Land buying Bots are effecting EVERYONE

Do you remember the name of that individual?

Whoever that was probably just purchased it from the bot. Because this took place in 1 minute doesn't mean it was this person's bot.

Yes you are right. Landbot may have relisted it and this person could have made it to the place to grab it. ummm I thought I was getting somewhere. lol

Yes i have the Name and reported it also. But i will refrain from naming it here till this issue is solved.

Here's a Resident Question for the bot users.

How's it workin' out for ya?



Honestly, if you haven't made say, at least 10,000 USD off it by now it's at hobby level, barely worth the effort except for maybe... bragging rights? I dunno.

Think of it this way. You could apply the same time and effort to something else using the same education level.

Had you created a comparable bot app *for* a private company, the same amount of work just to write it would net ya 50,000 USD. No matter how simple. I've done plenty of consulting; that's a loooow estimate.



We all know that:

1) bots will be defeated by some mechanism 'yet again' making the arms race more work than it's worth,

2) one will 'leak' and soon there will be more bots than land for sale

3) the Company *will* dump on the market to the point the cost benefit analysis of bot use is barely there



So are any of you really cashing in the chips now?

Say, over 5k USD/month? Anyone willing to confess?




I'm just wondering how much hay you are making while the sun is still shining.

I do the 'added value' approach with Caledon; I do alright but nothing stratospheric. if anyone wants to know my numbers I'm totally transparent about it.

So c'mon, spill.

I've seen you use this analogy before, and it only shows that your knowledge of the Industrial Revolution is both ridiculous and underwhelming. The switch away from the weaving loom and other such manual devices was the automation of production. Your bots produce nothing. They consume. History has shown us all too well over and over again that automating and thereby increasing the amount and efficiency of consumption harms everyone in the long run.

Does anyone do anything in SL as more than a hobby? No-one, surely not even Anshe thinks you can seriously make a living here. Even if you make $50,000 this month it could all be gone next month.

Not when that money comes out of the game and into your bank account. I would ask people like the ESC and others in their field. Ask some of the top designers and builders that make the $5,000 a month. I am sure that much of that is cashed out into their paypal accounts. If SL was to close tomorrow they only thing they would loss is their jobs. No different then a brick and mortar company closing up shop.

Well, that's exactly my point really. I guess I've always considered the chances of losing this job tomorrow as being somewhere around 50/50.

So then you admit that people can make a living off of Second Life?

I'll take that bet! 1,000,000L says they don't close tomorrow.

Uh sure if you like. I wasn't really ever trying to say anything different.

So... is it worth it yet?

Let's pretend you just had the bot just magically land in your lap. USD tier reserve, $L cash reserve, profits vs growth - it ain't cheap.


Are you actually able to cash out anything significant without bringing down the whole house of cards?

Or are you still re-investing like mad to grow bigger?

Of course, you have no reason in the world to answer me; I respect that.

You just like the attention, don't you?

You can assume I'm either embarrassed about how little I've made or too modest to brag about how much I've made. I will say this though. I've never put money into SL and I've taken money out. I have next month's tier saved and in my LL account. I manage my financial position such that if every L$ and meter of land in the world vanished tomorrow I could walk away happily.

The thing about programming is it's like any other art such as building in SL or painting. People like me do it for fun. If I hadn't written my landbot I'd have been writing some other little program to perform some other menial task. Sure the profit motive is strong otherwise I would have given up 2 months ago and moved on to some other interesting little project. I think you'll find the same motive is true of the other bot writers but I guess you'll have to ask them.

Yeah, I kinda do! Look, my initial point was that sure, you can make some pocket money but no-one seriously thinks you can make a living here. It still stands. Make money today? Yes! Rely on it for tomorrow? No!

This issue is part of the open source growing pains we all are going to have to face moving forward. I for one like stability and abhor change, so I'm in for a bumpy ride unless I change my attitude. LL is doing nothing to police things and seems to be encouraging all comers, so I'd better buckle my seatbelt.

And Elanthius, since you like attention, here's some more: I think you are open with your dealings, smart, funny, infuriating, and yes, HAWT!

Well said.

One month's tier is a bit thinly capitalised in my book (I'm assuming you have a *lot* more than that), but I suppose it makes sense considering your operation.

I was an embedded systems engineer for a long time; I can appreciate the fun of making such a bot. And do admit some admiration - nice job! Myself, I tend to prefer being a 'people person' more these days.

Don't get me wrong; I'm still very much in Chip's camp when it comes to land flipping - other than some market liquidity I don't see any merit to it - other than to yourself of course!

My guess is that bots will put themselves out of business. Playing the margin, eventually there won't be enough 'land sale mistake' people to make decent money off of, and too many bots will simply smooth the land market just the way the LindeX is smoothed by currency traders to the point that the currency market doesn't have much to cherrypick any more.

Care to give a short technical brief outlining in broad strokes how your bot works? Just a webserver / NPC avatar pinging search I presume?

Nothing more complicated than using the regular search, scanning the data for cheap stuff and then teleporting there and buying it.

It's a classic arms race where all the players work as hard as they can just to stay in the same relative position. So long as one person is using all the tools at their disposal, you have no choice but to follow suit.

As for ethics in SL, I can't even comment on that without lapsing into withering sarcasm.

I just really hate libSL. And any cold-blooded person who thinks that if it is technically possible, and it profits them, then it is a good thing to do. That includes anyone at LL who thinks like that.

As for selling land, here's what I would do if I decided to sell mine: I would list it at a price higher than it is really worth. Then I would state in the description that this isn't really the price, and state what the price really is. Then I would ask people to contact me if they are interested in buying it, and I would sell it to that person only.

A lot more trouble, but worth it to avoid lining the pockets of people who think they are all that just because they can write code.

I hate money-grubbing bot users scarfing up all the low-priced land for themselves with no effort at all. Hey - let's allow steroids in the Olympics, why don't we? I mean, it can be done. Or maybe bionic limbs, once they get good enough! Shoot, eventually no real human will bother to compete in the Olympics at all. And that will be a Good Thing, won't it.

Also: What's this about removing the in-world transactions history tomorrow? I didn't see that mentioned on the blog anywhere. They said it would happen eventually, but where does it say tomorrow?

I doubt the Lindens are removing that to make life easier for bot users. (While making it REALLY REALLY CRAPPY for me.) However, the fact that it does make life easier for bot users could possibly seem only reasonable to the Lindens while the fact that it is a horrible thing for me bothers them not one whit.

coco

The first look viewer no longer has the in-world transaction history. I never liked the in-world on anyway. It never told me exactly want I needed to know. The web based one was much better. I would guess that this is a resource issue. Removing it to the outside would most likely reduce load. It is not just the bots that will benefit. If you don't mind me asking, how is removing the in-world transaction history really that bad? There is more information on the web then what you could see in world. You can also do more with that data. Plus the data has been on the web forever, so it won't be a change for people that already use it off the web.

Libsl is fine, it's a library of code. Whatever people use it for is a different issue. It got a bad name because of copybot but there are many, many legitimate reasons for using it.

Let's ban knives because some guy once stabbed somebody. Cars are evil because people get run over all the time, repeat ad nauseum.

There are a lot of people who can't easily run a web browser and the grid client at the same time.

Also, the web data is delayed by *days* sometimes - this is absolutely horrible. It really messes with my ability to see what's going on in terms of business if there's a grid bug with payments, say (which has happened recently).

I suspect the idea is to relieve the servers of load, so we can all have a better world - that's the only reason I can think of. I'd like to see Account History come back inworld someday.

Cocoa, I think we are going to see a Company response to the bot users soon. Removal of First Land was done, I think, because of the horrific gaming of the system.

This is a company still dedicated to breaking the financial back of those who profit merely by flipping land. Won't get into details but I'm pretty darn sure of it.

True, I didn't think of not being able to run a web browser and Sl at the same time. But for the last few weeks the web page has been updated within a minute of a transaction taking place. Hopefully they fixed whatever was causing the delay.

I also agree that they would love to break the back of the land flipper. I think they understand a limited need to make life easier on them, ie full sim auctions, but the current price of land is just too high for their liking. I wouldn't be shocked to see 100 sims go to auction at once.