Wonder why they have not done this...

I am just wondering what is taking the Lindens so long to figure out that there is one very simple way to stop the landbot issues.... "CAPTCHA".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha

It makes me wonder if they really want to stop it.... Hhhhhhmmmmm

Anyway just a thought.

Of course they don't want to get rid of Bots, bots are their most well behaved valued customers, they never complain about TP or transactions not working.

Don't forget they do not bitch about other bots either

Probably the land- and traffic bots are not the highest priority of LL. Since they count in the concurrency number, they benefit from them even. As for me, I would rather have them work on more stability on the grid, then on how to fight landbots. How many landbots actually are there on the grid? Anyone knows? Not that many I guess. So why should they implement a new system for a few dozen landbots, will be their question probably.

Traffic bots wil eventually disappear since traffic is becoming less important in search results. And those are not the ones putting a load on the system, where landbots travel around, traffic bots stay foot where they are. So a captcha system would not be necessary for those.


Marcel

Um yeah there may be only a few thousand Land & search bots, put a visitor counter out sometime and you can get 2 or 3 visitors per hour that never even rez and all different names. Landbots grab land in under a few seconds so that means there's one in every sim every say 5 seconds, how many mainland sims are there?
A spambot recently proved to me by sending me 1365 emails in 3 hours from approximately 3000 different sims, that bots can visit 23 sims per minute, THAT IS INTERFERING WITH REAL PEOPLE FROM TELEPORTING, especially on weekends.
So is the Captcha system going to hurt non-bot landsales?
Why are so many people against any improvement to SL, or do you solemly believe we have THE BEST land transaction system available?
Can you do 20 group land transfers in an hour and come back to us saying you really like the existing system and felt it can't be improved, that you felt no concern of stuffing up and losing your land to a bot?

Well put, and I really like VooDoo's CAPTCHA idea for direct land sales. It's not like it's rocket science to include it.

You assume that Linden Labs acts as a singular, managed entity.

Assuming that Linden Labs's tolerance of land bots based on profit value of the land bots to Linden Labs may be giving Linden Labs too much credit.

Now that I know that the Linden Labs personnel management philosophy is that no management is good management, I'd say it's more likely that a program to eliminate land bots just isn't appealing enough for technicians to make it a choice of pet project. There are more fun projects on which they can choose to work.

I dunno about the rest of you; but, it would really irritate me to have to be challenged by a CAPTCHA test....especially having drank myself into a blitz safely in my home and sitting at my computer all nice and safe instead of...oh, driving down the road and risking real lives like that...*takes another sip*

It would be like taking a Field Sobriety Test....*hic*

Well if you are drunk and set your land price wrong, well, so be it I guess, better if you are prevented from selling your land at all perhaps for your own good

CAPTCHA's can be broken.

Here is a story about how hotmails CAPTCHA system was broken by spambots

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080415-gone-in-60-seconds-spambot-cracks-livehotmail-captcha.html

So can cardoor locks, doesn't stop us fitting them to cars though

Look at the bottom of that wiki page. There's about 10 different links on how to defeat CAPTCHA. CAPTCHA is dead as... dead.

As for how many land bots there are. I'd say there are only about 2 or 3 bot runners in operation right now, although how many actual bots each of those are running is up to debate. Worst case it's a couple hundred I'd guess. More likely a dozen or so though. there's not much point in logging on with more than 3 or 4 bots at once to be honest.

Traffic bots is another thing, there could be a few thousand I'd guess but it sounds like LL is pretty close to solving that whole issue so I guess it doesn't matter anymore.

On the other topic, I'm pretty sure LL wants to encourage automated use of their grid not discourage it. Serious large scale businesses can't operate without "bots" or as I like to call it "software". If you start crushing automated access then you're basically limiting SL to the kind of small scale business it's full of now. You can't manage 5000 renters or 3000 franchise stores or 500 sims without software unless you're the kind of person that loves spending hundreds of hours doing work that can be done in 10 minutes.

This is an important issue. I see lots of people complaining about bots, but lots of people use automated solutions and would generally like to use more. For example I'd love an easy to use group inviter. There aren't many around, I'd also like an easy to use group ejector for when people stop renting. This would be good for my business.

Network vendors are very popular and although they aren't bots, the underlying principle is the same and they do put stress on the servers.

Hey Tegg,

You should read my postings a bit better, as I did not say I was anti-captcha, I said it is not of high priority for LL.
As Elanthius sorta confirmed, we are talking about a few dozen, not about a few thousand. It is quite understandable that they are not going to implement a system just to beat a few dozen bots.

Some better system for land trading is good, but should be very well thought of. And I do not think Captcha will be the one. No one will be against improvements Tegg, but letting your emotions be the guide of those improvements never will work.

One thought would be to put a timeframe between teleports for example. Which might put less of a load to the system. Because I agree with you that bots teleporting 23 sims per minute do strain the system. Some limits on teleports and emails would probably benefit us all!

Greetings Marcel

They may nortbe landbots, but over 30 bot names a day visiting one sim, means there's a lot more than just a dozen in world. The campbots searching for camppads are one example. And there's hundreds maybe thousands of those things on the loose and now the spambots and begbots.

I'm not so sure limiting the number of TP/min would actually help. It would keep the bot from TPing, yes, but you would think the bot runners response would be to just increase the number of active bots present to keep up grid coverage. Also, If the bots DID get held back from a fast TP, they might just sit there and hammer on the server until it could get through, possibly making their presence even more of a strain. I admit I don't know much about how bots work currently, but I DO know a few things about human nature and the old "I'll show you" attitude.

umm, thats what they use now

Heck, there are a lot of times that I have trouble making out the CAPTCHA stuff when I am totally sober - never mind after having a few glasses/bottles of wine.

Ah that would be good for LL though, we all know how important more concurrent users is