is this real? or just another SL Urban Myth?

Two problems (at least) with that:

1) There is no automated way to determine what any particular parcel of land is worth. The price can vary based on aesthetic and/or subjective metrics, which are simply not measurable in any quantitative way.
2) As has been pointed out in many threads on the subject, no amount of "confirmation" dialog boxes beyond the current one which displays the pending action to the user and asks for confirmation will guarantee that people won't make mistakes, let alone have any significant impact on the "problem". Worse, the more intrusive and obnoxious the confirmation dialog, the more likely it is to be skipped.

No matter what you do to try and get people to think before they act, there will always be the small percentage who will still defy every safety mechanism you put in the process, and end up hurt as a result.

Sometimes, it is best to just let people make mistakes, because it may be the only way they will learn.

There is. Linden Lab already determine what they think land is worth when they set Reserve Price for land going to auction. That would be a good benchmark to use.



Perhaps. But.

There are two situations where people sell land wrongly.

1) They dont know about landbots and Linden Labs makes no effort to let people know about this in the Sale Process itself. So inexperienced people seeing that noone is around set to $1L and sell to Anyone thinking to buy for themselves or their Group straight away.

2) People type into the dialog the actual real price they intend. The viewer lags and doesnt capture the first one or two keystrokes. Resulting in sale price numbers like 500 or 995 etc rather than 2500 or 19995. Ya it does then show us in the Confirmation dialog what the client viewer accepts as our intention. But as many cognitive studies show, people even when looking at something, see what it is that they expect to see. This happens alot and is one of our most common human failings. It happens here in forums all the time. We type a sentence and we miss a word. When we read what we have written before we post, we often 'see' the missing word when its not there at all. We are predisposed to seeing it because thats what we meant to say.

I take your point about being overly bothered with warning dialogs. I just think that the Land Sale and Confirmation process could address both of these problems a bit better is all.

EDIT: Is not much point if I dont at least try to provide a solution as well. So

The options: Sell to Anyone or Specific User: could be enhanced.

1) Sell directly to a Group you belong to. Choose the Groups Name here -->
2) Sell directly to a particular avatar. Choose the Avatars Name -->
3) Sell to Anyone else including automated landbuying bots.

And then have a bold red Warning come up when the price set for sale is below Auction Reserve instead of the generic Confirmation dialog.

Please drop on me, thanks!

If we didn't make companies spend so much money in RL protecting people from their own stupidity, the gene pool might get cleaned out a bit and we might have less of these problems.

Unfortunately, it will probably just get worse as the nanny state gets bigger.

sent notecard with the script.

And it's time for my daily mini-rant! Yay!



What does it matter if it's real or not? Either way, you should be cautious whenever some random object sends you some random radar for no reason whatsoever. In my opinion, everything like this should be considered. If you never see it in your Second Life, okay. If you DO see it, then at least you know what to do.


P.S. It IS real. I recieved it one day at a sandbox. It's a sort of HUD thing, obviously in another language. Looks like french to me. I rezzed it on the ground, and, sure enough, I immidiately recieved the yellow/orange popup window asking permission to take money from my account.


I have since reported it, deleted it, and have never seen it again.

if anyone wants a copy of the darn thing send me im in game when im around ill send the code on a notecard to you.

it works, and is not a hoax, I have never used it on anyone but was curious how it worked so I grabed the code and picked it apart it's very good at hiding who the money goes to

cause you put in the uuid of the avatar you want the money to go to, then use an alt or whatnot to do all this and if the alt gets in trouble no biggy cause all the money gets funneled to the uuid of the avatar you set, so alt goes bye bye and main has the money.

its quite twisted and ingenious script yet very very simple

If you accept it it will not only wipe out your hard drive but also your brain. I have this infromation from a reliable source but he is not authorized to talk to the media so shall remain anonymous.

sent copy of it out to few on a notecard so you can see it

for info purposes only -grin-

Yes, I'm sure there are real examples of things like this. That's not the point.

The point is that warning people about specifically named products is not useful, because the creeps and crooks who distribute these are always changing their names and behavior. The real warning is not "The Good Times HUD will steal your brain" it's "don't accept unsolicited inventory (or group invites, for that matter), and CERTAINLY don't approve DEBIT permission".

I'm not going to discuss possible social engineering attacks they could make, because I don't want to give them ideas, but someone who's been a network admin and security hacker as long as I have has seen them all, and could REALLY come up with some nasty variations if they chose the dark side.

I agree with Argent.

People who want to do everyone a favor should simply get on the rooftops and shout:

"Never accept the big yellow-orange popup unless you know what you're doing!"

Citing specific products is a waste of everyone's time, because it only covers one possibility, AND it can be used for invalid purposes.

And the worst part is, it doesn't tell people what they need to know: it's the yellow-orange popup you need to pay attention to. Not the object name. (Anyone can change the object name, so an overspecifi warning is easily circumvented.)

Meanwhile, these IMs and notices from so many groups are a nuisance and a waste of photons.

Since it's my experience that SL Support Staff identify themselves with full SL account name, I see the "Charlie @ SL Helpdesk," and that tells me that this particular warning is a hoax.

Even though this particular message may be a hoax, I have no doubt that what is described is possible, and I act with extreme paranoia at all times.

Whenever I get a pop-up, message, or offer of any type, and I do not immediately recognize the source as someone I know, I read no further. It's an immediate cancel, no, delete, ignore, whatever. No questions, no decisions. And I have a strict policy of not accepting candy from strangers.

I don't even care that an object can't take my money unless a yellow box pops up. I'm not taking any chances that someone figures out a way around the yellow box.

no one is saying that the item is not real

it is the fact that the rumor is stating that it takes all your money (without having to click ok on the big debit permission popup warning)

I got into an argument yesterday with a guy who swore up and down that the thing takes your money without having to click the warning for debit

then he went on to say that people can also make it so that the debit popup is in green and also blue....

I gave up arguing as he would not listen and let him believe what he wanted....

(just to show how far off he was, he also claimed that linden hired an in world security group to police waterhead.... um, yeah ok... LOL)

The best one was the freebie penis that stole all your money, a brilliant piece of interactive performance art about the male partner's role in parental responsibility.