Here's a story that will warm your heart on Christmas Eve---NOT! Another story of man's inhumanity to man, and figuring (not surprisingly) the scripterati -- but also a tale of inspiration that SOME scripterati are capable of redeeming the soul of their entire soulless bunch.
The scripterati are nothing like the Magi. They are frequently technically competent but not intelligent; they are filled with information but not knowledge; they make up the deficit with sheer arrogance, condescension, and hubris. They're the kind of people who might follow a star with their calculations, but then claim that it only led to a straw-filled shed. Literalists, tekkie-wikinistas believing falsely in their own collective "wisdom" (which is often rather dense), they perpetrate insult upon insult on the unsuspecting population -- precisely because they are driven by emotion, not intellect, which forms the basis of my newest -- and best -- critique of them and the problem they continually pose for Second Life. This is a long one -- have a seat with some hot chocolate and marshmallows that don't melt right away.
Are all script-writers like this? No. But enough of them are to make you always worry. There are very good and understanding and reasonable scripters who take some thought of the *effects* of their script in the world and who even take some thought of the *consumers* of their scripts and try to provide simple explanations for them. Ordinal Malaprop is one of these people. Others are not -- you can see their usual smug bullying and hectoring in a thread on the forums where the Lindens let their old forum FIC pals of yesteryear still reign supreme. It's astounding to me how the old "General" in fact lives, where people can get on and make the most mean-spirited and outrageous claims about people and events inworld, and the mods are merely laughing along with them.
We've all heard about CopyBot. Duh, we got it long ago that it doesn't work, doesn't copy very well, has never actually been documented as stealing and re-selling, was broken on the last patch OR...the opposite (we're supposed to learn BOTH lessons) -- it copies so well it's the end of the merchant phase of SL; copies so well the rest of the Internet will own everything you make; ushers in a new era; breaks the business model; establishes the scripterati as the ruling class for ever and anon because their stuff...doesn't copy. Well, both are true; neither are true.
And we've all heard of the anti-copybot spammer. People who actually live in Second Life on land in houses and struggle to work with their stores -- unlike those who live on the IRC channel or the sandboxes of SL -- have had to put up with a great deal more. I must have removed hundreds of these things. I banned them from Ravenglass and other group lands. They do absolutely no good, we're told, because they defeated only the very first version of the CopyBot. Since I personally saw that command used to stop the very first version of it, I thought it was a plausible, but obviously temporary fix. I personally didn't distribute it, but during the first week of its use, until we found out better information, I didn't delete it.
It was heart-breaking to me to see the number of people who used it and gave it to others *on good faith with the best intentions*.
They were not the clueless idiots wrapped in FUD that the arrogant scripterati would have us think. Many of them in fact at that stage were technically proficient themselves. They were merely trying to be *helpful* and tried to reassure people. And frankly, the suspect members of libsecondlife who perpetrated the CopyBot disaster on SL were selling antidotes to their creation on Day One -- yet another piece of evidence proving their malicious intentions and reason for us all to continue to find *the entire group* suspect because *they refuse to disassociate from the immoral and illegitimate activities of their founder, leader, and key members*.
It's not about believe in the dangers of CopyBot -- hey, we're long past that. It's not about some McCarthyite desire to engage in "guilt-by-association". It's having a series of documented, explicitly malicious and immoral activities and finding that this group, in whole and in part, does not condemn and disassociate from them (except for a few of their members with greater intelligence and conscience, but then who have been timid and silent in doing this publicly). It's not about the threat to the community posed in the form of an actual copying device; it's about the threat to the community posed by rampantly cynical bad behaviour with impunity. That means deliberate deployment of CopyBot consciously to cause harm and fear while mocking people's reactions; that means responsibility for the side effects where people lost business by closing stores *because someone had deliberately tried to terrorize them, not because they are FUDites*; that means bribing a source to lie to a journalist; that means selling the CopyBot itself (!) and the antidote to it (!!!); that means apologizing and then retracting; that means the continued blatant, self-serving arrogant attitude of Eddy Striker, Baba Yamamoto and the other members of libsecondlife who *refuse to condemn, and disassociate themselves from immorality because they believe as reverse engineers, they are above the law*.
The problem, as usual in human life, is not about the artifacts humans make; it's about the ill intentions of humans themselves. It's not about the technology!
Since the scandal in November, many of us have worked assiduously to inform people that the anti-bot spammers are worthless; to pass out educational cards; to delete the spammers; to IM neighbours and reason with them -- all with nearly 99 percent success rates. I have dealt with literally hundreds of these situations as have other land managers. The spam was reduced by 80 percent surely, with only a few persistent situations left, involving no-show land owners or people who couldn't be persuaded (and I've never found one yet who didn't mitigate the situation after being asked politely and given information.)
Still, all of us were looking for some way to use something other than the confusing red lines within the user panel that finds ALL scripted objects; we were happy to see a way to find the owner of that specifically named chatter that spams for 96m2 continually.
After two years in SL, I know to read the scripters' forums and libraries extremely carefully. If you just copy something given there, much of the time it doesn't work, or doesn't work as it is supposed to. It is merely a kind of working draft sort of place, and usually in a day or two some other scripter comes along and *corrects* the work of the first poster, by pointing out their script was clunky or laggy. Such fixes and corrections can proceed through many iterations. But this is a public forum. Anyone can copy the script and use it. No Linden or poster has ever had a sticky on there saying USE AT YOUR OWN RISK! (iT SHOULD!!!) The people who make these scripts are merely interested in the sterile, abstract exercise of their scripting itself, not of the consumer using the scripts. In fact, most of them do these scripts as an abstract programming exercise and don't even want customers; they loathe them.
Ordinal Malaprop, who *does* have a store and *is* endlessly patient with consumers is not like this; I've found her prepared not only to discuss a problem for an hour, but spend another hour of her own time, for free, solving it for you -- though she has absolutely no call to do so. She's one of those genuine altruists of Second Life, not one of the bullies who goes around forcing help on newbies and styling themselves as newbie helpers merely because they "need to be needed" or need to look good in their stunning sandbox gear. She is the genuine article; a Renaissance woman, well-rounded in art, philosophy, and science, one of the citizens of Caledon who saves its stuffy, steampunk soul. I've known her to be a good merchant helping customers; a good neighbour; just an all-around good citizen -- contrasting sharply with all the tekkie-wikinistas out there who give the entire class of programmers a bad name -- precisely because there are so many of them and they are so aggressively nasty in SL.
That's why when I read through all the different versions of her script doing this or that thing, I still took her script to use -- since she had tested it. However, there was a problem -- for me -- in trying to understand where the name of the spammer went in the script. Having found that most scripts work by having you insert the name of the card to be acted upon, say, in a notecard giver, and reading that this script involved inserting names, I figured I had to put the name into the brackets -- so I did. It appeared to then function when I touched it.
I had two locations to check. The first location was in Keuka, and it turned up a store owner. Knowing that he was a long-time smart creator, I figured he couldn't possibly be using anti-copy bot at this juncture. But the device turned up his name. It gave you the option to send an IM automatically or not, but after I clicked yes, I wrote him manually trying to explain. I couldn't SEE he had it out but it was showing -- and possibly giving a false positive. I kept hearing the spam -- and then later fixed the script, found the person (up in the air apparently which is why it had been such a long search for weeks) and she promptly got on the problem hearing about the issue.
Next I went to Tuliptree where for weeks, neighbours and tenants and I had been driven absolutely mad by the spam. One neighbour said he had figured out how to mute the owner but in fact that wasn't working -- we couldn't *find* the owner to mute him. We kept looking and discussing it for days. It was most definitely heard there. But somehow in between the time I was working on other sites using the new script, and I returned to Tuliptree, it must have been removed. Anyone there can testify that it was indeed there. When I came to test it with the anti-anti device, it showed up the name of Weedy Herbst.
Now I'm definitely not stupid. Weedy, being a scripter herself, could hardly be accused of putting out an anti-copybot thing -- she would have long since figured out that those spammers just don't work. It wasn't visible at all in her store -- again, there must be something wrong with the way I was using it or the thing itself -- I immediately wrote all this to Ordinal asking for help.
The device sent Weedy one automatic message -- ONE -- when clicked "yes".
ONE IM.
ONE.
Not a spam, not a deluge. ONE.
Before I could follow up with a manual IM explaining that it didn't seem to be possible it was her object but explain what *was* going on -- Weedy herself came storming on the line. She becan falsely accusing me of "spamming her" (one IM does not make a spam) and refused to listen to reason. She went on a jihad, as usual, fueled with every ounce of her malevolent, vicious spirit, with which she poisoned the forums for years. Chief among her wild-assed complaints was an accusation that I made the script because I was shown as "creator" -- when in fact I had written on the description of the prim that Ordinal was creator, and everyone knows I couldn't possibly have written a script. Explaining all this was lost on the hysterical Weedy.
I got Ordinal on the job, explaining urgently that the issue was that it was somehow making false positives. She gently explained that it would do that if you didn't use the script command /123 [name of thing]. Of course, there being no directions to do that, and the channel itself seemingly not labeled 123 inside the script [again, I have gotten used to seeing "channel 1" or "100" inside the script itself on things like window tinters], I couldn't know that.
Ordinal quickly and competently fixed the script to make it dummy-proof against people like me so that it wouldn't start searching for ANY script-owner of ANY script (which it was doing, thus seeming to turn up false positives).
The thread itself, of course was despicable even before Weedy turned up with her shrill witch-hunt and fake P**** N***** comments.
I had in fact contacted 3 people in this thread and gave them quite a piece of my mind. Why? Because this is a public forum, and when they put out hate-filled, inciting statements on a public forum, I sure as hell do get the right to contact them and condemn what they are doing.
In this thread, a person named Winter Ventura gets on and vents with hysterical, hate-filled rage against the people who have deployed these spammers. Yeah, we all hate the spammers. But it's like those well-meaning posts to your email circle from people who tell you about the latest virus threat -- and it turns out to be just some hoax involving an actual needed piece of your Windows program -- they aren't ill-intentioned -- the people who gang up and scream on them are.
>There are over 10,000 residents in world that are NOT copybots, who are getting spammed mercilously by these things," she claims falsely. Huh? There is no such thing. That many people may be logged on, but not every one is hearing a spam; I'm not, nor are the hundreds of people in my groups who -- even when it WAS a big issue -- were not complaining. How can somebody who is supposed to be "technical" get away with an outrageous, illogical comment like that?
I've always found that the tekkies are a tribe unto themselves who believe that they can actually redefine what intelligence is and actually even redefine what logic or "correct thought processes" are. So much of what they do is actually infused not with intellect, but with emotion. This is actually a big insight for me and the key to understanding much of the idiocy of SL.
I used to think the problem with the tekkie-wikis is that they were intellects short of conscience and morality by being shorn of emotion. Now I see the problem is the opposite -- they suffer from too much emotion.
They substitute rage and ecstasy for rationality much of the time, in must of what they do, and that is why I find so much of what they do suspect. Only someone completely dominated by their emotional need for self-justification, power, recognition, glee over others' misfortune, and many other hysterias could do something like a) make CopyBot b) deploy it to scare others; c) take enjoyment in this; d) make a profit of it; e) make a profit of its antidote; f) lie about it and pay others to lie about it. These features are all profoundly emotionally-based on all the seven vices -- not on calm and rational intellect -- it is intellect not shorn of heart, but intellect overrun by the infantile and vindictive hearts of very immature, unformed beings.
I'll never forget my first experience of the World Wide Web years ago in a new job. I sat down at a brand spankin' new mail listserve that could now hold attachments -- thinks like pictures or WAV files. Someone sent around a notice saying that email attachments were infected by a certain virus and people should delete it. A condescending and arrogant tekkie got on and harangued everybody, telling them that viruses could NEVER be spread by attachments EVER it was NOT POSSIBLE (I'll bet he had to do some serious crow-eating some time later when it was finally found that they could). He kept haranguing the list for distributing this helpful news. People's internal trigger to be helpful is hard to stop -- and it means their helpful-impulse in fact becomes the real virus and legions of people dutifully go and erase some necessary thingie in Windows. Tekkies scream at people doing that as being paralyzed by FUD -- in fact they are paralyzed by the Good Samaritan Rule and a sense of wishing to help their neighbour (unlike the screaming tekkies).
Yet so outraged is Winter Ventura in this thread that she even winds up inciting an actual boycott of merchants who have this spammer out. Outrageously -- with the kind of FUD and hysterical mindlessly stupidity that is supposed to be the property of only the non-technical -- she describes this innocent Good Samaritan sort of anti-bot device as "a distributed DNS attack". Libsecondlife is guilty of something like a DNS attack by unleashing CopyBot in the first place and causing people to fight back in the only way they knew how: closing their stores in protest and anger.
These wild-assed accusations go unheeded by other smug tekkies in the thread, and by the mods, of course -- they want blood and will get it. They lurch around whipping up each others' sentiments against all those "stupid idiots" who are supposedly out their spamming people. In fact, there are far less spammers today than there were a month ago precisely because people like me are going around deleting them everywhere and warning others they don't work -- not because of rants in the scripting tips forums. But that's never good enough.
Along in this thread an interesting thing occurs -- while the OP is fuming about people using the defeater as being the dummies and spammers, she never once -- not once!!! -- (why-are-we-not-surprised) -- asks who had SCRIPTED the defeater and why THEY were not responsible! Interesting, eh? Defend your own; never question your own.
SO this person actually comes on, startling enough, given that being a scripter means never having to say you're sorry, and confesses to being the culprit who invented the defeater. Much like the Americans and Russians often say they planned to be involved in a war "for only a week," Domino Marama thought her defeater would only be used for a week. If anything, it is still being distributed because so many new people are reading about it in the press, joining SL, and arming themselves with it just in case.
"I am sorry that the systems, by necessity, are annoying to regular citizens, but I hope that as a whole, their use can be seen as a neccessary evil for this short time. Sorry if this makes me seem like a "joker" but it was with the best of intentions I took the actions I did," she said.
Now, Winter, even more irrational and seething with righteous indignation, lets loose another "fact" in her tirade against others for being stupid and not grasping the facts of the uselessness of the defeater, "And they'll never realize that spamming 1.4 million people to stop ONE original instance of copybot (which has legitimate uses).. isn't appropriate behaviour." Um...what, we went from 10,000 people to 1.4 million people over night, each and everyone one of whom gets a spam? Huh? What sort of Kool-Aid are YOU drinking??? And to think Winter actually had a plan to spam spammers back. For shame.
The thread natters on with one after another taking nasty pot-shots at all the supposed ignorant spammers out there (COMPLETELY overlooking that what these "ignoramuses" did was take a SCRIPTED ITEM made by a SCRIPTER who distributed it into the WILD without taking RESPONSIBILITY FOR IT (and who still hasn't, despite making at least a decent apology). Interesting, that bit, eh? A *scripter* has cased the anti-anti problem, eh? And yet the solution another scripter wants to implement is to spam the spammers and also nail the users -- not the maker -- to the wall for a DNS charge. Fascinating.
Another fellow has the "bright idea" to make merchants turn off "build" and "outside scripts" on their land as the REAL defeat of a potential copybot situation. Well, that's a dumb idea. What merchant will deprive his customers of being able to rez the package out while in the store and see what they bought, and also walk into the store on their scripted high-heel shoes? Hello? Are you hopelessly ignorant? Or do you just play that on TV?
Finally someone named Rebecca Proudhon gets on the thread and comments that she really doesn't like the spirit in which people are discussing this. Thank GOD for the bravery of this Ms. Proudhom, whom I don't know. She writes:
"This thread strikes me as very indicative of a major polarization among SL people. I think the comments above sound arrogant and non-helpful. Two posters objecting to Copybot use are criticized or slammed and store owners and creators are just "paranoids." And you want to boycott their stores. You are totally riding roughshod over the main point of all of the objections to the copybot use.
If you have a better tool to defeat copybots that doesn't spam then please produce it. People will pay for it--more then will want to violate creators rights."
Amen. Rebecca definitely does the right thing. She calls these arrogant scripterati to *conscience* to have them take responsibility for what they do in polarizing the community and also unleashing their unbaked shit on the community.
She gets an abrupt slap from Jesse Barnett, one of the FIC-types (they don't have to have a 2003 birthdate to behave this way) who tells her that while Winter Ventura, he, and a score of their precious little friends can use "Scripting Tips" to incite hatred of a class of people; publish wildly stupid concepts like "1.4 million people being spammed" (aren't scientists supposed to be precise with numbers); and vent long emotional tales of their brother nearly quitting SL; and many other stories, comments, and vents worth of As the World Turns for their soap opera quality, suddenly, when somebody like Rebecca points out that they are really out of line, Jesse says, "This is not the General Forums or Resident Answers. If you have a script to discuss then please discuss. If you only come to try to create division or rant, then go elsewhere". Huh?! Thus entitling his own tribe to rant against people forever and anon with nary a resmod intervention. Winter piles on with a hectoring, "This is not an ethics debate" -- although it damn well should be. And the ethics debate should start with Domino, and why she and others with similar scripts are doing nothing to compensate for their errors in spreading this in the world; and continue with a stiff controntation of Winter, for inciting hate against innocent merchants.
We saw how that works in the Cory Linden town hall thread. I challenge the hate and incitement going on from the smug assholes, and I'm the one banned, not them. These creeps feel they can incite boycotts and lambast an entire class of people -- merchants putting out something that they merely thought would work CREATED BY A SCRIPTER -- and never take responsibility for their own class of people inflicting scripts on the world in the first place.
(As an interesting side discussion, Rebecca also notes how World of Warcraft's makers fight their version of CopyBot with coding on their side and detectors and blocks server side, a path the Lindens refuse to take).
Winter continues on with another utterly false and utterly incredible statement: "Meanwhile, tens of thousands of users (who are not copybots) are each receiving hundreds of pieces of junk mail every hour.. many of us are getting them shunted to email, and even when we have them muted, they're using processor cycles like crazy." That's simply not true.
This concept that 'many of us are getting them shunted to email" sounds utterly preposterous to me. While it may be true in her case, I've never heard of a single other case. How can a chatting inanimate object inworld's chat come to you in an IM when it is unable to access your profile and IM you??? It merely chats inworld. This sounds completely bogus to me.
And then enters hysterical and screechy Weedy Herbst, who tells us she was "in bed" and got an "IM alarm". WTF? Every IM to her inworld is an "alarm" and "gets her out of bed"? One IM message makes an "alarm"??? My God, she must not get a minute of sleep, what with all those land deals and jobs she has an all the IMs they generate. What a ridiculously, hysterical emotional and emotionally-blackmailing statement from someone who, again, we are told is supposed to be a rational scientist and scripter.
Not to be trumped by the languishing Weedy woken from her bed by evil PN's IM, Winter announces dramatically, "I personally didn't need the athsma attack triggered by P****y N**a's verbal assault."
Wow -- you really have to hand it to the Internet Histrionics Gang. Next thing we'll hear that her kid was kidnapped and is being held at gunpoint by her ex-boy-friend and it's all my fault because she was in IMs with me lol.
What I did was contact Winter inworld and challenge her hysteria and hate-incitement. I explained that many of us work assiduously to remove these items from the world. We try to educate people, but frankly, not a single SCRIPTER who is RESPONSIBLE for this has taken the trouble also to distribute on SLEX and other public areas the NEWS that they do not work, much less antidotes.
And then together with Weedy, she launches on a witch-hunt against ME. All of a sudden, merely for sending ONE--REPEAT ONE--AUTOMATIC IM, and for trying to use a script in good faith to clean up these damn things, I'm to be expelled from Second Life through the use of their reports to LL. (This is how I can always determine people's real, authentic evil: that they wish to expel you from SL completely. I never wish that for them; they wish it ardently for me because they cannot stand any dissent.)
All of a sudden, for sending a few lines of comment, I'm guilty of "triggering an asthma attack" (!). You had to see this gal. She went on and on and ON -- emotion definitely rules this being, not rationality. She began psychoanalyzing me, started psychobabbling about how I must fear confrontation, and kept trying to force-port me. I kept saying "bye" and telling her she shouldn't incite hatred against people merely trying to do good. The irrationality and hysteria I dealt with for an hour for this person gave me an insight into what prompts these kinds of posts in the first place: not only youth and immaturity in RL could be at stake (one has no idea to whom you are talking in SL) -- if this person is a RL woman, she is someone in a man's domain -- programming -- trying to prove herself as a scripter and therefore likely insecure. But this may be a non-point, since quite a few of the IRC channelling types of scripters are in drag in SL and are m2f.
Weedy states falsely that I am an "owner of IMs" --a fake plural -- when this automatic device sends one IM and quits. It asks "yes/no" and I pressed it once only and then sent her the box. And the situation was clarified -- and should never have been one to get her out of bed in the first place (only the most hysterical crank could be setting up real-life alarms related to SL IMs).
Winter, never one to check her facts, having found a soul-mate to play vindictive tribal warfare with, starts spouting about me, claiming I "arrogantly fired off a series of invictives at you, demanding the object's removal." Bullshit. I did no such thing and the Lindens' server logs prove THAT. The object sent one IM. I have the chat log. I didn't demand shit. I explained that it was in fact likely a false positive of some sort. I merely explained it to Weedy, said I realized it wasn't likely her object, and she should talk to Ordinal. It was Weedy who then fired of a series of "invictives" (also known as "invectives") against ME, claiming falsely that I was creator of the script, etc.
Honestly, emotions will always disprove the bona fides of this class of scripterati who claim to be based on intellect alone. Their emotions have completely suppressed their reason. And as such, with their combination of a little bit of smarts to be able to script, and a whole bunch of wild emotion that is impermeable to even the most patient reason, they are a real bane to the world.
For the first time, the concept of a script clearing-house, something I'd always opposed before, seemed like a really good idea, given the hysterics we have at the scripting switches here, unable to find facts, see reason, or take the slightest bit of criticism of their actions. If it were only their intellect and creativity involved, we would never have to think about curbing them. Since they've allowed emotions, hysteria, and deep-seated vindictive hatred to prevail over their reason, they DO need to be curbed.
"Scripts like this, in the hands of scripting ignoramii and/or antagonists.....isn't good," says Weedy -- though the thought of a scripting clearing house would make her spit if it harmed her creativity.
Am I to blame for not having a script for instructions? No. I attempted to read the thread and follow the instructions in good faith. When I explained that my error was caused by reason-by-analogy (other scripts work by putting names in brackets; other scripts seem to "say something" when you type a channel or turn on and prompt you to say "XYZ"), Ordinal promptly dummy-proofed it. She didn't spend an hour calling me an "ignorami".
"I agree... and yet.. there's really no other way to learn to script, than to try things and make mistakes," says Winter, fondly remembering some spamming particle thing she made by mistake.
So...it's fine for the scripterati to make mistakes, but not people who innocently try to use them to do good? The people who took Domino's script to prevent theft because they didn't know anybody? Me -- taking Ordinal's script and trying to remove the annoying spammers? You can see where the good lies here...and see where the evil lies -- in the hypocrisy and blindness of scripterati who think the world is their sandbox and they have eminent domain to do whatever the fuck their little emotionally-immature hearts desire.
Weedy ends by stating falsely again that there were "IMs" when there was one; she also accuses me of "lying" because she was unable to find the anti copybot. Well, we've been all hearing it for weeks, and have spent DAYS trying to get rid of it. Somehow, in the course of the last day, with all the group IMs, etc. somebody found it and deleted it before I managed to arrive on the scene that day to look for it. End of story. No lies, no drama. Just a good-faith effort to get rid of something bothering people on 3 sims!
But there's always an eager, infantile, immature ear to pile on whenever there is an emotional-drama-fest like this one, especially under the shingle of INTELLECT which scripters falsely hang on their shack.
"It is also most pleasing to know that there are at least a FEW rational people around here with the ability to excercise common sense. You guys inspire me every day," gushes a little wannabe, Zaphod Kotobide, implying that people who used the scripts to fight the copybot, or used the anti-anti scripts in good faith to fight the spam, are the stupid morons, and the few emotionally-hysterical shrews who incited hatred of people, wildly cited fake facts and even faker accusations, and planned to harass them back are to be rewarded as "inspiring" others.
Continues Zaphode, with the usual short-sighted and narrow-minded moralizing we find on this issue, "It may have slowed down, thankfully, but it's still out there, along with the attendant misunderstanding of the core issues, and unfair characterization of libSL members or supporters. Interestly, there is a shop very near the libsl HQ in Hooper, with a big sign that in part reads: "Anyone found using, or suspected of using COPYBOT in this area will be banned IMMEDIATELY"."
So? With these kinds of irresponsible, juvenile, and condescending threads in "Scripting Tips," we can see why such bans need to be held firmly in place at least to send a message to people who are impervious to reason.
While some remain with "attendant misunderstanding of core issues" because they haven't figured out yet that CopyBot never worked well and is broken now anyway (messages that libsecondlife itself could have done 1,000 times better in spreading instead of being smug assholes), the attendant ignorance I see most glaring is within libsecondlife and its supporters to this day. They remain tonedeaf to the viciousness, tolerance of W-Hat griefers, and sheer assholery evident in their leaders and chief promoters. They remain tonedeaf to the fact that people who opposed CopyBot or used deaters were not seized by FUD, but by sheer common sense. Let me remark again: look at the group carefully, and see that people with the best reputations in SL are no longer in the group -- and with very good reason.
It's also true that people have the right to ban anyone from their land -- isn't this Philip Linden's solution for EVERYTHING? It's a good message to send to libsecondlife, which has been so emotionally immature and so irresponsible AS A GROUP for which I hold ALL GROUP MEMBERS INCLUDING LINDENS responsible. The leadership, the style, the message did not change.
So in contemplating this Christmas Eve the "polarization of the world," as Rebecca so aptly put it, I don't think it's a time to issue palliatives and silly, saccharine, "let's all get along" homilies.
Polarization can be minimized and managed, but first, there has to be a recognition from the scripterati that while they may follow a star, they are not the Magi and didn't find the Christ. They do indeed only find dirty straw much of the time. Their science isn't a science in the game of SL, it's just a kind of arty hobby with a very clunky set of tools. The arrogance they have about their "knowledge" is particularly pumped up because some of them do NOT have these credentials in first life at all, and hope to obtain them through SL and therefore are particularly juvenile, hysterical, and insecure about their "creations".
Furthermore, a script is not good in a vacuum; it is only good if it can be used successfully in the world and make it better. CopyBot has never been demonstrated to make the world Better; it has only been very reliably shown to make it Worse. Scripters must accept that they are not the only unilateral pole of Second Life that can dictate its nature; the other pole of users -- consumers -- are a very necessary and integral part of this world and their needs and concerns are legitimate.
Several people doing good really shined for me in this usual SL drama. One was Rebecca, who was willing to stand up to bullies. But the real star of the show was Ordinal, who kept re-doing the script quietly until the issues were fixed.
Today, thanks to Ordinal's quiet excellence, we have a script that anyone can press and use to find the owner of the anti-anti-copybot. That means that the hysterical nutters who got so angry about this SCRIPTER's work unleashed on the world so irresponsibly now have an antidote (not thanks to the original poster, and not thanks to the original maker of the defeater!) -- and we can get to work finishing the clean-up. Again, I can only call on Domino to hold public events, put out really visible public notices, and work much harder at educating the public to the inefficacy of the anti-anti script.
Says Zaphode, "So the issue is two-fold. Not only do people still apparently not understand that these countermeasure scripts are entirely ineffective, but categorically criminalize the entire libSL project, and all its members. It's really a shame, and I wish there was a way to reach out to these folks with the basic truths of the matter."
I can only say to this fellow, whom I don't know: open your mind wider, please. Nobody has "criminalized" anything. The Lindens made the "unauthorized use" (but not *any* use) of CopyBot a TOS offense. People have the right to ban folks from their land "for any reason or no reason" -- and that's something I myself fight because there is no recourse.
Bt in this case, they have more than a technical reason, and they are not guilty of a witch-hunt. The leaders and main supporters like Zaphode himself are continuing to remain blind to -- if not outright cover up -- the serious MORAL issues involved in CopyBot that are not about its technical dimension whatsoever -- and muddying those distinctions to enable scripterati to lord it over us once again is transparently wrong.
I don't expect any more peace to come to Second Life in 2007, any more than I expect it of the Middle East. I do think that unfortunately, there is a basic good fight to be had in Second Life that is vital in order to keep it free. Those who make the very mechanizers of the world -- the scripterati -- must be curbed, must be challenged as to their heedless and hedonistic infliction of devices on us in this world -- and must be compelled to cease their emotional handling of what should be accomplished by intellect. They must be compelled to stop harming our world.
Comments:
Posted by: Ordinal Malaprop | December 24, 2006 at 04:22 PM
I'm glad you are willing to say that and you were never faulted for a minute, Ordinal. You seem quite capable of not only rational thought yourself, but capable of ascribing rational thought to other beings -- that if they don't have the same set of reflexes, expectations, pieces of knowledge, they will come at something with a monkey wrench unwittingly, not out of stupidity.
The unwillingness of just about everybody else in that thread to credit people with basic reason -- their willingess to cast aspersion and hatred on them and assume they are stupid and harmful and then take great glee in hating them -- is what has prompted me, from my very first encounter with SL forums in October 2004, to fight back hard ever since -- just as hard as I possibly can.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | December 24, 2006 at 04:56 PM
Merry Xmas, Neva, try not to steal christmas this year!
Posted by: King Frederick | December 24, 2006 at 06:05 PM
You spelled my name wrong. How am I supposed to pay you off for increasing my profile if you don't spell my name right! No $100 check for you Prokofy.
Posted by: Eddy Stryker | December 25, 2006 at 12:07 AM
About that "can't send IMs bit"...
Let me see now (digs through his Gmail account). Ah, here we are:
The object 'Anti-CopyBot V2' has sent you a message from Second Life:
!quit
Objects can send IMs (see http://lslwiki.com/lslwiki/wakka.php?wakka=llInstantMessage for the gory details); in fact, a working CopyBot defeater has to send IMs (CopyBot only responds to commands received via IM). Any object that just spams "!quit" in chat is a total waste of time.
(Of course, any version of CopyBot that's still working would have to be modified, and so probably wouldn't respond to !quit anyway.)
Posted by: Mako Mabellion | December 25, 2006 at 05:41 PM
Yes, objects can send IMs -- when they are scripted to do that to send you an IM to your email -- when you configure the object to send you an IM to your email offline. I have rental boxes that do this, for example.
I don't see how an object merely chatting, however, not set up to go to your email, can reach you. If that were true, merely by logging off on a lot where a defeater was spamming, I'd continue to get IMs in email from it. But I don't. There'd be thousands of people who would be getting these -- but they don't.
I don't see how it is possible to take an object that is merely chatting in room chat, that you haven't set up to reach you in email, be able to reach you.
Most of the defeaters merely chat. They just spam. They *are* a total waste of time.
If there aer objects that somehow can identify whoever is on a sim AND send them IMs AND send them emails, it's something especially configured to do that, not the garden variety defeater.
Sorry just not buying this. We're talking about different things.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | December 25, 2006 at 09:45 PM
it really is too bad you never gave me any real chance to respond to your one-sided rant in IMs. You've made your mind up about me, yet as I correctly assessed, we've never met, or even corresponded once.
My posts to the thread were largely prodded on when the owner of a campsite I frequented, installed 4 (4?!?!?!) of the anti-copybot spammers. Then someone near my shop installed one. Then someone installed one in the sandbox I spent the most time in. I tried muting them, but they kept getting through the mutes. Then I got half-logged-off (red mapped.. you know, that weird state where you're on SL, but you're not?)... and woke up in the morning to find hundreds of emails in my inbox. I posted to the scripting tips forum, in an effort to find SOMETHING that would either help me find them to click them (and thus shut them up) or else help me find them so they could be AR'ed (as LL had requested).
My initial requests in the forum were met with "sorry it can't really be done" so I tried confronting the owners of these devices.. but their attitude was much of a "my way or the highway" vein. So I went about muting the things.. rather than getting banned over something so pointless. By the time Ordinal had posted his script, I had already begun muting them.
At this point it became more of a project to see if we could "punk up" the script that Ordinal had created. I think in the end we had 3 solid scripts, each that handled the task a little differently. Some used notecards, some did wildcard searches...
I did joke a couple of times, that it would be funny to send an IM back to the owner of the things IMing us.. that said "no, you !quit"... every time they said quit. like two arguing children in the back of a car (quit, not you quit. you quit. no you. stop. no you stop... etc). A few of the others posted a few joke scripts, but in the end, every one of us was working towards the same goal. Creating an easy to use tool, to help a human being.. annoyed by the useless spam.. to find the damned thing, and either click it, or IM the owner to remove it, or just abuse report it.
As to the numbers I used. At the time I posted, there were roughly 1,400,000 accounts in secondlife, and current login numbers showed about 10k. Since the "spambot" script(s) were so widely spread on the grid that Linden Labs was asking residents to report them if the owners wouldn't remove them... it seemed reasonable to venture forth the concept that "Everyone is getting these IMs". That was a loose statement, not a carefully studied fact based on solid research. But as we know, 78% of all quoted percentages used in everyday conversation, are made up on the fly... or was it 91%?
What I find odd, is that with all your anger at "The Scripting Elite" (which it's kind of funny you should lump me into.. given that I can't script my way out of a wet paper bag) - Why would you intentionally go into the viper's den, and read through a thread so full of what you viewed to be elite snobbery, hate, etc... and then why would you grab the first script you found, throw it in a prim, and fire it up in world?
If we are the base of all that is evil...
Why would you use the tools of the dark side?
All I wanted was some way to find the damned things... because I did not want another "mailbox full" warning.
Another assumption you made, in your post here.. is that the person who posted (I forget their name) claiming to be the originator of the "Spambot" was not in fact it's originator. The person who actually did create the first of these devices (the one who set it up on SLexchange for giveaway) pulled it 24 hours after he realized how many thousands of people were installing it. He immediately began trying to contact these people to have them remove it, and even began a separate thread, borrowing heavily from our ideas, to try and help locate these scripts and contact the owners. Sadly, most of his scripted items had been ripped open and reshelled, and SOLD by people trying to make a buck off the panic. (including one that was being sold by the guy who was selling copybot on SLX). Adding features like name randomization, so even people who wanted to AR them, or even just mute them.. couldn't. These people added features like "randomly changes position" and "invisible"... so the people who just wanted the things to shut up, were "out of luck" finding them to click it. One person in that thread, mentioned they found one hidden INSIDE a pool table.
At the end of it all, the things faded to background noise. Thanks.. in part, to the actions of everyday people finding them, and talking to the owners. Did they use the scripts we kitbashed together? I don't know.
You did. Would that script have been written at all, if someone like me, angry at their spam load, hadn't posted, asking for a solution? Maybe yes, maybe no.
The funniest part of this whole thing is, I am really not a scripter of any merit. I just hang out there because the threads are more about "need" and "need fulfillment" rather than about opinion and politics. I like the way scripts develop there, when people say "how about adding this feature?" or "that's not working, let's try this instead". A sort of collaboration.. among the art people and the programmers. It's a place where even someone like me can contribute to the betterment of other people's scripts.. because I can approach it from the "output" side of the equation.. and say "how about if it does this?"
We did indeed discuss, to a great degree, the "ethics" of automatically sending an instant message back to the owners of the devices, and we all agreed that it was generally not a great idea in the wrong hands.
http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=148951&highlight=copybot
http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=150802
(guess there were two actually, my bad).
Anyways.. in the "request for review" thread, you can see the true horror of my "master plan of evil" as I wrote the following lines of sheer malice and hatred:
"Basically.. with the hunter-seeker script, the ultimate goal iis for us to have a nice, sanitized, concise, non-harrassing notecard we can pass out to people who are running these things. Many of us are willing to do the legwork to pass out the notecards, but we need a little help creating that notecard. It sounds, frankly, like the notecard you hope to send to the users of your devices."
Tempers were running hot about this issue, (as yours still seems to be).. the last thing I wanted to do was to get into a shouting match with someone saying "I'm not spamming you, you're spamming me! get rid of it now or be AR'ed!".. and sadly, the owners of these spambots, in their panicked state at the time, were sure to escalate a "conversation about it not really helping" to that level in only a few seconds.
I didn't WANT to get into it with people. I just wanted to find them, get out the "Did you know?" flyer, fire it off to the owner, and forget about the issue.
There's more I could say on the matter.. about some of the things you've said, to me via IMs, or about me to the world in your Blog here. But I won't. I'll let my track record stand for itself over the long term. I'm a good person, and I know it.. and you don't have to like me. That's really okay.
But what you *HAVE* done.. by posting about me, and using my name.. is make me 100 times (made up figure) more important to the world, than I was before.
(sits back in her high-backed leather chair, petting her persian cat.) ".. and I will destroy the earth's core... that is of course unless you pay me.. one million dollars."
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to pandering to corporate interests, bent on destroying the SL economy... or was I patronizing evil camplords who abuse the grid and shamefully hog precious system resources in exchange for a place in the top search? No wait.. I was leeching off the perverted underbelly of SL, shamefully extorting money in exchange for providing genitalia to people bent on turning SL into a sexscapade... No wait, I was encouraging women to debase themselves by performing in strip clubs.. or was I dominating my herd of submissive, latex clad, shemale anthropomorphic weasels? Hrm.. there was something about a boat, and an anchovy pizza..
Oh wait, no I remember, I was finishing up some christmas presents for my housemate's kids.. one of which is in the hospital tonight.
So it's back to duct tape and PVC pipe for me. Hope you enjoy the script we made. Try not to get into too much trouble with it. Remember it's not a "point and click" thing.
Oh, and if you don't beleive objects can send instant messages... I have one word for you.
llInstantMessage
Posted by: Winter Ventura | December 25, 2006 at 10:23 PM
Oh just an extra bit, saw your last post.
Copybot only responded to !quit if you IMed it. The "Simple Copybot Defeater" did a sensor sweep (96m radius) and created a list of all avatars it found. It would then use llInstantMessage to send the !quit command to every found "agent" (I may still have the "simple copybot defeater" I got off SLexchange on day 1.. (I'll look for it if you like)
The problem being that object sourced IMs look just like local chat. There was no way, however, to detect the chatting object, because the objects WEREN'T CHATTING they were IMing avatars(agents).
Unfortunately it's very hard to TEST if an object is chatting or IMing, without some scripting know-how. The reason that your mailbox didn't fill up, is because you logged off. If you log off, the spambot stops sensing your presence, and therefore stops IMing you. What was happening, however, was that many of us were becomming redmapped in those days.
Servers and clients were disconnecting from the grid all over the place. (I think they call that a "soft crash" or a "silent crash?" I dunno). But in that odd state, the scripts (on your server) can still see you as being online. Yet the main SL system, and your client cannot directly talk to each other, so the IMs simply drop off to silence... being shunted to email since the SL presence system is certain you ARE offline.
The original SCD only imed every 30 seconds (I say only!)... but later incarnations scanned every 5 seconds, or less.. people would double and triple up on them, creating a huge server load of object to avatar IMs, bounces, and sensor events.... perhaps actually triggering more red-maps?
There were a lot of complaints at the time, to the lindens, about the spam.. you have to really look all over the forums to find it unfortunately... this did happen over a month ago! It got buried in the hundreds of demands to ban copybot, and libSL, et all. People were getting it in emails, a lot.
But only a few of us were working towards "okay.. how do we find the things and get them turned off already?" Since those not panicking, knew they wouldn't help for more than a day or two (and ya certainly didn't need 4 of them in a mall), and since it was clear that the linden response to the whole issue was going to be somewhat laid back.
IM-to-email is a really buggy system.. Many times I'l be having a conversation with someone via IM, and I'll pop open a web browser to check email.. and find some IM from them.. from the middle of the conversation, that I never got.
The biggest problem with the IM spambots wasn't the IM spam (since most of the time, you could mute them or find them to click), it was the Linden Labs faulty IM and presence system that allowed an object to see you online while SL could not see you. But since Linden Labs has something like a 2-month backlog on bugfixes (made up number)... it seemed easiest to try and head the problem up at the beginning of the river, rather than trying to build a complex spam filter in my email that could discern spam from these things, from genuine IMs I wanted and needed to read.
Posted by: Winter Ventura | December 25, 2006 at 10:46 PM
Winter, why do you take me for a fool? I *got* all that -- every bit of it. Every single issue you've raised here is already answered by what I already wrote -- copiously.
I read the forums. I understood perfectly what you were going through -- but...like you were the only one? I had dozens of these things hammering constantly everywhere I went, too, but I simply worked with the owners to get them deleted. Why are you special?
And most people didn't experience anything of what you are describing, whatever its merits -- objects IMing you even offline.
The issue isn't the defeater -- any more than the issue is the copybot. The issue is your fucking privileged, arrogant, bullshit attitude toward other people, that just because they've been forced to defend themselves against something that threatened their livlihoods -- and doesn't threaten YOURS -- you can treat them like shit.
I'm here to tell you no, you cannot.
You fail to see that what is required here is a realization on your part that you behaved like a piece of shit to people accusing them, making up fake numbers, hysterically venting, and inciting to hatred and even boycotts. That is not going to fly.
It's not ABOUT you explaining ten million technical aspects of all this shit -- we're not stupid, and we got ALL of it LONG AGO.
Can't you see that whatever you got from a item installed in a sandbox *had* to have been especially set up to IM *you*? The script contained that feature. I am just not buying that ordinary chatting objects can go into your IMs. They can't. They go into room chat. They don't go inside your IMs when you are online; they can't go into them when you are offline. This is just very basic stuff. Something else is at stake here -- and it is not an ordinary phenomenon at all to have something chatting in world -- whether sweeping and finding agents and IMing them or merely chatting -- to then reach you also offline.
It has to be scripted to do that -- and most things DO NOT do that. In fact, I can't think of anything else that does this except store and security scripts.
You yourself explicated here *but not on the forums* that this was due to being partially logged off or frozen or "What was happening, however, was that many of us were becomming redmapped in those days." So why do you think you can extrapolate from this UNIQUE situation to you at that time, that SOME (not many) people experienced and then say that 10,000 or 1.4 million people were being spammed offline by these objects inworld? That's just fucking PREPOSTEROUS. It's not LOGICAL and you know better, if you call yourself a tekkie.
Don't extrapolate your little one-day experience to something happening across the board.
You're already somebody who thinks themselves very special, and very important, such as to get on a forums and treat people like shit as you did. And what I do when I see people doing that is push back. You may not like it -- but you shoved first. You shoved people like me, and my tenants first, and you get a shove right back. That's all.
Your one day of fame in my blog is a lesson not only for you, but others like you that bad behaviour like that WILL get a robust pushback, where you keep inciting hatred, and ganging up on others with these fucking lame asstard juvenile script-kiddies to harass and bully the adults on this world who want to live in piece.
>Why would you intentionally go into the viper's den, and read through a thread so full of what you viewed to be elite snobbery, hate, etc... and then why would you grab the first script you found, throw it in a prim, and fire it up in world?
This is typical of the head-up-ass view of the world that you have -- and evidence you didn't read what I wrote. I do indeed loathe the script kiddies and the scripterati for their behaviour. I constantly condemn it. It's the only way. These uncooth beasts only understand force, and force is what I use on them with as sharp a pen and as critical a commentary as I can.
Scripters are the rulers of our world. A few of them I've found over the years are kind and intelligent and helper. I wrote about one like that here -- Ordinal. I wish they were all like this. They aren't. Most are assholes -- arrogant, aggressive assholes who like having power over other people.
I regularly read the scripting tips and library to read about improvements in scripts that are laggy or anything new put out for free or for sale. I use a fair number of scripts for rentals. I was keen to get Ordinal's script which I read about on her blog or something and she sent me the link. I would have eventually perused this forums, but I have less and less time for the LL forums, and in this case, Ordinal herself gave me a link to the "den of vipers".
Your comment that a "dummy" like me shouldn't "venture into the vipers' den" is all I need to know about how tribalistic you bare. You chose this area to excel in because it gives you a sense of power over others, a sense of having arcane knowledge they don't have.
I just brush aside all that bullshit and go in there and get the little I need to accomplish the job. Ordinal is a good scripter, and I don't "grab the first script I see off there," but I sure as hell take Ordinal's link (she being a trusted person and good scripter) and use it to pick up her script.
Duh? Does that answer your question? But I had already written this. So your need to keep bullying and fuming about it lets me know about your tribal urge to make everyone conform.
Once again, I never said I don't believe objects can't send messages to you. Didn't I just say that hundreds of rental boxes send messages to me daily? Duh? But they are *set up* to do that.
For an object inworld to spam you and reach you with an IM is a pretty aggressive act. Most scripts do not function that way. This one did -- the defeater. And the anti-defeater functioned the same way.
This seems like a pretty aggressive thing that all scripters should think of just disabling and perhaps deprecating. It can IDENTIFY an agent but then you yourself can manually chose to IM them. Of course, scripters never met a script they didn't like and never deprecate anything.
What you're also failing to grasp is that I read through this thread several times. I am not stupid. You don't have to be a scripterati to understand the ethics issues at stake.
(Funny you should suddenly invoke an "ethics" discussion in this thread when both you and Jesse Barnes jumped on other people and claimed when other people raised these issues that this wasn't 'general" or an "ethics discussion" but just a technical scripting tips forums.)
I didn't at all like the idea of something that automatically IMs people when they are offline or online, so they get a mysterious automatic IM from some object they never heard of. In fact, when I first turned this on and saw it doing this, I chose "no" because I wanted to reach the person in person. Then when another time I saw the person was offline, I chose "yes" merelythinking, so, they can one more offline message, I will follow up with a manual message.
Finally, let me repeat, that we are FORCED to use the tools of "the dark side". We have no choice. They brook no dissent. They accept no oversight. They think they have eminent domain. But the fight is only beginning. They can't be allowed to destroy the world.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | December 26, 2006 at 12:01 AM
Ironically.. we keep arguing the same side of the issue.
spam = bad.
IM spam = very bad.
Emailed IM spam = extremely bad.
I dealt with a lot of people who were very agitated in that time. panicked about the copybot. So panicked that they were willing to ban people if they didn't like their copybot defeater IMs. "Oh your mailbox is full? too fucking bad, it's my livelihood I'm trying to protect. Now either shut up or get off my land."
The results of confronting people directly were bad. The best solution was to just find the things, note down the names, and then fire off an AR to LL and let them handle it.. maybe someday.
You've been very rude to me. both in your IMs and in your post and reply here. You've swore AT me repeatedly over this issue.. and I don't really think that's very nice. I was really hoping we could have a sit-down meeting and discuss your views on the matter, but every "Teleport Offer" I gave you was rebuked as some sort of "imposed force teleport".. as if I were a Linden or something.
Obviously you're very upset. and I'm sorry for that. I just wanted a script to help find the bloody things. The woman who posted to the thread was lambasting us for "daring" to try and have these things removed from world. I told her that there were literally hundreds of other threads for that debate.. and scripting tips was not the place for the political discussion (I did use the word Ethical there.. but like two sentences later I did mention that we debated the responsibility of the mechanism)
I just wanted help finding one.. because I couldn't. it was near my store, and harassing my customers and they were complaining to me thinking it was mine. I had already stated that I had begun muting the things.. and finally just gave up on the whole matter.
This thread was a month old.. dead in internet terms.. and it was only through your bumbling with the script, firing off automated IMs to a person who didn't even own one of the things... (which she got in her email) that the thread was even resurrected again.
Personally I think you've begun to lose touch with reality, and you seem to see conspiracies within everything. I'm an art geek, not some tech person.. Hell I've only had a PC for 2 years or so. I have no retention for scripting languages. But I spend a lot of time looking things up, and can eventually put together some pretty okay things... if they are a bit simplistic. That's why I tend to lean on the help of others.. and the best place to find that help.. is the forums.
I like Ordinal.. Ordinal seems to be a pretty nice Guy/Girl/Person-of-indeterminate-Gender. Ordinal's helped me out a few times. Newgate and Jesse have too. They all pitched in when that Message Board project came up... and I still ended up more or less doing my own thing.. but I was grateful for their attempts, and they did teach me a few things along the way.
As to your belefs about what Scripted objects can do, or what "Simple Copybot Defeater" and it's ilk were programmed to do... You're wrong.. simply, factually in error. But I doubt you'll concern yourself with that. People on a witchhunt rarely let facts affect their views.
Simple fact is.. the world has gotten along just fine without you, and will continue to do so. I never claimed to be important.. it's you who have made me so. And for that small amount of notariety, I guess I should say Thank You. If you are firmly convinced that there is some secret illuminati group within SL.. that controls everything, of which people like Jesse are a part...
Then I consider myself truly honoured to be counted among their number. Jesse's been really nice to me, and was there to say something nice when the chips were down.
But I guess in every group, there's always got to be a few bad eggs looking to spoil the game for everyone.. and I think (counting the cusswords in your response) I think I've just decided you're just a different type of griefer.. I have no more time to play your meta-game.
And I'm still looking for where I "incited a boycott"... or rather, I would be. if I felt like you mattered.
Does the FIC give out Christmas bonuses? I need to look into that.
Posted by: Winter Ventura | December 26, 2006 at 02:14 AM
>So panicked that they were willing to ban people if they didn't like their copybot defeater IMs. "Oh your mailbox is full? too fucking bad, it's my livelihood I'm trying to protect. Now either shut up or get off my land."
And that's all good. It's their right. Sounds like hatred and nastyness? But that's how YOU behaved to them -- I can see it right in your writings in this thread.
And you were dead wrong. Because they weren't panicked -- that's simply ridiculous. They were rightfully angry. RIGHTFULLY angry at a group of total fucktards in libsecondlife who deliberately, maliciously, and callously griefed the whole grid; sold these items; sold their antidotes; maliciously and gleefully laughed at their victims; lied that the Copybot was disabled; lied about their involvement; made fake apologies; paid a source to lie to journalists -- and many other things -- they've been outlined copiously not even first here on this blog, but in transcripts of the parties involved in sluniverse.com You need to catch up the reality of this immoral bunch before you start slinging around words like "panicked" or implying that ANYTHING that people did in response to these fucktards is something THEY are to blame for. There is only one source to blame here: LIBSECONDLIFE. LIBSECONDLIFE. LIBSECONDLIFE. Not people who "panicked". Not people who tried to help. Not people who put out spammers or anti-spammers. But LIBSECONDLIFE.
I dealt with many irate tenants,neighbours,friends, colleagues in those few days of the CopyBot scare. People were not frightened -- these are intelligent people with DSL lines, discretionary time and income. They were ANGRY and worried about their living in SL. ANd they banded together and fought hard. Since a SCRIPTER -- a fact you say NOTHING about -- gave them an antidote, they used it in good faith. Just like I used the anti-antidote in good faith!
Most people, contacted within a week about the news that it bothered people and was useless, removed it.
The day or two that you might have had to put up with a storm of this was never a reason to post the hate and bullshit you posted.
YOUR experience ONLY was leading to bad results BECAUSE OF YOUR FUCKING BAD ATTITUDE. I'm here to RUB YOUR LITTLE FACE IN IT until you see it.
If you come at people with a superior, smug, scripterati attitude that they are idiots and panicked and FUD-ridden -- naturally they will result by saying FUCK YOU. As well they SHOULD. I IM'd them and patiently explained that it didn't work and was bothering people. In many cases, store owners who don't live in stores 24/7 didn't understand the spam went 96 m2. They thought it was in their own store only. Once they saw it was going 96 m2 they completely rethought it.
Many used a defeater that even says "IMs once and quits" -- but didn't actually -- and didn't realize it was STILL spamming so they promptly removed it when you showed them the chat history.
As for meeting inworld: No. Fucking. Way. I'm not interested in touchy feelies and fuzzy wuzzies here. I don't wish to be your friend or interlocutor inworld. I don't wish to "reach an accord" or "accommodate" or "resolve our differences".
Because it's not about that. I don't know you; and I don't care to know you. It doesn't matter what kind of person you are or what your reputation is.
All that matters is that you be forced to deal with the repercussions of your incitement of hate and your smug condescension on the forums. I fight back when I see that -- hard. I don't let it pass. You have yet to acknowledge the falsehoods of your idiotic citation of 10,000 and then 1.4 million people "being spammed" merely because you had a day of spam; you've yet to acknowledge that people had a LEGITIMATE concern about their livlihoods.
SO no, there are no sit-downs here, there are only repeated confrontations. You don't get to get away with this.
I understood from the first minute that I saw a) the CopyBot being shown off by Baba Yamamoto and b) the device he used to stop it (or command) that !quit was the thing to make it cease. That's a well=known command. It worked only on the first version, later editions it didn't. People even without some deep technical knowledge understand these basic truths. The device worked by scaninng 96 meters and if it found the CopyBot it would IM it to try to get it to quit its routines. Duh. I mean, this is NOT rocket science.
Read what Rebecca and others wrote on the forums. She said "and you want to boycott their stores". Your original post incited people to want to do that, and she picked up on that. Did you literally say "I call on everybody to boycott these stores." No. What you do is so pillory them, so denigrate them, and get 12 other people to pile on, that some in the thread then began to start discussing boycotting the stores. That IS what incitement IS.
Scripting tips IS a place for a political discussion for YOU -- YOU think it's fine to make hugely political, hateful remarks about people you don't like, portraying them as FUD-dled and stupid.
They were just angry -- and frankly, just organized. People in this thread castigate them for boycotting the members of libsecondlife; frankly, they did the right thing because they were able to send a sharp consumer message.
You don't have any good solutions for CopyBot or anti-Copybot, frankly. Merely writing to Lindens isn't a solution; merely scripting something to stop the spam isn't the solution.
Only when you stop screeching and climb off your high horse will they be solutions.
Your repeated, obdurate, belligerant, dense efforts to keep reciting technical bullshit in my face when I confront you with moral realities earn nothing but the sharpest rebuff. I'm not wrong about anything I've said here. You're the one who has to explain to other tekkies, not me, how you can write ridiculous bullshit about objects spamming 1.4 million people in their offline email boxes. For shame.
Many find it unpleasant when I take this strong and sharp a stance about something. Too bad. Everybody in Scripting Tips thought it was just fine when somebody named Winter Ventura started a political rant inciting hatred of the non-technical and merchants who put out anti-Copybot defeaters. Dozens piled on in joy and glee at finding tribal bonding around the issue of hating others. Many in this thread smugly berated with the full-force of arrogant condescension people they thought were stupid and undeserving of sympathy. There were even little fawning wannabee fanboyz who came along to gush that gosh, they were just all the most reasonable and intelligent people out there and wasn't it grand that these few -- and now this newbie could count himself among them! -- were the smart ones, surrounded by idiots.
See how you look? You look like shit. I'm here to *give you that feedback until you stop*.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | December 26, 2006 at 02:46 AM
LOL Prokofy, you just spent how long trying to convince people you are right about how the Simple Copybot Defeater works, that it spams text and not IMs? First, it would mean the libsecondlife bot "IM Responder" that responds to !quit messages would never fire, which you can see from anecdotal evidence or try for yourself that it certainly does receive IMs from objects. You might then wander over to the LSL Wiki and find http://www.lslwiki.com/lslwiki/wakka.php?wakka=llInstantMessage the llInstantMessage command that allows an object to IM people, which will show up as green chat text in their client (confusing I know). If you hadn't gotten yourself banned from the forums you might find the pages and pages of threads on this same subject and read about the bug where if a scanner detects you and you go online just about that same time, you will still receive IMs from the object that are forwarded to your e-mail inbox (depending on your account settings) since you are offline.
The sheer volume of text you write gives off the appearance that you might have done some research on the subjects you speak of, but that's rarely the case.
Posted by: Eddy Stryker | December 26, 2006 at 05:53 AM
Um, duh, I got this ages ago, "the llInstantMessage command that allows an object to IM people, which will show up as green chat text in their client (confusing I know)."
Yes, it appears as green chat. Yes, it is confusing. Yes, we got all that. Simple Copy Bot Defeater is not the only device out there.
There are now several. Some of them ONLY chat and don't do a damn thing.
I can read the forums just fine. You are an asstard.
I didn't get myself banned; I was banned by unjust and unscrupulous Lindens who were pressured for business reasons by people they had signed NDAs with.
My conscience is clear and I haven't done a thing wrong. I stand by every word I wrote on the SL forums and there is nothing in them -- even by the Lindens' own admission -- that is in fact a TOS violation.
YOU are the one who has a lot of explaining to do for your immoral actions, Eddy Stryker, so fuck you.
And stop spamming me inworld with bogus invitations to your stupid griefer-filled group.
YOU need to explain why Partyhats Loll and other W_hat griefers are still in your group, using it to impress everybody.
And if what you say is true, that these devices IM you, you can't explain why...they do NOT IM you as a huge, routine, massive phenom. They only IM'd when there was a presence issue, as you just explained:
"bug where if a scanner detects you and you go online just about that same time, you will still receive IMs from the object that are forwarded to your e-mail inbox (depending on your account settings) since you are offline."
DUH. Now how often does that happen? Hello?
And Winter Ventura made roughly the same point, and I challenged her too -- this is .... a one time occurence for you only?
Because that's not what she claimed. She claimed 10,000 people -- nay, 1.4 million people were being spammed in their offline email by defeaters.
If you weren't so eager to show off your bogus rote knowledge and try to trump someone; if you weren't such an incredible asshole, you'd see that my point here wasn't about what the defeaters do or don't do technically and literally; it's about HOW OFTEN they really do this -- whether it is a MASS and REGULAR phenom.
And all you've done is dig yourself in deeper in trying to expose me. All you've done is prove my point. You've confirmed my suspicions. That is is a bug. That means you'd have to hit it just right -- coming online just at the right moment or "redlining" or having presence issues.
That's not the bulk, the mass experience.
Therefore I am absolutely right to challenge this bogus, hysterical, dumb-ass claim that 1.4 million people - the real ghosts of SL as they don't exist!!!! -- are being spammed in offline IMs.
Nothing whatsoever of the kind is happening. One little tekkie bitch got a little bite in the ass and tried to make it sound like the entire world was infected -- it is not.
What's infected are your sick minds.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | December 26, 2006 at 06:40 AM
Well, thank you for the kind words. I should really have made sure the script itself was self-instructing and a bit clearer to start with; in my defence I can only say that the original one was simply something I made in my lunchbreak for the consideration of other scripters. In a situation where other people might use it, much clearer instructions are needed. Not because they are stupid, far from it, just because some things are obvious to me which aren't obvious to someone without the same background.