New news on the possible fate of landbots

Firstly, by bringing your daily schedual and your mother's sayings into this, YOU made it personal. But I think I misjudged you. Not only do you not understand economic theory, but the rules of debate are beyond your grasp as well. So here's a tip, words like F*cking and Tw*t, not acceptable in intellectual discourse. Also, telling someone to 'shut up' rather than argue the merits of your position is not acceptable.

Just because making SL clothes is detail intensive and time consuming for you, does not mean that the outfits we all wear in SL don't have programing behind them, after you finish your photoshopping and upload your files. Anything in SL has a code behind it, as the whole metaverse is based on code. Bots are programs created with code, that interact with the codes in SL. I'm sure the outfits you make are lovely and you put alot of work into them, however, to a computer, they are just code, and someday, will be botted, if bots aren't reigned in by LL. land bots were easier because of the open sourcing of the viewer, which lists land placed for sale. I believe, and this is just a guess, that it will be shortly after servers get opened sourced and more of the grid itself becomes transparent, that you will begin to see the botting of design related professions, and Corey Linden has said repeatedly that that is one of the goals of LL to open sourcing servers and let individuals run their own sims connected to the grid.

Also, I know how SL clothes and skins and hair are made. I choose not to make them because I prefer working in real estate and other pursuits. My second life dreams don't involve fashion design, although I do buy alot of clothes, I will admit.

AGAIN, you do not understand oligarchy in the economic sense. With oligarchy, there is a HIGH barrier to market entry NOT a COMPLETE complete barrier to market entry. That is the primary difference between a limited monopoly (another name for oligarchy in economics) and a pure monopoly. High barrier to entry means you have to have vast resources to enter the market, not that it is impossible to enter the market, only that very few can ever enter the market and the market is set up in such a way to dissuade market entry.


Fistly, I didn't know there was a serious JIRA for that. I'll sign up before I log off. Thanks for letting me know.

Also, I have prob with bots that information gather. I have no prob with scanners or other tools used to simplify real estate transactions in SL. I'd buy a bot if it were merely a program that gathered information for a human botmaster to do the actual transaction. However, when it does the entire job and the only thing a botmaster has to do is set it's rates for buying and selling and then walk away, that's going too far. That is what unevens the playing field, the fact that a human nervous system can't click a mouse fast enough to beat a bot, who is merely running as a program with no human interaction. It's one thing to get an advantage with a tool. It's another thing for that tool to do all the work faster than several humans could. That ensures no competition outside other computer programs with absantee humans.

You are the one who started with your personal sob story, which I never commented on. You are fortunate that SL provided you an opportunity that you couldn't otherwise have in real life, but the times moved ahead and you aren't moving with them. And the only thing I told you to shut up about was the personal issue. With regard to everything else, there has been no such exchange. And it does not change that personal responsibility is not a fantasy to be had, but a characteristic of a person.

This makes no sense. We already have automated vendors, and a bot entering at this phase of sales transactions would have marginal effect. The hard part is all done before the upload of the texture. After that, it's effect would be negligible at best. For a design bot to have the same dominating effect on these markets as it did on the land market, it would have to make creation of superior products easier and cheaper. Anyone can put out a poor to mediocre product with a ham-fisted overlay of some free texture obtained on Google. But there is no incentive to buy such a thing when you can get something that is aesthetically pleasing and crafted in detail. Bots will never do this on their own. So until bots develop a sense of aesthetics, none will dominate the market the way it has for land. And that's not going to happen any time soon.

I haven't chosen this particular line of work either, but I know enough about it that I can tell where a bot would reasonably make a difference.

I don't know, but how much do one of these bot clients cost anyway? Clearly, expensive for you is not the same as expensive for someone else. Considering that SL valuation is often skewed, and these things have proliferated, it cannot be all that expensive. I could be wrong, so I'll reserve on it.

That is your opinion, your choice. This is that fairness thing again. Again, you either advance with the times, or you don't. Granted, as I have already stated, it would be better for LL to implement controls, but I will not stand in the way of technology.

Honestly, the next bot killer would be the bot that knows that it's purchasing waterfront, water view, or green land, that is not oddly shaped or not contiguous. Bots end up picking up a lot of crap just because the price is below the lowest price per meter. In this way, much of the value of the bot is diminished, because it cannot find land that would be perfect for an end user. A brand new auction winner is going to price nice land differently from steep hills and granite. As far as I'm concerned, the bots can have the granite. Price isn't everything.

As much as I love catfights, I'm going to have to change the channel soon...

Yep popcorn box is empty and I'm out of snakes

I chose to include my facts in regards to how I started out w/o the means to enter a oligarchic market, but did have the means to enter a purely competative market and triumphed over poverty. How is that a sob story. It was an illustration I CHOSE to include. As for moving with the times, I do move with the times, but when I see something I don't like I don't roll over and just accept it if it's important enough to me. I've converted my business already, and am still making money. However, the change in the very nature of the MARKET STRUCTURE is disturbing and if it continues, could upset many industries in SL, not just mine. You know, that thing 'personal responsibility', that you seem to be harping on, includes taking responsibility for the world around you as well as your own immediate actions. Bots threaten the entire metaverse in the long run. They need to be controlled by LL or they could upset the economy as a whole.

You hope it doesn't happen soon. At the end of the day, all clothing in SL is converted to code to be read by servers that keep the virtual world running. You work hard on detail, I'm sure, but other designers, in RL, make clothing too. All a person with a third party program would have to do is create a customer service bot, after scanning in RL designs. The program that ran the bot would do the rest. In RL you can get designer clothes but you can also hire someone with sewing skills to make you a knock off. So long as you don't place a label on the outfit and infringe copywrite, you're cool. Most folks buy off the rack in RL. If a person with a third party program that had scanned in a large number of dress patterns, along with a boatload of textures, etc, a garmet just as nice as anything a human designer could create with hours of Photoshop work could be created and sold cheaply, and I doubt very few folks would care that it wasn't human made, just as very buyers care if they get their land from a bot or a human realtor.

You seem to think human creation is more precise and visually compelling than what a computer can produce. Get over it. Human perceptions of beauty are merely our reaction to precise mathematical relationships in the world (worlds when dealing with SL). Nothing handles mathematical precision better than a computer. A bot prduced dress would be as nice, if not nicer, than anything a human could create, if given enough precise patterns (in mathematical terms ofcouse) and uploaded textures. Creative humans who would create the patterns are a dime a dozen, and very cheap to employ. Some even post their work on the internet for anyone to see and use. Artists are cheap resources.

No, there hasn't been that much bot proliferation. The number of individual land bots has grown, but the number of botmasters, that is humans who own the programs and use them is pretty small. I can name 5 that I know of. The number of competitors with bots is small. Income for each is great because they are no longer in serious competition with many competitors.

Again, I refuse to stand in the way of technology as well, but I also refuse to allow the health of SL's economy go down the toilet without a fight. It's not an either or scenario. SL's economy can't withstand the loss of its image as a dream factory, and while right now only a few markets have been hit by bots, I truly believe that more are coming.

There is not only one path to technological advancement. In fact, if you actually read or thought about what I've posted on the nature of advancement in the limited monopoly market structure vs. the purely competative market structure, you'd see purely competative markets encourage and result in greater tech gains over time. There is less incentive to tinker with your product to make it better when you only have a handful of fixed competitors and you are all flush in cash. When there are a large number of competitors working to outdue one another and no gentleman's agreements to be had between them, you have competitors trying to outdo one another with advancement.

Agreed, but don't go thinking someone won't make a bot that can do all that too. The land textures are found in the terrain menu of the estate tools, same with water level, etc. All industries are susceptable to botting, when a world is based on code. Your programmer just has to know how to read it and interact with it. Open sourcing opens the door.

*eyeroll* At least now you agree it's a characteristic and not some fantasy. I have done my part and have voted for the jira, and I see you finally did too. There isn't much else I can do, other than help educate about the danger of landbots - which I am willing to do as part of Ray's Land Answers group, and to anyone else that asks.

Still more nonsense. You clearly don't do any kind of texture work relevant to SL clothing. You forget who is buying the items - humans. Humans care about details. Things like seams, shirring, beading, shading, etc. Unless those dress patterns are photosourced properly and given proper alpha transparency in the RIGHT places before upload, it's meaningless. Someone may come along and come up with a way to do it but I don't expect to be a young woman or alive when that happens, because no matter how good a bot may do it, it takes a human eye to clean it up to make it appealing to human beings. A bot cannot decide whether or not to make something asymmetrical or symmetrical - that is an aesthetic choice only a human can make. A bot cannot decide what is the right level of shininess for a skin, how low to cut a neckline, what shape a neckline should be, or sharpness for latex, or the number of beads to put onto a dress. Someone has to put in the time to make those choices and do the texture work. My argument is not about precision in creation at all - it's about aesthetic choices that are not merely mathematical. Your customer service bot couldn't make a dress slightly sluttier on the fly, lowering the neckline by increasing alpha transparency to just barely expose an areola - it would be limited to hacking together things already uploaded in the database. If cheap designs are to be had, as in your example, they are to be had by ALL, and there is no way that a bot would make one clothing creator dominate another the way landbots have dominate the bottom-of-the-barrel-land market.

Your AI scenario not happening any time soon. We'd be lucky to be alive.

I'd love to hear from Elanthius how great his competition is for non-swooped, quality land that isn't at the bottom of the price list. I imagine that the market there is pretty healthy since it hasn't put Sarah, Thai, CP or a number of the other large land traders out of business. Maybe you 'outsmarted' yourself and put yourself out of that business.

Backpedaling now, but I'll take it We are not going to agree on the implication of bots in other more creative markets, so we will have to agree to disagree. There are few markets susceptible to bot *domination*, and this one is one of them.

Never said personal responsibility was a fantasy, only your interpretation of it.

Thank you for informing me there was a JIRA vote. I've never really seen JIRA voting do anything in SL; LL pretty much has its plans and they go their own way, nomatter what the community wants, but I'll vote regardless.

This wouldn't involve AI any more than land botting does. All the qualities you mentioned can be broken down into a computer program. All that would be needed would be input of templates and seme basic information. Just programming. This would not be cheap qualtiy design, anymore than CD quality sound is cheap audio compared to analogue. Digital image and sound already surpasses what humans can discern in terms of perfect image or perfect pitch, so when we see them we assume they're perfect. Technically, they are better than human perfect; human perfect is cheap quality. The brain isn't that savy. Details like beads numbers or neckline lengths would be part of a template, or the basic program where one just enters a number. That's dataentry. Sluttiness is a series of modifications that usualy expose more flesh at certain points in dresses. A bot requested to make 'sluttier' would be able to make those modifications based on it's program. You like to think it's complicated but it really isn't, at least not to modern day technology. Much of what you are describing is in fact part of some high-end photo editing software, used by professionals who work with digitized photos that go into magazines. There is no more air-brushing flaws. It's a simple few mouse clicks to make a model freckle/scar/dimpl-less with software already available. But go on believing your work is bot-proof.

Just said last post, I'M NOT OUT OF BUSINESS. I"VE MANAGED TO ADAPT TO THE BOTS EXISTANCE.

Not backpeddling. I never said I was against technical advancement in SL. I'm all for it. You don't seem to get that purely competative markets are BETTER at advancing technology.

Alright. I agree to disagree on our interpretation of bots. However, I don't believe real estate isn't a creative business. You have to be creative there. It's just a different kind of creative.

Oh yeah?
Clintonize that.

JIRA only works if the particular JIRA fits the Tao. Oh well.

I didn't say you were out of business. I said THAT business (land flipping).

We differ on whether or not the market is purely competitive. I believe that it basically is, if you equip yourself with the same tools that the others use. I don't believe the cost is all that high, for those who have the financial means to enter the land trading market to begin with. And I don't believe that honest traders have much to fear by losing bottom-of-the barrel land. The only things they miss are honest mistakes and people crazy enough to abandon land.

A) The rematch of this battle is going to fetch a ton on Pay-Per-View.

B) HBO called. They want the rights for the movie version.

C) Enough foreplay. Get on with it already.

D) I've seen 100 Year Wars that were settled faster.

E) I wish a bot would throttle this thread.

This like watching the Bold and the Beautiful or similar, 2 days later the same 2 actors are in the same room still continuing the same conversation.
We are just the commercial break

THIS TEGGO AV break proudly brought to you by the LIOME Land CoOp

I clearly critisised "YOUR 'personal responsibility' arguement", NEVER the idea of personal responsibility as a whole. YOUR interpretation of what personal responsibility means is a fantasy.

What a high cost is is debatable, and dependent on interpretation. However, I can tell you that for most realtors that still trade mainland the bots have made business costs much higher and profits much lower. The cost of entering the market anew is FAR higher now than it was prebot, even a few weeks, pre-bot. Driving up cost of entry is a sign of market transition from pure competition to limited monopoly. As for 'honesty', there was nothing dishonest about dealing at the bottom of the market, pre-bot, anymore than botmasters are dishonest for dealing at that end of the market now. However, I thought you wanted to keep moral judgements out of this debate?

Goodness gracious. Honest mistakes are the kind of thing we have been talking about - people setting land for sale for 1L to anyone. It doesn't make sense in any other context. *eyeroll*

And in light of your skewed view of anything I write, I am really curious to understand what exactly you think my interpretation of personal responsibility is.

I put 1000L on Cristalle.

welcomez to my ARz

Actually, for those who emigrated here from World of Warcraft, it's like watching two paladins advanced enough to have plenty of life duel to the death. For those who don't know WoW, it can take a looooooooong time...

I'll just interject a small but almost thought out summary of the match

Ladies and Gentleman... Welcome to Forum Fights!

Introducing in this corner ... Joy "Landbots are bad" Iddinja. Fighting for the competitive market among human controlled avatars (OP Cheers!)

In that corner Cristalle "Landbots are good" Karami. Figthing for landbot rights

Joy comes out first waving the banner of a capitalist market between actual humans controlling avatars, waves to the crowd... you can hear Har Fairweather cheer in the crowd!
Chris sitting in the 1st row shouts " Down with all bots! "
Oh but whats this, Joy gets a surprise thrashing by Cristalle, Cristalle, rips the banner of free capitalist market and cracks joy a good one over the head, and raises her own banner, "I don't like landbots, but it dont effect me so I oppose anyones thought on getting rid of them"
Tegg tries to jump in the ring but the girls attention is already fixed on each other
Nina slaps Chris in the face. Fights breaking out in the crowd!
Cristalle picks Tegg up and throws him out of the ring
Tegg gathers his face and "rolls eyes" at Nina, "oh your one of those botlovers"
Nina retaliates" I wasnt even talking to you lil lego man" "I'm chewing on Chris, wait your turn"
Back in the main ring... Joy snaps a cold har clarificationj to Cristalles face by saying, SL is a dream, and dreams are what you make of them"
Cristalle clubs Joy, with the "What world are you living in " across her back. Cristallle continues her attack with a "everyone can have a bot" jab, and a quick 'if you got will or the money" combo
Joy returns the favor by throwning some big words out "Bots are part of the creation of SL oligarchy" to the chest of Cristalle (me runs to get a dictionary) and doesnt stop there, we are rewarded with a heartfelt quick biograpghy of "The World of Joy"
Har Fairweather continues the chant!
Cristalle visibly angered now, starts the wardance around the ring, many quotes and rebuttals to come, a stiff "anyone can buy a bot, that is if your not poor" punch just below the belt makes you kinda wish there was a referee in the ring
Cristalle point to Har in the crowd "You want some of this too?"
Jackson slaps a bandage on Joys open cuts "back in the ring!"
Yumi stand up and confirms that Yumi indeed is not affected by landbots and therefore is in Cristalle's corner
Raymond confirms that he was too a victim of those dreaded bots, oh the second humanity
Tegg still bruised from the earlier encounter with Cristalle, tries to make a prophecy "They wont stop till we are all dead!" and gestures to Cristalle "what do you want?"
Cristalle eyeballs Tegg, "don't you have something better to do?"
Joy launches a suprise attack on Cristalle by jumping on her back and administering some deep "I'll take you down you rich brat" stabs, and follows up with a "You still dont get it do you" manuever.
Cristalle visibly shaken up by Joys counteroffensive, begins to lost control of her forum manners and lets a few obsenities fall friom her talker..Cristalle looks at Yumi and issues a reminder that her name is on the fight bill. But still applaueds the vote of confidence.
Sling sqaures up in Joys corner.
Raymond steps a little closer to Joys corner, but reminds everyone that this battle can't be won.
Cristalle flashes a smile at Raymond, oh what a wilely fighter she is!
Tegg is ready for another attempt at getting nto the fight but Joy quickly steps in and rattles the dictionary again catching Cristalles attention. Joy continues the " you still dont get it do you" stance.
Land Sheppard interjects with a little facts for the fight
Cristalle calls joy a "presumtive twat" not even sling can sling that much mud.
Raymond asks "can't we all just get along?"
Christalle continues flirting with Raymond.
Cristalle Lunges at joy, with a " I have some experience in the matter" dagger
and Joy rebukes Cristalles expereince by claiming that shes not a virtual seemstress, stay with us folks it gets hard to follow sometimes
Cristalle take a opportunity to call Joy a crybaby. and makes the landbot comparasion to vendor systems.... pretty weak...
Raymond and Tegg both show weariness of this long drawn out fight
But Joy continues on her fact checking rhythm and raises moral once again
Cristalle, sensing a turn in the battle tries to inoke the spirit of Elanthius to aid her in the battle.
Joy tries to turn the tables by making kissy kissy with Cristalle over Cristalle information about JIRA, But Cristalle quips back that JIRA is only useful if LL actually manages it, so thierfore shutting down Joys kissy manuever


this commentator is pooped, stay tuned for round 2 later!

I'm sorry, but I have to object to that.

While it is quite true that I'm not particularly affected by landbots, I was at one point affected by their ye olde equivalent ("land swoopers" - basically, humans doing the same thing, just somewhat more slowly - but still much faster than you can explain to a new friend how to open the Buy Land dialog). And I don't in any way support the use of landbots - nor land swooping for that matter.

The problem is that the argument on this thread hasn't been that "landbots are bad" - many, many people agree with that - but that "landbots are bad because they give the people who use them an unfair advantage", which isn't a sensible argument. At one point, I would have agreed with that, but some years of both positive and negative experiences in SL have convinced me that you have to be pragmatic about these things. _All_ advantages are unfair, otherwise they wouldn't be advantages; and, like it or not, SL is a capitalism and thus not everyone can be a huge market winner. If you start deconstructing things based on that, then after you banned landbots you'd have to ban Anshe from having 24-hour staff cover, then you'd have to ban people who were better at reading markets, and so on..

If the argument had been "landbots are bad because they take advantage of people's mistakes" then I'd support it wholeheartedly, and I do still agree that action should be taken against landbots, but not for that reason.

That was actually sorta funny. However:

1. I never said Landbots are good. Considering that people don't like to read, I object to that characterization. Maybe I'll luck out and they won't read that post!
2. I have agreed with and voted for controls to limit landbots' ability to purchase land. Consistent with #1 above.
3. I don't get personal until invited to do so, and in this case, the condescending bs was an open and clear invitation for a healthy smack back.
4. Joy made no kissy kissy about the JIRA, and I merely agreed with her that JIRA is, by and large, useless. You're just stirring things up!

Well said again, Yumi.

/me wonders what would have happened if Hitler had Landbots

Ask yourself Cristalle, if you dont disagree with Joys post about landbots, why do you continue a 2 day flame war with her...

Simple fact is , landbots didnt affect your business model, it DID affect Joys, so she does have a reason to be vocal about it. Many people got into SL because of what a few big names did in SL before landbot, now the moving force that made those people are gone. landbots took it away. Of course it was inevitable for people to try and monopolizae that market in that way, but LL should have done something to stop it, to preserve the economic model that was doing so well.

Instead it wasnt stopped, and look at SL now, no longer the thriving community it was back then, not as many people coming into the seam, not as many people telling media how well they are doing, Not as much opportunity, and whyis all this? landbots, thats why, landbots destroyed a vital business in SL and now SL is showing the results of its affects.

Heres a good and easy way to fix all the problems, stop opensourcing the damn viewer, aother way would be to modify the TOS to forbid bots from making any type of purchase LL is no stranger to modifying TOS, and this change I think would be for the better, to bring back that competitive market

LL has approxiamately 33% more mainland sims than it did 9 months ago, but the land value is 1/3rd that of what it was. SL Produded its first millionaire about that many months ago, and she attanded it not by running bots, but by making a name for herself, have the bot runners made that much of a positive impact on SL and made a name for themselves in the same fashion?

Here's a quick question I dare anyone to answer, what have landbots done that was good for the SL community? Obviously they certainly did namable bad things, but what good did they do?

And I wasnt trying to be 100% factual about the entire berth of posts back and forth, just making a comical summary of the action, considering its mostly the same people that have been following it all along, we all could use a little humor

My view of landbots is not a simplistic one. Yumi's post sums it up quite nicely.

I think LL expects the market to even itself out. I would tend to agree with that position.

Landbots destroyed SL? Hardly. I think LL's mercurial approach to customer service, poor system performance, and inventory loss have had a bigger effect than landbots, especially since the profit margin in said business tanked - thanks to LL's flood of land, and the aforementioned performance issues.

I do not support stifling of technological advances because it merely gives an advantage. As Yumi said, all advantages are inherently unfair. Otherwise it would not be an advantage.

Anshe is part of the reason why First Land no longer exists, as her cronies would either make then-illegal noob alts, or buy it from unsuspecting noobs for well-below-market prices, and then jack up the price. Let's celebrate her as a paragon of competitive behavior!

They reduced the number of intermediate flippers who jacked up the prices to 15L/m2 and beyond, adding zero value to the land by scaring them out of the water. Maybe I should revise my position that landbots are bad...

Wrong, shows how little you actually know about the land market in SL, the land was at high value because LL hadn't released enough land to feed the huge influx of new residents SL was expereincing...

now anyone want to try to actaully answer my question?

and Cristalle, IM not going to get into a quoting war with you, your obviously a way better quote general than myself

Well.. if anyone really did get into SL because of what the "big names" _already did_, then they are very silly people who don't know that much about business. You don't see new start-up companies rushing into manufacturing soft drinks because Coca-Cola did well, nor writing huge numbers of different PC operating systems because Microsoft succeeded. Once there are "big names" like that, you have to start seeking out _new_ opportunities, where you can differentiate yourself from them. And there is plenty of opportunity still there in the land market, because landbots basically are all the same, and landbot dealers are limited in what they can do.

Most of those big land dealers now mainly deal with private islands, which landbots don't affect. Plus, "back then", those land dealers tended to get their start by buying new sims at auction, landscaping them and selling them on, and/or by buying land at slightly below the going rate from people who would otherwise have had to pay tier on it for another month. Landbots can't do either of those.

There are various things in world that have affected my business model. I won't mention them here because it would sound like I'm trying to slander competitors, and I'm not - they're competitors, they're just doing their best too, and most of them I actually _like_ quite a bit. When I started on SL, I would and did rage back and forth and say they ought to be banned so that others have a chance, but if that really was true, then if I had that chance and took it then I would have to be banned too. Moreover, displaying that attitude only stops you creating business relationships that might help you succeed in the future.



No, that's how capitalism evolves. The available resources are naturally moving to where they are most efficiently spent. It would happen with or without landbots. Also, bear in mind that only a very small percentage of Second Life users have _ever_ been land dealers or content creators. The majority have always been the consumers and those who play for fun or role-play, and the most likely reason they've stopped spending so much is because with the gambling ban, the reality of US$=L$ equivalence has become rather harder for them.



It's strange you should mention that - when I joined, well before the Business Week article, there were people arguing on these very forums that Anshe had to be banned from bidding on land auctions because she bid on too many, which gave her too much control over the resale value of land. At one point she was routinely winning every single land auction the Lindens started, so quite literally, it was impossible to buy any land except from her (possibly indirectly). There were all kind of arguments about why this broke the entire auction system and it ought to be abolished, and so on. If they had banned her then, then the Business Week article would never have appeared and this "wonderful situation" that brought people into SL would never have existed!