How to solve the self-replicating problem once and for all

Perhaps you weren't here before free accounts? Grid crashes used to happen then about.. once every 2 months? And some of those were /accidental/. Maybe I am getting senile about it, but it didn't happen this often back in the day.

And of course they can sign up, but if you actually pay to get in, you need an actual card. None of these fake credit card scams, none of the phones to play, an actual credit card with actual money in it so you can actually trace someone.

And the introduction of free accounts is hardly the _only_ aspect of the situation that changed, so i'm not sure why it's being singled out and touted as definite source. I could as well point out that another changed aspect of situation is, people who's been around for the long time (also pre-dating these free accounts) have in the meantime gained experience in scripting, and in ways how the simulation can be crashed. And that some of them must've gotten bored with SL over that time, as it's part of human nature. And how bored, skillfull people with good knowledge of how things work are at least as dangerous as million monkeys with typewriters.

Just because people in the past had fun in game without crashing them doesn't mean some of them don't get their fun crashing it _now_, because they 'already did everything else' and all the forum drama along with sense of being a master of life and death is both empowering and entertaining to them. And with SL getting older, amount of people like that will only be growing.

In theory, the above actions would also keep it from becoming a problem in the first place, or at least one that is noticeable by most.

Oh, so the people who've been here the longest and made the most connections(and believe me, you make connections learning how to script) are the ones who are the most dangerous?.. clever clever..

I'm sure alot of things have changed since free accounts came out, at the same time there were explicit cases of self replication in the past. Back in the day they even had object to object, which made it infinitely easier to make an item duper.

Also, would you deny that the /ease/ of making a new account to test out these horrible scripts has absolutely nothing to do with the current problem? The fact that someone can use a phone card or a coinstar card and have a completely untraceable account for free has nothing to do with the fact that the last 8 or so grid crashes(that I sat through at least) were perpetrated by people with free accounts who were under a week old?

And even if that weren't the case, the fact you would need to pay a measly ten bucks would make the account more important to you. I know that when I started SL I hated my first few days, the place made no sense and the game was clunky at best, but I had been dragged on by friends and it cost me something, so I learned how to enjoy myself, and I've stayed since then. I know 10 bucks for the cheap thrill of bringing to grid to it's knees may seem paltry, but it's better than an account you can get for free and have absolutely nothing about it that makes you give a damn.

Not necessarily the longest, as everyone's attention span, experience and learning rate is different -- but it's just to point out there is very little reason to focus on any group in particular. Short of the usual "us vs them" mentality, anyway.


I don't know how much impact it has, and if it has any impact for that matter. Considering how supposedly the items used in latest attack came with Linden 'signatures' on them out of all people, it doesn't seem one actually needs new accounts to test things, when they can hide behind SL glitches and/or gullible 3rd parties that are new to the world... do they?


Wait a minute. I can understand it's not difficult to find out the age of someone's character, as it's provided in world... but how do you actually know if these people paid for their accounts, or not? I'd figure that's something only LL should have knowledge of, because it's a matter of business deal between them and the person in question, and these generally remain undisclosed to uninvolved 3rd parties.


And when the measly charge of $10 per account will not weed out all asshats, and the grid still goes down on regular basis because it's as vulnerable as ever and it still takes one idiot out of 200 k to crash it, will you demand the charge to be raised to $20? $50? $100, maybe? After all, that'd make one's account even more important to them, wouldn't it...

Seriously, why is it that people are so hell-bent on trying to put obstacles for their vision of theoretical griefer that might have little to do with the real thing... while completely ignoring the actual issue which is the simulation being unable to protect itself from being overloaded in such stupid ways? Fix the core problem and there's no need to setup harebrained hoop courses for people to jump through... because that doesn't help as long as it takes just one monkey to hop through that course and press the red "nuke it all" button at the end of it.

I am not focusing on a group. I am focusing on accounts that are new, and /quite likely/ free.




Yes, gullible third parties. Gullible, new, third parties. I don't see how someone using a linden created script, and then pasting their own scripting into it, enters into this situation, really. I think it just proves the creator tag isn't very trustworthy.




to be honest? I used to believe that a 'resident' type account was for unpaid players. Either the system has changed or I was misinformed, upon further checking it does not appear that people who pay for land are a different kind of Account, thank you for pointing that out to me.

At the same time, since it's pretty easy to tell who owns what land(even group owned land), it's not exactly disclosing some clandestine secret of the universe if we knew if this person did or did not pay a monthly fee.



I never said it would weed them all out. I implied that people would be less likely to grief, or grief repeatedly(as has been alluded to before in the forums) if they have to pay 10 bucks a pop to do so.

Also it doesn't take one idiot out of 200K, I doubt half the grid has the means to bring the grid down by themselves. I am not saying it's hard to destroy the grid, I am just saying that it takes more than a simple "whups" to do it.

Also you are suggesting I would not be willing to admit my mistake if the grid still crashed twice in 3 days after a pay for account system has been /re/-instituted? I wouldn't ask for more, I am only suggesting the $10 fee because I come from a time when that fee was a part of SL, and I remember SL being much more stable back then.



Because we're bored when SL is down and we want something done, at the same time if the lindens happen to read this and consider it maybe it will alter their opinion of the situation. They can easily see if it is or is not free accounts that are using these scripts to crash the grid, right? So they have a better context of it than you or I.

Also the simulations are incredibly protected against this thing, I know from experience how much harder it is to crash a sim than it used to be(shift-copy 1000 prims, make the sim unstable for the rest of the day). When a sim goes down it doesn't actually cause the grid to crash, the real damage is when the asset server or the login server are overrun with requests and choke.

Here's an idea(serious) lets alter the login queue, maybe make it so that in times of stress it is throttled down[Please wait 5 mins to log in, we are under strain and need to assess the problem], maybe with a lil timer so you can see how long you have to wait? Also it might be a good idea to stagger the places where avies log back in, so that the glut of people porting around is less severe.

every time you mention that name you make that griefer happy. great job of rewarding griefing.

*sigh*

OK, obviously I'm not doing a good enough job explaining this. Let's try again.

It doesn't matter whether it's $10 or $5 or $7 or $20. It's the fact that there would be an actual charge placed on the credit card. That means that they actually have to own that credit card or Linden Labs will be able to go after them for credit fraud as well as attacking a federal interest computer system (which is about all they have now... and only for people outside California since it's the interstate connection that makes it "federal interest". Plus they may find the owner of the credit card on their case, and if they got the stub through a service job (eg, a waiter) they could lose their job as well.

This doesn't eliminate griefing, or grid crashing, but it makes it riskier or limits the opportunities. And that is all you can do from that side.

On the technical side, if you can limit the number of times an avatar is allowed to replicate objects, you can just as easily limit the replication rate in a sim or at the asset server. You can respond to rapid replications. You can do the same thing to physics attacks. Sim crashes and asset server problems are bugs to be fixed, not design features to be worked around. But... no matter what you do technically, unless you nerf LSL to the point where it's useless people will still find ways to mess you up. You still have to have mechanisms that attack the results of the action, not "exploiting this particular bug".

It's like spam. There's been thousands of very smart people coming up with technical responses to spam, over the past dozen or so years, and the spammers keep coming up with ways around them... until the point where the technical responses cause as much or more damage as the spam. Every time people try and get a bill to attack spam socially the Direct Marketing Association brings in their lobbyists and it's defanged. Whether LL can do a better job of socially responding to their problem, I don't know, but I'm seeing now the same kind of badly-thought-out technical responses to one kind of attack here that I've seen in the spam wars.

Charge them a pro-rated fee, then, but just slamming them will cost LL too much in the long run. Too many Lindens from Torley on up have said that Basic Accounts Are For Life.

It's not necessarily the source, but it's definitely an enabler.
But if so, it's the free accounts that let them do it anonymously.

I'm not a fan of charging folks to rez objects, or to cripple autorezzing in some way.

However, here's a suggestion solution to grey goo attacks:

(Well, maybe not a solution - but something that might help!)

llDeleteObject()

With llDeleteObject() and a little sensor magic, we could detect if someone is rezzing an inordinate amount of prims on our land, and delete them as fast as they come. Not to mention, the ability to link up llAddToLandBanList() & llDeleteObject() to really neutralize griefers & their objects.

As Kelly Linden replied in an Answers post here - Deleting the grey goo might be a good thing.

There's also a post in Feature Suggestions if you want to discuss it there

I am worried about the malicious uses of this command. What if someone decided to incorporate it into a home security system? I am not sure I am cool with automating something at permanent as deleting someone else's object.. Would it be able to delete no-copy objects? That alone would make it an incredible headache.

Edit: Maybe if the lindens made no mod objects that could do that, just for the sole purpose of defending a sim, I'd be for it. I could see them networked together but...

Edit2: Why not give scripts the ability to toggle no-build and no-outside scripts on land? Then people could make a detector that, if it saw enough physical objects in range, would literally just shut them off.. hell could even make it a new toggle for sim owners so that no in-game scripting was needed.




This is also an issue, if there were a way to check primcounts and owners on a parcel/sim*, it would be very useful. I could see a script that did a check ever 5-10seconds and compared growth of primcount, where say a single sharp rise wouldn't trigger it.. say if someone rezzed a whole house, but a steady increase would set it off?

Also the lindens could quietly place a single prim sim controller into every sim in SL, and in case of grid attack they could all be instant messaged and activated, halting all object and script production in the grid?.. maybe a little much, and maybe people could opt out of the system, but I think having to retoggle some flags on your land(after having it locked for maybe a half hour to clean up the mess) would be better then losing six hours to a grid crash.

*I am really for this idea now, since I think it's more useful than a sensor even if specific info would need to be weeded out. I am envisioning it as something like:



and perhaps to suppliment that:



Long post, probably confusing to alot of you, and I bet a little messy since I am hoping to get a nap soon..

Comments appreciated though, and if the idea needs to be shot down, just say so.

And? This bases entirely on presumption it isn't already the case, and that these people would nowadays go through extra hoops which, as you point out, put them at risk of becoming subject of criminal investigation.

Incidentally, this is surprising argument to hear. I mean, you'd think if using data from someone else's card to preserve anonymity is such a large opportunity and thus security problem, there should already be built-in way for the card verification system(s), to notify the bank and consequently the card owner, that such check was performed and that their data was being used, even without actual charge being made. Are you positive there isn't really one? o.O


But this argument can be used for literally every kind of limitation you'd apply, all way to entirely shutting down the logon servers. It' not just the matter of 'limiting grief opportunities' but doing so in a way that doesn't cause negative side-effects that could outweight the gain.

I know I'm late coming in here, but Pixleen, the problem is that your idea was tried. Up until er 1.2 I think, every prim cost L$10 to rez at ground level, with multiples based on altitude, size and whether or not it was "light". Did it work? Well yeah kinda, but the system was changed so you now pay tier for land instead... there were some serious issues with an economy based on prims - which I won't go into... it's all in the forum archives, and not just the tax revolts either... (there was a rather famous bookshelf).

Would it work now? I don't really know. Since LL gave players the ability to trade L$ for US$, it's all become much more greed driven... A money sink like that which would actually work (unlike the ones proposed daily in Land and Econ, which couldn't) wouldn't make the rich folks too happy.

As it stands right now there are many ways to pass a credit card to the system without it getting more than a cursory inspection. A small charge will ensure the credit card is valid, and that the real owner is notified of it's use. I know from signing up for MMOs using my debit card that I would receive no notification of it's use until a charge was made, I used to sign up for free trials with it all the time without being notified of it by my bank.

So I am not /positive/ SL isn't checking every person who signs up to make sure they approved of the use of their card and info, but I am doubtful that they are keeping up considering the number of user sign ups.




You think that there will be negative repurcussions from a $10 charge? I mean yes even I and Argent(not grouping his opinions with mine) have said that nothing is perfect and will stop all greifers.

On the other hand, I cannot see why a charge of $10 is such a horrible hoop to jump through, as you put it. I see it as a minor inconvenience, just as I did when I paid it to join SL. And since it is just a minor financial charge, is it really going to stop anyone /except/ people who create multiple accounts to a redundant level? I can sympathesize with wanting a second account, which of course if you use the same credit info /does/ cost $10 anyway, but beyond that it's just wasteful beyond the point of anonymity.

This doesn't even bring into consideration the stipend, with accounts being completely free and easily created, could in some small way alter the economy? I am not saying the $L is going down because of stipends to accounts that never put any money into the 'economy', I am just wondering if others have an opinion on it. I mean $10 american goes a long way in 50$L increments.


Just a few questions Joannah, and anyone else who wants to voice their opinion.

-Do you really think the re-instituting the $10 charge is going to snowball into something so much worse? Could you give examples?

-With the amount of press and word of mouth SL has does SL really need the extra incentive of a completely free account?

-Was the $10 basic account cost wrong when it was first instituted? Did it keep SL from becoming a vibrant and creative system in it's earlier days?

-This one is, I admit, up for arguement, but... Has SL's growth since the inception of free accounts been equal to the creative potential of the community? As in.. has the ratio of users making SL better for the community as a whole gone up or down, since free accounts started?

-Finally, whacha think of that script idea I had, the one a lil higher up, above yer last post... higher.. there! Isn't that spiffy, do you think it'd work? I hope alot of people comment on it!

*edited for better spelling, bad Myri. x.x;

Yes I mentioned that name. Nothing in my post was complimentary toward that person. Also note that I mentioned the name only once in the thread. I am rewarding no one.

You spoke of He-who-must-not-be-named.

Someone greedy for notoriety is rewarded by insults.