Preparing the Document, I Stopped...

The parameters of the petition keep changing.  Interestingly, while anyone who has tried to reason with the one responsible for the scourgemobiles is given a response laden with fictional statistics, the number of these things out on the road has definitely gone down.  Maybe somewhere in that brain a conscience is stirring. They're still an issue and continue to violate SL's usage terms on many levels.

As feared, a precedence has been set. While scourgemobiles have decreased, a new problem has arisen: scourgetrolleys.  Yes, you heard right.

Bring up an inworld or slurl.com map of Heterocera. Doesn't matter which region as long as it has SLRR rail in it (try Anilis).  You can see them.  Red and yellow rectangles on the tracks, sometimes several in a region.  Think of it: all these on the map at the same time in a snapshot of the continent.  These trolleys are infesting the rails like roaches.

You have to really wonder what's wrong  with these people.  Why do they think littering public land is a good thing?  Do they actually believe they provide some sort of service?  Have any of these people taken into consideration the people who reside along these routes who don't want these passing them constantly? Spam is spam.

 Actually, I'd like to know where things went wrong with the SLRR project.

Originally it was not just about completing the guide rails but also what standard of scripting would be used by the moles when they rolled out the new trains.  They would ride sporadically and stop at stations for a few seconds.  They'd be sparse enough so rail fans could ride their engines on the tracks as well. 

What we have are no Linden trains at all.  Maybe it was agreed with a smidgen of rail enthusiasts during some LDPW brown bag meeting to do away with a proprietary line and give the residents full reign over the rails.  I don't know; they were held while I was at work.  The result though - once again - is that some obsessed nutjob is unable to tell Linden and personal property from eachother and acts to singlehandedly dominate protected land.

You might say: "Well at least their vehicles are phantom." This certainly becomes a learning curve for anyone who applies practice over theory.  There's great potential for a freeze or crash when several of these pass you in close succession.  Happened to me. And nuff said about the overall frivolous drain in region resources and contribution to latency, not just in one region but throughout the continent.

Add to that their blocking your view.  Riding other vehicles along the rails - which residents have every right to do - you run into difficulties like trying to avoid gaping banlines or falling off trestles and bridges.

Remember that all occupied vehicles have right of way access over any unofficial vehicles on Mainland road and rail at all times.  A scripted vehicle never takes precedence over a real person.  No one can declare themselves in absentia just because their scripts are running.  The only exceptions are sanctioned projects such as GSLR Ferry and Railroad, Blake Sea & Nautilus City Ferry services along with Second Life's own trolleys and monorails in their themed neighborhoods. 

So... Two petitions or one?

Scourge & Scourge Again

If I understand a prominent Linden, the following among many other offenses is perfectly okay:

1. Unfair use of region resources

2. Adfarming (what else would you call dozens of scripted objects on Linden land which simultaneously solicit a product?)

3. Pushing (vehicles which shove you if they don't just drag you under, whether you're in a vehicle yourself or not. I've been pushed into banlines or crashed because of these things)

4. Encroachment (several rezzers target protected parcels. A taxi stand is sitting right on a Rezz Zone*)

5. Weapons use on protected property (the Tank will shoot missiles at you if you click on it)

6. Object littering (pileups on private and protected property, stranded in waterways...)

7. Excessively scripted objects (I dunno - are a dozen script files in a garbage truck considered excessive?)

This is in addition to their dominating protected roads so no one else can use them, not omitting obvious areas on their routes such as unpaved roads, ramps leading into water, Dammastock's glen and so on.

*ONE rezzer was removed. This resided in Samoa, a hop skip n jump from Clarksburg, where a prim platform & taxi cab were positioned on a public LDPW rezz zone, right up against a doorway to Ross Infohub.

Looking at the JIRA history, it seems the Lindens have given this person a great deal of attention to accommodate her project. Blatantly talking about unmanned vehicles not properly dominating roads and being improperly returned for being objects. Well, they ARE. 

In the process of carefully preparing the petition text. Tonight expect a tweet and new Blog post.

And Now a Few Words About Banlines

For those who wandered here from elsewhere, allow me to explain what banlines are.  They're an illusory form of security in Second Life.  A designated perimeter can be set to block specific people, everyone, everyone except friends, everyone except members of a group, everyone except those on a guest list, permit only those who pay a fee, and so on.  When this is set, a kind of forcefield is not only set along that perimeter but above as well. Usually 88 meters up from the ground.

The two most popular scenarios people set public banlines are as follows:

1) Someone is harassing the landowner and said landowner either doesn't not know how to block the offending avatar or there have been alts used to get past a specified ban, and

2) Residents are having sillysex and don't want anyone barging in on them.

This doesn't prevent anyone from looking in though.  As my friend Peter once said, banlines simply "keep people out" with regard to an avatar's physical access.

Aesthetically, they can be an issue.  They appear from within 1 or 2 meters away, which means they are not obvious from a distance so they are not an eyesore to most, but having a banliner for a neighbor can be a problem as the alpha stripe wall appears along your property and through other alpha textures such as your windows, trees, and fencing.  Recent viewers have allowed homeowners to hide banlines so that paranoid neighbors are no longer a factor when selecting a place to settle.  It also helps to have a property large enough that you're seldom at a border.

This leaves vehicles.  When an avatar walks or flies into banlines they bounce harmlessly off.  Riding into them means that ride is over. 

 From an explorer's perspective, setting up banlines against a route may be seen as a form of griefing. Given their detrimental effect on the SL user experience, it's a shame either regulations weren't put into effect for Mainland parcels from the start or the technology allowed for vehicles to harmlessly bounce off banlines the same way avatars do. They've already changed the result on some sim servers: instead of autoreturning the vehicle and having one fall to the ground, the vehicle is most often caught on banlines like a web. You now have to take back your vehicle.  I'm sure in most circumstances you can do that, but if you've gotten snagged at an angle which causes you to fall off when you disengage, you might not have had the foresight to prepare and hover rather than plummet and lose sight of the vehicle.

 It's precarious traveling on the northern Sansara route.  Properties and roadside intermingle and one gets snagged by banlines while on the road.  I can see why there is now a protected buffer on newer routes (and even that is not enough with some sim crossings), But how about the old ones?  Either offer more rez zones or ask land owners to split off strategic parts of their properties and set bordering portions without banlines, creating a buffer which allows scripts so people can ride by.  Or use one of those security orbs since no one riding wants to stick around when they fly over or waver through a snippet of property while stabilizing their handling after a region crossing.  Vehicle users aren't interested in your place and what you do inside your homes anyway.  Good luck trying to enforce that though.

Time Out For Fun

I wasn't feeling very holidayish this year until I came across Divvivity in my hoverboard travels on Snow Day. Suddenly I remembered that I had a party just about every other week when I had the diner in Turtle Dove last year.  What happened? 

Well, it's time to make up for things with a Party!

The annual East Coast Countdown will be held this year at the Starship Diner in Hydrangea from 8:30pm SLT on New Year's Eve.  GoSpeed Racer is tentatively scheduled to spin the tunes (when plans are firmed, this part of the post will be edited) as we ring in the new year in Times Square.  A URL to some webcam will be provided for offgrid viewing while yours truly enjoys a local tradition of cable channel New York 1 covering the event without interference from 11:55est onward.

I got decorations & food for the event, and I'll be dusting off the bunny ball. Free hats will be available as well.

The Dalek will not be present unless someone insists on a snowball fight.

I plan to update the video in time for the party to possibly a classic cartoon.  Today is the last day you can catch the stars of Doctor Who sing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" by clicking the mural of a cheeseburger deluxe.

Better realign my matrix for this event.

Friends and o-matic subscribers will get an invite; I'll also post the SLURL on Twitter when we start.

Update Scourgemobiles & Test Drive

Three more rezzers, one of them a "bus stop," were found in Heterocera since last writing.  I've updated the list I keep inworld.

Last weekend I sent Snurky to go for an ex-Scourge-sion. hahaha

It was interesting. Not a minute or two into the ride it offered to sell the car, claiming the vehicle was free and the price was for the automated script.  Even if that's the case, using these creators' builds to solicit scripts when at least one of them noticeably left over exploitation of their creations is a bit low.  The ride itself was okay for the first minute as a novelty concept, but the lumbering around got tedious very quickly. These vehicles handle the roads like someone drunk feeling their way in the dark at night to get to the bathroom.

I had an odd visit from a group with dramatic notions of non-involvement.  I neither came to them nor asked for help from any transportation group of residents.  Wouldn't non-involvement suggest that the best course of action would be silent observation from a safe distance?  If they cannot help as friends and individuals then that's that. It's very simple.  At any rate, my position concerns the quality of residents' lives being compromised by the actions of one selfish person's avatars.  Any limitations imposed - and there will have to be to do right by Mainland's denizens - will affect their group and similar ones.  I originally took them to be enthusiasts looking to see the routes built so they could enjoy riding on them with glorious constructs; turns out they have several automated projects among their members.

I'm calling the compulsion to schedule personal, unmanned vehicles on protected roads and rail Skimbleshanks' Syndrome.  That's what they have.  They missed the point of having routes to allow them to enjoy the ride and explore.  Sort of like losing one's soul in a way. I still maintain that if you want to run your own transportation service, do it on your own property like many, far more talented residents have.

This would be a separate behavior from what I'm trying to put a stop to.  The person in question just litters the routes, and enough of us have had our fill of them.  Now all we need is Linden Intervention.

The Scourge Continues

So during my break, instead of working on the comic and some new T-shirt designs for the gallery, I went on a mission to track as many Rezzers I could find on Mainland responsible for the Scourgemobiles.  It's very possible that i've missed some in Sansara for the reasons brought up last post. 

I continue to be in awe of what residents have created.  It's really quite nice, from ambitious urban downtown districts on Corsica to lovely seaside towns on Nautlius.  Gaeta along Route 8 consists predominantly of marinas and tropical resorts: Tiki and fishbait; you can smell the seawater.  The inland routes are like driving through a New England Colonial town.

And then the Scourgemobiles - a representation of everything wrong in our society - mar these landscapes.

It's a sin.  It truly is. 

There's even more going on: the use of one Arcadia Asylum's vehicles for this among other builders.  Way more than one fan of AA's expressed that she would not be happy knowing her builds were used to disrupt the Second Life experiences so many at the whim of one person.

In my travels I've met more supporters and made a couple more friends. If anything good comes from all this, I've already got the icing on the cake.

I haven't ridden those things personally, but from what I've heard maybe I should.

There are two bits I've been told about them: first that they nag for money whenever you unsit from one.  Asking for a tip: it is what it is. Either you put a jar in the prefab station or you stop touting it as a free ride.  The other is that if you ride in one long enough, it offers the vehicle for sale - more soliciting.  They're worse than anyone thought: they're adfarms in motion, solocitation scripts dominating protected land, shoving residents out of their way.

Remember my recent post about Linden Labs having to set rules and make concessions?  Remember when new ones are set for automated and unmanned vehicles, and that it won't have been the fault of Linden Labs, Philip, Jack, Blondin, or even the new CEO Rod.  The changes and restrictions were the result of one resident's actions.

The Road Less Hoverboarded

  As mentioned previously here and/or on Twitter, I've taken to going to places in Second Life either via TARDIS or hoverboard over teleporting or by Stargate. The folks at New London have given me my own TARDIS landing spot on a moon just a ways from a Judoon ship.  I've mastered three different routes from The Starship Diner to TMA Nessus and the railyards of Gluphasia.  I've easily navigated from Purple in Sansara across the water to Heterocera up the Atoll coast to Starship Diner.

What fascinates me the most is the roadside content.  Think of it: about two-and a half years ago most of Mainland was cluttered with cheesy porn and adfarms along bare roadbeds.  Now the porn is gone, the adfarms are 90% clear, and the roads paved.  In fact it seems properties along these roads live up to what the Moles have put down.  There is true inspiration at work.

While I've made the excursion from Cartoon World in Bay City to Abbotts Aerodrome, it's a dodgy route which involves skirting the Ahern Welcome Area to avoid the lag and 4-way region crossing (especially since once you crash, the ride is over; there are no rezzing zones nearby) and traversing terrain there's the risk of hitting a banline.

I've even attempted from Heterocera to Bay City, a very difficult and irritating route by virtue of poor terraforming and intermittent patches of road.  Even went from Andrew Linden's office hour location in Denby to Abbotts, an equally unpleasant feat with the added obstacle of a full help island region bordered by banlined parcels.

Sansara needs a major replanning.  No access to key areas from roads - when there IS a road - except between the Bay City- Nova Albion - Suburbs sector (and guess what? Two of those communities are not recognized by LL as part of Sansara).  You can see they plopped down some regions, added more regions, still more, pieces added here, some snowy ones there, some beach terrain in the corner...

There's no budget for it nor staff.  It seems to me many people who once owned estates - when they stay in SL - could be embracing large chunks of Mainland more and more; the dollar auctions are empty.

We're certainly seeing less 512's on Mainland.  Homesteads are bringing people into the Noob Continent as a first step (when inhabitants aren't Oldbies or estate owners).  They break out from there in search of open spaces and roomy, configurable land.  It could be why roadside lands more and more have that fresh look to them.  Michael Linden has indicated that he and the Moles have been assigned to add more land to the N C so there's certainly fresh meat for a new generation of property owners to set the look.