Rick Nightingale

It's an hegemonising swarm!

Isn't it silver for bots? Or is that werewolves? So many genres... so many stereotypes... so much confusion!

The phrase "go and stake yourself" always worked for me. I was one of those who refused the neckalce because it put my name on a database. Opt-in... not opt-out is my battle cry. Well, actually it's "Arrrhhhoooogaaahhh"

Yep - had that happen to me. Another reason no-mod permissions is unacceptable to me. Another way to 'break' a no-copy item if the item does have modify permissions is that the user changes it somehow, like just replacing a texture because you cannot get the original back. One of the excuses used by sellers to set things to no-mod (and a very poor excuse at that). And... the easiest way of all to lose an item which I suspect happens far more often that the owner admits or realises... accidentally delete it in your inventory and then sometime later empty your trash. Then six months later remember you had something. No, I've never done that. Honest. Maybe. You could also just accidentally (or not) drag it into somewhere else in your inventory and never be able to find it again if you don't know exactly what it was called to search for it. I've done that one; finally found it with the help of this very forum when someone recognised what I was trying to describe and told me the name of it.

Yeah, getting it accepted was a good start. There's no timeline on when it will be implemented though, and I would imagine will need a fair bit of testing to make sure it doesn't break something else. Still, given the amount of interest in the topic one way or another I would hope it's being treated with some importance.

Hate to tell you this but it has been for a long time. The current state of AI only makes it quicker, easier and more accessable. I've had a little exposure to such matters in my varied careers and you would probably be shocked at the amount that can be discovered with the use of statistical analysis*, if enough data is available. There's a reason that three letter agencies stockpile everything they can. *helping a room full of very clever people, admittedly. AI is changing that too.

You are quite right @OptimoMaximo, that does indeed work. It requires, however, uploading two versions of what could otherwise be a single mesh asset, duplicated and rotated in world (assuming it has rotational symmetry which is the case here). It also then means dealing with an object with an inherently mirrored texture, an irritation should I want to apply different (not mirrored) textures afterwards to each object. I would have to mirror/invert everything before upload and could not simply use existing textures (if I want normal maps too). I do like to design things to be easy to retexture by myself or others. And of course it cannot apply to prim builds. I think as @Wulfie Reanimator said, it must be an oversight in the viewer's treatment of 'manually' mirrored normal maps, since I can't see any advantage to having highlights and shadows the wrong way around.

I would be frankly shocked if many were not doing that since it's such an obvious source of who all their visitors are and what they wear. Valuable information to a store!

I'm clearly only talking about scripted agents, not the privacy updates (which do also effect me, although I'm already aware of my responsibilities under the GDPR etc.) There are obviously two, somewhat inter-related topics in this thread.

Again you infer and say something that I did not say. Some others make it sound (here and in other threads and places) as if everyone running bots is doing it for the betterment of SL and all of us lucky residents and we should be grateful for their visits. There's a middle ground. Note again that I did not say "everyone", I said "a lot of people". I don't include @Paul Hexem in that for instance. It's been my experience in life however that most people do things purely for themselves (nothing necessarily wrong with that, or with monetisation, before anyone tries to put more words into my mouth). That is the way of the world in my experience. There are as many (more I think) bad actors as good ones. At best, some seem to think that because the service they provide is valuable to some, that others should just accept the inconvenience. How is that to everyone's benefit? Anyway, my baking in Blender has finished, so... laters!

I didn't say everyone.

I think a lot of people are genuinely doing what is best purely for themselves, especially when running some service that has potential commercial value. Regardless of how they try to spin it. That's the way of the world.

If nothing else, this topic has taken the heat away from the fee increase related threads... [ducks and runs for cover]

That can happen if you are you inside a large, invisible 'cube' or similar, like a surround made in that way, or a part of a building made that way. If the item you want to sit on also does not have a sit target set into it, then you can get that problem.

It might surprise someone to know I too have a product which relies on bots, that I've sold to the vehicle riding, flying and sailing community for years. One difference: My bots don't TP to parcels unasked for. In fact they have to be specifically summoned by a control HUD, by the user, when needed for a specific purpose. They don't gather anyone's data, or anything else for that matter and only land where specifically told to by the owner. Mine too will suffer from this though, despite that they are totally benign in action. Such is life. We still should have the ability to control access to bots properly.

I don't understand the issue with not registering accounts that are mostly alts, and occasionally bots, as scripted agents. Per the TOS https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Scripted_Agent_Policy : My emboldening. I used to log in alts with a bot viewer occasionally. Never felt the need to have them registered since they are mostly alts, not bots.

It would be incredibly useful in my opinion to be able to mirror a normal map and have it work 'properly'. I often want to mirror a texture on a build, which saves UV space and texture memory, or would if I could also mirror the normal map. For those wondering what I'm on about, see the pictures. All that's needed is to invert the red channel for a horizontal mirror, for instance. Would it be asking too much of the viewer to be able to do this if the normal map scale is negative? Or would it cause some issues I've not thought of? (other than possibly breaking existing content - it would need a new checkbox to enable the inversion, not just do it automatically to every existing mirrored normal map). Or... am I just missing something alltogether? In these pictures, light is coming from the right. The top images show a normal map on the left, and the same normal map but scaled -1 on the right. Note the opposite shading. The bottom pictures have the same UV map on the left, with a mirrored but a red-inverted UV map on the right. I did that in photoshop but the viewer could do it on the fly.

@Zalificent Corvinus - would I be right in thinking that you don't like the change? I really do not believe anyone at LL is daft enough to listen to most of what you say will be reported; don't you think they must deal with stupid abuse reports all the time and filter them out? Nor do I think most event and shop owners are that daft*. There will be no 'Draconian Crackdown'. Yes, I'm sure it will increase LL's workload somewhat, but that is down to them. Not us. Frankly I would make making an invalid abuse report as serious an issue as the abuse that is being misreported. Again though that's for LL to deal with and us to not know anything about. Edit: ...and I'm not exactly known for my high opinion of most people.

This is (edit: one of the reasons...) why I keep saying we need it at parcel level and whitelistable.

Let's face it - if someone runs a (unregistered) bot on their own land for their own purposes - who cares or knows? If it wanders where it hasn't been invited...

Exactly this! This is my issue with bots, and always was. They are disruptive to both my work and enjoyment of my land. Real people are welcome to disrupt me, except the one who attached himself to me with a follower script and 'abused' me. Even that gave me a bit of a laugh (I took 30 seconds to eject it) which a bot wouldn't have done.

@M PeccableWow - you're making this a bit personal and putting words into my mouth that I didn't say. Such is how people like to argue I guess. I have never said that all parcels be blocked to bots by default. I have said we need an option to turn on blocking. DO NOT tell me that I don't care about losing functionality in SL. Who do you think you are and what gives you that right? I guess I already have my answer since you think it is acceptable that people have to tolerate your bots' invasion of their paid-for land, because otherwise your product will suffer. If your product is that wonderful, let word of it spread as it surely will and people will allow it. I'll not engage any further with you on the matter. To do so would be a waste of air for us both.

As I said @M Peccable, it is unfortunate your product relies on sending un-asked-for bots to other people's land. I love to explore. Never needed a HUD to help me.

My importable whitelist idea was intended for parcel owners to implement, not for LL to blanket implement on us. It could be provided by LL but should still be up to the parcel owner to choose to implement it. I would accept it being turned on by default as long as we could just tick a box in parcel setings to turn it off too. Just like the overall deny-bots setting. It is unfortunate that it does not work for a product like yours, but the issue is with your product and the unreasonable expectation that you can send bots to people's parcels without their prior acceptance.

On a semi-serious thought... I run PiHoles for local DNS to block tracking and advertising. That works best with a whitelist/blacklist supplied by 'trusted' people. I wonder if a such a list could be compiled and imported for bots?