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Second Life scripted agents to be exempted from traffic this month
Well, it's been a long time in coming, but it is finally just around the corner. Back in October, Linden Lab added a facility where Second Life users could flag the accounts of their scripted agents (commonly called 'bots'). That was in October and the flag itself has had no effect so far. However, along with the search update on Wednesday, 20 January, user accounts (whether they are actually scripted agents or not) who have chosen to turn the flag on for their account will no longer count towards the per-parcel traffic data generated by the system.
Second Life users can flag accounts as bots, to no effect
Linden Lab have installed a new account setting for Second Life users, where an account can be marked as a 'scripted agent' (which you can call a 'bot' if you prefer). At present, it isn't actually known what effect the marker has, or to what use it is being put. At some future time, we are told, it may be used to exempt accounts from contributing to the Second Life parcel-traffic system. Right now, though, it's sort of like being asked "Would all citizens who have firearms and do not use them to break the law, please leave your name at your local police-station." That is, there doesn't seem anything actually wrong with the idea, but you've got to wonder why it is being asked at this time.
Second Life parcel-traffic scoring to change at the end of the month
Ever notice that the Second Life grid's performance tends to suddenly drop at midnight, Pacific time? That's the hurly-burly of batch processing. Stipend payments, group disbursements and traffic calculations. In fact, some parts of the traffic calculations system is so dense and arcane that processing the previous 24 hours worth of data doesn't always even finish within 24 hours. Linden Lab have been making noises about simplifying the traffic system for about three years, and there have been a number of under-the-hood tweaks to the algorithms during that time. In fact, the majority of Second Life users believe that the new system that has been announced has actually already been in place since 2006 (partly because the existing system can appear that way, as an edge-case of some overly-simplistic testing methodology).
