Stop Thief!

Okay... this raises the question: Is the landbot a predator? Also, is the intended person on the other end of the transaction a predator?

A big portion of the entire premise (besides the OP's intent of singling out another resident for a rather scurrilous thread which fails to deliver an actual theft) is that Bob, being Bob, is subject to being preyed upon and we must all take every opportunity to prevent Bob from, sadly, being Bob.

Let's pretend Bob completes the transaction. He marks the land for L$1. He marks the land to be sold to Tiffany Moistpanties. He reads the warning dialogue "Do you want to sell this land for L$1 to Tiffany Moistpanties?" He even conducts a little due diligence. He asks Tiffany, "Now in exchange for this land for L$1 you promise to love me and be the bestest virtual girlfriend ever and attest to the fact that your avatar looks just like you in RL and you even have RL lady things like 'boobies'?"

"Of course," says Tiffany Moistpanties in a deep voice while brushing the cookie crumbs off "her" mustache.

Bob proceeds with the sale of his undervalued asset to his virtual girlfriend, Tiffany Moistpanties.

Nine minutes (or days or weeks or months) later Bob learns that Tiffany Moistpanties is actually a dude in RL (oh noes!).

Does Bob have a right to ask for the Lindens to intervene and return his land to him?

If yes, how many rollbacks and transactions reversals per day would we all be subjected to on the basis that we must not only allow Bob to be Bob, but any of his mistakes (whether he has forewarning or not) must be rectified in his favor?

Wait... Tiffany Moistpanties is a guy? Aw, MAN!

She tol' me she was a girl. *snif*

Boy! Landbots can do all that now??!!

We're doomed.

The landbot can only engage in its "predatory" behavior if Bob fails to set his parcel for sale to another individual. I'm merely pointing out that, Bob being Bob, will face a variety of other pitfalls and that it's going to be a HUGE waste of everyone's time to prevent Bob from being Bob.

Enough already! All this is moot anyway.

Everyone reading this knows not to make the mistake that will benefit the predator known as L-andbaron M-erlin. No one here will set their land to "anyone" when they intend that it go to a specific person. The Bobs of SL will continue to get burned because they don't know any better. LL is not changing the way land sales work and is fine with landbots taking mistakes. So let's let it die.

This has to be the most words devoted to defending a slimy jerk outside of the White House.

Die! Thread, Die!!!

Well, yeah, I don't want to create a nanny state world that is safe for self-destructing idiots either. "Bob," or whomever, needs to be responsible for him/herself. You cannot save a fool from him/herself, and it may be best if they drop out of the gene pool. And I would not want LL or Residents to try.

But this is not about certifiable fools. This is walking into a trap most relative newcomers would have no reason to realize is there.

So, on the other hand, I think it is just good common sense - and good business practice for LL - to arrange things so that a small mistake anyone could make, especially if they are in a hurry or operating on too little sleep (as who is not these days?) will not have such a (relatively) huge cost. IMO, LL should not be so - foolish - as to permit a predatory practice to which newbies are particularly vulnerable continue when it can easily cost them more US$ than a year's subscription to There or Entropia or whatever the SONY thing is called. This is known as not killing your customer, or not driving him to your competitors, and most businesses do try to avoid doing that. I think LL should too. And I think Residents who understand that a growing SL is good for everyone, including themselves, should do what they can to help avoid that too.

Sorry, but the existence of the individual in question is apparently the sole reason as to why you won't buy land (see post: 83)



Actually, LL has been looking into this since January: Stop automated land buying in SL.

I know... I know... everyone else's hands were broken and unable to search for a relevant Feature Proposal.



No one is defending anyone. You simply failed to make a compelling argument that a theft had occured and while attempting to make the argument used the guise of a "warning thread" directed at a single resident.

Looking into it? Perhaps. Doing something about it? No. And Merlin isn't the reason I don't buy land. My total lack of confidence in LL, with what they are allowing with this situation as one example, is the reason for that.

You simply failed to make a compelling argument that you factor morality into your thinking process, so I think we're even.

I dont think those who favor landbots want the general population to know what a landbot is or its capabilities.

Becuase if the general population KNEW they wouldnt make these 1L$ transfer attempts.

So most people not knowing is money in the bank for the Land Bot runner.


I dont think the Lindens wanting the general population knowing about Landbots and what Landbot owners are capable of.

Becuase if the general population KNEW the outroar would drown out the complaining you hear on the forums. People would be upset that LL knows about the problem but is very hands off about a solution. The general population doesnt care about excuses. There would be a large number of complaints, cancelations, lack of referals, general headaches and taking up Customer service time.

So most people not knowing is money in the bank for Linden Labs.

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So although it doesnt make sense for people to defend landbots and blame those who are hurt finacially by losing their land .. its actually does.

So although it seems messed up Linden Labs doesnt warn everyone about landbots when they try to sell their land, and on the log on screen and on the blog .. It actually does make sense.

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If its common for people to lose their land under the current system to a landbot - then the current system is FLAWED.

Obviously the "obvious" things arent so obvious. Its easy for us to say its obvious since we know the risks.

I really dont see why there is such disdain for the ignorant. Second Life can be pretty intimidating for someone who has very little computer/online experience.

Try climbing down off the high horse and imagining yourself in their shoes.

*sighs at the mention of "morality"*

This is where we get into that "Seven Deadly Sins" thing again: Wrath. One of the characteristics of "wrath" is impatience with the judicial system. As far as you're concerned (and in your opinion) "justice" hasn't been meted out quickly enough to the owner of the landbot (though no one has managed to prove that the landbot has broken any rules) and thus the landbot owner is worthy of your wrath in the form of a "warning" thread.

The mugger analogy is more accurate than you realize. It's like a store owner setting something on a counter in front of his customer, with the intended customer standing right there waiting to grab it the instant the store owner sets it down, and a thief that wasn't even in the same state an instant before snatches it away.

People can know of the existence of landbots and know that they search for land at unusually low prices and still not know how fast the process is. It is literally instantaneous. I was doing a land trade with a friend and Landbaron M*&%$#F*&^%$# screwed us. One problem with selling to an individual is that it won't let them buy it for a group, even if they are the one doing the buying. For whatever reason my friend needed to buy for his group. We were the only two people in the entire sim. He was ready to hit the buy button immediately after I hit the sell button. We were doing the land trade in sections so that we wouldn't go over our tier limits. His house had already been moved, so the entire area of the first section of land we were transferring was covered by one corner of his house. The land itself was completely unclickable. To repeat, there was NOBODY else in the entire sim. As soon as I hit the sell button (before my finger could even leave the mouse), the land had been swooped, and that entire corner of my friends house had been deleted.

It is true that any individual could have seen the land for sale by searching at the exact right time and teleported in to buy it, but if they had tried, they would have gotten there too late. If someone had been teleporting in already and happened to get there right as the land went for sale, they would have seen the corner of the house sitting there with 2 people standing on top of it, and they still would have been too late. If I had set it for sale and walked away, I could agree with the landbot defenders. What these landbots are doing is literally impossible for any person to do. Even if you told the person exactly when to look at the search page, they would not be able to read the price before the landbot bought the land. It is completely unreasonable to expect people to know that this is possible if they haven't seen it or heard about it firsthand. I had heard about landbots, but assumed that even if the search was instantaneous, they still had to teleport in like anybody else and go through the other clicks like any other avatar would. For the honest landbot runners out there, a 5 second delay would keep you from doing this kind of thing.

One good improvement for the landselling process would be to have an option for the seller to confirm the sale. It would also help a lot if the individual you set the land for sale to was able to buy it for a group.

Excellent question... and we have no idea of how many land transactions per day/week/month/etc in which this scenario occurs.

Even if we have a whole number (it's happened X times) we don't know how much it would cost to effect a change to the land selling interface (the costs to prevent Bob from being Bob might exceed the value derived from all Bobs).

Over generalise much?

This is starting to sound like a campaign of misinformation on your part Colette. There's only half a dozen of you buggers but I'll be damned if I can keep chasing you around and correcting your mistakes forever. You're eventually going to win this game.

Heh. half a dozen forum posters, + everyone who got screwed by a landbot, +all their friends and associates, +evryone who reads the forums, +everyone they know in Rl who is not yet in SL and after hearing about this probably never will be.

I hate to be the one to have to say this, but SL really does appear to be something more than a source of profit for landbotters and other unscrupulous victimizers of the unwary. The day when LL finally is able to quantify the actual damage such practices do to LL is the day when certain botters will be gone from SL, and possibly the subject of civil lawsuits and in some cases criminal prosecution.

Look, landbots don't rely on this silly land stealing nonsense. There's not even that much money in it. Landbots and all other land traders leverage two things.

Firstly they use an imbalance in information. My bot knows far more about what land is worth than you do. Therefore my bot knows which parcels it can buy and sell for a profit. In other words which parcels are "too cheap". This is a natural function of a marketplace. Those with information and resources can use them to trade with people with less information or resources. If some 12 year old kid sets his land for sale 10 or 20% less than what some 50 year old bank manager will pay for it then it's not a crime if I go and buy it off him and sell it to the bank guy. It's not even remotely immoral.

The second thing they use is volume. The aforementioned 12 year old kid may lose USD0.30 if he sells his land too cheap but he probably doesn't care. Any money he has he probably made in the game and losing it is the same as losing monopoly money, meaningless. There are dozens of people every day who just don't care that they sold their stuff a little cheap or a lot cheap because the sums involved are minuscule. You collect all those minuscule amounts together and you suddenly start to see them add up. Here's the profits I made on the parcels I sold yesterday: 676, 34, 66, 408, 3534, -112, 274, 229, 7876, 158, 9, 41, 28, 173. You think that guy who sold his land for L$9 less than it's "value" really gives a crap? Do you think he was mugged?

Save your hatred and barn burning for PEOPLE not for TOOLS.

A warning thread ain't wrath. It's a warning. And damn right, justice has not been meted out quickly enough to my or anyone's satisfaction.

The practise you describe here is so far off topic that it's not even funny. What you describe is a good business practise that anyone could take part in. What the thread is talking about is the landbots instantaneously swooping land away from people that didn't know that the capability existed.

Methinks we have an exploiter or two exposed and getting desperate. Everyone put on flame-retardant clothes. I think this is about to get interesting.

No, several people here have a "bots are evil, they ate my puppy" agenda regardless of the way they are actually used. Since it's obviously a slur on my "good business practise" every time someone says landbots must be banned because they prey on poor unfortunate newbies then I feel I have to stand up and make correction after correction. I think my earlier catchphrase stands, blame the person not the tool. We don't ban hammers because a few people have been hit in the head and we don't ban automatic stock trading because a few people hit the offer instead of the bid.

Actually, it is, as you singled out a single resident for your wrath. Your thread isn't a warning against all landbots, but a warning against a single landbot owner. [You engaged in vigilantism]

Wrath:
"Wrath may be described as inordinate and uncontrolled feelings of hatred and anger. These feelings can manifest as vehement denial of the truth, both to others and in the form of self-denial, impatience with the procedure of law, and the desire to seek revenge outside of the workings of the justice system (such as engaging in vigilantism), fanatical political beliefs, and generally wishing to do evil or harm to others."

This is not true. I did this five minutes ago.

He is not stealing, he just brought it for what the person sells it for!

Semantics again. Okay he's not a thief, he's an opportunist. Ok it's not a warning, it's me exhibiting wrath. I get it. You don't like my vigilante tactics and think I am unfairly singling out one resident because this bastard is taking what does not belong to him EVEN THOUGH HE IS FULLY ENTITLED TO DO SO UNDER THE TOS.

Will you please go away now?

It was impossible on the day I was talking about.