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Phil Deakins

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Everything posted by Phil Deakins

  1. Phil Deakins
    Surprisingly, I agree with you. But I got into it when the #1 ranking for 'low prim furniture' was a place that sold furniture but not low prim, and the ranking traffic wasn't from the store. It was generated by a club that was on the same parcel. That was the game back then. You either played the game or you left all the sales to those who did.
  2. Phil Deakins
    Oh yes I was
  3. Phil Deakins
    I did know that
  4. Phil Deakins
    I don't argue without basis or reason. In the case of traffic bots, the basis was that they were legal, and the reason was that my competitors used them. Both basis and reason were indisputable facts, so I was always right in those arguments. All the others had in their armoury was that they didn't like search rankings being manipulated.
  5. Phil Deakins
    I don't get into debates and arguments where there are opposing views unless I believe that I'm right. Isn't everyone the same?
  6. Phil Deakins
    Yep :D. I enjoy a good debate and/or argument, and the ones about traffic bots were arguments. Some people were so against them that any discussion/debate quickly turned into arguments, and I was always in the right on that topic.
  7. Phil Deakins
    "the good old bad old days" Those were the days I yearn for Back in RA I had some really good arguments - really good arguments. I attracted them and I loved it. I loved it because I was always right, of course . They were about traffic bots, which everyone knew I used, but many people seriously objected to manipulating search results like that. I was always right because they were absolutely legal at that time. Wonderful days
  8. Phil Deakins
    No need to move it. We're done
  9. Phil Deakins
    You certainly jumped to the wrong conclusion. You're right about that, but you are definitely wrong about why it takes some time for TPVs to release their catch-up viewers. It simply can't be done until they've blended their modifications and the new code together. It's rather obvious. Incidentally, I use the official viewer (and another one) and new releases of it work just fine. Nothing needs fixing. It could be that the LL developers omitted to clear a variable or two so the viewer uses a tiny bit more memory than in necessary, but looking for such things isn't needed, and isn't the reason for the time it takes to release the catch-up TPVs. You only need to think about it to realise it.
  10. Phil Deakins
    Maybe Oz wasn't overly happy about it, or maybe that was just an assumption based on imagination during a chat. Either way it doesn't matter because (1) Oz was just an LL employee and not LL, and (2) LL's intention was to allow people to develope the viewer in various ways, and that's still their intention or they wouldn't release the code. They never had to release it, and they still don't have to release it, but they did and they do. There is no competition. There may be competition between the various TPVs, but none between TPVs and the official viewer. You have jumped to a wrong conclusion, just as someone else here jumped to the ridiculous imagined conclusion that the reason why TPVs lag behind official viewer releases is because TPVs spend time fixing mistakes in the new LL release.
  11. Phil Deakins
    I already told you that LL produces the viewers that everyone uses. There is no competition. All TPVs are is LL's viewer with a few mods. Or do you actually think that TPVs are created by other people? If you do, then you're wrong. If LL was actually competing, they'd ban TPVs altogether.
  12. Phil Deakins
    Yes, true. We can set and unset accounts without persistence, as I have done myself in these few days. That fact had escaped me when I thought of it whilst writing the post It must be one of those days lol.
  13. Phil Deakins
    Thanks for that 👍 I've sometimes wanted a thumbs up in with the like, thanks, laugh etc. reactions (we could do with one there, and a thumbs down) because thanks and like don't imply quite the same things. Your post made me look at the emojis and they are there. I'll certainly use the thumbs up now, even though I'll have to quote the post.
  14. Phil Deakins
    User numbers only imply competition if more than one is actually competing. LL isn't. LL already has almost 100% viewer user numbers inasmuch as TPVs are LL's viewer with some mods, that's all. LL writes it, and TPVs mod it a bit. TPVs don't write their own - I think that there's one that's written externally but almost all TPV users are using the LL viewer with mods. That's it Yes I know why. It's because it takes significant time for TPVs to incorporate the changes that are in the official viewer, making sure that their mods still work. It's not an overnight task
  15. Phil Deakins
    Firestorm isn't competition. It's the LL viewer with some modifications, that's all. LL likes and supports TPVs because they sometimes come up with good modifications that LL can put into the official viewer, but it's still the LL viewer with some mods. It's not competition
  16. Phil Deakins
    Ah. Yes, I did misunderstand it. I thought you meant that the user didn't want it removed. My mistake.
  17. Phil Deakins
    They probably wouldn't know why they got banned from somewhere, and probably wouldn't even consider a support ticket. This is why the system isn't perfect. I remember discussions about whether or not we should set ourselves as scripted agents when we stay logged in for hours but are nowhere near the keyboard. Some people like to leave their avatars sleeping when they go to bed in RL. If they set them as scripted agents and it sets the internal flag, they won't know why things happen later in life. They'll think the owner of some bot-free place actually banned them. Now that we know about the internal flag, we can suggest trying to TP into Bellisseria to those who post that they were banned from somewhere but don't know why.
  18. Phil Deakins
    That would be a very reasonable assumption. An example would be that, when I was testing the bot detector that I offered for free in GD, I was surprised to see that it had banned a stranger from my little 512. Since then, no other scripted agent has been on the parcel, so I've no idea if is was a potential customer that was booted from my store or not. I suspect it might have been, and, if it was, the person may not have known that he is internally registered as being operated by a programme. Wicked Leigh, my original alt, was never used as a bot and yet she was internally registered as one. I finally went through all my accounts and I have 6 left that are internally registered, but not set as scripted agents. I didn't know about any of them. I did register some since the rules changed way back when, and I'm wondering if the internal flag is set when the user changes the status to scripted agent, and is left set that way when the user changes it back to human. I.e. once a bot, always a bot. It could account for why some of my accounts are internally set and not others, but I can't be sure about that. The system isn't perfect but, on the whole, I think it works. A few people will have accounts that can't get into Bellisseria for instance but they can probably get it fixed with a support ticket.
  19. Phil Deakins
    That sounds as though you are stopping using SL. I suggest that you rethink it, especially in the light this forum where many people have told us the sort of ages they are. Tbh, I've been surprised at how many of us are older and haven't been in the prime of life for a very long time. I'm in the prime of old age, for instance, and I can still get out of SL everything I ever wanted to get out of it
  20. Phil Deakins
    That might be why the accounts weren't informed, but I don't recall any of them being booted out and, if a logged-in agent is determined to be a bot, it would surely be booted out at the time. It's all a very long time ago (I assume lol) and it really doesn't matter. It's just puzzling, that's all. I can have them 'fixed' if it matters but it doesn't, and it may be useful to have some that are "known" for tests in the future. You never know
  21. Phil Deakins
    Yep. Knowing does have its merits
  22. Phil Deakins
    Yes. But it puzzled me why only a few of mine are "known". From way back, yes, but there were plenty of others from way back, so why only them. For instance, after traffic bots were banned, and just for the enjoyment of doing it, I created more than one bots system that had around 8 bots wandering round the sim in unpredictable routes and they ran on my bot software. I don't remember all the accounts I used, but I do remember some of them and they aren't 'false positives'. I didn't religiously set them as scripted agents because, although they were using bot software, I was actually in control at the keyboard. I can't fathom why the particular 'false positives' that I have came to be flagged. ARs don't make sense in these cases. Anyway, it is what it is, and I'm happy that we got to the bottom of it.
  23. Phil Deakins
    You mean problems like being told they can eff off and go to Tinder? You muckied yer ticket with that comment, lass.
  24. Phil Deakins
    THE ANSWER Maestro Linden posted in the JIRA that the false positives are actually flagged as scripted agents internally. It means that requests for AGENT_AUTOMATED check both bit 15 (the agent_automated flag) and an internal flag. If either flag is set, then 'scripted agent' is returned. It is necessary to do it that way for LL to try and keep bots out of Bellisseria and other places, which is what they try to do. If only bit 15 is used, then bots couldn't be kept out because they'd be set as human, not scripted agents. So AGENT_AUTOMATED works as intended, and there is no bug. I am satisfied In the process, I've discovered 2 unpublished flags. I'm sure I know what one of them is for, but the other is a mystery.
  25. Phil Deakins
    It could be coincidence that the 2 Speedlight accounts that were Gold for short time, are the same 2 accounts that have bit 16 set, while none of the other account have it set. I'm not insisting that bit 16 is the flag for it, but I do think that it's a very reasonable conclusion to make. Nothing has been said in this thread or by LL's jira/support about bit 16, except by me. I no longer see it as being bug. I'm now convinced that it's behaving as intended. I simply don't believe that a bug causes the Scripted Agent account pages to display the wrong settings. Yes, as an experiment, I did set one of the accounts to scripted agent, and back again to human. It made no difference. LL won't tell us the details of why it happens, but Maestro effectively told us why it does - the accounts are set as scripted agents internally. We know it has to be bot-related ("in that direction") because AGENT_AUTOMATED is only about scripted agents and, even though the user-facing accounts pages are set as human, they are returned as scripted agents; i.e. they are set as scripted agents internally, as Maestro said. I see it like this. When a bot is recognised, probably from an AR, a Linden sets a flag for it in a programme form, but not in the user-facing account's page. And that's the flag that is checked along with the user-facing flag when AGENT_AUTOMATED is requested. As far as I am concerned now, what appeared to be a bug is not a bug at all, and we've learned that there is an internal bot/no-bot setting as well as the user-facing setting. It does make sense from LL's point of view, because LL keeps scripted agents out of Bellisseria and other places. If that relied solely on the agent-automated flag, then users could set the accounts as human and the ban on bots wouldn't work. From that point of view, an internal flag is necessary. We have the answer and I'm now satisfied
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