New Bot: The Estate Owners Fight Back!

Asumming I could forget about the means they use to get this information ...

The only use I can see for this searchbot is to game it for free advertzing.

You could have Prims for Events, New Products, Asking for donations, Saying "Jack+Jill 4 evar", etc

You dont normally name your For sale prims with keywords and the like, Though I suppose you could.

And if someone is looking up you by name they dont need the Searchbot deal.

I suggest that you please go and read the CS and the TOS and come back when u have found the section that says i cant use these methods to thwart a web spiders attempts to collect data as SL is just a 3D web site and as i protect my websites with cgi that gives the spiders false positives i will do it here. I apologise for not adding the words "many of the residents" to the line that you have quoted

I have far more important things to worry about than a fellow resi accusing me of harrassing a company that uses web spiders to try and trawl sites here that i own so please excuse me for not getting drawn into derailing the issue as being disscussed, im sure if ESC feel that i am harrassing them, that they will contact me about the matter, i will post details of any emails i recieve on this matter here

Peace

I think we should get going on this.

I'm going to have my alts create some prims for inclusion by this bot.

coco

I guess I should thank Rusty for the compliment to my vocabulary.

I will try to keep this real simple, so even Rusty can get it.

1. It is clear that Electric Sheep Company (I am sparing Rusty difficult acronyms like ESC) is committing (please forgive a three-syllable word, Rusty, I'm trying!) is committing FRAUD when it says this search tool finds items for sale in SL. This bot misses almost all of the items really for sale and mainly catches honest mistakes by people using normal, past practice.

2. Electric Sheep Company knows by now that its claim for this thing is FRAUD. It also knows this thing is hurting people who do not deserve to be hurt.

3. Electric Sheep Company doesn't care. It thinks common civil, decent behavior is "sucking up."

4. Every response from Electric Sheep Company's stooges in these threads has been a basic FU to all other people in SL. It appears to believe we are all fools and/or, well, Sheep. It also appeaqrs to thing we are all fair game.

5. I think it is fair to figure from all this that Electric Sheep Company believes it pwns SL, and maybe pwns Linden Labs.

6. Linden Labs has been silent about this attack on its platform and its residents (darn, three syllables again).

7. As someone else pointed out, this is an invite to other crooked minds to exploit Second Life and its people that no crook worth his salt can ignore.

8. It seems clear Second Life Residents are going to have to take care of themselves against raiders like Electric Sheep Company and the scum who will follow in their wake. It looks like no-one else is going to.

9. There are many ideas in this thread about how to defeat these present-day Vandals and Huns. If you care about SL or just about your own hide in SL, you should apply those ideas ASAP.

10. The best idea of all is garbage data. Produce all you can for their bots (don't assume Grid Shepherd is the only one; it is just the only one we know about). Opt out pf their crap sevice, but only because it is a clear vote against their shell game.

11. If you can reach the big companies Electric Sheep Company is likely really "sucking up" to - and you can, if you try - let those companies know what kind of people they would be dealing with. They really don't like dealing with people who will one day make them look bad, or people who are deceiving them about what is on offer. If they see they will not profit and can only get their good names hurt, they will bail. You will be helping them out.

12. As far as I know, LL has not sold SL to Electric Sheep Company. If it does, we will all be gone the next day. Think about that.



Okay, "Rusty," (whoever you really are) post again. This is helpful. Bring it!

And this will continue to be a huge problem as long as the general perception of secondlife is "it's just a game."

I don't like it either, but constant disappointment is our fate unless we staff a legion of greeters with hypnotic powers to indoctrinate all newbies into some consistant set of ideas and manners. Assuming you can get anyone to agree on a consistent set.

Until that far off day, posting a "No trespassing" sign will chase off people you'd more likely consider friendly, and dare those that you don't like to investigate.

I don't think this battle can be won. The more things slide towards proper etiquette, the more rebellious and affrontive a counter culture will become to balance it out.




I think your analogy is flawed. Standing from the public curb outside your house and looking in your window, I can't buy your coffee table, or see who created it.

I can in secondlife without ever setting foot in your abode.

People are not clairvoyant in real life. We are in secondlife. This is a new area of etiquette and decorum. Without sufficient guidance and consequences for mis-behavior folks will do what they "can" because they don't know better, in most cases. By definition, the majority dictates what is generally acceptable behavior when law is vague or absent. It will take a hell of a lot more than some angry forum posting to sway popular opinion.

Poison away, if it floats your boat. I'm not mining and aside from the occasional vanity search, I have no desire to use a secondlife data mining based search engine.

[What will you do? Call the cops? "Hello cops someone is trespassing on my make believe land" I am sure the police will enjoy the chuckle as well. ]
Make belive land..that I paid damn near 1700 real dollars for, for that at least I should have the right to expect a say of what is going on on my "make belive land".

If it had scanned my store and listed things there..I wouldn't have had as much of an issue with it. (It did scan my store..got about 3 things from the whole place..and listed it as being on the plot next to mine..pretty crappy for even free marketing I say.)

The problem is that it scans everything. Everywhere. Without concent. Opt out..pfft..of what? I didn't even know it was there to opt out of in the first place. Thats what pisses me off the most. It really wouldnt have been that hard to tell us about this, if they had wanted to. Would have been better off for them in the long run. I would have opted in to a free marketing tool. But I will never agree with a sneeky goat creeping around doing things on my land with my stuff without being invited.

Quoting Har Fairweather

I guess I should thank Rusty for the compliment to my vocabulary.

A compliment in honesty yes. I don't recall ever seeing or hearing the word "meretricious" used before and looked it up. Nice one. Thanks for introducing it to my vocabulary.

I will try to keep this real simple, so even Rusty can get it.

Fine, I compliment you and you turn to insulting me. If you have to resort to character assassination then you must have little faith in your logic.

1. It is clear that Electric Sheep Company (I am sparing Rusty difficult acronyms like ESC) is committing (please forgive a three-syllable word, Rusty, I'm trying!) is committing FRAUD when it says this search tool finds items for sale in SL. This bot misses almost all of the items really for sale and mainly catches honest mistakes by people using normal, past practice.

Fraud? With a vocabulary like yours and you mis-use a simple word like this? Show me where they claimed to list ALL or MOST of the items for sale. I went to check but they're probably getting hit by a denial of service. Score one for the ?good? guys...

2. Electric Sheep Company knows by now that its claim for this thing is FRAUD. It also knows this thing is hurting people who do not deserve to be hurt.

Of course they don't deserve to be hurt, no more than someone who forgets to look both ways before crossing a busy street. But by neglect, ignorance, poor choice or whatever... they put themselves in a position where they CAN be hurt. You make it sound like it is entirely esc's fault. A delusion I don't share with you.

3. Electric Sheep Company doesn't care. It thinks common civil, decent behavior is "sucking up."

You're reading minds now? I don't care what they "think" it's the consequences of their actions that matter.


4. Every response from Electric Sheep Company's stooges in these threads has been a basic FU to all other people in SL. It appears to believe we are all fools and/or, well, Sheep. It also appeaqrs to thing we are all fair game.

Because you're demanding rights that you do not have. The most politely worded "you're being unreasonable" from them is going to sound like a veiled "FU".

5. I think it is fair to figure from all this that Electric Sheep Company believes it pwns SL, and maybe pwns Linden Labs.

more pointless attempts at mind-reading.

6. Linden Labs has been silent about this attack on its platform and its residents (darn, three syllables again).

Silence should be no surprise by now. Calling it an "Attack" is a blatant exaggeration.

7. As someone else pointed out, this is an invite to other crooked minds to exploit Second Life and its people that no crook worth his salt can ignore.

crooked, from m-w.com: 1) not straight, 2) dishonest. There are plenty of both in secondlife. Buying something left available for L$0 is not dishonest, nor bent. Did you mean "exploitive?" Honestly, how can you be trusted with big words when you mis-use the small ones so much?

8. It seems clear Second Life Residents are going to have to take care of themselves against raiders like Electric Sheep Company and the scum who will follow in their wake. It looks like no-one else is going to.

yes. I agree with item 8. It's a new world and more disturbing changes will come, and not all of them will be from linden lab.

9. There are many ideas in this thread about how to defeat these present-day Vandals and Huns. If you care about SL or just about your own hide in SL, you should apply those ideas ASAP.

Oh I care all right. But I don't consider esc "vandals" (they're not marking up or damaging my property) nor are they "Huns" riding across mongola slashing and pillaging as they go. (what nation are "Vandals" from?)

10. The best idea of all is garbage data. Produce all you can for their bots (don't assume Grid Shepherd is the only one; it is just the only one we know about). Opt out pf their crap sevice, but only because it is a clear vote against their shell game.

Why bother? There's enough legitimate crap scattered all over secondlife that there should be no need to create yet more of it, it'll do the job of mucking up their search just fine. Look how useless the events calendar is. I remember when ... no, nevermind.

11. If you can reach the big companies Electric Sheep Company is likely really "sucking up" to - and you can, if you try - let those companies know what kind of people they would be dealing with. They really don't like dealing with people who will one day make them look bad, or people who are deceiving them about what is on offer. If they see they will not profit and can only get their good names hurt, they will bail. You will be helping them out.

When all else fails, resort to slander then?

12. As far as I know, LL has not sold SL to Electric Sheep Company. If it does, we will all be gone the next day. Think about that.

You do have a sense of humor in there somewhere, after all.

Okay, "Rusty," (whoever you really are) post again. This is helpful. Bring it!

Helpful. Heh, you crack me (whomever I really am) up.

Simple explanation: The Electric Sheep Company (ESC) has created a web-based search engine that finds objects in Second Life that are for sale.

Complications: ESC searches everyone's land unless they specifically "opt out," without asking permission first. While the scanner finds objects for sale, it is not able to look inside scripts, so objects in vendors--that get rezzed at time of purchase but are not rezzed when the area is scanned--do not show up in the search engine.

Real scary? If you have objects that are marked for sale that you don't actually want to sell, it can be. Some people are surprised to find which of their objects are, for one reason or another, marked for sale. People with large building projects, where objects in mass quantities are marked for sale at L$0 to transfer between owner and contractors, have had their objects bought out from under them by residents using ESC's search engine.

Analysis: People who think of SL in terms of RL are abhorred by the very thought of having their private sanctums scanned and complete strangers walking into their bedrooms to buy something sitting on their desk. People who think of SL in terms of the World Wide Web (WWW, sometimes called the Internet) assume their land, like most web pages, is being scanned all the time by bots benign and malicious, and hope ESC can end up with a useful search engine. Many people, of course, fall somewhere in between (or outside) these two dominant perspectives.

Nicely summed up, cHex.

The only thing I'd add is that bots can't do anything an 'real' player can't do and, since LL has made it clear that open source is the way they want things, bots are here to stay.

I had a quick look through these posts but I am still baffled why stuff I have for sale on the mainland is listed by ESC, but nothing from my stuff on a private island (publicly accessable). I guess I'll need to check with my pi owner and see whether he banned the bot? Has anyone else noticed that their pi stuff is not listed?

I cant scan an entire sim in minutes and move onto the next one recording everything as I go tirelessly 24 hours a day.

Evidently you know some real players who can?

Well, I wouldn't exactly agree with that analysis. It's not a matter of people who think of SL as "home" and those who think of it as a conglomeration of people-less websites.

I think ESC's spybot should be opt-in, not opt-out. But I feel that way about my STORE, where I obviously WANT people coming in; not my bedroom.

In other words, teleporting people automatically into other people's bedrooms is bad (and I found it embarassing when I teleported into that guy's treehouse, where he had an object he bought from me which was not purchasable, but was nonethless listed by the bot).

But I would like to decide with whom I want to list my items for sale, not have someone help themselves to listing my inventory without my permission. Moreover, I don't like my land being scanned without my permission, even though it is my shop land.

Still, I wanted very much to be in it. But reading about what has happened to other residents (in addition to my own treehouse incident), and hearing nothing - not even an apology - from ESC - has changed my mind 180 degrees.

I would have been happy with this searchbot if it had been opt-in. I tried to be helpful to them in working the kinks out (that guy's treehouse).

But they will not even deign to discuss it with us, so I lost patience with the whole thing. They will do what they want to, and not only do they not care about people's monetary losses or the invasion of other residents' privacy one whit, they are actually too self-important and self-involved to even bother discussing the options raised in this thread.

THAT is how much they care about the community.

Thus, I have reluctantly withdrawn my shop from the system.

Tonight, though, my alt put out five prims for sale with messages about this system.

It's interesting, if you look through this whole thread. You can see where I went from not liking the OP's idea, and trying to talk with ESC about the issues, to being ignored, to finally, unhappily, opting out of the system, and now to putting in the prims with my messages on them, a variation on the OP's original idea.

I hope everyone who is unhappy about this follows suit.

coco

Yes, Colette. You are correct - they can, of course, do some things much quicker than a real person can.


Given the absolutely rabid reaction that a number of people have had to this topic, I'm not surprised that they've clammed up. Not an approach I really agree with but it doesn't surprise me.

Make sure you inclue a 0L in the title and description so you bump up to the top of the "relevance" list.

I have done the Opt out, thnks to ESC for making it a bit of an Easter Egg hunt, but it only took a couple of minutes. I spent some time making all my household objects, NO Sale. As others have stated, a little dilligence will be needed from now on. We've been sold out. The plan is to bring in as many of the Mainstream Corporations, to try to force the same garbage they put out in RL on us in Second Life. Electric Sheep is a fitting Point Company for this. I have a feeling many residents will follw , like sheep , this lead.

And most of the rest will be blissfully unaware - having counted sheep

Oddly - The story where the name Electric Sheep comes from was about Androids who were out of control. The whole Blade Runner thing was to kill these replicants who malfunctioned.

Ironic.

Okay, thanks.

coco

Edit: Did it.

Yep. It might be a good time to brush up , on Mr Dick's classic.

So was there a reason they didn't get their bot to only catalogue items rezzed on land marked as commercial or whatever (or excluded items on personal land categories)?

I mean these people have been in SL since before day one, I couldn't believe it was an oversight.

Few Possibilities I can think of

-Hard to catalog all rezzed objects that way, since they actually to know whats used as well as "for sale". Why else even OFFFER their "opt in" catagory?

- They would have had to check if the parcel they were data mining was listed in "places" somehow. Maybe thats difficult?

- Like many posters here, they consider SL to only be a chain of "3d Websites" therefore they didnt care if anyone objected.

-They know that its not against the letter of the TOS/CS and LL only enforces the spirit of the TOS/CS when it involves bad RL press. So they didnt have to.

Maybe I am particularly dense today, but somehow I fail to see where the problem is with this search engine.

If me or a friends puts something on my parcel flagged "for sale" it's because the owner wants it to be sold. Why else enable the "for sale" option?

With that in mind, what could the object owner (or the land owner) possibly have against these objects being listed somewhere? If I want to sell something then another promotion channel is good, isn't it?

If I don't want people to TP into my bedroom, I don't put any "for sale" items there (and maybe restrict TP to a landing point, if I'm extra careful).

So ... why is this search engine considered an Evil Thing? I really don't get it, sorry.

I think if most of us were honest - we could look at how our freinds, our neighbors, our customers see second life and recognize the following -

The really internet technical / web savy types (the extreme Minority) will see the 3d World Wide Web Idea. These types are disproportionally represented on the forums. Becuase forums culture is one of those places these types participate in.

While Majority of the Second Life User base sees it as a Virtual World / 3 chat room or a Online Game. Most are looking to "play house" live out their virtual lives, talk to freinds, go shopping, own their own house, Maybe open a shop make a little money. This would be the people cHex refers to as seeing it in terms of RL.

I submit if anyone who thinks the 3d Internet types are the majority in SL then they arent being honest with themselves, they are out of touch, or they need to start meeting people who arent as Tech Savvy to get some perpective.

If the former catagory were the majority the SL economy would be much different. I dont need 20 pairs of shoes and 10 different little black dresses to browse a 3d Web. I wouldnt need a house or a bed.

Just something to think about when before all of us living in a virtual world get dismissed again by the 3d Web of the future people.

The Pros and Cons of the searchbot system are discused in these threads

/327/8d/178576/1.html

/327/96/178132/1.html

/128/0b/176557/1.html

This forum isn't for general discussion; there are many Resident Sites where this discussion is appropriate — Resident Answers is for Resident-to-Resident help. I'll close this thread...