition" sharing the same "sales" interface:
- Massive confusion for the newbies (and oldies)

The quaint idea that Relevance in the new 'Googlised' Search would be driven by Resident's Picks and Landmarks:
Can you say Pick-bot? Can you say Landmark-spamming?


LL really need to recruit very devious minds in order to ensure that new developments are as fully-baked as possible.
Acknowledgement of the reality of the existence of large numbers of spiritually-impaired and sociopath residents roaming SL in the midst of the majority of basically decent and technologically innocent/illiterate residents *has* to become a major design consideration for LL.

If the bots never leave their owners land, I am cool with them. Until then they are little more than mobile toasters.

Sounds nice, where do you get these mobile toasters at?

Presumably fully-baked is better than the half-baked ideas we see coming out of LL right now??

Broccoli