BZZZZ-ZAP! Ouch!!!

I'm a dragon in SL and one thing I really like doing is flying. Diving, swooping, climbing, all that stuff. Thing is I keep on hitting security fences all over the place and often end up miles away in a different sim. Now i'm not moving all that quickly yet SL has a hard time keeping up and rezzing as I fly around. The result is that from my POV I hit a security barrier in clear blue sky. This isn't just at ground-level but often at altitude. For instance I bought a TigerShark so I could fly higher. This morning I hit security barriers that threw me out of my plane at 600metres and even higher. No warning, nothing had even rezzed when it happened.

On the ground my neighbour has a security barrier that throws me right out of my sim every time i bump into it, which is fairly often as I walk thru the bushes past her house alot.

OK, some people are paraniod or think they've got something to hide or that they're super-duper-special or something but these security barriers really are a pain. I'm not even interested in what any of these sad sacks are trying to hide, I'm just trying to go from A to B. Now maybe if SL rezzed a bit faster and wasn't so laggy I waouldn't have these problems.

Someone suggested that I file an abuse report. But if I filed an abuse report every time, I'd probably spend a greater part of my time on SL filing reports. And that's one thing I don't want to do. Maybe occasionally if I get badly cut up or something, but....

Whatever, as you've probably figured out I'm an SL newbie. I haven't got a clue how things really work, what's allowed and what isn't. I do find the security barriers to be a negative and selfish (on the part of people who use them) phenomenon.

I'm with ya on that. I've been here two months. I hate running into these things and ending up some place farther away, and though my computer is great for being 3 years old, it is over three, and I think maybe people like me without the latest computer set up end up inconvenienced by these dang things more than others who can see where they are and get around a lot more quickly in general anyway.

I agree that they are stupid and selfish. I'm also just not real sure what they are for, since as far as I can tell, you could stand outside of them and use your camera to see inside the building therein, just like you can pretty much see inside of most things if you really want to.

Friend of mine got some land and it was next door to a place with this fence. I was walking around his land and accidentally bumped up against the fence and there was this black thing on the other side of it, kind of a barrel, that started going "BABABBABBABATTATATTA" and bouncing around and all this and bouncing ME too, in place. I guess it was some kind of a weapon. I thought it was funny, kinda like getting shocked by an electric fence. I'd hate like heck to live next door to it, though. Or any ugly red stupid-looking fence. Too bad they can't at least look like REAL fences, instead of some ridiculous crime-scene barrier kind of thing.

Anyway, I just put my continual frustration with these fences down to Just One More Thing in this game that pisses a person off. There are several things like that, and as far as I can tell, we just gotta live with them.

It's just that I'm not sure WHY. I know you can ban individuals from your property, so that would take care of somebody doing you harm or being a total pain in the butt.

But - why this need to ban everyone? All the time? Especially when they can probably see what you're doing anyway? Is it so they can't hear you? Or what?

Whatever it is, it still doesn't seem very necessary to me because I have NEVER RUN ACROSS one of these fenced places that ACTUALLY HAD ANYONE THERE IN IT. So, see, why keep people out if you're not even there? I mean, maybe there is some reason, but I don't know what it would be.

Consequently, rather than serving any particularly good reason, as far as I can tell, there are just these little places in the middle of other places with ugly red fence thingies around them and nobody in them, just to maybe kinda say, "Hey, we're special. Go AROUND and GO AWAY, FAR FAR AWAY." lol

Maybe somebody else who has played longer than I have can come up with some advantage to having these fences in the game. I don't think there is any.

coco

Ah, so it isn't just me that runs into these things all the time. Does your computer setup determine how fast SL rezz's for you? Mine's a 2.8gHz P-4 with 1gB RAM and a 128mb nVidia. I'd have thought that would be up to the job. It certainly is for my RL work.

But, yes, I'd have thought the barring option that's part of the land use properties would be sufficient.

How fast things rez in SL is mostly due to your network performance (ie how fast of broadband you have).

LF

I despise security fences. You have no idea. I'll be happily puttering through a sim in one of my flying machines, and then BAM! Phantom zone. I wasn't even crossing a sim border, in most cases. Hello, re-log.

Is it on a sim boarder? I.e. do you cross a sim boarder into her land? I think theres a big that when you cross sim boarders into No-Entry lines, it tosses you into the corner of that sim. Its very annoying especialy since you can't see the No-Entry lines. (I have bug reported this)

If this isn't what you mean, disregard. Regardless it is annoying, more warning should be given.

Oz Spade, that sounds a bit like what has happened to me. Though to be honest it all happened so fast and suddenly that I forgot where I was when it happened. Next time (and I it probably will happen again) I'll try to make a note of my position.

Prop 229, banning security boot teleports and Prop 230 the warning sign act II will prevent this and at least give you a warning that you are approraching a area with security

Is that what i keep hitting? What are security boot teleports? But, yes, some sort of advance warning would be useful. At least that way I could turn and avoid the mid-air bugzappers that I've been running into.

Those are the ones that port you back to your home and leave your aircraft out of reach high above an estate with a security system that teleports you home

Oh yeh, that's happened to me a few times already. I get an email a day or so later telling me where my plane is. I've had to create a 'flying brick' to lift me up so that I can retrieve my plane. Some of them just leave me falling thru the air.

We've talked about this pernicious phenom in SL for many months, and spent many hours with the Lindens on this.

Here is my recommended strategy to combat this pernicious phenom, and when enough people adapt my strategy, we'll get some action:

1. Negrate the person who uses bouncer scripts -- both the land-owner and the creator of the builder on their property. Yes, that means that you might hit a well-known architect who makes prefabs or an innocent bystander. I used to say, don't negrate the building creator, they aren't to blame. But enough bad things have happened to my tenants over these malicious scripts that now I negrate creators of buildings, too, for good measure so that building-creators can see that if they allow the deployment of their product on the land of a bounce-scripter, they get my negrate, and a second thought about whether I buy their building.

2. Get your friends and your alts to negrate this person, too.

3. File an AR against the person for use of a weapon -- it takes one second to do, and honestly, the Lindens will not pay attention to anything but repeated, multiple ARS on an issue like this, they are overwhelmed.

4. Go in the Hotline to the Lindens and complain bitterly, like others before you. They don't do anything about this, and their answers have been long-winded, cautious and overly technical. We need to help them to concentrate their minds wonderfully on this.

5. If you have the time and the energy, call a Linden to the scene (not a live helper). Ask them to remove the bouncer script from the offending person's property. They have done that occasionally. Linden enforcement on this issue is extremely contradictory and spotty, but we need to demand more.

In involving a Linden, making an AR or writing to the Hotline, you need to do this:

a) Record the time, sim name, and property owner and if it is group-owned click on the menu and take at least the first name of the officers, if not all names.
b) Mention whether you received notice before bouncing, i.e. did it say "Can't Enter Parcel".
c) Mention how far you were bounced, i.e. all the way home, all the way to the next sim, or just a few meters.

Think about forming a group and creating a negr-ate posse. This is about the most effective consumer boycott technique type think I can muster in this very difficult game. People don't like to get organized in groups to do something negative, but honestly, if they do not, we will all go on living with this scourge.

HATE those things!

I'll be riding around in my balloon, maybe giving some folks a tour when *BAM* no warning, just instant teleport to a corner of the sim or worse, a trip home... or worse yet, hundreds of attempts to send home resulting in overwhelming and crashing.

They're malicious code and aught to be removed.

-Ghoti

I consider an ejection or tp script that activates without any warning to be an unprovoked attack on another avatar. THAT is against the community standards.

Basically what we're looking at is a growing number of users who buy an ejection script, set it to the maximum, and have a good laugh at people who try to fly *past* their land. It's clearly against the rules to prevent someone from flying through open airspace hundreds of meters over the ground.

Worse, some opt to use an invisible ejection script at ground level, and these people don't bother to turn on the build-in land access tools -- there are no barrier lines.

There are some sims that you can't travel through now, even if you try to avoid all builds. You'll never know when you might take a half-meter step onto a virtual minefield and get blasted halfway across the sim.

I THOUGHT that was against the rules outside of Jessie and Rausch. In fact, I thought unattended hostile scripts weren't allowed even there. Why aren't these landowners being suspended for PvP attacks?

Know what I love? If I'm bounced really hard, I get watersimmed, but I can fly back to where I was bounced... since I'm essentially kicked off the grid and SL doesn't consider me "online" anymore, but I still have the cache of where I was loaded, I can freely investigate the property from where I was kicked by manually flying back.

As fun as it is, it's dissapointing to find nothing but crappy porn and the same old poseballs that everybody else owns. Come on, if you're going to watersim me, at least do it for a really cool reason.

I don't go around purposefully invading people's privacy, but if I'm watersimmed out of the blue while flying a cubeyplane at cloud level, I do feel completely entitled to investigate why it's warranted.

I'd just like a way to see the sensor sphere itself...if I could avoid them, I would. But there isn't a way to make that visible. I've been thrown off my flying vehicles just trying to seek right of passage at 200m, for chrissakes.

It really kills the exploring aspect. The snow sims are just a minefield of eject scripts.

I don't know, Maxx. Making the scanner spheres visible doesn't solve the problem. Scanners are used for much more than hostile ejection scripts and it's quite possible to have several overlapping scanners.

Also, why should I have to mess up my view of the SL world? The PvP scripts shouldn't be there in the first place. And if I fly into a sim and see a wall of overlapping scanners, I still can't go through and in a vehicle, I probably can't turn fast enough to avoid them.

No, I think just making them visible would make the problem worse by encouraging people to use MORE PvP scripts because the feature would appear to condone their use.

When the scripts attack other players, then the scripts are *already* against the rules of SL. The script owners should be suspended unless they use the scripts *inside* the walls of their build or to eject griefers on a blacklist. I see those as the only legitimate use of these scripts.

On another note... who sells these "security" scripts, and do they default to maximum range? They should default to something reasonable like 20m or so.

I'm reall glad to see a scripter and content-creator take this position against a pernicious script. Go one step further now and follow some of the suggestions I've made -- HOTLINE, negrates, etc.

You've asked a good question -- who does sell these scripts? Because we need to organize a consumer boycott and negrating of their person immediately.

I already made a hotline post on the subject this morning. A neg rating against the script owner is only warranted if first you ask them to reduce the range of their script to within the walls of their build. If they don't, then a negative "behaviour" and possibly "build" rating is a good idea.

You suggested neg rating the creators of any content on their property, Prokofy. That's way over the line. Most of the time, those people have never had any contact with the land owner and would have no control over whether or not the landowner uses their items. They're completely uninvolved parties. Leave them out of it.



There are many legitimate uses for an ejection script: using an ejection script inside the walls of your build for privacy and security, enforcing a whitelist of group member-only builds, enforcing a blacklist of griefers, to name a few. I wouldn't want to see this scripter neg-rated, but I really wish he/she would take more time to explain the correct, non-abusive use of the script to his/her customers, and set the default ejection range to something really low... not the maximum 96 meters.

I'd like to repeat Cubey's question: Why aren't they suspended for PvP?

On some group land in Papa, I sped to 450 meters to build a little skybox for the other officers in the group to use for thier more private meetings. I was lobbed three sims away immediately. A neighboring skybox had a security script using llPushObject. Mind you, this is over land my group owns. Land that is in part, my land. OK? I was attacked on my land by a robot.

I ARed it, of course.

I got the "been investigated" letter and I returned to start the skybox, and I was booted away again. So, I ARed again.

I just now went to check again. Guess what's still there. I've ARed it again. I'm not holding out much hope that "the third time's the charm".

Cubey - While I agree with you 100% on the insanity of using ejection/TP Home scripts for any uses other than the ones above - my concern is this:

Unless I'm reading it incorrectly, what you are asking for in your hotline post is for anyone who ejects or TP's someone home for any reason to be suspended.

I use one of these scripts, inside the walls of my build only - to help against repeated grief attacks. The Linden provided tools are absolutely, completely insufficient - because they cannot be delegated to others unless I deed my land to a group. Is your position that I should be neg rated, abuse reported, and suspended - for sending a repeat griefer home - while they have voluntarily walked *inside* my structure? This doesn't make sense.

If this is your position - what is your alternative for me? What should I do? Just put up with the C4 bombs - and file an abuse report?

If this isn't your position - and you believe that there are legitimate uses for ejection/TP home scripts - I think you should clarify that in your hotline post. Or - at the very least - include as part of your post that better land tools should be created to make the need for these security scripts moot for everyone.

I believe 100% that security scripts used in a residential context are absolutely excessive and unneccesary. However - security scripts used in a *commercial* context - which inherently use a blacklist - is not excessive, given the current land parcel toolset we have today.

Actually, those security scripts have rougly the same usefulness to a homeowner as they do to club and other business owners. They do counter greifers. I'd prefer not to take these tools away from anyone if it can be avoided.

I'm certain Cubey's not asking for such a needlessly draconian change to the rules. That's not his style at all. And I know I'm not either. Can't see anyone asking for that, really.

What we *are* asking to be punishable, is the overzealous script. If I fly over your club, I won't be un-sat from my plane and booted outside your land as your script presently stands, right? That's becasue you're using the tools responsibly.

However, if I fly over Whadda Phuqtard's sexball skybox - and mind, I'm 50 meters above it - I *do* get unsat and ejected. Why? Becasue he doesn't know how to adjust his script for range or adjust it to give appropriate warning and time to get off his land, or he thinks it's funny to have a collection of abandoned aircraft over his propery.

Even less fun are the ones using scripts that use llPushObject. I've no idea why the hell people think this is appropriate *at all*, but they're shoving people not only off thier 512 meter plot, but off the surrounding plots as well. Including the owners of those plots. Surely this is *already* against the TOS. Not that I could tell from its enforcement.

So, no, you get to protect your club just as is resonable to expect you'd be doing.

I think we're all on the same page here - and fighting for the same thing. I just get frustrated sometimes - because frankly - I don't want to use a security script at all - but feel forced into it - by greifers for doing what they do - and by LL for not doing what they should do.

I haven't seen any improvement or dev work done on the land tools in my 10 months in SL. Yes - I can vote for that with the new vote tool - but I don't have a lot of confidence that "Better Land Tools" is going to make it to the top of the list over other, more popular requests.

Overzelous security scripts are evil, for sure.

One of the problems with security devices is that llSensor is a sphere and most properties in SL are cubes. Those that recall their geometry will understand why this is a problem.

In my opnion security scripts are the third most useless thing in SL, right after the flashing, screaming manpain.wav towers. (The first being flashing screaming paintowers with eject scripts.)

Most security script placements I've seen are useless, too. If you're that embaressed by the fact that you've wallpapered your skybox in hentai porn, why did you do it? Or why not spend the llSensor on turning your stuff into featureless black cubes when you're not there.

Frankly I think the thing that annoys me the most is that these devices are allowed to operate without supervision. I can understand the need to run a device during an event or other activity that draws unwanted activity but the nature of most eject and security scripts I've encountered is they run 24/7 on unattended plywood castles.

There's more than a few places in the world, particularly the snow sims near the telehubs that are only navigable by sitting on a cube and scooting around with the editing tools. I guess I just don't understand the need to hide the secret documents.