Second Thoughts

STORM THE JIRA!

The JIRA is a great evil, as I've written. And there are many sub-evils within it that have to be tackled. It's a great evil precisely because it's a little embryonic evil now putting down roots in the entire Metaverse that the people making it imagine should be the system of governance of this vast thing. So the time to strangle it in its cradle is *now*. Before it invades the mode of thinking and enables little cabals of people to take over lots of other people.

Please storm the JIRA and vote on this issue -- WEB 382 -- symbolic of so much that is wrong with this infernal contraption -- and stop people from arbitrarily closing and moving bugs and featurse they don't like. And hunt around for all the other many things worthy of voting for. Unfortunately, you can't vote "no" yet on anything -- it's totally rigged like a Soviet election -- but we can hopefully get that fixed when the makers of JIRA itself are overthrown.

While it may not prove technically possible to weld in a mechanism that triggers an ask for an author's consent (you wonder why not, but the makers, again, may be the problem there), by voting on this issue, you can help create a climate where these little weasel script kiddy fanboyz can stop trying to hijack things there -- they will feel some social pressure not to do so.

Express Denunciations!

My God, so much to denounce, and so little time! I'm sure you all can sympathize with the busy life of Prokofy Neva and yet the mounting horror of so many awful things to denounce everywhere, some not rising to the test of being dubbed "evil" -- but still pretty awful. So I'm going to just lodge a series of "express denunciations" here without links even (why give linkage to these brutes!) and catch up later:

o csven Concord -- ugh, ugh ugh. This highly creepy character has started posting again here and there in respectable company, and posting more on his own blog. You would never, never know that he is completely unhinged, and a full-throated supporter of "ageplay", the cynical simulation of child rape. Now that it is condemned and prohibited by the Lindens officially (yes, even the depiction of anime or cartoons or anything resembling child pornography, even if performed by adults), csven has absolutely nothing to say. Nothing. Nowhere. Not a post. You would think, from reading his blogs about design or marketing or see him pop up on other odious blogs like Sycophanske's, that he was "normal". He isn't. That has to be remembered, and refreshed periodically. I bother with csven like I wouldn't bother to cross the street to denounce all the other ageplayers (that can be somebody else's job) because of his cynical manipulation of this topic, his harassment of me and my tenants, and his outrageous behaviour on Clickable Culture and Terra Nova, which led to me fighting back (the mods were wimps) and both of us being banned. If he turns up at either one of these blogs because these wimpy mods think he's rehabilitated, I will definitely be screaming bloody murder.

o and speaking of Benjamin Sycophanske of Morally Blind, hey he did NOT surprise by feting and fussing over Ginsu Linden and of course loving up his presentation for Metronomics (monotonous like a metronome). He falls into a faux reflective and rueful posture, as if alas, alack-a-day, we must concede that "the Law will prevail" -- which of course is baloney, as one must always ask: which law? whose law? by whom? how? And many other questions. I will have more on this in a moment, but it is interesting to note that now that Benjie doesn't have Ginko to kick around any more, his traffic is down.

o Daniel Terdiman -- who is continuing to flounce around with his dubious guide to enterpreneurship -- we had to bear up under a painfully-rendered detailed account of his sleepy limo drive to be interviewed on CNN (yawn). Doubledown Tandino put it wonderfully on the old Blingsider: Terdiman reminds him of one of those hucksters on late-night TV, you know the kind, who has a real-estate seminar or a get-rich-quick scheme that he will sell you for a mere $289 in 3 easy installments...but...if the schemes really worked, then...why is the guy reduced to hawking stuff on late-night TV to chumps?! Terdiman at first rushed me with lengthy emails trying to pitch his book and pre-empt my criticism after I denounced his failure to thank me and others who helped; he then promised to send me the book to review (and never did); when I challenged him about Anshe, he angrily responded -- well, this all now cries out for a very long treatment, which it will get, but geez, I'm not going to buy that book myself, I'll wait til it's in the bargain bin at the Strand (any day now!)

What Caleb Erases

I'm long overdue with a long-contemplated post called "The Geek Religion" -- really, I just need to get it posted and not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Meanwhile, a little tsunami in a teacup with Onder Skall/Caleb Booker happens and I have to simply remark once again on the astounding propensity of the tekkie mind to be roundly closed, to clamp down like a deathly vise on a sense of certitude and never, ever zoom out. I don't mean merely a vigorous defense of one's own point of view, I mean an unfailing inability to realize how *offensive* the arrogant condescending certitude is, and how *that* is the initial personal attack -- that only engenders the pushback.

If you read the chat log here at this lousy Linden meeting about griefers, you start to see the problem. Then imagine that Caleb can't leave *that* alone, and has to go on and dis the chumps who bother with low-level Lindens in his blog -- *and* even say on Twitter, "Boy, I'm asking for it here" -- lol. Ah, multi-media? He's even asking a question on Facebook: "Am I scary?" Hehe -- ah, social media! so retarded ROFL.

Then...a few rounds and Caleb is huffing and puffing about how I must "cease these personal attacks! or else! Or I will...moderate you! so there!". Ok. Moderate away, champ, welcome to my blog.

There's lots more, but it's probably boring drama, and really, it's mainly about the problem one often sees in Second Life...Second Life as a machine for taking your first life, exposing it to the harsh light of strangers' analysis and your own lucid realization that you want something different, and so now you'll do this Real Thing With Second Life! Look out world! That's what happened to Onder/Caleb: Onder transformed from a pie-coloured antelope into Caleb in a business suit. Oh, and when he threw this tantrum, he decided to refund out of my rental! lol -- as if to say, "I only rent from you when I am pleased with you but as soon as I'm displeased, REFUND! SO THERE!". It's funny how people always imagine they are doing you some kind of favour, even the favour of making some kind of little community to witness the depradations of Second Life...but then...did he ever realize that the other neighbours found his cluttery, game-filled lot a nuisance, and put up big trees to block the view? Could he have ever gone up in a skybox like other inventors? I never complained, although it was kind of against the rules...No good deed goes unpunished!

The Awful New Search

Within minutes of downloading and opening up the new version of SL recommended for release (1.8.5), I was IMing Jeska Linden to tell her about the many evil things in the evil new search, the most evil of which is:

o things you didn't check off deliberately as "show in search" show up by default merely if they are checked off "for sale" -- whether you consciously did this or not. I found 6 things in my office "for sale" that weren't intended to be sold which I never checked -- I managed to uncheck two of them before taking this screenshot which illustrates the problem.

o things that aren't transferable but still show as being "for sale" (apparently once the creator checks them off they continue to show) automatically default to showing up in search.

These two problems, of course, plagued the very first edition of the SheepSearch created by the controversial Grid Shepherd's scrape. I went to the JIRA to report these bugs and it was eerily silent -- not a single bug filed yet on 1.8.5 and no commentary on these problems which are sure to cause pain.

For Linden Lab to have inflicted these two problems AGAIN on their suffering population, oblivious to the static that it caused the Sheep, is just well...evil. Shouldn't I save the word "evil" for things like Darfur and the shooting of little children in the Caucasus? Of course. No need to lecture me on *that* score. But in our synthetic world, when things are done so callously, so consciously, so banally, so *deliberately* -- well, what can you call them but evil? You'd like to call them "stupid" -- but to have ignored the two things that infuriated everyone about the SheepSearch when rolling out the Linden SEARCH shows a barkingly bad lack of sensitivity, consciousness, intelligence and general in-touchness with the Community.

Even Torley, who is supposed to be the Community-friendly Watermelinden, managed to write a whole Tips on this new Search and never notice that it shows up things you didn't mean to be found -- which means it shouldn't have been rolled out until it was fixed.

There was no reason for this to happen. They could default objects -- things -- to "not show up in search" automatically in the first iteration, and give everyone a chance to deliberately OPT-IN instead of forcibly OPTING OUT by themselves looking at objects, noting that OMG they are set to sale, and noting, oh, I don't want to sell that! or not at that price! or no, that's no transfer, I will UNCHECK that from search if it is defaulting now in this buggy first version!

I believe the Sheep got rid of this bug fairly quickly in later versions; the Lindens appear not to have learned from their pupils.

There are numerous other awful things about it.

LINDENS DENY GRID-WIDE DENIAL OF SERVICE ATTACK

I tried filing a report in real time to the much-vaunted CNN i-Report website while this meeting was going on, but I suppose the posts are held somewhere and scrubbed. The news on the site is still completely retarded and lame -- hypervents, corporate drivel, happy-sounding resident mindlessness.

Meanwhile, I attend the Governance Team's daily office hour at 10 am to see if we are getting any traction with this awful chronic griefing in Second Life. It's just appalling -- racist, nasty, anti-Semitic spam, hateful anti-furry stuff, all the worst the Patriotic Nigrahs and their spin-off groups from Woodbury University and the b/tards and W-hat have to offer -- paralyzing literally thousands of sims and thousands of avatars this weekend. And nary a word from Linden Lab. No blog. And no plan of action. And not even an *acknowledgement* that what we are undergoing here is a DENIAL OF SERVICE ATTACK.

As always, these sessions are made even more painful by the presence of these horridly smug fanboyz do-gooders, who are always head-patted by the Lindens in the most nauseating ways. Look at this tool with his 15 years of community service telling us that our petitions aren't fresh enough, and we need to scamper around and make new ones. Sorry, but you can shove it up your ass bud. I have hundreds of signatures -- they are called "my trouble tickets" and "my tenants anguished pleas in my group". Master Quatro has thousands more. It's insane that we'd be forced into a humble petition-gathering mode with these idiots at LL, when they can read their own goddamn abuse reports, for starters -- that IS a petition of those who managed to log on to those who govern.

CNN Launches Sanitized News Service

Second Life Urban Distressed Uniform and Soviet Cement-Workers' Stadium School Nestled in a Utopian Lilith Heart Woods -- and All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace.

Dear God, have you seen how lame the CNN Second Life page is?! Think "Metaversed Messenger Meets Linden Office Hour" and you won't be far off.

So far, it's filled with lovely little stories about Great Masters of Art and NPR in Second Life and Pathfinder Linden in a circle with his fanz. My God, could it really get this bad?! Little retarded NPR science events and sitting in a circle and holding hands with Pathfinder...Pathfinder?! and talking about music in SL? As if there haven't been terribly anguished music listserve debates about this nobody has covered yet? As if sitting with Pathfinder is going to fix it?

I was at first well disposed to this project and still hold out some hope for it. I thought it was a good thing if CNN came in and published blog-like reporting from residents. What not? I noticed the Blingsider and some others were instantly dissing it -- likely because it was American, old media, and involved a news chain that they wouldn't be infiltrating hehe. That's not a reason to dislike it, of course, but it's disconcerting that CNN is both relenquishing old-style intelligent news-room editorial judgement and infantilizing news-gathering by turning it over to non-paid "i-Reporters".

I'm still happy to go and sit in whatever retarded little training session they have...but I do have to wonder why this isn't asynchronous and requires scheduling in a multi-time-zone world where people have real and second lives.

Of course, CNN could just shrug about the lame news copy and say, but that's what our resident i-Reporters posted, we can only post what people find newsworthy! Guess nobody found your nasty cynical reports about the Lindens allowing the PNs to paralyze the grid again this weekend very interesting! People are so TIRED of cynical news media, Prok!

Of course, CNN could have played this very differently. They could have come in to Second Life and reported on it themselves. You *do* have to wonder why CNN couldn't go a little bolder in this game-like virtual world, when in real life, Wolf Blitz can scrutinize the White House day after day without having to sit in a circle with Bushies and talk blandly about music. Or if another intrepid CNN reporter could face down Pakistani military goons, to try to interview our colleague, Asma Jahangir, a lawyer who is under house arrest -- before being frog-marched away by said goons, with Asma calling out sanely through the walls about the travesty of fighting terrorism by fighting the peaceful human rights advocates and free media. Where's the CNN reporter or "i-reporter" (gag) challenging Michael Linden's nonsense at his office hour? Of course, that sort of behaviour would require CNN to stand up to the Lindens and the corporations in Second Life in ways they likely aren't comfortable with yet.

They could have also reached out to the existing inworld media and asked them to be paid stringers. Of course, paying journalists, even in Linden chump change, isn't likely what they want to be doing. Remember, they're here in our world because they are losing advertising and viewers, and are besides themselves trying to figure out what to do next?

So they figured out that they can get reporters for free, get eyeballs for free, because we're all such good little fanz, why pay? What's more, they get to do -- finally! -- what they've always dreamed:

Fat With Amazon Loot, Second Life Herald Indulges in Censorship

Tenshe Vielle goes out trolling for corporate ads such as from the CBS/CSI:NY ESCapade, and helps shield the corporations - and the Herald itself -- from any sort of criticism.

LOL -- figures that just as Uri's book comes out, the Herald would start indulging in massive and blatant censorship, sponsored by old thrashing dinosaur media outlet CBS now -- because the absentee publisher and editor-emeritus are laughing all the way to the bank and can let the Editrix do his thing with impunity -- no one will notice. Authors are now allowed to remove any comments they don't like -- and even brag about it -- and even remove *positive* comments if they have some bi-polar attack.

Now Pixeleen takes comments made on his outrageously tendentious pro-griefer articles, and sends them back to me inworld on notecards with the header "Needs Revision" (wow, clever, that!). She/he imagines that if I put a link in a Herald comment to my own article in my blog, that it is somehow "an ad" that needs to be "purchased" LOL. Of course, people don't "buy ads" for their blogs, they go on what we like to call "the Internet" which has "hyperlinks" on it and in fact is a place where normally, normal people encourage "linking", rather than filling up a comments section with long interventions. Note that ANYTHING critical of THE HERALD ITSELF is now scrubbed.

This just in:

Pixeleen Mistral: (Saved Sun Nov 11 20:04:03 2007) hiya Prok
Pixeleen Mistral: (Saved Sun Nov 11 20:05:31 2007) if you want to buy ads for any of your blogs - please contact Tenshi Vielle
Pixeleen Mistral: (Saved Sun Nov 11 20:07:57 2007) with that thought in mind - I suggest you stop posting thinly disguised ads for your various blogs in the Herlad comments
Pixeleen Mistral: (Saved Sun Nov 11 20:08:24 2007) I mean people are starting to write parodies of this it is getting so bad
Pixeleen Mistral: (Saved Sun Nov 11 20:09:12 2007) I'll send your the text pf you more recent advertizement-infested comments so you can repost them after a revision

Yes, There are Cheeseburgers in the Metaverse!

So I slog over to the Williamsburg neighbourhood of Brooklyn, taking the L just a bit deeper into Brooklyn than I want to go -- I don't have all my shots! I emerge -- in pitch darkness -- and stand on a windblown corner of 4 run-down streets, with day-old newspapers and Ring-Ding wrappers blowing up and down the avenue. There isn't a clue in the world where to go -- so I call Jerry Paffendorf.

Jerry, of course, has started this new secret start up. From what I gather, he is tagging all of Williamsburg, the heart of the Metaverse, with these little active RFID thingies that, when the system goes live in a few weeks, will light up special web pages like a Christmas tree, so that you can have all sorts of interesting things, like instant navigation to your favourite pizza parlour by Twitter, or a hive-time-lapse photo showing all the movement of all the people in that neighbourhood, or...um...well, other stuff. I'm not sure. Or maybe that's NOT what Wello Horld is going to make, but something very like it! Actually, I just made all of that up. I cast around looking for any glowing tags on the telephone polls. Nado. Finally Jerry answers, and walks me, step by step, block by block, even DEEPER into Brooklyn.

I look up and down an absolutely dark-as-a-pocket sidestreet and timidly approach a huge, boarded-up lot -- the last time I went to a Metaverse Meet-Up it was near a junkyard like that. I hear a pitbull growl behind chain-locked gates and quicken my pace. Across the way, I see that TNT Scrap Iron has MOVED from this place and has BIG ARROWS borrowed from CSI:NY pointing AWAY from this area to their new location. Smart move, TNT! But...where's Jerry's party?

A few more blocks, and finally I see a giant place with tin roofs and metal walls that is probably some former ball-bearings plant, called 3rd Ward which bills itself as "open-sourced space" (stifles laughter). This must be the place!

Unmitigated Gall and the Shambling Horror

This is a story about another Metaversed Business Innovator, which I hope will illustrate the problem in microcosm of what we all face with the Lindens in microcosm -- which we can also see in spades from Joshua Linden's "Shambling Horror" post.

What a name for an avatar -- Unmitigated Gall -- and what a statement from a Linden -- "The Shambling Horror" -- eh? Don't you wish you had grabbed that name and that epithet?! Joshua Linden had the unmitigated gall -- appalling all the more so for being unconscious -- of planning a whole SL grid outage on Halloween Day, of all days. He was just completely oblivious, being just a little bit older than trick-r-treat age and just a bit too young to care about other people for whom Second Life, with all its role-players and BDSM queens and Goths and Vampires, Halloween was practically a National Holiday.

And it's not just something SL "celebrates," which he conceded in his post -- but it is a day serving something like Christmas when merchants do a huge percentage of their business ($70 million Lindens changed hands on that day). People screamed about this insanity of doing maintenance -- which can optionally be done any other day, or even in the very wee hours of this day if really mandatory, which it wasn't). There were blogs and complaints -- and Joshua portrayed this as "the mob coming at him with pitchforks" -- and LL finally cancelled the outage. Why should it take that? Because of a very deep-seated bias being structured into SL that "creativity, programming and its maintenance trump everything else". (Remember when the pouting LL coding kiddies threw a tantrum about the NBC Christmas being on "their" maintenance day?!)

The real mob with pitchforks is the Lindens. We're the progressive, enlightened ones who have understood this is an interactive world "imagined and created by its residents", not merely engineered by software programmers at the top or outside of the world. They still imagine, in their retrograde darkened minds, that they can hysterically go after something created -- the world -- with a pitchfork -- an ill-timed patch -- and stop the world. We're here to get them educated away from stuff like that -- or else put them somewhere where they can't do damage. And it's an attitude that needs work everywhere.

Unmitigated first came to my rentals under another name -- he's been there for probably 2 years or so. I've always tried to help him out -- but you know, no good deed goes unpunished. Like many people who imagine their creativity should trump everyone else in Second Life, he can't hear "no," even when said politely -- and when said forcefully, suddenly the person who is by now shouting at him "No" because he wouldn't listen the first 12 times is "to blame". I'm used to this: I don't care. I discuss it on my blog *shrugs*.

Nick Wilson's Virtual Business Innovators at Metaversed

The other day I get an invitation to join a group, Virtual Business Innovators, from 57 Miles which is the avatar name for Nick Wilson, who is of course the fellow who caves to advertisers and canned me from his website Metaversed out of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about whether or not you can have free criticism of corporations in the Metaverse (um, you can lol).

About 15 minutes later, I was ejected from the group, so I asked him why he was inviting and then ejecting. He explained that he banned me because of my "behaviour". I reminded him that my "behaviour" was appropriate : ) He then told me he accidently invited me, because he was just going through all his friendship cards to invite people.

Oh! Ok. Just so you know how it works then, kids: a) befriend Nick Wilson b) get called a Business Innovator lol.

So tonight, I see an announcement come in from my greeter, "Lord Coalcliff has entered your store." Lord Coalcliff is someone who builds and rents sky boxes, he was a former tenant in my newbie community back in the day -- but a tenant who was basically just trying to copy my business and get ideas. I get a lot of people who do that, and I ignore them. My ideas for rentals are great -- and I share them. I have one open-sourced script, and my groups are open. Of course, some people are so retarded that they so slavishly copy me that they include in their leases things that in fact are only in my rentals like, "Enjoy our public commons on X sim or free vending on our Y boardwalk" -- which is of course not in that copy-cat's rentals properties so it just bewilders his tenants ROFL.

Lord Coalcliff is a regular at Metaversed and I wondered what on earth he was doing snooping around my office. He has 8 islands at least -- he doesn't need a rental ROFL. The following convo ensues: