Security orbs and navigable waters

[Persephone Emerald]

4 hours ago, Gabriele Graves said:

In the case of LL being the land owner, it is still just the ToS/CS and Covenants (again not applicable).  If these were rules then why wouldn't they put them in a covenant?  They did in Bellisseria.

However, OK let's indulge you here.  Even if those are rules, and I disagree that they are, then all a zero second orb owner would have to do is send out a message right before ejecting/tping you home.  Then they could claim, this is "adequate warning".  When things like "adequate" aren't defined properly (adequate to do what? or adequate in amount of seconds?) then how can anyone say what is or is not adequate.

I would say that if these are indeed rules, then considering that nobody seems to be able to successfully AR zero-second orbs on mainland that adequate warning is being given and they are in compliance. So "Yes" to your original question, these "rules" do allow it, one way or another.

In addition, why would the Bellisseria covenant have to spell out "no zero-second orbs" if these were enforceable "rules" and must already be obeyed on LL estates?

The entire knowledge base article only mentions mainland exactly once, when specifically referring to transferring mainland parcels.  So does this mean that these "rules" are applied to estates as well?  So no zero-second orbs on private estates without "adequate warning"?  Even by the estate owner?  Are we sure about this?

Further, why would LL have to have even specifically have banned them on Bellisseria?  Weren't they already illegal according to these "rules"?  Wasn't that enough?  Clearly not!
The orb announcement and addition of it to the covenant happened a long time after Bellisseria was up and running.  I had already had taken a home and given it up by that time.

So by mere deduction Watson, we can tell that on mainland where there isn't a covenant, the things contained in the Bellisserian covenant are not applicable.

All of this doesn't present a compelling argument for that article being anything than it seems, a set of recommendations or guidelines.

I agree that not being specific about what words mean or what is or isn't allowed is problematic.

Much of your "argument" here is spurious, however.  The Bellisseria covenant states that security orbs in Bellisseria must allow at least 15 seconds. It does not nor should it be expected to say anything about Mainland or Estate land. Even if LL did consider 0 second orbs to be against the rules on mainland, that would have no baring on the tighter regulation for Bellisseria. 

I think the reason for Community Standards to exist as well as Terms of Service, is so people using SL will understand what is expected, socially appropriate behavior, without LL having to police every little action of everyone here. We're being asked to play nice in this sandbox and to police our own behavior like responsible, considerate adults.

[diamond Marchant]

Additional Info About Sailing Issues in Second Life

The main problems facing sailors are associated with the grid itself... region crossings, 4-corners, unexpected lag, and regions down or broken. These occur everywhere.

Orbs and banlines are, by comparison, a minor annoyance and appear disproportionately on older continents such as Sansara. They are not present in Bellisseria by design. Kudos to the moles for including 4-corner markers in Belli... those are a huge aid to navigation.

Cruise sailing groups (e.g. Leeward Cruising Club),  inform cruisers about potential hazards using charts (textures), navigation HUDs, and chat. Our intent is to NOT encounter any obstacles.  I personally ground check the cruises I help organize and try to locate obstacles so that I can direct cruisers around them.

In summary, I view the priority issues for sailors as those involving the grid itself and continental connectivity. Orbs/banlines are more of an education issue about how water parcel owners can keep sailors out of their waters by simply rezzing a few visual clues.

Edited July 28, 2022 by diamond Marchant
usual typos

[Coffee Pancake]

5 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Now I just have to figure out how someone can clear something up without answering a question.

Because this is not a new discussion and it has been clarified repeatedly, and no amount of rules lawyering, fighting over must vs should, and bullying people will change anything.

Zero second orbs are fine.

You may have one on mainland. 

You can have more than one if you like.

Build your whole house from them if you want.

Edited July 28, 2022 by Coffee Pancake

[Theresa Tennyson]

2 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Because this is not a new discussion and it has been clarified repeatedly, and no amount of rules lawyering, fighting over must vs should, and bullying people will change anything.

Zero second orbs are fine.

You may have one on mainland. 

You can have more than one if you like.

Build your whole house from them if you want.

Theresa Tennyson nods and smiles.

They were fine in Bellisseria too until they weren't.

[Gabriele Graves]

3 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

Much of your "argument" here is spurious, however.  The Bellisseria covenant states that security orbs in Bellisseria must allow at least 15 seconds. It does not nor should it be expected to say anything about Mainland or Estate land. Even if LL did consider 0 second orbs to be against the rules on mainland, that would have no baring on the tighter regulation for Bellisseria.

I strongly disagree, there is absolutely nothing spurious about my argument.  If something had to specifically be put in Bellisseria's covenant and in addition to that Patch had to specifically make a post on the forum saying that orbs must be at least 15 seconds that the correct inference that not only up until that point they had been OK on Bellisseria but that they had also been OK everywhere, including mainland.  Why would they have been OK up until that point?  Answer: There was nothing specific against them in the covenant?  Why are they OK on mainland? Answer: There is no specific rule against them.

They are still OK on mainland.

[Rowan Amore]

1 hour ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Theresa Tennyson nods and smiles.

They were fine in Bellisseria too until they weren't.

Mainland has been around a lot longer and Belliseria was intended as something different than mainland so not sure what you're nodding and smiling about.

[Sylvia Tamalyn]

2 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

Mainland has been around a lot longer and Belliseria was intended as something different than mainland so not sure what you're nodding and smiling about.

Exactly right.

Bellisseria is, despite GOH, intended to be made up of regions of "starter homes" to replace the old, original Linden Homes. As such, the regions have had covenants from the start, something that Mainland simply does not have.

Apples and oranges, folks, and if you are thinking LL is going to upend Mainland after all these years and attempt to implement and enforce covenants at this late date, well, I really don't know what to say except keep dreaming. 

[diamond Marchant]

32 minutes ago, Sylvia Tamalyn said:

if you are thinking LL is going to upend Mainland after all these years and attempt to implement and enforce covenants at this late date, well, I really don't know what to say except keep dreaming

Orbs that do not depend on Experience use llEjectFromLand to eject trespassers. Should Linden Lab decide to enforce a minimum time for ejection, they need only add a delay to this routine.

[Istelathis]

/me peeks around looking for zero second aggravation balls

Security orbs are the bane of any explorer's existence, it would be greatly appreciated if LL would someday find a middle ground that would give land owners and renters the privacy they want and explorers a means to wander around the world without fear of running into a minefield of zero second orbs.  Perhaps just give us sonar, that way we can navigate around people's property with easy to see, highlighted property lines where any such orb may exist.  

/me runs off, away from the angry people

[Gabriele Graves]

2 hours ago, diamond Marchant said:

Orbs that do not depend on Experience use llEjectFromLand to eject trespassers. Should Linden Lab decide to enforce a minimum time for ejection, they need only add a delay to this routine.

They could but that would affect private estates as well and so they then would most likely have to exclude those.  All that would do is ensure that everyone either uses an Experience (after all they are Premium land owners) or change their orb to TP home.  Start to nerf those and people may end up just putting prim barriers around things.  I wouldn't be surprised if LL has deliberately decided in the past to avoid these kinds of escalation scenarios because they harm everyone.

I could show you any random script function and warn people that at anytime LL could nerf it.  Nerfing has definitely happened in the past but generally only when a new particular problem, permission/security hole or exploit has arisen and LL needed to deal with it.  That isn't the case here, the perceived "problem" here has always been in existence, it's within their own rules currently and I doubt they will see it as an actual problem.  They have bigger fish to fry.

I agree with the sentiments about Bellisseria from @Rowan Amore and @Sylvia Tamalyn.  I'm pretty sure I saw Patch also refer to Bellisseria as "land ownership with training wheels on" and that it was designed to give residents a taste of land ownership before moving on to mainland or estates, not that anyone would be forced to but it would be the natural progression from that point for many.  Training grounds require different rules for them to work well.

There were at least two opportunities to apply any of the additional Bellisseria rules to mainland, first when it was built and then when they overhauled the Linden Homes covenant.  They obviously decided at both those opportunities to not do it.  I would not expect them to suddenly decide at some random point later to then backtrack just like they never applied the original Linden Homes covenant to mainland during all those years.

In the end, I'll admit, LL could do anything they please at any time.  However that doesn't mean that any random thing that people can conceive of has much likelihood of ever actually happening.

Edited July 29, 2022 by Gabriele Graves
spelling and grammar

[Gabriele Graves]

5 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

/me peeks around looking for zero second aggravation balls

Security orbs are the bane of any explorer's existence, it would be greatly appreciated if LL would someday find a middle ground that would give land owners and renters the privacy they want and explorers a means to wander around the world without fear of running into a minefield of zero second orbs.  Perhaps just give us sonar, that way we can navigate around people's property with easy to see, highlighted property lines where any such orb may exist.  

/me runs off, away from the angry people

I fully endorse the sentiment of giving explorers much better tools to avoid inadvertently straying into restricted areas.  It should definitely be possible with ban lines.  It's much harder with orbs though.  Perhaps it would be possible to automatically mark the parcel on the mini map in a colour to indicate use of an orb and detect that from any script in any rezzed object using LLEjectFromLand/llTeleportAgentHome.  Of course, they would then have to actually send the parcel data for all parcels to each viewer when the logged in avatar enters the region, a thing they don't do now presumably for efficiency and contributes in part to the lamentations of explorers.  If they could do all that though, they could add a mini map API so that scripted detectors could get that information too.

[Coffee Pancake]

45 minutes ago, Gabriele Graves said:

I wouldn't be surprised if LL has deliberately decided in the past to avoid these kinds of escalation scenarios because they harm everyone.

There's more than one way to send an avatar home, and many ways to make them miserable and impeded their movement, half of which don't even need scripted evil .. just "oops .. I left a prim out".

Better information about which parcels an agent has access to when an agent enters a region would be very useful though, rather than just informing the viewer about the nearest as they approach.

[Qie Niangao]

Regarding Experience-based teleportation, wouldn't the agent need to have granted experience permissions to the script's Experience in order for that to work? That's certainly a graceful means of ejection, but wouldn't seem ideal for dealing with actual miscreants.

Also, does anybody know the real history of how llTeleportAgentHome() came to exist? My hunch is it was originally intended for role-play combat, as a way for scripted combat meters to replace the functionality of the built-in but absurdly kludgy "damage" system. It's just such a violently hostile measure to take against straying passersby. llEjectFromLand() is no picnic either, but it doesn't tempt me quite so much to take up arms.

[Tonya Souther]

6 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

Also, does anybody know the real history of how llTeleportAgentHome() came to exist? My hunch is it was originally intended for role-play combat, as a way for scripted combat meters to replace the functionality of the built-in but absurdly kludgy "damage" system. It's just such a violently hostile measure to take against straying passersby. llEjectFromLand() is no picnic either, but it doesn't tempt me quite so much to take up arms.

My guess is that llTeleportAgentHome() came first. Its function ID is 158, as opposed to 213 for llEjectFromLand().