Stop Thief!

Will your bot Buy a 1L Parcel?

And would you return it if the owner did not directly tell you what had happened, and ask for its return?

If you take away the 16 SQM parcels out of the equation , how many people do you think dump their land on the market for 1L compared to those trying to transfer?

Will your bot Buy a parcel where the owner accidently left a zero off? So instead of 10,000 it was set for 1,000?

And would you return it if the owner did not directly tell you what had happened, and ask for its return?

What happens if the land resells before someone who's land was bought due to a lapse in judgement realizes what happened?

If the swooping aspect is so negligible - why are bots not programed to avoid land swooping?

Why program your bot to buy properties where you have a reasonable expectation to suspect they made a error in pricing, rather than just low price - I have heard you are one of the few Bot runners who will make good. If conscience dictates you refund those who complain, why doesnt it likewise dictate you refund those who dont?


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Its pretty clear to me that your biggest enemy isnt us complaining - its your fellow landbot runners who are unscrupulous in thir dealings.

Their continued exploitation of people and the fallout of that will cuase you many more problems than some people complaining on the forums.

Are you opposed to warning that there are automated bots that can buy land without being obviously present to do so?

Some sort of politically correct statement so as not to ruffle bot owners' feathers - but makes it clear that other residents are capable of remotely and automatically buying your land if you put it up for sale.

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Im not playing any game - Im expressing my opinion. In my opinion those who will take advantage of others are best served if their marks dont know what they are potentially in for.

Land swoopers are opportunists - Automated Land swoopers are mechanized opportunists.

There is a mistake in the above statement?

And finally I was clearly expressing my Opinion.

Therefore I dont understand how that is a mistake to be corrected. You dont correct opinions.

While its possible my opinion might be misguided or wrong - its not disinformation- its my opinion.

On the other thread I did make an incorrect statement and I thanked you for providing alternate information. That has nothing to do with my opinions of the automated land swooping situation however.

While your characterization of me as a "bugger" is anatomically imposible; I dont understand who you'd use a homosexual slur to describe people who are anti-bot.

You have no right to complain, as what he is doing is legal under the TOS, you just singled out a resident for harrasment, against the TOS. What you are doing under the TOS is illegal and legally worse then what he is doing, legally.

Did I mention that what he does is all legal?

Bugger isn't a homosexual slur, it's anal sex, gay or straight.

Correction police to the rescue!

Bugger is an expletive used in vernacular British English, South African English, Australian English, New Zealand English and Sri Lankan English. When used in context it still retains its original meaning, implying sodomy (see buggery).

The phrase bugger off means to run away [Let's bugger off out of here]; when used as a command it means "go away" ["piss off", "get lost" or "leave me alone"]

You hear that folks? No one has the right to complain if what they complain about is legal in the TOS.

Yes my words of caution are doing more harm than the harm done to those who have lost thousands of US dollars to this guy.

So I'm violating the TOS? It's ok. Nothing gets enforced in SL.

Yeah his land grabbing is legal. So is stupidity. Bugger off.

I'll have to take you at your word. But for the record I do this almost daily.


Yes


I'm not psychic, I can't go around second guessing everything my customers do. I don't question the supermarket when they sell stuff for half price either.


In the last 3 weeks I've bought 8 parcels for L$1. Half were 128sqm or smaller. I'm fully confident that all these sales were completely legitimate.


No, since I can't possibly know what the seller intended to sell for. It's a shame you have absolutely no experience in the land market or you'd already know that people will dump 512s for whatever arbitrary price they think is right. For example, a lot of people bought their parcels a year ago for 5/sqm and now they'll sell them for 6/sqm and be very pleased they made a profit. Or maybe they bought the parcel as first land, or maybe it was a free gift from a friend. Is it my fault that they don't know that other people are willing to pay so much more for land?


Again, my mystical powers are insufficient for this task.


I've returned land three days later, But I've never run into this situation. On the other hand, I deal with dozens of people every day and can count the unsatisfied customers on one hand so I'm sure there'll be a solution everyone will find equitable.


Because "swooping" is indistinguishable from "finding a great deal"



For a few weeks I actually stopped buying everything under L$1/sqm. Of course, you have to still target things that are exactly L$1/sqm because Gov Linden has a habit of selling land at that price. Anyway, I did that for a month or so and during that time Merlin won every single parcel of that price. Of course, I consider him the competition and this free run over all the extremely cheap parcels was funding his business and encouraging him to keep going. Since then I've automatically bought those super cheap parcels but I change the description to a note indicating the seller should contact me immediately. That way I avoid filling the pockets of my competitors and can "save" the land for the mistaken seller. You see, there are some very big downsides to simply ignoring those extremely cheap parcels.


I have faith that people will realise that landbots don't do anything that people haven't been doing for years and they will understand that when you have a problem with how a resident is behaving then you deal with that resident. Not with the legitimate business model of half a dozen completely random people.

Oh, edit, I couldn't give a monkey's if there was a warning or not. If I was trying to keep landbots a secret I wouldn't be in here every day clarifying, correcting and commenting on so many threads.

It is used as a homosexual slang term where I live. A Bugger is used to mean a man who rapes another man analy - As in the movie Deliverance.

I guess its not just Amercians that assume their slang terms apply everywhere.

Too bad Amercians are the usually the only ones ever called on it.

No, I'll say it then - landbots in general are bad.

1) Landbots exclude people who do not have landbots from taking part in land arbitrage. I believe that the exact reason for the "same as what's in the standard client or less" TOS rule about connecting with other software, is to prevent users who use the regular SL client becoming an underclass. Landbots effectively create that in the field of land dealing.

2) When multiple people have landbots running 24/7 the result is chaos and technical faults. Landbots are incapable of sharing a market as real land dealers, even the huge barons, have done while making a perfectly good profit for years. When a price is obviously too low, how does the system decide which landbot gets it? On stock exchanges, with automated trading, the stock exchange itself has effectively a bot too which deals with this, dividing the shares between orders. But this kind of division with land can't be done in SL.

3) Landbots are alts which are permanently incommunicado. As a result, they can be used to hide the true identities of avatars involved in land transactions and put them beyond contact.

4) Landbots create lag on the back-end by repeatedly polling the Land Sales list at the fastest speed the Lindens will allow.

5) Landbots lack the human judgment to make a distinction between cases which are obviously mistakes (such as the L$21000 half-sim) and cases which are not. Operators can then use this as an excuse, saying that they cannot be held to task for not exercising their own judgment in buying the land because they weren't there and didn't buy it. This abrogation of responsibility isn't acceptable.

Any more?

In the same way that scuplties exclude artists who don't have Maya and LSL excludes people who can't code scripts and penis shops exclude people who aren't skilled at making prim penises. People don't "have" or "not have" landbots. Every one of you is making a conscious decision not to write your own bot. Maybe you think the work is too much or maybe you think it's unethical. But it's your personal choice. You could have a landbot if you studied hard and worked as much as I have.


Odd, how comes there are dozens of land barons, some of them much much richer than me with no technology at all?


All my bots receive IMs and pass them on to me. Anyway, what is a "true identity." Maybe that bot avatar is my only alt. In my case one of my bots could be considered my "true identity" and Elan is an alt.


True, but technical solutions will prevail here.


Right, and actual humans can make the distinction but often, I repeat OFTEN choose not to. Again, this should be an attack on a person, not a tool.

As has been pointed out -

Even though its obvious that some people are being taken advantage of , its not against the TOS.

So the Lindens kind of have 3 things they can do.

1) Nothing.

2) Change the TOS/CS. Or change how its enforced.

3) Change the code to hamper landbots.

The fact that its not against the TOS doesnt making something right per se, just allowed.

My guess is what they do will probably depend on the squeeky wheels they want to get unsqueeky.

That doesnt include most of people on the forums.

I think it will have little , if anything, to do with the "rights" of either normal residents - or landbotters.

4) Change the interface so people are less likely to make mistakes. A simple way to transfer land that doesn't involve selling it seems like a no-brainer. It would simply be a button that says Transfer, then you type the name of the target in, then it sets it for sale for L$0 specifically to whoever. It requires no backend changes whatsoever.

That can be done. I wish it were easier, but here's how:


HOW TO: TRANSFER LAND FROM GROUP A TO GROUP B
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1. Set Destination Group as Active Group
2. Donate/Transfer Tier (Set Land Contribution)
3. Transfer Land to New Group


SET DESTINATION GROUP AS ACTIVE GROUP

Choose Edit >> Groups. In the box highlight the group TO which the land will be transferred. Click Activate.


DONATE/TRANSFER TIER (SET LAND CONTRIBUTION)

If you have donated tier to Group A for land and you need the tier in Group B, remove your tier donation in Group A.

1. Select Edit >> Groups from the menubar. The list of the groups you belong to appears. In the new pop up box, highlight the group where land currently is held (Group A). Click the Info button. The Group Information box opens.

2. Go to "Land and L$" tab. In the white box next to "Your Contribution" change this number to zero to remove all of your tier from group, or subtract the amount of the land you will remove and click "apply".

3. This puts Group A into negative tier and gives warning message. Don't panic. It will be OK for a few minutes to have negative tier in Group A to complete this transaction.

[N.B. You can simply sell land to yourself and tick the "remove contribution from group" box EXCEPT that if you do not have sufficient tier to cover buying the land back out of the group, you are bumped up to the next tier level. These steps help ensure you do not incur a higher tier charge]

4. Add tier (if needed) to Group B. [If Group B does not need tier donation, skip to steps for Transfer Land to New Group.] Select Edit >> Groups from the menubar. The list of the groups you belong to appears.

5. Highlight the group you want to donate to (Group B) and click the Info button. The Group Information box opens.

6. Click the "Land & L$" tab.

7. In the Your Contribution box, enter the amount you want to donate and click "Apply"



TRANSFER LAND TO NEW GROUP

1. Go to the land and right-click it. Select About Land from the pie menu.

2. Click "sell land"

3. In the new box, type in agreed price for land (can be 0).

4. MOST IMPORTANT STEP!! Choose "SPECIFIC USER" from drop down box. In new popup box, type your own name and click on "find", then click "select"

****If you choose ANYONE from the dropdown list, and you are selling below the market price for land, you're almost guaranteed a bot will buy your land. In effect, you are telling Second Life that you are selling the land to anyone in the game for the price you have just typed and that means anyone can buy it.*****

5. Choose whether you transfer the objects with the land.

6. Click "set land for sale"

7. Go to the land and right-click it. Select Buy Land from the pie menu.

8. Click on "Buy Land for Group" <--- Double check you have correct group active!

9. Watch for the transfer message. If Group B does not have sufficient tier, you will get a message saying the transfer failed.

I did buy land for my group (RL partner, very good RL friend and me) not very long ago. My SL neighboor did move away.
She was kindly enough to ask me if I would be interested to buy some her land (as it is in the same Sim my house). We agreed on a price, she placed it for sale for that price on my name.

I bought it directly into the group. No, problem at all.

Morwen.

I'd even take issue with the use of "allowed" in the context. It gives the moral pygmies some wriggle room.
Allow - 'to accept or approve of'

But 'me-too'ing the thrust of Colette's observation -
If it's not against the TOS, then it's simply *not explicitly forbidden*.
If everything that is not 'against the law' is therefore 'accepted and approved of', then there is no need for any new or amended laws - ever.


I understood from another thread that LL had done something recently to curtail landbot activity (like throttling streams of database queries from a single agent)?
What happened? Did LL step back from that? Or did the landbots respond by distributing the query load over a number of separate agents?

The Landbots probably complained to the Media.......

I was working on a sculptie the other day when one of those cars with jet wheels came cruising in, black camaro maybe. It smashed into a sculptie fish prim, when it took off all that was left was a blob with no textures, two of them actually. Sculptie texture, uv mapped skin were gone. It was really strange. Was I being copybotted?

if so whoever got it got a borked up model which I totally blew the vertices.. good luck with it!!!!


-why

Sounds like a useful reform. Couple that with a transaction delay that allows sellers to catch and correct honest errors and buyers to block the "lag" exploit that allows a bot to switch the price after it's been agreed to and complete the transaction before the buyer is aware of it, and it looks like most of the abuses reported here would be guarded against. Or am I missing something?

Good point.

A transfer button which came before the sell button would do a lot of good.

This is probably the best idea Ive seen to help with Landswooping yet.


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https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-251

I added this suggestion based on the idea. I really think it would help reduce people losing their land due to the 1L attempts to transfer problem; as it relates to land bots that are used for swooping.

First: the fact that sculpties originally required Maya was also controversial - there was a fair bit of upset about it on the Wiki page - but this has now settled down, and the most popular tools are Blender and Wings3D.

And, of course people who can't do art are excluded from becoming artists and people who can't program are excluded from becoming programmers. But this isn't the same as that - this is saying that people who can't program are excluded from becoming *land dealers*, which up until a few months ago was nothing to do with programming at all.

In fact, beyond business acumen (which is valuable, but once you have mastered it there are single 'best' prices for everything which are the same for everyone), land dealing was also to do with art and the ability to make land attractive. That is a far better type of competition in terms of consumer benefit (they get to make their SL home in a more attractive place) than bots.

Also, you're assuming the only reason someone would not want a landbot is that they could not program one. They might just choose not to use that method, because people don't like it.



Bear in mind I'm not talking about *your* bot in particular, but about the general concept of landbots. Technically at the moment it would be possible for someone to create a landbot account where no human being never logged into SL - they just left the landbot running, setting it to obviously underpriced parcels, and only visited LindeX from time to time to cash out. I don't think any of the existing landbot users have done this, but there is no protection against it.



But in that case the human would have been responsible for that choice. The problem with landbots is that they enable the human to hide behind the defence that "well, my landbot did it automatically, so it's not my fault since I wasn't there".

I was once the victim of a land bot but it wasn't my error or mistake. I wanted land a new person had gotten and he wanted the land I had, an very even trade of land plots. I set my land to sell only to him and since he was over a month old and owned several piece of land I assumed mistakenly he would put the land sale to me and not public. We both set our sales and the instant he set his to sell for 0 Linden a bot swooped in and grabbed it before I had a chance to buy it while the other guy was busy buying the land I had set to 0 linden. I was the victim. I lost the land and the unwashed got his land. I was told this might be a scam and that I was led to believe he had done this intentionally but that's not proven and I know the guy and he's was very upset and offered to return the land he got from me. So the point is it's more about not knowing the way things work and using the tools than "Idiots getting what they deserve" Right and Wrong are not always injunction with legal and illegal.

Not the case at all. As I mentioned earlier there are quite literally dozens of other land traders that are large enough to have caught my eye. Some like CP Costello and JR Unknown continue on as if I don't exist. Indeed, their tier (and presumably profit) is probably an order of magnitude larger than mine. It's true that some people were ill-equipped to deal with the competition this new technique brought but I don't feel sorry for them. If you are in a business and someone legally and fairly out competes you using technology then that's just tough. In the real world it doesn't even matter if it's fair as long as it's legal.



Land bots barely compete with the type of traders you describe here. Land bots compete with the type of trader many refer to as land flippers. Generally these traders hammer the search, looking for land that is obviously too cheap, then they flip it quickly for a for a few lindens. Land improvers, auctioned sim cutters, traders in waterfront, private sim owners and those with a sharp eye for valuable land are not affected one jot by land bots.

Further I think the skill of pricing parcels is not quite as trivial as you make out. Indeed it is NOT the same for everyone as indicated by the variety of trading strategies. Most landbots set their prices super low so they can dump the land and keep down tier costs while some people set prices high and wait for a buyer. Trading high tier costs for high profits on each parcel. Sadly, no-one has yet done a quantitative analysis to work out which strategy is best.



My land bot is a member of the set of landbots. If you make a negative generalisation about that set then you hurt my business and offend me personally.

PS it's impossible to set something for sale for L$0 and not specify the target. In other words, if the parcel Emily refers to really was set at L$0 it's impossible for it to have been stolen.

With landbots, the entire transaction takes place faster than the human eye can register any information from the screen, and you know that. Trying to claim that landbots aren't doing anything that people can't do is nothing but a lie.

The issue here is greater than making a mistake. If my any reason you have adjacent land for sale, lets say 512m2, and is for sale at 512$L. Then one day you decide to buy more land nearby and join the properties, but by mistake extend the join box on the terrain editor to the land you had for sale, all your land is now @ 512$L. The Landbaron Merlin, will send his bot and before you can fix it, meaning in a matter of seconds he has your land. By the time I joined the land and realized that i had joined the land for sale also it was gone from under my feet 5140m2 @ 295$L simply by joining your land and not realizing you extended the join box to the next land plot. Now that is definetly robery. I was working on separating the land when i could no longer edit because it wasn't mine any longer.

They fixed this about five updates ago. Now when you join land it automatically resets as not for sale.