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Bot-avatar Pesters Second Life Users (For Science!)
holy_calamity writes "A bot-controlled avatar that tracks down lone avatars in Second Life and purposely invades their personal space has been created by UK researchers. The idea was to see if users value their virtual personal space. Bots avatars are not encouraged by Linden Labs — although this one is being deployed by academics, presumably spam-avatars (spavatars?) won't be far behind."
(v) take any actions or upload, post, e-mail or otherwise transmit Content that contains any viruses, Trojan horses, worms, spyware, time bombs, cancelbots or other computer programming routines that are intended to damage, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data or personal information; I'd consider that detrimental interference. Also, there's this one
(vii) upload, post, email or otherwise transmit any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, or promotional materials, that are in the nature of "junk mail," "spam," "chain letters," "pyramid schemes," or any other form of solicitation that Linden Lab considers in its sole discretion to be of such nature;
There are others that I believe apply to the utilization of a bot, potential exploits through bots (ex. spamming) or both. Also, what they're extrapulating from the empirical evidence is off IMHO as well.
SL-bot observed pairs of normal avatars as they interacted. It found that users are, on average, six times more likely to shift position when someone comes to within 1.2 m. That backs up the idea that people also value their virtual personal space, say the researchers.
I'm sure it had nothing to do with being courteous, putting the new character into view to inspect or anything else. Yeah, they wanted their "personal virtual space"... sure. Sounds like another misread on cause and effect at the expense of opening a pandora's box.
That's just my POV... no more, no less.
Hold on, I post a comment about wifes and the first thing you think of is shotguns? :)
You should be posting in this thread.