Another Grid-Down Pondering - first land

I'm wondering, when the first land program was active, and there was that lil problem of people creating alts in mass numbers to buy it up for quick profit before the noobs got to it... Why didn't LL use the MAC address info from the users computer to filter out those who were using that lame alt strategy to swoop first land? up to the max number of alts allowed? I mean, the MAC is hardcoded... if applied against a users account, wouldn't it have been jaw-droppingly easy for LL to see and filter those addresses making more than the max number of allowed FL buys?
Instead of just needing a new alt account, after a few swoops they'de need a new ethernet adapter too, thus completely wiping out all profit in the matter since FL was always only 512m plots.
Wouldn't this have easily solved that problem?
Wouldn't this kind of filtering/monitoring also have a huge impact on those idiotic individuals who like to use free alts to repetitively grief?

lol just curious

well say you have 2 network cards, makes 2 MAC addresses, then you have a wireless card, makes 3. Now say you have a PC and a laptop... 6 MAC addresses... not much of a filter ^^
I think they could just make that first land couldn't be resold once bought, or resold at same fixed price, so it wouldnt have been a business.
But i still think the mistake that brought to many issues and keeps new issues comin out all started when they chosed to set free registrations, thus allowing any type of lame

I don't think they got rid of first land because of the gaming of it. First land was another welfare program that they eliminated like ratings bonus, dwell bonus, stipends for basic accounts, and probably soon stipends for premium accounts. They had options to stop the gaming of the first land program but didn't.

It looks like they are restructuring things to where there is no premium account anymore. Just land owners and non-landowners. There really is not much more they can eliminate from the premium accounts anymore.

I tend to agree -

They just SAID that gaming was a reason.

Basically "after the decision was made" Rationalization.

Just like they do with all their other decisions.

Maybe I'm missing something but...

Why wasn't First Land just offered to the user when they upgraded their account? Was it? Surely any profit to be made from the sale of one plot wouldn't offset the price of the upgrade meaning large scale purchases of First Land wouldn't work? Even an alt requires a payment that, I assume, would be more than any profit there too (plus couldn't they restrict that anyway since it would be linked to an existing account?)

Forgive me for any ignorance of facts here, with the grid offline the rusty cogs in my brain squeeked into motion and now I'm curious how the system was so badly abused.

You couldn't filter connections by MAC address anyway. The MAC address of an incoming packet is always that of the last router interface it traverses, not that of the originating ethernet card.

well true, there are ways to get a couple more addresses, but in theory, couldn't the number of addresses have been filtered too? or at least throttled to a low number per month? In the case of FL tho, i can only see the really persistant and desperate ones going thru all this dikkin around just for a few small plot buys.
I was really thinking about validation and verification processes LL has, or COULD have used to better the SL experience by tightening the leash on those who abuse. FL was just an example, as was alt griefing

I'm not sure that's right but since you can change a NICs MAC anyway, it doesn't really matter. Filtering by MAC (if Zaphod is wrong) would just force the people gaming the system to another level. How many times has LL said that they're not intererested in arms races?

Back when premium stipend was 500L and there were bonuses for going premium it did ten to pay for itself.

52 weeks x 500L = 26,000L
26000L / 242L to the dollar (the rate back then) = $107.43 US

Land sold for 8000-512 initial investment = 7488L

7499L / 242L to the dollar = $30.99 US

$107.43 + $30.99 = $138.42 US

$138.42 - $72.00 (annual fee cheapest rate) = $66.42 in pure profit

Now these numbers no longer work but back then there were people who would use nefarious means to obtain credit card information to make hundreds of accounts. 66 bucks a pop would add up fast.

Now with open registration and virtually unlimited accounts per household alot of the things that stopped most of us from doing what is outlined above are gone. Makes sense LL nerfed first land and stipends. If anything it was easier to game these days for those so inclined to do it.

Disclaimer : This whole breakdown is what I remember of a long ago post on the topic from my earliest days in game. I might well have got some details wrong.

Oh... well... then the client has to send it as information in the packet, yes?

Just trying to apply non-techie-logic, so sorry if I did not grasp some detail

Again, true. But you're thinking server side.... How hard would it be to have the VIEWER pull the MAC right there on the host and transmit it along with the request?

EDIT: beaten to the punch
Combining the MAC query with the already in place IP query, that's an aweful lot of screwing around to bypass more than a few times. What if they gave each viewer copy a unique hash ID too? Install routine could pull that from a server np.

Ahh, thanks for the breakdown. It makes more sense now, I wasn't thinking about stipends but with them included I can now see how people would do it.

mac addresses live in layer 2 of the OSI model. routing functions in layer 3 (IP addressing).. as the packet traverses a routed network (such as the Internet) the ARP requests extend in the direction of travel of the packet.. each of these hops involves 2 physical interfaces communicating with each other (layer 2/mac).. inside that packet is the layer 3 information needed to identify the source and destination IP addresses.

So no, the originating MAC address is never known by the other end of connection, only what possibly MIGHT be the originating IP address.

From what I have heard, LL may actually on occasion ban based on an IP address. If they were to ban based on the MAC address, they'd be banning one of their own router interfaces.

Each computer has its own hardware ID numbers (CPU, graphis card, etc)

These numbers could have been linked to the users name. If multiple avatars had the same hardware ID then they would be caught/known about.

Of course upgrading any component in the PC would force you to update your hardware/username link with LInden Labs. So what...big deal...it would take a few minutes to update the IDs however often you upgraded your computer.

Steam does this for Counterstrike, Halflife and other Steam enabled games.

It already does, and it's easily broken.
Check the second script on this page:
http://www.libsecondlife.org/wiki/Login_Proxy

That is php code that can be used with the bog standard client.

Ty Markubis this is what i was talking about... it's very effective for policing and as a deterrant.

Reguardless if the MAC addy is sent embedded in a packet or not, it can be communicated to LL via the client, which is what i was getting at. Server side filtering of client transactions, not global filtering of incoming tcp/udp packets.

In many countries, the primary method of Internet access is via Internet cafe. So dozens of people might access SL from the same computer/MAC address/IP address.