Automated Burglary

You're right. But I think their scanner is the first of many, many more to come. Outfits such as ESC that respect residents' decisions to opt-out will be hard-pressed to explain why their scanners ignore the feature (however it makes it in) for estate and parcel owners to disallow all scanners in general or their scanner in particular.

For bots that don't care about residents' wishes not to be scanned, we're talking about a whole different kind of warfare.

Hmmm, you were in the know. How many don't? Not really a Failsafe situation I fear.

You mean this?

A system in which advancement is based on individual ability or achievement

Virtually everyone in SL is at risk from this thing and they are not going to buy it.

Question for Zaphod Kotobide.

You say you opted in. I searched for you, and it immediately lists 4 things that are for sale. It also has a link where it supposedly lists more than 50 other things it has already found in-world belonging to you. That link does not work, for me. Does it work for you, somehow? And are you really OK with the whole world knowing precisely what those 54 or so in-world items are, and where in SL they are located?

Ah, but there's the thing, ability at what? The definition of "meritocracy" leaves that part vague, and it is vague. There never has and never will be a strict meritocracy for the simple reason that everyone's values are different. If you value interesting bits of code, then in your view people who create interesting bits of code are high achievers. If you value, say, moral judgement, then the value of a given bit of code is only in how it reflects on your abilities at making moral judgements. If you value money, then the definition of "ability" is in how much money you make.

And of course the entire thing is complicated by the fact that a given person can value all of the above simultaneously. Moreover, even if you value multiple things simultaneously, you inevitably value certain things more highly than others. So which things are more important than others? Everyone is different; it is impossible to have a strict meritocracy because it is impossible to have a single simple scale that everyone agrees on.

People who understand how society works understand that strict meritocratic thought processes will create problems for you. Among other things, you fail to consider your impact on others. In a strict meritocracy, whoever writes the most technologically advanced bot (for example) is the "winner," and it doesn't matter what happens to anyone else or what they think.

As for the dotcom bit, yeah that was off-topic so I'll just retract that part of my statement.

Question for Zaphod Kotobide.

You say you opted in. I searched for you, and it immediately lists 4 things that are for sale. It also has a link where it supposedly lists more than 50 other things it has already found in-world belonging to you. That link does not work, for me. Does it work for you, somehow? And are you really OK with the whole world knowing precisely what those 54 or so in-world items are, and where in SL they are located?

I should add, since I did opt in, that it's only ever going to list product I have available at my mainland retail location. My private home and everything within and above it are located on a private sim that is not open to the public.

Who wants to live out a second life in your second scenario though?

It only helps businesses

Nice that you have that luxury. Most of us do not. I live on a private island, but it isn't a gated community, accessible only by a handful of sim residents. And for someone like me, opting in would list every posession I have in-world. No thanks. I'll take out my own ads for what I sell, and they will be accurate reflections of everything that I want to sell, and nothing that I want to keep for myself.

Hate to be the one to say it, ok no I don't, but Second Life was intended at its inception to be just as the second scenario describes. The fact is, it can be, and is, both. A platform on which to conduct business, a platform on which to "play house", a platform on which to do pretty much whatever tickles your fancy. There's no reason at all why it all can't coexist, much in the same way it all coexists on the World Wide Web.

And to directly answer your question below, I do. And no, it doesn't only help "businesses". The ESC search engine helps -resident content creators- by cataloging the products they create for them, and providing direct access to those products to potential buyers, for FREE. It helps resident shoppers FIND those products. It helps everybody spot freebie items that are being sold. It could help texture artists locate illegal sellers of their textures. It has a long way to go, it's buggy, it's quirky, it has unintended behaviors, but that's why it's called "beta".

If these kinds of things bother you to such a great extent, then you're in for a long, unpleasant Second Life, because they are not going away, no matter how much people scream and yell in the forums.

This is the intent of the service. Given a chance, it can and will be a hugely valuable tool, that enables a granularity of search capability that the in-world tool will likely never approach.

I'm sure in RL the airlines would like nothing better than to return to the pre internet days when fare structures were opaque and they could much more easily extract large sums of money from their customers.

I imagine they curse the advent of Travelocity, Kayak, Farecast et al on a daily basis.

Fact is these fare comparison engines/bots (yes they are bots) have benefited the average consumer tremendously.

The ESC tool has the potential to do the same for SL provided they are sensitive to the comments/needs raised in this thread. Your objection to the existance ESC search engine seems to me to be rather illogical and based on general notions of "greed". I hope you will come to revise that view in time.

Hate to be the one to say it, ok no I don't, but Second Life was intended at its inception to be just as the second scenario describes. The fact is, it can be, and is, both. A platform on which to conduct business, a platform on which to "play house", a platform on which to do pretty much whatever tickles your fancy. There's no reason at all why it all can't coexist, much in the same way it all coexists on the World Wide Web.

I can fully appreciate not wanting this thing to index my personal items in my private home. You are supposed to be able to prevent this by simply banning the crawler agent - posts here indicate there's a problem with that. I really do believe however that there is a willingness on their part to work with the community to make sure this thing isn't so invasive. It's certainly off to a rocky start, but on the other hand, I still believe people are over reacting.

Hate to be the one to say it, ok no I don't, but Second Life was intended at its inception to be just as the second scenario describes. The fact is, it can be, and is, both. A platform on which to conduct business, a platform on which to "play house", a platform on which to do pretty much whatever tickles your fancy. There's no reason at all why it all can't coexist, much in the same way it all coexists on the World Wide Web.

And to directly answer your question below, I do. And no, it doesn't only help "businesses". The ESC search engine helps -resident content creators- by cataloging the products they create for them, and providing direct access to those products to potential buyers, for FREE. It helps resident shoppers FIND those products. It helps everybody spot freebie items that are being sold. It could help texture artists locate illegal sellers of their textures. It has a long way to go, it's buggy, it's quirky, it has unintended behaviors, but that's why it's called "beta".

If these kinds of things bother you to such a great extent, then you're in for a long, unpleasant Second Life, because they are not going away, no matter how much people scream and yell in the forums.

The ESC search engine helps -resident content creators- by cataloging the products they create for them, and providing direct access to those products to potential buyers, for FREE.

It helps resident shoppers FIND those products.

It helps everybody spot freebie items that are being sold.

It could help texture artists locate illegal sellers of their textures.

Hi, Zaphod, see you post a lot on this thread in this vein. Glad to see your contribution. Tell me, do all the other people in the Electric Sheep user group ("Counting Sheep" you belong to feel the same way. And how come it took you so long to opt in to this wonderful service -- only after the controversy began? You surely must have known about it in advance, at least as far back as the Searchbot thread goes?

Hi, Zaphod, see you post a lot on this thread in this vein. Glad to see your contribution. Tell me, do all the other people in the Electric Sheep user group ("Counting Sheep" you belong to feel the same way. And how come it took you so long to opt in to this wonderful service -- only after the controversy began? You surely must have known about it in advance, at least as far back as the Searchbot thread goes?

No, it only finds a very small subset of what content creators sell - items rezzed in-world and set to be sold as "buy original" or "buy copy". It does not find anything in a script-driven vendor. It can't find 95% of legitimately for-sale products. It can't find ANY clothing or texture products, as those are always sold via a scripted system.

No, it gives people who use that service access to a very small subset of what is available. It presents a false sense that you are searching the grid, when in fact you're only searching a small subset of what is for sale.

Not in the slightest, unless they are being sold individually as rezzed items. And then, how would you locate them? Searching for each freebie item by a specific name? If they are selling them, they won't be L$0 items. The search engine lists by owner. Can it list by Creator? I don't see how. And most freebies come in boxes, which contain dozens of different free items, and which often have no indication in the box name of what they contain. It can locate items that say "free" in the name. That found all of one page of stuff. Supposedly there is a way to search for price, to show all items at L$0. But that isn't documented on their site.

Nope. It would only find people stupid enough to sell the textures one at a time, in prims named exactly the same as the texture name and set for sale. A seller of illegal textures isn't going to put the real creator's name on their bandit bundles.

No, the only thing this does well is locate items that are owned by one person, and locate items that are priced far below what they are worth, and which can be snatched up by an unethical buyer before the mistake in pricing or the intended transfer is corrected or completed.