Are Bots Disproportionate

I'm not talking abot simple bugs.

I am talking about things like not being able to transfer funds, which has happened umpteen times in the past few months. Or being gray, or invisible. These aren't bugs per se, these are issues caused by the fact that the architecture cannot handle the load the Lindens are feeding it. It's not acceptable, this thing has been out of beta for almost 4 years, and something as basic as monetary exchange cannot be repeatedly broken, if LL wants to continue to be successful. This is why it's crucial we discuss and shed a LOT of sunlight on just how much drag on the system things like landbots are causing. As more and more mainstream people and big business enter SL, more and more eyes will see these problems and they will tell other people. Eventually, if they don't get their act together, someone's gonna come along and knock them down.

It isn't out of context. You told him his opinion wasn't a fact because he isn't a gridmonkey, then you went on to make your own statement of fact about the same topic, in the form of an absolute even!

It is ironic.

I agree things are stressed but it is illogical to place blame on some automated systems when it is more obvious it is the increased user load to be the cause.

Personally, I think it's a really shitty way to do business, regardless of the impact on system resources.

I'm not blaming.

I simply want them to take a real good hard look at it, and figure out if it is an issue.

I also want them to take a real stance on the issue, whatever that stance may be.

I am glad for these threads, because maybe it will prompt them to examine it. I also am glad people are ARing the hell out of these threads, because that will get more Linden eyes on the topic.

I have to just lean back in my chair and giggle when I see people whining about someone starting threads they don't like while at the same time supporting the threads by participating in them for page after page.

Then of course we get the sanctimonious scripter types, like moths to a flame, any time anything to do with something techie is being challenged, acting like resmod wannabes quoting the forum guidelines like good little hall monitors, even though in this case a resmod has participated in the darned thread and not issued so much as a warning!.

And the beat goes on...

The increased user load is very much the cause. At last we agree.

Even discounting the far overinflated numbers caused by unverified accounts, the actual userbase is increasing and LL has shown time and time again it can't keep up with that increase. So how foolish is it for them to allow landbots on top of that which, although they don't carry the graphics overhead and so don't lag the system in that way, still exist as avatars in the world and create server lag as far as keeping track of them goes, and more importantly hammer search 17280 times a day, increasing traffic along the search/asset data pipeline far more than any human client ever could?

Moreover, if Weedy's network is snatched up by Century 21 or some other real world realtor with the intent of putting 1000 new bots in world (and I hope to God she's not serious about selling out), don't expect things to get any better anytime soon.

"At first glance" yes.

The question is, what constitutes effective regulation?

Punish anyone that flips more than 10 parcels a day? 20? 50?
Punish anyone that does more than 30 land searchs in an hour?
Punish anyone that buys land within 60 seconds of it being listed?
Punish anyone that might look like they're using bots?

Most of those could be circumvented by using multiple alts.

What problems are we really trying to solve here anyway?

Lag?
Fairness?
Lazy people making a profit?

If it's lag... then LL needs to find ways to throttle or cache land search results.

If it's fairness... ignoring the argument that LSL is unfair to non-scripters... then what? Would it be fair for LL to 'gom' the land market, and snarf up underpriced parcels for them to resell at an 'average' rate? What about people that just spend all day doing manually what bots are doing now? Is that fair to people that can't be online all the time?

If the problem is with lazy people making a profit... that goes beyond what LL can help with. Medication and therapy would be a good start.

If it comes down "If land scanners are evil and can't be tolerated then Landbots are evil and shouldn't be tolerated"... okay sure, it's a valid point from one "Fairness" angle, and both are unfair to 'human' land buyers. From the "lag" angle? Scanners lagged sim servers... and landbots lag the land search tool. One is clearly worse than the other. Most people can use SL just fine with a slow land search tool.

Anyway... I don't lke the term "Regulation"... to me it implies breakable laws, enforcement, quotas, monitoring, interpretation, lawyers, etc. My problem with this kind of "regulation" is that it requires user education. Posting 'consequences' as a deterrant just doesn't work well in an environment which has such a high user turn over. Enforcing these regulations would become full time jobs for an already limited number of staff... and will likely result in variable enforcement causing yet more unfairness in different ways.


I would rather see the process of buying and selling land change to be more 'fair' to humans, 'swirly' confirmation codes, seller-transaction-acceptance, in-world land auction abilities. If these kinds of thinkgs [edit: err.. 'things'] are what you're referring to as "Regulation"... then I'm with you 100%.

Spinning things that are more than likey unrelated just to further one's own agenda is irresponsible and does nothing except help to further that persons selfish goals. So say for the sake of argument they eliminate all land bots and the grid still falls apart when concurrency is high or hardware fails, then who will be the next witchhunt victim? Campers again?

What surpise! (I put a grinning face to soften the insult, neat trick!)

Is that your real reason? Or are you just worried that your freedom to script basically unfettered may have to obey a boundary? Life is regulation. Life is learning and educating. Your lazy, anarchic, beta test utopia cannot last forever at the expense of 1000s of other people.

If you take a look outside the landbot threads, you'll see that not all the blame for load is being placed on landbots. Landbots are one part of the whole load problem. People running laggy scripts, griefers, increased user numbers, all are blamed elsewhere.
This thread is not about the other causes though.

The fact is, LL obviously did decide that land searches were using too many resources, and limited the number as an attempt to reduce that. Landbot owners have deliberately circumvented that limit, so they should expect some criticism.

Agreed.

Again, the fact that they're unrelated is your opinion. Stop trying to "spin" it into fact. The fact that the search and asset servers utilize the same data pipeline is a fact. The fact that when asset related issues occur (tp failure, rezz failure, texture failure) search also goes down and vice versa is a fact. If you don't think that 1000 bots each hammering search 17280 times a day (that's 17,280,000 searches a day just from the bots) will have a lag effect on both search and asset, then I'd like to know what you're smoking and where I can get some. LL had to throttle search once already just from the load that the users and the few bots we have are putting on it. That's a fact too, just in case you try to call it spin as well. You don't throttle something just for the fun of it. Well, maybe you do ...

We can agree to disagree. Creating a witchhunt will not do anything to solve these issues. Going to the source will.

Go re-read the last paragraph of the post you're replying to please.

Which makes more sense... leaving a pile of money on your front door step with a slip of paper that says "Don't take this, burglary is illegal!"

Or locking up your money so the thief has a nearly impossible time trying to get to it?

My point is just this: Forget the "regulations"... Change the RULES.

heh honestly i see a "its hard on server load" but an argument presented for its "unfair"

I dont believe its that hard on server load i think campers and other things are much harder so lets be honest here the reason why people are upset is because land bots give an unfair advantage in the eyes of the non users to the few that do use them.

Unfortunately for people who play second life since its a situation where there is no real way to have an "unfair advantage" mainly due to the fact that second life is built on "if you can imagine it you can do it" with the ability to write code, make original art and build anything you can't really deal with the issue of bots giving an unfair advantage because everyone potentially has the ability to create one . Okay so you might have to learn to script and other things you have never done before but the fact remains and although I hate to say it that with the current way second life runs that you can't regulate it. If you start to regulate bots you will have to regulate everything else. YOu can only regulate overuse of bots. Since there is no way you can prove to me that enough bots are being used to crash the grid nor can you prove this to Linden labs at this point there is nothig that can be done. But again this is not really an issue of it causing lag because quite simply put i hightly doubt that it is.

This is an issue of "unfair advantage" which is something that linden labs wont be dealing with anytime soon because the only advantage that exists is that some people script andothers either won't or can't learn due to lack of time or whatever. This cannot be helped by LInden labs this is an end user responsibility.

If you want bots removed you have to define it as an exploit and I have to admit that its not an exploit so as much as I hate them because it makes it impossible for anyone to buy land who is not using one they are not an exploit and hence not against any TOS they aren't illegal software they at this point dont cause significant lag etc. Until they become a true issue of bringing the grid to a grinding halt Linden Labs will not be dealing with it because its causing no stress on the system. If people argue that it is then the mere presence of you avatar in the second life framework logging in and doing a search is a stress on the system and you should be removed as well.

again this thread is and continues to take the wrong direction this is the point until people stop saying its causing lag and start saying its causing economic and social issues and lobby based on that this will get knowhere fast.

This entire thing is misleading bots are not taxing the system there simply aren't enough of them to tax the system at the present time so please at least be honest to yourselves and say what it is its giving an advantage to a small group of people that others are finding hard to deal with. This is a more to the point for the "everyday user" this its causing lag and taxing the system is a dead end and should be recognized as such

The agenda here is to disguise the bot problem as a lag causing machine instead of coming out and saying why it should actually be dealt with. I see this argument of lag trying to be used and then people turn around and do a "double speak" thing and what they are actualy saying is its an issue of unfair advantage.

ah well such is life if you think this is causing to much lag I suggest you stop logging in your avatar to reduce load and stop using the classifieds because your contributing to it as well...

If you really believe that bots have no effect on a MySQL server, go try it yourself. Hit MySQL 3-4 times per second and things look ok, hit it 500 times per second and things will start to look really shaky. Users download their inventory once, they do searches slowly, if they are camping then they aren't even touching the databases. They also tend to be in control of only one account at a time. Bots hammer the database as fast as they can.

As I mentioned above, Linden Labs did take action on the land searches. They limited how many you could do in a set time (hence why bot owners use many alts). They have yet to limit new account signups or concurrent logins. I think they are in a better position than you or I to know what is causing the load, and the fact they limited the land searches suggests what their suspicions are.

If everybody dropped their bots, their 150+ flexi prim hairs, their 3 times a second 96m scanners etc, we could all have a nice, lag free world to play in. Bot owners don't care about that, as long as they can make money, just the same as people who sell the laggy flexi hair and the laggy scripts. Just because they are not unique in lagging the system does not mean they are not part of the problem though.

your answer shows you didn't actualy read what i said

/shrug

Yes and no. Yes, by definition a "flat price structure" would mean stable prices--in game. But that would not change the forces of supply and demand.

If the flat price were set low, what would happen? Many of us would want to expand our holdings. If land were free, I would want several sims for different kinds of builds. Also, I just plain like extra space around my builds--by owning entire sims, I wouldn't have to worry about camping chairs, clubs, billboards, etc. Of course, land wouldn't be free, but if it were low, I think many of us would want a lot more than we have right now. But would LL be able to supply all the land we'd want? I doubt it, considering that right now, when they sell land at auction--earning more money than if they fixed the prices lower--they can't meet the demand.

So, given that lower prices would lead to increased demand, a couple of things might happen. First, those who got their cheap land first would be happy, but the supply of land would run out before everyone got theirs. So the problem would be no land. We'll all be here in the forums complaining about greedy people taking more than their fair share of land. We'd be agitating to have people's land allotment limited, and pointing fingers at those we suspected of using alts to control even more. We'd begrudge unpopular people their greenbelts and gardens. We'd be complaining about how Linden Labs must not care about their customers because they don't keep adding land.

Second (more likely, in my opinion), with land values in-game being set artificially low, people would realize the difference between the flat price and the true market value of land on 3rd-party auction sites such as eBay. Basically, people would bid for the right to purchase land at the flat rate. Less L$ would be sold in-world, so the L$ would lose value against the dollar (impacting both LL and residents who are trying to sell L$). And we'd all be here complaining about people exploiting the system, calling on LL to release more land to break the land barons, chortling everytime more land was released and market prices drop a few L$/m2, etc. etc. etc.

If the flat price was set high, even fewer people would be able to afford land than do now. Corporate residents, land barons, gifted designers and scripters--they'd be fine. But most other residents would be living a Second Life without land ownership.

What a flat price does is (1) assumes LL knows better than the market what land should be worth, and (2) assumes a coercive pricing scheme is more powerful than market forces. I am skeptical about both assumptions.

The way economics work, is that there are two sides to every deal. Minimum wages are great for low-skilled employees--they earn more; but minimum wages are bad for consumers--they pay more. Rising housing costs are great for homeonwers--they can refinance and pay off higher-interest debt, they can sell their house quickly, etc.; but rising housing costs are a bummer for first-time home buyers--they have to offer more than is being asked to be sure of getting the house, they have to save up more for down payments and land, their monthly payments are higher, etc. Import duties are great for manufacturers--they can make a bigger profit; but they're bad for people in other countries, who may be paid even less just so their products can compete, and they're bad for consumers, who have to pay more. So it is in SL; most "solutions" are by nature also "new problems."

I think what most people really want is a "better system" for buying and selling land. Personally, I haven't heard of any system better than the one that already exists--but that doesn't mean somebody won't come up with one. All of the systems I've seen proposed so far address one problem but create others; it may simply be that we have to choose which problems we want to live with and which ones we don't. Also, I oppose some of the proposed alternate systems if they replace what we currently have; but in several cases I think they would make great alternatives to choose from. For example, I like the present system where I can always sell my land real quick if I need to, but wouldn't mind having the option of putting my land up for auction or for having a chance to approve offers before completing a sale.