Time to Limit Free Accounts RE: Grid Attacks ?

.............................No....just no...

Agreed with the money Lindens customers are paying for Second LIFE .. SURELY THEY CAN AFFORD THE BEST FIRE WALLS and protection????


Shoot lets get ANSHE to pay for it !!

Wow..............just.....wow..........The arrogants is beyond the charts.

Wow, this would royally suck if this idea was implemented.

I've had a free account for about 5 months or so. Have I done any grid attacks? No. Do I script? Yes. While I'm not even close to someone like Cubey Terra, I feel that I have contributed to SL via my scripting and work, primarily on aircraft. And if you count Mannie Madonna(My RL Dad), whom I do a lot of scripting for, I've have contributed even more. He's set up quite the business through his boats that I've helped him script, and thus contributing a significant ammount to the SL community.

Now lets say this idea gets implemented. My dad, who can barely set a sit posistion in a script, likely never would have had his little business take off without me, a free member, helping him script. I never would have started this game if free membership wasn't available, and scripting is one of the main reasons why I play this game at all.

Some may ask, why don't I upgrade then? Well, frankly, I'm not on all that often, and I'm prone to taking breaks. Simply, it's not a game that would pay off for me to pay for if I didn't have to.

While in no way am I saying that I'm some great and awesome contributor to SL, and that SL wouldn't exist without me, I am saying that a free member like me who scripts can contribut in a positive manner, and by limiting free member's ability to script, a basic function in SL, you could be denying some really great contributions to SL, and you'll harm SL more then help it.

And by setting a "validation" time of X days or months before someone can script won't really help. A griefer can just set up an account, have it sit for a while as (s)he plans his/her dasterdly attack.

Ok this might be a good compromise. Have a time limit that must be met before someone can use certain features of second life. say 30 days before you can begin scripting?

I've been studying scripting since day 1 and I am one of those who intend to become a contributor to the SL world.

If you blocked me from scripting for 30 days ... I probably would have forgotten about SL in 2. It's because I was able to poke around in scripting from day 1 that I'm still here.

As someone pointed out, a determined griefer will just keep making accounts day after day then use the one that already reached 30 days.

In the meantime you've seriously discouraged a lot of potential new contributors. People you WANT in the game.

There's no such thing as a "free account".

There are "Basic accounts", some of which were "free", some (like mine) paid US$10 to create, and some are premium accounts tiered down to zero. They are not "free".

The "free accounts" that griefers use are those Basic accounts that didn't pay the initial US$10 fee, because they can use a "borrowed" CC# to create them without alerting the owner.

If LL required a fee for all accounts again, griefers couldn't hide behind "borrowed" numbers.

And like I said in my post above, the griver would just let the account sit for that long before he would attack. It doesn't really solve anything and it will detract those who came to check out SL for its scripting.

There are really many basic members that still spend good money on second life even though they aren't premium. Its to tempting not to. Basic accounts is good business and from some of the basic members I imagine they are getting more revenue. Look at all the people that rent they get that money to do that some where.

Now if there weren't all the basic members who can't own land who would the people making a good income off renting to people rent to?

Not a good Idea in my opinion.

And how do we know the people doing all this stuff were basic anyway?

You act like people who pay money arn't genuine jerks also. allow me to refer you to a few MMORPGs and the griefers there in. not only does it cost 50 to get the game - its 15-20$ a month, and still people hack , dupe , scam , bot , and grief. penelizing honest players doesn't work - down with impunities and penelties for honest people. Move on - report jerks - and ignore rable - lindens are cleaning it up - and the more attention you give to these guys the more they will do it IMO - all hackers and griefers have ONE motive... TO piss you OFF - so the more you whine and show them HEY GOOD JOB - the more these attacks will happen

my 2 cents.

Kisses <3
Mitsu

Scripting is just as essential for some people as building is for others. Should we stop accounts younger than 30 days from rezzing objects? Its somewhat the same concept. Also, how would this work? Unless basic members arent even allowed to have scripts run in all objects they own, whats to prevent a person from creating a premium account, creating a self-replicating object, and then handing it to a dozen basic members (alts or whatever)?

let me add these under 30 day accounts could still get to LSL documentation and an offline editor. 30 days come up and they hit the ground running. This 30 waiting period will not accomplish much if anything.

My Girlfriend & I started on the free account, guess we never would have joined otherwise.

I think maybe limiting SOME stuff may be a good idea, we have our group land set with fastest possible return of other peoples objects etc. so I suppose this covers scripts.

But I have noticed a LOT of people selling land with all the flags set to default.
We had some idiots dropping boxes and running pornographic, sick & high lag animated objects right along our back wall on land that was for sale.

Just seems a LOT could be achieved if some of the OLDER users spent tthe time to check THEIR stuff instead of dreaming of the fast buck

Maybe the newbie island could have full use functions to keep malcontents to a minimum and the mainland have autoreturn on all objects flagged as having been owned by a Free Account?
<<< oops I meant if the stuff is dropped all around the place like newer players tend to do and just left there. they should still be able to create and sell their stuff, and it doesn't mean ALL new people are malcontent DOH, sorry about that!>>>

No I am NOT a Despot ;p

Offline editors don't compile. Unless LL decided to make their own, the current options would be useless. Coding(scripting) is not learned by just reading a book, or a wiki. It requires alot of toying around and alot of trial and error. It would be like teaching someone what all the buttons on the edit tools do, yet not letting them really use them for 30 days. Let LL fix their own problem, on their own network, with their own object code. The inadequacies of LL's current ways to counter a grid attack have been noted several times, with every grid attack, but people seem to like to overlook that and start attacking resident privlidges.

I don't really think banning free accounts is right.. cause it is the best move SL did make in my opinion. Brings in new people, some that are retards and like to make other people suffer for their riddiculous reasons. I think they should just bann the IP adresses... But then I could be wrong about this. This is just really stupid...

Also you can use a cellphone to sign up for an account in the US therfore anyone can get a pay as u go cellfone and create accounts far to easy with no checks, surely thats a big hole that they can walk through for their attacks.

I'd be really pissed off if my modem went out for some reason (power outage, or whatever), only to have my isp assign me a banned ip address! Ip addresses are dynamic for most providers, so a client would just need to disconnect their modem, or whatever, for a short while (for someone else get the banned ip assigned to them) and reconnect. Voila, new ip address.

Agreed about offline editors. But you could get one heck of a start in 30 days especially if you had some experience in coding in similar setups.

I was actually not supporting the 30 day thing. Pointing out another flaw in it. I agree LL needs to find a better way to deal with it. CHeck my posts historically. I am not for throttling peoples accounts or LSL.

From what I learned recently there is a 3 month limit on creating an ALT char now, I have no idea if this is new or not, but you can not create another account for FREE after paying for your first one and only the FIRST account is actually free.

Judging by some of the KNOWN malcontents (some have 4 ALTS), a lot of them are possibly LONG time accounts.

Also IF they are using another persons CC wouldn't they be asking WHY there CC bill is taking a chunk out of their accounts?

Maybe half the problem is caused by Apathy?

Just a thought...

The name that I have seen as responsible is not a free account, I know because he owns land across from where I do. so don't blame the free accounts.

not sure wether this is viable or not but a posible solution to these arguements,
keep free accounts,you sign up with your name and address etc as normal,
you have limited rights that you can make prims and texture ect but cannot script or run scripts in you own object until you recieve a vadil access number that lindens post to your address once recieved you enter it to unlock all rights,will cost lindens a little extra but how much would it save on time and aggrivation.

Um, the thing about that is... if you got rid of the "free accounts" (free creation of basic accounts) you wouldn't have the cellphone option either.

I'm not really sure how that would solve anything. While it's good that you are thinking of ideas, I just don't see that validation number thing making any difference.

IF I couldn't script *immediately* I logged in to my Basic account *that I paid US$10 for* I wouldn't have bothered with SL. Neither, I suspect, would a goodly fraction of the other scripters that make all the cool shit you use in SL.

Scripting is *the* thing that distinguishes SL from everything else. WIthout scripting it's nothing.

well your user name would have to have an address that was legitimate in the database so it would cut down on stolen credit card users etc,lindens would know that the user had recieved the unlock at that address,its harder to forge an address than an id