Definition of Theft?

Behaving unethically here--especially in the financial realm--is no different that behaving unethically in RL. Business here is business in the real world. Ignoring the impact of SL on RL therefore is, from my perspective, self-serving at best.

No. But I do like when people show themselves up - in this case by offering a challenge and then backing down when it's accepted.

Do you want a real challenge? Are you up to one? I am if you are? So what's it to be?

I want to show you up. Scared?

Man, you're so dumb. Learn about what you're talking about - you'll find it helps.

aaw. Do I affect you like that? I'm so sorry.

Perhaps if you tried minding your own business it might help

Not in the slightest. I do do what's right.

I *enjoy* these threads - I told you that.

For your education:-
If you want a normal discussion of facts and views with someone, don't start out by calling them a cheat and a liar. . . .

I've never heard of a "presence server". What does it do? I've looked at the architecture in the wiki, and it's not mentioned at all.

Then it's even better. If such things as av textures are handled by sims, then they are not cumulative on a grid-wide central server, as I'd thought. They are part of the in-sim operations. It doesn't make any difference to well-used bots though, as they are a long way out of range of the need for av textures, wherever the textures are served from.

If everyone were prohibited from running bots, businesses would still rise to the top ten. So . . . bots can't be the only way.

There was a third, more difficult option: fight to get bots banned. If enough people got together and did so, perhaps change would occur. Of course, it is easier not to do this.

There's also a fourth option: discount your products and watch how business increases. The trick here is to find the right price-point.

There's also a fifth option: damn the top ten rating and just do what's ethical. Good products speak for themselves.

However, if you have a gamer's "frame" on this you'll treat this as a "win at all costs" situation and stoop to any behavior that ensures the win. You'll also justify that behavior on such "principles" as

--"winning is the only thing",
--"if you don't get caught it's okay",
--"if it's "legal" it's fair and okay to do"
--"everybody's doing it"

Virtual world, real world . . . this is still people dealing with people
This virtual world has a real world money link. This virtual world has real impact on people. Ethics are applicable in both realms.

Behaving unethically here--especially in the financial realm--is no different that behaving unethically in RL. Business here is business in the real world. Ignoring the impact of SL on RL therefore is, from my perspective, self-serving at best.

"Business within the boundaries of the law" has very little to do with ethics. In fact, it all too often runs counter to ethical behavior.

When you behave unethically, you impact others negatively and at their expense to further your own agenda, while ignoring their needs and desires. You won't be loved for doing so.

<rubbish snipped>

For your education--
As far as calling you a cheat and a liar. I focused on your behavior which was and is, to me, lying and cheating . . . and not you personally. I probed to see if you were well-meaning and just misguided. You weren't.

Then you started the prolific ad-hominems. You've deserved what you got as a result.

It's the one that keeps track of who's logged in, and what sim they're on, so that messages can be routed to the right sim. I have been told this job was originally performed by the login server, and at another point it may have been one of the functions of a database server. It's the one where, when it gets overloaded, you get stuck with that message about the system trying to log out out forever when you try and log in.

The problem is that there is an impact for every logged in avatar. If there wasn't, then it wouldn't matter how many avatars were logged in, because they'd only be having an impact on the sim they were on and they could always fix that by adding more sims.

And just because you were mistaken about one of the places where the load was coming from, that doesn't mean the load doesn't exist.

To my way of thinking, it's common sense that it doesn't.

What mistake? If you mean the av textures, then what you taught me aids my argument.

From what you say about it, the Presence Server can't suffer load from well-used traffic bots, and I see no other functions or servers where they can cause an appreciable load.

I'm sure you mean the Userserver.

I've been writing software professionally for almost 30 years, and I've implemented some really enormous databases, some of them handling records for over half a million concurrent users. A huge amount of debugging and scaling problems are due to common sense completely failing to match reality.

No, because I never suggested that was part of the cost of bots. The point is that your supposed "well behaved" bots are not creating any less load on the grid than an idle alt sitting on a camping chair. They are causing less load on the sim, but not on the core servers.

If you were right, it wouldn't matter how many avatars were on the grid.

The login server was responsible for presence at one point, yes. It's not running that service now. Now presence service is apparently handled by the data servers. Presence service still has to be provided, and it's still a cause of bottlenecks and login failures during high load.

For example, one likely bottleneck is the Presence-Agent table, which is frequently updated and contains entries for every logged-in agent. Even if the bots themselves don't cause direct updates in it, every entry in the table increases the cost of any update. Increasing that table size by 17% at peak load is a cost caused by traffic bots.

Unless you can show where even reasonable loads could occur, then I don't accept what you say.

Of course updating an extra 17% takes more time, if it actually happens, but even then, updating a small amount of data for 70k avs isn't a big task.

You focused on my behaviour, did you? And you stated that my behaviour is cheating and lying. So, if my behaviour is cheating and lying, then I must be a cheat and a liar. In other words, you called me a cheat and a liar. They are personal insults.

I just realised that you're new to SL.

No wonder you don't know anything about what you're discussing. I wonder why you've got your knickers in such a twist about bots.

Guess who was there trying to get bots banned and/or the traffic-based rankings changed or removed. Give in? It was me. Where were you during those meeting? Oh, that's right - you weren't around then.

My products *do* speak for themselves, and I behave perfectly ethically too. So I do that option already.

Your arguments are flawed because they are made on a false premise. There is nothing unethical about using traffic bots and camping, except in the minds of a few anti-bots here. [\QUOTE]I could say the same about your arguments; they're based on the flawed assumptions that there's nothing unethical about using traffic bots . . . and that those of us who believe that are simpletons.

When two people "debate" and they don't share the same fundamental core assumption(s), there is no way that reaching a consensus or agreement is ever possible.

So . . . I suppose we could keep this up for a long time and waste each other's time some more. Clearly, neither of us will convince the other.

You'd better go check on my view of campers (it's posted to someone else in this thread); you'll see I'm not that black and white about 'em.

I am, however, black-and-white about traffic bots . . . and if you go back to previous messages, you can review the why. 'Course, you won't agree, because your basic premise is just the opposite of mine.

So perhaps it's time to leave it at that.

BTW, I stand against land littering, land cutters, land extortionists, and ad farmers. I also stand against anyone who indulges in personal attacks and ad-hominems for the joy of it.

If you had avoided the latter with me and with others here, you wouldn't have drawn such flak from me. I react negatively to people I perceive as bullies.

You'll also find that I generally don't attack a person per se. I didn't you, although you did interpret my comments that way.

I do attack behaviors, however, when I don't agree with them . . . vigorously, when I believe they're wrong and/or abusive . . . and that's why you drew my fire.

I find it interesting that you immediately discount a person's intelligence just because the avatar you're dealing with shows a birth date of a mere 4-5 months ago.

Have you looked at business in the real world lately? RL business has tricks and gimmicks that far outweigh the tactics you're questioning. Indeed the tactics you're questioning don't even raise an eyebrow RL. Blizzard also get accused of bloated figures for Wow.

I have been around for far longer than Phil, but he still personally attacks me. His issue isn't with your newness. He was just looking for something to stab you with.

I've been around these forums a long time and NO OTHER POSTER has ever thrown more total personal attacks than Phil. Period.

Keep at it though and maybe he will put you on ignore like he did me and Pie, LOL.

You focused on my behaviour, did you? And you stated that my behaviour is cheating and lying. So, if my behaviour is cheating and lying, then I must be a cheat and a liar. In other words, you called me a cheat and a liar. They are personal insults.

Your "if-then" is flawed from a logic standpoint. Let me help you here:

--one instance of lying does not mean you're a liar
--one instance of cheating does not mean you're a cheater

I can't help what twists you put on what I say, Colette. If you think I called you a liar, for instance, you are WRONG! You can say all you like, but if you don't take what I write as being what I actually mean, it's your fault - not mine.

So untrue, Colette. You are not telling the truth. The reason you don't see it is because you prefer not to see it. BUT if you were to actually look, you *will* see that any insults I throw, in any thread at all (except the rare 2 that I've mentioned before) are responses to insults thrown at me. And even those 2 threads were responses to the insults thrown at me in another thread. Now you may imagine that calling someone a scammer and such is not an insult or personal attack, but that's just you being extremely biased, which is nothing new, of course.

Tell me something, Colette. Why don't you criticise other people who throw insults? At the time you read them, you can easily see that they are not responses to mine, because I don't make them until someone insults me.

[added]
Out of curiosity, and to help you, I went back and looked for the first insult in this thread. It came on page 9, post 122, and was written by Chris Norse. He said:-

It's interesting how you seem to be blind to everyone's insults except mine. I responded in kind, of course, but as you can see if you care to look, your statement that "The one who started the constant name-calling was you." was simply wrong. Why do you make such statements when you know they are not true, Colette? Is it just wishful thinking? Is it bare faced lying? Is it just shit stirring? Why do you do it? Let me guess. You do it because you want to paint Phil as black as you can because he uses traffic bots - he's the baddy. And you are pretty certain that people are not going to go back and check. Am I right?

And since you seem to be oblivious to realities when they don't suit your preferences, I'll add that, if you go and look, you'll see the same pattern throughout - someone insults me, and I insult back. I don't claim to just match insult for insult though. Once someone has thrown an insult at me, s/he is fair game for them. I don't subscribe to the idea that they muist be evenly traded, but I do subscribe to the idea that it must be the other person who throws the first one. That applies to all threads, and not just this one.

So untrue, Colette. You are not telling the truth.

If everyone were prohibited from running bots, businesses would still rise to the top ten. So . . . bots can't be the only way.

There was a third, more difficult option: fight to get bots banned. If enough people got together and did so, perhaps change would occur. Of course, it is easier not to do this.

There's also a fourth option: discount your products and watch how business increases. The trick here is to find the right price-point.

There's also a fifth option: damn the top ten rating and just do what's ethical. Good products speak for themselves.

However, if you have a gamer's "frame" on this you'll treat this as a "win at all costs" situation and stoop to any behavior that ensures the win. You'll also justify that behavior on such "principles" as

--"winning is the only thing",
--"if you don't get caught it's okay",
--"if it's "legal" it's fair and okay to do"
--"everybody's doing it"

Virtual world, real world . . . this is still people dealing with people
This virtual world has a real world money link. This virtual world has real impact on people. Ethics are applicable in both realms.

Behaving unethically here--especially in the financial realm--is no different that behaving unethically in RL. Business here is business in the real world. Ignoring the impact of SL on RL therefore is, from my perspective, self-serving at best.

"Business within the boundaries of the law" has very little to do with ethics. In fact, it all too often runs counter to ethical behavior.

When you behave unethically, you impact others negatively and at their expense to further your own agenda, while ignoring their needs and desires. You won't be loved for doing so.

......... as running bots is perfectly well accepted by LL, so what has getting caught to do with it? Again, this part does not make any sense.
..........
Really, it is only a very small group agitating against bots.

... we also identified that the key areas to focus on in improving search (and traffic) is in having an effective policy to deal with disruptive bots (keeping in mind that some bots could be valid and useful), and in revamping how we deal with events in search. These are all key areas for search, as we move forward, and we hope to have progress in the months that follow, especially over the longer term.

In the context of these exchanges, it is probably accurate to assume that by "bots" in the above you are talking about "traffic bots".

Who thinks that traffic bots are a problem?
You will have to include LL in the category of those who see traffic bots as a problem.

Again from Kalpana Linden representing LL officially in the LL Traffic Group

It is a nonsense to say that (traffic) bots are "perfectly well accepted by LL". It is clear that they see them as disrupting Search. It is clear that they see them as having a negative impact.

All that is strictly accurate is that LL do not currently forbid traffic-gaming in the TOS. However, it is clear that they consider that a whack-a-mole approach to a range of traffic gaming issues to be inappropriate.
It seems that they are loath to do away with Traffic simply because some people are abusing it.
It seems that they realise that there are valid uses for bots in general and that the purpose of many bots is not to game Search.
If they banned "traffic bots" tomorrow and enforced that ban, then those bots would be used in whatever other ways they could influence search without contravening the explicit terms of the TOS.
A simplistic paragraph in the TOS would result in the banning of bots that are not designed to game Search.

I've definitely shown where unreasonable loads can occur. You don't believe me, and I can understand why, but to say that I haven't even shown where they CAN occur, that I haven't even SUGGESTED how bots can have an impact? That's either deliberate blindness or merely rhetoric.

They're using SQL (MySQL, to be precise), so the amount of data that's being updated (the row size) isn't the issue, it's the frequency of updates and the size of the table that matters more.

Hi Collette,

I got that impression. Some people just like to abuse others.

We shall see. I'll be in good company if he does, heh?

Nice to know Phil is back at it as the #1 ever personal attack thrower of the SL forums.