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Honey Puddles

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Posts posted by Honey Puddles

  1. Check your "Classifieds".

    I had this happen with one of my most beloved store accounts (Ironically named Accounting Binder). I had a couple of classifieds set up for the store, and would get pinged every week or month or whatever for the bill. Back at the time, I guess I must have assumed (reasonably) that if I didn't have money in the account, SL would delist the classifieds. Then I could stick money in the account when I wanted to reactivate the listings.

    Didn't work like that at all, and at one point I was thousands of L$ in the negative on that account. I shut off the classifieds as soon as I realized the cause... then I just mothballed the account, because this negative balance meant I couldn't even take that account to go get a 'free head' if it cost 1L$ to 'buy', even if that 1L$ was refunded.

    I eventually decided to just set up a script to send L$10-30 a day to it, something that wouldn't really be 'felt' in the grand scheme of things, the idea being that within a year or so, it would be paid off.

    But at the scale described by OP, I'd say it's definitely 'support ticket' time.

    • Like 1
  2. 23 minutes ago, Arwyn Quandry said:

    Maybe the regions in use for those will finally be done away with in order to support this new initiative? That would be a smart decision which would benefit a ton of people - which means it'll never happen! 

    Linden are on record as saying that they will not allow Adult-rated 'mainland' regions to be 'discoverable' from M or G rated 'mainland'.. meaning that they can never allow M or G rated regions to touch an A rated region on a side. The 'OG' A-frame Linden Home regions, I believe, are connected directly to 'the rest' of Belliserria.

  3. 17 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

    Is the concern here that people might end up with stuff that's neither copy nor transfer (either intentionally or by accident of the merchant)? Do we think the Lab's policy intended to require these no-transfer items be copy enabled? because I don't see that in the policy.

    But it does make me wonder about the formal definition of "items" in "Gacha items and their containers must be set as 'No Transfer'…" Suppose I have a no-transfer "gacha item" that contains a full-perm animation, that's surely okay because it's just incidental to the "item", right? Suppose I make that animation transfer/no-copy, inside a "gacha item" that's no-transfer and mod-enabled… still okay, right? Except now it's different: with this modifiable "gacha item" I can remove that animation and have a transferable, no-copy animation asset from inside my "gacha item". I could resell it on Marketplace. And maybe next time it's more than an animation.

    Seems to me somebody will need to define what's an incidental embedded asset that might be transferable, and what's a full-fledged "gacha item" that mustn't be transferable.

    Divorced from the context of the back and forth, I can see your confusion here.

    I wasn't trying to say that a no-copy + no-mod item was BAD, just that it was POSSIBLE to engineer.

    The use-case we were exploring was whether a gacha machine could issue a 'gift certificate' that could then be 'redeemed' for a transferable item. The hangup in that imagined situation was giving someone a copy-able gift certificate, could essentially give them an ability to request unlimited copies.

    The 'workaround' I was illustrating, was showing that it's technically possible to make a gotcha 'item' that complied with the no-transfer requirement, that was still also not copy-able, resulting in an 'only one redemption' gift card that meets the criteria.

    ---

    I do NOT think this is an 'in-good-faith' compliance with the new rules, issuing redeemable 'cards' that can get someone a transferable item... but it is one possible approach people can attempt to utilize, which seemingly complies with the technicalities of the rules.

    This mechanism (no copy AND no trans) might be more abusively/lucratively used to make sure that people *have to play* to get several instances of a gacha item.. imagining a table with 8 chairs, you'll need to win that '1 chair' eight times.

    Were I to engineer a system like this, I would want to give the end user the choice of redeeming a 'card' for a copyable version, or a transferable single copy. But then I'd also want to make it so those 'cards' could be resold. (which wouldn't be permitted by the rules).

    I personally don't believe that this 'gift card' loophole will survive the first Abuse Report.

    My opinion is that this rule change is all bad.. taking away 85% of what people liked about gachas, while preserving only the most exploitative parts that solely benefited the creators.
     

    • Like 4
    • Thanks 2
  4. 6 minutes ago, Polenth Yue said:

    I know how to do that, but the updated rules were very clear that every single item must be no transfer. The no perms trick requires setting one item to no copy/transfer. Not to say that someone won't try it, but that seems like a clearly reportable thing if they do. But given we both interpreted it differently, that's another question for the Lindens.

    Actually, the opposite.

    You can set the 'object' to no-mod, no-transfer.. thus complying with the rules.

    But if any one component inside, or inside any child prim, or inside anything inside any prim.. has 'no-copy' enabled, the whole thing will be treated as both no-transfer AND no-copy. A texture, a sound, an animation.. and it could very easily be done by accident. every asset like that, uploads with no-mod, no-copy, yes trans permissions by default.

    • Like 1
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  5. 4 minutes ago, Polenth Yue said:

    The voucher would also need to be copy. I suppose the system might only allow one copy to be redeemed per customer, even though they could make endless copies of the voucher.

    I can only imagine that as they announced how excited they were to see residents engage in new opportunities, there was a Linden out there responsible for wading through these potential loopholes who was quietly sobbing.

    The rule doesn't state that it must be copy, only that it must be no-transfer. While objectively unintended by the permission system, it's actually fairly trivial to create an object that is no-copy, AND no-transfer, in a way that the permissions system won't allow to be tampered with.

    image.png.d943dcfec527710784f2fbd30e572bc7.png

    Placing a no-mod, no-copy script.. inside a child object in a linkset, then setting the permissions of the linkset to no-mod, no-transfer.

    When passed on to another user, it will appear as no-copy, no-mod, no-transfer in their inventory.

    When rezzed, it will rez their 'only copy' (as if no-copy).

    The rezzed object will display "yes copy, no mod, no transfer on the ground, as Linden expects.

    Attempting to delete the 'nail' from the child prim's contents will generate the following warning:
    image.png.98caf13a9f0b79213230d335c55fadaa.png

    Selecting "OK" will generate the following error message in local chat:

    image.png.35fea00d3a4e6a8394db2364171645c8.png

    Because the 'nail' is in a child prim (and not the central 'core' prim) the old "Copy contents to inventory" trick will not work either.

     

    • Like 4
    • Thanks 2
  6. 1 minute ago, Cube Republic said:

    Whats to stop someone making a machine that gives out a non transferable voucher that could be exchanged at the merchants store for a tranferabble asset?

     

    Here we go again...

    "No officer, I didn't get this money from Pachinko gambling, I won a stuffed toy animal. I sold that stuffed toy animal for money right outside, totally legal!"

    • Like 5
    • Haha 3
  7. People you've muted, maybe? Estate owners?

    In Firestorm, people you've muted are grey, friends are yellow, strangers are green, and you are orange.

    You also have the option to right click individual markers on the minimap and select a color for them.

  8. I was friends with a club owner, who started adding a mall to his club. I'd helped him with the mall's design, and he'd offered me some space there. He wanted to try and fill some of the larger spots before telling me where to set up. A few days later, he informed me that the owner of ██████████ store had told him flatly that if my products were allowed in his mall, they would refuse to be in the same mall.

    My 'friend' then told me that I was 'out' because this other brand was more important/prestigious.

    ---

    Another time, I reached out to a store █████████, to get a developer's kit so I could, at the request of numerous customers, add support to some of my products for their mainline product. They told me that under no circumstances would they ever allow me a developer's key, because I made a 'competing product' to one of theirs.

    __

    Another time, I reached out to another store owner, ███████ maker of a certain mainstream script kit. They provided a critical lynch pin tool that I needed for a quality-of-life product I had been developing, that was also going to improve several products I'd made in the past. I was very excited about this project (my first attempt at rigged mesh), and had gotten it working with no-transfer scripts. But when I reached out to them for a license for their commercial kit, I was refused, because this one item I was making as part of a larger packaged product 'was a competing product to something they made 4 years earlier' (a product that didn't do what mine did).

    .

    So, yeah, there's all sorts of horse hockey going on behind the scenes in Second Life.. and I think there's a lot of truth to stories of people being 'unable' to get into events, etc.

    • Like 2
    • Sad 2
  9. I vote for "Office Party got a little too rambunctious" which, given that everyone at LL is working remotely, is all the more fun.

    Someone strapped on their Apple Vision Pro or Occulus RIft to do a little virtual teleconferencing, and whacked a coat-rack, which fell over and unplugged the dodgy cable from the back of the Commodore Vic 20 that was running the service.

     

    7pzlxumx copy.png

    • Like 1
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  10. 1 hour ago, Marianne Little said:

    Thank you @Coffee Pancakefor the information that SL is not only 18+. I was so sure it is 18+ because it was something years ago about 16-18 SL that is closed? My brain is really tired now.

     

    There used to be a walled off area specifically for people under 18, called "Teen Second Life".. they closed THAT a number of years ago, and dumped all those users into the main SL with extra terms and conditions 'for the safety of the childrens'.

  11. It's definitely a questionable business practice, that I can at least recall going back to childhood, with video arcades. You could play the games for a quarter, or you could take your dollars and put them in the token machine, and get 5 tokens for each dollar. That seemed like a great deal. 4 games per dollar with cash, 5 per dollar with tokens.

    Til you were ready to leave the arcade, and had tokens left over. The arcade got you to give them your money up front, and all you had to show for it was some brass coins that you couldn't spend anywhere else.

    Casinos do this with "Chips" as well, though at least you can 'cash-out' those chips. But at least in most cases those chips have a real dollar value attached to them.

    In SL, it's 'technically' possible to estimate the value of L$ based on the current exchange rates.. but those rates have, and do, change. the '3L$-to-1¢' estimate is pretty reliable, as is the "250L$ to 1$".. and it often rings in my head when looking at '30 Linden Saturday" or "99 Linden" sale events.. "it's a dime.. it's 30 cents.. " and keeping that real life value in mind often helps snap me out of the ambiguity over whether I should pick up a sale item I'm waffling about.

    That outfit is supercute, but the fatpack is 2499. "Honey, that's TEN DOLLARS... and it's not even mod. Maybe look at Seraphim to see what's on sales?"
    That cute woodland cabin in Trompe Loeil Superfans vendor for just 50L$? Should I? Shouldn't I? "Jeez Honey, it's 17 cents, just grab it".

     

    • Like 7
  12. Yeah, you'll need to 'spend' that bought L$. Luckily it all goes into the same pot, so it's not like you have to spend everything to get rid of the 250L$ at the bottom of the pile.

    You'll just need to spend 'that amount' on something.

    Or give it to a friend, buy someone you know a gift, go to the welcome hub and make a noob's day. 😁

    • Like 1
  13. 45 minutes ago, WeFlossDaily said:

    So I guess the scripting challenge here is: Can a bot be scripted to avoid getting lost or trapped at info hubs?

     

    While some bots can be written to interact with and accept commands from LSL scripts, they're usually a program running on a computer, like a stripped down viewer. So it's not so much a 'simple' scripting task, as getting under the hood of a windows program.

    • Like 2
  14. 3 hours ago, Quartz Mole said:

    If I were programming a bot, I'd tell it, if it found it had relogged at an infohub rather than where it was supposed to be, to keep trying every few minutes to tp to where it should be, until it finally made it, but I don't know how people programming bots actually do handle this.

    As someone who used to run a store bot, I suspect what's happened is a conflation of changes to the way SL works over the years, that the bot's software hasn't been updated to adapt to.

    You may know that SL will sometimes choke-out when it comes to Teleports. Region goes down, bot relogs and is in the wrong region. It tries to get home.. but can't because the region is still down. So it tries again, and again, and again.

    At some point, SL complains that you're doing that too much. I can't think of the exact phrase, but it's something like "Teleports are limited to 1 per minute, please wait til the average drops". The bot never sees that popup, nor does it care.. so it keeps retrying to get home. The average never drops, or the system just puts them on "you'll have to relog if you want to teleport" ignore, and they're just sitting there at the hub, hammering the TP system.. but the system has them on ignore.

    And they stay there until the hub itself resets, or until the operator notices that the bot is gone and resets it's connection.

    I know that Radegast does this.. And I've watched it complain as "I can't find my chair to sit on" a bunch of times on login. But if I had that running in the background, or on a machine elsewhere in the house (like on a PC acting as the household media server, or on a rented virtual machine on a hosting service) I probably wouldn't notice the bot was missing from the store, until I actually WENT to the store and saw the bot wasn't there.

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    I wonder if SL should have a max session time, that would disconnect the user after X hours online. Probably would put some fire under those "AFK Sex Parks" as well, and regions using bots to try and own the top spots on the destination guide. Any responsibly operated bot could simply relog.. but it would at least make sure that every X hours, the bot would get a fresh session, and probably be able to teleport to it's proper home.

    Alternatively, maybe those infohubs should reset themselves every 24 hours.

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