Suspected Listening Satellites

Lisse,

<<and not suddenly in the middle of the night when no-one is around.>>

Well, apart from people from that totally insignificant and uninteresting place called the rest of the world.

I would like to see people instantly, permanently and irreversibly banned from SL along with all their alt accounts for avoiding land fees like that.

Yikes, sorry! I guess it's been too long since I was one of those puttering around on MUSHes while America slept. How soon we forget....

Well, yes, that would be ideal but I was trying to be a little realistic about what LL would do!

Alas dude, you can't code community - more rules and more code just encourages gaming the system. Everytime something is forced into code and rules a lil more freedom is lost.. It's a losing battle in the end.

Look at the changeover to 1.2 - some good things, some bad things, but a lot of things came about because of people problems rather than code problems.

It's a shame, but it's also human nature.

Siggy.

I imagine this will drive us to tight-knit communities and neighborhoods.

As a side note, the worst place you could put a listener in is way up in the air... since there is nothing to listen to!

Thank you for bringing up this point. It took me awhile to get why someone would do this, but now I understand it. I know the person you are speaking of, and it pisses me off that they have found yet another way to abuse the land system. I have even noticed they have let land go back into auction several times. My question is, aren't you charged right away for land when you win? Or only when you claim? And is there not a restocking fee?

LL should just deprecate the ability the scan land. They do lots of silly things that just seam to goad us people into the abusing the community.

Obviously, if you can you probably will. This is a game, after all. Winning by playing the rules is what it is all about. It's like when your opponents hangs a piece in chess .. if you're trying to win, are you going to ignore the piece? I don't think so..

As for "super scripting", from the TOS:

"In addition to abiding at all times by the Community Standards, you agree that you shall not: (viii) interfere with or disrupt the Service or servers or networks connected to the Service,"

Can't do that without disabling the ability to add scripts that permit land-owners control over the script.



There are different ways of defining 'disrupt'. The land scanning bastards could easily say "But the service PERMITS scanning," and some courts 'n such would agree.

That said, it's not exactly a problem any more, is it?

Several times now LL has upheld the validity of land scanners. Essentially, if they thought it was a problem, they would have shut the function down. It exists for no other purpose, at this point, but land scanning.

Even though plots > 256m2 go to auction when released, there is still profit to be made in smaller plots.

One can still buy even as small as a 16m2 plot, terraform it so that it is an eyesore, or place a particle emitter, spinning sign, or noise emitter on the property, and then set the land at an unusually high price. People will buy the small plot -just to get rid of it-.

This practice works, and it works well. Prices of L$1000/m2 are not unheard of, prices of L$250/m2 are more common, when this happens. (Anyone who does not believe me, feel free to take a look at Perry with 'land owners' or 'borders' on. )

If Linden Lab wanted to ban land scanners, they could have, easily. But those with land scanners are fully within their rights, unfortunately. The only real solution is to outcode them at their own job, since if you're hoping to get released land in a sim with an Acidic Flight scanner in it - forget about it. Chance is notified by email to pager or cel phone almost INSTANTLY, 24 hours a day, whenever anything is released.

All publically released land, for what it's worth, in most sims, must go through, and is governed by, Chance Small. And there's not a while lot we can do about it. The only thing that's changed is that plots >256m2 go to auction.

Anything below that still belongs to Chance, and likely will for the forseeable future.

It's best to just consider Chance the "released land Linden", anything else is banging your head against a wall. And he's on call, 24/7. He will gladly redistribute the land to the SL residency -- at the price he sees fit. Many people in SL would argue that he is doing the community a great service, by keeping the base "value" of land high. I don't agree with this conclusion, but I think we all know that many folks 'in the land business' would.

Many, including myself, have asked LL for this policy change. But LL is not going to ban land scanners. Not now, and probably not ever.

I got back to my house last night, to find a small orb at the corner of it. "Pico Small" was the name of it, if I remember correctly, made by someone named DaMa Quartermass. I sent an IM to try and figure out what it was for. I returned it to the owner, nothing happened on my land that could affect me in any way, so had no problem doing so. If anyone knows what this thing was, please fill me in. Yep, i'm a noob. have now set my land to no build, save myself and one other, and banned everyone but myself and a couple of friends. Hopefully that'll stop it from happening again.

there is one over Riiki on the border of Pappa... and from the one in Riiki you can see another in Pappa...

Also have another transparent cube, probably a scanner in Riiki, right down by the road... owner creator Rathe Underthorn...

Seriously guys I can sit there and release and buy 16m all day until I get bored of watching you scanner lads enter the sim....

You're charged right away - not when you claim.

And there is a restocking fee.

But I guess when you're making "enough" money anyway, losing a few hundred US$s to avoid going into an extra tier might not worry you too much.

While I totally agree with the sentiment of your post, just a few points of clarification:

I have personally seen, and claimed a 2048m2 lot that was released to public by the owner in a snow Sim. So in this case (purposeful release), it did not go to auction regardless of size. I claimed the lot because it bordered land I already owned.

In the last month, a neighbor of mine logged on, IMed me to say he would give me his land, and then (because I was not logged on) released it to public. It was claimed 10 minutes later by someone who was nice enough to sell it to me for L$1/m2 after I IMed them about buying it - they made no profit. It was not claimed by the person who had (and still has) a land scanner in that Sim. And neither the claimant nor the scanner owner is Chance Small.

Lisse, Chance was "away" for a month-plus long period in the last few months.

It's likely that if he has a scanner in your sim, and you were able to get released land, it occurred because his account was dormant for a period of time in the last month or two.

(Many of us were hoping that LL finally had enough of it, and kicked him. Unfortunately, this was not to be the case.)

He is, however, back now, and back in force.

WRONG!

I'm assuming that land scanners all use llGetLandOwnerAt?

I have sixty+ objects in Seacliff who all would prove that statement to be the HORRIBLE LIE that it really is. llGetLandOwnerAt is a useful tool. I know it's also used in the publicly available Online Status Indicator scripts. Just because it's used in a few land-scanners too doesn't make it a bad thing.

Well then it could have been made a matter of policy, which it hasn't been.

Ah, old news, 100th thread about this... I only took down the ones that weren't on my own land.

What are these? Public Land Scanners.

"Public land goes to Gov now!"

Incorrect... Public land released by the system (Because land/account was not paid for) is released to gov. USER released land remains public.

Fact of the matter is, I don't even use them anymore, I've just been too lazy to take them down. But they're on my land, so no worries.

Kewlios...

But be a real friend and take them down because they DO lag the world for those of us who care.

- Ace

Small chance of that happening.

LOLOLOMGLOL!1HAOHO!

I guess after you built a large network of tons of pieces of land that slow down lots of different sims, it must take a lot of work to go to each piece of land and return all objects to self.

[sarcasm]
Gee, I think I'll go spew some garbarge all over SL and be too lazy to pick it up. Sounds fun.
[/sarcasm]

Just proof that the system is fundamentally flawed.

At least I can thank Chance for that, it underscores my points beautifully.

Its like the cold war... its over, but the legacy remains....

Chance Small's heyday is over... but his legacy remains...

so, no feedback on the object on my land? I must be the only one to find one. Wow, I feel special now