reeneebob Birmingham

One Linden should NEVER have the power to do this.

The thousands of man hours that Stroker is going to have to put in to fix this and his reputation because of the incompetence of ONE LINDEN and all he gets is a "Sorry bout that, mate"? Oh hell no.

I have never seen a company that treats it's customers this way - like they stab you in the back, charge you in full and then expect you to say "Thank you sir may I have another".

It's disgraceful and if I was Stroker, once this is fixed (and lets face it this will take months, with people who don't log in regularly logging in weeks from now and realizing their stuff is broken) I would be having my lawyer contacting LL for some sort of reparation for his time and damage control.

__________________
"BOP BOPBOP BA BOP BOP BOPBOP...this is planet earth" - Simon Lebon

Rev Eponym

Stroker, all sympathies to you, dude.

My opinion is, you will never know who is really responsible. LL doesn't do accountability, as we all know. Conspiracy theories are fun, but not in this case, because of the implications. (i.e. someone wants Mr SL Adult Content to blow a gasket and leave )

Just this week I had someone tell me that they'd spoken to you personally (maybe on this issue), and that they were impressed that you're such a straight-up guy. Her assumption had been that you would be a Joe Francis-style jerkwad. So congrats on being an iconoclast in more ways than one.

BTW, Firefox has a bangin' internal spellchecker. And your posts are pretty clean, from what I can see, so don't let your high school English teacher's ghost stop you from blogging. I wish I had as much to blog about.

Oh wait, no, I don't wish that! I don't!
.

__________________
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The MadScience Blog, unsafe for any workplace. Magnetic soundtrack shielding currently untested.

Phoenix Psaltery

Hmmm...

I realize this is wild speculation, but...

Prospero is out of the Lab

Is there a connection?

Uhm... I know a professional proofer/editor who would be glad to assist you with blog posts if you like.

P2

__________________
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Arcady.Yue

I just left all my support groups about 1 minute before tabbing over to firefox and seeing this...

Pretty much, for the reason you list - 25 limit and I just thought "I don't need spam from these vendors, I know them, if I want more, I can find their shops again."

Maybe vendors of certain themes should build coalition groups?

One group to handle support announcements from all of the various builders of 'SL erotica toys' with a hard rule that it can only be used to announce fixes to problems. No ads, no chat, no update notices unless the update affects 100+ different vendors (or some other proper number - I have no idea how big the vendor list is, but say, unless the update affects the product lines of 20% or more of the entire list of vendors in the coalition, it stays off list).

Can groups be set up to disable IM privileges for 'regular members'? So that customers who join can't spam it?

Couldbe Yue

I wish there was something I could say or do to take some of the pressure off you right now. I can't even begin to imagine how you're managing to keep on top of that sea of people milling around wanting a piece of you, nor how you're managing to stay so well balanced about it all.

I'm also surprised your lawyer or your business insurers haven't slapped a reputational damage suit, restraint (constraint?) of trade/industrial sabotage suit or financial loss against them. I think you've been very generous in accepting what they have said and concentrating on your customers. Particularly in light of their steadfast refusal to acknowledge the damage the wrong has caused and offer any kind of restitution.

LL really is the most remarkable company I have ever seen in action. It lack basic business ethics and business infrastructure and behaves in a way that would land them in jail if it was a human being.

I can't work out if they deliberately work to the line of illegality or if it's the sheer resistance of their customers to investigate real life redress from LL for their behaviour. In a way I hope it's the former, simply because if it's not then we're then colluding with LL in our own exploitation.

I'll climb down of my soapbox now and wish you as low stress passage through this as is possible.

oh and if you do start blogging, don't forget to send a press release/statement to all the online news places like wired, massively etc.. Bad publicity is the only thing that LL understand at the moment and as one of the major businesses in SL making a substantiated claim of bad dealings from LL may go some way to giving those large companies and educational institutions that LL are drooling over second thoughts about coming inworld.

stpaulsub Clio

i just wanna
HUGGZZ your the best and once again are showing just how classy you truly are...( for a smut peddler )

seriously, i feel for you and once again am impressed by how you are handling whatever gets thrown at you!

__________________
Originally Posted by Trout Recreant
I find you worthy of the title, The Beatific and Magnanimous Saint Paulsub Clio, Most Fearsome Initiator of the Damned, Creator of the Hopeless Darkness of the Soul, and Queen of the Unholy Alliance of Famine and Disease. She from whom the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse Flee in Terror.
Enjoy. Go out and wreak vengeance on small towns and steal from the poor. You'll have a ball. I promise.


look here at mah Flikr

Sooz Pascale

You may very well have some legal remedies for this problem. The operative word is "may."

First, the employee who blacklisted the script seems to have behaved deliberately, maliciously, arbitrarily and capriciously. I agree with you that the timing is suspect. I think you should consider going after this person in a law suit. As you well know, he or she cannot hide behind any percieved shield of anonyminity once the law suit is filed.

You might also consider naming LL as a defendant in any lawsuit. Their TOS is not as iron clad as they wish to believe. Granted, the wording of the TOS appears to give them the right to deleted anything at any time for any reason or no reason whatsoever. It is now in Caps. I THINK you can make the argument that provision is unconscionable based upon the relative bargaining position of the parties [you and LL].

In CA and many other states, every contract includes was what is called "The Implied Covenant of Good Faith and Fair Dealing." This is most commonly used in the contect of insurance law since insurance companies have refined Bad Faith into an art form. Ther idea of suing LL for Bad Faith is certainly an idea that you could explore with your lawyer, who is far more expert in this area of the law [virtual worlds] than I am.

LL seems to shy away from bad publicity the way a vampire fears the cross. I would consider taking and making this dispute as publicly as possible.

Finally, in the event you DO take this to the courts or are considering doing this, don't share any conversations youi may have with your lawyer here or in any other public forum. Basically, it is NO ONE'S business, including mine.

One final and troubling point, what could have been this person's motivation for his or her misdeeds? Its not particularly legally relevant, but I'm curious. People usually do stuff for a reason. Was he or she singlehandedly trying to "clean up" the more bawdy and ribald aspects of SL? Was there a personal agenda involved? Was there some kind of profit motive, like deciding to remove a competitor of a friend?

I have had the same bed for years, and frankly it is not used very much. I checked it and it is not even one of Strokers, much to my shame and embarassment. I bought it before
I knew Stroker. So. I plan on doing my small part by doing some bed shopping soon at Strokers bed store.

Stroker, good luck!!!!

Sooz

__________________
Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library - Barbara Tuchman

Joshua Nightshade

I think assuming this was a malicious act on the basis of nothing but personal outrage is more than a little ridiculous.

I empathize with your situation, but LL is not known for their subtlety, and in the long history of people complaining about them, nobody's been targeted directly for anything. There's also a host of shit they could do if they wanted to, and a host of people who've pissed off Lindens-- specific and in general-- who haven't been abused in anything other than passive-aggressive ways.

This is an act that will absolutely be tied to an identity, and would have absolutely been detectable. Someone wouldn't do something like that unless they were a complete idiot.

And on the other hand we have years of LL doing stupid fuckups like this. Use Occam's razor here, which is the more likely explanation? LL fucked up, as they often do, or some evol conspiracy happened to get back at you for complaining about things?

Sooz Pascale

My understanding is that the only script blacklisted was Strokers and it was a key script in his product. Is it possible to accidently blacklist a script? The question is not rhetorical, I really don't know and am asking. Since it SEEMS that the act of blacklisting was (a) deliberate; (b) directed solely at Stroker's products; (c) and clealry would cause harm to Stroker, I don't think that a preliminary conclusion of malice is all that ridiculous.

I agree that no one would do something like this unless they were a complete idiot generally. However, that situation is not exactly unheard of in LL is it? I have absolutely ZERO knowledge of the internal workings of LL. It is possible, albeit remotely, that some could have been responding to an off the record stated desire from higher up the food chain there that "We have to clean up SL or we're never going to get more mainstream companies in here" and decided to do some clean up on his or her own.

I DO see your point but I think there is a definite possibility of malice here.

Sooz

Joshua Nightshade

I don't think anyone is going to be able to tell that it's a key script unless Stroker fortuitously named it "THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT SCRIPT IN THE PRODUCT PLEASE NOBODY AT ALL BLACKLIST THIS."

I don't know if it's possible for them to blacklist it accidentally, I don't know how they'd blacklist anything at all. I do know that in the last few months the grid was in a tizzy because they had accidentally blacklisted a similar open-sourced animation script that a lot of freebie resellers were using, and everyone finally thought LL was deleting assets that had been DMCA'd like they were supposed to, but in the end it was a fuckup and they said so.

So this isn't without precedent.

They mess shit up technically all the time. A couple weeks ago I had a Linden out in my sim because a good bit of it had been built by Aesop, and when he was perm-banned, I suddenly lost the ability to do anything with the prims of 50% of my sim. I had to rebuild all of it from scratch because they couldn't do anything more than tell me "Woah, how weird."

Sooz Pascale

Why would they blacklist THAT particular script then?

Its not an argumentative question, I don't know enough about scripting to have an answer.

Sooz

Joshua Nightshade

Again, I couldn't tell you. That's why I think it's ridiculous to assume this was done deliberately and maliciously without any information to suggest that.

Sooz Pascale

If it was not maliciously done, then LL can certainly explain, at least to Stroker, how and why it happened. Unless and until THAT happens, I will think, based on the information Stroker provided that it was indeed deliberate and malicious. LL can and should clear the entire thing up by providing simple, honest and transparent information.

Sooz

Joshua Nightshade

Which they've never done, about anything, even things more serious than this.

So, don't hold your breath.

Sooz Pascale

I rest my case. Thank you.

Sooz

Joshua Nightshade

Mine was rested with my first post to this thread.

Syanin

Very upset by this. Sorry you got such a raw deal Stroker.
On a side note. I just tried to search "sex" In the Linden search as well as a few other naughty words. It failed and I was told I could not search for these words due to the community standards. This was with mature content enabled. Is this new? I have to admit I am out of the loop these days. Sexgen was one word I was able to search. Ohhhhh theres now an "adult" checkbox...but it isn't enabled... I really am out of the loop...


Oh ffs, I fixed it. Updating the General tab then using the checkbox in search. Not even six years old and already I am babbling and senile...

Winter Ventura

Just for a moment, consider the market penetration of Sexgen beds. Next let's assume that this one script is "the number one memory hog" in a sexgen bed. Now.. let's mix in the new Homestead/Openspace stuff.

Recently, LL has been on a "anti-rich-content kick.. ARC, parcel script limits, avatar script and prim limits coming soon).. they prefer to blame the residents for the shitty state of the grid's performance, rather than finding ways to make things work better, they get us to work against each other.

Linden now has n INTENTIONALLY sub-par server product, with less than adequate functionality. People are constantly complaining that these servers are sub par.. yet what do people keep doing with these servers? they build HOMES.. what do they put in homes? yes.. SexGen Beds.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how, very quickly, this one memory hogging script could get red flagged as "the biggest problem" on homestead sims. In fact, it wouldn't take much more, from there, to notice just how many copies of this script are running, everywhere.

While it's entertaining to presume malfeasance, the simple fact is that Stroker may be the victim of his own popularity here.. and his script may have triggered all the systems in place to identify a grid attack.

Now.. was blacklisting the correct thing to do? no.. But we know this now. Was this system automated, or done at the hand of a particular linden? we don't know, and they're not going to tell us.

It is interesting that Prospero's firing came around this same time. Interesting, because Prospero was the "server" front man.

Is it possible that some automated process was put into place, which nixed this script automatically? Is it possible that Prospero was the one who okayed this process to go ahead?

The fact that Stroker emailled Philip is an interesting element.. When the #1 sex sales icon in Second Life, the famous guy who made all the papers with his lawsuit, calls Philip Linden complaining that someone broke his shit.. Would that be enough to get someone fired?

Maybe these two parts are completely unrelated.. maybe (we can only dream) someone in LL's Morality Protection office got a little too gung ho, and will be getting their walking papers as well..

But there's a rule that someone always quotes, never assume malice, when stupidity can explain it.

__________________

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Twitter: WinterVentura

Sooz Pascale

Thanks Winter. That's a rational explanation for the situation.

Sooz

reeneebob Birmingham

If not malice, there is negligence.

No one person should have the power and ability to blacklist a script that will break thousands of product sold by one of their subscribers. There should be a set protocol that the first Linden can identify the scripts to be blacklisted. This is then submitted to a second LL employee with supporting documentation to investigate whether this is a justified banning. If that is found to be the case, it can then be submitted to a third group, who DO have the permissions to do the scrubbing.

I don't think that is too much to ask. Instead, they let one jackass have the ability to potentially ruin a business and drive one of their premier content creators (and someone who has appeared on national news shows as an example of the success that could be found in SL and to get the LL brand out there in the public eye ) off the grid in frustration. There was no excuse or need for what just happened.

I don't think expecting a company to have reasonable safety protocols in place to prevent someones livelihood from being destroyed by incompetence is too much to ask, do you?

Joshua Nightshade

Oh it was absolutely a stupid fuckup, without question.

But the point is, LL has a history of stupid fuckups. Well and truly.

They also have a history of doing the wrong thing with regards to transparently explaining that fuckup. Hell, when the database was hacked and people had their cards stolen, LL maintained that no numbers could have possibly been taken and everyone was safe, even while people were discovering that cards which had only been connected to SL were getting foreign charges on them.

And that database break happened, I believe, because someone was idiotic enough to set Wordpress up on the same server as their login database, using the same MySQL login.

So again, lots of fuckups, lots of bullshit responses, they've done this all before, so I don't get the assumption that this has to have been the act of terrorism.

Sooz Pascale

Malice, in the legal sense, is considerably different from terrorism. I could be mistaken, but I didn't see any refernces to possible terrorism in this thread?

Sooz

Joshua Nightshade

Yes dear, it's called hyperbole, in the same vein as accusations that this was a deliberate act done by an employee disgruntled with Stroker's criticisms of Linden Lab.




Or were you not being satirical too?

Sooz Pascale

I was not being satirical. I regard this as a serious subject where a certain degree of factual accuracy helps the discussion.

There was no discussion of this being an act of terrorism.

Sooz

Joshua Nightshade

I'd suggest you look up sarcasm as a method of humor, but I'm sure you're well acquainted.