Security orb in Linden Homes area

[Fionalein]

13 hours ago, animats said:

This is a new system. The trouble spots haven't all been detected yet.

Will it handle those as well?

because I doubt they will - making it kinda useless...

Edited August 8, 2018 by Fionalein

[Qie Niangao]

The Linden Homes regions seem the very last place in SL that I'd want to fly (or drive, or walk, or cam, even), so I'm not sure it's worth anybody's trouble to intentionally map travel hazards on those particular mini-continents.

I've often said, though, that I think it's a mistake that the Lab never set aside some Mainland continent(s) where access is explicitly unrestricted -- simply a feature of the land there, just as some areas don't allow terraforming, some don't allow Adult content, etc.

My hunch is that this hypothetical continent would have the highest land values in SL.

[Fionalein]

27 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

The Linden Homes regions seem the very last place in SL that I'd want to fly (or drive, or walk, or cam, even), so I'm not sure it's worth anybody's trouble to intentionally map travel hazards on those particular mini-continents.

I doubt they will ever map the Lindenhome regions for aviation hazards... I was asking if the hazard maps will feature content rejection orbs that send your vehicles home ... as mentioned in the "Do you care if content is ripped" thread.

[Qie Niangao]

1 hour ago, Fionalein said:

I doubt they will ever map the Lindenhome regions for aviation hazards... I was asking if the hazard maps will feature content rejection orbs that send your vehicles home ... as mentioned in the "Do you care if content is ripped" thread.

Ah. After reading that whole thread, this part sounds to me to only work on land that is owned* by whomever is doing the content rejection. So merely mapping an offending object wouldn't be enough to poof it.

There is an interesting overlap, though, in the technical challenge. It's not so hard for an airport to detect a landing vehicle (probably collision with llVolumeDetect object) and compare its name and/or other attributes with whatever content it wants to reject. To be able to automatically detect rezzing of a rejection target anywhere in the entire space of a sim, however, is much harder, and requires some pretty laggy sensor-based scripted objects moving through the whole volume. That's painfully similar to trying to use sensors to detect objects that look like security orbs that pose a hazard to vehicles.

_________
*More precisely, they must be able to call llReturnObjectsByID effectively, which means landowner, estate owner, or estate manager, or someone with the "Owner" role in the group on group-deeded land.

[mikka Luik]

Aside from the " hostile areas " comment by animats on the previous page, Qie makes a good point. How are these security devices being detected if not by users reporting them to some central collator? Any automated scanning would be incredibly resource hogging to cover entire volumes.

[animats]

Kama City security orbs. Trouble in Charlesville.

I've been trying out Shergood's experimental orb-finding system. I drove all the roads in Kama City in Zindra wearing the orb-logging HUD, and this is what it picked up and added to the database. The updating is automatic, but someone has to carry a sensor around to each sim. Each orange circle with "!" is a security orb.

This is what I meant by a hostile area. The big concentration of security orbs is in Charlesville. There's a new cult there, and they're not getting along with the neighbors. Except for that, you can fly over most of Kama City.

There's a separate online map of ban lines and parcel boundaries, constructed by Peregreena, who builds and flies large airships. She has a map display HUD. It turns out that she and Shergood didn't know about each other, so I got them together.

My own helicopters (modified Kiwi EZ-Fly) now stop automatically at ban lines without damage. With ban line detection and the orb map, you get where you're going.

(Developing vehicle technology out of Kama City has been tough but valuable. Kama City has region crossings in the middle of every street, double region crossings at every intersection, badly designed intersections atop region crossings, barriers down the middle of streets, ban lines that cut off part of sidewalks, and security orbs. If you can make it work in Kama City, it will work anywhere in SL.)

[Qie Niangao]

Interesting map. I have some interest in Broadwater, the region in the far upper left of that map, and was surprised to see the three orbs there so I went to investigate. Indeed, a neighbor has their parcel secured and I never noticed, despite sharing that region with them practically since Zindra was new. But looking at the other two Broadwater orbs on side-by-side parcels further south, a couple of things came to mind that have me doubting the value of (purely) sensor-based detection of security orbs.

First, those particular orbs are turned off, and I'm not sure when they get turned on, if ever. They're right there in conspicuous view on the nearly empty ground level, so they aren't merely ancient artifacts, but other sensor-detected orbs very well could be turned off and long forgotten. Hence potential false positives.

The other thing, it appears these parcels were identified by virtue of having a separate orb on each one, but in fact they (and the third one) all have the same owner, so they could have all been protected by a single orb; with more modern scripts, they surely would be. The same owner has another public parcel without an orb that's unmarked on the map. Unless the map logic is taking into account the per-parcel limitations specific to these creaky old Conover scripts, there could be misses.

This is all by way of supporting the more brute force hazard-mapping approach discussed at the Simulator User Group: collect evidence of danger at the previous location when the traveler's HUD is force-teleported. If only we could detect that force-teleporting.

[mikka Luik]

Pro-tip : rename any items you use in a totally TOS reliant way to anything not containing 'security' type terms (note FluffyClouds already taken)

Pro-tip : locate a proper parcel control system at random altitudes. Also have them on at random.

Bonus : make your own SAMS are a wonderful display of lights and joy for all events.

[Prokofy Neva]

On 8/8/2018 at 10:47 AM, Qie Niangao said:

The Linden Homes regions seem the very last place in SL that I'd want to fly (or drive, or walk, or cam, even), so I'm not sure it's worth anybody's trouble to intentionally map travel hazards on those particular mini-continents.

I've often said, though, that I think it's a mistake that the Lab never set aside some Mainland continent(s) where access is explicitly unrestricted -- simply a feature of the land there, just as some areas don't allow terraforming, some don't allow Adult content, etc.

My hunch is that this hypothetical continent would have the highest land values in SL.

What's important is not to support efforts involving "all of the Mainland"  like "mapping" that segue to "community control" and really "my control". This is especially important not to do in a world that is not democratic, and has no free press or independent judiciary. 

Like sim seams and roads believed to have hazards, this "identification of a problem" really has no base. Who would want to fly over boring, homogenous Linden Home lands anyway? Indeed.

Fourteen years ago, we debated Philip Linden about the wisdom of allowing orbs in the first place -- period. They led to so many miserable experiences and were so unfair when overdeployed near waterways and roadways. Perhaps at the very list, they could be prevented from TPing users homes, which led to crashes often. So unfair. Couldn't the bounce script be deprecated completely? It really didn't secure privacy given camming ability and was really only about this deep, atavistic fear that some virtual avatars have about other virtual avatars coming into their homes and using their adult furniture. That, more than anything, triggers the most fear and anger in these situations and leads to orbs.

Philip's reaction at first was to concede that yes, this function should be removed. And he even set about doing it. But then his fellow Lindens who never met a script they didn't like had a total freak-out -- and since some of them were alts from the community base, essentially, they got their way. They invoked the supposed need to have elevators. That there were perhaps 11 1/2 elevators, even including suspension bridges, in SL at that time seemed hardly relevant. But certain prominent and ubiquitous orb manufacturers, then and now making a fortune off the deep-seated atavistic feelings of people, lobbied to keep the function.

Some orbs have the option of not TP home, but it's not imposed and many don't use it as they love the idea of TPing intruders home, even if it's their own landlord or a random passer-by.

If the Lindens sold land that had no orb function capacity, it wouldn't sell.

You would think that this function of "avatars can see me" being checked off -- making you invisible! -- would be the best form of privacy there is, safe against camming. Many now opt for it despite the inconvenience of not seeing people they want to see sometimes. But it's still possible then to cam in from the person's lot by invading it -- not that this is the frequent occurrence imagined.

The people in Charsville are not "trouble" or a "cult" -- they are simply enjoying their rights currently supplied to everyone in Second Life, and they shouldn't be brow-beating as miscreants because people with world aspirations think it's important to fly over their lawn (?!). There isn't enough encouraging of people to be better neighbours, and not enough rewards. But the answer is not to criminalize people doing what hundreds of thousands of others do in SL without this exposure of their privacy.

Sometimes there isn't a mystery to this -- I've found a number of Linden homes that are used as bot holders or Tiny Empires players or some kind of strange thing where 30 of them will be piled up sitting in rows or dancing with the same tag. Linden Homes can't be used for stores and can't be put in search but there isn't any rule against pile-ups, and I've noticed sometimes ban lines are put on such pile-ups, which is allowable of course.

Once again, it is possible to get the Lindens to bar "TP home" as a function, but they won't do it because they will invoke games or something that they feel will need this.

Edited August 12, 2018 by Prokofy Neva

[Garnet Psaltery]

2 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

[...] Couldn't the bounce script be deprecated completely? It really didn't secure privacy given camming ability and was really only about this deep, atavistic fear that some virtual avatars have about other virtual avatars coming into their homes and using their adult furniture.[...]

I haven't got any adult furniture so that doesn't apply.  I just am buggered if I'm going to let Tom Dick and Harriet Cadger invade my bought space.

[Nargron]

On 8/3/2018 at 7:20 AM, Solar Legion said:

"Shot down" - really? No, no you were not "shot down" at all.

To be "shot down" you'd have to be fired at by actual weapons, have them hit your plane and have a script system register "damage" high enough to cause it to cease to function. Alternately you could have been over an area that has the in built Linden Damage system enabled and been shot at by actual, scripted weapons which dropped your "health" to zero and force teleported you home.

Being ejected/teleported out by a security system is not being "shot down" at all.

Weapons for shooting down aircraft? Hmm... *me goes to look at the MP*

[Qie Niangao]

8 minutes ago, Nargron said:

Weapons for shooting down aircraft? Hmm... *me goes to look at the MP*

Look for aircraft capable of being shot down by weapons, rather than weapons capable of shooting down aircraft.

I once spent quite some time working on an aircraft (really just a personal hover-jet) that responded to incoming fire (raycast-directed particles) from others of its kind. Making a vehicle gradually lose more and more control and eventually plummet to earth after successive hits is at least as difficult as making it fly all kinds of airborne tricks. (It's lots of fun, though. Even more adrenaline than you get from trucking packages around Mainland.)

[Fionalein]

You could script that, a battery shaped security orb that does not de-rez the intruding aircraft but instead sends out a rezzed SAM that hunts down the aircraft and de-rezzes them on contact... Yes it can be done, no it makes no sense and I guess that is why we are not seeing them...

Edited August 15, 2018 by Fionalein

[Nargron]

32 minutes ago, Fionalein said:

You could script that, a battery shaped security orb that does not de-rez the intruding aircraft but instead sends out a rezzed SAM that hunts down the aircraft and de-rezzes them on contact... Yes it can be done, no it makes no sense and I guess that is why we are not seeing them...

That would just be great for the awesome factor alone!

[Fionalein]

9 minutes ago, Nargron said:

That would just be great for the awesome factor alone!

True, and while I think of it it could be even usefull, if the SAM is slow enough and programmed to stay withing parcel passing pilots would just never need to bother... But I bet the SL aviation community would still be far from delighted ?

Edited August 15, 2018 by Fionalein

[Nargron]

47 minutes ago, Fionalein said:

True, and while I think of it it could be even usefull, if the SAM is slow enough and programmed to stay withing parcel passing pilots would just never need to bother... But I bet the SL aviation community would still be far from delighted ?

Yeah, you're probably right. I just think it would be cool as hell to have SAMs that fire from parcels and start tracking planes and avatars in flight, even if they don't actually do anything.