SL Grid Hobbled Twice in a Day
It’s hardly news anymore when self-replicating objects hobble the operation of the virtual world of Second Life, even when it happens twice in the same day. That’s a bit of a shame, as the problem is a serious one, and Linden Lab seems to be doing little toward a more lasting fix than simply cleaning up each problem as it arises. That’s a solution that simply won’t scale as the world grows bigger. Even if the number of griefers remains the same in proportion to the population, the number of attacks will necessarily rise. Once these attacks start coming with any kind of frequency, a more permanent solution will have to be found, since the amount of downtime will soon become intolerable. We look forward to hearing whether LL is considering any such possible solutions.
Feeds
Actually, LL doesn’t have to do anything. Think about it. This could be a good thing for them.
How so?
This is one of those cases where there must be tradeoffs between freedom and order. You know, the kind of thing poli sci students write bad term papers about. In this case, for Linden Labs to enact adequate protections from these kinds of attacks, they’re going to have to limit the freedom of their legitimate content creators. There will be some hard decisions to be made, and I don’t envy LL, because no matter how they decide, a large part of their constituency will be unhappy.
It’s true, there’s no good solution to this. I’ve come down on both sides of the argument in the past. LL’s original solution — to disable scripted object creation on land not owned by the object’s owner — was too harsh. It seems there must be some middle ground, though, that would at least help with the problem.
“Once these attacks start coming with any kind of frequency, a more permanent solution will have to be found, since the amount of downtime will soon become intolerable.” - Mark
Compared to when, last year?
If this is a good thing for LL, it’s only in preparation to license the grid hosting software to others who’ll be clammoring to operate their own useful worlds.
The Innovation of Insecurity…
A week or so back I read a post over on the Cybergate9 blog (Link) and was tempted to jump in with a comment. But I was busy. Soon after I happened across a post on 3pointD (Link) and got off a short comment, but didn’t have time to follow it up…