The Great Bot Hunt - part 3

A new game in SL - finding greedhead bots perma-parked in Linden sims

by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk

Hanshin's sim's mystery bot

After reading the previous stories in the Great Bot Hunt series you may decide to try bot hunting yourself. In this article we cover the basics of locating the bot squatters that haunt quiet Linden water sims.

The first step is to take a look at the map - paying special attention to water sims that have a single green dot in the center - suggesting that a bot may be present. The bots seem to favor corner sims somewhat off the beaten path - although one lives in Zolezzi sim where Michael Linden previously had a getaway - which is still listed in his picks

The Linden water sim bots fall into one of three categories - ground, air, or underground. The ground bots are easy to find - open the map, teleport to where the green dot is and you should be able to see the bot without too much trouble - although they are underwater.

The bots that fly have recently become more tricky to get close to - they seem to be scanning for the precence of other avatars and fly away when you get close - the closer you get the faster they fly - although they only move up or down. Some sort of avatar scanner is very helpful in locating these bots - I like the MystiTool HUD which tells you which other avatars are near.

the flying Kyle Munro bot of Jergens sim

More challenging are the underground bots - these are located below the surface of the ground so you almost certainly need an avatar scanner such as the MystiTool HUD. Once you get close, you still have the problem if seeing the bot - to do this you will have to turn on the debug menus, then tell Second Life to stop displaying the ground. Like this:

After you turn off the surface patch rendering, you'll find the bot underfoot:

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Once you have located the bot you might decide to report it for "parcel violations" or "other" - such as creating lag. Here is a sample:

Comments

[nimrod Yaffle]

What's the point of reporting them? They will never get IP/hardware bans... even if they do, it takes 30 minutes to get back into SL. Accounts are free to make so they can just make another account. This is something that needs to be fixed server side, with a capcha when buying land or something. Please see my comment in article 2 for more ranting of mine.

[Anonymous]

bawwwwww

[Somedood]

Even though you got some lip service from one Linden, I can all but guarantee you that they will take no action, even if the community starts a million threads in resident answers and floods LL with complaint emails.

We've been through this with both prim based land scanners and their avatar bot cousins before, and LL deemed them kosher despite the community outcry, so I have no faith that this situation will be handled any differently. In fact, it's really not new at all.

This past year or so it was Elanthius' bots. Two years ago it was Pete's flying scanners, and even further back were Chance Small's scanners, which used a LOT of resources. Much more than say Weedy's, (which were in some 800+ sims, buried in a 16m parcel) or Pete's, because they had dozens of scripts running inside them. In those cases, the community went ballistic, yet the bots were allowed to continue. When it comes to scripted stuff, the Lindens fall all over themselves for the creators of said networks. (ala libsl kids, even when they went "bad" for a while there.)

I am not saying you don't have a right to express dissatisfaction with the situation, just that you have about zero chance of getting anything done about it. In fact, the more technically savvy Lindens and even the top dog himself LIKE this kind of thing. They consider it awesome that the script kids are "pushing the boundaries" of innovation. the problem is likely to get worse as even more custom clients are written.

[Miraren Firefly]

Veeery interesting. Perhaps an organized group should be formed to hunt out and abuse report these bots?

[Ruud Lathrop]

Hmmm that Jada Auer is still camping out there. On sim Margeray :(

[Prokofy Neva]

There's something fundamentally stupid about making a big deal about these bots idling on Linden land. Better they should idle on Linden land than my land or your land, that way they often take less resources from a sim -- they're on a Linden void water sim. Catching them on Linden land is no different than catching them on your own land. I bump into them all the time, ban them, abuse report them, etc. -- the little good it does.

It's not just about the Lindens never meeting a script they didn't like, and giving maximum latitude to script kiddies.

It's about the Lindens' fundamental hatred and loathing of the land-dealing class and everything about the economy that isn't their selective "rich content" that promotes their agenda.

Their way of getting rid of the human land dealers who build up a rich network of properties, content, and connections with live human beings that form a bulwark against the scripterati and the Lindens themselves is to allow the automated botting to happen.

If the entire land market could be converted to bots, they'd be happy. Bots after all aren't mere disembodied intelligences of sorts. They are scripted by cynical human beings who don't care anything for the economy as part of the "no business but my business" position.

The Lindens will GOM, ban, savage through proxies, or force into automation anything that creates an economy separate from them, independent of them, and therefore a threat to their power. They're not really here to make a world. They're here to make a software to take over the world.

[FWord Utorid]

it's looking for porn at the bottom of the ocean.

[Peter Newell]

Now that's just silly.

Talk about hating a whole class of residents... Give the peace loving bots a chance!

You know, the bots out there enhancing the functionality of the world, letting people join groups by simply clicking a prim sign (one click!) or providing utilities for setting permissions in bulk on your items. There are TONS of valid uses for bots, many of which are in use right now, some of which may be sitting in a Linden lake.

But, then again, perhaps I can find some people to help me start my own campaign... Finding people who write for and read the Herald, because they let the PN write for them, and the PN does bad stuff, so every herald reader and writer should be abuse reported.

Really all you're doing is putting more irrelevant abuse reports in the system, bogging it down even more (perhaps then so you can later complain about how much the AR system sucks and never gets a response).

[Peter Newell]

"You know, the bots out there enhancing the functionality of the world, letting people join groups by simply clicking a prim sign (one click!) or providing utilities for setting permissions in bulk on your items. There are TONS of valid uses for bots, many of which are in use right now, some of which may be sitting in a Linden lake."

That is to say, "there are bots out there doing good", not "the bots in the linden lakes are necessarily doing good".

[not a bot]

This article doesn't even try to explain why generic bots should be a problem.

Nobody is entitled to know for sure what other residents (or their bots) are doing. So this article also instigates to misuse Abuse Report.

My english is bad but this kind of articles is even worse. Thanks to Peter Newell and his previous comments that provide more useful information.

[moses]

well it would be fun to have a little sport with this bots. we can abuse hell out of them. maybe kick them around to work out agressions. grief them with impunity ? lot of us secretly wants to be a griefer any ways, come on....admit it...you know you want to....

[Going to go Sith on some Bots]

Hmmm I have some griefer combat items I have been itching to try.

[Dora Leakey]

Hi guys
Are you starving while playing SL??????
Fill out this form and help us to improve the quality of your second LIFE!!!

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=vYaZsdl9CWGhieAY_2bbE3cA_3d_3d

See ya all!

[Al Sharpton]

I find this highly racist

SLH allows Dora Leakey, an adbot with no comment value, to post, while blocking the word "ni gr a" because it is "spam".

I DEMAND EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL THE BLACK PEOPLES ON THE INTERNETS.

[notabot]

The main use for bots IS TO ARTIFICIALLY INFLATE LAND TRAFFIC NUMBERS. They are routinely used by commercial sim owners... Some use them creatively in a positive role:check out the bot in the main store on the Aitui sim...he is on a stage singing 24hrs a day modelling the store's clothing. Nicely done!

[Tam]

"SLH allows Dora Leakey, an adbot with no comment value, to post, while blocking the word "ni gr a" because it is "spam"."

lulz at the butthurt emo kid

QQ moar

[Tenshi Vielle]

Prok's just whining because she didn't get to write this article first.

[Lillie Guildenstern]

I don't get the point of building traffic with bots - does anyone actually use the traffic numbers for anything other than deciding which sims to stay AWAY from??

[Prokofy Neva]

Why would I want to write this article first? It's lame. Besides, I wrote this article already long ago for the Herald:

http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2006/12/campbots_draini.html

And I could probably find another 3-4 links to the same story -- how many times can it be written for the Herald?!

[Obscure Doodad]

Re: traffic. The bots noted by SLH in the article were described as being in Linden water. There is no value to building traffic numbers in Linden water. Some other purpose is in play.

[griefer]

after orbiting 3 of them i looked at the profile of one of them. it said it was the bank avatar of some linden/dollar exchange.

[Alyx Stoklitsky]

I love how Prokofy rants and raves about how much she hates the the 'teki wiki' types, whilst failing to realise the whole metaverse was programmed by them.

[Angel]

Why was this split into 3?

[You are all Duracell Batteries in the Matrix]

The reason bots live in unoccupied void sims is because LL uses those sims servers to store data in the asset server and other database systems. For this reason, a landbot can access the land database system faster sitting in an unoccupied void sim, and thus beat others to the punch in finding deals on land....

[LIGHTS, then camera and then action. In that order please]

Going utterly completely off topic here.

I have a great idea for a usefull article:

How To Make SL Snapshots Better Good

As is demonstrated by Pixeleen here, who no doubt has several years of experience with Second Life, and is a good reporter, and has been working for the Herald a while now,
it is very hard to see anything in a photograph if you don't use proper lighting.

The first image in this article, and especially the fourth one, could have been left out completely. Or be replaced with just a completely black image. people woulndt see the difference...

I'm not even an SL photographer, let alone know all to well how to use a camera in RL, but I do know one thing: Without light, the picture gets dark and you wont see shit.

So, please, for the good of the Herald reporters with their years of experience, the fashionistas who also regularly post pics here that need photoshopping to be able to see what is in the pic at all, please let a GOOD, and I repeat, GOOD SL photograper teach everyone how to make proper, not all black but the menu text snapshots in SL.

We have local lighting nowadays, use it please.

This was a public service announcement by your local critic.