Desmond Shang

Okay, I don't really believe this, but it makes for an interesting possibility.

Say the grid's software was locked down. I mean *really* locked down. Disk scanning, trusted computing, give a tissue sample every time you wanna log in, whatever it takes to protect the grid from outsiders.

Now, you got a different problem. Insiders.

(see, I told you this was paranoid!)

For instance, we've all heard of corrupt GM's on other games... this is not a new phenomenon. Quite common, really. And they aren't even coders.

Or let's look at another industry: gambling. The issue there is kept fairly quiet because it's not good for business, but programmers for slot machines have been an issue for decades.

Not sure how many remember what happened with Bally (I just spent a very unsuccessful 10 minutes looking for the news article) but there was a case a few years ago that led right back to the slot machine programmers. Perhaps it's laughable to think of it this way, but it never could have happened if the slots code was open source!

A paranoid person might imagine, say, $L being magically created by an insider, or free classifieds or all manner of indirect 'bugs' that could be easily capitalised upon, if you only knew they were there.

Maybe it would be a regular guy turned bad, tempted because of utter lack of oversight. How many supervisors pick through boring code that ostensibly does what it's supposed to? Perhaps the malicious code would only be inserted now and then, when everyone was distracted... disguised as an honest bug. Or maybe someone who got hired in by their tech skillz has been a longtime member of an internet gang or something... there are lots of possibilities.

In any case... the grid at some level is financial transaction software. Does anyone think that a rogue insider coder might be able to rake in some serious cash somehow, and get away with it?

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Steampunk Victorian, Well-Mannered Caledon:secondlife://caledon/190/190
West Trade Imports LTD Architecture & Antiques:secondlife://alice/89/114

Lucifer Baphomet

Yes, if they were subtle, and fled to a country that didn't extradite to the USA beforre they were caught.

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NeoBokrug Elytis

It's you all along!!

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Khamon

Yes it's possible, considering the loose, read lack of, management style at Linden Lab, it's likely. Auditing though does eventually catch up and no business in the USA can get away with bad auditing for too many years before the tax people catch the scent. So I'd be planning to have all that money laundered, possibly through alts renting land on alt-owned estates paying tier back into the system, at least partially, with the ill gotten gains, and myself wholly disassociated with the lab by mid-2010 or so.

While several people could've handled the coding and internal accounting aspects, I can't think of any Lindens that've been in a position to pull off the "phasing out of the picture over time" routine. It'd really have to be...wait...is that a kite? It looks just like a dragon flying through the wind; that's just beautiful did you build it yourself? I'm so totally out of this thread.

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But of bliss and glad life there is little to be said, before it ends; as works fair and wonderful, while still they endure for eyes to see, are their own record, and only when they are in peril or broken for ever do they pass into song. - Quenta Silmarillion

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Hypatia Callisto

do they have to be coders... I always kinda thought what Zee did was pretty crappy, manipulating the sales of sims to make the grid look like it "grew" exponentially in size last year.

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"To begin with," said the Cat, "a dog's not mad. You grant that?"

"I suppose so," said Alice.

"Well, then," the Cat went on, "you see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad."

"I call it purring, not growling," said Alice.

"Call it what you like," said the Cat.

eku Zhong

oh come lets get really paranoid... =^^=
third party viewers.. snowglobe, emerald.. (no disrespect meant.. but since we are getting delusional.. lets cover all bases)
Phil is the Elvis of SL... symbolically there but .. i suspect left the building a while ago.. or something.. even his P-squared place is run by others..
Snowglobe is Phil endorsed.. maybe he has a midlife crisis... proggies in a little handdip.. and pisses off to some south american country with no extradition laws .. and lives out his own personal Burning Man in Patagonia
Or Emerald.. everyone is so enamored with it.. the various bells and whistles.. the jiggling boobies... but who is to say there isnt a timed money vacuum that will siphon off funds to a bevy of preset alts who cash out through Apez and Poof Goes the Weasel...
who knows.. but when you start to wonder.. you just have to wonder...

so why even wonder.. if you gonna get hit ... you wont even see it coming anyway.

"Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth."
— Mark Twain

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Tristin M

If its the lab doing the coding.. do ya gotta ask?

Desmond Shang

No I'm not that smart! I would never do such a thing!

Just don't type the words "want to start a steampunk themed estate" into the client too many times, if you like a pretty avatar.

Ann Otoole

Oh someone accessed the asset system and did something a no-no? Oh darn how about that. We just suffered a crash and all the logs on all the backups just mysteriously vanished.

I've already had design mockup images mysteriously get from my inventory, where in theory nobody but me ever saw them, into the hands of a top percentile competitor. Whatever. It is the price of doing business in Second Life. Linden Lab has access to everything and their access control, logging, and metrics are not subject to external certified auditing.

In any business where corruption is feasible on a grand scale, when humpty falls, we can hope people go to prison and experience convict justice. But most white collar silver spoon fed from birth stock never thinks about that because they are completely unfamiliar with how real life works. After all it can never happen to them.

Linden Lab will begin to care when viable competition appears. Not before. Put yourself in their shoes. Why should they care? Because it is the "right thing to do"? hahahahh right.

Hypatia Callisto

Run OpenSim on your local computer

Ann Otoole

Please buys my contents. Yew ain't allowed to see dis here nicely crafted contents. But yew should buys it anyways cuz i r koot.

I.e.; does it matter? I mean if someone is going to go through all that trouble then you are not going to stop them lmao. This is when the creation rate rule comes into play and being able to create more better faster wins. (Or other strategies) That is if you are really into dedicating all your time and energy to a "platform" where there is no government regulation and you are competing directly with people that can live comfortably off of a couple hundred dollars a year.

It is a bummer when the koolaid wears off.

Hypatia Callisto

Well, OpenSim already works pretty well to make more better faster and cheaper, aside from scripting... and even the scripting is getting better.

I do my mockups and uploading with OpenSim now, on a local installation, so that even my uploads are never leaving my computer. Nobody can "look" into my inventory then, and I can just upload the item to SL when I'm done.

But yeah... for some folks the koolaid never wears off about not uploading early design plans to an unsecure platform. It's a bit like sticking your business plans on a web page so anyone can access. Not smart.

I wish I could say different, but my experience with online services has been that there will always be a few employees that break company policy. Just because they do, doesn't mean that the company overall is corrupt. It usually means that they get fired at some point when the company catches up to them though.

Kyllie Wylie

someone really corrupt would just steal payment information of payment on file people and max out thier Visa or clean out thier bank accounts, why bother with lindens?

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Ann Otoole

Because that involves actual money and is watched for and would be almost instantly spotted and prosecuted as opposed to squirreling L$ which no government on planet Earth gives a damn about.

I.e.; there are regulations and laws about real currency. L$ is not a currency at all. In fact Linden Lab's Second Life TOS clearly and unambiguously states L$ has no value at all. If Linden Lab turned off Lindex and ended cash out there would be no consumer recourse whatsoever because there are no consumer rights inside Second Life. Linden Lab made no promises whatsoever about anything actually other than their promise to bill you for virtual land.

I hear you can buy parcels on the moon too. I bet complaints to the FTC about Second Life are as entertaining as complaints about moon parcels.

Make the best of it. Or don't. Your choice. It is a huge party. When the music stops the only people with chairs will be Linden Lab.

eku Zhong

OMG.. in my sleeplessnes.. i finally realised whats really going on in Second Life.

the lindens have kidnapped the hippos, and sold them to Zoos and even worse, chinese apocatharies...
The lucky ones are languishing behind bars in zoos around the world... tormented by ppl with mobile phone cameras

proof



the less unfortunate ones have been cut up and sliced and diced and dried and pickles and pulverised and made into potions



the ones too small have been sold as pets on ebay...

Pamela Galli

Ohhhh, you mean insiders like those guys in Office Space!

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LA GALLERIA

NikitaNightNinja

Don't mean to make you feel more 'paranoid ' about maybe being paranoid , , but in a mixed social enviroment such as SL , ....what is to keep a deep level coder from putting a rootkit with a keyboard sniffer on everyone's drive ( as a subobject in the game , SL in this case , viewer itself either there as a complete spyware sub object itself or a communicating 'talking' object he can access stealthwise and addmore to without anyone aware of it ), that becoming as part of the system is invisible to most all , as say the *F*B*I* 's
old post 911 spyware Nat Hentoff wrote about in the Village Voice ;' magic lantern ' . My point is ; average user will not know ; it's too fast and it's competely invisible to the naked eye going on parrallel to whatever you are doing in a stealth way . But , if someone is stealing money from anyone or the system , it should be measurable amounts seen somewhere one would think . Follow the money ; as they say in RL . .........blah blah blah , I dunno , but sure it's transparent and it's tweakable ; the citizens of SL , obviously , have mixed moral characters and personalities where lots and all kinds of stuff can happen .

I guess I am saying it's not necessarily 'paranoid' at all to occassionally think about the issue of crime and black hacking and cheating , in a world where maybe most RW businesses use such methods themselves as industrial and ecomonic espionage between companies , which is both illegal and immoral and on a larger scale than anything in SL , I 'spose as well . Spyware , sneaky code apps , uses of insecure sections of programs ; that's all fact , not fantasy ,..........but imagination is a neutral double-edged tool itself I guess ; while you need imagination to spot new potential ways for crooks to cheat and steal , ect. ... one can also start to also imagine stuff going on which has not yet happened as well !

That what you may call 'boring code' is highly interesting maybe for a hacker say in Moscow or someplace ; who sees it all as part of a fun puzzle game to him . They live for these challenges and get a big kick being first to break some new code , and new code 'fixes' themselves often have bugs themselves , if not ALWAYS , they either don't mention or know about it , so a veteran programmer tells me .

I will never invest alot of time or money in SL , but maybe only use it as marketing tool rather for say a song of something , but that might be a different topic more ; the future of SL as a marketplace of poparts and fun , in it's evolution .

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NewsFlash from NikitaNightNinjaNewsNetwork : * Contrary to ongoing deceitful propaganda, psyops and most silly rumours ; God is unchanged and still alive as The Sovereign UnCaused Cause of all being and Most Holy Majesty , forever . As for the Ninj , she is just very busy in rw awhile ; and rarely has time for more than her email and Youtube/Berkeley Channel . It is said that she lurks silently unseen at times unawares to most souls , in the SLU Hotel . end * . more to follow ....

Ciaran Laval

They stole one cent off me once! Something about using two systems and one rounds up and one rounds down, it just vanished.

There was a film about this sort of thing!

Fred Rookstown

G-Team is so corrupt that Satan himself shits his knickers when their name is uttered.

Standing around talking to friends in a Mature sim? Ban.
Standing on a border of A sim waiting for B sim to come back online? Ban.
Taking a bathroom break after hours of building prefabs? Ban.
Start a security bot in a private sim with no one around? Ban.
Make a blog post criticizing G-Team decisions? Ban.
HAVE ANY FUN AT ALL? Ban, and a permanent one at that.

(USER HAS BEEN BANNED FOR THIS POST)

Siggy

I wrote an lsl script that gathered up all the 1/2 cents and put them all into an alts account.. I was making bank until I was sued by the writers on the Superman movie franchise

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And as it was in the beginning, so too shall it be in the end. That bullshit is bullshit, it just goes by different names.

Desmond Shang

Here's one for you!

You know how LindeX rounds to the nearest penny?

It does... it can't cash out those extra $L 1 or $L 2 if you are near the line.

So say the average vanishing $L on a transaction, buy or sell, is $L 1.5. Reasonable, eh?

Lets play with that number a little.

Volume is what, $L 100 million a day with the average transaction being what, maybe $L 1000? Both ways? Be *real* skeptical and call just it 100,000 transactions a day eating $L 1.5.

That's $L 150k, or about 580 bucks a day. 18,000 a month. 200k USD a year!

eku Zhong

FUCK

Ann Otoole

Which is why SL is not a serious business platform until publicly held/owned and subject to auditing.

...


Stop holding your breath. Something has to pay M's salary.

BJ Tunwarm

I propose this alternative theory.



Consider:

• Linden Lab is in San Francisco
• San Francisco is the home of The Church of Satan
• SF Bay Area programmers have a notably large number of Satanists.
• Linden Lab has never denied being staffed by Satanists.

I think if you connect the dots it is clear the Lindens are a bunch of closeted Satanists. When we are offline they take over random avatars tp them into some locked Linden sim were they sacrifice them in the some horror-gore build that would make Clive Barker's blood run cold. God only know what happens, most likely the avatar is tortured or hours on end.

Ever wonder why you can't log on the gird some times? Things get weird in your inventory? Maybe some Linden was in there living out their sicko fantasies with your avatar.

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"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Whole sims on fire off with griefer particle spam off the shoulder of Nautilus . I watched bling glitter in the shadows of Kristen Viewer. All these moments will be lost in time, like posts on an IM chat... Time to log off.“ Botrunner.

Desmond Shang

That would be a great case to get the grid working then, as a lot of residents pay dearly to live out their sicko fantasies for themselves, thus saving the Satanists a lot of work...