New Bot: The Estate Owners Fight Back!

(informative post Cory - thank you)

I do have some thoughts on this question though.

- You will know how many people actually own items in world. This you can compare to the "Users Logged on" information
-You can deduce how many of those own large numbers of items.
-You sort number of in world objects by creator as well, thus you'd know whose objects are popular.
- You can deduce something about their interests - Large numbers of BDSM objects for example, sex balls, dometic furnature.

Im not a marketing person but those ideas come readily to mind.

As for reducing the data, This I know something about. Given some time to set up the spreadsheets you could get the process down to where you could get all your information fairly quickly.

Producing charts to demonstrate trends would be simple as well.

With enough macros you could get the process down to a couple of mouse clicks.

I'm sure the thread can withstand a little more offtopic




Just posted on the blog and got a response. They have thought about it and put "warnings" in place. Considering how ineffective the warnings on other things, I wonder if this will work.

Another response to someone else was this:


I'm picturing a worse case scenario where an estate owner, or an estate admin, or any of their friends, is not only abusive but threatens rape or violence towards someone who has been a victim of such in RL. Would this shake up the victim enough to miss those little warnings while filing the AR? Would they mention in the AR that they have been abused in some way in RL?
As I've mentioned, it's possible to get the IP address of people with video enabled (whether they chose to play the video or not). If they have paid rental on the estate through paypal, then their harasser has at minimum an email address. If they did not check the "does not require delivery address" box in paypal, the harraser may have their home address as well.

I think it needs a lot more than a couple of little warnings. A grid wide announcement, a checkbox to send the report directly to LL and then a big fonted popup warning you if you are about to file the AR with an estate owner would be a start.

I didn't state that. I did state that most of them don't frequent the forums. I'm not responsible for the bot - I'm not a coder and had nothing to do with its development or implementation - but I'm in this thread discussing it because I often check the forums. Its possible to have your PM messages from the forum sent to your email, in which case the person you're talking about wouldn't have to check the forums at all to know someone was trying to contact them. Without knowing who it was, what their schedule has been like over the course of this specific thread, etc. its hard to say more, besides the fact that we don't have someone at ESC in charge of monitoring the forums for new threads about topics that might relate to us.

Before this came to light here, I had never even heard of Electric Sheep, or of any connection it had to Second life, let alone any website or blog connected to it. They took action that affected ALL Second Life residents, without any prior notice. In my opinion they had a responsibilty to communicate that either here or In World. The after the fact self serving musings of apologists will not change my opinion in the least. However, I will assume you are a member of the group, give you the benefit of the doubt and accept the information as a genuine attempt to show another side to their story.

Considering their "Service" can have an effect on money changing hands in SL, I think they might want to drop by here every so often.

Good points, I'd like to think out loud on them more individually:

"- You will know how many people actually own items in world. This you can compare to the "Users Logged on" information
-You can deduce how many of those own large numbers of items."

I'd almost call this a situation like the one on the home page, showing total signups vs. currently logged in. You get two numbers, but not a lot of information out of either besides a ratio with a lot of other unknowns needed to be discovered before it becomes useful. SL is still in the situation where someone's objects from 3 years ago could still be sitting out, as long as they're paying tier, and they need not have logged in since the objects were set. In addition it also only takes into account items that are set out - nothing about what is in inventory, or an avatar is wearing as an attachment.

" -You sort number of in world objects by creator as well, thus you'd know whose objects are popular. "

True to a point, but again there's the additional factors of inventory and attachments (this data might be worthwhile for say a prefab seller, who's items are meant to be set out, vs. someone who makes skins or scripted attachments, in which case the data means nothing as to their popularity since they wouldn't be listed). It also doesn't take into account the reason behind the popularity - is it because its cheap or a freebee? Is it because of its quality or uniqueness?


" - You can deduce something about their interests - Large numbers of BDSM objects for example, sex balls, dometic furnature. "

Again, true to a point, but I really think the dual factors of inventory and attached items/clothing which cannot be catalogued by scanning make the data set one that is so naturally limited in scope as to be relatively worthless for any sort of business to base decisions off of - especially one that is looking for a large enough data set to be interested in a gridwide list in the first place.

I appreciate it, and I'm listed on the employee's page:
http://www.electricsheepcompany.com/esheep/core/about/people/?PeopleAction=renderById&PersonId=15

As far as announcing inworld, that's relatively impossible as LL is the only entity that can send out universal notices - just like any other resident accounts, ESC employees function within the set group system to send announcements etc. and any use of those is still far limited in the number of people we'd reach. Same honestly as the forums, which a small fraction of residents regularly check.

Additionally I believe the mindset behind not announcing the search was that its strictly a beta version - its not in a state for major promotional release as its not a finished product, although the number of residents using it as of last week is a big step towards getting the necessary feedback to improve the site, address privacy issues, find bugs, etc. There's already a pretty large misconception about the site that its a finished product, despite the beta labeling at the top. Promoting the site right out of the gate would have severely minimized the time frame that we had wherein enough people were looking at the site to give feedback and we could correct errors, but not had such a rush that a severely large number of people could be possibly adversely affected by bugs that we couldn't get to with internal testing alone. I agree its not the perfect solution, but it is one that tried to minimize the problems all around.

This is not true. Items set for sale on a parcel I know about, were scanned from a neighboring parcel and are mistakenly listed as such in the results.

If you're on the mainland, you can be scanned, period.

Speaking of which, why only ban? I have some lovely defensive Orbs by Psyke and they only defend when someone enters the parcel.. and teleport the target home.. if this bot is an avatar, it ought to work (and be amusing how often I see it happen)

I would never be as pissed off as I am if the search function was opt in instead of opt out. It could be a lovely tool to help beginning makers get on the market. As it is, it's a nuisance to newbies and anyone else who rezzes things without knowing they need to worry.

I don't recall ever having been opted in by someone else to participate in a beta program, either, until this. That seems even worse than being opted in by someone else to participate in a program that is more or less finished and actually works as intended.

Rather than going over why this was done this way, why not close this version and start over with an opt-in version?

That would relegate all the privacy and other issues to the past*, and this thing could go forward in a way that would be a service to residents.

coco

*With the exception of those items someone has bought which are showing as for sale when they are not actually for sale, as in my case, where a resident had an item of mine in his home, and I TP'd directly to it - in which case, the people opting in can be responsible for noting such incidents and contacting you to have the innocent individual removed, as I did.

Must say this article is quite ironic, although it's likely that irony is lost on the writer.

"In early 2006, I went hunting for an avatar visitor counter. I flailed around using the in-world search and spent several hours hopping around the grid. I searched on slboutique and slexchange. The whole process was unnecessarily painful and time consuming.

(..)

We decided to do something about it, rather than talk about it. (..) Yesterday, we decided that our experimental search beta was at an interesting enough state that we should share it with the community for feedback."

slExchange search results for "visitor counter"
sheepbot search results for "visitor counter"

I have to admit am quite puzzled how the latter could be considered functionality improvement in any way... and given statements in both the article and throughout the thread, one could expect to see at least some. The sheep search provides drastically less information about products on sale, supplies instead data that's of little relevance whatsoever but highly controversial atm (object owner) ... and makes the shopping process longer rather than shorter, as it includes unnecessary step of travelling to location in world if one wants to make the purchase or even get some kind of idea about presented item.

At this point "interesting enough state" in regards to it simply begs the question "interesting enough for what?", am afraid ^^;;

It is not a finished enough to announce, but it's finished enough to effect many thousands of residents of SL WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT?!?!?

Where do you folks get the gall to inflict upon an unknowing population a device that can cause them great financial loss, and not even make an attempt to notify your guinea pigs? No, not the gall, who gave you the right to do this?

People who do not read the Forums would have no idea what is going on with Grid Sheperd, they might come home to find that they have suffered a great loss with no easy explaination.

You seriously need to re-think your position, and your PR efforts. ESC is surely getting a black eye on this...

Max

Well put. Once again you've summed it up excellently.

I know! And two club owners have already IMed me to say what a brilliant idea. Sprinkle tasty sounding prims all over their clubs, and watch the grifters pour in! Better than paying campers any day!

Thank you for posting these concerns. Over time I've become increasingly worried about people's safety in an SL where play and work and RL identity are becoming more and more mixed together.

The "it's just a game" B.S. would soon evaporate if someone was successfully stalked and assaulted because of RL information leaked while roleplaying in SL. This has happened in other Internet settings and naively believing you know who you're dealing with isn't good enough.

A few points:

i) You are entitled to privacy wthin SL - the fact that there may not be foolproof technical ways of enforcing privacy which are not easily bypassed does not change that entitlement. As such a valid protest against ESC current practive would be to reporting ESC to the Lindens via the abuse tool as a violation of the community standards.

ii) if you do participate in the protest of adding junk prims to your land to add junk to the ESC search engine, i would recommend you put a script similar to the following in the prim. At least then, the prim is clearly labelled that it is not the real product, etc.:

default
{
    state_entry()
    {
        llSetText("DO NOT BUY THIS ITEM.\nThis is a protest prim.\nTouch me for more information", <1.0,0.0,0.0>, 1.0);
    }

    touch_start(integer total_number)
    {
        integer i;
        for (i = 0; i < total_number; i++)
        {
            llLoadURL(llDetectedKey(i), "", "http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=178576");
        }
        
    }
}

Addng code to give a landmark to the real store for the item, as mentioned above, would be fairly trivial

iii) For those builders, making use of setting an object for sale at a zero or low price to allow exchange of ownership of inworld objects, the following script may be of use. Basically it warns that the object is on sale to a particular individual, and autodestructs if the owner is not the builder or the intended customer (since you may not wish others to run off with your creations), and tidies up when the intended customer takes ownership (you clearly need mod/copy rights on the original object). I've not done copious testing on this script!

string builder = "Matthew Dowd";
string customer = "Another Avatar";

checkOwner()
{
    if (llToLower(llKey2Name(llGetOwner())) == llToLower(builder))
    {
        // Builder still owns the object so do nothing
        return;
    }
    
    if (llToLower(llKey2Name(llGetOwner())) == llToLower(customer))
    {
        // Customer now owns the object so remove script and label
        llSetText("", <0.0,0.0,0.0>, 0.0);
        llRemoveInventory(llGetScriptName());
        return;
    }
    
    // Someone else owns the object so self destruct
    llDie();    
}

default
{
    state_entry()
    {
        llSetText("WARNING\nThis object is for sale to " + customer + " only.\nOthers should not attempt to buy this item, as it may result in loss of the item.", <1.0,0.0,0.0>, 1.0);
        checkOwner();
    }

    on_rez(integer n)
    {
        checkOwner();
    }
    
    attach(key id)
    {
        checkOwner();
    }
    
    changed(integer type)
    {
        if (type == CHANGED_OWNER)
        {
            checkOwner();
        }
    }
}

Matthew

This point has been largely missed. LL make it an absolute no-no in their 'Big Six' of the CS, under disclosure:

"Sharing personal information about a fellow Resident --including gender, religion, age, marital status, race, sexual preference, and real-world location beyond what is provided by the Resident in the First Life page of their Resident profile is a violation of that Resident's privacy."

In several of the homes rented by my tenants are RL photos of their partners, children, homes. If anyone inadvertently pasted that texture on a prim that was set for sale, a grifter could swoop in and buy it.

How could ESC guarantee that no prims containing personally identifiable information will appear on their website?

If I put up Notices all over my Estates saying, NO BOTS ALLOWED, how could they read that? Or any notice whatsoever in SL?

Cory, thank you for attempting to show the other side of th story. I will concede that maybe ESC acted not out of deceit or nefariousness. no conspiracy exists, I can redirect those energies to the Kennedy assasinations.

I do still have a couple of questions.

Granted that ESC may not have the resources or authority to announce this plan inworld. But doesn't ESC have a relationship of some sort with LL? Couldn't LL announce it on ESC's behalf?
Also you say that a small fraction of residents visit this forum as opposed to the total registered . Fair enough. But do you mean to say a larger percentage read the ESC blog? Again, I never heard of ESC before this fiasco. ESC did the right thing by announing to their readers, but since this is the official SL site, a posting on the LL blog would have, in my opinion gone a long way in the good will department.
The Beta question is also well stated. With that in mind, was it right to include all of us in your test program without our knowledge?Combined with limited announcement we really had no opportunity to opt out before it was implemented. Betas, as we know are sometimes bug filled. SL in itself is still bug plagued. What if this program contained a bug that caused people's items to disappear totally. What if someones items were sold and the buyer refused to return them. It's bad enough that inventories are being lost to Roll Backs and other problems?
I do thank you for your comments. In my case it has at least convinced me that ESC probably acted not in any sense of sinister nefariousness, but with a lack of foresight. I still don't like this concept, and wil nort participate in it, but I won't be looking over my shoulder for the black helicopters, either. I can comfortably find the next trivial manner to get hysterical about.

Anybody who is interested in such things now knows to find land you rent and look around.


It would ignore them. Just like any non-bot intent on causing trouble would do.

Many thanks Matthew. Very useful indeed. Maybe this will appease those apologists who wax lyrical about the poor grifters who will be defrauded out of their L$0, when they thought nothing of grabbing up a L$14,000 bed for the same amount from someone's bedroom, instead of going to the well-known and well-advertised store and buying one for the going price, which rewards the creator for their creativity. Am I going to be sued for their Kleenex supplies though?

*chuckles* I dont agree the data is as useless as you say it is. In a previous job I prepared test reports on literally reams of data so I suppose im biased.

Still If you are right and the data is fairly useless - your argument diminishes the value of the searchbot to a degree.

And once you diminish the value past a certain extent it makes the fact your company intentionally scans us all without our consent pretty outragous.

This seems more of a scavenger's tool. Any Actively sold and advetized items are easier to find via the classifieds and SLexchange.

I am surprized there was a lot of complaints that shopping in SL is too difficult, most people I know find that spending too much shopping is far too easy. The complaint someone cant find something is far less common.

I much prefer Meade's proposal that Linden Labs improve the search functionality in the FIND. It will vastly improve your ability to find things that you know the owner WANTS to sell.

good god, where the hell is strife when the forum needs him?

I promised myself, and one other person that I would refrain from posting anything further, but this is just getting stupid.

You all have fun here, I'm going back to my Second Life.

Peace, love and sandcastles

.. Zaphod

What if somebody who doesn't read english sees it?

Useful info, Matthew, especially the AR, passive resistence. Your script idea is fine ..except not al of us are scripters. I'm not. It doesn't interest me. While using your method is an aprreciated work around, again it is palcing the onus on us to protect ourselves from something we had no wish to participate in, and isn't an inherent part of the program when we signed up. Thanks to you for supplying it, but I feel i shouldn't have to do anything to be "unmolested" by this. (And i use the word unmolested flippantly, not trying to make the rape analogy someone usd earlier)

That is the beauty of forums such as this...You don't HAVE to read a thread, or post in one that you do. I'm sure we can maintain the Hysteria without you.

Strife is on vacation - He told us this. You must have missed the post.

Never a good idea to do the "this is my last post on this thread" post - becuase someone surely going to say something that annoys you. Its Murphy's Law of Forums.

The thing is a lot of the recent posters hadnt spoken their minds yet - who are we to tell them their opinions on this dont matter? Its much later in the day.

Unless locked I will be posting on this thread again.