Promotional Poster Propagator Proposal

Posting handbills and posters about New Babbage can be something of a chore. Whether it’s fighting through lag, or locating high-traffic walls that won’t auto-return, or roving through the streets after the festivities, trying to remember where you pasted the wretched things, bill posting is… not an enjoyable time.

My proposal is for a system of clients and servers, which can allocate and schedule poster textures using the llEmail() function and email() events.

1. Submissions

Interested parties can use a submission box to deposit a notecard, bearing a full-permissions texture, and details about when the poster expires etc. This submission box would alert whatever body is in charge of checking submissions. (New Babbage Board of Censors, anyone?)

2. Installation into servers

The aforementioned officer takes the texture and loads it into one of the texture servers, along with editing the server configuration with the new texture’s details. I say “one of” as I see mesh objects, which have eight distinct textures apiece, therefore devoting one server per face is probably more sensible than having one device stagger and die from sending multiple emails.

3. Propagation into clients

At most once a day the servers email the clients to update their faces. On receiving emails, clients alter their assigned face textures to use the UUIDs delivered.

Clients may support up to eight different posters (mesh!) and would be available gratis. On rezzing, they email the servers back to be added to their lists of clients.

LL does not have an event to fire when an object is deleted, so owners of clients would be encouraged to touch their objects and select the “Delete” option should their situation and/or building change. This function would send a “remove me” email to the servers, then invoke die(). (Since replacements would be free, this minor inconvenience is just that.)

0. Thoughts?

Currently this concept is nothing more than a proposal; at Team PFV we have roughly three other projects on a slow boil, Ms. Flood’s musical activities, Mr. Pontecorvo’s current sartorial atrocities, and our User’s frequent brown studies permitting.

While the technical aspects seem straightforward, this is entering territory I’ve never actually tried before. It might be months before a prototype is ready.

Further, there are the social issues. Is this sort of thing likely to stimulate or scandalise society? Would we be better off with copy/transfer prims in the grubby paws of urchins, shewing them the benefits of honest labour? What will happen to those advertisers whose works do not fit the proportions of the client objects?

I really don’t know. Pray join the converse and with any luck, talk me out of this mad endeavour.