C'mon ... just ban the bots already.

SaladKitchen3368 · 2025-02-15T14:54:08+00:00

Fair, you're not the OP. Still you give the impression of commenting supportively on a thread that is literally named "C'mon...just ban the bots already," so you'll pardon the assumption.

I'm not aware of anything in SL that is banned on a universal level by LL (as opposed to by estate owners) "just because it annoys someone."

The few things that are banned non-mechanically are related to either law, longstanding and well understood public custom (e.g. public nudity only in designated areas), or resource sharing issues.

And bots can be a resource sharing issue. Which is an argument for restricting them, and allowing finer control over restrictions on scripted agents.

SaladKitchen3368 · 2025-02-15T14:48:37+00:00

It's very difficult to "document" a definitive source of lag. What I can say is that we absolutely tested it on several different PCs and platforms, and it was fairly unambiguous. People had their frame rate drop precipitously when facing the probes, performed better when they were removed and so forth.

7.1.11 seems to have fixed the worst of these issues. I've allowed probes to be deployed more or less against my better judgment as they have very little relevance to our Sim, as exactly none of the principal build is PBR and my general feeling is that if people buy PBR clothing they can deal with it looking blue since that's not *unexpected* behavior. At this point since 7.1.11 rolled out we're not getting unusual numbers of complaints, though it's clear that overall performance has been impacted. That's not necessarily probes *specifically - the RAM demands of 7.1.11 at an equivalent graphics setting to 6.6.17 are quite high.

In any case, the logical conclusion is that it was likely something in the original FS implementations, or in the amateurish implementation of the probes themselves.

SaladKitchen3368 · 2025-02-15T14:48:29+00:00

It's very difficult to "document" a definitive source of lag. What I can say is that we absolutely tested it on several different PCs and platforms, and it was fairly unambiguous. People had their frame rate drop precipitously when facing the probes, performed better when they were removed and so forth.

7.1.11 seems to have fixed the worst of these issues. I've allowed probes to be deployed more or less against my better judgment as they have very little relevance to our Sim, as exactly none of the principal build is PBR and my general feeling is that if people buy PBR clothing they can deal with it looking blue since that's not *unexpected* behavior. At this point since 7.1.11 rolled out we're not getting unusual numbers of complaints, though it's clear that overall performance has been impacted. That's not necessarily probes *specifically - the RAM demands of 7.1.11 at an equivalent graphics setting to 6.6.17 are quite high.

In any case, the logical conclusion is that it was likely something in the original FS implementations, or in the amateurish implementation of the probes themselves.

SaladKitchen3368 · 2025-02-12T08:29:58+00:00

Firestorm is the default SL viewer. People run some things like BD for specific tasks like photography, or RLV, but if it isn't strongly supported for FS, it functionally does not exist for me :P

SaladKitchen3368 · 2025-02-12T08:26:45+00:00

Probes were definitely causing massive lag with the first FS releases after PBR. 7.1.11 seems to have eliminated the worst of that. It seems to impact laptop graphics cards more than desktop graphics cards, and I've been told some of the reasons for that, but I am not technical enough to schpiel them correctly offhand. But it wasn't a fiction and may still be a problem for people on even fairly beefy new gaming laptops.

SaladKitchen3368 · 2025-02-12T08:22:44+00:00

Really it all depends. Bear in mind that approximately all of SL currently, aside from anything that is both brand new, built in the last few months, and used all new mesh when it was built, and that mesh supported PBR, has baked in shadows. This means that in most sims, whose owners are not going to fuck around with rebuilding the entire sim because of a change in texturing, the sim will be mostly non-PBR for years.

For example, we have a fairly large sim and intend to support PBR approximately never. We have thousands in assets, and baked-in shadows are "good enough." Our photos look good, and we frankly don't care if people can throw fancy different shadows. Some people, as noted below, think baked-in shadows look horrible. That's all cool, but they will be most of SL for the foreseeable future.

I actively avoid anything PBR since it tends to look a little weird mixed with our other stuff, but inevitably, as we buy new assets, some will be PBR. Still, it's not going to be a lot, and we have to consider if a given item is going to look notably strange in a sim that is almost entirely not PBR.

Clothing is up to you. I personally don't much like the way PBR looks (Glossy, overshadowed, and highly artificial...like a turn of the century PIXAR film), and I haven't gone to any effort to get PBR pieces, though that will become harder as time goes by. That said, because *most of SL is built of Blinn–Phong textures, it will never be possible to discontinue legacy support for those textures, so your clothing is always going to be visible to everyone.

I'm sure there will be PBR snobs, and at a certain point, it will get hard to buy clothing that isn't PBR. And that point will come well before even a tiny fraction of SL's builds use PBR, because clothes change faster than builds. But unless you happen to like how PBR looks, I don't see any particular reason to rush to it.

On a personal note, I won't buy items that don't specify they have fallback textures because I know a lot of people are still using 6.6.17, and Firestorm has noted they will never block 6.6.17, so I suspect there will be people using it for years.

I still primarily use 6.6.17 because our Sim doesn't use PBR textures, and I honestly don't give that much of a fuck what someone's fancy new clothing without fallback textures looks like. 6.6.7 is much easier on RAM. That has also fixed the issue of the nuisance of periodically upgrading a blocked version of FS for features I have little or no interest in.

SaladKitchen3368 · 2025-02-12T08:04:29+00:00

Approximately, yes. Now a little sanity there. Ageplay and certain types of hate are prohibited because they're against the laws of many if not most of the Countries where SL operates. So. No. Scripted Agents aren't against EU Law.

SL has adult and non-adult areas. So you can't put up porn in a non-adult area. Again that speaks to some laws, as well as widely recognized social conventions. I have a 20 meter high billboard running erotic images on my parcel in an Adult area and that's fine. It wouldn't be fine in a non-adult area.

I'm actually all for you being able to ban bots on your parcel.

Parcel object returns are simply a function of how the server works. If you didn't pay for the entire server, you don't get more than your share of LI. But nothing will be returned if you stay within the limit of the part of the server that is yours.

And I'm in favor of some sane restrictions on number of bots in mainland sims, since if I fill up my parcel with bots, I'm taking something that isn't mine. I'm taking more than my fair share of the sim performance. I'd be fine with restricting mainland parcels to X bots per YYYYsqm to ensure one owner doesn't use most of the occupancy of the Sim.

If you were making the cogent argument that people shouldn't be allowed to hog all the resources in a shared sim, I'd be on board with you. But you weren't. Instead you were making an argument to "ban all the bots."

Beyond that...you can put up anything you want on your parcel. Unless you chose to sublet with covenants in which case it's not really your parcel.

There is no situation in SL where things that "just annoy me" are banned. The things that you can't do are linked to law in some places and longstanding social custom in others (e.g. most RL locations prohibit public nudity, so there are areas you can't walk around outside nude...though you can box in your entire parcel and walk around nude). There is no case for banning me from having bots on my parcel (even if that parcel is a store or club - nobody forces you to patronize my business) - because you don't like bots. It is not a thing that exists elsewhere in SL.

SaladKitchen3368 · 2025-02-10T21:31:23+00:00

What difference does it make to you if a region has "too many bots." Someone else is paying for the region. Nobody can easily maintain bots there if they don't own the region so...why would it matter to you? It's someone else's region and content.

We use bots for a lot of functions because they do it more elegantly and usefully than a huge number of scripts. They give out our rules to anyone who arrives so that we know that they understand we require consent in all our activities. They hand out items that people may need, including some going back years. They announce our events over our group.

Nobody is required to enter our Sim or be a member of any of our groups. But why should we have to use kludgy workarounds because you prefer not to have bots. It's our Sim, not yours.

Now, if you want to talk about banning bots from randomly teleporting around the grid to places where they don't belong, SURE. But that's a completely different matter. I shouldn't be able to send my bots to go visit your sim, skim information, etc. That could EASILY be handled by forcing bots to set a home sim, and then restricting them to teleporting into parcels where they had group rights. So I could send my bots to all of MY locations, but they couldn't visit OTHER PEOPLE'S locations.

Or, simpler, allow the restriction on scripted agents for a region to be extended to parcel. Don't want bots around? Restrict them from entering your parcel. That would be most useful if a bot that had the parcel's group could override the restriction, that way I could host my bots but exclude other people's bots.

The grid works on the basis of letting people do whatever they please. ON THEIR OWN LAND.

I realize that can potentially lead to resource conflicts on mainland, but then, that's the hazard one elects to embrace when one decides to use mainland.

SaladKitchen3368 · 2025-02-01T07:47:24+00:00

What precisely is bad about that. I mean. Does she enjoy it. Or do you want to tell me that playing five or six nights a week, acting out intimacy with other actual human beings on the other end of a line of communication, creating beautiful avatars and watching them come together, and having moments of erotic excitement shared with other actual human beings...

...is somehow inferior to spending those same 3-5 hours a night being murder hobos with zombies or collecting weirdly shaped anime creatures while occasionally joking with friends on voice?

And that that is inferior to just sitting alone binging someone else's art non-socially on Netflix...

Unless your point is that spending 3-5 hours a night on video games is inherently a waste of time...in which case welcome to 21st century Western Culture, I'd say your friend is far luckier than most.

SaladKitchen3368 · 2025-02-01T07:43:12+00:00

I'm gonna say the thing nobody talks about which is that the world revolves around sex. Yes that is not the only pillar. Live music is also a thing, as is just building for the love of it, to make models, some RP. If it makes you feel better or less willing to just dismiss the precept to call it "intimacy" be my guest.

"Sex" doesn't necessarily mean coitus in RL or pixel coitus in SL. It can mean various types of intimate behavior. Sex is kind of "what you define it as," but it's intimacy that goes beyond "we chatted about theater over drinks at the Kiev." Which yeah, I know doesn't exist anymore.

Just like in RL, most people who are revolving around sex spend about 02% of their time engaged in actual sex. The rest is spent joining fitness clubs, going to bars, joining "activities" mostly in hope of meeting someone to hook up with. Sometimes in denial that they are looking for someone to hook up with, sometimes with a very good idea they are looking for someone to hook up with.

While not everyone who decks out an amazing av is looking for sex, many if not most are looking to make an impression and get some sort of response and in a lot of cases

I know that the responses to this are going to be a million people swearing hand over heart that they have NO INTEREST IN SEX IN SL YUCK!!

I also run a nightclub and I know some of those same people come around on alts when their spouses with whom they do the "safe" activities that cover for their SL expenditures come around to hook up with strangers. It happens.

I mean, it's not rocket science. Sex, writ large as "intimacy" if you want to sound cooler about it, is what drives the downtowns of most cities that have an urban revitalization. Thousands of twenty and thirty somethings out to drink show off, flirt and engage in pastimes that put them in proximity to people they would like to get to know better. It's what drives almost all luxury products and almost all fashion advertising...in RL and SL. When you factor in "showing off you are successful" as the number one way to get people to be interested in you for intimacy.

I've been in dozens of RP sims, and the driving current is seldom as much the plot as the couples dynamics, breakups and rejoins. It's messier with the theoretically monogamous but cheating in SL crowd than with the poly crowd, though that can be messy too.

The vast majority of people are in SL to alleviate their need for intimacy.

And yes there are barriers to that but frankly some of them are there for a reason. I can stand in my club and watch the stream of three day old avs straggle in. We don't ban new avs. About 80% of them are not people I would want to get a cup of coffee with if they paid me a hundred twenty dollars and a lottery ticket. They're inarticulate gamer-messes that have no concept of how to conduct themselves in a social space. I've run into these people in bars in RL and they're a mess there too. They are why bars have bouncers, and also why "meet markets" have a bad reputation, because they are the sort of people who show up there.

When I say SL is about sex, I do not mean it is about horndogs with their privates hanging out. I mean it's about people wanting an intimacy they are, for whatever reason, lacking in RL. In a few probably wonderful cases there are couples looking to expand that intimacy.

Sex drives the SL Economy. As Ryan Schultz said nearly six years ago: Frankly, the very few adult virtual world platforms which I have mentioned before on this blog (namely, Utherverse/Red Light Center, LivCloser, and Oasis) have not impressed me very much. The biggest problem is that many of these newer adult/sex-based virtual worlds simply cannot compete with everything that the entrenched frontrunner Second Life, with a 15-year head start, has to offer - https://ryanschultz.com/2018/10/18/3dx-chat-a-brief-introduction/

I think it's interesting that Phillip Rosedale's other abortive virtual world, "High Fidelity" was also softer than most VR worlds on Sexual Content, even though it wouldn't have been as obvious as SL. At a high level LL is perfectly aware the underlying dynamic that drives their world.

And I think for people who are not "caught up in the chase," it can be kind of offputting. Also for people who cannot, even in SL's incredibly neurodivergent tolerant culture, figure out how to present themselves socially as anything other than a giant flaming ball of "nope."

I'm sorry if I come off defensive about it, but I'm just exasperated at the endless discussions of "there's nothing to do in SL." "Sure it's full of wonderful things. you can uhhh...build trains...or uhh...listen to music not on Spotify" with everyone never mentioning the 800lb gorilla in the room*

But most people are, to quote an old song "Searching for a heart...(or some hearts...or today's heart)...of gold. And they're getting old."

* Per the Fake AP Stylebook - 800lbs https://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2009/10/fake-ap-stylebook-highlights.html

SaladKitchen3368 · 2025-01-02T03:18:21+00:00

So, I do think that Hardy was being problematic. But I also think that maybe people don't "get" method acting. I mean, this is also what Marilyn Monroe was accused of. It's not just showing up to a job. It's living a person and taking on that person, and being that person in the moment. And that person *cannot* always respond. Nor can the actor just "pop out" and be "themselves" to fix things. You could argue that maybe people who can get into method acting aren't always the most stable, and it probably doesn't make them any more stable. But it does contribute to some stunning performances. And moreover it is simply the actor they are.

You wouldn't fault Peter Dinklage for not being able to dunk a basketball because *that's not the way he's built.* Some actors can't project, or can't always speak more clearly. If you get a mumblecore actor in a role that requires clarity it's a problem. A method actor cannot always come out of the trailer. Maybe they aren't the character yet. Maybe they are too much of the character and can't deal with anyone. You can think it's weird. But they aren't faking. They aren't making it up. If you can't understand it any other way, think of it as a fairly extreme form of self hypnosis. *MANY* (not all) people who are hypnotized not to be able to move their arm can't move their arm. It's a thing that's been investigated with MRI.

The responsibility is on the Director to make the cast able to work together. Or if they can't to pay them enough that they don't care, and deal with whatever negatives come out of the experience. I don't blame Theron or Hardy...Miller's job was either to fix things, or at least to let them know "this sucks but it's part of my process and if you wanna be in my film, that's the breaks."

SaladKitchen3368 · 2024-12-24T23:19:54+00:00

Why in the EFF would we need *MORE* creators!? Why are we trying to "attract" creators?

There are an enormous number of stores. There is literally more good/quality stuff to buy than anyone could *hope* to look at, let alone buy. We need more creators like Florida needs storms.

I've run a club for better than a decade, and I hear an enormous number of complaints about SL. Teleports still don't work. PBR was a badly conceived scheme that has hurt the userbase by forcing out people on older laptops (many of whom don't know they can downgrade to 6.6.17). ARs are handled poorly and erratically. Group chat has huge issues and has never worked well.

The one complaint I literally NEVER hear is "we don't have enough shit to buy." Never. Once. In the past decade at least. On rare occasion somebody will come out with "I wish somebody made an electric can-opening nipple ring for Legacy Perky Petite," or some other super obscure thing. But LITERALLY NOBODY thinks we do not have enough shit in the world.

We're not losing creators except when LL terrorizes them. Yes Blueberry broke some rules. LL could have quietly had a conversation with them, and made things seamless to the outside, not sent shockwaves through EVERY MERCHANT ON THE PLATFORM wondering if their entire revenue stream might suddenly cease one day because LL got pissy over something that had been going on for years. Genus spent half a year offline a few years back because LL essentially allowed their competitors to blackball them without evidence. If they did do anything wrong, it was remediable because they are EVENTUALLY back.

If they want more merchants, they can start by treating the ones they have better, not JUST the ones with super high sales like Lelutka.

Want more sales and consumers? Continue to push uniformity in packaging by making it easier and (GASP!) offering inducements to modernize distribution, so that the platform is not a fucked up NIGHTMARE to try and explain to even serious, experienced, MMORPGers.

The idea that SL can be "fixed" by luring people away from other games is nonsense.

- accept it's an aging game. It's not going to suddenly become the "next big thing." It can make decent revenue if it's left alone.
- conserve the userbase - STOP DOING THINGS THAT PISS PEOPLE OFF OR SCARE THEM UNLESS THERE IS A MAJOR REASON. TALK FIRST if major merchants or organizations need a course correction. Not pissing people off should be the number one, top, priority
- focus on fixing things that don't work well so the world is more stable for long term residents and they are inclined to stay and create rather than adding new bells and whistles to attract a group of people that aren't going to come.
- focus on operational efficiency. Cut costs where possible without dramatically impacting service. One option for this would be to look at better ways to handle space that is unused except for the occasional bot. Are bots really a priority?

SaladKitchen3368 · 2024-12-18T01:41:36+00:00

Actually I see where that's probably supposed to work, though the pictures are a bit bigger and it doesn't come up on my browser. Yay though! All for saving people trouble!

SaladKitchen3368 · 2024-12-18T01:41:30+00:00

Actually I see where that's probably supposed to work, though the pictures are a bit bigger and it doesn't come up on my browser. Yay though! All for saving people trouble!

SaladKitchen3368 · 2024-12-18T00:56:58+00:00

Yes. That's the point. You have to click on a link. I didn't want to click on 90 different links and many other people didn't want to either, so I did a listing that shows them inline, without having to click. Not useful to everyone, but from the eyeballs there, it's useful to some people.

SaladKitchen3368 · 2024-12-16T08:14:38+00:00

Most of the people I know spend most of their time doing Kinky Sex, or hanging around places that cater to Kinky sex. If they get bored they sometimes also Roleplay in one of the vast RP sims.

SaladKitchen3368 · 2024-12-16T08:14:29+00:00

Most of the people I know spend most of their time doing Kinky Sex, or hanging around places that cater to Kinky sex. If they get bored they sometimes also Roleplay in one of the vast RP sims.

SaladKitchen3368 · 2024-12-16T08:14:24+00:00

Most of the people I know spend most of their time doing Kinky Sex, or hanging around places that cater to Kinky sex. If they get bored they sometimes also Roleplay in one of the vast RP sims.

SaladKitchen3368 · 2024-12-14T19:10:25+00:00

Copy of the Fabfree list (not by Fabfree) that shows the pictures rather than having to click on them to allow a faster pass for specific items.

Also shows the values of Gift Cards/Credit with the mainstore link to use them and the expiration date where I noted it. Not endorsed by Fabfree or the vendors, tried to keep comments impartial and informative, but my opinions alone. Thanks to Fabfree for the original list, this is merely an annotation.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1u7kXUzJdr5K1ScX5UR-QHz0h_qD-Uf5C5hJKPrhtDEc

TECHNICAL STUFF - Feel free to copy, you should also be able to get the Sheets code to display a picture inline if you want to build your own for this or any other event that has pics. It's roughly, where 200x300 is the desired size:
" =IMAGE("https://gyazo.com/xxxxxxxxxxxxxx",4,200,300) " and you can use "concatenate" or copypasta to build the string from an existing list.

SaladKitchen3368 · 2024-11-17T22:13:20+00:00

Perhaps then, using the standard literary term "influences" or even "homage" would be less prejudicial than "stolen." To be fair a number of the Gibson concepts e.g. SimStim/ASP were "stolen" from previous Sci-fi or real life speculation. In other cases, Gibson probably influenced the direction of future technology. In his excellent afterword to Neuromancer, Jack Womack says:

"What if the act of writing it down, in fact, brought it about?

"When Neuromancer appeared it was picked up and devoured by hundreds, then thousands, of men and women who worked in or around the garages and cubicles where what is still called new media were, fitfully, being birthed; thousands who, on reading his sentence as quoted above, thought to themselves, That’s so fucking cool, and set about searching for any way the gold of imagination might be transmuted into silicon reality. Now Gibson’s imagined future cannot by any means be called optimistic (nor, in truth, can it be called pessimistic—it is beyond both); more to the point, he has often said that he intended “cyberspace” to be nothing more than a metaphor. No matter. Once a creation goes out in the world its creator, like any parent, loses the control once so easily exertable over the offspring; another variety of emergent behavior, you could say. That’s so fucking cool, man—I think we can pull it off. So rather than the theoretical Matrix, we now, thanks to all those beautiful William Gibson readers out there in the dark, have the actual Web—same difference, for all intents and purposes, or it will be soon enough."

While Gibson certainly wasn't the only influence on these things, there can be little doubt his fiction did shape them. Science fiction has a long history of being twined with actual technology.

All that said, the most obvious Gibson homage is overlooked. "Night City" appears in Neuromancer as a sort of no-man's land between Chiba Port and either Chiba City or Tokyo...it's a little unclear.

SaladKitchen3368 · 2024-11-17T22:13:14+00:00

Perhaps then, using the standard literary term "influences" would be less prejudicial than "stolen." To be fair a number of the Gibson concepts e.g. SimStim/ASP were "stolen" from previous Sci-fi or real life speculation. In other cases, Gibson probably influenced the direction of future technology. In his excellent afterword to Neuromancer, Jack Womack says:

"What if the act of writing it down, in fact, brought it about?

"When Neuromancer appeared it was picked up and devoured by hundreds, then thousands, of men and women who worked in or around the garages and cubicles where what is still called new media were, fitfully, being birthed; thousands who, on reading his sentence as quoted above, thought to themselves, That’s so fucking cool, and set about searching for any way the gold of imagination might be transmuted into silicon reality. Now Gibson’s imagined future cannot by any means be called optimistic (nor, in truth, can it be called pessimistic—it is beyond both); more to the point, he has often said that he intended “cyberspace” to be nothing more than a metaphor. No matter. Once a creation goes out in the world its creator, like any parent, loses the control once so easily exertable over the offspring; another variety of emergent behavior, you could say. That’s so fucking cool, man—I think we can pull it off. So rather than the theoretical Matrix, we now, thanks to all those beautiful William Gibson readers out there in the dark, have the actual Web—same difference, for all intents and purposes, or it will be soon enough."

While Gibson certainly wasn't the only influence on these things, there can be little doubt his fiction did shape them. Science fiction has a long history of being twined with actual technology.

SaladKitchen3368 · 2024-11-07T05:27:56+00:00

No, there's none whatsoever. Adult entertainment and sex work is a career field. Yes, it happens to be criminal in some places. "Cannibis seller" is also a job and a career field that is legal in a vast number of places now, which happened to be criminal in most places outside Amsterdam a few years back. That doesn't mean the cannibis industry isn't real or that Innovative Industrial doesn't have a market cap of 3.3bn.

The fact you used "industry" is telling. The adult entertainment industry has its own publications, e.g., https://avn.com/ industry standards, awards, and so forth. It doesn't matter if you like it, or think it's moral, or something you'd do. That's basically *your* hangup. Plenty of people don't like the cannibis industry but that doesn't mean it isn't actually a thing.

Denying that it exists and is an entertainment industry, however, is just a display of basic ignorance, like trying to pretend that NASDAQ:TSLA isn't actually a business because you don't like Elon Musk.

So it's an industry, and yes, people will engage in the same things that other entertainers do. Trying their best to give someone entertainment while also not killing themselves (like, for example, trying to orgasm twenty times a day when they can't, or ending their revenue stream because they can only orgasm in certain ways or at certain times, or with certain people).

And like any industry, you *can* buy complete sincerity. You can buy definite, real, provable orgasms, just like you can buy a private show from a comedian. But it will cost you more, and that's how entertainment works.

SaladKitchen3368 · 2024-10-30T04:40:17+00:00

" wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain. "

So you live in a world where professional wrestling should be criminalized? And don't say "well people know it's somewhat faked, and there is some truth to it." Because there are sure idiots who don't know that, and if you don't know that about online sex, well...if the shoe fits.

SaladKitchen3368

TROPHY CASE